I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open.
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.
Trump’s cards
The elements of the deal
1. Think big
2. Protect the Downside and the Upside Will Take Care of Itself
I always go into the deal anticipating the worst. If you plan for the worst—if you can live with the worst—the good will always take care of itself.
3. Maximize Your Options
4. Know Your Market
5. Use Your Leverage
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.
leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants.
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.
6. Enhance Your Location
the most misunderstood concept in all of real estate is that the key to success is location, location, location.
What you need is the best deal. After we negotiated the deal, success became a matter of management and marketing.
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.
7. Get your words out
even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business.
when a reporter asks me a tough question, I try to frame a positive answer, if someone asks me what negative effects the world’s tallest building might have on the West Side, I turn the tables and talk about how New Yorkers deserve the world’s tallest building.
truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.
8. Fight back
if they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting me, they’d be doing something constructive themselves.
9. Delivers the goods
10. Contact the costs
the day I can’t pick up the telephone and make a twenty-five-cent call to save $10,000 is the day I’m going to close up shop.
11. Have fun
very fragile, and success doesn’t change that. If anything, success makes it more fragile. 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.
if you ever catch someone stealing, you have to go after him very hard, even if it costs you ten times more than he stole.
You can’t be scared. You do your thing, you hold your ground, you stand up tall, and whatever happens, happens.
To me, that was classic shortsightedness. For example, in the face of a sales drop, most companies cut back on their advertising budgets. But in fact, you need advertising the most when people aren’t buying.
everyone underneath the top guy in a company is just an employee. An employee isn’t going to fight for your deal.
a hotel with 1,500 employees, and there’s got to be a chain of command or else a business like this just doesn’t work.
giving time is far more valuable than just giving money.