Donald Trump - Millionaire

Unless you live under a rock, you instantly know who Donald Trump is, or at least what his persona is. Any businessman whose tag line is “Your Fired!” has a reputation for being less than congenial. Many people find him a good target to throw stones at as has been evidenced over the years in the media. What we should be doing however is looking less at whether we think he is a nice person and more at what we can learn from him and his success.

Donald Trump was born June 14 1946 in New York City. His father raised him around construction sites and taught him the real estate business from the ground up. This experience on job sites and working with contractors would hold him in good stead as he began building many of his signature works.

His education began in the Kew-Forrest School in Queens but problems soon led his parents to send him to military school at the ripe old age of 13. The hope was the increased discipline would focus his energy and keep him out of further trouble; apparently, it worked because he graduated and continued his education by earning a Bachelors degree in economics at the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania.

When He returned to New York, he quickly became a part of his father’s real estate business. Unlike his father who focused on middle income, housing Donald Trump had grand dreams of monumental proportions. These dreams were made reality through his tenacity and sheer grit. Whenever a problem would arise, he would meet it head on.

He has a very distinct sense of himself; he knows what he is good at and what he is worth. Take his hit show the Apprentice, He had been approached by many networks to do a show all of which he was uninterested in. When Mark Burnett met with him and presented his idea for the show Trump said yes immediately, he credits Marks track record and salesmanship as the reason he readily agreed. Incidentally, his agent advised him against doing the show telling him reality shows had a high failure rate, in order to be true to his word he pressed on and the rest as they say is history. Later this same man came to Donald and explained he felt he deserved a cut of the money he was making from the show, Donald quickly told him “You’re Fired!”

In all his kicking and taking names attitude the man behind the persona is simply a man doing what he is passionate about. In the question and answer section of his book “Think Big …..” He was asked what created the burning desire to make money; he responded by saying, “I don’t have a burning desire to make money. I have a burning desire to enjoy what I do.” That friends is the answer to the question, do what you love and the wealth will come to you. Of course, you need to add in little Trumpisms every now and again like his response to people who say a rich person got lucky… “Yeah they were lucky enough to have the brains to work hard!”

This is classic Donald Trump a brand of one.