Introduction

Thinking Like a Billionaire

In a world of more than six billion people, there are only 587 billionaires. It’s an exclusive club. Would you like to join us?

Of course, the odds against you are about ten million to one. But if you think like a billionaire, those odds shouldn’t faze you at all.

Billionaires don’t care what the odds are. We don’t listen to common sense or do what’s conventional or expected. We follow our vision, no matter how crazy or idiotic other people think it is. That’s what this book is about—learning how to think like a billionaire. Even if you absorb only ten percent of the wisdom in this book, you’ll still have a good shot at becoming a millionaire.

In my previous book, How to Get Rich, I shared some of my favorite techniques for running a profitable business and becoming a TV megastar. Consider this new book the second part of an ongoing conversation between you and The Donald—the billionaire’s equivalent of those bestselling works of inspiration Conversations with God and Conversations with God, Book 2.

I’m sure some wise guy in the media is going to accuse me of comparing myself to God, so for the record, I do not think I am God. I believe in God. If God ever wanted an apartment in Trump Tower, I would immediately offer my best luxury suite at a very special price. I believe God is everywhere and in all of us, and I want every decision I make to reflect well on me when it’s time for me to go to that big boardroom in the sky. When I get permanently fired by the ultimate boss, I want the elevator to heaven to go up, not down.

Some of you may think it’s wrong to talk about God and business in the same breath, but God has always been central to our way of thinking about capitalism. The Protestant work ethic has thrived for centuries. The pursuit of prosperity is ingrained in our religious culture. The more you have, the more you can give.

Here’s something else about God that any billionaire knows: He’s in the details, and you need to be there, too. I couldn’t run a business any other way. When I’m talking to a contractor, or examining a site, or planning a new development, no detail is too small to consider. I even try to sign as many checks as possible. For me, there’s nothing worse than a computer signing checks. When you sign a check yourself, you’re seeing what’s really going on inside your business, and if people see your signature at the bottom of the check, they know you’re watching them, and they screw you less because they have proof that you care about the details.

I learned how to think like a billionaire by watching my father, Fred Trump. He was the greatest man I’ll ever know, and the biggest influence on my life.

A lot has been written about my family. A writer named Gwenda Blair spent twelve years on her thorough history, The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire. She even traced our lineage back to 1608, when a German lawyer named Hanns Drumpf settled in the town of Kallstadt, forty miles west of the Rhine River. According to Blair, one of my ancestors, a winegrower, changed the family name to Trump at the end of the 1600s—a good move, I think, since Drumpf Tower doesn’t sound nearly as catchy.

My grandfather Friedrich was the first Trump to come to America. Like many entrepreneurs, he ran away from home because he didn’t want to work in the family wine business. One of my fellow billionaires, John R. Simplot, left his family farm because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his days milking cows. Instead, he became a potato grower and one of the largest suppliers to McDonald’s. He earned his billions in french fries. One way to think like a billionaire is to question your surroundings: Don’t assume you have to accept the hand you were dealt.

My grandfather was a barber and the owner of several businesses, including a hotel and a restaurant. He moved from New York City to Seattle and eventually to Alaska during the gold rush, where he fed miners at the biggest joint in town, the Arctic Restaurant. Unfortunately, he caught pneumonia and died when my father was just a boy. My father never said much to me about him or about other Trump family history.

Fred C. Trump wasn’t the kind of dad who took us to the movies or played catch with us in Central Park. He was better than those fathers. Instead, he’d take me to his building sites in Brooklyn and Queens. He’d say, “Let’s make the rounds,” and we’d be on our way. He never yelled at me or had to punish me, but he was always strong, and a little remote, until I joined his business. That’s when I really got to know him.

I saw how he dealt with contractors and unions, and how he made the most out of every space. My father believed in adding “the extra element” to his properties—he was among the first to build garages into homes in Brooklyn. He could be a showman, too. His deals were front-page news in the Brooklyn newspapers. He advertised regularly and had big openings for his developments. His gift for promotion rubbed off on me, but it was never something we talked about, and to this day, I don’t think promotion had much to do with either his success or mine. We succeeded because we learned how to create the best buildings at the best locations with the best zoning. My father showed me how to fight the unions and the politicians in order to get the building done under budget and ahead of schedule. And then, after the building is up and it’s a great success, everyone says, “Boy, Donald, that was a great promotion,” when promotion had nothing to do with it.

My father always trusted me. He’d been in business for fifty years, but he’d never let anyone else in the company sign his checks until I came to work. He had absolutely no doubt about my ability.

His faith gave me unshakable confidence. Even when I was at my lowest, in the early 1990s, when the real estate market tanked and I was billions in debt and Ivana and her lawyers and a hundred banks were ready to sue my ass off, my father told me he had absolutely no doubt that my business would be fine. He’d say, “You are a killer. You are a king.”

My father never wanted to build in Manhattan. He thought it was too expensive. He’d say, “If I can buy a piece of land for a dollar a square foot in Brooklyn, why should I pay a thousand dollars a square foot in Manhattan?” It was a different philosophy, but it worked for him.

I’d been working in the family business for five years when I made the move into Manhattan. Some critics have suggested that my success is the result of family money, but family money didn’t get my first Manhattan projects built. I had to raise tens of millions of dollars from investors for those jobs. It wasn’t money that my father gave me; it was knowledge—knowledge that became instinctive for me.

When I was in college, I thought about becoming a movie producer, but whenever I talked to a friend about real estate, he would say, “Why would you want to make movies when you already know so much about real estate?” So yes, my father was a millionaire many times over, but if he hadn’t shown me how to think about business, I never would have made it into the billionaires club.

I wish I could tell you that the billionaires club meets regularly at Mar-a-Lago, where we gather to analyze our portfolios, make blockbuster deals, eat caviar, and drink vintage wine, but the truth is: I don’t drink, I’d rather eat a steak than caviar, and I’ve met only about twenty of the club members over the years, often on the golf course, where we tend to talk more about our game than our net worth. Still, I’ve studied fellow billionaires from afar, and I’ve also read what others have written about us.

In an article for Forbes by Matthew Herper, Robert Baron, a psychologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said we are persuasive and have strong social skills—that we call upon our charisma to make a sale. In the same article, Kelly Shaver, a professor of psychology at William & Mary College, said we don’t care what other people think about us. She said, “They’re just happy to go off and do what they’re doing.”

I agree. My father thought I was nuts to build in Manhattan, but I didn’t listen to him because I had my own vision. One of my favorite billionaires is Warren Buffett, who has his own vision, too. He didn’t follow the stampede into the dot-com gold rush, even though he was widely criticized for remaining a traditional value investor. Now he once again looks like a genius. One of many things I admire about Warren is that in all of his years as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, he has never sold one share of stock.

Another student of successful entrepreneurs, Michael Maccoby, a psychoanalyst and consultant, believes that billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Ted Turner are successful in part because they are narcissists who devote their talent with unrelenting focus to achieving their dreams, even if it’s sometimes at the expense of those around them. Maccoby’s book The Productive Narcissist makes a convincing argument that narcissism can be a useful quality if you’re trying to start a business. A narcissist does not hear the naysayers. At the Trump Organization, I listen to people, but my vision is my vision.

In The Natural History of the Rich, author Richard Conniff put it this way: “Almost all successful alpha personalities display a single-minded determination to impose their vision on the world, an irrational belief in unreasonable goals, bordering at times on lunacy.” He quotes a passage from Michael Lewis on entrepreneur Jim Clark in The New New Thing: “He was the guy who always won the game of chicken because his opponents suspected he might actually enjoy a head-on collision.” I doubt Jim Clark would enjoy that collision, but the fact that he has convinced people he might has a lot to do with his success.

Here are my top ten ways of thinking like a billionaire:

1. Don’t take vacations. What’s the point? If you’re not enjoying your work, you’re in the wrong job. Even when I’m playing golf, I’m doing business. I never stop, and I’m usually having fun. Now that my kids are joining the family business, I’m closer to them than I’ve ever been, and I’m finding out that I love relating to them just the way my father related to me—through a passion for work well done.

By the way, I’m not the only one who doesn’t take vacations. My NBC compatriot Jay Leno works just as much as I do, and maybe that’s one of the reasons he’s stayed on top in the late-night ratings wars.

2. Have a short attention span. Most successful people have very short attention spans. It has a lot to do with imagination. Quite often, I’ll be talking to someone and I’ll know what they’re going to say before they say it. After the first three words are out of their mouth, I can tell what the next forty are going to be, so I try to pick up the pace and move it along. You can get more done faster that way.

3. Don’t sleep any more than you have to. I usually sleep about four hours per night. I’m in bed by 1 A.M. and up to read the newspapers at 5 A.M. That’s all I need, and it gives me a competitive edge. I have friends who are successful and sleep ten hours a night, and I ask them, “How can you compete against people like me if I sleep only four hours?” It rarely can be done. No matter how brilliant you are, there’s not enough time in the day.

You may be wondering: Why do you need a competitive edge? You don’t, if you’re happy to be an also-ran in life. In The Natural History of the Rich, Richard Conniff notes that it’s common behavior for moguls to seek dominance. Even such traits as who makes the most eye contact in a conversation can be an indication of who seeks to dominate. Conniff singles me out as an example of someone who achieves dominance through my appearance, by leaving my eyebrows untrimmed in order to intimidate negotiating partners. I’m pleased to note that he doesn’t comment on my hair.

4. Don’t depend on technology. A lot of it is unnecessary and expensive. I don’t have a computer on my desk. I don’t use an intercom. When I want someone in my office, I yell. It works a lot better than an intercom, and it’s much faster.

I don’t even have an ATM card—I’ve never used one in my life. That’s the funny thing about being rich: When I go to restaurants, I rarely have to pay. It’s usually on the house. The sad part is that if I needed the money, they would make me pay!

I can understand why some people would appreciate the convenience of ATM cards, but a lot of other tech devices are completely unnecessary and get in the way of human contact. If you have something important to say, look the person in the eye and say it. And if you can’t get there, pick up the phone and make sure they hear the sincerity in your voice. E-mail is for wimps.

5. Think of yourself as a one-man army. You’re not only the commander in chief, you’re the soldier as well. You must plan and execute your plan alone.

People are always comparing business to war and to sports. We do it because these are analogies we immediately understand, not because business is about toughness. It isn’t. It’s much more important to be smart than tough. I know some very bad businessmen who are brutally tough, but they’re not smart people. They want to act like Vince Lombardi, but they don’t know how to win. Lombardi would slap his players, even spit in their faces. He’d have three-hundred-pound men virtually crying. He could do that because he won, and you can do that only if you win.

Billionaires like to win. The Natural History of the Rich is full of examples of hypercompetitive plutocrats: Larry Ellison racing his yacht from Australia to Tasmania, Steve Fossett flying a balloon around the world, and Dennis Tito paying $20 million for a trip to space on a Russian rocket. “All of them, one way or another, were showing off,” Conniff writes. “To put it in the biological context, they were engaging in display behavior. Animals do it all the time, and their displays, like ours, fall loosely into two categories: They show off with fine feathers, and they show off with risky behavior.”

I have my own theory, but it’s not as scientific: We do it because it’s fun. Work hard, play hard, and live to the hilt.

6. It’s often to your advantage to be underestimated. You never want people to think you’re a loser or a schlepper, but it’s not a good idea if they think you’re the smartest guy in the room, either. Because I wrote The Art of the Deal, everyone is always on guard whenever I negotiate with them. One of the reasons President Reagan was such a successful candidate for office was because rival politicians consistently misjudged him. They assumed an actor wouldn’t be able to compete. Through years of insults about his lack of intelligence and political experience, Reagan would smile and remain genial, and in the end, he always exceeded expectations.

Because I’m too famous to be underestimated—I know that sounds egotistical, but it’s true—I’m always impressed by ultrasuccessful people who live great lives in a low-key manner. For example, one of my neighbors in Trump Tower is a man named Joel Anderson. For years, I’d see him in the elevator and say hello, but I didn’t know anything about him. One day he called my office and said, “Do you think it would be possible for Mr. Trump to attend my party?” He seemed like a nice guy, with a terrific wife, so I figured I’d pop in for a few minutes. When I got to the party, I was amazed to find myself surrounded by some of the most influential people in New York, including S. I. Newhouse and Anna Wintour. I soon discovered that mild-mannered Joel Anderson is the chairman and CEO of Anderson News, one of the country’s largest distributors of newspapers and magazines. He’s one of the most powerful and generous people I know. I’d been riding in the elevator with him for years and I never knew who he was.

In How to Get Rich, I discussed how important it is to let people know about your accomplishments. I’ll always believe that, but there are times when it’s even more impressive if people discover your accomplishments without you telling them directly. A few weeks after Joel Anderson’s party, I noticed a long and highly positive profile of him in the business section of The New York Times. So I want to amend my advice from the previous book: It’s often necessary to boast, but it’s even better if others do it for you.

7. Success breeds success. The best way to impress people is through results. It’s easier for me to do deals now because I’ve had so many triumphs. You have to create success to impress people in the world of business. If you’re young and you haven’t had any successes yet, then you have to create the impression of success. It doesn’t matter whether the success is a small one or a big one—you have to start with something and build on it.

8. Friends are good, but family is better. It’s better to trust your family than your friends. When I was young, I said to someone who had a fairly big business, “Do you see your brothers and sisters?” The person looked at me and said, “Yes, I do, Donald. I see them in court.” That had a big impact on me, and I’ve always tried to stay close to my brothers and sisters, my children, and my former wives.

9. Treat each decision like a lover. Vast fortunes are accumulated through dozens of decisions a day, thousands a month, and hundreds of thousands in a career. Yet each decision is different and special in its own way. Sometimes you decide immediately—love at first sight. Sometimes you go slowly—the long engagement. Sometimes you gather people in a room and consider various opinions—the equivalent of asking your friends what they think of the person you’ve been dating. If you treat each decision like a lover—faithfully, respectfully, appropriately—you won’t be locked into a rigid system. You’ll adapt to the needs of that particular decision. Sometimes you’ll think with your head. Other times you’ll think with other parts of your body, and that’s good. Some of the best business decisions are made out of passion.

Sometimes people are surprised by how quickly I make big decisions, but I’ve learned to trust my instincts and not to overthink things. I like to compare a decision to a lover because it reminds me to keep in touch with my basic impulses, the drives that excite us, attract us, give us inspiration and energy. We are all drawn to beauty, whether it’s the allure of a person or the elegance of a home. Whenever I’m making a creative choice, I try to step back and remember my first shallow reaction. The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.

10. Be curious. A successful person is always going to be curious. I don’t know why this is true, but it’s definitely the case. You have to be alive to your surroundings and hungry to understand your immediate world. Otherwise, you’ll lack the perspective to see beyond yourself. One of the great aspects of working on The Apprentice has been learning about how network TV works. I recently found out that one of the reasons Thursday nights are so crucial to the networks is because that’s when lucrative movie advertisements for the weekend releases are aired. The higher the ratings are on Thursday night, the more the networks can charge their advertisers. And the more they can charge their advertisers, the more they can pay me to save their network! You see? Curiosity pays!

I’ll offer a lot more advice on how to think like a billionaire in the following pages. For the first time, I’m sharing practical advice on how to invest in real estate—buying, selling, getting a mortgage, dealing with a broker, renovating, and decorating. I’ve also put together a consumer guide to the best things in life. You don’t have to be a billionaire to afford them, either.

Whenever I give speeches or appear in public, people want to hear about The Apprentice, so I’ll take you behind the scenes of the first two seasons and describe what it’s like to go from prime locations to prime time.

I’ll never forget what a thrill the first season’s live finale was. We were about to switch from the taped part of the show to the live conclusion, where, without a script, I would spontaneously announce whether I was hiring Kwame or Bill. Right before I went on the air, the brilliant head of NBC, Jeff Zucker, told me he was already receiving instant reports that the audience watching our program was going to be huge. That wasn’t exactly what I needed to hear before appearing on live national television, but it turned out to be a truly exhilarating experience.

People have been referring to The Apprentice as a “comeback” for me, but I never went away. I was always big. And my buildings just keep getting bigger—and better!

And if you personally are bigger than ever, I’ve added another new element to this book: “The Mar-a-Lago Diet,” a brief guide to the eating habits of billionaires and the people who lunch with them. I’m a frequent follower of the Mar-a-Lago Diet, and even though I’m not going to be considered thin, without this diet, I’d look and feel like a total disaster.

So turn the page and begin reading the only book I’ll ever write that will make you rich and thin. Perhaps one day you’ll join the billionaire’s club. I’m sure I’ll enjoy your company. DyKqiuzFzWEUy4c5b500AsU5NgMeTVAXKrjOOyRD5KCrpByDDjrM552LbBX5CXmK