Former stockbroker Jordan Belfort gained notoriety in the 2013 film "The Wolf of Wall Street." The Martin Scorcese-directed film was based on Belfort's memoirs, which detailed his life of debauchery and a guilty plea to securities fraud and money laundering that landed him in federal prison for 22 months.
"I lost my money, I lost my freedom, I lost my kids for a while," he tells Goalcast in a recent video interview. "My life hit rock bottom."
Just days after his release from prison, Belfort began writing his memoirs, which received an advance of $500,000 from Random House. These days, he spends his time as a motivational speaker and consultant. According to Bloomberg, he receives around $30,000 per speech and also earns royalties for his best-selling memoirs and the movie “El Lobo Wall Street,” which grossed almost $400 million worldwide.
"You have to have a vision for your future that inspires you," Belfort tells Goalcast. "So when you think about it, it just makes you jump out of bed in the morning to really have a life that's so much better [and] so much greater than it is today."
Belfort says her vision focused on her two young children. As he lay in his cell every night, he would swear to himself that he would do everything possible to free him to correct his mistakes and prove to his children that he was not a failure.
"That was my why. It was about my children, and that's the secret, ”he says. "Your why is never about you." Belfort notes that people are willing to do "crazy things" for a cause they believe in, but that they will go so far for themselves. That's why having a vision is so important, he says.
The second step is to have a game plan. "You have to have a strategy or plan that allows you to achieve your vision," he says, adding that most people skip this step.
He gives this example: In 1978, Belfort went to a New York beach on a brutally hot summer day. While lazing around with friends, he overheard other beachgoers complaining about having to walk more than half a mile to the concession stand. Very early the next morning, he found an ice cream dealer, grabbed his “battered old car” and loaded a refrigerator with a variety of ice cream and popsicles. “All the loaded work was from $22, including the refrigerator,” he recalls.
Then he drove an hour to the beach, walked to the water's edge, and started yelling about the products he had for sale. "In an hour, I had sold the entire refrigerator for $125, and I made $ 100 in an hour," he tells Goalcast. “Back then, the minimum wage was $1.20 per hour. I almost made more than my parents. " The next day he came back with four coolers and made almost $500.
Because he was so successful, he told five friends about his business plan and they started selling refrigerators with him. However, Belfort noticed something: only one friend managed to earn more than $100 per day. The reason for this, he says, is because four friends would stop selling ice cream after one refrigerator, while the other friend would join him in selling up to four refrigerators.
"That boils down to this last element of the inner game of success," says Belfort. "And those are your standards."
He says some people have a bold vision that sounds inspiring and great, but they have low standards and are unwilling to get the job done. He calls it "champagne vision and beer standards." At the opposite extreme, there are people who are hard workers but do not have an inspiring vision.
Belfort says the two should be on par: "It's about having a match between your standards and your vision."
Source: ECTVPlayMag
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