 And we are back with episode 14, The Prince of Investing. And we still haven't gotten canceled. So thank you guys for tuning in. The response is being great around the globe. The response is being great around the world. And as always, guys, I don't have a lot of time and I definitely know you guys don't have a lot of time. So we're going to jump straight into it. As you can see in the description box, as you can see in the title, it's Halloween and we brought in the wolf all the way from LA, Los Angeles, California. We have the real Wolf of Wall Street, Mr. Jordan Belford here live with us all the way from LA. I am honored to have him on. How are you doing, Mr. Belford? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Now, for people out there who don't know who Jordan Belford is, can you please tell everybody who you are? Well, I mean, I think unless you're living in North Korea or Iran, you probably have seen the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. So that was based on my life story. Leo, the character Leo played was Jordan Belford in the movie and it's off of two books that I wrote about 10 years ago and, you know, they turned into a motion picture. So that's who the Wolf of Wall Street is. Awesome. Awesome. So we are glad to have you here live in the studio and to talk about, you know, your life after being the Wolf and doing these things like that and writing the books and stuff like that. Now, one of the questions I got to ask you, right? Everybody saw the Wolf of Wall Street played by Leonardo DiCaprio, all of the great stuff like that. How accurate is the Wolf of Wall Street of how it really was back then? On some level, it was very accurate. Other levels, it was not as accurate. I'll give you some examples. I think that the, you know, in terms of the, you know, gross inaccuracies would be that is a scene in towards the two thirds into the movie where I get up and give a meeting and I say, guys, it's time for me to leave, put strap and we'll live on. And then halfway through that meeting, I changed my mind and I say, fuck it. I'm staying, right? And I don't leave. That's not true. I actually left. I gave that meeting and left and I went on to run another company I own called Steve Badden Shoes. So that was my other business. So I ran that for a few years. So that, you know, sort of once that happened, there's a lot of contextual issues that are thrown off. But that being said, in terms of more specific things like scenes in the movie that where it kind of painted the wrong picture, well, I think a good example would be that, and I understand why they did this was that they made it seem like, you know, that the object was almost to sell shitty companies to people. And that was just never true. It just wasn't like that. I mean, you know, you make a lot more, you're investing, you make a lot more selling good companies than bad companies. Now, the most one I ever made in my entire career on Wall Street was when I took Steve Badden public because it was a good company, right? So no one, you're priced to sell dog shit companies. It's a losing proposition. The problem is that when you're dealing in those small venture capital deals that I was, a lot of companies that you think are good end up going bad or whatever, there's problems. So it's not like there's an actual, you know, hey, let's sell them dog shit. No one would ever do that because it's just a, it's a foolish proposition that Molley, so that, that sort of gave a feel to the movie that, you know, they're actually out there trying to just scam people out of their money. It wasn't true. It wasn't like that. Ultimately, it came to that, but not because of the companies. It became because of stock manipulation and sort of stacking the deck against your clients, which is something I think that we saw happen all over Wall Street in 2005 and six. So I'm not trying to minimize what I did wrong, but it certainly wasn't something that was like planned from the beginning like that. Got it, yeah, that makes sense. Now, you made a good point. You're saying, hey, you know, yes, you know, some things may have gotten out of control, but that was not my true intention to, you know, just manipulate the market and stuff like that. Right. Now, one question. How did you get the name The Wolf? Because when you hear the name Wolf on Wall Street, you're thinking, hey, this guy, you know, just going down Wall Street, tearing up, you know, Wall Street apart and, you know, the character that, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio and it's like, wow, this guy is just, you know, out there. How did you get the name The Wolf? Well, I was kind of out there. I mean, like, you know, the stuff that is true is the drug addiction, the women, the craziness. I mean, that was all true. The yachts and planes and the crazy lifestyle, right? So, and the thousands of sales meetings, you know, the meetings I gave in the rah, rah, rah, and training the brokers, that stuff was true. And that's what really intrigues people in the movie, that whole camaraderie and stuff. It makes the movie amazing, right? And of course, the personal conflicts with my wife and this, right, that really makes it exciting. The actual name itself, believe it or not, comes from Gilligan's Hawaii-based TV sitcom, Gilligan's Island. So first and out of the third, his nickname was The Wolf of Wall Street, believe it or not. And so it was gonna play on that. Got it, got it, okay. Now, we spoke about how accurate the movie was. How would you, what is something in the movie that you probably think that was probably left out, that they forgot all about Jordan Belfer? Well, that's a good question, you know? I think that what was left out of the movie, simply because it wasn't any one particular scene, but it was this idea that you see a little blip of it in the beginning where I sit down with Mark Hatter on my first day of work and up at that restaurant that he's explained to me how Wall Street works, right? Very funny scene. And I, being a babe in the woods, say, well, can't we make our clients money too, right? Sort of, you know, idealistic young kid, and he goes, nah, that's not what we do here, right? Well, from there, the next scene in a strip club, snorting coke and going wild, right? Like, it was, it happened. That's not what happened, okay? It took a good couple of years to get from where I started to where I was like, you know, fuck everybody. You know what I'm saying? Very slow de-evolution of the human spirit, basically. So that, that I think was what was left out is that slow progression from someone who was brought up very ethical and, you know, and my parents were great people and never broke a law, you know, other than a stupid thing, right? I never was out there breaking your laws my whole life. And then, you know, all of a sudden I went to Wall Street and I sort of went on this path. So, you know, how did that happen? What was that process by that step-by-step incremental process? The problem is that you only have a couple of hours in a movie, right? It was a TV series for a couple of years. You could have seen that happen, but I understand why they did what they did. Okay. So you said it was like a little slow progression into you, you know, getting into the drugs and getting into the, you know- The women, the drugs, the criminal behavior where I'm like manipulating stocks and thinking it's okay. Like that sort of stuff. Like, how did that happen from someone who was raised well, never broke a law, right? You know, it's a different story. It's not as an exciting story, but it's a very, I think it's an intriguing one though. Now, with that lifestyle, did you enjoy it? Listen, I always say that things that make sense at 25 don't make nearly as much sense at 55. So at 25 years old, yeah, it was fun. You're going out, you're partying like a rock star, living out every adolescent fantasy. But I look at my life today and I have to tell you it's a thousand times better not being on drugs, having one woman I love and you know, sort of, you know, waking up feeling good every day as opposed to waking up saying, oh, I'm like, you know, trying to cover for the night before. So I had fun for sure. If I could change things, I would change a few things for sure. But, you know, you look back, you learn from your mistakes. And I had to ask that question because, you know, you became the epitome of Wall Street. Like, you know, people thought about Wall Street, this was everybody's dream. It was like, man, look at the yachts, look at the women, look at the, you know, the drugs. So it was just like, man, that is Wall Street, you know. So that's why I had to actually like, hey, did you know, yeah, looking back, I was like, man, you know, the movies made it look great. I wasn't there. I didn't see it. I wasn't on Wall Street. Again, it's fun to watch someone else, but to be your own life is not all it's cracked up to be. So, but listen, I'm not saying that's wrong, going out and partying and sleep with a lot of women or men, whatever turns you on if you're a man or a woman. But again, you know, you have to grow up at a certain point. So, you know, you're a young guy in my twenties and I'm, you know, living up my analysts and fantasies, but at a certain point you have to grow up. All right. Now, the question I have to ask you now, I know that you spend all these years in investing, built this maids and firm, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, the Wall Street, all that great stuff like that, writing the two books, having the ups and downs that you had. Is Mr. Belfer still investing today? I invest, but I mostly invest in private companies that I want to take public, I'm not really out there investing in public companies. Okay, so you don't really get them capital. So, you don't really do stocks anymore, you do like more like venture capital is like getting, you know, new startups and stuff like that. Right. Okay. Now, how do you find these new startups? Do you, do you? They come to me typically, you know. Oh, they come to you. So, people find you and say, hey, I got this idea, I got this company, I got whatever the case may be and you look at it and say, hey, you know what, I think this is worth crap or I think this is good, something that I get behind. Correct. Yeah. Okay, now, are you still open for clients because it may be somebody that's listening like, man, I would like to have. I'm always open to hearing a good idea, but again, you know, there's a process by which someone has to get to me. A lot of times, they pay me as consultants, they'll hire me as a consultant and that's how it gets started and I'll be helping them and they'll, let's say they get so much value in what I'm doing, they'll walk me a piece of the company and then they want me to get me more involved and so forth. So, a lot of it happens that way. Okay, so you actually do consulting for like new startups that are maybe looking for funding? Yeah, I do start mostly not for startups as much as for companies that are already in business that have some traction. Got it. And they want to now take their idea and monetize it, roll it out. I'm very good at, don't know how to do that. Okay. All right, so now I got to ask you about the new things that's on the market nowadays. I know you say, hey, I'm only private and stuff like that. What do you think about the rush we have nowadays into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? Cause I saw something on MarketWatch where you were saying, if I'm getting this correctly, that article was correct. Well, you thought it was like one of the biggest scams ever. What do you think about the new cryptocurrency, Bitcoins, Litcoins, Ethereum, all that other great stuff? I think that it's not so much that Bitcoin is a scam. It's not that. It's what's happening around Bitcoin and also the speculative fever and the rapid rise that's based on nothing more than pure speculation. So, well, I believe that cryptocurrencies do ultimately could have a role in the global economy. The problem right now is it's just that there's all these fraudulent operators and opportunists right now who are preying upon the hopes and dreams of unsophisticated people selling their new cryptocurrency as the next Bitcoin and so forth. And this is just like gonna end badly because it always does. It's just a bubble of really unsophisticated people running into a mall because it's been going up and typically that's the time when things will pop out and eventually crash, when everyone starts to jump in and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I mean, it happens again and again and again, it's just repeating itself. So, I would look at Bitcoin right now as probably being the least risky of all these things. Like, for instance, today I just was on Facebook and I saw an ad, a paid ad, it says, take advantage of the next Bitcoin. This one could be what Bitcoin was in 2011. That's a fucking scam. Okay, that's just like, you know, they're gonna, it's probably some self-invented piece of shit that's just fucking, you know, a little bit of a, you know, whatever it is in there, they create a cryptocurrency. You can do it, you can buy a program and create one now, right? Or should probably 10 grand to do one and they hold a lot of themselves, they'll create some interest, they'll bump up the price and they'll dump it. It's pretty simple, you know. Okay, got it, got it. I give up just saying. So, you're pretty much saying it could be a classic pump and dump type situation that could be going on with the whole Bitcoin currency. 100%, yeah. Got it. So, people out there who understand Mr. Belfort is saying, he's saying that, hey, someone gets the software, creates their own little Bitcoin, run out there and pay ads, run out there and throw ads out there and say, hey, this could be the next big thing. You can get it now for a penny. Everybody jumps in, they creates interest, they put a big marketing plan behind it. Once everybody buys it, then they sell out theirs, classic pump and dump. It's just classic. Got it, got it. Now, going into, you know, you've been an investor, you've been around, you know, seeing the good side and the bad side of investing around the world, right? You've been around good investors, bad investing, having your own situations. What advice would you give someone that is listening to this that wants to get started in investing? Well, number one, educate yourself. Right now, there is simply no excuse not to go out there and become totally, financially educated in what you want to buy. All the information is out there, you get it? So if you don't do that, shame on you. That's the number one thing. Number two, find someone who is a sophisticated investor you trust and ask them for guidance. And they'll be back to your ideas with them just don't go out and have cock on your own. Got it, got it. So what we're going to do guys, we're going to take a break right here. We're going to take a one minute break and we're going to get more into the wolf, what he's doing today, what he has out now. And I was, you know, more with the wolf. So you guys stay tuned and we'll be right back with more on the Think Tech of Hawaii. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. We have this crazy thing going on today. I was just walking by and all these DJs and producers are set up all around the city. I just walked by and I said, what's happening guys? They told me they were making music. I had no musical talent and then sat down and kind of played to me. I saw it do it. For you. All right, guys, and we're back live more with the Wolf of Wall Street, Mr. Jordan Belford. He's here right here live. If you guys haven't seen him earlier, we've been talking about all of his endeavors, you know, about him and what he's thought about Bitcoin, what he thought about investing, what he thought about the movie, telling about itself, you know, his personal life, all this other great stuff. But the thing about Mr. Belford, I saw him on the Breakfast Club and I was surprised. When I saw him on the Breakfast Club, he was doing, he was talking about his new book called The Way of the Wolf. And I actually downloaded it, right? I went and got, I went and got the audio and I went and got the audio version and I ordered a copy to sit back and read the book. I haven't finished it all the way completely. But one of the things that I found that was very masterful about him was, you know, most people think you think Wolf of Wall Street, you think the word Wall Street, you think maybe investing, but I figured out how good of a salesman Mr. Belford really was. He has a system, he broke down sales to, like, you know, I haven't read a lot of sales book, but he broke down sales to a, I would say the big, A mental level. A mental level, it was just crazy. He was taking it like, hey, you need to take this lip balm, you need to snip it right when you make a deal. And the thing about it, the way he took conversations, I was like, he broke it down to our art to where I'm not, I never considered myself a salesman. But when I thought about it, I said, well, everyday we're selling ourselves. You know, if you're trying to get a job, or if you're trying to make a business proposal, if you're trying to get clients, if every, even if you are in a corporate position where hey, I don't do sales, you're selling yourself in a resume. So it had a lot of good information there about the straight line salesman, about going off into Pluto and getting back and how he trained all these people. And even in the movie, where he took these kids that could pretty much, you know, do anything. But he closed the door. Yeah, couldn't close the door and turned them into master salesman. Now, what got you, what made you write this book, The Way of the Wolf? Well, I think that, you know, one thing that is portrayed well in the movie, but it's, the movie's so over the top that I was like, you forget about it. It's like, it's how I was able to essentially accomplish what I accomplished, meaning taking these kids who were average, who were below average that had never thought or let's say that they were raised to think that they were not capable of achieving greatness. And any greatness that they naturally had in them had been basically conditioned to out of them since the day they were born, first by their parents, then by their friends, by their school teachers, by the media. I mean, they had been conditioned to be average, to basically survive, not to thrive. When these kids showed up in my boardroom, they had always limiting beliefs. And also, I would say 99.9% of them actually didn't possess any extraordinary skills that could make them great. In other words, there's two sides to this whole thing about, you know, every human being is capable of achieving greatness. Now, I believe that's true. I know it's true. However, part of achieving greatness includes learning specialized skills, possessing specialized skills, learning them if you don't naturally have them. And what happens to most people in the world is that they're not born salespeople. I'm a born salesman, I am, and no doubt I was. Since I was older than 12, I was just having a natural gift. And I developed that and honed it over the years, right? But most people are not like that. They don't like to influence and persuade, they feel uncomfortable, they don't know how to do it. So what happens is because it's such an integral skill to success. I don't care what you do, what work you're in, business or personal, you could be a mom or a dad trying to influence your children to make their beds and do their homework. You could be a teacher trying to influence your students on the value of education. You could be a pastor trying to influence your congregation on a certain moral compass. You could be a politician trying to influence your constituency. A lawyer trying to influence a jury. An entrepreneur trying to influence someone to give you money to invest in you. You could be an entrepreneur trying to recruit someone to join you, to buy into your vision for the future. You could be a person trying to get a job. You're trying to influence a owner to see the value in you. You could be an employee trying to get a raise. You get it? You're trying to have the value that you give to a company recognized. Well, how do you go about explaining that to people? How do you make your ideas, your thoughts, your concepts, your dreams known to other people in a way that connects with them and moves them to take action and gets you what you want to? That's what ethical persuasion is all about. If you don't possess that skill, what happens is your brain, my brain, the human brain is very smart. It knows it and it will shy away from opportunity if you say, you know what? I don't really think I have what it takes. You know, if you're not good at persuasion, if you're not competent, you don't have to be an expert, but at least good enough. And that's the goal of the book. The book is for everybody. It's not just for salespeople. If you're a salesman, yes, the book couldn't turn you into a top producer. It's a very powerful system. It's worked with people all over the world, millions of people, literally millions of people. It changes people's lives. But if you're not a salesperson, it's simply a matter of getting yourself to a level of competency that sales, persuasion, or a fear of it will be removed and no longer hold you back from achieving what you want in life. Because it doesn't matter, again, it doesn't matter what you do. That skill is a linchpin skill to getting what you want. So what I did back in the day was I came up with a system where taking average people who were just okay or they were poor when it came to sales and make them into world-class salespeople. Almost isn't a matter of days a week, right? And once you do that, it changes the person fundamentally. They become more powerful, because they're empowered, essentially. You empower them to take action. They feel good about it. They feel confident about it. And the results stop pouring in. And also, it's a change in their own mindset because they say, you know what? Okay, maybe I didn't succeed in the past. Maybe I was average my whole life, but now I know something new. I'm a different person. So I was able to essentially rewrite their belief systems by giving them this very powerful system of persuasion. And once you learn this, it just, it makes you so effective. It's incredible. That's the story. I'm not gonna lie. You know, like I said, I'm not paid by Mr. Belford or anything like that. I'm just giving you a hundred percent like you guys have trusted me so much in the past. When I was reading this book, it made me want to go sell something. It just works, yeah, no doubt. It makes me, it reminds you of conversations you have in real life with sales people and stuff like that. So what I'm gonna do here. Let me give you one example. So I wrote the book myself. I didn't have a ghost writer. And I wrote the book in a way that I made it conversational. I wanted people to be able to connect with the book, laugh a little bit and sort of understand, you know, here's the goal. If you're an average salesperson, it'll make you great. If you're a great salesperson, you'll say, wow, now I know why I'm so great. I know what I gotta do every single day. It actually shows you, it's so logical and intuitive that when you read it, you say to yourself, wow, that makes, it all makes sense, right? If you're not a salesperson, what it will do is it will give you the ability to essentially go out and just move through the world in a more empowered way, bottom line. That's what it does. And it's very powerful. So what we're gonna do right here since we got The Wolf and it's Halloween, the first five people to comment on the YouTube link, you comment on the YouTube link, I will send you a copy of his book, no matter where you're at in the world. I know we got listeners in Japan and stuff like that. So what we're gonna do, the first five people to comment on the YouTube link, you comment on the YouTube link, or the Facebook link or wherever you see this, once you comment, write comment The Wolf, something like that. Write The Wolf, if you write the word The Wolf, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna email you, ask you for your mailing address. You have to give me your mailing address. Some of you guys are commenting that you're not giving me your mailing address to be able to mail you the product. I can't, I can't read your mind. So what you do is if you do that, you will get The Wolf, mail to you wherever you are in the world, courtesy of me. And thank you for stopping by and speaking about that. Now the thing that I noticed that was great about it, you know, when you look at the book and you look at the movie, that he was a great salesman. He knew how to teach other people sales and then he spoke about his life of going overseas and teaching companies that with these big sales strips, and he writes out these big sales strips and things like that, it's pretty, it was very, it was very surprising about persuasion and influence and it's not about manipulating people, it's about knowing how to get your point across to people and stuff like that. Is there anything, is there anything else that you would, like think speaking, knowing a good salesman, right? How can someone spot when something is full of crap? Like I need to stay away, I don't need to do this. How would you, well, how would you say that's what I'm gonna do? There's really, I think there's overall, there is two telltale signs. One of the things that I focus on in the book is that in order to close at the highest level, you need to tap into both logical persuasion and emotional persuasion, there's logic and emotion, very different things. People don't buy on logic, they buy on emotion and justify their decisions with logic. When someone's trying to influence you or sell you, if they're just making an emotional case, which is more about painting a picture of you in the future using the product and feeling good, getting the benefit, the future pacing, but they don't focus on the logical side, saying why ABC on a logical, why does this product make sense? What are the features, the benefits? What's the value proposition? If they don't give you that side of the equation, just try to impulse you on hype and bullshit on emotion, that's one side. Number two, if someone doesn't ask you questions about yourself and just tries to sell you without knowing anything of value, you can't sell someone something until you first ask them questions to find out what their needs are, what their values, what their pain is, and what lack they have. So if someone just tries to ram shit down and they talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and don't listen, that's enough to tell someone. Got it, got it. Well, Mr. Belfort, is there anything you want to leave with your listeners, people that hear this on a podcast, watch this on YouTube, the people that's watching this live now, is there anything you want to leave with them? Listen, I think that one commonality among all people, salespeople, entrepreneurs, civilians, so to speak, right? People just out there working, just trying to make a living and live a good life for themselves and their family, those they love, right? You need to really examine, if you have the belief that, in the end it comes down to beliefs that sales or persuasion is evil or manipulative or it's not something I need to learn, I would urge you, I would urge you to really reconsider that, not because you want to go out there and tell people, so to speak, but every idea you have, every concept that you have, it has a certain value in terms of what it's worth, is it right, is it wrong, what's it worth, right? Well, you might have the best idea in the world. You might have the most value to give to someone else as an employee, as a person's friend, as a lover, even to find a life partner, right? Whatever that might mean to you, okay? Your idea, your value, your personal value, your product is either enhanced or diminished by your own ability to explain that to someone else. So I feel really, really bad for the people who are moving through life right now that don't have an internal communication platform and allows them to express themselves, to talk about their ideas, to get that, their point across to other human beings in a way that connects with them, that doesn't piss them off or bore them or make them think you're an asshole. If you lack that skill, just think about how crazy it is to move through life and have great ideas that are being diminished because you will not explain it to people. That's, to me, at the highest level what this book is about. It's a communication strategy that allows you to essentially get what you want in life. And without that, you had essentially those dying with your music on your lips locked inside you. The greatness that you have is locked away inside you and you can't unleash it because you can't explain it. That's it. Every great leader, whether it's a Nelson Mandela, right? He had great ideas, but his strength was his ability to rally everyone around him to communicate those ideas, to connect with people. Whether it was a Wozniak who had their incredible foresight with building computers, but it took Steve Jobs to communicate that and commercialize that. Whether it's a Warren Buffett who's now the third richest man in the world today, right? Warren Buffett, when he first graduated from college, he, there's a great video on this. He says, the first thing he did is he went out and he took a communication, a sales force. Back in, it was Dale Carnegie, back in the 50s. That was the gold center back then. He's the straight line, but he did that because he knew as great as he was at picking stocks and creating value, what would he be without the ability to explain to people? You know what he'd be today? The greatest money manager in Omaha, Nebraska that nobody ever heard of. That's it. So you have your skills for your business, your life, what you're trying to do, and then you have the ability to explain that to other people to get them to want to buy into your idea, your vision with time and money. That's what success is about, business and personal. You could be the greatest partner to your life, your husband, your wife, your significant other. You could be a person that truly could make someone else happy. And as so much value in life as a partner, right? You're trustworthy, you're honest, you're sincere, you're compassionate, okay? You're great in bed, you have all these great qualities, right? But you are locked up, you can't explain it. To go through life like that to me is fucking insanity. So it's an easily learnable skill, the straight line will show it to you. ABC, it's worth it. You deserve to have the life you want and you deserve to have a life full of riches and beauty. Everyone, I think everyone created to have abundance, stop lack. So that's why I think it's an important book and why I think the skillset, your lurchment will change your life no matter what. Got it. So that's Mr. Belford. He said some great things there about, you know, the art of persuasion is just not about selling a product. There's a lot of times about selling yourself. Whereas becoming an employer as an entrepreneur, you have to rally up a group. And that's something that he did great in the movie where he rallied up these people to get behind them and things like that. So I'm glad for the wolf to stop by. So I got Mr. Belford, if people wanna catch you live, how can they catch you live? How could they follow you? How could they maybe get in contact with you or whatever the case is? Go to my website. Go to your website. JordanBelford.com. Say again? JordanBelford.com and I have a world tour going on right now and it'll be all over the place. And I'd love to come to Hawaii as well. I gotta figure that out. I gotta find someone in Hawaii who knows how to promote events. But bottom line, I'd love to do that. Go to my website, you'll see all my stuff that's coming out. And, you know, if you're like most people, you'll have a great time and you'll learn a lot from one of my events. Cool, so that's Mr. Jordan Belford. If you wanna catch you live, go to JordanBelford.com. If you want one of his books sent to you free, on the show, comment with the word wolf, send me your address to wherever you're at in the world and we'll make sure you get your copy. Guys, as always, I'm, this is The Prince of Investing. My name is Prince Dykes. Thank you guys for tuning in each and every Tuesday. Thank you guys for all the tremendous support. Until the next podcast, video, cartoon, book, or whatever you see me do crazy around the globe in the world, peace, be safe, I'm out. Thank you.