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The Playbook With David Meltzer

How I Turned Loss into Alignment

The Playbook With David Meltzer

David Meltzer, Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneurship, Business, Careers

4.6 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In today’s episode, I sit down with sales coach and behavioral science expert Nick Graz to explore the moments that reshaped my understanding of success, control, and fulfillment. I share how losing over $100 million became the catalyst for rediscovering gratitude, empathy, accountability, and effective communication—and how surrendering control led to intentional living. Nick and I discuss what it means to build happiness through purpose, community, and daily discipline, and how success isn’t about arriving somewhere new but about aligning who you are with what you’re becoming. This conversation is about humility, faith, and finding meaning through service.

Transcript

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0:00.0

David Belzer, thank you so much for being here.

0:02.2

People know you that you have built a lot of wealth and you have lost as well a lot of wealth.

0:08.4

When you go back in that moment, what was the lowest moment of that journey for you personally?

0:14.4

And most important, what did teach you about who you truly are in those moments?

0:21.3

Yeah, ironically, two years before I lost everything, two years before I lost over $100 million,

0:28.4

two years before I had to tell my mom that she had to move out of her house, which was the

0:33.6

only reason I wanted to be rich. Two years before all of that was the defining moment of my life

0:40.2

when I came home after lying to my wife from the Grammy Awards with Little John. And my wife told me

0:49.1

she was leaving me. She told me to take stock in who I was and what I wanted to become, that she wasn't going to hang around with my three daughters at the time who were under 10 to watch me die.

1:02.6

She told me I wasn't paying attention or giving intention to the things that I cared the most about.

1:08.9

My family, the activities I get paid for from running

1:12.2

Lee Steinberg Sports and Entertainment, the most notable sports agency in the world, that I was

1:17.5

utilizing and partying too much with alcohol and drugs, and she wasn't going to stay.

1:24.1

It was then where I told her that, you know, I basically told her like I did my mom, my dad, and my best friend when they told me the truth.

1:35.6

I told her I hated her into F off.

1:38.4

But it wasn't until the next day when I woke up thinking how much I hated my wife.

1:46.7

I hated my mom, my dad, and my best friend,

1:52.5

who were the only people who were loving me enough to tell me the truth. It was not until the next day when I looked over at a jacket that my father had given me with no pockets to remind me

1:58.5

what life was about, that money couldn't buy a lover happiness,

2:02.8

that my pockets would be empty when I died because I couldn't take anything with me when

2:07.4

I'm gone.

2:08.8

And it was at that moment I realized I don't hate my wife.

...

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