This was technically the second book by Trump that I have read. Based on what I heard beforehand, people either liked it a lot or said that it just showed Trump as a bragging ego maniac.

The book definitely has a blunt direction for the most part. Although I guess you can say a lot of the advice can be considered as common sense, the blunt direction made the information more interesting to read I thought.

It’s not everyday that someone is open to giving advice this way as I suppose most people would consider it politically incorrect. While I personally didn’t really learn too much in the sense of how I would change my way of thinking as I believe if you don’t already think in a similar approach you are in trouble, the stories that were used as examples were insightful. As they say too, you absorb information and then take what works for you.

We all need a reminder every once in awhile on the harsh realities of the world when you are trying to achieve financial success. I think overall the book does a very good job in telling you the things that you don’t want to necessarily hear but need to in life.

It’s only in the last few chapters where I felt the book began to lose its charm. I could easily see how some of the content in those chapters alone painted the picture of an ego maniac for a lot of people. I also thought Bill Zanker’s contribution at the end of each chapter felt more like an advertisement for his company and it would have been better if he referenced examples that were not specifically tied to his business.

You do have to be in the right state of mind to read things like this too. Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others.

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This was the final chapter in the book and of course it was titled “Think big and kick ass in business in life”. For the most part it was mostly a re-affirmation of what has been said with different stories.

One thing that I thought was odd was that there were a lot of pages near the beginning of this chapter where Trump talks about how many women he has been with as well as diving into topics such as what attracts women and so fourth. It felt completely off topic especially with lines such as “So guys, be cocky, confident, smart, and humorous and you will be able to get all the women you want”. Felt more like reading a book of “How to be a player 101”.

Although, I believe the intent in writing those parts was to demonstrate how in life attitude plays a large role on how others perceive you. He then talks about how if you are thinking big in life that you should say also own expensive and high end clothing to project to the world that you value quality.

I can easily see people interpreting that in a surface level way though which usually causes people to kill themselves financially. Speaking for myself, everyone who I have personally met who does that usually aren’t too well off financially with the ones who can speak for themselves are usually the ones who are better off financially.

The rest of it talks about having the right will, courage and determination to see things through to the end. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of how if you want to succeed then you need to surround yourself and make friends with like-minded people as oppose to say people who are always negative and complaining to others about problems. He even says that you should discontinue contact with negative people as they will only drain you.

He then wraps it up by re-emphasizing that in the world there will always be obstacles forced upon you in your journey to success such as greedy professionals who will want to take all of your money or people who are willing to lie, cheat and steal from you. You just have to be prepared to find ways to keep going.

That does it for this book. I’ll be writing my final thoughts on it overall.

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This chapter was focused on the issue of money overall and protecting your assets. It was all based around marriages though and was titled “I love you, sign this”. Trump talked about his marriages in the past and how he had a prenuptial agreement for all of them which protected his assets.

He used statistics such as 58% percent of marriages end up in a divorce and mentions that while it might not be the most romantic thing to do, in the event of a breakup it can save you from the ugly legal battles over money that could arise. There was one example he used which was kind of surreal where a rich and powerful person kept marrying and divorcing women and each time the person had to pay $50 million. The money part didn’t surprise me so much as oppose to one getting married so many times with the same outcome.

While it can go both ways when you think about it where the prenuptial could be used as a way to take advantage of someone or to protect themselves from being taken advantage of, I guess the usual debate is the guilt factor it would play for a lot of people. Example, one of those “If you need that it means you don’t trust me” type of deal.

In many ways I always viewed various types of contracts as a good way to help discourage any rash decisions too. It’s like those times where people throw and break things when there are mad. If they knew for sure it would be costly throwing/breaking a certain item because of some kind of penalty/stipulation, they are more inclined to not do it which can provide the necessary time to really think about what they are about to do.

This is one topic that people can debate about all day depending on one’s philosophy. You either view marriage like a business partnership or a fairy tale I guess you can say.

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This chapter felt the mellowest so far to me. The title was “Never Take Your Eye Out of The Ball” and dealt with how you need to maintain your skills and presence to stay successful. Example, it’s a like a fighter who wins so many fights that they believe they don’t have to train anymore only to get wiped out by a new person.

The main theme it seemed was how you can’t let what others say about you whether it be a bad comment or a good comment affect you as you need to determine your image yourself. Not getting too caught up with good comments was kind of an interesting twist as I don’t usually hear people say that. Basically, if people start saying you are the best and that you can never fail for example, believing that as if it is written in stone can cause you to be unprepared for disasters or at the same time cause you to lose focus.

He used an example of his old employee Carolyn Kepcher and how appearing on the Apprentice has caused her to get a big head as she didn’t do her job as effectively anymore but rather focused in profiting around her new found fame. As a result, he had to get rid of her.

Overall everything seemed like practical advice. As mentioned, the chapter didn’t seem like it had the same zing as some of the other ones I thought.

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“Big Mo!” was the chapter title and it was a fairly good read I thought. It revolved around how momentum can either bring you vast success or extreme consequences in life.

He talks about a person named William Levitt who made it big building houses post world war II era who then sold his company for a lot of money. Years later of mostly living life, the company he sold was doing bad and he decided to re-purchase it as he wanted to get back into the industry. However, he didn’t achieve the same success and instead ended up losing everything with the main reason being that he loss momentum.

Trump then talks about how every little thing you do builds momentum and that it is really important for beginners to keep at it. At the same time, in general he emphasized how once you have it you have to keep doing something to continually move it or else you will lose it. That is so true I thought as many times people simply ride off the success of the past only to then wonder why everything crashed all of a sudden.

Afterwards, he dived into how you should deal with adversities in life and to use these incidents to make yourself strong. There was another topic about momentum about how when you have momentum everyone wants to be a part of it. Zanker had a story on how since his business uses motivational speakers and so fourth, with the success of that “Secret” DVD he started to capitalize on that by getting speakers from there to appear in his seminars which in hence gave his business a lot of attention.

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