Want to unlock your potential and live a life of harmony and impact? Join host Bronson Hill for an inspiring conversation with David Meltzer, a serial entrepreneur, top 100 coach, and chairman of the Napoleon Hill Institute. Known as the inspiration behind Jerry Maguire, David built a $100 million net worth, lost it all in 2008, and made it back through resilience and a powerful mindset. With a career spanning legal research, sports marketing with Warren Moon, and media ventures with Gary Vaynerchuk, David’s journey is a masterclass in aligning skills with opportunities. In this episode, recorded in 2025, David shares how to raise your frequency, harmonize ambition with ease, and define success by enjoying the pursuit of your potential.
From non-negotiable habits like sleep and health to visualization practices rooted in Think and Grow Rich, David’s insights will empower you to overcome interference and create a life of purpose.
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Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: All right, welcome, welcome, welcome to the Mailbox Money Show.
We’ve got a special guest today. This guy has literally done so many things in business. Had $100 million net worth, lost it all, and has made it back. And just one of the most positive guys I’ve met.
If you don’t know him, his name is David Meltzer. The Jerry Maguire movie was basically based on him, and he has done lots of different things. He’s the chair of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, super inspirational guy.
So really excited to get in this interview with David Meltzer. I think you’re going to love it, the billion dollar mindset.
David Meltzer, welcome to the Mailbox Money Show.
How are you doing?
David Meltzer: I am doing fantastic. I love the name of the show, the background of the show. I can’t wait to pour into the community to see how I can help. Hopefully, with the abundant philosophy of making a lot of money, helping a lot of people, and having fun.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, well you seem like a guy, just no matter what’s going on. You always have a good thing to say. You’ve always got a good attitude. I watched your TED Talk recently about changing frequency, and can you talk about that?
Like, how do you get your frequency up to where you’re always on, or do you ever have a down day?
David Meltzer: So it’s interesting, because I don’t believe in on or off. I believe in God, and I believe in everyone should have their own God that’s bigger than them. An omniscient and all-powerful source that knows everything, and has, he’s omnipotent. Which means all-powerful, he’s omniscient, which means all-knowing. And so for me, it’s I’ve been working for 18 years to not interfere with what I’m a part of, a co-creator, a commander of the universe, with God.
And I don’t care what religion, philosophy, spirituality, or theories you believe in. I just believe in a simple thing that everyone should have something bigger than them. That loves them, protects them, promotes them, and perfects them more than their mom. And so for me, when people say on or off, or, you know, it’s interesting. The progression of I started focusing in on, I am happy, I am healthy, I am wealthy, I am worthy.
What am I doing to interfere with it? I want to interfere with my God. And then it got to a point in this elevation of awareness and frequency and vibration and energy that I had to start getting on the other side of it to hold on a second, I’m in a human experience dictated by the time my heart starts till the time it stops.
I’m given in the human experience this linear, incremental timeframe of 24 hours. God himself guarantees me the only certainty in my future is I’ll be given 24 hours every day to spend, to progress towards my higher self, and I’ll only be cheated the last day of my life. And so within the context of this framework, I started to actually just regulate because there’s limitations to the human body.
There’s limitation to the brain. There’s limitations to time. So I got past what am I doing to interfere with it?
Now I’m trying to harmonize all of that information, all the power that I have. And so when people say, man, you seem like you’re on all the time.
No, I’m not.
I’m just harmonizing with so much energy and so much intuition, inspiration and information. It seems like to other people, I’d have to be on to be like David Meltzer.
No, you just have to be at ease, not diseased to be David Meltzer.
Bronson Hill: I love that. I love that. I’m having Dr. Benjamin Hardy on the show tomorrow. And one of the things I love about him, he’s got the gap in the gain. Which is how do you stay in the gain of measuring not how far you have to go, but how far you’ve come.
And then also the 10 X is easier than two X are kind of the mindset, exponential mindset. And honestly, I’ve had, for some of our listeners, we’ve got a lot of people that are business owners are very driven.
So I feel like I have just this incredible amount of ambition and want to make a difference in the world. I want to impact financially and give to causes and all the, some of it’s very altruistic. Some of it’s just, I want to create big stuff and do things for myself.
But how do you, I mean, for you personally, or even as you’re coaching people. Because then you’re a top hundred coach in the country. How do you coach people that are very driven to the drive isn’t bad, the focus isn’t bad. But also like to be content where they’re at. So they’re not living in a place of like they’re not at ease.
Like you’re talking about sitting in a place of comfort rather than disease.
David Meltzer: It’s so interesting because utilizing once again, time is a dependent variable of all matter. Subjective and objective matter. I actually use time to help people reconcile between this desire that they must be what they can be and this idea of the infinite.
And so what I try to do is help people understand first. What are your non-negotiable behaviors and a non-negotiable behavior is something that you’re committed to every single day for a minimum amount of time.
And so I try to re-engineer these non-negotiables to what I believe will help them get to where they want to be. And most of the time, the number one non-negotiable that’s ignored is sleep. Sleep should take about a third of your life.
And most people, they don’t put any intention in sleep. I’m the chairman of Napoleon Hill Institute. Indefiniteness of purpose is something that Napoleon Hill and Thinking Grow Rich, I want to be the devil. How to sell through life, the 17 principles of success.
He talks about deafness of purpose. How purposeful are people to sleep? Cause most people go to bed at night and wake up more tired in the morning. And they don’t think anything of it, which seems ironic.
Cause it’s eight hours a day that people supposedly sleep. And so I get people to be non-negotiable about making it the number one priority to access information and power and recover. Then I go to their health.
You know, most people don’t take care of themselves and they think that that philosophy is going to allow them to take care of others and it won’t, especially determined upon health. And we know throughout history, so many very wealthy, wealthy people would gladly trade all their wealth for health in the end. Steve Jobs, then it goes to family and so many people make the mistake of putting family first.
Once again, if you’re not sleeping and you’re not focused in on your health, you’re not going to be capable of taking care of your family. Then finance, then faith, then relativity studies and time. But in the essence of taking half of your life and making it non-negotiable. You take out the number one thing that gets in the way of everyone in the pursuit of their potential, which is prioritization.
You see, prioritization is knowing what is important to you, who you can help and who can help you. How to get it done according to the circumstances of the day. Now, what’s nice about non-negotiable behavior is it takes all the uncertainty out of the future because it’s regardless of the circumstances of the day. I’m going to sleep a minimum of seven hours, spend a minimum of an hour on my health.
I am going to spend a minimum of an hour with my friends and family. I’m going to spend a minimum of time on faith, on study of time and relativity and my finance. And now that leaves the second half of your day. The other 12 hours of awake time to prioritize according to the circumstances and get better at that circumstantial prioritization.
Why? Because prioritization is the antidote to feeling overwhelmed. It’s the antidote to procrastination.
If you know what to do now and what to do next, you’ll never feel overwhelmed and you’ll never procrastinate. And so utilizing this philosophy has been a great way to help those hard hitting, grinding everything in people to understand that there’s plenty of time to grind. But we need in order to be able and capable of handling the grind to take care of our sleep. Our health, our family, our faith, then grind with the finance, relativity and the use of time.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s interesting. You talk about a lot, you’re just really living the life that’s balanced to putting your own face or your own mask on first before the person next to you and just really taking care of yourself. I was a well paid medical sales professional for 10 years, did really well in that.
And but I realized I just was grinding and when I left, it was really because I wanted to have freedom of time to be able to create. To be able to write. And it’s I think for a lot of people, a lot of people have a business or they’ve got a job. They go do and they just work the hours because they kind of have to.
How do you, I guess, actually, this is a question more for you personally, because obviously I see you, you were the inspiration behind the movie.
Jerry Maguire, you’ve done all kinds of things. Actually, a partner started a marketing agency with Warren Moon is a hero of mine. I grew up in Seattle.
So he was a quarterback there. So big fan there, but for you personally and even doing this a long time. But what were some of the big moments where you took a big jump up in your influence or in your success? Where there’s certain like, we bought this business here, it grew over this amount of time or this specific interview or this book. Was there certain things that you look back like these were kind of big jumps for me. I’d love to walk you through, have us walk us through that.
David Meltzer: Yeah, when I graduated law school was a big moment for me because I had two job offers, one to be an oil and gas litigator for a hundred in 1992, by the way, for $150,000 salary plus bonus, that was going to meet my objective, which is buy my mom a house and taking care of her. I had an amazing mom who raised six kids, worked two jobs, second grade teacher, amazing, packed my dinner and paper bag at night and taught us in the country’s car station wagon while she worked her second job. Then I also got a job in sales, kind of like your job in medical sales, I got a job in legal research as a lawyer to sell legal research online in 1992.
And I read a book called Think and Grow Rich in 1992, that told me that I could believe and achieve whatever I wanted. Despite everyone telling me that the internet was not going to work, that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. I believed differently. And nine months out of law school, I was a millionaire and three years out of law school. we sold for $3.4 billion to Thompson Reuters.
That made a big impact that book on my life, which led me to take inventory of myself and why this was so important because every big moment of my life. Including when I lost everything in 2008, over a hundred million dollars, I, because of the books that I read. Like Think and Grow Rich, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Winning the Devil, one of my favorites that didn’t come about till 2010, even though it was written in 1937.
But what is really important is, I developed my skills, my knowledge, and built my desire, and I applied it to what was doing well, what was stable, and what I thought would be doing well. So, I moved from legal research online to middleware, raised hundreds of millions of dollars, learned financial, VC, how to raise money. Then was Samsung CEO of their phone division, their data division. Then got hired as CEO of Lee Steinberg Sports and Entertainment, not because I was a great lawyer or a great agent, because I was the only one who had the highest level of experience in venture capital and technology. And Lee Steinberg saw the future of sports in venture capital and technology. Pretty good, because 20 years later, he was absolutely right.
Then I market with a partner with Warren Moon, as you suggest, and create a global sports marketing company. Still taking inventory of my skills, knowledge and desire by what’s doing well with stable. And I think then create this media business with Gary Vee and so many others. None of it was planned.
The only thing that I took from those books in every big step and every big thing in my life was, okay, what are my skills, what are my knowledge of who and what, and what’s my desire? Align it with what’s stable, what’s doing well, and what I think is doing well, and make decisions accordingly. So when I lost everything, that’s the first thing that I did was align my skills, knowledge and desires with what was doing well, what was stable, and what I wanted to do, because my ultimate goal, you talked about freedom, I don’t believe in balance.
I believe in harmony. And for me, true harmony and freedom comes from when you can do what you want with who you want for as long as you want. And I’ve reached that point in my life to be able to do so.
In fact, I would love to share with your entire community. I’ll sign my book, send it to you, pay for shipping and the book for anyone in your community that emails me, I would love to share this philosophy, but the framework behind it with the values, the daily practices and execution model clearly defined to make your own so that you can apply your skills, knowledge and desires as well. And that will be [email protected] if they want to email me.
Bronson Hill: Okay, we’ll put that in the notes as well.
Yeah, thank you for that. That’s awesome. So then is that how you define success then for you is being able to spend, do what you want, when you want as much time as you want.
Is that, or is there more to success than that?
David Meltzer: Yeah, that would be the outcome. And I teach people one of the great lessons is don’t ever say I’ll be happy when, so I never say I’ll be happy when I make a hundred million dollars, I’ll say I’m going to make over a hundred million dollars for the sake of helping a billion people. Right.
So it’s for the sake of not happy when, but my definition of success is a capability based success. What do I mean by that? True success comes when you can enjoy what you don’t like or love, what other people don’t like or love every day, out quitting in the pursuit of your potential, according to the meaning of the past, the line with your divine direction, according to what you want, not what other people want, what’s missing, what you don’t have.
So if you’re able to enjoy what you don’t like or don’t love, other people don’t like or love consistently every day, persistently without quit in the pursuit of your potential, life will be easy. Life will give you its cheat codes. It’ll dissipate and dissolve the dis-easy as we talked about before.
And so I want everyone to learn the mindset, the hard set and the handset to enjoy what you couldn’t even fathom enjoying every day in the pursuit of your potential. Now that’s success.
Bronson Hill: That is success. It sounds like, thinking of real riches really impacted me a lot. You know, Napoleon and I have the same last name.
Obviously, we’re not related, but we are distantly related. But the idea of, like, one of the things he says in there in thinking of real riches, spend 30 minutes thinking about the person that you intend to become. And it sounds like you spent a lot of time, because being wealthy, is not having money or not having money, you had money, you lost it, you had to get like, like it’s that visualization.
So do you have a specific visualization practice that you do a certain amount of time or is there a certain I’d love to just I know you probably talk about your books, but just briefly, if you could share a little bit here.
David Meltzer: Yeah, one of the key components of what I do that’s very different is I have an unwinding routine at night. So my today starts last night by unwinding, which means I put myself in the position to become by recovering and accessing that information, that vision. So what I do is I put myself in a position to recover and access information and energy while I sleep.
And then I meditate the minute I wake up to transcend the information that I received and the energy I received into a pragmatic divine direction for the day, according to the circumstances of the day. And so I have a 20 minute Theta meditation practice. I studied quantum healing to understand the quantum nature of becoming.
So think about it for those people that understand what quantum is. It’s the oneness of the universe. So what better way to utilize Napoleon Hill’s philosophies, teachings and strategies and theories than understanding becoming is becoming one that everything has already happened.
And so that’s why people will say, I am happy. I am healthy, I am wealthy, I am worthy.
What am I doing to interfere with it? That’s the bigger question.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, I love that. Well, and there’s a lot of things we can do an interfere with it, right? What’s the common?
David Meltzer: Yeah, what’s a common interference people have is just like not believing it or shame or let me list them up need to be right need to be offended, separate and furious, superior, anxious, frustrated, angry, guilty, worried, just to name a few.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, you rattle off fast, man. Well, what’s what’s next for you? I know you’re creating you’re doing you’re making an difference in the world.
What’s next for you?
David Meltzer: You know, I’m blessed to be the chairman of the Napoleon Hill Institute. And so for me, it’s building that base of knowledge of the most seminal personal professional works ever created. And for anyone out there that hasn’t read Napoleon Hill’s thinking grow rich out, winning the devil has helped through life, the 17 principles of success.
You can build an amazing foundation. I will tell you, with almost a half a billion thinking grow rich books sold across the world. If you ask any key executive multimillionaire billionaire, what’s one of the top five books that had the most impact on their life?
I guarantee you thinking grow rich will be on the top five list of all those types of people. If you want to be that type of people, the fastest way to get to where you want to be, find someone that’s already there and ask them for directions. Napoleon Hill has been a master at giving us those directions.
And I’m blessed to be an amplified extension of Napoleon Hill with my books, which is, again, I’d like to send everyone for free paper shipping and the book, but we need to do more. We’d love to have you invitations, not obligations. Where are you located again?
Bronson Hill: We’re in Los Angeles. Yeah, we’re in Los Angeles.
David Meltzer: Come to SoFi Stadium. That’s where our office is in Studio Dar. We’ll do more content.
I’d love to interview you. I’d love to have our masterminds and VIP dinners in L.A. Orange County. Invite them all obligated.
But thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to share.
Bronson Hill: David, thanks so much. Appreciate you. Looking forward to spending more time with you.
And thanks for the time, brother.
David Meltzer: Anytime. Thank you.
Bronson Hill: Thanks.
OK, so many takeaways in a short amount of time. A lot of times, a couple of takeaways for me was one was he talked about I am worthy, I am loved, I’m special and what is getting in the way of that.
Right. A lot of times we don’t come from a place of worthiness. We come from a place where we feel unworthy or we just we’re kind of we’re not really allowing ourselves to be that or be in that place.
And so lots of different things, reasons why we don’t stay in a place of a feeling we deserve it. And then also a lot of the Napoleon Hill stuff that myself included. I mean, this is really generated.
He talked about CEOs and people that are wildly successful entrepreneurs use Napoleon Hill’s work to really help them grow. And so if you haven’t read the book Thinking Grow Rich, you’re going to it could potentially change your life. Like it literally has changed my life.
I’ve talked about my story. I was able to twenty five X minute worth and over just four years to multiple seven figure net worth. And it happened just because I begin to see myself as that person.
Right. So for you, wherever you are, you may say, I’m a passive investor. I’m retired.
But what do you want to be doing? What’s the impact you want to make in the world? What do you want to see for your kids?
What do you want to see? Do you want to write the book? Do you want to start traveling?
What is the thing that you the purpose that you’ve been put here to do? And if you get a hold of that and you see yourself as that person, like you show up as a different person. Right.
And so then these opportunities just come to you because you just weren’t able to see it until you actually showed up that way. So I hope that you got something out of this. I really love this interview.
I’d love for you to share this. Any comments from you, please do share them with me. And if you know about investing to investing is a path that helps us get there.
So if you’re not familiar with Bronson Equity, our company, we have raised over $50 million to do different projects. We help people get cash flow, appreciation or tax benefits, particularly the cash flow and tax benefits. Right now, a lot of real estate is not providing cash flow or tax benefits for various reasons.
But we have oil and gas, other businesses that we’re buying that we’re basically helping investors participate in and get cash flow and benefits. So if you’re interested in that, check the link below or go to bronsonequity.com. You can learn more about that.
But thanks for taking the time to educate yourself. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Mailbox Money Show.
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