“Get in, get it done, get it done right, and get out,” Trump once said. Indeed, this has been his motto from his earliest days assisting his father’s real estate business to his multi-million dollar deals in the high stakes world of Manhattan real estate.
He has earned a reputation as a ruthless, cunning and suave businessman who can spot a business opportunity a mile away. He has turned the deal-making process into an art form and he has demonstrated that he can come back swinging after even the hardest of challenges to wind up again on top.
Estimated to be worth over $2 billion, Trump has secured his name as one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century.
“What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate,” says Trump. He has reacted to the twists and turns in his life with optimism, becoming CEO of the largest privately held company in New York, with over 22,000 employees and estimated revenues in excess of $10 billion. What did he use to get ahead?
“I learned a lot about discipline and about channeling my aggression into achievement. I decided that as long as I had to be in college, I might as well test myself against the best. Always look out for yourself.
I was relentless, even in the face of total lack of encouragement, because much more often than you’d think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure. When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal, be tough, Just go get them.
My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want. You can’t be scared. You do your thing, you hold your ground, you stand up tall, and whatever happens, happens.
My experience is that if you’re fighting for something you believe in – even if it means alienating some people along the way – things usually work out for the best in the end. The most important thing in life is to love what you’re dong, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be really good at it. Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. Without passion, you don’t have energy, without energy you have nothing.
If you go for a home run on every pitch, you’re also going to strike out a lot. I try never to leave myself too exposed, even if it means sometimes settling for a triple, a double, or even, on rare occasions, a single.
If you want to sell a car and you spend five dollars to wash and polish it and then apply a little extra elbow grease, suddenly you find you can charge an extra four hundred dollars, and get it. If you want to buy something, it’s obviously in your best interest to convince the seller that what he’s got isn’t worth very much.
When I build something for somebody, I always add $50 million or $60 million onto the price. My guys come in, they say it’s going to cost $75 million. I say it’s going to cost $125 million, and I build it for $100 million. Basically, I did a lousy job. But they think I did a great job.
Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. I’m a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. I ask I ask I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that’s when I make a decision. I have learned much more from conducting my own random surveys than I could ever have learned from the greatest of consulting firms.
Somewhere out there are a few men with more innate talent at golf than Jack Nicklaus, or women with greater ability at tennis than Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova, but they will never lift a club or swing a racket and therefore will never find out how great they could have been. Instead, they’ll be content to sit and watch stars perform on television.
Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. I like thinking big. I always have. If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage.”
Thanks to Mr. Wong Wai Sing for the this article.
20.2.2011
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