I thought it was a series of realizations - First he learned to stop sounding like he hated his job, and focus on making the other persons feelings. This got him to people saying "yes".

To close more, he started dropping the disclosures and sending people to the next department.

The point you are raising does make sense, I suppose the lesson for him was getting to yes, and then ensuring you dont blow the lead. Which I suppose is the core lesson to selling. You cant sell if people get out of the flow.

And he does allude to this, that the economy is small constant hustles that convince people to buy things, as opposed to the sterile idea of economic demand.

It's kind of like claiming you're the world's best trader, but all your winnings come from insider trading.

That's fine, when and where that's legal.

Eg even the US has no laws against insider trading in commodities. Similarly, French insider trading laws work on rather different principles than US ones. So it's hard to attach much moral significance to the legal accident of insider trading laws in one place and one time.

(And arguably, laws banning insider trading are bad for the general public, because to the extent they are respected and enforced, they keep information out of market prices.)

True, but they also make it hard for a cynical exec to game the system, for instance by shorting the stock and then tanking the company on purpose.

Contracts and laws around fiduciary duties already handle that just fine.

This is exactly what the laws around fiduciary duty "really" cover. I say "really" because the term is often invoked to justify/excuse scummy behavior from executives, arguing that they're legally obligated to behave that way because of fiduciary duty. In reality it just means you must act in the interests of the company, largely to prevent this exact sort of scenario (or an exec just being butthurt or whatever).

Yes, though it goes a bit further than just a blanket 'in the interest of the company'.

Sometimes it's that, sometimes it's in the interested of the shareholders, sometimes it's also in the interest of (some) customers, etc.

sounds like hes setting the stage for a movie script - "wolf of wall street 2"

The wolf of wallstreet 2 should be about the making of the wolf of wallstreet: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52661779 the whole thing is crazier than the original.

This reminds me of how the film Catch Me If You Can about a credit card / pilot con man was in itself a con and the whole story was made up. It's great, the author did not actually commit any of the crimes he "confessed" to, and at best there's a civil case of the claim of the story being true events not in fact being true. But I hope the filmmakers had a good laugh about the irony.

Wolf of Wall Street even opens by reminding the viewer that Belfort is a convicted fraudster, you are watching and listening to him tell his version of the story, and he's almost certainly lying to you.

The difference between a racounteur and a bullshitter is that one is entertaining.

I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't jumped all over that yet lol.

> the thing that made him America's top telemarketer was... illegally omitting the disclosures

Honestly, when I’m on a call with customer service I could do without being reminded every microsecond that I’m actually on a phone call that might be recorded.

Appealing to be recorded in secret is a weird one to read in the morning. Another solution to your problem that respects the law is for them to not record you.

> Another solution to your problem that respects the law is for them to not record you

You'd run a customer-service operation that has no record of who said what?

I worked in a professional services department that did not record calls, except at the request of the customer. We took copious notes on each call, shared things that showed up repeatedly over a few days to weeks in wikis, and shared things that showed up repeatedly over a single morning in Slack channels.

Where I live companies are required to get my explicit consent before recording me and are also required to continue the call if the only reason they would not is that I didn't consent to being recorded.

It'd be a bit silly if not as where I live I can also request them to delete the recording immediately after the call ends. So yes many businesses operate like this.

When you go to a shop and talk to the person there for help with a previous purchase they aren't recording your interaction, why is it so surprising?

Hotel chains frequently don't own hotels, but rather franchise their name to them.

Similarly, taxi companies are much less ethical than you're implying here. Often more criminal too.

Isn't it "always" rather than "frequently"? In case of hotels. Hotel chains are brand operators, their job is to build up brand value through ads, enforcing quality standards within hotels of their chain, and managing their loyalty program. They are not supposed to operate hotels, let alone own them.

Because entities that operate hotels (paying royalty to the hotel chain), almost always do not own the hotels per se i.e. real estate. They rent it. From holding companies that did not build it, they bought them ready from real estate developers who start a project targeting several potential buyers usually picking the actual one while construction is near finishing. And the developer is also not building the building, construction company does it, the developer just manages the land deal, licensing, permitting, and architectural designs, asking construction company to do particular phases of work with a particular budget. And that one then subcontracts different things to different entities, who in turn manage imports of the labor force and materials and manage people who do the work... The chain is looong.

> Uber is a taxi company that doesn't own taxis, AirBnB is a hotel chain that owns no hotels

Most taxi companies don’t own cars. Almost none of the hotel operators own real estate.

> secret 99/100 times is crime

Nope. This is the excuse of stupid criminals.