Adam Torres and David Meltzer discuss David Meltzer’s philosophy in business and life.
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Show Notes:
Helping 1 billion people is a BIG mission. In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed David Meltzer, Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing. Explore David’s mission and book, Connected to Goodness: Manifest Everything You Desire in Business and Life.
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About David Meltzer
In his early 20s, David Meltzer quickly rose to the top of his game in the business world, becoming a millionaire. David lectured around the globe and saw rapid success in every business project he touched. But something was missing, and in his 30s as a multimillionaire, he went on a rapid downward spiral that ended in bankruptcy. It was only then that David realized, in order to revive and thrive, he needed to codify what had made him successful in the first place. He has since emerged to realize even more rewarding heights of success in business and life.
David Meltzer has created a platform that uses four overarching principles—gratitude, empathy, accountability, and effective communication—and these principles have allowed him to communicate and mentor everyone from college students to c-suite executives. These four principles in everyday practice allow David to live by his mission to “make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun.”
About Sports 1 Marketing
Founded by Hall of Fame Quarterback Warren Moon and veteran sports & technology executive David Meltzer, Sports 1 Marketing is a global sports and entertainment marketing agency that leverages over $20 billion in relationship capital and over 38 years of business experience, bringing athletes, celebrities and businesses together to make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is a very special episode. We have Dave Meltzer on the line, and he is the co-founder of Sports One Marketing.
Been looking forward to this interview for a long time. Hey, first, just wanna say Dave, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, and I’ve, uh, really look forward to being on Mission Matters. All right, Dave. So, uh, we’re gonna start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So Dave, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Dave, what mission matters to you? Well, I’m on one mission and that’s to empower over a billion people to be happy, to teach them what I’ve learned through my journey. To live in abundance, to make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun.
And so I’m looking for a thousand people like you, Adam, to empower a thousand to empower a thousand, a thousand times a thousands, a million, a million times a thousands, a billion. I want to create a collective consciousness of happiness on earth. Yeah. And, uh, I’ve heard people say these, you know, big goals, big things in the past.
And as I, as I, I, I already, I already knew who you were before the interview, of course, and I, I, I got into your content, but in preparing for this, I got a chance to really deep dive. And when you say a billion, I know you mean it a billion. And one of the things that, uh, that. Kind of struck me was a couple things, but definitely your consistency over time.
Like I look at your Friday calls, I watched one the other day and I’m, I’m gonna be on their them, um, even more often now. But, um, you’ve been doing that for like 20 plus years. Am I off on that? No, you got it. 23 years, it’ll be 24 in October. I’ve been doing free Friday trainings. I haven’t missed a week in over, you know, 23 years.
Wow. Uh, and on my mission though, aligned with my mission of empowering others, I do as much as I can for free. If people want more intimate help, I have group things like meetups and office hours. And then I have one-on-one very intimate help that I can give. Uh, but I try my best to give everything from my books, my guides, my exercises, podcast, movie, TV shows, all for free.
And what I found really interesting about this, and now you, you, you caught my attention because you haven’t missed. Denny. ’cause I was, I was kind of wondering, I’m like, I think you were traveling, you were in Europe. And I’m like, man, he, he’s, he’s had a long day, or, or, or woke up really early. One of the two.
And I’m like that consistency. So you were, you were out traveling, I believe, right on that last one. Last one. I was in Italy. Yeah. And, uh, it was about one in the morning, uh, with the difference, uh, that we have with time. So yes, I won’t miss them. Sometimes I’m a little bit more tired than others. Sometimes a little more disheveled than others.
But, uh, consistency to me is so important because, Two minutes a day, for example, is in a physical realm. Physics, quantum, physical, and metaphysical realm is worth two hours on a Saturday. So I think people discount how important consistency is, but to me it’s the epicenter. It is my superpower. I. And, uh, and so today I definitely want to go into your book.
So have my copyright here that you so graciously gave me. Um, and, but before we get into that, like I, I, as I’m digging through your content, I noticed you had a gratitude challenge on your website and that, that just struck me because, um, just a quick, quick backstory. So all of this mission matters.
Everything else started with. This little thing that I used to do on YouTube called The Gratitude Show, and I would run around Century City literally when streaming just started on Periscope, just like talking about what I was grateful for, and all these things were just attracted to my life and opportunities and everything.
But it all started with gratitude. So I’m interested to hear what is gratitude mean in your life? It means everything. It means my capability of finding the light, the love, and the lessons in everything. It is my participation in my perspective. Mm-hmm. It allows me to have not only gratitude of the past, which means that I’m giving meaning I.
Finding the light, the love, and the lessons of the mistakes, failures, setbacks, even successes, defining moments, historical relevances of my past, and you’re looking at someone that made over a hundred million dollars, lost it, made even more back again, and helped more people and had more fun doing it.
Through gratitude, but what gratitude really holds for me now is gratitude of the future. It is the cornerstone of my faith that there’s more than enough of everything for everyone, that I’m part and parcel of this collective, of the omniscient, all powerful, infinite source of unified thought that is protecting and promoting all of us at all times.
Gratitude is the. Cheapest, fastest, easiest, effective way to change your life, and it’s no surprise that from the streets of Century City to mission matters here in the amplified stories that you’re participating in. Gratitude has been the cornerstone for you as well. Yeah, and I, I read that in your book talking about, you know, making and then not, not having a hundred million dollars and that, that it was like a punch to my gut, like, how, how do you, how do you stay focused in the bad times, whether it’s on gratitude or, or otherwise?
Because when I read that, I was like, I’m not punching it that way. That hit me. Yeah, it hits a lot of people, but I know that I have control of three things. Mm-hmm. My mindset, my heartset, and my handset. And I know that I’m merely a bag of beliefs and that I wanna align my beliefs to the mindset I want, the heartset I want, and the hand I want.
So, uh, for me, the principles of my four values, gratitude being one of them, forgiveness, accountability. And inspiration along with five daily practices of knowing my what, my who, my how, determining and prioritizing my now and next, and then applying my why so that no longer am I in search of more happiness, more health, more wealth, and more worthiness.
But instead, I am. I am happy, I am healthy, I am wealthy. I am worthy. I’m helping people and myself figure out what I’m doing to interfere with it. And that’s how, uh, I have not only dealt with some pretty big void shortages and obstacles in my life, but exceeded everyone’s expectations and. Even improving upon where I was and where I want to be, or even better.
All right. Let, let’s, uh, let’s switch focus slightly to the, to the book here. So connected to Goodness, um, now lots, only so much you can accomplish in, in a, you know, 20, 20 minute interview. But what do you hope, and I, for all the readers or all the, all of our leaders out there that are, that watch this program, a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs and executives, um, a lot of executives.
Um, what do you hope that people take away from this book? Well, my biggest takeaway is that you live in an abundant world. So the first step to go from nothingness, you see most people live their lives like tubes, food in food out. They roll a boulder to the top of the hill just to have it rolled to the bottom the next day.
Yeah. And so I teach people in a very pragmatic way how to take a. Nothing life and turn it into a possible life. And when we know what we want, those possibilities are there. It’s a mathematical advantage. Then I teach people to take another mathematical leap, another progress that they are dreaming of from possibility to probability.
So when you know what you want, and then apply, who can help you and who can you help. You now become in spirit, which takes the possibility and makes it a probability. And when you know, uh, how to get it done, it becomes your perspective. And your perspective becomes reality when you prioritize. I. The what?
The who and the how. So I want everyone to take away, how do I figure out what I want in life and a trajectory of where I think I want to be? How do I give a meaning to my past that aligns with where I think I want to be or better? And how do I go from nothingness? To reality to manifest as they say, which is a woo woo turn that scares a lot of people and did me when I first heard it.
But how do I basically take the nothingness of my life and everyone else’s and turn it into exactly what I’m dreaming about? That’s what the book is about, and we do it by connecting to goodness. That’s why I always say, be kind to your future self and do good deeds. Yeah. Your philosophy, one of the core philosophies that’s not stated in the book, but also just woven throughout your organization as I’ve, as I’ve, you know, had the pleasure to work with some of your team like Keaton, who’s been wonderful over there.
But your philosophy make a lot of money, help a lot of people have a lot of fun. I, it’s so balanced. It’s so good. It’s so straight. It’s so straightforward, but there’s just so many layers to that. Um, like how did that come about? Like how did all that come about? That’s a great question, and a lot of people don’t ask about that, and I think it’s indicative of my own, uh, evolution.
So, you know, I’m, uh, self-admitted, an oversell, a backend seller, a liar, manipulator, and cheater when it came to sales. And so I was very verbose in explaining things. There was a lot of. Fluff to everything that I did. So when I created my mission for my company mm-hmm. It started out with a very verbose, superfluous BS mission about, yeah.
You know, I coalesced the vapors of human existence and created viable and logical conclusion by leveraging billions of dollars of relationship capital in order to effectuate abundance in a unified system, blah, blah, blah. I was blessed to have an extraordinary business partner. His name was Warren Moon.
Yeah. He was a Hall of Fame quarterback in the N F L, the first African American Hall of Fame quarterback. And he read through and he said, David, this sounds like a bunch of fluff. And so he went through it and he read off the first paragraph and he said, in simple terms, David, Without the fluff. What does it mean?
I said, I wanna make a lot of money. Oh, okay. Good. Second paragraph. I want to help a lot of people. Huh? That sounds good. Third paragraph. I wanna have a lot of fun doing it. He said, why don’t we just say, make a lot of money, help a lot of people. And have a lot of fun, and it has stuck over two decades now.
Inspired people also reconciled with my mission. Mm-hmm. When people ask me how do I define being happy, it’s that enjoyment of the consistent persistent pursuit of my potential, of making a lot of money, helping a lot of people, and having a lot of fun. And so one of the things, so my, my previous career I was a financial advisor.
I managed a lot of money. So that was, so my mind tends to think sometimes in buckets. And when I broke down your philosophy, at least in my own life, and I think a lot of people would fit into these, into these buckets. So sometimes in our earlier years, like in college, we’re taught, you know, um, that’s when you can have, have a lot of fun, right?
Like that’s when we’re allowed to have a lot of fun. Fun. Then when we get into our adult lives, that’s when it gets to the, we have to make a lot of money and then when we get to retirement, it, then it becomes like help a lot of people. Maybe we enter the philanthropy side of, of our lives, but in yours I see balance and really you did like that, that statement has kind of changed my perspective.
’cause I was stuck in an old way and as I worked through your book, like I’ve already, I’ve benefited quite a bit from the knowledge in it. But I’m like, whoa. Like we can do all these things at the same time. It, Dave, it never even occurred to me. It’s wonderful. And then to incorporate the daily practices that we can, instead of thinking about our twenties, thirties, and forties.
In that way, we can actually think of each day that someday I’m weighted more heavily to making a lot of money. Some days I’m heavily weighted towards, uh, helping a lot of people, and some days I’m weighted even more. Towards having a lot of fun, but every day I spend a minimum amount of time doing all three and notating that two minutes a day is worth two hours on a Saturday.
Notating. That time is the dependent variable of all matter, and when I utilize my time in a productive, accessible, and gracious manner, I can leverage the weighted balance in order to incorporate a totality. A balance that incorporates the idea of abundance to make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun, but requires me to enjoy the consistent, every day persistent without quit pursuit of my potential.
So I wanna, I wanna shift focus here slightly. Uh, So one of the reasons I was really excited to get you on the line was because deal making. When I look at what I know of your career and what I was able to read, um, I mean, in the book specifically, I mean, you talked about everything from being thrown into a, um, a, a deal early on, uh, for negotiating a, a.
Sports team. Right. All the way to, I’m sure your deal started smaller at some point, but this concept of deal making and, uh, and collaborating, um, like what, when you’re going into a deal, big or small, like, like how do you, like, how do you approach that? You’ve done deals with huge brands, Yeah. You know, originally I went into it as a zero sum game, and so I thought of it as a trade or a negotiation, winners and losers in a world of just enough.
Uh, and instead today there’s three components of my. Own negotiation. Number one, it’s called appreciation in negotiation. And appreciation is let’s set a mindset in a context to adding value. Because instead of being a negotiation of zero sum, I create a negotiation of value add. And so in my negotiations today, we sit down and talk about each party, how much value we can add via a concept called depreciation.
The word appreciation, as you know from Wall Street means to add value. If your home appreciates a stock, appreciates your portfolio, appreciates. It goes up in value. So setting the, uh, platform of appreciation. The second one is called acknowledgement. And acknowledgement is how do we acquire the knowledge of what we all have in this negotiation?
Mm-hmm. And the truth is the only way. That we can acquire the knowledge is to not what have what we have anymore. Hmm. And so to bring a awareness to the acknowledgement of each party’s assets or capabilities, skills, desires, whatever they may be the acknowledgement of, Hey, I’m going to either give this away, lose it, have it manipulated or even cheated from me, but I’m going to acknowledge.
Not only the add added value, but what I have. And then finally, the key to a true negotiation is not just appreciation and acknowledgement, but it’s the ability to live in abundance, to believe that there’s more than enough for everyone and to ask for more. And if each party asked for more from the other party.
More of the skills, knowledge, and capabilities and desires that they have, and those are equal in value and added value notating. The timing and risk tolerance, perceived values and bottom lines of each party. You can see how instead of a winner and a loser in negotiation, we actually can have winners all around.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s that, that abundance mindset. But you’re, you’re speaking even more specifically tactically, like to where like there we can, you know, everybody has to give a, give something, but we can all win out of this. And as you, and I don’t know if you view like the, a deal as a continuum, like you’re going down this linear path and you know, there’s zigs and zags or whatnot.
Um, and if, and if not, please correct me, I don’t wanna put words into your mouth, but as. As, as the negotiations maybe get a little bit tricky, which, which all will, um, like how do you know if it’s time or how do you kind of make the decisions on whether it’s time to continue to push through or if it’s to time to walk away?
I think that’s a really good point, and I barely touched on it. There’s two things that people need to do before negotiation. One, you need to know your timing and risk tolerance, and you need to know your timing and risk tolerance to identify two things critical going into any value add situation, or as you stated in negotiation one, what is the perceived value of all the different assets in the negotiation?
Hmm. And then two, aligned with the timing and risk tolerance. What is my bottom line? You see, once you know your perceived value, that’s what you’re gonna ask for. And you know, the bottom line, which is the least amount that I’ll take, you’re done. There’s nothing other, because there is no emotional attachment.
There’s just math. Yeah, it’s, Hey, I asked for a hundred grand to speak and you offered me 60 grand. My bottom line is 50, so I’m already. In a position to be productive, accessible, and gracious with the value add. Now, if I asked for a hundred thousand and you offered me 10 and my bottom line is 50, because of the alignment of the timing and risk tolerance involved, then I can very confidently say I’m sorry, but that’s not enough.
I let me know if there is a time when you’re willing to discuss more, but right now I can’t do it for that. And you don’t waste any time trying to squeeze people. Look negotiation, always be fair. Never negotiate, uh, above your bottom or below the bottom line. And don’t do business with dick’s, which is in the book.
I feel I, I think I counted three times, maybe four. At least, and it kept reminding me like, over and over my next book, people are gonna love it. The, the, oh, that’s great. Oh, well, well, uh, first off, Dave, I really appreciate you coming on the show and for, for our audience and listeners, um, just so you know, this is like tipping the iceberg.
Uh, David’s doing a full hour of this every Friday, and what really struck me is that, I mean, he, he, he goes even. Further, even more tactical and I mean, when he is answering the questions and otherwise, um, a full hour every Friday. So I’m, I’m hooked. I hope everybody else goes and checks it out. Um, that being said, uh, Dave, if everybody wants to connect, whether it’s with the call, the book or otherwise, um, what’s the best way for them to do that?
I also would like to offer your entire audience, uh, my book. I will sign the book, I will send it to you. I will pay for the book and shipping, so don’t worry, there’ll be no, no cost to you at all, but just email me directly, David. At D meltzer.com. Uh, [email protected]. My free Friday trainings, my groups, anything you want, just email [email protected].
If you forget my email and it’s not in the notes, then just Google me. You will find me. I’m on every platform. David Meltzer like Seltzer with an m. David Meltzer. Fantastic. And we’ll, we’ll put all that in the show notes so that our audience can just, uh, head on over and check out the site and everything else we talked about.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters, um, we’re all about bringing on entrepreneurs, executives, and experts and having them share their best, their mission, what drives them, what motivates them to get out of the bed and in the morning and make a difference. That sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, hit that subscribe button.
We have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line, and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Dave, again, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me, Adam. I’ll talk to you soon.