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Inside Trump University

This Issue: Triple Your $$$ from the Customers You Already Have

Issue 66

Never Quit: A Lesson from The Apprentice

by Donald J. Trump

I was shocked after a recent task on The Apprentice, when a candidate resigned instead of taking her chances in the boardroom. After having a tough time as project manager - and knowing her teammates certainly didn’t like her - Michelle threw in the towel and quit.

I was amazed that she would throw away such an opportunity. She had a chance at catapulting into the business spotlight, a chance at a high-profile job in a high-powered corporation. Yet, she chose to throw it all away.

It’s a business lesson I teach over and over again: “Never, ever give up. Never quit. You can never be successful if you give up.”

In this case, Michelle had plenty of excuses. She said her Apprentice experience wasn’t what she had signed up for. She didn’t expect to be on a losing team, living in tents in the rain. She said the negative adventure just wasn’t worth it to her.

Had she gone to the boardroom, she probably would’ve been fired. But I would have had much more respect for her had she taken her chances and fought for her job than just give up. But she didn’t even try. She conceded defeat without a struggle, without a whimper.

It takes strong people to succeed in business. And if you quit, you don’t stand a chance.

The wisdom of Donald J. Trump, Chairman of Trump University, can be found in all Trump University courses, including The Marketing Mastery Program.

Donald J. Trump is Chairman of Trump University.

Create Wealth from the Customers You Already Have

by Michael Sexton

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You probably don’t think of your customers as expenses. But if you add up all the money you spent to win their business, you will discover how costly they really are. To win them, you spent a lot of money on advertising, salespeople, a Website and other marketing initiatives too.

Customers are costly. In fact, many businesses report that it takes more than a year before a typical customer represents a profit, not an expense.

What is the solution? You could go on spending money to win more customers - and you should. But you need to do something else too:

You need to create wealth from the customers you already have.

Here are some proven strategies that can get that job done - whether you are a small startup or a major corporation.

Strategy one: Build loyalty. In other words, get your customers to buy exclusively from you, not from your competitors. If you own a coffee bar, hand out little cards that entitle your customers to a free eleventh cup of coffee after they have bought 10. Or if you are a car dealer, offer attractive predetermined trade-in prices for the new vehicles you sell, provided that your customers turn them in on the next cars they buy from you.
Strategy two: Offer volume discounts to encourage your customers to buy more. If you have a landscaping company, offer a year’s service to customers who prepay for the next ten months. That sounds like you are lowering your per-month price, and you are. But the point is, you are selling at volume and boosting your cash flow.
Strategy three: Upsell your customers to more expensive products. Airlines do it when they encourage current economy-fare customers to upgrade to first-class tickets. You can do it too. If you own a health club, for example, upsell your customers to more expensive memberships that include exclusive classes, massages and a tempting array of bundled benefits.
Strategy four: Expand your product line. If you build swimming pools, start selling water purification systems to your current customers too. Or if you operate a martial arts school, introduce new self-defense courses for the parents of the children who already come to your school.

Be imaginative. Tripling the dollars you earn from each customer is an achievable goal. Apply the strategies I outline above. Stick to them. You will soon discover that even incremental income growth from each of your current customers will quickly make your profits soar.

To learn more about increasing your profits with creative marketing, be sure to investigate The Marketing Mastery Program from Trump University. Classes are forming now.

Michael Sexton is President of Trump University.

Entrepreneurship Defined

by Michael E. Gordon

An exclusive first look inside Trump University’s newest book, Trump University Entrepreneurship 101

The term entrepreneurship leaves much to be desired. You have to wrap your mouth around the word, making creative pronunciation choices on three of the five syllables. Dictionaries define it as the startup and management of a business, with great initiative and risk, for profit.

But to me, entrepreneurship encompasses these three factors: Mindset, Actions and Process:

Mindset: Entrepreneurs go through the world continuously seeking ideas and opportunities that can be commercialized. They focus on innovating, doing things better, adding, creating, and delivering unique value to customers and to all stakeholders. And they want to be rewarded for their successes. The more value they add, the greater their financial rewards.

Actions: Entrepreneurs are proactive to the extreme, and once on the opportunity trail, they move mountains to mobilize the necessary resources to accomplish their goals. And then, in the words of Nike, they just “do it,” and they do it their own way.

Process: Entrepreneurship is a dynamic, continuous, living process. The process is driven by you, the entrepreneur, the founder, the champion. This means taking the following actions in your life:

Generate ideas incessantly.
Select the real opportunity from the heap of ideas.
Build and empower the team.
Mobilize and control necessary resources, whether or not you own them.
Develop an astute strategy to capture customers and to generate sales and sustainable profits.
Develop a compelling business plan.
Assess personal and business risks.
Launch the venture.
Manage the growing venture.
Harvest the rewards of success: sell your business, take your business public, or continue to build your venture and pay yourself appropriate and generous compensation.

Entrepreneurship is a personal voyage, and your chance of success is greater the more clearly you understand yourself, your goals, and the obstacles you face.

Feel the entrepreneurial energy and exhilaration in the process! Generate, select, build, mobilize, develop, assess, launch, manage . . . and harvest the rewards.

This blog post is adapted from Dr. Gordon's new book Trump University Entrepreneurship 101: How to Turn Your Idea into a Money Machine, with a foreword by Donald J. Trump. This book, the latest success title from Trump University, is arriving this week at all booksellers.

Michael E. Gordon, PhD, author of Trump University Entrepreneurship 101, has founded five companies. He teaches entrepreneurship at universities around the world. He is an Adjunct Professor at Babson College, the Harvard University Extension School and at the International School of Management in Paris.

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