The REAL Wolf of Wall Street Story - Fact vs Fiction
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What childhood experiences shaped Howie's early outlook?
In the movie, the character of Jonah Hill is made up of a composite of you and one other person. Yeah.
The speech was great that Scorsese put in there, you know, I'm not going, the show goes on, yeah. He's too much of a To give a speech like that. We never threw a midget in the office. He eats one of the goldfish, so I ate the other goldfish. People didn't quit. People slid under the door. They snuck out. It was that insane of an environment. They only knew that that was the mild version. The truth here is much stranger than anything you could possibly make up. And that was really a relatively normal childhood until uh I got stabbed by a kid. In the uh men's room with a lead pencil. For my lunch money. And being the the fat fuck that I was, um, that was the last thing I was giving up was my lunch money. So uh as soon as I came home, the overprotective mother said, That's it.
We're moving to the suburbs, and that was it for living in Queens. We moved out to Long Island, and that's where I got my first. um sniff of real wealth.
And your parents could afford that or yeah, it was a
stretch, but at seven, eight years old we moved out to Long Island and I was definitely the poorest kid of the friends I had made. I had just moved out of an apartment house And these guys were living in houses with limos out front and cabanas to pools and Z a completely new world to me. But that's where the drive for success and the drive for money, that's where I first got the taste of it.
During high school and everything, you never got in trouble, anything like that?
No. I was always uh I was always getting over on the system. You know, back in those days, uh in the dinosaur age when I was in high school. Um The grades were kept on Pieces of paper. And whenever the teacher used to leave to go to the bathroom, I would change my grades. You know, that's where it kind of starts. Um I had missed in my senior year of high school a quarter of the the days by cutting. Uh and a letter was sent out, but a physical letter in the mail. So what did I do? I intercepted the mail. And my parents never saw it. And uh I got to graduate with my uh classmates, so I was always cutting corners. I was always cutting corners. Um, and always trying to take the the shortcut wherever I could find one.
And I don't know how long I was in college. Well, I I can tell you that it I lasted one test. That's the extent of my college career. Someone said to sit next to two particular types of people. I did. And at that time they just started switching up tests. So one would get one, the next seat would get another test. And I'm cheating off the two to the left and the right of me. And I ended up getting a 30 something. And I immediately decided, that's it. I'm done with college. It's time to take over the world. Okay. Literally that's what I said.
So what was the plan to take over the world? You you need you need a good plan to take over the world.
Yeah. Uh I didn't have one. But I I kind of figured it would fall into place. Uh I began uh working uh at my my best friend's father's company. And it was a market research company doing these annoying telephone surveys. Before you know it, I'm running the place and I'm Twenty. Uh something like that. And then I get a phone call from a friend from high school who says, Uh, Howie. Have I got the job for you? You were built for this. Come check it out. And I went there and the guy I interviewed with. Um was a guy by the name of Kenny Green, who was one of the original partners of Strat. No one's really heard of his name. Because he sailed into the sunset. Um, I think he sold his piece for five million dollars to the fellow uh Matt McC uh Matt McConaughey played.
Uh whose real name is Mark Hannah. So um I just interviewed with him. I knew him from high school. And he said, All right, you got the job. I said, we didn't go over anything. You didn't ask me anything. It doesn't matter. I know you're from high school. You got the job. And the beginning of Stratton was all made up of guys from the Syoset Long Island area and Bayside Queens.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What childhood experiences shaped Howie's early outlook?
0:00–8:11
2
How did Howie transition from a market‑research job to becoming a Stratton Oakmont partner?
8:11–15:52
3
What tactics did Stratton brokers use to manipulate investors and generate commissions?
15:52–31:54
4
How does the process of taking a company public work and why was it so profitable for Stratton?
31:54–1:00:35
5
How did the early Stratton Oakmont sales tactics, like glossy brochures and printing, work behind the scenes?
1:00:35–1:10:09
6
Why did Howie’s YouTube channel “The Wolf Stand” lose momentum and what was the business model behind it?
1:10:09–1:22:14
7
How did Howie go from a multimillion‑dollar lifestyle to living in a sober house and filing welfare paperwork?
1:22:14–1:32:51
8
What does Howie say about the differences between the real story, the documentary, and the Hollywood movie?
1:32:51–1:58:51
Speakers
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