In a few weeks time I will finally get the opportunity to formally shine the light on a person in regards to his actions when it came to a business agreement and how he has gone through extreme lengths to try and mislead everyone around him. To make it more interesting, he actually had a lot of “accomplices” to help him carry out his deeds. A big reason in spending the time and energy to do this is that it will help others too as I know for myself if someone I was associating with business wise had this shady past that he has been intentionally covering up that harmed others I would personally like to know.

Now this was kind of interesting as one person told me people generally don’t care about what happens between certain groups of people as long as the person didn’t do anything to them directly. I was thinking this is kind of true when it comes to just personal petty things, but if it was business related and you are in some way associating with the person in some kind of business capacity wouldn’t you be interested in it?

For example, let’s say a person now works at a company as he went through the interview process and they loved him. Thing is, he misled everyone about his past history with a former company such as he fabricated his position/role with the business. As well, he actually stole money from them or did something severe that harmed the business and somehow got away initially and was nowhere to be found. Not realizing these details, he gets hired by the new employer.

It turns out that he is like an angel with the new company though and when asked why he left the previous company he says things such as they weren’t treating him well and all that. Now let’s say for some reason the old company finally catches up to him and they take action to recoup the damages and such and of course in doing so that would expose the person’s past. So thinking about this as the third party person, in this case the new employer, would you want to find out all the details about the person’s past or would you feel that since he hasn’t done anything wrong with you currently that this is simply between him and the other business?

I would personally be kind of surprised in situations like these if one simply turns a blind eye to it. If you think about, even from a business perspective that shows that there is a huge risk that there could be a repeat in some form happening to them sooner or later. Who’s to say the person isn’t just playing the same act with you too?

As a result, I usually always like to talk to a person’s past associations directly just to get a true feel on what they are really like. In my opinion, the way they treated others in the past may not be my business directly, but it’s only wise to know what you are dealing with I’d say. Especially if there is some kind of monetary transaction involved, I’ll be the first one who would want to know as much as possible about the person’s past dealings to help prevent any unfortunate surprises.

When I read the title of this chapter “Fear Factor” I thought it was going to deal with the typical you can’t let fear stop you from doing things. Instead, it dealt more with the fact that when you are successful everyone wants to take you down. Trump used some very interesting examples such as another realtor who he was treating very well only to see him turn around to try and take money from him. He also mentioned that he was debating whether or not to fight back as it would be an expensive matter to pursue and eventually he did so as it was the principles of the whole situation.

Trump then talked a lot about managing and hiring employees with an emphasis that loyalty was one of the most important traits that he values in a person not just in business but life in general. I have a very interesting story on how I developed a personality of being loyal which I may write about in a later date.

The rest of it kind of dived into how you have to earn respect from others and forgive people over honest mistakes and used that Tara Conner event as an example. At the same time, you should not forgive a crook. This chapter was a little confusing I thought in terms of the theme. An interesting line was used in this chapter to say how you have to watch your back in life which stated “Lions kill for food, humans kill for sport”.

This chapter is titled “Basic Instincts” and revolved around how you have to learn to use your intuition when making decisions. Trump used a lot of examples during his real estate career such as buying properties in areas that everyone told him that he would fail in, yet he still did it anyways as he had a gut feeling that it would be big. At the same time, he talks about how your intuition can tell you if someone is say being deceitful or genuine.

He then used an example with how he agreed to create the show The Apprentice with Mark Burnett. Without much fuss, he agreed to do it as he had a gut feeling that Mark Burnett was genuine and they simply shook hands in one day to get the deal going. In turn, that led into the topic on how if you shake someone’s hand, that means you have just made a deal and that dishonoring your word will create distrust to everyone.

He titled that part as “Your Word Is Golden” and talked about how his then agent told him not to do the show as business shows have never done exceedingly well apparently which Trump was oblivious to along with a statistic that 98 percent of the shows that get on TV fail. As a result, the agent was persistent that the deal not go through despite their handshake and even phoned Burnett to tell him that the deal was off. However, he went with his intuition along with the fact that he already agreed to do it and so he did. We all know how that turned out.

I couldn’t help but snicker at the next part where Trump mentioned that his agent then started congratulating Trump and asked for a commission payment. Guess you know what happened there. Overall in the end, he mentions that you have to factor other things as well such as timing your action as well as gathering the facts along with your analytical skills. With that, you then go with your gut.

Overall, I thought it was interesting about how it mentions that you have to train yourself when it comes to trusting your gut. I often do that where if I have a hunch about something, in situations where I can I always do small things to see if the reaction would be what my instincts told me would happen. It’s almost like building an encyclopedia for yourself to reference as every situation usually has some kind of predictable pattern. As mentioned though, you have to use logic and other factors too.