David Meltzer

So again, thank you, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate you being on, being the first guest of the podcast. Let’s welcome David Meltz.

Thank you for having me. I’m super excited. I always loved to be the first. So what an honor it is. And I look back now, I’ve been doing this for so long. There’s some really big podcasts that I was the first on and it’s fun for me to go ahead and support people who are trying to support their community. So thank you for doing this, Harry.

Of course, thank you for being available. It’s having people like you being so gracious with their time and allowing us to be able to spread the message, so thanks.

course.

Give our listeners a little bit of background about who you are. We’re a law firm, that’s what we do, but who’s Mr. Meltzer?

Yeah, you know, I like to take people through my journey with three different worlds. So the first world is the one I was born into. It’s the world of not enough. So many of us are born with nothing. Born as victims, my dad left when I was five. I had a single mom who raised six kids under one auspice. That was the fetus would be fully developed after graduate school. So her favorite mantra was doctor, lawyer or failure. And as you have gone to law school, you know how many people have been

waited into that direction to make a lot of money and have stability in their life that wasn’t present in the world of not enough, where people are victims always whining, and whining, why me? When I graduated law school, I wanted to be an oil and gas litigator because they made the most money. And my objective to go to law school or anything I was gonna do was to be able to make a lot of money to help my mom, to buy her a house, buy her a car,

because the only time there wasn’t happiness in my life was when there was a financial stress, which was every single day, whether it’s food, summer camp, school, whatever it may be, a dishwasher or a car breaking down. The only stress ever in my life because my mom and siblings were so extraordinary. All of them went to the Ivy Leagues, graduated summa cum laude, followed in the guise of education and understanding how to empower and exit me.

I just wanted to make money so that I could finalize the complete happiness in my life. But when I graduated law school…

because I only wanted to make money, not only was I offered a litigation job in oil and gas, but I also was offered a sales job in the internet, selling legal research online from, in 1992, Westlaw, which I know, Harry, you know what Westlaw is, but in 1992, nobody knew what Westlaw was. In fact, nobody knew what the internet was. In fact, my mom told me the internet was a fad and that if I took the job in the internet,

mistake of my life and she was wrong. And here I’ll give you a lesson that I learned applicable to I’m sure a lot of the people at your law firm and other lawyers you deal with. Just because your mom loves you doesn’t mean she gives you good advice. And so making sure that a lot of times people who love us give us advice based off of fear because they love us too much and they’re too afraid that we’re taking too many risks. And so they’ll give us advice

even though they don’t have any situational knowledge or experience in the space. Luckily, I took my chances, hedged my bet, took the bar and passed it, but I became a salesperson for West Publishing.

Nine months out of law school, made my first million dollars. Within three years, we exited to Thomson Reuters in 1995 for $3.4 billion, changing the trajectory of my life. I now lived in a world of so many people, the world of for me, not to me.

the world of buying things to be happy, buying more things to be happy, buying different things to be happy, buying things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like to be happy. But in that journey, I truly believe that money was buying me love and happiness, that I was living my dream, and it wasn’t but for a journey of learning and making over as I became CEO of Samsung’s first phone division, the PCE phone,

Lee Steinberg, the sports agent, hired me to run the most notable sports agency in the world. Then Warren Moon and I created a global sports marketing company called Sports One Marketing. Through that process, I ended up losing everything.

because I lost my values. I lost my gratitude for everything I had. I lost my ability to live in empathy, to forgive myself and others. I lost my accountability. I was living in a world of blame and shame and justification that as a lawyer, you know so many people live. And then finally, I lost my inspiration that made me passionate and purposeful and profitable at everything I did. And through that journey,

I learned to live not in the world of to me, not in the world of for me, but where I live today and have lived for the last 15 years ever since I lost everything, lost over $100 million. I’ve lived in a world of through me, an abundant world, not a zero sum game of trading and negotiating like we’re taught in law school, but a world of more than enough, of everything for everyone, a value ad world of appreciation, acknowledgement, and even asking, asking for help

I can be of service. I have built a community over the last 15 years of people like you Harry that want to help each other and Know people that can help each other and that has been my mission to empower over a billion people To be happy to live in abundance to live in more than enough and I appreciate the opportunity To share your community and your platform for the very first podcast you’ve ever done

And that just gave me goosebumps. To be able to go through that path and still have that big beautiful smile on your face and spread this kind of message to over a billion people as is your mission. It’s very impressive, especially sitting on this side of the screen, hearing that in person for the first time. I’m a big follower of your social media, your podcast, but hearing it live is a little different.

Thank you.

Yeah, it’s amazing, you know, where we…

and you are on the same mission where I’m looking for a thousand people like you so that you can empower a thousand with your podcast. And it’ll eventually turn maybe into books and coaching and TV shows and all the interviews. You know, we’ve done over 1700 episodes of my podcast. I’ve done over 4,000 interviews. And when I started Harry, there was a gentleman named, who’s now a close friend of mine, Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as Gary V.

with his sports agency. And in fact, we were sitting six Super Bowls ago in the Nike suite and everybody got super excited all of a sudden because there’s this guy, Gary V, coming into the Nike suite. And I looked at AJ Vaynerchuk, I literally said to him, who does he play for?

And he thought I was joking. He goes, what? I go, yeah, who does Gary Veeve play for? He said, no, Dave, that’s my brother. You’ve never heard of my brother? I said, no, I’m sorry, I haven’t. He goes, oh, you gotta meet my brother. And when I met Gary, he changed my life.

by saying some of the same things that I’m saying to you. I told him too many podcasts. I’m not gonna, I had a radio show on GOW Media, syndicated throughout the country, Sports Blender, pretty popular radio show. And Gary said, you gotta go digital. You need an Instagram, you need a podcast. I said, dude, I’m 50 years old. No one’s gonna, there’s too many of those. And he convinced me it’s never too late to build a community of people that wanna help each other and know people that can help each other. And here I am today,

and I can’t wait to sit back six years, seven years from now when you are sitting in my situation, articulating your journey and empowering other people the same way I have been given the opportunity to do so.

Well said. You mentioned something about the digital age and kind of branding yourself, starting the podcast when you were 50. In today’s digital age, how important do you think it is for professionals, especially in the legal space, which is notoriously known to be the last industry to evolve as things change over time. How important is it for people to develop a personal brand?

I think it’s the most important thing. It doesn’t mean that you have to build a community of millions of people. I believe that if we focus as I have on empowering people.

with your skills, your knowledge and desire, determinative upon your own topics and subject matters and expertise, which is particularly ironically aligned with the law, right? People think that you’re a lawyer and you can do everything. The same thing that’s just not true in here, you’ll admit it. The thing that holds true in building a personal brand is that you now have access to a total addressable community that we can’t even fathom.

Dave Meltzer, Kardashians, it doesn’t matter. We can’t fathom the size, scope, and scale of the total addressable community. And so therefore, if we build our brand according to our own skills, our own knowledge of who and what, and our own desires, that individual essence and fingerprint will resonate with a small percentage of 7.6 billion people. And I’m here to tell you that a small percentage

of 7.6 billion people is a hell of a lot of people. When you look at Ronaldo, you look at the Kardashians, you look at the Rock, those are examples of people that have a very small percentage of 7.6 billion people. And so when we look at a law firm, or we look at a financial planner, or we look at a teacher, or we look at anyone, according to their subject matter, topic, or expertise,

A small percentage of a small percentage of 7.6 billion people, I’ll repeat that, a small percentage of a small percentage of 7.6 billion people will change your grandkids’ lives. And I’m living proof of that because I’ve built a community and a brand of a very small percentage of a very small percentage of 7.6 billion people, and my grandchildren will never starve.

And the small percentage of a small percentage resonates with us specifically because we’re contingency fee injury lawyers. And so that’s the world we live in. We live in value add world.

And I have some introductions for you, by the way. So we’re gonna have to talk offline. I have a key channel partner for you that would be a great introduction. So he lives in Atlanta, but he works across the country.

I’d love to talk about that, I’ll find.

Oh, no, yeah, it’s Andre Fluel in the NFL player. And he does a lot of PT work with PI lawyers, so across the country. And he refers that business as people get injured and need rehab.

That’s amazing.

I love that introduction. Thank you. Thank you, David.

Of course.

That’s what, by the way, for those people listening, I know this is Harry’s first podcast. That’s what happens when we do podcasts, when we are more interested than interesting and able to build a bond and a community and a relationship for people like you that have invested their time and money and all the different things in order to do this, you’re gonna make more money. This is the way the universe works in the relationships that we have. And so many people don’t see that, Harry, and they…

end up just seeing things as an expense. I can’t afford to do a podcast. I can’t afford, and meanwhile, every time they open up their hearts and minds and hands to other people, there’s so much more in return in the acknowledgement and appreciation. All we have to do is ask.

I love that because this is something I would have never thought I would ever thought I’d have the opportunity to kind of speak to people in your position before especially in law school kind of going up and going through the going through the trenches so to speak until you have your team built there’s just not something ever that was possible until now

Well, join the club, my friend. I had a IG Live today with Jamie Hess, who is Joan Lunden’s daughter on Good Morning America, and had her own struggles through addiction and recovery. And she said this morning, she has a thing called gratitude allergy, which is an ideology of gratitude, which you know I live by, because you follow my content, and you know it’s a firm value of mine. But anyway, as we were talking,

She says, you know, I watch your content day, I follow it, and I was thinking as I was watching Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, and David Meltzer, and I started to tear up, I’m thinking, in what world would someone like Jamie Hess put me in the same sentence as Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, and David Meltzer? And the crowds and the frequency.
I am not going to deny it, lie to it, cheat it, manipulate it, oversell or back end sell it. I’m simply going to stop and spend minutes and moments in that fear, fear of the past or fear of the future. And then I’m going to remind, remember and recollect that I’m protected, promoted and loved by something bigger than me that loves me more than my mom and is helping me get to where I wanna be. I am just too stupid. I am not capable of understanding why.

That would happen to me in order to get to where I am today, 15 years later, in divine time.

Ha ha

from what we were just talking about, of building a community and a brand, has put me at a level where those conversations happen all the time, where people are like, well, you know, so and so, so and so, and David Meltzer. And I’m like, in what world does an oil and gas litigator out of Tulane University, who grew up with absolutely nothing but a mom who illustrated work ethic and poured in unconditional love, who made over a hundred million dollars and lost it and made it back.

would ever be mentioned in the same breath as people like that. And I bless you with the same self-image because if you can see that for yourself, remember we’ll never overachieve our own self-image. If you work on that self-image and say, I am and my self-image is the same and someday I will be mentioned in those exact same places, the exact same neighborhood.

but.

the exact same frequency as all those amazing people that I wanna be like.

I love it. As our team has been expanding, we’ve been trying to set up our core values, communicate it, and really imprint that into our business and our law firm. And gratitude is one of those core values that everybody at the firm is expected to live by. It certainly makes a big difference to me in my life when every day you wake up and you’re grateful about everything that you have, the little problems just seem just like little bumps you have to go over.

exactly what they are. Finding the light, the love, and the lessons is the key to life, and that’s the definition of gratitude.

But it’s hard because as litigators especially, you win some and you lose some. What’s your philosophy about how to deal with the losses and how you’ve dealt with your own?

It’s so funny because I always say, picture yourself, your past, and the meaning of it, and align it with your future. And so I utilize the past, the failures, the setbacks, the mistakes, the defining moments, the historical relevances, the pain, the void, the shortages, the obstacles, even the successes. And I have a daily practice of saying, what do I want today in…

pursuit of what I think I want in the future or better. And therefore, what meaning do I give the failures, the setbacks and mistakes of my past to propel me, promote me and love me towards that goal, that result, that outcome? And there’s a distance, believe it or not, between what we want and the results that we get. And the distance requires two things. And this is why

learning from the past, mistakes, failures, and setbacks, void, shortages, and obstacles are so important. It’s so important to understand it because between the distance of our behaviors and the results that we want, lies wisdom and faith. And if we don’t give the meaning to the pain, setbacks, failures, and mistakes of our past in order to gain the wisdom, and if we don’t have the faith,

that our good behavior creates an instant result called good progress, it does not create an instant result called good result. Good behavior creates good progress. We need faith that in order to continue the good progress, we need to continue the good behavior even though we don’t see the good results. In fact, a lot of times, all we see is bad results. That’s all we see. But we have to understand that human beings aren’t capable of knowing

or understanding the results that are happening at that time. It’s the divine time that reveals that we are progressing towards where we wanna be or better. It is only time itself and divine time itself that can take a bankruptcy of losing over $100 million, almost losing my wife and my life to look back and give it a meaning of, wow, I wouldn’t be where I am today, but for divine time and the wisdom that I learned.

So, I’m going to go ahead and start the presentation. So, I’m going to start with the presentation of the first item, the first item, the first item, the first item, the first item, the first item, the first item, the first item,

and the faith that I gained by the experience of losing over $100 million has made it all back for me in a different mindset, a different heart set, and a different handset. It’s made it back for me by finding the light, the love, and the lessons in those mistakes. And so shifting my paradigm to understand pain is just an indicator that I got a better place to be, a better situation to be in, and that when pain comes into my life,

I am not going to deny it, lie to it, cheat it, manipulate it, oversell or back end sell it. I’m simply going to stop and spend minutes and moments in that fear, fear of the past or fear of the future. And then I’m going to remind, remember and recollect that I’m protected, promoted and loved by something bigger than me that loves me more than my mom and is helping me get to where I wanna be. I am just too stupid. I am not capable of understanding why.

That would happen to me in order to get to where I am today, 15 years later, in divine time.

Go through the process, trust the process, and everything else will fall into place.

Yeah, practice the good behaviors, identify when you’re interfering with the good behaviors, and learn the wisdom and have the faith that you’re gonna get there in divine time. To me is the formula of success. I also have a mathematical equation of karma, luck, of outcomes and results, which is called what I pay attention to, what I focus in on what I want, and then give my five levels of intention, meaning, okay, I want this in the future.

then I’m gonna do this, say this, think this, believe this, and feel this to get me to where I wanna be in the future or better. And those people that don’t add intention to their vision boards, the people that don’t add intention to their meditation, those people that don’t add intention to their calendar are just creating a non-guided pursuit of what they think they want instead of.

by adding intention, by doing saying, thinking, feeling, and believing what you want, you get the aggregation, the attraction, you get the compounding exponentially of the outcomes and the acceleration that gives us a better indication that our behaviors are progressing in the right way to a place we wanna be or better.

Yeah, and having completed our three-year vision, I hope to come back to this three years from now and And just kind of laugh at this conversation with the with the sprinkle of gratitude Um for everything that’s taking place in that three years now did Sometimes I get asked advice and sometimes I give the advice for lawyers at the end of the day But sometimes the imposter syndrome seems like it creeps up and that little bully in the head rises out do you ever feel like

Or have you ever felt like you haven’t been good enough?

every day, and I have to understand that, you know, 40,000 of the stored thoughts that I have, the stored intentions that I have, are in my subconscious mind. They are genetically and energetically inherited by the 10,000 thoughts, words, actions, beliefs, and feelings that I experience every day. And so understanding that those 40,000

things that are stuck in my subconscious that have created neural pathways, 80% of them are negative. And even worse than that, 90% of the negative thoughts are repetitive. So my biggest opponent is that imposter syndrome. It is the worthiness. It is the distance between I am, and this is what I want people to think I am, creating greater voids, obstacles, and shortages. And so,

What I do is try to use time as a dependent variable in order to shorten the negativity by canceling negative thoughts, by clearing my mind when it’s negative, by connecting to my source, my God, my inspiration, and by utilizing the cancel, clear, connect, which by the way, Harriett, as your community grows, everyone in Harriett’s community, all you need to do is email me.

David at dmelter.com. I will sign my book, I will send it to you. I will pay for shipping and pay for the book. Just email me, David at dmelter.com and utilizing time and the Cancel Clear Connect and the Power of 64 and all the different wonderful tools that I have utilized myself, the key elements and philosophies, theories, all of the different spirituality, inspiration, and even source, the source of all.

that loves, protects, and promotes me is included in that book on manifesting or getting everything you want or better in your life and in your business. So go ahead, email me, davi to help you with exactly what Harry and I suffer from, which is the difference between who I am and what I want other people to think I am.

Well said. I know it’s going to be more, you’re going to touch on their daily routines and the things that let you get past that in those topics that you mentioned, but can you tell our listeners a little bit about their daily routines that help you go through this?

Yeah, so beyond my values of gratitude, forgiveness, accountability, and inspiration, I have five daily practices, which I’ve labeled the habit machine. So instead of trying to have and inflectuate habits, I actually keep practicing the habit machine. So whatever I want to implement in my life becomes a habit. So nutrition, exercise, mindset, whatever it may be. So the first practice is knowing what I want today in the trajectory of where I think I wanna be in the future.

by giving meaning to the mistakes of the past. Then once I know what I want today, I then ask myself who can help me and who can I help? Because the fastest way to get to where you wanna be is to find someone that’s already there to help you and help someone else get to where they wanna be. Then I ask myself, how can I get there? Well, utilizing lenses of productivity, accessibility and gratitude by understanding

time and studying time, studying my calendar with that mathematical equation of karma, what I pay attention to and what I give intention to, do, say, think, feel and believe, in alignment with where I wanna be or better is going to accelerate what I want or better and allowing me to have the non-negotiables in my life, the activities I planned, unplanned, my sleep, and being able to utilize the what, the who and the how in order to understand each day.

by giving meaning of my past and a trajectory of where I wanna be or better, the importance of the activities. Now, I have the antidote to feeling overwhelmed. I have the antidote to procrastination because the fourth daily practice that I have is knowing my now and knowing my next. In other words, I can prioritize my day by learning from the past to get me to a better future in a better place in the future, or better than I even think.

So if I know my what, my who, my how, my now, and remember, 100% of the things I do now get done, and if I know what to do next, I’ll never procrastinate or feel overwhelmed. Therefore, by knowing the now as well, I can instead of searching for what I already have, for what’s missing, for what other people want for me, accelerating me in the wrong trajectory, I can apply my why, I can live inspired.

in passion, purpose and profitability. I can apply my why by identifying the fear in my life that’s omnipresent, the fear of the past that manifests itself in resentment and guilt, the fear of the future that manifests in anxiety and depression and worry. And so when I identify that fear as a clue, I look for the pattern of the needs that the ego provide me to protect me from that fear, I need to be right, offended, separate, inferior, superior.

anxious, frustrated, angry, guilty, resentful. And instead of trying to resist that fear through ego, instead of trying to go over it, under it, through it, around it, lie to it, manipulate it, cheat it, deny it, I simply stop. And I breathe, and I remind, remember, and recollect with the Almighty, with the source, with the omniscient, all-powerful, abundant, infinite, unified system that I belong to. And I stop and at ease using gratitude to find the light, the love, and the lesson.

forgiveness to put me at ease, accountability to give me control of my path to a future that’s bigger, brighter, and better. I then roll into that path, once again, by giving meaning to my past in a trajectory towards a future I want or better. Know your what, your who, your how, your now, and apply your why. Five daily practices that make up a habit machine that’ll allow you to have consistent, persistent pursuit of your potential and enjoy it.

habit machine that allows you to aggregate, accelerate and compound exponentially what you want and more. Know your what, your who, your how, your now and apply your why. Get the habit machine. I’ll throw it in with my book, davidatdemelzer.com. Live the life you love. If you learn to live the life you love, it’ll tell you all its secrets, the cheat codes, allowing you to level up every single day of your life. I promise you, it works for me and it works for Harry. Come and join us on this journey.

Thank you so much for sending that David Meltzer. This is all the time that we have today and we appreciate you being here. I hope this isn’t the first or the last conversation that we, you and I have together. Thanks.

I guarantee it. We’ll see you up at SoFi Stadium. Everyone email me, davidatdemelter.com. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. Remember, be more interested than interesting. Be kind to your future self. Do good deeds. Thank you, Harry.

Thank you, David. Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate this. This was awesome.

Awesome, man. Let’s let this upload and I’ll go ahead. I gotta jump to my next interview, but I’m gonna stay on until it uploads 100%, okay?

Thank you so much. I appreciate you, David. Talk soon.

All right, talk soon, buddy.