Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2016, on 13 November 2016, days after Trump won the presidential election, when he was president-elect and not yet president. Its remarks about his becoming president reflect that moment.
Donald Trump was one of the people who inspired me in the world of business. Reading what he said and how he thought was a dose of motivation for me. He was one of those “idols” you could learn a lot from. Leaving aside his personal life and his somewhat arrogant personality, the truth is that, despite a string of business failures, he has gone on to succeed at everything he has set out to do.
Digging Donald Trump’s out-of-print book Surviving at the Top out of the old memory chest, I was reminded of a businessman who was already successful but was trying to survive that success while on the brink of business collapse.
The book contains some passages that show a humble Trump, angry at the damage the press was trying to do to him, his fights with Forbes, and the worst moments of his life because of personal losses, yet still keen to fight on, unlike others who would have been lost by then. This quote from Donald Trump seemed to predict many things that would happen in the future:
“Anyone who thinks my story is about to end is making a mistake. It has barely begun.”
When Trump said those words, he probably had no idea that 25 years later he would become President of the United States.
Here are some of Donald Trump’s words as they appear in Surviving at the Top (translated here from the Spanish edition, so the wording may differ from the original):
“Whether we have 3,000 million or 300 dollars in the bank, life is always a series of challenges. Some of those challenges work out in our favour. Others don’t. I have come to learn that the way a person reacts to changes of fortune, in business and in other areas of life, is what separates the winners from the losers.”
(See: Donald Trump: the secret of business)
“Every day, when we face the world, we must be confident, but we must not be conceited or vain. Anyone who believes they can always beat everyone will end up a great failure.”
This reminds me of an old saying: you can’t win every battle, so choose very carefully the ones you are willing to fight.
“When I was at the Wharton School, I learned, basically, that the point of business is to buy low and sell high.”
He is referring to real estate bubbles, in which many businesspeople forgot this principle even as the price of land and buildings went up. Trump admits that he walked away from some negotiations because, although he might have been able to sell what he bought for more, he was no longer buying cheap. The same thing happens when we buy shares. If we don’t buy them at a good price, we lose what Warren Buffett calls the “margin of safety”.
“For someone with a fighting personality, what matters is not the reward but the challenge.”
Trump mentions those people who, once they succeed, end up throwing it all away, both their success and their lives. Trump admits that he has to go from challenge to challenge so as not to get bored. Here is Trump:
“Anyone who reaches the top of their career or profession and is honest will tell you that their potential enemy is themselves. They achieve an important goal and immediately begin to feel empty and sad.”
Trump gives the example of Elvis Presley, who, like so many others, could not cope with success as soon as it came and threw his life away with drugs, alcohol and excesses of all kinds. The same can happen to businesspeople if they think they have already made it. That is why you need constant challenges, and that is probably why Trump is President of the United States. One more challenge.
See also: How to rescue a business: ideas from a leader at MAPFRE
“There are no guarantees of happiness in this world. Even if we have been successful for a long time, everything can collapse at the most unexpected moment.”
Trump believes that success is harder to keep than to achieve, and who better than him to know it: his empire came under threat and Trump woke up to debts of more than 3,000 million dollars, 830 million of them personally guaranteed. In the end he came through his worst business and personal crisis and ended up a billionaire businessman once again.
See also: Donald Trump’s 10 commandments for business
Featured image: Bernard Gotfryd, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}