David Meltzer | From Bankruptcy to Billion-Dollar Mindset

What does it really take to rebuild your life after losing everything?

On this episode of the Intangible Podcast, we sit down with David Meltzer—former CEO of Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment, entrepreneur, investor, and one of the most impactful voices in business and sports today.

David opens up about going from the top of the sports world to losing over $100 million… and the mindset shift that brought him back stronger than ever.

This conversation goes deeper than business and sports. It’s about human nature, faith, humility, and the unseen intangibles that separate those who stay down from those who rise again.

From lessons learned working alongside legends like Leigh Steinberg to powerful stories about his mother’s influence, this episode is packed with wisdom every athlete, parent, and coach needs to hear.

If you’re chasing greatness—or trying to find your way back—this one is for you.

Watch now and then take the next step in your own journey at intangible.io

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

David Master, I am excited to have a conversation with you. Did a quick background on you. And so forgive me. I was a CAA guy. Oh, right on. This is with Tom Condon. Yeah, Tom Legend. And um, you know, and and looking at your story, and you've been at the top of the at the pinnacle. Uh so congratulations on all that work. But I want to go back there, you know. Take me back to, you know, when you were running Lee Steinberg's, um, you're at the top of the top, you know. What did people what did people see that you were chasing that other people really couldn't see?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

You know, what Lee's secret was was something that uh he hired me to do, which is I actually wasn't a great sports agent ever. I was never a great lawyer, but I was at the top of my game in technology and venture capital. And in the early 2000s, Lee, who's a visionary, he saw the future of sports and sports agency in technology and venture capital, not in actually representing the athlete. Right. And like everything else Lee does, way ahead of his time, he was right. So I actually got hired into the position. Now that's the first lesson. The second was Lee always saw sports as a backdrop where everybody would hit us up. Oh, I want to get a job in sports, I want to get a job in sports. Sports to us, even the movie Jerry Maguire, which was about Lee Steinberg. Yeah, it people come up to me, that's my favorite sports movie. I said, it's not a sports movie, it's a love story with a backdrop of sports. Think about it, it's not really about sports, yeah. You're right, it's a love story. That's why so many women that's why so many freaking women love that movie. Because and the guys went because sports agent, right, right, football, they thought for sure. And so I have learned that lesson from Lee that if you use sports as a backdrop for change, for impact. And one of the last things that we kept us at the top of our game, at least, he required every one of our athletes to give back. So you had to pick a charitable purpose or a cause that was important, emotionally connected to you, couldn't just be St. Jude Hospital because they're famous.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Yeah, so something that you had to actually put.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Like Warwick Dunn had a single mom. I had a single mom, and we started a foundation for down payments for homes for single moms. And Warwick's put, including uh uh Watson, right? He he he actually gave Deshaun Watson's mom a house when he was nobody, right? So there's a lot of great people and a lot of great things that they don't see behind the scenes in the backdrop of sports that Lee Steinberg did. Now, Tom, I've been with CAA for my books, I've been represented by CAA. Tom Condon is a legend. Uh, everyone had their own specific power. Joel, Tom, obviously David Dunn and Bruce Tolner, all those guys were great. Um, there's only a few people I don't think were working for the best interests of their clients, but Tom definitely was.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Yeah. Now when you think back, when you think about what's happening in the space right now with NIL, Transfer Portal, all those different aspects, what do you think is missing right now that is going to be is it's there's a lot of light being shed on a lot of different areas. What's really, what do you think is missing right now that we're that we're really not paying attention to?

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Human nature. So history is missing. See, what everyone's doing is the same thing happens with AI, right? Everybody is looking at, okay, this is the NIL situation, here's the impact, here's the outcome. Human nature never changes. And so what's missing right now is we're not looking at the human nature. You know, most of the things that are going on today happened before on the back porch, right? Now it's happened on the front porch, except for the transfer portal.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Right? They tried to squeeze their way around it, but it very rarely could that that one you have to go back in history and look at human nature and what's going to happen to these kids. And I think if we study human nature and look for the clues and the patterns of when you put children into these circumstances, seventh graders, eighth graders, tenth graders, 11th graders, what has happened so that we can help to avoid the mistakes of the past by studying history. And I think a lot of people don't understand human nature. And they're looking at, well, if we do this, there's so many variables. I don't care what type of strategist you are. And people do it all the time with money. They'll tell me, Oh, buy this, sell this. You don't know. I've come, my favorite uh lesson from my mom: you're either humble or you're about to be, right? And the other day we were buying a property with my daughter, and I said something really stupid to her. I'm like, you know what? It doesn't really matter if you lock in because there's no way interest rates are going up. Next thing you know, there's a war. Right, right. Here we go. Here we go. It's the same thing with NIL. When you try, you trust me, you come up with a well-developed plan, God's gonna laugh at you. Yeah, absolutely. So you might as well be humble, study history, and just look at human nature, not these outcomes that you can't predict.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

What a great, great perspective. You know, human nature is all for the dawn of time, it's it's been the same. Exactly. So that's a great perspective, doesn't change, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Human nature never changes.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Absolutely. Well, I always like to kind of, you know, with intangibles, think about you know, your upbringing. You know, you've again you've been at the pinnacle of this thing. And and when you look back at your childhood, what was that drive? What was that thing, that family upbringing that made you uh, you know, want to kind of take a path to get to the tip top of something?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

I'm a 58-year-old mama's boy. My mom passed one year ago. Uh I'm gonna get choked up, but my mom, she she raised six kids on her own, five boys, one girl. All my siblings went to the Ivy Leagues, not even just the Ivy Leagues, but graduated Sumakum Laudi. My my mom uh helped women when she got my dad left when uh I was five. She couldn't get a credit card because men in the 70s had a co-sign or she couldn't get a card. So I here's a funny thing about my mom. I told this before she passed. I said, Mom, I don't think I've ever listened to your advice. I don't think I've ever listened to you, but I watched you. I watched you for 57 years, and I learned more by watching you. How you were able to give to everyone around you, to the Sunday school, second grade teacher. My mom packed my dinner for years in a paper bag, drove six kids around Akron, Ohio, filling up turnstiles at the convenience stores with greeting cards just so we could eat, and never took a dime from the family because she was going to take care of her kids herself, right? Regardless of the circumstances. And she was going to make sure that all six of her children were good people.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

And and I and I can hear I can hear it in your voice, how special that that was to be able to watch that. And it gives me hope, you know, when I think about my kids, and you know, my kids are growing up in a different lifestyle than how I grew up. I grew up farm kid, Mississippi, and rough, you know. Um, my kids don't have to do that. And so having a farm where I can go teach my kids how to work, half the time they don't want to do anything, but at least they're seeing me continue on. They see me retire from farming. Yeah, they gotta watch you and starting a company and doing the work that I'm doing. And so that gives me hope that that keeps watching.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Three intangibles to raise children. I I don't care what my kids do, but I ask them no matter what they want to do, including gaming, did you do your best? What did you learn? Right, and did you have fun? No matter what it is, I have three things I ask them, and then the three things I tell them every day, which is what my mom told me. She said, I love you, I'm proud of you, and I always have your back. And to me, that's my mom's wisdom, the advice that by watching and experiencing it, I stole from her and I now use on my kids.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Oh, uh, I'm taking a note. I'm gonna go back and make sure I write those down. Now, when you think about you know challenging times and uh and overcoming challenging times, um, there's a again, we're talking about these intangibles, you know. It's at what point at some point in your career did you have a challenging moment where you felt like, all right, I'm gonna need every intangible that I need to get myself to the other side of this?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yeah. Um, when I was re running Lee Steinberg, I lost everything. I lost over a hundred million dollars. I went bankrupt, including my mom's home, where the only reason I wanted to be rich was to buy her financial security, a home and a car. When I went up to my mom's house, I broke down like a four-year-old in tears. I couldn't get it out. My mom's like, what's the matter? Are you okay? Is Julie, your wife, okay? Are the kids okay? Yeah, mom, I lost everything. I lost your house. You need to move. Oh, are you okay, baby? Mom, I lost your house. You need to move. Oh, do you need some money? Mom, why would God punish me this way? My mom changed my life. She said, David, God doesn't punish anyone. He's protecting you, he's promoting you, he's perfecting you. Sweetheart, you got to figure out how. That's your job now. I need you to have faith in God that you're going to be better for this. And I said, Mom, I don't believe in God. She said, Son, you believe in God, you just believe in the wrong God. Now go fix yourself.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

And in that, the how, you know, you talk to, you coach up, you know, guys like myself, how to, you know, podcasts, yeah, all the social followers, all these different things that you do now to get yourself back. How? How did you how did you strap it back up?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Paradigm shift. I always so sought wisdom from other people, but my mom instilled faith in me. And so for me, instead of thinking, I'm gonna be happy when I make it all back, I'm gonna be happy when this happens, I said to myself, for the sake of what am I doing? This just like at the beginning. My mom said, Take stock in who you are and who you want to become. And I know who I am. So I started every day by saying, I am happy, I am healthy, I am wealthy, I am worthy. What am I doing to interfere with it? Because I have someone bigger than me that loves me, and I got to figure out what I'm doing to interfere with the omniscient, all-powerful, all-knowing God that's protecting me. I must be interfering with it. So from day one, I started to look not at where I was gonna go and when I was gonna be happy, but for the sake of what am I doing this and what am I doing to interfere with what's already there?

SPEAKER_02 11:06

That's powerful.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

And it was not a long amount of time until I started getting back on my feet. And I am now here, almost 19 years later. I make more money than I've ever had. I help more people than I ever dreamed of. I'm on a mission to empower over a billion people, and I enjoy my life in a level of happiness and fulfillment that I never imagined as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

David, that's that's that's powerful. I got two more questions for you as we start to wrap up here. In that same vein, when you think about your life and you think about your mom, and uh you think about you know making this transition to success to failure to back to success. If you had to go back and talk to your 17-year-old self, what would you say to her?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Same thing I tell my 58, 18, 28, 38, 48, 58, ask for help. We were talking about humility. I thought asking for help wasn't humble, but the fastest way to get to where you want to be is find someone that is already there and ask them for directions. Now, as much as somebody can give you directions, teach you those directions, or bring the most out of you to go and accelerate to from A to B. Also remember when you ask for help, make sure you're asking for help from the omniscient, all-powerful, because no matter who helps you, in order to get from A to B, it's a private lesson between you and God.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Oh, all right, man, you're preaching over here. I got one more, I got one more question for you. Um, and I'm so fortunate that to be able to sit and have a conversation with you. I feel the same way that this PAX pro athletes community has been a tremendous blessing for my in my life. Um, my last question for you though is when you think back to all those trying times and all the successes, what do you think those intangibles are? A couple intangibles that's made you who you are today.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Well, I've been blessed to be around billionaires, millionaires, entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes, and entertainers at the highest level. And there's one common intangible of everyone: it is the desire that you must be what you can be. It takes discipline and determination to another level called devotion. With the desire that you must be what you can be, you are now moving every day in a divine direction. So when there's no evidence or the evidence is contrary to where you want to be, it doesn't matter because you have a desire that you must be what you can be, protected, promoted, loved, and perfected by something bigger than you that loves you more than your mom.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Oh, David, man, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you joining me last minute. Heck yeah. This has been awesome. We'll do it again. Inspired by your story. Um I look forward to staying in contact with you.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Thank you for being on the tangible podcast.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Appreciate it. My pleasure.