FEARGAL QUINNreviews Think Like A Championby Donald J Trump Vanguard Press 188pp; $24.99
A FEW months ago I played golf on a spectacular golf course in the Caribbean called the Trump International Golf Club and was impressed at the huge investment in such a faraway resort.
I questioned the gamble of putting so much money into such a venture and the confidence of somebody to do that.
So, with an inquisitive mind, I picked up Think Like a Championto see if I could learn more about this man who appears to succeed at every project he pursues; real estate, entertainment, golf course development and TV – all seem to respond to his Midas touch.
My first reaction was that Donald J Trump certainly does not suffer from modesty.
“I’m never bored. In fact I think that’s a big reason for my success.”
This lack of humility turned me against the author early in the book. But I grew to enjoy his writing and to find his stories valuable and entertaining.
It’s a “dip into” type read that one can learn from. In particular, the chapter titles (and there are 50 of them) are snappy and motivational.
“You can better your best at any time” is an example, and there is no doubt that “No one wants to spend their life treading water just to keep from going under” is the type of encouragement we all need.
What is even better are the quotations attached to each chapter.
He quotes Henry Ford’s “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do”.
“Think like a champion” is topical too. Trump declares his confidence in Barack Obama. Mind you, he is no fan of George W Bush.
“Bush was a disaster for the country as well as for the Republican Party,” Mr Trump writes.
I like his sense of reality and the anecdotes giving examples of how he built his business empire. Those of us who ran a business know that you have to do a lot of the work yourself.
It isn’t all about giving orders or having other people do the legwork or the brainwork for you. Trump argues that if that bothers you, maybe you’d be better off being an employee.
When he was constructing Trump Tower in New York, he wanted a certain kind of marble called Breccia Perniche which was “expensive, beautiful and rare”. “It was also irregular and has white spots and white veins, which bothered me, so I went to the quarry itself and marked off the best slabs with black tape,” he writes.
Bill Cullen will find the decisions that Trump had to make when invited to front The Apprenticesimilar to his own in Ireland.
Donald Trump had 30 years’ experience to draw upon when conducting the boardroom scenes but he had no television experience.
If he had chosen to listen solely to the negatives about the endeavour, such as “most new TV shows fail” or “you’ll lose your credibility”, he’d never have given it a thought.
He has an interesting story to tell and good advice to give. He has one essay that is worth dwelling on: “People have different ways of achieving results.”
He tells of the copywriter whose colleagues complained that he spent all day looking out the window and it seemed like he wasn’t doing anything.
Their boss responded by insisting that they were not to disturb the copywriter because “the last time he acted like that, and the time before, he came up with ideas that were worth millions of dollars”.
Trump’s advice is that we should never think our way is the only way.
Perhaps his readers should keep that in mind.
Feargal Quinn is a member of Seanad Éireann and the author of Crowning the Customer