David Meltzer: The Mindset Shift You Need to Build a Profitable, Purposeful Business | Entrepreneurship E308

25:55I breathe through my nose and out through my mouth, reminding, remembering, and recollecting where I do want to be or better. And I look and ask myself, have I ever done that before? Oh, you mean cut someone off, Dave? Yeah, you have. Maybe that this person also is on accident cutting you off. And maybe you should use gratitude and forgiveness instead of attack and reaction of fear, being angry or upset, resentful or guilty or offended or whatever else people are, and not waste your time, emotion and value on creating resistance, but instead stop, breathe, drop, and then roll back into where you want to be, the airport on time, instead of elevating and escalating where you may end up if you react in the wrong way.

26:50And then how is this related to going against your true purpose or becoming who you want to be? Well, your potential is who you want to be. And I use time is a dependent variable in this realm, meaning that when you look and understand that there's two different times that create conflict in our life. One is man-made construct of time. We got shit to do today. I'm sure your calendar and my calendar are packed with activities of today. But some of those activities are in more of an infinite time zone that we're making an investment into our longevity or into future lives or to lessons that are much bigger than paying our bills or making a lot of money or helping a lot of people or having fun today.

27:36And so what I do is teach people to use the 24 hours that you're guaranteed every day, except for the last day of your life, you'll be cheated seconds, minutes, or hours. So number one, put a framework around the 24 hours that you're blessed with every day, and then utilize that 24 hours today with number one, what do you want today according to the actual circumstances of today by learning and aligning the lessons of the past with where you think, and I'll repeat, where you think you want to be in the future. And so as we prepare for our day and we ask, what do I want today according to the temperature and the interest rates and the flat tires and the relatives that call us or whatever else there is in circumstantial today, align it with the lessons from the past in the trajectory I call a divine direction in divine time.

28:35Understanding divine detours also occur with where I think I want to be or better. Now I'm maximizing my progress by focusing in on my behaviors of today, knowing that good behavior is simply behavior that's aligned with where I think I want to be, and bad behavior is that which interferes with where I think I want to be. My good behavior could be your bad behavior, Hala, determinative upon our ages, our circumstances, our business, whatever it may be. My good behavior may be your bad and your bad behavior be my good because it's defined by where I want to be, not where you think I should be or what's missing or what I don't have.

29:16And so many people, they're looking to attach their emotions to outcome and evaluate their success by outcomes that they don't understand or know. For example, when I lost everything, nobody could imagine what it's like to lose over$100 million. But imagine having to go tell your mom not only that you went bankrupt, but you lost her house in the bankruptcy because you didn't take your name off of title. And the only reason you ever wanted to be rich was to buy your mom that house. And if somebody would have told me at that time, look, you just don't understand or know how losing everything, including your mom's house, is the best thing that is ever gonna happen to you.

29:58It's gonna save your life. It's gonna save your marriage. It's gonna promote you, protect you, and love you to make you a world thought leader, to write eight books, to have all the, all this is gonna happen because this shitty thing occurred. Well, you are human. And at the time that these outcomes occur, that suck. It's almost literally impossible to feel promoted, protected, and loved. And that's why each day I work on my faith to know that there's something bigger than me. I don't care what religion, philosophy, spirituality, or theories you believe in. All you gotta believe in is something that's bigger than you, that loves you more than your mom, protects you at all times, and promotes you because it's omniscient, all-powerful, and all-knowing in its core.

30:41And so for me, the faith combined with the wisdom of living life has allowed me to accelerate to aggregate the right things around me, and most importantly, to create exponentiality in my outcomes, even though I don't know or understand how any of the outcomes are actually going to promote me or protect me or love me. I just have faith that they will. And it's just a matter of either man-made constructive time or infinite time that's going to reveal, which is called a revelation, the salvation that faith and wisdom provide us in the long run of where we wanna be in our divine direction and divine time and see our divine detours as divine, not punishment.

31:28Wow, that was such a good explanation. I couldn't have ever imagined that that's where you were gonna take it, but it's so true. And I love everything you said. And it's so clear, David, that you've really dedicated the last several decades of your life, like helping others. And you actually have a mission not to just help people and make a lot of money, but to actually help make people happier, right? And there was a point in your life that you were just telling us that you were very, very unhappy. So why do you feel like people need to be happier and why has that become your mission? Yeah, well, initially it became my mission because my daughter, when she was 12, had one of her friends commit suicide and I couldn't understand what would cause a 12-year-old to kill themselves.

32:12And I went and did research to find out that it's the fastest growing cause of death for everyone, all ages, all demographics. And so whether you call it joy, happiness, fulfillment, passion, purpose, or even profitability, I don't care. I know that I have a capability of teaching people three things. How to make a lot of money and live in abundance with the perspective of making a lot of money. Two, how to help a lot of people. And three, how to be positive, how to have fun with it. And I've paid the dummy tax to learn those lessons. And I know that if I can empower a thousand people like you in your lifetime, to empower a thousand people, to empower a thousand people, to make a lot of money, to live in abundance, to have the perspective of abundance by helping a lot of people and having fun, enjoying the consistent every day, enjoying the persistent without quit, enjoying the pursuit of your potential, not what other people want or what's missing or you don't have, that I can create a fulfilled, passionate, purposeful, profitable world, a happy world, a joyous world, a collective consciousness because a thousand people like you times a thousand people like you times a thousand people like you equals a billion people.

33:34And that's a collective consciousness. One particle of light will overcome a million particles of darkness if we can change the world together by empowering each other to be a community or neighborhood of people that want to help each other and know people that can help each other, we can actually change the world. And that's why I went on this mission to help facilitate through all the things that I do from 17 and a half, almost 18 years ago, when my wife woke me up and said, hey, you're going to end up dead. You are going to end up in a bad place. And unless you take stock in who you are and who you were and what you want to become, I don't want to be around it.

34:15And when I sat on my bed the next day hating my wife, hating my mom, hating my dad and hating my best friend because they all told me the same thing, that I was lost and I was going to end up dead, I realized that day that I don't hate any of them. I hated myself. I was the one that was the liar, the cheater, the manipulator, the overseller, the back-end seller and I was going to live my life and take stock in the values that I had. I was going to practice those values every day, non-negotiable commitment to consistent behavior and execute on them the best I can by utilizing time, infinite and man-made constructive time to be productive, accessible, and gracious, to live in divine time with divine direction and be blessed with divine detours to protect, promote, and love me.

35:07We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.

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39:53As you may know, a lot of people that listen to this show, David, are entrepreneurs. And what you just said about being honest with yourself reminded me of something I've heard you say, where you said entrepreneurs have two annoying things that they always have to do. One is to be honest with themselves and two is being repetitive. So let's dig into this honesty a bit. Why do we need to get honest with ourselves? Because the truth vibrates the faster and sooner or later, the truth is going to come out. And all we're doing is creating obstacles, voids, and shortages by lying to ourselves. We're not telling ourselves we can't find outside of us what we can't see inside of us.

40:32And so if you think that somehow your bullshit is helping you, it's only helping you in the instantaneous reaction to the fear that you have. It's not helping you pursue your potential. Remember, your potential is your truth. Your essence is determined by your skills, your knowledge, and desire. When you're honest with yourself, you are only adding the number one criteria of being successful, which is credibility of your potential. Remember, your basement's determined by what? Your skills and your knowledge. Your delta determines how far you're going to get, which is your desire. When you are not honest with yourself, you're interfering with your desire, with your skills and your knowledge.

41:15And sooner or later, it's going to come up and turn out and you're gonna end up and have to go where? Back to the back of the line. You cut the line by being dishonest, you're gonna have to go to the back of the line. It may not be for a long time. And people may wonder why that person is lying to themselves. Why are they so successful? Well, sooner or later, it all comes crumbling down. And the longer it takes for the truth to come out, the further the fall, which was my truth, over$100 million, that's a big fall, and almost costing me my life with the shame, blame, and justification that's attached to the dishonesty of being an overseller, back-end seller, liar, manipulator, and cheater with good intention.

42:05I wasn't a bad person. I gave tons of money to charity. I help my family, but in its core, I lied to myself all the time. And I was just afraid. I was afraid that I wasn't worthy. I was afraid that I wasn't enough. And it carried through genetically and energetically until I became honest with myself and started working on that every single day. And I still spend minutes and moments in my bullshit instead of days, weeks, months, and years, just minutes and moments. And then I catch myself and I forgive myself and I move back into the right trajectory. I think this is such a powerful lesson for entrepreneurs because I'm an entrepreneur.

42:42I run a podcast network and I have some of the biggest legends that you probably know in my podcast network, like Jenna Kutcher and Amy Porterfield and John Lee Dumas. And I see other networks cheating and I see them buying downloads and selling downloads and I'm tempted every day. Well, everyone else is doing it, but then I remember that you said it so beautifully. if you're dishonest, you might get really successful. But then if something goes wrong, it comes crashing down, your reputation is ruined, and you're at the back of the line. And so slow and steady wins the race in entrepreneurship.

43:18And as entrepreneurs, it's easy to cheat. There's lots of ways to cheat in every different industry. I laugh too at the 500 top 10 podcasts in business or entrepreneurship. A ranking, I actually changed the signature on my email because so many people put top 10 Forbes speaker, number one podcast, and this, all this bullshit that doesn't mean anything. I actually changed it to res ipsa loquitur. And I encourage people when they become honest with themselves and also have a commitment to consistency or being repetitive, that you think about what res ipsa loquitur means. It means that which speaks for itself.

44:00And so if what you do speaks for itself and the test of time allows you to have the credibility, does that mean it's gonna be perfect? No, there's always 10 % of the people that are going to hate you, but there's also 10 % that are gonna love you no matter what. For me, it's that 80 % that by being honest and consistent will learn to love you just the same way you should learn to love what you don't like or don't love. Because if you learn to love what you don't like or don't love, and you learn to love what other people don't like or love, you do it consistently every day, persistently without quit, life will tell you all its secrets.

44:42You'll get all the cheat codes. And it's those cheat codes that have made the difference in my life to make my life easy and identify the dis-ease or the dis-easy in my life, the interference that I create myself by not being honest and not being consistent. David, I know another cheat code in entrepreneurship is relationships and being a good networker. So I'd love to understand from your perspective, what are the types of relationships we should surround ourselves with as entrepreneurs? One of the biggest myths of entrepreneurs is from Napoleon Hill, who's one of my favorite mentors. And he said, you're the aggregate of the five people that you spend the most time with.

45:24and I've changed that in my life to understand that we have teams, that there's more than just the five people that we spend the most time with. It's according to the subject matter, topic, or expertise that's of most value to us. What team do I want around me? What neighborhood do I wanna live in? And what position do I wanna play? So at 56 years old, in my family, I'm the point guard or the owner or the coach. I don't want to be the water boy. But when it comes to other areas of my life, like private equity, for example, something that I've learned later on in life as a venture capitalist and investor, I started as a water boy, maybe the towel boy.

46:07And I'm moving up to a second string, six man off the bench. But there's a lot of people that know a lot more about it. But I'm surrounding myself with the right team. I'm picking the right position to be on that team and working my way up to differing positions that would be most beneficial to me. So as an entrepreneur, not only surround yourself with the right people, the right idea, but by the subject matter, topic, or expertise, pick your position. Because remember, as an entrepreneur, the fastest way to get to where you wanna be or better is either find someone that's already there and ask them for directions, or help somebody else get there.

46:48And both of these, you know, I have this icon of reaching up and someone pulling up a seat for me above me and me reaching back and pulling up a seat for someone that's below me. That's the fastest way to create a neighborhood of people that want to help each other and know people that can help each other. All the content that I do, and we were laughing about having over 1 ,900 podcasts with a playbook, but we've had 4 ,300 interviews on Office Hours. I have four TV shows on Apple TV. so many different interviews. But the only purpose of all the content that I do is to build community, is to build a community of people, whether it's the free Friday trainings, the group stuff that I do, one-on-one consulting business advisory.

47:30It's all about a community of people that wanna help each other and know people that can help each other. And I'll tell you why. Because if you can build a community like that, they will buy from each other and sell for each other for life. And there's nothing that will guarantee your success more than a community of people that are buying from each other and selling for each other for life. And the bigger you have that community, I promise you, you'll make a lot of money, you'll help a lot of people, and you'll have a lot of fun. Okay, so one last question, and then we're gonna start to close out the interview because I know that you have to go.

48:06So you are one of the most prestigious business coaches. I know several people who have used your business coaching. Not everybody can afford such a world-class business coach like you. What's your recommendation to get a mentor? Find out, first of all, who sits in the situation that you want to be in, in the particular topic, subject matter, expertise. My oldest coach myself, and I have many coaches, is my sleep coach. Because a third of my life is spent sleeping. It allows me to recover and access information, those cheat codes that we were talking about. So I've had a sleep coach for 17 and a half years.

48:43I want to be in the Hall of Fame of sleep. I used to want to be in the football Hall of Fame. Now I want to be the best sleeper in the world because it means more and it will give me more out of my life. And so to that end, also don't be afraid just because someone is a prestigious coach or he's the highest in their field. A lot of people like me, my friends who sit at the highest levels and your friends, Hala, we do the majority of what we do for free. I do free lives every day. I do ask meaning things every day. I do free meetups and hold court in every city. Over 200 cities a year. I have a group that meets on Monday.

49:19I have free Friday trainings for almost 25 years. That might be older than you. I've been doing this stuff. But if somebody wants proximity and intimacy with me and to take that time, I have to charge. But I also have to guarantee me as a profit center. If I'm going to charge you, whether it's in a group setting,$97, or I'm going to charge you for a$27 video, or I'm going to charge you$20 ,000 plus equity to give you a business advisory, I'm going to guarantee profitability. And I think that's an important and essential thing to look for in a mentor. Look for the people. Don't worry about what they charge.

49:59Ask them for help or if they know somebody that can help you. and you'll get to where you wanna be a lot faster than having to pay the dummy tax yourself. Can you talk to us about service? Yeah, being of service is understanding value. A lot of people get confused about being of service and they give and not understanding that they can't give what they don't have. So being of service is understanding what people like and what people don't like. See, there's only two ways to provide value. It's to understand where someone is today and what is gonna help them and what's not helping them. Because the only way to derive service is to give people more of what they like or take away what they don't like or part of what they don't like.

50:44And so if you wanna be of service, you need to be of value. To understand value is to give people what they like or take away what they don't like. In order to do that, you have to be more interested than interesting. You have to ask them, hey, what are you doing today? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? Would it help you if, and you know someone that can help me. When you understand the open-ended question template and value at its core, you will live your life of service. You will live in that world, as I suggested, of more than enough of everything for everyone. Okay. So I end my show with two questions I ask all of my guests.

51:20This also gives you an opportunity to just give whatever advice that you feel like entrepreneurs really need to hear. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow. Ask for help in person, on the phone, via email, traditional and social media, one time a day. Be consistent of asking for what you want in person, on the phone, via email and media. Once a day, that'll be 28 asks a week, 112 asks in a month. On average, each of those people will have a thousand people in their community. So you reach 112 ,000 people a month that are aligned with wanting to help you.

52:01And if just a small percentage of those people actually do, it'll accelerate aggregate and compound exponentially the outcomes that you have. Most people have no problem giving, but they certainly can't confirm their faith in more than enough of everything. So ask for help, make it a committed, consistent behavior. And I promise you, you will make a lot of money, help a lot of people and have a lot of fun. And the last question is, what is your secret to profiting in life? Kindness. Abundance in itself. Just be kind to your future self. Do good deeds. When everything tells you to lie, manipulate, cheat, oversell, back and sell, be kind.

52:44Be kind to your future self. Do the good deed. The more you give, the more you'll be given. The more you're given, the more you'll receive. And the more you receive, the more you can ask for. And when you ask for more than more, you'll be able to give more than more, be given more than more, receive more than more, and then you'll ask for more than more than more. So instead of living in a zero-sum game, like all great negotiators, all great transactors, thinking that they're giving more and receiving less is a zero-sum game. There is no scarcity. There's more than enough of everything. So I always say, be kind to your future self and do good deeds.

53:23I do want to offer all of your community. I know I haven't been here a while, but I'd be more than happy to send my book to everyone, pay for the book, pay for shipping. I'll sign the book if you want. Email me for anything you need, but I will send you that book, david at dmelzer.com. Put it in the notes. I'd be happy to send you my book for free. Pay for shipping. Don't worry. Hand the book. I'd love to be of service or value to your young community. I love it. David, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? David at dmelzer.com. Everywhere it's David Meltzer. You can Google me.

53:56Blessed to have plenty of content out there. But my best way, I answer all my emails myself. So if you email me, david at dmeltzer.com, I'll be of service and of value. Thank you so much, David. Thank you. I'll see you soon.

54:14Could you imagine losing more than$100 million or better yet, realizing that it might be the best thing that ever happened to you? David Meltzer has had such a fascinating career with some huge ups and downs. And often it's those low points that really make us who we are, that give us perspective that we need to keep going. Thanks to his own experiences, David now has some valuable life lessons to share. And I personally really love his perspective on how to take advice from others. Whether it's good or bad advice, helpful or unhelpful, try to appreciate where it's coming from and recognize it for the gift that it is.

54:53I certainly could take that advice. Sometimes it's also useful to take things one day at a time, literally. Focus on that next 24 hours. Give it a framework. What do you want to accomplish today? How does it fit within your larger goals? And finally, above all, be truthful with yourself. It can be so tempting to take shortcuts, especially when you see others, including your competitors, taking them. But like David said, sooner or later, the truth comes out and the longer it takes to do so, the harder the fall. Just be patient and be kind to others and to your future self. Everything you've given of yourself will come back to you in the end and then some.

55:35Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting. If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation and wanna get started giving yourself, then why not start by sharing this episode with a friend or a family member? We love it when you spread the show by word of mouth. And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something, then please take a couple minutes to drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Nothing helps us reach more people than a good review from you. We never charge. We don't have subscriptions. We do this all for you, our dear listeners. If you prefer to watch your podcast as videos, you can find us on YouTube.

56:09Just look up Young and Profiting. You'll find all of our episodes on there. If you're looking for me, you can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Halataha. and I also want to thank my amazing Yap team who works so hard every day to make this podcast what it is. You guys are incredible. Thank you so much. This is your host, Halataha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.