Jordan Belfort Quotes

The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it.

When you live your life by poor standards, you inflict damage on everyone who crosses your path, especially those you love.

Act as if! Act as if you're a wealthy man, rich already, and then you'll surely become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence and then people will surely have confidence in you. Act as if you have unmatched experience and then people will follow your advice. And act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today - you will become successful.

Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.

Successful people are 100% convinced that they are masters of their own destiny , they’re not creatures of circumstance, they create circumstance, if the circumstances around them suck they change them.

There’s no nobility in poverty.

No matter what happened to you in your past, you are not your past, you are the resources and the capabilities you glean from it. And that is the basis for all change.

You don’t choose who you fall in love with, do you? And once you do fall in love—that obsessive sort of love, that all-consuming love, where two people can’t stand to be apart from each other for even a moment—how are you supposed to let a love like that pass you by?

I want you to back yourself into a corner. Give yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire and so unthinkable that you’ll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed.

Winners use words that say ‘must’ and ‘will’.

The easiest way to make money is -create something of such value that everybody wants and go out and give and create value, the money comes automatically.

If you want to be rich, never give up. People tend to give up. If you have persistence, you will come out ahead of most people. More importantly, you will learn. When you do something, you might fail. But that’s not because you’re a failure. It’s because you have not learnt enough. Do it differently each time. One day, you will do it right. Failure is your friend.

I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?

They were drunk on youth, fueled by greed, and higher than kites.

And my wife…well, I guess she’d earned her scene with me, but still; did she really have that much reason to be angry? I mean, when she married me she knew what she was getting into, didn’t she? She had been my mistress, for Chrissake! That spoke volumes, didn’t it”?

Act as if! Act as if you're a wealthy man, rich already, and then you'll surely become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence and then people will surely have confidence in you. Act as if you have unmatched experience and then people will follow your advice. And act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today - you will become successful.” ― Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street

And from the time I was a kid, I've had this internal monologue roaring through my head, which doesn't stop - unless I'm asleep. I'm sure every person has this; it's just that my monologue is particularly loud. And particularly troublesome. I'm constantly asking myself questions. And the problem with that is that your brain is like a computer: If you ask a question, it's programmed to respond, whether there's an answer or not. I'm constantly weighing everything in my mind and trying to predict how my actions will influence events. Or maybe manipulate events are the more appropriate words. It's like playing a game of chess with your own life. And I hate fucking chess!

If I earn a million dollars a week and the average American earns a thousand dollars a week, then when I spend twenty thousand dollars on something it’s the equivalent of the average American spending twenty dollars on something, right?

inside the restaurant young Strattonites carried on their time-honored tradition of acting like packs of untamed wolves.

Victor was Chinese by birth and Jewish by injection, having been raised amid the most savage young Jews anywhere on Long Island: the towns of Jericho and Syosset.

Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and you will become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and people will have confidence in you. Act as if you have all the answers, and the answers will come to you.

I had considered changing my phone number, but I was so far behind on my phone bill that NYNEX was after me too.

the logical mind serves as a human bullshit detector.

[Aunt] Patricia smiled, and we walked in silence for a while. But it wasn't a poisonous silence. It was the sort of silence shared by two people who're comfortable enough not to force a conversation ahead of its logical progression. I found this woman's company to be incredibly soothing.

You do not want to try to resolve their pain at this point. In fact, if anything, you want to amplify that pain.

But what I sincerely hope is that my life serves as a cautionary tale to the rich and poor alike; to anyone who’s living with a spoon up their nose and a bunch of pills dissolving in their stomach sac; or to any person who’s considering taking a God-given gift and misusing it; to anyone who decides to go to the dark side of the force and live a life of unbridled hedonism. And to anyone who thinks there’s anything glamorous about being known as a Wolf of Wall Street. BOOK I

در فقر هیچ شرافتی وجود نداره

People don’t buy stock; it gets sold to them. Don’t ever forget that.

Everyone does this shit.’” I paused, letting Elliot's words hang in the air. Then I said, “There's no denying that he had a point. You see it in jewelry stores all the time: They inflate their price tags and then mark things down right in front of you so you think you're getting a good deal.” I paused again, then: “And all this business about an overorder isn't much different than all those stores you see advertising ‘ going-out-of-business sales.’ Most of them have been advertising the same going-out-of-business sale for the last ten years, and in ten more years they'll still be going out of business!

I don’t think you’re cut out for this job. You look like a kid, and Wall Street’s no place for kids. It’s a place for killers. A place for mercenaries. So in that sense you’re lucky I’m not the one who does the hiring around here.

The three of us exchanged glances but said nothing. After all, what was there to say? The truth was that hookers did take credit cards—or at least ours did! In fact, hookers were so much a part of the Stratton subculture that we classified them like publicly traded stocks: Blue Chips were considered the top-of-the-line hooker, zee crème de la crème. They were usually struggling young models or exceptionally beautiful college girls in desperate need of tuition or designer clothing, and for a few thousand dollars they would do almost anything imaginable, either to you or to each other. Next came the NASDAQs, who were one step down from the Blue Chips. They were priced between three and five hundred dollars and made you wear a condom unless you gave them a hefty tip, which I always did. Then came the Pink Sheet hookers, who were the lowest form of all, usually a streetwalker or the sort of low-class hooker who showed up in response to a desperate late-night phone call to a number in Screw magazine or the yellow pages. They usually cost a hundred dollars or less, and if you didn’t wear a condom, you’d get a penicillin shot the next day and then pray that your dick didn’t fall off. Anyway, the Blue Chips took credit cards, so what was wrong with writing them off on your taxes? After all, the IRS knew about this sort of stuff, didn’t they? In fact, back in the good old days, when getting blasted over lunch was considered normal corporate behavior, the IRS referred to these types of expenses as three-martini lunches! They even had an accounting term for it: It was called T and E, which stood for Travel and Entertainment. All I’d done was taken the small liberty of moving things to their logical conclusion, changing T and E to T and A: Tits and Ass!

95 percent of the time, the common objections are merely ploys on the part of the prospect, who would rather bow out of the sale gracefully than have to look the salesperson in the eye and confront them about their lack of certainty concerning the Three Tens.

In terms of the split between logic and emotion, you’re always going to build airtight logical cases first and airtight emotional cases second. Why? Quite simply, by making the airtight logical case first, you satisfy your prospect’s bullshit detector, which then frees them up to be moved emotionally.

He never addressed it as infidelity. To Jordan Belfort and his men, sex with a Blue Chip was a reflex of sorts – a kind of spasm or procedure or 'niche-service', useful as a form of stress relief; as the girls were never regarded as fully human, there were no problems. There were, the brokers felt, certain liberties to which men of power were entitled.

But what was wrong with that? They were drunk on youth, fueled by greed, and higher than kites.

Use power words, like “dramatically,” “explosive,” “fastest growing,” “most well respected.” Power words go a very long way to capturing someone’s attention and establishing yourself as an expert.

Listen, guys, fucking around with midgets ain’t no joke. Pound for pound they’re stronger than grizzly bears, and, if you want to know the truth, they happen to scare the living shit out of me. So before I approve this midget-tossing business, you need to find me a game warden who can rein in the little critter if he should go off the deep end. Then we’re gonna need some tranq darts, a pair a handcuffs, a can of Mace—” Wigwam

I laughed right along with her, but inside I was dying. There were certain things that you just didn’t joke about; it was simply bad luck. It was like pissing in the fate god’s eye. If you did it long enough, he was certain to piss right back at you. And his urine stream was like a fucking fire hose. But

Corruption,' Jordan Belfort believes, 'is endemic to human being. I mean, even men in monasteries - where enticement is hard to come by – even men in those circumstances have sex with other men and abuse children. Look at the Catholic Church! Man is an imperfect animal and he is corruptible, okay? And in finance, the liquid nature of the market makes corruption very easy. On Wall Street, this liquidity is so in your face -' he suddenly grits his teeth - 'that if you have even the slightest predisposition to the dark side, you become corrupted. In addition to which, those attracted to Wall Street have a predisposition to greed.

communications to your “almost” new client come from a position of strength—meaning that, as far as you’re concerned, the deal is already closed and the communication you’re sending is from the perspective of building a long-term relationship and doing more business in the future. Otherwise, you’ll come off as being desperate, and it will end up having the reverse effect.

contrary to previous assumptions, young men and women who possess the collective social graces of a herd of sex-crazed water buffalo and have an intelligence quotient in the range of Forrest Gump on three hits of acid, can be taught to sound like Wall Street wizards, as long as you write every last word down for them and then keep drilling it into their heads again and again—every day, twice a day—for a year straight.

amplify that pain by asking the following questions: “How long has this been going on?” “Do you see this getting better or worse?” “How do you see yourself in two years?” “How has it affected your health or your family?” In essence, you want to make sure that you make your prospect talk about their pain. These types of questions will have a powerful impact on opening the prospect’s mind to receiving information, which they will now measure against their pain.

In other words, when you reach the end of the Forrest Gump pattern, rather than asking your prospect a question (like you’ve done with your previous patterns), you’re going to move straight into your new pattern for reselling the company—using the following seven words as your transition: “And as far as my company goes …” For example, let’s say that the last point you were trying to get across to Bill with your Forrest Gump pattern was that not only are you going to tell him when to buy but you’re also going to tell him when to sell.

In addition, I want you to notice how I use the word “so” in the second half of each of the three examples. In this context, we refer to the word “so” as a justifier, because it justifies your need to ask the prospect questions, as opposed to doing it out of curiosity or nosiness. In essence, in order to do your job correctly, there are certain things that you need to know in your capacity as an expert. By using a justifier, you can get that point across to your prospect loud and clear, and it paves the way for an even more productive intelligence-gathering session.

One of the key reasons why you want to always use a script for prospecting is that each industry has its own unique set of questions that need to be asked in a certain order. If you try to wing it—as opposed to having all your questions mapped out in advance, in precisely the right order—then the chances of you remembering all the questions, or asking them all in the right order, is slim to none, and each mistake you make will have a negative impact on your ability to gather intelligence. Another major benefit of using a prospecting script is that since you already know what words you’re going to say, your conscious mind is freed up to focus on applying the right tonality to your words, as well as on what your prospect is communicating back to you.

Если занимаешься бизнесом, нужно уметь прессовать. Люди не покупают акции, людям продают акции.

Az egyetlen dolog, ami közted és a célod között áll nem más, mint az a szar sztori, amit magadnak adsz elő, hogy miért is nem lehet elérni mindazt, amit szeretnél.

They tend to ask lots of questions that they seem to already know the answers to. They make it a point to kick the tires of whatever it is you’re selling, almost to the point of over-kicking them. They let out a large number of ooos and aahs and yups, to reinforce the sense that they’re genuinely interested. When asked about their finances, they either become boisterously overconfident or unnecessarily vague.

Identify the lookie-loos and the mistakes and remove them from your sales funnel as quickly as possible. Gather the necessary intelligence from the buyers in heat and the buyers in power, and then continue moving them down the Straight Line towards the close. Begin the process of turning the buyers in power into buyers in heat by amplifying their pain.

everything you’ll need to create a practical blueprint for gathering intelligence in your industry. Now, as you go through each rule, you should keep relating it back to your own situation—making whatever changes are needed to your current method of prospecting. To that end, if you have a prospecting script or a list of intelligence-gathering questions, then you should have those in front of you before we begin. So, grab those now, and let’s get started.

As easy as this distinction is to execute, virtually all untrained salespeople ignore it, simply because they’re unaware of how negatively it will impact their ability to get into rapport. Plain and simple, unless you ask for permission to ask questions, you run an extremely high risk of being perceived as the Grand Inquisitor–type, instead of a trusted advisor, and the Grand Inquisitor–type does not “care about you,” nor are they “just like you,” which are the two driving forces behind getting into rapport. However, the good news here is that all you have to do to avoid this outcome is remember always to ask for permission to ask questions. It’s as simple as that.

Below are a few sample language patterns that get straight to the point and have been proven to work: “John, just a couple of quick questions, so I don’t waste your time.” “John, let me just ask you a couple of quick questions, so I can best serve you.” “John, let me ask you just a couple of quick questions, so I can see exactly what your needs are.” Any one of the above examples will set you up for a nonconfrontational intelligence-gathering session that promotes the building of rapport.

Narrowing your eyes even more while compressing your lips more intensely, if the above topic deals with one of the prospect’s pain points. In addition, you’ll continue to nod your head slowly while letting out the appropriate oohs and aahs to show that you actually feel your prospect’s pain.

forward when you ask an emotionally charged question, and then continuing to lean forward while your prospect answers (while also using the active listening techniques I laid out above in number 3).

If they’re not, then it will serve as a major red flag that the person who’s asking them is not an expert in their field. For example, imagine being on the receiving end of the following series of intelligence-gathering questions, asked in exactly this order:

that actually future pace it—forcing them to experience the reality of being in even greater pain at some point down the road if they don’t take action now to resolve it. This will ensure that your prospect not only understands the ramifications of not taking action to resolve their pain, but also feels those ramifications in their gut.

Now, there are some exceptions to this, which I’ll get to a bit later, but my point is that, more than 95 percent of the time, the common objections are merely ploys on the part of the prospect, who would rather bow out of the sale gracefully than have to look the salesperson in the eye and confront them about their lack of certainty concerning the Three Tens.

Now, before we move on, let’s quickly go through the process of how to handle buy signals when they arise in the back half of the sale. In other words, as your prospect starts to become more and more certain about the Three Tens, they will start sending you signals that they are interested in buying, in the form of leading questions about the closing process. For example, the prospect might say, “How much did you say it would run me?” or “How long will it take until I receive the product?” or “How long until I start to see results?” Those are just a few examples of the more common buy signals.

again?” To which you reply, “Oh, it’s only three thousand dollars,” and you say no more. Alas, you just committed sales hara-kiri. Why? Simply put, you’ve just created a scenario where there’s $3,000 worth of energy going in and zero benefits coming out, not because those benefits don’t exist—in point of fact, they do—but because you simply forgot to remind the prospect of them at the same time you asked them to tap into their energy reserves. In other words, the fact that you laid out the benefits three or four minutes ago when you asked for the order for the first time has no bearing on the energy in, benefits out equation a few minutes later, when your prospect gave you a buy signal.

but you still need to state them every time you bring up the expenditure of energy.

that again?” is as follows: “It’s a cash outlay of only three thousand dollars, and let me quickly tell you exactly what you’re going to get for that: you’re going to get [benefit #1] and [benefit #2] and [benefit #3], and again, like I said before, getting started is very, very simple, so believe me, if you do even half as well as the rest of my clients in this program, then the only problem you’ll have is that I didn’t call you six months ago and get you started then. Sound fair enough?

For example, you’ll have a script that starts with those all-important first four seconds, and then includes your qualifying questions and your transition. Second, you’ll have a script that starts with the main body of your presentation and ends with you asking for the order for the first time. Third, you’ll have a series of rebuttal scripts that include the well-thought-out answers you’ve prepared to the various common objections you’re going to hear. And fourth, you’ll have a series of looping scripts that will include the various language patterns that will allow you to loop back into the sale, in order to move your prospect to higher and higher levels of certainty.

You see, at the end of the day, objections are merely smoke screens for uncertainty for one or all of the Three Tens.

It sounds great, let me think about it …” or “Let me do a bit more research and I’ll call you back.

Well, I’ve got a news flash for you,” I continued sarcastically. “You’re wrong. People see through that shit in two seconds flat, especially rich people, who are constantly on guard for that. To them, it’s actually repulsive, not attractive, which is the opposite of what building rapport is all about.” I shrugged.

So, again, that’s what’s happening when you’re directly on the straight line. You’re the one doing all the talking, and your client is listening. And when you’re off the straight line, but still inside the boundaries, right here and here”—I point to the spaces—“it’s the prospect who’s doing the talking, and you’re doing the listening.

Vấn đề của bạn là gì? Tôi muốn bắt tay với vấn đề của bạn bằng cách trở nên giàu có

The first number is a prospect’s level of certainty about your product; the second number is their level of certainty about you; the third number is their level of certainty about your company; the fourth number addresses their action threshold; and the fifth number addresses their pain threshold.

However, as powerful as the Straight Line System is, it completely breaks down in the absence of one crucial element, which is: You need to take immediate control of the sale.

Just how you go about doing that turned out to be elegantly simple, albeit with one complication: You have only four seconds to do it. Otherwise, you’re toast.

said, “Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and you will become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and you will become confident. Act as if you have all the answers and the answers will come to you!

Practically speaking, the implications of this are staggering. After all, if you can lower a person’s action threshold, then you can turn some of the toughest buyers into easy buyers—which is something that we do with great effect in the latter stages of the sale, and that sets up the possibility of being able to close anyone who is closeable.

In essence, pain creates urgency, which makes it the perfect vehicle for closing these tougher sales.

At the end of the day, it’s these three distinctions—he cares about me, he understands me, and he feels my pain—that serve as the very foundation on which all rapport is built, and they come naturally to those who possess massive charisma. In fact, the power of charisma is so vital to a salesperson’s success that it’s almost impossible to find even a single top producer who doesn’t possess it in massive quantities.

Then, after he’s finally done orbiting Pluto, all you need to say is something along the lines of ‘Wow, that’s totally cool. It sounds really interesting. I can see why you feel that way. Now as far as your goal for learning how to trade currencies goes …’ And then you lead him back to the Straight Line and pick up right where you left off by asking him the next question on your list. That’s how you maintain control of the sale and build massive rapport at the same time. Make sense, everyone? Raise you hands and say ‘yes’ if it does.

It’s like framing out a new house: you have to do it in stages. First you put up the actual frame, then the drywall, then the paint. It’s the same thing with a sale. You can’t expect to close so soon. There are going to be objections, so be prepared for a prolonged battle. You have to get your foundation in place first. In essence, human beings are not built in a way where we go from zero to 100 mph in one shot. There have to be these little stopping-off points, where we can take a deep breath and consolidate our thoughts. In other words, the way you raise someone’s level of certainty is bit by bit; you can’t do it all at once.

In addition, these little stopping-off points serve as periodic rapport checks. For example, if you say to your prospect “Make sense so far?” and they reply “Yes,” then you’re in rapport; however, if they reply, “No,” then you’re out of rapport, and you can’t move forward in the script until you’ve gotten to the bottom of things. If you do, then your prospect will be thinking: “This guy couldn’t care less about what I’m saying; he’s just looking to make a commission.” So, instead of moving forward, you’re going to loop back and give your prospect a little more information that relates to that topic, and then ask them again if things make sense so far. Once they say yes—which they almost always will in this case—you can then safely move forward.

So, if at any moment you sense that you’re falling out of rapport with your prospect, then you need to stop, regroup, and make a conscious effort to get back into rapport, using the active listening protocol I laid out for you, along with two specific tonalities I went through this morning—‘I care (I really want to know)’ and ‘I feel your pain.

If you make a powerful statement, and then another powerful statement, and then yet another powerful statement, by the time you’ve made the third powerful statement, they’ve all started to blend in with one another, and they lose their power. This is why a well-written script has an abundance of stopping-off points, where the prospect will interact with you and affirm that you’re still on the same page. In other words, after you make a powerful statement, you want to lock it down by asking the prospect a simple yes-or-no question, such as: “You follow me so far?” or “Make sense?” or “Are you with me?” By doing this, not only do you keep the prospect engaged in the conversation but you also get them into the habit of saying yes, which creates consistency.

So, all Bill has to do now is lay out a closing scenario, explaining the various steps that Mr. Smith needs to take to get the ball rolling, and then ask him for the order.

Okay, great,” I continued. “The key here is that you always remember that rapport is not a constant; it goes up and down throughout the sale, depending on the following two things: “One, how your prospect thinks and feels about the last point you made; and two, his belief as to whether or not you are on the same page with him, in regards to that point.

return. In essence, you want to crystallize the fact that once they say yes they’re going to receive a massive number of valuable benefits, and the amount of energy they’ll have to expend will be considerably lower. By the way, one company that does this just about as well as a company can possibly do it is Amazon.

To that end, if he feels positively about the last thing you said, then the level of rapport increases; and if he feels negatively about it, then the level of rapport decreases. Likewise, if he believes that you are on the same page with him, then the level of rapport increases; and if he believes that you are not on the same page with him, then the level of rapport decreases.

Front-loading is when you disclose all your major benefits right up front, which leaves you with nothing powerful to say to change your prospect’s mind when they hit you with the first objection. This is one of the biggest mistakes salespeople make: they think they have to mention every single benefit when they make their initial sales presentation.

Remember, it’s not the job of salespeople to turn nos into yeses; it’s simply not what they do. Instead, we turn “Let me think about it” into a yes, and “Let me call you back” into a yes, and “I need to speak to my wife” into a yes, and “It’s a bad time of year” into a yes.

we don’t leave a crucial outcome like honest communication up to chance. We ensure it by making it the sole responsibility of the salesperson, and then providing him or her with a bulletproof formula to achieve that outcome every time.

promise you that it’s not. In fact, once you become even reasonably proficient with the Straight Line System, you’ll be able to take any prospect, regardless of where they started off on the certainty scale, and move them to higher and higher levels of certainty with remarkable ease. It will simply be a matter of taking immediate control of the sale, and then moving your prospect, step by step, down the straight

One of the key reasons why you want to always use a script for prospecting is that each industry has its own unique set of questions that need to be asked in a certain order. If you try to wing it—as opposed to having all your questions mapped out in advance, in precisely the right order—then the chances of you remembering all the questions, or asking them all in the right order, is slim

It was a hefty sum, $5 million, and in truth it had little to do with setting them up. In point of fact, they paid me out of loyalty, and out of respect. And at the very crux of it, what held it all together was the fact that they still considered themselves Strattonites. And I considered them such too.

Comprised of the sum of all the possible ways that you can move and hold your body—your posture, your facial expressions, how you move your appendages, your rate of breathing, your overall level of motion—physiology of human beings as it relates to each emotional state is nearly identical across all cultures.

become linked together in this way is referred to as setting an anchor. The most common state that salespeople will try to set an anchor for is a state of absolute certainty, and the most common anchor they’ll choose to try to link it to is a combination of shouting the word “yes” and simultaneously clapping their hands.

In truth, there was more than one thing behind it, but at the heart of the transformation was a powerful visualization technique that I taught the Strattonites called future pacing.

would say, “Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and you will become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and people will have confidence in you. Act as if you have all the answers, and the answers will come to you.

Certainty, clarity, confidence, and courage. These are your linchpin states for achieving wealth and success. If you don’t learn how to trigger them, then you’re playing Russian roulette with your future—essentially hoping that you’ll be in the right state when you enter a sales encounter, versus knowing you will be because you have a surefire strategy to do it. The name of that strategy is olfactory anchoring.

To that end, NLP has distilled the entire state management process into two core elements, both of which are under a person’s conscious control. The first of these two elements is: What you choose to focus on. In essence, at any particular moment, you have the ability to choose the precise direction of your focus; and based on that choice, you’ll fall into a state that’s congruent with what you’ve chosen to focus on. For example, if you spend the next few minutes focusing on everything that’s great in your life—a recent business success, being in a loving relationship, the health of your children, a recent goal you achieved, a family getaway—then you’ll quickly pop into a positive,

The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it. ― Jordan Belfort

I convince the prospect that I am a highly competent, ultraknowledgeable professional by coming off as a world-class expert in my field, right out of the gate.

unwitting

Vender es todo en la vida. De hecho, si no vendes, fracasarás.

First, you’re identifying their needs—and not just their core need but also any secondary needs or ‘problems’ they might have.