People who want to learn about success often forget that many of these lessons are also about how to face gigantic problems and solve them. As Oscar Wilde famously said “Who are afraid to fail are afraid to succeed.” There is no better person to learn from than Donald Trump.
As a kid, Trump was obsessed with baseball to the exclusion of almost everything else so his parents had to send him to the New York Military Academy to sort him out. It worked and Trump pulled up his socks, graduating from one of the best business schools in the country, the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania. After an apprenticeship with his father, a successful real estate developer, Trump was ready to take off on his own. Trump has always thought big and told Millionaire Magazine “Always do something that you like, always do something that you enjoy doing, or you will never be successful. You will never be good at it,” However, it is Trump’s success in overcoming his gigantic problems that make him truly unique.
Trump made a multibillion dollar fortune only to see most of it wiped out in the real estate market crash. He was staring down the brink of the precipice with total debts of over $9.2 billion. His superlative negotiating skills and his astute business moves enabled him to recover. In his own words: “It’s always a great asset to be able to get along with people.” Over the years, despite some very tricky deals, I’ve generally been able to get along with people. You always have to let the other side think that they are also getting something out of the transaction. And, it’s often true that the best deals are the ones that everybody benefits from.”
Trump would be a winner anywhere, but he happened to choose the real estate business. He was also a master at using debt and keeping his options open. Certainly, one lesson you can learn from him on using debt is to investigate the use of elastic loans.
