Pursuing our Potential
David Meltzer reflects on his journey from fame and fortune to bankruptcy and brokenness, and shares how his experiences helped him discover humility, servant leadership, and his life’s purpose to help people find joy.
Episode Notes
David Meltzer believes that mistakes ‘promote and protect us’. It’s a hard-earned belief—his own story substantiates the idea that with the right mindset, no setback is permanent.
In his talk with Jesse, David describes his journey from humble beginnings in Ohio to becoming wildly successful and rubbing shoulders with sports legends as the CEO of Leigh Steinberg Sports. He also describes the undoing of that success—a downfall he recounts with inspiring vulnerability. He identifies the people, moments, and insights that helped him build back to a joyful life. Throughout the conversation, he shares profound ideas for how to become a fast learner, develop more empathy, find hidden reserves of gratitude, and reach your ultimate potential. And he and Jesse share a memory of an Ohio sports memory that any NBA fan will know well.
(4:21) The power of ‘starting today’ when addressing big problems
(8:17) David as a ten-year old: disadvantaged but ambitious
(10:02) Landing a lucrative job with Leigh Steinberg Sports
(11:35) Experiencing the compounding effect of bad behavior
(17:04) How telling the truth illuminated a path forward
(18:11) Advice for building a brand—the importance of frequency
Guest Bio
David Meltzer is the Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh (“Lee”) Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. David has been recognized by Variety Magazine as their Sports Humanitarian of the Year and awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He is also the Executive Producer of the Bloomberg and Apple TV series 2 Minute Drill and Office Hours.
His life’s mission is to empower OVER 1 BILLION people to be happy! This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing...VALUE. As part of that mission, for the past 20 years, he’s been providing free weekly trainings to empower others to empower others to be happy.
Helpful Links
David’s website
Watch Season 1 of Office Hours
+ Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] David Meltzer: You need to learn to enjoy the consistent everyday pursuit of your potential. If you enjoy the consistent pursuit of your potential, things will aggregate, and you will build something bigger and better than you could even imagine. But it will not happen without the consistent pursuit. The pursuit of happiness doesn't exist. Happiness is the pursuit.
[00:00:37] Jesse Purewal: From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts, and ideas fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands and experiences.
I'm Jesse Purewal, head of brand at Qualtrics and your host. My guest on the show today is Dave Meltzer. You might know Dave from his podcast, The Play Book, or from his live show, Office Hours, or as the author of one of four books on decision making or compassionate capitalism. You might even know that he rose to fame as the CEO of the Lee Steinberg Sports and Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie, Jerry Maguire. What you might not know is that his journey to the top and his subsequent fall formed the arc of a story that's as tragic as it is compelling. But rather than stay out of the limelight or bury the past or live quietly on the sidelines, Dave's taken the opposite approach. His mission is simple, even if it's ambitious. Dave wants to share the lessons that he had to learn the hard way to help people on their own journeys toward happiness.
On the show today, Dave and I go deep on his story, including how he sees empathy as a way to learn more and learn faster, the relationship between productivity, accessibility and gratitude, how his unique past helped him forge a connection to Lee Steinberg, the disarray he allowed his life to lapse into, and how embracing vulnerability helped set him back on course, the importance of mistakes and setbacks in fueling happiness, how he's able to be so forthright and transparent about his experiences and his truth, and some of his and my favorite moments in Ohio sports. We started off talking about the definition and the power of deep empathy.
[00:02:20] David Meltzer: The way that I look at empathy is are you a fast learner. So in order for me to accommodate a person, place or thing in my life, an activity, they have to be a fast learner [inaudible] opportunity for me to learn fast, because the idea of learning fast is you're going to make a lot of mistakes. So you're going to respond and learn something very quickly. I study time. And if we understand the interval between cause and effect, it's time. And there's two types of time. One is linear time that everybody understands, but there's this time of relativity that exists as well.
Let me give an example why this time or rapid nature is so important. Let's say that you and I want to go visit New York together, but we're going to take two separate cars. And you say to yourself, "I'm going to be so happy when we're in New York. I can't wait to eat at this restaurant. I can't wait to visit these people." And then I say to myself, "What do I need to do to get to New York faster? How efficient can I be? Are there better directions? Is there a better app to use?" All I do is put my intention on the cause, and you're putting your intention on the outcome.
Most likely, I'll get there faster than you in linear time. But here's where this idea of fast learning comes in, in the form of thought or relativity. No matter what, my trip will seem faster than yours because if you put your intention on the outcome, it doesn't come fast enough. In fact, I'm always trying to pursue infinite patience through putting my attention on the cause, because if you have infinite patience, everything actually happens immediately. Now, I've never really experienced infinite patience, but I'm working on patience in general. And I'm also looking at everything in terms of time because in essence, your productivity is determined upon how you're utilizing the 24 hours you're given every day. Rapid learning allows me to have more activity in my life and learn more lessons. Life's about lessons. I want to learn more.
[00:04:21] Jesse Purewal: So how can people that want to translate the New York trip into a learning context with one another? Let's say I sit down with somebody on my team, say my head of content. Say I sit down with Jack, and I say, "Jack, I need to understand why content piece X is outperforming relative to Y." Now, I want to understand that in five minutes and then I want to go fix it. On the other hand, if I want to sit down with my head of DEI, and I want to say, "Hey, [Farrin] , what do we need to do over the next five years to get really serious about representing the human race inside our four walls?" I don't know if I can learn that fast. Maybe he has 100 things to teach me, and they need to each happen quickly. But how do I react to these different potential needs to sort of be in listening mode for a longer term versus maybe just the high speed version?
[00:05:08] David Meltzer: I've given this a lot of thought. The first example, what you want to do is say, "Hey Jack, what are you doing today pertaining to this? What's working? What's not working? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? Would it help you if ..." And then listen. And then react and say, "Do you know anyone that could help me with this or with some other activity?" That's a really simple example that occurs every day because you have a specified activity. So by asking what they're doing today, what's working, what's not working, what they like, what they don't like, allowing you to apply your situational knowledge and relationship capital to it, you'll be more efficient, effective, and statistically successful in that activity.
Now, where people get confused is the second one, when we're looking at much bigger midterm or long-term objectives that cannot be satisfied today. What I do in those situations is look at it as a daily practice. So I say, considering we want to have better morale within our organization over the next five years, what should we do today, personally, experientially, giving wise, productivity wise and receiving wise? And who can we help with what we're doing today, and who can help us with what we're doing today? How best should we get this done using the lenses of productivity of how much value we're going to provide, lenses of accessibility of how accessible we need to be to others, and what are we accessing? And of course, the lens of gratitude. Where are the lessons, the light and the love in what we want to do according to a trajectory, not an outcome. And then we can get down to the crux of business, which is prioritization.
[00:06:42] Jesse Purewal: I love that framing on the long-term. But what do we do today? What do we do now to get to where we need to be in five years? It takes me all the way back to high school, riding a bus to St. Francis in Toledo. [Jebron Bedra] , class ahead of me, is sitting next to me on the bus. And we're talking about how I can help my game playing hockey. And I'm like, "I think I'm going to try to get into the weight room a little bit, get my strength up." And he's like, "Yeah? You're thinking about that." I'm like, "Yeah. I think I'll probably get into it, like maybe next month." And he goes, "You start today."
That moment was actually really important because it was like, it's not about getting started next week, when I think I have more time. It's actually about creating the behavior right now and being, as you said, accountable for something right now, because otherwise you look ahead and then you're like, oh yeah. No, I didn't do anything. I probably should have started sooner.
[00:07:30] David Meltzer: You nailed it, because prioritization is the antidote to procrastination. It's also an antidote to feeling overwhelmed, but so many people today do feel overwhelmed. See, if I feel overwhelmed, I actually say thank you first. And everyone looks at me like, why are you saying thank you? Well, obviously, I'm living in abundance. I'm feeling overwhelmed. My issue is how can I prioritize better, because prioritization is that antidote to the procrastination as well as the antidote to feeling overwhelmed. See, people who dream about going to workout so they can play better hockey or basketball or baseball or football or whatever you want to play, they're still trying to find their why. People like you that went into the gym immediately and prioritized their strength to play better hockey end up applying their why. They live inspired in spirit at all times. Right?
[00:08:17] Jesse Purewal: Hey, now that I've got myself in pre-adult brain, talk to me about growing up in Akron. If I run into 10 or 11 year old Dave Meltzer, who's the kid I'm running into? What's he up to?
[00:08:27] David Meltzer: He wants to be rich. He is a scared boy who is a mama's boy because his mom's working two jobs, six kids. My dad had left when I was five. A lot of inherent anger, competition, anxiety and fear. He's going to prove to the world that he's worthy, and he's going to be rich to prove it to the world. So from the time I was five, I was going to buy my mom a house and a car and prove that money can fulfill me. It's the last missing component in my life. That all those rich kids that live in Montrose, all those rich kids that live in Bath, I was going to show them that they're not better than me. They just have money. And when I have money, I'm going to show them that I'm good enough. And that's who drove me until I was about 36 years old.
[00:09:14] Jesse Purewal: And you chased the dream, not in a category where people were just on a conveyor belt. It's not like you went to a big bank or a big car company, to channel Midwest roots a little bit. Getting into sports marketing, and with some of the names you were with, that was no joke.
[00:09:27] David Meltzer: When I graduated law school, I got a job in the internet. And my mom told me I should be a real lawyer, in 1992, by the way. Told me the internet was a fad. It was never going to last. And I took the job that paid more. It wasn't that I had some insight onto the internet. It's that that job paid more than my law job. So I sold in 1992 legal research online, and I knew I could always go back to being a real lawyer. My mom made me take the bar. So I knew if I wasn't great at selling the internet or the internet wasn't great, I could go back to being an oil and gas litigator and make 150 grand. But that's where I made my first money.
And people ask me how I got the job at Lee Steinberg. The way that I got the job was really two things. Lee was looking for someone that had a law degree, that looked like the other 25,000 resumes that he looks at. But he was looking for someone that knew technology. I'd run the world's first smartphone division at Samsung. I'd worked in technology for a decade. But one thing that I learned looking backwards was I was blessed to be around a brother, 14 months younger than I, that went to Harvard, graduate summa cum laude, hyper academic, a little bit maybe on the spectrum, even, like Lee. So from the day Lee met me, I was able to effectively communicate at his frequency because I had trained my whole life, sharing a bedroom, sometimes a bed with my brother. I knew how to get along with my brother. So when I talked to Lee Steinberg, I was probably one of the few people on earth that he felt so at ease communicating with me because I knew which frequency he communicated at.
Those are the two reasons he hired me within 48 hours, which set my entire life in a different direction for one reason. Lee gave me access, and I was aware of it when I took the job. And I took advantage of it and then built the sports marketing mecca with Warren Moon based off of what I learned there and the relationships I gathered through the experience with Lee.
[00:11:24] Jesse Purewal: What were the things that you picked up on in those chapters of your career that turned out to be instructive as you formulate the philosophy that you live by today?
[00:11:35] David Meltzer: For me, it was experiencing what I believe, meaning I thought money bought love and happiness. I was happy for a while, buying things I didn't need to impress people I didn't like. I was really enjoying flying private. I was enjoying over serving myself and partaking in different drugs that I shouldn't ever participate in. And I enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun with it. But what I really learned was compound interest. It means much more than just what I learned to make the wealth back that I've been able to ... I lost over $100 million. And people ask me, "How did you make it back?" Compound interest. I understood the aggregate effect of money, which is an energy.
But what I didn't understand and I learned through this experience was my behaviors aggregate just like the energy that money aggregates. So when you are doing incrementally the wrong things, it takes about 90% of the time until you actually become aware of the bad that has occurred, the aggregation of eating the wrong foods or drinking too much or not exercising. And this is true about good habits. The problem is, see, if we do good things, good habits, we expect immediate results. When we're doing bad things, negative habits, we don't ever anticipate a bad result. So it's duplicative working against us that when we're looking for good things, that's why there's no overnight successes. Most people will quit because they don't see the results.
Now, on the other side, on the negative, it's so easy to aggregate negative effect because you don't see it until it's too late. Oh, I don't get hungover. Oh, the drinking's not bothering me. It's aggregating. And when you're 90% of the way there, and then it doubles again and then doubles again, pretty soon, you're in big trouble because you're 100% of the way there.
[00:13:21] Jesse Purewal: Tell me the role that empathy played in getting you on track. Who did you listen to? What kinds of voices? What kinds of lessons were out there for you to start to pull out after you [inaudible] get to this point in your life where you're down?
[00:13:34] David Meltzer: At 30, my dad sent me the first birthday gift in 20 years. He sent me a jacket with no pockets. And I was so upset with him because I was on top of the world. I had married my dream girl from the fourth grade, multimillionaire, running Samsung's phone division. I couldn't have had a better life in my mind. I couldn't even dream ... I wasn't dreaming even that big when I was five. I thought a million dollars would retire me and buy my mom a house and a car. Well, my dad sends me this jacket. I get upset. I'm like, "Why would you send me a jacket I can't wear?" He said, "I just want it to hang in your closet to remind you that money doesn't buy love or happiness. You're just like me. Don't make the same mistakes that I made."
Well, at 30, I told him to F off, never talk to me again. Six years later, now that I'm 36, I'm running the most notable sports agency. And my best friend, Rob, I've known him so long, he actually asked my wife at sixth grade camp to go steady for me, and she said no. I invite him to go to the Masters. We're going to go backstage to the cabins with Curtis Strange. I got Montana, Gretzky and Moon. It's going to be amazing. And he says no. I was like, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "I don't want to go with you. I don't like what you're doing." I'm like, "Come on, Rob. You don't like what I'm doing? I'm not doing what those guys ... Come on, Rob. This is me, Dave." He said, "Dave, you can lie to me all you want. Lie to everybody else all you want. What really concerns me is you're lying to yourself. You believe your own BS." He said, "You've got to stop lying to yourself or you're going to end up dead, buddy. I don't want any part of it."
I left and told him to F off, told him I hated him as much as I hated my dad. Two weeks later, my life would change forever. I was invited to go to the Grammy awards. My wife said, "You can't go. You're not paying attention to work, to your family. And you're partying way too much." And I said, "Oh, don't worry." I lied to her, told her I had a business meeting. Came home wasted at 5:30 in the morning. And when I walked in the door, as she was waiting for me, she told me she wasn't happy. She told me that she was leaving me, and she told me I'd better take stock in who I was and what I wanted to become, or I was going to end up dead.
I told her to F off, told her how dare you talk to me that way. I go to bed. I wake up thinking about how I'm going to steal my wife's happiness. I'm going to get a lawyer. And I look over in the closet. Of course, there's that jacket. And I break down crying the minute I see the jacket. And I say to myself, "I don't hate my dad. I don't hate my best friend. I don't hate my wife. I hate myself. I'm a liar, a cheater, a manipulator, over seller, backend seller. I'm not happy." And I sat there and I took stock. Took me a whole day long to come up with gratitude, empathy, accountability, and effective communication. They helped me get through the hardest time of my life two years later, when I lost everything, but allowed me also to keep my family. I had three daughters under eight, a pregnant wife with my fourth, my son coming. If I didn't make the change two years earlier, I never would've survived.
[00:16:57] Jesse Purewal: What enables you to continue to be vulnerable about this, continue to be transparent about it and share it openly?
[00:17:04] David Meltzer: What I found was by being truthful, it actually allowed other people to find their truth, to take yourself off in a situation ... And people apologize to me sometimes. "Hey, I lost all my money, but not nearly as much as you," or "I did this, but not ..." No, it doesn't matter. This is me. And this is just one layer. I've been sexually abused. I've gone bankrupt. I have said things in interviews, in tears, that I never thought ... Some of it, I blacked out of my own brain, like the abuse as a nine year old. It took me years to even remember it myself because it was so traumatic. But to be able to tell the truth has been a blessing in my life, and it's freedom at its best.
[00:17:51] Jesse Purewal: The concept of personal brand, how do you counsel others to think about how they build their own personal brands and where they develop reputational equity with others and use that as a way to help prioritize the things that they do in the way that live, work, play, and learn?
[00:18:11] David Meltzer: I think it's really important to know your own frequency, to thine own self, be true, meaning that not only know who you are today, but be open to being someone different tomorrow. But consistently pursue your truth. Building a brand, that is your frequency. And I think the better you know your own frequency, the stronger your frequency will be, the wider the spectrum will be, the more people that will tune into your frequency.
But there's one root word in frequency that most people don't get. And it's the piece of advice is I traded consultative services with Gary five years ago to help AJ and him with the sports agency. He helped me with my brand. He taught me frequency in two respects. One, Dave, be honest. You've got to learn who you are. You can't please everyone. Quit trying to be diplomatic in your answers. Just say what you think, for God's sakes.
And then two, the root word of frequency is frequent. And I can't tell you how many times Gary looked at my Instagram, and I'm like, "Dude, what advice you got from me?" He goes, "Love your stuff, man." He goes, "Just post more. Post more." I'm like, "Dude, people are going to laugh at me." Until your family's telling you that you're posting too much, your friends, the people who love you the most, you haven't even reached the minimum of how much content you should be creating. So the word frequent, with your own true self, your own frequency, are the two dependent variables that will determine not only how strong your signal is, how wide your spectrum is, but how clear your message is.
And remember this. This is my golden rule, Jess. You step on a stage, 10% of the people, no matter what you do, will love you. 10% of the people are going to hate you, no matter what. It's a matter of frequency. You could get on a stage and say, "The, the, the," for 30 minutes. 10 people out of 100 are going to go, "Oh man, I love that. I see what you're doing about repetition. I see what you are teaching about patience." It's bullshit. But where the frequency comes in is in the 80%. They aggregate the 80% until they have 9 million people that love them, and all the things that come with that frequent behavior. So these are the key components to building a brand today, whether you're a personal brand, a product solution or a service, it's frequency and the frequentness of the frequency.
[00:20:25] Jesse Purewal: What do you think is the role that challenge and unfortunate circumstance has to play in someone's life in order for them to develop the resilience that's required to do what you're talking about?
[00:20:40] David Meltzer: Yeah. [inaudible] very strong opinion on this. Pain, failure, setbacks, mistakes, they promote and protect us. See, what most people worry about is the actual pain, mistakes, failures and setbacks. They don't realize that with the right paradigm, that they're being promoted. Let me give you an example. I went to go reach out when I was three years old to touch a hot stove. My mom hit me and screamed at me, "No." I started to cry. I'm being punished. Why am I being punished? I just wanted to touch that. And she said, "Honey, I'm not punishing you. I'm protecting you and promoting you."
So the perspective of pain, setbacks, failures and mistakes are alleviated by finding the light, the love and the lessons in the pain, setbacks, failures and mistakes. And when you have that paradigm shift in your life, when you have the appropriate protection and promotion attitude of the pain, setbacks, failures, you're able to be a fast learner, to be more empathetic, more gracious and more accountable for what's occurring in your life. You actually, as freakish as it seems, you welcome pain, failure, setbacks, and mistakes because it's an indicator that you have a better place to be.
Now, it took me 16 years to believe this, to act upon it, where I only spend minutes and moments in the ego based consciousness of the need to be right, offended, separate, inferior, superior, anxious, frustrated, guilty, fearful, whatever it is. I only spend minutes and moments in there every day. Most of the time, I live in faith that there's something bigger than me that loves me so much. I've got something better for you. You just don't have the omniscient, all powerful, all knowing sense that I have. You're a human being on a journey to learn these lessons. Let me guide you to a faster way me to learn them.
[00:22:29] Jesse Purewal: Dave, my last one will be for our audience of builders here, people who are trying to make and create and build towards cool products, cool experiences, cool brands. A lot of advice you've left throughout this conversation. What's the thing you'd push to the top when you think about, keep this in mind as you go through that building journey?
[00:22:46] David Meltzer: I think a builder needs to do one thing, and it's my definition of happiness. You need to learn to enjoy the consistent everyday pursuit of your potential. If you enjoy the consistent pursuit of your potential, things will aggregate, and you will build something bigger and better than you could even imagine. But it will not happen without the consistent pursuit. The pursuit of happiness doesn't exist. Happiness is the pursuit.
[00:23:15] Jesse Purewal: I love it. I have to ask, are you still an Ohio sports fan?
[00:23:18] David Meltzer: I am all Buckeye, so yes, a huge Ohio fan. And I've been tortured almost my entire life. I've been at every Indians world series and every Cav's championship. My highlight maybe of my sport fan career is seventh game, when LeBron James single handedly whooped up on the Golden State Warriors, and I was there with my seven year old son to share it. It puts all the pain away when I watch the Browns. Let's just put it that way.
[00:23:43] Jesse Purewal: It totally does. One of my daughters came to me the other day. She said, "You get one pick for your team. Do you pick LeBron, or do you pick Steph?" And I look at her, and I'm like, "LeBron all day." And she's [inaudible] . She sees Steph play a lot on local TV. She was a little confused by that. I'm like, "Let me show you the block." That changed, not Ohio sports fans' lives forever. That changed probably the fortunes of the NBA and lots of other sports for a long time, that single play. I'm glad you picked that game because that game is important for me too.
[00:24:14] David Meltzer: It's awesome. Well, you had me at Toledo. So anytime you need anything, Jesse, you just let me know. Anybody can reach out to me as well, david@dmeltzer.com. I answer everything myself.
[00:24:24] Jesse Purewal: Thank you, David, and thank you to your team. And looking forward to catching up soon.
[00:24:27] David Meltzer: Anytime. Thank you. Take care, team.
[00:24:30] Jesse Purewal: Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review and tell a friend. Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios original, hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal. An awesome team of people puts this show together, including our show writer, Todd Bagnull, and our head of social media, Chelsea Hunersen from StudioPod Media in San Francisco. Our show coordinator is Nicole Genova. Editing and music are by producer Sterling Shore and executive producer Katie Sunku Wood, with sound engineering by Ryan Crowther. At VaynerTalent in New York, Samantha Heapps, Hanna Park and Yvonne Lynn provide publicity and promotional support. The show's designers are Baron Santiago and Vinsuka Chindavijak. Our website is by Gregory Hedon, photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, Ben Hawken, John Johnson, and Kylan Lundeen.