Transcript of 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. Crush it.

I'm just going to go right into it. I don't have to do a whole... I'll 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, this is one of the podcasts I've been very excited for, and I said it off the camera. Me too. No, you didn't even know who I was. You probably didn't care.

No, you're an amazing podcast. I'm excited.

Well, I'm just saying that you're so fascinating to me. I swear, everything about you, you also look. You guys, the guy looks like he's Benjamin Button. He's aging backwards. How old are you?

I'm 61.

Okay, and no surgery, no plastic surgery, no nothing.

No air dye. I have a I have two gray hairs here and there, but I've had them for a few years. It doesn't really get worse. Well, that's not even bad for have gray hair, but I don't have really gray hair. Listen, I have my issues are more inside. I look good on the outside, I'm riding away in the inside. No, I got muscle. I played a lot of sports, tennis, golf. I wrestled when I was in college, and I did a lot of weight lifting. I have my shoulder. I have an artificial replacement here. I told 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. But listen, but- That's more wear and tear. That's wear and tear, yeah. I've done some... I over did it, especially in my 50s. I was playing tennis for two hours a day with one of the top players in the world, and I just destroyed my shoulders. But it was worth it. I think in the end, it was so much fun and kept me fit. But yeah, listen, you look amazing, too.

About 60, though.

I'm just looking for the founds in a middle age at this point.

I'm telling you, it's beyond with you. Whatever you're doing, I want to actually start doing.

I've done stem cells. That's the only thing I've done.

But stem cells, yeah, that's more for an injury.

No, I've done my face, too.

Oh, you've done it for your face? Yeah. What did it do?

It's subtle. It's not plastic. It's very different than plastic.

Tell me what they do.

They do this microneedling, and they put the stem cells It's supposed to enrich the collagen. But I think it works. I don't know. It's not like where you're like, Oh, my God, the next thought doesn't work. Maybe in six months, it's subtle, but I think it's refreshing. 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, I go to Costa Rica to do it. Really? Yeah, and I have stem cells in my neck and my hands. I do stem cells. That's great stem cells.

Did it hurt to get in your face? Was it just middle needle?

I was asleep. Listen, I was a drug addict. Yeah, I know. I got sober in '97, but that's a long time ago. I was really before that. I was just unbelievably in every... I never met a drug I didn't like, basically. Now my only high is I get to go to the doctor. I have to get surgery. Give me the anesthesia really slow. I want that volume in the arm. Give it to me a little... I want to remember. I don't want to forget. I got anesthesia, so it didn't hurt at all. But yeah, you get a couple of little It bumps for a day, then it goes away. Then you don't see results right away. But then over three to six months, it builds more collagen.

It works. I think it works. I want to see a before and after just to see if there's any... It's probably so, like you said, subtle. It's subtle. Yeah, it's not like- It's not going necessarily rip, pull your face up. Yeah, pull your face up. 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've seen it like 25 times. I'm not joking.

A lot of people love them. I mean, I love it. 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?

No, 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 because that was my life. Then it got delayed because of the writer strike. Over that six-year period, I rebuilt my life. I had a comeback story. Marty and Leo were 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. I think it made it a much better movie because suddenly it's like, Oh, my God, the guy came back from the whole thing.

He came back, he basically, yeah.

Versus being like a downer. It was like, oh, my God, and he came back from it.

Well, it was interesting, though, because it came out, what you said, I thought 2013, it came out.

Christmas, 2013.

2013. But that was your life so many years before, 30 years ago.

I was just telling this to someone. People say, Wow, were you just at Straton 10 years ago? No, it was literally 30 something years ago.

That is what's so crazy because if you're like... Okay, so you're- It was 35 years ago. Right. You're a whole different person.

Yeah, it's crazy, right?

You've had five different lives since then.

I have, for sure. I've definitely had at least three lives. Because it was a life up to Straton. Then Straton started and my life was literally insane, walls for 10 years. Ten years. Then I had this five-year period where I was indicted, waiting to go to jail. Worst five years of my life, 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 sitting there watching yourself die in slow motion. I still was living in a giant house. It's like your possession is being stripped away one by... It's a fucking worst. When I finally went to jail and I lost everything, it was literally I hit bottom. I mean, bottom, no more money left, separated from everything. My kids was the saddest part of all. They were 9 and 11 at the time. But once I got to jail, so who's my bunkmate? Tommy Cheung from Cheochin Cheung. 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, he was a great guy. He's amazing. I would tell him stories at night, and he was 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, 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. I'm like, Really? You think my life is crazy? I didn't think my life was crazy because it was mine. Your life happens to you, and you're like, I guess shit just happens. I didn't look at it that way. I knew my life was a bit absurd, but I didn't think it was like, Write a book? She's like, Just do it. I started writing. I'm very difficult at first. My writing was terrible. I taught myself to write in jail. I spent about a year teaching myself how to write by reading the Another book I love called Bonfire of the Vanities.

I remember that book, yeah.

Classic, but one of the best authors in the world. I used a book like a textbook. It was yellow on the way. I cracked Tom Wolf's strategy for writing it. That's how I learned to write in jail. Then it 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. Very quickly, long story short, an agent read it and he was like, Holy crap, and sold it to a random house, and that was that. That's how it started.

You actually wrote that book yourself?

I wrote all of it. Every word of every book I write. I just wrote that book. I write every word. I hate writing. By the way, I know you talk about biohead. When you also talk about success and empowerment, and not just monetary success, but succeeding in life. 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, you want to achieve it. It's like people are often going to do the hard work, but not so much the preparation. I did what I did. I wanted to write a book, but I didn't know how to write. I spent the year learning how to write. Without that skill, I could have wanted to tell my story, but I didn't own the skill. 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. People 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. Consistently, if you can train yourself To do this stuff you don't like doing. That's what I think I'm really good at. I hate writing, but I spent one year, 17 hours a day, myself writing this book. I wrote this book. It's on how to make money in the stockbook by the right way.

It's good information, actually. It's very, very- It's for everybody. It's like the layman's version, too, for any average person who... Because you get screwed so often because you don't know what you don't know. But we'll get into that after.

The advice there is amazing. But the point is I was able to make it accessible and funny because the information is out there, right? But if it's boring and dry, people don't read it. I think whatever you want to do in life, there's going to be a set of specialized skills and probably one skill that's most important of all in what you want to do. 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. 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? If someone doesn't like to do something, there's resistance. They don't want to do it.

They procrastinate. For me, I think this is an overarching strategy with this whole thing about the inner game, the mindset of success. Now, it has to do with your belief systems and things that happen when you're very, usually when you're younger. For me, the linchpin moment in my life of success was at When I was the age of 16, I had this big hit financially. I went out. Were you from the East Coast or West Coast?

Yeah, I'm from Canada.

Okay, Canada. There's a beach in New York called Jones Beach. 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 a dollar 35 an hour. It's 1978, right? I noticed everyone's bitching and moaning walking up to the concession stand. It's like 90 degrees, right? I'm saying, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to get a cooler, I'm going to load up a styrofoam cooler. I'm going to load up with ice cream and ice 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. Went down to it next morning to a distribute that sold Good Humor ice cream. I load up my cooler. The full cost of the cooler is 20 bucks. I go out and sell it out in one hour, made $120 in an hour in 1978. It was more than my parents were making my... Anyone, my parents, my neighbor were making. What happened is that the next day, I went back and made $500.

In the first summer, I made $26,000. Second summer, $50,000. I made big money. What I realized, so what happened in this moment, I linked up in my brain that if I worked my freaking ass off, I wanted money. I didn't grow up wealthy. I grew up lower middle class. We had everything we needed, but not what I wanted. I had this burning desire for whatever reason. But I realized in that moment that if I worked harder than everybody else and I'm willing to do what everyone else is not willing to do, I could make just so 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? I had these beliefs that were so strong. I did this job for five years, and then I I put myself through college and sold ICEs all through college and drove a nice car, had money in my pocket. That was the start of it, these beliefs. Then let's miss the middle of my life for a second. Let's go to jail now. I already have this rise and fall, but I'm that guy I'm still that kid that did that at 16.

I never got in trouble in my life before Spratten or after Spratten. There's one thing I did. I was like, I came from the best family ever. No one ever got in trouble. I had this belief about money and success and hard work. That if I do the right thing, I make money or I have success. Now, flash on, I'm in jail. I'm in the worst moment of my life. Everything is stripped away. You're with the so-called losers of society because everyone is lost at the game of life. You're locked up with no money, no power. You're just the lowest piece of pond scum on the tornable, right? I get this idea from Tommy Chan, who I love and credit for starting this whole thing of writing this book, right? I'm trying to write and I suck at it. I can't write. I'm reading This is Tom Wolf's book. I'm trying to improve my thing. 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 or a simile, write it down for me. That's how granular I was getting in trying to crack Tom Wolf's code, right?

Wow. It was months in the beginning, I'd say by month three, four, five of trying to write where I honestly felt I just can't go on doing this. It's not working. My life is 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 just the idea of trying to be empowered hour, we were all locked up. It was just too much. And in those moments, and the worst moments were at night when you're alone with your thoughts, you're in your bed, and you're lying there, all the mistakes you made, the people that you hurt, all the stuff you did wrong, it's terrible. 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. And that was for me. That was my why. 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, I guess that was about... I didn't want to hide from my mistakes. And I had this idea that I was going to 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, My children, I let them down. I'd hurt them. I'd embarrassed them. Not that they didn't love me anymore. 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.

That's amazing. Did they see you while you're in jail?

Yeah, they visited me in jail. Do you remember this with Tommy Cheung? It was hysterical. Yeah.

So you guys, you never missed a beat, really, with the kids?

Not with them. They're very fortunate. I moved out to California for that reason. They were in California at the time, right? But anyway, so that for me, I think that what people often miss is when you're trying to find your so-called why. It's a self-developmental chain. Know your why, know your why. But the truth is, if you really know your why at the deepest level, it is freaking powerful. 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. You have kids, right? Yeah. Okay. So let's say there's a fire in the house here, right? And you're alone in the house. You're just going to run through the flames. You're like, Oh, shit. That's hot. You're like, Fuck, that's hot. One of 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 didn't burn and run through. 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 seventh. 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. Exactly.

You know you're right. It's always about, so it's not- A higher purpose.

Exactly. People miss with this is when they try to say, I want to get rich. What's my why? I want a beautiful house on the hill. I want to retire young. It's not about you. That's more 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. Once you tap into that power, you become unstop. I believe that if you're willing to do the hard work, it can't just be that. There's always this, there's the inner game, which is mindset, and then there's the outer game, which is strategy. You have to be willing to do the hard work and learn the specialized strategies to execute. If you reconcile those two worlds, you become unstottled.

But you're also... First of all, I have so many questions for you. I'm going to be going all over the place there. But you're considered to be the best salesman in the world, right? Like best sales trainer in the world. What would you say to people who don't have kids or a big purpose, what would be the number one sales strategy or how to get people to be a better salesperson? What would you say? What do you teach people?

Well, I wrote a book. My last book was called Way of the Wolf, which was a massive best seller.

You have three books now. Four. Four?

The Wolf of Wall, she was in. It was Catching.

Oh, yeah. The Catching. Yeah. Catching was the lowest performing one because it got released the day after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

There was no difference. No one was buying anything. You couldn't get any talk shows. There was no podcast back then, right? Yeah. That one, it's so better later on, but it was a disaster. Yeah.

Well, it's not your fault, though.

Even this book, by the guy, hit the beam because it came out right after October seventh. Oh, it did? Yeah. I was on talk about it. It had to be 60 days later because- He couldn't talk about this exactly. No one was talking about investing. Every single major news. So it's time. But listen, you don't release a book. I don't care. It was a best seller, but it's not why you do it, It's not for money because it's so hard to write a book.

Trust me, I know.

I write them myself, and I hate writing.

How long does it take you to write this one?

More than a year.

Then, of course, 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? People just get taken advantage of by Wall Street and stupid investments in short-term training. This is really the truth about how you put your real- Right.

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 so important because- It's like financial health, right?

It is. It is financial health.

It is. 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 financially- I know.

We have to talk about that. You hate Jim Kramer. Not as a human being.

Not as a human, but you don't like- But I call him a barking ass clown because he basically is, and everyone knows it. Anyone in finance laughs at the fucking guy. I mean, he's funny as shit, by the way. But I mean, if that bloviating sense of humor is your cup of tea, not mine, but he's funny and he's smart. He knows his shit, Jim It's hard to be for him. But the advice he gives is the most toxic financial advice. To think that you could actually make money by trading out of this, going into this, timing the market, sell this, buy this, or this is going. Who the fuck? What does he know? Human beings are the They're the first stock pickers ever. There's five people in the world that actually can beat the S&P 500. And guess what? What? They're not taking your money. Exactly. They have hedge funds that are closed. They trade for themselves in their largest institutions.

Like Ray Dalio.

Those people like that. Historically, he's an amazing, brilliant guy. But what happens with the hedge fund and the mutual fund industry, but especially hedge funds, is that they're all like the Ray Dalios or Warren Buffet or a Tepper. Unbelievable, brilliant people that can beat the market. And then you have There's five dollars and 6,000 people that are the also rise that bathe in the afterglow of these people. When you look at their returns after you subtract their fees and performance bonuses, they don't beat the index. They're underperforming the index. The mutual fund industry is even worse. It's so simple to build yourself a massive retirement nest egg by investing the way I explain here, which is 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. 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 S&P has been compounding at 10%, 10. 5%, including dividends over the last 90 years. It's not always up, it goes Last year was a great year. I look at the genius. It was up 25% last year, but that's the relative luck. It could have been down 25%. It doesn't matter. But on average, it always trends upward over the long term. Then you engage in what's called long term compounding. There's certain things you want to do. I go through it step by step in the book. It's so simple. You don't need Wall Street. Wall Street is there. It's this fee machine complex to basically rob you blind. But Wall Street does create value. You need Wall Street. Wall Street is 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. 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 say basically you don't believe in even having a financial planner.

A financial planner can be good for things like tax planning, setting up certain type of retirement accounts, education accounts. 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 shit, 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. No one will argue that I'm right in this book. I'm right. It's the truth. I didn't invent these strategies. A guy named Jack Bogle is really responsible for creating the index fund. But in terms of 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 could actually have a stockbroker who's going to beat the essence.

It's ludicrous. It doesn't work. Every academic study, going back since the 1920s, has proved it. All I did was wrote it in a very funny So the book is funny. Yeah, it's funny. It is. 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. Trust me, if you read the book, you'll be back to me 30 years later. I'll still be alive, probably because I'm aging very slow.

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Well, so I was much worse than that. You were? Oh, With the drugs and the hookers, I'll admit it. No, I love it. Tell me. It's not my life today, right? But I was insane. The thing was, best for us, the Jona Hill character, right? Oh, my God. His real name is Danny. The best thing about I love Danny. The best thing, everyone needs a Danny in their life. Oh, my gosh. 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. I don't care. He's got a problem, right?

Exactly.

But he's a great guy.

Are you friends still?

Yeah, I don't see him that much because we don't live in the same area, but nothing but praises for him.

What is he doing now?

He's wealthy. I'm sure he's a great salesman, smart guy, came from a very successful family. His father was a famous doctor. His mother was an educator, very well-respected educator.

But they were like, upper class. They weren't like, rich. Exactly. They were upper class. Correct. Yeah. So he was able... Does he have money, money or He does. He does have money. What did he do after? I don't know much about him.

He was in 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. 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?

Underplayed to the insanity. There were some scenes that had to be cut out because the movie would have been X rated. Really?

Oh, my God. Like, what? Tell me.

The bachelor party scene.

Okay, tell me. Don't feel like you can't say it because I'm a girl. I want to know.

No, I know. There's some things I can't 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, Daniel Perez. Great, very smart lady. I'm sending her the first chapter, and it was really raunchy. I'm like, I wonder what she's going to think. She sends me back a note. Back then, it was before everything was digital. I sent her a chapter, she FedEx it back. I'd be like, No, it's check. Oh, my God, it's so great. You're such a bad boy. Keep going. I'm like, Wow, okay. I'm like, I'm emboldened by that. Next chapter I send her is like something else crazy happened, four hookers and this and I'm like, What's she going to think of that one? I said to that, she's like, Oh, my God, this is amazing. I showed it to Erwin Atman, and he was rolling on the floor. I'm like, Fuck. I'm like, All right, here we go. Next chapter was even worse in Switzerland. It's just pure and say, right? So I just keep getting worse and on and on. Finally, I get to the chapter where I have my bachelor party.

We flew 100 stratenites, they would call them, right out there. What do you call them? Stratenites. They were called stratenites. Oh, Stratnites. Oh, Stratnites. They were called stratnites. Oh, Stratnites. Oh, Stratnites. Equal number of hookers of all shapes and sizes. Like the movie, it's true, we rated them like stocks. We had blue-chip hookers, the best. We had mastack hookers. 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 them out. 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… There's the 22nd floor of the Mirage. It's like Sodom and the Gemora on the 22nd floor of Mirage. That was the hotel back then, right? Back then, yeah. It's just absolutely raging away. There's animals, there's cocaine out on bowls, quayloods everywhere, everyone's high, and there's hookers, sex going on out in the open, the whole nine yards, right? Just complete insanity. Anyway, I was downstairs with this guy named Elliot Levine, who was the CEO of Perry Ellis.

Oh, yeah.

This guy was the biggest degenerate of us. He was the guy that was the king of... He was brilliant. This guy was a brilliant businessman, as smart as they got during the day, and wild gambler, drugs, we were all crazy. He was like, literally, I was like, he was like, wow, he's amazing. He was like, the best of the bad. He was just unbelievable. People, right? Wow. So I'm with him with gambling, and we're all coked out of our minds and quailed out of our minds, 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 I cash out, get my chips. He leaves his there because he wants to keep gambling. We go upstairs, right? We walk in the door. And as we got there down, turn the corner to the hallway. There's two police watch the bar in the bachelor party, right? And as we walk down there like, Mr. Belfour, you don't want to go in there. I'm like, I have no choice. I must. It's beyond my control.

We go in there and it hits you. The whole thing is just complete insanity. Music blasting, hookers dancing this way and that way. People just engaged in sex. We get to the back of the room and 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 a line of guys, and one guy is having sex with her. We're watching this disgustingly via a laugh. Anyway, long story short, if something happens, I can't say it's just too disgusting, but something happens after the guy pulls out and you can't imagine what the woman looks like after that. It's really the most disgusting vagina. It's like the world's most polluted vagina, basically, ever to exist on planet Earth. It's that thing. Wow. You have to look. There's morbid curiosity takes over. You just want to take a look. You're like, Oh, my fucking God. This guy was number eight on the line of 20. Can you imagine this? I'm not this guy anymore. I'm married. I'm happily married.

I wouldn't have to clip that because people are good. This is what people like to hear, though. They like the morbidity. They like this stuff.

What can I say?

It's so interesting and fascinating. That's why people like to look at a bad accident or they don't have a life like that.

This was a fucking 10-year train wreck. But by the- The fact that you're not dead is unbelievable.

I know.

I look pretty good, considering.

That's what I'm saying. The drugs, nothing even aged you.

It's a testament to the human liver. 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, yeah.

You love the quayloops. Quayloops and cocaine, yeah, were the big ones. A lot of Xanex and clonopin and morphine because it was cool and awesome. I just did massive quines of drugs. I never met a drug I didn't like. The LSD, not much. But anyway, this story- The story, the party. Anyway, so we were all looking and Elliot is next to me, the brand of us all. He goes and grabs a bottle of champagne, shakes it up, and then something happens. Something so disgustingly wild that it tore through the fabric of space time. All of a sudden, everyone just stopped. Everyone just froze. You're looking at this thing, you're like, I can't believe it. Then it's like he's gargling anyway. But then I'm like, I have to go. I can't watch this. It's just too disgusting. What was it? I can't say it, but it had to do with a champagne bottle and drinking it and the whole thing, vagina champagne.

Yes, I understand. I get it.

I don't want to say it because it's just too gross. He drinks and goggles and everyone's frozen in horror. Like frozen in horror. Then I'm like, Fuck, I got to go. I walk out and I leave the party and I go downstairs, take four or five Xanax and go to sleep because I'm just disgusted by the whole thing. Next morning, I wake I had $2 million, a million eight, and the money I brought down, like a million seven, a million plus I have $1,700. I put it in the safe. I wake up next morning, Elliot shaking me awake. He's like, We got to get out of here. This place is too depraved. I'm like, You're telling me it's too good. You're He's like, Let's go. He's like, All right, let's go. He's like, We got to go. The jet's where? The jet's where. All right, we're going to go. I go to the safe, my money's gone. Not only did he lose his 2. 5, he took my 1. 7. He ended up losing $40 million gambling this guy. It was like an unbelievable in Saturday. Anyway, I write this- Over 40 million that trip.

He lost at 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 Jordash jeans. Brilliant garmento, this guy. No one He was brilliant, but so self-destructive, really, but unbelievably smart and talented, 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 are with us, protecting us. The whole thing is just like, and I write the whole thing. It's like 22 pages, an excruciating detail of everything that happened. All right? Down to Ellie 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 does she to say about that, right? And then maybe five to four years later, I get back and back with that answer, and I open up and she's on the front page. I just don't think other human beings will understand.

And then the only thing I look at is an X here, an X there and the whole thing. So in my first book, The Wolf of Wall Street, right? Yeah. There's this part where I describe the back. In detail, I describe this whole story. We up the money because it's a true story. It's vetted.

And nothing is fabricated.

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 walked to the back of the room, okay? And it says, I open the door and there's the bachelor party. And it was so depraved, I had to walk out. There's the whole thing put out of the thing. You get it? I went downstairs. She's like, Wow. If you read it fast, you're like, Oh, it was depraved. But the whole thing was described. Wow.

It wasn't in there.

It wasn't in the book. Then when Marty, the movie, I'm like, Marty, you want me to... He goes, Yeah, I want to see this pages. So he saw the pages. I think the first version of that was they had to cut because it would have gotten NC 17. Get out. They said for that little still shot that said something happened with a guy screwing a book.

It was still pretty like for a movie, but it was still, it could have been. It was like, watch. It's like the smurfs compared to what really happened.

The problem with the whole why these things happen, these insane things, is that we were like action junkies. It's almost like, what's next? It's like you keep looking for a higher and higher cliff to dive off of in a shallow and shallower pool to land in. Because the first thing we did that we thought was insane, we shaved someone's head to $10,000. We're like, Oh, my God, it was great. But then three months later, head shaving is $50. It doesn't have the same impact. So let's shave a girl's head this time.

Because you got to always up the ante, right? 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? Tell me how it worked. What was the process?

This is where I would say the hard work of writing. I spent a year teaching myself to write. What really happened is I came up with a style of writing where I took what was non-fiction and wrote it like fiction. My book reads like a novel, but it's true. 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 ghost writer. Or if they write themselves, they didn't spend the amount of time. I taught myself to write as if I was a novelist, because Tom was a novelist. He started off as non-fiction. And by the way, that's the beauty of Bonfire is he wrote non-fiction, but it was almost like it was... He wrote fiction. It was fiction, it was fiction Bonfire, but he wrote it like non-fiction. Like he did so much research into stuff. So it was so believable. I did the opposite using his style. I wrote what was non-fiction, and it read fiction. I spent so much time, and I did do a very good job writing that book. Everyone loves that book. When Leo read the book, he was like, Holy shit.

Was it a massive seller before you got the movie deal? Yeah. Before you even got the movie deal?

Yeah. Well, no, it wasn't out before the movie.

That's what I'm saying. I thought you got the book after the- Let me explain. Let me give it the chronological.

Leo read the book before it was a manuscript. It was just a It was an edited. The editing was done. The original version was 1,500 pages, and my editor and I whittled it down to 5: 38, something like that. A lot of stuff got cut. I overwrote the book. When that was a manuscript, my producer, a woman named Alexander Milchon, one of the sharpest ladies I know, brilliant producer in Hollywood. She slipped that manuscript to Leo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Mark Wallberg. Ultimately, and Wallberg loved it, too. He wasn't quite his biggest star yet. Now, he's massive, right? And he was done great, too. I love Mark Warburg. But at the time, it came down to a... 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 over a weekend, the bidding went up and up and up. Each side said, Whatever they pay you, we'll pay you 10% more. So the price of the sale kept going up and up. And finally, Leo calls and goes, I have Martin Scorsese attached.

He's going to direct. Marty read the book, loves it, too. He'll direct. I was like, and by the truth is, I always loved Leo. I thought Leo was the perfect person. I love Brad Pitt, too, but Leo was- You did it perfect. I sold it to Warner Brothers with Leo on behalf of Leo and Marty. 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 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 because it was slated to come out in September, and now we're in June. Everyone loves the script. I got a call from Leo's manager, Rick Yohan, saying, Dude, we're green light in the movie. We're good to go. We're looking for South State. I'm like, What? It never happens. When someone options a movie, it's a very slim chance it ever gets made. It usually doesn't get made. Never. It goes on forever.

But Leo loved the role and why he loved it. The whole thing worked out. Then the writer's strike hits, the 2007 writer's strike. The script is not ready. They all put their pen down. Leo and Marty go off and do Shutter Island because it was ready. The window closed. One thing about Marty, who is one of the most talented directors in the world. He was amazing. But he moved slowly. When he's with a picture, he's with it for years. It's very slow. Now it became the brutal wait for Marty to be ready again. Leo's easy because he does a movie, he's next, next. We're trying to get it done, and the stars could not get aligned, and on and on it goes. Then 2008, the financial crisis hits, right? I can't sell another book because no one's buying anything. I'm completely broke again. I'm freaking out. With my then-wife, my I'm calm and low, but she's like, My wife. I'm like, I hate writing, and I hate writing so much. I can't even sell anything right now. I was working on another book, but no one would buy it because no one had money, right?

She's like, What do you want to do? I said, Maybe I should go and try to be a speaker. I'm like, Let's do that. I remember this moment, I called my book agent. His name was Joel, and I said, Joel, listen, 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. You got to wait till the movie gets made. Then they'll come for you. I'm like, What did you say? He's like, Wait for the movie? I'm like, I'm not fucking wait. I got so... I liked the guy, but 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. I slammed the phone down. I said, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to do this, right? I went out and I started with giving free speeches at colleges. My first speech was free. Some girl was a big fan. I want to bring you to my college. I went for free. I had a few free speeches. When I did the first free speech, the kids were wild.

Anne was like, Holy Christ. It's like something that comes naturally to me. They went crazy. Then the first person that booked me was a $5,000 event for some entrepreneurs thing. Never even fucking paid me. I flew to New York. They put me in a tiny little room the size of a fucking railroad car. I went through shit. I was just getting started. Then I was just talking about the inner game of success. I wasn't even teaching sales yet because I had created so much mayhem with my last time I taught sales. I was like, I don't want to talk about sales anymore. Because I had my own negative answers about it. But then something happened. I was at some event in Australia. I had a big following from the book Around the World. I did a tour in Australia and I met a guy there. He goes, I want to take you to It was only the inner game of success. No sales or business. Just mindset. But it was really compelling. There goes, Dude, I got to bring you people who are going to love this stuff in England. I went to his company.

It flew me to England. I went to his company, England, and he had a phone room, like How many people on the phone because he was doing some stuff with trading. They were selling trading programs. I listened to his salesman. Like, Dude, your people suck. I'm like, he goes, I know they're the fucking worst. He goes, That closing rate is just horrific. I said, If you want, I'm happy to train them for you. I'll teach them the straight line. He goes, What's that? I said, I'll show you the straight line. He calls all his people into a room. The name of the company was called Knowledge. The video is still around. Knowledge to Action. Now, at the time, I had my first shoulder surgery already. I think for the second one, I was actually in a sling from me having my rotator cup for a bit. But anyway, he calls people in, and they had this big… They had this script that sales manager wrote this fucking script that was like a big piece of oak tag in a circle. It was like, It was a toxic piece of shit. It was like the opposite of the straight line.

It was the circular bullshit. I took a blow torch and lit it on fire in front of 20 people. I said, Guys, this is the biggest salesman. Just like, you're going to see. I start teaching the straight line system, which is what I invented to teach all these... The guy who was a seminar promoter was like, Holy... When I was done, he's like, Why the fuck are you talking about the inner game of success? Because this is the most... I've never heard... This There's nothing fresh in the world of stuff. Everyone's saying the same shit. He got in. No one's ever said this before. This is like, Where is this? I said, Well, this is what I taught. He goes, Dude, you're going to make billion dollars on this thing. You're like, Fuck that. I was like, Really? Still, I was like, I don't know if you want to teach sales. He's like, Buddy. I went back three days, and what happened is he was closing about 20 sales a month from his room. The next month, they close 328 sales. Really? Yeah. Massive fucking success. Blew up his biz, right? What happened was I still didn't want to teach it because I was like, Oh, last time I taught it, people lost money.

It was terrible. I really wanted to just give value, and I didn't want to teach something I thought would hurt people because I made some huge mistakes, there's no doubt. Now, in hindsight, I can feel great. I've redeemed my life and the whole thing. But I still at the time was very new and I felt terrible. People lost money. I wasn't happy about that. I wanted to come back and rebuild my reputation. I said, I'm never going to do anything again. If I I want to charge $1,000. I want 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. The straight line is really freaking powerful.

What is it? What is the straight line system?

It's an incredibly powerful system of sales and persuasion. I sell courses now, but 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. It's not how I make my money. 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 Yeah, I wanted to watch it. People don't want to pay will pay and they can go buy it. It's amazing.

The courses- Give me the basics of it, of how it would work.

What it is, really, is that if you ask the average person, a salesman that's not trained, But they might be a decent salesperson, right? What do you do when you sell? What's actually happening? If I ask you, you're probably a very good salesperson. You're a good communicator. If I ask you, what do you do when you sell? What would you say?

Are you asking me?

Yeah, what would you do? What is selling to you? What do you do? What Which makes you a good salesperson?

I don't know if I am. 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. Is 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.

I think. You can match energy really well, right? 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 really happens, what sales really is at the highest level, it's the transference of emotion. The emotion you're transferring is certainty. For example, if you're going to be selling me whatever it is, this is- Slate. Slate.

Which is, by the way, amazing.

Slate, right? Okay, right. It's Slate, right? Okay, how sure are you? How sure are you this is amazing?

Well, I love the taste. I'm very sure. I'm incredibly sure. A hundred % sure.

So 1 to 10, where are you? One to 10. Ten. Okay, right. Where am I?

You're at zero right now. Really? No. One, two, three.

Who fucking knows? 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 have a trust in you. 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 to sell to, the moment they know what the product is, their brain will take everything they've heard, seen, experienced, their prejudices, good, bad, and land somewhere on this scale of certainty. But where are you? You're at 10. Why? Because you know you You know how awesome it is. 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? If I'm in a three or four, am I buying this stuff? No. If I'm at a nine or 10, A good chance, right?

What I would do, and what I would naturally do is because it's the truth, and that's why I can only really sell things that way. 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. If you're into health or fitness or wellness, you would rather have this. A hundred %. That's like a bunch of junk.

Totally, right. Okay, so those are all features, right? Okay, yeah. Then the benefit is going to be how it made me feel. But the point is, is that if you're the salesperson, whatever you're selling, the salesperson needs to enter at this level of absolute certainty, right? 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. Let's say you do that. Okay. Let's say you do that. When you're done, give me the features and benefits and you're going to go to a great job. But I'm like, Wow, this shit's really good. I'm like, Wow, this stuff is really good. It's a 10. Question, will I buy? Will I buy?

Yeah.

The answer is not yes, and the answer is not no. The answer is maybe.

I said, Yeah, I want to hear what you're going to say.

Why is it maybe? Because what if in the process of you making me certain, you did it in a way that maybe not trust you or not like you? What if the way you talk to me, it offended me? So you're convinced me it's great. I'm like, 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 I have to trust the salesperson or the person who's presenting them with the product. Let's just say you did that well. Would I buy now? The answer still is maybe I would, 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. Sometimes that could 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.

Then the goal is to get them to that 10, 10, 10 in a single moment in time. Then you ask them to purchase. Now, there's more to it than that because there are all these rules of persuasion, for example. 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? Well, there's another side to this that has to do with how you're initially perceived. Then we get back to how I invented this straight line, which was back at Straton when I had this situation where I was closing at a very high level, and so was Danny. We were killing it. I invented a new... I I found a niche in the stock market, an untapped niche. What happened was I was closing at 50%, Danny was in the 40s, 40%, right? My 12 kids who had the average IQ of Forrest Gump on three hits of acid, not the sharpest tools of the shed, no Ivy League diplomas. They were basically no members of the lucky sperm club. They were 18 to 20-year-old kids that barely clawed away in a 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? Those are my people, right? And I already taught them a system of how to close average moms and pops on penny stocks, $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. We were all multimillionaires, 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? 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. Dennis is in the 40s. They're at zero. For a month, I couldn't figure it out. I was already considered to be an amazing sales trainer at this point. But something was missing. Anyway, long story short, I stumbled on it after a month of just banging my head against the wall, reading every book about sales I tried everything.

Nothing worked. Nothing could get these kids to close. Finally, one night, I was giving a marathon, a five-hour training session at night to my 12 guys. I looked at them and then, Guys, I don't get it. I'm doing it. Danny's doing it. I know you can do it, too. What's the problem? They started yelling, There's too many objections. One guy goes, There's a thousand objections. So I was like, 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. So it was like, There's a thousand objections. I said, great. I'll tell you what. And I whiteboarded on me. Let's write all a thousand objections down. I said, come on, let's call them out. It's a long story. We're going to keep going.

No, this is fascinating. So is it the takeaway close you do?

No, nothing about that. Nothing about that.

Okay, so what do you guys go on?

Completely different. I said, Guys, what is that? Call out. Someone goes, They want to call back. I said, Great. What else? They want to think about it. I wrote that down. What else? They want to call their wife. What else? Great. Man, tell me yet. They paused. I'm like, What else? Silence. My guy It's four objections. There's 996 to go. Let's fucking go. On and on, they went on and on. They're calling it 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 loopy. It's a ground on. It's a bullshit. I want to speak to Santa. It's a fucking tooth fairy. And in that moment, I got so pissed off. 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. They're like, What? What do you mean every sale is the same? 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. I draw a straight line across the board for the very first time. I put a big fix 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 leave it out and you go and see this on videos, it's all over YouTube, right? Then I said, Now, guys, when you were selling penny stocks and it was easier, every once in a while, you get an easy lay down there. That doesn't happen anymore. What's happening is this, and I realized something, it hit me.

They were saying they kept getting cut off. The rich people were assholes. They couldn't even get their pitches off. 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. It just hit me. It was so profound. I'm like, Wait a second. I'm not having trouble getting my pitch off. People listen to me. I'm like, and then it hit me. I said, Guys, when you're speaking to smart people, when you're speaking to... Everyone's smart now. We all got smart phones, right? When you're speaking to people who are smart and educated, you have four seconds to establish three crucial things. I'll tell you what they are. Number one, you must be perceived as being sharp as a tack. Number two, enthusiastic as hell. 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.

Here's what happens. If you're perceived the right way, sharp, on the ball, enthusiastic, and most of the boy, 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. When the doctor says to you, so how long has it been? You don't say, well, how long has her been in the doctor? You answer their questions honestly and forthrightedly. We have been conditioned with coaches, two years. If there's adults that you need advice on taxes, you hire an accountant. You want to get in trouble, you hire a lawyer. We seek out experts to help us solve our problems. When we're in the presence of an expert, what do we do? We defer, we let them control the flow of the encounter. But when you're in the presence of someone you believe is a novice, what do you do? You try to take control. What was happening is I was a natural born closer, as was Danny.

I taught Danny something about sales, but he took to it like a fish to water. 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 sharp. This guy is an expert. 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. What could you say to someone in four seconds? I'm strong. I'm an expert. I'm an enthusi... I'm an expert. You sound like an asshole, right? You do it through unconscious communication. Tonality, body language. Just certain tonalities you use in person body language. What happens is people, you fall into this, you hit this box in their mind, that this is an expert. 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. Let's say, intuitively, I knew 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 natural, born closer. I was doing all of these things that were perfection in sales. I closed anyone I ever went up against when I was very young, even. Naturally, I just knew what to say. There are other people around the world that are natural, born closer, but most people aren't.

Right. So how do you teach it?

Well, what happens is, but with the straight line does is this visual, and you see it play, you're like, Oh, my God. 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 boy, 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. If you know what things have to line up, you can then line them up the same way. That's what I was doing. When I taught this, and it's much more of it, I got it done for three hours in this. I teach this around the world. I teach this three days at a time. But the point is that when someone that is in which most people, 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.

You could take someone that's terrible at sales and make them good. Not like me. You make them good. It's not going to hold them back. You take someone who's good and make them amazing. Take someone who's amazing, they'll be one of the top closest in the world. So it works for everybody in every industry, and it's easy to learn. I think what really- Did the 12 people learn that? They hadn't closed a sale in 30 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 Straton became the largest firm in the country selling five dollars. We had 3,000 people. The success of Straton was based on the straight line. It was the straight line that fueled Straton, not the stocks. The problem was that the mistake I made was I didn't understand enough about creating the better company. My ability to sell, I'll view my ability to create the right stocks. That was the problem. Then, of course, it doesn't help when you're doing six quailage a day and snorning cocaine and partying six nights a week in the city.

It became like what it was. It was like the most fun place. It was before people had smartphones. Yeah, of course. You do what the fuck you want. Now you're being deep shit, right?

Of course.

But it was a different time, different social rules. 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. I love it. Like all things. People would walk in there. They walk in the board and they're like, What the fuck? It's like animals running around, not hooks, but your girls and me.

I can't even imagine. Okay, so by the way, we got off it. I know. Although that was very fascinating, and I actually want to know how you would sell that. I'm curious. How would you get someone to attend?

What?

If you were selling Slate or Farisage or whatever, what would...

What I would do, I'll tell you, because if you only I was supposed 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, a CEO. It was actually staged, though. It was staged by a psychology company that was trying to understand the straight line and break into psychological components. They spent a lot of money, paid me a lot of money to do this. This was in 2010. What they did is they gave me what are called critical incident scenarios. It's where they hand It was like a dossier. They say, Okay, here's a fur coat company. They give you like this big, all things. These are your customers. Go prepare, and then we're going to film you. How would you sell it? I did it for a few things, fur coat company, automobile. Then they did the same with this financial services package. They gave me this big dossier. It was about a milk company, dairy company that was big in Australia, and they wanted to expand it to China, and they were looking for better banking relationships and so forth, blah, blah, blah.

They said, Okay, you got 15 minutes to prepare. Then we're going to call them this is an actor who's a CEO, and we want you to close them. The cameras, everyone, light just like this, lights, cameras. We want to tape it and see how you go about doing it. I'm like, All right, great. They hand me the dossier and start reading through it. I'm writing some shit down. I'm looking for the whole thing to find the facts about the company. They come in 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, looking at my stuff, planning it out. Thirty minutes later, are you ready? I'm like, Just give me a little more time. All right, no problem. Thirty Three minutes more. Ready? No, just give me 15 minutes. Well, finally, after an hour and 45 minutes, I said, Okay, I'm coming in, right? Yeah. The psychologist sit down in the corners, the cameras are rolling, the guy comes in, he's the CEO. He's playing the role. He's really talented. I mean, he was fucking really good.

He acted like the CEO and knew everything about the company. We start getting into this sales on camera. I'm using the straight line at a very high level. I'm using all the things I know how to do. I'm moving them down straight line, so to speak. Then I find it's really going well. I asked him to buy and he wants to think about it. 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 the straight line. I asked for the order again and he's close and he's like, No, let me just speak to my part in the first. Then I do another loop again and I pull out one of my most powerful language patterns, and I guide him into this perfect close. It's impossible for him to say He's like, No, I can't do it. I'm like, All right, double secret probation. I do one more loop back again. I raise this, it's called this pain threshold, another impeccable wrap I give him. I asked 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. He puts his head back. He starts cracking up. The psychologist pop up. Everyone's like, What the hell just happened? I'm like, What happened? They're like, We paid him to say no. He wasn't allowed to say yes.

Are you serious?

Yeah. 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. 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 on 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 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 know what I would do? I'd say, Give me all the fucking... I would come up with the most perfect way. Why? Because I know I have to line the three-tenths. I need three or four ways to sell you on this product, logically and emotionally. I want no features. I could wing it and do a decent job because 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 I had it basically meant... I wouldn't have a script for it, but I want to know. In my own mind, I know exactly where the sales is going to go before. I would take immediate control by coming on like an expert you be- Because you were an expert by that point. Also, 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, so they don't want to like an expert. 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 fucking experts, and they sound like novices. So it's not really what you are, it's what you sound like. Now, that might sound unethical. No, it's so true. Here's what I do. 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, 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 while maybe they'll close a bit lower. But anybody with practice and hard work can become an expert and you could learn to sound on by using certain tonalities.

That's great, though. I agree with that because 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 saying to this thing to this guy about his business he didn't We didn't read the thing. I read the fucking- He didn't read the thing. I read every fucking statistic. I had big things about the difference in the current space of China to the one and fucking swaps. He was like, he's always rolling around. He didn't know what to do. It was so much that he felt like if he said no, he'd be an idiot. That's what he said. He was like, Phil, get in here. I said no.

Is this in this straight line?

It's on YouTube. I'm going to watch it now. Jordan Belfort selling live. At the end, everyone, you just see everyone just didn't understand. It got cut off and they all stood up at the end, but they were laughing. I didn't know why they were laughing, right? Because the guy was paying him to say no.

Wow. I want to take a quick break from this episode to thank our sponsor, Therisage. Their Tri-Light Panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go, and I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where, honestly, I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go-to. Plus, it also has amazing anti-aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for. I personally use Therassage Trialight everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Effective. Head over to therasage. Com right now and use code B BOLD for 15% off. This code will work site-wide. Again, head over to therassage, T-H-H-L-I-T-L-I. Com H-E-R-A-S-A-G-E. Com, and use code B BOLD for 15% off any of their products. So When you were doing this. You're starting the whole speaking circuit before the movie was even out.

Yeah, so this is the best part of all.

You were getting better at it.

I built this huge business.

How much was your fee to even go speak?

By the time before the movie came out, I was getting over $100,000.

You were a super successful speaker.

Yes, the same people were promoting Tony were promoting me around the world, right? It wasn't nearly like it is today, obviously. But back then, I was doing really, really well. So what happened was there was this four-year gap.

Wait, the movie came on in 2013.

And they bought it in 2007. So when the first script was written, it ended with me going to jail. That was the end of the movie. There was no, sell me this pen. And there was no commercials with the straight line. Remember the straight line? That didn't exist because I didn't teach the straight line on TV before. But what happened was when four years passed, Leo comes to my house now. When he came to my house the first time, I was living in a tiny little house, okay? Like a little tiny house. I had an apartment. It was by 2000 a month, right? Then four years later, he goes, I'm coming over. Let's celebrate. He comes over. 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 do these seminars. I teach skills. Show me. I put the video up of... You know Frank Kern, if that name means that. He was an old internet market back in. Very popular many years ago. I had this Frank Curren that I did. Everyone loved this tape. It was me on stage teaching the straight line. I show Leo, he's like, Oh, my God. Wait till Marty sees this. He goes, We're going to change the whole movie. He goes, This is going to be a comeback story. I can't. You just gave me the You gave me the biggest gift. This is going to be 10 times better movie now because it's going to be like… 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 10 times as much... Marty loved the sales stuff because they said so much about what really happened. A hundred %. It had to cut up because it was just too long.

But what happened was it created, A, those scenes where I come back where I'm giving seminars. I love that part. Which is funny, right? They get arrested. That was fiction-wise. I wasn't teaching the straight line, but they loved it so much. They put it in there, my new life in the Old. Then they end the movie where I go to jail and ends up with me selling this pen, which is this iconic seen at the end. 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.

That is so amazing. When did they actually start filming the movie?

2012.

Oh, and they turned it around that fast?

Very fast.

Okay, then how much did you sell the script for?

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

Oh, just option.

Okay. Then when the script was bought, about a million one more.

Then did you get any back end of the movie?

No.

Are you serious?

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... No one thought probably how that movie is literally one of the most popular movies of all time.

Yeah, it's amazing. 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 high school. I have fans of all ages up to your mother would love the movie. I know.

That's the thing. Women love it, men love it, kids love it. My sister was telling me her little nephew- It's insane.

I know. But here's the interesting thing, though. In 2010, as a kid, let's say he's 16 years old, right? He's in high school. He's probably a junior or something, right? Maybe he's a freshman or a sophomore. He watches the movie. He loves it. He sees it three times. He sees it five more times in college. He gets out. He goes to 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 in this company. So all these kids, A, that will watch them. They were nice. They're all hardening me now.

I was going to just... You know what I was thinking?

They age up. To teach them the straight line, and I teach this very ethical version that really empowers people, makes sure they sell ethically. So I teach this ethical version. My business gets bigger every year because kids aging up.

No, I swear. I was just thinking, I want my son Dylan, who's 11, to take a picture with you because he doesn't know you now. But in a year, he's going to watch your movie, in a couple of years, maybe now.

Listen, I got to tell you, you have no idea. Sometimes I'm shocked. I used to live in the Strand. I live in Miami now, but I used to live in the Strand in Manhattan Beach. On July fourth, I'm with my wife and we're playing back. I'm in our house, we're on the Strand, so people are walking by. We're playing back. We're just like, maybe five feet off the strand in our little just one's chairs. I'm like, Excuse me. 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, a movie, too. I'm like, What the fuck?

See? Do you get recognized all the time? He was everywhere.

Like, I came like, TSA. It's funny, right? If I go to an airport, I can't TSA every... Customs.

Do people go crazy for you?

Yeah, people are very... The people could not be nice. I've never refused a picture with one person that has ever asked me-Do people freak out?

People are like, Why are you here?

I'm like, I have to be somewhere.

That's 100%.

Last night, I went out with a friend of mine to a club here, and it was a floor or something. I don't go to clubs, but he joyfully rent that late. There's one girl, she's like, Who Oh, my God. I'm like, Well, I'm here. I have to be somewhere. You have to be somewhere. Why are you? What are you doing here? Oh, my God! I just told them I'm here.

I would think even more than a celebrity because it's like they saw your life story. It was real, exactly. Yeah, it's different. They saw your life story and it was so compelling. I know. It's just I think that's why I was how I am, so excited. But then, okay, so then a movie gets made. Then you said that you can't talk about all of it, but you sell it, you make a million one from it.

Not at all about I ended up having to sue them because the people that made the movie- I was going to say the Malaysian people, the Goldman Sachs guys, were the financial- That's why for the last four years, I've been in litigation with them to get some rights back, but we're going to settle.

But that's the part that I need to ask you about. Basically, who found them as the financiers for the movie? To tell them who they are, the guy- It's the guy Jolo. They're in the news right now. Jolo.

This guy, Reza Aziz.

There's a major Netflix movie on them right now. Yes.

It's called Man on the Run. Yeah, Man on the Run. Billion Dollar Whale was them, too. It was the Prime Minister of Malaysia's stepson. He was the founder of Raqqana. They came in with gang money. They were telling everyone it was oil. It was Saudi oil money, so no one knew. At the time, no one really knew. I met with them. I met with the CEO. I met with the production people.

You did or did Marty do it?

No, we did. I did. Leo did. We had big lunch.

You were involved with the production of the movie?

No, just to buy the movie.

No, that's what I mean. You were involved. After you sold it to Warner Brothers as an option and all the other stuff.

No, it just sat there for like forever. When they finally got, when they finally... When I had this meeting with the Malaysiaians, right?

Right. But wait, hold on. Let's go back a second. So then you still the option, then you get the million once the movie's now green-lit being made.

That's from the Malaysiaians.

Okay, go ahead. I thought what happened is Warner Brothers then gave you some money and then they would take care of it.

No. Option expired. I got the movie back. So I got 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 Malaysiaians, and at the time, no one knew they were crooks. No. 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 the old scale of raising money and spending. It happens on venture capital. You raise a billion, because they were spending money like crazy. But you didn't know it was stolen money. You thought it was just like you were milking the hour.

It was insane. They had so much money.

I sold them. The script thinking was legit. Everyone thought they were legit. Everyone did. Then right around the time the movie came out, rumbling started happening. The money may have been diverted from at first. I was like, Whatever. It was upsetting. But over time, it built and built. Eventually, they had to pay $60 million. They disappeared. One of them got invited. The CEO of got invited in Malaysia. Jolo went on the run. The whole thing, right?

Did he get a facelift to change his face, too?

That's what I heard. You could be Jolo, by the way. Yeah, I could be.

You could be.

But I'm not that I know him. He's never your Jolo. You're not Jolo, are you?

Uh-oh.

We caught you. Anyway, I think he's in China. But that's the word. Oh, really? Yeah. So what happened was the rights got frozen. We should have made a TV series and done all the stuff. That's why I got into litigation with them to try to get the rights back. I don't want to talk about it anymore about that. I understand. But it's still ongoing. I understand. But so, yeah. Those guys are... I think one guy, CEO of Reggie Granate is like, I think he didn't go to jail, but like, whatever. He paid some money and that's that. But his The mother, the prime minister, is still in jail. He got sent to 12 years. I think yesterday, he reduced it to six. He was getting out soon in a year. Jolo never found me. Still away with the money in China somewhere.

Wow, that is so crazy. Who distributed the movie, though, wasn't it?

Domestically, 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- I do.

I speak to Leo. Yeah.

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 day with the red. He was like, I had to freeze to death and fucking got it at the Academy Award. I should have got it for the Wolf of Wall.

100%. When that movie 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. It's a huge hit.

Right off the bat.

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 Margot Robbie. Who picked her?

Marty. I only picked Leo, and I picked Leo and Marty, and then everything else was after that.

So who was it between? Was it anyone between her?

Margot. 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 sweetest.

She's the sweetest.

She's the nicest person.

Everyone says that.

Ever fucking meet.

Seriously. Can you believe that you had the biggest of the biggest? You had Martin Scorsese doing your movie, Leo DiCaprio. You didn't have B-listers on this thing.

But I I'll go back to one thing about that. Some, of course, it's lucky and some of it, but it goes back to it was the hard work. It was the skill, the time I put in to learn how to write, which 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 know how 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. I served up to Leo on a Silver Plata. Totally. Then he saw it, and then, of course, 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.

Leo believed in this so much. He really gets the credit for what... Scorsese came in. He was there in the beginning, and then was like, he was less Involved or interested. Well, yeah, he always liked it, but it was like he had his passion project, which was, I think, what was that movie he made with the priests going in, whatever. It was a silence. He was desperate to make this movie silenced. That was his passion project. He 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 were in Cannfield Festival. We were on a boat together and we were having dinner. He sitting next to me at dinner. He goes, You know what? I'm going to 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. That made me happy to hear that. I think also it reflects in the movie, how happy he was, and he was like this light. He just had this tone to it.

It was light.

It was fun. So many of his movies, I know he's phenomenal and a great actor. They're a darker, right? Yeah, not even not. They drag a little bit. This one, it hooks you the second it starts, and you don't let go until the end. It is such a good movie in terms of from the beginning to the end, the whole thing.

Listen, the script was amazing, but a lot can go wrong. A lot can go wrong. He just took that script and we polished it. I polished every word. Terry wrote an amazing script, but 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 I made sure every word was authentic, and Leo did, too. Leo painstaking every fucking word. Really? Oh, my God. Leo, I spent a year with him. He was so intense in getting this right. So he's talented, of course, but he works his ass off.

That's what I was going to say. It sounds like it.

No, he's preparing for this thing. It was unbelievable.

How come they always work together, those two? I feel like they're like a pair.

Well, They have. For example, I think there's others pairs, but they're one of the top, De Niro and Scorsese as well. But what is for an actor like Leo? Is a bad director could fuck up a movie? I mean, you could be the greatest actor in the world if it's a bad director. For Leo, it's almost an insurance policy. To have somebody- So Leo will only work with really Tarantino. He's very careful, Leo, with who he works with, right? Because he is talented as he is, the wrong director could fuck up the movie, right? Yeah. I think the same thing goes for a director is like, they're great, but if the actress can't bring it to the table. Yeah, you're screwed. So it's a comfort. So I think that's why.

Has any of this... It's funny. I feel like what happened with jail and everything else, it doesn't seem like it affected you and it would most of other... You bounce back, I think, incredibly well and fast beyond anybody else. Again, why? How did that happen?

It affected me, but in a positive way. I think what happens, it was so important for me to go to jail. It was so important because... Here's people saying, How did you turn your life around?

Also, I feel like, not that we forget, but it doesn't affect your reputation. That's not the first thing that I think of.

Listen, there's always some people who want to be assholes and let them have their good for them. They're entitled to 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 the truth. I didn't have to change into becoming a good person. From becoming a bad person. If you're leaving good in bad people or bad people doing good things. But what happened was I had to change back into the person I was originally. I was originally a really good kid. I had never gotten in trouble. It 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, famous surgeons. Everyone, no one got in trouble in my family.

Also, you were just ambitious. I feel like you didn't want to give your-It was ambitious that went off the walls, right? Right. But that can happen.

Ambition turned into greed, okay? With massive drug abuse attached to it, right? But I don't blame the drugs. All the drugs that was helping me quiet the critics. After I was doing shit that I should have been doing because drugs make you feel better about it, right? But it wasn't the drugs. It was really greed. Also, I have this thing that I want to be the best at anything. If I'm doing something bad, I got to be the best at doing something terrible, right? Exactly. But what jail did is it was a research. I need to become, what happened to me? What did I do? What were my values? So example, if you would have asked me at the age of 26, 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. 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 business, I'm going to make money. It's to monetize something of value. So today, when I go out, from the moment I left jail, I haven'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.

Are you Are you allowed to do any financial stuff? Of course, I do. Yeah. You weren't banned from doing- I wasn'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 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, okay. 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 do- No, when I want Nor would you want to.

But you didn't even go to jail for anything that actually people are not doing right now.

Which is just crazy. Which is the irony. I think what happened was, I think people's view of me changed after 2008, where they're like, Wait a second. What they did on Wall Street was so much worse than what I ever... I mean, What I did was wrong. I never want to minimize that.

Yeah, no, I understand.

But I didn't bankrupt fucking Iceland or Greece. No, Wall Street, I mean, wow. When that came out, there was the world economy through complete fraud and greed and insane selling shit products to institutions and pension funds and everyone's 401. It almost destroyed the world.

Oh, did you know who Michael Milken is?

Yeah, he's great.

He's amazing. Okay, right. He went to jail for- Job bullshit.

He did nothing, this guy.

I was going to say, what I'm saying is it was like something so minimal and nominal in the grand scope of what happened. He's a legend. He's a legend, right? He's amazing. But is it what you did, though? It was pretty nominal inIt's nominal 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. I'm not saying it was not wrong. But yes, listen, I wish no one had ever lost money from actions I took. But when you compare it to what happens, it's nominal. The amounts are tiny compared to what happens every day. It's insane. And that's what I wrote this book about. You have to avoid- I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. You have to avoid that whole... This book shows you 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 I love those.

I love Bitcoin.

But isn't that considered to be like, we don't know what's going to happen? Tell me your opinion first, and then I'll ask.

I love Bitcoin as a very long term investment, not to try to trade Bitcoin to make money. Bitcoin is 100% legitimate right now. It's all the biggest institutions on it. You have big ETFs. It's legitimate now. It's decentralized. Maybe it's still going to be a little bit here, but not in an organized way. It's legit. I I didn't think that many. I was a very bearish on Bitcoin. I thought it was the biggest scam ever. Yeah, that's what I- I thought so, right? But it was my gut reaction. It was back then. It was being in the beginning, it was. But the idea, the coding was so brilliant that some people who are more insightful and sought the knee, obviously, got involved. And ultimately, it was like the lie became the truth. Yeah. Okay, so now there's enough large players. I believe it's totally different. I own a lot of it. And I I think that over the next 5, 10 years, it's going to go much, much higher. Now, I feel very differently about crypto, the rest of crypto.

Okay, I was going to say, so that part you're okay with.

But the rest of it, I'm not saying they're all bad, But most of those coins or tokens, they have no function other than speculation. If you want to speculate, that's fine. And have fun and buy Dogecoin if you want to do so. 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? But I think people should speculate because it's fun to speculate. But 95% of your capital should be the type of investments I talk about in the book, which are these index funds, which are the safest and the most... They outperform everything else. There's reasons why. Also, you don't need a lot to 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 Cramer's of the world and all these people who are convincing you to buy this, sell this shit.

You're never going to go on that on CNBC or whatever.

They did not invite me on CNBC. They used to invite me. I knew this book by timeline CNBC, but I've been on other stage of my going on Fox a bunch of times. I'll be on Gutfeld soon next week, two weeks from now. It was great. I love going on TV. I love doing podcasts.

Because you're such a great entertainer. When you speak, you're so enthusiastic. It's a pleasure talking to I love making people laugh because I think it's great.

I love educating people, but I think people learn more when they're laughing and they're engaged. When I'm doing my events, I try to mix humor and stories with actual learnings. And at the end of the day, that's been 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 woke up and be like, You changed my life. You changed everywhere I go. No one ever says, You fucked me. Everyone's like, You changed my life. And they go through life like that. What a great way to go through the rest of my life.

Because you're actually giving people actionable things that they can do. It's not just you yammering on and on, but there's things that it's compelling. It's very actionable. And it's things that people can take away. Exactly. How do you spend your time? You're doing mostly speaking? Mostly consulting for companies.

Oh, you do that? And some companies I own myself.

What do you own? Tell me what you own.

Different companies in the different spaces. I don't want to get into particules. Because a lot of the time I do is behind the scenes. Because when you're a celebrity, it almost takes away from stuff. I don't want to... Some stuff is good. Other stuff is 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, maybe 10%, like the online products.

I would imagine that you would be called from every major Fortune 100, 200 companies to go in and just train their sales teams.

That's interesting. I've gotten about, I would say 30% of them. But the 70%, they're like, use the word fuck too much.

Really? Even though you'd be effective for them? What do they care?

What they do is they buy my courses. I'm sure all the salespeople do. Where was I in an event in New York? I would say every major salesman everywhere, not all of them have hired me, but their salesman, they say, Yeah, go use this stuff. I admit that I am not for everyone. I think there's a lot of companies whose values I just much more out there with the cursing and the-Yeah, but it's entertaining. I know. The people love it, but sometimes it doesn't get by the... A lot of times, I It gets hard and the HR kills it. It happens sometimes, and I get that, and that's fine.

Well, you know what it is? We're living in a very woke, liberal world, which is not my cup of tea. Don't even get me started. I can talk about it. We can do a whole podcast about this.

Don't get me fucking started. Believe me. Because I'm like the anti-woke bully. I fucking hate it.

You and I both, okay? 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. I'm not a fan of what's going on in the world right now at all. Me neither.

It's the opposite of empowered thinking and living.

It's the opposite. It's the anecdote of that.

The victim mentality.

I know. Why this is not happening? I am enough culture. God forbid that you… 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? Any time you want. No, I'm serious. We could do another one. We can do part 2 and part 10.

Yeah, I'm coming back here in March. You are? 100% for sure for over a week.

Because this is like, I'm just love… This is like you're my cup of tea. Everything about you and that sales piece. I think I'm going to have to clip that in some way because I think A lot of people will find that so… It's great. This is actionable stuff that people can really… If you're an entrepreneur, I'm talking to people. If you're an entrepreneur, someone who's starting a business, this is 101 what you need to do. Because if you're not a good salesperson, good luck.

It makes it really hard to do anything else.

That's the foundation of starting businesses. That's the person at a company that is the most valuable. If you don't know how to sell, you're fucked, period. Okay, so Jordan, where do people find you? The new book is called The Wolf of Investing. I highly recommend it. It's like all his other books. So easy to digest, understand.

This information is really important, too. You can go to jordanbelford. Com, Wolf of Wall Street on Instagram, on TikTok, on Twitter, and you'll find me. You'll find me. I'm everywhere.

He's everywhere. If you don't know who this guy is, you're living under a rock.

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. Anyway, thank you so much.

My pleasure. This is awesome.

Okay, bye.