The Megyn Kelly Show - Jordan Belfort on His Incredible Life, Victimhood Mentality, and the Keys to Entrepreneurial Success ｜ Ep. 182

00:00:00.000 When I found out my friend got a great deal

00:00:02.160 on a wool coat from Winners,

00:00:03.760 I started wondering,

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00:00:08.560 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00

00:00:11.260 Are those from Winners?

00:00:12.780 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.

00:00:15.260 Did she pay full price?

00:00:16.600 Or that leather tote?

00:00:17.620 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:00:18.500 Or those knee-high boots?

00:00:20.300 That dress?

00:00:21.080 That jacket?

00:00:21.740 Those shoes?

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00:00:25.800 Stop wondering.

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00:00:30.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.520 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.540 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:44.240 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.560 Joining me today, the one and only Wolf of Wall Street,

00:00:49.860 Jordan Belfort.

00:00:51.140 In the 1980s and 90s,

00:00:52.640 Jordan ran one of the most successful brokerage firms

00:00:55.320 in Wall Street history.

00:00:57.620 Also one of the craziest.

00:00:59.280 He lived a life of luxury with money, yachts, women, and drugs.

00:01:05.880 But it could not last forever.

00:01:07.800 Soon the FBI would catch up and catch on to a multi-million dollar pump and dump stock

00:01:14.140 manipulation scheme that would land Jordan in federal prison for 22 months.

00:01:20.320 He would later write a New York Times bestselling book, The Wolf of Wall Street,

00:01:24.100 and soon Hollywood would come knocking.

00:01:26.520 And A-list actors would launch a bidding war for the movie rights.

00:01:30.980 Leonardo DiCaprio would go on to portray Jordan in the now very famous and high-grossing film.

00:01:37.260 It's incredible life and incredible life lessons that Jordan has gotten along the way.

00:01:42.080 And today, he is my guest and we'll discuss it all.

00:01:45.820 Jordan, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:47.520 Oh, thanks.

00:01:48.440 It's a pleasure.

00:01:49.040 Okay.

00:01:49.220 So, I saw The Wolf of Wall Street when it came out in 2013 and now I've read the book

00:01:55.180 and have been following you on Twitter and I love your inspirational messages.

00:01:59.820 You really have taken a lot of these life lessons to heart.

00:02:03.720 And one of the things that attracted me to your messaging was your very anti-victim mentality.

00:02:08.260 I mean, you know, you own everything that you've done and have been through and have

00:02:12.060 been really open about it, but you also haven't lost touch with the drive that it takes to

00:02:18.800 make all the money that you made, some legally, some not legally, but you haven't lost touch

00:02:24.300 with what it takes to be successful and to get ahead of the other guy.

00:02:28.360 And so I want to get to all of that because that's part of who you are as well.

00:02:31.500 Let's start at the beginning, though.

00:02:32.900 So you're a kid from Bayside, Queens.

00:02:34.680 You did not grow up rich or poor, right?

00:02:37.640 About middle class, would you say?

00:02:39.320 Yeah.

00:02:39.780 And your parents were what?

00:02:40.920 Well, my parents were both CPAs.

00:02:44.780 And, you know, it's interesting because that you think, well, wow, both are CPAs, professionals.

00:02:49.220 You'd probably be upper middle class, maybe even, you know, lower wealthy, right?

00:02:54.240 But my parents really struggled growing up and kind of didn't realize that until I was about

00:02:59.980 10.

00:03:00.540 And when I was 10, I remember, it's a funny story.

00:03:02.420 I wanted to buy a pair of Pumas because they were all their age back then, right?

00:03:06.460 Pumas.

00:03:06.980 And they're probably $19.

00:03:08.760 And, like, I think it was my birthday was coming up.

00:03:10.500 And I asked my mom, you know, I want Pumas.

00:03:12.960 She's like, well, we can't afford it. 0.98

00:03:14.160 I'm like, what do you mean you can't afford it?

00:03:15.940 Like, you and dad are professionals.

00:03:18.060 You both, and they both were.

00:03:18.960 My mother was like a trailblazer, just so you know.

00:03:21.040 Like, in the 50s, back in Mad Men days, she was going into the city and working as a

00:03:26.320 CPA.

00:03:28.220 And, you know, it was a big eight back then, accounting firm.

00:03:31.240 And she was the oldest woman in New York State that passed the bar when she was 68.

00:03:35.420 So she's a real piece of work, my mom.

00:03:37.820 She's awesome. 0.83

00:03:38.460 But they had no money.

00:03:40.880 I was like, well, and she sat me down and she showed me, you know, what was going on.

00:03:45.200 She showed me they made X and here are expenses and, you know, our rent and so forth.

00:03:49.860 And at the end of the month, we have a little bit left over.

00:03:52.600 It's for a college fund.

00:03:54.280 And I was appalled because I was like, it didn't add up to me.

00:03:57.800 You know, I get like, it was something seemed like it was off.

00:04:00.540 How could two such brilliant people, hardworking people, educated people,

00:04:05.380 industrious people have been broke?

00:04:07.800 It didn't make sense.

00:04:09.140 And it wasn't long after, I think it started to occur to me, there were certain other elements

00:04:13.500 that were necessary to achieve financial success.

00:04:16.200 And one of them was taking risk.

00:04:18.600 My parents were completely risk averse, depression, mentality.

00:04:22.200 And also they were really against any type of sales or marketing type ideas.

00:04:28.920 They just shunned them and thought they were evil.

00:04:31.080 And because of that, they were never able to use their services or market their services,

00:04:36.220 their wares, so to speak.

00:04:37.300 So they worked for other people, they worked for a paycheck, and they struggled badly.

00:04:42.160 So I think a lot of that went into my makeup of what it really means to succeed financially.

00:04:47.280 It's not just about hard work.

00:04:48.640 Hard work, of course, is required.

00:04:50.240 It's not just about education.

00:04:51.680 Education is usually important, not always, but, you know, at least self-education of some

00:04:55.960 sort.

00:04:56.560 But there's other components involved.

00:04:58.320 And one of those is going to certainly be, you know, taking some risks, working for yourself,

00:05:04.060 or at least being in an industry like sales where you can almost work for yourself and

00:05:08.480 risk-taking.

00:05:09.300 So very important lesson to learn very young.

00:05:11.220 So how did you understand, like, how did you become such a good salesman?

00:05:14.400 Because if you read up on Jordan Belfort, you realize one of the things that made the difference

00:05:17.620 in your life is you know how to sell.

00:05:21.320 And it's not that easy for the average person.

00:05:23.720 I think a lot of people are more introverted.

00:05:25.700 They don't want to put themselves out there.

00:05:26.880 They don't want to have to sort of, I don't know, make themselves feel vulnerable by asking

00:05:31.360 somebody to buy something from them.

00:05:33.320 So how did you get so good at that?

00:05:35.020 Part of it, I think, is a God-given gift.

00:05:37.260 Seriously, I mean, I think that we all, all of us, each person possesses certain gifts

00:05:41.660 and certain, you know, deficits, right?

00:05:44.440 I think in my personal genetic makeup and a combination of nature and nurture, I ended

00:05:49.200 up naturally being very, very talented at sales.

00:05:52.460 But then I trained myself and honed that skill over years and years of hard work and selling

00:05:58.340 to a razor's edge.

00:05:59.700 And then I found myself in a position very young when I started my firm.

00:06:03.380 Where I was teaching a methodology of sales that was intuitive to me.

00:06:07.660 It didn't have a name back then.

00:06:09.080 And it didn't, it was working real well until I tried to go to a much more difficult type

00:06:13.060 of sale.

00:06:13.740 And when I was faced with this difficult sale, I could do it.

00:06:17.640 Yet the people that worked for me couldn't.

00:06:19.320 And it forced me to come up with a new way of training salespeople, which is really what

00:06:23.980 allowed me to understand my own sales process much better.

00:06:27.780 So, you know, by almost by becoming a teacher, it made me a far better actual student.

00:06:33.320 I mean, you know, a salesperson myself.

00:06:35.480 You have to think about it.

00:06:36.680 So it happened.

00:06:38.000 There's a moment in your book, late in the book, where your daughter says, you were supposed

00:06:42.780 to take me to the Blockbuster.

00:06:43.820 You promised to take me to the Blockbuster video.

00:06:45.760 And you say, I had promised her nothing of the sort, but I appreciated the negotiating

00:06:50.300 tactic.

00:06:51.100 Start from a position of strength.

00:06:52.720 Assume the sale is already done.

00:06:54.160 I thought it was.

00:06:56.380 Oh, yeah.

00:06:56.700 She's also the tonality.

00:06:58.360 Like, yeah, you know, you told me to go on a Blockbuster, right?

00:07:01.000 Like, I'm like, what?

00:07:01.840 Like, almost what she phrases a declarative as a question.

00:07:05.400 It's good.

00:07:05.640 I learned.

00:07:07.000 I understand.

00:07:07.840 That's how I'm going to pitch my next big guest.

00:07:09.740 You promised me you'd come on.

00:07:11.140 What?

00:07:11.460 Who the hell are you?

00:07:13.200 OK, so you you were a worker when you were a kid.

00:07:16.220 You'd had the paper route and you did all the stuff that, you know, a lot of successful

00:07:19.460 people I know have done that.

00:07:20.940 You did not sit on the couch watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie like somebody

00:07:24.620 else I know when I see in the mirror.

00:07:27.740 Then you did not immediately go to Wall Street.

00:07:30.660 You decided that you were going you want to make money and you decided to be a dentist.

00:07:36.080 And then tell us what happened your first day at dental school.

00:07:38.720 Well, yeah, that was really, you know, about I think it's a reflection of belief systems

00:07:45.220 that, you know, we all have infused into us by our parents, society, our peer group.

00:07:51.020 And, you know, my mother, my parents are just very highly educated people.

00:07:55.320 And to them, it was like, you know, there's only no one noble way to become wealthy.

00:07:59.360 And that is, you know, doctor, dentist.

00:08:02.280 And like, you know, time, if you asked me at the age of 21, you know, what do you want

00:08:07.600 to be for a living, I'd say, I want to be rich for a living.

00:08:10.220 And I didn't know what I wanted to do.

00:08:11.940 So it was playing in my head like doctor, dentist, rich.

00:08:15.440 Now, my uncle was a dentist and he was very successful.

00:08:19.020 I was like, well, my uncle's a dentist.

00:08:20.460 Four years, medical school will be another 10.

00:08:22.820 I'm going to kill myself in 10 years.

00:08:24.480 So I said, I'll go to dental school.

00:08:26.400 So I applied very well in school as I got in.

00:08:29.220 And the first day of dental school, Dean stands up in front of the audience.

00:08:32.720 It was Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in Maryland.

00:08:34.880 And then he says, you know, welcome to the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery.

00:08:38.620 You should be proud to be here.

00:08:39.740 Dentistry is a wonderful profession.

00:08:41.680 And he goes, but let me say this.

00:08:43.640 The golden age of dentistry is over.

00:08:46.680 If you're here to make money, you're probably in the wrong place.

00:08:49.800 Like, what the hell?

00:08:50.500 I'm in the wrong place.

00:08:51.440 And I got up and I literally walked out my first day and I dropped out.

00:08:55.060 Yeah, that too is such a moment.

00:08:57.360 It tells us a lot about you because I would think, I mean, honestly, having been to law school

00:09:01.320 and practiced law, you, at that point, your ego's into it.

00:09:04.240 You've told everybody you're going to dental school.

00:09:05.960 You have some sort of, you know, skin in the game.

00:09:08.220 So the fact that you got up and walked out does say something about you.

00:09:12.180 Like, you know, it doesn't take you long to make a decision about your life and your future

00:09:16.160 and what are you going to do?

00:09:17.260 What are you going to do next?

00:09:18.480 That's an important thing that you're hitting on here because one of the biggest mistakes

00:09:23.020 that I think people make, and we all make, you know, I still make it, but I try to stop

00:09:26.760 myself from making it, is that it's not just ego.

00:09:31.060 It's part ego.

00:09:32.200 It's part, it's just part when you get caught up in something, you're in, like, you can't

00:09:36.640 see the forest or the trees.

00:09:37.940 Like, you know, anyone on the outside would say, what are you doing?

00:09:40.520 No, it's not working.

00:09:41.620 You know, it's time to make a move.

00:09:42.840 Get out.

00:09:43.280 Go do something else.

00:09:44.260 So many people will stay with something to a point where it's obvious it's not working

00:09:49.180 for them.

00:09:49.540 It's obvious it's not going to get them the outcome they want, but they feel like they

00:09:53.000 put time into their invested in it.

00:09:55.960 They've done things.

00:09:56.620 They've told people they're doing things, so they feel they have to be consistent with

00:10:00.220 that, yet to their own detriment, they stay and they, that other opportunities pass them

00:10:05.300 by.

00:10:05.840 And I think that's a very, very powerful thing to, you know, for all entrepreneurs, actually

00:10:10.240 success-oriented people is to always be looking at your surroundings and what's going on and

00:10:15.140 just being honest.

00:10:16.080 You know, is this working or is this not?

00:10:17.800 I don't believe you just keep trying and quitting.

00:10:19.920 I'm not like that at all.

00:10:20.680 But at a certain point, you have to get realistic with yourself and say, you know what?

00:10:24.980 I should be making a pivot here and trying something else.

00:10:27.900 What I'm doing is simply not working.

00:10:29.920 And you had your eyes on the prize.

00:10:32.020 You knew your overall goal was to get rich.

00:10:34.860 It was not to be a dentist.

00:10:36.480 That was just a means to an ends.

00:10:38.020 And when you found out it wasn't the means, you were like, peace out.

00:10:40.580 So you, you, not knowing exactly what's next, you leave.

00:10:45.800 And then the way I hear it, you heard about a kid from your neighborhood who was making

00:10:50.860 a million bucks on Wall Street and the light bulb went off and you were like, I too am

00:10:55.320 going to Wall Street.

00:10:57.060 But it's not that easy.

00:10:58.440 One step, you missed one step.

00:11:00.780 What?

00:11:01.120 Oh, the meat?

00:11:01.860 Is it the meat salesman?

00:11:03.600 Yes.

00:11:04.800 Yes.

00:11:05.220 I actually, so this is a very important part of the story is that, you know, when I dropped

00:11:09.160 out of dental school, I answered a blind ad in the newspapers, newspapers back then with

00:11:13.760 ads, right?

00:11:14.320 Not the internet.

00:11:14.840 And it was for a sales job and it said company vehicle, a thousand week, a thousand week

00:11:19.880 company vehicle.

00:11:20.640 I was like, wow, that sounds pretty good, right?

00:11:22.260 And I went down and I even realized that the company vehicle was a meat truck and it turned

00:11:26.000 out it was selling meat and seafood door to door.

00:11:28.380 It was door to door sales, right?

00:11:30.080 And I was like, all right, well, whatever, I'll give it a shot.

00:11:32.180 And that was the, that was the first real sales job that I had.

00:11:36.340 I'd always been selling stuff, you know, hard work, going blanket to blanket on Jones Beach,

00:11:40.620 making a lot of money, selling ices as a kid.

00:11:42.980 I was the kid with the paper out.

00:11:44.320 I was the kid with the lemonade stand, but this was a magic show is even I did when I

00:11:48.580 was younger, but this was the first real, you know, job and sales job was like about

00:11:52.920 influence and persuasion.

00:11:54.260 And, and my first day on that job, I broke the company record.

00:11:57.860 I just, I had a natural ability to sell.

00:11:59.840 And that was really how I, it got started is like, you know, me knowing that I could really

00:12:04.300 close at a high level.

00:12:06.080 And after about two weeks of breaking the records, I said, let me just try to open up a business

00:12:10.580 myself.

00:12:10.980 I always had, I had that entrepreneurial edge and I started my own meatball.

00:12:14.500 And over the next year, I built it up to 26 trucks.

00:12:18.720 And, you know, I'll train and I train all those employees had to sell door to door and

00:12:23.080 was selling door to doors.

00:12:24.020 And that was really the proof, the proving ground for everything else that came after.

00:12:28.360 And then ultimately I made every mistake that a young entrepreneur could make.

00:12:32.020 I was over expanding.

00:12:32.980 I was under capitalized.

00:12:34.160 I was growing on credit.

00:12:35.860 It was a really poorly run business.

00:12:37.400 It was like, you can look at that as a textbook for how not to run a business.

00:12:40.440 Right.

00:12:40.780 And I went bankrupt and I lost everything.

00:12:42.720 And that was when I heard at the same time about this kid I grew up with.

00:12:47.180 His name is Michael Falk.

00:12:48.240 And I heard he's making a million dollars a year on Wall Street.

00:12:52.620 Like, just think back.

00:12:53.460 It's 1986, 87, like a million dollars a year.

00:12:56.960 It seemed like an impossibly large number.

00:12:59.340 I had $10 in my pocket at the time.

00:13:01.540 And I didn't believe it when I heard it.

00:13:03.500 And about a week later, I went to the local park.

00:13:06.260 We all hung out in Bayside.

00:13:08.100 And he pulls up in a Ferrari, you know, and a beautiful suit and a beautiful girl.

00:13:13.420 Like, I'm like, and this guy was not, just to understand, he was not like this kid that

00:13:16.780 was voted most likely to succeed in high school.

00:13:19.180 It was kind of the weird kid growing up.

00:13:20.700 So I was like, Michael, what happened?

00:13:22.800 He's like, oh, I'm a stockbroker.

00:13:24.300 Here's the things about stockbrokers, Megan.

00:13:25.960 If I was saying, hey, Megan, what'd you make last day?

00:13:28.560 You'd be like, excuse me?

00:13:29.820 Like, what did I earn last day?

00:13:31.300 It's a little bit forward of you, right?

00:13:32.760 You would like, you know, ask a doctor, hey, what'd you earn?

00:13:34.900 Like, what?

00:13:35.720 But ask a stockbroker.

00:13:36.740 Like, I made a million dollars.

00:13:38.360 They just offer the information.

00:13:39.920 Like, the first stockbroker is calling, hey, I made a million dollars.

00:13:43.980 What are you doing?

00:13:45.320 So I was like, he goes, I made a million too.

00:13:47.420 He goes, next year I'll make two million.

00:13:48.740 I was like, and I said to myself in that moment, what you probably said to yourself, many

00:13:52.960 of your listeners have said, if this idiot can make a million, I can make 10.

00:13:56.920 That was exactly what I thought, you know?

00:13:58.900 And that really started my quest to go down to Wall Street.

00:14:03.500 What you say is so true.

00:14:04.760 Having lived in New York for almost 20 years, people are the same way about rents.

00:14:08.160 What are you paying in rent?

00:14:08.840 How many square feet?

00:14:09.860 Let me see your apartment.

00:14:10.840 Take me around.

00:14:11.420 As soon as they walk in, like, oh, great.

00:14:12.660 You show them everything.

00:14:13.280 You show me your closet, your bathroom.

00:14:14.960 It's just like you put it all out there.

00:14:16.380 We all live in different terms when you're in New York City.

00:14:19.020 Okay, so you get the first big job you get is at L.S. Rothschild.

00:14:24.820 And what was the messaging from your superiors there at this?

00:14:28.180 This is the portion of the movie in which Matthew McConaughey is portrayed as your boss.

00:14:32.860 Great scenes.

00:14:34.320 That character was spectacular.

00:14:36.620 It was amazing.

00:14:37.340 Yeah.

00:14:37.480 So what was the messaging to you then?

00:14:40.940 How did they see you?

00:14:43.080 So I was really pretty funny.

00:14:45.440 So I was interviewed by the manager of that office and, you know, the L.S. Rothschild office,

00:14:50.760 a big, well-respected firm.

00:14:52.820 And I knew I had to stand out because there was like 50 kids lined up for the interview.

00:14:57.560 It was the bull market of the 80s.

00:14:59.620 And when I went to this interview, I started pitching him a stop.

00:15:02.600 Like, I'm not even really knowing what I was saying, but I knew I was really sounding good,

00:15:06.360 I had a good tone out.

00:15:07.140 So I started saying, hey, I'm going to, you know, this stock is, I forgot what I said

00:15:10.500 exactly, but the point is I was pitching him a stock and he's like, whoa, whoa.

00:15:13.420 He's like, stop.

00:15:14.460 I'm like, what?

00:15:14.960 He goes, I've never met anyone like him.

00:15:16.900 He goes, I'll tell you, he goes, either one of two things are going to happen to you.

00:15:19.800 Either you're going to become the most famous broker in Wall Street history, or you're

00:15:22.760 going to end up in jail.

00:15:23.460 Well, the guy was a genius.

00:15:24.260 He was right on both accounts. 0.63

00:15:25.820 And he hired me, right?

00:15:27.120 And that was how I got my job.

00:15:28.680 And my first day of walking into that boardroom, I was like, I heard the mighty roar of Wall Street

00:15:33.920 boardroom.

00:15:34.440 I was blown away by it.

00:15:35.860 The fear, the greed, the cursing, the screaming.

00:15:39.140 I mean, it was unbelievable, the energy in this room.

00:15:42.700 And for six months, I watched all these other brokers selling.

00:15:47.880 I wasn't licensed yet.

00:15:48.900 I had to go through a licensing process.

00:15:50.980 And the messaging was, you know, let's just say it was very much like Matthew McConaughey

00:15:55.460 said, even at a big firm.

00:15:56.740 I think one of the worst, probably one of the worst kept secrets and probably the dirty

00:15:59.960 little secret of Wall Street is that most of it is really not in the best interest of

00:16:03.540 the client when it comes to because, you know, the fact is, is that most of this whole machine

00:16:08.040 is not necessarily of stockbrokers and analysts because you better have just buying the S&P

00:16:12.760 and holding it.

00:16:13.420 That's a separate issue.

00:16:14.680 But, you know, it was churn them and burn them.

00:16:16.480 You know, let's churn them and burn them and move the money around and, you know, close

00:16:20.420 at all costs.

00:16:21.320 It wasn't lie to the client.

00:16:23.700 It wasn't about lying or, or, or, you know, or like, you know, Bernie made up stuff, but

00:16:29.300 it was about get their money, churn and burn and, and you come first.

00:16:32.960 And, and, um, I was pretty shocked when I heard that, but, you know, that was, that was

00:16:36.780 the theme.

00:16:38.060 Was it, is it true that the, the, your boss at the time took you out and flat out encouraged

00:16:43.880 you to drink more, consider drugs, consider hookers or masturbation several times a day?

00:16:48.560 Like, I mean, does that, did that really happen?

00:16:50.780 Yeah, but like, yes, the answer is yes, but more like, but more, you know, in other words,

00:16:54.880 he was just, he was a very funny guy.

00:16:56.860 He was just, he was that sort of guy that like, he was, you know, he would do anything

00:17:00.140 for a laugh.

00:17:01.040 He was a very clever, funny person.

00:17:03.080 So he was saying, but you know, one thing that was very prevalent, which I, I don't know

00:17:07.580 if it still is today, but cocaine back then was like wildly prevalent everywhere.

00:17:13.080 And, you know, the, the idea that people were doing cocaine during that, that was like standard

00:17:16.840 operating procedure back at that period of time.

00:17:20.600 I think it's gotten better.

00:17:21.840 I hope it's gotten better.

00:17:23.120 Um, but that was certainly standard operating procedure.

00:17:26.360 And I think also was, you were probably all seen from various other movies as well, that

00:17:30.180 prostitutes, hookers on wall shoes, also very much standard procedure. 0.98

00:17:34.540 But the message really grim was just like, you know, smile and dial and have fun.

00:17:38.920 And, and basically, you know, you, the idea here is like, and I really, you know, I came

00:17:43.560 from a really honest, good family.

00:17:45.060 And I was like, so can we make our clients money?

00:17:47.240 They're like, nah, it's like, it's like, that was not like the objective.

00:17:50.480 It wasn't the, it wasn't the objective to lose their money, but you would never want

00:17:54.200 to lose someone money because it just doesn't, there's no reason to want to do that.

00:17:57.480 Even at Stratton, one of the biggest misgivings in the movie states that like we tried to

00:18:02.120 lose the money.

00:18:02.600 That's just nonsense.

00:18:03.300 We never would, you would never try.

00:18:04.480 You make more money when your clients make money.

00:18:07.140 It's just very difficult sometimes when interests are not aligned, which they often

00:18:11.360 don't bolster.

00:18:12.300 It's like you're trying to lose someone money.

00:18:14.380 So that wasn't, you didn't say, let's just rip the client.

00:18:16.500 It wasn't that.

00:18:16.960 It's more like just, just, you know, churn them and burn them, baby.

00:18:19.520 That sort of stuff.

00:18:20.540 If you have to choose between yourself and the client, you choose yourself is basically

00:18:24.620 the approach.

00:18:25.300 So, so Jordan winds up going, and we'll get to this in one second.

00:18:28.940 We're going to take a quick break, but he, L.S. Rothschild collapses when Black Monday

00:18:33.600 hits in 1987, and that career quickly dies.

00:18:37.900 But Jordan, you won't be surprised, would not be stopped, and his biggest and now most

00:18:42.900 infamous chapter was yet to come.

00:18:44.880 That's where we're going to pick it up right after this quick break, and we'll play some

00:18:48.540 clips from the award-winning movie as well.

00:18:52.020 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering,

00:18:57.760 is every fabulous item I see from Winners?

00:19:00.460 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00

00:19:03.580 Are those from Winners?

00:19:05.100 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings?

00:19:07.560 Did she pay full price?

00:19:08.920 Or that leather tote?

00:19:09.920 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:19:11.120 Or those knee-high boots?

00:19:12.560 That dress?

00:19:13.400 That jacket?

00:19:14.080 Those shoes?

00:19:15.100 Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:19:18.000 Stop wondering.

00:19:19.320 Start winning.

00:19:20.260 Winners.

00:19:20.840 Find fabulous for less.

00:19:22.240 Jordan, so Black Monday comes, and that's the end of Rothschild, and you must have been

00:19:31.680 thinking at the time, your Wall Street career, too.

00:19:34.020 Yeah, I was pretty shocked, because after six or seven months of being a cold cooler, like

00:19:40.540 just, you know, darling the phone and passing it to someone else, because they didn't have

00:19:43.660 my license yet.

00:19:44.460 When I finally passed my Series 7, got my license, my first day, literally, my first day

00:19:50.460 as a broker, and I was on the phone dialing for myself, the market crashed 508 points.

00:19:56.480 Rothschild is, you know, essentially out of business by the end of the day, but it

00:20:01.140 took a couple of weeks after they shut down permanently, but they were already like, that

00:20:05.200 was it.

00:20:05.440 They were done that first day, so it was really, really sad, and I remember the brokers

00:20:09.200 were walking around saying, oh, damn, the game's over.

00:20:11.960 I'm like, what do you mean the game's over?

00:20:13.540 I didn't get to play.

00:20:14.200 I was a slave.

00:20:14.940 They're like, oh, no, the game's over.

00:20:16.120 But then on that day, down on the ground floor was the newsstand, the New York Post,

00:20:21.620 like the death of Wall Street.

00:20:22.680 All brokers will be cab drivers.

00:20:24.500 I'm like, oh, I should have stayed in dental school, right?

00:20:26.240 It was really unbelievable.

00:20:27.620 When I got home, my first wife, I had not done great in the wife department.

00:20:32.280 I've got a few marriages, but anyway, I got it right this time, hopefully.

00:20:35.840 But she, unfortunately, didn't know the market crash.

00:20:38.780 She'd taken our last dollars.

00:20:40.320 We were really struggling, and she bought a bottle of champagne.

00:20:42.360 And, you know, I walked through the door, she's like, how did you break the rate?

00:20:45.920 Because everyone thought I'd do so well.

00:20:47.080 It was broke.

00:20:47.600 I was like, I'd given up.

00:20:49.440 And she said, that last night, buddy, I'm the champagne.

00:20:52.080 I collapsed in her arms and started to cry.

00:20:54.880 I literally, you know, we all take that punch.

00:20:57.100 I'm sure you've been there.

00:20:58.020 You know, you're a movement shaking yourself.

00:21:00.600 You have ups and you have downs.

00:21:02.600 And like, sometimes when things are going bad, you think the world is just against you,

00:21:06.420 God's against you.

00:21:07.240 You think you have the Midas touch in reverse.

00:21:08.960 Everything you touch turns to shit, basically.

00:21:11.040 It was like, really, I really was like, I had this moment where I was just like, was

00:21:14.920 like collapsed.

00:21:15.740 And I just said, I can't do this anymore.

00:21:18.420 You know, I should have just been like the normal route, you know?

00:21:21.020 And that lasted about five minutes because I didn't have longer than that.

00:21:24.760 Couldn't pay the rent.

00:21:25.440 So after I had a good cry, we sat there.

00:21:28.220 We opened up the help want section.

00:21:29.920 And we just started looking for other jobs, like outside of Wall Street, like sales.

00:21:34.480 And after about a few minutes, she stumbled on some ad.

00:21:37.440 It was like stockbrokers, like in Long Island, and it was part-time, full-time.

00:21:42.220 And there was so much that didn't make sense.

00:21:43.760 But like stockbrokers on Long Island, like this is back in the late 80s where there was,

00:21:47.560 you know, everything was on Wall Street.

00:21:49.560 And then it was part-time, like part-time stockbrokers.

00:21:51.760 Like, you know, and then when I answered, I called the phone.

00:21:54.000 They're like, that's the center.

00:21:55.220 I'm like, whoa.

00:21:56.020 It was like a gruff voice.

00:21:57.180 I'm like, what about Morgan Stanley or Goldman?

00:21:59.180 It's like investor center.

00:22:00.160 I never even heard, you know, it sounded like a weird name.

00:22:01.940 And they asked me to come down and do it.

00:22:04.500 The next day I went down and I walked in.

00:22:06.460 I was like just shocked.

00:22:07.820 It was like nothing in the office that, you know, reeked of wealth, success, or Wall Street.

00:22:13.040 It was just like, it was going back to like the cave band days.

00:22:16.200 It was like no computers on the desk.

00:22:18.020 It was young kids in jeans and sneakers.

00:22:20.580 They were just, you know, cursing, like, but a different type of cursing at the clients,

00:22:24.560 like, and like lying through their teeth.

00:22:26.940 And I'm like, what are you guys doing here?

00:22:29.000 Like, oh, you know, imagine we sell penny stocks.

00:22:31.220 And I'm like, what's a penny stock?

00:22:32.680 I legitimately did not know what a penny stock was other than that it traded at a lower price.

00:22:39.020 I didn't understand the context, you know, what it was really all about.

00:22:42.440 And in that moment, you know, there was a scene in the movie where I say, you know,

00:22:47.440 is this legal?

00:22:48.160 Is that legal?

00:22:49.360 And he's like, well, you know, that's not true.

00:22:52.000 You know what he said?

00:22:52.820 Of course it's legal.

00:22:54.560 We have.

00:22:55.300 So we actually have this clip teed up from the movie.

00:22:57.980 The fake you portraying this moment.

00:23:01.740 Leonardo DiCaprio.

00:23:02.580 Here it is.

00:23:03.900 Yeah, they're penny stocks.

00:23:05.360 You know, companies that can't get listed on NASDAQ.

00:23:07.460 They don't have enough capital.

00:23:08.880 Their shares trade here.

00:23:10.120 Is this stuff regulated?

00:23:12.620 Or are you guys, what are you doing here?

00:23:17.120 Sort of.

00:23:18.500 Sort of?

00:23:19.020 Jesus Christ, the spread on these is huge.

00:23:23.920 Yeah, and that's the point.

00:23:25.020 That's, what's your name again?

00:23:26.220 Mine, Jordan Belfort.

00:23:27.720 Jordan, what do you get on a blue chip stock?

00:23:29.600 I make 1%.

00:23:30.980 I did make 1%.

00:23:32.780 Pink sheets, it's 50.

00:23:37.160 It's 50%?

00:23:39.820 50% commission?

00:23:41.380 Yep.

00:23:41.700 For what?

00:23:43.020 It's our markup for our services.

00:23:44.580 So good.

00:23:47.100 So, you get the dollar signs in your eyes at that point.

00:23:49.820 Like, 50 is a lot better than 1.

00:23:52.360 You know, the most important thing, and I mentor a lot of young people.

00:23:56.780 I do big events around the world, small events, and there's a lot of people in their teens

00:24:01.380 and 20s.

00:24:02.020 And one of the things I always say to them is, you know, be really careful.

00:24:04.760 That seems very misleading.

00:24:05.920 And I wish they wouldn't have done that.

00:24:07.360 But that's one of the, you know, it's an amazing move.

00:24:09.700 But I just think that it's not accurate in the sense that if he would have said that to me,

00:24:14.580 I would have run out the door.

00:24:16.500 Like, I was a really good kid that never broke.

00:24:19.420 And it wasn't like my nature to go in and say, I don't know, maybe it's legal.

00:24:23.660 I would say, bye-bye.

00:24:24.660 I'll find something that's legal.

00:24:25.940 But that's not what he said.

00:24:27.400 He said the opposite.

00:24:28.320 He said, of course.

00:24:29.760 What do you mean?

00:24:30.140 We are SEC.

00:24:31.880 We report to see NASD members.

00:24:34.480 So, and the reason that's so important is because right now, today in the world,

00:24:38.320 all you people listening, especially young people, you're going to find yourself walking

00:24:43.000 into offices and businesses where they're ripping people off.

00:24:46.820 And as a young person, like what I was, you'll just, you assume it's okay.

00:24:51.920 Because if it wasn't, it wouldn't be happening.

00:24:54.280 They would have shut it down.

00:24:55.740 Some regulator would have made it stop. 0.82

00:24:57.680 But it's not true.

00:24:59.100 These things often take many years to be shut down, if ever.

00:25:02.640 So, you know, just be careful.

00:25:03.980 If your alarm goes off in your stomach and like, it's like not legit, it's probably not.

00:25:08.880 Like, don't just assume they say, oh, of course it is.

00:25:11.780 Or if they say, yeah, maybe run the other way.

00:25:13.980 That's my advice.

00:25:15.480 I've had, I've had jobs in the past where you see ethics compromised here and then there.

00:25:21.860 And then you detect a pattern and you have to ask yourself, do I stay or do I go?

00:25:26.360 Right?

00:25:26.500 Like that's a one-off can happen anywhere.

00:25:28.420 But when you, once you realize, oh, this is not an ethical place to be, it's a character

00:25:33.440 test.

00:25:33.860 And actually, it's one of the questions I have for you.

00:25:35.340 Cause I'll tell you, I know a guy in New York, um, who he was arrested and he was accused

00:25:41.120 of being kind of a mini Madoff and that the jury was hung when all was said and done.

00:25:47.020 So that was a good result for him.

00:25:48.660 But it did come out later that he had cheated on his series seven.

00:25:51.780 Uh, he had had another guy go in and take it for him.

00:25:54.940 And I thought to myself is so like these early ethical compromises, you know, how often do

00:26:00.280 they result in just the loss of ethics, right?

00:26:03.560 They're gone.

00:26:04.280 Once you cross that line, it's tough to cross back over.

00:26:06.980 You know, one of the things I always say when I'm out there speaking, I say, you can't be

00:26:12.260 half pregnant when it comes to ethics.

00:26:14.460 It doesn't work that way.

00:26:15.960 It will be nice if it did, but it doesn't.

00:26:18.320 I'll tell you why it doesn't.

00:26:19.720 It's because, you know, like, and my story illustrates this perfectly.

00:26:23.420 You know, I was doing everything right.

00:26:25.380 When I started my firm, I was doing everything right.

00:26:27.640 And I had this one moment where like, I, I was faced with making a decision of taking

00:26:32.280 a very large amount of cash from someone.

00:26:35.280 And the person said, everyone's doing it.

00:26:37.880 I knew it was wrong.

00:26:38.740 I was like, well, you know, and I, I figured it was being done.

00:26:41.740 I knew it was, I wasn't the only person that done this, but I knew it was wrong.

00:26:44.540 I said, well, you know what?

00:26:45.720 I'll do this once and then I'll, won't do anything again.

00:26:49.680 But once you take that first step over the line, what happens is your line moves slightly

00:26:55.880 to the wrong side, a slight bit.

00:26:58.820 So next time, and you do things right for a while, but next time you step over the line,

00:27:02.760 you'll step a bit further and then a bit further still.

00:27:05.960 And through these tiny, almost imperceptible nudges towards the dark side, you can very quickly

00:27:12.380 find yourself doing things you thought you would never do, associating with people you

00:27:17.620 never thought you'd associate with it.

00:27:19.280 It all seems perfectly okay.

00:27:22.060 You don't think it's wrong.

00:27:23.360 Your line has moved, your morality, your ethics, your compass.

00:27:27.620 It's just little nudges.

00:27:28.740 And before you know it, you're, it's insanely off.

00:27:31.120 Like, it's like when you dip your toe into a piping hot bathtub, right?

00:27:34.520 You're like, oh my God, it's so hot.

00:27:35.540 And then five minutes later, you're submerged under the water and it feels perfect, right?

00:27:39.280 When I was a kid, I was like, oh, I guess the water cooled down.

00:27:41.740 No, no, the water didn't cool down.

00:27:43.900 You just got used to it.

00:27:45.120 It's like, you know, and that's what happens.

00:27:46.540 And, you know, it happened to me so profoundly that when I got my first subpoena from the

00:27:52.900 SEC for like something I wasn't really even guilty of, it was just, I vomited.

00:27:57.980 Like I was so, I was, oh my God, my life is over.

00:27:59.820 I got a subpoena.

00:28:00.480 What am I going to do?

00:28:01.280 It was a civil subpoena.

00:28:02.440 And I was just so nervous.

00:28:03.700 I was devastated.

00:28:04.480 My life is over.

00:28:05.620 Two years later, I'm like, through the paper shredder.

00:28:08.200 Like, you don't, you become, it's so weird how that happens, you know?

00:28:13.200 And very, very careful with your ethics.

00:28:16.660 And the really sad part is that, you know, you make more money by being ethical.

00:28:22.580 It just takes a little bit longer.

00:28:23.620 But the big money is by being ethical.

00:28:25.360 That's the sad part.

00:28:25.980 And picking back up on your book, that same kid who vomited when he first got the SEC

00:28:31.280 subpoena, you write, would wind up bugging the SEC.

00:28:36.500 How, how did you do that?

00:28:39.020 It's really easy.

00:28:39.860 I mean, it was, they came to my office and they were sitting in my conference room for

00:28:45.680 months and months and months on end.

00:28:48.100 For what reason?

00:28:48.840 I have no, let's say it was a different world back then.

00:28:51.260 We didn't have like computers the way they had us.

00:28:53.140 I guess they had to sift through mounds of paperwork because I guess they decided it

00:28:56.240 was easier to come to us.

00:28:58.120 So, you know, we had all these spy shops back then that sold all these, like, cool little

00:29:02.560 plug that looked like a, that, you know, it was like a plug and it was actually a listening

00:29:06.160 device.

00:29:06.640 And, and we put that device in and see what they were saying, which really wasn't that

00:29:10.160 much.

00:29:10.560 And, uh, yeah.

00:29:11.920 And then we actually got caught doing that, believe it or not, because my apartment was

00:29:16.000 one day when he was incredibly high, he like, they said something bad about him.

00:29:20.140 Oh no, there's a great scene.

00:29:23.900 Um, so Bo Dietl would become your like chief investigator sort of protector.

00:29:28.460 And a lot of my listeners may know him from my time at Fox and, and he's on Fox.

00:29:33.160 He was all the time with Sean Hannity, such a colorful character.

00:29:36.960 Um, I was just telling my friend, great story about Bo.

00:29:39.800 He's just so funny.

00:29:40.940 And there's a, he ran for mayor a couple of years ago in New York.

00:29:44.600 And I can't remember the context in which he said it, but it was basically, it was in

00:29:47.520 a magazine article and he was talking about how he's going to clean up New York city, I

00:29:50.100 think.

00:29:50.540 And he's like, I'm going to clean up this city, uh, from Harlem all the way down to 0.97

00:29:53.640 that slut New York Harbor. 1.00

00:29:55.220 I'm like, does he mean the statue of Liberty?

00:29:58.540 He's talking about this statue of New York Harbor.

00:30:02.600 It's a good way of communicating, but with everything has an attation at the end.

00:30:06.360 You know, I'm going to have my lunchtation and my, uh, meditations.

00:30:10.420 And I love it.

00:30:11.060 And you, you write about how, um, this, I didn't know about Bo.

00:30:14.120 He's never done it with me, but he calls the people around him, Bo.

00:30:17.700 I did not know that.

00:30:18.760 Yeah.

00:30:19.180 He calls everyone Bo.

00:30:20.260 So it's like, he's a, he's like a larger than life character.

00:30:24.260 You know, he's always very good friend of mine and I respect him.

00:30:27.260 And, uh, you know, he just did, he did a lot of good stuff.

00:30:29.780 He personally had people, you know, like, you know, uh, security guards and he did a

00:30:34.480 good job for me.

00:30:35.160 Yeah.

00:30:35.500 So he tried to help you, but he, he, he was quick to tell you, please do not try to

00:30:39.800 bug the FBI agents.

00:30:41.340 Do not try to tape them.

00:30:42.620 Do not try to bug offices or briefcases or anything like that.

00:30:45.080 Okay.

00:30:45.580 So you go from the penny stock place.

00:30:47.500 How does Stratton Oakmont, it's got a great name and that's by design, but how does Stratton

00:30:52.340 Oakmont, which was officially born in 1989 come about?

00:30:56.000 So, so Stratton was actually started, Stratton securities was started in 1979, I think.

00:31:03.840 And, um, it was a trading firm, um, that just, you know, did a lot of interbank trading, insurance

00:31:10.660 companies, pennies, traders.

00:31:12.060 Right.

00:31:12.220 Um, and then when the crash came, the firm basically lost all its equity and it was teetering,

00:31:17.940 um, you know, by thread.

00:31:20.280 Um, and right around the time I decided to open up my own brokerage firm, um, you know,

00:31:26.780 Stratton became available that you could like use their licenses with what was called an

00:31:30.760 OSJ office of supervisory jurisdiction.

00:31:33.740 So, um, I jumped on that bandwagon and, um, that's how it started with Stratton.

00:31:39.420 Uh, after a short time, another firm named Oakmont became available when I wanted to, there

00:31:46.120 were some things about that firm.

00:31:47.700 I like had a good clearing arrangement.

00:31:49.260 The trader was, uh, more professional than what I had.

00:31:52.360 So I bought Oakmont and that's how I came to Stratton Oakmont.

00:31:56.540 Okay.

00:31:57.020 So you wind up going around and hiring a bunch of guys and they're, these are, I don't know

00:32:03.060 how you want to describe them, but salt of the earth.

00:32:06.700 I've been barely post-adolescent new companies, but in a loving, fun way, you know?

00:32:11.720 And you were their fearless leader who was up there like, let me show you how it's done.

00:32:15.480 There's a famous scene in the movie in which you're talking to them about selling and, you

00:32:20.320 know, how they got to get out there and sell.

00:32:22.380 And, and they did respect you and they were very loyal to you and they all looked up to you.

00:32:25.840 But here's just a clip of you, uh, well, Leonardo DiCaprio, as you motivating the team.

00:32:31.880 There is no nobility in poverty.

00:32:35.980 I have been a rich man and I have been a poor man and I choose rich every fucking time.

00:32:42.680 Because at least as a rich man, when I have to face my problems, I show up in the back

00:32:46.800 of a limo wearing a $2,000 suit and a $40,000 gold fucking watch. 0.92

00:32:52.240 If anyone here thinks I'm superficial or materialistic, go get a job at fucking McDonald's because that's

00:32:59.640 where you fucking belong. 0.91

00:33:02.900 It taps right into Wall Street at the time and the guys and it was, you know, F everybody

00:33:10.020 and it's us against them and be a killer.

00:33:12.580 And that worked.

00:33:13.600 It worked very well.

00:33:14.540 That's, you know, that's a really, uh, interesting scene because it, um, it's true.

00:33:20.980 I mean, that was, it comes from a speech that I kind of reconstructed.

00:33:23.680 I wrote, I wrote my book and, um, but that came later that, that, that, that mentality,

00:33:28.840 like when I, you know, let's just say what we were doing at that time was a little different

00:33:32.820 than when the firm first started.

00:33:34.260 I, you know, when the firm first started, we were selling penny stocks, um, to average

00:33:39.400 moms and pops like that other company was doing.

00:33:41.900 And then I came up with this idea to go to the richest 1% and just to call, you know,

00:33:47.320 really rich people and sell them $5 stocks.

00:33:50.400 So the, so the leap that, that really made Stratton, Stratton was we weren't selling penny

00:33:54.900 stocks.

00:33:55.400 We were selling $5 stocks and we weren't calling average moms and pops.

00:33:59.520 We were calling rich business owners.

00:34:01.220 And that was also what forced me to come up with a new way of training salespeople.

00:34:05.960 Because what happened was the, the way I had been training salespeople with the, with

00:34:09.820 the first program, which was calling average moms and pops, it was very easy sales, more

00:34:14.920 of an impulse sale, like, you know, dollar and a dream, like a lot of a ticket.

00:34:18.500 And it was very different than what was happening when I actually had to go and call the richest

00:34:23.880 1% and sell them $5 stocks.

00:34:25.840 And some of the kids that worked for me, which were kids that were not educated highly, did

00:34:30.500 not naturally that intelligent.

00:34:32.620 And also none of them possessed any, you know, let's say there were no members of the lucky

00:34:36.320 sperm club and no Ivy league diploma.

00:34:38.460 So they couldn't close the rich people.

00:34:40.780 And I had to come up with a new way of training salespeople.

00:34:43.460 That was what really forced me to invent this new system that came to be known as the straight 0.98

00:34:48.020 line.

00:34:48.420 And it was the straight line system.

00:34:49.840 And this, this new way of training that allowed me to get these kids to close the, these wealthy

00:34:55.100 one percenters.

00:34:56.200 And also what you heard there was motivation.

00:34:58.300 So, you know, there's always two sides to training this, you know, this motivation and

00:35:01.440 this actual skill.

00:35:02.640 So the secret was a combination of motivation and skills.

00:35:06.540 I'm going to stand you by right there.

00:35:07.720 Cause we're just, this is a good time for, for a quick pause, quick break and much, much

00:35:11.620 more on the opposite side of this with Jordan Belfort, the wolf of wall street.

00:35:19.840 So the straight line, what's the other piece of the straight line?

00:35:22.640 One is motivation.

00:35:23.340 And the other is actually, how do you sell to really rich people?

00:35:25.840 And in a nutshell, how is that?

00:35:27.520 So the motivation is definitely part of the straight line.

00:35:31.900 Like sort of the, you know, there's two, there's two sides to, to succeeding at anything.

00:35:35.980 And we live in a world of duality.

00:35:37.580 There's up, there's going to be down.

00:35:39.180 Yes, no, start, stop.

00:35:41.020 Even the digital world that allows us to communicate, you have a one, you have a zero, right?

00:35:44.640 There's two sides to every coin.

00:35:46.080 Same thing goes in success and sales.

00:35:48.820 And when we speak of sales, you know, there's the inner game of sales success and entrepreneurial

00:35:54.540 success and the outer game.

00:35:56.620 Inner game means your mindset.

00:35:58.260 What's happening up here between your ears before you ever go out and try to close someone

00:36:03.060 or start a business, whatever that might be.

00:36:04.800 Then the outer world are the actual real world skills that allow you to accomplish what you

00:36:11.120 want to accomplish.

00:36:12.500 So, you know, in mindset, there's things like managing your emotional state.

00:36:16.260 Make sure that you're in a positive, empowered, emotional state, that you have belief systems

00:36:21.320 that support you and that propel you to success and don't stop you from succeeding or cause

00:36:26.080 you to pull back when you shouldn't.

00:36:27.980 Beliefs like my parents had, where they thought that selling was evil, that marketing was evil,

00:36:32.060 that any type of risk was a bad thing.

00:36:34.080 Those are limiting beliefs when it comes to making money.

00:36:36.440 So, you know, you could have the best entrepreneurial skill set and education, like my parents did,

00:36:42.040 like they had great education.

00:36:42.820 But if you have that sort of belief system, it's going to stop you from achieving.

00:36:46.760 So that's inner game as well.

00:36:48.540 Then you have another thing, which is called, you know, your vision focus.

00:36:51.140 You know, what's your vision?

00:36:52.100 Do you have a target that you're aiming for?

00:36:54.500 Where do you want to be in five years from now?

00:36:56.440 And why does it matter to you?

00:36:58.240 Very important, you know, why.

00:36:59.640 You know, why you do what you do.

00:37:01.040 And most people think, oh, I want to make money.

00:37:03.140 And it's not a why.

00:37:04.480 You know, a why is much more profound than that.

00:37:06.560 It's typically to do with someone that you love unconditionally or a cause you believe.

00:37:10.220 You know, it's not about you.

00:37:11.120 It'll be about the people that you love or the community or something bigger than yourself.

00:37:15.000 That's a real powerful why.

00:37:16.420 And then lastly, on the inner game is something called your standards.

00:37:20.100 You know, your personal standard.

00:37:21.840 What you will not settle for less than.

00:37:24.580 You know, a standard operates like a thermostat.

00:37:26.980 You know, it's like your set point.

00:37:28.380 Where do you burn?

00:37:29.340 Where do you feel comfortable?

00:37:31.040 If you have low standards for making money, well, guess what?

00:37:34.120 You know, it's like the furnace.

00:37:35.860 If the thermostat is set to a low level, the thermos shuts off pretty quickly.

00:37:39.700 If the thermostat is set to a high level, it keeps going.

00:37:42.200 So that's what your standards operate like.

00:37:43.980 All that's happening every second of every day in your mind.

00:37:47.940 And it's influencing what decisions you make, what you do, how you handle adversity.

00:37:52.240 And those things, when they're wrapped into one empowered, you know, into one empowered,

00:37:58.240 let's say, you know, lump, so to speak.

00:37:59.800 Where you're like literally, you know, you have this ability to just be positive and think positively

00:38:04.560 and focus on where you want to go in life.

00:38:06.840 That sets you up for massive success in the outer world, which is now where your strategies,

00:38:13.720 your real world business and entrepreneurial and sales strategies take hold.

00:38:17.680 For example, as a business owner, you know, there are certain skill sets that an entrepreneur must have.

00:38:23.700 There's knowledge that you need.

00:38:24.600 It's critical.

00:38:25.260 Mission critical knowledge.

00:38:26.300 When I talk about entrepreneurship, I typically divide it into like these two sides.

00:38:30.500 Like you need to learn how to, believe it or not, fail elegantly.

00:38:33.580 Like how do you go into business and be wrong?

00:38:35.580 And because you're wrong more than you're right when you go into business.

00:38:38.260 You're going to, you know, be on the wrong side of the test more often than not.

00:38:42.920 How do you maximize the lessons learned in the failures, but minimize the amount of money loss,

00:38:48.760 time loss, so you can learn from it and move on and try again?

00:38:51.400 And then that's what's family elevate.

00:38:53.340 It's crucial.

00:38:55.080 You've tweeted out and I've heard you say before, if you're the smartest person in the room,

00:38:58.540 you're in the wrong room.

00:39:00.060 Yeah.

00:39:00.540 I mean, yeah.

00:39:01.220 I love meeting people who know more than me because that's how you learn, right?

00:39:04.820 Yeah.

00:39:05.020 So it's okay.

00:39:05.500 It's okay to fail.

00:39:06.380 It's okay to fail.

00:39:07.260 Do it well.

00:39:07.920 Do it elegantly and understand it's not so bad to be the one learning.

00:39:12.460 Yeah.

00:39:12.680 And also I think one of the, you know, one of the things I, I think a quote I'm well known

00:39:16.540 for and I say to my kids all the time, especially when they were younger, is like,

00:39:19.360 you're not the failures of your past.

00:39:22.740 You're the resources and the capabilities you glean from your past failures.

00:39:26.420 You know, you get stronger when you fail.

00:39:29.020 If you learn from those failures, you don't become your failure.

00:39:32.300 You don't start thinking you're the failure.

00:39:34.380 Your failure is not you.

00:39:35.880 It's a lesson learned and you grow stronger with each time you fail and both mentally and

00:39:41.640 you learn from that.

00:39:42.860 And that's what sets you up to succeed the next time.

00:39:45.160 So I like that failure means you're a risk taker.

00:39:47.140 If you've got some failures behind you, it means you're a risk taker.

00:39:50.080 If you haven't failed, then you probably haven't tried.

00:39:53.840 Like it's like, it's like, I don't know many people, even like someone, like if you look

00:39:57.420 at someone like Zuckerberg, who like you seemingly hasn't failed, but he did fail.

00:40:02.240 He's had all these launches and things he's tried since then that hadn't worked out.

00:40:06.200 You know, it doesn't affect his, his, his, his massive net worth and his core company,

00:40:09.580 but everyone tries and fails.

00:40:11.640 And it's what you do when you, when you try and fail, that defines who you are.

00:40:16.260 You know, how do you process that?

00:40:17.880 Do you learn from it or do you let it paralyze you?

00:40:20.560 And the worst is that you let it form limiting beliefs inside of you.

00:40:24.500 Like you have a failure about, you know, in a business and you're like, oh, maybe I'm,

00:40:28.980 I'm just not meant to be an entrepreneur.

00:40:30.940 It's not who I am.

00:40:32.280 And that's a massively problematic limiting belief.

00:40:35.180 So it's an example of how you could fail and let it paralyze you versus, okay, I failed.

00:40:40.780 Let me look soberly at this and say, why, what that was missing here?

00:40:44.200 What can I learn?

00:40:45.000 How can I grow?

00:40:46.040 And then when you try again, integrate those lessons from your failure into your next pass

00:40:50.680 at success.

00:40:51.180 And if you do that enough times, you surely will succeed and probably sooner than you think.

00:40:56.820 So it's a crucial part.

00:40:58.460 And then also on the other side of that is with entrepreneurship.

00:41:01.360 So there's failing elegantly and also succeeding wildly.

00:41:04.580 What do you do when, when the idea is right, when you have an idea, you test it and it's

00:41:09.200 actually working better than you thought.

00:41:11.580 How do you take a small idea and scale it?

00:41:13.840 How do you turn a small business into a big business, a big business into a international

00:41:18.200 business?

00:41:18.820 And there's all these rules and strategies that are proven to work and you need to know

00:41:23.680 these.

00:41:24.100 There's an entrepreneur and they're all learnable.

00:41:25.560 They're out there.

00:41:26.300 The knowledge is for the taking.

00:41:27.680 It's an open world on the internet.

00:41:30.140 So, so you're really, I would say, ignore that at your own peril.

00:41:33.540 That's, that's entrepreneurship.

00:41:35.000 The next skill that's crucial in the outer game is, is marketing.

00:41:38.920 How do you go out and identify who your best buyers are, your potential buyers, and how

00:41:43.400 do you reach them in a cost-effective way?

00:41:46.400 You know, there's the online marketing, which is very popular right now.

00:41:49.180 And I'm sure it will continue to be things like social media, Google ads, just, you know,

00:41:55.000 all the things that we know and use online to reach people both in our local market and

00:41:59.960 all over the world, absolutely crucial.

00:42:01.780 And those skills are learnable.

00:42:03.760 They're out there and you can hire people if you don't have them yourself.

00:42:06.840 And then there's the offline, the traditional TV, radio, you know, knocking on doors, calling

00:42:11.900 on the telephone.

00:42:12.720 So that's marketing.

00:42:13.940 And marketing brings people into your so-called sales funnel, your store, your website, whatever

00:42:19.680 that might be.

00:42:20.900 And then the next step is the one that I'm probably best known for is sales, persuasion.

00:42:24.900 How do you take those people and close them?

00:42:28.680 How do you get them to see the value of what you have to offer, that yours is the best solution

00:42:34.040 for them?

00:42:34.500 How do you convince them to part with their hard-earned money now?

00:42:38.740 Without that, skill is very hard to make money.

00:42:41.500 And then the last part of that is, you know, what I call MSIs, multiple streams of income.

00:42:45.500 And what do you do with your money once you make it?

00:42:47.420 How do you put your money to work to make more money for you so you can ultimately retire and

00:42:52.120 be wealthy, meaning, you know, you don't have to just run around like a chick with a head 0.98

00:42:55.680 on trying to make the next dollar because your money's actually earning money for you.

00:42:58.960 Those are like this four on one side, four on the other.

00:43:01.600 So inner game, outer game, eight things in all.

00:43:04.340 If you know all eight of those things, you're going to end up being very successful, like

00:43:07.360 I promise you.

00:43:08.740 You know, it's funny.

00:43:09.760 Back in 2016, I actually wrote a book called Settle for More.

00:43:13.180 And the title was from a saying, the only difference between you and someone you envy is you

00:43:19.200 settled for less.

00:43:20.380 And I actually got it from Dr. Phil.

00:43:23.660 But right, it's to your to the one of the points you made, right?

00:43:26.480 Like you got to set the high goals.

00:43:28.120 And if you set the low goals and you're sitting there feeling unhappy, that's on you.

00:43:32.460 Well, you're probably the problem with most people in their goals, not, you know, people

00:43:35.700 that don't succeed.

00:43:36.500 The problem is that they not only set their goals too high and miss them.

00:43:40.360 They mostly set their goals too low and hit them.

00:43:43.000 And then like, because the enemy of great is good, because when you're feeling good or average,

00:43:48.000 there's no pain or uncomfortability, so you don't have any impetus to change.

00:43:53.200 So it's like, you know, one of the most profound things I ever heard in the interview was from

00:43:57.480 James Cameron.

00:43:58.620 He was being interviewed after Avatar came out.

00:44:01.120 And now he had like two out of three multi-billion dollar blockbusters.

00:44:05.500 And I think it was Larry King.

00:44:07.380 I forgot who it was.

00:44:08.860 They rest in peace.

00:44:10.100 They said, you know, James, how is that?

00:44:11.820 You, one person has, you know, two of the biggest grossing movies of all time.

00:44:15.760 He goes, well, when I go about planning this out, I'm thinking about it.

00:44:19.780 I am shooting to, I'm looking to have a $3 billion.

00:44:23.480 I want to have the biggest multi-billion dollar hit in my mind.

00:44:27.280 So if I'm only half right, I'm still doing really well.

00:44:31.120 He said, go so high that even if he misses them, he's still doing well.

00:44:36.620 And I think that's a real, I was like, wow.

00:44:38.640 And I always, I knew that to be true and taught that myself, but to hear it from James Cameron,

00:44:43.160 like, so he's like a filmmaker and just showed me how it just translates into all types of

00:44:48.900 businesses and industries.

00:44:49.880 It's a mindset thing of, you know, where do you set your goal?

00:44:53.400 If you're aiming for here, yeah, you'll probably hit it, but then what?

00:44:57.240 Okay.

00:44:57.440 So you'll need your goal on your average and average, like, you know, average plus average

00:45:01.380 plus average times average equals average.

00:45:03.440 It's not like somehow that all coagulates to be great.

00:45:06.140 It's like, you know, the mortgage crisis where they said, let's take a bunch of piece of

00:45:09.980 shit, deadbeat borrowers, actually deadbeat loans.

00:45:13.500 Okay.

00:45:13.860 And I beat bars on pieces of shit.

00:45:15.700 Okay.

00:45:15.860 But deadbeat loans, right.

00:45:17.620 And they're all terrible, but we put them all together.

00:45:19.760 They're suddenly good.

00:45:20.740 No, you have a giant look terrible.

00:45:22.800 Like it doesn't change the makeup, like by putting a lot of bad together, suddenly becomes

00:45:26.840 good through diversification.

00:45:28.680 So the same thing is true of success.

00:45:30.940 And I would add to that success in love and business.

00:45:34.460 I mean, it's, you can apply it across the board.

00:45:36.440 For sure.

00:45:38.360 And I always say that, you know, like I had incredibly high standards for money and success,

00:45:44.700 but very low standards, my personal relationships with my wife, like, you know, what, what you

00:45:50.160 have a high standard for, you focus on, you, you, you won't settle for less than.

00:45:54.860 So I learned the hard way.

00:45:56.560 And also for ethics, my, my ethical standard was very, became very low.

00:46:00.420 It started off high, it dropped.

00:46:01.980 And because of that, I paid the price.

00:46:04.180 So in those standards, we have them for everything.

00:46:06.400 We have them for love.

00:46:07.700 We have them for relations.

00:46:08.760 We have them for our body.

00:46:09.680 I've always had a very high standard for keeping in shape.

00:46:11.960 So yeah.

00:46:12.620 So, so my body is important to me.

00:46:14.400 So I exercise every day.

00:46:15.580 If your body's not important, what do you do?

00:46:17.520 You won't exercise.

00:46:18.160 It's hilarious to hear you say that after all the drugs I know you've taken.

00:46:23.800 What?

00:46:24.760 I look pretty good considering.

00:46:27.440 I really want to talk about that because I've, I've told my audience this before.

00:46:31.460 I do drink alcohol, but I, I've literally never tried a drug.

00:46:35.020 I've never tried an illicit drug of any kind.

00:46:37.300 Um, and I, I don't know if I'm in the minority, the majority, but yeah, having lived in New

00:46:42.100 York for almost 20 years and having practiced law and been in media, I think that's unusual,

00:46:46.420 but I'm kind of curious about all the drugs you took and like how they felt and how you

00:46:52.660 feel about them.

00:46:53.260 Now I know you're sober now, uh, but it was a lot and you lived a life of big, big debauchery

00:46:58.840 while you were, while you were running that firm.

00:47:02.020 And I, I, I'm just curious about the whole thing.

00:47:04.760 So, uh, let me start with this.

00:47:06.380 Had you grown up, we'll squeeze in a break in a minute, but had you grown up doing drugs,

00:47:11.520 drinking alcohol?

00:47:12.180 Like, were you that kind of person before all this?

00:47:15.620 I use drugs occasionally in high school and the college, but not, I was not a drug.

00:47:22.100 I was never addicted to drugs and, uh, it was never something that was like an integral

00:47:26.680 part of my life growing up, but I tried, I tried drugs and use them.

00:47:30.660 Like, you know, most kids, you know, I think back then it smoked pot and, uh, I tried cocaine

00:47:35.680 once or twice, but that wasn't something that was really part of my life.

00:47:39.660 And so when you were at the penny stock firm and Rothschild before that, this is prior to,

00:47:44.380 you know, the formation of Stratton, had it yet blown up in your life where you were like

00:47:48.560 addicted yet when you started that firm, the big firm?

00:47:51.260 That was another part of the movie.

00:47:52.800 That was a bit, I thought it was kind of, I, to me, it could have been done a bit more elegantly.

00:47:58.700 Again, I loved the movie, but if there were things that could change it, they, they had

00:48:03.040 me going to the dark side really fast.

00:48:05.960 And like, it almost like, you know, I go day one, I'm like this really wet behind the

00:48:09.520 ears, honest kid that can't we make our clients money too?

00:48:12.340 And he's like, no.

00:48:13.340 And I'm like, okay.

00:48:14.280 And then the next scene I'm in a strip club, starting Coke, right?

00:48:17.040 That's not true.

00:48:17.420 Okay, wait, that's a great place to leave it.

00:48:19.100 So we've got a clip to sort of bring that to life for you right after this quick break

00:48:25.300 when we have more with Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street, sex, drugs, and Leonardo

00:48:31.480 DiCaprio.

00:48:32.200 What more could you ask for?

00:48:33.240 Stay tuned.

00:48:33.500 How many years were you, I don't know if we can say on the straight and narrow, but like

00:48:44.340 how, how long did it take before a full debauchery and drug addiction set in?

00:48:48.960 Um, so I would say it took from the time of, I walked the devil of Wall Street, probably

00:48:56.500 two years, um, to start using drugs and maybe two and a half to, to be really deep into it.

00:49:03.280 Um, and you know, drug addiction is a very strange thing.

00:49:07.280 It's very insidious.

00:49:08.360 It starts slowly and it creeps in a little bit at a time.

00:49:12.900 And before you know it, you know, one drug makes you want to do another drug to counterbalance

00:49:18.340 the negative effects of the first one.

00:49:20.240 Then the third one, I mean, it happens really slowly.

00:49:24.340 And, um, but I would say by 1991, 1991, I was full in very much into drugs.

00:49:34.020 Okay.

00:49:34.300 And, um, the, you know, it's, I think I understand that just because anybody who drinks alcohol

00:49:39.420 can understand the alcohol at night and coffee in the morning.

00:49:42.200 This is just a much more extreme version of it.

00:49:44.260 And when you, when the firm was killing it and you were killing it, there's a, that's

00:49:49.520 portrayed in the movie and you're pretty open about the drugs.

00:49:51.800 And here's a clip of, uh, Leonardo as you on the drug cocktail that you'd been using.

00:49:57.300 On a daily basis, I consume enough drugs to sedate Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens

00:50:03.860 for a month.

00:50:05.220 Okay, Mr. Jordan.

00:50:06.500 I take Quaaludes 10 to 15 times a day for my back pain, Adderall to stay focused.

00:50:13.480 Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and

00:50:17.600 morphine well, because it's awesome.

00:50:20.420 All the drugs under God's blue heaven, there is one that is my absolute favorite.

00:50:26.640 See, enough of this shit will make you invincible.

00:50:31.400 Able to conquer the world and eviscerate your enemies.

00:50:35.180 Oh, and I'm not talking about this.

00:50:41.580 I'm talking about this.

00:50:43.720 At the end there for our listeners, he was, the, the character was snorting cocaine and

00:50:47.520 said, I'm not talking about this, the Coke, he's talking about this.

00:50:49.780 And he holds up a hundred dollar bill.

00:50:51.520 Money, money was the number one drug.

00:50:54.360 I have to say that, um, I wish I could take credit for writing that line.

00:50:57.920 That was Terrence Winter who came up with that brilliant statement, which is so true.

00:51:02.700 But yeah, it's a real, I, I thought that was so clever of him.

00:51:06.600 Um, cause you know, the other things I, I all said, but he sort of pivoted back to this

00:51:11.420 ultimate truth that, that the money itself was the most powerful drug of all.

00:51:15.480 And I read that like, wow, this guy is good.

00:51:17.600 How much money were you making at your peak?

00:51:22.280 Oh, so a lot of money, man.

00:51:24.000 I, I, you know, let's go back to the time wall.

00:51:27.640 So this is a time before hedge funds, before you heard about people making hundreds of millions

00:51:32.380 of dollars.

00:51:33.440 Um, uh, I was making, you know, a million a week in, in the cash side.

00:51:39.960 Plus I was, uh, taking stakes in all these different companies.

00:51:44.420 So I had a net worth much, much higher.

00:51:46.820 You know, I, I had shares in, you know, I, there was a time I owned 85% of Steve Madden

00:51:51.340 shoes and 20 other companies, um, that were all going public or were public.

00:51:56.740 Um, and then I was making the cash portion as well.

00:51:59.720 So I was making phenomenal amount of money.

00:52:02.080 Wow.

00:52:02.440 You had a yacht, you had a helicopter, you had a state's mansions and so on jewels for your

00:52:06.440 wives and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 1.00

00:52:07.540 What did it feel like?

00:52:09.500 Did it, did it make you happy?

00:52:11.180 You know, the goal of being rich, were you feeling like nailed it?

00:52:15.080 I think the thing about money is that, you know, and I've said this many times, you know,

00:52:19.580 I have been rich and been really, really, really happy.

00:52:24.760 I've also been rich and really, really, really miserable.

00:52:29.120 I've been poor and really, really, really miserable, but never once I've been poor and

00:52:34.840 happy.

00:52:35.240 Like, so like, it's like, I think money doesn't buy happiness, but a lack of money can really

00:52:41.040 be a passport to misery and discomfort.

00:52:44.140 And I've seen a lack of money cause so many problems in marriages with families.

00:52:50.980 And money is, I believe, my belief is money is an incredibly important thing.

00:52:55.520 It's a tool.

00:52:56.380 It's certainly not everything and it won't buy happiness, but without it, uh, you could really

00:53:01.640 be making your life much more complicated and your relationships much more tenuous without

00:53:06.260 money.

00:53:06.860 So I mean, that's the best definition I give you.

00:53:09.180 Did it feel great to make all that money?

00:53:11.340 Yeah.

00:53:11.620 I mean, it felt great.

00:53:12.780 And I make a lot of money now and it's, I love making money, but I don't buy into this

00:53:17.640 idea that it's the money itself that's making me happy.

00:53:21.320 Because I have times now where I'm unhappy and I have times now where I'm ecstatic.

00:53:26.460 Uh, but I, I will tell you that I was broke right now.

00:53:28.760 I would not be very happy at all.

00:53:30.380 Ever.

00:53:30.580 What was your favorite toy, right?

00:53:33.020 Like what, cause a lot of people fantasize about having all that, all that dough and

00:53:37.600 they ask, what would I buy?

00:53:38.780 And what would I love?

00:53:40.000 What was your favorite?

00:53:41.500 Probably like the helicopter, you know, um, on the, on that yacht at a helicopter and,

00:53:48.300 you know, we'd land this helicopter and, um, on the boat and then take it out and fly it

00:53:52.560 around.

00:53:52.920 My captain was amazing.

00:53:54.140 He was a great pilot and he'd fly 10 feet off the water and, you know, like gunship in

00:53:59.140 Vietnam sort of stuff.

00:54:00.380 And, and we just, you know, have that boat in places that, you know, that you would normally

00:54:05.580 not go to, like, you know, the Virgin islands or the Caribbean and then take the helicopter

00:54:09.400 and just see amazing things land in live volcanoes that weren't currently erupting.

00:54:13.880 So we did all these really cool things.

00:54:16.020 I think that was probably the most, my most favorite toy, even more so than the yacht.

00:54:21.220 And is it true that the, the yacht, the Nadine named after your second wife, um, was taken

00:54:26.860 down by a rogue wave?

00:54:28.180 Yeah, that's true.

00:54:30.000 It's just true.

00:54:30.640 It was a weird, a storm, a massive storm, um, that kicked up.

00:54:36.440 It started off as just like, you know, some chop, heavy chop.

00:54:39.740 And the captain was, uh, you know, advising me against making the crossing from Rome to

00:54:45.360 Sardinia.

00:54:45.960 But, you know, I was like, can we make it?

00:54:48.040 He's like, yeah, we'll make it.

00:54:49.560 We'll be rough.

00:54:50.480 We'll be uncomfortable.

00:54:51.380 We'll break a few plates.

00:54:52.140 I'm like, let's go.

00:54:52.740 Like I was just an action junkie.

00:54:54.080 Junkie.

00:54:55.020 And, um, also at the time I was doing a lot of drugs, you know, and that sort of got

00:55:00.660 me into this mindset.

00:55:02.500 Like I couldn't sit still.

00:55:03.920 I had to move.

00:55:04.680 I had to, let's go, let's go, let's go, you know?

00:55:07.200 And I, I convinced him to make the crossing.

00:55:10.140 And then in unbeknownst to him or I at the time, a freak storm was about to kick up and

00:55:14.860 it did.

00:55:16.020 And those six to eight foot waves became 20 foot waves really fast and then 50 foot waves.

00:55:23.100 And then we got hit with a rogue wave to the side and that's how the whole thing happened.

00:55:27.620 Yeah.

00:55:27.780 It was crazy.

00:55:28.740 Oh my God.

00:55:29.880 So, I mean, did, did she break apart at sea?

00:55:32.960 Like did, was there a helicopter rescue?

00:55:35.520 Yeah.

00:55:35.840 Oh yeah.

00:55:36.060 A hundred percent.

00:55:37.020 So it's just so hard to believe.

00:55:38.220 It's so crazy.

00:55:39.060 What?

00:55:40.280 No, Megan, I'll tell you this.

00:55:41.960 Um, the reality is far more cinematic than the movie.

00:55:46.900 I think for budgetary reasons, they didn't recreate what really happened was just, it

00:55:50.960 was an 18 hour ordeal where the boat was sinking slowly on its side after getting hit by this

00:55:56.780 wave and going down.

00:55:58.480 And they tried to first, the Italians first tried to send out a Coast Guard helicopter, which 0.92

00:56:03.520 lowered down a basket.

00:56:05.020 But in 50, 60 mile an hour, you know, it looks easy in the movies, but in reality, the basket

00:56:12.040 swinging a hundred feet that way, they couldn't get the basket to the boat.

00:56:15.660 And then they ran out of gas.

00:56:17.760 So they had to go back and then the captain's like, all right, we need to abandon ship.

00:56:22.420 I'm like, what?

00:56:23.420 Like into the life raft.

00:56:25.020 I'm like, you're not kidding.

00:56:26.720 So captain's orders.

00:56:27.860 Like, all right, so we all go to the back of the boat.

00:56:29.400 And, uh, he puts the rubber raft in and bam, like in one second, the raft washes away.

00:56:34.560 Of course it took down a yacht. 0.72

00:56:36.440 It's going to take down a raft.

00:56:37.620 It's so funny.

00:56:39.120 When I watched this in the movie, I was like, Leonardo DiCaprio will only be in movies in

00:56:42.840 which big ships go down that he's on.

00:56:46.240 This is his thing.

00:56:47.340 Apparently that is crazy.

00:56:49.000 You've survived so many massive life risks, you know, not yes, drugs, of course.

00:56:54.220 And then there was prison, but like that, that was so crazy.

00:56:57.140 I had a hard time believing it, but I believe you now.

00:57:00.080 Um, so you, so the drugs and the whole thing, can we just talk about the marriages for a

00:57:04.720 minute?

00:57:04.840 Because in the movie, your wife is, um, your second wife, Nadine, who is this incredibly

00:57:10.780 beautiful woman in real life and in the movie, uh, you fall in love with her while you're 0.99

00:57:15.480 still married to your first wife.

00:57:16.820 And in the movie they portray it as Margot Robbie walking in and you're just completely

00:57:20.540 floored by this gorgeous woman.

00:57:22.520 And, um, just as a funny aside, I'll tell the audience that when I texted you first,

00:57:28.500 um, this is, I pulled it up cause it was a funny sort of introduction from me to you.

00:57:33.820 I said, so nice to meet you.

00:57:35.360 Uh, we have a ton in common.

00:57:37.680 I hate perpetual victimhood and people who blame others for their problems.

00:57:41.300 I love Brian Friedman, who we both know it's a, our lawyer.

00:57:44.700 And I also had a movie made about my life in which Margot Robbie starred.

00:57:49.320 So she played your second wife, Nadine.

00:57:51.860 Um, there's actually, she, in the movie that was partially about me, Bombshell, she played

00:57:56.860 a different character and Charlize Theron played me.

00:57:59.660 Hold on.

00:57:59.960 We actually had a full screen made showing that the split screen of, of the two will

00:58:04.240 pop it up there.

00:58:04.980 Look, there's, there's me and me, Charlize and Margot and Leonardo and Margot.

00:58:11.160 So, um, yeah.

00:58:13.100 So, so Margot Robbie plays your second wife and your thoughts now, because Nadine is a big 0.99

00:58:17.100 star in your life, in the movie, in the book, you call her the Duchess.

00:58:21.100 Uh, cause I guess she was British originally, um, your thoughts on her.

00:58:25.500 Cause it's a real love story.

00:58:26.900 You do wind up having a terribly tumultuous relationship with her.

00:58:30.500 And I know you're married to somebody else now, but I kind of wanted you to put a period

00:58:33.900 on the end of that relationship for me and how you, how you see it now.

00:58:36.620 Um, yeah, I think that, listen, you know, um, she was, I think, you know, you have certain

00:58:43.400 people that come into your lives at certain times for a reason.

00:58:47.240 Um, and she was the right person for me at that time.

00:58:50.900 I, you know, I really, you know, the sad part, but I really loved my first wife.

00:58:54.460 I really did.

00:58:55.020 She was an amazing lady. 0.99

00:58:56.180 And I think she was under portrayed in the book in many ways.

00:58:59.920 Like in the movie, uh, she was a beautiful woman. 0.70

00:59:02.520 The girl played, it was beautiful too, but she really was, it was a good woman.

00:59:05.300 And, um, and, but at that point in time, I don't think anyone could have survived what

00:59:11.920 I was at the time.

00:59:12.920 I was, everything was taking off so fast and it was, um, you know, the, with the drugs

00:59:18.840 involved, it was just like, I was looking, I was in that mindset of just what's next.

00:59:23.020 What's next.

00:59:23.640 What's next.

00:59:24.020 And it was excess and it was excess at every turn more, more weird mindset that you get

00:59:29.420 into sometimes on wall street and other times as well, but wall street seems to bring it

00:59:34.100 out in people.

00:59:34.580 And, um, and, um, and I met her just, it was just like the movie, literally like exactly

00:59:41.400 like that at a party.

00:59:42.460 She walked in, I was, but she was gorgeous. 1.00

00:59:44.380 And then we, uh, you know, I tracked her down and we went out and, and, you know, I learned

00:59:48.940 a very important lesson, you know, from that whole situation that about cheating in a

00:59:53.660 marriage.

00:59:54.560 Um, cause I don't cheat my marriages after that.

00:59:56.880 I didn't cheat after that marriage.

00:59:57.920 Cause, um, you, you can't choose who you fall in love with.

01:00:02.820 Like it's, and you know, you're playing Russian roulette.

01:00:05.340 Like, you know, you talk to just kind of have a casual affair cause you don't know what

01:00:08.500 might happen with that affair.

01:00:10.020 And I fell in love with her.

01:00:11.220 I didn't really intend to, but when you do fall in love with someone, um, you know, it's

01:00:16.300 very difficult, um, to stay with someone that you're not in love with anymore.

01:00:20.540 Cause I think it's hard to love two people at the same time.

01:00:22.540 You know, wait, but you're not saying you didn't cheat on Nadine, the Margot Robbie

01:00:25.780 character, because that's like half the movie of you with the hookers while you're married 1.00

01:00:28.980 to her.

01:00:29.380 Is that you're saying when you're current marriage, you don't after her, like when I

01:00:33.960 look the whole, when I look back and say, when I perspective, when I look back at my

01:00:37.700 life after my marriage to Nadine, okay.

01:00:40.960 Okay.

01:00:41.480 Okay.

01:00:41.760 Got it.

01:00:42.400 When I wrote my book, that was really true for me, writing the book was an incredibly

01:00:48.240 like profound experience, but it was almost like self analysis and self psychology, my

01:00:53.480 own, you know, strengths, faults, and frailties.

01:00:56.080 Right.

01:00:56.840 And when I look back then, even when I was with Nadine, I kind of knew that I made this

01:01:01.740 gross error in terms of just like going out and sticking my hand in the cookie jar.

01:01:05.220 But just so you understand when you're doing drugs, like the way I was doing drugs, you

01:01:09.660 know, anything is possible.

01:01:11.420 There is no like, Oh, I'm going to be a good, you're like a different person.

01:01:14.580 At a certain point, you get caught up in a mindset where everything can be rationalized

01:01:18.500 and everything seems okay.

01:01:20.440 Um, the truth is I had far more, I, I, I, this is going to sound strange to you.

01:01:26.180 Okay.

01:01:26.520 But it's not as strange as you think.

01:01:28.540 Um, but you know, in my mind, I didn't consider sleeping with hookers cheating in the traditional 1.00

01:01:33.520 sense because there was no emotional attachment.

01:01:36.820 No, I, I understand that my, my husband wrote a book about Wall Street called ghost of Manhattan

01:01:40.340 and he, he, he did it.

01:01:42.180 It was very well researched.

01:01:43.340 This is one of the points he makes about the guys who eat, whether it's hookers or what

01:01:46.780 they call, forgive me, a rub and tug from a massage therapist kind of thing.

01:01:51.220 They don't consider it cheating.

01:01:53.360 Exactly.

01:01:53.840 So yeah, I'm glad that you at least, you know, you don't have to agree with it, but you can

01:01:56.360 understand I'm not the only person that thinks that, and I'm not saying it's right.

01:02:00.040 Cause I don't think it's right.

01:02:00.980 In retrospect, they don't think it, but that's how I was thinking at the time.

01:02:04.320 And she knew, she knew what was going on.

01:02:06.620 She was aware because it was all, everyone was getting married.

01:02:09.060 Everyone was having bachelor parties and all the stories were searching, but it was kind

01:02:12.280 of harmless, so to speak.

01:02:14.300 Right.

01:02:15.160 Um, and then I had some affairs as well as, as did she, you know, she was no angel either.

01:02:19.960 Right.

01:02:20.480 It takes two to tango.

01:02:22.020 Um, but yeah.

01:02:23.220 And I, and I think that since that marriage though, whenever I've been in a relationship,

01:02:26.340 I have been faithful since, since then.

01:02:28.200 So without, after that.

01:02:29.020 Can I ask you a dumb question?

01:02:29.900 This is a dumb, like, I really feel like a goody two shoes at the moment, but how does

01:02:34.840 one order a hooker? 1.00

01:02:35.840 Like when you first did it for the first time, like, you know, it's not like ordering Domino's

01:02:40.220 pizza.

01:02:40.600 Like how does.

01:02:41.860 Yeah.

01:02:42.140 It's like, it's like ordering Domino's pizza, probably even easier.

01:02:45.440 So now it's all done on the internet, you know, and you have all these websites and

01:02:49.140 all this sort of stuff that, that goes on around the world, everywhere.

01:02:52.740 Every, I mean, you can go any, like any city.

01:02:55.680 There's like a Craigslist.

01:02:56.880 I think it was really big with it for a while.

01:02:58.340 I'm not really up on the sites these days, but I'm sure if you just, just Google call

01:03:03.700 girls in my city, you're like, that was, you know, your public service announcement 1.00

01:03:08.380 for the day.

01:03:10.100 Okay.

01:03:10.560 So in, in the movie that's portrayed with like, I mean, it's not just hookers.

01:03:14.320 It's like orgies.

01:03:15.320 It's craziness on planes.

01:03:17.400 So many naked girls everywhere. 1.00

01:03:18.900 So much drugs, so much alcohol.

01:03:20.700 Is that how it really was?

01:03:23.320 Yes.

01:03:23.580 It was, it was like that and worse.

01:03:25.020 It was, uh, it became, it became, um, some sort of perverted version of can you top this?

01:03:32.960 You know, it's like, you know, we were these action junkies that were constantly looking

01:03:37.460 for higher and higher cliffs to dive off of and shallower and shallower pools to land

01:03:43.740 in.

01:03:43.980 So every time you would do something, it would be extreme and insane.

01:03:48.560 What do you do next?

01:03:49.400 The topic, you know, the first time we did something obscene, you would think it sounded

01:03:52.980 obscene that we, some kid that was struggling financially, we, we just said, well, shave

01:03:56.560 his head and give him $10,000.

01:03:58.120 And that was amazing.

01:03:59.220 We got a barbershop poll we made.

01:04:01.860 It was like, oh my God, we're going to shave everyone.

01:04:04.240 I'm crazy.

01:04:04.740 But then three months later, a head shaving is a hundred dollars.

01:04:08.760 Like, so it becomes like the norm.

01:04:10.920 So what do you do next?

01:04:11.860 Well, let's shave a girl's head. 1.00

01:04:13.200 Like, you know, let's, you know, it's every time you do something, it's like, what's next?

01:04:16.640 What's next?

01:04:17.280 What's next?

01:04:17.740 So this sort of evolution of insanity that happens by trying to constantly keep yourself

01:04:23.940 and everyone around you entertained.

01:04:25.660 I always compared to Stratton, like the, you know, the floor of the brokerage room is like,

01:04:29.140 it's like the floor of the Coliseum, the sands of the Coliseum where acts of depravity

01:04:33.200 serve as entertainment for the mob.

01:04:35.240 And it was very much like that.

01:04:37.180 Yes.

01:04:37.380 I read in your book that you said that you had to impose a rule in the office between

01:04:42.260 the hours of, I think, 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.

01:04:44.780 People were not allowed to have sex on the floor. 0.87

01:04:47.560 Most people didn't obey that.

01:04:49.200 Like that started from, you know, it's really funny.

01:04:55.060 In the beginning, I was very, like, very straight like that.

01:04:58.320 Like the first time I caught someone was like, they want.

01:05:00.940 Now, some kid was getting a blowjob in an elevator in the building.

01:05:04.360 And I was like, and I heard this.

01:05:06.400 I'm like, I'm going to fire this kid.

01:05:07.780 And then like, like, well, you know, and then, you know, it's not so tough, like whatever.

01:05:11.260 And within a week, the girl had given a blowjob to everybody. 1.00

01:05:14.720 And then me, it's like, it's so crazy.

01:05:20.080 If you're not actively guarding your own ethics, your own integrity, your own moral compass,

01:05:26.620 it is really easy, Megan, for it to spiral out of control.

01:05:30.140 Really easy.

01:05:31.080 I'm telling you.

01:05:32.100 Yeah, this is kind of the theme of the interview, right?

01:05:34.860 Back to our original point about the guy cheating on the Series 7.

01:05:37.680 So when you look back now, how old are you now?

01:05:41.040 I'm 59.

01:05:42.400 Okay.

01:05:42.600 So when you look back now at that time and the craziness and the excess, you know,

01:05:47.740 from a guy who had to be rescued from the waters after your yacht sunk, I wonder what

01:05:52.700 is, does anything jump out at you as especially crazy?

01:05:56.440 Like, wow, that was the most, that was the most excessive.

01:06:00.500 My bachelor party, which we really can't talk about here.

01:06:02.920 It was too disgusting.

01:06:03.860 But, you know, my bachelor party was like a low, I think.

01:06:07.800 And it was like sort of a culmination of, can you top this?

01:06:10.960 What, you know, what, what can we do?

01:06:12.300 That's just, you know, depraved and unusual.

01:06:14.660 And, and, you know, it's almost like, you know, you see, this is, you know, remember the

01:06:20.660 time this is before the internet, you know, and now on the internet, you could find every

01:06:25.660 type of perversion and insanity and over the top behavior, whether it's on like platforms

01:06:31.940 where they're doing gags and stunts or on porn sites, it's everything that you want is on

01:06:36.320 the internet right now.

01:06:37.240 Good, bad, ugly, or otherwise.

01:06:38.980 Back then that didn't exist.

01:06:40.160 And, you know, you imagine things from what you saw in movies and, and heard things that

01:06:44.180 you like put together these like scenarios of what you thought was cool and what you thought

01:06:48.420 was fun.

01:06:49.020 And you're like inventing it as you go along.

01:06:51.140 And we were doing that at, at, at a very high level because we had a lot of money.

01:06:56.160 So we, nothing was really out of reach of what we could do.

01:06:58.960 So, you know, while someone might have a bachelor's client, have a, a dancer or a one prostitute,

01:07:03.440 we had a hundred of them.

01:07:04.480 And, you know, if there's someone bring some drugs, we had a boatloads of trucks.

01:07:08.180 It was all with like, you know, sort of five times, five times, 10 times a hundred.

01:07:12.220 And, and it was insane.

01:07:13.860 It truly was insane.

01:07:15.740 Would you ever have the sick feeling the next day?

01:07:17.720 I don't mean physical illness, obviously that must've come with it, but would you ever

01:07:20.880 have the, you know, the moral second guessing the next day, or would that just, that would

01:07:24.640 have to wait until sobriety and, you know, prison and all that.

01:07:27.540 So I would have it every hour of every day.

01:07:31.800 You would.

01:07:32.140 So you were conscious of the wrongness of it.

01:07:34.800 In the book, I'm always talking about these things.

01:07:36.900 Like, I'm almost like watching my own life fall, you know, unfold before me.

01:07:41.320 Like I'm an actor on a stage, not in control of my own behavior, which is a massive, incredible

01:07:46.380 cop-out, by the way.

01:07:48.400 It's an incredible, like liberating cop-out.

01:07:50.460 It's not me.

01:07:50.920 It's my, I'm out of control.

01:07:51.920 Right?

01:07:52.200 Right.

01:07:52.400 But it's in control, but you rationalize, never underestimate the power of rationalization.

01:07:57.600 And also, you know, what we do as human beings is we surround ourselves with a peer group

01:08:04.380 that shares our values.

01:08:05.760 So we don't think we're crazy.

01:08:07.740 So, you know, what defines what's normal and not in a society is what's happening in

01:08:12.400 society every day.

01:08:13.560 So we almost form this self-contained society where rules that might seem abnormal or completely

01:08:20.320 out of control in the real world seem quite normal in the four walls of the boardroom or

01:08:24.680 when we were partying in a hotel or in a casino.

01:08:27.700 Does that make sense?

01:08:29.180 It does.

01:08:30.080 It makes sense.

01:08:30.960 And it's scary.

01:08:32.580 It's, it's, I see it and I read it and I, it's like, you almost have to look at the

01:08:36.960 people around you for the reflection of what you are, good or bad.

01:08:41.520 Um, but eventually it would all come crashing down, uh, legally, the marriage, uh, the money,

01:08:49.800 all of it.

01:08:50.500 And that's where we're going to pick it up next, uh, with Jordan Belford.

01:08:54.740 So happy to be speaking with the Wolf of Wall Street.

01:08:57.660 Uh, and we'll be right back with more.

01:09:03.320 I can't skip by before we get to the downfall about, before asking you about the animals

01:09:08.220 that were allowed on the floor of your office.

01:09:11.080 Can you spend a second on that?

01:09:13.060 Yeah, it was, it wasn't like it was a zoo or anything like that.

01:09:15.580 I think the people, they just were more than the animals.

01:09:18.920 But for the, uh, but yeah, but people would bring in pets like iguanas and, and dogs and

01:09:24.460 parrots and, uh, and, uh, fish, goldfish, as you know, one of them got eaten.

01:09:30.340 Mm-hmm.

01:09:30.740 Um, so yeah, that we had the sort of, um, I think we were ahead of our time in that

01:09:36.060 sense.

01:09:36.460 Like we had the sort of like fun, loving atmosphere that they, they, the bro culture on and the

01:09:41.240 high tech firms have now.

01:09:42.520 And like, you know, it's sort of like you go to work and like, it's all about being

01:09:45.500 comfortable, having fun at work with that, like the beanbag chairs and that obviously

01:09:49.420 we had a bit of a twist there, but I mean, some of the untraditional stuff were blazing

01:09:56.700 trails.

01:09:57.300 What you didn't know was that that was the, their emotional support iguana.

01:10:01.600 I mean, these guys, they needed, they needed a lifeline.

01:10:05.540 I read that, um, the one that was a bridge too far for you was, uh, a chimpanzee coming 1.00

01:10:09.920 in and a diaper and you had, even you drew the line at that one.

01:10:13.380 Exactly.

01:10:13.920 It was, you know, there was always like, uh, interesting things trying to be brought into

01:10:19.540 the boardroom acts of the, you know, where they were people, animals, things, you name

01:10:24.580 it.

01:10:24.700 It was a, it was a freak, just, you know, it makes sense when you view it from the lens

01:10:28.780 of what happened when you put 3000 barely post adolescent kids in a room and give them

01:10:34.520 too much money and too much time and some drugs and alcohol, what do you think is going to

01:10:38.340 happen?

01:10:39.300 Nothing good.

01:10:40.120 So it's like I, when I look at this and read about this, all I can think is, can you imagine

01:10:45.240 if today's post me to post like woke world, woke world, got to look at this in, you know,

01:10:52.980 the present day?

01:10:54.640 Megan, I, I, you know, it's really interesting that you say that because, you know, I come

01:10:59.060 from a family, as I told you, a really empowered female.

01:11:02.460 My mother is a really empowered, successful, educated, trailblazing woman. 0.98

01:11:08.760 She literally is the oldest woman to pass the bar. 0.97

01:11:10.660 She was voted pro bono lawyer of the year in New York.

01:11:13.500 And she was like 74.

01:11:15.500 She's still showing an attack at 89 or 88.

01:11:19.000 She'll kill me, 88. 0.99

01:11:19.740 But like, you know, there wasn't, it's interesting because, you know, rules have changed so much

01:11:28.460 over the years.

01:11:30.400 If you would ask me if we sexually harassed girls back then, I would say unequivocally not

01:11:35.800 like unequivocally, like no girl.

01:11:38.040 If I knew of any girl there that was being harassed, I'd fire the guy.

01:11:42.320 Like in a split, if I found out that a guy was doing something to a girl, the girl didn't

01:11:47.460 want, I would have insisted that they be fired immediately.

01:11:51.660 And I, I, I live by that.

01:11:53.220 I swear by that today.

01:11:54.760 Most of the girls, they were part of the insanity. 0.99

01:11:57.800 Well, that's the thing.

01:11:58.400 It's not harassment if you want it.

01:12:00.400 They really enjoy.

01:12:01.500 Now I'm bet, you know, in retrospect, it was happening hidden from me.

01:12:05.620 And also in this sort of culture of women accepting things they probably weren't comfortable with, 0.96

01:12:11.100 but had to smile and, and, and shake it off because they thought that was the norm.

01:12:15.400 So I think it's very good on some level that that's changed, that women speak up for themselves

01:12:20.300 and, and, and don't accept what they're not comfortable because they feel like they have

01:12:24.160 to.

01:12:24.300 So I'm betting that there was women that were very uncomfortable there and that, but they 1.00

01:12:29.700 just felt like they had no choice.

01:12:30.900 So if you go with the flow or you're out, right?

01:12:33.280 So I think that that's some positive change.

01:12:35.280 I think also, I, I agree that it's gone many, make way too far in some cases with the sort

01:12:41.120 of victim mentality, people not taking responsibility for their part and things as well.

01:12:45.180 And I think that, you know, going back 20 years and trying to say something happened without

01:12:49.220 proof is very difficult.

01:12:51.900 In some cases, it's very clear, like with animals like Harvey Weinstein, so obviously

01:12:55.760 things happen and there's proof and there's corroborating evidence, but it's a lot more subtle

01:13:01.140 than that with many cases.

01:13:02.400 And it's a very difficult thing.

01:13:03.900 So I don't pretend that the answer, but, um, um, but we certainly did not look at it

01:13:08.980 as harassment.

01:13:09.860 That, that I tell you that would have been stopped in a second.

01:13:12.320 I'm thinking now there was a woman who came on my show at NBC.

01:13:15.400 Uh, we were doing a story on harassment.

01:13:17.320 Me too.

01:13:17.800 What's happening in the society right in the midst of all of it.

01:13:20.060 And she was complaining that her complaint, it wasn't like part of a bigger story.

01:13:24.020 Her complaint, she's part of a panel was that her boss told her she looked hot in her dress. 1.00

01:13:29.440 Now.

01:13:29.920 Okay.

01:13:30.200 It's not ideal.

01:13:30.820 Cause you want to, you want to be seen as a professional, but like, that's not really

01:13:34.200 what the me too movement was.

01:13:36.540 I, I, all I can think about is a woman from your firm saying that I had a girl next to

01:13:41.400 me, giving blowjobs to half the firm, sit down, take a seat. 0.96

01:13:44.820 A woman would say, damn, I thought I looked pretty hot that day too.

01:13:48.840 Like that mindset back then, probably.

01:13:51.880 But like, again, it's, you know, I have a daughter, my daughter's 27.

01:13:55.120 She's, you know, 20, 28.

01:13:56.380 She's impressed.

01:13:57.540 She's a graduate from NYU, a degree in psychology, grad school.

01:14:03.000 Um, very empowered woman, very, very liberal in our, in our, in our, in our, uh, beliefs

01:14:08.160 and stuff.

01:14:08.700 And then we get along phenomenal.

01:14:10.380 Uh, we don't agree on a lot of stuff.

01:14:11.820 Well, one thing I, I certainly agree with you is, is victimhood.

01:14:15.360 I, I, I think that sometimes this has a way of crossing over into someone becoming a victim.

01:14:20.640 And I don't think that helps any cause.

01:14:22.740 I think that, um, I think it's, things have to change.

01:14:25.760 It's good that they're changing and, and, and will continue.

01:14:27.800 But there's a, there's, I think what gets lost sometimes in these, in these movements

01:14:31.880 and these paradigm shifts is like, it's like, you can't paint everything with one brush.

01:14:35.820 There's like a degrees of things and there's a continuum and you have to look at things

01:14:40.560 really along that competing to decide, you know, you know, what do you do about something

01:14:44.300 that happened a long time ago?

01:14:45.360 I think it's really sad when someone loses their career over something that happened 15

01:14:49.360 or 20 years ago, when the, when the norms were different, that being said, then there's

01:14:54.020 monsters out there that deserve everything that they got.

01:14:57.260 And, and that's a great thing.

01:14:58.980 So, but I think it's more complex than just bad, good, you know, harassing.

01:15:02.620 I totally agree with you.

01:15:03.580 I mean, I, I was talking with Douglas Murray, who is brilliant and a social commentator and author

01:15:07.500 and this British guy, and he's great.

01:15:09.380 And he, and I was talking to him about these college students who were yelling at their

01:15:12.900 school dean saying, these were college students who happened to be black saying, you don't

01:15:17.180 understand anything.

01:15:17.840 We come, you know, we come from slaves that are, you don't have the same ancestors.

01:15:21.940 Our ancestors were slaves and yours weren't.

01:15:24.140 And, you know, you, you, you basically can't explain anything to us because of that.

01:15:28.160 And I said, well, you know, how's this guy supposed to respond to this?

01:15:30.360 And Douglas Murray said, we can all do that.

01:15:34.180 We can all do that.

01:15:35.720 Right.

01:15:35.980 Everybody's got some sort of a painful history.

01:15:38.700 This may not equal slavery, but bad, you know, it's bad.

01:15:41.460 I have been, listen, my people, the Irish Americans didn't have it so good when we first

01:15:44.360 came over to America and you could go down the list, but you tweeted out something on

01:15:49.320 July 22nd where I was like, well, I haven't seen a shorter, more succinct version of the

01:15:54.400 way I feel, which is sad story.

01:15:56.220 No one cares.

01:15:56.920 Work harder.

01:15:58.240 It's not to dismiss slavery.

01:15:59.780 It's not about slavery, but it's just about victim mentality. 0.99

01:16:01.880 Something bad happened to you.

01:16:02.660 I understand.

01:16:03.060 Oh, it's anyway, back to work.

01:16:04.920 Like, try harder.

01:16:06.180 Like, that's the only way forward.

01:16:07.640 Sitting around and pointing the finger at everybody and lamenting and feeling like you're bad luck

01:16:10.560 and poor me.

01:16:11.280 Not going to get you anywhere.

01:16:13.380 I, you know, I have, I've said publicly many times that I am very, very prejudiced against

01:16:19.260 two types of people.

01:16:20.360 Lazy people and stupid people.

01:16:21.980 Everyone else I'm totally okay with.

01:16:24.220 It's like, I just despise lazy, stupid people.

01:16:26.820 Right.

01:16:27.120 And, you know, I, I believe in the egalitarian system.

01:16:30.920 I grew up in a household that like, like it was just zero prejudice in my household.

01:16:35.320 Really like zero.

01:16:37.240 Okay.

01:16:37.480 Like I never even considered it.

01:16:39.320 And when I saw it out in the world so much, it was pretty shocking to me.

01:16:43.880 Um, and, but listen, I, it's, it's, it's very complicated.

01:16:47.740 You know, this stuff, when you start getting into, into the race struggle, it's, you know,

01:16:52.020 there's a lot of bad shit that happened.

01:16:54.120 And like, you know, I watched a movie recently.

01:16:55.640 I was watching Crash with my wife, Paul Haggis.

01:16:58.280 Great film.

01:16:59.180 And, you know, and you look back and it's like, it was appalling, but like what we have

01:17:05.020 the LAPD treated black.

01:17:06.720 Fucking appalling.

01:17:08.140 Imagine having to, I can only imagine driving in a car and not, like, I never worried that

01:17:11.940 if I got pulled over, something would happen.

01:17:13.260 Like I never even cared.

01:17:14.280 Right.

01:17:14.920 So, but again, okay.

01:17:17.120 Sucks.

01:17:17.980 Work on it.

01:17:18.620 I get it.

01:17:19.240 Like, okay.

01:17:19.620 But like, you can't use that as an excuse, not to, you got to still go forward in your

01:17:23.000 own life and, and just, you know, do the best with whatever hand was dealt to you.

01:17:28.000 We all have negative stuff that either we was dealt us or for our own mistakes, we put

01:17:34.520 ourselves in positions that compromise us, that, you know, caused us problems.

01:17:38.460 And we have to overcome that and put one foot in front of the other.

01:17:40.880 So I just think that, that when you take, sometimes things can be true, but okay.

01:17:46.100 So what?

01:17:46.640 Like you can't, if you, you, it doesn't serve you.

01:17:49.380 It doesn't serve your cause to live in the problem versus you actually, you know, living

01:17:54.180 your most empowered version of your own life and, and being part of a solution.

01:17:57.940 Which is work harder, make changes and go forward, but don't blame everyone around

01:18:02.200 you for what you're alive.

01:18:03.260 I just think that helps you.

01:18:04.780 Honestly.

01:18:05.420 And I understand it because I, it's not to say that there are no victims in the world

01:18:08.460 who people don't get victimized.

01:18:09.720 But I remember even when I was getting harassed by my boss at Fox in the moment, talking to

01:18:14.820 my therapist at the time, she was my like marital therapist.

01:18:18.560 Although I didn't go through marital therapy with my first husband.

01:18:20.980 I just went to individual.

01:18:22.720 And this woman, I was telling her about it.

01:18:24.280 Like, this is what he's doing, all this stuff.

01:18:25.600 And she just kept putting it back on me.

01:18:27.860 And now today's people would say, oh, she was wrong.

01:18:30.580 She blamed the victim.

01:18:31.340 She didn't blame me.

01:18:32.260 She just said, what could you have done differently in, in the room?

01:18:35.940 What can you do differently in the future to make, you know, to, to try to avoid that

01:18:40.120 situation?

01:18:40.680 And I didn't find it offensive.

01:18:42.020 I found it empowering, right?

01:18:45.060 Me, I will be the one to change my life and make sure this doesn't happen to me or that

01:18:49.860 I navigate it better or that I navigate this deftly in a way that I can preserve my future

01:18:55.040 in an industry in which I'm totally green and new.

01:18:58.300 You know, of course, right?

01:18:59.920 Of course you're right.

01:19:00.940 Like, exactly.

01:19:01.840 Like, I think that most people have to believe, feel this way, the way you feel, the way I

01:19:08.520 feel, I think what we have in the Twitter sphere is like a relatively small group of

01:19:14.200 very loud, vocal people that, that is found on a view that is really not widely popular

01:19:22.220 or believed.

01:19:23.080 But I think on some level, what happens is corporate America embraces that because it

01:19:30.040 allows, it gives them plausible deniability.

01:19:32.920 So they say they're woke.

01:19:34.440 They say they're doing all this stuff so they can keep raping and pillaging the village as

01:19:38.280 they've done for the last hundred years.

01:19:40.360 Like, it's their great way.

01:19:41.680 We're responsible.

01:19:42.600 See, but they're actually, in reality, all it is, is smoke and mirrors for them to keep

01:19:46.860 doing the same old, same old thing by embracing causes they really don't believe in.

01:19:51.780 Because to me, all I'm seeing happening make zero sense unless you look at it in that way

01:19:56.960 that it's like it's all part of a much broader strategy to say we're great because if we embrace

01:20:03.260 those causes, then we keep doing what we want and keep making as much money as we want as

01:20:07.880 long as we want.

01:20:08.800 Yeah, that's, that's PR.

01:20:10.440 Don't be fooled.

01:20:11.040 And I, sadly, I don't know whether people are or not, but they, they got to be paying

01:20:14.040 attention.

01:20:15.280 Okay.

01:20:15.760 So into your life comes someone named Agent Coleman portrayed in the movie by literally

01:20:22.100 the only celebrity I've ever had a crush on, Kyle Chandler.

01:20:25.680 I love, I fell in love with him on Friday Night Lights.

01:20:28.060 Doug knows.

01:20:29.700 And he, he does a great job in the movie of sort of quietly stalking you.

01:20:33.760 And you knew about this Agent Coleman who was on to you.

01:20:37.540 First, the SEC was on to you.

01:20:38.940 And then he was an FBI agent who was on to you.

01:20:41.600 And at first, you know, you, you'd never met him, but then they slapped the cups on you one

01:20:47.160 day and, and you met him.

01:20:48.740 But when you real, like, when was it that you realized the house of cards is coming down?

01:20:55.120 I'm likely going to prison and my sort of fast and loose with people's monies, you know,

01:21:01.640 dodging the ethics laws and so on.

01:21:04.080 What I, in a way that I thought was clever, but maybe not, has caught up with me.

01:21:08.180 So, it's a very, it's a good question.

01:21:11.260 The answer is probably a bit more lengthy than, than, because it's, it's complex.

01:21:16.780 It's not, it's not any one thing happening at one time.

01:21:20.600 There's like sort of a lot of things happening at once.

01:21:24.180 The interesting thing, I think, is how long it took him to actually find a way to, to get,

01:21:31.660 to get an indictment against.

01:21:32.860 Because, like, to be clear, like, what I was doing was not like a Bernie Mayhoff, like,

01:21:37.540 you know, hey, you know, just take your money and, like, not invest.

01:21:40.540 Like, I had a legitimate firm that was obeying every single securities law out there.

01:21:45.140 So, you could order my firm and literally living, like, the SEC was there for years.

01:21:49.300 They couldn't find anything other than garden variety, small violations that you would find

01:21:54.020 at every firm.

01:21:54.920 So, it wasn't like I was breaking the laws.

01:21:57.700 I go, ah, Mayhoff, he just took the money, didn't invest the money.

01:22:00.300 All they had to do was look, right?

01:22:01.900 Like, how come they didn't look crazy, right?

01:22:04.160 No, the SEC was, like, living in my firm and watching every ticket.

01:22:08.180 But I was breaking laws, but they were, they were very esoteric and hard to detect.

01:22:13.060 They, you understand, it was like, so I'm not saying I wasn't breaking laws, but like,

01:22:16.220 if you looked at the firm, unless you could speak to people and they'd admit they were

01:22:19.440 doing something, you would never know.

01:22:20.640 It would be impossible to prove, right?

01:22:22.200 It was a very small portion of my business was illegal, very small, but that was enough to

01:22:28.260 make it illegal, right?

01:22:29.240 And the difference with Coleman is he was just doggedly determined for years and years.

01:22:35.620 And ultimately, it wasn't even the stocks that he, that got him in to my firm and was

01:22:41.780 able to get an indictment.

01:22:42.760 It was the money laundering to Switzerland.

01:22:45.160 It was the fact that I moved money to Switzerland to a Swiss banker that, by my own bad luck, got

01:22:51.680 indicted in the United States, not because of me, for some other thing he was involved

01:22:56.860 with, Benny Hanna.

01:22:58.120 Benny Hanna.

01:22:59.500 Benny Hanna, right?

01:23:01.160 And he was laundering money for many different people.

01:23:05.120 One of them was this sort of offshore, I'll never forget looking at the indictment against

01:23:10.420 this guy.

01:23:10.960 It was like, Benny Hanna, offshore boat racing.

01:23:12.900 And I'm like, what?

01:23:13.840 Like, what is this?

01:23:14.700 Like, not mine, his indictment, the Swiss banker.

01:23:17.060 I was like, oh my God, could I have worse luck?

01:23:19.300 I picked the one banker that gets arrested in the United States for laundering money for

01:23:23.060 like a Benny Hanna.

01:23:24.320 Now, what Benny Hanna, I have no idea what ended up happening with that, but it was in

01:23:28.380 the indictment, right?

01:23:29.780 And then I knew I was screwed because he got picked up and he's in the US and he's cooperating.

01:23:34.880 So, of course, he gave my name up and that was what gave Coleman the ability to go back

01:23:41.140 and get the proper paperwork to open up my accounts in Switzerland and that was it.

01:23:48.780 I had a headshot against me.

01:23:50.300 I was done.

01:23:51.360 When I got arrested, I then admitted to breaking these other securities laws, which is called

01:23:57.400 free riding, putting new issues in friends' accounts and that sort of rat holes and stuff.

01:24:01.560 The indictment was secured by the Swiss banking stuff.

01:24:04.880 Right.

01:24:05.700 And that's ultimately how he brought me down.

01:24:08.260 And I had a massive respect for him.

01:24:10.920 And he's a friend of mine today, by the way.

01:24:12.800 We became friends.

01:24:14.160 He's been on my podcast.

01:24:15.420 I really like him.

01:24:16.120 I have nothing but the highest regard for him.

01:24:18.000 Yeah.

01:24:18.520 He's a great guy.

01:24:20.020 He thinks exactly like you, just so you know, you should have him on your show.

01:24:23.400 He shares, you know, he's a very, very intelligent guy.

01:24:28.000 And I deserve to go to jail.

01:24:29.960 I mean, I broke the law.

01:24:31.180 I mean, like, you know, he was like, it wasn't like I was, I was framed.

01:24:33.560 I wasn't like, they made this stuff up.

01:24:36.400 No, I broke the law.

01:24:37.680 I got caught.

01:24:38.400 Listen, I wasn't the first guy.

01:24:39.800 You know, Wall Street's a, you know, you can go to any firm and find terrible things happening

01:24:44.480 in any day.

01:24:45.140 So I'm not saying I was, I certainly wasn't any worse, but I broke the law.

01:24:48.560 It doesn't make it right.

01:24:49.500 Okay.

01:24:49.800 So like, you know, you could say it was happening everywhere, which it was.

01:24:52.980 I didn't, I did it with more panache, I guess.

01:24:56.200 But the things I was doing were happening all over Wall Street.

01:24:58.680 They're still happening today.

01:24:59.820 I got indicted for it.

01:25:00.780 I deserve to get indicted for it.

01:25:01.860 And he, he earned the indictment, the old fair, knocking on doors and doing the work.

01:25:05.820 Can I ask you about the, um, there, you, you write about how he came to you and said, I

01:25:12.620 went to a hundred people, you call them Strattonites, guys who work for you at Stratton and nobody

01:25:16.740 would talk.

01:25:17.280 They were, they were totally loyal.

01:25:19.140 And, and you said something like, that's what happens when you're, when you're the cash cow.

01:25:23.340 Um, but so, so they didn't want to turn you in the guys who worked for you.

01:25:27.300 But then I know you, you wore a wire for the FBI, you and the guy who also got indicted

01:25:32.660 with you, your partner, um, did you have to go against those guys, the guys who didn't

01:25:38.120 turn on you or was it different fish?

01:25:40.700 So this is really, this is, this is probably the most difficult part of my life.

01:25:45.400 I would think, and I ended up, I ended up getting in trouble, by the way, I almost, thanks

01:25:50.200 to Coleman, I didn't do 30 years in jail because I refused.

01:25:55.340 So I agreed to cooperate, um, as did pretty much everybody in my case.

01:26:00.480 So, and, and, and, you know, when I was considering whether or not to cooperate, um, I was like,

01:26:05.440 everyone is going to cooperate.

01:26:06.840 So you're not gonna have to testify against your friends.

01:26:09.340 You're gonna have to give all the information up, tell them where your money is.

01:26:12.640 And, you know, maybe you'll testify against someone you don't know, but it's not most,

01:26:15.800 everyone in the federal system, it's so rare that someone goes to trial in these cases

01:26:20.200 because the, the sentencing garlands is so onerous.

01:26:23.680 And unless you cooperate, it's like, it's like, go to trial, you lose, it's 30 years.

01:26:28.000 So most people will end up cooperating, right?

01:26:31.540 And then they were threatened to indict my wife, even though she hadn't done anything

01:26:35.620 wrong.

01:26:36.020 Once they threatened to indict my wife, I had no choice but to plead guilty and cooperate.

01:26:40.100 So I started cooperating, giving information on, on what was going on.

01:26:43.700 And then they asked me to wear a wire against a very, very close friend of mine.

01:26:47.920 And, um, and it was a terrible, terrible thing to do because it, for me, that was sort of

01:26:55.000 my moral line.

01:26:55.900 It was like, I'm okay, you know, cooperating with a rat out, a close friend of mine. 0.94

01:26:59.060 It was just, it just seemed like it was just a bridge too far at the time.

01:27:02.360 And so when I went to meet with him, they wired me up.

01:27:05.280 I passed him a note saying, I'm a liar, don't incriminate yourself.

01:27:10.620 And it was this moment I was like, I'm a good guy.

01:27:13.040 I'm a, I'm a, what a good guy I am.

01:27:14.860 Like for doing, I'm a, I'm a standup guy.

01:27:16.980 And I, you know, and I passed him this note and sure enough, he didn't incriminate himself.

01:27:21.820 And then three months later, he got in trouble and turned me in and gave me a vote.

01:27:25.860 And, and, and, and, I mean, and that was the point when I think I lost all faith in

01:27:29.500 humanity because like, that was my ultimate low point where I was like, I can't, what

01:27:34.680 do I, do I have any beliefs that are right or correct here?

01:27:37.680 Like, you know, like I broke the law.

01:27:39.940 I justified that.

01:27:40.880 I justified not cooperating because it's my friend.

01:27:42.780 I shouldn't rat my friend out.

01:27:43.760 And he turns around and rats me out.

01:27:45.400 Like it was the ultimate blow to seriously.

01:27:47.720 It was an emotional blow.

01:27:48.780 You can't imagine.

01:27:49.800 And the government was going to break my agreement and give me the full sentence.

01:27:55.860 It was like 28 years.

01:27:57.260 And it was agent Coleman that stopped that from happening.

01:28:01.200 Wow.

01:28:01.620 He stopped.

01:28:02.300 He stood up for me and said, listen, you know, he wasn't even doing it to benefit himself.

01:28:07.260 You know, it was a moment of, of stupidity and also trying, he thought he was trying to

01:28:10.680 be a good person.

01:28:11.380 And like, you know, it wasn't like a selfless, it was, it was like a selfless thing.

01:28:14.700 I did.

01:28:14.840 It was like, I was benefiting myself.

01:28:16.200 I just didn't want to hurt someone that I love, the friend, you know what I'm saying?

01:28:18.960 So Coleman stepped in and saved me.

01:28:21.260 And then I did cooperate.

01:28:22.280 And there was a couple of people that went to trial.

01:28:25.660 And, um, but most people, um, really, I think 90, anyone was really close to me.

01:28:30.760 They cooperated.

01:28:31.820 Yeah.

01:28:32.080 And, and they all cut deals and you and your partner went to prison.

01:28:35.760 You for, or.

01:28:37.580 Yeah.

01:28:37.700 So Jordan did, uh, plead guilty.

01:28:41.920 He went, he was sentenced to four years.

01:28:43.260 He served 22 months up next.

01:28:44.720 I'm going to ask him about the very famous guy he met in prison who encouraged him to

01:28:49.220 write this all down into a book and about the hundreds of hours he spent with Leonardo

01:28:55.640 DiCaprio and what that was like, uh, our closing chapter with Jordan Belfort right after

01:29:01.140 this quick break.

01:29:01.720 So Jordan, you go to prison and is it true that you met Tommy Chong there who had some

01:29:11.940 advice for you of Cheech and Chong?

01:29:14.940 We do not.

01:29:15.940 It's actually true that when I get to prison, who is my bunk mate, not just in the same

01:29:20.880 prison, my bunk mate is Tommy Chong from Cheech and Chong.

01:29:25.020 And they put us together in the same cube.

01:29:27.460 Uh, I guess they were both high profile, so they wanted to like kind of put us together

01:29:31.420 and told me to watch us or just like they thought it was a smart thing to do.

01:29:34.260 And, and, um, you know, he's just a, we are really good guys.

01:29:38.960 A very smart guy too.

01:29:40.520 Very, very, uh, very highly educated, profound speaker and nuggets of wisdom.

01:29:46.220 And he was writing a book and there's not a lot to do in jail.

01:29:49.320 So, you know, you, you sit there at night and you tell stories to each other.

01:29:52.320 And I was telling him stories about my life and he's just laughing and rolling on the

01:29:56.160 floor because I'm, you know, some really funny stories and I'm a pretty good storyteller.

01:29:59.380 He's doing the same to me.

01:30:00.440 And like the third night, he says, you know, I honestly thought you were full of shit,

01:30:04.300 but my wife Googled you and like, all of this stuff is online.

01:30:08.040 It's true.

01:30:08.640 You actually did all this goes, you have to write a book.

01:30:11.900 And I was like, really?

01:30:13.480 I'm like, you think my life was crazy.

01:30:15.280 I didn't think my life was that crazy.

01:30:17.160 Cause it was my life.

01:30:18.560 It happened to me.

01:30:19.700 And I sort of just, whatever you get used to all the inside.

01:30:22.580 And he's like, I'm Tommy Chong and I think your life is crazy.

01:30:25.220 So that's right.

01:30:27.600 So you do, you write, you write the book when you leave with the Wolf of Wall Street,

01:30:31.300 which is what you were called in a newspaper article.

01:30:33.460 And then everybody's clamoring for the movie rights.

01:30:35.760 Leonardo DiCaprio gets involved.

01:30:37.700 He wants to play you.

01:30:38.720 This seemed to be a mission for him.

01:30:40.180 And I read that you spend perhaps as many as hundreds of hours with him,

01:30:43.960 getting him ready, showing him what it was like to be on that many drugs and so on.

01:30:48.500 So what, what were your impressions of him and that whole process?

01:30:52.220 I think what people don't realize maybe about Leo is he's, of course he's naturally talented,

01:30:59.140 but the, like the amount of preparation and the care he put into the role,

01:31:04.480 like he really, like, he was just so determined to make it perfect.

01:31:09.440 And, and he, he worked really hard.

01:31:11.740 It wasn't like an, oh, let me just wing it.

01:31:13.720 It's going to come out.

01:31:14.340 But he really put in mass amount of hours, just, you know,

01:31:17.880 went through every single line of the script, you know, just again and again,

01:31:22.560 making sure every word sounds authentic and every scene was authentic.

01:31:25.820 And, uh, he just, you know, he's very talented and a very hard worker.

01:31:30.580 And there's a lot of integrity.

01:31:31.420 He was a great guy.

01:31:32.040 Wow.

01:31:33.620 Um, you now are doing like entrepreneurship,

01:31:38.700 lessons, uh, sort of guidance, mentorship, and it almost, in a way it's kind of self-helpy

01:31:44.520 to me in a good way.

01:31:46.520 Um, so like, how are you channeling this whole experience into a new version of you professionally?

01:31:53.060 So it's, you know, it's, it's been many years now that I've been doing this.

01:31:57.200 Um, I started in about 2009 and going out there and teaching people first about, you

01:32:04.040 know, the sort of the mindset of success using the lessons I've learned, then very quickly

01:32:08.340 pivoting to teaching sales, the straight line system, which is really what, you know, made

01:32:13.080 my career take off is that the system that I, I had taught the standards was very, it's

01:32:17.420 very ethical, you know, especially when I reinvented the system and, and, and, and made

01:32:21.660 it, you know, five better than it was.

01:32:23.740 It's a very powerful system.

01:32:25.840 And that's really what I was starting to get hired around the world to teach this to sales

01:32:29.620 forces and by individuals all over.

01:32:31.460 Um, and then, you know, also teaching general, you know, entrepreneurship.

01:32:36.980 So I do a lot of consulting with companies and, and yeah, my message is, is very, you

01:32:41.580 know, it's very, um, I would say it's very honest that I, I think there's a lot of people

01:32:46.600 that are out there teaching things like sales and, and entrepreneurship.

01:32:51.080 They don't know the first thing about it really.

01:32:52.420 They just, what they, what they read either in my, for my stuff or someone like a Tony Robbins

01:32:57.600 stuff, who I have a great respect for is a legitimate, really, you know,

01:33:01.460 brought things that were new and fresh.

01:33:03.240 And then there are just so many just charlatans out there that are regurgitating the same nonsense

01:33:08.680 and just trying to separate people from their money.

01:33:11.020 And I, I really was very, very, you know, early on made this sort of, you know, my, my

01:33:15.560 internal compass was very, very clear.

01:33:17.540 It was pointing north, meaning towards ethics and integrity.

01:33:21.120 Like I, you know, I was very careful that I never took a penny from anyone without trying

01:33:25.760 to give at least 10 times more value back.

01:33:27.880 It doesn't mean you always succeeded.

01:33:29.140 Like, you know, you always succeeded that.

01:33:30.560 You're my, my mindset is always, I'm looking to give more value than I, I ever would get

01:33:35.400 with every transaction I enter into every mentorship I do.

01:33:39.520 So, um, I've had tremendous success with people all over the world and it's great because now

01:33:43.400 it's, you know, the movie became this incredible cult.

01:33:46.020 It's so people come up to me all day, every day I get, you know, whenever I go out, you know,

01:33:50.160 people just say, you know, you, you, you're such an inspiration to me.

01:33:52.720 You're, you inspire me, your life, your teachings, your comeback.

01:33:55.500 Uh, it's just amazing.

01:33:57.340 And cause you easily could have skulked away.

01:33:59.380 You could have skulked away and said, I've been disgraced and you didn't, you found a

01:34:03.900 new way to reinvent.

01:34:04.680 And you came clean with all of it too, to your credit, which is how we're all learning

01:34:08.960 now.

01:34:09.340 But I have, I have to ask you about, um, the blowback because I, one of my questions in

01:34:15.120 watching was how do you have any money?

01:34:16.860 Cause they ordered you to pay 110 million in restitution.

01:34:20.100 So don't, do they garnish your wages?

01:34:22.560 Like what?

01:34:23.360 Cause I know some of the victims, some of the, the people who got burned, uh, this is what

01:34:27.540 I read left 1500 clients with 200 million in losses.

01:34:30.660 I don't know if those numbers are right, but did I know they sort of pop up when you make

01:34:34.820 money and say, this is not right.

01:34:36.920 That that's, that's not true.

01:34:39.160 I don't know if you're trying to be blind, but it's just not, that's not true.

01:34:43.100 Um, clients don't pop up, which is odd by the way, because I, the number was wildly

01:34:48.640 inflated.

01:34:49.560 Okay.

01:34:49.880 It was, it was, there was losses, no doubt.

01:34:51.920 Okay.

01:34:52.140 But like when Bernie Madoff, um, they said, what was it?

01:34:55.540 50 billion to turn to be 10 billion.

01:34:57.260 When you're, when they're coming up with losses and people, they double and triple count

01:35:01.320 and it ends up always being far less.

01:35:04.200 That was an estimate.

01:35:04.960 So it knows it only was fine for a hundred million, 110.

01:35:08.840 So what?

01:35:09.220 So, and then it was, Danny was 200.

01:35:10.660 It was a moving target that no one really knew what was actually lost, but there was

01:35:13.900 certainly a loss there.

01:35:15.200 And I discouraged a lot of money.

01:35:16.940 Danny discouraged some, some money.

01:35:18.280 I discouraged a lot more.

01:35:19.180 I continue to pay money.

01:35:20.640 Um, and I pay some money each month.

01:35:22.380 I pay some money and I pay a percentage of what I make.

01:35:24.720 And I, I, I said to myself, what's my solution?

01:35:27.580 You know what?

01:35:28.020 I'm going to make so much money that I can afford to pay a percentage and still be rich.

01:35:32.780 And that's what I always aspired to do.

01:35:34.800 And I said, I'm just going to work hard on everybody else.

01:35:37.080 I'm going to make so much money that I can afford to pay what I got to pay and still

01:35:41.540 live an amazing life with luxuries.

01:35:43.420 And that's exactly what I did.

01:35:45.080 And I just wait and make money.

01:35:46.240 And it's to their advantage too, to have you get back on your feet.

01:35:49.020 You've found sobriety.

01:35:50.760 You found love.

01:35:52.280 You found a way of making an honest living.

01:35:55.080 And so I only have about a minute left, but I want to ask you, because I know you've said

01:35:58.820 your life serves as a cautionary tale, but others do find it more than cautionary.

01:36:03.420 They find it downright inspirational.

01:36:05.100 So what do you want people to know about the Wolf of Wall Street and the takeaway on Jordan

01:36:10.760 Belfort?

01:36:11.380 The takeaway is, is that my, I think my life represents the best and worst of what human

01:36:16.520 beings can do.

01:36:17.520 And I think that the lesson that you can learn from my life is if you want to model me, especially

01:36:22.060 young people, you want to look at me and be inspired and use the techniques and strategies.

01:36:26.260 Remember, you don't have to model the whole person.

01:36:28.400 You can model all the best things that I did back when I was younger and I do today and

01:36:34.180 learn from the mistakes I made.

01:36:36.340 So you could become a better version of me.

01:36:38.560 I always say, you know, yeah, do all the stuff I did on the great side, have fun, make tons

01:36:43.300 of money, but you could do better.

01:36:44.740 You don't have to, you don't have to take shortcuts like I did.

01:36:47.040 And that cost me everything.

01:36:48.400 I had to start again.

01:36:49.160 I'm lucky that I had to come back and make back all this money.

01:36:52.240 Most people don't.

01:36:53.180 You're right.

01:36:53.440 Most people will wither away and die.

01:36:54.960 And it's the exception to the rule.

01:36:56.440 So I urge people that you can make a ton of money in an amazing world in an amazing

01:37:00.960 time.

01:37:01.740 Just be very, very careful, but don't take that extra step and make it quick because

01:37:05.460 it might cost you everything.

01:37:06.980 Model the good stuff and do the opposite of the bad stuff.

01:37:09.940 That's my message.

01:37:10.720 Watch that first step across the ethical line.

01:37:13.580 Jordan, what a pleasure.

01:37:15.220 Thank you so much for coming on and being so open and honest with us.

01:37:18.720 All the best to you.

01:37:19.780 Want to tell our viewers that we have Steven Crowder on Monday, recently banned from YouTube.

01:37:25.020 Don't forget that and check us out on youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 15, 2021

Jordan Belfort on His Incredible Life, Victimhood Mentality, and the Keys to Entrepreneurial Success ｜ Ep. 182

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