Posted on 01/01/2016 11:17:33 AM PST by poconopundit
The Art of the DealIn the last few months — like many people — I’ve become a YUGE Trump fan. And watching several of his rallies on YouTube, he often mentions his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal. Well, he aroused my curiosity enough that I went out and bought a copy from Amazon.
Now being a self-employed market analyst in the tech industry, I also figured the book would give me some profitable ideas for my business, which it has.
So what’s my opinion of the book? Well, it’s a highly interesting read, and any business person, I think, can get good advice and motivation from it. Most of the book’s content describes the planning, salesmanship, obstacles, and successes around some of his famous (pre-1987) deals such as Trump Tower and the Atlantic City casino he bought from Hilton Hotels. And the business lessons in the book are widely applicable beyond real estate.
Now each “deal” in the book is actually made up of several supporting deals — agreements/contracts with many parties — which all need to come together to win the business. For the Trump Tower deal, for example, there was the property lease, the building license, the air rights, bank financing — even city permits. So the fun of the book is learning how the jigsaw pieces fit together and reading about the many unforeseen twists and turns that happen, and how Trump flexes his original plan to inevitably close the sale.
The book isn’t all success stories. Trump also discusses his attempt to create a big deal through his USFL football franchise, the New Jersey Generals. That deal — a long shot bid with a potentially big payoff — ended when the opponent, Pete Rozelle’s National Football League (NFL), defeated Trump and his USFL partners in a close court case.
For me, the meat of the book is in the Trump Cards chapter. Here’s where Trump distills the basic principles he follows to win deals and grow his business.
And reading this chapter is where I started noticing many parallels to the techniques he employs in his presidential campaign. So that’s the genesis of this post. I thought, “Gee, I’ll bet many FReepers would enjoy reading about how Trump’s 1987 Art of the Deal principles are being applied in his 2016 campaign.”
So what follows are some excerpted lessons from Art of the Deal (in italics) and my observations on how they relate to what he’s doing in his campaign.
Hope you like it. Look forward to reading your comments.
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Think BigTo me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. . . I wasn’t satisfied just to earn a good living. I was out to build something monumental — something worth a lot of effort.
Bigness has become synonymous with the Trump campaign.
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Get the Word OutYou need to generate interest, and you need to create excitement. . . One thing I’ve learned about the press is they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. Trump is taking the art of public relations to new heights in his campaign:
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Enhance Your LocationYou don’t necessarily need the best location. What you need is the best deal. Just as you can create leverage, you can enhance a location, through promotion and through psychology. . In a short six months, Trump has YUGEly changed the rules of presidential campaigning:
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Contain the CostsI believe in spending what you have to. . . The point is that you can dream great dreams, but they’ll never amount to much if you don’t turn them into reality at a reasonable cost. Though Trump has plenty of money to spend on his own campaign, his campaign has been remarkably frugal and efficient:
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Fight BackI’m very good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard. America loves a fighter, and Trump has proven to be an expert counter-puncher in his campaign:
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Know Your MarketSome people have a sense of the market and some people don’t. I like to think I have that instinct. That’s why I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I am a big believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. . . Better than any other presidential candidate, Trump knows his market and has correctly read the mind of American voters.
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Maximize Your OptionsI also protect myself by being flexible. I never get too attached to one deal or one approach. . . Once I’ve made a deal, I always come up with a least a half dozen approaches to making it work, because anything can happen. The “anything can happen” crisis became real with the brutal ISIS mass murders in Paris and San Bernardino:
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Protect the DownsidePeople think I’m a gambler. I’ve never gambled in my life. . . One of the best examples I can give is my experience in Atlantic City. . . before I spent hundreds of millions of dollars and several years on construction, I wanted to make sure I got my gaming license. Protecting the downside is evident in the way Trump has prepared for his presidential run.
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Use Your LeverageThe best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Better yet, needs. Best of all, simply can’t do without. Trump’s celebrity status and broad name recognition created a virtuous vortex of publicity for him.
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Deliver the GoodsYou can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on. Trump has “delivered the goods” big time in his campaign:
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Have FunLife is very fragile, and success doesn’t change that. . . Anything can change, without warning, and that’s why I try not to take any of what’s happening too seriously. . . The real excitement is playing the game.
Despite his passion to win and beat his opponents, Trump has truly shown his love for the game itself.
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My hubby has ‘unsubscribed’ from CRuz’ emails so many times, it’s not funny. It just seems to send more!
Could you please post the Trump email you’ve received? I’m curious what the “RNC list” email from Trump looks like.
Nice post. Thank you.
LOL...nothing like poking a nest of snakes. The response was predictable. Ha!
NYE SHOCK: Voters and Media annoyed by Cruz’s constant email spam for cash:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3378814/posts
I voted for Sarah Palin. McCain just happened to be on the same ticket.
Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war. Donald Trump
Indeed.
Thanks! Appreciate all the good comments here. The beautiful thing is with Free Republic you get feedback right away from a post — and from intelligent readers. It’s motiviating.
And yes, you are correct. I spent a while figuring out how to format the piece in HTML. That’s another beauty of FR. You get the ability make a post look the way you want it.
Of course, by looking at the source code, anybody can take the framework I made and use it for their own story — just substitute text and pictures. Basically this is just one big HTML table.
Would love to see somebody in the Trump campaign link to the story. Not sure how to make that happen.
You’re welcome!
I think you’re the first on the web to compare The Art of the Deal to the Trump 2016 candidacy.
And it’s eye opening.
I was wondering why it hasn’t been done before. Maybe because Team Trump didn’t want anyone to give away its game plan, and they’ve been taking down any of those stories.
But then that would be futile. Based on what you wrote, it’s plain as day exactly what Team Trump is doing. Any enterprising and curious mind would eventually discover it.
I don’t think Trump has to worry about any of his competitors figuring out his game plan or using it against him if they study your post or anything else like it.
That’s because Trump has the advantage in using Art of the Deal tactics in 2016: no one else can use them as well as he does. He already has decades worth of experience using them. And he has already cornered the market on many of them in 2016, such as Think Big, Contain the Costs, and Having Fun.
So thanks again for sharing it with us, FR, and the Web.
I hope Trump’s people see it. I’m sure they already have. Some here have already mentioned or hinted they’ve shared it with their networks.
Also, congrats on your new market-analyst business!
Thanks again. Hearing what you say about "giving away the game plan" makes me think: that's probably a Trump strategy too! Imagine the brutally competitive New York real estate market of the late 80s, when out comes this book written by Trump, one of the most successful of all New York developers. And in that book Trump reveals the details and principles behind his business. How could a Trump competitor not buy his book! But why did Trump give away his trade secrets like that? The answer, I think, is that Trump planned to compete on a higher plane. The Art of the Deal would create terrific name recognition and a halo of success that would attract new business like bees to honey. And Deliver the Goods he did. A book doesn't become one of the best-selling business books of all time unless the quality is there — and readers feel they got good value. And then there's the Trump Card that is not mentioned in the book: Trump knew if The Art of the Deal took off, it would bring opportunity from places he could never imagine. Perhaps the biggest opportunity of all came from a certain reader named Mark Burnett, the creator and producer of The Apprentice. Here's what Burnett wrote in the foreword of another Trump book, The Midas Touch.
I especially appreciated that it was written for someone like me — someone who had never been to business school. I was in total awe of this real estate mogul, Donald Trump, and never believed I would set eyes on the man himself, let alone meet him. I certainly never imagined that I would be in business with him." |
Competitors could buy and read the book, but it wouldn’t help much. As the earlier poster said, Trump has been doing this for years. Even with knowledge in their heads, competitors would have to get up to speed and it would take time. With Trump, I think a great deal (no pun) of it is instinct.
Omg. Thanks for sharing that. Mark Burnett, whatever you want to say about his often more scripted than natural “reality shows,” I’ve been glued to several of them for years and they are ubiquitous. They shared a lot of human nature, both good and bad, and they are compelling to watch. My favorites have been Shark Tank and Celebrity Apprentice but there are so many. Amazing that he read the Art of the Deal and it took him from selling to T-shirts on the beach to where he is today.
Do not underestimate Donald Trump. He is powerful and he is good (even if he doesn’t agree with you on all the issues).
In the technology journal I publish, I often interview consultants who are paid a high price for their advice — and they give away lots of valuable advice in the interview.
Now maybe a few enterprising people will follow that advice directly. But a surprising number people — if they have a need for that expertise — will actually hire the consultant because of the extra value of instinct.
So yes, it all does boil down to instinct. The expert is valuable because his many experiences have allowed him to gained instinct. . . or wisdom perhaps.
But curiously, Shakespeare could never explain how Shakespeare writes his magic.
Ignore the one-hit Trump trolls :)
They add nothing and take NOTHING away from Trump....only help him.
Excellent work!
Thank you so much for posting this.
When I was first out of college and hired in sales, I read Trump’s Art of the Deal.
I learned so much from this book - so encouraging and inspiring.
I was number one and two, in the country, for several years. Not saying that it was all a credit to Trump, but his advice certainly stuck with me, throughout the years. I have recommended this book to many others, over time.
Hi Jane! That other FReeper and I have been exchanging some replies across various threads during the last week, and surprisingly it hasn’t been too personal. But it’s still early in the primaries, so we’ll see how it goes. :)
Happy New Year, Jane!
Great to hear how The Art of the Deal inspired your success in sales! It's fascinating how great books can become silent mentors. Back when I was learning copywriting skills, I read the 1984 book Direct Mail Copy That Sells! by Herschell Gordon Lewis. And many of the principles in that book still guide my writing career today. Now if top sales people around the country are connecting with Trump, well, that alone could create a nice bump for Trump! |
Happy New Year to you, as well!
See you on the Trump threads :)
Media likes to quote a list of Top 10 Most Memorably Quotes of 2015 by some guy (Shapiro?). I had heard maybe just one of them. It did not have “Je Suis Paris” nor Trump’s quote. How could anybody miss Trump’s “Let’s make America great again” unless it was deliberate?
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