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 was just passed this story that revolved around a contestant named Denise Martin that was on the reality TV show Survivor. I actually did watch the finale this past Sunday and she wasn’t the winner. At the end they had interviews with the contestants as usual. Denise mentioned how being on the show has forced her to lose her original job as a lunch lady at a school to being demoted to a role as a janitor.

The producer of the show, Mark Burnett, felt bad about her situation and it was announced that she would be given $50,000 to help her out. Soon after this happened, the school’s superintendent mentioned how none of it was true as she was a full time custodian prior to participating in the show and that her janitor job was actually a promotion with a pay raise.

Initially, the superintendent received a hoard of negative responses from the public on how the school was being a “scrooge” so to speak among other things. Obviously, that created quite a spark. Eventually, Denise Martin admitted that it was a lie. It was basically a fake sob story to get support I guess you can say.

In general, this whole Survivor season seemed to have sprung up topics on how the best liars are the ones that make the money in the world. One thing I definitely learned when it comes to people who lie for money or support is that when someone’s story sounds a bit too dramatic to be real it probably isn’t. As a kid I always saw lying to others for financial gain as like a form of credit. Basically, you are going to have to pay it back somehow down the road and the longer you hold it off for the harsher the penalty will be. So, it’s better to just earn it honestly.

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I was having a conversation with a person recently who was telling me about an experience he had on how there was a person whom he trusted a lot and as a result they had a mutual business agreement where he would aid the person in return for financial compensation that would be given to him down the road. Unfortunately, he ended up doing his part, but the other person got devious and attempted to weasel his way out from honoring his promises.

There was a lot of money involved too and I was kind of surprised that his decision was to move on while simply cutting contact with the person. His reasoning was a common one too though on how he could of spent his time to force the person to oblige to their agreement, but instead he felt that his time was better spent by recouping his losses through other means.

The other type of responses that I usually hear from people though in situations where there is a substantial amount of money involved is that they won’t allow the person to get away with it. A common reason is that it is the person’s intention to try and drag the situation on with as much drivel as possible so that you will hopefully just forget about it. So, they want to show that they mean business to prevent others from trying to do the same to them.

In my opinion, from a principles point of view, by not doing anything in these types of scenarios the person is essentially getting away with the damage they have done to you and thinking more long term that would increase the chances of them doing it to others as well. To me, that is usually the bigger motivator to do something as just thinking if they did that to someone else who is in a less fortunate position it would probably wreck a lot of people’s livelihoods.

I was told before that while obviously in a business you need to focus your time in doing what’s necessary to generate revenue, at the same time you shouldn’t forget about doing socially responsible things as well if possible.

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I was just passed this story that deals with a recent controversial firing of an 11 year staff member for a video game news site called Gamespot. Recently there was a highly anticipated game called Kane & Lynch that was released and the editor who was reviewing the game, Jeff Gerstmann, gave the title a less than admirable score of a 6/10.

From what I read, shortly after the person in question was fired and there were advertisements placed all over the site to advertise the game. This immediately made the majority of the public scream foul play such as concluding that the company who made the game, Eidos, was obviously paying Gamespot to help advertise its game.

As a result, people are saying that Jeff Gerstmann was allegedly fired partly due to some possible pressure from the advertiser that they would not do anymore business with them because of the review that was given. The company did issue this statement http://www.gamespot.com/news/6183666.html about it to hopefully tame it.

My personal opinion in general in regards to this is that there likely was pressure from the advertiser or that the company possibly wanted to get rid of the person for one reason or another. It just seems too odd that if you have someone working for you that long that you don’t at least give warnings if they are being unprofessional. Of course unless it was something serious such as stealing then that is a different question. What a story this will be if it was proven that money indeed played a big role in the decision making process.

I often hear the phrase on how everyone has a price. My personal train of thought is usually if there is a situation where you will be compensated financially to do something, at most money should only dictate your platform as oppose to your actions. Money can definitely help to facilitate you to do various deeds, but it shouldn’t speak for you.

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I was just reading this interesting article that talked about China’s implementation of a one child policy at around the early 80’s in order to control the growth of its population. The main topic was how being an only child in a family increases the likelihood of the child being spoiled and growing up with a mentality that things should be handed to them.

It went on to talk about how this has created a new generation of thinkers where things like a marriage is viewed more like a tool where one finds the right mate to achieve wealth and power as oppose to focusing in developing a nurturing relationship. Of course, it then dived into how so many people now see a divorce as simply a process to go through if one finds a more lucrative scenario to be in whereas before it was viewed as a disgraceful act.

Some of the comments I read were kind of amazing such as a person saying how it makes no sense to do so much work and planning in life financially when she could simply marry the right person and be worry free. I see this with people even if they are not the only child though. For example, it could even be a family having a lot of girls and so they tend to spoil the only boy in the family who then turns out to be the one who is always financially dependent on others.

Sometimes I would say the most important point to learning good financial management skills is to start from square one and to learn to appreciate the things that you already have while learning to genuinely respect others. That might sound cornball for a lot of people, but that attitude goes such a long way when it comes to money.

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