Lessons from Losing It All

The Playbook With David Meltzer

David Meltzer, Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneurship, Business, Careers

4.6 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode, I talk about the most expensive mistakes of my life, what I call the dummy tax, and how losing more than a hundred million dollars forced me to rethink everything. I also share what my mom’s recent passing taught me about humility, grief, and what it really means to be prepared. From there, I explore how faith and consistent action help us push through moments when life doesn’t make sense. When you understand the purpose of your human experience, you can start to see setbacks as part of a bigger plan. Progress, not perfection, is what moves us forward.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is more about listening for what you want to know than it is about me talking to you.
0:07.0	There's plenty of videos of me talking to you, so I don't want to waste too much of your time.
0:12.0	Just want to set a few things that I've learned to maybe inspire you or stimulate you to ask questions
0:18.0	that everybody else is thinking or may be afraid or too afraid to ask.
0:22.9	So I've requested, it's great to be on the main stage and I'll do it every once in a while,
0:29.2	but this is my jam, these are my people, this is what I live for.
0:33.4	I'll continue this on.
0:35.1	I'll do a Q&A outside of the room after this, never interfering or overlapping
0:40.3	with the main stage people, but I'm here to be of service and of value, and the only way that I can is to learn what you want to know and apply what dummy tax that I've paid so you don't have to pay it.
0:52.3	I know a lot of people here move from California, New York to Florida because they wanted
0:57.3	to save the state taxes.
1:00.4	Not a problem with that.
1:01.6	I always like to be around my family and good weather.
1:04.8	And so if your family and you like good weather here, good for you.
1:07.8	But I want you to know that there is a tax that you should be concerned
1:12.0	about, and that's the dummy tax. Dummy tax cost me everything that I ever had made over
1:18.7	$100 million, and it was about to cost me everything in my future until I started a great quote
1:26.6	that I heard from someone's mom that said,
1:29.6	you're either humble or you're about to be.
1:32.8	And from that day realizing at all times you're either humble or you're about to be,
1:38.9	I set on a journey to shorten the distance of resistance in my life,
1:43.8	seeking wisdom of the people that
	...

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