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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Decoding AQ, I have a good friend of ours and business advisor, David Meltzer.

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David  

Hey, Ross, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk about the new intelligence, the AQ intelligence, the one that's going to be most beneficial to everyone moving forward considering what we are going through and have gone through the last decade. And we'll go through the next decade.

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Ross  

Yeah, it's that instant connection, wasn't it? When we first met, in fact, it was on one of your online shows the Elevator Pitch, which was an interesting experience from my perspective. I guess you see so many pitches, and just for our listeners, a quick bit of background that I wanted to share and your mission to empower over a billion people to be happy. I mean, who can't smile at that, right?

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David  

Absolutely. Well, it took years to come to the epiphany and the courage to articulate what's important to me. And that's creating a collective consciousness of happiness of abundance, teaching people to make a lot of money, help a lot of people and have a lot of fun. So it blends not only the pragmatic world, or currency of money, but the spiritual world or currency of faith, and both are necessary, but also blend equally in importance to being happy. And I believe happiness is the key.

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Ross  

I couldn't agree more. And I think that's probably why it blends so well to our adaptability. Because our adaptability to either accept an environment, to adapt to it, to adapt ourselves, or even to adapt the environment through our own deliberate endeavor. Ultimately to thrive and to be happy throughout our journeys of life. And for someone who's been a three time best seller, had a journey of many different identities as a person. I wonder if you could just share a little bit of some of those highlights from a sports background in terms of CEO for the company that people might know as the inspiration behind Jerry Maguire. To somebody now who's really involved in so many humanitarian efforts, investment efforts, speaking all of these pieces. Perhaps just share a couple of things that stick in your mind of where you had to evolve yourself, you had to adapt to shift, perhaps your way of thinking or your mindset and your environment to thrive when something changed. And so perhaps, give us an example of a few of those things.

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David  

Well, I think it stems from our relationship to money, that currency of money, the object of energy that you put into flow to get what you want. So from a very young age, I wanted to buy my mom a house and a car. So I actually created an environment of options. And one of the unique positive aspects of thinking that money buys love and happiness and that money is your end goal is that your options are always open.

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And when you have the framework or the perception that your options are always open, you're looking to adapt. You're always looking to adapt to something better and that better means where can I make more money so whereas my siblings all grew up under the guise of my mom, who was a single mom working two jobs, education was king, the fetus wasn't fully developed to after graduate school. Doctor, lawyer failure was ingrained into their being. I had my eye flaps wide open, where can I make more money, including when I graduated law school, and made the decision to work in the internet, instead of being an oil and gas litigator.

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Then going to after we exited for 3.4 billion going to Silicon Valley to raise money in the wireless proxy service base transcoding internet on the web phones, then becoming CEO the world's first smartphone was Samsung. And then that was all because of money, right? People like how did you keep adapting? Well because I just want to go where I was expandable.

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And, that continued even into my sports career where I left Samsung to be, not only a venture capitalist but meet Leigh Steinberg, the most notable sports agent in the world. The guy they made the movie Jerry Maguire about and became the CEO of the most notable sports agency. Then I even met Warren Moon the Hall of Fame Quarterback in the last 12 years, adapted into marketing. Wherein the context the last four years, I adapted all of the skills, knowledge and desire that I had into my own brand. Like you said, writing books, one of the top podcasts, speaking around the world, one of the top business coaches, movies, TV, all the different things that I do.

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But the difference is, as I transitioned that paradigm from keeping my options open because I wanted to make more money. Instead, now I utilize that in a different context to create more abundance, right? To create this idea of empowering more people to empower more people, although have one thing, an open mind. In order to adapt, you need to have an open mind. And then, you and I can talk about what we do have control of and how we adapt to things pragmatically, as well. But I think an open mind is the first key component of why I continually, what other people call pivoted, I've just adapted what I was doing towards the objectives that I had.

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Ross  

And is there a story where, in hindsight, the path often we can tell ourselves a narrative and story that is all positive, abundant, and we can have that frame. In the moment, many of us face when we're going through change, it's an uncertain feeling, you can have anxiety, you can have stress, even when you might see yourself as successful in one area. When we're venturing to new career paths and new pieces, it takes courage to do that. And it also is a sense of loss. It's a loss of who you were before. So this emotional journey that we go on, it's so important to remain, as you said, not only open-minded, but also positive in those situations and challenges we face.

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How have you managed to maintain such a positive outlook? Because in every conversation we have David, it's always this energy of positivity and smiling and your mindset of belief in abundance? Is that something you were born with? You framed it, you work on it? Tell me a little bit more about that?

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David  

All the above. So I think everyone has to look at their quantum potential. I was obviously born with that happy-gene, a positive-gene. But just like LeBron James was born with an extraordinary athletic gene potential that I could never reach this lifetime, I was born with a higher integrator potential to be happy and to be positive. But I think, understanding how others can reach their potential is very important. And how do we do that? Well, one, what you described is faith. All of those things aggregated together is the second currency, which is faith and object of energy that you put into the flow.

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You see that faith is like a GPS of adaptability. What do I mean by that? When you put your destination into your GPS, you think you know where you're going. Now, a GPS, when you make a mistake, you miss a turn, you go the wrong way whatever, the GPS recalculates it and give you the best direction from there. Now, faith is a superpower GPS, because not only will it recalculate your route, but it also will recalculate your destination to a better place, a better position, and all the mistakes, all the failures, the setbacks, the pain, are just indicators, like missing an exit, indicator that you're going the wrong way. And that you need to learn a lesson, you need to learn the new route, in order not only to get to where you think you want to go, but to get to somewhere better.

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And so for me, Faith encompasses the control that we have of three things. One, when we realize although there's extraordinary change at all times, and that we need to adapt to that change, it becomes less scary or frightening. If we know we have control of our mindset. You see, we give meaning to everything we see. And when we practice having control of our mindset, understanding the triggers in our lives, that put us into ego-based consciousness, the need to be right, offended, separative, fear, superior, anxious, frustrated, angry, guilty, resentful, all of these different triggers that put us into a primal, ego-based consciousness, a primal fear.

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Because remember, when fear hits, all the blood leaves our brain so that our body can fight, our body can flee, our body can feed itself, or the other F word that Gary Vee uses. And unfortunately, so many people make crucial decisions in adaptation without any blood in their brain. So what we want to do is make sure that we have control of our mindset, knowing that we give meaning to everything we see so that when we lose these blood in our brain from triggers, that we stop, we get back to center neutral, and we can utilize our higher power of thinking, we can put the blood back into our brain and live to the potential that we have.

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Number two, we have control the way we feel, our heart set. So many people think they're not in control the way they feel. And that's because they try to use logic to change the way they feel. Logic will never change emotion. Logic will never change the way you feel. You can sit there all day long and tell yourself, “Don't worry, don't worry, you'll do fine.” And you're not going to change the way you feel. But if you take action that will change the way you feel. Actions how we change the way and we have control of our actions, therefore we have control the way we feel. And the best way to change the way you feel if it's not good is to go do something for someone else, do a good deed, help somebody else, guaranteed higher frequency changes the way we feel.

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Then finally, we have control of what I call the conscious continuum. But really we have control of what we think they do believe. And even our personality traits, characteristics, obsessions and addictions, if we raise the awareness to those. So those are the three things combined with faith that allow us to have the David Meltzer perspective, genre, energy, and charisma of being happy all the time. Or let's just say I only spend minutes in moments in ego-based consciousness or unhappiness, not days, weeks, months, a year.

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Ross  

Yeah. And I guess that's a habit that you are now consciously in practice off to, for us when we talk about adaptability in the influence of our environment. So who are we spending time with? What is our environment like? How are we feeding the data intake for our mind, and evolving that mindset and being very deliberate about that? And I think it's an interesting balance about, are we creating a reality that's delusional? Or is it a dream? Are we taking actions towards that future version of ourselves is so critical.

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In terms of where many companies and leaders right now are facing so much abundant opportunity and innovation at the same time as so much disruption, uncertainty and loss. And that, as you said, is it minutes, moments to spend in ego? Maybe the same can be thought about for many leaders or companies that are in this situation of yes, there is loss, there is disruption, but maybe only spend minutes and moments in it, not days and months in it. I love that analogy, David. I think that's very helpful for people to think in that way.

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David  

Yeah, I think too many people think about what's missing, what they don't want, what other people want for them. And of course, in times of accelerated change or disruption, a lot of people fall into that trap. And what happens is, if you focus in on what's missing, what's disrupted, what you don't want, or what other people want for you, that's what you end up with. And so I think it's important to have daily practices. I have a know your what, know your who, know your how, know your now and know your why, in order to effectuate daily practices. To look for what to take inventory of the skills I have, the knowledge of who and what and the desire that I have each day, not being afraid of changing my mind. Part of adaptability is not knowing what I don't know and being in acknowledging that I don't know what I don't know, in order to adapt. I have to be humble, to say, “I didn't know what I didn't know yesterday, I have no ego involved.” And I now am doing the best according to the values that I have. And taking inventory of that capabilities, and aligning it every day with what's doing well, aligning it with what's stable, and aligning it with what you think is going to do well tomorrow. And if you do those three things, using the five daily practices, aligned with your own values, you'll find that adaptability is really just a focus course of action aligned with what is changing around you by focusing on what you're in control of.

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Ross  

And that ability to let go is a learnable skill, it’s because it's easy to let go something when it's not working. It's harder to let go when it's giving you a gentle applause. And it's those subtleties that is maybe the reflection, it's maybe objective opinion, to be open-minded to reevaluate continually when things change so quickly. We didn't have to reevaluate so quickly in a linear world, because yesterday is similar to today and similar to tomorrow. Whereas now, that isn't the case. So this opportunity for us to reinvent ourselves is not only the reality, it's something we have to come to terms with I think, as a species living right now.

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David  

Yeah, absolutely. That it's so important to be and illuminate who we are in those circumstances. And I think a lot of people have a difficult time with it their limitlessness and infinity knowing that there's multi variables involved in everything, and that the best we can do is to know and look within ourselves to find what we want outside of ourselves.

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Ross  

And I loved your thought there about how we degrade our problem solving and our cognitive abilities of ie, the blood goes from the brain when we're in certain states. And I think adaptability for leaders and for companies that are developing their new lines, their new propositions, their new things, is to feed the mind state to be conscious of the blood in the right areas. So if they're making decisions under that pressure under that disruption, it's going to be impaired. So how can they create these environments of safety of that higher consciousness to unlock the flow of better problem solving.

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And it's the things that you talked about of positivity of open mindedness on a team scale, to give those things. And I'd like to just very quickly as we finish up, the balance between sports and work, and lots of people have written about these various things, and it's something you've evolved into your career, of your language, of playbooks and all of these sort of things. What advantage is around how sports teams adapt in the moment, from quarter to quarter, from half to half of reevaluating what's going and setting a new plan and position in the moments could we apply now within business that might be some tips or pieces that we could take away with David?

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David  

I think number one is the blending of persistence and patience. I think it's the most notable of all things that aren't talked about. Everyone talks about teamwork and leadership and communication, duh, like honestly, in sports, it's so obvious. And I think it's trite, and people tell you, but what I think is so fascinating, one of the superpowers that I learned is the persistence and patience blend. Think about being in the Olympics, four years of persistent behavior, that you have to patiently wait to see the results that if you're a speed skater like Apollo Ohno, that you may win or lose a Gold Medal by .0001% talk about a blend.

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I think there's also another aspect of the desire that you must be what you can be, their potential is one thing but if LeBron James, or Michael Jordan did not have the desire to be what they must be, they wouldn't be as good if even make it to the NBA. And I find that that ability, when you can apply it to your own quantum potential that is even higher.

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So if a David Meltzer learns to be what he must be on a football field, you add five, seven 147 pounds, it's only going to go so far, right? It made me an average division three football player in college, which considering my potential was quite an accomplishment. But when I applied it to other areas that I had greater quantum ability to communicate, to inspire, motivate, to process, just all these different things that I was born with a higher potential, that lesson of being what you must be combined with the blend of patience and persistence, really are two things within sports that will take you to the next level, in anything you do personally or professionally.

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Ross  

And the last piece of a tip for people that are looking to create something big, they have a big ambition, a big mission to reach their quantum potential. How can they, to reach that requires collaborations, requires a number of things. So that perseverance, yes, that's an innate individual pursuit of something, an expansion of something, but it takes many around them for that to reach the crescendo. Even a sports person that is a speed skater, there's a whole army behind that. So they inspire others, they tell others the story and bring them along with them. 

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What have you seen in the countless pitches, the countless conversations you've had of someone communicating their potential that inspires others? What are the things that really resonate with you when you see somebody can express that or communicate that when we shared? It's all about adaptability, we want to transform the health and well-being of a hundred million people this decade, feel that energy. How do people communicate well that you've seen to help people support the realization of their best self?

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David  

Yeah, well, number one, you want to empower over a hundred million. Don't limit yourself to a hundred million. It's over a hundred million.

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Ross  

I love that, yeah.

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David  

And there’s five things, I think. Number one, people discount credibility. So you talked about behind Apollo Ohno or behind Michael Jordan or behind LeBron James? Yes. But they're credible, right? They've earned thier credibility and so credibility number one. Two the emotional attachment. There's some people that may not perform or have a highest potential as other people but there's an emotional attachment. Steph Curry is a good example. Steph Curry people identified emotionally attached with more because they look at him and say, “Wow, I could be Steph Curry.” When you look at LeBron James, six-foot nine, runs a 4-4, you don't see, little kids don't say, “Well, I can never be LeBron James, but I can be Steph Curry, I have an emotional attachment. I'm like Steph Curry.” And so I think emotional attachment.

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Three is being able to articulate the quantitative reasons why people should do things, follow me, be motivated, empowered, etc. The other one is impact. when you have a greater impact, or you see the impact of changing the environment, or making people happy or health and wellness and mindset. And then finally, utilizing features and benefits capabilities to support those four. We use the features and benefits not to dump on people to oversell them back and sell them lie to them, manipulate and cheat them, but to support our credibility, emotional attachment, quantitative reasons and impacts.

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Ross  

Thanks, David. It's such insight and a gratitude to your giving and sharing nature is gratefully received. I want to thank you for that. I know we're at the final time that we'd set for this. But I did want to ask you, was there one thing that you wanted to be asked for this interview that I haven't asked you that you wish I had that you wanted to share?

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David  

I always like people to ask what's your best lesson, your best piece of advice? I believe that so many people listen to interviews, speeches, courses and never get one takeaway. So I always like people to ask me what's the number one takeaway and it's really simple for me. It's why I do trainings every Friday for free, why I give my books for free. Why anybody can email me directly at David@DMeltzer.com I'll give you my book. I'll ship it. I don't care. But here it is. Take this away. Be kind to your future self. And do good deeds. That easy. Change your life.

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Ross  

Love it. Thanks, David. Look forward to our next connection.

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David  

Thank you my friend, we’ll have you on The Playbook, we’ll book that. We got to have you as a guest on my show, incredible show. Thank you so much everyone, reached out to me, David@DMeltzer.com Take care, Ross.

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Ross  

Thank you. Bye bye.

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David  

Bye bye.

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Voiceover  

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Outro

Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding AQ. Please make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast directory, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Please do leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.

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