Net Worth | $97,000,000 |
---|---|
Name | Jordan Ross Belfort |
Date of Birth/Age | July 9, 1962 (age 57) |
State/City of origin | Queens, New York City, United States |
Height | 5'7 |
Occupation(s) | Author,entrepreneur, motivational |
Net Worth
Jordan Belfort’s net worth is $100 million.
How Did Jordan Belfort Make His Money?
Jordan Belfort is a former financial adviser who once made millions on the stock market. He is now a book author, motivational speaker and consultant to movies.
Belfort became notorious as a man who started with nothing and formed his own investment firm when he couldn’t get hired at the big firms on Wall Street.
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A Money Machine
Within a few years, he and his associates were raking in the money hand over fist. At one point, he made $49 million in one year.
Belfort used the money to live a wild, self-indulgent life, surrounding himself with yachts, beautiful women, drugs and increasingly illegal schemes.
Belfort’s exploits were so wild that he became the subject of the top-grossing Martin Scorsese movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio portrayed Belfort’s life, rise and fall. The movie was based on Belfort’s 2007 book of the same title.
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The Law Catches Up
The law eventually caught up with Belfort. In 1998, he was convicted of securities fraud and money laundering. Belfort spent two years in prison.
He was also ordered to pay his clients back $110 million. He has only paid back about $11 million of that fine. That explains his negative net worth.
Since his release from prison, Belfort has made his living as a motivational speaker, sales trainer and writer.
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Jordan Belfort Quick Facts
- He was born on July 9, 1962, in New York City.
- He is 5 foot 7 inches tall.
Career
Belfort was born in New York City and raised in the Bayside section of Queens.
Early Business Sense
From an early age, Belfort showed an interest in making money. While he was still in high school, he and his friend Elliott Lowenstein set up a business selling Italian ices to people on the beach.
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Their business idea made them over $20,000, which was a huge amount in those days. It would be equivalent to $65,000 in today’s money.
College Life
Belfort wanted to be a dentist, and he planned to use that money to pay for dental school. He attended American University in Washington, D.C., as an undergraduate.
Belfort was accepted into the University of Maryland dental school, one of the top dental schools in the country.
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In his first year, however, one of his professors told him that dentists were not making as much money as they had in the past. He told Belfort that if he were choosing the profession for money, he should get out.
Belfort took that advice and dropped out.
Selling Success
Belfort moved back to New York and started working as a sales representative for a meat and fish company. Showing his abilities as a salesman again, he was successful at this.
At one point, he had several people working for him. He later wrote that he was “moving” over 5000 pounds of food each week.
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The business may have been successful at first, but eventually things slowed down. When he was 25, Belfort dissolved the business and filed for bankruptcy.
Wall Street
In 1986, Belfort got a job at a Wall Street firm as an entry-level trainee. He was only there for a year when the firm laid him and other workers off during the stock market crash of 1987.
In 1988, Belfort convinced the trading firm Stratton to let him set up an affiliate trading company called Stratton Oakmont.
He eventually made enough money to buy out the original owners entirely and own Stratton Oakmont outright.
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Pump and Dump
At Stratton Oakmont, Belfort employed what analysts call a “pump and dump” method of getting money from investors. In this scheme, brokers first “pump” the stock by overinflating its value.
The brokers then sell their own shares in the company while the price is high. Later, the brokers sell the overinflated stock at a cheaper price. This is called “dump selling.”
When that happens, the stock loses its value and the investor loses all their money.
At Stratton, Belfort and his associates concentrated on small, so-called penny stocks. Using the pump-and-dump method, they were able to defraud their investors of billions of dollars.
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Turning Rookies Into Stars
Belfort had over 1000 brokers on staff. The firm was known for hiring inexperienced brokers and training them in Belfort’s sales techniques.
Together, they made billions of dollars for the company. Belfort became known for his motivational speeches to his employees, and he earned their undying loyalty by making them rich.
He also threw huge parties for his associates and took them on lavish company trips.
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Steve Madden IPO
Belfort has said that the illegal schemes were only a small part of Stratton Oakmont’s dealings, and that the majority of what he did was legal.
One incident he pointed out was the legitimate initial public offering (IPO) of Steve Madden Shoes in 1990.
Prosecutors in his case, however, said the firm was completely corrupt.
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Prosecution and Prison
Everything came crashing down in 1997, when government investigations uncovered the details of what Stratton Oakmont was doing.
Belfort was convicted. Part of his sentence included a deal to pay half of his income to his victims until the full amount of $110 million was paid off.
Over the years, the government has occasionally accused Belfort of defaulting on his payments. Belfort has said that he has made offers that the government has rejected.
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Global Motivation
In 2008, Belfort founded Global Motivation, Inc., a motivational speaking company.
He gives talks to companies about business ethics and what he learned from the mistakes that he made during his rise to fame and money. He charges between $35,000 and $70,000 for each speech.
He also offers a sales training seminar to teach his personal style of salesmanship. The sales seminar costs $80,000 to $100,000.
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Jordan Belfort Site
Belfort offers courses, books and workshops through his website JordanBelfortMembers.com. You can join the Wolfpack to get personalized training and advice for a fee.
You can order courses and books to learn what Belfort calls his Straight Line Sales System. As Belfort says, “This system was born, battle-tested and perfected on Wall Street.
This is the ‘playbook’ I used to teach clueless kids off the street my personal brand of persuasion.”
Relationships
Belfort has been married and divorced twice. He has two children.
Favorite Quotes from Jordan Belfort
“The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.”
“I want you to deal with your problems by becoming rich.” –
“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.”
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Success Tips from Jordan Belfort
1.“Successful people are 100% convinced that they are masters of their own destiny. They’re not creatures of circumstance, they create circumstance. If the circumstances around them suck, they change them.”
2.“If you want to be rich, never give up. People tend to give up. If you have persistence, you will come out ahead of most people. More importantly, you will learn. When you do something, you might fail. But that’s not because you’re a failure. It’s because you have not learnt enough. Do it differently each time. One day, you will do it right. Failure is your friend.”
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