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The Playbook With David Meltzer

How I Lost Over $100 Million Dollars

The Playbook With David Meltzer

David Meltzer, Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneurship, Business, Careers

4.61.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, I share my personal story of becoming successful at a young age and the consequences that came with it. I allowed everyone around me to drain me, including my family and so-called friends. I had no one in my life who practiced the balanced give-and-take of the Ben Franklin effect, where I was always helping others but never asking for help myself. Through my journey, I learned about the importance of the Ben Franklin effect, which states that when others help us, they become invested in our success and are more likely to offer assistance in the future. However, if we are not humble enough to ask for help, we will never receive it. My pride and belief that I didn't need anyone's help or advice led to my downfall and the loss of my humility. In this podcast, I share my insights and lessons learned in hopes of helping others avoid the same mistakes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I was a liar, a cheater, I'm a manipulator, over-seller, but I hated myself, so I sat there.

0:11.0

And I remembered these four things and I was going to take stock of them.

0:18.0

This is the flavor.

0:20.0

So a lot of people ask me, how the heck do you lose over a hundred million dollars and go bankrupt?

0:25.0

And it was really three points in my life that I look back now to say, this is how it happened.

0:34.0

And two, I will tell you how I got out of it, which is a lot of what I've explained already.

0:39.0

So when I was 30 years old, imagine being a multi-millionaire coming and growing up from nothing.

0:45.0

Not only a multi-millionaire, but I was running Samsung's phone division, the CEO of the world's first smartphone.

0:51.0

They didn't even call it a smartphone in 1999. It was called a convergence device.

0:56.0

It converged to phone and computer.

0:58.0

But I was also married to my dream girl from the fourth grade, who my best friend Rob at Sixth Grade Camp asked her to go steady with me.

1:07.0

And she said, no, and he made fun of me in front of everyone.

1:10.0

And so I got mad at her and threw an egg at her and then threw rocks at her and asked her why her friends were prettier than her.

1:16.0

Imagine I'm now living at 30, married to my dream girl, a multi-millionaire with an unbelievable position.

1:25.0

And my dad, who left me at five, gives me a birthday present, the first one in 20 years, he sends me a jacket.

1:33.0

I'm so excited just to get a birthday present from my father. I think in my head, oh my gosh, he wants to have a relationship with me.

1:39.0

He gets it. He wants my forgiveness for all the things that he's done to me.

1:44.0

And I open up the jacket and I put it on and it fits perfectly and I start to cry.

1:48.0

My wife's like, what's the matter? I said, he actually cared enough to find out exactly my size.

1:53.0

It fits perfectly. So I opened it up to see if it says especially made for my son's birthday or our money, he tore out all the pockets.

2:01.0

I went from complete joy to hate, to anger.

2:06.0

And I called him up and I said, Dad, why are you punishing me?

...

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