The Entrepreneurial Genius Of The Great Donald J. Trump
Whether you agree or disagree with his policies or morals, there is no denying that Donald J. Trump is the most inspirational recent US President for entrepreneurs.
I’ve collated a few anecdotes from things I’ve read about his business dealings. Some may be semi-fictional. Others may be recollected through the lens of my interpretation.
The more open-minded individuals should be able to put to one side his imperfections to absorb his wisdom. The less so can keep doing what they’ve always done.
The more open-minded individuals should be able to distinguish between supporting and admiring someone. The less so can continue to conflate the two.
This is a long article but I’ve selected in my opinion the best life lessons that Trump offers.
[NOTE: This article is a ‘loose’ sequel to my prior article The Art of Informing]
Ambition
Very successful people are almost always very ambitious. They know what level they are at and they aspire to get higher.
There are 70,540 Americans with a net worth over $50M. Trump was born into that class by default. But he wasn’t content. He wanted to climb higher.
Skyscrapers
Building simple housing projects was how his father made money. Continuing to do that meant maintaining the status quo. He wanted to do something grander.
Since Trump lived in NYC, it meant he just had to look up to see a natural extension to his father’s business model.
He took an enormous financial, personal and professional risk to move to a new industry. He had to learn how the industry works, network with the key players and intersect with government bureaucracy (such as obtaining permits from hostile mayors etc).
Entrepreneurs can learn from Trump that you should never refrain from learning new skills or fear a new environment. Life is too short to not take good risks (within your means). Most people are too scared to venture into the unknown because they fear failure more than they crave success.
The NFL
The NFL is America’s real favorite pastime. As American Football was becoming more and more ingrained in American culture, Trump, who had played the game as a child, wanted a piece of the action. The NFL had a de-facto monopoly that trampled over every other startup it went up against.
Trump knew that he wasn’t wealthy enough to buy into the NFL. The NFL owners were a different tier of billionaire.
But Trump was young and fearless. So he decided to get creative.
He bought into a new startup football league called the United States Football League. Against some owner’s better judgement, he then used his powerful charisma to persuade the other co-owners to directly compete with the NFL by aligning their playing seasons. Once the NFL inevitably squashed them, he then sued the NFL for anti-competitive behavior.
He won the court case, but the jury did not award him with the right to own a franchise in the NFL.
The young Trump lost a lot of money but learnt lessons that served him well into the future.
Patience
Ordinary people may not recognize that there are different classes of billionaires. Trump may have been born into wealth, but his family was a lower class of billionaire. The Trumps did not wield political power.
To illustrate the point, I’m sure that you can recognize that pre-presidency, there was a substantial disparity between Bill Gates and Donald Trump that was more than just their massive wealth gap (Remember, Microsoft was going to be split up after the 2001 anti-trust case until a change of government).
Trump wanted to become President as he saw it as the ultimate way to move his family up society’s ladder.
For more than four decades, the idea was swirling around in his head. He waited for the perfect opportunity to strike. In the meantime, he hired political analysts to gauge the political climate to see if the population would warm to him. He went on television arguing against the current leadership’s position on matters. He wrote books with his political ideas. It was all part of his 40 year grandiose plan to make an eventual run.
He was continually gauging public opinion and the weaknesses of his opponents. At around President Obama’s reign, he saw an opportunity to strike. He saw that the country was more polarized than ever. He saw that the current crop of candidates lacked his charisma and likability. He saw that he was getting old so it was either now or never. So he made his move.
In business, timing is everything. The window of opportunity is very narrow and often fleeting. Some entrepreneurs are too anxious and make their move too soon but are too ahead of their time. Other entrepreneurs make their move too late and miss the window entirely.
Trump shows that you have to be extremely well researched and you have to get your timing near-perfect — even if that means being patient.
Deep Understanding
Unlike traditional politicians, Trump recognized that all societies have a certain class of people that are denigrated. The establishment class that dictates society’s morals, usually consider them to be deplorable and not worthy of respect.
Their entire life, the establishment has always disrespected them, devalued them, and considered them to be uncivilized or quasi-human. In the US, they are given the name “red necks”. In India, they are called “untouchables”. In Australia, they are called “bogans”. The Tyranny of the Masses has been studied by political philosophers for centuries.
Because of that, they usually don’t participate in the political process because they don’t see any benefit in doing so. This creates a vicious cycle where the political process disenfranchises them further and further because politicians see no reason to pander to a group that isn’t going to vote.
Trump recognized that this class could be brought into the political process if he directly targeted their concerns. They became his base. Once he solidified their support, he then expanded to other peripheral social groups and kept expanding until he reached the point where if he expanded further, it was going to conflict with the support from his base.
Lo and behold, he now had a solid base to run for President and give the establishment politicians a run for their money. His approach was so radical, that the establishment still have no idea what hit them.
For entrepreneurs that seek to disrupt the status quo of their industry, they should take guidance in Trump’s wisdom. You should always investigate if there is some pathway that the market leaders are too blind to see themselves. If you find one, it may provide an “out-of-left-field” route that can be exploited. In many ways, Uber’s “ask for forgiveness, not permission” global strategy was analogous to Trump’s.
Alternatively, entrepreneurs may see a class of consumers that are being underserved or ignored by the market. They might provide an untapped revenue source.
Grabbing Opportunities by the Horns
Opportunities don’t fall on your lap every day. Even less so for the everyday person. But when they do come your way, you need to quickly evaluate the merits and run with it. There is no room for procrastination because opportunities dissipate more swiftly than they appear.
Successful people don’t waste opportunities. They fully recognize how rare they are.
When Mark Burnett came up with the idea for “The Apprentice” in 2002, it was innovative for its time. He was exploring different options for who should host the TV show. He was looking for a businessman and had many candidates in mind.
In the show, the host plays the role of a successful businessman who gives out challenging (serious) business tasks to the contestants, who then fight to do the best job. The weakest contestant gets booted out at the end of each episode. Most respectable businessmen had no interest in the nascent reality TV genre which popularized crass shows like Big Brother (1997).
When Burnett and Trump met up, Trump, like all the prior businessmen that were approached, felt it was bad for his brand. He was initially cold towards the idea, however, he slept on the idea and eventually concluded that his first instincts were not correct.
He realized the show could be produced in such a way that was respectable, entertaining and showed him in a good light. He called Burnett the next day and said he was potentially interested.
Had he not grasped the opportunity, Burnett may have found another candidate or perhaps abandoned the idea. The show became an unexpected ratings hit.
According to the New York Times, it also earned Trump $427.4M and the rest is history.
Likability
Trump is super likeable. He has a Q-rating through the roof. In the 80s and 90s everyone from Pizza-Hut to the Home-Alone movie franchise wanted him to promote their product because surveys showed that he was both well known and well-liked.
Obviously, the less open-minded can’t see his underlying likability due to his deliberately polarizing political opinions. But behind the opinions is raw likability. And that underlying likability is the fundamental source of his power.
Trump demonstrates that being likeable opens up myriad doors and opportunities. If your life experiences indicate that you aren’t well-liked, despite all your best intentions, then it makes sense to make tweaks to your superficial personality. There are self-help books such as Influence by Robert Cialdini that are well worth the read. There’s also acting-school, which can help you adjust your tone, body movements and dialogue-delivery, that others (subconsciously) use to form their initial opinion of you. This initial opinion forms the foundation of their rolling opinion of you.
Self Promotion
All religions preach that the opposite of love is hate. That’s wrong. The opposite of love is indifference — Not caring.
It’s all too common for entrepreneurs to produce unbelievably amazing products that will change the world … if only someone actually used it.
There is no point creating a product that no-one knows about (and thus cares about).
However, in many cases, the product is not something tangible. It’s YOU.
When other people are looking to collaborate on ideas and form joint ventures, they have to make a risky decision of whether to invest their limited time on you.
Trump knows this full well. From decades of experience, he’s learnt this from his business failures and successes: You have to promote yourself. He also knows that it’s not shameless because nothing is worse than putting money, effort and time into creating something and finding that it exists in a vacuum that no-one even knows about.
Trump puts enormous effort to make himself known. He doesn’t care if it’s positive or negative attention — because any attention is better than no attention. During the Republican Primaries and the 2016 General Election, he had a small fraction of the advertisement budget of his rivals. Yet he got 50 times more (free) media coverage than everyone else combined.
Every entrepreneur knows that advertising is expensive. It should become ingrained that self-promotion is a vital ingredient of the ultimate formula.
Today’s kids understand this better than most adults. They all want to be the next big Youtuber or Instagramer. They put enormous effort into self-promotion on their mission to accrue followers.
Delusional Optimism
All successful people are either optimists or realists. I’ve never seen a successful pessimist. Ever.
Trump seems to be delusionally an optimist. No matter how many setbacks and roadblocks he encounters financially, personally and politically, he seems to know only one direction: forward.
Even with a loss to Biden ensuing, he’s already implied that he intends to run for office again in 2024 as a 78-year-old.
His fortunes have been a roller coaster ride since the 70s, but he’s always willing to reinvent himself and try new things.
In my opinion, most entrepreneurs are looking for 1 modest success in their career. Very few want to reach the big-league once they reach a certain level of maturity. One modest success is sufficient to complement a regular salaried income and live a comfortable life.
Trump’s grit inspires entrepreneurs to not give up, even if rationally they should. Perhaps it’s an enormous waste of resources for society as a whole, but from an individual’s perspective, it does feel more fulfilling to lie on your deathbed knowing that you have no regrets. It certainly beats being miserable with a list of what-ifs under your pillow.
Persuasion
You’ve heard about Steve Job’s Reality Distortion Field.
You’ve heard the story of how Theranos’s Board had dead set planned to fire CEO (and alleged con-woman) Elizabeth Holmes, only for her to emerge out of the board meeting with the Board kissing her ass.
The reality is there are two ways to impose your will. The first is using (direct or indirect) physical might. That is the more primal approach (as exhibited by Silverbacks in nature). The second is by persuasion. I’m not talking about logical persuasion, which they teach at school (especially law school). I’m talking about the “dark magic” potion called emotive persuasion — which is 1000 times more potent. In fact, when applied correctly, the subject doesn’t even realize they are being externally influenced.
Trump is a wizard of the dark arts. Despite what western culture indoctrinates, you don’t actually need anything that entrepreneurs want to sell. The name of the game is manufacturing demand. Trump’s background is in selling multi-million dollar luxury apartments to people who don’t need them. He refined his persuasion abilities to the dizzying heights of just below that of a religious prophet.
But more striking to me is not his ability to sell, but his ability to persuade others to accept his version of reality.
When he was a co-owner of the United States Football League, he had the ulterior motive of forcing his way into the NFL — even if it was to the detriment of the other team owners, who had all invested enormous sums of money into the joint venture.
He needed the majority of co-owners to agree with his high-risk–high-reward proposal to align their playing season with the NFL’s.
John Bassett, one of the co-owners, recognized that Trump was going to bankrupt the entire USFL. He argued against Trump’s proposal with all the logic in the world — but it was to no avail. Trump had already hypnotized the others. Bassett was so powerless, that out of frustration he even threatened to punch the “bigger, stronger and younger” Trump.
I’d imagine the scene to something like this:
Entrepreneurs can learn 2 things from Trump. The first is offensive: learn the dark arts to the best of your ability. A good place to start is reading the first ⅓ of The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler by Laurence Rees. The second is defensive: do not ever enter an arrangement with someone who is significantly more talented at emotively persuading. They may have diametrically opposing interests in the future, in which case you’ll be a sitting duck.
But, if you do so, consider it an informed risk. Be willing to accept the consequences in exchange for the benefits of having them on your side.
If you want to learn Trump’s secrets, study his speeches at his political rallies. Unlike sales pitches and board room meetings, which are behind close doors, his spell-casting is fully transparent for all to see.
Having Fun
Trump is a Happy-Go-Lucky kind of guy. He doesn’t take life (or himself) too seriously. He’s as energetic now as he was in his 40s. He doesn’t care too much about what others think of him. He just does what he enjoys doing.
This kind of nonchalant attitude should be inspirational for everyone who lives in today’s “modern” hustle and bustle society that drives enormous numbers into mental illness.
Entrepreneurs can learn that focussing on success at the expense of all else is not a good formula for the mind, body and spirit. You hear copious stories of single-minded entrepreneurs chasing their financial dreams which may or may not ever arrive. It usually always comes at the expense of their family and children.
Sometimes their children grow up without spending any quality time with their father (or mother). Trump seems to have a great relationship with all his children. They were all encouraged to join the family business at a young age, which was his way of spending quality time with them. You don’t hear any words of resentment from any of them, unlike the children of many other famous celebrities and wealthy business people.
Final Thoughts
Although it’s difficult to know with certainty, it appears as though Trump is on the whole neither a successful nor talented businessman when he ventures outside his property-development core. His high-risk–high-reward overall strategy is clearly not optimum for long-term business success. It’s equivalent to always spinning the roulette wheel — sometimes you win, but in the long-term, the casino always takes your money.
…But you don’t need to adopt his overall strategy. You can choose to implement only his good entrepreneurial traits.
…And that is why he is a Great Teacher for Entrepreneurs. As such, All young aspiring entrepreneurs will find it enlightening to read about his life and learn from him.
To understand Trump Further
- The 48 Laws Of Power by Robert Greene
- Win Bigly by Scott Adams
- The Boys (TV Series), in particular Homelander and Vought’s Marketing and PR behavior
This article was inspired by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0KDBBaQrYA
