Latest / Real Donald Trump Wisdom / The Art of the Deal - Chapter 2: Trump Cards - Elements of the Deal - Maximize Your Options (1987)

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The Art of the Deal - Chapter 2: Trump Cards - Elements of the Deal - Maximize Your Options (1987) · Real Donald Trump Wisdom

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  All right, so back for another one of Trump's
• 0:03
  The Art of the Deal. We're in Chapter 2, Elements
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  of the Deal, Section Maximize Your Options. Trump
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  says, I also protect myself by being flexible.
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  I never get too attached to one deal or to one
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  approach. For starters, I keep a lot of balls
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  in the air because most deals fall out, no matter
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  how promising they seem at first. In addition,
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  Once I've made a deal, I always come up with
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  at least a half dozen approaches to making it
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  work. Because anything can happen, even to the
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  best laid out plans. Here, Trump suggests to
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  basically develop a pipeline for all the projects,
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  all the deals, all the ambitions you have to
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  plant multiple seeds and let them flourish, knowing
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  that not all of them will perhaps see the light
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  of day. And that's why you shouldn't get too
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  hung up on a single option. Trump is going to
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  list a few examples in his real estate career.
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  For example, if I hadn't gotten the approvals
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  I wanted for Trump Tower, I could always have
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  built an office tower and done just fine. If
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  I'd been turned down for licensing in Atlantic
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  City, I could have sold the site I'd assembled
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  to another casino operator at a good profit.
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  Perhaps the best example I can give is the first
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  deal I made in Manhattan. I got an option to
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  purchase the Penn Central rail yards at West
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  34th Street. My original proposal was to build
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  middle -income housing on the site with government
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  financing. Unfortunately, the city began to have
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  financial problems and money for public housing
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  suddenly dried up. I didn't spend a lot of time
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  feeling sorry for myself. Instead, I switched
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  to my second option and began promoting the site
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  as ideal for a convention center. It took two
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  years of pushing and promoting, but ultimately
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  the city did designate my site for the convention
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  center. And that's where it was built. Of course,
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  if they hadn't chosen my site, I would have come
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  up with a third approach. Here, we've seen there
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  were multiple options, both for Trump Tower,
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  the site of his landmark residential tower that
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  has retail. in it right on fifth avenue but we
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  also get the glimpse of a very interesting building
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  that became the jacob javits convention center
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  right so this second example that trump cited
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  right that he wanted to build affordable housing
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  projects there but government money dried up
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  and you had to switch the plan and became a convention
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  center. This is, ladies and gentlemen, the very
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  place where Hillary Clinton had staged in 2016
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  her glass ceiling speech. The convention center
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  is made with a lot of glass. And it's very, very
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  significant to understand that. The venue where
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  Hillary Clinton, the 2016 hopeful, gathered with
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  her supporters was a venue created and built
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  and thought by Donald Trump. This is a man who
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  was delegitimized by the media, by so -called
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  experts, by Hillary Clinton herself. And we see
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  that where they're selling... supposed celebration
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  takes place is a building that Trump imagined,
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  created decades earlier. And this is kind of
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  to suggest how much in advance Trump was in everything
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  he did and how much of a cultural and business
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  influence he had decades ago already. It's no
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  surprise that Hillary Clinton was a guest. with
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  her husband at Trump's wedding. So they were
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  buddies, as Trump says. When he was donating
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  to the Democrats, that was never an issue. Of
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  course, when he wanted to step up for leadership,
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  they saw, they had, they turned against him.
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  And on that note, we know that Oprah Winfrey,
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  asked very seriously of Trump if he considered
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  running for office in the early 90s after he
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  met with Ronald Reagan. And he said he might.
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  So she was very serious about it. And even a
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  decade later, it was around 2000, she thanked
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  Trump for showing up at one of her shows and
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  wrote him a thank you note saying they should
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  run for office together. and that she would be
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  his VP, as if that's not a stamp of approval.
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  And finally, two decades later, around 2018,
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  on the David Rubenstein show hosted on Bloomberg,
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  Oprah Winfrey is asked if she would think of
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  running for president. And she answers, I never
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  thought about it, but now that I saw that Trump
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  made it, I'm like, oh. So she's acting like she's
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  surprised that he ever won or that he even considered
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  running, that it wasn't a natural fit for the
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  office, which is completely false, as you know,
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  because she felt it was a natural fit in the
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  early 90s and the early 2000s. It's just, unfortunately,
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  a large segment of the population that Trump
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  supported. In his early days, we know from various
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  speeches that Trump was an early backer of Chuck
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  Schumer. And he said it publicly at one of the
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  charity dinners before the 2024 election. He
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  said it publicly right next to him that he was
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  the first supporter. And unfortunately, that's
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  how things... But here, the lesson, I digress.
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  The lesson here is maximize your options. Whether
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  it's a career choice, whether it's a choice of
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  what skills to get, you want to have the broadest
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  before specializing. Really aim wide, try to
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  have a lot of different possibilities in your
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  future. Maybe don't go all in with a single deal,
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  single client. You want to have multiple options,
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  pretty much. And this is also, we've seen it
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  earlier, when Trump wanted to have certain permits
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  before going ahead, making capital commitments,
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  right? And that's the previous episode we did
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  when we saw that Hilton had another approach
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  and it ended up having to fire sale their assets
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  because they had no license to operate in Atlantic
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  City. So do things sequentially. Think ahead.
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  Try to plant seeds that will open options for
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  you. Another element of the deal is to maximize
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  your options. And maybe a final note on this,
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  you'll notice that Trump will not commit, whether
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  it's to a journalist's question or to another
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  stakeholder's question, he will not, when he
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  doesn't have a certain answer, It seems quite
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  natural with many other politicians or other,
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  let's say, professionals in the business or political
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  spheres or, you know, so -called experts. They
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  have no qualms about saying some things for certain
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  when it's just to be absolutely not true. The
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  subject matter is vague. So he doesn't rule out
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  options because he knows that he does not know
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  the future. And he's wise enough to acknowledge
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  that things can take many different paths. And
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  depending on which path happens to be taken,
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  there could be a different set of reactions or
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  appropriate measures. And this just echoes that
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  philosophy of maximizing your options. So hope
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  you learned something with this one. And thanks
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  for listening.