Wednesday, 12 August 2015

Donald Trump


A self-made billionaire, real estate mogul Donald Trump is widely regarded as a man who makes the rules. And among Trump’s rules for success, you will not find the words, “humility,” “generosity,” “sympathy,” or “compassion.” The quintessential bullying boss, Donald Trump is a cultural icon and one of the most famous people in the world. Comparing publicity photos from his early years of fame with his more recent dominance on the world’s stage, it is clear Trump has cultivated a distinctly mean image. It is possible he still enjoys smiling, but apparently it is no longer marketable. While nobody is questioning his head for business, Trump’s fame, if not his fortune, is less attributable to any specific business deals or professional decisions than to his “mean boss” imagine and his high-profile personal life (including his widely publicized divorce from Ivana Trump and his scandalous sex life with Slovenian supermodel, Melania Knauss, who would become his wife).

Donald Trump
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Donald Trump


Trump announcing David Blaine's latest feat
Born June 14, 1946 (1946-06-14) (age 62)
New York City, New York
Alma mater University of Pennsylvania
Occupation Chief executive officer
Salary $32 million (2007) [1]
Net worth $3 billion (2008) [1]
Spouse(s) Ivana Trump (1977-1992)
Marla Maples (1993-1999)
Melania Trump (2005-)
Children Donald Trump, Jr. (b.1977)
Ivanka Trump (b.1981)
Eric Trump (b.1984)
Tiffany Trump (b.1993)
Barron Trump (b.2006)
Parents Fred Christ Trump (1905-1999)
Mary A. MacLeod (1912-2000)
Website
The Trump Organization
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American business magnate, socialite, television personality, and author. He is the Chairman and CEO of the Trump Organization, a US-based real-estate developer. Trump is also the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts, which operates numerous casinos and hotels across the world. Trump's extravagant lifestyle and outspoken manner have made him a celebrity for years, a status amplified by the success of his NBC reality show, The Apprentice (where he serves as host and executive producer).

Donald was the fourth of five children of Fred Trump, a wealthy real estate developer based in New York City. Donald was strongly influenced by his father in his eventual goals to make a career in real estate development,[2] and upon his graduation from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, Donald Trump joined his father's company, The Trump Organization.

Starting with the renovation of the Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt with the Pritzker family, he continued with Trump Tower in New York City and several other residential projects. Trump would later expand into the airline industry (buying the Eastern Shuttle routes),[3] and Atlantic City casino business, including buying the Taj Mahal Casino from the Crosby family, then taking it into bankruptcy. This expansion, both personal and business, led to mounting debt.[4] Much of the news about him in the early 1990s involved his much publicized financial problems, creditor-led bailout, extramarital affair with Marla Maples, and the resulting divorce from his first wife, Ivana Trump.

The late 1990s saw a resurgence in his financial situation and fame. In 2001, he completed Trump World Tower, a 72-story residential tower across from the United Nations Headquarters.[5] Also, he began construction on Trump Place, a multi-building development along the Hudson River. Trump owns commercial space in Trump International Hotel and Tower, a 44-story mixed-use (hotel and condominium) tower on Columbus Circle. Trump currently owns several million square feet of prime Manhattan real estate,[6] and remains a major figure in the field of real estate in the United States and a celebrity for his prominent media exposures.

Contents [hide]
1 Background and education
2 Career
2.1 Early success (1968–1989)
2.2 Financial problems (1989–1997)
2.3 Resurgence (1997–2007)
2.4 2008 financial crisis
3 Properties
3.1 Selected completed properties
3.2 Real Estate Licensing
4 In the media
5 Other ventures
5.1 Golf course
6 Personal life
6.1 Family
6.2 Hobbies
7 Bibliography
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links



Background and education
Donald Trump is the son of Fred Christ Trump (Woodhaven, New York, 11 October 1905 – 25 June 1999) and wife Mary A. MacLeod (Stornoway, Scotland, 10 May 1912 – 7 August 2000), who married in 1936. His paternal grandparents were German immigrants Frederick Trump (Kallstadt, Rheinland-Pfalz, 14 March 1869 – 30 March 1918), who immigrated to the United States in 1885 and became a naturalized US Citizen in 1892. Frederick married his wife, Elisabeth Christ (10 October 1880 – 6 June 1966)[7] at Kallstadt, Rheinland-Pfalz, in 1902.

Trump attended The Kew-Forest School in Forest Hills, Queens, but after trouble there when he was thirteen, his parents sent him to the New York Military Academy hoping to direct his energy and assertiveness in a positive manner.[8] It worked reasonably well: while at NYMA, in upstate NY, Trump earned academic honors, played varsity football in 1962, varsity soccer in 1963, and varsity baseball from '62-64 (baseball captain '64). The baseball coach, Ted Dobias, a local celebrity for his unselfish work with area youth, awarded him the Coach's Award in '64. Promoted to Cadet Captain-S4 (Cadet Battalion Logistics Officer) his Senior Year, Trump, and Cadet First Sergeant Jeff Donaldson, '65, (West Point '69) formed a composite company of cadets, taught them advanced close-order drill, and marched them all down Fifth Avenue on Memorial Day, 1964.

Trump attended Fordham University for two years before transferring to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in economics and concentration in finance, he joined his father's real estate company.

In his book, Trump: The Art of the Deal, Trump discusses his undergraduate career:

"After I graduated from the New York Military Academy in 1964, I flirted briefly with the idea of attending film school...but in the end I decided real estate was a much better business. I began by attending Fordham University...but after two years, I decided that as long as I had to be in college, I might as well test myself against the best. I applied to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and I got in...I was also very glad to get finished. I immediately moved back home and went to work full time with my father."

Career

Early success (1968–1989)
Trump began his career at his father's company, the Trump Organization, and initially concentrated on his father's preferred field of middle-class rental housing in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. One of Donald's first projects, while he was still in college, was the revitalization of the foreclosed Swifton Village apartment complex in Cincinnati, Ohio--turning a 1200-unit complex with a 66% vacancy rate to 100% occupancy within a year. When the Trump Organization sold Swifton Village for $12 million, they cleared $6 million in profit.

In 1971 Trump moved his residence to Manhattan, where he became convinced of the economic opportunity in the city, specifically large building projects in Manhattan that would offer opportunities for earning high profits, utilizing attractive architectural design, and winning public recognition.[2] Trump began by landing the rights to develop the old Penn Central yards on the West Side, then--with the help of a 40-year tax abatement by the financially strained New York City government, which was eager to give tax concession in exchange for investments at a time of financial crisis--turned the bankrupt Commodore Hotel into a new Grand Hyatt. [9]

He was also instrumental in steering the development of the Javits Convention Center on property he had an option on. The development saga of the Javits Convention Center brought Donald Trump into contact with the New York City government when a project he'd estimated could have been completed by his company for $110 million ended up costing the city between $750 million to $1 billion. He offered to take over the project at cost but the offer was not accepted.[10]

A similar opportunity would arise in the city's attempt to restore the Wollman Rink in Central Park--a project started in 1980 with an expected 2½-year construction schedule that was still, with $12 million spent, nowhere near completion in 1986. Trump offered to take over the job at no charge to the city, an offer that was initially rebuffed until it received much local media attention. Trump was given the job which he completed in six months and with $750,000 of the $3 million budgeted for the project left over.[11]


Financial problems (1989–1997)
By 1989, the effects of recession left Trump unable to meet loan payments. Trump financed the construction of his third casino, the $1 billion Taj Mahal, primarily with high-interest junk bonds. Although he shored up his businesses with additional loans and postponed interest payments, by 1991 increasing debt brought Trump to business bankruptcy[4] and the brink of personal bankruptcy. Banks and bond holders had lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but opted to restructure his debt to avoid the risk of losing more money in court. The Taj Mahal re-emerged from bankruptcy on October 5, 1991, with Trump ceding 50% ownership in the casino to the original bondholders in exchange for lowered interest rates on the debt and more time to pay it off.[12]

On November 2, 1992, the Trump Plaza Hotel was forced to file a prepackaged Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection plan after being unable to make its debt payments. Under the plan, Trump agreed to give up a 49% stake in the luxury hotel to Citibank and five other lenders. In return Trump would receive more favorable terms on the remaining $550+ million owed to the lenders and retain his position as chief executive, though he would not be paid and would not have a role in day-to-day operations.[13]

By 1994, Trump had eliminated a large portion of his $900 million personal debt[14] and reduced significantly his nearly $3.5 billion in business debt. While he was forced to relinquish the Trump Shuttle (which he had bought in 1989), he managed to retain Trump Tower in New York City and control of his three casinos in Atlantic City. Chase Manhattan Bank, which lent Trump the money to buy the West Side yards, his biggest Manhattan parcel, forced the sale of a parcel to Asian developers. According to former members of the Trump Organization, Trump did not retain any ownership of the site's real estate - the owners merely promised to give him about 30 percent of the profits once the site was completely developed or sold. Until that time, the owners wanted to keep Trump on to do what he did best: build things. They gave him a modest construction fee and a management fee to oversee the development. The new owners also allowed him to put his name on the buildings that eventually rose on the yards because his well-known moniker allowed them to charge a premium for their condos.[15]

In 1995, he combined his casino holdings into the publicly held Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. Wall Street drove its stock above $35 in 1996, but by 1998 it had fallen into single digits as the company remained profitless and struggled to pay just the interest on its nearly $3 billion in debt. Under such financial pressure, the properties were unable to make the improvements necessary for keeping up with their flashier competitors.

Finally, on October 21, 2004, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts announced a restructuring of its debt.[16] The plan called for Trump's individual ownership to be reduced from 56 percent to 27 percent, with bondholders receiving stock in exchange for surrendering part of the debt. Since then, Trump Hotels has been forced to seek voluntary bankruptcy protection to stay afloat. After the company applied for Chapter 11 Protection in November 2004, Trump relinquished his CEO position but retained a role as Chairman of the Board. In May 2005[17] the company re-emerged from bankruptcy as Trump Entertainment Resorts Holdings.[18]


Resurgence (1997–2007)
Trump has several projects under way. The level of success of the progress of the projects varies. The Trump International Hotel and Tower - Honolulu seems to be a success. According to Trump, buyers paid non-refundable deposits to commit to purchase every unit on the first day they were made available. Construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower - Chicago seems to be proceeding as planned although 30% of the units remain unsold. The Trump International Hotel and Tower - Toronto has had a series of delays and a height reduction. The Trump Tower - Tampa has been quite controversial because the initial sales were so successful that all deposits were returned to charge a higher price. Three years after construction of this controversial development began, construction has delayed and lawsuits have been filed. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida one Trump construction project was put on hold in favor of another (Trump International Hotel and Tower - Fort Lauderdale). Meanwhile, Trump Towers - Atlanta is being developed in a housing market which has the nation's second-highest inventory of unsold homes.[19]


2008 financial crisis
Trump has been caught in the 2008 financial crisis as sales for his Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago have been lagging and he failed to pay a $40m loan to Deutsche Bank in December.[20] Arguing that the crisis is an Act of God, he evoked a clause in the contract to not pay the loan and initiated a countersuit asserting his image has been damaged.[20] Deutsche Bank has in turn noted in court that 'Trump is no stranger to overdue debt' and that he has twice previously filed for bankruptcy with respect to his casino operations.[20]

On 17 February 2009 Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, Mr Trump having stated the Friday previous that he would resign from the board.[21]


Properties

Future site of Trump International Hotel & Tower, TorontoIn its October 7, 2007 Forbes 400 issue, "Acreage Aces," Forbes valued Trump's wealth to $3.0 billion. Trump is known for his many properties.

Selected completed properties
Trump World Tower: 845 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY. It is valued at $290 million.
Trump Tower: 725 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10022 Trump owns the retail and office space on the lower half of this building. It is valued at $288 million.
Personal Residence: Trump Tower: top 3 floors of Trump Tower with approximately 30,000 square feet (3,000 m²) of space; detailed in bronze, gold, and marble. Worth as much as $50 million, it is one of the most valuable apartments in New York City.
AXA Financial Center, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
555 California Street, formerly the Bank of America Center, in San Francisco: When Trump was forced to sell a stake in the railyards on Manhattan's West Side, the Asian group to which he sold then sold much of the site for $1.76 billion. They then reinvested the rest of the money, via a tax-free exchange, into two office buildings: 1290 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan and 555 California Street in San Francisco (The Group has since sold their stake to Vornado Realty Trust). Trump ended up owning 30% of the two buildings. Based on the recent sales price, Trump's stake is valued at $540 million.
The Trump Building at 40 Wall Street: Trump bought and renovated this building for about $35 million in 1996. Although Trump claims it is worth $400 million, New York tax assessors value it at only $90 million. Mr. Trump has taken out a $145 million mortgage on this property to use for other investments. Forbes values the property at $260 million.
Trump Entertainment Resorts: This company owns the Trump branded casino resorts. After a long period of financial trouble, the company entered bankruptcy protection in 2004. Trump agreed to invest $55 million cash in the new company and pay $16.4 million to the company's debtors. In return he holds a 29.16% stake in the new public company. This stake was worth approximately $171 million in October 2006. The following are the Trump branded casino resorts:
Trump Taj Mahal (Official Site)
Trump Plaza (Official Site)
Trump Marina (Official Site)
Riverside South/Trump Place When completed, Riverside South will be the largest single private development in New York City's history. It was built by the Trump Organization, although financed by investors from Hong Kong and owned by the Hudson Waterfront Company. During his financial difficulties in the mid 90's, Trump was forced to sell this site, the former west side rail-yards. The new owners continued Trump's involvement with the property and sought to use his name to seek higher sales prices. Trump was paid $2 million annually for his oversight of the project, and he was offered an estimated 30% of the net profits upon completion of this 10 year project. The investors sold off the uncompleted project in 2005 for $1.8 billion and offered Mr. Trump $500 million. Trump contends that the property should have been sold for more than $3 billion and in 2006 sued the owners for selling without his consent, and sought $1 billion in damages. Forbes values his stake in the property at $170 million.
Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago (Official Site), (under construction, anticipated completion is 2009) The entire project is valued at $1.2 billion ($112 million stake for Trump).
Trump Hotel Las Vegas (Official Site) This is a joint development with fellow Forbes 400 member, Phillip Ruffin. Trump's stake is valued at $162 million.

Trump International Hotel and Tower (NY) at Columbus CircleTrump International Hotel and Tower New York (Official Site), Trump provided his name and expertise to the building's owner (GE) during the building's re-development in 1994 for a fee totaling $40 million ($25 million for project management and $15 million in incentives deriving from the condo sales). Forbes values Trump's stake at $12 million.
Trump Park Avenue: Park Avenue & 59th Street. It is valued at $142 million.
Golf Courses (valued at $127 million):
Trump currently owns four golf courses in the United States including Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York, Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, CA.
In 2006, Donald Trump purchased a 1,400-acre (5.7 km2) plot just north of Aberdeen at Menie, Scotland, Trump International Golf Links, with the intention of turning it into a £1 billion golf resort and "the world's best golf course". The development plan included two courses, a 5-star hotel, holiday homes, and a golf academy. Trump wishes the site, once finished, to hold the British Open. There has been opposition from some locals and negative reaction from environmental groups interested in preserving the 4,000-year-old dunes that are designated as an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest). The development was rejected by the local council's planning subcommitee and is currently going through a planning inquiry with the Scottish Parliament.
Trump is also building Trump International Golf Club in the Caribbean island of Canouan Island, The Grenadines. The development will include Trump Club Privee, a Monte Carlo inspired casino.
Trump also builds residential housing developments near these golf clubs. Examples include: The Estates at Trump National in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, Trump Island Villas on Canouan Island, The Grenadines, and The Residences at Trump National in Westchester County, NY.
Nike Store: The Niketown store is located in Trump Tower. It is valued at $120 million
Palm Beach estate: 43,000 square feet (4,000 m²) on a large oceanfront lot in Palm Beach. Trump purchased this property for $40 million at a bankruptcy auction in 2004. Renovations to the property were led by the Season 3 Apprentice Kendra Todd, and Trump sold the property for $100 million in June 2008, making it the most expensive house ever sold in the United States. (The preivous record is $70 million for Ron Perelman's Palm Beach estate in 2004.). Forbes values his stake in the property for $43 million.
Mar-A-Lago (Official Site), Palm Beach, Florida. Most of this estate has been converted into a private club. This landmark property, according to Trump, has received bids near $200,000,000. However, Forbes magazine does not take into account either of Trump's large vacation residences (Mar-a-Largo or his 213-acre (0.86 km2) spread near Bedford, NY in Westchester County, NY) for its valuation of his wealth.

Real Estate Licensing
Many developers pay Donald Trump to market their properties and be the public face for their projects. For that reason, Trump does not own many of the buildings that display his name. According to Forbes, this portion of Trump's empire, actually run by his children, is by far his most valuable with a valuation of $562 million. According to Forbes, there are 33 licensing projects under development including seven "condo hotels" (i.e. The seven Trump International Hotel and Tower developments). Some examples are:

Manhattan:
Trump Palace: 200 East 69th Street, New York, NY
Trump Parc and Trump Parc East: Two adjoining buildings on Central Park South on the southwest corner of The Avenue of the Americas. Trump Parc East is a 14-story apartment building and Trump Parc (the former Barbizon Plaza Hotel) is a 38-story condominium building.
Trump Plaza: 167 East 61st Street, New York, NY ( 39-story, Y-shaped plan condominium building on the Upper East Side)
610 Park Avenue (The old Mayfair Hotel): Trump is helping with the construction and development of this property for Colony Capital.
Trump Soho (Official Site) Hotel Condeminium: A partnership with Bayrock Group to build a 42 story building in Soho.
New York City Suburbs:
Trump Plaza: Jersey City, NJ. The project includes New Jersey's two tallest residential towers and costs about $450 million. The 55-story tower will have 445 condos, and the 50-story tower will have 417. [22]
Trump Plaza (New Rochelle) is a 39-story luxury residence and hotel with retail space that is currently under construction in Westchester County, NY with developer Louis R. Cappelli.
Trump Tower at City Center is a 35-story condominium apartment building built in Westchester County, New York with developer Louis R. Cappelli.
Trump Parc Stamford is a development in Stamford, Connecticut with F. D. Rich Company and Louis R. Cappelli.
Florida:
Trump International Hotel and Tower Fort Lauderdale (Official Site), Anticipated completion is 2007
Trump Towers (Sunny Isles Beach, Florida): will have over 270 residential condominiums
Trump Grande Ocean Resort and Residences: A hotel condominium (Trump International Sonesta Beach) and two residential condominium towers (Trump Palace and Trump Royale) located in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida with fellow Forbes 400 member Jorge Perez.
Trump Hollywood: A 40-story building on Hollywood Beach, Florida with fellow Forbes 400 member Jorge Perez.
Trump Tower (Palm Beach) will be a 23-story residential condominium development.
Domestic:
Trump Towers (Atlanta): Tower I will be 48 stories and include 370 units while Tower II is still under design.
Trump Tower (Philadelphia): This 45-story building will offer 263 luxurious condominiums on the Delaware River.
Trump International Hotel and Tower Waikiki (Official Site), Anticipated completion is 2009
Trump International Hotel and Tower, New Orleans (Project slated to begin construction during the first quarter of 2007)
International:
Trump World: Seoul, Korea for which Trump received a licensing fee of $5 million to lend his name.
Trump International Hotel and Tower, Toronto (Anticipated completion is 2010)
The Palm Trump International Hotel and Tower, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, Panama City (Anticipated completion is 2009)
Trump Ocean Club Baja Mexico is a planned 3 tower, 25 story, 526 unit hotel condominium 30 minutes south of downtown San Diego.
Trump at Cap Cana will be located in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

In the media

Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Donald Trump, a two-time Emmy Award-nominated personality, has made appearances as a caricatured version of himself in television series and films (e.g. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, The Nanny, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Days of our Lives), and as a character (The Little Rascals). He has been the subject of comedians, flash cartoon artists, and online caricature artists. In addition to the aforementioned forms of media he has appeared on, he has been a guest on various talk shows and other media.

In 2003, Trump became the executive producer and host of the NBC reality show, The Apprentice, in which a group of competitors battled for a high-level management job in one of Trump's commercial enterprises. The other contestants were "fired," or eliminated, from the game. At the end of each episode, Trump eliminates at least one contestant while uttering the catchphrase "You're fired." For the first year of the show Trump was paid $50,000 per episode (roughly $700,000 for the first season), but following the show's initial success, he is now paid a reported $3 million per episode, making him one of the highest paid TV personalities. In 2004, Donald Trump filed a trademark application for the phrase "You're fired," which he had popularized on the show.[1][2][3]

In December 2006, talk show host Rosie O'Donnell criticized Trump on The View for "acting as a moral compass for 20-year-olds" after giving a second chance to Miss USA, Tara Conner, who had violated pageant guidelines by partying and drinking. Trump, who owns the rights to the pageant, decided to let Conner retain the Miss USA crown while she pursued rehabilitation. A tabloid war raged for several weeks thereafter between the two celebrities.[23]

In 2007, Trump received an honor for his contribution of The Apprentice to television by receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In October 2007, Trump appeared on Larry King Live and delivered a strong criticism of then-United States President George W. Bush, particularly concerning the Iraq War. He also predicted that Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton would win the Republican and Democratic Presidential nominations, respectively, and said that he would be very supportive of either of them being elected President. He made further statements about the issue on the The Situation Room, in which he said "anybody who wants more troops in Iraq, I don't feel can win an election" as Rudy Giuliani supports that position. On the same show, he was also critical of the public perception of Angelina Jolie as a grand beauty.[24]

On Sept 17, 2008 Trump officially endorsed John McCain for U.S. Presidency on Larry King Live show.[25]


Other ventures
The Miss Universe Organization is owned by Donald Trump and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). The organization produces the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants.

Other investments include a 17.2% stake in Parker Adnan, Inc. (formerly AdnanCo Group), a Bermuda-based financial services holdings company. In late 2003, Trump, along with his siblings, sold their late father's real estate empire to a group of investors that included Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and LamboNuni Bank reportedly for $600 million. Donald Trump's 1/3 share was $200 million, which he later used to finance Trump Casino & Resorts.

With his success in real estate and television, Trump has succeeded in marketing the Trump name on a large number of products. These products include Trump Financial (a mortgage firm), Trump Sales and Leasing (residential sales), Trump University (a business education company)[4], Trump Restaurants (Located in Trump Tower and consisting of Trump Buffet, Trump Catering, Trump Ice Cream Parlor, and Trump Bar), GoTrump[5] (an online travel website), Donald J. Trump Signature Collection (a line of menswear, men's accessories, and watches), Donald Trump The Fragrance (2004), Trump Ice bottled water, Trump Magazine, Trump Golf, Trump Institute, Trump The Game (1989 Board Game), Trump Vodka, and Trump Steaks. In addition, Trump reportedly receives $1.5 million for each one hour presentation he does for the The Learning Annex.[26]


Donald Trump and Bobby Lashley shave Vince McMahon bald.Trump is a known World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) fan. He has hosted two WrestleMania events in the Trump Plaza and has been an active participant in several of the shows. Trump's Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City was host to the 1991 WBF Championship (which was owned by WWE, known at the time as the "World Wrestling Federation"). He also appeared at WrestleMania 23 in the corner of Bobby Lashley who competed against Umaga with Vince McMahon in his corner, in a hair versus hair match, with either Trump or McMahon having their head shaved if their competitor lost. Lashley won the match, and he and Trump both proceeded to shave McMahon bald. Trump was also involved with the old USFL, a competitor to the NFL, as owner of the New Jersey Generals. In addition, Trump at one time acted as a financial advisor for Mike Tyson and hosted Tyson's fight against Michael Spinks in Atlantic City.

In the 2000 election, Donald Trump considered running for president as a member of the Reform party.

Instituted by Ronna Mee Brand, the Donald J. Trump Award honors and recognizes individuals who make a significant impact on the evolution, development and perpetuation of real estate throughout Greater Los Angeles.

The second annual Donald J. Trump Award was presented December 6, 2007 at the Beverly Hilton, International Ballroom. Tom Gilmore, the first recipient, presented the award to Michael Koss. Donald Trump congratulated Mr. Koss via video broadcast.


Golf course
Trump testified in June 2008, as first witness at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC) inquiry (ordered by Scottish ministers) after an Aberdeenshire Council committee denied his plans to build a £1billion golf resort north of Aberdeen, at the Menie Estate. Environmental groups and local campaigners opposed the bid in which part of the course would be built on sand dunes that are a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), though business leaders supported the would-be golf course.[27] Trump stated the site "had the potential to be the greatest golf course in the world."[28]


Personal life
Donald Trump is popularly known as The Donald, a nickname given to him by the media after his ex-wife Ivana Trump, a native of the Czech Republic referred to him as such in an interview.[29] He is also known for his catchphrase, "You're Fired", made popular by his television series The Apprentice. Trump is known for his distinctive hairstyle, which he has refused to change throughout his career.


Family

Melania Knauss-TrumpTrump's mother Mary Anne was born on the Isle of Lewis. She left Tong, Scotland in 1930 aged 18 for a holiday in New York, met a local builder, and stayed. Born in Queens, New York, United States, Trump has four siblings - two brothers (Fred Jr., who is deceased, and Robert) and two sisters (Maryanne and Elizabeth). His older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, is a federal appeals court judge and the mother of David Desmond, who is a neuropsychologist and writer.

In 1977, Trump married Ivana Zelničkova (later Ivana Trump) and together they have three children: Donald, Jr. (born December 31, 1977), Ivanka, (born October 30, 1981), and Eric (born January 6, 1984). They were divorced in 1992. In 1993, he married Marla Maples and together they had one child, Tiffany, (born October 13, 1993). They divorced on June 8, 1999. In a February 2008 interview on ABC's Nightline Trump commented on his ex-wives by saying, "I just know it's very hard for them (Ivana and Marla) to compete because I do love what I do. I really love it."

On April 26, 2004, he proposed to Melania Knauss (Melanija Knavs in Slovenian, later Melania Knauss-Trump) from Slovenia. Trump and Knauss (who is 24 years Trump's junior) married on January 22, 2005, at Bethesda by the Sea Episcopal Church on the island of Palm Beach, Florida, followed by a reception at Trump's Mar-A-Lago estate. Neither Melania nor Trump is an Episcopalian.[30] Melania gave birth to a boy named Barron William Trump, Trump's fifth child, on March 20, 2006. He was christened at the same church as his parents were married.


Hobbies
Trump is an enthusiastic golfer, with a low single-figure handicap. He is a member of the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York, and also plays regularly at the other courses he owns and operates.[31]




Steve Jobs





The trouble with Steve Jobs
Jobs likes to make his own rules, whether the topic is computers, stock options, or even pancreatic cancer. The same traits that make him a great CEO drive him to put his company, and his investors, at risk.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs mingled with the faithful at this year's Macworld Expo.
Jobs' artistic sensibility extends to everything the company does, including its memorable advertising campaigns.
Stock options or cancer treatments, Apple's CEO makes his own rules which could put his company and investors at risk.
Steve Jobs' journey
See key events for Apple and its CEO, from the company's start in 1976, when the Apple I was introduced, to its ascendance today. View the timeline
 (Fortune Magazine) -- In October 2003, as the computer world buzzed about what cool new gadget he would introduce next, Apple CEO Steve Jobs - then presiding over the most dramatic corporate turnaround in the history of Silicon Valley - found himself confronting a life-and-death decision.
During a routine abdominal scan, doctors had discovered a tumor growing in his pancreas. While a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is often tantamount to a swiftly executed death sentence, a biopsy revealed that Jobs had a rare - and treatable - form of the disease. If the tumor were surgically removed, Jobs' prognosis would be promising: The vast majority of those who underwent the operation survived at least ten years.
Yet to the horror of the tiny circle of intimates in whom he'd confided, Jobs was considering not having the surgery at all. A Buddhist and vegetarian, the Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) CEO was skeptical of mainstream medicine. Jobs decided to employ alternative methods to treat his pancreatic cancer, hoping to avoid the operation through a special diet - a course of action that hasn't been disclosed until now.
For nine months Jobs pursued this approach, as Apple's board of directors and executive team secretly agonized over the situation - and whether the company needed to disclose anything about its CEO's health to investors. Jobs, after all, was widely viewed as Apple's irreplaceable leader, personally responsible for everything from the creation of the iPod to the selection of the chef in the company cafeteria. News of his illness, especially with an uncertain outcome, would surely send the company's stock reeling. The board decided to say nothing, after seeking advice on its obligations from two outside lawyers, who agreed it could remain silent.
In the end, Jobs had the surgery, on Saturday, July 31, 2004, at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, near his home. The revelation of his brush with death remained - like everything involving Jobs and Apple - a tightly controlled affair. In fact, nary a word got out until Jobs' tumor had been removed. The next day, in an upbeat e-mail to employees later released to the press, he announced that he had faced a life-threatening illness and was "cured." Jobs assured everyone that he'd be back on the job in September. When trading resumed a day after the announcement, Apple shares fell just 2.4%.
Apple entertained no further questions about Jobs' health, citing the CEO's need for privacy. No one learned just how long Jobs had been sick - or that he had contemplated not having the surgery at all. "It was very traumatic for all of us," recalls one of those in whom Jobs confided, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the topic's sensitivity. "We all really care about Steve, and it was a serious risk for the company as well. It was a very emotional and very difficult time. This was one page in the adventure."
The Steve Jobs adventure: By now it's one of the most remarkable stories in business. When Jobs returned in 1997 to Apple - then facing its own near-death experience - he arrived with a tarnished legend. He was, of course, the charismatic boy wonder who at age 21 had co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in his parents' garage back in 1976. He was worth $200 million by 25, made the cover of Time magazine at 26, and was thrown out of the company at age 30, in 1985.
What he's accomplished in the past decade has not just restored Jobs to the Silicon Valley pantheon but elevated him to the status of superstar. On the brink of bankruptcy when he returned, Apple now has a market value of $108 billion - more than Merck, McDonald's, or Goldman Sachs; $1,000 invested in Apple shares on the day Jobs took over is worth about $36,000 today. And it isn't just Apple and its investors that have benefited from Jobs' executive skill. Pixar, where he served simultaneously as CEO, has come to dominate the animation business, churning out megahits like "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" that prompted Disney (DIS, Fortune 500) to buy the company in 2006 for $7.5 billion. (Jobs now owns 7.3% of Disney, worth $4.6 billion, in addition to Apple stock worth $682 million.)
See Apple's Most Admired profile, rankings
No less an authority than Jack Welch has called Jobs "the most successful CEO today." Jobs, at age 53, has even become a global cultural guru, shaping what entertainment we watch, how we listen to music, and what sort of objects we use to work and play. He has changed the game for entire industries.
Jobs is also among the most controversial figures in business. He oozes smug superiority, lacing his public comments with ridicule of Apple's rivals, which he casts as mediocre, evil, and - worst of all - lacking taste. No CEO is more willful, or more brazen, at making his own rules, in ways both good and bad. And no CEO is more personally identified with - and controlling of - the day-to-day affairs of his business. Even now, Jobs views himself less as a mogul than as an artist, Apple's creator-in-chief. He has listed himself as "co-inventor" on 103 separate Apple patents, everything from the user interface for the iPod to the support system for the glass staircase used in Apple's dazzling retail stores.
Jobs' product introductions are semiannual events, complete with packed houses, breathless blog dispatches, and celebrity appearances - two hours of marketing performance art. Who else could have the nation panting in anticipation of a cellphone? After watching Jobs unveil the iPhone, Alan Kay, a personal computer pioneer who has worked with him, put it this way: "Steve understands desire."
Jobs' personal abuses are also legend: He parks his Mercedes in handicapped spaces, periodically reduces subordinates to tears, and fires employees in angry tantrums. Yet many of his top deputies at Apple have worked with him for years, and even some of those who have departed say that although it's often brutal and Jobs hogs the credit, they've never done better work.
How Jobs pulls all this off - how this bundle of conflicting behaviors can coexist, to spectacular effect, in a single human being - remains a puzzle, even though more than a dozen books have been written about him. Jobs is notoriously secretive and controlling when it comes to his relationship with the press, and he tries to stifle stories that haven't received his blessing with threats and cajolery.
This story is one of them. While Jobs agreed to be interviewed by my colleague Betsy Morris on the subject of Apple's selection as America's Most Admired Company (see What Makes Apple Golden), he refused to comment for this story, which had been in the works for months. Dozens of people who work or have worked with Jobs did agree to extensive interviews, most insisting on not being named (even if praising him) for fear of incurring his anger.
Exclusive interview: Steve Jobs speaks out
History, of course, is littered with tales of combustible geniuses. What's astounding is how well Jobs has performed atop a large public company - by its nature a collaborative enterprise. Pondering this issue, Stanford management science professor Robert Sutton discussed Jobs in his bestselling 2007 book, "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't." "As soon as people heard I was writing a book on assholes, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story," says Sutton. "The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry. But he was almost always right, and even when he was wrong, it was so creative it was still amazing." Says Palo Alto venture capitalist Jean-Louis Gasse, a former Apple executive who once worked with Jobs: "Democracies don't make great products. You need a competent tyrant."
Fair enough. But it is also important to understand the ways in which Jobs' attempts to manipulate his world pose risks for Apple - and thus its investors. They are evident in his difficult partnerships with music and television companies, which chafe at his insistence on setting uniform prices for their songs and videos on iTunes; in the real story of his battle with cancer; and in his deployment of stock options at Apple and Pixar, which exposed both companies to backdating scandals.
Jobs himself judges the world in binary terms. Products, in his view, are "insanely great" or "shit." One is facing death from cancer or "cured." Subordinates are geniuses or "bozos," indispensable or no longer relevant. People in his orbit regularly flip, at a second's notice, from one category to another, in what early Apple colleagues came to call his "hero-shithead roller coaster."
10 most admired companies for innovation: Apple rules
Jobs' own story is far more complex. And in the 26 years that Fortune has been ranking America's Most Admired Companies, never has the corporation at the head of the list so closely resembled a one-man show. Last year Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster opined that if Jobs were forced out as a result of the backdating scandal, Apple's shares would drop 20% overnight. At the company's current market cap, that would make him Apple's $22 billion man. "Steve Jobs running the company from jail would be better for the stock price than Steve Jobs not being CEO," muses Sutton.
Jobs is hardly likely to be forced out, as we shall see. On the contrary, he's likely to continue taking Apple - and its customers, competitors, and investors - on a wild ride to places they couldn't have imagined.
It may be instructive, then, to consider what drives the Steve Jobs adventure.


Sir Richard Branson

I


n 1972, at the age of 22, Richard Branson had recently opened his first Virgin record store in London and signed his first artist, Mike Oldfield, to Virgin records. Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” was released the next year and would sell millions of records, becoming a classic document of electronic experimental music. Five years later, Branson signed the Sex Pistols, a leading pillar of the British punk rock scene who had been rejected by every other record label in England. In addition to his groundbreaking Virgin record label, record stores, and competitive airline, Branson is famous for his world record-breaking attempts, earning him respect as a daredevil as much as a business mogul. A charismatic and like able persona, he has appeared on a number of the world’s most popular television shows, including Friends and Baywatch. He also has a space plane. If nothing else, Branson has proved that a man can be one of the richest, most successful people in the world and still be cool.

MOJAVE -- A souped-up aircraft that would help boost well-heeled thrill seekers into the outer atmosphere was unveiled Monday, lifting the prospects for travelers to one day fly in a commercial spaceliner.
After keeping the project shrouded in secrecy for more than three years, project developers dropped the curtain on the White Knight Two, an odd-looking aircraft with two airplane bodies joined at the wings and resembling a flying catamaran.




And that was just the mother ship, designed to ferry an eight-person rocket from the Earth's surface to a launch point 48,000 feet up.
Still under construction is the rocket-powered passenger ship, dubbed Space Ship Two, which would be attached to the mother ship and carried to its launch altitude
There the rocket ship would be released and its engine ignited, hurtling it up to an altitude of 360,000 feet -- the edge of space -- where passengers and crew would experience about four minutes of weightlessness. The craft would then drift back to Earth and land at an airport like a plane. Elapsed time from takeoff to touchdown: about 2 1/2 hours.
Space Ship Two could be ready for flight tests next year. If all goes well, the first spaceflight is expected by the end of the decade.
The mother ship was revealed at a much-hyped ceremony at the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 95 miles north of Los Angeles. The spaceport is the home of the aircraft's developer, Scaled Composites, a Northrop Grumman Corp. subsidiary founded by famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan.
The maverick engineer has built such pioneering aircraft as the Global Flyer, which shattered aviation records by flying around the world on one tank of fuel.
On hand for the ceremony were Rutan and British billionaire Richard Branson, who bankrolled the project. In typical Branson fashion, the aircraft was unveiled in front of about 150 journalists, many of them flown in by Branson's U.S.-based carrier, Virgin America, for the two-hour affair. The plane was painted with the message, "My Other Ride Is A Spaceship."
After the media were corralled into a hangar, a massive white curtain was dropped to reveal the White Knight Two.
Sitting alone, tucked in a corner and covered in black so it could not be seen was Space Ship Two.
Both vehicles are larger versions of the mother ship and rocket that made the first privately funded suborbital spaceflight four years ago. Unlike most of today's planes, which are made of aluminum and other metals, the space launch vehicles are built with composite materials.
"This is quite something, isn't it?" Branson said, after unveiling the mother ship to a throng of television cameras and reporters. "It's one of the most beautiful, extraordinary aviation vehicles ever developed."
The rollout at the remote desert airport here came a year after a deadly accident killed three Scaled Composite engineers who were testing an engine for a rocket ship nearby. It and other development problems set back the effort to launch the first commercial spaceflight initially set for this year.

During the ceremony, Branson also revealed that he was naming the mother ship after his own mother, Eve, a former "air hostess" who attended the rollout, and that the first passengers would be his family, including his mother and father.
"If you are going to build a mother ship, it's only right that you should name it after your mother," Branson said.
So far, the first 100 wannabe astronauts have paid $200,000 for a chance to float weightlessly in space. An additional 175 have put down deposits of $20,000 or more.
Many of those who have signed up are deep-pocketed thrill seekers who are running out of adventures on Earth, said Matthew Upchurch, chief executive of Virtuoso, a Forth Worth luxury travel agency that is booking passage on the spaceflights.
"One of our customers has climbed every peak in the world," Upchurch said.
Eric Wittenberg, a retired home builder and a Laguna Beach resident, paid $200,000 three years ago to "find out the difference between the deep sea and space."
An avid scuba diver, Wittenberg has dived in a submersible to depths of more than 10,000 feet. "Now I want to know what it's like up there."
But he would like Branson and Rutan to hurry it up: "Safety is first, but I'm 75 years old," Wittenberg said. "So for me, sooner is better if you know what I mean."


Sam Walton





At the end of his autobiography, Made in America, Sam Walton wrote that the most important rule in business is to break all the rules. He has also said, “I always prided myself on breaking everybody else’s rules, and I always favored the mavericks who challenged my rules.” His innovative and daring approach to business established the worldwide Wal-Mart chain, which replaced Exxon as the largest corporation in the world in 2002.
"There is only one boss - the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

Growing Up

Sam Walton's career in retail began in 1940 when he become a sales trainee in Des Moines, Iowa at a J.C. Penney store. Despite his enthusiasm to serve the customers, Walton was not a model employee. His desire to make his customers happy was so great that he often let other responsibilities like paperwork and keeping the books fall by the wayside. He was almost fired by his boss who told him that he was not cut out for a career in retail. Walton kept his job, however, because of his ability as a great salesman.

In 1942, Walton was drafted into the United States army. He worked in the communications division of the Army Intelligence Corps and remained on home soil throughout the Second World War. When he left the army three years later, Walton was married, had a child, and decided to start his own business to support his new family. With the $5,000 that he had saved along with a $20,000 loan from his wife's father, he purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. Walton was 27 years old.

Starting The Business

By putting in many hours at the store and implementing a pricing strategy far below what his competitors were charging, Walton's new business took off. By 1950 he had the top performing Ben Franklin store in the area. Walton's landlord, seeing his success, decided that he wanted Walton to sell the store to his son. When Walton refused, the landlord decided not to renew Walton's lease and he was forced to shut down.

Walton's 10 commandments for business success were:

1) Commit to your business.

2) Share your profits with your associates and treat them like your partners.

3) Energize your colleagues.

4) Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners.

5) Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.

6) Celebrate your success.

7) Listen to everyone in your company.

8) Exceed your customers' expectations.

9) Control your expenses better than your competition.

10) Blaze your own path.

Determined as ever to succeed in his venture, Walton looked for other rural Arkansas towns for a new place to set up shop. He came across a small village called Bentonville and opened the Walton's Five and Dime in 1950. He made sure to get a 99-year lease this time on the property. The two local competitors in Bentonville did not want to discount their prices and Walton's business began to flourish.

Realizing he had a recipe for success, Walton began looking for other areas of expansion. He borrowed money and used the profits from his first stores to acquire more. By 1960, he owned 15 stores but he was not getting the kind of return on investment that he thought he would be making. He then made the decision to follow a heavy price cutting strategy and hope to get much higher volume to turn a larger profit. This was not a new idea. The problem at the time was that most discount stores were small, located in urban areas, and focused on specialty items. Walton's plan was to change the way retailing was done across the country.
Building An Empire
Walton's revolutionary plan was to have large superstores in rural towns that discounted a wide variety of products. His initial approach was to Ben Franklin. They turned him down as they did not like the idea of operating with lower margins. Without a large company behind him, Walton opted to go it alone. In 1962, he mortgaged his home and borrowed against everything he owned to open his first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas, a neighboring town of Bentonville.

Excited about the prospects of getting discounts and selection that were previously only obtainable in the cities, rural customers came out in droves to his store. The success of his first store allowed him to expand and by 1969 he had 18 Wal-Marts in Arkansas and Missouri.
Funded solely through debt and reinvested profits, Walton decided that in 1970 he would take the company public. The IPO raised $5 million and Walton retained 61 percent of the company. The money was used to settle the company's debts and fuel further expansion. By 1980, 276 Wal-Marts were operating.
An integral component of Wal-Mart's success was its leveraging of new technologies to improve efficiencies and save costs. Walton knew that the key to success in a low margin business was to rigidly control his costs. Wal-Mart was, for example, one of the first major retailers to use electronic scanners at the registers which tied to an inventory control system so they could know immediately which items were selling well and needed to be re-ordered.
The success of his Wal-Mart stores led Sam to another idea - Sam's Wholesale Clubs. These would be discount stores that sold to small business owners in bulk. The idea was another big hit for Walton and by 1985 he was considered by Forbes magazine to be the richest man in America with an estimated net worth of $2.8 billion.
Similar to Ray Kroc, Sam Walton did not invent retailing; he simply changed the business model and way of doing business to make it a much more profitable venture.
Evan is an entrepreneur and international speaker. At the age of 19, he became an owner and Chief Operating Officer in Reda soft, a biotechnology software company. The company quickly grew to over 300 organizations as clients, including NASA and Johnson & Johnson, in 30 countries. He started Evan Carmichael & Associates with the goal to give entrepreneurs the motivation to follow their passion and the strategies they need to succeed. Evan has delivered over 100 keynote presentations to entrepreneurs in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has been interviewed by newspapers, radio stations, and television stations including CHUM FM, CityTV, Global TV, OMNI TV, Enterprise, and the Toronto Sun. Evan's website, http://www.evancarmichael.com is the world's #1 website for small business motivation and strategies.




Ray Kroc




Ray Kroc did not open the first McDonald’s restaurant. He just turned a small, family-owned drive-in into a multi-billion-dollar global franchise. Like Henry Ford before him, Kroc’s ingenuity was in finding a way to bring high quality goods to a mass market. He revolutionized the restaurant industry by introducing strict guidelines for how his items were produced and sold. He turned the sale of hamburgers into a science, and even had his franchise owners earn a “Bachelor in Hamburgerology” at McDonald’s training institute. Unlike Ford, however, Kroc has been criticized for paying his employees as little as possible, and has been accused of trying to circumvent minimum wage laws.
Ray Kroc
McDonald's begat an industry because a 52-year-old mixer salesman understood that we don't dine — we eat and run
Among the army of burger flippers at work across America in the 1960s was a French chef putting his training to use at Howard Johnson's on Queens Boulevard in New York City. I worked for HoJo's from the summer of 1960 to the spring of 1970, doing my American apprenticeship, learning about mass production and marketing. The company had been started in 1925 in Massachusetts by Howard Deering Johnson, and by the mid-1960s its sales exceeded that of Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's combined. There would be more than 1,000 Howard Johnson restaurants and 500 motor lodges. Yet after Johnson's death in 1972, the company lost its raison d'etre. The restaurants became obsolete; the food quality deteriorated. You underestimate the clientele at your peril. The late restaurateur Joe Baum used to say, "There is no victory over a customer."

As the Howard Johnson Co. went to pieces, Ray Kroc's obsession with Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value — the unwavering mission of McDonald's--was gathering momentum. Kroc was adroit and perceptive in identifying popular trends. He sensed that America was a nation of people who ate out, as opposed to the Old World tradition of eating at home. Yet he also knew that people here wanted something different. Instead of a structured, ritualistic restaurant with codes and routine, he gave them a simple, casual and identifiable restaurant with friendly service, low prices, no waiting and no reservations. The system eulogized the sandwich — no tableware to wash. One goes to McDonald's to eat, not to dine.
Kroc gave people what they wanted or, maybe, what he wanted. As he said, "The definition of salesmanship is the gentle art of letting the customer have it your way." He would remain the ultimate salesman, serving as a chairman of McDonald's Corp., the largest restaurant company in the world, from 1968 until his death in 1984.
In 1917, Ray Kroc was a brash 15-year-old who lied about his age to join the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. Sent to Connecticut for training, he never left for Europe because the war ended. So the teen had to find work, which he did, first as a piano player and then, in 1922, as a salesman for the Lily Tulip Cup Co.
Although he sold paper cups by day and played the piano for a radio station at night, Kroc had an ear better tuned to the rhythms of commerce. In the course of selling paper cups he encountered Earl Prince, who had invented a five-spindle multimixer and was buying Lily cups by the truckload. Fascinated by the speed and efficiency of the machine, Kroc obtained exclusive marketing rights from Prince. Indefatigable, for the next 17 years he crisscrossed the country peddling the mixer.
On his travels he picked up the beat of a remarkable restaurant in San Bernardino, Calif., owned by two brothers, Dick and Mac McDonald, who had ordered eight mixers and had them churning away all day. Kroc saw the restaurant in 1954 and was entranced by the effectiveness of the operation. It was a hamburger restaurant, though not of the drive-in variety popular at the time. People had to get out of their cars to be served. The brothers had produced a very limited menu, concentrating on just a few items: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, soft drinks and milk shakes, all at the lowest possible prices.
Kroc, ever the instigator, started thinking about building McDonald's stores all over the U.S. — each of them equipped with eight multimixers whirring away, spinning off a steady stream of cash. The following day he pitched the idea of opening several restaurants to the brothers. They asked, "Who could we get to open them for us?" Kroc was ready: "Well, what about me?"

The would-be Great War veteran would grow rich serving the children of World War II vets. His confidence in what he had seen was unshakable. As he noted later, "I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced that the best was ahead of me." He was even more convinced than the McDonalds and eventually cajoled them into selling out to him in 1961 for a paltry $2.7 million.
On his travels he picked up the beat of a remarkable restaurant in San Bernardino, Calif., owned by two brothers, Dick and Mac McDonald, who had ordered eight mixers and had them churning away all day. Kroc saw the restaurant in 1954 and was entranced by the effectiveness of the operation. It was a hamburger restaurant, though not of the drive-in variety popular at the time. People had to get out of their cars to be served. The brothers had produced a very limited menu, concentrating on just a few items: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, soft drinks and milk shakes, all at the lowest possible prices.
Kroc, ever the instigator, started thinking about building McDonald's stores all over the U.S. — each of them equipped with eight multimixers whirring away, spinning off a steady stream of cash. The following day he pitched the idea of opening several restaurants to the brothers. They asked, "Who could we get to open them for us?" Kroc was ready: "Well, what about me?"
The would-be Great War veteran would grow rich serving the children of World War II vets. His confidence in what he had seen was unshakable. As he noted later, "I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced that the best was ahead of me." He was even more convinced than the McDonalds and eventually cajoled them into selling out to him in 1961 for a paltry $2.7 million.


Jack Welch





John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr. (born November 19, 1935(1935-11-19)) was Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. Welch gained a solid reputation for uncanny business acumen and unique leadership strategies at GE. He remains a highly-regarded figure[citation needed] in business circles due to his innovative management strategies and leadership style.Welch's net worth is estimated at $720 million.[1]
Early life and career
Jack Welch was born in Peabody, Massachusetts to John, a Boston & Maine Railroad conductor, and Grace, a housewife.
Welch attended Salem High School and later the University of Massachusetts Amherst, graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. While at UMass he was a member of the Alpha chapter of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.
Welch went on to receive his M.S. and Ph.D at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1960.
Welch joined General Electric in 1960. He worked as a junior engineer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at a salary of $10,500 annually. Welch was displeased with the $1,000 raise he was offered after his first year, as well as the strict bureaucracy within GE. He planned to leave the company to work with International Minerals & Chemicals in Skokie, Illinois.
However, Reuben Gutoff, a young executive two levels higher than Welch, decided that the man was too valuable a resource for the company to lose. He took Welch and his first wife Carolyn out to dinner at the Yellow Aster in Pittsfield, and spent eight hours trying to convince Welch to stay. Gutoff vowed to work to change the bureaucracy to create a small-company environment.
"Trust me," Gutoff remembers pleading. "As long as I am here, you are going to get a shot to operate with the best of the big company and the worst part of it pushed aside." "Well, you are on trial," retorted Welch. "I'm glad to be on trial," Gutoff said. "To try to keep you here is important." At daybreak, Welch gave him his answer. "It was one of my better marketing jobs in life," recalls Gutoff. "But then he said to me--and this is vintage Jack--'I'm still going to have the party because I like parties, and besides, I think they have some little presents for me.'" Some 12 years later, Welch would audaciously write in his annual performance review that his long-term goal was to become CEO.[2]
Welch was named a vice president of GE in 1972. He moved up the ranks to become senior vice president in 1977 and vice chairman in 1979. Welch became GE's youngest chairman and CEO in 1981, succeeding Reginald H. Jones. By 1982, Welch had disassembled much of the earlier management put together by Jones.
[edit] Tenure as CEO of GE
Through the 1980s, Welch worked to streamline GE and make it a more competitive company. In 1981 he made a speech in New York City called ‘Growing fast in a slow-growth economy’.[3] This is often acknowledged as the "dawn" of the obsession with shareholder value.
He also pushed the managers of the businesses he kept to become more productive. Welch worked to eradicate inefficiency by trimming inventories and dismantling the bureaucracy that had almost led him to leave GE in the past. He shut down factories, reduced payrolls and cut lackluster old-line units. Welch's philosophy was that a company should be either #1 or #2 in a particular industry, or else leave it completely. Although he was initially treated with contempt by those under him for his policies, they eventually grew to respect him. Welch's strategy was later adopted by other CEOs across corporate America.Each year, Welch would fire the bottom 10% of his managers. He earned a reputation for brutal candor in his meetings with executives. He would push his managers to perform, but he would reward those in the top 20% with bonuses and stock options. He also expanded the broadness of the stock options program at GE from just top executives to nearly one third of all employees. Welch is also known for destroying the nine-layer management hierarchy and bringing a sense of informality to the company.
During the early 1980s he was dubbed "Neutron Jack" (in reference to the neutron bomb) for eliminating employees while leaving buildings intact. In Jack: Straight From The Gut, Welch states that GE had 411,000 employees at the end of 1980, and 299,000 at the end of 1985. Of the 112,000 who left the payroll, 37,000 were in sold businesses, and 81,000 were reduced in continuing businesses. In return, GE had increased its market capital tremendously.
In 1986, GE acquired NBC, which was located in Rockefeller Center; Welch subsequently took up an office in the GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. During the 1990s, Welch helped to modernize GE by shifting from manufacturing to financial services through numerous acquisitions.
Welch adopted Motorola's Six Sigma quality program in late 1995. He led the company to massive revenues. In 1980, the year before Welch became CEO, GE recorded revenues of roughly $26.8 billion. In 2000, the year before he left, the revenues increased to nearly $130 billion. When Jack Welch left GE, the company had gone from a market value of $14 billion to one of more than $410 billion at the end of 2004, making it the most valuable and largest company in the world.
At the time of his retirement, Welch received a salary of $4 million a year, followed by his record retirement plan of $8 million a year. In 1999 he was named "Manager of the Century" by Fortune magazine.
There was a lengthy and well-publicized succession planning saga prior to his retirement between James McNerney, Robert Nardelli, and Jeffrey Immelt, with Immelt eventually selected to succeed him as Chairman and CEO. Nardelli became the CEO of Home Depot until his resignation in early 2007, while McNerney became CEO of 3M until he left that post to serve in the same capacity at Boeing
[edit] Criticism
Some industry analysts claim that Welch is given too much credit for GE's success. They contend that individual managers are largely responsible for the company's success.[4] For example GE Capital, under Gary C. Wendt, contributed nearly 40% of the company's total earnings while NBC and Robert C. Wright worked to turn the network around, leading to five years of double-digit earnings growth. It is also held that Welch did not rescue GE from great losses as the company had 16% annual earnings growth during the tenure of his predecessor, Reginald H. Jones. Critics also say that "the pressure Welch imposes leads some employees to cut corners, possibly contributing to some of the defense-contracting scandals that have plagued GE, or to the humiliating Kidder, Peabody & Co. bond-trading scheme of the early 1990s that generated bogus profits".[2]

Welch has also received criticism over the years for an apparent lack of compassion for the middle class and working class. Welch has publicly stated that he is not concerned with the discrepancy between the salaries of top-paid CEOs and those of average workers. When asked about the issue of excessive CEO pay, Welch has stated that such allegations are "outrageous" and has vehemently opposed proposed SEC reforms affecting executive compensation. Countering the public uproar over excessive executive pay (including backdating stock options, golden parachutes for nonperformance, and extravagant retirement packages), Welch stated that CEO compensation should continue to be dictated by the free market, without interference from government or other outside agencies.[5] In addition, Welch is a vocal opponent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.[6]
[edit] Personal life
Welch has had a slight stutter since childhood. He had four children with his first wife, Carolyn. They divorced amicably in April 1987 after 28 years of marriage. His second wife, Jane Beasley, was a former mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer. She married Jack in April 1989, and they divorced in 2003. While Welch had crafted a prenuptial agreement, Beasley insisted on a ten-year time limit to its applicability, and thus she was able to leave the marriage with an amount believed to be in the range of $180 million.[7]
The third wife of Jack Welch is Suzy Wetlaufer, who co-authored his 2005 book Winning as Suzy Welch. Wetlaufer served briefly as the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review before being forced to resign in early 2002 after admitting to having been involved in an affair with Welch while preparing an interview with him for the magazine.
Welch underwent triple bypass surgery in May 1995. He returned to work full time in September of the same year and also adopted an exercise schedule that included golf. Welch is a member of Augusta National Golf Club. However, in Winning, Welch acknowledges that back problems forced him to give up playing golf, and that surprisingly, he doesn't miss it. He acknowledges using his time formerly spent on the golf course to consult with companies and indulge other personal interests such as modern art, international travel, teaching, and attending Red Sox games. Since then, he has picked up his golf game, playing at courses such as Nantucket Golf Club, Sankaty Head Golf Club, and the Country Club of Fairfield, CT, among numerous others.
On January 25, 2006, Jack Welch gave his name to Sacred Heart University's College of Business, which will be known as the "John F. Welch College of Business".[8]
Since September 2006, Jack Welch has been teaching a class at the MIT Sloan School of Management to a hand-picked group of 30 MBA students with a demonstrated career interest in leadership.[9] He is also a global warming skeptic.[10]


Todd’s Blog
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10 Jack Welch Inspirational Quotes
1 “Be candid with everyone.”
2“Control your own destiny or someone else will.”
3“I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
4“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.
5“The team with the best players wins.”
6“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”
7“Change before you have to.”
8“In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product and profits. Unless you’ve got a good team, you can’t do much with the other two.”
9“Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing the time. Action with Vision is making a positive difference.”
10“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”


Henry Ford



The father of the modern automobile, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and inventor of the moving assembly line was a highly unconventional business leader. Henry Ford challenged his times (and his investors) by insisting on producing affordable automobiles for a mass market. He paid his employees much more than was common at the time, creating what he called “wage incentive” and thereby attracting and keeping a strong work force. Advocating “welfare capitalism,” Ford took an unusual amount of interest in the lives of his employees, requiring them to live according to the rules set by his “Sociological Department,” which restricted how they spent their leisure hours. His risks paid off, and Ford Motor Company has helped define the modern urban landscape
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Entrepreneurs Story
 Henry Ford was not the inventor of the automobile (actually, no one single person was - see The History of the Automobile for the whole story), but his innovations in assembly-line techniques and the introduction of standardized interchangeable parts produced the first mass-production vehicle manufacturing plant, paving the way for the cheap automobiles that turned the United States into a nation of motorists.
The Early Years:
Ford was born the first of six children July 30, 1863 to prosperous farmers in Dearborn, Michigan. Not liking his farming life and his studies in school, Ford set off at the young age of sixteen to the nearby town of Detroit to work three years as a machinist’s apprentice. After his experience he went back to his home in Dearborn working only part time for Westinghouse Engine Company and spending his spare time working in a small machine shop that he put together on the family’s land.
Ford’s marriage to Clara Bryant in 1888 required him to get a better paying job. In 1891 he started as an engineer for Edison Illuminating Company and was promptly promoted to Chief Engineer. The job required Ford to be on call 24 hours a day. In his on-call time he began to experiment with internal combustion engines and created the Quadricycle, the first "horseless carriage", powered by gasoline and riding on four bicycle wheels. This invention led to the founding of Ford Motor Company.
Ford Motor Company:
Ford made several attempts to establish his company. In 1903 with $28,000, eleven men, and Ford as Vice President and Chief Engineer, Ford Motor Company was incorporated. They produced only three cars a day and had up to three men working on each. In 1908 the company produced the famous Model T, a reliable and affordable vehicle for the mass market. Ford drove and raced this vehicle at every opportunity to prove how reliable it was. By 1918, half of all cars in the U.S. were a Model T.
Assembly Line Innovation:
In response to growing demand, Ford built a new factory using standardized interchangeable parts and a conveyor-belt based assembly line. The factory was able to build a car in just 93 minutes, producing around 1 million vehicles a year (one every 24 seconds). With this advancement in production, Ford was able to market to the general public. The factory had everything it needed to construct the vehicles including a steel mill, glass factory, and the first automobile assembly line.
Management Style:
Ford had a complex, conflicting and strongly opinionated personality. Most of the company's struggles were linked to his stubborn management style. He refused to unionize with the United Automobile Workers, and to prevent his employees from doing so he hired spies and company police to check in on his workers. When work on the assembly line proved overly monotonous and sent employee turnover rates to over 50%, he doubled the going wage to $5, buying back their loyalty and upping productivity.
Other Innovations and Inventions:
Ford was responsible for cutting the workday from nine hours to eight hours, so that the factory could convert to a three-shift workday and operate 24 hours a day. He also continued his engineering innovations, patenting a transmission mechanism in 1911 and a plastic-bodied car in 1942. He also invented the first one-piece engine, the V-8. Ford fought and won a patent battle with George B. Selden, who was being paid royalties by all American car manufacturers for his patent on a "road engine".
Losing the Top Spot:
In the 1920s, General Motors and others began offering cars in a variety of colors with added features, extending credit so that consumers could afford them. Ford insisted on keeping costs down by offering limited features and just one color (black). But after losing market to GM, the company shut down for several months to transition to the redesigned Model A. After this Ford came out with the "V-8". The vehicles were both successful, but the company remained outsold by General Motors.
Legacy:
Henry Ford died April 7, 1947 and his presidency was passed down to his grandson Henry Ford II. Today Ford Motor Company is one of the world's leading consumer companies for automotive products, including a family of widely-recognized brands: Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, and Volvo. The Henry Ford Museum in Greenfield Village, a rural town which Ford sponsored the renovation of, is one of America's top history attractions.
Henry Ford Quotations for Entrepreneurs:
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

The best we can do it size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them, and then make our plans with confidence.

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

People can have the Model T in any colour--so long as it's black.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

All Fords are exactly alike, but no two men are just alike. Every new life is a new thing under the sun; there has never been anything just like it before, never will be again. A young man ought to get that idea about himself; he should look for the single spark of individuality that makes him different from other folks, and develop that for all he is worth. Society and schools may try to iron it out of him; their tendency is to put it all in the same mold, but I say don't let that spark be lost; it is your only real claim to importance.