Page 208 - Trump University Commercial Real Estate 101

TRUMP UNIVERSITY COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE 101

First, you decide to hire someone to do your marketing. Later, you
hand off the financing relationships to someone, because you have the

dough to do it. You decide that you ’ re almost done, and then delegate
the last remaining big responsibility, which is to manage the managers.
You ’ re almost done, all right. Your company will now grind to a
halt, or worse, die. You cannot delegate the marketing, fi nancing, and
managing aspects. I ’ m not saying you must do every aspect of them
yourself. By all means hire people to assemble and distribute the mar-
keting materials, schedule meetings with brokers and private money
lenders, and prepare property management reports.
You must stay on top of these areas, though, because they ’ re your
highest and best use. If you continuously perform these duties, you
can reproduce your success anywhere in the country. If you set them
and forget them , like some expensive alarm clock, you ’ re going to have
a rude awakening when your company gets away from you and deals
grind to a halt.

Reputation Trumps Revenues

In this ultrawired world, news travels fast. Even so, real estate inves-
tors love to engage in a practice that is thousands of years old — they
gossip.
When you make news by being a great guy or a jerk, you can be
sure that the real estate community knows about it within days. I was
surprised to find out how small the commercial real estate investing

world really is. After you have played the game for only a little while,
you will realize that you know almost all of the players at your level
and at the next level above. As you increase the size of your portfolio,
this principle will still hold true.
The way you do deals and manage properties will soon be reduced
to sound bytes and labels:

• “ She ’ s a straight - shooter. ”
• “ When he says he ’ ll do it, it ’ s as good as done. ”

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