Way of the Wolf

Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling Jordan Belfort (2017)

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The Night a Broken Whiteboard Changed Everything

It is a Tuesday evening in 1988, and Jordan Belfort is standing at the front of a cramped boardroom in Long Island, staring at twelve brokers who look like they might riot. They are young, barely educated, mostly broke. Four weeks earlier, Belfort had made the call that changed everything: Stratton Oakmont was done cold-calling ordinary people about penny stocks. From now on they would pitch blue-chip ideas to America's wealthiest 1 percent. The math was beautiful. One wealthy investor could move as much capital in a single trade as a hundred small-account clients. The commissions would be extraordinary.

They knew this because Danny Porush had already proved it. On the fifth day of the experiment, Danny had walked into Belfort's office holding a single buy ticket. His commission on that one trade: $72,000. More than the average Strattonite earned in six months of grinding penny-stock calls. Belfort looked out at the boardroom, at those cheap wooden desks and gray monitors, and knew instantly that the firm would never sell a penny stock again.

There was only one problem. He could not teach it.

For a full month, Belfort had tried everything. He read sales books, listened to training tapes, flew to Los Angeles for a three-day seminar billed as the world's best. He came back empty. The uncomfortable truth he landed on: his own system was already more advanced than anything else available, and it still was not working for his people. Danny and Jordan were closing at high rates. The Strattonites had not opened a single new wealthy account. Not one. In four weeks.