What attracted me was the challenge of building a spectacular development on almost one hundred acres by the river on the West Side of Manhattan, or creating a huge new hotel next to Grand Central Station at Park Avenue and 42nd Street.
One of the keys to thinking big is total focus. I think of it almost as a controlled neurosis, which is a quality I’ve noticed in many highly successful entrepreneurs. They’re obsessive, they’re driven, they’re single-minded and sometimes they’re almost maniacal, but it’s all channeled into their work. Where other people are paralyzed by neurosis, the people I’m talking about are actually helped by.
I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions. I’m a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. It’s a natural reflex. If I’m thinking of buying a piece of property, I’ll ask the people who live nearby about the area—what they think of the schools and the crime and the shops. When I’m in another city and I take a cab, I’ll always make it a point to ask the cab driver questions. I ask and I ask and I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that’s when I make a decision.
Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can’t do without.
The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.
3. Growing Up
“The most important thing in life is to love what you’re doing, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be really good at it.”
4. The Cincinnati Kid: Prudence Pays
I learned something from that: it’s not how many hours you put in, it’s what you get done while you’re working.
You’ve seen these guys, maybe 150 pounds, who walk blithely into a cage where there’s a magnificent 800-pound lion pacing around. If that animal sensed any weakness or any fear, he’d destroy the trainer in a second. But instead the trainer cracks his whip, walks with authority, and, amazingly, the lion listens. Which is exactly what Irving did with this huge guy, except his whip was his mouth.
6. Grand Hotel: Reviving 42nd Street
He’ll walk through the Hyatt Regency in Washington, D.C., or West Palm Beach, Florida, and he’ll know everyone’s name, he’ll remember their families, he’ll kiss the chef, tell the porter he’s doing a great job, say hello to the lifeguard and the maids. By the time he leaves an hour later, everyone feels uplifted, like they’re ten feet tall.
7. Trump Tower: The Tiffany Location
because much more often than you’d think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.
13. Comeback: A West Side Story
The truth is that unless you design a project to be self-supporting as you build it, you risk getting eaten alive before you’ve turned the corner into profit.
One of the first things that anyone should learn about real estate—and New York real estate in particular—is never to sign a letter of intent. Years can be spent in court trying to get out of a seemingly simple and “nonbinding” agreement.
My first critical challenge was to make the project exciting and attractive to the city so that they’d be inclined to give me the zoning approvals I needed. The key was to find a mutual interest. Deals work best when each side gets something it wants from the other.
My second challenge was to find a way to immediately capture the public imagination with my project. The more awareness and excitement I could create early on, the easier it was going to be to attract buyers down the line. A lot of developers build first and promote later, if at all.
14. The Week That Was: How the Deals Came Out
In my life, there are two things I’ve found I’m very good at: overcoming obstacles and motivating good people to do their best work. One of the challenges ahead is how to use those skills as successfully in the service of others as I’ve done, up to now, on my own behalf.