The life of Jordan Belfort was turned into a film back in 2013. You might have heard of it: Wolf of Wall Street.

Yes, yes, the international box office hit, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was based on the convicted criminal’s life, one that involved a “drug-fuelled crime spree, in which he crashed a helicopter (while high on quaaludes), sank a yacht and arranged midget-tossing in his office,” details The Guardian.

The film took direction from Belfort’s first book, ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’:

Belfort, 20 years sober, lives a charmed life. It took almost seven years for the film to be made after it was optioned and even that delay worked in his favor [sic]. The script originally ended with Belfort in jail. By the time it was made, Belfort had rebuilt his business, giving seminars about his “straight line” sales techniques and the film ended with him giving one of those talks.

It was “amazing” he says. “In a way the fact it was so late really worked.”

Now, not only is he in the early stages of turning his life story into a Broadway musical, but the budding author has released another book, called ‘Way of the Wolf’, which “promises to teach anyone how to be an ace – and ethical – salesman”:

“It’s really about a strategy for coming back from failure,” he says. “I should have written this book a long time ago.”

While the book is an easy read that will no doubt “fly off the bookshelves at airports around the world”, it’s not just for sales people: everyone is always selling themselves:

“There are so many people out there who are brilliant, hardworking and industrious but lack the art of persuasion,” he says. “And because of that they end up dying with their music on their lips. It’s crazy.”

During his sit down in New York with The Guardian, Belfort touched on what’s going down in the market these days:

He says bitcoin is a bubble waiting to burst. “It’s artificially created scarcity,” he says. “The problem I have with bitcoin right now is that it’s very much like at the tail end of of 2007, 2008 right before the mortgage market blew up. You’d be getting your haircut and he’d be like: ‘Oh yeah I also do mortgages on the side.’ Everybody was a broker. Everyone’s flipping houses. Now everyone’s buying bitcoin. I promise you the end is near.”

He also thinks that the stock markets – which seem to reach record highs on a daily basis – are in for a fall. “I think the lessons of the crash have been forgotten,” he says. “It feels like we are going back into a cycle of irrational exuberance. Like with Trump. How can the country be that unsure of him, how can we be that unsure of him and the markets be so high? If there is that much uncertainty then there is risk,” he says. “The market itself might not be linked to reality any more,” he says. “It’s the ‘greater fool theory’. If there is a greater fool that will buy it from me at a greater price then I did good.”

Something is off and there is going to be a big correction, he says. “There is North Korea and yet … What are they going to do with the national debt? Something is going to happen.”

I have a suspicion that no matter what happens, the Wolf of Wall Street will be just fine.

[source:theguardian]