Page 21 - How To Get Rich

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 3P.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 Dealcontained 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
musicalWest 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 ofWest 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.