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.

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I managed to read another chapter earlier before I start doing all the new years eve stuff today. This chapter was titled “Passion, Passion, Passion!” As the title implies, it was mostly about doing the things that you love to do in life first and foremost as the money will come afterwards. There was also a lengthy part about being able to handle pressure where Trump talks about how he owed banks billions of dollars in debt during the real estate crash in the 90’s which was one of his ways to prove that he could perform under pressure.

He then dived a bit into relationship building and how even though he owed the banks a lot of money, he treated them well before and as a result they weren’t as hard on him as they were to others. He used an example of a person who was the opposite and had a very pompous attitude towards others including the banks. When the person was in trouble and needed a favor from the bank, they were more than motivated to not help him.

Trump used an interesting quote that I haven’t heard of before stating “Be careful who you step on going up because you meet the same people coming down”. How true is that I thought as even from my experiences it’s just funny how the people you have met in your past often play a role in your future as well. Trump also talks about learning from other people’s mistakes as it is a lot faster than going through it yourself as well as having that never giving up mentality.

It was interesting afterwards as he talked about that Apprentice candidate Michelle who decided to quit the show as it was evident that she performed poorly on a task and was more than likely to be the one who was going to get fired. This made him talk about quitters and if young people today have what it takes. He references a psychologists study on how young people nowadays are more narcissistic and self-centered as a result of being fed with too many compliments and in his view this is a big reason why many people grow up with an entitlement mentality and that they always quit when they don’t get something right away.

The whole message in the chapter I thought was basically do what you love to do and learn to respect and appreciate things in life.

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The title of this chapter is “Do You Have What It Takes?”. For the most part, the chapter discussed about how the top 2% of the people in the world all share a similar trait and how you can’t see life in a fairy tale way, so to speak. Trump is pretty blunt on how it’s tough in the real world as people are going to cheat and steal from you and that you have to be prepared to fight back. He then devised this little quiz that you could take to see if you fit the mentality of a person who has the right attitude to succeed in his view.

For the most part, the best answers with his system seemed to be a fairly straight forward way of thinking from a business point of view anyways. There were two questions that caught my attention though. One of them asks “What is your attitude towards people?” with one of the choices being “I believe people are generally good and would never lie, cheat, or steal from me”. That caught my attention because this year there is a situation where I thought there would be an exception to that and so I did put my guard down by a lot more than normal. Sure enough, it did happen eventually in a big way and fortunately I did not get knocked down cold over it while being prepared to fight back.

The other point talked about marriages and the use of a prenuptial agreement. Obviously with Trump’s personal experiences, he would consider that as the right/smart thing to do. I’m guessing this one would probably generate the most controversy as I’m sure there are a lot of people who would say something along the lines of you shouldn’t even get married if you can’t trust the other. Touchy subject for a lot of people though. Afterwards, Zanker throws in his bit about how one needs to be persistent in order to succeed.

Overall, I was surprised at how blunt the message was in this chapter in terms of the possibility of getting hurt is large and how you have to develop the plan/attitude to be able to rise from the occasion. It wasn’t done in a negative way but rather from a realistic point of view which I thought was great.

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