Episode 512: The Best of Habits&Hustle: Jordan Belfort (Wolf Of Wall Street)

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Greg.

I'm just going to go right into it. I don't have to do a whole, I'm going to put your name up.
They're going to see who you are.

I don't have to do a whole like, I have the wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, Google him. By the way, I am like, this is one of the podcasts I've been like very excited for.

And I said it off the camera. No, you didn't even know who I was.
You probably knew that. You're an amazing podcast.
I'm excited. Well, I'm just saying that you're so fascinating to me.

I swear, like everything about you, you also look, you guys, the guy looks like he's Benjamin Button. He's like aging backwards.
How old are you? 61. Okay.

And no surgery, no plastic surgery, no nothing.

No air dye. I have a few gray hairs here and there, but I've had them, you know, for a few years.
Like it doesn't really get worse, you know?

Well, that's not even bad for have gray hair, but I don't have really gray hair. And I'm just, listen, I have my issues are more inside.
Like I look good in the asset, I'm riding away in the inside.

No, I got muscle. I played a lot of sports, terrorist golf.
I wrestled when I was in college, and um, I did a lot of weightlifting. So, I have like my, you know, shoulder.

I, you know, I have a artificial replacement here. And I tore my cuff recently, so I have to get more surgery.
Then, this has got arthritis. I got problems with my hands from golf and tennis.

I mean, so, but listen, but that's more wear and tear. It's wear and tear.
Yeah, I've done some like I overdid it, especially in my 50s.

I was playing tennis for two hours a day with like one of the top players in the world. I just destroyed my shoulders.
So, but it was worth it.

I think in the end, I had so much fun and kept me fit and um but yeah you know but listen you look amazing too and and uh about 60 though i'm just looking for the fountain of middle age at this point i mean i'm telling you it's beyond with you like whatever you're doing i want to actually start doing

i mean i've done stem cells that's the only thing i've done but stem cell yeah but that's more for injury no i've done my face too oh you've done it for your face yeah what did it do i've never oh it's subtle it's not like plastic it's very different than plastic so tell me what it tell me what they do just like they do like this micro needling and they put the stem cells in.

It's supposed to enrich the collagen. But I mean, I think it works.
I mean, I don't know. It's not like where you're like, you're like, oh my God, the next doesn't work.

Maybe in six months, it's subtle, but I think it's refreshing. And, you know, I love to, I do anything I can on my own blood.
I love that using my own. Oh, you mean PRP? You did? No, stem cells.

I go to Costa Rica. I don't do it here.
You go to Costa Rica to do it. So, really? Yeah, and I have stem cells in my neck and my hands and my, I do stem cells.
That's great. Stem cells.

So did it hurt to get in your face? Like, it was it just

I was asleep. Yeah.
And they gave me, and that's, you know, listen, I was a drug, you know, I was a drug addict. Yeah, I know.
So I got sober in 97, but it's a long time ago.

And I was really, before that, I was like just unbelievably like, you know, every, and then I never met a drug I didn't like, basically, right?

So now my only high is I get to go to the doctor to have to get surgery.

Give me the anesthesia really slow. I want that valium in the arm.
Give it to me.

I want to remember. I don't want to forget, you know, so I got anesthesia, so it didn't hurt at all.

But yeah, you get a couple, like a little bumps for a day, and then it goes away, and then you don't see results right away.

But then, over like three to six months, it builds more collagen, and yeah, it works.

I want to see like a before and after just to see if there's any like it's probably so, like you said, subtle, it's subtle, yeah, it's not like it's not going to search and rip

pull your face up. Yeah, by the way, you just said something that's so crazy because you've been that movie, even though it came out in 2013.

First of all, a cult favorite, my favorite movie of seriously all time, The Wolf of Wall Street.

I am obsessed with it. I think I've seen it like 25 times.
I'm not joking.

People love the movie. I mean, I love it.

And I love the first half a lot better than I love everything up to the end. I was going to say, until the end, right?

And then it ends on an up note, which is really interesting because

when they first were going to do the movie, it was 2007 and it ended with me going to jail. Yeah.
Because that was my life. And then it got delayed because of the writer's strike.

And over that six-year period, I rebuilt my life. I had a comeback story.
So, Marty and Leah are like, We got to change the movie.

They made it a comeback story to reflect my new life, which was going around the world, teaching people about entrepreneurship and sales, right? Right.

And it made it a much better movie because it was suddenly it's like, oh my God, the guy came back from the

basic being like a downer. It was like, oh my God, and he came back from it.
So, yeah. Well, what was interesting, though, because it came out, what you said, 2000, I thought 2013

it came out. December, Christmas 2013.
2013. But that movie, like, that was your life so many years before, like 30 years ago.

I was just telling this to so-and-so. People like were saying, Wow, you like just at Stratton, like what, 10 years ago? No, it was like literally 30-something years ago.
That is what's so crazy.

Cause if you're like, okay, so you're

35 years ago. Right.
So that's like, you were like, that was, you're a whole different person. Yeah, it's crazy.
But you've had like probably five different lives since then. I have, for sure.

I've definitely had at least three lives, you know?

Because it was a life up to Stratton. Then Stratton started

and my life was literally insane, balls to walls for 10 years, 10 years.

Then I had this like, you know, five-year period where I was, you know, indicted, waiting to go to jail, worst five years of my, like, you're dying in slow motion.

Literally, jail wasn't even the bad part, by the way, but it's when you're waiting to go to jail and your life is slowly, it's like the Roman Empire is falling and burning and burning.

And you're like sitting there watching yourself die in slow motion. Yeah.
And I still was living in a giant house.

It's like your possessions are being stripped away one by, it's the fucking worst, right? When I finally went to jail and I lost everything, it was liberating. I hit bottom.

I mean, bottom, no more money left, right? Separated from everything.

My kids were the saddest part of all, right? They were nine and 11 at the time, right? But once I got to jail, so who's my bunk mate? Tommy Chang from Chi Chin Chang. We're sharing a cell together.

They put us in the same cell. Are you serious? And that's how I began writing.
So he was my cellmate and we were like, you know, he's a great guy. He's amazing.

And, you know, I would tell him stories at night and he would be rolling on the floor. Second night, he's rolling on the floor.
Third night, he's rolling on the floor.

The fourth and he goes, you know, I thought you were making all this shit up, but my wife Googled you and it's all true. He goes, you have to write a book about this.
So I'm like, really?

You think my life is crazy? Like, I didn't think my life was crazy because it was mine. Right.
You know, your life happens to you. And you're like, I just, I guess shit just happens.

I didn't look at it that way, right? I mean, I knew my life was a bit absurd, but I didn't think it was like, write a book. He's like, just do it.
So I started writing. I'm very difficult at first.

My writing was terrible. And I taught myself to write in jail.
I spent about a year teaching myself how to write by reading another another book I love called Bonfire of the Vanities.

I remember that book. Yeah.
Classic, but one of the best authors in the world. And I used the book like a textbook.
I was yellow underlay. I kind of cracked Tom Wolf's strategy for writing it.

And that's how I learned to write in jail. And then I came, I wrote maybe 50 to 100 pages in jail, but I ripped them up because I didn't think they were good enough.
Came out of jail.

And that's when I started really, I took out the laptop and started writing. And, you know, very quickly, long story short, I, you know, an agent read it and he was like, holy, holy crap.

And sold it to Random House. And that was that.
That's how it started. So you actually wrote that book? I wrote it.
I read every word of every book I write.

I just wrote that book. I read every word.
And I hate writing. And by the way, I know you talk about biohack, but you also talk about success and empowerment, right?

And succeed, just feeling not just monetary success, but succeeding in life.

And I think one of the things, if there's one piece of advice that I could give to anyone, and I think what a lot of people miss is that there's typically a specialized skill required to do what you need to do.

If you want to do something and you really want something, you have the desire for it and you want to achieve it, right?

It's like people are often willing to do the hard work, but not so much the preparation.

Like I did what I did, like I wanted to write a book, but I didn't know how to write. I spent the year learning how to write.

Like without that skill, I could have wanted to, you know, tell my story and, but I didn't own the skill.

And I think with a lot of businesses that people go into and a lot of things they want to accomplish, they have a great idea and they would work really hard at making it work, but they didn't do the, there's a skill they need to do.

The process.

And people are, you know, are very good at doing the things they like doing, but so much of success is getting yourself to do the shit you don't like doing every single day, even when you don't feel like doing it most, right?

Right.

Consistently, if you can train yourself to do the stuff you don't like doing, that's what I think I'm really good at.

Like I hate writing, but I spent one year, 17 hours a day myself writing this book. And I wrote this book.
It's on how to make money in the stock market the right way. And, you know, it shows.

It's good information, actually. And it's for everybody.

It's like the layman's version too for any average person who you know could you get screwed so often because you don't know what you don't know but we'll get into that no the advice there is amazing but the point the point is i was able to make it accessible and funny because you know the information's out there right but if it's boring and try people don't read it so i think whatever you want to do in life you know there's going to be a set of specialized skills and probably one skill that's most important of all and what you want to do and if you want to do the hard work in that even though it doesn't feel good while you're doing it it opens up everything else Absolutely.

So how do you even get yourself disciplined enough to even go through that year of the process of even learning to write or like you said, with anything, right?

Like someone doesn't like to do something. There's resistance.
They don't want to do it. So procrastinate.
So for me, I think this is an overarching strategy with this whole thing, right?

About the inner game, the mindset of success, right? Now, it has to do with your belief systems and things that happen when you're very, usually when you're younger, right?

So for me, the linchpin moment in my life of success was at the the age of 16, I had this big hit financially. I went down.
Where are you from? You're from the East Coast or West Coast?

Yeah, I'm from Canada. Okay, Canada, okay, right.
So there's a beach in New York called Jones Beach. Yeah, okay.

On a hot summer Sunday, there's a million people on Jones Beach, and it's a very wide beach, long walk to the concession stand. I'm a 16-year-old kid.
Minimum wage back then is $1.35 an hour.

It's 1978, right? And I noticed everyone's bitching and moaning walking up to the concession stand. It's like 90 degrees, right? So what I'm saying, I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to get a cooler, white styrofoam cooler. I'm going to load it up with ice cream and ices, and I'm going to get some dry ice and walk down to the beach and sell it for a buck a piece.

That was my idea, right? Went down to the next morning to a distributor that sold good humor ice cream. I load up my cooler.
The full cost of the cooler is 20 bucks, right?

I go out and sell it out in one hour, made $120

in an hour in 1978, right? Wow. It was more than my parents were making by fly.
Anyway, my parents, my neighbor were making, right? And what happened is that the next day I went back and made $500.

And the first summer, I made $26,000. Second summer, $50,000.
So I made big money.

And what I realized, so what happened in this moment, I linked up in my brain that if I work my freaking ass off, I can get the, I was, I wanted money. I didn't grow up wealthy.

I grew up lower middle class. All right.
We had everything we needed, but not what we, what I wanted. Right.
Right. And I had this burning desire for whatever reason.
Right.

But I realized in that moment that if I work harder than everybody else and I'm willing to do what everyone else is not willing to do, I could make just like, you know, so and it became a very, it became a cornerstone belief in my mind, A, that I'm the hardest worker, B, that I'll do whatever it takes, C, I'm an entrepreneur.

You get it? So I had these beliefs that were so strong that I did, I did this job for five years, right?

And then I took, put myself through college and sold ICE all through college and drove a nice car, had money in my pocket, right? So, so that was the start of it, okay, is these beliefs.

Then, then let's miss the middle of my life for a second. Let's go to jail now.
So I already have this rise and fall, right? But I'm that guy. I'm still that kid that did that at 16.

I never got in trouble in my life before Scratton or after Scratton. There's one thing I did.
I was like, I came from the best family ever. No one ever got in trouble, right?

So it was just so, so I had it, but I had these beliefs about money and success and hard work, right? And that if I do the right thing, I make money, right? Or I have success, right?

So now Flashron, I'm in jail. I'm in the worst moment of my life, right? Everything is stripped away.
You're with the so-called losers of society because everyone is lost at the game of flat.

You're locked up with no money, no power.

you're just like the the lowest piece of pond scum on the tonal pole right right and i get this idea from tommy chong who i love and credit for starting this whole thing of writing this book right and i'm trying to write and i suck at it i can't write and i'm reading this tom wolf book and i'm trying to improve my thing and i'm i'm like i paid one kid four cans of two and i said go through this book and every time he compares a person to something else like a metaphor a simile write it down for me so i was that's how granular i was getting in trying to crack tom wolf's code right wow and there was it was months in the beginning, I say about month three, four, five of trying to write where like I honestly felt I just can't go on doing this.

Like it's not working. My life's a disaster.
I know I'll make money again as a salesman.

I'm not going to end up poor because I know how to make money, but like just the idea of trying to be empowered while locked up, right? Was just, it was just too much.

And in those moments, and the worst moments were at night, you know, when you're alone with your thoughts and you're in your bed, right?

And you're lying there, like all the mistakes you made, the people that you hurt, right? All the stuff you did wrong. It's terrible, right?

And in those moments, when I felt like I couldn't go on, couldn't keep writing, I closed my eyes and I'd imagine the faces of my two children. That's, and that was for me, that was my why.

Like, why do I want to come back from failure? Why do I want to write a book? There's many ways to go out and succeed again after you get locked up for a couple of years.

You can make money, but I wanted to do something, you know, I guess that was about, I didn't want to hide from my mistakes.

And I had this idea that I was going to like tell this story that I thought could be pretty amazing once I started writing it, but I just couldn't write it.

So anytime I felt like I couldn't go on, I said, you know, my children, like, just I let them down. I'd hurt them.
I'd embarrass them. And I, you know, not that they didn't love me anymore, right?

I'm super close with my kids. I saw my son.
I was going to say, I saw my son this morning for breakfast. He's like, we're like this.
My daughter and I speak every day.

So I'm very close with my children.

Did they see you while you're in jail? Yeah, they visited me in jail. Everybody.
Yeah, joint visit with Tommy Chong. It was hysterical.
Yeah, yeah. So you guys,

you never missed a beat, really, with,

I mean, then it was very fortunate that, and I moved out to California for that reason. They were in California at the time, right?

But anyway, so that for me, like I think that what people often miss is when you're trying to find your so-called why. It's like it's a self-development cliche.
Know your why, know your way.

But the truth is, if you really know your why at the deepest level, it is freaking powerful. And here's the secret.
It's not going to be about you. It's not about what you can get for yourself.

It's about someone that you love unconditionally or a cause that you truly believe in. Like for instance, you have kids, right? Yes.
Okay. So, let's say there's a fire in the house here, right?

And you're alone in the house. You run through the flames.
You're like, oh shit, that's hot. You're like, fuck, that's hot.
Fuck. Is there any? What if your kids were on the other side of the fire?

Would you even think for a second to rescue your kids? No. Not even for a second.
You'd run through the fire, burn yourself, hug them so they ain't burned and run through.

And if you died to save your kids, you wouldn't think twice, right? You love them more than yourself. It's a type of unconditional love or even

a cause you believe in. And people do awful things.
Look what happened

in October 7th. Yes.
What people will do for a cause, they will do disgusting, horrible, terrible things in the name of God, or they'll do amazingly wonderful things. Mother Teresa,

it's always about, so it's not a higher purpose. Exactly.
And people miss with this is when they try to say, I want to get rich. Like, you know, what's my why? I want a beautiful house on the hill.

I want to retire young. It's not about you.
That this power is something, that's more like goal-oriented as part of your vision statement. Yeah.

But the real power of your why is going to be much deeper and more profound than that. And once you tap into that power, you become unstoppable.
I believe that.

If you're willing to do the hard work, it can't just be that's, so there's always like this yin and yang. There's the inner game, which is mindset, and then there's the outer game, which is strategy.

So you have to be willing to do the hard work and learn the specialized strategies to execute. So, but those two, if you reconcile those two worlds, you become unstoppable.

But like, you're also, first of all, I have so many questions for you. I'm going to be going all over the place here.
But like, you're considered to be like the best salesman in the world, right?

Like the best sales trainer in the world.

What would you say to people people who don't have kids or a big purpose, like what would be the number one sales strategy or how to get people to be a better salesperson? Like, what would you say?

What do you teach people?

Well, I wrote a book. My last book was called Way of the Wolf, right? Which was a massive

three books now. The four.
Four. You have four? I have the stack.
The Wolf of Walsh was in it was Catching.

Oh, yeah, The Catcher. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. And Catching was the lowest performing one because it got released like the day after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

and like there was like no difference no one was buying anything you couldn't get any talk shows there was no podcast back then right yeah so that one it's so late better later on but like it was like disaster yeah well it's not your fault even this book by the guy hit the beam because it came out like right after october 7th so all it did yeah like so i was on talk about it it had to be like 60 days later because he couldn't talk about no one was talking about investing

every single major news so you know so some is fine but you know listen you don't release a book i don't care and it was a bestseller but and you know it's not why you do it okay Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's not for money because it's so hard to write a book. Oh, trust me.

And I write them myself and I hate writing. How long does it take you to write this?

More than a year. And then, of course, it takes another year to come out and all the other stuff.

For me, it's a grueling experience. But I do it because I think it's important.
I think this book was on some level most important things.

It answers the question: what do you do with the money that you have saved? And people just get taken advantage of by Wall Street and stupid investments in short-term training.

And this is really the truth about how you put Right.

And also you talk about also all the fees and how do you know when your financial planner is taking advantage of you. I think these are all like so important because financial health, right? It is.

It is financial health. It is financial health.
It is. And I think that now people get very overwhelmed because there's so much information.
They don't know. They listen to this person.

They listen to that person. They watch Jim Kramer and get this financial health.
I know, because we have to talk about that. You hate Jim Kramer.
Not as a human being. Not as a human being.

I'm like Carnival barking ass clown because he basically is.

And everyone knows it like everyone anyone in finance laughs at the guy i mean he's funny as shit by the way but i mean like that's your if that bloviating sense of humor is your cup of tea not mine but he's funny and he's smart he he knows his jim crammer like for him but like the advice he gives is the most toxic financial advice like to think that you can actually make money by trading out of this going into this timing the market sell this buy this oh this is the only who the fuck what does he know human beings are the worst stock pickers ever.

There's like five people in the world that actually can beat the SP 500. And guess what? What? They're not taking your money.
Exactly. They have hedge funds that are closed.

They trade for themselves and the largest institutions. Like Ray Dalio.
Like those people like that. Okay.
So, and you know, historically, he's an amazing, brilliant guy.

But those are what happens with the hedge fund and the mutual fund industry, but especially hedge funds, is that there are like the Ray Dalios or Warren Buffett or, you know,

some, you know, Tepper, right? Yeah. Unbelievable, brilliant people that can beat the market.

And then you have like this five of those and 6,000 people that are the also rounds that bathe in the afterglow of these people.

And when you look at their returns after you subtract their fees and performance monitors, they don't beat the index.

They're underperforming the index. And the mutual fund industry is even worse.

So it's so simple to build yourself a massive retirement nest egg by investing the way I explained here, which is, you know, low cost index fund, some money in a certain type of bond fund, some cash and saving some for speculation.

A little bit though, because you want to have fun speculating because speculating is fun. And if you don't set aside a defined amount of money, you probably will speculate with too much money.

So, better to say, I'm going to speculate with 5% or 10% of my capital, but the 90% is going to be in investments that I know. And unless the world blows up, then who gives a fuck anyway?

But as long as the world keeps trucking along, the SP has been compounding to 10%, 10.5%, including dividends over the last like 90 years. And it's like, it's not always up.
It goes down.

Last year was a great year. So I look at genius.
It was up 25% last year, but that's the relative luck that it was.

It could have been down 25%. It doesn't matter.
But on average, it always trends upward over the long term.

And then you engage in what's called long-term compounding. And there's certain things you want to do.
And I go through it step by step in the book. It's so simple.
And you don't need Wall Street.

Like, Wall Street is there. It's like this fee machine complex to like basically rob you blind.
But Wall Street does create value. So you need Wall Street.

Wall Street's necessary, but you don't have to play in their corrupt casino.

You can extract all the value they create by buying into these certain types of funds that have no expenses, no fees, right? So you get all the value they create and none of the bullshit.

But if you're someone who doesn't understand any of this at all,

you would say basically you don't believe in even having a financial planner.

Financial planet can be good for things like tax planning. Okay.
All right. Setting up certain type, you know, retirement accounts, education accounts, right? Nothing wrong with that.

But as soon as they start trying to direct you into certain investments, unless they're saying to you, you should buy this S ⁇ P 500 index fund.

There's some very ethical ones that will do that and guide you into the right type of investment in vehicles. When they start going to complex annuities and all this shits, boy,

you don't need it historically. And

this is not my information. All I did was I gathered all the information, what everyone knows to be true on Wall Street.
And no one will argue that I'm right in this book because I'm right.

It's the truth. So I didn't invent these strategies.
A guy named Jack Bogle is really responsible for creating the index fund. But in terms of like, you know, how do you really build a portfolio?

It's known. Everyone knows how to do it.

But Wall Street advertises it their way into the hearts and minds of people and gets people convinced that they should be engaged in short-term trading, trying to time the market, that, you know, you could actually have a stockbroker who's going to beat the S.

It's ludicrous.

It doesn't work. And every academic study going back since the 1920s has proved it.
So all I did was wrote it in a very funny the book is funny. Yeah, it's funny.

Because I said, if I don't make the book funny, no one's going to read it.

So, the idea was to make it really funny and accessible, but teach you a step-by-step strategy of how you do that and secure your retirement.

And trust me, you read the book, you'll be happy, you'll be thanking me 30 years later. I'll still be alive probably because I'm aging rapidly.
Exactly, you really are.

You're gonna be alive to your 270. That's the story.

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We'll get to the sales actually. Well, let me just, I wanted to go back because you were talking about the movie, and of course, I'm like obsessed with that movie.

Was it, how accurate was it of your real life? Was it accurate? It was like how much? 90%, 80%?

Well, so I was much worse than that. You were? Oh, yeah.
Like with the drugs and the

hookers, I'll admit it. You know, it's not my life.
No, I love this. It's not my life today, right?

But we were, I was insane and we were, and, and, and then the thing was, the best part is the Joe the Hill character, right? Oh, my God. His real name is Danny.

And the best thing about that, I love Danny, right? And the best thing, everyone needs a Danny in their life. Oh, my God.
You know why you need a Danny?

Because as bad as I was, I'd look at Danny and say, when I'm as bad as this fucking guy, then I know I got a problem. Exactly.
He was that guy. He was doing more drugs.

got he's got a problem right exactly he's a great guy are you friends still yeah yeah we're still i don't see him that much because we don't live in the same area but got nothing but praises for what is he doing now he's wealthy i'm sure he's he's very he's a great salesman smart guy came from a very successful family

father was a famous doctor his mother was an educator very well respected educator but they were like upper class they were up there they weren't like rich rich they were exactly yeah they're upper class correct yeah and so he was able like what like does it does he have money money or just like He's got a lot of money money.

He does. He does have money.
Like, what did he do after? What did he, like, I don't know? He's in the medical supply business or something.

I don't know exactly what he did, but he's in medical supplies, maybe some pharmacies. I don't know exactly what he did, but he made some good money.

He's not poor, but he's not, he's not, he's very wealthy. He's not just trucking along.
No, he's doing well. So you'd say the movie was actually underplayed your life? It underplayed to the insanity.

Like, you know, there were some scenes that had to be cut out so the movie would have been X-rated. Really? Right.
Oh, my God. Like, what? Tell me.
The bachelor party scene. Okay, tell me.

Don't feel like Ken says I'm a girl. I want to know.
No, no, no, no. There's some things I can say because they're just too depraved.
I'll tell you a funny story. So when I was writing the book,

and my editor from Random House was a female,

great, very smart lady, right? And I'm sending, if I send her the first chapter, and it was like really, you know, raunchy, right? And I'm like, wonder what she's going to think, you know?

And she sends me back a note. Like back then, it was by before everything was digital.
I sent her a chapter. that she fed X it back.
Be like, no, it's checkball. Oh my God, it's so great.

You're such a bad boy. Keep going.
Right. I'm like, I'm like, wow.
Okay. I'm like, I'm emboldened by that.
Right.

So next chapter I send, there is like something else, you know, crazy happened, like, you know, four hookers and this. And I'm like, wonder what she's going to think of that one, you know?

So I send it that. She's like, oh my God, this is amazing.
I showed it to

Irwin Appaum.

And he was rolling on the floor. I'm like, fuck.
I'm like, all right, here we go. Right.
Next chapter was even more worse in Switzerland.

Just pure insane, right? So I'm like, I just keep getting worse and on and on. Finally, I get to the chapter where I'm, I have my bachelor party, okay, right?

And we flew a hundred strat nights, they were called them, right, out there. And what do you call them? Strat nights.
They were, they were called stratnites, right?

And, you know, equal number of hookers of all shapes and sizes. And we, we, and we, like the movie, it's true, we rated them like stocks.
We had blue chip hookers, the best.

We had, you know, NASDAQ hookers, and then we had the pink sheets with the bottom of the barrel. We took those too because we wanted to punish ourselves, right? But we did.
And we flew back.

Then we hooked up with counterparts in Vegas. We know the 50 to 100 hookers from Vegas, right?

Anyway, the Bachelor Party is just spiraling out of control upstairs on the, like, there's like the 22nd floor of the Mirage. And it's like Sodom and Gomorrah on the 22nd floor of Mirage.

That was the hotel back then.

And it's just absolutely raging away. There's animals.
There's...

cocaine out on bowls, quailudes everywhere. Everyone's high.
And there's hookers, sex going on out in the open, the whole nine yards, right? You know, just complete insanity.

Anyway, I was downstairs with this guy named Elliot Levine, who was this, who was the CEO of Perry Ellis. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah.
And this guy was the biggest degenerate of us.

And he was the guy that was the king of, I mean, brilliant, like, this guy was a brilliant businessman, as smart as they got during the day and wild gambler, drugs.

I mean, just, we were all crazy, but he was like, literally, I was like, he was like, wow, he's amazing. Cause, you know, he's like the best of the bad.
He was just unbelievable, right? Wow.

So, so I'm with him, we're gambling, and he's, and we're all coked out of our minds and quailed out of our minds, like just on massive quantities, right? And he's up like 2.5 million.

I'm up like a million dollars for 700,000 playing blackjack, right? So, we decided, let's go upstairs to the bachelor party, right?

So, we, you know, I cash out, get my chips, he leaves his there, right? Cause he wants to keep gambling. We go upstairs, right?

We walk in the door, and as we got there down, you know, turn the corner to the hallway, there's like two police guarding the bachelor party, right? And as we walk down, they're like, Mr.

Belford, you don't want to go in there. It's like, it's like, you really, I'm like, I have to, I have no choice.
I must, you know, it's beyond my control.

And we go in there, and it hits you like the whole thing is just complete insanity, music blasting, you know, hookers dancing this way and that way, people just engaged in sex.

And we get to the back of the room, and there's this, you see, this scene in the movie, by the way, where there's a snapshot of one team with this pink sheet hooker, and there's like a line of guys, and one guy is having sex with her, right?

And we're watching this like disgustingly vile act. Anyway, long story short, is something happens.

I can't say it's just too disgusting, but something happens like after the guy pulls out and you know, you can't imagine what the woman looks like after that.

And it's like this really, the most disgusting vagina. It's like the world's most polluted vagina, basically, ever to exist on planet Earth, right? It's that thing.
Wow. Okay, right.

And we're all looking at, like, and you have to look because

morbid curiosity takes over. You're like, you just want to think a little.
You're like, oh, my fucking God. And this guy was like number eight on the line of 20.
All right, right. Okay.

Can you imagine this, right? Yeah.

Oh my God. I'm not this.
I'm not this guy anymore. I'm like married.
I'm happily married.

I wouldn't have to clip that because people are going. This is why people like to hear them.
They like the morbidity. They like this stuff.
You know, what did I say?

You know, it's so interesting and fascinating. And it's like people, like, that's why people like to look at like a bad accident or like, or they don't have a life like that.

It's like a fucking 10-year train wreck. But by the way, the fact that you're not dead is unbelievable.
I know. And I look pretty good considering that.
That's what I'm saying.

The drugs, nothing even like age.

It's a testament to the human liver, right? So if the liver stays in, I didn't drink a lot. I think that was the big thing.
I didn't drink much. I had a little bit, not much.

That wasn't the big thing. It was mostly just drugs.
Drugs.

You love the quality and cocaine. Yeah, were the big ones, right? And a lot of Xanax and clonopin and morphine because it was cool and awesome.
And I just did massive quantities of drugs, right?

I never met a drug I didn't like, right? And the little LSD, not much, right? But anyway,

the store, the bachelor party yeah anyway so we're all looking and elliott is next to me the most the brand of us all and he he goes and grabs a bottle of champagne shakes it up and then something happens right something so disgustingly vile that it it tore through the fabric of space time like all of a sudden everyone just stopped like in hot like like everyone just froze and you're looking at this thing you're like i can't believe it right and then he's like he's it's like he's gargling anyway but then like i'm like i have to go i i can't watch this.

It's just too disgusting. What was it? I, I can't say it, but it had to do with like a champagne bottle and drinking it, you know, and, and the whole thing, you know, vagina.
Yes, I understand.

I get it. I get it.
I don't want to say it, okay? Cause it's just too gross, right? And he drinks and goggles, and everyone's like frozen in horror, like frozen in horror, right?

And then I, I'm like, fuck, I gotta go. And I walk out and I leave the party and I go downstairs, take like four or five Xanax and go to sleep because I'm just disgusted by the whole thing, right?

Next morning, I wake up and I put my, my, I had like two million dollar, a million eight in the money I brought down, like a million seven, a million plus I have one seven, put it in the safe, right?

I wake up next morning, Elliot shaking me awake, right? And he's like, we got to get out of here. This place is too depraved.

I'm like, you're telling millions to fucking he's like, let's go, let's go. He's like, all right, let's go.
He's like, we got to go. The Jets wait.
The Jets were like, we're going to go. We'll go.

I go to the safe. My money's gone.
He took my, not only did he lose his 2.5, he took my 1.7. He ended up losing like $40 million gambling.
This guy. It was like unbelievable inside day.

So anyway, I write this. Oh, the 40 million that too.

He lost that night, like probably 4 million. But over the next six months, everything, he was like just, and then he lost his job.
And

he came back to again and became rich again with George Ash jeans. Brilliant garmento, this guy.
Like, no.

He was brilliant, but so self-destructive, really, but unbelievably smart and talented and charismatic, right? But anyway, so this scene that starts when we fly there with all the hookers, right?

And someone gets shot in the knee along the way. No big deal.
New York cops cops are with us, protecting us. The whole thing's just like, and I write the whole thing.

It's like 22 pages in excruciating detail of everything that happened, all right? Down to Elliot taking my money and then imploding, and then he drowns in my pool. And I save him.

It's a whole thing, right? And I send the pages to my publisher, to Diane Perez, and I'm waiting for what she to say about that, you know, right?

And then maybe like five days, four days later, I get back and packed that ex and I open up and she's on the front page. I just don't think other human beings will understand.

And then I go in there and look, and there's an X here, an X there, and the whole thing. So, in my first book, The Wolf of Wall Street, right?

Yeah, there's like this part where I walk, I describe the back, or I in detail, I describe this whole story. We'll up the money because it's a true story.
Yeah, it's very true.

And nothing is exaggerated. There's 300 witnesses to this story.
No, there's 300 witnesses. No, nothing is exaggerated.
300 witnesses, right? So the whole thing, we won all this money.

He took everything, but in the middle, I say, we walk to the back of the room, okay? And it says, I opened the door, and there's the bachelor party. And it was so depraved, I had to walk out.

Like, there's the whole thing cut out of the thing. You get it? I went downstairs to like, she's like, wow.
And if you read it fast, you're like, oh, it was depraved.

But that, but the whole thing was described, you know. Wow.
And no, and it wasn't in there. It wasn't in the book.
So then when Marty, the movie, I'm like, Marty, you want me to?

He goes, Yeah, I want to see this pages. So you saw the pages.
I think the first version of that was they had to cut because it would have gotten NC 17

out. So they sent for that little still shot, you know, that kind of said something happened with a guy screwing up.
Right, right, right.

It was still pretty like rushy

for like a movie, but it was still, it could have been, that was like, it was like, watch, it's like the Smurfs compared to what really happened. You know, the problem.

with the whole why these things happen, you know, like these insane things, right? Is that we were like action junkies, you know, like, you know, and it's like almost like, what's next?

It's like you keep looking for a higher and higher cliff to dive off of in a shallower and shallower pool to land in. Because what was it?

The first thing we did that was, we thought was insane, we shaved someone's head to $10,000. And we're like, oh my God, it was great.
But then, you know, three months later, a head shaving is $50.

Like, it doesn't have the same impact. So let's, let's shave a girl's head this time.
Right. Cause you get the always up the ante, right? And it never, it never gets to that place.
But then, okay.

How did you even get Leonardo DiCaprio? Were you able to pick him?

I picked him. Yeah.
I picked him in Scorsese. How did you get that chance? Like, tell me, like, how it worked.
What was the process? And this is where I would say, like, the hard work of writing.

So I spent a year teaching myself to write.

What really happened is this, I came up with a style of writing where I took what was non-fiction and wrote it like fiction. And my book reads like a novel, but it's, but it's true.
Okay.

It's true, but it reads like a novel, which is different from almost every memoir that you would read because usually the person has a ghostwriter. Yeah.
Okay.

Or if they write themselves, they didn't spend the amount of time. I taught myself to write as if I was a novelist, like Tom, because Tom Wolves is a novelist.
He started off as nonfiction.

And by the way, that's the beauty of Bonfire is he wrote, you know, non-fiction, but it was almost like it was, he wrote fiction. It was fiction bonfire, but he wrote it like non-fiction.
Like

he did so much research into stuff, right? So it was so believable. I did the opposite using his style.
I wrote what was non-fiction and it read like fiction.

So, and I spent so much time and I think, and I, and I, I did do a very good job writing that book. Everyone loves that book.
And when, so when Leo read the book, he was like, holy shit.

Was it a massive seller before you got the movie deal? Before you even bought the movie deal. Yeah.
Well, no, it wasn't out before the movie deal. That's what I say.

I thought you got the book after the movie.

So give me the chronicle.

So Leo, Leo read the book before it was even a book. It was a manuscript.
It was just a manuscript. It was an edited.
So the editing was done. Okay.

The original version was 1,500 pages. And my editor and I whittled it down to like 538 or something like that.
So a lot of stuff got cut. Right.
Wow. I overwrote the book.
Right.

So when that was a manuscript, my producer, a woman named Alexandra Milshawn, one of the sharpest ladies I know,

brilliant producer in Hollywood, right? She slipped that manuscript. to Leo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Mark Wahlberg, right? Ultimately, and Wahlberg loved it too.

He wasn't quite his biggest star yet. Now he's massive, right? And he's done great too.
I love Mark Wahlberg. But at the time, it came down to George Clooney was too old.

He would have played the FBI agent, right? So it came down to Leo and Brad Pitt both wanted the book. There was a bidding war between the two of them.

So like over a weekend, it was when bidding went up and up and up. Each side said, whatever they pay you, we'll pay you 10% more.
So the book, the price of the sale kept going up and up.

And finally, Leo calls and goes like, I have Martin Scorsese attached. He's going to direct.
Marty read the book, loves it too. He'll direct.

And I was like, and I, and by the way, the truth is I always loved Leo. Like, I thought Leo was the perfect person.
You know, I love Brad Pitcher, but Leo was at the end of the day.

Yeah, you did it perfect. Right.
And so I sold it to Warner Brothers with Leo on behalf of Leo and Marty. Right.
And then a man named Terrence Winter, a brilliant screenwriter, adapted the book.

We spent a lot of time together. And he took my book and like.
put it into a format that became the movie. There's many changes after, but it was the movie, that first script.

And everyone loved this first script so much. It was in 2000, and the book hadn't even come out yet.
The book was slated to come out in September, and now we're like in June.

And everyone loves the script. I get a call from Leo's manager, Rick Yorn, saying, dude, we're green lighting the movie.

We're going to go. We're looking for South State.
I'm like, what? Like, it never happened. Like, when someone options a movie, it's a very slim chance it ever gets made.

It like does usually doesn't get there, right? It goes on forever, right? But Leo loved the role and why he loved it. The whole thing worked out.

And then the writer's strike hits, the 2007 writer's strike, and the movie, and it's not the script is not ready. It needs

all of them, put their pen down. Leo and Marty go off and do Shutter Island because it was ready.
Yeah. And the window closed.

And one thing about Marty, who's the one most talented directors in the world, amazing, but he moved slowly. He, when he's with a picture, he's with it for years.

It's very slow. So now it became the brutal wait for Marty to be ready again.
And like Leo's easy because he does a movie, he's next, next. And so we were trying to get it done.

And we just, the stars could not get aligned and on and on it goes and then 2008 the financial crisis hits right and i can't sell another book because no one's buying anything i'm completely broke again i'm freaking out and with my then wife i was you know my partner you know i'm coming up but she's like my wife and she and i'm like i hate writing and i hate writing so much and like i and i can't even sell anything right now i was working on a another book but no one would buy it because no one had money right right and i'm like she's like what do you want to do i said like you know maybe I should go and try to be a speaker, you know?

And I'm like, well, let's do that. And I remember this moment, I called my book agent.
His name was Joel. And I said, Joel, listen, you know, I really want to go and try to do some speaking events.

He's like, oh my God, you're a great speaker. It's great.
Just, you got to wait till the movie gets made. Then they'll come for you.
And I'm like, what did you say? He's like, you wait for the movie.

I'm like, are you? I'm not fucking waiting. I got so, and I liked the guy, but I was like, I was like, that is how you go out and become successful.
Wait for the movie?

I could be waiting the rest of my fucking life for the movie to get made. And I slammed the phone down.
I said, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to do this.
Right.

And I went out and I started with giving free speeches at colleges. My first speech was for free.
Some girl, you know, a big fan. I want to bring you to my college.

I went for free, did a few free speeches. And when I did the first free speech, the kids went wild.
And my ann was like, holy Christ, like, it's like something that comes naturally to me, right?

They went crazy, right? And then the first person that booked me was like a $5,000 event for some entrepreneurs thing. Never even fucking paid me.
And I flew to New York.

They put me in a tiny little room the size of a fucking railroad car, right? I mean, I went through shit. I ended up just getting started, right?

And then I was just talking about the inner game of success. I wasn't even teaching sales yet because, you know, I had created so much mayhem when my last time I taught sales people.

I was like, I don't want to talk about sales anymore, right? Because I had my own negative ideas about it, right? But then something happened. And I was at some event in Australia.

So I had already had a big following from the book around the world. So I did a tour in Australia and I met a guy there.
He was like, I want to take you to England.

It was only the inner game of success. No sales or business, right? Just, you know, mindset, right? But it was really compelling.

I goes, dude, I got to bring you people going to love this stuff in England, right? And I went to his company. It flew me to England.

I went to his company, England, and he had a phone room, like 20 people on the phone because he was doing some stuff with trading, right? And he had, they were selling trading programs, right?

And I listened to his sales, but I'm like, dude, your people suck. I'm like, he goes, I know they're the fucking worst, right? He goes, their closing rate is just like horrific.

I said, if you want, I'm happy to train them for it. I'll teach them the straight line.
He goes, what's that? I said, I'll show you the straight line. So he calls all his people into a room.

All right. The name of the company was called Knowledge.
The video is still around. Knowledge to action, right? Now, at the time, I had my first shoulder surgery already.
I already had, so I went.

So I was actually in a, I think for the second one, I was actually in a sling from having my rotated comfort pad, right? But anyway, so I calls people, he calls people in, all right?

And they had this big, they had the script that sales manager wrote this fucking script that was like a big piece of oak tag in a circle.

It was the most toxic piece of right it was like the opposite of the straight line it was the circular right and i took a blowtorch and lit it on fire in front of like 20 people all right i said guys this is the biggest and sales manager's like you're gonna see right and i start teaching the straight line system which is what i invented to teach all these and and the guy who was a seminar promoter is like holy when i was done he's like Why the fuck are you talking about the inner game of success?

He goes, this is the most, I never heard, this is there's nothing fresh in the in the world of so everything everyone's saying the same again and no one's ever said this before this is like where this i said well this is what i taught he goes dude you're gonna make a billion dollars on this thing yeah this is you're like don't stop that right so i was like really and still i was like i don't know if i want to teach sales he's like buddy and i and we i went back three days and what happened is he was closing about 20 sales a month with his from his room the next month they closed like 328 sales really oh yeah yeah like it was a massive success blew up his business right And, and what happened was I still didn't want to teach it because I was like, oh, last time I taught it, you know, people lost money.

It was terrible. I just, I, I was, I really wanted to just give value.
And I didn't want to teach something I thought would hurt people because I'd made some huge mistakes. There's no doubt.

Like now in hindsight, I can feel great. I've redeemed my life and, you know, and the whole thing.
I've been, I've had this, but I still at the time was very new and I felt terrible.

People lost money. I wasn't happy about that.
And I was, I wanted to come back and rebuild my reputation.

I said, I'm never going to do anything again if people don't get a, if I charge $1,000, I want them to think they got 10,000 in value. That was on my mind.

And I didn't want to teach things that might hurt people, right? So I wasn't, and the straight line is really freaking powerful. What is it? What is the straight line?

It's an incredibly powerful system of sales and persuasion. And there's, you can, I sell courses now, but like you can get enough.
I give enough stuff away for free. You don't need to buy my courses.

If you want to.

buy my courses you can buy them and it's very organized but you don't have to like i don't it's not how i make my money and i but and i and i love teaching it and there's so many videos on you can't suppress stuff that you it's always on youtube if you want Yeah,

people that want to pay will pay and they can go buy it. It's amazing.
The course is.

Give me like the basics of it, of how it would work.

But what it is, really, is that like if you, if you ask the average person, like, you know, a salesman that's not trained, but they might be a decent salesperson, right?

Like, you know, what do you do when you sell? Like, what's actually happening? If I ask you, you're, you're probably a very good salesperson. You're a good communicator.

But I asked you, what, what do you do when you sell? Like, you know, what would you say? Are you asking me? Yeah, what would you do? What is it? What is selling to you? What do you do?

What makes you a good salesperson? I don't know if I am. I mean, I think.

You are, but what do you do? What would I do? I would tell you all the benefits of what it is and how it would help you.

I would be focused on you, not about that not right. Well, it's right, but there's a bigger answer.

It's not incorrect. Yeah, of course you do that.
You're also very good at building rapport, right? Yeah, very good at that. Right.
Your energy, you can match energy really well, right? Yeah.

You come off as a figure of authority, right? So people will listen to you because you're an authority. All these things you do, right? Right.

But what's, what's really, what really happens, what sales really is at the highest level, it's the transference of emotion. And the emotion you're transferring is certainty.

That if I'm going to buy, like, for example, if you're going to be selling me whatever it is, this

slate, which is, by the way, amazing. Slate, right? Okay, right.
So it's slate, right? So, okay. How sure are you? How sure are you this is amazing? Well, I love the taste.
No, how just very sure.

Trading. 100% sure.
So one to 10, where are you? One to 10. 10.
Okay, right. Where am am I? You're at zero right now.
Really? No? One? No. Two? Three.
Who fucking knows? Right. How could you know?

I don't know. But the moment I looked at this can, I landed at a seven and a half.
Why? Yeah. Okay, the packaging looked good.
I trust, I have a trust in you.

So immediately everything I know about energy drinks, coffee, whatever, French vanilla, immediately my brain will take all my experiences and put me somewhere because I'm from Earth.

Whether you're selling cars, homes, slate, books, the person that you're trying to to sell to, the moment they know what the product is, their brain will take everything they've ever heard, seen, experienced, their prejudices, good, bad, and land somewhere on this scale of certainty, right?

But where are you? You're at a 10. Why? Because

you know how awesome it is. So what's your job now? If you want to get me to that level of absolute certainty, because listen, where do you want me on the scale? that I absolutely love.

If I'm at a three or four, am I buying this stuff? No.

If I'm at a nine or 10, good chance. Yes.
Right. So what I would do is, and what I would naturally do is, because it's the truth, that's why I can only release it.
It tastes great, by the way.

It tastes amazing. There's 20 grams of protein, zero sugar.
It's 110 calories. It's way better than all the other junk out there.

And if you're into health or fitness or wellness, you would rather have this

than like a bunch of junk. Totally.
Right. So, okay.
So those are all like, those are all features, right? Okay. And then the benefits could be how it made me feel.

But the point is, is that if you're the salesperson, whatever you're selling, yeah, yeah, yeah, the salesperson needs to enter at this level of absolute certainty, right?

And then their job is they want to transfer that certainty to the person they're trying to sell to, right? To make them hopefully as or close to as certain as they are, right? Right.

So let's say you do that. Okay.
Right. Let's say you do that, right? And when you're done giving me the features and benefits, and you're going to, and but I'm like, wow, this shit's really good.

I'm like, wow, this stuff is really good. It's a 10, right? Question: Will I buy? Will I buy? Yeah.
Yeah.

The answer is not yes. And the answer is not no.
The answer is maybe. Right.
I said, yeah, yeah. Like I want to hear what you're going to say.
Maybe.

Why is it maybe? Because what if in the process of you making me certain, you did it in a way that made me not trust you or not like you? What if the way you talk to me, it offended me?

And so yeah, you convinced me it's great. I'm like, but I don't trust this person.
Am I going to buy from you? No. Right.
So it's not enough that they love the product.

They also have have to trust the salesperson or the person who's presenting them with the product, right? So let's just say those, let's say you did that well, right? Would I buy now?

The answer still is maybe I wouldn't, maybe I wouldn't. Why? Because what if I don't trust the company that manufactures the product? There's something about this.
It's an unknown company.

I don't know how they are. I don't really know how it does.
And sometimes that can be very profound. in certain industries.
Sometimes it's less important. But the bottom line is this.

It's not enough for any one of those things. What you're doing as a salesperson is you're aligning all three of those elements.

You're trying to increase someone's certainty for all three of these things. They want a product, yourself, the company that stands behind the product, right?

And then the goal is to get them to that 10, 10, 10 in a single moment in time. And then you ask them to purchase, right?

Now, there's more to it than that because there are all these rules of persuasion. For example, so let's say you know you have to line those three elements up.

Well, the million dollar question is how? How do you go about doing that, right? Well, there's another side to this that has to do with how you're initially perceived.

And then we got, then we get back to how I invented the straight line, which was back at Stratton when I had this situation where I was closing at a very high level and so was Danny.

We were killing it, right? I invented a new, I found a niche in the stock market, right? An untapped niche, right? And what happened was I was closing at 50%. Danny was in the 40s, 40%, right?

And my 12 kids who had the average IQ of Forrest Gump on three hits of acid, right? Not the sharpest tools in of the shed, no Ivy League diplomas.

They were like the, the, you know, basically no members of the Lucky Sperm Club. Right.

They were 18 to 20-year-old kids that barely clawed their way out of high school, kids that were never told by their parents they were capable of greatness.

Any greatness they had in them naturally was beaten out of them since the day they were basically born, right? Right. So those are my people, right? Right.

And I already taught them a system of how to close average moms and pops on penny stocks, right? $500 trades. Easy to do.
And my system worked.

But when I found this new system, which was selling $5 to $10 stocks to the richest 1%, we didn't call people that we were all multi-millionaires we called, right?

So I was able to do it. Danny was able to do it.
And these 12 kids a month later hadn't closed a single account. I was making millions of dollars.
Danny was making millions.

The kids were making zero after a month, right? So I'm like, how is this possible? We're calling the same people using the same script, right? Same stock, same everything, same leads.

I'm at 50% closing rate. Danny's is in the 40s.
They're at zero, right?

And for a month, I couldn't figure it out. And I was already considered to be like an amazing sales trainer at this point, but was something was missing.

Anyway, long story short, I stumbled on it one after a month of just like banging my head against the wall, reading every book about sales.

I tried everything, nothing worked, nothing could get these kids to close.

And finally, one night, it was like this, I was giving a marathon, like five-hour training session at night to my 12 guys, right? And I looked at them and guys, I don't get it. You know, I'm doing it.

Danny's doing it. And I know you can do it too, right? And like, what's the problem? They started yelling, there's too many objections.
One guy goes, there's a thousand objections.

Someone says, yeah, there's a thousand objections. Another guy goes, we can't even get our pitches off.
They keep cutting us off. The rich people are assholes.

Someone says, there's a thousand objections. I said, great.
I'll tell you what. And I whiteboarded, let's write all a thousand objections down, right? I said, come on, let's call them out.
Right.

And I said, it's a long story to keep going here. No, this is fascinating.
So, like, is it like the takeaway clothes you do? No, nothing about that. Nothing about that.
Nothing.

Okay, so so what do you guys call it different right so so i said guys write them what that call out someone goes they want to call back i said great what else they want to think about i wrote that down what else they want to call their wife what else great bad time yeah they paused i'm like what else silence i'm like guys that's four objections there's 996 to go let's go right and on and on they went on and on they're calling out every conceivable objection they could think of And at the end of the day, the board was filled with objections.

You know how many? 14 fucking objections. Not a thousand, 14.
And half of those were repeats of two. It was like, I want to speak to my wife, my partner, my business, my lawyer.
Or it's a bad time.

It's Christmas time. It's back to school time.
It's fucking leapy, a ground on day, bullshit. I want to speak to Santos, the fucking toothbrush, right? And in that moment, I got so pissed off, right?

And I looked at them and I'm like, you guys are unbelievable. You're whining about these thousand objections.
There's 14 and even half of them are repeats of two, but you know what?

Even those don't matter. I'm like, don't you guys get it? And suddenly this thought pops in my head.
I'm like, every sale is the same. And they're like, what? Like, I mean, every sale is the same.

You know, see by their expressions, every sale is different. People have different needs, different values, different pain points, different experiences.

They say different things, right? They're like, every sale is different. Like, guys, every sale is the same.
Watch. And this idea pops in my head.
And I'm like, it's a straight line.

And I draw a straight line across the board for the very first time. I put a big, thick X on either end.
I say, this is your open where the sale begins. This is the close.

And then I start teaching this system with a straight line. Then I said, I'll make, I'll leave it out.
And you go and see this on videos on, it's all over YouTube, right?

And then I said, said, now, guys, when you were selling penny stocks and it was easy, every once in a while, you get an easy lay down sale, right? That doesn't happen anymore.

What's happening is this. And I realized something had hit me.
They were saying they kept getting cut off. People were, the rich people were assholes.
They couldn't even get their pitches off, right?

Now, guess what? I was not getting cut off. People never cut me off.
I was getting the same objections they were getting, right? But I was getting them at the end after I asked for them to buy.

That's why I asked for the order. They were getting cut off in the beginning.
And I'm like, there's something like, it just hit me. It was so profound.

I was like, wait a second, I'm not having trouble getting my pitch off. People listen to me.
And I'm like, and then it hit me.

I said, guys, when you're speaking to smart people, when you're speaking to people, everyone's smart now. We all got smart bros, right?

When you're speaking to people who are smart and educated, you have four seconds seconds to establish three crucial things. And I'll tell you what they are.

Number one, you must be perceived as being sharp as attack. Number two, enthusiastic as hell.
And number three, most important of all, an expert in your field.

You got four seconds to do it because people judge books by their covers. We seize people, we size them up, we make a snap judgment.
And here's what happens.

If you're perceived the right way, sharp, on the ball, enthusiastic, and most importantly, an expert. What do you do in the presence of an expert? You defer.

You let the expert control the conversation. We've been conditioned since we're yay, big.
When we're kids, you're sick. Where do you go? Parents take you to the doctor.

The doctor dresses a certain way. Even your own parents defer to the doctor, right? When the doctor says to you, so how long has this been? You don't say, well, how long has heard of your time?

You answer their questions honestly and forthrightly, right? So we have been conditioned with coaches, tutors. If there's adults, you need advice on taxes, you hire an accountant.

You want to get in trouble, you hire a lawyer, right? We seek out experts to help us solve our problems. And when we're in the presence of an expert, what do we do?

We defer, we let them control the flow of the encounter, right? But when you're in the presence of someone you believe is a novice, what do you do? You try to take control, right?

What was happening is I was a natural-born closer, all right, as was Danny, right? And I taught Danny something about sales, but he took to it like a fish to water, right?

So when people would hear my voice from the second I opened up my mouth in the first few seconds, they're like, fuck, this guy's sharp. This guy's an X.
I sat, I was coming off a certain way.

And they weren't. I was using certain million dollars.
So how do you do that? Is it the words you say? Well, it really can't be, right? What could you say to someone in four seconds? Right.

I'm sure I'm an expert. I'm an enthusiast.
I'm a swear. I'm an expert.
No. So you sound like an asshole, right? So it's, you do it through unconscious communication, tonality, body language.

There's certain tonalities you use in person, body language. And what happens is people, you fall into this, you hit this box in their mind,

that this is an expert so what do they do they defer to you in that moment when they defer it opens up the possibility to make every sale the same see if you're in control of the sale you can now run a strategy you if let's say i say intuitively i knew there were these three things see i knew these three things had to line up i never thought about it before i did it automatically because it was a natural born closer right i was doing all of these things that were like perfection in sales i closed out closed anyone i ever went up against when i was very young even naturally i just knew what to say say.

And there are other people around the world that are natural born closers, but most people aren't. Right.
So how do you teach it?

Well, what happens is, but what the straight line does is this visual and you see it play, you're like, oh my God.

And I break it down into each of its components and I give you a step-by-step formula. And it always starts with this.

You must learn how to take control of the sale to be perceived the right way as an expert.

Once you learn how to be perceived as an expert and sharp on the butt, it opens up a universe because now you can actually say, all right, I'm going to do this first, this second, you have a logical progression.

And if you know what things have to line up, you can then line them up the same way. And that's what I was doing.

And when I taught this, and there's more, much more to it, this is a very, I've gone for three hours of this, right? I teach this around the world. Like somebody three days at a time, right?

But the point is, is that when someone that is and this, and which most people, like there's a spectrum. Some people are just awful.
Many people are decent. Some people are talented.

They don't understand strategy.

but there's a spectrum when they learn the straight line it's like a monitor from heaven so you could take someone that's terrible at sales and make them good not like me you make them good competitive it's not gonna hold them back right you take someone who's good and make them amazing take someone who's amazing they'll be one of the top closers in the world so it works for everybody in every industry and it's easy to learn easy to learn so i think what really did the 12 men learn the 12 people learn that they didn't so they hadn't closed the sale on third days that next morning we came back and they went on an account opening spree of such biblical proportions they were all millionaires in 90 days and stratton became the largest firm in the country selling five dollars we had 3 000 people that was the success of stratton was based on the straight line it was the straight line that fueled stratton not the stocks okay right right right the problem was is that the the mistake i made was i didn't understand enough about creating the better better company so like my ability to sell out fueled my ability to create the right stocks right and that was a problem And then of course, you know, it doesn't help when you're doing six qualities a day and snorting cocaine and, you know, partying six nights a week in the city.

And it became like, you know what it was? It was like, it was like the most fun place. There was before like, you know, people had smartphones.
Yeah, absolutely. You can do whatever the fuck you want.

You know, now you're being deep shit, right? Of course. But it was different time, different social rules, you know, and we had our own set even within those.
You see how things are now.

So things were different there. But even then, we had our own alternative universe inside the four walls of the boardroom.

Like all things people would walk in there that whenever they walk in the board like what the fuck it's like animals running around hook not hooks but your girls and me strips i can't even imagine okay so by the way we got kind of off it i know although that was very fascinating and i would i actually want to know how you would how you would sell that i'm curious how would you get someone to attend what if if you were selling slate or you know ferrosage or whatever what would like like this is what i would do i'll tell you because there's a great is it if someone wants to watch a video

of me selling, there's a great video of me doing just this thing. It was in Australia, and it was selling a financial services package to some guy, right? A CEO, right? It was actually staged, though.

It was, it was staged by a psychology company that was trying to understand the straight line and break it into psychological components. Yeah.
Right.

They spent a lot of money, paid me a lot of money to do this. It was like in 2010.
And what they did is they gave me what are called critical incident scenarios, right?

And it's where they hand you like a dossier, right? And they say, okay, here's a fur coat company. And they give you like, it's like this big, all things.
And these are your customers. Go prepare.

And then we're going to film you. How would you sell it? Right.
I did it for a few things, fur coat company, automobile. And then they did this thing with this financial services package, right?

Right. And they gave me this, this big dossier.
It was about a milk company,

dairy company, right? Okay. That was big in Australia.
And they wanted to expand into China and they were looking for better banking relationships and silver, blah, blah, blah.

And they get, they said, okay, you got, you know, 15 minutes to prepare, right?

And then we're going to call this an actor who's a CEO, and we want you to close with the cameras everywhere, light just like this, lights, cameras, right?

We want to tape it and see how you go about doing it. I'm like, all right, great.
So they hand me the dossier and I start reading through it. I'm writing some shit down.

I'm looking for the whole thing to find facts about the company, right? They come in like 20 minutes later and they're like, are you ready? I'm like, can I have more time? They're like, yeah, sure.

Take as much time as you want. I said, great, thanks.
I kept writing. Look at my stuff, planning it out, right? 30 minutes later, like, are you ready? I'm like, just give me a little more time.

All right, no problem.

30 minutes more like ready no just give me 15 minutes well finally after an hour and 45 minutes right so okay i'm i come in right yeah the psychologists sit down in the corners the cameras are rolling the guy comes in he's the ceo right he's playing the role he's really talented act this guy i mean he was like really good he he acted like the ceo and knew everything about the company and we start getting into this you know sales right on on camera yeah and i'm using the straight line at a very high level right and i'm using all the things i you know know how to do and i'm you know moving them down the straight line, so to speak, right?

And then I find it's really going well. And I ask him to buy it.
He wants to think about it. And I do what's called looping and I loop back.
I do another thing, blah, blah, blah.

All these things that you would learn with a straight line. And I ask for the order again and I have him and he's close.
And he's like, nah, nah, I just, that's that.

Let me, you know, let me just speak to my partner first. And then I do another loop again.
And I pull out like one of my most powerful language patterns, right?

And I guide him into this perfect close. Like it's almost, it's impossible for him to say no, right? And he's like, nah, I just, I can't do it.
So I'm like, all right, double secret probation.

I do one more loop back again. I raise this, it's called his pain threshold.
Another impeccable rap I give him, right? And I ask for the order again. Just believe me, you will not be sorry.

Does that sound fair enough? He's like, fine, I'll do it. And he puts his head down.
He starts cracking up. And the psychologists pop up.
Everyone's like, what the hell just happened?

I'm like, what, what? What happened? They're like, we paid him to say no. He wasn't allowed to say yes.
Are you serious? Yes. He goes, we told him you cannot say yes under any.

The guy's like, you were too compelling. I couldn't say, I felt like an idiot.
And he couldn't. Okay.
Now, so, and then they go, but that's not even the craziest part.

I'm like, what's the craziest part? He goes, we tested 50 other people in the same scenario. No one closed the guy.
I'm like, okay, well, that doesn't surprise me.

He goes, no one spent more than five minutes looking at the material. Wow.

I'm like, what? They're like, no one spent, well, they just skimmed it and the guy came in. You studied for an hour.
I'm like, of course I did. I couldn't sell this to you.

You say, you know what I would do? I'd say, give me all the fucking, and I would come up with the most perfect way. Why? Because I know I have to learn three tens.

I have to sell, I need three or four ways to sell you on this product, logically and emotionally. There's certain, I want to know features.

I want to, I could, I could wing it and do a decent job because I'm, I'm good at this stuff. But to really do it, I would sit there and prepare myself for a couple of hours and write it all out.

So I had it basically sort of met, I wouldn't have a script for it, but I know.

I want to know, and in my own mind, I know exactly where the sale was going to go before I would take immediate control by coming on like an expert.

Because you were an expert at that point. But also, I just like my ability to use tone.

But here's the thing. I can sound like an expert, even if I'm a novice with something.

I've trained myself and you can.

Now, I don't suggest this, but one of the biggest problems with salespeople is they feel like they're just getting started in a certain career with a certain product and they don't feel like they have the confidence.

They don't want to sound like an expert that you can't do that you have to future pace you have to act as if so you can sound like an expert even when you're not there's many people out there who are experts and they sound like novices so it's not really what you are it's what you sound like now i'm not that now that might sound unethical no it's so true but here's what i don't i'm not saying you should pretend to be an expert and just do that no while you're closing the knowledge gap you should be studying your ass off every day becoming an expert but there's no reason you can't sound like one day one you get it so the first thing i'm selling any product i sound like i know more about it and i'm very good at putting words together this is a natural talent so some people struggle a bit one maybe they'll close a bit lower than many but anybody with practice and hard work can become an expert and you can learn to sound by using certain tonalities That's great, though.

I mean, that's true. I agree with that because if you do, the more information you have, obviously you're going to be able to be better.
How are they going to close this guy? I was able to,

I was saying to this guy about his business. He didn't know.
he didn't read the thing i read

i read every statistic i had things about like the difference in the currency of china to the one and swaps i was he was like his eyes rolling around he didn't know what to do that and he just i mean it was so much that he felt like if he said no he'd be an idiot and that's what he said he was like i felt like an idiot if i said no and is this in this straight line it's on youtube i'm gonna watch it below what's selling live and at the end everyone you just see everyone stay got cut off and they all stood up at the end but that they were like laughing and that's and why they were laughing right because the guy was paying him to say no.

Wow.

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So then you were doing this, you're starting the whole speaking circuit before the movie was even yeah, so that so this is the best part of all you were getting better at it.

So I built this huge business. And how much were you? How much were they, how much was your fee to even go speak by the time before the movie came in? I was getting over a hundred thousand dollars.

So you were like a super successful speaker. Yes, the same people who were promoting Tony were promoting me around the world, right?

And I had this massive so it wasn't listen, it wasn't nearly like it is today. No, obviously, right? But but like, but back then, I was doing really, really well.

So, what happened was there was this four-year gap of

the movie came out in 2017.

And I bought it in 2007. Yeah.
So, when the first script was written, it ended with me going to jail. Yeah.
That was the end of the movie. There was no sell me this pen.
Yeah.

And there was no commercials with the straight line. Remember this in this straight line? That didn't exist because I didn't teach the straight line on TV before.

But they, but what happened was when four years passed, Leo comes to my house now. When he came to my house the first first time I was living in a tiny little house, okay? Like a little tiny house.

I had an apartment, like it was probably $2,000 a month, right? And four years later, he goes, I'm coming over. Let's celebrate.
He comes over.

And I'm living in a beautiful mansion in Manhattan Beach on the water, like a 15 million. He's like, what the fuck happened to your life? That's hilarious.

I'm like, oh, no, I rebuilt my business in four years. He's like, what do you do? I'm like, I do these seminars.
I teach. He goes, show me.
So I put the video up of, you know, Frank Kern of that name.

He was an old internet marketer back. He was very popular many years ago, right?

I had his frank current idea everyone loved this tape it was me on stage teaching the straight line and i showed leo he's like oh my god wait till marty sees this he goes we're gonna change the whole movie he goes it's gonna be a comeback story i can't hold you just gave me the gift you gave me the biggest gift this is gonna be 10 times better movie now because it's gonna be like up and then marty saw this and was like he became obsessed i sent marty 50 videos on the straight line There was a four-hour cut of the movie before the final cut that was shown to some people probably that had like 10 times as much.

Molly loved the sales stuff because it was so they said so much about what really happened,

right? That had a cut up because it was just too long. But what happened was it created A, those scenes where I come back with a, right, where I'm giving seminars, I love that, which is funny, right?

I get arrested, right? And that was fictionalized. Like, I wasn't teaching the straight line then, but they loved it so much, they put it in there, my new life and the old.

And then they end the movie where I go to jail and ends up with me selling the selling this end, which is this iconic scene at the end so I you know really I rewrote my own life story while it was being made into a movie I changed my own ending through hard work perseverance and some luck too but mostly hard work and perseverance you know that is so amazing so when did they actually start filming 2012.

Oh and they turned it around that fast very fast. So then, okay, then how much did you sell the script for?

Complex. So I sold it originally for an option.
So I got back a total in the beginning. I got before it was bought, I got about $700,000 for the just option money.
Oh, just option. Okay.

And then when the script was bought, I bet a million one more. And then did you get any back end of the movie? No, no.
Are you serious? No, but, but there's something I'm in litigation.

I can't talk about it right now, but there's some things happening right now. Because that's like, I'm sure, no one thought probably how that movie was, is like

literally one of the most popular movies of all time. Yeah, it's amazing.
And, you know, it's funny. And girls and boys.

I'll tell you the interesting thing, which is which is really what it's been so amazing for me in terms of my business, because when the movie came out, it was 2013, right?

Kids are in, you know, high school. And I had fans of all ages up to like your mother would love the movie.

Women love it, men love it, kids love it. My sister was telling me her little

kids.

I know, right? So, but like, here's the interesting thing, though. So, in 2010, there's a kid, let's say he's 16 years old, right? He's in high school.
He's just, he's probably

a junior or something, right? Maybe, you know, he's a freshman or sophomore. All right.
He watched the movie. He loves it.
He sees it three times. He sees it five more times in college.
He gets out.

He goes into the workplace. He sees it 10 more times.
He strikes it rich as a businessman. What does he do? He hires me to come speak and consult at his company.
So all these kids

watched them. They were nice.
They're all hiring me now. I was going to just, you know what I was saying? They age up.
And

to teach them the straight line, and I teach this very ethical version that, like, you know, really empowers people, makes sure they sell ethically. So I teach this ethical version.

And my business gets bigger every year because kids aging up. No, I swear, I was just thinking like, I want my son Dylan, who's 11, to take a picture with you because he doesn't know you now.
Right.

But in a year, he's going to watch your movie. Well, we can open in a couple of years.
Maybe now. I got to tell you, I have, you have no idea.
Like

sometimes I'm shocked. Like I was on the, I used to live in the strand.
I live in Miami now, but I used to live in the strand in Manhattan Beach. And one July 4th, I'm.

with my them wife and we're playing backhamming like our house is right we're on the strand so people are walking by and we're playing back backhamming.

And you know, we're just like five, maybe five feet off the strand in our little just once chairs. And you're like, Excuse me, and I look, and it's a kid, like this big, he's like seven years old.

He goes, Are you the wolf of Wall Street? I'm like, Yeah, he goes, I'm your biggest fan. I'm like, Where's your mother? That's hilarious.
I was like, You're he's like, Yeah, I read the book. I'm like,

Yeah, the movie, too. I'm like, What the fuck? See, I would you get recognized all the time everywhere, yeah.
You should like though, like, like, I can't, like, but TSA.

I can't go to, if I go to an airport, I can't, like, TSA.

Customs. Do people go crazy for you? Yeah, people are very, they're always, people could not be nicer.
And I've never refused a picture with one person that's ever asked me. Do people freak out?

So people are like, why are you here? I'm like, I have to be somewhere. That's 100%.

Like, last night I went out with a friend of mine to a club here in

Flora or something. And I don't go to clubs, but he enjoyed.
We went there late, right? And there's one girl. She's like, oh my God, oh my, I'm like, well, I'm here.
I have to be somebody. I'm here.

You have to be somewhere.

Why are you, what are you doing here? Oh my God, I just told him.

I would think even more than like a celebrity, because it's like they saw that your life story is a gap.

And they saw your life story and it was so compelling.

And like, it's just, I think it, that's why I was like, so, how I am so excited. But, uh, but then, okay, okay.
So then, like, the movie gets made.

So then you said that you have, you can't talk about all of it, but you sell it, you make a million ones.

No, I can talk about that, but like I ended up having to sue them late because the people that made the movie, I was going to say the Malaysian people, the Golden Man, the Golden Saps guys,

were the financiers. That's why I was for the last four years, I've been in litigation with them to get some rights back, but we're going to settle something.

But that's the part that I needed to ask you about. So, basically, who found them as the financiers for the movie? So, to tell them who they are: the guy

right now, Jolo, Skyraza Aziz, right? There's a major Netflix movie on them right now. Yes, it's called Man on the Run, right? Yeah, Man on the Run.
Billion Dollar Whale was them too, right?

So it was the Prime Minister of Malaysia's stepson. Right.
He was the founder of Rigmana, right? And they came in with gang money.

And it was supposed to everyone, they were telling everyone it was oil. It was like Saudi oil money.
And so no one knew, right? And at the time, I didn't know, no one really knew, you know,

you know. And so, you know, I met with them, I met with the CEO, I met with the production people.
You did, or did Marty do you? No, we did. No, we did.
I did, Leo did.

We had a big lunch right so you were involved with the production of the movie no no this was just to buy the movie no that's what I mean the but you were involved like after you sold it to Warner Brothers as an option and all the other stuff it just no it just sat there for like right forever

when they when they finally got when they finally when I had this meeting with the Malaysians right right but wait hold on let's go back a second so then you sell the option then you get the million when once the movie's now green lit being made

from the Malaysians oh so oh okay go ahead I thought what would happen is Warner Brothers then gave you some money and they would take care of it. Option expired.
I got the movie back.

So I got two, twice,

they paid me option money twice, but they never exercised the option. I got the property back.
Then Leo and his manager found these Malaysians. And at the time, no one knew they were crooks.
No.

Right. You know, they were just super rich.
And then they spent money. I'd never seen people spend money.

So I thought they were, at the time, I was like, this is just like the old scam of raising money and spending it. Like, you know, it happens.

Venture capital. Like, yeah.
You raise a billion

because they were spending money like crazy, crazy, but you didn't know it was stolen money, you thought it was just they were milking the Arabs, it was insane, right?

And they had so much money, right?

Yeah, so like, so I sold them the script thinking it was legit, everyone thought they were legit, yeah, everyone, and then right around the time the movie came out, rumbling started happening, right?

And like the money may have been diverted from like at first, I was like, ah, whatever, and it was upsetting, but you know, and over time it built and built.

Eventually, you know, they had to pay $60 million, right? They disappeared, you know, one of them got indicted. The CEO of Red Grat

got indicted in Malaysia. Jo Lo went on the run.
Whole thing, right? Did he get a facelift to change his face? That's what I heard.

You could be Joe Lo, by the way. Yeah, it could be.
You could be. But I'm not the diet.

You never Jo Lo. Yeah.
You're not Joe Lo, are you? Uh-oh. We caught you.
Yeah.

So anyway, I think he's in China, but that's the word. Oh, really? Yeah.
So what happened was the rights, so the rights got sort of frozen. And that's what it was.

We should have made a TV series and done all the stuff. And that's why I got into litigation with them to try to get the rights back.

And yeah, so I don't want to talk about any more about that because it's still ongoing.

But so, yeah, and those guys are, you know, I think one guy, the CEO of Ray Brannett is like, I think he's, he didn't go to jail, but like, whatever, you know, he paid some money and that's that, right?

And then, but his father, the prime minister, is still in jail. He got sent to 12 years.
I think yesterday they reduced it to six and he's getting out soon in a year. Joe Lo never found him.

He stole away, got away with the money in China somewhere. Wow.
That is so crazy. Then who distributed the movie, though? Wasn't it?

Domestically was was Paramount and then different companies all over the world. I can't even believe that.
By the way, do you still talk to Leo or do you still talk to Leo? I do. I speak to Leo.
Yeah.

And like, he's amazing. He's the best.
I mean, you picked the best. I mean, he crushed that movie.
He's the best. That movie is just like.
He should have gotten the Academy Award.

I cannot believe he did not get that. I mean, he got it the next year for the red venue.
He was like, I had to freeze to death and fucking get it at the Academy Award.

I should have got it for the Wolf of Wolf.

100%. Like, so how did it, like, so when that movie came came out, how did it really change your life, though, in a real way? Well, in stages.
So what happened was, here's the interesting thing.

So the movie comes out. Yeah.
It's a huge hit. And right off the bat.
Right. It's a huge hit, right? Did anyone expect it to be even close to that? They did.
People who saw it, we knew it.

When I saw the movie the first time, I was like, I mean, everyone that saw it was like, what the fuck? No, it was, oh, Margo Robbie. Who picked her? Marty.
Marty.

I only picked Leo and I picked Leo and Marty. And then everything else was Marty after that.
So who was it between? Was it anyone between her?

Virgo, it was a few other actresses up for the role back then, but she was just head and shoulders the best. Beyond.
She's so talented. She's the most beautiful human being in the world.

She's the nicest person

you'll ever fucking meet. Like, seriously.
Like, can you believe that you had like the

biggest of the biggest in like you had Martin Scorsese do your movie? Leo Decap. Like, you didn't have like B-listers on this thing.
Like, you know, but I I go back to one thing about that.

So, yeah, I mean, some, of course, it's lucky and some of it, but it goes back to it. It was the hard work of the writing.
It was writing.

It was the skill, the time I put in to learn how to write, which made, allowed me to tell a story in a very compelling way that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

No matter how good the story was, if I didn't have to tell it the right way, structure it and put together the words in a way that people would laugh and turn the page.

It didn't matter how great the story. So I made, I served up to Leo on a silver platter.
Totally. And then he saw it.

And then he, of course, he, and and it was Leo's, and Leo was the one that drove it forward. It was Leo.
Well, because he's such a

it was his passion project, and he knew. And it was Leo believed in this so much, you know.

So he really gets the credit for what Scorsese came in at the he was there in the beginning, and then was like, he was less, you know, involved or interesting.

No, well, yeah, he just didn't, he always liked it, but it was like he had other, he had his passion project, which was, I think, um, what was that movie he made without the priests going in uh whatever it was a silence he was desperate to make this movie silence that was his passion project right so so he didn't, nothing didn't like it, it just wasn't his passion.

But then, once he started, here's what Leo said: I ran, it was like maybe six months ago, Leo and I, we're in Confield Festival, right?

And we were on a boat together and we're having dinner, like when he's sitting, he's sitting next to me at dinner, right? And he goes, You know what? I'm gonna tell you this.

He goes, I have never seen Marty Scorsese as happy and carefree as when he was making the wolf of Wall Street. Really? He was smiling every single day, like you never,

and that made me happy to hear that. And I think also it reflects in the movie, like how happy he was.
And he was like, this light, you know, you know, he just had this, like, this tone to it.

He was light. And that's what it was fun.
Like, so many of his movies, I know he's phenomenal and a great darker, right? Yeah, not even that.

Like, they're, they, they're, they're, they drag a little bit, you know, like this one, like, it hooks you the second it starts, and it doesn't, you don't let go until the end.

Like, it is such a good movie, like, in terms of like from the beginning to the end, you know, like the whole thing.

He's a so, I mean, listen, you know, the script was amazing but a lot can go wrong a lot can go wrong you know and like he just took that script and we polished it i mean yeah i polished every word like terry wrote an amazing script but i i worked myself at least 50 hours on that script also after terry wrote it i wrote the book and i didn't write this he wrote the script he has credit but you know i was i made sure every word was authentic and and leo did too like leo painstakingly over every word so really it was oh my god so like leo i spent a year with him like he was so intense on getting this right.

Like, so he's talented, of course. Yeah.
But he works his ass off. That's what I was going to say.
It sounds like. No, he like, he's like preparing for this thing.
Like, you know, it was unbelievable.

How come they always work together, those two? I feel like they're like a pair. Well, they have a lot of people.
For example, I think

there's others' pairs, but they're one of the top De Niro and Scorsese as well. But what it is for an actor like Leo is a bad director could fuck up a movie.

I mean, if you could be the greatest actor in the world, if it's a bad director, so for Leo, it's almost an insurance policy to have some so leo will only work with real like really like tarantino he's very careful leo with who he works with right because you know he is as talented as he is the wrong director could up the movie right yeah and i think the same thing goes for a director it's like you know that they're great but if the actors can't bring it to the table yeah so it's a comfort so i think that's why Has any of this, like, you know, it's funny, like, I feel like what happened with

jail and everything else, it doesn't seem like it, it affected you and it would most of other like it didn't you bounce back i think incredibly well and fast beyond anybody else again how why how did that happen it affected me but in a in a positive way so i i think what what happens it was so important for me to go to jail it was so important because so here's people say you know how did you turn your life around yeah and also nobody even i feel like we not that we forget but it doesn't affect your reputation like people don't that's not the first thing that i think of right yeah well listen there's always some people who want to be assholes and let them have their good, good for them, their entire feel what they want to feel.

But 95% of the world feels the opposite, and that's fine with me, right? Exactly. But here's, here's the truth.

So, like, I didn't have to change into becoming a good person from becoming a bad person.

If you believe in good and bad people or bad people doing good things, but I'd have to, what happened was I had to change back into the person I was originally. I was originally a really good kid.

I never got in trouble.

That wasn't my life. My parents never, I was raised by the most legitimate family.
Everyone went to college. My brother's a top lawyer.

My two first cousins are doctors from Harvard, you know, famous surgeons. Everyone, no one got in trouble in my family.
Also, you were just ambitious. Like, I feel like you didn't have to do that.

It was ambition that went off the walls, right? Right. But that's what, but that can happen.

Ambition turned into greed, okay? And

with massive drug abuse attached to it, right? But I don't blame the drugs.

All the drugs did was help me quiet the critics. So like after I was doing shit that I shouldn't have been doing, because drugs make you feel better about it, right? But it wasn't the drugs.

It was really greed. And also, I have this thing that I want to be the best at anything.
So if I'm doing something bad, I got to be the best at doing something

terrible, right? But what jail did is it like, it was a recent, like, I need to become, what happened to me? What did I do?

What were my values that like, so example, one, if you have asked me at the age of 26, you know, what's the purpose of a business? I say the purpose of a business is to make money as much as you can.

But in reality, that's not the purpose or the function of a business. The function of a business is to monetize value.

So you have something of value and you build a business that allows you to deliver that value to a lot of people in a cost-effective way. So you make a profit.

The more people you help, the more money you make. But it's not you go into, you don't go into business, I'm going to make money.
It's to monetize something of value. Right.

So today, like when I go out from the moment I left jail, I didn't engaged in one transaction, done one deal, or brought something to the market that I didn't think I was giving a lot more value than what I was charging for it.

Wait, are you allowed to do any financial stuff? Of course I do, yeah. So you weren't like, you weren't banned from

trading or anything like that. You weren't? No.
So you can still do any of that stuff? I do. I trade all the time.
I don't trade. I invest.

I don't believe in short-term trading, but I invest in the stock market. I have some Bitcoin.
I do a lot of venture capital. Are you allowed to have like your own private equity firm if you wanted to?

I wouldn't want to. No, but are you allowed? Up to a certain amount of investors.
Oh, but I could not have anything that was regulated. But what I can't do is own a brokerage firm.
You cannot.

I cannot. Own a brokerage firm.
But you. Nor would I want to.
Nor would you want to. But you didn't even go to jail for anything that actually people are not doing right now.
It's just crazy.

Which is the irony. I think what happened was, is I think people's view of me changed after 2008 when they're like, wait a second.
Like what they did on Wall Street was so much worse than what I ever.

I mean, listen, what I did was wrong. I never want to minimize that.
No, I understand. But I didn't bankrupt fucking Iceland.
No. Or Greece.
Like, no, Wall Street, like, I mean, wow.

Like, when that came out, like the, you know, I remember just blew up the world economy through complete fraud and greed and insane selling shit products to institutions and pension funds and everyone's 401, right?

It almost destroyed the world. Although, do you know who Michael Milken is? Yeah, he's great.
He's amazing. Okay, right.
And

he went to jail for

bullshit. No, he was, he did nothing, this guy.
I was going to say, like, what I'm saying is like, it was like something so like minimal and nominal

in the grand scope of what happened.

And he's looking at him now. I mean, he's like a legend, right?

But like, isn't what you did, though, like, it was pretty nominal compared in the grand scheme.

It's nominal in the grand scheme, but still, I never want to say that what I did wasn't wrong because it was wrong.

But yes, the amount, listen, you know, listen, I wish no one would have ever lost money from actions I took, but when you compare it to what happens, it's nominal.

So the amounts are tiny compared to what happens every day.

It's insane. And that's kind of what the book, I wrote this book about.
Like, you have to avoid that. Right, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.

Well, you have to avoid that whole, this book shows you, like, what to do to avoid all that shit. I was going to ask you a question, though.
What do you think of crypto, Bitcoin, all of of those?

I love Bitcoin. But isn't that considered to be like, we don't know what's going to happen.
Well, tell me your opinion first.

So I love Bitcoin, right? As a very long-term investment, not to try to trade Bitcoin to make money. All right.
Bitcoin is 100% legitimate right now.

It's all the biggest institutions own it. You have big ETFs.
Okay. Yeah.
So it's like, it's legitimate now. It's decentralized.
Okay.

You know, maybe it's still manipulated a little bit here, but not like in an organized way. It's legit.
I didn't think that many. I was a very, very bearish on Bitcoin.

I thought it was the biggest scam ever. Yeah, that's okay.
I thought so, right? But I, but I, I just, it was my gut reaction. It was back then.
It was being manipulated. In the beginning, it was.

But the, but the idea, the coding was so brilliant that some people who are more insightful and sort of than me, obviously, that, you know, got involved.

And ultimately, it was like the lie became the truth. Yeah.
Okay. So now there's enough large players.
And it's, I believe it's totally legitimate. I own a lot of it.

And I think that over the next five to ten years it's gonna go much much higher now I don't think you should and I feel very differently about crypto rest the rest of crypto okay I was gonna say so that part you're okay with but the rest of it I don't I really am I'm not saying they're all bad but most of those coins or tokens they have no function other than speculation so if you want to speculate that's fine and have fun and buy dogecoin if you want to do stuff that but just know you're probably going to lose all your money but that's okay if you have fun maybe you'll make money, but you're probably going to lose a lot of money, right?

Right. So, but I think people should speculate because it's fun to speculate.
But 95% of your capital should be in the type of investments I talk about in the book, which are these sort of these

index funds, which are the safest and the most, they outperform everything else. Okay.
And there's a lot, and there's reasons why. And also, you don't need a lot to start.

You can start, even if you're not rich, you can become rich over many years if you're smart and you just stay the course and not listen to the Jim Kramers of the world and all these people who convince you to buy this, sell this shit.

You're never going to go on that on CNBC or anything. They did not invite me on CNBC.
They used to invite me. I knew this book by time on CNBC, but I've been on other stages.

I'm going on Fox a bunch of times.

I'll be on Gutfeld soon next week, two weeks from now. He's great.
So I go on. I love going on TV.
I love doing podcasts. But people, because you're such a great entertainer.
Like when you speak,

you're so enthusiastic. It's like a pleasure talking to you.

you i love making people laugh because i think it's great and i love educating people but i think people learn more when they're laughing and they're engaged yeah so i when i'm doing my events or whatever i try to mix you know humor and stories with actual learnings and at the end of the day that's been a very you know a very

profitable formula for me and incredibly even more valuable for people who learn these things i can't tell you how many people walk up like you changed my life you changed my you change all everywhere i go you changed no one ever says you everyone's like you changed life life, so it's like that's and they go through life like that.

What a great way to go through the rest of my life. Well, yeah, because you're actually giving people like actionable things that they can like they can do.

It's not just you yammering on and on, but there's like things that they're like, it's compelling,

and it's things that people can take away. Exactly.
Is that how you spend your time? Like, how do you spend your time? You're doing mostly speaking, smoke, speaking, mostly consulting for companies.

Oh, you do that and some companies I own myself. What do you own? Coming what you own.
There's different companies in the different spaces. I don't want to get into particulars, right?

Because a lot of stuff I do is behind the scenes. Because when you're a celebrity, it almost takes away from stuff.
I don't want to, like, some stuff is good.

Other stuff is like, it's just like, it's about the product, not about me.

But I do consulting for all different types of company. You name it.
I've consulted in the industry. That's probably 60 to 70% of my business.
Touring is probably 20%.

And products are maybe 10%. Like, you know, like the online products.

I would imagine that you would be like called from every major fortune 100 200 companies to go in and just train their sales teams i've gotten so that's interesting so i've gotten about i would say 30 of them but the seven 70 they're like you use the word fuck too much you know really even though you'd be effective for them

so what they do is they buy my courses i'm sure all the salespeople do yeah like for example what was it where was i in um in an event in new york and i i would say every major had salesmen everywhere not all of them have hired me but their salesmen they say yeah go use the stuff yeah But like, I, you know, I am, I admit that, you know, I am not for everyone.

I think there's a lot of companies whose values, like, I just, you know, I'm much more out there with the cursing and the. Yeah, but it's entertaining.
I know.

So the people love it, but sometimes it doesn't get by the, a lot of times like, I get hard and the HR kills it happens sometimes. And I get that, you know, and that's fine.
Well, you know what it is?

We're living in a very woke liberal world, right? Which is not my. cup of tea.

Don't even get me fucked up. Don't even get me.
I could talk about it. We could do a whole podcast about this.
Get me fucked up. Don't Don't started.
Believe me. Because I'm like the anti-woke police.

I fucking hate it. You and I both, okay? And so I think because of that, companies have to shy away from anything that would be controversial or non-PC, which is a bunch of nonsense.

You know, like, I'm not a fan of what's going on in the world right now. No, neither.
Yeah. It's like a whole opposite of empowered thinking and living.

Oh, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the antidote about victim mentality. I know, like,

exactly. Like, why this is not happening.
I am enough culture. Like, God forbid that you, like, it's, it's, I know, we're going to wrap it up.
Can we do this? I know he has to go.

Will you come back on this podcast? What time you want? No, I'm serious. We could do like another one, like, double, like, we can do, like, part two.
Yeah, I'm coming back in March. You are?

100% to show up. Like, for over a week.
Because this is like, I'm like, just love.

This is like

my cup of tea, like everything about you. And that sales piece.
I think I'm going to have to like clip that in some way because I think a lot of people will find that so interesting.

This is actionable stuff that people can act really, if you're an entrepreneur, I'm like talking to people, if you're an entrepreneur or someone who's like starting a business, like this is 101 what you need to do.

Because if you're not a good salesperson, good luck. Makes it really hard to do anything else.
That's like, that's like the foundation of

starting businesses. And that's the person at a company that is the most valuable.
If you don't know how to sell, you're fucked. Period.

Right. So, okay, so Jordan, where do people find you? The new book is called The Wolf of Investing.
Right. I highly recommend it.
It's like all his other books, so easy to digest, understand.

This information is really important too. So you can go to jordanbelfort.com, wolf of Wall Street on Instagram, on TikTok, on Twitter, and you know, you'll find me.
You'll find me. I'm everywhere.

He's everywhere. And if you don't know who this guy is, you're living under a rock.
You don't watch. You don't go out.
Yeah, you don't go out. And go watch the movie if you haven't, please.

I mean, you never know. People can be very young watching.
So, anyway, thank you so much. My pleasure.
This is awesome. Okay, bye.