Growing Up and Early Training

On June 14, 1946 there was an addition of a fourth child, Donald Trump, in Fred and
Mary Trump’s family; Donald was born in New York City borough of Queens. At the time
of Donald’s birth, his parents, Fred and Mary had three older children; Maryanne, nine,
Fred Jr., seven, and Elizabeth, four. Donald’s father Fred was already in real-estate
business and had a lot of success as a developer. Although Fred was a rich man, but
wealth did not get into his head at any point of time. Besides all the luxuries, he did not
take much time off, left for work before dawn, spent his day driving from one site to
another and keeping himself on the top of the work. Fred’s success was not only due to
his persistent efforts, but his instinct for “how far to push the envelope”.

At one side, where Donald’s was performing a tough role as a father and a
businessman, on the other hand, his mother was balancing the home with her affection
and courage. In Trump’s family she was a role model, a strong lady, she united for
family events and took pleasure in having everyone’s eye even if she was ill. Donald’s
mother was role model for him as well, who used to notice as her mother command the
attention of everyone present, a habit which Donald adopted and practiced throughout
his life i.e. to get noticed.

Donald, like his other four siblings was brought up simply and under a lot of rules and
curfews at home. They were trained to lead challenging lives, inside the big home no
one was allowed to utter a curse word, children were made to respect the resources
which God has blessed them with, and this was reflected as they were not allowed to
have cookies or snacks between the meals. There was a constant check and balance
on children from parents, when Fred used to come home at night he was given a report
to whom had done what to whom during the day, and he would meet out the
consequences. Fred and Mary made sure that their children had a good grounding in
life. All week long both parents preached the value of a dollar, kids collected empty
bottles from their father’s building sites to turn in for the deposits, and on Sundays they
had to show up in the church for the prayers. Both the parents taught them that “life’s
highest priority was to turn out the lights, eat every bite, and remember the poor children
around the world.”

Getting Education and Joining NYMA

At the age of five, Donald went to the Kew Forest, the private school in nearby Forest
Hills. His initial playmates circle included his younger brother, Robert and Peter Brant
who was his classmate and whose father was also a wealthy man. In the school he was
extremely competitive and had to be on the top whichever way he could be. “Donald
would push the limits in terms of authority and what he could get away with,” said
classmate, Fina Farhi. Donald’s favorite activity was building with blocks. One of
Donald’s favorite childhood stories was using all his own blocks on a particular
ambitious structure and then borrowing Robert’s to complete it and once he is done he
would be so pleased with the results that he would glued everything together; a Vision
which he pursued in the whole life i.e. to become number one real-estate developer.

Growing up with the siblings and friends in a regulated environment, Donald was little
sharp and cheeky, very often you found him involved in stink bombs, hot peppered gum
which they gave to school-mates and plastic vomit. Summers were real attraction for the
children, when they used to go to Camp Hilltop and enjoy eight weeks of outdoor
activities. Donald found camp life very boring; he had inherent great sums of passion
from his father and couldn’t find ways to channelize it until he went off to New York
Military Academy at the age of 13, where he would discipline him in a tough
environment, where you have to rise before dawn, classes and military drills, cleaning
their rooms and polishing their shoes. This all helped Donald to build character, get
organized and to know what he was doing all the time, training which he required in
pursuit of realizing his dreams. NYMA was a place where for the first time; Donald was
in a place that suited his nature, which encouraged him to go for extra and channeled
competitiveness and aggression to achieve the targets.

Transformation

His stay at NYMA really polished him build him a character and he was on the track of
competing for everything ranging from shiniest shoes, highest grades, best performer in
the athletics and flair for friends relations. Donald became so competitive while living in
the NYMA that he really did not have truly close friends. He had developed strong
determination which he would need in the brutal real estate career. On the holidays he
used to go his father building sites, watched him working and showing interest in every
possible area. He started talking about his dad’s business how he would use him as a
role model but a one step further. At the age of 6 he envisioned something and when he
was 15 he knew what he would be doing for the rest of his life. A time when smoking
and drinking was a sign of status symbol, most of his friends used to get drunk and went
to parties and meet with girls, he used to accompany his father in the business
gatherings and used to watch how to deal with different people.

Business Education

After the academy he joined Fordham University and attended business classes.
Stayed there for two years and got himself transferred to the best business school ever
Wharton in the real estate department. He knew what knowledge and skills he would be
requiring in his life to realize the dream of becoming the biggest developer in the real
estate. There he polished his business skills and canny abilities to perceive the profit
deals miles ahead. At this time he had all the idea about his acts, what efforts were
required form him and he was going just fine.

Donald’s parents provided the same very opportunities to their all five kids, but Donald
was the one who was the most influenced from his father business skills and
determination, and was able to make greatest use of his resources and business.
Donald was a younger son of Fred which meant his elder brother Fred Jr. was to head
the family business by all means, but fortune provided Donald the opportunity. His elder
brother had opted out of the family business to become a pilot and left Donald in line to
take over. He was given an opportunity and he clinched it without a second thought in
his mind.

The Apprenticeship

Donald professional life was begun. When he was in Fordham, his father had a
developed Swifton a living apartment for middle income group and rented out to
tenants. Meanwhile, the urban problems were closing in; the highway had sliced the city
in half and there was high turnover rate of tenants’. Swifton was begun to slide down
and it was a time to sell. Selling Swifton was not an easy task rather Donald had to work
a lot on developing a selling strategy that could earn him a profitable deal. At the age of
26, he secured his first multimillion-dollar deal. And this was the fist step towards
success which he dreamed.

Donald trump had remained his father full time apprentice after graduating form
Wharton. His father showed him how to use political connections and business relations
to get your work done and how to pull off a last minute negotiating. Fred had a different
philosophy for real estate; he was happy working and developing in Brooklyn. But after
all the years of influence and remained mentor to his son, Fred couldn’t hold up his son
to stay in Brooklyn and start here. Donald had different dreams, he learned a lot form
his father though but he wanted to achieve his own set of goals and attain his own glory.
His father gave him the last big push when in 1970 he promoted Donald as president of
the family business. Donald wanted to expand in Manhattan which was offering more
revenues and potential to real estate.

Donald’s capabilities and sight for real estate was now being appreciated in New York.
He was certainly carrying a vision to become the biggest real estate developer of all
times. His sight for real estate was very different; unlike others he could see opportunity
in even those things which appeared dump idea to others. His childhood passion to
form tall and ambitious structures was still with him and he had already started to work
on it in order to pursue his dreams. Form here he started and excelled at the might pace
and in few years he had built structures which are still eye catchers for the world, and
depict his vision.

Becoming a Leader

Donald was always leading from the front either it is school athletics or any projects in
NYMA. Friends and people around him used to admire him for his competitiveness and
achievements. He had almost all the ingredients for becoming a leader.

Initially Donald’s life was very much influenced by his father, who was a role model for
him. Donald inherited characters like working hard, passion, struggle, confidence and
how to deal with people from his father. He took all these attributes to NYMA where he
polished them and added addition traits in his personality, being competitive, self-
regulation, social skills, and motivation.

Discovering himself

It would not be wrong to say that he had discovered his inbuilt talent and capabilities at
very early age, when he used to make ambitious structures of buildings and felt happy
after completing them. And if you read up his early life you would be amazed to see how
he carried that ambition in his mind all the time in his decisions and moves. He knew
exactly what would be required to pursue that dream of becoming the biggest
developer. He knew exactly where he belonged to. And he channelized his strengths
and opportunities according to that. For instance his decision to join NYMA at the age of
13, to build competiveness and self-regulation is one such example. He worked very
hard to organize himself for the challenges he would face at later stage of his career. He
once said, “Finding your purpose may be a lifelong pursuit or you may have discovered
it when you were 5 years old. There’s no absolute timeline for anyone. That’s a good
reason never to give up, to keep on discovering things every day.”

From his early age, he was self-regulated and self-aware. That was the reason he used
to say openly where he want to go in terms of career and what he want to achieve in
life. He made himself regulated in order to align his goals with his abilities. For instance
he used to wake up before dawn and work on his day tasks. He usually says, “If you do
not love waking up early in the morning, you are not going to be any good to yourself or
anyone else”. That was one of the many other things which he learned from his father.
Who used to say, “Take the pains required to become what you want to become, or you
might end up becoming something you’d rather not be. That is also a daily discipline
and worth considering.”

One word that would best define Donald trump is passion. His life revolves around it;
passion to perform and excel at the very highest level in any field of life. He sets himself
very high standards because he has confidence in his abilities that nothing is out of
reach if you are willing to work hard and pursue your goals with passion. He was
persistent in working and over all life, “If you really want to succeed, you’ll have to go for
it every day like I do. The big time isn’t for slackers. Keep up your mental stamina and
remain curious.” He always has enormous energy to get things done, which at time
might take very long to get done.

His dreams gave him enormous motivation to keep going. He still has the same very
desire to do what he had forty years back. Motivation has really kept him going all the
time even when he faced difficulties in his dealings and things took years to come to his
way but je remained motivated, and achieved things which were beyond anyone’s
expectation. He never feared failures that was the reason when his organization almost
gone to bankrupt he kept his focus and motivation strong and amazed the world with his
ability to control the devastating situations. He than wrote in his book, The Art of the
Comeback, “Confidence can get you where you want to go, and getting there is a daily
process. It’s so much easier when you feel good about yourself, your abilities and
talents.”

Support Team
If you could analyze Donald’s success it would appear that like many other successful leaders
he always had a support team with him, in fact he always believed in having the best people
around you, in form of best professionals and abilities. And over the years these best
professionals actually kept him out of few lawsuits and big tax abatement and saved him from
failures many a times. That is why he always believed in his team who are the best possible
people and rely on them for the mutual success; he wrote in his book “The Art of the Deal”,
“When employees and employers, even coworkers, have a commitment to one another,
everyone benefits. I have people who have been in business with me for decades. I
reward their loyalty to the organization and to me. I know that they'll always be
dedicated to what we're trying to accomplish .” This is the confidence he has placed on
his people around him who would contribute in his success and would deliver at the
required time.

He couldn’t think of marriage sooner, because he had to go way too long and couldn’t
afford any stopovers. When he turned to thirty and by that time he had gone into three
major successful deals, Commodore Hotel, Grand Hyatt and a Casino. This was the
time when he was beaming with success and wanted a life partner, until he met Ivana
an intelligent lady who was in the mid of her modeling career and athlete; Donald got
married with her. She started to take care of the media which played a very important
role in Donald success; she begun showing up at the construction site and conducting
her inspection tours. She became a crucial part of operations for Donald. He involved
her in his business and she started to share his burden and now Donald could devote
himself on future deals and still knowing what is happening on the current project. She
had remained an integral part of his success and endorsed him at every place. Donald
would not have been able to diversify that quickly if she was not taking care of his
business all the way.

Social Relations

The type of business he is in, politicians has always a great influence in real estate
industry, because of huge chunk of profits and in order to get going, you have to have
relations with the politicians, which could be governors, mayors, or senators. Donald
had seen his father operating and developing relations with political bodies, which would
later help in tax abatements and approval of projects in different areas. This was a very
important area which Donald had to work on because without the influence of the
successful people he couldn’t excel in the market. He followed up his father’s mark and
started approaching influential people who could later help him in his business affairs.
He had strong relations with NY governors of all the era, mayors used to dine out with
him and senators were close to him, the point I am making here is that he was covering
all his ends wherever he could get benefited from.

Leadership Style

After going through his life and business history one can clearly finds out that he is a
Transformational Leader for number of reasons. He still is a role model for young
entrepreneurs. He has become an icon in the business community for his way of doing
business and thinking. His famous quotes also depict his leadership style; like, “As long
as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.” He has changed the philosophy of
doing business. All around the globe young follow him and want to adopt his way of
thinking and doing things. He has been a tremendous inspiration for people who want to
go some extra miles in their lives. He is a phenomenal communicator who knows how to
motivate people for a certain job and change. He has build relations with the
entrepreneurs through communication, conducting TV shows and speeches. It was
because of him we saw young developers pouring into real estate industry and making
their way through.

His approach in developing leaders is amazing, for that he has started a TV show with
the name “The Apprentice” which has become a huge success and attraction for the
entrepreneurs. There he starts off with two teams normally 18-20 people on board and
giving each member opportunity to be innovative in thinking way of doing tasks. He puts
them in difficult situations and giving rise to Creative-Conflict, and brings best out of
them. This is his way of developing people as leaders. He encourages to approach
problems with different perspectives and logically.
You would see him delegating the complete anatomy to perspective leaders to see their
cognitive thinking ability and constantly monitoring their moves and in the end after
going through all the required processes a leader is developed who would work with his
organization a dream which most of the professionals wish to do.

Besides this, Donald Trump carries a great deal of charisma to inspire his followers,
which is mostly because of him being on the media all the time, showing up at major
functions and events. His choppers with Trump brand name and range of limousines,
they all certainly bring him something special for his followers to inspire them to work
and achieve the most in their lives. He carries such a persona that even the finest
institutions used to get influenced by his persuasion and deliveries. Banks were so
blinded by Trump’s charm and past achievements that they felt it would be the easiest
buck they would ever make, which later proved other way round.

Constraints in his Leadership

Donald’s constant, unrelenting focus on his own achievements separated many

followers, those drawn to winners found him appealing. No matter the occasion you will
always see him competing, and always concentrating how to make whatever he was
doing seem bigger and better than what anyone ever has done it before. With all the
positives Donald has, the type of business he was in, he couldn’t resist carrying out
activities which are not trait of leaders.

For instance he was involved in giving favors and bribes to politicians and influential
people from where he could get his work done either it’s tax saving or getting
permission for any project. He seemed to have lacked values and business ethics. He
would use each and every move to promotes his business, no matter it’s charity or it’s
something to do with media he is selling Trump name every where. He was low on his
values, his values rotate around the dollars; he would not hesitate to turn the deal down
and back off from his words if he thinks financially this is not suitable to him. To cut the
cost he wouldn’t mind using average material in the buildings and later projecting that
this is the best possible deal other person is making.

All he knew was to excel no matter how he does it; whatever he has to does he will do
it in order to fulfill his vision. Trump was always flying high and finally felt he had
achieved everything he wanted. At the speed of light he acquired and developed assets
that he had no experience in managing. This caused him to soon lose sight of it all. He
was unable to balance his current assets against his outstanding debts that were rapidly
coming due. His decision making style was, “Lets do it”, he surely used to lack strategy.
There was no formal business plan, no development strategy. Donald would come up
with an idea and would do basic calculations and would implement it, not considering
the cost benefit analysis.
He never transferred decision making authority to his executives. He literally believes,
“If you want the job done right you do it yourself.” Because of this you see Donald
always brings the sheer power of his persona forth. He negotiates with subcontractors
himself instead of relying on a purchasing department and isn't opposed to using his
celebrity status to better the terms wherever he can. This shows he was very conservative
and didn’t believe his personnel, you will find him signing the small checks, reading the
documents and small details and interrogating everyone for small details.

Another constraint in his personality was that he never used to admit his failures and
used to project them as wise deals. He would always be selling, selling and selling. He
used to exaggerate the facts beyond imaginations and used to present it in a way that
no body would have imagined. When he lost he would say he won; when he won, he
would say he won more.

Legacy

Whatever you say about Donald Trump, he is the one who proved to the world that it’s
not difficult to accomplish what you dream if you equipped yourself with proper expertise
and knowledge. One thing which is important is to know yourself, where you belong to
and love whatever you do. The word passion defines Donald Trump more than
anything. All his life he strived for every inch he could get every penny he could save
from his business deals. He wanted to be a biggest developer; he proved that and
shaped the New York City. His legacy includes Trump's billion dollar empire included
Trump Parc which contained more than 24,000 rental and co-op apartments, the Trump
Shuttle Airline, ownership of the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football
league, casinos in Atlantic City, Trump Castle, and his luxurious private homes. They all
depict his legacy he wanted to live with, and he is yet to stop.