David Meltzer is the CEO of Sports 1 Marketing, a firm in which he co-founded with Hall of Fame Quarterback Warren Moon. Sports 1 Marketing is a global marketing agency whose projects include the Super Bowl, The Master’s, and Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the Unstoppable Foundation.
David has been recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Keynote Speaker, named by Entrepreneur as a Top 5 Entrepreneurial Speaker, and honored for his philanthropic work as Variety Magazine’s “Sports Humanitarian of the Year”. He is a national top ten best-selling author of Connected To Goodness and a #1 national, and international, best-selling author of Compassionate Capitalism.
Destination Luxury: As such an incredible entrepreneur, can you give us some tips on how to start or grow your own business?
Meltzer: Many people think that it’s so challenging to be an entrepreneur. I really have some simple tips that help entrepreneurs.
The key to being an entrepreneur is staying in business. Your first goal should be: make sure and secure your position for tomorrow because all entrepreneurs know that we need to evolve. Whether you’re a Snapchat and you evolve to a billion dollars in eight months or whether you’re a Wonder Bread that evolves to a billion dollar business over a hundred years.
If you stay in business every day you have that lottery ticket to become a successful business.
Destination Luxury: What are some tips for staying in business?
Meltzer: Number one, surround yourself with the right people and the right ideas. he biggest piece of advice that I give to stay in business is to ask for help. Understand the reasons, impacts, and capabilities of what you’re doing and find the people that have the situational knowledge for what you’re looking for and simply ask for help. Put yourself in this position: if somebody would ask you for help for something you are capable of doing, would you do it? Usually you will say yes.
I find that most entrepreneurs who stay in business and become successful are the ones that actually counterintuitively “get out of their own way”. Use humility and ask for help from multiple people that can help one understand how to avoid paying the “dummy tax” that the previous generation went through.
Destination Luxury: What was one of your first businesses and how did you start it?
Meltzer: One of the first businesses I ever ran was actually the world’s first convergence device called the “PC-E Phone”, which was a division of Samsung at the time. We raised a lot of money and soon Samsung became the second largest manufacturer of phones in the world, but it didn’t happen without several struggles and tribulations. A lot of people thought in 1999 that the phone was too big and too expensive, but compared to today’s iPhones that isn’t the case.
In Asia, can still see the future of different phones. One of my favorite stories is that when I was working with Samsung we were offered the form factor for what was the Razor phone. I begged them to take that form factor. It wasn’t expensive to license and I said, “this phone’s going to work in America” and they did not like it in Asia. They did not like it in Korea and sure enough Motorola licensed the form factor to the Razor and it became the number one selling phone in the world.
Destination Luxury: Amazing. You just launched a new product. It’s actually an app and it’s a virtual gift bag and what this does is it connects sponsors with clients of major golf tournaments and events.
Meltzer: The biggest gap in sponsorship and advertising is that we never have a direct ROI for our sponsors and advertisers. I started thinking what it would mean for sponsors if I was able to track who was engaged with that sponsor. From there, we’ve learned to use technology to incentivize consumers through advertising and marketing to come to an event no matter what size it is. It could be the Super Bowl or it could be a small little golf tournament or a charitable gala. Or, we can engage them at the event by using our gifting platform, thanking them for coming to an event. By offering attendees gift cards from companies like Dave and Buster’s, DoorDash, Chick-fil-A, and Trendy Butler. The companies whose offers are on the platform get data from those interested in their products or services.
Even if they don’t actually go back to the store or the website to redeem a gift, the company at least knows that I’m interested in Trendy Butler or Chick-fil-A. One of my favorite stories is I’ve been going to Laker games for years, and have been blessed to share my seats with Dyan Cannon, right on the floor. On the back of the ticket it’s always said that if the Lakers score over a hundred points you get two free tacos for Jack in the Box. I’m a huge fan of Jack in the Box. and I have four kids who are too. I’ve never redeemed the ticket once, and the disadvantage for Jack in the Box is they haven’t known for the last thirty years that I am a big Jack in the Box fan.
What if they would have my information, and know that I’m interested even though I’ve never redeemed the ticket I’ve gone to Jack in the box a ton of times? If they were utilizing marketing data and targeted advertising towards me they probably could increase the frequency that I go to or recommend Jack in the Box to people.
Destination Luxury: One of the major problems in gift bags is that when you have physical products they’re so hard to take care of. So hard to track. I’ve noticed that a lot of times I’ll get a product that’s amazing but I’ll just forget to use it and then all of a sudden I never connect with a company that I’m interested in. They don’t connect with me and then, everybody’s just out a lot of money.
Meltzer: This is huge bottle neck. So, think about events that you do. They usually at a venue that you don’t own. Whether or not your house they’re at your office. So, you’re shipping product … First of all the amount of time it takes to sell the company to get your free stuff.
Then they ship it to a restaurant or hotel or golf course and things are lost and not there on time and that’s expensive. Then, you have to take it out of the boxes and usually at union labor wages and put them into bags or boxes or lunch, right, into carts or whatever it may be. And then you have to distribute it at the event and then when you finally get at the event how many times do people leave it there on their chair or you can’t take the items on the plane.
Or you’re going out after the event so, you’re just stuck because you want to take it but you forget it in your friends car, you leave it there because you can’t take it into the club. There’s so many different bottle necks that we resolve. Be it a virtual platform because now, not only can I make that all efficient and effective but I can give gifts that you can never give before. For example, there’s a lot of food events that utilize this. What if I wanted to give three hundred dollars worth of wine to you?
Destination Luxury: Then I would take it.
Meltzer: You would. Except for that you would have to carry it around those bottles all night. Then you couldn’t take them on a plane. Then you’ve got to ship them home. And then there’s all these issues with how to ship it, temperature.
Wouldn’t you rather have it delivered to your house? What if you were a company gifting shoes or t-shirts? Wouldn’t it be better to ship them their direct size?
Destination Luxury: Of course. Well, this is fantastic and it solves so many problems.
Meltzer: That’s what we made it for. It’s called the Aggregate Marketing Platform with a virtual incentive program included in it. The best part about it that I did mention is everything we do has a charitable cause. I’m a “philanthro-pimp” because the generous athletes and celebrities and all those people that have just been so generous that I’ve been able to pimp them out for charity.
This is another platform that we do that for. We actually guilt you at the end of the platform that says, if you appreciate the 500 dollar gifts from the gala pay it forward and donate to their charity. And there’s an action within the link an application to donate directly to the charity 100 percent of the funds minus the processing fee from the credit card company goes directly to the charity.
Destination Luxury: Giving back is so important and it is an essential part of the luxury lifestyle and we are so happy that you’re able to promote that. How can people get in touch with you?
Meltzer: Sports1marketing.com is our company. I also have meltzermission.com and you can find me on Twitter at @Meltzer. We want to empower other people to empower other people to be happy and make sure if you want to help yourself, help others.
To learn more about David, visit Sports 1 Marketing.