Lessons You Can’t Learn Without Losing

The Playbook With David Meltzer

David Meltzer, Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneurship, Business, Careers

4.9 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode, I sit down with Ross Mandel, a longtime Wall Street executive and entrepreneur, for a conversation about resilience, rebuilding, and the lessons that only come through adversity. Ross shares how losing his father at 16 shaped his worldview and his drive to create lasting impact. We talk about growing up with nothing, recovering from major losses, and why values matter more than appearances. I open up about my early years as a ball boy, my journey through wealth and bankruptcy, and how the teachings of Think and Grow Rich continue to shape my mission to help others stay grounded in intention and consistent action.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome, David Meltzer.
0:02.9	Thank you so much for having me.
0:04.9	And what a great compliment that there's some golden nuggets out there.
0:08.8	I believe it's not just the wisdom, but it's the faith that I have that shortens that distance or resistance for so many people in their lives.
0:17.2	And I have made it my life's mission to share those nuggets, the wisdom.
0:24.1	I call it not wisdom.
0:26.1	I think I'm a little bit more humble in my old age.
0:28.3	I like to call it dummy tax.
0:30.1	So you could say I got more dummy tax paid by David Meltzer than any other person on the
0:36.0	internet.
0:36.3	You know, I'm a Wall Street guy where you were, you were basically in the sports management
0:41.5	business.
0:41.9	We're going to get to that in a minute.
0:43.3	I was a Wall Street guy.
0:44.3	We call these million dollar nuggets.
0:46.7	You talked about getting sleep.
0:48.5	You talked about the law of attraction.
0:50.5	There's so many things that I heard that I, you know, you're very, you have a very paternal way about
0:58.3	you. And, you know, I wish I had a father like you. I'll be honest, David. That's so nice. A lot of
1:05.8	people call me Uncle David. You have that way about you and that's really powerful, you know,
1:10.2	to be paternal in
1:11.0	the world that we live in.
	...

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