Yesterday I was talking to a group of people who were working on a film and they started working from about 7am with an anticipation that it could last the whole evening as well. While they mentioned that they were dead tired and could barely stay awake, the thought of how much they would be paid due to all the overtime was a motivating factor for them to not complain and besides that they don’t mind.

I know most people who hear that would wonder how anyone could fathom the idea of working say 12 hour days for a long period without being apprehensive over it even if they are making more money. When you are truly doing something you enjoy you tend to not keep track of the time per say but rather achieving a goal.

This is one of those things too where when you do something you truly enjoy the money seems to come naturally in one way or another too. Whenever I have to put in long hours into some kind of task I personally don’t see it as having to work longer but rather working more now so that I don’t have to work as much afterwards. Different way of thinking I guess.

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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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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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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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