Page 31 - Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success

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T R UM P: N E V E R G I V E U P

The next problem was that Mark Burnett told me that the
most time they would need from me each week to film the show
was three hours. Three hours for a prime time show! Amazingly,
I believed him. When it turned into more like 30 hours, I had
some concerns, namely, I was running a huge organization, and
already worked about 12 hours a day. How would I handle this?
For once, I thought I’d probably overextended myself, big time.
What I decided to do was to take it week by week, realizing
it would probably need more time initially and that I could live
with that for a short time. What happened is that it gradually
did become part of my daily routine, but my days were definitely
longer. I adjusted, everyone adjusted, and it gave me a new form
of energy as well. If you are faced with a situation that is
demanding of your time, give it a chance to settle in. You’ll be
surprised at how much you can actually do each day.

THE LOW POINT

The week before The Apprentice aired for the first time, in Janu-
ary 2004, I remember wondering if that would be the last week
of my well-respected life. I couldn’t help but think that, consid-
ering all the negative advice I’d been given, although the elec-
tric energy we seemed to capture during the shooting was
strong. Was it just because it was something new for me? Was it
really going to be good? What if it was a disaster? How long
would it take to recover? There was a huge amount of media
attention already. Having a show bomb in that environment
wouldn’t be easy to handle. These predebut thoughts were the
low point for me because they were justified concerns, not just
nerves or negativity. What got me through was remembering
my gut instinct that said, “This is a great idea—go for it!”

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