Goldie Hawn and Jordan Belfort - Megyn Kelly's "Double Feature" of Fascinating Interviews

29:58You really fucked me up. I told you to be nice to him. I told you to be nice to him. And I said, Peter, please go back to Tuesday. Well, then leave me alone. And I went into the bathroom. I threw up again. And I came back and I realized I needed my mother. But for some, how, I don't know, I remembered this guy's number. And I called him up and I said, I'm alone in New York. I know, you know, you're not happy with me. But I was in a very bad automobile accident last night. He hung up. He ran to my apartment. He lived near me. he came to me with roses that he got and he was crying and he said i'm so sorry you're such a nice girl and i i'm just a pimp for our cat that's all i am oh my goodness i'm really sorry and he got the ambulance he took me back to the hospital he made sure i had everything i needed a tetanus shot, whatever they didn't give me.

31:02And, you know, he took care of me. And, and that was very, very interesting. Mike, it was like, it's so many things about human nature in that story. By the way, that will, that will officially conclude our Al Cap is an asshole chapter. But so many things in there, right? Like the young trusting ingenue given opportunity or the shot at it. You know, the old grizzly wooden legged, I'll make you a star guy who tries to take advantage of her. I mean, that scene that you describe is straight out of the movie bombshell, though. I know it. I mean, I heard it from you long before that. I realized that's not where it came from.

31:41They must have stolen it from you. It's almost identical. And and learning bit by bit that she's there for very different reasons than she thinks she's there. Right. And then the decision has to be made. Do I do this? I'm a nobody. Nobody knows who I am. I have no career. Everybody knows this guy. He can open up doors for me. What do I do? And it's that moment. It's in those flashes of moments where morality is questioned. Your strength is questioned. It's a before and after moment. And some women submit, even though they don't want to. It doesn't make them immoral, but they live to regret it.

32:19They beat themselves up. It can be so hard. And the fact that you walked and you stood up for your beliefs and almost nobody knows who Al Cap is and everyone knows who Goldie Hawn is, is the best end to that story. All right, hold on. Stand by. I've got to pay a bill. I'm going to get in a commercial break and much, much more with the one and only Goldie Hawn after this.

32:46I love the story, by the way, of that. You won an Academy Award for Best supporting actress like 1970, right? It was early in your career and you, you weren't there. You didn't show. Why not? I made a movie with Peter Sellers and that's what I was doing. And so it was my second movie and I was in London. And in those days, you know, they didn't let you go. I mean, it was like, I forgot it was on. I forgot it was on. I literally forgot the Academy Awards are on television. Okay. So I went to bed and I woke up by a phone call. It's like, you got it. And I said, you got what? And they said, you got the Academy Award.

33:27And I went, oh my God. I didn't even know it was on television last night. I mean, that was my first thing. That is amazing. It was 1970, right? 1970, Cactus Flower, right? That's the one. Yeah. Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, and you. That's amazing. You know, I was thinking about it this week because, you know, they canceled the Golden Globes and they did it. They basically live tweeted the Golden Globes this year. It's kind of imploded for a whole bunch of reasons. But what the but the New York Times podcast, The Daily, did an in-depth report on the implosion of the Golden Globes. And one of the things the entertainment reporter was saying is that apparently it's an open secret these days that you basically buy your Golden Globe.

34:14Unlike the Academy Award, it's like the producers of these films are like, sure would be nice if I guess it was back in the 80s, too, because they were talking about how Pia Zadora won for some film. Everybody was like, Pia Zadora. I don't know. Yeah, I remember that. Exactly. She had a lot of help, if you know what I mean. with all respect you know i don't want to you know start ill about anyone uh really unless they're horrible like al cap but anyway um yes so no she was uh definitely um what do you call it honed and manipulated i mean yeah so yeah so i i didn't realize i mean was that is that an open secret in hollywood that like you kind of buy your golden globe but you earn your academy award or no You know, I can't.

35:00The Golden Globes are really an interesting group. OK, they're they're, you know, sort of reporters or people that a liaison with every country. And they're they're quite a quite a group of people. Right. And as the time went on and I make these movies and you see them every year, you know, you get to know them. Right. You get to know, oh, hi, how are you? And whatever. And it's actually, in many ways, back in the day, I like people. You know, it's like, well, who was that thing that Judy said was, was it First Wives Club? No, that was the other. I like people and people like me. She said, so this is basically why I don't look at them such as scants, okay?

35:49I have nice relationships with them, meaning that they were always happy. These are the ones who make the decisions. Yeah. And then how they just come to their decisions oftentimes is because they just like somebody so much or because, you know, but paid off and in such a way, you know, I that I don't know. I mean, I've got to be honest with you. I don't know what you pay them money to do this or people take money to. I know they're bribed. I mean, I hear that, but, you know, a lot of talk is talk. I don't put a lot into it. Now the Golden Globes are, you know, they're not, are they going to come back?

36:29I don't even know. I mean, it's unclear. It's like they had basically a lot of problems, one of which was they didn't have enough minority players and then they got minority players and then they didn't have enough minority players. And then, you know, they're sort of trying to fix their diversity, equity and inclusion problem. them. And until they do, NBC is not going to put them on the I don't know. I don't follow it that closely. I just didn't. Yeah, that's equity and inclusion. That was you've never needed. You've never needed the Golden Globe to get movie roles. It's like you can I guess you can get ahead in your career by saying, look, I won this Oscar.

37:03I won this Oscar. Or you can just be amazing film after film and you keep getting hired. That's how you've done it. Yeah, I had a weird career. I mean, it really was. I didn't make a lot of movies and I made movies that really were, I produced. Now, you know, I just made a decision to produce movies. I thought, you know, I'm not going to wait around for the phone to ring. I'm an odd character. I'm not like everybody else. I knew that. Her comedy or my comedy or whatever was very, you know, my own. And also people don't think you can transcend an image. In other words, I had a very strong image, still do.

37:44And that image was part of the movie. But a lot of directors like to get an actor who didn't have so much baggage, you know, who didn't, you know, everybody knew them a certain way, a big personality or whatever. In spite of that, I did really well. But I had my own production company. So, you know, you talk about what leads you, what guides you, what drives you. What drove me was very practical. And I thought, let me just make my own movies. It's make deals at Warner brothers and, you know, and universal and all the places that I was and make a deal, make movies. Right. So I made movies that even were not with me.

38:23They weren't, they were for Julie Roberts and Steve Martin and different movies. Right. But I got to do movies that matter to me, meaning, am I going to do a movie about a girl in the army? Am I going to make a movie about a woman who is a football coach? Am I going to make a movie about protocol? Someone who basically blows up Washington and the lies and comes up and speaks in front of the Senate. I like to make movies that actually mattered. And for me, that was the most exciting part of being in the movie industry. And so, you know, By the way, those are all three great movies. Protocol was hilarious.

39:05Wildcats loved it, of course. That's you and the football team. And Private Benjamin was like, my mother fell in love with you before I fell in love with you. She used to run around the house quoting you in Private Benjamin. I want to go out to lunch. And for those of you who don't know Private Benjamin and want to be reintroduced to it or be introduced the first time, here's just a little clip. This is Soundbite 6. I hate to interrupt you, but could I speak to you for a sec? Oh, my Lord, Sergeant, would you look at this? I've seen it, ma 'am. What's your name, Princess? Judy. Judy? Judy Benjamin.

39:45Judy Benjamin. Um, I think they sent me to the wrong place. Uh-huh. See, I did join the army, but I joined a different army. I joined the one with the condos and the private rooms.

40:06What? No, really, my recruiter, Jim Ballard, told me that. I don't care, I don't care what your lousy recruiter told you, Benjamin. Now, I'm telling you, there is no other army. Wait a minute. I don't want to have to go to your boss or anything, okay? It's amazing. You know, you can't do it without great writing. You just can't do it. I mean, the writers are everything. And, you know, they give you basically the words, you know, and you can interpret them how you want, but they're damn funny. And, you know, that's what they did. Nancy Myers and Chuck Shire and Harvey Miller. They were amazing.

40:49So that, yeah. But that was the one that, like, that you produced that. Your name was the only name above the title. No man's name. You know, you proved a woman can carry a film because that film was hugely successful. And it was yours on a number of levels. Let me pay one more bill. Sorry, it's annoying, but that's how we stay on the air. And then we'll come back and we'll pick it up with maybe some of the fallout from Private Benjamin. I didn't realize that it was a double-edged sword until I studied up for today. Stand by for more of with Goldie Hawn. And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

41:24The full video show and clips by subscribing to my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Or if you prefer the audio version, just get a podcast and subscribe it by downloading our show on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts for free.

41:40Jordan Belfort:Hi, I'm Gabby Windy with Long Winded. And I'm not going to lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible So listen to my podcast, won't ya? It has great insights, exceptional humor And plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls And some even say it's a great way to fall asleep Due to my soothing voice And I don't take that personally, fall asleep A listen is a listen, even when you're sleeping And a view is a view, even with your eyes closed If you dare, and it doesn't take much gumption Enjoy! Listen to Long Winded wherever you get your podcasts.

42:54I'm going to pick it up with Private Benjamin, Goldie, because that was a huge success for you. You were the producer, you were the star, everybody loved it. But I know you've said it turned out to be a double-edged sword, your success on that movie. How so? Because I produced it, but I also worked with the writers and so forth. So, you know, the only reason I produced it was because I said, why do we need another producer? I mean, we don't need one. I've been producing before at Universal. And, you know, you get your producer that works on the show and you're working with your thing. And it's just fine.

43:28You know, why pay someone else, basically, a big producer to take over? Because, you know, this was a financial, practical decision. In the meantime, big hit, cover of whatever, everything's saying. And then next thing I know, it was such a hit, I guess, that I had, you know, directors really didn't want to work with me because they felt that I would only do my own things and that I took over. And that I was, it was sort of, it had to be my way. There was some fear around a woman being successful and being a bitch. And I wasn't at all, not even close. I mean, there were many of us that made that movie great, not just me.

44:13And I'm just looking at, you know, at that time, you know, there was a serious glass ceiling. And when I broke a record or whatever you call it, I mean, I don't know, I made a movie that was successful. And I was happened to be a person in it that, you know, made it more successful. She was funny and whatever. But point is, is that I remember even one of my dear friends who I was who was a dancer and a friend of my mom's, Herb Ross. He heard that I took over and I wanted to do everything my own way. Thinking, oh, my God, who made that up? I mean, you know, trying to save a movie. Yeah. Private Benjamin had like, you know, three laughs on the first edit.

44:57I mean, it was we had issues, but we have the most amazing writers. And they sat down and they did 135, I think, notes, editing notes. And they were followed because we were producing. And they changed the whole movie around to make it as funny as it was written. So I think there's a whole viewpoint of women at that point in power. And it was extremely male dominated, extremely. So it's so crazy that somebody like you who is obviously warm, friendly, kind, that no one would ever look at you and suspect bitch you know that that if they can do that to you they could do it to anybody yeah it wasn't about me really it was about the you know the culture and uh you know i was part of the color of that culture uh and slowly it changed which it has to a point but i remember uh with my daughter we went katie and i she was just starting and the two of us were at women's lunch what was it women's film for women for film or something and it was a thing that they created you know and like the powerful women and now we had certain women in positions of power and you know it was great and it was like women in film women in film and I got the giggles it was just so crazy Katie and I are you know in the podium and we're looking around and I'm looking around at all these women and I got the giggles because it didn't matter these women were working for men and there were still no women's movies being made including first wives club we all took a less money certain amount of money because they were scared that women a certain age and we weren't even that old then but a woman of a certain age couldn't bring in you know box office dollars and we went out and made this movie and it was a huge hit cover of time magazine oh wow then you go to make it another one a sequel and they don't want to pay you any more money oh wow shocking and that was first wives come now it was 25 so whatever years ago 30 but i mean the reality is is that the fighting of this you know idea that a woman cannot really carry a movie or that they can't make money you know in the industry is sort of true because the money that they make are all these other big tentpole movies which aren't really about a star you know they're about subsistential effects they're about you know all these big movies and they're most of them at least back and then were very male oriented so young boys would go to the theater they would go to see them so you know but my point is as we're getting to is that women have had an interesting hill to climb sometimes.

47:50Well, I mean, and in a lot of industries, but especially Hollywood, which is one of the crazy pieces of, I think it's why it drives people crazy when Hollywood tries to act holier than now and start lecturing middle America about morality and so on. And, you know, there's people sitting in Iowa who have never done any, they've never tried to put something at a casting couch or do what, you know, Al did or any of this. They're like, you could save your lectures for somebody else. That's right. Exactly. And the idea that, you know, well, I do have a feeling about keep your, keep, I've never known, okay, how do I say this?

48:32Hollywood and a lot of Hollywood has a lot of mission, right? And, you know, you want to put your name onto something that you believe in, but it doesn't make a difference. and that's the one the reality is that if you are someone in the indie industry and you want to go into politics or you want to talk about these things you know i stay in my lane and and i think that the idea if if you know maybe segwaying into what i'm doing now but the reality is to say if we'd want to do anything we want to do it for all people not just for a group or whatever what makes polarity even more is creating teams on either side of the aisle.

49:15And I don't think that's what we do. I think we entertain. I think we bring awareness to people just of their ability to laugh, to have joy, to experience it, to cry. We are emotional beings and create emotion and in others and and it's an escape i think we're in service i really do i think people get paid really well to be in service but i don't think that we should forget that our first job is to help people laugh feel something escape all right now that's a great note on which to leave it and when we come back goldie's latest effort to bring that kind of messaging to your kids my kids and the world in a really creative way.

50:03Don't go away.

50:11So, Goldie, we talked a couple of years ago about your program. The MindUp didn't just launch, but you've just gotten this great big online platform that helps people navigate their way through it. And can I just set this up with some stats? We talked about one of these earlier this week, but the CDC says suicide attempts during the pandemic have jumped 51 % for girls, 51%. It's about just under 4 % for boys, so less for boys, but still up. Israel just did a big study of 200 ,000 boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 17. This is, again, taking a look at during the pandemic. And they report that there's been a 55 % rise in eating disorders, a 38 % rise in diagnosis of depression, 33 % rise in anxiety disorders, ER visits for mental health issues for teens are going through the roof around the world, and especially in the United States.

51:08And you actually have a program that can help parents do something about it. They can do it from their living room. They can do it in the classroom, but it provides real tools for schools and families in dealing with some of these issues. How so? Well, you know, this was something I started like 20 years ago, and I did it because of 9-11 and my issues around the fear that I had of the atom bomb. I thought I was going to die before I ever got to kiss a boy. I mean, I was really scared. I really thought at that point about my mortality, and it created a lot of anxiety for me. And during 9-11, I realized that children all over were going to be, in America in particular, were going to be showing symptoms because fear is a dangerous thing.

51:58It's quite poisonous. And it turns into anger and all kinds of like side effects. So I started looking then into the problems of suicide and anxiety and all kinds of different, you know, issues around children's mental stability. And I was shocked. And that was in, you know, 2003. it was a uptick in suicide for children, young children, 10 years to 15 years. And then older kids was a second leading cause of death. I really was shocked. It knocked me out. It God smacked me. I thought, oh my God, something has to happen. So after all the world that I have done over the years, which is psychology, which is meditation, which are ways and means to create a sense of happiness or more well-being, I learned sort of what the causes of happiness were.

52:49And I started applying them in a TV show. I wanted to do a documentary on joy. That's when 9-11 happened. So my background really went, how am I going to use what I know? So I brought in neuroscientists. I brought in psychologists, positive psychologists, teachers, and practitioners, right who were in meditation and also also research scientists in order to put these things together to create a holistic approach to a classroom program and i felt that putting it in the classroom then would begin to mitigate some of the issues around their fear around anxiety by knowing their brain so it's based in neuroscience you know it was never based as a basically a program about mindfulness or meditation.

53:39I mean, yes, we do three times a day, we do a brain break, but a brain break is to give a brain a break. These children know that they get anxious, they get scared, they get angry, there's aggression. They know that maybe they need to take a brain break. That's a three minute moment of listening to a sound and then breath and using your breath and learning to breathe properly. And it's been incredibly helpful. So teaching the brain is not just to know about the biology of your brain. It's to know how to use your brain. How do I change the way I'm thinking? How do I change my environment? When they realize that their brain that they have there is not like anybody else's, it's their brain and they own it.

54:20Then they get to know that they can actually not just shake hands with it as a friend, but they can actually change the way things are happening. So that's why they learn to breathe and they learn to focus. That's how they learn when we have the happiness of giving of kindness, you know, and also gratitude journaling. Things where it happens in the classroom sounds like a lightweight thing. It's not. It changes the neurons and how they fire. And when you start building small children whose brains are actually developing, you're helping them develop brain fitness. And that's what we want. We want resilience.

54:57We want children to be caring of each other, aware. They want kids to be self-aware so they know that if they do something this way, it might have a repercussion another way. Create critical thinking where they're thinking critically about whether to do something or not or how to solve a problem. I mean, it's an amazing, simple way of learning how to manage your own brain and your own outcome, therefore your own reality. So this happened how many years ago, right? And I've been putting teachers in classrooms and I'm putting the program, whatever, and it's been great. But the scaling of it is hard because you can't fly people here and do this there or create trainers here because you can't really manage the trainers in the same way you need to.

55:44It's important on how it's delivered, right? So what we did was when COVID happened, part of what happened to me, we talked about earlier, of basically sitting down is that I had the dream and I was able to dream in quiet. I was able to quiet my mind, my stress level, my body, my movement places, take my distracting my brain. And I figured out how to redo and reimagine what mind up is. And so that's what my, what what COVID helped me do. So now we have created for various amazing people, online accessibility on our learning platform. So any teacher of any school can go ahead and get that program just as it's taught.

56:35And it's beautiful to look at. I didn't want the program to look at like pedagogy or anything a teacher would have to do again. It's all written. It's there, but it's beautiful. It has sound. It's pretty to look at. It feels good to be in that space is what I wanted it to look like. In the meantime, you can take that program, become a accredited trainer and go in there and teach your children. Schools have already bought the program along with other teachers similarly. But then I decided we've got to put a parent program in here. This isn't just rituals. So now we're building, we've built part of it, of a really in-depth parent program of learning how their brains work and knowing that until they are a little more mindful themselves, that they will be able to be a better parent.

57:27You know, we're hijacked by our anger and our fear and lack of knowledge of what's happening in the future. Our money, look, we're in a, you know, in basically a recession, right? Or in, no, not recession, in a...

57:43Help me out. Well, we're in a massive inflationary period and filled a lot of jobs. A lot of people have left the workforce altogether. Exactly. So we've been inflation. So that was the. So the reality is, is that we've got a lot to worry about. Right. But in what we teach and what we're helping them with is to actually stay right here, right now, and understand that this moment right now is the most important moment. And they understand now about their children, their children's brains, their brains. They have discussions around it. They're able to work with families. We have MindUp family. So what happened is, Megan, is that I have taken this and now it's grown into a library of people talking about these various things.

58:27We've got, you know, happiness experts. We've got researchers. We've got neuroscientists talking about what is mindfulness? What happens to the brain? What's going on when you quiet your mind is powerful. We're going to have doctors, food, food, the best food for your mind, the best food for your children. And we have a cardiologist now speaking about the brain and breath and the heart and that connection and how it heals your heart physically. So I've just opened up a world that literally I believe that we need to all understand about the potential of who we are and how we can change our mindset, how we can be a better partner, how we can literally have more tolerance and more love and more listening capability.

59:17Well, just to pick up on what you're saying, there's a line of sweatshirts and T-shirts and so on, and it reads, choose happiness. And to me, that's never spoken to me because if it were that easy, everyone would do it. It's not that easy. So I like what you said about brain fitness. If you have somebody who's trained their brain to be negative, to see the darkness, to stay mired in anxiety and worries about the future and depression, and they don't know how to sort of reset that, they can't choose anything other. You're talking about training the brain the same way you train a muscle to do something different that would be better for it to understand how to process some of those feelings, get a handle on them, maybe table them, right?

1:00:03So stay in the moment, as you're saying, so that happiness is just more frequent in your life. It's not about having to choose it. It's just, you've set your brain up to put yourself there. Perfect. Perfectly put because it is you, do we choose happiness? Of course, everyone wants to be happy. What do you want for your children? I want them mostly to be happy, right? We get it. But we have to set our brain up. We have to have foundational material to understand that we can't just be happy because we say we want to be happy. We have to understand how to. We look at the causes of happiness. One of the causes of happiness is a very together, bound together, loving family.

1:00:44That is one of the big causes of happiness. that other thing is a cause of happiness is giving caring about someone else the idea of doing something which is acts of kindness sounds crazy but that actually makes you feel better hang out with happy people why because there is a thing called emotional contagion and emotional contagion is real whether i mean we're experiencing it today you know people are angry hang out with you're going to be angry. It's what happens. We're just humans. Our brain has this mirror neurons and it starts to process in the brain and we get it. You hang out with happy people, you'll be happy.

1:01:26Or you hang out with people who aren't watching their weight as well and not taking, sometimes you'll actually put on a few pounds. It's weird, but we actually, if you want to be happy, there are actions to take. There's things to learn about the causes of happiness. One of them is movement. movement, real movement, you know, go out there, be with a friend, hike, take a walk, breath, breath is another one. So when we learn all these causes to have a more, I would say, a more generous life, a feeling that there's more abundance in your life than deficit, that's the way to do it. We have a brain that we can train, but just by wanting to be something does not mean you're going to get there.

1:02:11You've got to work. And I think that's ultimately what you said. And that's what we train. So in a child's classroom, which we are, we're preschool through eighth grade right now. And I'm doing it because that's a developing brain. And they learn. 85 % of our kids said reportedly, they now felt they could make themselves feel happier. Well, you know, I have to tell you, that was huge for me. I just made it really did. It made me emotional because if those kids today could figure out that if you could do this in every grade till you're in eighth grade, you'll ride that bike for the rest of your life.

1:02:48That will never, ever go away. You will always remember. On the website, you have tips for parents that I was like, this is actually quite clever. It seems simple, but it's quite clever. One of them that stood out to me was every night at the dinner table, ask your child, what was something good that happened today, as opposed to what most of us do, which is just, you know, what happened today? Tell me about your day. Like what was interesting. Usually I've come at it from sort of a neutral standpoint or just an information seeking standpoint. But the point is you're helping them train to go to something positive, something for which they might have gratitude.

1:03:26Right. So it's like it's a practice that you can get your child into night after night. exactly right you know my dad used to call me and he'd say what good happened today and daddy I'd call daddy when I was like dancing in New York or whatever and he'd say and then he'd say to me okay go what did you what what is the one thing you learned today did you just tell me what you learned today just one thing and you know it's lived with me I mean I'm an older person now but it still lives with me I mean I remember what did I learn new today and I can I can remember myself all through the days, I could say, well, I learned something new today.

1:04:04That was great. These are positive experiences. Here's the deal. The brain is negative bias, no matter what. And it's negative bias because it's there. The brain is there. It's a very primitive part of our brain, but it's there to look for trouble. That's the individual. That's the center brain, right? That's the area where we are. Our smell, oh, I smell gas. Oh, I do this. Oh, you know one of the little kids was seven years old and her niece or aunt pulled her away from the curb and she said auntie do you know what saved our lives and she said no and she said the the amygdala her aunt said what me but she said no because that saves that saves our life because that was an alert we knew and i'm thinking oh my god this was a seven-year-old telling okay this is me hearing this story from in in Vancouver so the reality is is that learning what we naturally go to which is the negative story and you find yourself doing that negative story you wake up in the morning you're lying in bed you're thinking about what happened a year ago or 10 years ago or whatever why is that happening that's what the brain's doing it's shifting.

1:05:21It's bringing stuff up. Don't even think about it. Just get out of bed. Change the subject. You don't have to, you know, sort of go over and over and over this thing that your husband did or your boyfriend or back in the day, or, you know, you're holding grudges. Your brain won't let you forget it. You have to talk to your brain and say, stop it. I'm getting out of bed. I am not thinking about this anymore because it's gone. It's over. Today is today. It's now. And dammit, if we don't live for where we are right now, if this pandemic didn't teach us that we can't depend on a lot of things, including this frigging virus that's running around here, but we can find the things that we depend upon and we can have a nurtured heart.

1:06:10We can go in and sit quietly and think of the beautiful things that have happened to you and look at your children every day so you can't so you can't right so you can't just say okay be happy right you can't do that but you can practice mindfulness you can practice it's basically cognitive behavioral therapy you're talking about when you you got the thing the bad thought in your head over and over and you just choose to just redirect for the moment i've always i said i used to this moment i use my my old puppy's face little bosh's face it was so sweet for me it's just a good it's like a rejiggering, you know, like Bosh's face.

1:06:44It'll just stop the thinking of whatever I need to stop. It works. But, but I wanted to ask you, this is a, this is a sensitive subject, so forgive me, but I do, I do think it's helpful. Something bad happened to you when you were a child, um, with respect to an attempted sexual assault. And you told me this over dinner one time. It's never left me. But the way your mom handled it with you, I thought was brilliant. And I'm sure some people would find it controversial. I thought it was brilliant because in a way, Goldie, she was training you this, you know, from a very early age. Right. That's exactly right.

1:07:25You're 100 % right. Is that I had one of my sister's friends and they were like 18 in that age. And I went, it was Christmas time and we were having a party and he came upstairs and I knew him, you know, I was 11. And the next thing I know, I wake up and he has his hands on my breasts. And then he puts his hand on my vagina area. And, and I said, Ted, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Trying to push his hands away. and I said stop it and then I just stopped as it called my mom I called mommy and I called her from I didn't get up because I was in bed you know a little bit because then he left and my mother ran upstairs and they you know somebody went to get him they ran out the door I said my here's what he did and he touched me here and he did this and my mom looked at me and she said okay look at me are you okay are you okay and I said I am she's wow all right so just so you know I want you to know something all right he's very sick he's a very sick boy honey so if you're okay and whatever and you're not hurt and everything's fine don't don't worry I'm right here.

1:08:42But I didn't know she didn't go. Oh, what happened to my daughter? You know, how are you? How are you? I mean, no, no, no. She just said, you know, how are you doing? Are you okay? And suddenly, again, contagion. Okay. Mom didn't wasn't upset. I wasn't upset. I learned that he wasn't well. I had Owens, Ralph went and Ralph went and chased him out. He left the house. She said, so he's a very sick boy, honey. So, you know, but so I didn't have this like woman who lost her shit, you know? Yeah. She gave you the file to put this in. Yeah, exactly. You know, and it's very interesting when you talk about the outcaps of the world.

1:09:31And by the way, he wasn't the only one. You really, you know, I danced in Vegas. So, you know, it's a whole other story. but you know in a way I had more empathy for them I felt like they there's a weakness there and and I felt bad there's a you know whether they're addicted to sex terrible thing to have that hormone running through your your body and not being able to handle it not deal with it not know what to do so I you know I know it sounds crazy but I forgive them and and And, you know, I kind of. I care about about them. That that may be a bridge too far for for many people, but I but I think people can get into the habit of not catastrophizing every bad thing that happens.

1:10:25And this was by any measure a bad thing that happened. And your mother absolutely could have said, oh, my God, and held you and started rocking and saying, you'll never be the same. Your relationship with men will not be the same. We're going to have to get you in a meeting with therapy. And that could have created further scarring. I do think the way she chose to handle it, and already the child she built till 11 years, you know, who she was dealing with, thanks to all those years of input, she was able to sort of say, this is the file it goes in. It's about him, not about you. You're fine. And I know you've said it did not negatively impact your view of or relationship or sexual relationships with men at any point thereafter.

1:11:12No, not at all. I mean, I would, but as you say, you're not whatever that was an early experience um and i remember back when i was also at a bar with my girlfriend and it was over and he locked the door and my girlfriend was in the other place next door she wasn't there and this guy who was a really nice guy and he threw me down on the banquette in this place and and it was they served food and everything so it wasn't and and he started to you pound on me, not hurt me, but he wanted to make sense with me or something. And I was lying there. Now, mind you, I was a ballet dancer. So I was strong.

1:11:53I had very strong legs. I wasn't wimpy. Right. In the meantime, a cop came from Washington, D.C. I looked at the window. He looked down because he heard me yelling and the guy put his hand over my mouth. I got out from under him and And I ripped out from under him my leg. I pushed him. I got out. And I ran into the kitchen and I got a knife. And I held it up and I said, don't touch me. Wow. And he started to cry. And he said, I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened to me. I'm so sorry. Now, I look at that experience and I still feel bad for him. Wow. Because I wasn't hurt. And I knew it was wrong with him.

1:12:42He redeemed himself, obviously. So I didn't have one of those horrible experiences. Okay. So I'm not saying, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. It's gone a different way for too many people. It's gone a different way for too many people. You bet. I mean, so, but it's an experience. And I think that it's an element of, if we can't have a deeper understanding of human behavior, forget killing, forget full-on rape, forget all these things. But with your husbands, your children, your loved ones, the people that are in your life, people, strangers that aren't nice, things that you can see out of it.

1:13:22If we don't feel empathy, a sense of empathy for someone else, I don't know if life is worth living. I really don't. I think caring for something, caring about something is really, really what you have in life. And it brings great happiness and great joy. And this thing that I'm doing with MindUp, MindUp for life, brings me so much joy because I'm ultimately doing something at this time in my life that I care about. Building human capacity, human capital, to be able to say one day, maybe this will be in every school in the world. 27 countries have already come to our site. You said it. It's around the world, this problem.

1:14:15We've got to build a healthier world, a world where people actually experience what it is, all the joys of being human, not just being angry, not having to win, not be somebody who has to weigh this against that. Understand that. Try and understand that. And when you do, you realize there's actually more congeniality where we actually understand. We don't always think the same way. And we talk about this in the classroom. So I just think we have to build better capital. We are there. I'm sappy to do it. I may sound like a Pollyanna sweetheart. I'm very scrutinizing, but I'm resilient and people aren't going to push me over that easily.

1:15:02And I think it's a good reminder that there is a soft, safe, loving place that everyone can go to on their own, within their own head. You don't need a room called a safe room. You don't need speech labeled safe. You are in charge of the safety of your own body, your own mind, and whether you are OK, whether you can handle the anxiety or the stress brought on by anybody's words or behavior, whatever it is, you are in charge of how you're going to react to that. And if you don't have the tools, they are gettable. They're gettable. They're learnable. They definitely are. I love, I love, thank you.

1:15:40No wonder we have dinner when we get together. I just, what were you? It's like, come on, you can do it. It's not this, it's the tequila, but this is also good. All right, wait, let's squeeze in a quick break because I want to talk to you about what else you're doing now. And just a couple of fun moments because you know I'm not letting you leave without talking about Overboard, one of the greatest films of all time. It's like The Godfather, Overboard, Willy Wonka. We'll be right back with the one and only Goldie Hawn. When you fill up with 76, you're ready to go to that music festival you see posted about each year but have never been to.

1:16:23And you're ready to go

1:16:25Jordan Belfort:to a sunrise yoga class before work and go. Dog sitting. And try to get the zoomies under control. Now who wants to go? Go here, go there, go anywhere with 76. Hi, I'm Gabby Windy with Long Winded. And I'm not going to lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible, so listen to my podcast, won't you? It has great insights, exceptional humor, and plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls. And some even say it's a great way to fall asleep due to my soothing voice. And I don't take that personally. Fall asleep. A listen is a listen, even when you're sleeping. And a view is a view, even with your eyes closed.

1:17:16Jordan Belfort:If you dare, and it doesn't take much gumption, enjoy! Listen to Long Winded wherever you get your podcasts.

1:17:28Okay, so not, I mean, like your list of movies it's crazy. I just went back and was looking, like, I've seen all of these Seems Like Old Times, Talk About Private Vengeance, Swing Shift, I Love, That's Where You and Kurt Russell Met and it goes on and on. Here's just a couple for people who need a refresher like I did. We'll get to Overboard in a second. First Wives Club, Everyone Says I Love You, that was the Woody Allen film, 1996, same year. Protocol, Wildcats, Bird on a Wire, House Sitter, Death Becomes Her, the out-of-towners town and country uh i could go on first wives club is i hear possibly making a sequel so we'll see about that but let's get to the main event okay let's talk let's talk turkey overboard 1987 i just learned in preparing for this interview it was based on a real story there was an actual woman who fell off a boat or showed up on a florida shore with amnesia and in the movie which was apparently written with you and curt in mind um the the premise is that the woman your character falls off of her yacht after being a real jerk to Kurt Russell's carpenter character.

1:18:29And he decides after she threw all of his carpentry tools in the water that he's going to go claim this woman at the hospital and convince her that they're married and put her to work for him until she works off all the money she threw into the water. It's so funny. You could never make this film today, by the way, you could hit her. Not appropriate, not PC, whatever. so um you couldn't make any of them a lot of them you know yeah i mean when you look at some of the films and the way they were and what they i mean it's just you know things have changed tremendously uh interestingly enough uh it has affected comedy uh quite a bit uh this you know basically being you know uh you know basically politically correct and so forth um because their jokes were oftentimes made you know on all these different things that you know were sort of liabilities right yeah um and uh you know they i know with a lot of comics i mean it's sort of like they you know even when they go into universities there's a lot of sensitivity to uh all kinds of stuff so it's really interesting to be a stand-up comic or understand what your subject matters could actually be without offending someone that's gonna be so annoying to you you spent a whole you're trying to make people laugh, like having to worry about the third rail.

1:19:46You're supposed to step on the third rails. If you're trying to make people laugh. Uh, you're supposed to start on what you're supposed to step on the third rails. You're supposed to sort of poke the things that normal people wouldn't poke. No, exactly. I mean, Don Rickles, you know, was the killer on that. Um, no, that's sort of, you know, what you do. I mean, it was, it was kind of like that, you know, I mean, I don't know. I remember one line I did on Wildcats and, you know, I told I told him off and, you know, I was really upset with him. And this was Nipsey Russell. And I was like, really this?

1:20:22And I left there and I hot it up and I came back and I said, I forgot my purse. So and she went back, you know. Now, today, that would be a moment which is it was funny. but it's now it's sort of like oh you're just down down deep i'm just a crazy female you know um so there's a lot of areas that maybe not would not have been not you've been getting guff for doing this kind of thing for a long time i understand when you you did laugh in that was sort of your first big big thing i mean laughing back in the late 60s was i mean everybody watched it. It was like one in four Americans was watching Laugh-In, which was on Monday nights.

1:21:04Everybody watched it. That's where she became a huge star. And then your movie career launched right after that. But I read that when you were doing that, because you sort of played up sort of the dumb blonde character in a funny way. And I read that sort of the women's lib advocates kind of gave you a hard time saying, what are you doing? You're setting women back. And you were like, well, I don't think we need to burn our bras necessarily to get ahead. I'm kind of living the women's lib thing by paying my bills and working as an actress. I don't like, is that true? What I said to her was this, she said, well, what about women's liberation?

1:21:41And don't you feel bad because, you know, you're basically showing off as a dumb blonde. I said, really? I said, you know, I'm already liberated. And she looked at me like, uh, what do you mean? I said, well, liberation comes from the inside and I'm liberated. And she, it was one of those moments really where I didn't even know what I was going to say. You know, sometimes when people ask you questions and you're thinking, you know, and it just comes out, you know, and it just came out is that, you know, I don't know what you're saying because I'm experiencing liberation right now. Well, and you would go on to live a life that showed it.

1:22:22I mean, I think that some of the stuff we're talking about producing the movie instead of just starring in a time when not a lot of women were doing that and standing up for yourself and not submitting and so on taking a lot of bullshit from men um so you navigate yourself to a place where you can do a movie like overboard you occur or do me i mean really that that was a great role by the way and i was also looking at wonderful roles i mean she was first of all we did the movie you know where i played um annie first. I didn't, we didn't put in, in, in order. Joanna was the rich bitch version of you.

1:23:00And Annie was like the one he said, no, Annie's my wife. Do all the cleaning Annie. Exactly. So she was the one that I had to know who I was so I could play who I didn't know I was. So it was, it was quite a challenge to tell you the truth. One of the scenes I love the most, Goldie, is where you've had it. You know, this woman who's really Joanna, who's being told she's Annie and a housewife who does all the chores, knows at some level that this isn't the right fit. And he dumps you in this like sort of water barrel out in the front of the house. And we have a clip in which you channel my every thought when I pick up a mop.

1:23:42Here she goes. Listen. Come on, guys.

1:23:52Feel better? I don't belong here. I feel it. Don't you think I feel it? I can't do any of these vile things, and I wouldn't want to. My life is like death. My children are the spawn of hell, and you're the devil. Oh, God.

1:24:21Baby, we like you.

1:24:31Oh my God. I mean, I haven't seen that in a long time. I can't do any of these vile things that I wouldn't want to. My children are the spawns of hell. You're the devil. My God. I mean, there are things in that film. It was so funny. And it also was emotional because when she came out and said, how could you? How could you do this? When she learns that he's been duping her because they do fall for each other. And then she learns he's been lying to her. Exactly. And then my real husband comes back in his limo and the kids were devastated. And I was, I just didn't know what to do. I remembered who I was finally.

1:25:31And, and it was like, oh my God. Now in the middle of a movie that is hilarious, right? That was a very dramatic moment. And when she got in the car, the kids running after her, That was so sad. So a movie where you can cry, laugh, you know, just have a lot of emotions to it. We're really extraordinarily lucky to be able to play. the end of the movie was one of my favorite endings because when we jumped in the water because we we were pining for each other he was looking for i was looking for him and we dove in the water together in the in the sea to get together the end of it after they're all bundled up he says what can i give you that you don't already have because she had the money and she looked at him and said a baby baby girl yeah kind of like oh perfect line perfect line for an end of a movie i mean it's like i loved it but you guys were the key the writer of the film is it uh leslie dixon leslie dixon and and and then there was writing from every you know everybody harvey wrote some stuff and you know we we were we worked on it together well so she says she gives you guys all the credit.

1:26:55She's like, Kurt and Goldie are the cutest people on the face of the earth. She goes, I don't say that to be diminishing. She goes, it's just a fact. Everyone loves them. The chemistry was palpable. You guys had met a few years earlier on the set of Swing Shift, which I also really enjoyed. And you could feel it. And then you had a new baby, Wyatt, Wyatt of now, like who's now like Captain America. I just learned today he was running around the set. He was one of the kids in one of the outdoor mini golf scenes. He was nine months old. Oh my gosh. Nine months old. And my nanny was holding him in the scene.

1:27:36So he was just one of the extras. Right. It was meant to be. And he's like a baby on the movie set and still is on one. Right. And he took his first steps on that movie. Wow. I don't know. What do you, Why do you think that movie has withstood the test of time? You know, because not every movie made in 1987, like Moonstruck. That was an amazing film. I think it may have come out that year. People aren't still watching it. It's still not on television all the time. So why is Overboard doing that? Well, I think Overboard is a general relationship movie, first of all. It's about people falling in love.

1:28:13It's an amazing premise. If you didn't know who you were, who would you be? uh it's also about when you it's also about love um when you think you can't fall in love it changes you and it's also good for blended families to see is that sometimes when they don't know who their mother is or they don't have a mom anymore a new person coming into the household doesn't mean that it's going to fall apart sometimes it means that they're going to have a great time. A lot of doctors use this movie for blended families to show. And so it has tremendous ability to make people feel and it has nothing to do with time.

1:28:59That's why it's so timeless. It's that it's really about about humor, but how people get along and how to get along. And, you know, it was emotional. I mean, when she wakes up and says, when she had you know all that you know she was had um she said i'm so ugly i mean this is where she had you know it's she had poison oak exactly yeah you know no it was great when she came out he was telling all these stories about her past that she was in the navy and that she had she used to be really fat which is why she had he had only these huge house dresses for her that he got from the salvation and she goes i was a short fat slut that's right i mean really it's just so funny you know and then when we're in bed together right and it's sleeping and he got me a washing machine um for my birthday and the kids it's she was so happy you know and then he told her all about how she we know was a employee of the month and and she was so happy about it you know and and so you had this feeling you you you kind of hated him and you kind of knew he was falling in love with her and she was so vulnerable to believe that I was I was employee of the month you know learning about who I was and feeling good about it yeah new information for this character that she might actually be a good person which Joanna the other person not would never have actually heard and by the way I mean it must be said your body was so amazing it's like your body looks See, by the way, I've had a baby.

1:30:35Well, he was nine months old. How is that possible? What were you doing? Well, you know, I guess being a dancer all your life, your body knows. The muscles know. They have information. And so it's like when you go back to work again or you lose weight again or you do whatever, you kind of got to go back. Your body has memory. And I think that's what happened. What did I do? I worked out. I did a lot of things, you know, I didn't break my back, but I worked out. I did my sit ups. I did my stuff. I had someone working with me. You know, I did all my weights. Of course, I did aerobic. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I did what I what I normally do.

1:31:18You looked amazing. You both did. I think it's muscle memory. I swear to God. You still have it. You post these little videos of you and your family during the pandemic. You got the puppy or whatever. I'm like, that bitch looks better than I am. and she is 76 now. I don't even know what she is. What the hell? First of all, your body is killer. I mean, you will always have that, by the way. You know, there's nothing to snap back into. No, it's very jiggly. It's not like the Goldie Hawn in Overboard. Trust me, it never has been. You can't tell me that. It's not true. But anyway, yeah. So it's really it is nice.

1:31:53But you know, what's interesting is we get older and I'm very, very, what it is, you can tell, you know, I've been a dancer. You can't. let that go. Once you're three and four and five and six and seven and eight, and that's what you did dance all your life. You cannot let yourself go. Right. So I, you know, I went and I got, I go to places for cleanses and all that. We were just talking about that, uh, this morning. And I said, you don't, no matter what I do, I go to the cleansing place. It's great. I'm doing all my, everything we do, we do come on, we do the scrubs, we do the massage. We don't eat.

1:32:25We have, you know, all the stuff that we do do, you know, my stomach is so flat and I'm so happy. And it takes about two weeks. What the hell cleanses this? What cleanses this? It goes back again. I mean, my stomach is, it's not huge. It's just all in the wrong place. You know what I mean? I'm like, oh, come on. So, you know, so am I paying attention still? Yes. We can tell is you look amazing. And by the way, Abby, could you sign me up for dance classes immediately. Goldie Hawn, I love you so much. Thank you so much for doing this, for doing Mind Up, and the next tequilas are on me, sister. Okay, babe, you got it.

1:33:05Talk soon.

1:33:13Jordan Belfort:Hi, I'm Gabby Windy with Long Winded, and I'm not going to lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible, so listen to my podcast, won't you? It has great insights, exceptional humor, and plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls. And some even say it's a great way to fall asleep due to my soothing voice. And I don't take that personally. Fall asleep. A listen is a listen, even when you're sleeping. And a view is a view, even with your eyes closed. If you dare, and it doesn't take much gumption, enjoy! Listen to Long Winded wherever you get your podcasts. Summer routines live or die by how easy they are.

1:33:56Jordan Belfort:And honestly, if something takes too much effort, I'm out. That's why Grooms is my go-to. It's one daily pack of gummies covering my greens, vitamins, and minerals. Plus, it has six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is more than two cups of broccoli. No mixing powders, no giant pills, no hassle. I just rip open the pack and I'm done. They taste good and make it easy to stay on top of my health, even when life gets busy. Save up to 52 % off with code podcast at Grooms.co. That's code podcast at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O. In the 1980s and 90s, Jordan ran one of the most successful brokerage firms in Wall Street history.

1:34:30Also one of the craziest. He lived a life of luxury with money, yachts, women and drugs. But it could not last forever. And soon the FBI would catch up and catch on to a multimillion dollar pump and dump stock manipulation scheme that would land Jordan in federal prison for 22 months. He would later write a New York Times bestselling book, The Wolf of Wall Street, and soon Hollywood would come knocking and A-list actors would launch a bidding war for the movie rights. Leonardo DiCaprio would go on to portray Jordan in the now very famous and high-grossing film. It's incredible life and incredible life lessons that Jordan has gotten along the way.

1:35:15And today he is my guest and we'll discuss it all. Jordan, thank you so much for being here. Thanks. It's a pleasure. Okay, so I saw Wolf of Wall Street when it came out in 2013 and now I've read the book and have been following you on Twitter. and I love your inspirational messages. You really have taken a lot of these life lessons to heart. And one of the things that attracted me to your messaging was your very anti-victim mentality. I mean, you own everything that you've done and have been through and have been really open about it, but you also haven't lost touch with the drive that it takes to make all the money that you made, some legally, some not legally, but you haven't lost touch with what it takes to be successful and to get ahead of the other guy.

1:36:03And so I want to get to all of that because that's part of who you are as well. Let's start at the beginning though. So you're a kid from Bayside, Queens. You did not grow up rich or poor, right? About middle class, would you say? Yeah. And your parents were what?

1:36:17Jordan Belfort:Well, my parents were both CPAs. And, you know, it's interesting because that is think, well, wow, both are CPAs, professionals. You'd probably be upper middle class, maybe even you know lower wealthy right and but my parents really struggled uh growing up and um kind of didn't realize that till i was about 10 and when i was 10 i remember it's a funny story i wanted to buy a pair of pumas because they were all their age back then right pumas and probably 19 dollars and like i think it was my birthday was coming up and i asked my mom you know i want pumas she's like we can't afford it i'm like what do you mean you can't afford it like you you and dad are professionals you both and they both were my mother was like a trailblazer Just so you know, in the 50s, back in Mad Men days, she was going into the city and working as a CPA.

1:37:05Jordan Belfort:And, you know, it was a big eight back then, accounting firm. And she was the oldest woman in New York State that passed the bar when she was 68. So she's a real piece of work, my mom. She's awesome. But they had no money. I was like, well, and she sat me down and she showed me, you know, what was going on. She showed me they made X and there are expenses and, you know, rent and so forth. And at the end of the month, we have a little bit left over. It's for a college fund. And I was appalled because I was like, it didn't add up to me. Like, something seemed like it was off. How could two such brilliant people, hardworking people, educated people, industrious people, have been broke?

1:37:44Jordan Belfort:It didn't make sense. And it wasn't long after, I think it started to occur to me, there were certain other elements that were necessary to achieve financial success. And one of them was taking risk. My parents were completely risk averse, depression, mentality, and also they were really against any type of sales or marketing type ideas. They just shunned them and thought they were evil. And because of that, they were never able to use their services or market their services, their wares, so to speak. So they worked for other people. They worked for a paycheck and they struggled badly. So I think a lot of that went into my makeup of what it really means to succeed financially.

1:38:24Jordan Belfort:it's not just about hard work. Hard work, of course, is required. It's not just about education. Education is usually important, not always, but, you know, at least self-education of some sort. But there's other components involved. And one of those is going to certainly be, you know, taking some risks, working for yourself, or at least being in an industry like sales, where you can almost work for yourself and risk taking. So very important lesson I learned very young. So how did you understand, like, how did you become such a good salesman? Because if you read up on Jordan Belfort, you realize one of the things that made the difference in your life is you know how to sell.

1:38:58And it's not that easy for the average person. I think a lot of people are more introverted. They don't want to put themselves out there. They don't want to have to sort of, I don't know, make themselves feel vulnerable by asking somebody to buy something from them. So how did you get so good at that?

1:39:13Jordan Belfort:Part of it is a God-given gift. Seriously. I mean, I think that all of us, each person possesses certain gifts and certain deficits. I think in my personal genetic makeup and a combination of nature and nurture, I ended up naturally being very, very talented at sales. But then I trained myself and honed that skill over years and years of hard work and selling to a razor's edge. And then I found myself in a position very young when I started my firm where I was teaching a methodology of sales that was intuitive to me. It didn't have a name back then. And it didn't. It was working real well until I tried to get to a much more difficult type of sale.

1:39:52Jordan Belfort:And when I was faced with this difficult sale, I could do it. Yet the people that worked for me couldn't. And it forced me to come up with a new way of training salespeople, which is really what allowed me to understand my own sales process much better. So, you know, by almost by becoming a teacher, it made me a far better actual student. I mean, I'm a salesperson myself. So think about it. There's a there's a moment in your book late in the book where your daughter says you were supposed to take me to the blockbuster. You promised to take me to the blockbuster video. And you say I had I had promised her nothing of the sort, but I appreciated the negotiating tactic.

1:40:29Start from a position of strength. Assume the sale is already done.

1:40:33Jordan Belfort:I thought it was. Oh, yeah. she's and also the tonality like yeah you know you told me we're going to blockbuster right like i'm like what like almost what she phrases a declarative as a question it's good i learned i understand that's how i'm gonna pitch my next big guest you promised me you'd come on what who the hell are you um okay so you you were a worker when you were a kid you'd had the paper route and you did all the stuff that you know a lot of successful people i know have done that you did not sit on the couch watching reruns of little house on the prairie like somebody else i i know when I see in the mirror.

1:41:06Then you did not immediately go to Wall Street. You decided that you were going, you want to make money and you decided to be a dentist. And then tell us what happened your first day at dental school.

1:41:18Jordan Belfort:Yeah, that was really, you know, about, I think it's a reflection of belief systems that, you know, we all have infused into us by our parents, society, our peer group. And, you know, my mother, my parents are just very highly educated people. And to them, it was like, you know, there's only no one noble way to become wealthy. And that is, you know, doctor, dentist. And like, you know, at the time, if you ask me at the age of 21, you know, what do you want to be for a living? I'd say I want to be rich for a living. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. So it was playing in my head like doctor, dentist, rich.

1:41:53Jordan Belfort:Now, my uncle was a dentist and he was very successful. I was like, well, my uncle's a dentist four years. Medical school will be another 10. I'm going to kill myself in 10 years. So I said, I'll go to dental school. So I applied very well in school as I got in. And the first day of dental school, Dean stands up in front of the audience, who is Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in Maryland. And he says, you know, welcome to the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. She's proud to be here. Dentistry is a wonderful profession. And he goes, but let me say this. The golden age of dentistry is over.

1:42:24Jordan Belfort:If you're here to make money, you're probably in the wrong place. Like, what the hell? I'm in the wrong place. And I got up and I literally walked out my first day. And I dropped out. Yeah, that that too is such a moment. It tells us a lot about you, because I would think I mean, honestly, having been to law school and practice law, you at that point, your ego's into it. You've told everybody you're going to dental school. You have some sort of, you know, skin in the game. So the fact that you got up and walked out does say something about you. Like, you know, it doesn't take you long to make a decision about your life and your future and where you're going to do what you're going to do next.

1:42:56Jordan Belfort:That's an important thing that you're hitting on here, because one of the biggest mistakes that I think people make, and we all make, even though I still make it, but I try to stop myself from making it, is that it's not just ego. It's part ego. It's part, it's just part when you get caught up in something. You're in like, you can't see the forest or the trees. Like, you know, anyone on the outside would say, what are you doing? No, it's not working. You know, it's time to make the move. Get out, go do something else. So many people will stay with something to a point where it's obvious it's not working for them.

1:43:28Jordan Belfort:It's obvious it's not going to get them the outcome they want, but they feel like they've put time in so they're invested in it. They've done things. They've told people they're doing things. So they feel they have to be consistent with that. Yet to their own detriment, they stay and other opportunities pass them by. And I think that's a very, very powerful thing for all entrepreneurs, actually success-oriented people, is to always be looking at your surroundings and what's going on and just being honest. You know, is this working or is this not? I don't believe you just keep trying and quitting.

1:43:58Jordan Belfort:I'm not like that at all. But at a certain point, you have to get realistic with yourself and say, you know what? I should be making a pivot here and trying something else. What I'm doing is simply not working. And you had your eyes on the prize. You knew your overall goal was to get rich. It was not to be a dentist. That was just a means to an ends. And when you found out it wasn't the means, you were like, peace out. So you not knowing exactly what's next, you leave. and then the way I hear it, you heard about a kid from your neighborhood who was making a million bucks on Wall Street and the light bulb went off and you were like, I too am going to Wall Street.

1:44:35But it's not that easy.

1:44:37Jordan Belfort:One step, you missed one step. What? Oh, the meat? Is it the meat salesman? Yes. Yes, I actually, so this is a very important part of the story is that, you know, when I dropped out of dental school, I answered a blind ad in the newspapers, newspapers back then with ads, right? Not the internet. And it was for a sales job and it said company vehicle, make a thousand week company vehicles. Like, wow, that sounds pretty good. Right. And I went down, I didn't realize that the company vehicle was a meat truck and it turned out it was selling meat and seafood door to door. It was door to sales, right?

1:45:08Jordan Belfort:And I was like, all right, well, whatever, I'll give it a shot. And that was the, that was the first real sales job that I had. I'd always been selling stuff, you know, hard work, going blanket to blanket on Jones Beach, making a lot of money, selling ices as a kid. I was the kid with the paper out. I was the kid with the lemonade stand, but this was a magic show as even I did when I was younger, but this was the first real, you know, job and sales job was like about influence and persuasion. And, and my first day on that job, I broke the company record. I just, I had a natural ability to sell.

1:45:38Jordan Belfort:And that was really how I, it got started as like, you know, me knowing that I could really close at a high level. And after about two weeks of breaking the records, I said, let me just try to open up a business myself, I always had that entrepreneurial edge. And I started my own meat business. And over the next year, I built it up to 26 trucks. And I trained all those employees how to sell door to door. And we're selling door to door. So that was really the proving ground for everything else that came after. And then ultimately, I made every mistake that a young entrepreneur could make. I was overexpanding.

1:46:11Jordan Belfort:I was undercapitalized. I was growing on credit. It was a really poorly run business. You could look at that as a textbook for how not to run a business, right? And I went bankrupt and I lost everything. And that was when I heard at the same time about this kid I grew up with. His name was Michael Falk. And I heard he's making a million dollars a year on Wall Street. Like, just think back, it's 1986, 87, like a million dollars a year. It seemed like an impossibly large number,$10 on my pocket at the time. And I didn't believe it when I heard it. And about a week later, I went to the local park.

1:46:44Jordan Belfort:We all hung out in Bayside. And he pulls up in a Ferrari and a beautiful suit and a beautiful girl. And this guy was not, just to understand, he was not like this kid that was voted most for I can succeed in high school. He was kind of the weird kid growing up. So I was like, Michael, what happened? He's like, oh, I'm a stockbroker. Here's the thing about stockbrokers, Megan. If I was saying, hey, Megan, what did you make last day? You'd be like, excuse me? What did I earn last day? It's a little bit forward of you, right? You would ask a doctor, hey, what you're earning? What? But ask a stockbroker.

1:47:15Jordan Belfort:I made a million. They just offer the information. So true. A stockbroker is calling, hey, I made a million. What are you doing? So I was like, I made a million too. He goes, next year I'll make two million. I was like, and I said to myself in that moment, what you probably said to yourself, many of your listeners have, saying, if this idiot can make a million, I can make 10. That was exactly what I thought. you know and that was really started my quest to go down to wall street what you say is so true having lived in new york for almost 20 years if people are the same way about rents what are you paying a rent how many square feet let me see your apartment take me around as soon as they walk in like oh great you show them everything you show me your closet your bathroom it's just like you put it all out there that we all live in in different terms when you're in new york city um okay so you get the the first big job you get is a ls rothschild and what was the messaging from your superiors there at this.

1:48:06This is the portion of the movie in which Matthew McConaughey is portrayed as your boss. Great scenes. That character was spectacular.

1:48:15Jordan Belfort:It was amazing. Yeah. So so that was so what was the messaging to you then? How did they see you? So I was really pretty funny. So I was interviewed by the manager of that office and, you know, the Elf Rothschild office, a big, well-respected firm and I knew I had to stand out because there was like 50 kids lined up for the interview it was the bull market of the 80s and when I went to this interview I started pitching him a stock like I'm not even really knowing what I was saying but I was I knew I was really I sounded good a good tone out so I started saying hey I'm gonna you know this stock is I said I forgot what I said exactly but the point is I was pitching him a stock and he's like whoa he's like stop I'm like what he goes I've never met anyone like him goes I'll tell you it goes either one of two things are going to happen to you.

1:48:58Jordan Belfort:Either you're going to become the most famous broker in Wall Street history, or you're going to end up in jail. Well, the guy was a genius. He was right on both accounts. And he hired me, right? And that was how I got my job. And my first day of walking into that boardroom, I was like, I heard the mighty roar of the Wall Street boardroom. I was blown away by it. The fear, the greed, the cursing, the screaming. I mean, it was unbelievable, just the energy in this room. And for six months, I watched all these other brokers selling. I wasn't licensed yet. I had to go through a licensing process. And the messaging was, let's just say it was very much like Matthew McConaughey said, even at a big firm.

1:49:35Jordan Belfort:I think one of the worst, probably one of the worst kept secrets and probably the dirty little secret of Wall Street is that most of it's really not in the best interest of the client when it comes to, because the fact is, is that most of this whole machine is not necessarily of stock brokers and analysts because you better just buy the S &P and holding it. That's a separate issue. but um you know it was turn them and burn them you know let's turn them and burn them and and move the money around and you know you know close at all costs it wasn't lie to the client it wasn't about lying or or or you know or like you know burning made or something but it was about get their money churning burn and and you come first and and um i was pretty shocked when i heard that but you know that was that was the theme was it is it true that the the your boss at the time took you out and flat out encouraged you to drink more, consider drugs, consider hookers or masturbation several times a day?

1:50:27Like, I mean, is that did that really happen?

1:50:29Jordan Belfort:Yeah, but like, yes, the answer is yes. But more like the more. In other words, he was just he was a very funny guy. He was that sort of guy that like, you know, he would do anything for a laugh. He's a very clever, funny person. So he was saying, you know, one thing that was very prevalent, which I don't know if it still is today, but cocaine back then was like wildly prevalent everywhere. And, you know, the idea that people were doing cocaine during that, that was like standard operating procedure back at that period of time. I think it's gotten better. I hope it's gotten better. But that was certainly standard operating procedure.

1:51:04Jordan Belfort:And I think also was probably all seen from various other movies as well, that prostitutes, hookers on wall shoes, is also very much standard procedure. But the message really, was just like, you know, smile and dial and have fun. And basically, you know, the idea here is like, and I really, you know, I came from a really honest, good family. I was like, so can we make our clients money? They're like, nah. It's like, that was not like the objective. It wasn't the objective to lose their money. You would never want to lose someone money because it just doesn't, there's no reason to want to do that.

1:51:36Jordan Belfort:At Stratton, one of the biggest misgivings in the movie He thinks that like we tried to lose money. That's just nonsense. We never would. You would never try. You make more money when your clients make money. It's just very difficult sometimes when interests are not aligned. It's like you're trying to lose someone money. So that wasn't, he didn't say, let's just rip the client. It wasn't that. It's more like just, just, you know, churn them and burn them, baby. That sort of stuff. If you have to choose between yourself and the client, you choose yourself is basically the approach. So, so Jordan winds up going and we'll get to this in one second.

1:52:07I'm going to take a quick break, but he L.S. Rothschild collapses when Black Monday hits in 1987. And that career quickly dies. But Jordan, you won't be surprised, would not be stopped in his biggest and now most infamous chapter was yet to come. That's where we're going to pick it up right after this quick break. And we'll play some clips from the award winning movie as well. Stand Bye. Jordan, so Black Monday comes and that's the end of Rothschild. And you must have been thinking at the time your Wall Street career, too.

1:52:40Jordan Belfort:Yeah, I was pretty shocking because after six or seven months of being a cold cooler, like just, you know, dialing the phone and passing it to someone else. I didn't have my license yet. I finally passed my Series 7, got my license. my first day, literally my first day as a broker, and I was on the phone dialing for myself, the market crashed 508 points. Rothschild is, you know, essentially out of business by the end of the day, but it took a couple of weeks after they shut down. But they were already like, that was it. They were done that first day. So it was really, really sad. And I remember the brokers were walking around saying, oh, damn, the game is over.

1:53:18Jordan Belfort:I'm like, what do you mean the game is over? I didn't get to play. I was a slave. Like they're like, oh no the game's over then on that day and down on the ground floor was the uh the newsstand the new york post like the death of wall street all brokers will be cab drugs like i'm hot should have stayed in dental school right it was really unbelievable but i got home my first wife i've not done great in the wife department i've got a few marriages but and i got it right this time hopefully and uh but she unfortunately didn't know the market crash she'd taken our last dollars we were really struggling and she bought a bottle of champagne and and you know i walked through the She was like, how did you break the rate?

1:53:52Jordan Belfort:Because everyone thought I'd do so well. I was broke. I was like, I'd given up. And she said, that last night of the party on the champagne. I collapsed in her arms and started to cry. I literally, you know, we all take that punch. I'm sure you've been there. You know, you're a move for a shake of yourself. You have ups and you have downs. And like, sometimes when things are going bad, you think the world is just against you. God's against you. You think you have the Midas touch in reverse. Everything you touch turns to shit, basically. It was like, really, I really was like, I had this moment where I just was collapsed and I just said, I can't do this anymore.

1:54:25Jordan Belfort:I should have just been the normal route. And that lasted about five minutes because I didn't have longer than that, couldn't pay the rent. So after I had a good cry, we sat there, we opened up the help wanted section and we just started looking for other jobs outside of Wall Street, like sales. And after about a few minutes, she stumbled on some ad. It was like stockbrokers like in Long Island. And it was part-time, full-time. And there was so much that didn't make sense. But like stockbrokers on Long Island, like this is back in the late 80s where there was, you know, everything was on Wall Street.

1:54:56Jordan Belfort:And it was part-time, like part-time stockbrokers. Like, you know, and then when I answered, I called the phone. They're like, that's the center. I'm like, whoa. It was like a gruff voice. I'm like, what about Morgan Stanley or Goldman Investor Center? I never even heard, you know, it sounded like a weird name. And they asked me to come down and do the next day. I went down and I walked in. I was like, just shocked. It was like nothing in the office that, you know, reaped the wealth success or Wall Street. It was just like, it was going back to like the caveman days. It was like no computers on the desk.

1:55:25Jordan Belfort:It was young kids in jeans and sneakers. They were just, you know, cursing, but a different type of cursing at the clients and like lying through that teeth. And I'm like, what are you guys doing here? Like, oh, you know, imagine we sell penny stocks. And I'm like, what's a penny stock? I legitimately did not know what a penny stock was other than it traded at a lower price. I didn't understand the context, you know what it was really all about. And in that moment, you know, there was a scene in the movie where I say, you know, is this legal? Is that legal? And he's like, well, you know, that's not true.

1:55:58Jordan Belfort:You know what he said? Of course it's legal. So we actually have this clip teed up from the movie, the fake you, portraying this moment. Leonardo DiCaprio, here it is. Yeah, they're penny stocks. Companies that can't get listed on NASDAQ, they don't have enough capital. Their shares trade here. Is this stuff regulated or are you guys, what are you doing here? Sort of. Sort of? Yeah. Jesus Christ, the spread on these is huge. Yeah, and that's the point. What's your name again? Jordan Belfort. Jordan, what do you get on a blue chip stock? I make 1%. I did make 1%. Pink sheets, it's 50.

1:56:43Jordan Belfort:It's 50 %? 50 % commission? Yup. For what? It's our markup for our services. So good. So you get the dollar signs in your eyes at that point, like 50 is a lot better than one. You know, the most important thing, and I do, I mentor a lot of young people. I do big events around the world, small events, and there's a lot of people in their, you know, teens and 20s. And one of the things I always say to them is, you know, be really careful. That seems very misleading. And I wish they wouldn't have done that. But that's the one that, you know, it's just, it's an amazing move. But I just think that it's not accurate in the sense that if he would have said that to me, I would have run out the door.

1:57:23Jordan Belfort:Like I was a really good kid that never broke. And it wasn't like my nature to go in and say, I don't know if this is, maybe it's legal. I would say, bye-bye. I'll find something that's legal. But that's not what he said. He said the opposite. He said, of course. What do you mean? We are SEC. We report to SEC, NASD member. So the reason that's so important is because right now, today in the world, for all you people listening, especially young people, you're going to find yourself walking into offices and businesses where they're ripping people off. And as a young person like I was, you'll just assume it's okay because if it wasn't, it wouldn't be happening.

1:58:01Jordan Belfort:They would have shut it down. Some regulator would have made it stop, but it's not true. These things often take many years to be shut down, if ever. So just be careful. If your alarm goes off in your stomach and it's not legit, it's probably not. Like, don't just assume they say, oh, of course it is. Or if they say, yeah, maybe run the other way. That's my advice. Mm hmm. I've had I've had jobs in the past where you see ethics compromised here and then there and then you detect a pattern and you have to ask yourself, do I stay or do I go? Right. Like that's a one off can happen anywhere. But when you once you realize, oh, this is not an ethical place to be.

1:58:39It's a character test. And actually, it's one of the questions I have for you, because I'll tell you, I know a guy in New York who he was arrested and he was accused of being kind of a mini Madoff. and the jury was hung when all was said and done. So that was a good result for him. But it did come out later that he had cheated on his Series 7. He had had another guy go in and take it for him. And I thought to myself, so like these early ethical compromises, you know, how often do they result in just the loss of ethics, right? They're gone. Once you cross that line, it's tough to cross back over.

1:59:14Jordan Belfort:You know, one of the things I always say when I'm out there speaking, I said, you can't be half pregnant when it comes to ethics. It doesn't work that way. It would be nice if it did, but it doesn't. I'll tell you why it doesn't. It's because, you know, like, and my story illustrates this perfectly. You know, I was doing everything right. When I started my firm, I was doing everything right. And I had this one moment where, like, I was faced with making a decision of taking a very large amount of cash from someone. And the person said, everyone's doing it. I knew it was wrong. I was like, well, you know, and I figured it was being done.

1:59:48Jordan Belfort:I knew I wasn't the only person that done this, but I knew it was wrong. I said, well, you know what? I'll do this once and then I won't do anything again. But once you take that first step over the line, what happens is your line moves slightly to the wrong side, a slight bit. So next time, then you do things right, Rob. But next time you step over the line, you'll step a bit further and then a bit further still and through these tiny, almost imperceptible nudges towards the dark side, you can very quickly find yourself doing things you thought you would never do, associating with people you never thought you'd associate with, and it all seems perfectly okay.

2:00:28Jordan Belfort:You don't think it's wrong. Your line has moved. Your morality, your ethics, your compass, it's these little nudges, and before you know it, it's insanely off. It's like when you dip your toe into a piping hot bathtub, right? You're like, oh my god it's so hot and then five minutes later you're submerged under the water and it feels perfect right when i was a kid i was like oh i guess the water cooled down no the water didn't cool down you just got used to it it's like you know and that's what happens and you know it happened to me so profoundly that when i got my first subpoena from the sec for like something i wasn't really even guilty of it's just i like vomited like i was so i was oh my god my life is over i got a subpoena what am i gonna do it was a civil subpoena and i was just so nervous i I was devastated.

2:01:11Jordan Belfort:My life is over. Two years later, I'm like through the paper. Like, you know, you become it's weird how that happens, you know, and very, very careful with your ethics. And I know you make more money by being ethical just takes a little bit longer. But the big money is by being ethical. And picking back up on on your book, that same kid who vomited when he first got the SEC subpoena, you write would wind up bugging the SEC. How how did you do that? It's really easy. I mean, they came to my office and they were sitting in my conference room for months and months and months on end. For what reason?

2:01:57Jordan Belfort:I have no level. Let's say it's a different world back then. We didn't have like computers the way they had us. I guess they had to sift through mounds of paperwork. I guess they decided it was easier to come to us. So, you know, you had all these spy shops back then that sold all these like cool little a plug that looks like that you know it was like a plug and it was actually a listening device and and we put that device and see what they were saying which really wasn't that much and uh yeah and then we actually got caught doing that believe it or not because my apartment was one day he was incredibly high he like they said something bad about him and he ran me i don't know what you see oh no there's a Great scene.

2:02:32So Bo Deedle would become your like chief investigator, sort of protector. And a lot of my listeners may know him from my time at Fox and he's on Fox. He was all the time with Sean Hannity, such a colorful character. I was just telling my friend, great story about Bo. He's just so funny. And there's a he ran for mayor a couple of years ago in New York. And I can't remember the context in which he said it, but it was basically it was in a magazine article and he was talking about how he's going to clean up New York City, I think. And he's like, I'm going to clean up the city from Harlem all the way down to that slut New York Harbor.

2:03:03I'm like, does he mean the Statue of Liberty?

2:03:06Jordan Belfort:He's talking about this statue of that slut New York Harbor. The way of communicating, but with everything has an attation at the end. You know, I'm going to have my lunch attation and my meditations. And I love it. And you write about how this I didn't know about, Bo. He's never done it with me. But he calls the people around him, Bo. I did not know that. Yeah, he calls everyone Bo. So he's like a larger than life character. You know, he's always very good friend of mine and I respect him. And, you know, he just did he did a lot of good stuff. He personally had people, you know, like, you know, security guards.

2:03:42Jordan Belfort:And he did a good job for me. Yeah. So he tried to help you, but he he was quick to tell you, please do not try to bug the FBI agents. Do not try to tape them. Do not try to bug offices or briefcases or anything like that. OK, so you go from the penny stock place. How does Stratton Oakmont, it's got a great name and that's by design, but how does Stratton Oakmont, which was officially born in 1989, come about? So, so Stratton was actually started, Stratton Securities was started in 1979, I think. And it was a trading firm that just, you know, did a lot of interbank trading with insurance companies, traders, right?

2:04:22Jordan Belfort:And then when the crash came, the firm basically lost all its equity and it was teetering by a thread. And right around the time I decided to open up my own brokerage firm, Stratton became available that you could use their licenses with what was called an OSJ, Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction. So I jumped on that bandwagon and that's how it started with Stratton. And after a short time, another firm named Oakmont became available. And I wanted to, there were some things about that firm. I like it had a good clearing arrangement. The trader was more professional than what I had. So I bought Oakmont and that's how I came to Stratton Oakmont.

2:05:06Okay. So you wind up going around and hiring a bunch of guys and these are, I don't know how you want to describe them, but salt of the earth.

2:05:16Jordan Belfort:I've been barely post-adolescent new compoots, but in a loving, fun way. And you were their fearless leader who was up there like, let me show you how it's done. There's a famous scene in the movie in which you're talking to them about selling and how they got to get out there and sell. And they did respect you and they were very loyal to you and they all looked up to you. Here's just a clip of you, well, Leonardo DiCaprio, as you motivating the team. There is no nobility in poverty. I have been a rich man and I have been a poor man and I choose rich every fucking time because at least as a rich man when I have to face my problems I show up in the back of a limo wearing a$2 ,000 suit and a$40 ,000 gold fucking watch if anyone here thinks I'm superficial or materialistic go get a job at fucking McDonald's because that's where you fucking belong

2:06:14It taps right into Wall Street at the time and the guys and it was, you know, F everybody and it's us against them and be a killer. And that worked. It worked very well.

2:06:26Jordan Belfort:That's, you know, that's a really interesting scene because it it's true. I mean, that comes from a speech that I kind of reconstructed. I wrote my book and but that came later. That mentality, like, you know, let's just say what we were doing at that time was a little different than when the firm first started. You know, when the firm first started, we were selling penny stocks to average moms and pops like that other company was doing. And then I came with this idea to go to the richest 1 % and just to call, you know, really rich people and sell them$5 stocks. So the leap that really made Stratton, Stratton was we weren't selling penny stocks.

2:07:06Jordan Belfort:We were selling$5 stocks and we weren't calling average moms and pops. We were calling rich business owners. And that was also what forced me to come up with a new way of training salespeople. Because what happened was the way I had been training salespeople with the first program, which was calling average moms and pops, it was very easy sales, more of an impulse sale, like, you know, dollar and a dream, like a lotto ticket. And it was very different than what was happening when I actually had to go and call the richest 1 % and sell them$5 stocks. And suddenly the kids that worked for me, which were kids that were not educated highly, did not naturally that intelligent.

2:07:43Jordan Belfort:And also none of them possessed any, you know, let's say there were no members of the Lucky Sperm Club and no Ivy League diploma. So they couldn't close the rich people. And I had to come up with a new way of training salespeople. I'm going to stand you by right there because we're just this is a good time for a quick pause, quick break. and much, much more on the opposite side of this with Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street. Hi, I'm Gabby Windy with Long Winded. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible. So listen to my podcast, won't ya? It has great insights, exceptional humor, and plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls.

2:08:22Jordan Belfort:And some even say it's a great way to fall asleep due to my soothing voice. and I don't take that personally. Fall asleep. A listen is a listen, even when you're sleeping and a view is a view, even with your eyes closed. If you dare and it doesn't take much gumption, enjoy! Listen to Long Winded wherever you get your podcasts. Summer routines live or die by how easy they are and honestly, if something takes too much effort, I'm out. That's why Groom's is my go-to. It's one daily pack of gummies covering my greens, vitamins and minerals. Plus, it has six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is more than two cups of broccoli.

2:08:59Jordan Belfort:No mixing powders, no giant pills, no hassle. I just rip open the pack and I'm done. They taste good and make it easy to stay on top of my health, even when life gets busy. Save up to 52 % off with code podcast at grooms.co. That's code podcast at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O. So the straight line, what's the other piece of the straight line? One is motivation and the other is actually how do you sell to really rich people? and in a nutshell how is that so the motivation is definitely part of the straight line like sort of the you know there's two there's two sides to to succeeding anything and we live in a world of duality there's up there's going to be down yes no start stop even the digital world that allows us to communicate you have a one year zero right there's two sides to every coin same thing goes in success and sales and we speak of sales as you know there's the inner game of sales success and entrepreneurial success in the outer game.

2:09:53Jordan Belfort:Inner game means your mindset, what's happening up here between your ears before you ever go out and try to close someone or start a business, whatever that might be. Then the outer world are the actual real world skills that allow you to accomplish what you want to accomplish. So, you know, in mindset, there's things like managing your emotional state, make sure that you're in a positive, empowered, emotional state, that you have belief systems that support you and that propel you to success and don't stop you from succeeding or cause you to pull back when you shouldn't. Beliefs like my parents had, where they thought that selling was evil, that marketing was evil, that any type of risk was a bad thing.

2:10:30Jordan Belfort:Those are limiting beliefs when it comes to making money. So, you know, you could have the best entrepreneurial skill set and education, like my parents did, like they had great education, but if you have that sort of belief system, it's going to stop you from achieving. So that's inner game as well. Then you have another thing, which is called, you know, your vision focus. You know, what's your vision? Do you have a target that you're aiming for? Where do you want to be in five years from now? And why does it matter to you? Very important. You know, why you're, you know, why you do what you do.

2:10:57Jordan Belfort:And most people think, oh, I want to make money. And it's not a why, you know, why is much more profound than that. It's typically to do with someone that you love unconditionally or cause you believe it. It's not about you. It'll be about the people that you love or the community or something bigger than yourself. That's a real powerful why. And then lastly, on the inner game is something called your standards, your personal standard, what you will not settle for less than. A standard operates like a thermostat. It's like your set point. Where do you burn? Where do you feel comfortable? If you have low standards for making money, well, guess what?

2:11:30Jordan Belfort:It's like the furnace. If the thermostat's set to a low level, the thermos shuts off pretty quickly. If the thermostat is set to a high level, it keeps going. So that's what your stands operate Like all that's happening every second of every day in your mind. And it's influencing what decisions you make, what you do, how you handle adversity and those things when they're wrapped into one empowered, you know, into one empowered, let's say, you know, lump, so to speak, where you're like, literally, you know, you have this ability to just be positive and think positively and focus on where you want to go in life.

2:12:03Jordan Belfort:That sets you up for massive success in the outer world, which is now where your strategies, your real-world business and entrepreneurial and sales strategies take hold. For example, as a business owner, you know, there are certain skill sets that an entrepreneur must have. There's knowledge that you need. It's critical, mission-critical knowledge. You know, and when I talk about entrepreneurship, I typically divide it into, like, these two sides. Like, you need to learn how to, believe it or not, fail elegantly. Like, how do you go into business and be wrong? And because you're wrong more than you're right when you go into business.

2:12:35Jordan Belfort:You're going to, you know, be on the wrong side of the test more often than not. How do you maximize the lessons learned in the failures, but minimize the amount of money loss, time loss, so you can learn from it and move on and try again? And then that's failing. It's crucial. You've tweeted out and I've heard you say before, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I love meeting people who know more than me because that's how you learn. Right. Yes. It's OK. It's OK to fail. It's OK to fail. Do it well. Do it elegantly and understand it's not so bad to be the one learning.

2:13:08Jordan Belfort:yeah and also i think one of the you know one of the things i i think a quote i'm well known for and i say to my kids all the time especially when you're younger is like you're not the failures of your past you're the resources and the capabilities you glean from your past failures you know you get stronger when you fail if you learn from those failures you don't become your failure you don't start thinking you're the failure your failure is not you it's a lesson learned and you grow stronger with each time you fail and both mentally and you learn from that. And that's what sets you up to succeed the next time.

2:13:41So I like that failure means you're a risk taker. If you've got some failures behind you, it means you're a risk taker.

2:13:47Jordan Belfort:If you haven't failed, then you probably haven't tried. Like it's like, it's like, I don't know many people, even like someone, like if you look at someone like Zuckerberg, who like seemingly hasn't failed, but he did fail. He's had all these launches and things he's tried since then that hadn't worked out. You know, it doesn't affect his massive net worth and his core company, but everyone tries and fails. And it's what you do when you try and fail that defines who you are. You know, how do you process that? Do you learn from it or do you let it paralyze you? And the worst is that you let it form limiting beliefs inside of you.

2:14:22Jordan Belfort:Like you have a failure about, you know, in a business, you're like, oh, maybe I'm just not meant to be an entrepreneur. It's not who I am. And that's a a massively problematic limiting belief. So it's an example of how you could fail and let it paralyze you versus, okay, I failed. Let me look soberly at this and say, why? What was missing here? What can I learn? How can I grow? And then when you try again, integrate those lessons from your failure into your next pass at success. And if you do that enough times, you surely will succeed. And probably sooner than you think. So it's a crucial part.

2:14:56Jordan Belfort:And then also on the other side of that is with entrepreneurship. So this failing elegantly and also succeeding wildly. What do you do when the idea is right? When you have an idea, you test it, and it's actually working better than you thought. How do you take a small idea and scale it? How do you turn a small business into a big business, a big business into an international business? And there's all these rules and strategies that are proven to work. And you need to know these. There's an entrepreneur. And they're all learnable. They're out there. The knowledge is for the taking. It's an open world on the internet.

2:15:27Jordan Belfort:And so you're really, I would say, ignore that at your own peril. That's entrepreneurship. The next skill that's crucial in the outer game is marketing. How do you go out and identify who your best buyers are, your potential buyers, and how do you reach them in a cost-effective way? You know, there's the online marketing, which is very popular right now, and I'm sure it will continue to be. Things like social media, Google ads, just, you know, all the things that we know and use online to reach people both in our local market and all over the world. Absolutely crucial. And those skills are learnable.

2:16:01Jordan Belfort:They're out there and you can hire people if you don't have them yourself. And then there's the offline, the traditional TV, radio, knocking on doors, calling on the telephone. So that's marketing and marketing brings people into your so-called sales funnel, your store, your website, whatever that might be. And then the next step is the one that I'm probably best known for is sales, persuasion. How do you take those people and close them? How do you get them to see the value of what you have to offer, that yours is the best solution for them? How do you convince them to part with their hard-earned money now?

2:16:36Jordan Belfort:Without that, skill is very hard to make money. And then the last part of that is, what I call MSIs, multiple streams of income. And what do you do with your money once you make it? How do you put your money to work to make more money for you so you can ultimately retire and be wealthy, meaning, you know, you don't have to just run around like a chick with that head on trying to make the next dollar because your money's actually earning money for you. Those are like this four on one side, four on the other. So inner game, outer game, eight things in all. If you know all eight of those things, you're going to end up being very successful, like I promise you.

2:17:06You know, it's funny. Back in 2016, I actually wrote a book called Settle for More. And the title was from a saying, the only difference between you and someone you envy is you settled for less. and I actually got it from Dr. Phil, but right to one of the points you made, right? Like you got to set the high goals and if you set the low goals and you're sitting there feeling unhappy, that's on you.

2:17:30Jordan Belfort:Well, you're probably, the problem with most people and their goals, people that don't succeed, the problem is that they, not that they set their goals too high and miss them. They mostly set their goals too low and hit them. And then like, because the enemy of great is good. Because when you're feeling good or average, there's no pain or uncomfortability so you don't have any impetus to change. So it's like, you know, one of the most profound things I ever heard in an interview was from James Cameron. He was being interviewed after Avatar came out. And now he had like two out of the three multi-billion dollar blockbusters.

2:18:03Jordan Belfort:And I think it was Larry King. I forgot who it was. They rest in peace. They said, you know, James, how is that you? One person has, you know, two of the biggest grossing movies of all time. He goes, well, when I go about planning this out, I'm thinking about it. I am shooting to, I'm looking to have a$3 billion. I want to have the biggest multi-billion dollar hit in my mind. So if I'm only half right, I'm still doing really well. He said so high that even if he misses them, he's still doing well. And I think that's a real, I was like, wow. And I always knew that. I knew that to be true and taught that myself, but to hear it from James Cameron, like, so he's like a filmmaker.

2:18:42Jordan Belfort:It just showed me how it just translates into all types of businesses and industries. It's a mindset thing of, you know, where do you set your goal? If you're aiming for here, yeah, you'll probably hit it. But then what? OK, so you'll need to go on your average and average, like, you know, average plus average plus average times average equals average. It's like somehow that all coagulates to be great. It's like, you know, the mortgage crisis where they said, let's take a bunch of piece of shit, deadbeat borrowers, deadbeat loans. okay and i'd be bars on pieces of shit okay but deadbeat loans right and they're all terrible but we put them all together they're suddenly good no you have a giant lump terrible like it doesn't change the makeup like by putting a lot of bad together suddenly becomes good through diversification so the same thing is true of success and i would add to that success in love and business i mean it's it you can apply it across the board for sure and i always say that I had incredibly high standards for money and success, but very low standards for my personal relationships with my wife.

2:19:46Jordan Belfort:What you have a high standard for, you focus on. You won't settle for less than. So I learned the hard way and also for ethics. My ethical standard became very low. It started off high. It dropped. And because of that, I paid the price. And those standards, we had them for everything. We had them for love. We had them for relationships. We have the body. I've always had a very high standard for keeping in shape. So yeah. So my body is important. So I exercise every day. If your body's not important, what do you do? You won't exercise. It's hilarious to hear you say that after all the drugs I know you've taken.

2:20:21What?

2:20:22Jordan Belfort:Amazing. I look pretty good considering that. I really want to talk about that because I've told my audience this before. I do drink alcohol, but I've literally never tried a drug. I've never tried an illicit drug of any kind. And I don't know if I'm in the minority, the majority, but having lived in New York for almost 20 years and having practiced law and been in media, I think that's unusual. But I'm kind of curious about all the drugs you took and like how they felt and how you feel about them now. I know you're sober now, but it was a lot. And you lived a life of big, big debauchery while you were while you were running that firm.

2:20:59And I'm just curious about the whole thing. So let me start with this. Had you grown up? We'll squeeze it in a break in a minute. But had you grown up doing drugs, drinking alcohol? Like, were you that kind of person before all this?

2:21:13Jordan Belfort:I used drugs occasionally in high school and the college, but no, I was not a drug. I was never addicted to drugs and it was never something that was like an integral part of my life growing up. But I tried drugs and I used them like most kids. You know, I think back then it smoked pot and I tried cocaine once or twice, but that wasn't something that was really part of my life. And so when you were at the penny stock firm and Rothschild before that, this is prior to, you know, the formation of Stratton. Had it yet blown up in your life or you were like addicted yet when you started that firm, the big firm?

2:21:49Jordan Belfort:That was another part of the movie that was a bit, I thought was kind of, you know, to me, it could have been done a bit more elegantly. Again, I love the movie, but if there were things that could change, they had me going to the dark side really fast. And like, it almost like, you know, I go day one, I'm like this really wet behind the ears, honest kid, can't we make our clients money too? And he's like, no. And I'm like, okay. And then the next scene, I'm in a strip club starting Coke, right? Okay, wait, that's a great place to leave it. we've got a clip to sort of bring that to life for you right after this quick break when we have more with Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street, sex, drugs, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

2:22:30What more could you ask for? Stay tuned.

2:22:37So Jordan, so you, how many years were you, I don't know if we can say on the straight and narrow, but like how, how long did it take before a full debauchery and drug addiction set in?

2:22:49Jordan Belfort:Um, so I would say it took from the time of, I walked into LF Raw, probably two years, um, to start using drugs and maybe two and a half to, to be really deep into it. Um, and you know, Well, drug addiction is a very strange thing. It's very insidious. It starts slowly and it creeps in a little bit at a time. And before you know it, you know, one drug makes you want to do another drug to counterbalance the negative effects of the first one, then the third one. I mean, it happens really slowly. And but I would say by 1991, 1991, I was full in very much into drugs. OK, and the you know, I think I understand that just because anybody who drinks alcohol can understand the alcohol at night and coffee in the morning.

2:23:43This is just a much more extreme version of it. And when you when the firm was killing it and you were killing it, there's that's portrayed in the movie and you're pretty open about the drugs. And here's a clip of Leonardo as you on the drug cocktail that you'd been using. On a daily basis, I consume enough drugs to sedate Manhattan, Long Island and Queens for a month. OK, Mr. Jordan.

2:24:08Jordan Belfort:I take quaaludes 10 to 15 times a day for my back pain. Adderall to stay focused. Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again and morphine well. Because it's awesome. All the drugs under God's blue heaven, there is one that is my absolute favorite. See, enough of this shit will make you invincible. Able to conquer the world and eviscerate your enemies.

2:24:39Jordan Belfort:And I'm not talking about this. I'm talking about this. At the end there for our listeners, the character was snorting cocaine and said, I'm not talking about this, the Coke, he's talking about this. And he holds up$100 bill. Money, money was the number one drug. I have to say that I wish I could take credit for writing that line. That was Terrence Winter, who came up with that brilliant statement, which is so true. But yeah, I thought that was so clever of him. Because, you know, the other things I all said, but he sort of pivoted back to this ultimate truth that the money itself was the most powerful drug.

2:25:19Jordan Belfort:When I read that, I was like, wow, this guy is good. How much money were you making at your peak? Oh, it's a lot of money. Let's go back to the time wall. So this is a time before hedge funds, before you heard about people making hundreds of millions of dollars. I was making a million a week in the cash side. Plus, I was taking stakes in all these different companies. So I had a net worth much, much higher. I had shares. And there was a time I owned 85 % of Steve Madden's shoes and 20 other companies that were all going public or more public. And then I was making the cash portion as well. So I was making a phenomenal amount of money.

2:26:06Wow. You had a yacht, you had a helicopter, you had estates, mansions and so on, jewels for your wives and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What did it feel like? Did it make you happy? You know, the goal of being rich, were you feeling like, nailed it?

2:26:22Jordan Belfort:I think the thing about money is that, you know, and I've said this many times, you know, I've been rich and been really, really, really happy. I've also been rich and really, really, really miserable. I've been poor and really, really, really miserable, but never once I've been poor and happy. Like, so like, it's like, I think money doesn't buy happiness, but a lack of money can really be a passport to misery and discomfort. And I've seen a lack of money cause so many problems in marriages with families and money. I believe my belief is money is an incredibly important thing. It's a tool. It's certainly not everything and it won't buy happiness, but without it, you could really be making your life much more complicated and your relationships much more tenuous without money.

2:27:14Jordan Belfort:So I think that's the best definition I give you. Did it feel great to make all that money? Yeah. I mean, it felt great. I make a lot of money now and it's I love making money, but I don't buy into this idea that it's the money itself that's making me happy because I have times now where I'm unhappy and I have times now where I'm ecstatic. But I will tell you that I was broke right now. I would not be very happy at all. ever. What was your favorite toy? Right. Like what? Because a lot of people fantasize about having all that, all that dough and they ask, what would I buy? And what would I love?

2:27:47What was your favorite?

2:27:51Jordan Belfort:Probably like the helicopter, you know, on the, on the yacht at a helicopter and, you know, we'd land this helicopter and on the boat and take it out and fly it around. My captain was amazing. He was a great pilot and he'd fly like 10 feet off the water and, you know, I'm like gunship in Vietnam sort of stuff. And, and we just, you know, we'll have that boat in places that, you know, that you would normally not go to like, you know, the Virgin islands or the Caribbean and then take the helicopter and just see amazing things land in live volcanoes that weren't currently erupting. So we did all these really cool things.

2:28:25Jordan Belfort:I think that was probably the most, my most favorite toy, even more so than the yacht. And is it true that the yacht, the Nadine named after your second wife, was taken down by a rogue wave? Yeah, that's true. What happened? We had a storm, a massive storm that kicked up. It started off as just like, you know, some chop, heavy chop. And the captain was, you know, advising me against making the crossing from Rome to Sardinia. But, you know, I was like, can we make it? He's like, yeah, we'll make it. And, you know, it's going to be rough. It'll be uncomfortable. We'll break a few plates. I'm like, let's go.

2:29:02Jordan Belfort:Like, I was just an action junkie. junkie and um also at the time i was doing a lot of drugs you know and that sort of got me into this mindset like i couldn't sit still i had to move let's go let's go let's go you know and i i convinced him to make the crossing and then in unbeknownst to him or i at the time a freak storm was about to kick up and it did and those six to eight foot waves became 20 foot waves really fast and then 50 foot waves. And then we got hit with a road wave to the side. And that's how the whole thing happened. Yeah, it was crazy. Oh my God. So, I mean, did she break apart at sea?

2:29:42Like, was there a helicopter rescue?

2:29:45Jordan Belfort:Yeah, 100%. So it's just so hard to believe. It's so crazy. What? No, Megan, I'll tell you this. The reality is far more cinematic than the movie. I think for budgetary reasons, they didn't recreate what really happened. It was an 18-hour ordeal where the boat was sinking slowly on its side after getting hit by this wave and going down. And they tried to first, the Italians first tried to send out a Coast Guard helicopter, which lowered down a basket. But in 50, 60 mile an hour, it looks easy in the movies, but in reality, the baskets swing 100 feet that way. They couldn't get the basket, the boat, and then they ran out of gas.

2:30:27Jordan Belfort:So they had to go back and go up in the county. All right, we need to abandon ship. I'm like, what? Like into the life raft? I'm like, you're not kidding. So captain's orders like, all right, we all go to the back of the boat. And he puts the rubber raft in and bam, like in one second, the raft washes away. Of course, it took down a yacht. It's going to take down a raft. It's so funny when I watch this in the movie, I was like, Leonardo DiCaprio will only be in movies in which big ships go down that he's on. this is his thing apparently that is crazy you've survived so many massive life risks you know not yes drugs of course and then there was prison but like that that was so crazy i had a hard time believing it but i believe you now um so you so the drugs and the whole thing can we just talk about the marriages for a minute because in the movie your wife is um your second wife nadine who who's this incredibly beautiful woman in real life and in the movie.

2:31:23You fall in love with her while you're still married to your first wife. And in the movie, they portray it as Margot Robbie walking in, and you're just completely floored by this gorgeous woman. And just as a funny aside, I'll tell the audience that when I texted you first, I pulled it up because it was a funny sort of introduction from me to you. I said, so nice to meet you. We have a ton in common. I hate perpetual victimhood and people who blame others for their problems. I love Brian Friedman, who we both know. It's our lawyer. And I also had a movie made about my life in which Margot Robbie starred.

2:31:59So she played your second wife, Nadine. There's actually, in the movie that was partially about me, Bombshell, she played a different character. And Charlize Theron played me. Hold on. We actually had a full screen made showing the split screen of the two. We'll pop it up there. Look, there's me and me, Charlize and Margot and Leonardo and Margot. So, yeah, so Margot Robbie plays your second wife. And your thoughts now, because Nadine is a big star in your life, in the movie, in the book. You call her the Duchess, because I guess she was British originally. Your thoughts on her, because it's a real love story.

2:32:36You do wind up having a terribly tumultuous relationship with her. And I know you're married to somebody else now. But I kind of wanted you to put a period on the end of that relationship for me and how you see it now.

2:32:47Jordan Belfort:I think that, listen, you know, I think, you know, you have certain people that come into your lives at certain times for a reason. And she was the right person for me at that time. You know, I really, you know, the sad part is I really loved my first wife. I really did. She was an amazing lady. And I think she was under portrayed in the book in many ways, like in the movie. uh she was a beautiful woman the girl played it was beautiful too but she really was it was a good woman and um and but at that point in time i don't think anyone could have survived what i was at the time i would everything was taking off so fast and it was um you know with the drugs involved it was just like i was looking i was in that mindset of just what's next what's next what's excess and it was excess at every turn more more right it's just a weird mindset that you get into sometimes on wall street and other times as well but wall street seems to bring it out in people and um and um and i met her just it was just like the movie literally like exactly like that at a party she walked in i was but she was gorgeous and then we uh you know i tracked her down and we went out and and you know i learned a very important lesson you know from that whole situation that about cheating in a marriage um because i don't cheat my marriages after that i didn't cheat after that marriage because um you you can't choose who you fall in love with like it's and you know you're playing russian roulette like you know you talk to just kind of have a casual affair because you don't know what might happen with that affair and i fell in love with her i didn't really intend to but when you do fall in love with someone um you know it's very difficult um to stay with someone you're not in love with anymore because i think it's hard to love two people at the same time you know wait but you're not saying you didn't cheat on nadine the margot robbie character because that's like half the movie of you with the hookers while you're married to her is that you're saying when your current marriage you don't after her like when i look the whole when i look back and saying when i perspective when i look back at my life after my marriage to nadine okay okay okay got it especially when i wrote my book that was really for me writing the book was an incredibly like profound experience it was almost like self analysis and self psychology, my own, you know, strengths, faults and frailties.

2:35:06Jordan Belfort:Right. And when I look back then, even when I was with Nadine, I kind of knew that I made this gross error in terms of just like going out and sticking my hand in the cookie jar. But just so you understand when you're doing drugs, like the way I was doing drugs, you know, anything is possible. There is no like, oh, I'm going to be a good, you're like a different person. At a certain point, you get caught up in a mindset where everything can be rationalized and everything seems okay. The truth is I had far more, I, this is going to sound strange to you. Okay. But it's not as strange as you think.

2:35:38Jordan Belfort:But, you know, in my mind, I didn't consider sleeping with hookers cheating in the traditional sense because there was no emotional attachment. No, I understand that. My husband wrote a book about Wall Street called Ghost of Manhattan. And he, he did it. It was very well researched. This is one of the points he makes about the guys who, whether it's hookers or what they call, forgive me, a rub and tug from a massage therapist kind of thing. They don't consider it cheating. Exactly. So yeah, I'm glad that you at least, you know, you don't have to agree with it, but you can understand I'm not the only person that thinks that.

2:36:08Jordan Belfort:And I'm not saying it's right because I don't think it's right. In retrospect, they don't think it, but that's how I was thinking at the time. And she knew, she knew what was going on. She was aware because it was all, everyone was getting married. Everyone was having bachelor parties and all the stories were certain, but it was kind of harmless, so to speak. Right. And then I had some affairs as well as, as did she, you know, she was no angel either. Right. It takes two to tango. But yeah. And I, and I think that since that marriage though, whenever I've been in a relationship, I've been faithful since, since then.

2:36:38Jordan Belfort:So that was after that. Can I ask you a dumb question? This is a dumb, like, I really feel like a goody two shoes at the moment, but how does one order a hooker? Like when you first did it for the first time, like, you know, it's not like ordering Domino's pizza. Like, how does it's like it's like what are Domino's pizza? Probably even easier. So now it's all done on the Internet, you know, and you have all these websites and all this sort of stuff that goes on around the world everywhere. I mean, you can go any like any city. There's like a Craigslist. I think it was really big with it for a while.

2:37:08Jordan Belfort:I'm not really up on the other sites these days, but I'm sure if you just just Google call girls in my city, you'll be a thousand. Your public service announcement for the day. OK, so in the movie, this portrayed with like, I mean, it's not just hookers. It's like orgies. It's craziness on planes. So many naked girls everywhere. So much drugs, so much alcohol. Is that how it really was? Yes, it was. It was like that and worse. It was. It became it became some sort of perverted version of can you top this? You know, it's like, you know, we're these action junkies that were constantly looking for higher and higher cliffs to dive off of and shallower and shallower pools to land in.

2:37:53Jordan Belfort:So every time you would do something, it would be extreme and insane. What do you do next to top it? You know, the first time we did something obscene, you would think it sounded obscene. Some kid that was struggling financially, we said, well, shave his head and give him$10 ,000. And that was amazing. We got a barbershop pole we made. It was like, oh, my God, we're going to shave everyone. I'm crazy. But then three months later, a head shaving is$100. So it becomes like the norm. So what do you do next? Well, let's shave a girl's head. Like, you know, let's, you know, every time you do something, it's like, what's next?

2:38:26Jordan Belfort:What's next? What's next? So this sort of evolution of insanity that happens by trying to constantly keep yourself and everyone around you entertained. That was compared to Stratton, like, you know, the floor of the brokerage room is like, is like the floor of the Coliseum, the sands of the Coliseum, where acts of depravity serve as entertainment for the mob. And it was very much like that. Yes, I read in your book that you said that you had to impose a rule in the office between the hours of, I think, 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. people were not allowed to have sex on the floor. Most people didn't obey that.

2:38:59Jordan Belfort:That started from right in the, you know, it's really funny. In the beginning, I was very, like, very straight like that like the first time i caught someone was like day one some kid was getting a blowjob in an elevator in the building and i was like and i heard this i'm like i'm gonna fire this kid and then like like well you know and then you know it's not so tough like whatever and within a week the girl had given a blowjob to everybody and they made it's like it's so crazy if you're not actively guarding your your own ethics your own integrity your own moral compass it is really easy, Megan, for it to spiral out of control.

2:39:40Jordan Belfort:Really easy. I'm telling you. This is kind of the theme of the interview, right? Back to our original point about the guy cheating on the Series 7. So when you look back now, how old are you now? I'm 59. Okay. So when you look back now at that time and the craziness and the excess, you know, from a guy who had to be rescued from the waters after your yacht sunk, I wonder, does anything jump out at you as especially crazy? Like, wow, that was the most. That was the most excessive. My bachelor party, which we really can't talk about here, is just too disgusting. But my bachelor party was like a low, I think.

2:40:19Jordan Belfort:And it was like sort of a culmination of can you top this? What can we do that's just depraved and unusual? And, you know, it's almost like, you know, you see, remember the time. This is before the Internet, you know, and now on the Internet, you could find every type of perversion and insanity and over the top behavior, whether it's on platforms where they're doing gags and stunts or on porn sites. It's everything that you want is on the Internet right now. Good, bad, ugly or otherwise. Back then, that didn't exist. And, you know, you imagine things from what you saw in movies and heard things.

2:40:56Jordan Belfort:And you put together these scenarios of what you thought was cool and what you thought was fun. And you're like inventing it as you go along. And we were doing that at a very high level because we had a lot of money. So nothing was really out of reach of what we could do. So, you know, while someone might have a bachelor's client, have a dancer or one prostitute, we had 100 of them. And, you know, if someone brings some drugs, we had boatloads of drugs. It was all like, you know, sort of five times, five times, 10 times 100. And and it was insane. It truly was insane. Would you ever have the sick feeling the next day?

2:41:30I don't mean physical illness. Obviously, that must have come with it. But would you ever have the, you know, the moral second guessing the next day? Or would that just that would have to wait until sobriety and prison and all that?

2:41:40Jordan Belfort:I would have it every hour of every day. You would. So you were conscious of the wrongness of it. In the book, I'm always talking about these things. I'm almost like watching my own life unfold before me. Like I'm an actor on a stage, not in control of my own behavior, which is a massive, incredible cop-out, by the way. It's an incredible liberating cop-out. It's not me. I'm out of control, right? Right. But I'm in control, but you rationalize. Never underestimate the power of rationalization. And also, you know, what we do as human beings is we surround ourselves with a peer group that shares our values.

2:42:18Jordan Belfort:So we don't think we're crazy. So, you know, what defines what's normal or not in a society is what's happening in society every day. So we almost form this self-contained society where rules that might seem abnormal or completely out of control in the real world seem quite normal in the four walls of the boardroom or when we were partying in a hotel or more casino. Mm hmm. It does. It makes sense. And it's scary. It's it's I see it and I read it. And it's like you almost have to look at the people around you for the reflection of what you are, good or bad. But eventually it would all come crashing down legally, the marriage, the money, all of it.

2:43:03And that's where we're going to pick it up next with Jordan Belfort. So happy to be speaking with the Wolf of Wall Street. And we'll be right back with more.

2:43:13Jordan Belfort:Hi, I'm Gabby Windy with Long Winded. And I'm not going to lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible. So listen to my podcast, won't you? It has great insights, exceptional humor, and plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls. and some even say it's a great way to fall asleep due to my soothing voice. And I don't take that personally. Fall asleep. A listen is a listen, even when you're sleeping, and a view is a view, even with your eyes closed. If you dare, and it doesn't take much gumption, enjoy! Listen to Long Winded wherever you get your podcasts. Summer routines live or die by how easy they are, and honestly, if something takes too much effort, I'm out.

2:43:58Jordan Belfort:That's why Groom's is my go-to. It's one daily pack of gummies covering my greens, vitamins, and minerals. Plus, it has six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is more than two cups of broccoli. No mixing powders, no giant pills, no hassle. I just rip open the pack and I'm done. They taste good and make it easy to stay on top of my health, even when life gets busy. Save up to 52 % off with code podcast at grooms.co. That's code podcast at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O. I can't skip by before we get to the downfall about, before asking you about the animals that were allowed on the floor of your office. Can you spend a second on that?

2:44:34Jordan Belfort:Yeah, it wasn't like it was a zoo or anything like that. I think the people, they were animals. But yeah, the people would bring in pets like iguanas and dogs and parrots and fish, goldfish, as you know, one of them got eaten. um so yeah that we had this sort of um i think we were ahead of our time in that sense like we had this sort of like fun loving atmosphere that they they bro culture on and the high tech firms have now and like you know it's sort of like you go to work and like it's all about being comfortable having fun at work with that like the beanbag chairs and that obviously we had a bit of a twist there like with the sex but i mean some of the untraditional stuff replacing trails what you didn't know was that that was the their emotional support iguana i mean these guys they needed they needed a lifeline i read that um the one that was a bridge too far for you was a chimpanzee coming in in a diaper you had even you drew the line at that one exactly it was you know there was always like uh interesting things trying to be brought into the boardroom acts of the you know where they were people, animals, things, you name it.

2:45:48Jordan Belfort:It was a it was a freak. You know, it makes sense when you view it from the lens of what happened when you put three thousand barely post adolescent kids in a room and give them too much money and too much time and some drugs and alcohol. What do you think is going to happen? Good. So it's like I when I look at this and read about this, all I can think is, can you imagine if today's post me to post like woke world, woke world, got to look at this in, you know, present day. Megan, I, you know, it's really interesting that you say that because, you know, I come from a family, as I told you, a really empowered female.

2:46:27Jordan Belfort:My mother is a really empowered, successful, educated, trailblazing woman. She literally is the oldest woman to pass the bar. She was voted pro bono lawyer of the year in New York when she was like 74. she's still showing an attack at 89 or 88 she'll kill me 88 but like you know there wasn't it's interesting because you know rules have changed so much over the years if you would ask me if we sexually harassed girls back then i would say unequivocally not like unequivocally like no girl if I knew of any girl there that was being harassed, I'd fire the guy. Like, if I found out that a guy was doing something to a girl the girl didn't want, I would have insisted that they be fired immediately.

2:47:17Jordan Belfort:And I live by that. I swear by that today. Most of the girls there were part of the insanity. Well, that's the thing. It's not harassment if you want it. They really enjoy it. Now, I bet you, though, in retrospect, it was happening, hidden from me, and also in this sort of culture of women accepting things they probably weren't comfortable with, but had to smile and shake it off because they thought that was the norm. So I think it's very good on some level that that's changed, that women speak up for themselves and don't accept that they're not comfortable because they feel like they have to.

2:47:50Jordan Belfort:So I'm betting that there was women that were very uncomfortable there, but they just felt like they had no choice. So if you go with the flow or you're out, right? So I think that that's some positive change. I think also I agree that it's gone many way too far in some cases with the sort of victim mentality, people not taking responsibility for their part and things as well. And I think that, you know, going back 20 years and trying to say something happened without proof is very difficult. In some cases, it's very clear, like with animals like Harvey Weinstein. So obviously things happen and there's proof and there's corroborating evidence.

2:48:24Jordan Belfort:But it's a lot more subtle than that with many cases. And it's a very difficult thing. So I don't pretend that the answer, but but we certainly did not look at it as harassment. That I tell you, that would have been stopped in a second. I'm thinking now there was a woman who came on my show at NBC. We were doing a story on harassment. Me, too. What's happening in the society right in the midst of all of it. And she was complaining that her complaint, it wasn't like part of a bigger story. Her complaint, she's part of a panel, was that her boss told her she looked hot in her dress. Now, OK, it's not ideal because you want to you want to be seen as a professional.

2:48:58But like, that's not really what the Me Too movement was. All I can think about is a woman from your firm saying that I had a girl next to me giving blowjobs to half the firm. Sit down. Take a seat.

2:49:11Jordan Belfort:Woman would say, damn, I thought I looked pretty hot that day, too. Like that mindset back then, probably. But like, again, I have a daughter. My daughter's 27. She's 28. She's impressed. She's a graduate from NYU, a degree in psychology, grad school. Very empowered woman, very, very liberal in her beliefs and stuff. And we get along phenomenal. We don't agree on a lot of stuff. But one thing I certainly agree with you is victimhood. I think that sometimes this has a way of crossing over into someone becoming a victim. And I don't think that helps any cause. I think that things have to change.

2:49:51Jordan Belfort:It's good that they're changing and will continue. But I think what gets lost sometimes in these movements, in these paradigm shifts, it's like you can't paint everything with one brush. There's like degrees of things and there's a continuum. And you have to look at things really along that team to decide, you know, what do you do about something that happened a long time ago? I think it's really sad when someone loses their career over something that happened 15 or 20 years ago when the norms were different. that being said and then there's monsters out there that deserve everything that they got and and that's a great thing so but i think it's more complex than just bad good you know i totally agree with you i mean i i was talking with douglas murray who is brilliant and a social commentator and author and this british guy and he's great and he and i was talking to him about these college students who were yelling at their school dean saying these were college students who happen to be black saying you don't understand anything we come you know we come from slaves that you don't have the same ancestors.

2:50:47Our ancestors were slaves and yours weren't. And, you know, you basically can't explain anything to us because of that. And I said, well, you know, how's this guy supposed to respond to this? And Douglas Murray said, we can all do that. We can all do that, right? Everybody's got some sort of a painful history. It may not equal slavery, but bad. You know, it's bad. Listen, my people, the Irish Americans, didn't have it so good when we first came over to America. And you could go down the list. but you tweeted out something on july 22nd where i was like well i haven't seen a shorter more succinct version of the way i feel which is sad story no one cares work harder it's not to dismiss slavery it's not about slavery but it's just about victim mentality something bad happened to you i understand oh it's anna anyway back to work try harder like that's the only way forward sitting around and pointing the finger at everybody and lamenting and feeling like you have bad luck and

2:51:36Jordan Belfort:poor me not going to get you anywhere i i you know i have a i've said publicly many times that I am very, very prejudiced against two types of people, lazy people and stupid people. Everyone else I'm totally okay with. It's like I just despise lazy, stupid people, right? And, you know, I believe in the egalitarian system. I grew up in a household that like it was just zero prejudice in my household. Really? Like zero, okay? Like I never even considered it. And when I saw it out in the world sometimes, it was pretty shocking to me. um and but listen i understand it's it's very complicated you know this stuff when you start getting into into the race struggle it's you know there's a lot of bad shit that happened and like you know i watched a movie recently i was watching crash with my wife paul haggis film great film and you know and you look back and it's like it was appalling like what how the lapd treated black fucking appalling imagine having to can only imagine driving in a car and not like i never worried that if I got pulled over, something would happen.

2:52:39Jordan Belfort:Like I never even cared. Right. So, but again, okay. Sucks. Work on it. I get it. Like, okay. But like you can't use that as an excuse, not to, you got to still go forward in your own life and, and just, you know, do the best with whatever hand was dealt to you. We all have negative stuff that either we was dealt us or through our own mistakes, we put ourselves in positions that compromise us, that, you know, caused us problems. And we have to overcome that and put one foot in front of the other. So I just think that when you take, sometimes things can be true, but okay, so what? Like you can't, if you, it doesn't serve you, it doesn't serve your cause to live in the problem versus you actually, you know, living your most empowered version of your own life and being part of a solution, which is work harder, make changes and go forward, but don't blame everyone around you for what you're alive.

2:53:29Jordan Belfort:I just think that helps you. Honestly, and I understand it because it's not to say that there are no victims in the world who people don't get victimized. But I remember even when I was getting harassed by my boss at Fox in the moment, talking to my therapist at the time, she was my like marital therapist, although I didn't go through marital therapy with my first husband. I just went to individual. And this woman, I was telling her about it, like this is what he's doing, all stuff. And she just kept putting it back on me. And now today's people would say, oh, she was wrong. She blamed the victim.

2:53:57She didn't blame me. She just said, what could you have done differently in the room? What can you do differently in the future to make, you know, to try to avoid that situation? And I didn't find it offensive. I found it empowering. Right. Me. I will be the one to change my life and make sure this doesn't happen to me or that I navigate it better or that I navigate this deftly in a way that I can preserve my future in an industry in which I'm totally green and new.

2:54:25Jordan Belfort:You know, of course. Right. Of course you're right. Exactly. I think that most people have to believe, feel this way, the way you feel, the way I feel. I think what we have in the Twitter sphere is like a relatively small group of very loud, vocal people that that is found on a view that is really not widely popular or believed. But I think on some level, what happens is corporate America embraces that because it allows it gives them plausible deniability. So they say they're woke. They say they're doing all this stuff so they can keep raping and pillaging the village as they've done for the last hundred years.

2:55:07Jordan Belfort:It's a great way. We're responsible. See, but they're actually in reality. All it is is smoke and mirrors of the keep doing the same old, same old thing by embracing causes they really don't believe in. Because I'm seeing happening make zero sense unless you look at it in that way, that it's like it's all part of a much broader strategy to say we're great. Because if we embrace those causes, then we keep doing what we want and keep making as much money as we want as long as we want. Yeah, that's that's PR. Don't be fooled. And I sadly, I don't know whether people are or not, but they they got to be paying attention.

2:55:42OK, so into your life comes someone named Agent Coleman portrayed in the movie by literally the only celebrity I've ever had a crush on, Kyle Chandler. I fell in love with him on Friday Night Lights. Doug knows. And he does a great job in the movie of sort of quietly stalking you. And you knew about this Agent Coleman who was on to you. First, the SEC was on to you and then he was an FBI agent who was on to you. and at first you know you you'd never met him but then they slapped the cups on you one day and and you met him when you real like when was it that you realized the house of cards is coming down i'm likely going to prison and my sort of fast and loose with people's monies you know dodging the ethics laws and so on what in a way that i thought was clever but maybe not has caught up with me.

2:56:36So, it's a very good question.

2:56:41Jordan Belfort:The answer is probably a bit more lengthy than, because it's complex. It's not any one thing happening at one time. There's like sort of a lot of things happening at once. um the interesting thing i think is how long it took him to actually find a way to to get to get an indictment against because like to be clear that what i was doing was not like a bernie made you off like you know hey you know just take your money and like not invest like i had a legitimate firm that was obeying every single securities law out there so you could order my firm and living like the sd was there for years they couldn't find anything other than garden variety these small violations that you would find at every firm.

2:57:24Jordan Belfort:So it wasn't like I was breaking the laws. He just took the money, didn't invest the money. All they had to do was look, right? Like, how come they didn't look crazy, right? No, the essay was like living in my firm and watching every ticket, but I was breaking laws, but they were very esoteric and hard to detect. So I'm not saying I wasn't breaking the laws, but if you looked at the firm, unless you could speak to people and they'd admit they were doing something, you would never know. It would be possible to prove, right? It was a very small portion of my business was illegal, very small, but that was enough to make it illegal, right?

2:57:59Jordan Belfort:And the difference with Coleman is he was just doggedly determined for years and years. And ultimately, it wasn't even the stocks that he, that got him in to my firm and was able to get an advantage. It was the money laundering to Switzerland. It was the fact that I moved money to Switzerland to a Swiss banker that, by my own bad luck got indicted in the United States, not because of me, for some other thing he was involved with, Benny Hanna and offshore. Benny Hanna. Benny Hanna, right? And he was laundering money for many different people. One of them was this sort of offshore, I'll never forget looking at the indictment against this guy.

2:58:40Jordan Belfort:It was like, Benny Hanna, offshore boat racing. I'm like, what? Like, what is this? Like, not mine, his indictment, the Swiss banker. I was like, oh my God, could I have worse luck? I picked the one banker that gets arrested in the United States for laundering money for like a Benihana. Now, what Benihana was doing, I have no idea what ended up happening with that, but it was in the indictment. Right. And then I knew I was screwed because he got picked up and he's in the U.S. and he's cooperating. So, of course, he gave my name up. And that was what gave Coleman the ability to go back and get the proper paperwork to open up my accounts in Switzerland.

2:59:17Jordan Belfort:and that was it. I had a headshot against me. I was done. When I got arrested, I then admitted to breaking these other securities laws, which is called free-riding, putting new issues in friends accounts and that sort of rat holes and stuff. That was not, the indictment was secured by the Swiss banking stuff, right? And that's ultimately how he brought me down. And I had a massive respect for him. And he's a friend of mine today, by the way. We became friends. He's been on my podcast. I really like him. I have nothing but the highest regard for him. Yeah, he's a great guy. He thinks exactly like you.

2:59:51Jordan Belfort:Just so you know, you should have him on your show. He shares, you know, he's a very, very intelligent guy. And I deserve to go to jail. I mean, I broke the law. I mean, like, you know, he was like, it wasn't like I was framed. I wasn't like, they made this stuff up. I broke the law and I got caught. Listen, I wasn't the first guy. You know, Wall Street's, you know, you can go to any firm and find terrible things happening in any day. So I'm not saying I was, I certainly wasn't any worse, but I broke the law. It doesn't make it right. Okay. So like, you know, you could say it was happening everywhere, which it was, I didn't, I did it with more panache, I guess.

3:00:25Jordan Belfort:Um, but the things I was doing were happening all over wall street. They're still happening today. I got indicted for it. I deserved to get indicted for it. And he, he, um, earned the indictment, the old factory, knocking on doors and doing the work. Can I ask you about the, um, there, you, you write about how he came to you and said, I went to 100 people. You call them Strattonites, guys who work for you at Stratton. And nobody would talk. They were totally loyal. And you said something like, that's what happens when you're the cash cow. But so they didn't want to turn you in, the guys who worked for you.

3:00:57But then I know you wore a wire for the FBI, you and the guy who also got indicted with you, your partner. Did you have to go against those guys, the guys who didn't turn on you? Or was it different fish?

3:01:11Jordan Belfort:So this is really, this is probably the most difficult part of my life, I would think. And I ended up getting in trouble, by the way. I almost, thanks to Coleman, I didn't do 30 years in jail because I refused. So I agreed to cooperate, as did pretty much everybody in my case. So, and, you know, when I was considering whether or not to cooperate, I was like, everyone is going to cooperate. So you're not going to have to testify against your friends. You have to give all the information up, tell them where your money is, and maybe you'll testify against someone you don't know. But it's not most everyone in the federal system.

3:01:48Jordan Belfort:It's so rare that someone goes to trial in these cases because the sentencing garlands is so onerous. And unless you cooperate, it's like it's like go to trial. You lose 30 years. So most people will end up cooperating. Right. And then they were threatened to indict my wife, even though she hadn't done anything wrong. And once they threatened to indict my wife, I had no choice but to plead guilty and cooperate. So I started cooperating, giving information on what was going on. And then they asked me to wear a wire against a very, very close friend of mine. And it was a terrible, terrible thing to do because for me, that was sort of my moral line.

3:02:27Jordan Belfort:It was like, I'm OK, you know, cooperating with a rat out, a close friend of mine. It just seemed like it was just a bridge too far at the time. And so when I went to meet with him, they wired me up. I passed him a note saying I'm a liar, don't incriminate yourself and it was this moment I was like, I'm a good guy what a good guy I am I'm a stand up guy and I passed him this note and sure enough, he didn't incriminate himself and then three months later, he got in trouble and turned me in and gave me a note and that was the point when I think I lost all faith in humanity that was my ultimate low point where I was like, I can't what do i do i have any beliefs that are right or correct here like you know like i broke the law i justified that i justified not cooperating because it's my friend i shouldn't wrap my friend out and he turns around and rats me out like it was the ultimate blow to seriously it was an emotional blow you can't imagine and the government was gonna break my agreement and give me the full sentence of like 28 years and it was agent coleman that stopped that from happening he stopped he stood up for me and said listen you know he wasn't even doing it to benefit himself you know it was a moment of stupidity and also trying thought he was trying to be a good person and like you know it wasn't like a selfless it was it was like a selfless thing i did it was like i was benefiting myself i just didn't want to hurt someone that i love the friend you know saying so coleman stepped in and saved me and then i did cooperate and there was a couple of people that went to trial and um but most people um really i think 90 anyone was really close to me They cooperated.

3:04:03Yeah. And they all cut deals. And you and your partner went to prison. You for. Yeah. It's terrible.

3:04:10Jordan Belfort:You're really terrible at one. So Jordan did plead guilty. He went. He was sentenced to four years. He served 22 months. Up next, I'm going to ask him about the very famous guy he met in prison who encouraged him to write this all down into a book and about the hundreds of hours he spent with Leonardo DiCaprio and what that was like. our closing chapter with Jordan Belfort right after this quick break.

3:04:37So, Jordan, you go to prison. And is it true that you met Tommy Chong there who had some advice for you of Cheech and Chong?

3:04:47Jordan Belfort:We do not. It's actually true that when I get to prison, who is my bunkmate, not just in the same place, my bunkmate is Tommy Chong from Cheech and Chong. And they put us together Cube. I guess they were both high profile. So they wanted to kind of put us together, told me to watch us or just like they thought it was a smart thing to do. And, you know, he's just a really good guy. He's a very smart guy, too. Very, very, very highly educated, profound speaker and nuggets of wisdom. And he was writing a book and there's not a lot to do in jail. So, you know, you sit there at night and you tell stories to each other.

3:05:24Jordan Belfort:And I was telling him stories about my life and he's just laughing and rolling on the floor because I'm you know some really funny stories and I'm a pretty good storyteller he's doing the same to me and like the third night he says you know I honestly thought you were full of shit but my wife googled you and like all of this stuff is online it's true you actually did all this goes you have to write a book and I was like really I was like you think my life was crazy I didn't think my life was that crazy because it was my life I it happened to me and I sort of just whatever you get used to all the inside.

3:05:54Jordan Belfort:And he's like, I'm Tommy Chong. And I think your life is crazy. So that's right. So you do it. You write, you write the book when you leave with the Wolf of Wall Street, which is what you were called in a newspaper article. And then everybody's clamoring for the movie rights. Leonardo DiCaprio gets involved. He wants to play you. This seemed to be a mission for him. And I read that you spend perhaps as many as hundreds of hours with him, getting him ready, showing him what it was like to be on that many drugs and so on. So what were your impressions of him in that whole process? I think what people don't realize maybe about Leo is he's, of course, he's naturally talented, but the amount of preparation and the care he put into the role, like he really, like, he was just so determined to make it perfect.

3:06:42Jordan Belfort:And he, he worked really hard. It wasn't like, oh, let me just wing it. It's going to come out. But he really put in mass amount of hours just you know we went through every single line of the script you know just again and again making sure every word sounds authentic and every scene was authentic and uh he just you know he's very talented and a very hard worker and there's a lot of integrity he's a great guy wow um you now are doing like entrepreneurship lessons uh sort of guidance mentorship. And it almost, in a way, it's kind of self-helpy to me in a good way. So, like, how are you channeling this whole experience into a new version of you professionally?

3:07:27Jordan Belfort:So it's, you know, it's been many years now that I've been doing this. I started in about 2009, going out there and teaching people first about, you know, the sort of the mindset of success, using the lessons I learned, then very quickly pivoting to teaching sales, the straight line system, which is really what, you know, made my career take off, is that the system that I had taught the strategist was very, it's very ethical, you know, especially when I reinvented the system and made it, you know, better than it was. It's a very powerful system. And that's really what I was starting to get hired around the world to teach this to sales forces and by individuals all over.

3:08:06Jordan Belfort:And then, you know, also teaching general, you know, entrepreneurship. So I do a lot of consulting with companies. And, and yeah, my message is very, you know, it's very, I would say, it's very honest. I think there's a lot of people that are out there teaching things like sales and entrepreneurship. They don't know the first thing about it, really. They just, what they, what they read either in my, for my stuff or someone like a Tony Robbins stuff, who I have a great respect for, was a legitimate, really brought things that were new and fresh. And then there are just so many just charlatans out there that are regurgitating the same nonsense and just trying to separate people from their money.

3:08:46Jordan Belfort:And I really was very, very early on made this sort of, my internal compass was very, very clear. It was pointing north, meaning towards ethics and integrity. Like I was very careful that I never took a penny from anyone without trying to give at least 10 times more value back. It doesn't mean you always succeeded in life. You always succeeded that way. My mindset is always I'm looking to give more value than I ever would get with every transaction I enter into, every mentorship I do. So I've had tremendous success with people all over the world. And it's great because now it's, you know, the movie became this incredible cult.

3:09:21Jordan Belfort:And so people come up to me all day every day. I get, you know, whenever I go out, you know, people just say, you know, you're such an inspiration to me. You inspire me, your life, your teachings, your comeback. It's just amazing. Yeah, because you easily could have skulked away. You could have skulked away and said, I've been disgraced. And you didn't. You found a new way to reinvent. And you came clean with all of it, too, to your credit, which is how we're all learning now. But I have to ask you about the blowback because one of my questions in watching was, how do you have any money? Because they ordered you to pay$110 million in restitution.

3:09:55So do they garnish your wages? Like what? Because I know some of the victims, some of the people who got burned, this is what I read, left fifteen hundred clients with two hundred million in losses. I don't know if those numbers are right, but I know they sort of pop up when you make money and say this is not right.

3:10:12Jordan Belfort:That's that's not true. That's not true. You're trying to be lying, but it's just not that's not true. Clients don't pop up, which is odd, by the way, because the number was wildly inflated. okay it was it was there was losses no doubt okay but like when Bernie Madoff um they said what was it 50 billion that turned to be 10 billion they when you're when they're coming up with losses and people they double and triple count and it ends up always being far less that was an estimate so it knows it I only was fine for 100 million 110 so what so and then it was Danny was 200 was a moving target that no one really knew what was actually there was certainly a loss there and I discouraged a lot of money.

3:10:52Jordan Belfort:Danny discouraged some money. I discouraged a lot more. I continue to pay money and I pay some money each month. I pay some money and I pay a percentage of what I make. And I said to myself, what's my solution? You know what? I'm going to make so much money that I can afford to pay a percentage and still be rich. And that's what I always aspired to do. And I said, I'm just going to work harder than everybody else. I'm going to make so much money that I can afford to pay what I got to pay and still live an amazing life with luxuries. And that's exactly what I did. And it's to their advantage, too, to have you get back on your feet.

3:11:24You found sobriety. You found love. You found a way of making an honest living. And so I only have about a minute left, but I want to ask you, because I know you've said your life serves as a cautionary tale, but others do find it more than cautionary. They find it downright inspirational. So what do you want people to know about the Wolf of Wall Street and the takeaway on Jordan Belfort?

3:11:47Jordan Belfort:The takeaway is that I think my life represents the best and worst of what human beings can do. And I think that the lesson that you can learn from my life is if you want to model me, especially young people, you want to look at me and be inspired and use the techniques and strategies, remember, you don't have to model the whole person. You can model all the best things that I did back when I was younger and I do today and learn from the mistakes I made. so you could become a better version of me. I always say, you know, yeah, do all the stuff I did on the great side. Have fun. Make tons of money.

3:12:20Jordan Belfort:But you could do better. You don't have to take shortcuts like I did. And that cost me everything. And to start again, I'm lucky that I had to come back and make back all this money. Most people don't. You're right. Most people will wither away and die. And it's the exception to the rule. So I urge people that you can make a ton of money. We're in an amazing world at an amazing time. Just be very, very careful. but don't take that extra step and make it quick because it might cost you everything. Model the good stuff and do the opposite of the bad stuff. That's my message. Watch that first step across the ethical line.

3:12:50Jordan, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on and being so open and honest with us. All the best to you.

3:12:57Jordan Belfort:Hi, I'm Gabby Windy with Long Winded, and I'm not going to lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible, so listen to my podcast, won't you? It has great insights, exceptional humor, and plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls. And some even say it's a great way to fall asleep due to my soothing voice. And I don't take that personally. Fall asleep. A listen is a listen, even when you're sleeping. And a view is a view, even with your eyes closed. If you dare, and it doesn't take much gumption, enjoy! Listen to Long Winded wherever you get your podcasts. Real talent is defined by what people can do, not where they learn to do it.

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