A friend sent over a copy of Wealth Building 101: Your First 90 Days on the Path to Prosperity, by Trump University. Despite sporting a picture of His Royal Trumpness on the front, it’s only edited by The Donald. It’s actually a compendium of essays from individuals who I assume teach intermittently at Trump U.
All right, I confess. I’ve always been intrigued by Trump, so I was a bit disappointed. You see, I loved the early seasons of The Apprentice and even enjoyed contributing to former wannabe-apprentice Amy Henry’s book, What It Takes: Speak Up, Step Up, Move Up: A Modern Woman’s Guide to Success in Business. Hmmm. Wonder what she’s doing now? I did a quick scan of Amazon reviews and noticed some people slamming her for writing a book despite finishing fourth. My thoughts–if you ever have a chance to write a book for whatever reason, do it! And, to anyone who rags on someone for finishing fourth, I have one word for you – Daughtry.
But, I digress. Back to building wealth the Trump way.
While part of me was looking forward to a big dose of Trumposity, I wasn’t totally disappointed to be hearing from some different professors, most of whom put a softer edge on the view from Planet Trump. The book is divided into seven sections:
- Think Rich: How to Unleash Your “Inner Trump�
- Plan Smart: Your Playbook for Financial Success
- Act Now
- Be the Boss: The Entrepreneur’s Path to Wealth
- Own Property: The Real Estate Path to Wealth
- Invest in Wall Street: The Stock Market Path to Wealth
- Protect Your Wealth
It’s probably not surprising that my favorite part of the book was Donald Trump’s intro, where he sets forth 12 skills you need to be successful. Most of it is common sense and nothing new (just delivered in the way one would expect of Trump): Think big, take risks, etc. But, what caught me were the lines about being tenacious: “Very few things of worth are easy achievements. That’s just the way it works.� So very anti-The Secret that I loved it!
Another short sound bite from his intro that I found intriguing was his take on negotiating. It’s really not what I expected.
Negotiating isn’t about calling all the shots–it’s about ability: the power to convince people to accept your ideas. Present your ideas in a way that won’t intimidate them. Let them think the decision is theirs. Bulldozing people into accepting your ideas is a recipe for disaster.
If this is the definition of negotiating, then I’m actually pretty good at it. As a born marketer, I spend most of my time convincing people that my ideas were really theirs to begin with.
Of interest in the next chapter, “Learn Millionaire Habits” by Marshall Sylver, the author actually talks about the importance of balance. He states that you need to create and maintain mental, physical, relational and financial balance (in that order). Guess that’s a millionaire mindset because that’s certainly not what we learned from the billionaires.
I didn’t find much new in most of the other chapters that involved reducing your debt, creating monthly financial statements, investing in real estate or the stock market, but that doesn’t mean you won’t.
The best part of the book besides Trump’s intro was the Opportunity Screening Checklist in the “Start Your Own Business” chapter by Michael E. Gordon. While it is meant to help you preview entrepreneurial ideas, I found it useful to run my own business plan through it.
The Top Shelf Bottom Line: If you haven’t read a book on managing your personal finances, this one is pretty useful as it covers all the bases, and the addition of the entrepreneurial chapter is a bonus for those with their own businesses.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 8:47 am and is filed under Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Leave a Reply
