But—and here’s the rub—he has been pretty successful in achieving them, at least if we ignore his goal-setting hiatus in the mid- to late 1980s. He has not “become discouraged over the long term” due to unrealistic goals. And maybe they weren’t so unrealistic after all.
In other words, he is one of those rare individuals in which repeated failure to achieve his long-term goals—even colossal failure like what happened to him in the early 1990s—did not appreciably impact his future goal setting.
Consider this: The overwhelming majority of his businesses and investments failed up until the early 1990s: Atlantic City casinos, the Trump Shuttle, New York City’s Plaza Hotel, and the West Side Yards where he wanted to build the world’s tallest building.
He and entities he controlled or was involved with went through six bankruptcies, with investors and others losing more than $1.5 billion due to his business decisions.105
He was even forced to take out a $10 million loan from his siblings in 1993 just to pay his monthly living and office expenses, according to TrumpNation.106
Bottom line: His businesses failed and left him and the banks that financed him holding the bag.
Yet he still exhibited supreme self-confidence and set aggressive goals. He was “remarkably resilient” and a person who had “gumption in spades.”107
Trump agrees that he doesn’t set reasonable goals, too. In Trump: Think Like a Billionaire, he approvingly writes, “In The Natural History of the Rich, author Richard Conniff put it this way: ‘Almost all successful alpha personalities display a single-minded determination to impose their vision on the world, an irrational belief in unreasonable goals, bordering at times on lunacy.’” [Emphasis added.]108
Trump has taken that irrational belief and translated it into a passionate expectation of success in all his negotiations. That’s not irrational. That’s effective. As he has said,
“Passion is absolutely necessary to achieve any kind of long-lasting success. I know this from experience. If you don’t have passion, everything you do will ultimately fizzle out or, at best, be mediocre.”109 And “nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”110
Donald Trump’s confidence and attitude toward life—and negotiations—can be summed up by the only person other than his father he called a mentor—Rev. Norman Vincent Peale of New York’s Marble Collegiate Church.
Author of the 1952 bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking, a bible of the self-help industry, Peale preached that a positive attitude and mindset will lead to tremendous success.111
Trump attended Peale’s sermons with his family in the 1950s and wholeheartedly internalized Peale’s message. In fact, “Trump credited Peale with teaching him to win by thinking only of the best outcomes.”112
And Trump told a New York Times reporter, discussing Peale and his general attitude in 1983, “The mind can overcome any obstacle. I never think of the negative.”113
Peale, who also had a radio show and newspaper column with millions of followers and later married Trump to his first wife, Ivana, reciprocated this admiration. In 1983, he said Trump was “kindly and courteous in certain business negotiations and has a profound streak of honest humility.”114
Trump’s can-do positive mindset has been to “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and never mess with Mr. In-Between,” according to TrumpNation.115
Trump openly touts this, writing, “Even if you haven’t encountered great success yet, there is no reason you can’t bluff a little and act like you have. Confidence is a magnet in the best sense of the word. It will draw people to you and make your daily life…and theirs…a lot more pleasant.”116
How has Trump’s attitude manifested itself in his negotiations?
Confidence Is Contagious
Donald Trump sells an attitude, a belief, and a persona. It underlies his aggressive goal-setting and everything he does.
It also represents a fundamental factor of his negotiation success, especially early on with the Commodore Hotel redevelopment and the building of Trump Tower. Recall, Trump was in his late 20s when he negotiated an unprecedented 99-year tax abatement for the Commodore Hotel. Barbara Res, the construction manager for that project who worked for Trump for years, said Trump “had tremendous self-confidence, which is important.”117
And he was only in his mid-30s when he built the 58-story Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Of course, his detractors would suggest it’s easier to exhibit confidence when you’re backed up by a highly successful real estate father. And your negotiation counterparts will be more likely to accept your bona fides when you surround yourself with experienced lawyers like Roy Cohn and George Ross and real-estate experts and contractors (and Trump wisely did).
Regardless, Trump would not have achieved such early financial and brand success without a highly confident attitude. Trump’s confidence was contagious in his negotiations.
Trump Tower serves as the ultimate testament to this. How?
One, he built Trump Tower on spec, meaning he got the land, lined up the financing, built the building, and simultaneously had to sell commercial and residential space in a 58-story tower in one of the most competitive commercial and residential real-estate markets in the world.
This could easily have failed. And Trump knew it. In fact, other residential luxury buildings available at the time didn’t achieve this same success.
Only a supremely confident individual would have even embarked on such an ambitious effort. Trump did. And he reaped the rewards.
Two, early successes like the Commodore Hotel and Trump Tower led to more deals and increased confidence. Success bred success. And confidence bred more confidence.
Finally, Trump Tower was his first named project. He branded it to himself. This building—and all it would represent, good and bad—would immediately reflect on Donald Trump the person and businessman. You don’t name something after yourself if you’re not supremely confident it will reflect well on you.
Of course, Trump critics would say naming it Trump Tower simply reflected the size of his ego. But, whether you love or hate Trump, naming the building after himself started a successful and profitable luxury real-estate brand that now spans the globe.
RESEARCH: Confidence of success aligns with the experts’ proven research. And it fully supports the positive and practical impact of Trump’s extreme confidence.
What should you do? Expect to succeed. A passionate, positive attitude makes a difference. Those with an optimistic, can-do attitude toward achieving their desired result will be more likely to succeed than those with a lackadaisical approach. So, consciously transform your mindset about goals from theoretical targets to genuine expectations. Goals are one thing: expectations another. Expect it. Your mindset and attitude will lead to improved results.118
There is a downside, though. Self-confidence might come across as arrogance. And arrogant negotiators
