Making Billions: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Startup Founders, and Venture Capital Investors
Thanks for listening to another episode of Making Billions with Ryan Miller: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Startup Founders, and Venture Capital Investors. This show covers topics connecting you to some of the best investment funds that won in their industry—from making money and motivation to alternative investments, fund managers, entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, capital raisers, money mavericks, and industry titans. If you want to start a business, understand investment funds that won the game, and how the top 0.01% made it, then this show will give you the answers!
Making Billions: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Startup Founders, and Venture Capital Investors
David Meltzer Shares His Top Business Growth Strategies
Have you ever felt like your career, company, or leadership is not where it should be? Perhaps you struggle to find people that believe in your vision. In this week's episode of Making Billions, I bring on my Dear Friend David Meltzer. David is a best-selling author, speaker, and content creator. He's the former CEO of Lee-Steinberg Sports and Entertainment company which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. What this means is David is about to drop some major wisdom on us on building a career, promoting a compelling vision, and finding the right people to support you every step of the way. Doing these things are all critical skills we need, in our pursuit of Making Billions.
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[THE GUEST]: David is the Co-founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Lee-Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. His miss
Starting a business by offering a service to your local community is one of the...
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Ryan Miller
My name is Ryan Miller and for the past 15 years have helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business or taking your life to the next level, this show will give you the answers so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of making billions. Let's get into it.
Hey, future billionaires. Have you ever felt like your career, your company or leadership is not where it needs to be? Or perhaps you struggle just finding people that believe in your vision? Well, in this week's episode of making billions I bring on my dear friend, David Meltzer. David is a best-selling author, speaker, and content creator. He's the former CEO of Leigh Steinberg, sports and entertainment company, which was the inspiration for the hit movie Jerry Maguire featuring Tom Cruise. So what this means is David is about to drop some major wisdom on us on building a career, promoting a compelling vision, and finding the right people to support you every step of the way. Doing these things are all critical skills we need in our pursuit of making billions. Here we go.
Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions. I'm your host Ryan Miller and today I have my dear friend David Meltzer. David is the co-founder of sports one marketing and formerly served as the CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg sports and entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. 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 in all his content and communication. And that's exactly what you'll receive today. He's a three-time international best-selling author, a top 100 business coach, the executive producer of entrepreneurs number one digital show elevator pitch, and the host of the top entrepreneur podcast, the playbook. His newest book, game time decision making was the number one release, David has been recognized by Variety magazine as Sports Humanitarian of the Year and awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. So the hits just keep coming with David. So what this means is David is one of the most influential speakers and business minds in the game today. He understands how to get you to achieve breakthroughs, starting with becoming happy and providing value. So David, welcome to the show, man.
David Meltzer
Thank you, Ryan, for having me. This is absolutely great platform, making billions in order to effectuate my mission in life, which is to teach people how to make a lot of money so that they can help a lot of people and have a lot of fun.
Ryan Miller
I absolutely love that. And what an inspiring mission, David, I mean, I've heard you speak, and I've seen a lot of your content online. And I gotta say, man, you're absolutely crushing it. So while we can read about and see all of that awesome content that you're putting together today, what I would like to know is, where did it all begin for you?
David Meltzer
You know, it all began for me in the world of not enough, I was born to a mom, a single mom, with six kids, and my dad left when I was five. And really my mission back then in the world of not enough, being a victim always asking why me? Why can I have this was to be rich, I had a great mom, and she was a great leader in the community. But literally, the only time that we were sad in my house was because of money or any kind of financial issue. So at a young age, I decided I was going to be rich money would buy me love and happiness, and I buy my mom, a house and a car someday. And that would be the end, I would be able to ride off into the sunset, completely happy because of money. And that was the start of my journey. I had a lot of lessons to learn along the way. But still, I'm evolving with my relationship with money, which has always played a key role, taking me out of the world of not enough and moving into bigger and better worlds and eventually reaching the world of abundance.
Ryan Miller
Man, I love that. You know, so speaking of those early lessons, early in your career as you started to just figure stuff out, especially in entrepreneurship and the business game, a little bit is a knowledge little bit as you just figure it out and refuse to die. So that part in your career, like so many of us who've climbed up, I'm sure you come across all kinds of people. So what have you found is the most helpful attribute in people that you look for to help elevate your vision?
David Meltzer
Well, one is, you know, for my gratitude, it's the cornerstone of everything I do. I want to surround myself with grateful people, and grateful ideas, I want people to share a perspective, and participate in a perspective of always trying to find the light, the love, and the lessons, and everything. So, gratitude is a cornerstone. The second thing was just forgiveness. You know, as an entrepreneur, you know, this Ryan, we're going to make a ton of mistakes. And then as human beings that are entrepreneurs, we're going to exponentially make given more mistakes, so if we don't have forgiveness and gratitude, then it leaves us uninspired below the line, living in shame, blame, and justification instead of inspired and participating in the perception of enjoying the consistent every day, persistent without quit pursuit of our own potential
Ryan Miller
Man, I absolutely love that. And you know, so forgiveness and gratitude, just really, the end of the day, just being a good person. And you know, in order to know peace, you need to know, peace. And bringing people into that is certainly a big important part of moving your vision forward is pulling people together. Now, on the other side of that, David, has there ever been a time that you felt like, maybe you're surrounded by the wrong people? And how did you know and what did you do to turn that around?
David Meltzer
This is always one of my favorite questions. Because coming out of law school, I was a millionaire nine months out of law school, despite my mom's advice, not to, to be a real lawyer not to get involved in the internet. She actually told me the internet was a fad. Luckily, I realized that an early age just because someone loves you, doesn't mean they give you good advice, but even more over, you know, understanding and evolving to, you know, being a multi-millionaire running Samsung's phone division, to being a multi-millionaire and having access to things that billionaires can have. By the time I was in my 30s. Running, Leigh Steinberg, sports entertainment, that notable sports agency, that was about the time I started to realize, with a little help from my mom, my dad, my best friend, and most especially my wife, pointing out that I was lost, that money doesn't buy love or happiness that I needed to start over when it came to surrounding myself with the right people and the right ideas. And two years before I lost over $100,000,000. Twp years before I went bankrupt and lost everything. My wife truly drew the final straw in my life and threatened to leave me if I didn't make changes if I didn't take stock and who I was through that gratitude and forgiveness and accountability and effective communication, through the ability of living above the line and taking accountability of who I was and what I wanted to become. In that allowed me to, I think, handle the stress of losing over $100 million and going bankrupt. But if it wasn't for my wife, making that change, and demanding that I fire some friends from my life, and I separate myself from some really bad behaviors and ideas that I was surrounding myself with, not only would I have been bankrupt, but without my wife, I would not only be divorced, but more importantly, I'd be dead. And so I always say to everyone, my wife saved my life and saved my life by giving me the right mindset, the right heart set and the right handset in order to effectuate living in abundance and being of service and value and as I always say, being kind to my future self, by surrounding myself with the right people the right ideas and doing good deeds,
Ryan Miller
Man, starting with your wife, I mean, bless the hearts of our understanding and supportive spouses. So sounds like finding a supportive spouse was definitely you can say an anchor to you just to help keep your feet on the ground and have those right people around you to say, Hey, man, what's going on? You're not being yourself. Or maybe you're not fulfilling the mission. There's something bad happening, I can see it and I care about you enough to say to tell you the honest truth, you need to make changes because I'm worried about you. So bless her heart man that she sounds like a wonderful person. So you've you've stated, David that you're on a mission to empower a billion people to be happy. Where did that start in? How's it going so far?
David Meltzer
Oh, great question I, first of all, want to clarify one thing it's over a billion people I don't let anyone limit me
Ryan Miller
Hey, all right.
David Meltzer
Well, you know, I reached reached a point in my life after I lost everything, I made it all back and I was living like I said, not in the world of not enough as a victim not in the world of just enough buying things. I didn't need to impress people I didn't like but I was now living in abundance a world of more than enough and, you know, just as I was reaching the point of you'll never having to work again being able to have all the options opportunities and touches a favor I had before but now with the right mindset hard said enhance it surrounding myself with the right people the right ideas. My youngest daughter's friend, she was only 12 committed suicide. And it really rocked me and I started doing research on happiness and I couldn't understand, you know why and how this could happen. And I did so much research searched to find out that the fastest growing cause of death in almost every demographic in America and let alone around the world is suicide. And you know, I'm walking the beach, thinking about what can I do to help? You know, I've lived through my own journey and the lessons I've learned. And, you know, I really knew how to do three things, you know, I could help by teaching people to live in abundance to make a lot of money, teach people how to help other people. Because you know, it's impossible to be anxious, depressed, or, you know, angry when we're helping others. And then finally, you know, how to have fun how to be happy. And as I'm walking, I realized that through my 35 years of a journey, that I really knew a lot about it, I paid the dummy tax, and maybe if I could share the dummy tax with others, and clearly articulate the quantitative value of what I knew to others, that I could empower others, not only to power themselves, but I can empower others to empower others to be happy. And the math started formulating in my mathematical mind of what if I could find 1000 People like Ryan Miller? What if I could find 1000 people that had a platform like Ryan Miller, what if I could help Ryan Miller through my content, speeches, coaching, podcast, all the things that I do books, to help empower Ryan Miller, to empower another 1000 Ryan Miller is to empower another 1000 See 1000 times that 1000s of million, a million times that 1000s of billion. And I felt at the time when I came upon this mission to empower over a billion people to be happy to change the world by creating a collective consciousness of abundance of happiness, that all I had to do in my lifetime was find 1000 People like you. And the math made sense, the mission made sense, the hair stood up on my arms, I got so inspired. And the only thing that made me nervous, Ryan was, you know, coming home to that beautiful, wonderful wife of mine. And here I was, you know, we went from owning 33 homes in San Diego, ski mountain golf course to a rented house with rented furniture in one car. Now I was back, living in this beautiful beach house on the boardwalk and having everything that I ever wanted again. And now, my wife's asking me, you know what's next? And I have to tell her, Hey, you know what's next, I'm on a mission to empower over a billion people to be happy, I'm gonna change the world. And I wasn't sure if my wife was going to handle my outrageous mission. But sure enough to her testament, she got it immediately, and said, What can I do? How can I be of service, I'm so proud of you, you can do this, let me know how I can help.
Ryan Miller
That is phenomenal. And for me, we've got over 100 countries listening to our show. Now, you can see the power of a compelling vision. And so just to synthesize when, when David found his mission, it like you said it made the hair stand up. And there was something that spoke to you deep at your core. And if it has the power to speak to you deep at your core, you know what's going to have the power to affect other people as well. So, you know, if I can join you on that mission, maybe we'll we'll circle up after and if there's anything else with making buildings community can do to support you on your mission. And it's such an inspiring mission. We certainly have a keen interest in depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, supporting first line responders, there's a lot of stuff out there. And you know, what, if, if not us then who, right? So somebody's got to step up and say, Look, we can make a change, we know how to do this, let's let's lean in, let's lock arms and get it done. So thank you, truly from the bottom of my heart of such an inspiring mission.
David Meltzer
Well, thank you. And I do want to also support your community. So if any of your community members, you know, I'd love to send my book, sign it pay for shipping in the book to anyone in your community. So if you could put my email David@Dmeltzer.com. And your notes, I'll send your entire community a free book pay for shipping in the book. So please, I want to share my message and my methodology. And the best way to do that is to start by reading my book, which I will give for free to everyone in your audience.
Ryan Miller
Wow, labor of love, talk about building value. So thank you for that. Well, we'll include that in the notes below of ways that people can just get started with you or go all in and everything in between. So we love to promote you and help support your, your vision to empower over a billion people to be happy. So I absolutely love that. You know, moving on, David, you've mentioned that it's just it's important for people to love what they do. So what advice can you give people to just get them on the road to happiness in their career, whether it's starting your own business working for someone else? I mean, we're all All just trying to get it right. What advice can you give to people to help them to love what they do? Yeah, well,
David Meltzer
first of all, know that you can learn to love what you do when we search for the light, the love and the lessons and the activities that we have. Which leads me to the second piece of advice is one know that you can learn to love what you do, by finding the light, the love and lessons and then two separate things is activities. Don't put meaning into the activities, just realize there's activities you have planned. There's activities you don't have planned, and there's the activity of sleep, there's activities, you get paid for an activity you don't get paid for. And the third step after we know that we can learn to love what we do. And we separate things by just calling them activities, then we go ahead and prioritize those activities by what's important to us, in the trajectory of what we think we want in the future, giving the meaning of the past defining moments, inflection points, mistakes, failures and setbacks. The line it with the trajectory want to be in, not aligned with where we don't want to be. And so if you can define your idea of loving what you do by one, knowing I can learn what to love what I do to that there's only activities that I'm learning to love what to do. And I want to align the meaning of my past with those activities, in the trajectory of what I think I want in the future, we now can prioritize the activities every day, buy what's important to us, which makes it far easier to love what we're doing all day long. So many people, they think they have to go get more they think they have to get more inspired, more happy, more healthy, more wealthy. What I'm trying to do is teach you the methodology in order to understand that you are, you are happy, healthy, wealthy and worthy. Let me help you figure out what you're doing to interfere with it, to enjoy the consistent, everyday persistent without quit pursuit of your potential, not what other people want for you, not what's missing what you don't have based off of meanings of the past, defining moments, setbacks, failures and mistakes, but simply what's most important to you and the trajectory of where you think you want to be, and know that you can learn to love all those activities, and align the meaning of the past with a trajectory of the future.
Ryan Miller
Well said absolutely brilliant. You know, you're you're one of the most impactful speakers have ever heard. And you've been involved with Forbes entrepreneur, Inc, Ted Talks. I mean, I can keep going, but you get the idea. Now we know that being able to influence people and drive impact is a key to successful career company, whatever it is that you're up to. So I'm curious, David, what have you found to be helpful in breaking through with people as you communicate just to help them unlock their own limitations?
David Meltzer
Well, first of all, we have to meet people where they're at. And so one, I want to make sure that the person has an open mind. But we can't change or help a closed mind. So I only have 24 hours a day as you so I want to maximize it with people who have an open mind at that time notating that everyone has an open mind at certain times. But I'm not going to try to help or change or empower closed minds. So the first qualifier is to, you know, hey, let's make sure we're dealing with an open mind. And when we do, then we can ask open ended questions in order to facilitate finding out what people like about whatever topic or subject or topic that we want to talk about, or what they don't like, because at its core, at its essence, what we want to do is create a community of people that want to help each other know, people can help each other, and utilizing and understanding what they like and don't like. There's two ways we can help someone, give them more what they like, or take away what they don't like. And so I keep a very simplistic template, which again, I'm more than happy to help sin inside for everyone along with my book. But if I can teach you how to find an open mind, how to ask open ended questions to find out what people like and don't like, then you simply just ask, would it help you if I gave you more of what you like, what didn't help you, if I took away some of what you don't like, then you can continue to build the community by not only providing value and service to everyone within the context of what your skills, knowledge and desire are. But you also can culminate the conversation by asking, Hey, do you know anyone that can help me notating their skills, their knowledge and their desire? we're maximizing everyone's strengths to utilize an aggregate and compound together to accelerate more value, more productivity, more accessibility, and most importantly, more gratitude, which allows us to find the light the love and the lessons have the best perspective and allows us all to expand, grow and accelerate, together
Ryan Miller
brilliantly said as we say we talk about pitching investors and helping them to understand the opportunities in front of them. And sometimes we call it an adrenaline shot or a pain reliever. So helping them to get more of what they want and double down on all the things that they love. Given that adrenaline shot or given pain reliever, a lot of those things are absolutely critical. And you heard it straight from from the master David Meltzer. So, all those things are critical, whether you're speaking, you're in a boardroom pitching investor or negotiation with one of your kids, which I do very often. So we're gonna work on that and implement those tactics. You know, on this show, David, we know that reputation relationships are some of the most valuable assets in our possession. Now, you're one of the most connected guys I've seen, you know, you know, Gary Vee and Rob Dyrdek and Tony Hawk, I mean, you keep going. But you also have a reputation that just pulls millions of people into your orbit. So for those entrepreneurs and fund managers, investment bankers, all those people that are listening to the show that just aspire for greatness, what are some of those things that you've found critical when building your reputation and relationships?
David Meltzer
Well, the first thing is to live in radical humility. And to understand there's two types of people. And it took me a while, right, like the only difficulty I ever have with relationship capital, luckily occurred before I really knew anybody of power. So you know, the snapshots of me and 1718 2526 are not the David Meltzer of today, 30 years later, thank goodness, thank goodness, there wasn't any cell phones either. So I get to be honest and illuminate that, you know, I had a lot of lessons to learn when I was young. But you know, the best thing that we can do is to be in understand two types of people, one, ignorant people, people that don't know what they don't know. And then two ignorant people, people that don't know what they don't know. And the difference between those ignorant people are the ignorant, arrogant people. And you see this in social media that attacked us, they have judgments and conditions they put around us, in their mean, in those are ignorant, arrogant people, compared to the ignorant humble people that don't know what they don't know, but admitted, they don't project their insecurity on you and pretend like they're all knowing and omniscient, and they're better than you are separate from you. The other nuance of this that has to, and we spoke about it earlier in the interview is the ignorant arrogant people that love us the most, I talked about my mom, just because someone loves you doesn't mean they give you good advice. One of the things to be careful of when we're looking at the separation of ignorance, arrogance, and ignorant humility, is that a lot of times the people have the most impact us with the best intention, but negative result are the people that love us the most. So our parents, for example, are so afraid that something bad will happen to us that they give us bad advice, because they give us advice based out of fear. And they act out of ignorance, arrogance and love to protect us pretending like they know what they don't know. So they'll tell us, Oh, you got to go to med school, you got to go to law school. Or if you don't do this, you're going to be a loser or whatever it is. They do it out of love. So I say that if we can live in radical humility, if we understand we don't know what we don't know, and we do our best. We learn lessons and have fun, then we can no matter what place or position we are in, not only appreciate Well, we have add value to it, we can acknowledge it and the only way we acknowledge things acquire the knowledge of things is not to have any more so give it away lose it haven't manipulators stolen from us with no interference, but also ask for more ask for help. Ignorant humble people not only give everything they have or don't mind being lost, stolen or or manipulated from them if they learned the lessons, but they have a great quality of asking for more. They don't live in a zero sum game. They live in a value add world of more than enough of everything for everyone.
Ryan Miller
You know, we all love growth. David, you love personal growth, business growth, revenue growth, we like to grow right? As Tony Robbins says progress equals happiness. I know when I'm progressing, I'm happy if I feel stuck, I'm miserable. And so you know, what are some of the the biggest obstacles in your opinion that you found that keep people and businesses from growing?
David Meltzer
I think the biggest one is that people attach their emotions to an outcome. They try to utilize a capability of human existence that doesn't exist. And that capability is that we as human beings by utilizing good behavior cannot be aware of progress. We expect instant progress, but we can see it so we end up quitting Seeing, see if you understand the three characteristics of energy that all behaviors aggregate in the way or direction of the behavior, they compound. So it gives us exponential results, and it actually accelerates. But the problem is when we attach our emotions to an outcome, we don't see those results, because like I said, the human condition, or existence is incapable of seeing progress from good behavior. So you'd be like dieting and wondering why we didn't lose weight. Or, you know, within the first three days, we don't see anything or working out, we're not stronger the first three days or studying something, we can aced the test. But what is occurring, and if we utilize our faith of progress, and utilize, and know that all good behaviors create good progress instantly, all bad behaviors create bad progress instantly. And we know that behavior energy progress aggregates, at tracks more, it exponentially compounds on itself, so you get more, and it accelerates, so you get it faster, when we can understand the characteristics of behavior and energy, including money, which is an energy, then we can have faith in the behaviors that are aligned with where we want to be in the progress that we want, even though we can't see it. Therefore, we will enjoy the consistent everyday, persistent without quit pursuit of that potential, even though we don't see the progress. And if I get more people to detach their emotions from the outcome, and attach those emotions to the behaviors, exponentially and accelerated, they will get what they want or better. And I
Ryan Miller
absolutely love that. So it just sounds like a growth mindset when you when you fix your emotions on an outcome you're fixed. linking it to, you know, to just to paraphrase what you were saying, linking it to the progress and the behaviors that you have to adopt to achieve the outcome is a much better approach, I believe is what I'm hearing that allows you to go from fixed mindset to continuous improvement mindset or growth mindset, whatever you want to call it. And thereby extension, not your words, mind. That leads you to a lot more of a fulfilling and happy life fulfilling your mission to empower over a billion people to be happy. absolutely inspiring. Well said, David, you know, final question for you, brother. But let's go deep. If you couldn't leave any of your money to your loved ones, when you when you leave this earth and it's time to graduate if you couldn't leave anything behind, except for advice on how to make money and enjoy the process? What advice would you leave them to help them get there
David Meltzer
three words, same three words, I tell myself if I was 18,28, 38, 48. Someday when I'm 58, I'll be telling myself these same three words. Ask for help. fastest and easiest way to get to where you want to be is find someone who sits in the situation that you want to be in and ask them for help. Have faith that we live in a world of more than enough ask for help. Live in a value added world not a zero sum game. No need to trade negotiate. Quid pro quo. Don't buy things you don't need to impress people you don't like simply continue to live in the flow not as an influencer, spreading the flu, spreading disease but as an influencer appreciating acknowledging and asking for more when you live in abundance, when you understand that when you ask for help, you're adding value to the people that you ask for help for as well as yourself, that we are in a growth mindset that that appreciation means add value. And we live in a universe that's growing, accelerating and compounding all the time. So just keep up with the universe by asking for help.
Ryan Miller
Man, I absolutely love that and brilliantly said, you know, so just just to summarize for our listeners, live in radical humility. I love what you said there. build that reputation in relationships with humble people seeking to just add value. Don't get attached to emotions, but get attached to or don't get attached to outcomes with your motions. But learn to attach those emotions to progress, continuous growth instead of fixed. And finally, just ask for help from people that are doing what you want to be doing. You do these things in you too will be well on your way in your pursuit of making billions.
What a show. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better. And make sure to come back for our next episode where we dive even deeper into the people the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends stay hungry Focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of making billions