Episode 512: The Best of Habits&Hustle: Jordan Belfort (Wolf Of Wall Street)

How do you rebuild your life when everyone thinks they already know your story? How do you stay sharp and influential when every move you make is judged and dissected? In this episode of Habits & Hustle, I sit down with Jordan Belfort, the real-life inspiration behind Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film The Wolf of Wall Street based on his bestselling autobiography. We get into the mindset behind high-stakes decisions, the psychology of influence, and how he built a system that turns underdogs into top performers. Jordan talks about rebuilding credibility, the habits that keep him steady now, and what extreme pressure taught him about discipline. He breaks down what persuasive leaders actually do differently and why charisma alone never gets you there. If you want a sharper understanding of communication, conviction, and reinvention, this one will land. Jordan Belfort is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, global sales trainer, and creator of the Straight Line System. After rising fast, falling hard, and rebuilding his life from the ground up, he has become one of the most recognizable thinkers in sales psychology, persuasion, and personal reinvention today. What We Discuss: (00:28) Why influence is something you can actually learn (05:12) The mindset Jordan used to handle high-stakes decisions (13:40) How the Straight Line System brings clarity to any conversation (18:55) What rebuilding credibility really looked like after his public fall (26:14) The habits that keep him steady and focused now (34:02) What extreme pressure taught him about discipline (41:33) The mechanics of persuasion and why charisma alone never works (55:10) What separates average closers from top performers (01:12:20) How he coaches leaders to communicate under pressure (01:28:46) The psychology behind reinvention and starting fresh Thank you to our sponsors: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com http://therasage.com/ and use code Be Bold for 15% off Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com http://airdoctorpro.com/ and use promo code HUSTLE40 for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Magic Mind: Head over to www http://www/.magicmind.com http://magicmind.com//jen and use code Jen at checkout. Momentous: Shop this link https://www.livemomentous.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorDUIZz3psr1Qsq_n1yE8_6JTq_QUFabOO9lH65HDEXCIoJOPLj and use code Jen for 20% off Manna Vitality: Visit mannavitality.com and use code JENNIFER20 for 20% off your order Prolon: Get 30% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit https://prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Amp fit is the perfect balance of tech and training, designed for people who do it all and still want to feel strong doing it. Check it out at joinamp.com/jen https://www.joinamp.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=in-stream&utm_campaign=jen Find more from Jen: Website: www.jennifercohen.com https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen https://www.instagram.com/therealjencohen/ Books: www.jennifercohen.com/books https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Jordan Belfort: Website: www.jordanbelfort.com https://jb.online/ Youtube: @wolfofwallst https://www.youtube.com/@wolfofwallst Instagram: @wolfofwallst https://www.instagram.com/wolfofwallst X: @wolfofwallst https://x.com/wolfofwallst TikTok: @wolfofwallstreet https://www.tiktok.com/@wolfofwallstreet Facebook: @jordanbelfort https://www.facebook.com/jordanbelfort

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:06Jen Cohen?

  I'm just gonna go right into it. I don't have to do a whole, I'm gonna put your name up, they're gonna see who you are. I don't have to do a whole, like, I have the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, Google him. By the way, I am like, this is one of the podcasts I've been like, very excited for. And I said it off the camera. No, you didn't even know who I was. You probably didn't care.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  No, you're amazing podcast. I'm excited.

• 0:27Jen Cohen?

  Well, I'm just saying that you're so fascinating to me. I swear, like, everything about you, you also look, you guys, the guy looks like he's Benjamin Button. He's like aging backwards. How old are you?

• 0:38Speaker 02

  61.

• 0:40Jen Cohen?

  Okay, and no surgery, no plastic surgery, no nothing?

• 0:43Speaker 02

  No, no air dye. I have a few gray hairs here and there, but I've had them, you know, for a few years. Like, it doesn't really get worse, you know? Well, that's not even bad for gray hair, but I don't have really gray hair. And, uh, I'm just, you know, see, I have, my issues are more inside. Like, I look at the outside, I'm riding away in the inside. No, I got muscle, played a lot of sports, tennis, golf. I wrestled when I was in college and, um, I did a lot of weightlifting. So, I have like my, you know, shoulder, I, you know, I have an artificial replacement here. And I tore my cuff recently, so I have to get more surgery. Then, this has got arthritis, I got problems with my hands from golf and tennis. You, I mean, so, but, listen, but I'm-

• 1:16Jen Cohen?

  That's more wear and tear.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  That's wear and tear, yeah. I've done some, like, I overdid it, especially my 50s, I was playing tennis for two hours a day with like, one of the top players in the world, and I just destroyed my shoulders, so, but it was worth it. I think in the end, it was so much fun and kept me fit and, um, but yeah, you know, but listen, you look amazing too, and, uh-

• 1:34Jen Cohen?

  About 60, though.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  I'm just looking for the fountain of middle age at this point.

• 1:37Jen Cohen?

  I mean, I'm telling you, it's beyond with you. Like, whatever you're doing, I wanna actually start doing.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  I mean, I've done stem cells. That's the only thing I've done, on my face.

• 1:46Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, but that's more for an injury.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  No, I've done it on my face too.

• 1:49Jen Cohen?

  Oh, you've done it for your face?

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51Jen Cohen?

  What did it do? I've never, oh, like-

• 1:52Speaker 02

  It's subtle. It's not like plastic. It's very different than plastic.

• 1:55Jen Cohen?

  Tell me what it, tell me what the-

• 1:56Speaker 02

  They just, like, they do like this micro needling and they put the stem cells in, it's supposed to enrich the collagen, but, I mean, I think it works. I mean, I don't know. It's, it's not like, where you're like, you're like, oh my god, the next, it doesn't work. Maybe in six months, it's subtle, but I think it's refreshing and, and, you know, I love to, I do anything I can with my own blood. I love that, using my own-

• 2:15Jen Cohen?

  Oh, you mean PRP you did?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  No, stem cells. I go to Costa Rica, I don't do it, yeah, I go to Costa Rica to do it, so-

• 2:21Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I have stem cells in my neck and my hands and my, I do stem cells, that's great, stem cells.

• 2:26Jen Cohen?

  So did it hurt to get in your face? Like, it was just

• 2:30Speaker 02

  I was asleep, yeah. And they gave me, and that's, you know, listen, I was a drug, you know, I was a drug addict.

• 2:34Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  So I got sober in ninety seven, but it's a long time ago. And I was really before that, I was like, just unbelievably like, you know, in every I never met a drug I didn't like, basically, right? So now my only high is I get to go to the doctor, have to get surgery, get, give me the anesthesia really slow. I want that valium in the little, I want to remember. I don't want to forget, you know, so I got anesthesia, so it didn't hurt at all. But yeah, you get a couple like a little bumps for a day and it goes away. And then you don't see results right away, but then over like three to six months, it builds more collagen and, yeah.

• 3:07Jen Cohen?

  It works. I want to see like a before and after, just to see if there's any, like, it's probably so, like you said, subtle.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  It's subtle.

• 3:15Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, it's not like

• 3:18Jen Cohen?

  Pull your face up.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:19Jen Cohen?

  By the way, you just said something that's so crazy because you've been, that movie, even though it came out in two thousand thirteen, first of all, occult favorite, my favorite movie of seriously all time, The Wolf of Wall Street, I was, I am obsessed with it. I think I've seen it like twenty five times. I'm not joking.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  People love them. I mean, I love it. And, and I love the first half a lot better than, I love everything up to the end.

• 3:41Jen Cohen?

  I was gonna say, until the end, right?

• 3:43Speaker 02

  No, but it ends on an up note, which is really interesting, because when I first, when they first were gonna do the, the movie, it was two thousand seven, and it ended with me going to jail.

• 3:52Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Because that was my life. And then it got delayed because of the writer's strike. And over that, that six year period, I rebuilt my life. I had a comeback story. So Marty and Leah, like, we gotta change the movie. They made it a comeback story to reflect my new life, which was going around the world, teaching people about entrepreneurship and sales.

• 4:08Jen Cohen?

  Right, right.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  I think it made it a much better movie, because it was, suddenly it's like, oh my god, the guy came back from the whole thing. Like a downer. It was like, oh my god, and he came back from it. So, yeah.

• 4:16Jen Cohen?

  Well, what was interesting though, because it came out, what you said, two thousand, I thought two thousand and thirteen it came out.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  December, Christmas, two thousand thirteen.

• 4:24Jen Cohen?

  Two thousand thirteen. But that movie, like, that was your life so many years before, like thirty years ago.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  I was just telling this to someone. So people like, say, wow, you like, just did Stratton like, what, ten years ago? No. It was like literally thirty something years ago.

• 4:38Jen Cohen?

  That is what's so crazy, cause if you're like, okay, so you're.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  It was thirty five years ago.

• 4:42Jen Cohen?

  Right, so that's like you were like, that was, you're a whole different person.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 4:46Jen Cohen?

  Like you've had like five different lives since then.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I have, for sure. I've definitely had at least three lives, you know?

• 4:52Jen Cohen?

  It's.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Cause it was a life up to Stratton, then Stratton started and it was in my life was literally insane balls to walls for ten year, ten years. Then I had this like, you know, five year period where I was, you know, indicted, waiting to go to jail, worst five years in my, like you're dying in slow motion. Literally, jail wasn't even the bad part, by the way, but it's when you're waiting to go to jail and your life is slowly, it's like the Roman Empire is falling and burning and burning. And you're like sitting there watching yourself die in slow motion.

• 5:19Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  And I still was living in a giant house. It's like your possessions being stripped away one by, it's a fucking worse, right? When I finally went to jail and I lost everything, it was liberating. I hit bottom, I mean, bottom, no more money left, right? Separated from everything, even my kids was the saddest part of all, right? They were nine and eleven at the time, right? But, once I got to jail, so who's my bunkmate? Tommy Chong from Cheech and Chong. We're sharing a cell together. They put us in the same cell.

• 5:47Jen Cohen?

  Are you serious?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  And that's how I began writing. So he was my cellmate and we were like, you know, he was a great guy, he's amazing. And, you know, I would tell him stories at night and like he would be rolling on the floor. Second night, he's rolling on the floor. Third night, he's rolling on the floor. The fourth, and he goes, you know, I thought you were making all this shit up, but my wife Googled you and it's all true. He goes, you have to write a book about this. So I'm like, really? You think my life is crazy? Like, I didn't think my life was crazy, cause it was mine.

• 6:11Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  You know, your life happens to you and you're like, I just, I guess shit just happens. I didn't look at it that way, right? I mean, I knew my life was a bit absurd, but I didn't think it was like, write a book? He's like, just do it. So I started writing, I'm very difficult at first. My writing was terrible and then I taught myself to write in jail. I spent about a year teaching myself how to write by reading another book I love called Bonfire of the Vanities.

• 6:32Jen Cohen?

  I remember that book, yeah.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Classic, but one of the best authors in the world. And I used the book like a textbook. I was, you have yellow underlay. I, I kinda cracked Tom Wolfe's strategy for writing and that's how I learned to write, in jail and then I came, I, I wrote maybe fifty. A hundred pages in jail, but I ripped them up because I didn't think they were good enough. Came out of jail and that's when I started really, I took out the laptop and started writing and you know, very quickly, you know, long story short, I, you know, an agent read it and he was like, holy, holy crap. And sold it to Random House and that was that. That's how it started.

• 7:01Jen Cohen?

  So you actually wrote that book?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  I wrote, I mean, every word of every book I write. That's why I just wrote that book. I write every word and I hate writing and by the way, I know you, you talk about biohacking. You also talk about success and empowerment, right? And succeed, just feeling not just monetary success, but succeeding in life. And I think one of the things, if there's one piece of advice that I could give to anyone, and I think what a lot of people miss is that there's typically a specialized skill required to do what you need to do. If you want to do something and you really want something, you have the desire for it and you want to achieve it, right? It's like people are often want to do the hard work, but not so much the preparation. Like I did what I did, like I wanted to write a book, but I didn't know how to write.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  I spent a year learning how to write, like without that skill, I could have wanted to, you know, tell my story and I didn't own the skill. And I think with a lot of businesses that people go into and a lot of things they want to accomplish, they, they, they have a great idea and they would work really hard at, and make it work, but they didn't do the, there's a skill they need to do.

• 7:59Jen Cohen?

  The process.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  There's a hard, there's hard, and people that, you know, are very good at doing the things they like doing, but so much of success is getting yourself to do the shit you don't like doing every single day. Even when you don't feel like doing it most, right?

• 8:12Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Consistently, if you, if you can train yourself to do this stuff, you don't like doing, that's what I think I'm really good at. Like I hate writing, but I spent one year, 17 hours a day myself writing this book. And I wrote this book, it's on how to, it's how to make money in the stock market the right way. And then, you know, it shows.

• 8:27Jen Cohen?

  Good information, actually, and it's for everybody. It's like the layman's version too, for any average person. Who, you know, could you get screwed so often? Cause you don't know what you don't know, but we'll get into that after.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  The advice there is amazing, but the point, the point is I was able to make it accessible and funny because you know, the information's out there, right? But if it's boring and dry, people don't read it. So I think whatever you want to do in life, you know, there's going to be a set of specialized skills and probably one skill that's most important of all in what you want to do. And if you want to do the hard work in that, even though it doesn't feel like you're doing it, it opens up everything else.

• 9:00Jen Cohen?

  Absolutely. So how do you even get yourself disciplined enough to even go through that year of the process of even learning to write? Or like you said, with anything, right? Like, someone doesn't like to do something, there's resistance. They don't want to do it. They procrastinate.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  So for me, I think this is an overarching strategy with this whole thing, right? About the inner game, the mindset of success, right? Now, it has to do with your belief systems and things that happen when you're very, usually when you're younger, right? So for me, the linchpin moment in my life of success was at the age of 16. I had this big hit financially. I went down. Where are you from? You're from the east coast or west coast?

• 9:35Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I'm from Canada.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Okay, so there's a beach in New York called Jones Beach.

• 9:40Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, okay.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  On a hot summer Sunday, there's a million people on Jones Beach. And it's a very wide beach, long walk to the concession stand. I'm 16-year-old kid, minimum wage back then is a dollar thirty-five an hour. It's 1978, right? And I noticed everyone's bitching and moaning, walking up to the concession stand. It's like 90 degrees, right? So I'm thinking, hmm, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna get a cooler, white styrofoam cooler. I'm gonna load up with ice cream and ices, and I'm gonna get some dry ice and walk down to the beach and sell it for a buck apiece. That was my idea, right? Went down to it next morning to a distributor that sold Good Humor ice cream. I load up my cooler. The full cost of the cooler is 20 bucks, right? I go out and sell it out in one hour, made $120 in an hour in 1978, right?

• 10:21Jen Cohen?

  Wow, yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  It was more than my parents making, my, anyway, my parents, my neighbor were making, right? And what happened is that the next day I went back and made $500. In the first summer, I made $26,000. Second summer, $50,000. So I made big money. And what I realized, so what happened in this moment, I linked up in my brain that if I work my frickin' ass off, I can get the, I wanted money. I didn't grow up wealthy. I grew up lower middle class, all right? We had everything we needed, but not what I wanted, right? And I had this burning desire, for whatever reason, right? But I realized in that moment that if I worked harder than everybody else, and I'm willing to do what everyone else does not want to do, I could make just like, you know, so, and it became a very, it became a cornerstone belief in my mind. A, that I'm the hardest worker.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  B, that I'll do whatever it takes. C, I'm an entrepreneur. You get it? So I had these beliefs that were so strong that I did, I did this job for five years, right? And then I took, put myself through college and sold Ices all through college and drove a nice car, had money in my pocket, right? So, so that was the start of it, okay, is these beliefs. Then, then let's miss the middle of my life for a second, let's go to jail now. So I already have this rise and fall, right? But I'm that guy, I'm still that kid that did that at sixteen. I never got in trouble in my life before Scranton or after Scranton. There's one thing I did, I was like, I came from the best family ever, no one ever got in trouble, right? So it was just so, so I had, but I had these beliefs about money and success and hard work, right? And that if I do the right thing, I, I make money, right? So, or I have success, right?

• 11:48Speaker 02

  So now flash on, I'm in jail, I'm in the worst moment of my life, right? Everything is stripped away, you're with the so-called losers of society, because everyone is lost at the game of life. You're locked up with no money, no power, you're just like the, the lowest piece of pond scum on the tuna pole, right? Right. And I get this idea from Tommy Chong, who I love and credit for starting this whole thing, of writing this book, right? And I'm trying to write and I suck at it, I can't write. And I'm reading this Tom Wolfe book, I'm trying to improve my thing and I'm, I'm, I paid one kid four cans of tuna. I said, go through this book and every time he compares a person to something else, like a metaphor or simile, write it down for me. So I was, that's how granular I was getting and trying to crack Tom Wolfe's code, right? Wow.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  It was months in the beginning, I'd say about month, three, four, five of trying to write where like, I honestly felt I just can't go on doing this. Like I, it's not working, my life's a disaster, I know I'll make money again as a salesman, I'm, I'm not gonna end up poor, because I know how to make money. But like, just the idea of trying to be empowered while locked up, right? It was just, it was just too much, but, and in those moments, and the worst moments were at night. You know, when you're alone with your thoughts, you're in your bed, right? And you're lying there, like all the mistakes you made, the people that you hurt, right? All the stuff you did wrong, it's terrible, right? And in those moments, when I felt like I couldn't go on, couldn't keep writing, I closed my eyes and I'd imagine the faces of my two children. That's, and that was for me, that was my why. Like, why do I wanna come back from failure? Why do I wanna write a book?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  There's many ways to go out and succeed again after you get locked up for a couple of years, you can make money. But I wanted to do something. You know, I guess that was about, like, I didn't want to hide from my mistakes. And I had this idea that I was gonna like tell this story that I thought could be pretty amazing. Once I started writing it, but I just couldn't write it. So anytime I felt like I couldn't go on, I'd say, you know, my children, like, just I let them down. I'd hurt them, I'd embarrass them. And, and I, you know, not that they didn't love me anymore, right? I'm super close with my kids. I saw my son.

• 13:41Jen Cohen?

  I was gonna say.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  I saw my son this morning for breakfast. He's like, like this, my daughter and I speak every day. You know, so I'm very close with my children.

• 13:48Jen Cohen?

  That's amazing. Did they see you while you're in jail?

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, he visited me in jail.

• 13:51Jen Cohen?

  Every, like all.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  With Tommy, yeah, joint visit with Tommy Chong was hysterical. Yeah, yeah.

• 13:55Jen Cohen?

  So you guys, I see, you never missed a beat, really, with the kids?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  I mean, they're not, he's very fortunate that, that, and I moved out to California for that reason. They were in California at the time, right? But anyway, so that for me, like, I think that what people often miss is when you're trying to find your so-called why. It's like a, it's a self-development chain. Know your why, know your, but the truth is, if you really know your why, at the deepest level, it is freaking powerful. And, and, and here's the secret, it's not gonna be about you. It's not about what you can get for yourself. It's about someone that you love unconditionally or a cause that you truly believe in. Like, you have kids, right?

• 14:30Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, true.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Okay, so let's say there's a fire in the house here, right? And you're alone in the house, you're just gonna run through the flames, you're like, oh shit, that's hot. You're like, fuck, that's hot, fuck. What if your kids were on the other side of the fire yet, would you even think for a second to rescue your kids?

• 14:42Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Not even for a second.

• 14:42Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  You'd run through the fire, burn yourself, hug them so they ain't burning, run through, and if you, if you died to save your kids, you wouldn't think twice, right? You love them more than yourself. It's this type of unconditional love or even the, a cause you believe in. And people do awful, awful things. Look what happened in, on, uh, in October 7th.

• 14:59Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  What people will do for a cause, they will do disgusting, horrible, terrible things in the name of God, or they'll do amazingly wonderful things. Mother Teresa, I mean, it's always about, so it's not.

• 15:11Jen Cohen?

  A higher purpose.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Exactly, and, and people miss with this is when they try to say, I wanna get rich, like, you know, what's my why? I want a beautiful house on the hill, I wanna retire young. It's not about you. That, this power is some, that's more goal-oriented as part of your vision statement, yeah. But the real power of your why is gonna be. Much deeper and more profound than that. And once you tap into that power, you become unstoppable.

• 15:34Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  I believe that if you're willing to do the hard work, it can't just be that's so there's always like this yin and yang. There's the inner game, which is mindset. And then there's the outer game, which is strategy. So you have to be willing to do the hard work and learn the specialized strategies to execute. So but those two, if you reconcile those two worlds, you become unstoppable.

• 15:52Jen Cohen?

  But like you're also, first of all, I have so many questions for you. I'm going to be going all over the place here. But like you're considered to be like the best salesman in the world, right? Like best sales trainer in the world. What would you say people, people who don't have kids or a big purpose, like what would be the number one sales strategy? Or how to get people to be a better salesperson? Like, what would you say? Would you teach people?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Well, I wrote a book. My, my last book was called Way of the Wolf, right?

• 16:14Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Which was a massive bestseller.

• 16:15Jen Cohen?

  You have three books now.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Four.

• 16:17Jen Cohen?

  Four? You have four?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  The Wolf of Wall Street, it was catching, there's a.

• 16:20Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah, the catcher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Okay.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  And catching was the late, lowest performing one because it got released like the day after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. And like, there was like no, no one was buying anything.

• 16:33Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  You couldn't get any talk shows. There was no podcasts back then, right?

• 16:36Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  So that one, it's so late, better later on, but like it was like disaster, right?

• 16:39Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. Well, it's not your fault though, right?

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Even this book, by the guy, hit the beginning because it came out like right after October 7th.

• 16:45Jen Cohen?

  Oh, it did?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, so I was on talk, but it had to be like 60 days later because.

• 16:49Jen Cohen?

  He couldn't talk about this.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  No one was talking about investing. Every single major news. So, you know, so some is fine, but you know, listen, you don't release a book. I don't care. It was a bestseller, but you know, it's not why you do it. Okay?

• 17:00Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  And it's not for money because it's so hard to write a book.

• 17:04Jen Cohen?

  Oh, trust me. I know.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  And I write them myself and I hate writing.

• 17:07Jen Cohen?

  How long did it take you to write this one?

• 17:08Speaker 02

  More than a year.

• 17:09Jen Cohen?

  And then, of course, it takes another year to come out and all the other stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  It's for me, it's a grueling experience, but I do it because I think it's important. This, I think this book was on some level, most important things. It answers the question, what do you do with the money that you have saved? Like, and people just get taken advantage of by Wall Street and stupid investments and short-term trading. And this is really the truth about how you put your real.

• 17:30Jen Cohen?

  And also you talk about also all the fees and how do you know when your financial planner is taking advantage of you? I think these are all like so important because. Yeah, it is.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  It's financial.

• 17:41Jen Cohen?

  It is financial health. It is. And I think that now people get very overwhelmed because there's so much information. They don't know. They listen to this person. They listen to that person.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  They watch Jim Cramer and get this financially.

• 17:51Jen Cohen?

  I know, because we have to talk about that. You hate Jim Cramer.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Not as a human being.

• 17:55Jen Cohen?

  Not as a human, but you don't like.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Carnival balking ass clown because because he basically is and everyone knows it. Like everyone, anyone in finance laughs at the fucking guy. I mean, he's funny as shit, by the way, but I mean, like that's your. If that bloviating sense of humor is your cup of tea, not mine, but he's funny and he's smart. He knows his shit, Jim Cramer, like for him, but like the advice he gives is the most toxic financial advice. Like to think that you could actually make money by trading out of this, going into this, timing the market, sell this, buy this. Oh, this is going. Who the fuck? What does he know? Human beings are the worst stock pickers ever. There's like five people in the world that actually can beat the S and P 500. And guess what?

• 18:34Jen Cohen?

  What?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  They're not taking your money.

• 18:36Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  They have hedge funds that are closed. They trade for themselves in this large institutions.

• 18:40Jen Cohen?

  Like Ray Dalio?

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Those people like that, right? Okay. So, and you know, historically, he's an amazing, brilliant guy. But those are what happens with the hedge fund and the mutual fund industry, but especially hedge funds. Is that they're all like the Ray Dalios or Warren Buffett or, you know, you know, some, you know, a Tepper, right?

• 18:56Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Unbelievable, brilliant people that can beat the market. And then you have like this five thousand, six thousand people that'll be also rise that bathed in the afterglow of these people. And when you look at their returns, if after you subtract their fees and performance bonuses, they don't beat the index. Not they they they they're underperforming the index and the mutual fund industry is even worse. So it's so simple to build yourself a massive retirement nest egg by investing the way I explained here, which is, you know, low cost index fund, some money in a certain type of bond fund, some cash and saving some for speculation. A little bit because you want to have fun speculating because speculating is fun. And if you don't set aside a defined amount of money, you probably will speculate with too much money.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  So better to say, I'm going to speculate with 5% or 10% of my capital. But the 90% is going to be in investments that I know. And unless the world blows up, then who gives a fuck anyway? But as long as the world keeps.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  rocking along the S and P has been compounding at 10% 10.5% including dividends over the last like 90 years and it's like it's not always up it goes down last year was a great year so I look at genius was up 25% last year but that's a relative luck that it was I could have been it could have been down 25% it doesn't matter but on average it always trends upward over the long term so but and then you engage in what's called long-term compounding and there's certain things you want to do and I go through it step by step in the book it's so simple and you don't need Wall Street like Wall Street is there is like this fee machine complex to like basically rob you blind but Wall Street does create value so you need Wall Street Wall Street's necessary but you don't have to play in their corrupt casino you can extract all the value they create by buying into these certain types of funds that have no expenses no fees right so you get all the value they create and none of the bullshit

• 20:39Jen Cohen?

  but if you're someone who doesn't understand any of this at all you could you you say basically you don't believe in even having a financial planner like

• 20:46Speaker 02

  financial planet can be good for things like tax planning

• 20:50Jen Cohen?

  okay

• 20:51Speaker 02

  all right setting up certain type of retirement accounts education accounts right nothing wrong with that but as soon as they start trying to direct you into certain investments unless they're saying to you you should buy this S and P 500 index fund there's if there's some very ethical ones that will do that and guide you into the right type of investment in vehicles when they start going to complex annuities and all this shit's bull you it's you don't need it historically and this is yeah it's not even this is not my information all I did was I gathered all the information what everyone knows to be true on Wall Street and no no one will argue that I'm writing this book because I'm right it's the truth so I didn't invent these strategies or getting Jack Bogle is really responsible for for creating the index fund but in terms of like you know how do you really build a portfolio it's it's known everyone knows how to do it but Wall Street advertises it their way into into the hearts and minds of people and gets people convinced that they should be engaged in short-term trading trying to time the market that you know you could actually have a stockbroker who's in a BBS it's ludicrous it's it's it doesn't work and every academic study going back since the 1920s has proved it so all I did was wrote it in a very funny

• 22:00Speaker 02

  So the book is funny. Because I said, if I don't make the book funny, no one's gonna like, no one will read it. So the idea was to make it really funny and accessible, but teach you a step by step strategy of how you do that and secure your retirement. And trust me, you read the book, you'll be happy. You'll be thanking me 30 years later. I'll still be alive, probably because I'm aging very slowly.

• 22:15Jen Cohen?

  Exactly, you really are. You're gonna be alive till you're 270.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  But that's the story.

• 22:26Jen Cohen?

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• 23:07Jen Cohen?

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• 23:51Jen Cohen?

  to their five day program. Go to prolonlife.com/jennifercohen and use Jennifer Cohen to claim your discount and bonus. That's prolonlife.com/jennifercohen and use code Jennifer Cohen.

• 24:13Jen Cohen?

  We'll get to the sales, actually. Well, let me just, I wanted to go back because you were talking about the movie and of course I'm like obsessed with that movie. Was it, how accurate was it of your real life?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Very accurate.

• 24:23Jen Cohen?

  It was?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Very accurate.

• 24:24Jen Cohen?

  How much? Ninety percent? Eighty percent?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Well, so I was much worse than that.

• 24:28Jen Cohen?

  You were?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Like with the drugs and then the hookers, I'll admit it, you know, it's not my-

• 24:34Jen Cohen?

  No, I loved it. Tell me.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  It's not my life today, right? But we were, I was insane and we were, and the thing was, his best part was the Jonah Hill character, right?

• 24:42Jen Cohen?

  Oh, my God, the best.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  His real name is Danny. And the best thing about, I love Danny, right? And the best thing, everyone needs a Danny in their life.

• 24:48Jen Cohen?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  You know why you need a Danny? Because as bad as I was, I'd look at Danny and say, well, I'm as bad as this fucking guy. Then I know I got a problem.

• 24:55Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  He was that guy, he was doing more drugs, like, I don't know, he's got a problem, right?

• 25:01Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  He's a great guy and-

• 25:03Jen Cohen?

  Are you friends still?

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we're still, I don't see him that much because we don't live in the same area, but nothing but praises for him.

• 25:09Jen Cohen?

  What is he doing now?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  He's wealthy. I'm sure he's very, was a great salesman, smart guy, came from a very successful family. The father was a famous doctor, his mother was an educator, very well-respected educator.

• 25:20Jen Cohen?

  But they were like upper class. They weren't like rich, rich. They were-

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 25:24Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, they're upper class.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah.

• 25:26Jen Cohen?

  And so he was able, like, what, like, does he have money, money, or just like-

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's money, money.

• 25:31Jen Cohen?

  He does.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  He does have money.

• 25:32Jen Cohen?

  Like, what did he do after? What did he, like, I don't know much about him.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Medical supply business or something. I don't know exactly what he did, but he's in medical supplies, maybe some pharmacies. I don't know exactly what he did. But he made some good money. He's not poor, but he's not, he's not, he's very wealthy.

• 25:47Jen Cohen?

  He's not just trucking along?

• 25:48Speaker 02

  No, he's doing well, yeah.

• 25:49Jen Cohen?

  So you'd say the movie was actually underplayed, your life?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Underplayed to the insanity. Like, you know, there were some scenes that had to be cut out because the movie would have been X-rated.

• 25:59Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:00Jen Cohen?

  Oh my god, like what? Tell me.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  The bachelor party scene.

• 26:03Jen Cohen?

  Okay, tell me. Don't, don't feel like you can't say it because I'm a girl. I want to know.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  No, no, I know. There's some things I can't say because they're just, they're just too depraved. I'll, I'll tell you a funny story. So when I was writing the book.

• 26:12Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Right? And, and my editor from Random House was, was a female, Danielle Perez, great, very smart lady, right? And I'm sending, I sent her the first chapter and it was like really, you know, raunchy, right? And I'm like, I wonder what she's gonna think, you know? And she sends me back the note, like back then it was by, before everything was digital. I sent her a chapter, she fed it back. And be like, no, it's check walk. Oh my god, it's so great. You're such a bad boy. Keep going, right? I'm like, I'm like, wow, okay. I'm like, I'm emboldened by that, right? So next chapter I send her is like something else, you know, crazy happened, like, you know, four hookers and this and that. I'm like, I wonder what she's gonna think of that one, you know? So I send it out. She's like, oh my god, this is amazing. I showed it to, to, to Irwin Atbaum, that, to all, and he was rolling on the floor. I'm like, fuck. I'm like, all right, here we go, right?

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Next chapter was even more worse in Switzerland. It's just pure insane, right? So I'm like, I just keep getting worse and on and on. Finally, I get to the chapter where I'm, I have my bachelor party, right? And we flew a hundred stratenice, they were called them, right, out there and.

• 27:11Jen Cohen?

  What do you call them?

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Strat nights. They were, they were called stratenice, right? And, you know, equal number of hookers of all shapes and sizes and we, and we, like the movie, it's true, we raided them like stocks. We had blue chip hookers, the best, we had, you know, masthead hookers, and then we had the pink sheets with the bottom of the barrel. We took those too because we wanted to punish ourselves, right? But we did, and, and we flew them. Then we hooked up with counterparts in Vegas. We know the fifty to a hundred hookers from Vegas, right? Anyway, the bachelor party is, is just spiraling out of control upstairs on the, like, there's like the twenty second floor of the Mirage. And it's like Sodom and Gomorrah on the twenty second floor of Mirage. And that was the, the hotel back then, right?

• 27:49Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  And it's just absolutely raging away. There's animals, there's, there's cocaine out on bowls, Quaaludes everywhere, everyone's high. And there's hookers, sex going on out in the open, the whole nine yards, right? You know, just complete insanity. Anyway, I was downstairs with this guy named Elliot Levine, who was the, who was the CEO of Perry Ellis.

• 28:07Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah, okay, yeah.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  And this guy was the biggest. of us. He was the guy that was the king of, and he was brilliant. Like, this guy was a brilliant businessman, as smart as they got during the day. And wild gambler, drugs, I mean, just, we were all crazy. He was like, literally, I was like, he was like, wow, he's amazing. Like, cause we, he was like, the, the best of the bad. He was just unbelievable, right?

• 28:30Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  So, so I'm with him with gambling and, and he's, I'm all poked out of our minds and quail out of our minds, like, just on massive quantities, right? And he's up like a, like 2.5 million. I'm up like a million dollars for 700,000 playing blackjack, right? So we decide, let's go upstairs to, to the bachelor party, right? So we, you know, I cash out, get my chips, he leaves his there, right? Cause he wants to keep gambling. We go upstairs, right? We walk in the door and as we got there down, you know, turn the corner to the hallway, there's like two police lock guarding the bachelor party, right? And as we walk down there, like, Mr. Bill, you don't want to go in there. It's like, it's like, you really, I'm like, I have to, I have no choice. I, I must, you know?

• 29:05Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  It's beyond my control. And we go in there and that gets you like, the whole thing is just complete insanity. Music blasting, you know, hookers dancing this way and that way, people just engaged in sex and, and we get to the back of the room and there's this, you see the scene in the movie, by the way, where he, there's a snapshot of one team with this pink sheet hooker and, and there's like a line of guys and one guy is having sex with her, right? And, and we're watching this, like, disgustingly violent act. Anyway, long story short, is something happens. I can't say, uh, it's just too, just too disgusting, but something happens, like, after the guy pulls out and, you know, you can't imagine what, what the woman looks like after that. And he's like, he's really the most disgusting vagina in, it's like the world's most polluted vagina, basically, ever to exist on planet earth, right? It's back there, okay, right?

• 29:51Speaker 02

  And we're all looking at, like, and you have to look, there's like morbid, morbid curiosity takes over. You're like, you just want to take a look, you're like, oh my fucking god. And this guy was like number eight on the line of 20, right, right? Okay, can you imagine this, right?

• 30:03Jen Cohen?

  Oh my god.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  I'm not this, I'm not this guy anymore. I'm like, married, I'm happily married.

• 30:09Jen Cohen?

  I would have to clip that because people are good, this is what people like to hear though. They like the morbid, they like this stuff.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  You know, what can I say, you know?

• 30:17Jen Cohen?

  It's so interesting and fascinating and it's like people. Like that's why people like to look at like a bad accident or like or they don't have a life like that.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Fucking 10 year train wreck, but by the.

• 30:27Jen Cohen?

  The fact that you're not dead is unbelievable.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  I know, and I look pretty good considering, right?

• 30:30Jen Cohen?

  That's what I'm saying. The drugs, nothing even like aged you.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  It's a testament to the human liver, right? So if you deliver stays in, I didn't drink a lot. I think that was the big thing. I didn't drink much, a little but not much. That wasn't the big thing.

• 30:42Jen Cohen?

  It's mostly just drugs.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Drugs, yeah.

• 30:45Jen Cohen?

  You love the.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Waylon and cocaine, yeah, were the big ones, right? And a lot of Xanax and Klonopin and morphine because it was cool and awesome. And I just did massive lines of drugs, right? I never met a drug I didn't like, right? And and though LSD not much, right? But anyway, this.

• 30:59Jen Cohen?

  The story, the bachelor party, yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Anyway, so we were all looking and Elliot is next to me, the most depraved of us all. And he he goes and grabs a bottle of champagne, shakes it up, and then something happens, right? Something so disgustingly vile that it it tore through the fabric of space time. Like all of a sudden, everyone just stopped, like in hot, like everyone just froze. And you're looking at this thing, you're like, I can't believe it, right? And then he's like, he's, it's like he's gargling anyway. But then like, I'm like, I have to go. I I can't watch this. It's just too disgusting.

• 31:31Jen Cohen?

  What was it?

• 31:32Speaker 02

  I I can't say it, but it had to do with like a champagne bottle and drinking it, you know, and and the whole thing, you know, vagina.

• 31:39Jen Cohen?

  Yes, I understand. I get it. I get it.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  I don't want to say it, okay, because it's just too gross, right? And he drinks and goggles and everyone's like frozen in horror, like frozen in horror, right? And then I I'm like, fuck, I gotta go. And I walk out and I leave the party and I go downstairs, take like four or five Xanax and go to sleep because I'm just disgusted by the whole thing, right? Next morning, I wake up and I put my my, I had like $2 million, a million eight and the money I brought down, like a million seven, a million plus I won 700, put it in the safe, right? I wake up next morning, Elliot shaking me awake, right? And he's like, we gotta get out of here. This place is too depraved. I'm like, you're telling millions to the fucking. He's like, let's go, let's go. He's like, all right, let's go. He said, we gotta go. The Jets win. The Jets win. All right, we're gonna go, we'll go. I go to the safe, my money's gone. He took my, not only did he lose his 2.5, he took my 1.7.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  He ended up losing like $40 million gambling this guy. It was like unbelievable in Saturday. So anyway, I write this-

• 32:30Jen Cohen?

  Oh, the 40 million that trip?

• 32:32Speaker 02

  No, he lost that night like probably 4 million, but over the next six months, everything, he was like just, and then he lost his job. And, and I, he came back too again and became rich again with Jordache jeans. Brilliant garment though, this guy. Like no one, he was brilliant, but so self-destructive really, but unbelievably smart and talented, charismatic, right? But anyway, so this scene that starts when we fly there with all the hookers, right? And someone gets shot in the knee along the way, no big deal. New York cops are with us, protecting us. The whole thing's just like, and I write the whole thing. It's like 22 pages. In excruciating detail of everything that happened, all right? Down to Elliot take my money and then imploding and then he drowns in my pool and I save him. It's a whole thing, right?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  And I send the pages to my publisher, to Diane Perez. And I'm waiting for one to see to say about that, you know, right? And then maybe like five days, four days later, I get back and I pack that X and I open up and she's on the front page. I just don't think other human beings will understand. And then the only thing I look at is an X here and X there and the whole thing. So in my first book, The Wolf of Wall Street, right?

• 33:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  There's like this part where I wa, I described the back, or I, in detail, I described this whole story. We up the money, because it's a true story.

• 33:45Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  It's, it's vetted, true.

• 33:47Jen Cohen?

  And nothing's fabricated.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  No, it's 300 witnesses. No, not, nothing exaggerated. 300 witnesses, right? So the whole thing, we won all this money, he took everything. But in the middle, I say, we walked to the back of the room, okay? And it says, I opened the door and there's the bachelor party. And it was so depraved, they had to walk out, like, there's the whole thing cut out of the thing, you get it? I went downstairs to like, she's like-

• 34:12Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  And if you read it fast, like, oh, it was depraved, but that, but the whole thing was described, you know?

• 34:17Jen Cohen?

  Wow. And no, and it wasn't in there?

• 34:19Speaker 02

  It wasn't in the book. So then when Marty, the movie, I'm like, Marty, you want me to, he goes, yeah, I want to see this pages. So you saw the pages. I think the first version of that was they had to cut because it would have gotten NC seventeen.

• 34:31Jen Cohen?

  Get out.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  So they said for that little still shot, you know, that kind of said something happened with a guy screwing a.

• 34:38Jen Cohen?

  Right, right, right. It was still pretty like raunchy for like a movie, but it was still, it could have been, that was like, it was like watch, it's like the Smurfs compared to what really happened.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  And you know, the problem with the whole, why these things happen, you know, like these insane things, right? Is that we were like action junkies, you know?

• 34:56Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  You know, and it's like, almost like, what's next? It's like, you keep looking for a higher and higher cliff to dive off of in a shallower and shallower pool to land in because what was the first thing we did that was we thought was insane? We shaved someone's head for ten thousand dollars. And we're like, oh my God, it was great. But then, you know, three months later, head shaving is fifty dollars. Like it doesn't, doesn't have the same impact. So let's, let's shave a girl's head this time.

• 35:18Jen Cohen?

  Right. Cause you could always up the ante, right? And it never, it never gets to that place. But then, okay. How did you even get Leonardo DiCaprio? Were you able to pick him?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  I picked him. Yeah, I picked him in Scorsese.

• 35:30Jen Cohen?

  How did you get that chance? Like, tell me like how it worked. What was the process?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  And this is where I, I would say like the hard work of writing. So I, I spent a year teaching myself to write. Really happened is I came up with a style of writing where I took what was nonfiction and wrote it like fiction. And my book reads like a novel, but it's, but it's, but it's true. Okay. It's true, but it reads like a novel, which is different from almost every memoir that you would read because usually the person has a ghostwriter.

• 36:03Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Okay. Or if they write themselves, they didn't spend the amount of time. I, I taught myself to write as if I was a novelist, like Tom, because Tom was a novelist. He started off as nonfiction, but and by the way, that's the beauty of Bonfire is he wrote, you know, nonfiction, but it was almost like it was, he wrote fiction, it was fiction, Bonfire, but he wrote it like nonfiction, like, like he did so much research in, into stuff, right? So it was so believable. I did the opposite, using his style, I wrote what was nonfiction and it read like fiction. So, and I spent so much time and I think, and I, and I, I did do a very good job writing that book. Everyone loves that book. And when, so when Leo read the book, he was like, holy shit.

• 36:43Jen Cohen?

  Was it a massive seller before you got the movie deal?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:46Jen Cohen?

  Before you even got the movie deal?

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, no, it wasn't out before the movie.

• 36:50Jen Cohen?

  That's what I say. I thought you got the book after the, yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Let me explain, let me say.

• 36:53Jen Cohen?

  So tell me, give me the chronological.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  So Leo, Leo read the book before it was even a, it was a manuscript. It was just a manuscript. It was edited. So the editing was done.

• 37:02Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Right? It was the, the original version was fifteen hundred pages. And my editor and I whittled it down to like five thirty eight or something like that, right? So a lot of stuff got cut, right?

• 37:10Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  I overwrote the book, right? So when that was a manuscript, my producer, a woman named Alexandra Milshon, one of the sharpest ladies I know, I know, brilliant producer in Hollywood, right? She slipped that manuscript to Leo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Mark Wahlberg, right? Ultimately, and Wahlberg loved it too. He was, he wasn't quite as big a star yet. Now he's massive, right? And he would, he was done great too. I love Mark Wahlberg. But at the time, it was, came down to, George Clooney was too old. He would have played the FBI agent, right? So it came down to Leo and Brad Pitt both wanted the book. There was a bidding war between the two of them. So like over a weekend, it was, when bidding went up and up and up, each side said, whatever they pay you, we'll pay you ten percent more. So the book, the, the price of, of the sale kept going up and up.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  And finally, Leo calls and goes like, I have Martin Scorsese attached. He's gonna direct. Marty read the book, loves it too. He'll direct. I was like, and I, and by the, the truth is, I always loved Leo. Like, I thought Leo was the perfect person. You know, I love Brad Pitt too, but Leo was.

• 38:08Jen Cohen?

  No, you did it perfect.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Right? And so I sold it to Warner Brothers with Leo on behalf of Leo and Marty, right? And then a man named Terrence Winter, a brilliant screenwriter, adapted the book. We spent a lot of time together and he took my book and like, put it into a format that became the movie. There's many changes after, but it was the movie, that, that first script. And everyone loved this first script so much. It was in two thousand and the book hadn't even come out yet. The book was, it was slated to come out in September and now we're like in June. And everyone loves the script. I got a call from Leo's manager, Rick Yorn, saying, dude, we're green light in the movie. Warner Brothers, we're gonna go. We're looking at the soundstage. I'm like, what? Like it never had, like, when someone options a movie, it's a very slim chance it ever gets made. It like does, usually doesn't. Never.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Right, people goes on forever, right? But Leo loved the role, Marty loved it, they, the whole thing worked out. And then the writer's strike hits. The two thousand and seven writer's strike. And the movie, and it's not, the script is not ready, needs, and they all of them put their pen down. Leo, Marty go off and do Shutter Island. Cause it was ready. Yeah. And the window closed and, and one thing about Marty, who is the most, one of the most talented directors in the world, amazing, but he moved slowly. He, when he's with a picture, he's with it for years. It's ve- it's very slow. So now it became the brutal wait for Marty to be ready again. And, and like Leo's easy, cause he does a movie, he's next, next. And so, so we're trying to get it done and we just, the stars could not get aligned. And on and on it goes. And then two thousand eight, the, the financial crisis hits, right?

• 39:36Speaker 02

  And I can't sell another book, cause no one's buying anything. I'm completely broke again. I'm freaking out. And with my then wife, I was, you know, my partner, we, um, kind of love, but she's like my wife and she, and I'm like, I hate writing and I hate writing so much. And like I, and I can't even sell anything right now. I was working on another book, but no one would buy it, cause no one had money, right? Right. And I'm like, she's like, what do you want to do? I said, like, you know, maybe I should go and try to be a speaker, you know? And I'm like, well, let's do that. And I remember this moment, I called my book agent, his name was Joel. And I, and I said, Joel, listen, you know, I, I really want to go and try to do some speaking events. He's like, oh my God, that you, you're a great speaker. It's great. Just, you gotta wait till the movie gets made, then they'll come for you. And I'm like, what did you say?

• 40:20Speaker 02

  He's like, you wait for the movie. I'm like, are you, I'm not fucking wait. I got so, and I liked the guy, but I was like, I was like, that is how you go out and become successful? Wait for the movie? I can be waiting the rest of my fucking life for the movie to get made. And I slammed the phone down. I said, I don't give a fuck. I'm gonna do this, right? And I went out and I started with getting free speeches at colleges. My first speech was free. Some girl, you know, was a big fan. I want to bring you to my college. I went for free. Did a few free speeches and when I did the first free speech, the kids went wild and my, what, and was like, holy Christ, like, uh, it's like something that comes naturally to me, right? They went crazy, right? And then the first person that booked me was like a five thousand dollar event for some entrepreneur's thing. Never even fucking paid me and I flew to New York. They put me at. Tiny little room the size of a fucking railroad car, right?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  I mean, I went through shit and it was just getting started, right? And then I was just talking about the inner game of success. I wasn't even teaching sales yet, because you know, I had created so much mayhem with my last time I taught sales. I was like, I don't want to talk about sales anymore, right? Because I had my own negative. Yeah, right. But then something happened and some, I was at some event in Australia. So I had already a big following from the book around the world. So I did a tour in Australia and I met a guy that he goes, I want to take you to England. It was only the inner game of success, no sales or business, right? Just, you know, mindset, right? But it was really compelling. There goes, dude, I gotta bring you people who are gonna love this stuff in England, right? And I went to his company, it flew me to England, I went to his company in England. And he had a phone room, like twenty people on the phone, because he was doing some stuff with trading, right? And he had, um, they were selling trading programs, right?

• 41:50Speaker 02

  And I listened to his sales, but my, dude, your people suck. I'm like, he goes, I know, they're the fucking worst, right? He goes, their closing rate is just like horrific. I said, if you want, I'm happy to, to, to train them for, I'll teach them the straight line. He goes, what's that? I said, yeah, I'll show you a straight line. So he calls all those people into a room, all right? The name of the company was called Knowledge, the, the video is still around, Knowledge to Action, right? Now, at the time, I had my first shoulder surgery already. I already had, so I was actually in a, I think for the second one, I was actually in a sling from having my rotate a couple of bit, right? But anyway, so I calls people, he calls people in, all right? And they had this big, they had this script, the sales manager wrote this fucking script that was like a big piece of oak deck in a circle. It was the most toxic piece of shit, right? It was like the opposite of the straight line, it was the circular bullshit, right?

• 42:35Speaker 02

  And I took a blowtorch and lit it on fire in front of like twenty people, all right? I said, guys, this is the biggest, the sales manager's like, you're gonna see, right? And I start teaching the straight line system, which is what I invented to teach all these kids. And, and the guy who was a seminar promoter is like, holy, when I was done, he's like, why the fuck are you talking about the inner game of success? He goes, this is the most, I never heard, this is, there's nothing fresh in the, in the world of, everyone's saying the same shit to get in. No one's ever said this before, this is like, where this, I said, well, this is what I taught. He goes, dude, you're gonna make billion dollars on this thing. Yeah. This is, you're like, don't stop, fuck that, right? So I was like, really? And it's still, I was like, I don't know if I want to teach sales. He's like, buddy.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  And I, and we, I went back three days and what happened is he was closing about 20 sales a month with his, from his room. The next month they closed like 328 sales.

• 43:25Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Massive fucking success. Blew up his business, right? And, and what happened was I still didn't want to teach it. Cause I was like, oh, last time I taught it, you know, people lost money. It was terrible. I just, I, I was, I really wanted to just give value. And I didn't want to teach something I thought would hurt people. Cause I, I made some huge mistakes. There's no doubt. Like now in hindsight, I can feel great. I've redeemed my life and you know, and the whole thing I've been, I've had this, but I still at the time was very new and I, I felt terrible. People lost money. I wasn't happy about that. And I was, I wanted to come back and rebuild my reputation. I said, I'm never going to do anything again. If people don't get a, if I charge a thousand dollars, I want them to think they got 10,000 in value. That was on my mind and I didn't want to teach things that might hurt people, right? So I wasn't, and the straight line is really fricking powerful.

• 44:07Jen Cohen?

  What is it? What is the straight line system?

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Incredibly powerful system of sales and persuasion. And there's, you, you can, I sell courses now, but like you can get enough, I, I give enough stuff away for free. You don't need to buy my courses. If you want to buy my courses, you can buy them and it's very organized, but you don't have to. Like I don't, it's not how I make my money and, and, but, and I, and I love teaching it. And there's so many videos on, you can't suppress stuff that you, he's always on YouTube if you want.

• 44:29Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I wanted to watch it.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  People don't want to pay, will pay and they can go buy it. It's amazing. The course is-

• 44:34Jen Cohen?

  But what's, give me like the basics of it, of how it would work.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  But what it is really is that like, if you, if you ask the average person, like, you know, a salesman that's not trained, but they might be a decent salesperson, right? Like, you know, what do you do when you sell? Like what's actually happening? If I ask you, you're, you're probably a very good salesperson. You're a good communicator. But I ask you, what, what do you do when you sell? Like, you, you know, what would you say?

• 44:56Jen Cohen?

  Are you asking me?

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. What would you do? What is it? What is selling to you? What do you do?

• 44:59Jen Cohen?

  I would-

• 44:59Speaker 02

  What makes you a good salesperson?

• 45:01Jen Cohen?

  I don't know if I am. I mean, I think, uh-

• 45:03Speaker 02

  You are, but what do you do?

• 45:04Jen Cohen?

  What would I do? I would tell you all the benefits of what it is.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:07Jen Cohen?

  And how it would help you.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:09Jen Cohen?

  I would be focused on you.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:10Jen Cohen?

  Not about, is that not right?

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Well, well, it's, it's right, but there's a bigger answer. Like it's not, it's not incorrect. Yeah, of course you do that. You're also very good at, at building rapport, right?

• 45:20Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, very good at that. I think-

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Your energy, you can match- Energy really well, right?

• 45:24Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  You you you come off as a figure of authority, right? So people will listen to you because you're an authority. All these things you do, right?

• 45:30Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  But what's what's really, what really happens, what sales really is at the highest level, it's the transference of emotion. And the emotion you're transferring is certainty. That if I'm gonna buy, for example, if if you're gonna be selling me whatever it is, this slate.

• 45:45Jen Cohen?

  Which is, by the way, amazing.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Slate, right, okay, right. So it's slate, right? So, okay, how sure are you? How sure are you this is amazing?

• 45:52Jen Cohen?

  Well, I love the taste.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  But how?

• 45:54Jen Cohen?

  I'm very sure.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Incredibly sure, right?

• 45:56Jen Cohen?

  Hundred percent sure.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  So, one to ten, where are you? One to ten?

• 45:58Jen Cohen?

  Ten.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Okay, right. Where am I?

• 46:00Jen Cohen?

  You're at zero right now.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Really? No.

• 46:02Jen Cohen?

  One, two, three.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Who fucking knows?

• 46:05Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  How could you know?

• 46:06Jen Cohen?

  I don't know.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  But the moment I looked at this can, I landed at a seven and a half. Why?

• 46:11Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Okay, the packaging looked good. I trust, I've trusted you. So immediately, everything I know about energy drinks, coffee, whatever, French vanilla, and immediately my brain will take all my experiences and put me somewhere. Because I'm from Earth. Whether you're selling cars, homes, slate, books, the person that you're trying to sell to, the moment they know what the product is, their brain will take everything they've heard, seen, experienced, their prejudices, good bed, and land somewhere on this scale of certainty, right? But where are you? You're at ten. Why? Because you know, you know how awesome it is. So what's your job now? If you want to get me to that level of absolute certainty, because, listen, where do you want me on the scale? That I absolutely love. If I'm at a three or four, am I buying this stuff?

• 46:56Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Right? If I'm at a nine or ten, good chance, right?

• 47:01Jen Cohen?

  So what I would do is, and what I would naturally do is, because it's the truth, that's why I can only really sell things that like.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  And it tastes great, by the way.

• 47:08Jen Cohen?

  It tastes amazing. There's 20 grams of protein, zero sugar. It's 110 calories. It's way better than all the other junk out there. And if you're into health or fitness or wellness, you would rather have this

• 47:20Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 47:21Jen Cohen?

  than like a bunch of junk.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Totally right. So, okay, so those are all, those are all features, right? Okay, yeah. And then the benefits could be how I'm making you feel. But the point is, is that if you're the salesperson, whatever you're selling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The salesperson needs to enter at this level of absolute certainty, right? And then their job is they want to transfer that certainty to the person they're trying to sell to, right? To make them hopefully as or close to as certain as they are, right? Right. So let's say you do that. Okay. Right, let's say you do that, right? And when you're done, give me the features and benefits and you'll be like, Joe. And but I'm like, wow, this shit's really good. I'm like, wow, this stuff is really good. It's a 10, right? Question, will I buy? Will I buy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The answer's not yes, and the answer's not no, the answer's maybe. Right. I said, yeah, yeah, like I want to hear what you're gonna say.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Maybe, well, why is it maybe? Because what if in the process of you making me certain, you did it in a way that maybe not trust you or not like you? What if the way you talk to me, it offended me and so, so yeah, you convince me it's great. I'm like, but I don't trust this person. Am I gonna buy from you? No. Right, so it's not enough that they love the product. They also have to trust the salesperson or the person who's presenting them with the product, right? So let's just say those, let's say you did that well, right? Would I buy now? The answer still is maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't. Why? Because what if I don't trust the company that manufactures the product? There's something about this, it's an unknown company. I don't know how they are. I don't really know how, and sometimes that can be very profound in certain industries.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Sometimes it's less important, but the bottom line is this, it's not enough for any one of those things. What you're doing as a salesperson is you're aligning all three of those elements. You're trying to increase someone's certainty for all three of these things. They want a product, yourself, the company that stands behind the product, right? And then the goal is to get them to that 10, 10, 10 in a single moment in time. And then you ask them to purchase, right? Now, there's more to it than that because there are all these rules of persuasion. For example, so let's say you know you have to line those three elements up. Well, the million dollar question is how? How do you go about doing that, right? Well, there's another side to this that has to do with how you're initially perceived.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  And then we got, then we get back to how I invented the straight line, which was back at Stratton. When I had this situation, I was closing at a very high level and so was Danny. We were killing it, right? I invented a new, I found a niche in the stock market, right? An untapped niche, right? And what happened was I was closing at 50%, Danny was in the 40s, 40%, right? And my 12 kids who had the average IQ of Forrest Gump on three hits of acid, right? Not the sharpest tools in the shed, no Ivy League diplomas, they were like the, you know, basically no members of the Lucky Sperm Club. Right. They were 18 to 20 year old kids that barely clawed their way out of high school. Kids that were never told by their parents they were capable of greatness, any greatness they had in them naturally was beaten out of them. Since the day they were basically born, right? Right. So those are my people, right?

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Right. And I already taught them a system of how to close average moms and pops on penny stocks. Right. $500 trades, easy to do, and my system worked. But when I found this new system, which was selling five to $10 stocks to the richest 1%, we didn't call people that, we were all multimillionaires, we call, right? So I was able to do it, Danny was able to do it, and these 12 kids a month later hadn't closed a single account. I was making millions of dollars, Danny was making millions, the kids were making zero after a month, right? So I'm like, how is this possible? We're calling the same people, using the same script, right? Same stock, same everything, same leads, I'm at 50% closing rate, Danny's in the 40s, they're at zero, right?

• 51:01Speaker 02

  And for a month, I couldn't figure it out, and I was already considered to be like an amazing sales trainer at this point. But something was missing. Anyway, long story short, I stumbled on it one after a month of just like banging my head against the wall, reading every book about sales. I tried everything, nothing worked, nothing could get these kids to close. And finally, one night, it was like this, I was giving them a marathon, like five hour training session at night to my 12 guys, right? And I looked at them, guys, I don't get it, you know, I'm doing it, Danny's doing it, I know you can do it too, right? And like, what's the problem? They started yelling, there's too many objections. One guy goes, there's a thousand objections. Someone says, yeah, there's a thousand objections. Another guy goes, we can't even get our pitches off, they keep cutting us off.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  People are assholes. So I was just a thousand objections. I said, great. Tell you what, and I wiped what I mean. Let's write all thousand objections down, right? I said, come on, let's call them out, right? And I said, it's a long, somebody keep going here.

• 51:53Jen Cohen?

  No, this is fascinating. So like, is it like the takeaway clothes you do?

• 51:56Speaker 02

  No, nothing about that. Nothing about that. Nothing.

• 51:59Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so what do you guys go on?

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Different, right? So, so I said, guys, write them, what is that? Call them out. Someone goes, they want to call back. I said, great. What else? They want to think about it. I wrote that down. What else? They want to call their wife. What else? Great. Bad time yet. They paused. I'm like, what else? Silence. I'm like, guys, there's four objections. There's nine hundred and ninety-six to go. Let's fucking go, right? And on and on they went, on and on they're calling out every conceivable objection they could think of. And at the end of the day, the board was filled with objections. You know how many? Fourteen fucking objections. Not a thousand, fourteen. And half of those were repeats of two. It was like, I want to speak to my wife, my partner, my business, my, my lawyer. Or it's a bad time. It's Christmas time. It's back to school time. It's fucking leap year, Groundhog Day. Bullshit. I want to speak to Santos, the fucking tooth fairy, right?

• 52:44Speaker 02

  And in that moment, I got so pissed off, right? And I looked at them and I'm like, you guys are unbelievable. You're whining about these thousand objections. There's fourteen and even half of them are repeats of two. But you know what? Even those don't matter. I'm like, don't you guys get it? And suddenly this thought pops in my head. I'm like, every sale's the same. And they're like, what? Like, what do you mean every sale's the same? You know? See by their expressions, every sale's different. People have different needs, different values, different pain points, different experiences. They say different things, right? They're like, every sale's different. But guys, every sale's the same. Watch. And this idea pops in my head and I'm like, it's a straight line. And I draw a straight line across the board for the very first time. I put a big thick X on either end. I say, this is your open

• 53:29Speaker 02

  where the sale begins. This is the close. And then I start teaching the system with a straight line. And then I said, I'll make, I'll leave it out. And you go and see this on videos on YouTube. It's all over YouTube, right? And then I said, I said, now, guys, when you were selling penny stocks, and it was easy, every once in a while, you get an easy lay down sale, right? That doesn't happen anymore. What's happening is this, and I realized something that hit me. They were saying they kept getting cut off. People were, the rich people were assholes. They couldn't even get their pitches off, right? Now, guess what? I was not getting cut off. People never cut me off. I was getting the same objections they were getting, right? But I was getting them at the end, after I asked for them to buy, that's why I asked for the order. They were getting cut off in the beginning.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  And I'm like, there's something, it just hit me, it was so profound. I'm like, wait a second, I'm not having trouble getting my pitch off. People listen to me, and I'm like, and then it hit me, I said, guys, when you're speaking to smart people, when you're speaking, everyone's smart, now we all got smart brains, right? When you're speaking to people who are smart and educated, you have four seconds to establish three crucial things. And I'll tell you what they are. Number one, you must be perceived as being sharp as a tack. Number two, enthusiastic as hell. And number three, most important of all, an expert in your field. You got four seconds to do it, because people judge books by their covers. We seize people, we size them up, we make a snap judgment, and here's what happens. If you're perceived the right way, sharp, on the ball, enthusiastic, and most importantly, an expert, what do you do in the presence of an expert?

• 54:58Speaker 02

  You defer. You let the expert control the conversation. We've been conditioned, since we're yay big, when we were little kids, you're sick, where do you go? Parents take you to the doctor. The doctor dresses a certain way, even your own parents defer to the doctor, right? When the doctor says to you, so how long has it been? You don't say, well, how long has her been done? You answer their questions honestly and forthrightly, right? So, we have been conditioned with coaches, tutors. If we're adults, you need advice on taxes, you hire an accountant. You want in trouble, you hire a lawyer, right? We seek out experts to help us solve our problems. And when we're in the presence of an expert, what do we do? We defer, we let them control the flow of the encounter.

• 55:38Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  But when you're in the presence of someone you believe is a novice, what do you do? You try to take control.

• 55:43Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  What was happening is, I was a natural born closer, all right? As was Danny, right? And I taught Danny something about sales, but he took to it like a fish to water, right? So, when people would hear my voice, from the second I opened up my mouth, in the first few seconds, they're like, oh, this guy's sharp, this guy's an expert. Coming off a certain way. Yep. And they weren't. I was using certain and million dollars. So how do you do that? Is it the words you say? Well, it really can't be, right? What could you say to someone in four seconds? Right. I'm sure I'm an expert. I'm enthusiastic. I'm a swear. I'm an expert. No, so you sound like an asshole, right? So it's you do it through unconscious communication, tonality, body language, there's certain tonalities you use in person, body language.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  And what happens is people you fall into this, you hit this box in their mind, you're unconscious, that this is an expert. So what do they do? They defer to you. In that moment, when they defer, it opens up the possibility to make every sale the same. See, if you're in control of the sale, you can now run a strategy. You, if, let's say, I, I say intuitively, I knew there were these three things. See, I knew these three things had a lineup. I never thought about it before. I did it automatically because it was natural born closer. Right. I was doing all of these things that were like perfection in sales. I closed out closed anyone I ever went up against when I was very young even. Naturally, I just knew what to say. And there are other people around the world that are natural born closers, but most people aren't. Right. So how do you teach it?

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Well, what happens is with the straight line by does is this visual and you see it play. You're like, oh, my God. And I break it down into each of its components and I give you a step by step formula. And it always starts with this. You must learn how to take control of the sale to be perceived the right way as an expert. Once you learn how to be perceived as an expert and sharp on the board, it opens up a universe. Cause now you can actually say, all right, I'm gonna do this first. You have a logical progression. And if you know what things have to line up, you can then line them up the same way. And that's what I was doing. And when I taught this, and there's more, much more of this, I've gone for three hours of this, right? I teach this around the world. I teach it three days at a time, right? Right.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  But the point is, is that when someone that is, and which most people, there's a spectrum. Some people are just awful. Many people are decent. Some people are talented. They don't understand strategy. But there's a spectrum. When they learn the straight line, it's like a mona from heaven. So you could take someone that's terrible at sales and make them good. Not like me, you make them good.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Right. You take someone who's good and make them amazing. Take someone who's amazing, they'll be one of the top closers in the world. So it works for everybody in every industry and it's easy to learn, easy to learn. So I think what really.

• 58:24Jen Cohen?

  Did the twelve men learn, the twelve people learn that?

• 58:26Speaker 02

  They, it within, so they hadn't closed the sale on Thursday. That next morning we came back and they went on an account opening spree of such biblical proportions, they were all millionaires in ninety days and Stratton became the largest firm in the country selling five. We, we had three thousand people. That was, the success of Stratton was based on the straight line. It was the straight line that fueled Stratton, not the stocks, okay?

• 58:48Jen Cohen?

  Right, right, right.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  And the problem was, is that the, the, the mistake I made was I didn't understand enough about creating the better, better company. So like, my ability to sell out fueled my ability to create the right stocks.

• 58:58Jen Cohen?

  Right, right.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  And that was a problem. And then of course, you know, it doesn't help when you're doing six quaaludes a day and snorting cocaine and, you know, partying six nights in the city. And it became like, you know what it was? It was like, it was like the most fun place to us before, like, you know, people had smartphones.

• 59:12Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, of course.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Fuck you want, you know, now you'd be deep shit, right?

• 59:16Jen Cohen?

  Of course.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  But, um, it was a different time, different social rules, you know, and we had our own set, even within those, you see how things are now. So things were different then, but even then we had our own alternative universe inside the four walls of the boardroom. Like all things, people would walk in there, they would never, they walk in the boardroom, they're like, what the fuck? It's like animals running around, not hooks, but you know, girls in miniskirts.

• 59:39Jen Cohen?

  I can't even imagine. Okay. So by the way, we got kind of off.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  I know.

• 59:43Jen Cohen?

  Although that was very fascinating and I, I actually want to know how you would, how you would sell that. I'm curious. How would you get someone to attend?

• 59:50Speaker 02

  What?

• 59:50Jen Cohen?

  If, if you were selling slate or, you know, Ferrisage or whatever, what would like, like this is.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  What I would do, I'll tell you, cause there's a great, if someone wants to watch a video.

• 1:00:00Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Of me selling, there's a great video, me doing just this thing. It was in Australia and it was selling a financial services package to some guy, right? A CEO, right? It was actually staged though. It was, it was staged by a psychology company that was trying to understand the straight line and break into psychological components, right? They spent a lot of money, paid me a lot of money to do this. It was like a. Two thousand and ten and what they did is they gave me what are called critical incident scenarios. Right? Uh huh. And it's where they they hand you like a dossier. Uh huh. Right? And they say, okay, here's a fur coat company and they give you like this big all things and these are your customers. Go prepare and then we're going to film you. How would you sell it? Right? I did it for a few things for a co-company automobile and then they did this thing with this financial services package. Right? Right.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  And they gave me this this big dossier. It was about a milk company, dairy company, right? Okay. That was big in Australia and they wanted to expand it to China and they were looking for better banking relationships and silver, blah, blah, blah. And they get they said, okay, you got, you know, fifteen minutes to prepare, right? And then we're going to call him. This is an actor who's a CEO and we want you to close with the cameras, everyone like just like this, lights, cameras, right? We want to tape it and see how you go about doing it. I'm like, all right, great. So they hand me the dossier and I start reading through it. I'm writing some shit down and looking the whole thing to find facts about the company, right? They come in like twenty minutes later and they're like, are you ready? I'm like, can I have more time? Like, yeah, sure. Take as much time as you want. I said, great, thanks. I kept writing, looking at my stuff, planning it out, right? Thirty minutes later, like, are you ready? I'm like, just give me a little more time. All right, no problem. Thirty minutes more. Ready?

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  No, just give me fifteen minutes more. Finally, after an hour and forty-five minutes, right? So, okay, I'm I come in, right? Yeah. The scholars sit down in the corners, the cameras are rolling, the guy comes in, he's the CEO, right? He's playing the always really talented actor. I mean, he was like fucking really good. He he acted like the CEO and knew everything about the company. And we start getting into this, you know, sales, right, on on camera. Yeah. And I'm using the straight line at a very high level, right? And I'm using all the things I, you know, know how to do and I'm, you know, moving them down the straight line, so to speak, right? And then I find it's really going well. I asked him to buy it. He wants to think about it. I do what's called looping and I loop back. I do another thing, blah, blah, blah, all these things that you would learn with a straight line. And I asked for the order again and I have and he's close and he's like, nah, nah, just let me, you know,

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  let me just speak to my part in the first and then I do another loop again. And I pull out my one of my most powerful language patterns, right? And I guide him into this perfect close, like it's almost it's impossible for him to say no, right? And he's like, nah. I can't do it. So I'm like, all right, double secret probation. I do one more loop back again. I raise this, it's called pain threshold. Another impeccable rap I give him, right? And I ask for the order again, just believe me, you will not be sorry. Does that sound fair enough? He's like, fine, I'll do it. And he's, and he puts his head down, he starts cracking up. And the psychologists pop up and everyone's like, what the hell just happened? I'm like, what, why? What, what happened? They're like, we paid him to say no. He wasn't allowed to say yes.

• 1:03:01Jen Cohen?

  Are you serious?

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  He goes, we told him, you cannot say yes under any, the guy's like, you were too compelling. I couldn't say, I felt like an idiot and he couldn't. Okay, now, so, and then they go, but that's not even the craziest part. I'm like, what's the craziest part? He goes, we tested fifty other people on the same scenario. No one closed the guy. I'm like, okay, well, that doesn't surprise. He goes, no one spent more than five minutes looking at the material.

• 1:03:26Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  I'm like, what? They're like, no one spent, well, they just skimmed it and the guy came in. You studied for an hour. I'm like, of course I did. I couldn't sell this to you. You say, you know what I would do? I'd say, give me all the fucking, and I would come up with the most perfect way. Why? Cause I know I have to learn three tenths. I have to sell, I need three or four ways to sell you on this product. Logically and emotionally, there's certain, I want to know features. I want, I could, I could wing it and do a decent job because I'm, I'm good at this stuff. But to really do it, I would sit there and prepare myself for a couple of hours and write it all out. So I had it basically sort of, I wouldn't have a script for it. I, I want to know, and I, in my own mind, I know exactly where the sale was going to go before. I would take immediate control by coming on like an expert.

• 1:04:10Jen Cohen?

  Cause you were an expert by that point.

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  And also I just like my ability to use tone, you know, but here's the thing. I can sound like an expert, even if I'm a novice with something. I've trained myself and you can now, I don't suggest this, but one of the biggest problems with salespeople is they feel like they're just getting started in a certain career with a certain product. And they don't feel like they have the confidence or they don't want to sound like an expert. That, you can't do that. You have to future pace, you have to act as if. So you can sound like an expert even when you're not. There's many people out there who are fucking experts and they sound like. novices so it's not really what you are it's what you sound like now I'm not that now that might sound ethical no it's so true but here's what I don't I'm not saying you should pretend to be an expert and just do that no while you're closing the knowledge gap you should be studying

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  your ass off every day becoming an expert but there's no reason you can't sound like one day one you get it so the first thing I'm selling any price I sound like I know more about it and I'm very good at putting words together this is natural talent so some people struggle a bit one maybe they'll close a bit lower than anybody anybody with practice and hard work can become an expert and you could learn to sound on by using certain tonalities

• 1:05:18Jen Cohen?

  that's great though I mean that's I agree with that because if you do the more information you have obviously you're gonna be able to be better

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  how are they gonna close this guy I was able to I was I was saying to this thing to this guy about his business he didn't know he didn't read the thing I read the fucking I read every fucking statistic I had big things about like the difference in the current series of China to the one and fucking swaps I was he was like he's always rolling around he didn't know what to do that and he just I mean it was so much that he thought if he said no he'd be an idiot and that's what he said he was like still getting idiot I said no

• 1:05:46Jen Cohen?

  and is this in this straight line

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  it's on YouTube

• 1:05:49Jen Cohen?

  I'm gonna watch it now

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Jordan Belfort selling live and at the end everyone you just see everyone stay it got cut off and they all stood up at the end but that they were like laughing and that's and then why they were laughing right because the guy was paid it paid him to say no

• 1:06:01Jen Cohen?

  wow

• 1:06:08Jen Cohen?

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• 1:06:52Jen Cohen?

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• 1:07:29Jen Cohen?

  So then you were doing this, you're starting the whole speaking circuit before the movie was even out.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that, so this is the best part of all.

• 1:07:35Jen Cohen?

  And you were getting better at it.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  So I built this huge business.

• 1:07:38Jen Cohen?

  Like, how much were you, how much were they, how much was your fee to even go speak?

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  By the time before the movie came out, I was getting over a hundred thousand dollars.

• 1:07:44Jen Cohen?

  So you were like, like a super successful speaker.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  Yes, the same people who were promoting Tony were promoting me around the world, right? And I had this massive, so it wasn't, listen, it wasn't nearly like it is today.

• 1:07:56Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  Obviously, right? But, but like, but back then I was doing really, really well. So what happened was there was this four-year gap.

• 1:08:04Jen Cohen?

  Okay, wait, the movie came out in 2013.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  But, and I, I bought it in 2007.

• 1:08:10Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  So when the first script was written, it ended with me going to jail.

• 1:08:14Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  That was the end of the movie. There was no sell me this pen.

• 1:08:17Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  And there was no commercials with the straight line, remember this, in the straight line? That didn't exist. Cause I didn't teach the straight line on TV before, but they, but what happened was when, when four years passed, Leo comes to my house now, when he came to my house the first time, I was living in a tiny little house. Okay, like a little tiny house, I had an apartment, like it was probably 2,000 a month, right? And four years later, he goes, I'm coming over, let's celebrate. He comes over and I'm living in a beautiful mansion in Manhattan Beach on the water, like a 15 million, and he's like, what the fuck happened to your life?

• 1:08:44Jen Cohen?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  I'm like, I'm like, oh no, I rebuilt my business in four years. He's like, what do you do? I'm like, I, I do these seminars, I teach, he goes, show me. So I put the video up of, you know Frank Kern, that name, he was an old internet marketer back then, very popular many years ago, right? I had this Frank Kern, everyone loved this tape. Me on stage teaching the straight line and I show Leo, he's like, oh my God. Wait till Marty sees this. He goes, we're gonna change the whole movie. He goes, this is gonna be a comeback story. I can't hold you. You gave me the give it. You gave me the biggest gift. This is gonna be ten times better movie now. Cause it's gonna be like up and then Marty saw this and was like, he became obsessed. I sent Marty fifty videos on the straight line. There was a four hour cut of the movie before the final cut that was shown to some people privately.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  That had like ten times as much. I love the sales stuff. There was so, they said so much about what really happened, right? It had a cut up because it was just too long. But what happened was it created A those scenes where I come back with the right where I'm giving seminars.

• 1:09:44Jen Cohen?

  I love that part.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Which is funny, right? And get arrested, right? And that was fictionalized. Like I, I wasn't teaching the straight line, but they loved it so much. They put it in there. My new life and the old and then. They end the movie where I go to jail and ends up with me selling the, selling this pen, which is this iconic scene at the end. So I, you know, really I rewrote my own life story while it was being made into a movie. I changed my own ending through hard work, perseverance and some luck too, but mostly hard work and perseverance. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:10:12Jen Cohen?

  That is so amazing. So when did they actually start filming the movie?

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  Two thousand twelve.

• 1:10:17Jen Cohen?

  Oh, and they turned it around that fast?

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Very fast.

• 1:10:19Jen Cohen?

  So then, okay, then how much did you sell the script for?

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  Complex. So I sold it originally for an option. So I got back a total in the beginning. I got before it was bought. I got about. Seven hundred thousand dollars for, for the just an option money.

• 1:10:32Jen Cohen?

  Oh, just option. Okay.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  And then when the script was bought, about a million one more.

• 1:10:36Jen Cohen?

  And then did you get any backend of the movie?

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:10:39Jen Cohen?

  Are you serious?

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  No, but, but there's something I'm, I'm, I'm in litigation. I can't talk about it right now, but there, there's some things happening right now.

• 1:10:46Jen Cohen?

  Because that's like, I'm sure no one thought probably how that, that movie was, is like lit, like literally one of the most. Popular movies of all time.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's amazing. And, and you know, it's funny.

• 1:10:56Jen Cohen?

  And girls and boys.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  I'll tell you, I'll tell you the interesting thing, which is, which is really what, it's been so amazing for me. In terms of my business, because when the movie came out, it was two thousand thirteen, right? Kids are in, you know, high school and I have fans of all ages up to like your mother would love the movie. I mean.

• 1:11:12Jen Cohen?

  Women love it, men love it, kids love it. My sister was telling me her little nephew.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  It's insane, I know, right? So but like, here's the interesting thing, though. So in two thousand ten, as a kid, let's say he's sixteen years old. Right? He's in high school and he's just, he's probably a junior or something, right? And maybe, you know, he's a freshman or a sophomore. All right, he watched the movie, he loves it, he sees it three times, he sees it five more times in college. He gets out, he goes into the workplace, sees it ten more times. He strikes it rich. He's a businessman. What does he do? He hires me to come speak and consult at his company. So all these kids, eh, that will watch them, they're nice, they're all hiring me now.

• 1:11:50Jen Cohen?

  I was gonna just, you know what I was thinking?

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  They age up, and I, and I, to teach them the straight line, and I teach this very ethical version that like, you know, really empowers people, makes sure they sell ethically. So I teach this ethical version, and my business gets bigger every year because kids aging up.

• 1:12:03Jen Cohen?

  No, I swear, I was just thinking, like, I want my son Dylan, who's eleven, to take a picture with you because he doesn't know you now.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:10Jen Cohen?

  But in a year, he's gonna watch your movie, probably, you know, in a couple of years, maybe now.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  I gotta tell you, I have, you have no idea, like, so sometimes I'm shocked. Like, I was on the, I used to live in the Strand, I live in Miami now, but I used to live in the Strand in Manhattan Beach, and one July fourth, I'm with my then-wife, and we're playing backgammon, like, our house is right, we're on the Strand. So people are walking by, and we're playing backgammon, and you know, we're just like, maybe five, five feet off the strand in our little, just one's chairs. And I go, excuse me, and I look, and it's a kid like this, he's like seven years old. He goes, are you the Wolf of Wall Street? I'm like, yeah. He goes, I'm your biggest fan. I'm like, where's your mother?

• 1:12:46Jen Cohen?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  I was like, you're, he's like, yeah, I read the book. I'm like, yeah, a movie too. I'm like, what the fuck?

• 1:12:55Jen Cohen?

  See, I, I, would you get recognized all the time?

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Everywhere. Yeah, he should. Like, no, like, like, I can't, like, TSA, like, it's funny, right? I can't go through, if I go to an airport, I can't, like, TSA, every customs.

• 1:13:06Jen Cohen?

  Do people go crazy for you?

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, people are very, they're always, the people could not be nice, and I've never refused a picture with one person that's ever asked me in.

• 1:13:14Jen Cohen?

  Do people freak out? Because like?

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  So people are like, why are you here? I'm like, I have to be somewhere.

• 1:13:19Jen Cohen?

  That's a hundred percent.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Like, last night I went out with a friend. to a club here in was a floor or something and I don't go to clubs but he enjoys rent there late right and it's one girl she's like oh my god oh my I'm like well I'm here I have to be somebody I'm here

• 1:13:33Jen Cohen?

  you have to be somewhere

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  why you what are you doing here oh my god I just told them

• 1:13:37Jen Cohen?

  I can I would think even more than like a celebrity because it's like they saw that your life story is a gap and your story like they saw your life story and it was so compelling and like it's just I think it that's why I was like so how I am so excited but but then okay okay so then like a movie gets made so then you said that you have you can't talk about all of it but you sell it you make a million one

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  no I could tell about that but like I ended up having to sue them like because the people that made the movie

• 1:14:04Jen Cohen?

  I was going to say the Malaysian people the Goldman Sachs guys were the financial

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  that's why I was for the last four years I've been in litigation with them to get some rights back but we're gonna settle so

• 1:14:14Jen Cohen?

  but this that's the part that I need to ask you about so basically who found them as the financials for the movie so that to tell them who they are the guy they're in the news right now Jolo

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  this guy Riza Aziz right

• 1:14:26Jen Cohen?

  there's a major Netflix movie on them right now

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  yes it called Man on the Run right

• 1:14:31Jen Cohen?

  yeah Man on the Run

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Billion Dollar Whale was them too right so it was the Prime Minister Malaysia's stepson

• 1:14:37Jen Cohen?

  right

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  he was the founder right man right and they came in with gang like money like and it was supposed everyone they were telling everyone was oil it was like Saudi oil money and everything so no one knew right and at the time I didn't know no one really knew you know and um so you know I met with them I met with the CEO I met with the production people

• 1:14:56Jen Cohen?

  you did or did Marty do it

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  no we did no we did I did Leo did we had a big lunch right

• 1:15:00Jen Cohen?

  so you were involved with the production of the movie

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  to buy the movie

• 1:15:04Jen Cohen?

  no that's what I mean but you were involved like after you sold it to Warner Brothers as an option and all the other stuff

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  it just no it just sat there for like

• 1:15:11Jen Cohen?

  right forever

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  when they finally got when they finally when I had this meeting with the Malaysians right

• 1:15:17Jen Cohen?

  right but wait hold on let's go back a second so then you sold the option then you get the million one once the movie is now greenlit being made

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  that's from the Malaysians

• 1:15:24Jen Cohen?

  oh so Okay, go ahead. I thought what would happen is Warner Brothers then gave you some money and then they would take care of it.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  The option expired. I got the movie back. So I got two, twice, they, they, they paid me option money twice. But they never exercised the option. I got the property back. Then Leo and his manager found these Malaysians and at the time, no one knew they were crooks.

• 1:15:46Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Right? You know, they were just super rich and, and then they spent money. I'd never seen people spend money. So I thought they were, at the time, I was like, this is just like the old scam of raising money and spending it. Like, you know, it happens all the time. Venture capital, like, you know, you raise a billion, spend it, because they were spending money like crazy.

• 1:16:01Jen Cohen?

  Crazy.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  But you didn't know it was stolen money. You thought it was just like they were milking the, the iris.

• 1:16:04Jen Cohen?

  It was insane. And they had so much money.

• 1:16:07Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. So, so I sold them. The, the script thinking was legit. Everyone thought they were legit.

• 1:16:11Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, everyone did.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  And then, right around the time the movie came out, rumblings started happening, right? And like the money may have been diverted from, at first I was like, ah, whatever. It was upsetting, but you know, and over time it built and built. Eventually, you know, they, they had to pay 16 million dollars, right? They disappeared. You know, one of them got indicted, the CEO of Red Brown, that, got indicted in Malaysia. Jolo went on the run, whole thing, right?

• 1:16:34Jen Cohen?

  Did he get a facelift to change his face?

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  That's what I heard. He got a change. You could, you could be Jolo, by the way.

• 1:16:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I could be, but I'm not that I know him.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  No, I mean, never you're Jolo.

• 1:16:42Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  You're not Jolo, are you?

• 1:16:43Jen Cohen?

  Uh-oh, we caught you. Yeah, no, no.

• 1:16:46Speaker 02

  Anyway, I think he's in China, but, um, that's the word, but.

• 1:16:49Jen Cohen?

  Oh, really?

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what happened was the rights, they, so the rights got sort of frozen. And that's what, it was, we should have made a TV series and done all the stuff and, and that's why I got into litigation with them to try to get the rights back.

• 1:17:00Jen Cohen?

  Oh.

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  And yeah, so I don't want to talk about anymore about that because it's still ongoing, but, but, so, yeah, and those guys are, you know, I think one guy, the CEO of Red Brown, it is like, I think he's, he didn't go to jail, but like, whatever, you know, he, he paid some money and that's that, right? And then, but his father, this premier, is still in jail. He got sentenced to 12 years, I think yesterday, they reduced it to six, and he's getting out soon, in a year. Jolo, never found him, stole away, got away with the money in China somewhere.

• 1:17:25Jen Cohen?

  Wow. That is so crazy. Then who distributed the movie, though? Wasn't it?

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  Domestically, it was Paramount, and then different companies all over the world.

• 1:17:33Jen Cohen?

  I can't even believe that. By the way, you still talk to Leo or you still talk to

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  I do, I speak to Leo, yeah.

• 1:17:38Jen Cohen?

  And like

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  He's amazing. He's the best.

• 1:17:40Jen Cohen?

  I mean, you picked the best. I mean, he crushed that movie.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  He's the best.

• 1:17:44Jen Cohen?

  That movie is just like

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  He should have gotten the Academy Award.

• 1:17:48Jen Cohen?

  I cannot believe he did not get that. I mean,

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  He got it the next year with the Red and he goes, I had to freeze to death and fucking get it at the Academy Award. I should have got it for the Wolf of Wolf.

• 1:17:57Jen Cohen?

  One hundred percent like, so how did it like, so when that movie came out, how did it really change your life though, in a real way?

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Well, in stages. So what happened was, here's the interesting thing. So the movie comes out.

• 1:18:07Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  It's a huge hit.

• 1:18:08Jen Cohen?

  And it right off the bat.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  Right. It's a huge hit, right?

• 1:18:11Jen Cohen?

  Did anyone expect it to be even close to that?

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  They did. People who saw it, we knew it. When I saw the movie the first time, I was like, I mean, everyone that saw it was like, what the fuck?

• 1:18:20Jen Cohen?

  No, it was, oh, Margot Robbie. Who picked her?

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Marty. Marty. I only picked Leo and, and I picked Leo and Marty. And then everything else was Marty after that.

• 1:18:30Jen Cohen?

  So who was it between? Was it anyone between her?

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Margot, there was a few other actresses up for the role back then, but she was just pen and shoulders, the best.

• 1:18:37Jen Cohen?

  Beyond.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  She's so talented.

• 1:18:39Jen Cohen?

  And she's the most beautiful human being in the world.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  She's the nicest person.

• 1:18:42Jen Cohen?

  Everyone says that.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  You'll ever fucking meet.

• 1:18:44Jen Cohen?

  Like

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  Seriously.

• 1:18:45Jen Cohen?

  Like, can you believe that you had like the

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:18:48Jen Cohen?

  Like the biggest of the biggest in like, you had Martin Scorsese do your movie, Leo DiCaprio, you didn't have like B-listers on this thing. Like

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  You know, but I go back to one thing about that. So yeah, I mean, some, of course it's lucky and some of it, but it goes back to

• 1:19:05Jen Cohen?

  You make your luck.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  It was the hard work.

• 1:19:06Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Of the writing, it was writing, it was the skill, the time I put in to learn how to write, which made, allowed me to tell a story in a very compelling way that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. No matter how good the story was, if I didn't know how to tell it the right way, structure it and put together the words in a way that people would laugh and turn the page. It didn't matter how great the story. So I made, I served it to Leo on a silver platter.

• 1:19:27Jen Cohen?

  Totally.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  And then he saw it and then he, of course, he's, and there was Leo's and Leo was the one that drove it forward. It was Leo.

• 1:19:33Jen Cohen?

  Well, cause he's such, he's such a

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  It was his passion project and he knew and it was Leo believed in this so much, you know, so he really gets the credit for one. Scorsese came in at the, he was there in the Beginning and then was like, ah, he was less, you know.

• 1:19:45Jen Cohen?

  Involved or interested.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, he just didn't, he, he always liked it, but it was like he had other, he had his passion project, which was, I think, um, what was that movie he made without the, the priests going in, uh, whatever it was, the silence? He was desperate to make this movie sound, that was his passion project, right? So, so he didn't, nothing even like it, it just wasn't his passion. But then once he started, here's what Leo said. I ran, it was like maybe six months ago, Leo and I were, were in, um, Cannes, Phil Pessell, right? And we were on a boat together and we're having dinner, like when he's sitting, he's sitting next to me at dinner, right? And he goes, you know what? I'm gonna tell you this, he goes, I had never seen Marty Scorsese as happy and carefree as when he was making The Wolf of Wall Street.

• 1:20:22Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  He was smiling every single day, like you never, and that made me happy to hear that. And I think also it reflects in the movie, like how happy he was and he was like this light, you know, you, you know, he just had this, like this tone to it, it was light and, you know.

• 1:20:37Jen Cohen?

  It was fun, like so many of his movies, I know he's phenomenal in The Great.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  They're in the darker, right?

• 1:20:41Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, not even that, like they're, they're, they're, they drag a little bit, you know, like this one, like it hooks you the second it starts and it doesn't, you don't let go until the end, like it is such a good movie, like in terms of like from the beginning to the end, you know, like.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:20:56Jen Cohen?

  The whole thing.

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  He's a, so, I mean, listen, you know, the script was amazing, but a lot can go wrong.

• 1:21:02Jen Cohen?

  A lot can go wrong.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  And like, he just took that script and we polished it, I mean, yeah, I polished every word and I, Terry wrote an amazing script, but I, I worked myself at least 50 hours on that script also after Terry wrote it. I wrote the book and I didn't write this, he wrote the script, he gets credit, but you know, I was, I made sure every word was authentic and, and Leo did too, like Leo painstaking over every fucking word. So like, it was, oh my God, so like Leo, I spent a, a year with him, like he was so intense in getting this right, like. So as he's talented, of course, but he works his ass off.

• 1:21:35Jen Cohen?

  That's what I was gonna say, it sounds like it.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  No, he like, he's like this, like preparing for this thing, like, you know, it was unbelievable.

• 1:21:41Jen Cohen?

  How come they always work together, those two? I feel like they're like a pair.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Well, for example, I think it was, it's, there's others, Paris, but they're one of the top, De Niro and Scorsese as well, but what is for actor like Leo is a bad director could fuck up a movie.

• 1:21:55Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  I mean, if you could be the greatest actor in the world, if it's a bad director, so for Leo, it's almost an insurance policy.

• 1:22:02Jen Cohen?

  To have some.

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  So Leo will only work with really like, really like Tarantino. He's very careful, Leo, with who he works with, right?

• 1:22:08Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  He is, is talented as he is, the wrong director could fuck up the movie, right?

• 1:22:12Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  And I think the same thing goes for a director is like, you know, that they're great, but if the actors can't bring it to the table.

• 1:22:18Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  So it's a comfort. So I think that's why.

• 1:22:22Jen Cohen?

  Has any of this, like, you know, it's funny, like, I feel like what happened with the, with jail and everything else. It doesn't seem like it, it affected you and it would most of other, like, it didn't, you bounced back, I think incredibly well and fast beyond anybody else. Again, how, why? How did that happen?

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  It affected me, but in a, in a positive way. So I, I think what, what happens, it was so important for me to go to jail. It was so important because, so here's, people say, you know, how did you turn your life around?

• 1:22:50Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. And also nobody even, I feel like, not that we forget, but it doesn't affect your reputation. Like people don't, that's not the first thing that I think of, you know?

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Listen, there's always some people who wanna be assholes and let them have their good, good, for them, they're entitled to feel what they wanna feel. But 95% of the world feels the opposite and that's fine with me, right?

• 1:23:07Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  But here's, here's the truth. So like, I didn't like have to change into becoming a good person from becoming a bad person. If you believe in good and bad people.

• 1:23:17Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Or bad people doing good things, but I never, what happened was I had to change back into the person I was originally. I was originally a really good kid. I had never gotten in trouble. It wasn't like, that wasn't my life. My parents never. I was raised by the most legitimate family. Everyone went to college. My brother's a top lawyer. My two first cousins are doctors from Harvard, you know, famous surgeons, like everyone, no one got in trouble in my family.

• 1:23:42Jen Cohen?

  Also, you were just ambitious. Like, I feel like you didn't wanna give your.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  That went off the walls, right?

• 1:23:47Jen Cohen?

  Right. But that's what, but that can happen.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  But ambition turned into greed, okay? And, and with massive drug abuse attached to it, right? But I don't blame the drugs. All the drugs did was help me quiet the critics. So like after I was doing shit that I shouldn't have been doing, because drugs make you feel better about it, right? But it wasn't the drugs. It was really greed. And also, I have to say that I want to be the best at anything. So if I'm doing something bad, I gotta be the best at doing something terrible, right? But what what jail did is it like it was a reset. I need to become what happened to me? What did I do? What were my values? That like, so example, if you would have asked me at the age of twenty six, you know, what's the purpose of a business? I'd say the purpose of a business is to make money as much as you can. But in reality, that's not the purpose or the function of a business. The function of a business is to monetize value.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  So you have something of value and you build a business that allows you to deliver that value to a lot of people in a cost effective way. So you make a profit. The more people you help, the more money you make. But it's not you go into, you don't go into business, I'm gonna make money. It's to monetize something of value, right? So today, like when I go out, from the moment I left jail, I had been engaged in one transaction, done one deal or brought something to the market that I didn't think I was giving a lot more value than what I was charging for it.

• 1:24:59Jen Cohen?

  Wait, are you allowed to do any financial stuff?

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  Of course I do, yeah.

• 1:25:02Jen Cohen?

  You so you weren't like, you weren't banned?

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  I wasn't banned from trading or anything like that.

• 1:25:05Jen Cohen?

  You weren't?

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:25:07Jen Cohen?

  So you can still do any of that stuff?

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  I do. I trade all the time. I don't trade. I invest. I don't, I don't believe in short term trading, but I invest in the stock market. I have some Bitcoin. I do a lot of venture capital.

• 1:25:16Jen Cohen?

  Are you allowed to have like your own private equity firm if you wanted to?

• 1:25:19Speaker 02

  I wouldn't want to.

• 1:25:20Jen Cohen?

  No, but are you allowed?

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  Up to a certain amount of investors.

• 1:25:23Jen Cohen?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  But I could not have anything that was regulated. But what I can't do is own a brokerage firm.

• 1:25:27Jen Cohen?

  You cannot?

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  I cannot own a brokerage.

• 1:25:28Jen Cohen?

  But you.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Know what I want to.

• 1:25:30Jen Cohen?

  Nor would you want to. But you didn't even go to jail for anything that actually people are not doing right now.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  Which is crazy.

• 1:25:35Jen Cohen?

  Which is the irony.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  I think what happened was, is like, I think people's view of me changed after two thousand eight, where they're like, wait a second. Like what they did on Wall Street was so much worse than what I ever, I mean, listen, what I did was wrong. I never want to minimize that, right?

• 1:25:47Jen Cohen?

  No, I understand.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  But I didn't bankrupt fucking Iceland.

• 1:25:50Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Or Greece. Like, no, in Wall Street, like, I mean, wow, when that came out, like the, the, you know,

• 1:25:56Jen Cohen?

  I remember.

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  It almost blew up the world economy through complete fraud and greed and insane selling shit products to institutions and pension funds and everyone's four one, right? It almost destroyed the world.

• 1:26:06Jen Cohen?

  Oh, did you know who Michael Milken is?

• 1:26:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's great. He's amazing.

• 1:26:09Jen Cohen?

  Okay, right. And he he got he went to jail for.

• 1:26:12Speaker 02

  Ah, bullshit. No, he was he did nothing, this guy.

• 1:26:15Jen Cohen?

  Well, I was gonna say, like, what I'm saying is, like, it was like something so, like, minimal and nominal.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:19Jen Cohen?

  And what in the in the grand scope of what happened.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  He's and he's a legend.

• 1:26:24Jen Cohen?

  I mean, he's like a legend, right?

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  He's amazing.

• 1:26:26Jen Cohen?

  Isn't what you did, though, like, it was pretty nominal compared in the grand scheme.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  In the grand scheme, but still, I I never want to say that what I did wasn't wrong, because it was wrong. But yes, the amount, listen, you know, listen, I wish no one would have ever lost money from actions I took. But when you compare it to what happens, it's nominal. So the amounts are tiny compared to what happens every day. Um, it's insane. And that's kind of what the book I wrote this book about, like, you have to avoid.

• 1:26:50Jen Cohen?

  I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  Well, you have to avoid that whole, this book shows you like what to do to avoid all that shit.

• 1:26:56Jen Cohen?

  I was gonna ask you a question, though. What do you think of crypto, Bitcoin, all of those?

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  I love Bitcoin.

• 1:27:01Jen Cohen?

  But isn't that considered to be like, we don't know what's gonna happen? Well, tell me your opinion first and then off.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  So I love Bitcoin, right? As a very long term investment, not to try to trade Bitcoin to make money. All right? Bitcoin is one hundred percent legitimate right now. It it it's all the biggest institutions own it, you have big E E T Fs, okay?

• 1:27:21Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  So so it's like, it's legitimate now. It's decentralized, okay? You know, maybe still manipulate a little bit here, but not like in a in an organized way. It's it's legit. I didn't think that many, I I was a very, very bearish on Bitcoin for me. I thought it was the biggest scam ever.

• 1:27:34Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, that's what I.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  I thought so, right? But I but I I just, it was my gut reaction. It was back then. It was being in the in the beginning, it was, but the but the idea, the coding was so brilliant that some people who are more insightful and sort the knee, obviously, that, you know, got involved. And ultimately, it was like the lie became the truth.

• 1:27:52Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  Okay, so now there's enough large players and it it it's, I I believe it's totally genuine. I own a lot of it, and I think that over the next five to 10 years, it's gonna go much, much higher now. I don't think you should, and I feel very differently about crypto. Rest the rest of crypto.

• 1:28:08Jen Cohen?

  Okay, I was gonna say, so that part you're okay with?

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  But the rest of it, I I I really, I'm I'm not saying they're all bad, but most of those coins or tokens, they have no. No function other than speculation. So if you want to speculate, that's fine and have fun and buy Dogecoin. If you want to do so that but just know you probably get to lose all your money, but that's okay. If you have fun, maybe you'll make money, but you're probably going to lose a lot of money. Right?

• 1:28:33Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  So, but I think people should speculate because it's fun to speculate, but 95% of your capital should be in the type of investments I talk about in the book, which are these sort of these in these index funds, which are

• 1:28:45Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:46Speaker 02

  The safest and the most they they outperform everything else. Okay. And there's a lot and there's reasons why. And it also, you don't need a lot to start. You can start, even if you're not rich, you can become rich over many years. If you're smart and you just stay the course and not listen to the Jim Kramers of the world and all these people who convince you to buy this, sell this shit, you know?

• 1:29:05Jen Cohen?

  Because you're never going to go on that on CNBC or whatever.

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  They did not invite me on CNBC. I knew they used to invite me. I knew this book by by time on CNBC, but I've been on other stages. I'm going on Fox a bunch of times.

• 1:29:16Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  I'll be on Gutfeld soon, next week, two weeks from now. He's great. You know, so I go on. I love going on TV. I love doing podcasts.

• 1:29:22Jen Cohen?

  But people, because you're such a great entertainer, like when you speak, like you, like you're so enthusiastic.

• 1:29:28Speaker 02

  I am.

• 1:29:28Jen Cohen?

  It's like a pleasure talking to you.

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  I love making people laugh because I think it's great and I love educating people, but I think people learn more when they're laughing and they're engaged.

• 1:29:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  So like when I'm doing my events or whatever, I try to mix, you know, humor and stories with actual learnings. And at the end of the day, that's been a very, you know, a very profitable formula for me and incredibly even more valuable for people who learn these things. I can't tell you how many people walk up and be like, you changed my life. You changed my, you changed all everywhere I go. You changed. No one ever says, you fuck me. Everyone's like, you changed my life. So it's like that's and they go through life like that. What a great way to go through the rest of my life.

• 1:30:04Jen Cohen?

  Well, yeah, because you're actually giving people like actionable things that they can, like they can do. It's not just you yammering on and on, but there's like things that they're like, it's compelling.

• 1:30:13Speaker 02

  It's very actionable.

• 1:30:14Jen Cohen?

  And there's things that people can take away.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:30:16Jen Cohen?

  Is that how you spend your, like, how do you spend your time? You're doing mostly speaking, you get smoke, speaking gigs?

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Mostly consulting for companies.

• 1:30:21Jen Cohen?

  Oh, you do that still?

• 1:30:22Speaker 02

  And some companies I own myself.

• 1:30:23Jen Cohen?

  What do you own? Tell me what you own.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  Different companies in, in, in the, um, different spaces. Get into pick the particulars, right? Cause the last thing I do is behind the scenes.

• 1:30:31Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  Cause when you're a celebrity, it almost takes away from stuff. I don't wanna like, some stuff is good.

• 1:30:37Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:30:37Speaker 02

  Stuff is like, it's just like, it's about the product, not about me.

• 1:30:40Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? So, but I, I do consulting for all different types of company. You name it, I've consulted for the, in the industry. That's probably sixty to seventy percent of my business. Touring is probably twenty percent. And products are maybe ten percent, like, you know, like the, you know, online products and stuff.

• 1:30:57Jen Cohen?

  I would imagine that you would be like called from every major Fortune one hundred, two hundred companies to go in and, and just train their sales teams.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  I've gotten, so that's interesting. So I've gotten about, I would say thirty percent of them, but the seven, seventy percent, they're like, use the word fuck too much, you know?

• 1:31:13Jen Cohen?

  Really? Even though you'd be effective for them?

• 1:31:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, use the word fuck too much. So, so what they do is they buy my courses. I'm sure all the salespeople do.

• 1:31:19Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  Like, for example, where was I in, um, in an event in New York? And I, I would say every major kind, salesmen everywhere, not all of them have hired me, but their salesmen, they say, yeah, go use the stuff.

• 1:31:29Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  But like, I, you know, I am, I, I admit that, you know, I am not for everyone. I think there's a lot of companies whose values, like I just, you know, I'm much more out there with the cursing and the, uh.

• 1:31:39Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, but it's entertaining.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  I know. So the people love it, but sometimes it doesn't get by the eight, a lot of times, like, I get hired and HR kills it. It happens sometimes. And I get that, you know, and that's fine.

• 1:31:48Jen Cohen?

  Well, you know what it is? We're living in a very woke, liberal world, right? Which is not my cup of tea.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  Don't even get me fucked.

• 1:31:56Jen Cohen?

  Don't even get, I could talk, we could do a whole podcast about this.

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  Get me fucking started, okay?

• 1:32:01Jen Cohen?

  Believe me.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  Cause I'm like the anti-woke bully. I fucking hate it.

• 1:32:04Jen Cohen?

  You and I both, okay? And so I think because of that, companies have to shy away from anything.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:10Jen Cohen?

  That would be controversial or non-PC, which is a bunch of nonsense.

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:15Jen Cohen?

  You know, like, I'm not a fan of what's going on in the world right now, at all.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Me neither.

• 1:32:19Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. It's like a whole.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  It's the opposite of empowered thinking and living. It's the opposite.

• 1:32:23Jen Cohen?

  It's the, it's the, it's the anecdote of that.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  Victim, victim, victim.

• 1:32:27Jen Cohen?

  I know, like. Exactly. Like, why this is not happening. I am enough culture. Like, God forbid that you like, it's, it's, I know, we're gonna wrap it up. Can we do this? I know he has to go. Will you come back on this podcast?

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  Anytime you want.

• 1:32:40Jen Cohen?

  No, I'm serious. We could do like another one, like double, like we can do like part two and part ten.

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  I'm coming back here in March.

• 1:32:46Jen Cohen?

  You are?

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  A hundred percent for sure. For, for over a week.

• 1:32:49Jen Cohen?

  Cause this is like, I'm like, just love, this is like my, my, you're my cup of tea. Like, everything about you and that sales piece. I think I'm gonna have to like clip that in some way because I think a lot of people will find that so.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 1:33:02Jen Cohen?

  This is actionable stuff that people can act really. If you're an entrepreneur, I'm like talking to people, if you're an entrepreneur or someone who's like starting a business like this is one oh one what you need to do because if you're not a good salesperson, good luck.

• 1:33:15Speaker 02

  Makes it really hard to do anything else.

• 1:33:17Jen Cohen?

  That's like, that's like the fu- the foundation of.

• 1:33:20Speaker 02

  It's a lynchpin skill.

• 1:33:21Jen Cohen?

  Of starting businesses. And that's the person at a company that is the most valuable. If you don't know how to sell, you're fucked. Period. Right? So, okay, so Jordan, where do people find you? The, the new book is called The Wolf of Investing.

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:33:34Jen Cohen?

  I highly recommend it. It's like all his other books. So easy to digest, understand.

• 1:33:41Speaker 02

  This information is really important too. So you can go to jordanbelfort.com, Wolf of Wall Street on Instagram, on TikTok, on Twitter, and you know, you'll find me, you'll find me, I'm everywhere.

• 1:33:52Jen Cohen?

  He's everywhere. And if you don't know who this guy is, you're living under a rock.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  You don't watch, you don't go out.

• 1:33:58Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, you don't go out. And go watch the movie if you haven't, please. I mean, you never know, people can be very young watching, so. Anyway, thank you so much.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  My pleasure, this is awesome.

• 1:34:07Jen Cohen?

  Okay, bye.