William Leith - The Trick: Why Some People Can Make Money and Other People Cant

THE TRICK

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First published in Great Britain 2020

Copyright William Leith, 2020

William Leith has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB: 978-0-7475-9940-1; TPB: 978-1-5266-1987-7; EBOOK: 978-1-4088-3418-3

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To my parents

Contents

Its like I actively want to be poor.

Like Id rather be poor.

Like everything I do, consciously or unconsciously, is to say: hey, poverty, come over here, I love you.

These are my waking thoughts on the day I discover the secret of making millions.

Fifty miles away, in Chelsea Harbour, Jordan Belfort is waiting for me in a hotel I have never seen, but which I imagine as white, with big glass panels.

Yes, thats right Jordan Belfort. The man who calls himself, or at least his book about himself, The Wolf of Wall Street .

Im not sure about that title.

If I were him, and if I wrote a book about how I made millions, and then realised that having millions makes you feel poor, if I wrote a book like that, about feeling poor and devising a fraud and getting caught and going to jail, I cant see myself calling it The Wolf of Wall Street .

Id call it something else. I dont know what, exactly.

But the point is, the book is about how some people can make money and some people cant, a subject that fascinates me, and injects pure cold anxiety directly into my stomach.

Ive never told anyone this, but I have a mental disorder in the area of finance. I am driven by a mechanism designed to prevent me from being rich; worse, it masquerades as a mechanism designed to do exactly the opposite.

It is an enemy agent, it lies deep in the wiring of my brain, and I dont know how it works.

I know I need to dismantle this mechanism and replace it with a new one, before I die a paupers death. But Im terrified of doing this, because I suspect that the mechanism is, actually, me.

Money is weird, anyway. Were supposed to instinctively understand it. But we really dont. For instance, most people think its real. Its not. But because we think its real, its real. It somehow emerged from the early murk of human interaction. It trumps God, because you cant make God exist just by thinking he exists. He either exists or he doesnt. But money is different.

It is us . Its our masterpiece. Its killing us.

So anyway, how can a guy whose relationship with money is, basically, that it destroys him, its even on the cover of his book, how money destroyed a Wall Street superstar how can a guy like that call himself the Wolf of anything?

Particularly Wall Street, the Hub of Money.

Because he wasnt the Wolf of the Hub of Money, was he? If you went in the ring with Mike Tyson, and Tyson destroyed you, would you then call yourself the Wolf of Mike Tyson?

These are my second, third and fourth thoughts on the day I find the secret of how to make millions. As you can see, they are not, so far, positive thoughts.

Im thinking that maybe the Wolf is not Jordan Belfort. Maybe its not a person at all. Maybe the Wolf is money itself .

I should ask him. Or I should ask Martin Scorsese. I know that Scorsese is making a film about Belfort, and I know hes calling it The Wolf of Wall Street , and I can see it, can see what hell do with the story, can see the arc of aspiration, the nervous and vicious laughter, the bad words, the dirty words, the fast talk, the money talk. Leonardo diCaprio, with the charisma of a fallen angel, will play Belfort.

As these sparks rise and fall through the dark sky of my half-alert mind Im stretching my arm out and batting my fingers around, trying to locate my alarm clock, which is bleeping. Being late today would be ruinous.

There are two things I must remember this morning, because I wrote them down on a piece of paper, and put it on my bedside table.

Im interviewing Belfort for a magazine. Thats how I make money. I interview people almost exclusively the rich and the super-rich. (Mostly men, by the way, for about a million reasons.) I persuade these people to talk about themselves not as easy as it sounds. My mission is always to extract their secrets, to reveal their modus operandi, to travel upstream into the darkness of their hearts, and then to assassinate them not quite with extreme prejudice, but in a nuanced sort of way. To reveal their inner pain. Tears are my pot of gold.

Anyway, before I meet the people I interview, I try to understand what motivates them. I think about what its like to be them. I take notes. I edit the notes. I boil everything down to the basics.

Hence the piece of paper. I peer at it in the half-light of my room. It says:

1 How he made the money

2 Why he turned to crime

Rolling the paper into a ball, and aiming it at the far wall of my bedroom, I slump back down on my pillow. The ball falls short. My other hand finds the clock.

The bleeping stops.

I must dismantle the mechanism before its too late. But I think the mechanism might be me.

What if its me?

***

In the silence, I consider my own financial situation. Just thinking about it, I am sick with dread, icy dread spreading up from my stomach into my chest and neck, and now I cant stop thinking about it, the bad thoughts and feelings are seeping out and getting everywhere, its like a crime scene I must clean up before I can even begin to get away, and the more I try to clean it, the dirtier it gets.

But I must not think like this!

OK. My financial situation. Like most nation states, Im currently running a deficit in other words, my life is costing me more money than I make. A deficit its not the same as a debt. A deficit is from the spending youre doing now, and will be punished for in the future. A debt is from the spending you did in the past. Its the punishment youre already taking.

Im aware that Ive asked for this punishment this abuse . It is happening to me because, on one level, I must want the abuse to happen to me.

I hate it. I cant even think about it. But I have to . But I cant .

But I must .

I am being abused by secured and unsecured loans, unpaid bills and taxes, fines, penalty fees, pending court cases, and cases I have already lost, or not contested, or forgotten about. The cases come back as different types of letters, with this or that tone, and then as actual people, again mostly men, not well dressed, they particularly have no idea about shoes.When they come, these men (and occasionally women), I am very polite indeed. I serve tea and offer food. I think it makes a difference.

I am driven by a desire to spend more money than I have, so I borrow money, from banks and corporations and individuals, and I dont pay it back promptly, because in truth I never had a strong desire to pay it back, I just wanted the money. The money actually makes me feel younger and healthier. It buys me time. Do you think I want to pay it back?