Trump: How to Get Rich

impressions could be. Norma was actually as far from fluff as you could get. So, I thought, Okay, maybe. Her abilities were superior to those of anyone else I had seen. As it turned out, I called her back on the same day her mother died, but Norma gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse: She’d work for me for one month at a low salary just to see whether we clicked. No strings attached.

I thought,Aha! She’ll never last anyway, and I can decide on someone else in the meantime. After one month with me, she’d be outta here for sure. The hoity-toity type just won’t fly, except out the front door.

Needless to say, I underestimated Norma completely. I was duly humbled and, I must add, grateful for being so. She was persistent and committed to getting the job, and she did it with elegance.

Ask for Your Raise at the Right Time

When it comes to your career, certain moves should not be made without careful consideration of the old and very apt sayingTiming is everything.

For example, if you’ve decided to ask for a raise, look around first. So many times, employees who I like very much do the dumbest things when it comes to conversations about their salaries.

Jason Greenblatt, a young and brilliant lawyer who works for me, is terrific at everything he does, but one day, I swear, he must have been wearing blindfolds—and earplugs.

I was having an especially tough, vicious, terrible, miserable day that seemed never-ending to me and to everyone else. It was a grand-slam rotten day. No one could possibly have mistaken it for anything else.

Late in the afternoon, by which time I had had enough, I heard a polite knock on my door. I yelled out WHAT? in my most exasperated tone. Jason nonchalantly entered my office, completely ignoring my angry welcome, and proceeded to ask me for a raise.

I could not believe a lawyer as smart as Jason could make such a dumb move. I use his real name only because Jason knows how much I like and respect him, despite his incredible faux pas. But I have to tell you that I was ready to kill him. Was he joking? It’s amazing, but he wasn’t. He was dead serious. I couldn’t believe it.

Did he get a raise? Not that day. He almost got fired for stupidity, except that I told him to get out before I really lost my temper. I also told him that although he might be brilliant, his timing for certain things needed work —and that maybe he ought to start paying attention to what was going on around him. I remember thinking to myself,Did I really hire such a person? But as I said, it had been a rough day.

Jason is still with me, and he gets lots of raises because he’s great at what he does. But now he always waits for sunny days, blue skies, and puffy white clouds on the horizon before approaching me. I told you he was smart.

The best way to ask for a raise is to wait for the right time. It also indicates to your boss that you have a certain amount of discernment and appreciation for what he might be going through himself. I need my people to be plugged in to what’s going on with me.

What impresses me most about people is their work ethic. A certain amount of swagger is okay—it’s just another form of enthusiasm—but, bottom line, I look for results. When I mentioned to a salesperson that I had to cut her salary because she’d made no sales in nine months, she just about went nuts. But some things are common sense. What would she do if she had a nonproductive salesperson on her own roster?

If you knew your company was scheduled to give a major client presentation at 3 P.M ., would you approach your boss at 2:45 to ask for a raise?

Money, like comedy, is all about timing.

Be Tenacious

The Art of the Deal contained a chapter called West Side Story, about my acquisition of the West Side yards, a hundred-acre property fronting the Hudson River from Fifty-ninth Street to Seventy-second Street. The chapter title was a deliberate double entrendre, as I knew that the popular musical West Side Story had taken ten years to put together. Its creative team had included no less than Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents, so whenever I experienced setbacks or delays on my West Side project, I would remind myself that I had some very illustrious company.

It’s now seventeen years later and it’s still a work in progress, but the example set by the architects of West Side Story has served me well. You don’t create a classic overnight.

I’m calling it Trump Place. It’s a $5-billion project, the biggest development ever approved by the New York City Planning Commission. When it’s done, Trump Place will have 5,700 residential units and more than five million square feet of commercial space. So far, four towers have been completed and are occupied, and two additional buildings are under construction. When we’re done, there will be a total of sixteen buildings on the site.

Trump Place is a good example of why tenacity is crucial in business. I bought the property in 1974. We’ve hit snags along the way and made many changes over time, but for more than thirty years, we’ve persisted. At times, just about every executive will appear impatient, but to build something that endures, you have to take the long view.

Recently, an employee told me that the pastor of her church had used Trump Place as an example of what a firm foundation should be, whether it be in faith, family, or, as in my case, buildings. The pastor, whose church was near the construction site, would watch each building go up and marvel at the immensity of the work. Each building could be a hundred stories high, he said, considering the meticulous foundation work.

My publisher sent me an inspiring book by Bill Shore called The Cathedral Within, which celebrates the commitment and hope necessary to build something that endures. It might be a cathedral like the one in Milan, which took five hundred years to build, or it might be a community organization or a business.

Paul Davis, the man developing Trump Place for me and my partners, is a true cathedral builder. I have rarely seen anyone work so hard or so diligently—Saturdays, Sundays—he’s there at all hours, paying close attention to every impeccable detail of the layouts, room sizes, and the quality of the fixtures. He’s one of the big reasons for our success.

Some things are worth waiting for. For me, Trump Place is one of those things: Sixteen beautifully designed buildings on the Hudson River. A twenty-five-acre park. The Upper West Side as a backyard. This could prove to be my finest contribution to the city of New York. Time will tell, but I’m in no rush, and I won’t stop until I’m done.

Golf is a brain game, and practice makes perfect.

Play Golf

I made a lot of money on the golf course before I ever went into golf as a business. I found solutions to problems, new ideas for ventures, and even a new career. Golf has a way of giving you an equilibrium that you can’t always find in the office.

Doing what you love will always make you a winner, and after spending many happy hours on golf courses, I decided to build some of my own. I am now one of the busiest golf course developers in the United States, with two award-winning, internationally acclaimed courses fully operational and two more in the works.

My first course, the Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida, has been home to the ADP LPGA championships for three years. When I first decided to develop the most beautiful golf courses possible, I did some research and got in touch with the most respected designers in the business—the Fazio family. Just as Michelangelo had an affinity for sculpting marble, some people have an affinity for sculpting land. In this case, Jim and Tommy Fazio designed a dream come true for any golfer, not only visually, but in terms of playability.