Trump: How to Get Rich

Needless to say, I underestimated Norma completely. I was duly humbled and, I must add, grateful for being so. She was persistent and committed to getting the job, and she did it with elegance.

Ask for Your Raise at the Right Time

When it comes to your career, certain moves should not be made without careful consideration of the old and very apt sayingTiming is everything.

For example, if you’ve decided to ask for a raise, look around first. So many times, employees who I like very much do the dumbest things when it comes to conversations about their salaries.

Jason Greenblatt, a young and brilliant lawyer who works for me, is terrific at everything he does, but one day, I swear, he must have been wearing blindfolds—and earplugs.

I was having an especially tough, vicious, terrible, miserable day that seemed never-ending to me and to everyone else. It was a grand-slam rotten day. No one could possibly have mistaken it for anything else.

Late in the afternoon, by which time I had had enough, I heard a polite knock on my door. I yelled out WHAT? in my most exasperated tone. Jason nonchalantly entered my office, completely ignoring my angry welcome, and proceeded to ask me for a raise.

I could not believe a lawyer as smart as Jason could make such a dumb move. I use his real name only because Jason knows how much I like and respect him, despite his incredible faux pas. But I have to tell you that I was ready to kill him. Was he joking? It’s amazing, but he wasn’t. He was dead serious. I couldn’t believe it.

Did he get a raise? Not that day. He almost got fired for stupidity, except that I told him to get out before I really lost my temper. I also told him that although he might be brilliant, his timing for certain things needed work—and that maybe he ought to start paying attention to what was going on around him. I remember thinking to myself,Did I really hire such a person? But as I said, it had been a rough day.

Jason is still with me, and he gets lots of raises because he’s great at what he does. But now he always waits for sunny days, blue skies, and puffy white clouds on the horizon before approaching me. I told you he was smart.

The best way to ask for a raise is to wait for the right time. It also indicates to your boss that you have a certain amount of discernment and appreciation for what he might be going through himself. I need my people to be plugged in to what’s going on with me.

What impresses me most about people is their work ethic. A certain amount of swagger is okay—it’s just another form of enthusiasm—but, bottom line, I look for results. When I mentioned to a salesperson that I had to cut her salary because she’d made no sales in nine months, she just about went nuts. But some things are common sense. What would she do if she had a nonproductive salesperson on her own roster?

If you knew your company was scheduled to give a major client presentation at 3 P.M ., would you approach your boss at 2:45 to ask for a raise?

Money, like comedy, is all about timing.

Be Tenacious

The Art of the Deal contained a chapter called West Side Story, about my acquisition of the West Side yards, a hundred-acre property fronting the Hudson River from Fifty-ninth Street to Seventy-second Street. The chapter title was a deliberate double entrendre, as I knew that the popular musical West Side Story had taken ten years to put together. Its creative team had included no less than Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents, so whenever I experienced setbacks or delays on my West Side project, I would remind myself that I had some very illustrious company.

It’s now seventeen years later and it’s still a work in progress, but the example set by the architects of West Side Story has served me well. You don’t create a classic overnight.

I’m calling it Trump Place. It’s a $5-billion project, the biggest development ever approved by the New York City Planning Commission. When it’s done, Trump Place will have 5,700 residential units and more than five million square feet of commercial space. So far, four towers have been completed and are occupied, and two additional buildings are under construction. When we’re done, there will be a total of sixteen buildings on the site.

Trump Place is a good example of why tenacity is crucial in business. I bought the property in 1974. We’ve hit snags along the way and made many changes over time, but for more than thirty years, we’ve persisted. At times, just about every executive will appear impatient, but to build something that endures, you have to take the long view.