Reykjavík Grapevine - 23.05.2014, Side 24

24 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 06 — 2014FILM
When I interviewed Belfort the week prior,
I asked him, given recent events—the col-
lapse of an economy fueled by an overlev-
eraged banking sector and unsustainable
household debt—do Icelanders really need
to get better at selling stuff?
Icelanders, says Belfort, “innocent
people who woke up one day and their
banks had been destroyed by a handful
of greedy people,” are shellshocked, in
danger of passing up new opportunities.
Belfort feels he’s in a great position to
inspire Icelanders to overcome “limiting
beliefs” formed in response to the crisis.
People take note of his own comeback
from a more “self-inflicted” trauma, as
he explains: “I went from being incredibly
wealthy at a young age to being broke, in
jail, losing my self-respect, my children
being taken from me, being smeared and
vilified in the press—and yet somehow, I
managed to take that and come back, and
build an amazing life again, and I'm in the
process of paying back all the money that
I—that, that was lost. When people look at
that, they're like, ‘Wow, if this guy can do it,
I can do it.’ Especially when I explain how I
did it.”
Belfort, so very tan, has an emphatic
Noo Yawk voice further enlivened with a
boiler-room vocabulary. At Háskólabíó, he
tells us that Icelanders were “hit between
the eyes with a lump of shit.” But the col-
lapse was the fault of a few crooks at the
banks. Wealth is not thievery; the past is
not the future. He refers to new oil explo-
ration in Iceland’s territorial waters, and
says he’s heard that some Icelanders are
relieved that any major windfall is years
off. He makes a face like: Whaaa?
“It’s bullshit.” There is a little applause.
We stand and repeat after him: “I am
ready to feel good NOW.” We are victims.
“Twenty scumbags” in the banking sector
are villains.
Super Power,
Super Responsibility
Belfort has, he says, a dualistic worldview:
yin and yang. Inner attitudes and outer be-
haviors. The twin motivations of pain and
pleasure. Duality also perhaps informs his
evident belief that sales technique, and
the pursuit of wealth, is either ethical,
or is not. We stand and repeat: “I will be
filthy rich.” “I will be filthy rich.” “I WILL BE
FILTHY RICH.” “I WILL BE FILTHY RICH.”
“But not greedy.” “But not greedy.” There
are caveats that can be inserted into the
call and response, which ensure we stay
in the correct category.
In our interview, Belfort is adamant
that “the idea that you need to slash and
burn and disempower others to get ahead
is complete and utter bullshit.” To create
sustainable success, you’re “looking to
create value.” He thinks that ‘The Wolf of
Wall Street’ is a more moral film than Oli-
ver Stone's ‘Wall Street,’ because you see
his “comeuppance” (and are then inspired
to see him come out of jail to be success-
ful, again, this time doing it the right way:
he’s in the process of arranging a tour
that’s going to net him forty or fifty mil-
lion dollars, he reminds both me and the
crowd, all of which he’s going to give back
as restitution, which, he also notes, he can
afford to do). During his talk, Belfort fre-
quently prefaces mentions of ethics with
the instruction to “write this down.”
Belfort’s four-hour talk is split into two
parts. In the first half, he discusses his
philosophy of sales and entrepreneurship.
In the second half, he introduces us to his
“Straight Line” system of person-to-per-
son sales technique. When we spoke on
the phone, he was clear in his conviction
that his message is perfectly compatible
with ethics. It was DiCaprio who con-
vinced him of this, at a time when Belfort
was reluctant to unleash his system onto
the world, for fear of its consequences.
“Nothing’s wrong with your system, your
system’s amazing,” Belfort says that the
star reassured him. “You just got to teach
it with ethics and integrity.” Think of an
M-16, Belfort says. If a single mother, out
in the boonies, uses that rifle to mow down
escaped convicts approaching her cabin
with intention to rape and murder, “that’s a
really valuable, great, wonderful, weapon
of good, and justice.” But it can just as
easily be used by an insane sniper in a bell
tower. Good intent, bad intent. “With great
power comes great responsibility—I think I
heard that in Spider-man, right?”
Both the analogy to a superpower
and the analogy to a weapon come up
at Háskólabíó as well. In front of his pay-
ing crowd, they are part of a riff on one
particular question he can’t stand being
asked by journalists. “Is sales evil? Shut
the fuck up.” (Another duality: Belfort’s
crimes are in the past, and he came out of
prison with a clean slate. Unfailingly ear-
nest and enthusiastic with me, he accepts
the interview as a platform for by-now rote
assurances. But whenever he mentions
“journalists” at Háskólabíó the implied re-
lationship is adversarial, and clearly there
are limits to the challenges to his dignity
he is willing to accept: he recently stormed
off an Australian TV interview after ques-
tions about disputes over his restitution
payments.) In any case, despite the as-
sociations Belfort’s answer has for him,
my actual question was nothing so binary
as whether or not sales is evil. I wanted to
know whether Belfort thinks there’s any
intrinsic danger in a sales mentality that
emphasizes control and influence.
For Belfort, the answer is, clearly, no.
Nor is there any intrinsic danger in focus-
ing on wealth creation, as Belfort readily
acknowledges he does, both to me and at
Háskólabíó—“this is not a happiness semi-
nar, but try and deposit love at the bank to
pay your rent.” With evident and sincere
pride, Belfort says that he sees his strate-
gies as equally applicable to other, equally
if not more valuable measures of success:
spiritual fulfillment, personal relationships.
The goal is an “empowered” life, in which
we can afford to do whatever we want,
while uplifting others; in which we give
buckets of money to our favorite charities,
and “take amazing vacations.”
Ducks And Eagles
Though Belfort says he’s “not a motiva-
tional speaker,” the first half of his talk has
the same, valuable core message as much
motivational speech. He stresses skill ac-
quisition and hard work, undertaken with
a self-aware and proactive attitude. Much
of the standing and repeating, he explains,
as well as his requests that we high-five
and hug each other, is to foster an atmo-
sphere of excitement and receptivity—part
of his overall emphasis on “state manage-
ment.” The first person you sell is yourself.
Get yourself into the right frame of mind
for the next task. This is how we have
agency in our own lives—how we ensure
that we’re always “playing offense, not
defense.”
To this end, another duality. “There are
two types of people in this world,” Belfort
tells us. “Reasons” people, and “results”
people. “Ducks” and
“eagles.” Reasons
people give you rea-
sons why they can’t
succeed. Results peo-
ple understand that
these so-called rea-
sons (I’m no entrepre-
neur, selling’s immoral,
“the world happens to
me”) are just “limiting
beliefs.” Belfort gives
a couple of examples.
There was the stew-
ardess who told him
that there wouldn’t be
any food for First Class
passengers on his
flight—Quack, Quack, Quack.
Another time, Belfort was vacationing
with his children at California’s Big Bear
Lake. He approached the 22-year-old at
the front desk about renting Jet Skis. Out
the window, he could see Jet Skis moored
on the hotel dock. “But,” the girl at the
front desk said, “those Jet Skis are rented,
until 1 pm.” What time is it now? “12:20
pm.” And the people who reserved them,
did they pay in advance? “Well, no.” Telling
us this story now, Belfort pauses for em-
phasis, arranges his face into an expres-
sion of supreme incredulity. He made an
offer: I’ll pay you for the whole hour, right
now, cash—he makes a gesture as if pull-
ing bills out of a wallet—and if the people
who reserved them come while we’re out
there, they can have the Jet Skis for the
rest of the hour, on me. “Well…” Quack
Quack Quack. So, Belfort said he told her:
Go find me someone else! As she turned
towards the back room, Belfort says, he
yelled at her: Stop! He knew she was just
going to bring out another duck.
Now, to be fair, I don’t know whether
Belfort actually treats service staff with a
contempt befitting the subhuman, or only
describes them this way in order to come
off like a raconteur in front of a roomful of
strangers. Nor do I know whether Belfort’s
attitude is a consequence of seeing sales
strategy and wealth creation as meta-
phors for life, or merely a coincidence. But
I have my suspicions.
Walk The Line
In the second half of the afternoon, Belfort
introduces the “Straight Line” with a clip
from Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’
in which Leonardo DiCaprio sells worth-
less stocks to gullible investors using
techniques, Belfort proclaims, he taught
to the actor. As a second clip plays, I think
to look down from the screen to the stage.
Belfort, who must have seen this scene a
hundred times, is leaning with one hand
on a stool, back to us, looking up at the
screen, head totally still. As the clip ends,
he chuckles softly before turning around
and requesting “a round of applause for
Leo.”
The “straight line” is the shortest dis-
tance between opening and closing a
sale. The client will have questions and
reservations, will want to go off the line.
But, through inflection and nonverbal
cues more than through any words we say,
we as salespeople will convey that we’re
sharp, enthusiastic about our product, and
credible experts. In this way, we build the
influence necessary to “get control of the
conversation.” We especially modulate our
tone of voice to “control the linguistic en-
counter.” As we counter objections, “the
client listens and subjugates himself.”
For certainty to build most efficiently,
the salesperson must most of all be a good
listener. We use our empathy to “gather
intelligence”—the client’s desires, beliefs,
pain. This is also where the “straight line”
becomes truly ethical, where we learn
whether or not the client really needs or
can afford what we’re selling. When you
listen, Belfort says, “you own the client.”
Belfort has a voice he speaks in to
convey weakness, a high-pitched, nasally,
wishy-washy whine. Earlier in the after-
noon, he used this voice when imitating
“reasons” people used to explain why they
couldn’t take action to improve their busi-
nesses, or properly
respect the prerog-
atives of his wealth.
Now, he slips into
this voice when
speaking as one of
those sales pros-
pects who remains
hesitant and “un-
empowered,” who
travels all along the
straight line only to
say, ‘Let me think
about it.’
The afternoon
closes with us on
our feet again. Ice-
land, Belfort tells
us, is amazing. We may be a small country,
but we have a big country’s attitude—“a
nation of three hundred thousand who act
like thirty million.” We have been swindled
by a handful of criminal bankers, but the
oil money is ready to flow, and we can be
rich again if we conquer our limiting be-
liefs. We are, Belfort reminds us, “entitled.”
“Fuck the bankers who stole my money.” “Fuck the bankers who stole my money.” “I will
make it all back and then some.” “I will make it all back and then some.” A couple hun-
dred Icelanders have risen from their seats in Háskólabíó to repeat after Jordan Belfort,
the “Wolf of Wall Street,” the high-living penny stock wizard and white-collar felon turned
reformed, sober guru of sales, entrepreneurship and “ethical persuasion.” Following the
recent Scorsese/DiCaprio adaptation of Belfort’s memoir—a cautionary tale, but one
which does not undersell the appeal of drug-fueled financial-sector dick-swinging—tick-
ets for his Reykjavík appearance, in early May, have mostly sold out despite prices in the
low to middle five figures ISK.
Words
Mark Asch @Therealmarkasch
Photos
Sigurjón Sigurjónsson
The Wolf of
Borgartún
Jordan Belfort teaches a room
full of Icelanders how to sell
“We stand and repeat: ‘I
will be filthy rich.’ ‘I will
be filthy rich.’ ‘I WILL BE
FILTHY RICH.’ ‘I WILL BE
FILTHY RICH.’ ‘But not
greedy.’ ‘But not greedy.”