Bernard Ginns: The rise and fall of stockbroker Belfort a lesson for us all

He is one of the few big-name stars still trying to make intelligent cinema.

But to date the top prize of his profession – an Academy Award – has eluded him.

Industry watchers are speculating that his next movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, will win him his first Oscar.

The forthcoming biopic sees him reunited with director Martin Scorsese to chart the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, the shamed New York stockbroker.

Belfort achieved notoriety as the entrepreneurial head of Stratton Oakmont, a Long Island brokerage with a reputation for hard sales tactics, and amassed a personal fortune worth a reputed $100m.

But his spectacular rise was followed by a crashing fall as prosecutors exposed boiler-room practices at the firm, which resulted in a 22-month prison term for securities fraud for its disgraced chairman.

America loves a story of redemption and after serving his time and ridding himself of cocaine addiction, Belfort wrote a well-received memoir about his experiences on Wall Street. I suppose the Tinseltown treatment was inevitable.

Indeed, diCaprio himself has said: “It is important that we learn the lessons that people Iike Jordan can teach us.

“He stands as an example of the transformative qualities of ambition and hard work. He is a motivator without peer.”

Since his release, Belfort has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker and now runs a consultancy offering corporate training, sales and wealth building strategies.

Watching the trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street at the weekend brought to mind the time I interviewed the fast-talking businessman back in 2010 when he visited Yorkshire.

Belfort was touring the UK as a speaker, using the motivational skills he employed as head of a sales firm but with a focus on ethics.

His show was called Breakthrough to Extreme Wealth and Success.

Belfort told me: “Making money and a lot of it and maintaining values are not mutually exclusive.

“I have been there and done that and made mistakes. I have been there and realised that essentially true wealth cannot be achieved slashing and burning and neglecting the people you love.”

At Stratton Oakmont, Belfort presided over a system that cost investors hundreds of millions of dollars. Looking back, he told me he has regrets.

“I hurt people and I was running that strategy and showing people how to be very successful without ethics. I cannot change the mistakes of the past but I can learn from them.

“My goal is to try to teach people to become successful without sacrificing integrity and ethics. I made it in the real world and failed in the real world.”

He added: “If you desire to be wealthy, it is not that difficult. It does happen overnight. There’s only one way to get rich. That’s quickly. That does not mean get rich quick. You have to do the preparation.”

Belfort then talked me through the four basic steps to take on the road towards extreme wealth.

In summary, he said integrate your internal and external worlds and have a vision for the future; manage your emotional state so this does not interfere with rational decision-making; squash any limiting beliefs you might have and have a good strategy underpinning everything you do.

I sat through some of his presentation at a hotel in central Leeds.

I’m not sure how many of the hundred or so people in the room that evening have since gone on to achieve extreme wealth.

But their presence alone demonstrated the underlying demand for this type of material.

The film is released stateside in November, but UK fans will have to wait until January.

In the meantime, for anyone who desires to learn how to achieve extreme wealth, I share with you this quote from the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr Rosewater.

“‘Go where the rich and powerful are,’ I’d tell him, ‘and learn their ways.

“They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their finger to their lips, warning you not to make a sound.

“And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man.

“You’ll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own.”

Truly entrepreneurial readers will have spotted the great opportunity to make money in this scene – bucket salesman at the riverbank.

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