Trump: The Art of the Deal Paperback – October 6, 2015

"Trump, who believes that excess can be a virtue, is as American as Manhattan's skyline," wrote George Will in the 1980's. Regardless of whether you think Donald Trump as a symbol of American success, or you think he's an annoying, chest-pounding egomaniac with bad hair, this book will show you what it took for him to build up his empire. The book shows Trump doing what he does best -- boldly making big deals -- during the "greed is good" decade of the 1980's. I found it interesting to see how much of his current empire he had built up before his 40th birthday, and to understand how he pulled off various deals.
The majority of the book is a swashbuckling, detailed history of his biggest projects. He talks about all the details, from negotiating with landholders, arguing about zoning with city officials, lining up contractors, interviewing architects, dealing with partners in various projects, negotiating with banks to line up financing, and the like.
Trump also devotes a couple chapters to his background. He was the son of a successful developer of rent-controlled & low-income housing in Queens and Brooklyn, NY. He was a mischievous, aggressive kid (he once punched a teacher), and was sent military school during his high-school years. He started college at Fordham in the Bronx, NY, to be close to home, but then then transferred to the Wharton Business School (at the University of Pennsylvania) because he liked its entrepreneurial emphasis. Shortly after college, he worked with his father to buy a troubled apartment complex in Cincinnati, which he fixed it up and sold for a multi-million dollar profit. Hungry for bigger things, he moved to a small studio apartment in Manhattan, and progressed from small deals to bigger ones, from renovating a hotel, to building Trump tower, to building and buying casinos in Atlantic city, along with a many other projects.
Besides the stories of his deal-making, Trump gives some tips for aspiring moguls. Although he believes you need a certain innate instinct for negotiating well, he thinks there are some tips everyone can use. For example: when planning deals, one should think big, always have a plan B, keep your options open, and use your advantages as leverage in negotiations. When executing a deal, one must deliver results, control costs, and fight competitors when necessary. Also, promotion of your project is important to get the word out. And finally, of course, Trump says one has to have fun doing all this -- if it's not fun, why do it?
Overall, the book was an OK read, and it moved quickly (I read it in about a day). Some reviewers were put off by Trump's bravado (but give me a break -- it's Donald Trump!! what did you expect?). If you can get past the bluster, you can see what it took to assemble his empire. I was inspired to re-read the book because of the success of Trump's new TV show, "The Apprentice," and I don't regret the day or so it took to re-read -- it's light reading & moves very quickly. If you'd like a quick refresher on Trump's rise, as I did, then this book (and some say the best book) should be on your reading list.

Donald Trump has become arguably the world's best-known real-estate icon. He has undoubtedly worked hard for the honor. Trump routinely wakes up at 6AM, at which time he reads the morning papers before arriving to work by 9AM. He'll make anywhere from 50 to 100 phone calls daily, and will hold a dozen or so impromptu 15-minute meetings throughout the day. But Trump's work ethic is only part of the reason why he has come to define the quintessential real estate mogul.

Donald Trump provides for our benefit his eleven Trump Cards of success. They include thinking big, protecting the downside, maximizing options, knowing your market, using leverage, enhancing your location, getting the word out through a public relations/marketing campaign, fighting back, delivering the goods, controlling costs, and having fun. Yet even these Trump Cards fail to fully illuminate what it is that makes Trump so successful.

A great deal of Trump's success can be traced back to his father who built and sold homes throughout New York City, most prominently in Jamaica Estates. Donald would learn on the job from a young age about managing costs and putting together a working symphony of various real estate professionals. After transferring from Fordham University to the University of Pennsylvania to complete his undergraduate degree in business administration, Donald and his father bought Swifton Village in 1968, a 1200-unit FHA apartment complex in Cincinnati, Ohio. While the scope of a 1200-unit apartment complex may seem unfathomable to many, for Donald it was just the beginning. These formative years convinced Trump to look beyond NYC and take the next progressive step, which for him was to develop commercial real estate in Manhattan and later casinos in Atlantic City.

Trump approaches business very straightforwardly. He believes that the art of business can be reduced to the simple formula of buy low sell high. Trump writes, "Much as I like the [Beverly Hill's Hotel] I'm interested in it only if I can get it for a much better price than they're now asking" (12). Trump will walk away from a very good property if the numbers don't match up. Trump makes a point of surrounding himself with the best talent when making these hard decisions. In fact, he attributes much of his success to surrounding himself with the best talent available. Throughout the book Trump writes:

"I'm just looking to hire the best talent, wherever I can find it (6) [and] I have a very simple rule when it comes to management: hire the best people from your competitors, pay them more than they were earning and give them bonuses and incentives based on their performance. That's how you build a first-class operation" (220).

Simply, there exists no room for second best. In this respect, much can be learned from Trump and applied to our lives. However, there exists another more intangible component of Trump's success that underscores the need for of a heightened sense of intuition.

This sense of intuition can be interpreted by many as self-confidence, the experience of feeling comfortable in one's own skin, or going with one's gut. In any event, this feeling transcends many areas of Trump's life, including a pervading sense of justice:

"I hate lawsuits and depositions, but the fact is that if you're right, you've got to take a stand, or people will walk all over you (7) [and] You have to be very rough and very tough with most contractors or they'll take the shirt right of your back" (38).

A sense of intuition cannot be underscored enough. Trump believes in it so strongly that he writes, "You can take the smartest kid at Wharton, the one who gets straight A's and has a 170 IQ, and if he doesn't have the instincts, he'll never be a successful entrepreneur. Moreover, most people who do have the instincts will never recognize that they do, because they don't have the courage or the good fortune to discover their potential (46)." Trump's remarkable history of deal making should embolden us to apply some of the very same business principles that made Trump so successful to our lives in an effort to discover our own true potential.

This book is not a how-to book for deal making or negotiation. This book is more autobiographical. Each chapter covers a different deal, which were mostly in the 1980s. To learn from this will require some reading between the lines and some extrapolation.
With the exception of the first couple chapters, which talk about his early years, each chapter goes into some detail about a different deal, like the USFL and Trump Plaza. Trump talks about some negotiations, licensing, and construction. Reading about the steps behind each deal has some benefit if you are patient and read carefully.
Unfortunately, you need to understand the time, New York/New Jersey, and Trump to get this information. Since the information is from the 80s, it is a bit dated. Also, if you are not familiar with New York or New Jersey, many of his references (which are oftentimes just the streets involved) will mean nothing to you. Trump also does a lot of name-dropping. If you are not from the area, then most of the names will mean nothing (with the exception of some of the USFL players he mentions).
I would rate this book higher if it wasn't so dated. If you are familiar with the area and time covered in the book, then this can be helpful.