The most successful people are also the biggest failures

I'm not a Trump support, neither am I a US citizen.

Right, with that out of the way....

I keep hearing this notion that Trump is a failure because he has had many failings in his business career.

Newsflash! Very few highly successful people make their millions overnight with no failures along the way. It happens, sure, but it's so rare that it would be classed as anomolous.

The majority of highly successful people, failed, failed, failed again. What sets them apart is their ability to respond to failure. Most people can't stomach failure, so when they fail, they give up, not wanting to feel that awful feeling of having been unsuccessful at something they had poured their energies into.

Successful people, just. Keep. Going. No matter how many failures they have, they dust themselves off and try again and they keep trying until they are successful, despite the gravity of their failures.

At the end of the day, Trump is a very wealthy business man. That means he has been successful. Very successful.

If it's so easy to become a billionaire, wouldn't everyone be doing it? They don't, because learning to respond well to failure is a very tough skill to learn.

Can't make an omelet if you don't break a few eggs!

Failure cannot live with persistence, and that persistence is the quality that counts.

Yes , many successful people have had failures.

Generally tho, they can dust themselves off and start again, because they have money (Family) behind them.

While I admire Trumpy, he has had many failures...he was bankrupt in the early 90s....But he always bounces back, because he has plenty of "Family" money.
His Grandfather was a millionaire, a self made one, His Father was worth 50 Million $ in the 1950s, and built a 50 room mansion for little Donny to grow up in. He was a developer in NY.....
Trumpy has Never had a real job, until now. When he was 18, he frove around NY checking on his Dads properties in a brand new Caddy........
People like J Paul Getty, who in the 1920s inherited 500,000$ from his old mans will, Then was given his old mans money later in life, also never worked a day in his life....but is revered for starting Art museums etc etc. His old man wanted to disown him in the 19teens and 20s because of his playboy lifestyle.

But Geezz, Good luck to them all....Im only as envious as hell!!!.

One thing I have noticed about 99% of billionaires over the last 150 years........

Virtually NONE of them had any formal University education or any Degrees in anything (other than Honorary ones in later life)

Trump, Gates, Jobs, Getty, Rocherfellas etc etc....never had degrees.

Just sheer dumb luck, persistence, and family backing....other than the ones of the 1800s which had slaves, ripping people off and dumb luck as well.

Lucky Bast.....s

originally posted by: Jefferton
Can't make an omelet if you don't break a few eggs!

You can actually..

a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner

You pose a question in your OP, which I would like to respond to...

If it's so easy to become a billionaire, wouldn't everyone be doing it?

I would say no. Not everyone would. It is hard to become a billionaire when relying on ones inherent wit, genius, inventiveness, technical qualification, and hard, physical and mental work. But that is not how Mr Trump got where he is today. He became a billionaire the easy way.

First, any sociopath with no particular skills and the IQ of a turnip can become a billionaire if they start out with 2 million dollars. But in order to do that, one has to be a sociopath, a chameleon, a liar, a bastard and a thief, and have no ability to feel the slightest twinge of guilt about any of the things they do to get ahead, or any of the people they destroy in order to make it happen. People who deserve to be paid well, like the labourers and engineers who put his projects together, were often underpaid or simply brushed off when the bills came in, and I am telling you now, if I simply refused to pay every second person who has supplied my business with goods and services, I would be better off too. Fortunately for those who do business with me, I am not a mercenary bastard who cares not how many people lose their livelihood as a result of my actions. I am a decent human being.

Trump is not. Trump is a billionaire because he has no qualms whatsoever, about acting immorally, about getting a large amount of something, and refusing to pay for it, and ensuring that his lawyers are capable of destroying the reputations and the businesses of anyone who crosses him. Trump is dirt, which is why he can brush these things off, call them fake news, and keep smiling. He simply does not care that his success is built on the total devastation of the lives of others.

Think for a moment, if you will, about Mr Elon Musk. He started out from relatively humble beginnings, and had to borrow $28,000 from his father to start his first business venture. This man is also a billionaire. However, he is a billionaire because he came up with products that everyone seemed to want to use, at a time where everyone was looking to do, what his product did. He made money, then he used that money to fund projects more inventive and exciting than the one he started out with. He is also an inventor, an engineer, and a visionary, the Swiss Army Knife of genius billionaires, a real world version of Iron Man, lacking only the suit and the drinking problem to finish the look. He works on products, real, actual products and initiatives, which he believes will be integral parts of the future of the species. He has ideas no one has ever had, first thing he opens his eyes in the morning, and works like a dog, even with his already vast wealth, to make sure that if he has an idea for an invention which might prove useful to the human race, he gets it as far as it can go under his care. The man is quite literally building the future of the human race, from an infrastructural standpoint.

However, Mr Trump? Property magnate. Have some architect draw up a plan for a posh building, slap your name on it, refuse to pay the people who built it, or contractors working on your projects, save yourself the largest share of your seed money, and you too can be a leech who produces nothing of any actual value or originality, and screws people in the process, to aid your bottom line in remaining viable. This individual, far from adding any benefit to the human race in the least, by operating his businesses, simply exists to peddle as many dollars out of as many people, for nothing, as possible. He puts his name on products he has no confidence in, condo complexes which were never going to be built, but he was willing to endorse on behalf of some rapidly collapsible shell corporation, which would be wound up once investors had sunk money into the nonexistent or built to fail project. People lost their retirements to these projects, on the basis that they trusted that Mr Trump, the most successful person they could name off the top of their heads, had endorsed the thing, even appearing in promotional materials for these things, and allowing the team heading the scam to use his name, but without his owning the project at all. They pay him a percentage of what they get for use of his name, and he washes his hands of it. What a champion, what a forward thinking visionary.... Oh wait, no, that would be cowardly, backward, blinkered fool. He has never come up with a single product which has even the slightest potential to change the world, he has never come up with anything which benefits the human race or even has the potential to do so, he has never laid a brick in his life or worked hard, from a position of the bottom rung on the ladder, in his entire life. He is a bloviating sack of utter futility, at best, and a corrupt shackle around the ankles of this species at worst, an example of everything wrong with the greed is good attitude. Sharks like him are successful because they do not care about anything other than themselves and their comfort, and that is not something which anyone ought to aspire to.

I know plenty poor people who never give up and keep slugging away despite setback after setback.

So I'd disagree, I think knowing how to respond to failure is quite a common life skill. We all have to develop it.

The difference between us and the super rich is the super rich usually all started with family money.

And it's easy to make money if you've got money.

You just plough it into property, leverage the assets, plough it back into property, and repeat.

Whatever you think of Trumps success, my point is that it's unfair to judge him by his failures alone, as by that standard, it would mean the majority of successful people were also losers.

Now, I'm really intrigued as to how you can make an omellette without breaking some eggs though.

a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner

The majority of successful people, like banking executives (well known as being very shady characters, prepared to shunt funds around to all sorts of impossibly terrible places, bankroll things that should not be bankrolled, and take massive bonuses even though their performance has been historically poor), and their casino style trader friends?

Are you talking about those oil tycoons and coal magnates out there, whose ownership of governments worldwide, though hard for the average mook to discern, is none the less near complete in some quarters, and whose whims can influence a decision to go to war or not?

Are you talking about those guys? Look, its well known that the upper echelons of big business, that is the successful end of the economic scale, are absolutely rife with psychopaths. Psychopaths have a greater proportional representation in those rarefied environs, than are to be found in other sectors of society, specifically, the less well off. The reason? They use low cunning, a preparedness to ignore any and all rules, a readiness to ruin otherwise decent people, a determination to grind the faces of others into the dust, just to climb a rung on the ladder, and a talent for exploiting the work of others to make themselves look good, to achieve what anyone else would try to achieve by way of simply working hard and being good at their jobs. It is important to understand, that a great many CEOs and top level figures in business, government and other high powered roles, occupy their positions not because they are the best at the job, but because they have kidney shanked their way to the top, blaming others for the effects of their incompetence, lying perfectly (because they have no conscience to give themselves away), and have an absolute desire to accumulate as much power and prestige for themselves as is physically possible, no matter the cost to others. This sort of individual is often, actually, a loser in reality, lacking any kind of talent for anything much, aside from making their lives as easy as possible at the cost of others comfort, health, or even lives.

Successful people, are RARELY the hardest working individuals, or the most talented, or the most dedicated. They are OFTEN the most morally bankrupt, odious, obnoxious, maladjusted individuals in the room, the building, or on the city block. Trump fits in gloriously well with that. Delusions of grandeur, an opinion of himself which does not match the man at all, and the ability to feed people a line of total bluster and BS, with a high enough success rate to get him what he wants... these are not virtues we are talking about. He possesses none. These are character flaws, as present in him as they are in any "successful" serial murderer you could hope to name. He is BTK with a bigger budget, and a different kind of fetish.

This does not apply to all spheres, of course. Sportspersons have to perform well in order to be highly regarded, people who make money by working with their hands have to be competent or better to get paid at all. But in an environment which permits a days "work" to be done while one is wearing a suit, you would be surprised as to just how many positions are filled by people who have no marketable talent at all, but have managed to appear for all the world as if they are Gods amongst mere mortals, and trade on that appearance to get what they want, regardless of their ineptitude.

a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner

If you see how many times Edison failed before he made the light bulb you'd be surprised.

trumps failures are pretty bad, tho.. banks stopped lending him money. most of his worth is his brand - pushing his brand is where he was genius.

also, I read most of his businesses were considered boutique businesses. the one real involved business was his casino.. look where that went. lol.

here's a good article breaking it all down.

LINK

Depends on your perspective:

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
― Thomas A. Edison

www.goodreads.com...

a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner

I was having a conversation with an underling at work one day.

He'd been having a rough day.

I explained to him that while our education levels were nearly identical, the reason why I could catch the mistakes he'd made was that I had 30 years experience in screwing up.

Mistakes are often he best teachers.

a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner

I judge trump primarily by his actions.. he's a narcissistic buffoon. he cares only about himself and his image.. biggest con job ever, if you ask me.

a reply to: gort51

Yea, I was going to mention that to be successful you need persistence, and luck. The luck part is mainly due to upbringing or the failures in a persons life leads them to a more prosperous future.
Warren Buffet time and time again said he was only successful because he was lucky and had the right guidance. I mean, the company he owns was an old failed Textiles factory, has nothing to do with investing at all. But he learned from it. And that's what matters.

Also, to add to the Trump thing. He was backed by real estate, and old family money. He was literally settup for success the day he was born.

originally posted by: tulermank
a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner

If you see how many times Edison failed before he made the light bulb you'd be surprised.

You mean how many times Edison failed until he started stealing other peoples inventions and using lawyers to shut them up when they complained?

Money isn't the criteria for success. Honor and character is the sign of a successful person.

And to quote my Baptist, Republican, Conservative Texan Mother that never uses profanity.....


"Donald Trump is a white trash SOB" I'll take her word over an internet mook, Trump apoligist, any day.


and I might add that defending Trump exposes your sense of honor and quality of character.....You are known by the friends you keep.

a reply to: olaru12

Lots of people who are seemed successful aren't nice people at all. Steve Jobs was a prime example.

originally posted by: Dem0nc1eaner

Newsflash!

Stopped reading at "Newsflash!" Find a less jackassamo hyperbole. You're welcome.