Customer Reviews

Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

I wanted to like this book, but I'm three-quarters of the way through it and I keep thowing it down in disgust. Most "chapters" are a mere page and a half long and the information contained therein are just extremely commonsense snippets with no real insight or depth. His section on real estate gives you gems like "get a home inspection", or "if you house isn't selling, lower the price". Uh...DOH! Every topic is covered too briefly to have any real merit or make it worthy of a second thought, much less a second read. So far the most interesting part of the book has been the two sections with color photos, though most are just pictures of his girlfriend scowling. (Isn't this chick like a model or something? Why is she making these screwy faces in all the pictures?)



Some of his advice on being successful in business includes not sleeping more than 4 hours a night and similar unpractical things.



My advice is save your money....if you are really curious about this book borrow it from a friend or the library. Don't let this book take up valuable real estate on your bookshelf!

Shame on me for expecting more... I had already purchased two Trump books when they came out, "Art of the Deal" & "How to get Rich", and was well aware of how self (Trump's self!)-promoting and devoid of content they were. Just pick up any Trump book and this should be apparent by the typeface size (in order to fill the pages, the type is so big Stevie Wonder could read it!) Still most books in general have some vaule so, roaming the aisle at the library, I picked up this 5 disc "gem".

How bad and useless is this children's book of financial "wisdom"?

1.) If you removed the words "me", "I", "my", "mine" (and every other narcissistic variant of the first person pronoun ), "Trump", "Apprentice" and "Mar-Lago" the runtime of this audiobook could be cut by an easy 25%.
Cut out the superfluous "information" about the tile at Trump's home and scores of other references that have absoultely nothing to do with you or success and you kill another 40% of time. What are you left with?

2.) A host of vague and contradicting generalities that are so broad or commonsense that they are frankly insulting. My pity to anyone who actually paid for this man's self-promoting diatribe of no real value.

3.) Then Trump wants to teach you about dieting and landscaping and...stop!!!! I can't take it. It's too hard to balance laughter and disgust!!

I borrowed this to listen to in the car, but the amount of noxious fumes and carbon dioxide spewed from the speakers actually made it impossible to listen to all the way through. I actually started carrying a caged canary in the car to warn me of the CO2 levels until I could get the oxygen masks that drop from the ceiling installed. Ugh!

Seriously, I've read a lot of finance and success books and while a few have been very valuable, most tend to be 80% fluff that must be endured to find 5-10 valuable gems. After a while, most just become helpful reinforcement of what you already know. While it is not uncommon for these types of books to have obvious, contradicting or useless information, this book has little else. And the amount of crap you have to sit through to get one or two things of value is inexcusable. This is just Trump doing what he does best: Not real estate, but branding and self-promoting. If anyone becomes a billionaire via this program, it is the guy who ignores everything said and just realizes: Hey, I can make more money talking about making money than actually making it...

And, another very surprising thing: The cover of the CD as well as the intro says the book is read by the author. A LIE! OUTRIGHT LIE! The book is read by Barry Bostwick. And what's worse, he reads it like he's doing an impersonation of Trump. Nice job further screwing the Trump credibility already damaged by the content of this audiobook (and other Trump "tomes").

Why doesn't Trump ever clarify or elaborate on his true great achievement? Clawing and negotiating his way out of his massive failure in the 90's. THAT would be interesting and useful.

Bottom line: There are a billion better "books" than this waste.

This is one of the most useless books I have read in recent times. It hardly has anything to offer. Sometimes I wonder why it was really written at all ...

This book is divided into four sections ...

(1) How to buy/rent a house?
(2) How to invest in the stock market?
(3) Trump's consumer guide.
(4) Apprentice: Behind the scenes ...

The "buy/rent" and the "invest in stock market" sections just seems useless. The advice is pretty much lame ... "buy house in good locality.", "buy the best house you can", "delegate responsibility of investing to Investment Gurus", "Invest (100 minus your age) in stocks" etc. All in all, nothing new. I wonder if Donald Trump really wrote this book or just OEM'ed it?

The Trump's Consumer Guide clearly brings out the shallow, superficial nature of Donald Trump. All the "best of the world" seems to exist only inside the Trump Tower. It clearly exhibits the "Frog in the well" thinking.

The final "Apprentice: Behind the scenes" section seems like pure filler. The sole goal being to promote Apprentice and to glorify himself. Donald Trump mistakenly seems to be taking credit for Apprentice's success ... what a loser? :-)

All in all, this is an useless & worthless book. Don't waste your time reading this book!

-Sachin

There I was stuck with a five hour wait in the Fort Lauderdale airport. I went into the bookstore seven times before succumbing to Trump: Think Like a Billionaire. But nothing else looked any better. I think it was the guarantee that I could bring the book back after I had read it for a 50% refund that hooked me.

I once met Bennett Cerf. He was a great publisher. It's too bad his name is sullied by printing a puff piece of no content self-promotion like this one under the Random House imprint.

Presumably, the reason you buy this book is so that you can think like a billionaire and become one. You can knock me over with a feather if anyone becomes richer because of reading this book.

The book has five parts: Real estate; money; the business of life; slices of a billionaire's life; and Inside the Apprentice.

In real estate, you learn that you need architects, contractors, agents, designers, lawyers, accountants, tax experts and other professionals to develop real estate. Hire good ones and treat them well . . . unless they are contractors. In that case, give them a hard time until they cut their price and deliver sooner. Walk through your properties as often as possible, looking at them like a tenant or a visitor, and fix any flaws. You learn everything you need to know in 44 pages including how to rent an apartment, read a classified ad and buy a home.

In money you find out that you cannot control costs unless you sign all the checks your billion-dollar company writes. You also learn not to trust a great deal. Have someone keep track of your financial situation and share it with you frequently. Don't borrow more than you can afford to lose. Get scholarships and grants for college and get a job for the rest. Everything you need to know comes in 31 pages.

In the business of life, Donald Trump tells you to do something you like, promote yourself by doing good work, be helpful in meetings, dress nicely, work all the time if you can make money at it, use your romantic desires to stimulate your work life, impress others that you are well organized, get a pre-nup so your next spouse won't take you to the cleaners, have a strong marriage if you want to make the most money and demand the best even if you're not paying. This takes 45 pages.

Slices of the Billionaire's Life include some heavy hitting examples and a diary of the work days for The Donald. He alternates between yelling at contractors, working on The Apprentice, chatting with celebrity buddies and sneaking out for a little golf.

In inside The Apprentice, you get a little gander at Apprentice 2 interspaced with crowing about the show's ratings.

Throughout all five sections, you read dozens of examples of people telling The Donald "You're fired" and cartoons developing the same point.

The book also displays many colored photographs of The Donald scowling. He has a few where he's getting TV publicity and he smiles for that. He does seem to like promotion.

You also get lots of photographs of The Donald and his third wife (while they were dating) including some where she is arrayed across the furniture and furnishings (atop a piano with a vertically challenged dress and standing partly in a marble pool in The Donald's living room). My favorite has them both scowling in the classic The Donald pose.

One sour note in the book is that The Donald decides to attack those rare souls who haven't given him publicity that was as positive as he desired.

If you really want to see how shallow someone can be, this is your book. If Trump: Think like a Billionaire didn't have that value, I would have graded the book as a one-star effort.

I recently read a note from a publisher that said that no one can discuss how to live well like The Donald. I'm still looking for that discussion rather than the pretty self-image he studies in the mirror in this book.

I think I'll skip future efforts by The Donald. I hope the book store is open when I go to the airport tomorrow so I can get half my money back on this book.

Sorry for the corny title, but it was obvious. This was a true disappointment.

Every section of the book (and there are 5) is made up of "Chapters" in fact there are 67 sections to this book - which is just an excuse to insert blank pages, and start the next page half way down the page. Talk about a book printed full of "air" - of the 263 pages, over 60 were BLANK!! The information was mediocre at best and only scratched the surface of any topic. It is also interesting to note that the book is titled "Think Like a Billionaire" and the final section of the book (40 pages) is about the participants of the apprentice show and has nothing to do with the subject of the book.

I must however say that Mr. Trump is probably the only person around who can take such garbage, sell it to the public - and get away with it!

He is indeed an amazing businessman, but don't waste your time with this poor excuse of a book.

This is the book for you. All this book is, is a review of how great Trump and all his business' are. In this book he lists some of his favorite things like restaurants. But then he goes on and lists his own restaurant as his favorite. Just a book filled with Trump advertisements and not much else that is useful.

I did not buy the book but bought the CD audio instead (I drive a lot so I need something to listen to). Based on what I've listen to so far, I don't think I would have been able to get though the first few chapters.

The book is mostly a waste of time. However, there are a few good nuggets here and there but finding them is like finding a needle in a hay stack. There are several sections where Trump discusses things like favorite ice cream and favorite shoes. Ok, how does that information get me to where I want to go? A better book to read would be "The Millionaire Mind" by Thomas Stanley.

One interesting fact. In the book he states how he does not consider himself a promoter. But listening to the CD all I could think about is that he is promoting himself! I mean, there is a whole section on his experience during his hosting of Saturday Night Live. I mean, come on... If this is not self-promotion I don't know what is.

The book is very choppy and lacks continuity. Trump writes 2-3 pages on every topic imaginable, from food to women and everything in-between. I had to force myself to finish reading this book. There are enough product endorsements from Trump in these pages that the book should be available for free.

Half the book is Donald Trump bragging about himself. While he does give some practical advice, it is only helpful for people who are either very young, or totally clueless. This man is totally in love with himself. The pictures in the book are mainly of his trophy wife, buildings, etc. Don't waste your money on this book, check it out of the library. On the positive side, this book did provide fun conversation at the family dinner table for my 12 year old son, when I read passages from the book. Even my 12 year old thought that Trump was nothing more than a braggart.

The information in this book is not worth the recycled paper it is printed on! The book is full of pretentious pictures of Trump with his gold digging girlfriend, along with worthless articles on where to shop for the best Ice Cream, Men's Shoes, and Neckties. Not quite sure how that information benefits people living outside of New York City, or how it pertains to building wealth, but it is clear that this book is not going to help anyone build wealth expect for Trump, who will obviously benefit from unsuspecting folks like me who expected much more from "the Donald". In short, Don, "You're Fired"!