Me neither! h/t .
I’m not understanding this take. The article’s main focus is on Trump’s buying of Plaza, spending way too much, losing control of it, and having to sell it for a loss. It seems to very much touch on an investment error ?!?
Not his worst one though. And he had a sound business plan and negotiation strategy: recall that in the 2000s the condos were eventually sold for $1.4 billion, so the deal might have worked if Trump was decent at execution.
Anyway, I appreciate the cites, but after reading all of them, I’m still unable to answer basic questions like what have been some of his greatest successes, how did he actually build the real estate empire that he has now, what drove those successes, etc.
Remember, what started this particular tangent was the claim that Trump’s only real strength is as a sales guy, and he hasn’t ever had mastery of the details of the nuts and bolts of actual real estate development. Perhaps a good way to examine that claim is to look at an actual success of his, from the earlier days, before he was just selling a brand. And by a success, I mean where he’s actually made money. And use that to understand what kind of role he’s taken there.
I’d like to ramp down “Solely a salesman” to “Mainly a salesman”. Because he does own a number of golf courses today. But those are good questions. I honestly don’t know enough to answer them in that sort of detail. If we could look at several years of his tax returns, we could impute a rough estimate of his net worth and changes in the same from his cash flows.
I did read an anecdote on this message board. Check out the thread, Donald Trump: How did such a nutcase get so rich? :
There is a component called “talent” which not everyone has. There’s also a component called luck, or timing. That talent fits exactly what is needed at the time.
As I posted earlier, there’s a knack or talent called “salesmanship” which is a typical route to getting rich. It seems to me it’s a bit of empathy, to understand the customer, a bit of ego to believe some of your own hype (since nothing succeeds like confidence), and a bit of sociopathy, to push onto them what satisfies your agenda rather than the customer’s and not be bothered doing it. Trump has this talent, and he also had the practice - having daddy’s millions to help him get started and avoid certain potholes in the road.
True, too, it was timing. The original Trump towers were a bit of genius. He finished with mostly the cheapest fixtures and materials, since the first thing a multimillionaire does with a condo is gut it and rebuild the interior. (Hopefully somewhat tastefully, not in gaudy tacky noveaux-riche fake baroque gilding like Trump’s penthouse on Apprentice)
The other ventures he has participated in, the way he sells his name, he is a pretty good salesman. However, like his tacky penthouse, it’s all superficial bluster, not a deep and lasting understanding of long term strategy to build value.
Shoulda given him a h/t.