Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2010, years before Trump entered politics, and nothing after 2010 is reflected. The estimated fortune of 2.5 billion dollars, the TV show and the Trump Network venture launched in 2009 are 2010 facts.
As a role model in investing and business, Donald Trump can certainly teach us a few lessons, and not only through his success as a businessman and a visionary who spots business opportunities, but because he managed to fall and get back up. He had the strength, courage and intelligence to rebuild his lost empire in record time.
Donald Trump himself tells how a simple flaw in a building forced him to demolish it, and how this coincided with a downturn in real estate investment that left him deep in debt.
Some people believe that debt spells the end of their business or company. They focus on their debts rather than on finding a way to get out from under them. This is what Donald Trump calls losing focus.
As we all know, Donald Trump made his fortune in real estate. He bought, sold and built. At the very height of his success, he watched his empire crumble, to the point that one morning, as he tells it, more than 15 bankers were waiting for him in a meeting room.
He had to negotiate a debt of more than 900 million dollars. Owing that much, with no realistic way of paying it back in the short term, the negotiation was tough, but not too tough for the man who wrote The Art of the Deal.
Only the people in that room could tell us exactly how he did it, but what we all saw is that in less than a decade Donald Trump was back at the top, free of debt and with an estimated fortune of 2.5 billion dollars.
He launched his own television show, bought shares in a major television network and still earns a healthy income from his books. Recently he lent his image to an international network marketing company, which is doing well: not as well as you would expect with Donald Trump behind it, but well enough.
Known for his taste in women and for how quickly he parts ways with them, he also left 10 pieces of advice for anyone who wants to get started in business, which I will always remember. We entrepreneurs should tattoo them on our skin so we never forget them.
Further reading
- Donald Trump’s 10 commandments of business
- How Steve Jobs got started: the birth of Apple
- Facing the crisis with a positive mental attitude in your business
Featured image: Bryan Horowitz, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
