This Is How The Top 1% Build Wealth - Talent Is A Lie | Jordan Belfort

If you're looking for ways to be a visionary, get rid of your limiting beliefs, and have absolute certainty, then this video is for you.

Most people have goals in life, and we would think you got to be goal-oriented. That's the first mistake.

The beliefs that we have really control our actions. We don't typically go at things or do things that we believe we're not good at.

What sales really is, is the transfer of emotion.

Need motivation? Watch a Top 10 with Believe Nation. What's up, it's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see explode out onto the world. So let's get your motivation to a 10 and get you believing in you. Grab a snack and chew on today's lessons from a man who once sold $20,000 worth of ice cream in a summer at the beach and wanted to become a dentist to actually becoming the Wolf of Wall Street and a motivational speaker. He's Jordan Belfort, and here's my take on his Top 10 Rules of Success Volume 2. Enjoy. All right, let's kick things off with rule number 1: Be a visionary.

Most people have goals in life, and we would think you got to be goal-oriented. That's That's the first mistake. Yes, you need goals, but there is something far beyond goals, which is what all successful people have, and that's a vision. It's a vision for the future. See, here's what it is. You see things as they are, but not worse than they are.

Yeah.

Which is what a lot of people do.

Yeah.

They say, oh, it's so terrible. They tell themselves this wild story about why they can't take action, and in truth, the story they tell themselves is exactly what holds them back from being successful. It's that bullshit story that stops them from acting. Like, oh, there's so much, the economy, and they play the blame game. They complain, they justify, and it stops them from moving forward. So see things as they are, not worse than they are, and then see them better than they are and make them that way. Look at a Gandhi, right? He survived hunger strikes and united a country, not 'cause he had a goal for a free India. He had a vision of a free India. Nelson Mandela, all those years in jail, a vision. Richard Branson, who's a friend of mine, who I know, he sponsors me, my speaking tour. He's a visionary. Bill Gates, they're all visionaries. And the best example, considering we're in Hollywood, is a guy like James Cameron. Now here's the trap. James Cameron is probably the greatest visionary of all time in filmmaking.

Would you agree?

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.

He was interviewed on Diane Sawyer, and they asked him a question of, what do you owe your success to? And what he said was this. I set really, really high goals. So even if I fall short, I'm still doing great. And people thought that was pretty profound, and I actually believed that too. It's not true though. See, what's happening is this. James Cameron is not a goal setter. He's a visionary. He just doesn't realize 'cause he's running unconscious strategy himself. If I said to James Cameron, is it really just the goals, or do you have a vision for Avatar? He'd say, oh, of course I will. And he'd get all excited and he'd tell you how nothing was gonna stop him from making this movie. The fact that it took 10 years and ran $200 million over budget and he put money in himself, all that's not what goal setters do. Goal setters will set a goal, gets tough, and they abandon it. And I can't overemphasize that distinction. That's number 1 is vision.

Rule number 2, my personal favorite, is get rid of limiting beliefs.

Second thing is your beliefs.

Essentially, the beliefs that you hold about yourself, about your capabilities, about money, whether you have beliefs that attract money to you or that repel money. Whether that you have beliefs that allow you to move through barriers and obstacles, or beliefs that cause you to shy away from barriers and obstacles. And the beliefs that we have really control our actions. We don't typically go at things or do things that we believe we're not good at. We don't take actions if we think we're going to fail. We shy away. And then, of course, we don't say that we're scared. We come up with a story. So there's sort of these negative, these limiting beliefs instigate The telling of bullshit stories to ourselves, right? And it holds us back from success. So the idea is that, is to understand what your core limiting beliefs are and then to actually break those beliefs.

And you can do that.

It's not that difficult to do it. Do it in a seminar setting. You break the limiting beliefs and you essentially empower somebody by helping them install their own beliefs in themselves.

Your beliefs are malleable. You can change them.

So the idea is to Essentially retrofit your beliefs to serve you and your outcomes. In the case of entrepreneurs, it's that money is not the root of all evil, that building a business is possible, that I can learn whatever I need to know, those sort of beliefs.

Rule number 3 is learn how to influence and persuade.

Warren Buffett was doing a speech with Bill Gates about maybe 10 years ago, and he was asked by a college student, what can we do as students to make ourselves more valuable in the workplace? So you'd think Warren Buffett would say, learn how to pick stocks, learn how to investments, whatever he would say, right? Not what he says. He says, go out and take a course in sales and communication.

Yeah, he did Dale Carnegie, changed his life.

There you go. And that was the point because he took that. He says, I took Dale Carnegie, changed without that. You know what he'd be without that course? He'd be the richest money manager in Omaha, Nebraska that no one ever heard of. Yeah.

And he met his wife that way, the love of his life.

Because without the ability to influence and persuade, you can't put yourself out there into the world and be known for what you really are.

Rule number 4 is manage your state.

You're in an angry, pissed off, negative, unresourceful state, you can't do anything well. You've had one of those days, for instance, where everything you're doing, you're like, I can't believe I said that, I can't believe I did that, I'm such a fool, right? You had that day? We've all had that day. Next day, similar situation, you're like, wow, you know, that was me, I did a really great job, right? You were perfect. So one day you're brilliant, next day, same situation, you're brutal. That's not talent, that's not ability, that's the state that you're in. So the key to success is not just, A, to have your vision, but to be able to manage the way you feel in the moment. Now, if you're a parent, what's the most resourceful state? Patience. If you're a businessman looking to make money on Wall Street, it's probably certainty or courage, because fear is the worst emotion of all. For being a trader on Wall Street. So every business has different states that you need to master. Now, in most businesses, in matters of wealth, there's 3, 3 states that you need to master to be able to trigger at a moment's notice. And it's easy to do once you learn how, which is what I teach people, okay? And number 1 is certainty, to be certain about what you're doing. The second one is clarity, to be clear, to not to be overwhelmed, which the opposite would be overwhelmed. And the Third is courage, is to have a conviction, to know that you might not be right all the time, but you're going to not let fear stop you. Because if there's one distinction between the wealthy people of the world and the poor people of the world, is that wealthy people act in the face of fear while poor people run away from fear.

Rule number 5 is do what you love.

Choose something that you do that you love, that you're passionate about. And that's like a cliché, but it's true. You know, there's many, many ways to make money in this world. It's easy to get rich. It's not hard.

It's easy.

That's one of the best-kept secrets in the world. It's easy to make a lot of money.

But you can make money in ways that, you know, are easy and fun.

It's part of your system, right?

Easy, lucrative, and fun, right?

And you can make money in ways that are a real pain in the ass. Where it's hard work, it doesn't empower you, it doesn't inspire you. So number 1 is choose something that's going to feed your spirit. It's going to feed your soul and inspire you.

Rule number 6: Have absolute certainty.

What sales really is, is the transfer of emotion. That's what's happening when you sell. You're transferring emotion, and the primary emotion that you're transferring is the emotion of certainty. In other words, watch this. You as a salesman, when you enter the encounter, you have to be absolutely certain that your product is the best, makes sense, it's going to give them the best benefits out there, the best value proposition and so forth, and you are in this state of absolute certainty. So imagine now we have a continuum of certainty, a line of certainty. So we have this line of certainty, and on one side of the equation we have what's called a 1, and the other side we have a 10. So a 10 represents a state of absolute certainty, meaning your product is the best thing since sliced bread. It's going to give them exactly what they want benefit-wise, it's the best deal for the money, it's going to make them feel— the whole thing, right? It is just absolutely awesome. That's a 10 on the certainty scale. It is great, the best thing since sliced bread. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have what's called a 1.

Right?

Which is it's the worst piece of shit in the world, right? It's crap, right? Your product is terrible. It's not going to work.

Okay.

The benefits don't match up with what they need. It's overpriced. I don't even want to be near this piece of crap because I'll just feel stupid even buying it or even thinking about buying it. That's a 1, right? So here's the first thing you need to understand, that the moment you open up your mouth to speak as a salesperson, you start a sale. The question is this: where is the average prospect, the person you're trying to sell to, where are they on the certainty scale at the beginning? Anyone know?

Where are they?

Who the fuck knows? You must be in this state of absolute certainty because what's happening is this: what you're doing when you're selling is everything that you say, everything that you do, every tonality you use, every gesture you make, every document you hand them, every phrase that comes out of your mouth are all designed to do one simple thing: to essentially raise the prospect's level of certainty to as close to a 10 as possible. That's what you're doing. The words that you say, the presentation that you make, the tonalities that you use, any documents you hand, sales aids, whatever it might be, is all designed to take them from where they are on the certainty scale and move them to as close to where you are as possible. Essentially, you're transferring your white-hot certainty to someone who's at a cooler level, at a lower level of certainty. It's almost like this first law I think it's actually the second law of thermodynamics in physics, right? And you study physics, energy always flows from hot to cold, not the other way around. So you need to be at this white-hot level of certainty. It's exuding out of you every pore that you have. And we know what certainty feels like and sounds like. We intuitively know as salespeople, and our prospects know as well. We know when someone sounds certain and they have confidence and they're enthusiastic. We know what that looks like, feels like, and sounds like.

Sounds like rule number 7 is learn new skills.

People don't realize how much of success is not an accident. It's about people have these extraordinary skills and they take action.

Yeah.

So I'm a big believer in learning skills. Like, you read my first book, right?

Yes.

Well, when I first tried to write, I was a terrible writer. I taught myself to write by—

Wolf of Wall Street was your first book?

Yes.

I never wrote before.

I couldn't. When I first tried to write as a terrible writer—

how many copies have sold?

Millions of copies, right? Wow. So, so how did I write Wolf of Wall Street myself without a ghostwriter? I picked up a book called Bonfire of the Vanities and started reading it. Tom Wolfe, I'm sure you've read it, right?

Yeah.

And as soon as I started reading, I'm like, oh my God, this guy's the best writer in the world. I want to write like that. And I used his book like a textbook. I took out my highlighter and I broke down his strategy for writing. And I practiced before I wrote the book. I said, let me first teach myself the skill to write like Tom Wolfe. And that's what I did. I spent about 6 or 7 months with 18 hours a day. Really? Oh, yes. To the point I could recite the whole book verbatim. Okay. Seriously. So the point is, is that I learned how to introduce characters.

It's almost like it was a mentor. The book was your mentor.

And my model.

Yeah.

And then I wrapped it up with Hunter S. Thompson because I think it made sense because of the drug use.

Right.

So I know, but I use those people. And then when I was reviewing the New York Times, they said the book sounds like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe. So it was amazing, right, that I accomplished my mission and made— turned myself into a writer.

Rule number 8 is manage your standards.

On some level, your standard, which is really like a thermostat, it's where you're going to end up. Now, your standard is not a constant where you're like, this is my standard. If you have a standard at any given moment in time, you'll be slightly above your standard or slightly below your standard. But that standard, it really dictates sort of where you end up over the long term. So there's many people out there, for instance, that, you know, they have a standard. They need to make $200,000 a year, so they make $200,000 a year. Because what happens when they go over that, they back off. Other people understand they make $2 million a year.

I won't settle until I make $2 million, right?

Those people end up at $2 million. So the idea is that to first realize what is my standard? And does my standard serve my outcome? Is my standard too low? Is my standard unreasonable? Is there any, you know, conflict? There's dissonance between where you want to go, what your actual standard is, then you need to either raise your standard, or sometimes even it could be lowering a financial standard if it's corrupting the rest of your life. But typically what we find is that people have financial standards that are really not serving. They're a little bit low and they raise them up.

Rule number 9 is hustle.

I was a born entrepreneur. I exited my mother's womb when I was 8 years old. I was delivering papers door-to-door, knocking on doors, expanding the paper out. When I was 12 years old, I was shoveling driveways after snowstorms in New York. Yeah, make $20 a driveway after a big snowstorm. Uh, I hit it big for the first time when I was 16, selling ices on the beach, blanket to blanket blanket.

And I—

but that's how it started. And after that, I was hiring people to come work.

I had little—

I had 12-year-old kids selling puka shell necklaces for me. My mother was buttering bagels in the morning. And that was really the way I always was, was, you know, moving towards life. Look, at 16, yeah, I was just, you know, always wanted to make money.

And rule number 10, the last one before the bonuses, is always be prepared.

You ended up at this firm, um, it was Oak— what was it, Oak Stratton or Oakton?

Well, I still—

I went to a firm called called the Investor Center, which is a penny stock firm, right? And that was where I, um, you know, it was really the first time I ever sold stock, and I became the, the top broker the first day. I just broke all the records. Really?

In the first day you broke all the records?

First day, yeah, yeah.

So you're a born— do you think you're a born salesman?

Yeah, for sure I am. And there are people out there who are, you know, born closers, born salesmen. Far and few between, there are some. Um, what that really means though, what does it mean to be a born salesman? What it means that you're actually running a strategy automatically inside. You're doing it.

You're still following a script, but it comes natural automatically.

So, but you don't realize it, but you are following a certain protocol that gets you to the same outcome every time. So that's really what a born closer is.

So for those people watching that are entrepreneurs, want to learn sales, what did you do in that first day that you basically became a top sales? And like, was there— we're going to talk more about your wholesale straight-line formula, but first day you didn't have time to implement a whole script. What do you do that most people don't do? Is it your tonality? That's one of the things— body language, tonality, taking people through features, not just features but benefits. Like, what do you think you did that first day?

Well, in fact, I see one of the interesting things you say, you didn't have time to put together a script. In fact, I did.

Oh, you did? Oh yeah, on day one I took 3 hours to write the right one.

See, I would never— this is something interesting that happened many years later. This is relevant, is that when I was tested by some psychologists about my ability to close, they put me through a whole battery of these weird tests. And one of them was a mock sale where I had to close someone in an investment type of situation. It was being filmed.

Was it like, sell me this pen?

No, no, they handed me some information on the dairy industry. And I had to then convince someone to open up an account at a firm to manage the money for the dairy industry, right? So they hand me about 10, 12 pages of information, right? And they said, take as much time as you want to study this, and let's see you close this guy, right? So I start reading it, I'm reading it, and I'm reading, right? And I start writing down my thoughts. About 30 minutes later, they knock on the door. I'm like, yeah? Said, do you need more time? I said, yeah, just give me another 30 minutes. They said, okay, no problem. 30 minutes goes by, they come back. I said, just give me another 20 minutes. They said, no problem. Take 20 more minutes. I said, give me 15 more minutes. Right. Anyway, after about 2 hours, I said, I'm ready. And I had wrote myself a really, really— not an exact script, but pretty close to a really killer script with sort of, you know, how I would actually engineer the sale from start to finish.

You're selling penny stocks.

No, no, this is— no, this I'm talking now is recent. Many years ago.

Oh, recent.

Okay. I want to tell you this because it's relevant. Now, this is in 19— this is like, I think, 2010 this happened.

Okay.

With Psychologist being filmed. Okay.

This is the latest.

I had some guy who was an actor and he was supposed to be the CEO of a dairy company and I was supposed to close him. So we go through this whole thing and I introduce myself and we go through this back and forth, back and forth and they're filming the whole thing. And after about 15 minutes, the guy just, he's like, "Okay, fine, I'll open up an account." And he starts laughing his ass off. So I'm like, "What's so funny?" Psychologists come in, they say, "We told him under no circumstances should he say yes." Yet within 15 minutes he said yes. I don't get it. I said, well, you know, when I got the guy into a situation, did it make sense to say no? He said, well, here's the weird thing. We've tested 100 other people in sales, and no one ever spent more than 5 minutes reading the material.

You spent 2 hours.

So preparation, it's some simple fundamentals.

Strategic, well, part of the straight line is about strategic preparation, meaning that you don't, you know what, listen, my overriding concept is every sale's the same, right? Yes. And that would seem to be counterintuitive. Intuitive because everyone has different needs, different belief systems, different outcomes. But the truth is that every sale is the same. And I'll explain that a little bit later on in the interview. But it starts with your ability to essentially make an airtight case to someone on both a logical and an emotional level about essentially why you're right to want them to do whatever you want them to do. Why does it make sense?

Makes sense, right?

Yes. And it's got to be an airtight case, and then you have to be able to also accomplish other things as well. So there's two ways to go about that. One is to wing it, which you might be able to do if you're really, really great, or you can write it down, plan it out. I mean, the second one is where you really start to bring your averages up tremendously. So I'm a big believer in strategic preparation.

So Jordan always has a lot of great things to say, a lot of which I agree with. It's why we've been able to do two volumes of his top 10 rules success. My personal favorite is rule number 2, get rid of limiting personal beliefs, because every major growth that I've seen in my business has come from me squashing a limiting belief. In my very first business, I was 19 years old and I didn't have a science degree and I sucked at computers, and I was selling biotechnology scientific software to people who are 3 times my age in some cases, who had multiple PhDs, and I thought they won't listen listen to me. And it took me a year to really figure that out, that all they cared about was that I could provide value, not what my background was, not how old I was. And so the story that I was telling myself as to why I couldn't do something was really limiting me. And every major breakthrough that I've made in my business has been because I broke through something here, something inside myself, and then I carried that forward. I raised my standards, I had new belief systems, and then I can go conquer new mountains. And Still, you might think that I've accomplished a lot with my YouTube and my businesses, but I could still be doing a lot more. And the thing that's holding me back is another set of limiting beliefs. So I need to find those, crush those, and move on to the next step. And so I love the message. Hopefully you guys did too. Rule number 2 is my personal favorite. I want to know from you guys, do you agree? Is rule number 2 the best in this video, or is there one that hit you harder? Leave it in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out.

Find out.

Now I made this video because Crazy Chicken Penguin asked me to, so if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, check out the link in the description to the request line and you can go and cast your vote. I also want to give a quick shout out to Randy Pierce. Randy, thank you so much, man, for picking up a copy of my new book, The Top 10 Rules of Success, and taking that picture and sending it in. I really appreciate it, man, and I hope you're enjoying the book. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.

And marketing is about, you know, bringing massive numbers of people into your sales funnel to attract people, but not just any people, attract qualified people. You know, how do you identify your target market? What are the strategies that allow you to really have a message-to-market match, to contact a lot of people at once in a cost-effective manner and attract them to whatever it is, whether it's your landing page, an incoming call, it doesn't matter, to walk into your store, whatever your business is. But without the marketing equation, you know, you'll be selling and selling and selling. It's all cold. So at the highest level, companies that succeed, they have not just a great sales program, they have a great marketing program as well.

Let's focus on money for a second because especially this time, the economy, everyone's interested in making more money, securing the future for not just themselves themselves, their families, for the children. And this is important. People say, you know, money doesn't matter. I'm like, oh, so you're broke? Well, that's— if someone tells you they're broke, they never had any money. Because just look at it like this, just imagine if you said that your wife wasn't that important, how long would she stick around? Yeah, not too long, right? Money is important. Money is not going to make you happy. No. But an absence of money could buy you an awful lot of misery. So I look at money as this: it's a problem that needs to be solved.

Yeah.

And here's That's another distinction which I think everyone should really key into, because this misconception that, you know, in some way money might be evil— here's the deal: there's no amount of poverty that you can have in your life that can make one other person wealthy. There's no amount of misery that you can have in your life that can make one other person happy. There's no amount of, of, of, of, of sickness in your life that can make one other person healthy. So if you want to make the world a happier, healthier, wealthier place, then Get as much of those gifts you can for yourself and then spread it around.

There are certain commonalities to all human beings, right? When it comes to rapport, getting into rapport, both in a business setting and in a personal setting, but it really boils down to two things. Number one, that you care. Yes. That in business you're not just there to make a sale to earn a commission. You actually care about the person and you want them to get the outcome they're looking That's number 1. And number 2 is that I'm just like you. And not like everything you like, I like. That's disingenuous bullshit, right?

Like, you know, you see a fish and go, oh my God, you like the fish?

You start bullshitting about it.

Like Michael Scott in The Office.

That's ridiculous, right? I'm talking about something very different. I'm talking about that you speak at the same general pace they do. That when they answer a question, like, aha, yep, got it, ooh, the interest that you see, yep, we I get it. We're on the same page. And it's very— it's almost below the surface because here's the thing. Imagine, you know, you just meet a salesman. You're a prospect, right? And the salesman looks at you and says, you know, I really care about you.

And you'll say, what the bullshit?

You care?

You want to make it—

the word—

see, in the beginning, there's no words you can say to say I care about you. Over time, of course, you give great service, you have a relationship. Yes, you can tell someone I care and I've prove that. But in an initial contact, that's so disingenuous. So yes, how do you get that across? Through tonality and body language. That's how you do it. Yep. So let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy. The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you, or that sums you up, or that would be kind of like a little beacon, Hey Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.