Archive View (September 2008)

It takes a good manager - and a great employee - for telecommuting to work. With gasoline prices still uncomfortably high, more companies are allowing their employees to work from home at least occasionally. While that sounds great for the worker, it’s often frustrating for the boss. It requires an unbelievable amount of trust as they hope their charges are actually accomplishing work-related missions and not watching TV, doing the laundry or working on the kids’ science project. In the end, it should be easy to tell if telecommuting employees are getting the job done. Their work output should speak for itself. But more...

Despite what some people might think, being an attorney and being a jerk don’t go hand-in-hand. At least not at one Atlanta law firm, where office etiquette matters. Morris, Manning, & Martin has a “no jerks” policy that everyone - from interns and support staff to the highest-ranking partners - is expected to follow. Employees are hired and later evaluated based on how well they get along with other people. Those who don’t play nice don’t stick around very long. Some actually get fired. “Law firms can be quite high-pressured,” managing partner Bob Saudek told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We have so much external more...

The REX Agreement (or Real Estate Exchange Agreement) is a way for a homeowner to “tap” into their existing home’s equity without incurring any monthly payments or interest charges. A home owner can do this by agreeing to share a portion of the home’s increase or decrease in value over a period of time. It acts as a leveraging tool: A homeowner who has equity in their home can get an “advance” of a portion of that equity with no out of pocket charges and no new debt service. The home owner gets a few options as to how much they wish to share more...

There’s a spectacular seminar on branding and marketing running in the United States right now. It costs millions of dollars to stage with public classes across the nation, and it continues until November 4. You’ve guessed the seminar’s title: it’s the Presidential election. There are serious issues at stake, of course, and we don’t want to trivialize those. At the same time, who can miss the dimension of pure marketing? No one in business should ignore the daily lessons we are getting on building brands and winning customers, with instant market feedback from almost daily polls. Here are some of the topics covered more...

I read an article recently that made a lot of sense to me. Doris Kearns Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize winner for her books on history, and she made a list of ten points that are important for a President to consider and to emulate if they hoped to be great. She has written books about Abraham Lincoln and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and she believes leadership strengths should be considered carefully before voting. Here are some of the attributes that she feels make for a great leader--and I agree! 1. The courage to stay strong. This means a President needs to be able more...

From difficult times, evolve great ideas and opportunities. There are many reasons why you should be cautious in this kind of unprecedented market cycle. But sometimes, if you are creative, you can find a way to fill a void or find a new opportunity while others are retreating. Just think about the very money managers and hedge fund managers that predicted the sub-prime crisis. You too could capitalize on a great idea if you put your mind to it even in this market. To do this, you must first clearly have an understanding of how business in a particular sector works. For instance, if you wanted to more...

What transpired yesterday on Wall Street is one day for the history books. I had predicted this would happen about a year and a half ago, and again about eight months ago when I appeared on Neal Cavuto’s show. That the landscape of Wall Street could be altered this rapidly is something we should think about. Yesterday was the worst day on Wall Street since right after the 9/11 attacks, with a fallout of some financial giants that we thought were untouchable. Here’s my view of this situation. We survived and prospered after 9/11, and we will do the same this time more...

September always seems like the start of a new year. It’s back to school time and the energy is great. Now that I have my three eldest children working at The Trump Organization and doing so well professionally and personally, I am often asked what the secret is to raising good kids. I’m not sure if any of these things are a secret, but there are some guidelines that I think are effective. After seeing me on television on The Apprentice, people might think I’m a tough guy. That’s true in some ways, but most people will admit that I’m fair. When more...

In the lending business, we are all about rules, regulations and guidelines.  We are dealt a set of guiding principles and are expected to work within their framework.  The mortgage industry depends on ethical people with honest core values to make loans for the American people and the rate at which people in this industry are breeching this fiduciary duty is growing at an alarming rate.  There are a myriad of excuses which can be given for this lack of self-control but the bottom line is that there is NO EXCUSE for it. The FBI investigated over 1200 cases in 2007 of more...

Some Trump University students have taken what they learned here to buy foreclosed homes at rock-bottom prices. Others have built large portfolios of commercial investment properties. Still others have become successful entrepreneurs. Then there’s Kevin Andrews, a student from Arizona. Kevin stands out as one of our most remarkable students. Let me explain why. After he finished our Real Estate Investment Training, Kevin started his own company, G2G Investments in Lake Havasu, Arizona. Like many new investors, Kevin wanted to buy properties at low prices. But as he watched the foreclosure crisis widen in Arizona, Kevin started to look for a way to more...

A big part of being successful is performance. We all know about preparation, doing your homework or groundwork, covering our bases and so on, but it all boils down to the bottom line. Sometimes there is only one winner. I’ve been lucky enough to watch quite a bit of the U.S. Open this year. I love to watch these champions go at it. I was there to watch the match between Serena and Venus Williams, and when I left I was thinking about what fighters they are. Both of them are great athletes, and to see them battle it out left quite more...

There’s too much oil in the world to justify the current high market prices. I’ve heard there are tankers all over the world that are loaded up to the gills with oil. They have so much oil they don’t know what to do with it. It’s ridiculous what’s going on with OPEC and all of that. I blame the major oil producing countries for the current recession and I think the large oil companies are doing a major number on everyone.  The price of oil has dropped recently, but it should drop a lot more. The price of oil should be no more...

Real estate investors often ask me how they should structure their business. They ask, “Should I be a sole-proprietor, LLC (Limited-Liability-Company), or an S-Corporation?” The answer is “Yes!” In my opinion, there is a time and place for each of these types of organization but I favor the LLC. In the beginning and certainly if you just own a couple of homes as rentals, the sole proprietor approach should be sufficient. It is an inexpensive way to organize but offers you no protection to the exposure of liabilities. No need to fear! You can insure against this risk with the proper insurance policy which will offer you around more...

Every time you turn around, another expert has an opinion about what’s wrong with our schools. Sometimes it makes more sense to ask the parents. After all, they see what their children are learning - or not learning - so they see where the schools are succeeding and failing. Recently, a major survey of adults and parents found that a large majority of Americans think schools are placing too much emphasis on the wrong subjects. More than half of those polled think that educators are doing just a fair job in preparing children for the eventual work force or giving them the more...