[JOE SANOK]
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 663.
[JOE]
Well, I am Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I am so glad that you are here today. We are helping people start grow scale and exit their private practices. We got people at the very beginning that are saying, “Hey, I might want to do this private practice thing.” Maybe you didn’t learn anything in grad school all the way to, you’ve got a thriving practice and you’re ready to do bigger things beyond it like keynote speeches, write books, e-course, maybe not better. All the phases in there have their place but sometimes we got to dream big. We’ve got to prioritize things. We’ve got to take the things that matter and actually put those first when we have so many options out there.

That’s why I’m so excited today. We have David Meltzer who’s the co-founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formally served as the CEO of renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports and Entertainment Agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry McGuire. David’s been recognized by Variety Magazine as their sports humanitarian of the year and awarded the Ellis island medal of honor. He’s also the executive producer of the Bloomberg and Amazon Prime TV series, Two-Minute Drill and Office Hours. David, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[DAVID MELTZER]
I love the Practice of the Practice. I’m in the right place. Thanks for having me.
[JOE]
You are. Man, we hung out on your show when I was doing my book tour and I loved it. I mean, you know that when you’re doing these big book tours, it blends together. Your show did not blend together with anything else I did and it just was so great. You have these Office Hours that you just kick. Maybe why don’t you talk about the Office Hours and how long you’ve been doing that and what the inspiration for that was?
[DAVID]
Sure. So when the pandemic hit there’s a lot of requests for help and as you deal with a lot of service providers and people that look to elevate others and celebrate others, I was trying to figure out how I could extend the value that I could bring. I’ve been doing trainings for over 21 years for free every Friday so I extended that out into Zoom. We have over 50,000 people registered a week now where people used to fly in, you might get 50 or a 100 people fly in for my Friday trainings in person. I joke around, but I have much more impact a day for a lot less expense because I used to buy everybody lunch. I’m still looking for a lunch sponsor, a virtual lunch sponsor, you know pizza place or somebody so people can get free food from me. Because it’s definitely, I think a big reason why people show up.

Anyway, so Office Hours, I have so many people that wanted to be on my show and I have top podcast, but there’s only so many podcasts you can post. So I wanted to be able to give a platform on all places and lo and behold, we came up with Office Hours, bringing in great authors, speakers, executives, and we just have a casual conversation. I usually bring in a co-host with me, great Mike Diamond or blame Bartlet or Mike Maul or Dave Marino or others. And guess what Bloomberg picked it up as a television show. We are in season two. So we are filming in Las Vegas at a studio right after super bowl for season two. But the idea is to share The Playbook to success. All my shows, Office Hours, Two-Minute Drill, The Playbook are all aligned with giving people a playbook to success.
[JOE]
What are some of those things that you’ve seen top performers, I mean you’ve helped coach and train and consult with just huge brands and people. I’m sure you notice some consistency between them as to how they prioritize and think through where they spend their time. What are some of those trends or things that you notice in those top achievers?
[DAVID]
Well, the top achievers have three things. They have skills and knowledge, applicable to your audience. Your skills and your knowledge, because everyone’s educated and have a tremendous amount of skills, that sets your basement. Now the thing that stands true, whether it’s the billionaire, the millionaires, the entrepreneurs, the celebrities, athletes, entertainers, thought leaders, because I’ve had Deepak Chopra and Tsa Guru, no, you don’t get bigger thought leaders than that here in America.
[JOE]
Seriously.
[DAVID]
So what is interesting is I believe that skills and knowledge are determined your basement, how low you can go, but your desire, this must be what you can be. Attitude and desire is what determines your ceiling or potential, your limitlessness and all the common denominators of all of those unbelievable people. They all have a desire that they must be what they can be combined with skills and knowledge.
[JOE]
I love that. What they must be and can be, that idea that man, I can just go beyond what I thought I could do. I remember when I was leaving my full-time job I was working full-time as a counselor and at a community college and then I had this side gig counseling practice and this growing podcast. The question I asked myself is would I rather stay here and never know my potential or would I rather leave and maybe fall flat on my face but at least I know that I pushed myself to try something bigger than what I had thought? So that idea of desire, how do you foster that desire? If someone says, yes, I feel like I got desire. I’ve got knowledge. It’s not clicking along like I want. I want to be like David. I have 50,000 people or even 5,000 people that tune into something. How do you make those jumps? If you have some desire and you’ve got the knowledge, then what?
[DAVID]
Well, that’s why I’m here because you nailed it with the title of your podcast. It’s the Practice of the Practice. I’ve created five daily practices that are the Practice of the Practice. I’ve created the adherence to what you want. I’ve created the habit machine. I’ve created the ability to enjoy the consistent persistent pursuit of your potential. Not other people, not what’s missing or not what you don’t want but your own potential. In order to do that, you need to know five things. You need to know what you want, that’s personally experientially giving and receiving.

Each day you need to know what you want taking in consideration the intermediate and long term goals. And you need to have the humility to know that you don’t know you don’t know and you’re able and capable of changing your mind each day when you take inventory of what you want. Once you know what you want, you need to know, and this is what’s so hard, I coach a lot of doctors, chiropractors, therapists. I coach a lot of, some of the leading psychiatrists even and here’s the problem. With most people, first responders, medical service providers, most people that are in the business of helping people, teachers are terrible at this.

They don’t know their who. They know their what. What do I mean by, they don’t know the who? They don’t know, they know who they can help with their what, but don’t know who can help them. Because somewhere along the line, somebody told them whether it was a Hippocratic oath or something along the line told them that if you’re a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, a therapist, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a social worker that you are the person that needs to help everyone and you’re not allowed to ask for help.

You’re the only one allowed to feel good about helping people. You can’t allow other people to feel good about helping you. You can’t ask for more because that would be against your profession to ask to grow a big business. You can only help people and have fun. You’re not allowed to make a lot of money because you’re here to help people. That’s terrible. That’s energetically off. Let me tell you why real quickly. So Joe, when we appreciate what we have, which all your audience does, it expands and grows and adds value. When we give it away, what we have and that’s what people in your profession do and your audience do, and my mom did this by the way; so you expand what you have by appreciating it, you acknowledge it, acquire the knowledge of what you’ve had by giving away, and now you have a bigger void to fill.

But most people in the professions that you help, they don’t ask for more. So slowly but surely what they had depreciates and pretty soon they end up in position that they can’t help anyone else, the exact position that they don’t want to be in. So my mom gave her life to her six children, to her second grade class, to her private Jewish school that she was the principal of, to the Sunday school that she was for 47 years at. She gave everything to all of those people and never asked for anything for herself, her health, her wealth, her happiness, and her worthiness.

So now she’s 80 years old and she can’t take care of herself because she’s given everything away without ever asking for anything back. She thought she was doing this out of humility and it’s a completely counterintuitive behavior that you need to Practice of the Practice. You need to know your what, your who, your how, with the lenses of productivity, accessibility, and gratitude and then you’ll be able to prioritize, which is the key word for 2022. People who prioritize is the antidote for procrastination by the way. Priority allows you to do more, be more productive, to be more accessible to others, to access what you want, and to be more gracious.

If you know your what, your who, your how, and your now you will apply your why. You won’t be in search of it. You will realize I’m happy, I’m healthy, I’m wealthy, I’m worthy. What am I doing to interfere with it? Not I got to go get happy, healthy, wealthy, and worthy. What am I doing to interfere with what I already am and applying your why? The five PoPs, the Practice of the Practice, the five PoPs is a perfect alignment. As you know I’ll be happy to send that to anyone, give my notes in the bio, dmeltzer.com. People just reach out. I’ll give you those Practice of the Practice.
[JOE]
That’s, oh my gosh, so good. I feel like just that one thing at the end of that you’re already happy, that that whole idea of, you know just recently I had this idea of, if someone said to me, “Hey Joe, do you want to be a dolphin for the day?” I’d be like, heck, oh my gosh, yes, I’d love to be a dolphin for the day. Or do you want to be a ladybug for the day? Hell yes, that sounds amazing. But how often do we get to say to ourselves or say to ourselves, we get to be human. Like we get to experience being human.

This right here is enough and that idea that we always are saying, oh, if only I was this or that, you think a dolphin is saying if only I could go do this thing, then I’d be happy? No, they’re just a dolphin. So I love that you start with that we already have that, even with the terrible things that people may be going through, that we get to choose to be in that happiness. Is there a time when that clicked for you more than a others, because I think that there’s usually a backstory to how you got to that point of realizing happiness now.
[DAVID]
Yes. Well, I had several warnings in my life. My father, when I was 30 warned me, I was just like him. He gave me a jacket with no pockets for my birthday, first gift in 20 years, told me I wasn’t going to be the richest man in the cemetery and gave it to me to remind me, I couldn’t take anything with me, that I was motivated by money. This was the mistake that he made motivated. By my best friend, Rob, who I’ve known since the fourth grade, who I had asked my current wife, my only wife, to go study at sixth grade camp. She said, no, told me to ask me himself. But Rob told me he wouldn’t go to the masters with me, private plane everything, because he didn’t like who I was, who I hung out with and what I was doing.

And I hated my dad. I hated my friend Rob for telling me that. Then two weeks later, my wife, we’re talking about three little girls that we have under eight, healthy, happy, beautiful, multi-millionaire running the most notable sports agency in the world. Everyone desired to have my life. My wife pointed out that I was taking for granted not only what other people are wishing for, but everything I had wished for and that I’d better take stock in who I was and what I wanted to become, or I was going to end up dead and she was leaving me. At that time I shifted the paradigm from I’m going to get wealthy, get happy, get healthy, get worthy to there is so bigger than me, an omniscient, all powerful, all-knowing source.

And that all powerful source loves me as much as I love my own children. Therefore, I am happy, healthy and worthy. Therefore, when I experience setback, pain, failure, mistakes, when I experience resistance, I’m being protected or promoted, not punished, just as if I was a young child, putting my hand on the stove and my mom who doesn’t believe in hitting slaps my hand and screams at me to protect me, to promote me. This is all that’s happening when you don’t get the job you want, when you’re not making as much money as you want, when you end up with a relationship that you don’t want, when things are happening as you haven’t planned them. If you can shift your perspective to want a promotion and protection, instead of punishment, you will realize I’m happy, healthy, wealthy, and worthy. What am I doing to interfere with it?
[JOE]
When you start from that point, I think you do work that matters more. It’s more fulfilling. It’s not coming out of like ego or achievement, or if I do this, then I’m going to be happy. It’s coming from a place of man, I get to do this really interesting work. So when people are starting from that point, or maybe even trying to start from that point, it doesn’t necessarily always happen in the blink of an eye, how do you start prioritizing? I love that idea of prioritizing being kind of the word of 2022. What are some ways that people can think through prioritization, ways to actually enact it to just live that out?
[DAVID]
I think the Practice of the Practice is the way that we do it. So reminding ourself, we need to identify the triggers that cause us to be paralyzed, to not do things. The triggers of the ego, there’s people, places, things, and ideas that trigger us to have a need to be offended, the need to be right, the need to be separate, inferior, superior, anxious, frustrated, angry, worried, guilty, resentful. All of these are the things that stop us from prioritizing in doing things right.

Adherence to prioritization is not only a identifying, remember what my priorities are, but actually doing them. So the more we practice identifying the triggers of the ego, triggers of ego-based consciousness then when we start practicing, identifying the triggers, now we can create a practice of stopping. Instead of resisting the triggers, instead of fighting the triggers, going over the triggers, under the triggers, around the triggers, through the triggers, instead of lying to the triggers, manipulating, cheating, overselling, and backend selling the triggers, simply stop. Breathe through the nose, out through the mouth and remind yourself, what do I want today? Who can I have help and who can help me and hw best can I get that done?

When you do that with what’s planned, the activity planned, or as we all know, come up with a great plan, God will laugh at you. So we are always confronted with activity we don’t have planned, expected or planned. This methodology of identifying the triggers, stopping, dropping, and rolling will allow us to not only adhere to prioritization, by remembering what we want, who we can help, who can help us and how to get it done, but also actually doing it in the priority of what’s most important to us, not what’s just urgent.
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[JOE SANOK]
So we identify the triggers. We stop the triggers, even just that idea of, we don’t have to push back. We don’t have to solve it. We can identify it and just observe it, let it unfold. Then how, I want to kind of step back. So you’re triggered all that, how do you or how do your clients figure out the best use of their time? How do you know even what to prioritize within a given year, month, week, or day?
[DAVID]
So I work on the daily practice. So for me, when I figure out what I want every day, I have to consider what my intermediate and long term objectives are. So for example, I want to live to over 111 years old. That’s a very —
[JOE]
Wait, why 111. That seems like a very specific amount of time.
[DAVID]
It is. It’s a great story because I used to tell people I want to live to 111 because I was born on January 11th at 1:11. So I told people my destiny was to die on January 11th at 1:11 on 111th birthday. I went to the Laker game with Diane Cannon, who’s a famous actress from Heaven Can Wait and whose married to Carry Grant. She’s in her eighties, beautiful, beautiful soul. I told her this story, because I was saying, gosh, you’re going to live so long. I want to live to 111. She almost got teary eyed. I said, “What’s the matter?” She said, “Why are you limiting yourself?” So from that day on, she said, “David, imagine if tech technology makes it so the average human being lives a thousand years and you spend the next 50 years manifesting dying January 11th at 111 years old. You’ve wasted 889 years.”

And you didn’t even know it because you don’t think big enough or you don’t ask the universe big enough. So that’s where I started the over 111, but when I start my daily practices, that’s a long term objective. Well now my daily practices are aligned with synergistic or supplementary too, making sure I’m healthy, which gives me a prioritization, a non-negotiable of spending a minimum of an hour day on my health. I also then say what’s next most important to me of what I want personally experientially giving and receiving wise? Wow, my family, within the context of my family. I’m going to spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day with my wife, minimum of 30 minutes with my 11 year old son, a minimum of two minutes a day with my three teenage daughters.

I ask for five, I ask for five. They’re better negotiators than me. I got two, but it’s a minimum. And a minimum of one minute a day with my mom to make sure she knows four things, that I’m happy, healthy, I appreciate her and love her. If you tell your parents, every day for a minimum of a minute, that you’re happy, healthy, appreciate, and love them, there’s nothing else they want for you. You could tell them you got the awards of the century, you’re the Heisman trophy winner. They don’t care because in the end they may seem if they care that you go to college, they may seem that they care that you marry a certain person, but innately in their being all they want you to be is healthy, happy, appreciate them, meaning they add value to your life and love them.

So now you can understand how the PoP, how these practices, daily practices are all aligned, synergistic and supplementary to intermediate and long term objectives. We’re just constantly (e)valuating them. What does that mean? We’re putting our energy and value into them by prioritizing them, by making what’s most important to us today, what we’re going to do by aiming towards what we want intermediately and long term. But that incremental growth, we didn’t talk about the get 1% better. Einstein’s one of my favorite scientists of all time, not just because of the theory of relativity, but because of compound interest in the rule of 72.

I think this is aligned with prioritization and adherence that everything aggregates on itself. Because money and energy. So when he said money, you have 1% more money in a certain segment of time, it takes 72 segments for it to double. So we can focus in on what do we need to do to make the segment shorter but also make sure that we’re getting 1% better in that shorter amount of time. This is true of about behavior, good behavior aggregates on itself, bad behavior aggregates on itself, money compounds in its interest, the same way. Why is this so important? Because the human mind says if I’m saving money or I’m doing the right thing, a good behavior, I should get an instant result.

The human mind also says, if I’m not saving my money and I’m doing bad things like drugs and alcohol, that will have no bad result. Both are critical to understand compound interest in the rule of 72 because if you understand this, you will be more adhered to doing the right things, to saving money, to doing healthy things to family, because you know that although you can’t see the result yet, it’s a mathematical proven equation that if you continue to do something and you get better at it and faster at it, that it’s going to double in 72 segments. If it’s a bad habit, you don’t want alcohol to double and then double again and then double again and double again. This is a problem. You do want kindness to double again, generosity to double again, you want fitness and nutrition and water and sleep all of these good habits to aggregate and compound on themselves.
[JOE]
Oh man, I think that even just that idea of how do we get whatever the goal is done quicker so that we can start to get that aggregate is such a key point. Because I’ve found that when I have limited my amount of time, you know Parkinsons’ Law, work fills to the time we give it, that I then can get so much more done in a shorter period of time and then have that time to be with my family, be with my friends, do things for my health. Not that those are back seats, but you just free up that time because you just sprint hardcore. And for me, at least when it’s in my calendar, when I’ve given myself a specific amount of time, I know it’s go time. I’m prioritizing it. There’s not even room for procrastination, versus if I show up with a blank slate on my calendar, it’s like I haven’t been intentional about what I want to get done so that I can get back to doing the other things that maybe I want to do.
[DAVID]
It’s so true, and I think when we talk about time, it’s essential because it’s relative to thought. But more importantly, if we look at time in the aspect that we’re only given 24 hours of activity a day, and the way that we utilize our time by being more efficient, effective, and statistically successful with it provides more what, options and opportunities. Like you said, we don’t have to live a balanced life if we live an efficient, effective, and statistically successful life. Why? Because there’s enough time for everything.

People ask me, how do you do this? You have this great relationship. I’m more in love with my wife today after 24 years than ever, still my dream girl. My kids are wonderful, my health is wonderful, I’m wealthier than I’ve ever been. I’m worthier. How do you do this? You got TV shows and podcasts and movies, and you got businesses and sports. How do you do it all? Well, time. My superpower is I’m efficient, effective, and statistically successful, which provides me more options and opportunities, more time.
[JOE]
It’s so true. It’s that one thing that we’ve all got the same amount of. Well, David, the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world we’re listening right now, what would you want him to know?
[DAVID]
Oh, ask for help. Listen to me. If you want to help more people. If you’re driven as a private practice practitioner, if you’re driven to help other people, the best thing you can do is ask for help for you. You can’t give what you don’t have. Let me help you make a lot of money, help a lot of people and have a lot of fun. The biggest practices in the world help the most people in the world and it’s better for the good people who are humble to use their humility in the right direction, by feeling comfortable receiving. You can’t give what you don’t have, appreciate what you have, give it all away, but ask for more so you can appreciate that. Add value to that and give that away. So ask, ask, ask, get rid of that feeling that good people don’t need help or ask for help. No great people ask for help and they then give away everything with the help that they’ve now received.
[JOE]
Oh, such great advice. And David, if people want to follow your work, if they want to connect with you more, what’s the best way for them to do that.
[DAVID]
So [email protected]. I answer my own emails directly. Please, if you want the PoP the five daily practices for your audience, I will sign and send and pay for shipping. I’ll pay for the book as well. Anyone that wants connected to goodness, this practice that allows you to do this, anything is [email protected]. If you forget the email, just remember my name, David Meltzer. You Google me, you’ll find me, David Meltzer.
[JOE]
Ah, such a giver. Thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[DAVID]
I love it, man. Could not have been a better place. Thank you so much, Joe.
[JOE]
So go take some action. I mean, we talked about so many things. I love how David just breaks things down in so many different ways, even just looking at how he looks at his health for 60 minutes a day, time with his family, the idea of (e)valuating; so looking at the energy that you’re going to evaluate. I have a million to notes from this show that I’m going to go implement. I would love to know what you’re doing as well. Will you take pictures of it, put it on social media, tag me and David in those notes.

Also head it over to our show notes. Sam and the team do amazing show notes, some of the best in the business. If you missed anything in this, maybe you were out for a run or driving around, go check out the show notes over at practiceofthepractice.com.

So we have a bunch of amazing podcasts coming up in 2022. We’ve got some great sponsors, some new sponsors but this week we’ve got Brighter Vision. Brighter Vision is the website solution for you. They always offer their biggest sale of the year in January. So make sure you check that out over at brightervision.com/joe. Again, that’s brightervision.com/joe. Also, thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.