In this post I leave you the best phrases of Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker and well known in the Spanish-American world after having represented his life in the movie «The Wolf of Wall Street».
After being convicted in 1998 of securities fraud, money laundering and stock market manipulation, Belfort wrote his two autobiographical books, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, translated into 18 languages and published in more than 40 countries.
Biography
Born in Queens, New York, on July 9, 1962, Jordan Belfort had a natural talent as a salesman at a young age, operating a meat and seafood business in the 1980s.
After the business went bankrupt, Belfort began selling stocks in 1987. He ran his own investment company, and started the Stratton Oakmont company in 1989, illegally making millions by defrauding his investors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating in 1992 to stop the company's illegal operations. In 1999, Belfort pleaded guilty to securities fraud and money laundering.
He was sentenced in 2003 to four years in prison, but only served 22 months. Belfort published his first memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street, in 2008. The following year, he released Catching the Wolf of Wall Street.
The wolf of Wall Street
Filming on Scorsese's adaptation of Belfort's memoirs began in August 2012, and the film was released on December 25, 2013.
Time magazine reported that many of the escapades depicted in the film are consistent with Belfort's memoirs and what was written about him in Forbes articles, although some things were exaggerated.
Belfort was played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who won the Golden Globe for Best Actor and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance.
Curiosities
-In the movie, he makes a brief appearance in the last scene introducing his own fictional version.
-DiCaprio worked together with Jordan Belfort himself, who helped him prepare for his role by indicating his general behavior.
-He was not born rich. He grew up in a lower-middle-class Jewish family.
-He studied biology at American University and tried to study dentistry, but the dean reminded him: “The golden age of dentistry is over. If you are here just to get rich, you are in the wrong place. "
-His ambition to get rich led him to Wall Street, where he worked at LF Rothschild, a brokerage firm that was his first school and that went bankrupt in 1988.
-In the 90s he founded Stratton Oakmont, which sold stocks for a few pennies promising astronomical profits.
-Before being arrested, he became famous for throwing huge parties in the same company office, and for being a self-confessed addict of company women and drugs.
-He had 6 luxury cars, a helicopter and a yacht, which was wrecked off the coast of Sardinia.
-He organized "dwarf launches" during meetings with his colleagues.
-Once he landed his helicopter in his backyard in a rough way, flying with only one eye open because he was so high he had double vision.
-He got to earn 50 million dollars a year. He earned so much money that the mob placed observers on him to learn how it was possible to earn so much money in such a short time.
-In prison he met Tommy Chong, actor, writer and advocate for the free sale of marijuana, who convinced him to tell his story and write his books.
-He only spent 22 months in prison, but was sentenced to return 100 million dollars to the shareholders he had scammed (he still pays most of the debt).
-Nowadays, he is dedicated to giving motivational talks and lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
The best quotes from Belfort
You may also be interested in these phrases about business.
1-The only thing that remains between you and your goals is the story that you keep telling yourself about why you can't get it.
2-If you give people a good "why", they will find a "how."
3-I believe in total immersion, if you want to be rich, you have to program your mind to be rich. You have to unlearn all the thoughts that were making you poor and replace them with new thoughts.
4-If you want to be rich, never give up. People tend to give up. If you have persistence, you will overtake most people. And most importantly, you will learn. When you do something, you could fail. But it is not because you are a failure. It's because you haven't learned enough. Do it differently next time. One day, you will do well. Failure is your friend.
5-Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.
6-Do not give yourself another option but to be successful. Let the consequences of failure be so dire and unthinkable that you have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed.
7-Successful people are 100% sure that they are masters of their own destiny, they are not creatures of circumstances, they create circumstances, if the surrounding circumstances stink, they change them.
8-Act as if you were a rich man, and then surely you will become rich. Act as if they trust you and then people will surely trust you. Act like you have experience and then people will follow your advice. And act like you already have tremendous success, and as sure as I am here today, you will become successful.
9-When you live your life at a low level, you inflict damage on everyone who crosses your path, especially those who love you.
10-Your tone of voice and your body language will make a person listen to you. Only the tone will make you believe that you are trustworthy in what you say.
11-Winners use words like "I must" and "I will."
12-No matter what happened to you in the past, you are not your past, you are the resources and capabilities that you collect from it. And that is the basis of all change.
13-There is no nobility in poverty.
14-The easiest way to earn money is to create something of such value that everyone wants it, the money comes automatically.
15-You are a valuable product, with added values in your current performance and that can be beneficial in the future. Connect with your boss, sell him your idea of the increase, but tell him what that investment will bring to the company, talk about benefits.
16-I have the guts to die. What I want to know is, do you have the guts to live?
17-I always wanted the best, the presidential suite, the Ferrari, a house on the beach, the most stunning blonde, the most expensive wine, a yacht… I wanted to be the definitive Wall Street rich man.
18-People have the right to redeem themselves. I've made some terrible mistakes. But a leopard can change its spots.