The following contains excerpts from the book, The Art of the Deal (Donald J. Trump).
Reading this book, published in 1987 brought back a sense of nostalgia, since I was in New York at the time he was building the various projects he talk about in his book. He was in the news constantly, and the NYC he describes brought me back to the feeling of the atmosphere of the city in those days.
I didn’t focus so much on the land-mark real-estate investments and buildings he constructed there, but rather on statements he made, giving insight into his core beliefs and rationale in how he approached leadership.
At our music school in Midland, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. When discussing the subject of Leadership, relationships become paramount.
Following are successive quotes from his book along these lines:
I don’t do it for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form…I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks…You can’t be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you’ve got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops…I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s where the fun is. And if it can’t be fun, what’s the point?
I don’t hold it against people that they have opposed me. I’m just looking to hire the best talent, wherever I can find it.
My people keep telling me I shouldn’t write letters like this to critics. The way I see it, critics get to say what they want to about my work, so why shouldn’t I be able to say what I want to about theirs?
That experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.
Also, when I do give an interview, I always keep it short. This reporter is in and out in less than twenty minutes. If I didn’t limit myself, I could spend my life talking to the press.
You have to be very rough and very tough with most contractors or they’ll take the shirt right off your back.
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…It’s not about being brilliant. It does take a certain intelligence, but mostly it’s about instincts.
At our music school in Midland, Texas we encourage our students to tap into their intuition to discover their strengths, and as teachers we try to help guide them to tap into those strengths.
I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: 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.
One of the great advantages we can give students at our music school in Midland, Texas is the ability to make decisions based upon what we as teachers can reflect back to them, showing them who they are and who they can be, in other words: objectivity.
One of the keys to thinking big is total focus. I think of it almost as a controlled neurosis, which is a quality I’ve noticed in many highly successful entrepreneurs. They’re obsessive, they’re driven, they’re single-minded and sometimes they’re almost maniacal, but it’s all channeled into their work…This is particularly true in New York real estate, where you are dealing with some of the sharpest, toughest, and most vicious people in the world. I happen to love to go up against these guys, and I love to beat them.
I also protect myself by being flexible. I never get too attached to one deal or one approach. For starters, I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first. In addition, once I’ve made a deal, I always come up with at least a half dozen approaches to making it work, because anything can happen, even to the best-laid plans.
I’m a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. It’s a natural reflex. If I’m thinking of buying a piece of property, I’ll ask the people who live nearby about the area—what they think of the schools and the crime and the shops. When I’m in another city and I take a cab, I’ll always make it a point to ask the cabdriver questions. I ask and I ask and I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that’s when I make a decision.
The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead. The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can’t do without…Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, which is why leverage often requires imagination, and salesmanship. In other words, you have to convince the other guy it’s in his interest to make the deal.
Perhaps the most misunderstood concept in all of real estate is that the key to success is location, location, location. Usually, that’s said by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. First of all, you don’t necessarily need the best location. What you need is the best deal. Just as you can create leverage, you can enhance a location, through promotion and through psychology…Location also has a lot to do with fashion. You can take a mediocre location and turn it into something considerably better just by attracting the right people.
What you should never do is pay too much, even if that means walking away from a very good site.
You need to generate interest, and you need to create excitement…One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. It’s in the nature of the job, and I understand that. The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you. I’ve always done things a little differently, I don’t mind controversy, and my deals tend to be somewhat ambitious…if the New York Times writes even a moderately positive one-column story about one of my deals, it doesn’t cost me anything, and it’s worth a lot more than $40,000. The funny thing is that even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business…The other thing I do when I talk with reporters is to be straight. I try not to deceive them or to be defensive, because those are precisely the ways most people get themselves into trouble with the press.
We try to create a sense of excitement with our students at our music school in Midland, Texas, giving them challenges and goals that are within their capability.
The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.
But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard…But 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.
I believe in spending what you have to. But I also believe in not spending more than you should…I never threw money around. I learned from my father that every penny counts, because before too long your pennies turn into dollars…The point is that you can dream great dreams, but they’ll never amount to much if you can’t turn them into reality at a reasonable cost…Even small jobs can get out of control if you’re not attentive.
Anything can change, without warning, and that’s why I try not to take any of what’s happened too seriously. Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what I should have done differently, or what’s going to happen next.
The most important influence on me, growing up, was my father, Fred Trump. I learned a lot from him. I learned about toughness in a very tough business, I learned about motivating people, and I learned about competence and efficiency: get in, get it done, get it done right, and get out. At the same time, I learned very early on that I didn’t want to be in the business my father was in. He did very well building rent-controlled and rent-stabilized housing in Queens and Brooklyn, but it was a very tough way to make a buck…my father was always very focused and very ambitious…my father just plain loved working. From as early as I can remember, my father would say to me, “The most important thing in life is to love what you’re doing, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be really good at it.”
At our music school in Midland, Texas we want our students to love what they are doing and to focus on it to the degree that they grow to become excellent.
My mother loves splendor and magnificence, while my father, who is very down-to-earth, gets excited only by competence and efficiency.
I made sure the whole complex was very clean and very well maintained. As I said earlier, I’ve always had a personal thing about cleanliness, but I also believe it’s a very good investment. For example, 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. I can always tell a loser when I see someone with a car for sale that is filthy dirty. It’s so easy to make it look better…it’s not how many hours you put in, it’s what you get done while you’re working.
Helping students at our music school in Midland, Texas be efficient in their work, to make the most efficient use of their time, is something we are highly focused on, as teachers. We encourage our students to find their strengths and train in core competencies that enable them to use those strengths most effectively.