Join your hosts, Eathan Janney, Jeff Kelley & Josh Kriger as they talk to the man, himself, David Meltzer. He is the founder of David Meltzer Enterprises and the cofounder of Sports 1 Marketing. He is one of the top e-sports entrepreneurs and investors and is a three-time international bestselling author. David is also the inspiration behind the film, Jerry Maguire. His life’s mission is to empower over one billion people to be happy. Come and listen to how he created his career and how NFTs play a role in it. Learn how he vets new opportunities and what business is like in the fantasy sports industry. Discover how to be successful in the NFT space today, like David Meltzer.
—
Listen to the podcast here
David Melzter—A Sports and Entertainment Mogul’s Perspective On NFTs, Plus NTFs And Data, FTX NFT Marketplace, And More…
All you snazzy NFT curious readers, stay for a great episode with business and sports legend David Meltzer. Find out David’s interesting strategy on how to approach new and untested territories without losing out and learn why the future of NFT is all about the data.
Discover why David’s first memorable purchase required four movers to deliver and place it in his home. All this and more on this special episode of the show with David Meltzer. Make sure to visit EdgeOfNFT.com to sign up for our newsletter, learn about the giveaway and many more to come.
—
This episode features guest David Meltzer, the Cofounder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. Considered one of the top eSports entrepreneurs and investors, he is also a three-time international bestselling author, a Top 100 Business Coach and host of the top entrepreneur podcast, The Playbook. He is the Executive Producer of the Bloomberg and Amazon television series 2 Minute Drill and Office Hours. He is also the Executive Producer of Entrepreneur’s number one digital business show, Elevator Pitch.
He is featured in many books, movies and TV shows such as World’s Greatest Motivators, Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy and Beyond The Secret airing on Netflix. Additionally, he has been recognized by Variety Magazine as their Sports Humanitarian of the Year and awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. His life’s mission is to empower over one billion people to be happy. This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing, value. In all his content and communication, that’s exactly what you receive. For the past many years, he has been providing free weekly training to empower others to be happy.
—
David, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It’s a great introduction.
We try to give Eathan difficult introductions to keep him honest.
I’m so excited to be here. Congratulations on the success of your show.
We learned from people like yourself. I’ve always enjoyed conversations that we’ve had over the years with you and your coaching on our different endeavors. For our readers, David helped us out with a fun endeavor. We had Canopy which is our first-ever sustainable interchangeable hat. You were such a great mentor in those early days so I appreciate that. How did we get here? We were always fascinated by digital collectibles. When this took off, we wanted to be part of the industry in a meaningful way, helping to create this ecosystem and help people explore all these uncharted waters. We would love to know what your world looks like and how it intersects with NFTs.
It’s so interesting because as everything evolves in different industries and spaces in eSports, crypto and NFTs, I always stick to my skills and knowledge of who, what and my desire. The relationship capital that I have to the content for the Non-Fungible Tokens, for the NFTs, has been a serious point of entry for me into the arena. Everybody wants to create these NFTs around celebrities, athletes and entertainers. Entrepreneurs, billionaires and millionaires play a key role in that as well. Whether it be the Hall of Famers that I have in my entourage or even people like Jordan Belfort, working with him with some killer content in NFTs from his exploits as an entrepreneur, criminal and back to an entrepreneur, these are fun things for me.
The money's in the picks and shovels. Click To Tweet
The biggest investment I’ve made in NFTs is a company called Creatify, which is for the masses. I understand and I’ve worked in the celebrity-billionaire space and the real collectibles in NFTs. I believe the money is in the picks and shovels. Creatify gives an end-to-end solution for the average person to create, market and monetize the NFT. That’s my biggest difference in what I do over anything else. I’m always the guy that has in my skills, knowledge and desires the relationship capital and 1 degree of separation which I apply whether it be newspapers, radio, TV, digital, NFTs or Bitcoin. That’s my core competency. My newest arena is in that Creatify end-to-end solution.
We know those guys and it seems like they’re trying to solve the problem of making it seamless for everyone. There’s a massive amount of people that haven’t purchased their first NFT yet. It should be as easy as swiping your credit card on Amazon.
That’s what I’m looking at to give it to the masses.
The NBA Top Shot is a good example of making it easy to use that credit card. Everyone has been waiting for the Shopify of NFTs and we think that’s what Creatify is bringing. We’re excited. Do you have anything through Sports 1 Marketing or yourself directly coming out in the world of NFTs?
It’s just with Jordan Belfort. It’s the first one that we’re doing and then the Pro Football Hall of Fame with the Hall of Famers. I’ve been playing around with my content. I was very flattered that I had some people who reached out to start to create some for me. I love to crawl before I walk and run. To use Jordan, The Wolf of Wall Street, that’s a fun one to start with. Some of my other Hall of Famers, Warren Moon, Troy Aikman and Steve Young of the world, I’m going ahead and playing around to see exactly what we can do. We did one with John Elway, Bill Gladstone and those guys. I’m sticking to what I do which is bringing talent in the relationship capital. I can’t completely disrupt the normal chain of work that I’ve created in my platform. I look for things that are cut-and-paste into the platform that I could monetize and help people with.
Even though NFTs are new to a lot of people, you’ve been in there for quite a while. How did you respond when you first started hearing about NFTs? What was that like? Were you one of the skeptics at first? Can you claim you knew what was going on?
E-Sports Entrepreneur: Creatify is for the masses. It gives an end-to-end solution for the average person to create, market, and monetize NFTs.
I would never do that. You’re talking about a guy that, in 2008, lost over $100 million because I used to claim that I was successful because I knew about things. One thing I know is I don’t know. I was immediately excited. I always trust something with an open mind but then I have learned since 2008 the skillset of vetting. I encourage everyone to institute trusting new things with an open mind but vet the crap out of them. I’ve been in the vetting phase. Some of my feelings at first were, “This is just another format for collectibles. I didn’t understand the Shopify commerce play, verification play and data play that are all behind it.”
All of those truly good business values of NFTs have come out because I have sought people like you, experts in the space, people like Mike Krilivsky, Mike Mumola and all the Mikes of the NFT world. I have asked the hard questions, utilizing my traditional business sense. One that I’ve seen historically is things get overbought and oversold in similar spaces, understanding what affects overbuying and overselling will have on the marketplace. How much was hype? What was real? Where are the picks and shovels within the industry? Where are the opportunities of what’s doing well, what’s stable and what they think would do well in the future? I impose this philosophy and template into everything. It was NFTs at one matter. I go into everything with this open mind and ability to crawl before I walk, run and get the answers.
I see so much of the core values, gratitude, empathy, accountability and inspiration that you bring forward into everything also alive and well within the NFT space. It’s such a community-oriented group of people where narrative, story and people matter. We found that the most successful projects do capture those core values in their DNA and they live it every day. For the people that don’t, you see that. It comes through it. It’s interesting to see.
I saw a major influencer offering everyone in his community to buy their first NFT that they mint if they haven’t had any sales yet. They’ve been trying to go at it for a few months. The groundswell of support that happened from people saying, “This is what I’m creating. This is my story. This is the experience I want for my community.” It was amazing.
I got my foot wet with Gary’s NFT with Ethereum and working through that. I was glad that I crawled before I walk and run because I got the big dip in Ethereum and ended up with great values in the NFTs comparatively.
Did you get one of Gary’s NFTs? Which one did you get?
Learn how to crawl before you walk and walk before you run. Click To Tweet
You’re not going to ask me on the spot because I have no idea. I didn’t pick it out for me. I’m not stupid. I don’t know what I don’t know so I said, “Gary, here’s my Ethereum.” He taught me how to create a wallet. It’s pretty cool. He was like, “Which one do you want?” I was like, “Ten years from now, you’re either going to be a genius or an idiot. Pick it out for me.”
One of the things that I get excited about when we talk about that drop a line, we love all the different elements of it. It captures so much more than just the pure collectible side of NFTs. There’s access to him and his network. There’s the admission to events and other little gifts. Even beyond that, we know and he has shown us glimpses of the long-term vision to turn those characters into real IP and bring those forward. It’s all rooted again in important values to him as well. We can’t wait to see where this goes next. The possibilities are endless in that. There are some big opportunities if you wanted to do some similar things based on the community you’ve built and the foundation that is built upon to do something great.
One of the things he inspired me to do is understand the experiential access that I can give. Gary has a larger audience than I do in a tight community as I do but where I have a huge leg up is on the experiential access. With all the years of who and what I know and where I can bring people alongside additional value is an incredible asset that I have in the space.
We’re here to help with whatever you do. We’re big fans. We’ve had some amazing guests on the show. We’re nearing 30 episodes and I can think of how they could interplay with what you do. Our tourist studio, for example, does holographic NFTs and can show these holograms from any angle. You can imagine reenactments of basketball dunks as holograms. It gets awesome when you start thinking about the possibilities.
Gary inspired me to switch my radio show as Angels Radio in Gal Media to Sports Blender Show with Jim Leyritz. It’s a pure sports show and here I am. We’ve had 2,000 guests on Office Hours and almost at 1,000 episodes of The Playbook. It’s split off. I don’t know if you heard the Blue Wire license, The Playbook: Sports & Entertainment. I have a studio at the Wynn and SoFi, at the new stadium and an office there as well. I can see the future for you. I remember when I had 30 and you’re already ranked higher than I was when I had my 30th episode. It’s going to be extraordinary when you get to that 1,000th episode. I’m happy to be back.
We’ll have you back before then. One last question before we move on to our Edge Quick Hitters. Where do you see this industry going from here? Talk about it through the lens of sports management. Things have changed with the NCAA, athletes in general and how they’re trying to market themselves. How do you see that in NFTs fitting together?
E-Sports Entrepreneur: People in the industry know how much a fantasy player would be worth as far as data. They will be able to create value and monetize because of how much information they have.
In the NIL, the licensing of amateur athletes is a huge area. We don’t even know or could fathom the size, scope and scale of this mass platform that allows so many different things including verification and authentication, which are important. The data side is something that I’m studying almost daily, seeking advice because I know especially in the sports world. I’ve been in the gambling and fantasy sports world for so long. I knew this one from the research I did is, “How much a 19 to 30-year-old gambler or fantasy player would be worth as far as data?”
There are companies that do nothing but they have a database. The value is about $120 per person. If you have a historical gambler or fantasy player from 19 to 30, each one of those pieces of data can be valued at about $120. Even if you have 1,000 of them, in effect you have a $120,000 business. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for this industry where the data evolves because you’ll have so much emotional information, the right genre and a spectrum of people to go ahead, create value and monetize it.
A lot of people forget that NFTs are essentially like mini-supercomputers that can hold any type of metadata. What about athletes? What do you see is possible for up-and-coming rising stars at the high school and college-level in NFTs?
When you understand the idea of capture, modify, amplify and perpetuate. If you can get someone to guide a branding, marketing, digital manager or agent to guide a young athlete to perpetuate their content and capture different things combined with the access and experience that they could give later on to in-person meet-and-greets, signings and pictures. That we should be encouraging every great or mediocre high school or even Pop Warner-type of athletes to go ahead and start their repository now because those are the valuable ones. My eleven-year-old, I have him repositing things. He’ll have a marketplace of items that he can combine with maybe either experiences with me or relationships that I have. Even if he’s not a D1, NFL superstar or MLB superstar, there’s going to be a marketplace behind these. Building the community and this metadata is going to be extremely important in this space.
At the very least, his grandparents will buy that NFT.
We would love to shift gears and hear from you from a personal perspective on a few questions. We call these Edge Quick Hitters. They’re a fun and quick way to get to know you better. We’re doing four questions and looking for short single-word or few-word answers but feel free to expand if you get the urge. Number one, what’s the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
Trust new things and be open-minded, but vet the crap out of them. Click To Tweet
A big-screen TV. I dreamed about it. It was $8,000 back then.
How big was the big screen back then?
It was 60 inches. Four people had to carry it.
I’m sure that played well for games and events.
It was amazing. I thought it was a lucky charm.
You could probably charge an admission ticket to somewhat defer the costs for the big games.
E-Sports Entrepreneur: Experiential access is an incredible asset that you can have in this business. You can have a larger audience, a tighter community, but you also need the experience.
Question number two, what’s the latest thing you sold?
I don’t sell very many things. I give it away. It would have to be a car. I was into flipping car video and I sold a G-Wagon. I started with $1,000 and I made it. I kept flipping. I finally sold it during COVID.
I have to call this out. We had a previous episode where you were talking about selling and giving away cars where Animoca Brands allowed us to give away 1,000 NFT race cars that could raise $150,000 of prizes. We missed the opportunity to have that moment where we said, “You’ll get a car.” Question number three. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would that be?
Kindness.
Question number four, what are you going to do next after the show?
Another interview.
Get involved and do the right things early to get the exponential payoff later on. Click To Tweet
That’s a little glimpse into our world of Edge Quick Hitters. Thanks for indulging us. We had a hot topic we wanted to hit as well. What do you say, Eathan?
Let’s dive into that one hot topic here. FTX is creating an NFT-focused sports and entertainment marketplace. They’re a crypto exchange and do some derivatives trading. The marketplace will be for prominent sports and entertainment brands. The company announced the marketplace would focus on brands within film, TV, music, gaming, eSports, culinary, lifestyle and charity industries. David, have you heard of this? Is this news to you as well?
It’s brand new. I’ve heard of it so it’s interesting. Mike brought it up to me. There’s a company called Sports Finder that’s interested in this. That’s in the sports industry and NFT industry as well. That’s on my trust and vet list since it aligns with my skills, knowledge and desire. This is a great example of so many people look outside of themselves for this idea or doing business in a certain construct or industry. I encourage everyone to look within. It’s a simple formula. Look at your skills, knowledge and desire. Go ahead and see how it’s synergistic, supplementary or aligned with things like this because this is something that will do well in the future.
If it’s not something like this will do well in the future where other things are very stable in this. You can look and say, “This historically has done well. It’s still stable. We know that the Hall of Famers could put their name on anything and it’s going to do well. You have a big-enough celebrity, athlete or billionaire and it’s going to do well.” You can look at what’s already doing well and mirror that. This is a good example of how you can formulaically use this process to be successful with NFTs. I encourage people if they want to reach out. I templated this stuff step-by-step to allow people to save the dummy tax that I’ve paid because I didn’t even know my timing and risk tolerance. I trusted everyone and never vetted them. I coach everybody on this stuff. I’m happy to help people so that they get involved early, do the right things early and get the exponential payoff later on.
We’re seeing these platforms that don’t necessarily do NFTs. They do something like crypto trading or something related. They’re diving into NFTs. There’s a little bit of skepticism there. They’re trying to spread things a little bit too far because of a hype-filled context.
FTX is fascinating to me. They have some naming rights with the UFC if I’m not mistaken now. They’re getting into stadiums and sponsorships of professional sports leagues. It seems like they’re on a mission. Sam who founded the company has worked with Tom Brady and that team on autograph. I never miss an opportunity to mention Tom Brady. I know he will be on the show eventually. Fundamentally, what’s fascinating to me is how this seems like a bigger play to make blockchain technology, decentralization and NFTs all mainstream. These guys have the money to do it and the horsepower.
That’s what it takes especially in a crowded hyped-up space. That’s why you trust and vet people and more being on the show. It allowed me to go out and reach different people. I love making bucket list dreams come true. Tom’s agent is a good friend of mine and we’ll have to put that on the bucket list. It turns me on personally but I have the capabilities of making others. It’s like I’m the original Make-A-Wish Foundation. People say something off the cuff like, “I dream of going to the Masters,” and I’ll take them to the Masters. They can’t believe it. I’ll fly them down, put them in my house and get them badges but forget the money. That’s what you shop for. When I can do things like that, I’m putting that down on my list. My team is notating it.
Warn us beforehand because we’re going to have to watch Josh’s health closely. He might pass out.
I’m humbled and grateful. Thanks so much, David. It’s great to see you here and catch up on all this cool stuff happening in the world of NFTs and how it intersects with all these traditional business worlds that you’re intimately familiar with.
What a great opportunity to see you guys again, to see and experience your success and why you’re successful. I’m on many different shows. I always know when it’s going to last and be a great show. You guys have great chemistry and insights. Anytime you need me, all you got to do is reach out. I’m a big fan of yours. Thank you so much.
Let people know where you would like them to find more about you or what you’re up to.
I like people directly emailing me, David@DMeltzer.com. You can google me and find me, David Meltzer. I give my books, these templates and the five daily practices away for free. I train every Friday for free. If you get lost, David@DMeltzer.com.
We have some books of yours. We love the book so we’re going to give away a couple as well to our readers. We’ll do a little contest with you and do a book giveaway.
Thank you so much.
—
We’ve reached the outer limit at the Edge of NFTs. Thanks for exploring with us. We’ve got space for more adventures on the starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to iTunes, rate us, say something cool and then go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Want to help co-create Edge of NFT with us, got guests you want to see on the episode, questions for hosts or guests, an NFT you would like us to review? Drop us a line at Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com or tweet us @EdgeOfNFT to get in the mix. Lastly, be sure to tune in the next episode for more great NFT content. Thanks for sharing this time with us.
Important Links:
- David Meltzer
- Sports 1 Marketing
- The Playbook
- Creatify
- Animoca Brands
- David@DMeltzer.com
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
- Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
About David Meltzer
David Meltzer is the Co-founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire.
His life’s mission is to empower OVER 1 BILLION people to be happy! This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing…VALUE. In all his content and communication that’s exactly what you’ll receive.
He is a three-time international best-selling author, a Top 100 Business Coach, the executive producer of Entrepreneur‘s #1 digital business show, Elevator Pitch, and host of the top entrepreneur podcast, The Playbook. His newest book, Game-Time Decision Making, was a #1 new release, David has been recognized by Variety Magazine as their Sports Humanitarian of the Year and awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.webp)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.svg)
