← Beyond Blind Blaming
Beyond Blind Blaming
David Meltzer: Be the Architect of Your Success, Take Ownership and Create the Life You Want
00:23:03
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- [00:00]
A
When I lost everything, over $100 million went bankrupt. I had to tell my mom I lost her house. Nobody could have convinced me at that time that somehow this failure would lead me to a place I never believed I could be. Better life than I ever imagined.
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B
Today I'm joined by David Meltzer. He's a globally recognized entrepreneur, investor and top business coach. His life's mission is to empower over a billion people to be happy.
- [00:27]
A
I was born in a world of not enough, moved to the world of just enough, where I consistently bought things I didn't need to impress people I didn't like and thought to myself, wow, I hate myself. I'm a liar, a cheater, a manipulator, an overseller, a back end seller. And that's when I took stock in who I was and what I wanted to become. And now, 18 years later, I make more money, help more people, and have more fun than I ever dreamed of.
- [00:53]
B
When you see people blaming external circumstances, how do you help them shift from a mindset of blame to one of ownership?
- [00:59]
A
So I always have people ask these three questions.
- [01:14]
B
Welcome to Beyond Blind Blaming. This is a place where we explore how easily hidden truths can hold us back, trapping us in cycles of frustration and blame, often without even realizing what's truly stopping us. Each week I'm joined by experts and professionals who share their journey of taking back control of their story, overcoming hidden challenges, and discover how to stop blind blaming from dictating their outcomes. The insights you're about to gain will help you see beyond your current limitations, find the courage to seek new perspectives, and ultimately live a life that's both purposeful and powerful. So if you're ready to break free from blind blaming and discover what's possible, you'll definitely want to listen to my next guest. I'm your host, Kevin St. Clergy and today I'm joined by David Meltzer. David is chairman of the Napoleon Hill Institute and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Lee Steinberg Sports and Entertainment Agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. He's a globally recognized entrepreneur, investor and top business coach. Variety magazine has recognized him as the Sports Humanitarian of the Year and he's been awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. As executive producer of the Apple TV series Two Minute Drill and Office Hours, as well as entrepreneurs number one digital business show Elevator Pitch, David brings unmatched insights to audience worldwide. His journey has been featured in books, movies and tv, including his World's Greatest Motivators Think and Grow Rich and Netflix's beyond the Secret. His life's mission is to empower over a billion people to be happy. The simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing, value. And all this content and communication. As you'll see from today, that's exactly what you'll receive. David, welcome to the show.
- [02:56]
A
Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for the great introduction. So pleased to be here. As we stated earlier, we have spheres of influence, of similarity, which means we're at the same frequency. So I know I'm in the right place. Thanks for the opportunity.
- [03:09]
B
Welcome. Thanks for being here. And I. A funny Jack story. When he asked me what my goal was for my new book, I want to help 10 million people find their hidden truth. And he's like, why so low? And I was like, I don't know. It was just a number I came up with. He's like, well, my goal is to help 100 million people, and we helped half a billion, so I think you need to up it. And now I get you. And I read your intro. A billion. So now I've got to go from a hundred million to a billion. So thank you.
- [03:31]
A
I actually make it over a billion. I don't even limit myself at a billion. So it's over a billion people. Yeah.
- [03:36]
B
Well, from what I've read about you, your journey's been extraordinary. Rising to an incredible financial success, losing it all, and then rebuilding your career in life with a new mindset. What was the pivotal moment that led you to shift your approach to success and fulfillment and happiness?
- [03:51]
A
You know, it was really a culmination of four red flags in my life. I was born in a world of not enough, moved to the world of just enough, where I consistently bought things I didn't need to impress people I didn't like. And it was exacerbated by the fact that I ran the most notable sports agency in the world. So not only was I worth millions of dollars, but I had access to what billionaires couldn't even afford to do. Sidelines and backstages and VIP rooms. And that led me to take note of who I was and what I wanted to become. And so the first red flag was my father gave me a jacket with no pockets for my 30th birthday. And I was furious. I told him, why would you do this? He said, well, you're just like me. You think money will buy you love and happiness. And I want you to not make the same mistakes I made, son. And I wasn't ready to hear that at 30 years old. So I Told my dad to F off and I hated him. And then six years later, running the most notable sports agency in the world. I asked my best friend Rob, who actually I'd known since the fourth grade. He actually asked my wife for me in sixth grade camp to go steady and she said no, tell him to ask me himself. So Rob and I had been friends for a long time. I invited him to the Masters with Wayne Gretzky, me, Joe Montana for a NET jets party behind the scenes at the cabins. And he told me he wouldn't go with me. I asked him why. He said, because I don't like who you hang out with and I don't like what you're doing. And I told him, hey man, I'm not doing what those guys are doing. He said, dave, you can lie to me, but stop lying to yourself. You're going to end up dead and I don't want to be around. So of course I wasn't ready to hear that. Told him how ungrateful he was and no longer was my friend. And I hated him. My mom along the way kept telling me she was worried about me, which caused me to separate from her. And then finally it all came to a head. As you was asked, I lied to my wife and went to the Grammy Awards with Little John the rapper. Told her I had a business meeting. She told me not to go. Told me I wasn't paying attention to my family, my health, I was partying way too much. And I came home at 5:30 in the morning a complete wreck. And that's when she told me to take stock in who I was and what I wanted to become because she was leaving because she thought I would end up dead. And my three daughters under 10 didn't need to be around me anymore. And there I sat the next morning hating my mom, my dad, my best friend and my wife, thinking about what my wife said. One other thing my wife said that's very relevant today is she said, if your mom knew who you really were, imagine what she'd think of you. And why that's relevant I'll get to in a moment. Because for me, I sat there hating everyone and I saw that jacket for the first time in six years and I looked at it, started to cry and thought to myself, wow, I don't hate my mom, my dad, my best friend, and certainly not my wife. I hate myself. I'm a liar, a cheater, a manipulator, an overseller, a back end seller. And that's when I took stock in who I was and what I wanted to become. And now, 18 years later, I make more money, help more people, and have more fun than I ever dreamed of. I do it by figuring out what I'm doing to interfere with it. Leveraging extreme wisdom from Russell Brunson and Jack Canfield and others, but also in extreme faith that I'm protected, promoted, loved, and perfected, even when no evidence is there or evidence is contrary to me getting there. And here I am today. And I brought up that story about my mom because recently, in the last three weeks, my mom passed.
- [07:31]
B
Oh, sorry to hear that.
- [07:32]
A
Thank you. And I eulogized her. And after walking out, my wife said to me, hmm, I know your mom knows who you are. She must be proud. And for me, that's that paradigm shift that I try to empower people with my expertise. I know how to help people make a lot of money. I know how to help people help people. And I know how to help people have a lot of fun. To enjoy what they don't like or love. To enjoy what other people don't like or love consistently, every day, persistently, without quit, in the pursuit of their own potential. And that's how I find a thousand people like you, Kevin, who will empower a thousand to empower a thousand. A thousand times a thousands. A million, a million times a thousands. A billion. That's how I get my math done. That's how I'm going to change the world.
- [08:21]
B
It's interesting how different things in different people's lives help wake us up sometimes. I certainly had mine after my second divorce. For me, it was when I actually sat down, very similar to what you just said. And I came up with, it was from Brendan Burchard. I don't know if you know who he is.
- [08:35]
A
Oh, Brandon really well, too. Yes.
- [08:36]
B
What I loved is sitting there listening to him talk. He's like, you need to have a to be list. I'm sure all of you have a to do list that never ends, but how many of you have a to be list? And that was my biggest takeaway. After lunch, I ended up leaving, and I went and worked on my to be list. This is like 15 years ago, but it certainly helped change my life. And my to be list was very simple, fit, free, and focused. But I added one this year, and it just has helped people because that's what I've always done. My experience has been, as long as you can help people, you'll be as successful as you want to be.
- [09:05]
A
I have another list. Maybe you can add this to Your repertoire. Jack Canfield And I, with Dr. Wayne Dyer, came up with this list. It's the I am list and it's I am. And then let's figure out what we're doing to interfere with what I already am. Because I'm part and parcel of an infinite, abundant, unified system of thought of all meaning. And my I am list continues to grow existential in its nature, but extremely powerful, encompassing what I am and what I can become and that already I am. And the shift in the paradigm of what am I doing to interfere with my potential is a key ingredient in a paradigm shift that changes millions of people's lives.
- [09:51]
B
So I love that because it kind of goes along with one of the core values I wrote down was being present. But I think I can see where you can take that I am list. So many different places.
- [10:00]
A
So beautiful. Thank you.
- [10:02]
B
You often talk about the difference between happiness and success. How do you define true success? And how can people shift their mindset to align with real happiness and fulfillment?
- [10:11]
A
Happiness is an ability to be happy, is an ability, it's a capability, it allows. And it's the process of being able to enjoy happy what you don't like or love what other people don't like or love every day without quitting in the pursuit of your own potential. Now, the fulfillment that you mentioned, the passion, the purpose, the profitability, the application of why is how I describe that in true success is a derivative of understanding where your skills and knowledge are today and then figuring out how to align your skills and knowledge with a higher level of productivity, accessibility, or gratitude. So, for example, if I wanted to be successful at basketball, I would take inventory of my skills, knowledge of basketball, and you have a genetic and energetic inheritance in this human experience, this limited amount of time of being a human being this lifetime. I know that my basement in basketball, as far as skills and knowledge goes, is very low. That I know that I could have an equal Delta, an equal desire of LeBron James, and I won't even be even close to his basement. I won't even be close to his genetic and energetic inheritance. But success is not just the Delta. It is understanding the, the alignment of your skills and knowledge to that delta. So if that was truly my passion, I could feel extremely successful being below average Jewish center basketball player on the over 50 league, because I know that I'm putting the work in. I'm improving so much from where I started. That's a success. That is a success. Now, will it gain outcomes or time be utilized to impact my life? The way I want to know. It's not a mission of mine. So I pick things where my skills and knowledge have a LeBron James type of basement and apply that same delta, which creates an appearance, a perception of success, because I started with a higher basement. But the real success in my heart is to find where my skills and knowledge have the most impact and and prove out that delta. Because it's not the pursuit of happiness, Happiness is the pursuit. And if we're pursuing our potential with a pragmatic awareness of what our potential actually is according to our skills and knowledge, we can actually ascertain a better perspective of success and continue to create momentum towards greater progress and make it more fun. Always or I'm not doing it. Don't take yourself so seriously.
- [13:01]
B
Yeah, well, I always say when it's not fun anymore, I'm done.
- [13:04]
A
You and I are birds of a feather, that's for sure.
- [13:06]
B
As we talked about before we started, beyond blind blaming is about uncovering hidden truths that hold us back. I just like my baseball story that you read about before we started. When you see people blaming external circumstances, people bad markets, lack of opportunities, or even bad luck for their struggles, how do you help them shift from a mindset of blame to one of ownership or one that can help them uncover the real cause of their problem that sometimes they can't even see?
- [13:32]
A
So I always have people ask these three questions. What did I do to be responsible for this? What did I do to attract this to myself? And what am I doing to participate in this perception and to come to the conclusion with these three different questions? And what am I supposed to learn from it? You see, life's about lessons. The lessons keep on coming until we learn them. You will forget every single lesson you've ever learned, but you have the power to remember it, remind it, recollect it at any time. And it's becoming more and more apparent because of social media AI, the cloud that we have that power to access and remember, but it's always been there before. AI was there before Google was there. We have the ability to remember everything. And so for me, in accountability comes control and the nuance of having not only the wisdom of what I'm supposed to learn from it, but the faith that there is a omniscient in all information and in all power that loves us, protects us, promotes us, and perfects us. And we're not always going to know the evidence, we're not always going to see the evidence. We're not always going to understand how contrary evidence could be promoting protecting, love and perfecting us. Just as I could not see when I lost everything, over $100 million, went bankrupt. I had to tell my mom I lost her house, which was the only reason I wanted to be rich in the first place, was to buy her house. Nobody could have convinced me at that time that somehow this failure in my mind, this perception that I was participating in, would lead me to a place I never believed I could be. Better place, better situation, better life than I ever imagined. See, problems and solutions exist as one. Human beings need a lapse of time between the problem and the solution. Very rarely do we find the solution right in the problem at the instant that it occurs. So how good are we? Through wisdom and faith have shortened the distance of resistance, the lapse of time between problems and solutions that we exacerbate and amplify by reacting to fear because we don't know the evidence or the evidence contrary to where we think we want to be.
- [15:50]
B
I see it all the time. Coaching clients, talks I do all over the world. I'm sure you do as well. But there comes a point where you have to make a decision. And your book, game time, decision making. I did get through a couple of your books before the talk to prepare. You talk about the importance of making the right decisions under pressure, which I think happens. But as you described, sometimes that pressure happens over time. What's your process for helping people make better, more aligned decisions?
- [16:14]
A
Well, first of all, understanding our non negotiables. So is a relationship a circumstance that often causes us to create the overwhelm, feeling, the procrastination that interferes with our decision making process. So I like to divide my life into half, into one understanding that every day has only one guarantee. There's only one certainty, tomorrow. There's only one thing. You can guarantee me 24 hours. Everything else is circumstantial. You can't guarantee me the weather, who's going to win the baseball, football or basketball game. You can't guarantee me my flight's going to be on time. But you can guarantee me that I get 24 hours tomorrow. Unless of course it's the last day of my life, then I'm cheated. I get that, that's God's guarantee. And so within that context, in order to make quicker decisions aligned with what's important to us, not urgent urgency is a subset of importance. But in order to do so, I have non negotiable behavior relative to time. Minimum of 8 hours of sleep, minimum of an hour on my, my health A minimum of an hour with my family, a minimum of time with my finance, my faith, the study of time and the study of relativity. Well then I've already taken control of my decisions because I have non negotiable behaviors regardless of circumstance, no matter what the weather, the interest rates, and it doesn't matter. I'm going to get that done with very few exceptions. Now I can just practice reprioritizing pre prioritizing, post prioritizing according to negotiables, circumstances. And so because I practice that with intentionality, I'm actually better at prioritizing the negotiable behaviors. I also get a better outcome because no matter what the circumstances or negotiable behaviors and my prioritization to decision making, it doesn't matter. Because I've always predetermined my success by making sure I spend a minimum amount of time sleeping, health, family, faith, finance, relativity and time.
- [18:14]
B
I love that because you've just taught everyone how they should structure their day.
- [18:17]
A
Make it custom to their own personal life. That's David Meltzer's life. You don't have to follow it, but use it as a great idea of where to start and make it your own.
- [18:25]
B
One of my favorite questions to ask is and clearly you've done this, but you've clearly invested in yourself. What's your favorite way to invest in yourself?
- [18:33]
A
Asking for help. So the biggest mistake I've made and the advice I give myself today, whether I was 17, 27, 37, 47 or 57 as I am today, is I just don't ask for help enough. And let me just share this before I leave it. I'm happy by the way, and thank you for reading my books. I want to share with your entire community. I will send them my book. I will pay for the book, I will pay for shipping. Just please email me directly if you believe what I'm about to say to you. And it's David Meltzer.com please put in the notes. But there's an infinite loop and asking for help is to me the best illustration of faith. You see, everybody gives. Everybody loves to give. Now not everybody sees what they're given when they give. And a lot of people are afraid to receive. And so this infinite loop gets interfered with because the more we give, the more we're given. With the right perspective, the more we receive. But the real testament of faith is if I believe there's more than enough of everything for everyone, if I believe there's a more than enough God, then if there's more than enough. Why won't I ask him for more so that I could give more than more, be given more than more, receive more than more, and ask for more than more than more. And so, so many people don't think it's humble to receive or to ask for more. So many people don't understand that it's the biggest testament illustration of abundance that you're confident when you're asking for more, that there is more for everyone. And instead of cheating yourself and others, and when I say cheating others, I mean everyone loves to give. Why not give an opportunity for everyone to have that feeling of worthiness, of love, of capability. Nobody feels bad when they're capable of helping someone else. We're just not asking enough. And so I want everyone to think about the infinite loop of giving. Please leave here. I'd be happy to help you with this philosophy of giving more, being given more, receiving more, and asking for more than more.
- [20:39]
B
It's interesting because my brand new assistant got a new house and I just brought her just from what she just said. So glad that she said this because I. For a housewarming gift, I bought her a couch and I bought her two pots and pans. And she's very close to my girlfriend. She's a family member. She's like, I just, I just don't like getting stuff like that.
- [20:58]
A
It's.
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B
It's always been give. And I'm like, what? I've never gotten this before. What's going on? So I sat down and talked to her and she's like, well, in my life, Kevin, so far, it's always been people give me things to get. And I was like, oh, welcome to the new new world. Because there's a lot of people out there just love to give, to give. It's just a gift, take it. I don't expect anything to work. You're doing an incredible job for me and you helped me so much. Yeah, just take it and say thank you. So that was great advice. I loved it.
- [21:24]
A
Thank you.
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B
Well, David, thank you. We'll make sure. We'll put your email address up there. We'll put your website up there so everybody will have that. On the video as well as the audio version of this, we have a resources section. I'd love to send you a copy of my book if you don't mind. I'd love to get your opinion on it, but I'd love to stay on.
- [21:38]
A
Give you a testimonial too. And yeah, let's re hook up. Where do you live?
- [21:42]
B
I'm in Austin.
- [21:43]
A
Oh, good. Yeah, we do a lot around 200 cities a year. So we're in the Masters, then in Nashville, then in New York, then in Boston and Denver this week. So invitations, not obligations. Let's do more.
- [21:55]
B
I'd love to meet here in person. That'd be wonderful.
- [21:58]
A
Absolutely.
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B
Well, David, I know we had a set amount of time. I will. I will. Definitely. Sam. I'll give him a hard time for missing your event.
- [22:03]
A
Thank you.
- [22:04]
B
All right, buddy. Have a great day.