DO YOU HAVE A BILLION-AIR(E) IN YOU
Think Like a Billionaire
Author: Donald Trump with Meredith McIver
Publisher: Ballantine Books,
Price: Rs.265 or Us $ 7.99
The book like all other Donald Trump books is a classic and touches upon several aspects of success, money and life. The book’s title is pretty much a one line summary of what to expect inside. He indeed tells you how he thinks, acts and lives in his characteristic crisp and proud manner. Don’t mistake this book for just another management book teaching you to be successful, it doesn’t. He just tells you how to think, act and live like billionaires by quoting examples from his life, and by giving a sneak peek into his own life. Donald Trump is no management “Guru” but is a real life billionaire and therefore you wont find direct lessons on time management, managing teams, or managing customers or any management theories or jargons, but instead he tells you about how to handle people, how to strike deals, how to rely on intuition, how to give in your best, how to negotiate, how to love your dreams and more importantly how to live your dreams. Sounds good huh!!!! It is.
The book gives you an in depth knowledge about real estate, money and how to invest in financial markets, and how to make a better impact as you go about doing your daily activities. But as I mentioned he is not a specialist or management guru and therefore doesn’t go in too deep with any topic but gives an overview and mentions certain basics do’s and don’ts. Overall this book is a must read for those who want to live their dream, be a billionaire or a millionaire, or those who want to play golf with him someday.
The book starts with an introduction and there-on the book is divided into five parts.
The introduction primarily tells you how billionaires think and then goes further to give you top ten ways of thinking like a billionaire. At times he does sound extreme with his philosophies but then he lives those value and has made billions of dollar doing so, so I won’t pass judgments on them but would surely advice to filter his advices to suit you and your ways of doing things but whatever you do make sure you learn because he is speaking from experience and a very vast one at that. For example he proudly states in the very second page “I believe in God. If God ever wanted an apartment in
Book gets even better in as he starts with his first part of the book- REAL ESTATE, as he is the biggest guy in the real estate market and is the best in the business. This part is not only a must for those who want to make a living of real estate and property but for almost anyone who plans to buy/sell a house presently or in the future. He further divides the 46 pages into 17 small chapters of 2 or 3 pages making it very simple and understandable to even a laymen like me. He covers a myriad of topics within real estate from the importance of location, to hiring a contractor, to renovation, interior designing, landscaping, to renting an apartment, to how to read real estate ads, how to sell a house, to how to select and make offices. But anybody looking for a very thorough insight into the real estate markets and functioning of property markets would be disappointed as he just gives basic guidelines and guiding principles and doesn’t delve deep into the functioning of the real estate markets. Probably he could have gone more into the details as people would have loved to hear it from the man himself and moreover since that is his core competency. This part has few pages of photographs of himself, his apartment and his beautiful fiancé Melania, and his family. All this makes the reader feel closer to Trump and relate to him and also have a look at his family and his house and I may add that both of them look rather impressive.
The second part deals with something all of us love-MONEY. This part covers the typical aspects of handling money like how to invest, balance risk, plan for retirement, invest in bonds etc.. Again he gives the basic things to keep in mind while handling our own money but not enough information if you want to learn about investing. Frankly, I am a little disappointed with his treatment of this part as he states things one can find in any book on investing, finance or money management. But I must add what you won’t find in any other book is the effortless simplicity with which he teaches you the basics through a number of very small chapters. Another good thing about this part is the fact that the end leads you to the next part which is the best part of the book in my opinion.
The third part is the most interesting and a must read for everyone, it is titled-THE BUSINESS OF LIFE. The first paragraph of this part gives a very accurate indication of the underlying emphasis of all the chapters in this part. He writes “You are your own storefront, your own manager, your own brand, so don’t screw it up by making bad decisions in life”. He further talks about the fact that there is no distinction between Personal and work business and in fact they are both a part of you and should be handled carefully and in the best manner possible. The 52 pages in this part are divided into 21 chapters. It’s remarkable how he is managed to cover almost every aspect of life in just 52 pages and in a very precise, crisp and a simple manner. The first chapter talks about loving your job and Trump gives a few simple but highly useful tips to do so. He then dedicates the next chapter on promoting oneself and gives the simplest way to promote oneself. It is so simple that after reading this 1 page you might curse yourself of not having thought of it yourself. He further dedicates chapters to handling meetings with people and organizing your workplace. His next chapter is another common sense lesson which we seem to ignore- the importance of grooming and dressing for the occasion. He then moves onto topics like romance and its importance in every aspect of your life. Trump moves on to discuss many more issues in our daily lives and teaches us very simply how to make every activity more important, productive and fun. He talk about everything from impressing people to marriage, to friends, to loyalties, to the best brands to places, to getting better service, to etiquettes, to vacationing and the list goes on. It’s rather comprehensive.
By this time, he already impresses you by the way he takes pride in everything he does, the people he associates with to the food he eats. He throughout the books talks good things about people he works with and gives their examples, endorses product he uses and takes immense pride in telling the reader about his various brilliant decisions. So half way through the book, you know the author lives every value he preaches and has made billions doing so which makes you trust everything he writes or at least treat everything he writes with respect. He further makes it more illustrative through pictures and cartoons of himself, another brilliant method to make the reader feel closer and connect with him. The only drawback is that sometimes he makes you feel that as if he is trying to sell you everything associated with him, probably he can keep this in mind while writing his next book which I sincerely hope that he does as his books make a brilliant read.
Part 4 makes an interesting read because it is about how Trump lives his life and it’s aptly titled – SLICES OF THE BILLIONAIRE’S LIFE. It’s a brilliant part 4 as he exemplifies as he takes us through his life what all he has mentioned in the book so far. He starts by taking matters that are close to him like Columbia University and the mistakes they made, the mess UNITED NATIONS have become in the recent past, the Statue of Liberty, People magazine, Beauty Pageants- Miss USA, Miss Universe, Miss world - that he owns, to the famous Mar-a-Lago diet. Confused!!! Never heard of this diet before, Understandable, Trump calls it the billionaire’s diet. So you should know about it because your chances of being one increase after reading this book. He also takes about his appearance on Saturday Night Live. And then comes the most gripping 40 pages of the book- A week in Trumps life. He gives a very detailed account of each day of an entire week in his life. The day is broken into 15 minutes slots to half an hour slots and each slot has a detailed account of what he was doing those 15 minutes. It is like living with a billionaire for an entire week. And it is as cool as it sounds and perhaps cooler.
The 5th and the final part of this brilliant book is about his Reality TV show- The Apprentice. This part clearly tells us how much he likes his show and also how surprised he is at his own success as a Reality TV show host. He takes us through the success of the first series of the show and talks about the making of the second series. He talks in length of the 18 new contestants and also gives us details of the first four shows of the yet unreleased second series of the show. Unless you are a die hard apprentice fan, this part is quite a drag and he goes overboard with his obsession with his new show assuming everyone would love reading 40 pages about this show. But it is not as bad is I am making it sound, it gives you a good insight on how the show functions and how Trump manages to shoot and manage his multi-billion dollar empire at the same time, which indeed is incredible. So this part is not a complete waste but surely far less relevant than the previous 4 parts.
Overall an excellent book and as New York Times put it “truly astonishing achievement”. The book brilliantly covers a myriad of topics without getting lost in the abstract. Substantiating most things with examples and use of simple language makes the book very reader friendly. Also the use of his personal photographs makes for an amazing visual support and makes the audience connect better with Trump. The book completely justifies the title and is an amazing learning experience.
I strongly recommend this book to everyone who has dreamt of being rich, successful and
Famous. And if you don’t want to be all of the above, still read it cause you might want to after this book because Trump shows us how much fun it is to be all of that. So if you have a dream, read it to know how to get there and if u don’t have one, still read it to get one.
Other books by the same author:
- Trump: The art of Deal
- Trump: Surviving at the Top
- Trump: The art of comeback
- The
- Trump: How to get Rich
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