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:
Irving probably saved his own life, just by showing no fear, and that left a very vivid impression on me. You can’t be scared. You do your thing, you hold your ground, you stand up tall, and whatever happens, happens.
In the end, of course, it never pays to be in too much of a hurry.
I worried about the future of New York City too, but I can’t say it kept me up nights, I’m basically an optimist, and frankly, I saw the city’s trouble as a great opportunity for me.
I’m the first to admit that I am very competitive and that I’ll do nearly anything within legal bounds to win. Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition.
In the end, we won by wearing everyone else down. We never gave up, and the opposition slowly began to melt away.
One of the things students at our music school in Midland, Texas learn is that being tenacious, never allowing one’s self to quit always yields long-term results.
Suddenly it dawned on me why my deals kept coming apart: if you’re going to make a deal of any significance, you have to go to the top. It comes down to the fact that everyone underneath the top guy in a company is just an employee. An employee isn’t going to fight for your deal. He’s fighting for his salary increase, or his Christmas bonus, and the last thing he wants to do is upset his boss.
I was relentless, even in the face of the total lack of encouragement, because much more often than you’d think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.
It just shows you that sometimes making a deal comes down to timing.
Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells. So, it turned out, does glamour.
I have great respect for what the Japanese have done with their economy, but for my money they are often very difficult to do business with…What’s unfortunate is that for decades now they have become wealthier in large measure by screwing the United States with a self-serving trade policy that our political leaders have never been able to fully understand or counteract.
Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from dealing with politicians over the years, it’s that the only thing guaranteed to force them into action is the press- or, more specifically, fear of the press. You can apply all kinds of pressure, make all sorts of pleas and threats, contribute large sums of money to their campaigns, and generally it gets you nothing. But raise the possibility of bad press, even in an obscure publication, and most politicians will jump. Bad press translates into potential lost votes, and if a politician loses enough votes, he won’t get reelected. If that happens, he might have to go out and take a 9 to 5 job. That’ the last thing most politicians want to do.
What you have to understand about Ed Koch is that he’s a bully, pure and simple. Bullies may act tough, but they’re really closet cowards. The only people bullies push around are the ones they know they can beat. Confront a strong, competent person, and he’ll fight back harder than ever. Confront a bully, and in most cases he’ll fold like a deck of cards.
Virtually no one in city government knows anything about construction…Worst of all, no one in the city government bureaucracy is held accountable for failure…You don’t reward failure by promoting those responsible for it, because all you’ll get is more failure.
At our music school in Midland, Texas we promote industriousness and initiative in students who want to get ahead by applying themselves diligently. The results speak for themselves. The more the student applies himself, the greater the evident progress is, and the joy of gaining mastery of their craft.
The truth is that unless you design a project to be self-supporting as you build it, you risk getting eaten alive before you’ve turned the corner into profit.
The problem is that when officials in a huge city government stop making decisions, you get the bureaucratic equivalent of gridlock. Dishonesty is intolerable, but inaction and incompetence can be every bit as bad.
I said at the start that I do it to do it. But in the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
Students at our music school in Midland, Texas do what it takes to pursue their dreams and accomplish their goals. As teachers, we are there to support them and guide their way to success.
I’ve spent the first twenty years of my working life building, accumulating, and accomplishing things that many said could not be done. The biggest challenge I see over the next twenty years is to figure out some creative ways to give back some of what I’ve gotten. I don’t just mean money, although that’s part of it. It’s easy to be generous when you’ve got a lot, and anyone who does, should be. But what I admire most are people who put themselves directly on the line…To me, what matters is the doing, and giving time is far more valuable than just giving money.
As students at our music school in Midland, Texas give what they have worked hard to achieve, their family, friends, and community become enriched as they bring forth beauty into a chaotic world.
In my life, there are two things I’ve found I’m very good at: overcoming obstacles and motivating good people to do their best work. One of the challenges ahead is how to use those skills as successfully in the service of others as I’ve done, up to now, on my own behalf.
We endeavor to help students at our music school in Midland, Texas see the value of becoming ‘others-centered’ rather than ‘self-centered,’ and even though focus must be given to personal progress, the ultimate goal of mastering their musical gift is to finally give it to those around you.
It is interesting to see many of the traits penned in this book play out decades later in the political arena. Trump, instinctively, had the underpinnings of political aspirations and wisdom, evidenced by his common-sense solutions and cutting critiques of bureaucratic blunders he had to deal with in his own work in New York City real-estate.