Jordan Belfort is a renowned American author, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and former stockbroker, best known for his dramatic life experiences and astounding wealth. His fame has extended far beyond his world of finance to feature in major motion pictures, best-selling books, and interviews with major news outlets.
Table of Contents:
1. Early Life and Career
2. Financial Success and The Wolf of Wall Street
3. Conviction and Aftermath
4. Media Appearances and Subsequent Accolades
5. Jordan Belfort Quotes
- Early Life and Career
Jordan Belfort was born in 1962 in Queens New York to a middle-class Jewish family. Despite his humble beginnings, Belfort was determined to make it big in the stock market and took a job as a trainee broker at the investment bank L.F. Rothschild, before moving on to create his own brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont. As Belfort grew in prestige and wealth, he became known for his unorthodox sales tactics and partying lifestyle.
Belfort quickly rose to the upper echelons of the financial elite, becoming incredibly wealthy and successful over a relatively short period of time. He founded Stratton Oakmont in 1989 and it quickly became one of the top brokerages on Wall Street, in spite of Belfort’s questionable tactics. Stratton Oakmont achieved widespread success and became best known for its pump-and-dump schemes that lead to massive inflation in the prices of certain stocks.
While Belfort was making millions of dollars, he was also leading a lavish lifestyle. He purchased a 90-foot yacht, several luxury cars, helicopters, and much more. He also became known for his wild behavior, such as throwing wild office parties and employing illegal substances. As Belfort’s success and recklessness grew, so did his enemies.
- Financial Success and The Wolf of Wall Street
As Belfort’s financial empire grew, so did his enemies. In 1996, Belfort and Stratton Oakmont were charged with manipulating stock prices and fraud. Despite facing jail time, Belfort was able to quickly and successfully coordinate a plea deal that kept him out of jail and allowed him to pay back a portion of the money he had taken from investors.
Belfort also wrote two best-selling memoirs, The Wolf of Wall Street and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, which detailed his life as a stockbroker and subsequent fall. The books were later adapted into major motion pictures by renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese and starred Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role. The movies received critical acclaim and were both commercial successes, further increasing Belfort’s presence in popular culture.
- Conviction and Aftermath
While Belfort managed to avoid lengthy jail time, he was placed on probation for two years and was forced to pay back millions of dollars to his former investors. Belfort also had to resign from his post as CEO of Stratton Oakmont. He served his two-year sentence without incident and emerged a changed man.
- Media Appearances and Subsequent Accolades
Since the completion of his sentence, Belfort has gone on to become a sought-after motivational speaker, delivering speeches and seminars around the globe. His media appearances have included talk shows such as The Howard Stern Show and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. He has also made a name for himself as a featured writer and presenter on such notable television shows as The Jon Stewart Show and Entourage.
Belfort has gone on to author books such as The Way of The Wolf, recently publishing the book The Wolf of Wall Street in 2018. He has received numerous accolades, including speaking engagements at the World Economic Forum, TED talks, and United Nations summits. In essence, Belfort has managed to turn his infamous past into a lucrative career, making him an inspiring example for those who have experienced adversity.
Jordan Belfort Quotes
“I want you to deal with your problems by becoming rich.” – Jordan Belfort
“I want you to back yourself into a corner. Give yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire and so unthinkable that you’ll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed.” – Jordan Belfort
“Victor was Chinese by birth and Jewish by injection, having been raised amid the most savage young Jews anywhere on Long Island: the towns of Jericho and Syosset.” – Jordan Belfort
“Every person around here, they want to get rich and they want to get rich quickly. They all want something for nothing.” – Jordan Belfort
“I don’t think you’re cut out for this job. You look like a kid, and Wall Street’s no place for kids. It’s a place for killers. A place for mercenaries. So in that sense, you’re lucky I’m not the one who does the hiring around here.” ― Jordan Belfort
“Average sucks.” – Jordan Belfort
“Act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today – you will become successful.” – Jordan Belfort
“Playing it safe and taking no risks is a shortcut to poverty.” – Jordan Belfort
“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.” – Jordan Belfort
“Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.” – Jordan Belfort
“It was as if I was bulletproof or something. How many times had I cheated death?” – Jordan Belfort
“Whether you say, ‘I can’ or ‘I can’t,’ you’re right either way.” – Jordan Belfort
“Money doesn’t just buy you a better life, better food, better cars, better p*ssy — it also makes you a better person.” – Jordan Belfort
“If you try and fail, people will praise you for trying. If you fail to even try people will ignore you.” – Jordan Belfort
“People don’t buy stock; it gets sold to them. Don’t ever forget that.” – Jordan Belfort
“You need to see things as they are, not worse than they are then see them better than they are and make them that way.” – Jordan Belfort
“They were drunk on youth, fueled by greed, and higher than kites.” – Jordan Belfort
“The Wolf strikes again!” – Jordan Belfort
“There’s no nobility in poverty.” – Jordan Belfort (The Wolf Of Wall Street)
“Money is the oxygen of capitalism and I wanna breathe more than any man alive.” – Jordan Belfort
“Let me tell you something. There’s no nobility in poverty. I’ve been a rich man and I’ve been a poor man. And I choose rich every f**king time.” – Jordan Belfort
“Dream stompers are people who want to stomp on your hopes and dreams. Lose their phone numbers.” – Jordan Belfort
“There are always patterns in everything, there are patterns in books, there are patterns in human behavior, there are patterns in success, there are patterns for everything in life. You just need to pay attention to them.” – Jordan Belfort
“Work until your bank account looks like a phone number.” – Jordan Belfort
“Don’t follow the path. Blaze the trail.” – Jordan Belfort
“Remember: Success begins in your head.” – Jordan Belfort
“You can watch me, mock me, try to block me but you cannot stop me.” – Jordan Belfort
“Have you got the guts to live?” – Jordan Belfort
“When you live your life by poor standards, you inflict damage on everyone who crosses your path, especially those you love.” – Jordan Belfort
“Hard work beats talent. Every time!” – Jordan Belfort (Wolf Of Wall Street)
“Still, give them to me young, hungry, and stupid. And in no time, I will make them rich.” – Jordan Belfort
“Yeah, that’s right; money is the greatest single problem-solver known to man…” – Jordan Belfort
“You grow stronger from failure than you do from success.” – Jordan Belfort
“In retrospect, I remember feeling somewhat relieved – that the chaos and insanity would finally be behind me.” ” – Jordan Belfort
“Money is the tool, my child, not the mason; it can help you make acquaintances but not true friends, and it might buy you a life of leisure but not a life of peace.” – Jordan Belfort
“If you give people a good enough ‘why’, they will always figure out the how.” – Jordan Belfort
“Pay close attention to people who don’t clap when you win.” – Jordan Belfort
“Create a vision that makes you wanna jump out of bed in the morning.” – Jordan Belfort
“Best way to sell something: don’t sell anything. Earn awareness, respect, and trust of those who might buy.” – Jordan Belfort
“When it’s all said and done, it’s the energy we send out into the universe that often comes back to us. That’s a universal law, love.” – Jordan Belfort
“Don’t hang up until the client either buys or dies.” – Jordan Belfort
“97% of the people who quit too soon are employed by the 3% who didn’t.” – Jordan Belfort
“There’s no way to succeed in business without the highest ethical standards.” – Jordan Belfort
“If money isn’t everything works at McDonald’s.” – Jordan Belfort
“Inside the restaurant young Strattonites carried on their time-honored tradition of acting like packs of untamed wolves.” – Jordan Belfort
“I had considered changing my phone number, but I was so far behind on my phone bill that NYNEX was after me too.” – Jordan Belfort
“Just like that I made two grand, the other guys looked at me like I just discovered fire.” – Jordan Belfort
“Perhaps I should have run the other way right then and there, realizing that a guy like this might bring out the worst in me.” – Jordan Belfort
“Winners use words that say ‘must’ and ‘will’.” – Jordan Belfort
“When you do something, you might fail. But that’s not because you’re a failure, it’s because you have not learned enough” – Jordan Belfort
“He was a complicated man, my father; a man of great mental capacity who was driven to succeed yet humbled into mediocrity by his own emotional limitations.” – Jordan Belfort
“When the window of opportunity open, that’s when you work twice as hard.” – Jordan Belfort
“I’ve got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?” – Jordan Belfort
“You wanna know what money sounds like? Go to a trading floor on Wall Street.” – Jordan Belfort
“No matter what happened to you in your past, you are not your past, you are the resources and the capabilities you glean from it. And that is the basis for all change.” – Jordan Belfort
“The story you tell yourself is exactly what holds you back from being successful.” – Jordan Belfort
“Do not let there be a shred of doubt in your mind. Chase your dreams.” – Jordan Belfort
“You know, just… people say s**t. I don’t even know. I don’t even listen to it half the time.” – Jordan Belfort
“Everything that has happened to you up to this point is irrelevant. It’s your past.” – Jordan Belfort
“It’s business. Leave your emotions at the door.” – Jordan Belfort
“I believe in total immersion, if you want to be rich, you have to program your mind to be rich. You have to unlearn all the thoughts that were making you poor and replace them with new thoughts – rich thoughts.” – Jordan Belfort
“There’s only 1 way to get rich, quick! But not through a get-rich-quick scheme. There’s a difference.” – Jordan Belfort
“Every human being, after all, is possessed with the undeniable urge to confess his sins. Religions were built on such things. And kingdoms were conquered with the promise that all sins would be forgiven afterward.” – Jordan Belfort
Source: Wikipedia JB InvestoPedia Twitter Instagram LinkedIn IMDb FinBold WealthyGorilla SystemeIO