Way of the Wolf

Way of the Wolf PROLOGUETHE BIRTH OF A SALES SYSTEMWHAT THEY SAY ABOUT ME is true.I'm one of those natural born salesmen who can sell ice to an Eskimo, oil to an Arab, pork to a rabbi, or anything else you can think of.But who really cares about that, right?I mean, unless you want to hire me to sell one of your products, my ability to close is basically irrelevant to you.Whatever the case, that's my gift: the ability to sell anything to anyone, in massive quantities; and whether this gift comes from God or from nature, I really can't say, although what I am able to say-with absolute certainty, in fact-is that I am not the only person who was born with it.There are a handful of others who are sort of like me.The reason they are only sort of like me has to do with another precious gift I possess, a gift that's infinitely more rare and infinitely more valuable, and that offers a massive benefit to everyone. Including you.What is this amazing gift?Quite simply, it's the ability to take people from all walks of life regardless of age, race, creed, color, socioeconomic background, educational status, and level of natural sales ability, and turn that person into a world-class closer almost instantly.It's a bold statement, I know, but let me put it to you this way: if I were a superhero, then training salespeople would be my superpower, and there's not a soul on the planet who does it better than me.Now, that sounded totally awful, right?I can only imagine what you're thinking right now."What a cocky bastard this guy is! So conceited! So damn full of himself! Let's throw the bastard to the wolves!"Oh, wait! He already is a wolf, isn't he?"Actually, I'm an erstwhile wolf. But, either way, I think it's time to formally introduce myself.I'm the Wolf of Wall Street. Remember me? The one who Leonardo DiCaprio played on the silver screen, the one who took thousands of young kids, who could barely walk and chew gum at the same time, and turned them into world-class closers using a seemingly magical sales training system called the Straight Line? The one who tortured all those panic-stricken New Zealanders at the end of the movie because they couldn't sell me a pen the right way? You remember.On the heels of Black Monday, I took control of an irrelevant little brokerage firm named Stratton Oakmont and moved it out to Long Island to seek my fortune, and it was there, in the spring of 1988, that I cracked the code for human influence and developed that seemingly magical system for training salespeople.Its name was the Straight Line System-or the Straight Line, for short-a system that proved to be so powerful and effective, and so easy to learn, that within days of inventing it, it brought massive wealth and success to anyone I taught it to. In consequence, thousands of young men and women began pouring into Stratton's boardroom, looking to hop on the Straight Line gravy train and stake their claim in the American Dream.For the most part, they were a decidedly average lot at best-basically the sad, forgotten spawn of America's working-class families. They were kids who had never been told by their parents that they were capable of greatness; any greatness that they naturally had in them had been literally conditioned out of them since the day they were born. By the time they made it into my boardroom, they were trying merely to survive, not to thrive.But in a post-Straight Line world, none of that mattered anymore. Things like education and intellect and natural sales ability were mere trivialities that could be easily overcome. All you had to do was sh