The Apprentice
By Michael Alan Hamlin
June 15, 2004

Although real estate mogul Donald Trump vowed quite publicly in The Art of the Comeback to never write another book, his hit reality show, The Apprentice, has changed all that. The Art was principally a vehicle for Trump to humiliate his critics with the message that they couldn't keep him down - although to many the jury is still out on that issue - and clearly wasn't intended to be a significant contribution to management thought. Indeed, Trump's casinos, for instance, remain heavily in debit. But despite that annoyance, Trump is very clearly riding high.

His vow not to write again might have had something to do with the popularity of his books. Or rather, the rather moderate popularity of his books (As someone who would very much like for his books to be much more popular than then are, I understand pretty well how irritating it is to realize that readers won't be going into a frenzy when the next volume appears.). Now that The Apprentice has made Trump a television star as well as a cult figure, he's suddenly become much more prolific.

Two new books have appeared this year. The first is Trump: How to Get Rich. This is a much less lofty title than Trump's earlier literary efforts, and is to me at least a pretty obvious attempt to sell a great many books by appealing to readers' desire to get rich quickly and easily. When I searched for best-selling books in which Trump's name appears on Amazon.com, the book at the top of the list turned out to be Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Like Trump, Kiyosaki's books more or less languished for a good many years, but Kiyosaki hung in there and people finally noticed him, and in a pretty big way. Now his book is number 92 on Amazon.com's sales rank list. I have no way of knowing of course, but I can't help but wonder whether Trump devised his own cheesy title in an attempt to garner some of the attention other get-rich authors like Kiyosaki do. If so, so far it hasn't worked too well. Trump's book is number 644 on Amazon.com's list.

Now, 644 isn't a bad ranking on Amazon.com. I'd give my eye teeth to be anywhere close to 1,000 on that list. But for The Donald - used to being on the top of top 10 lists - being so far behind Kiyosaki and others may be somewhat galling. After all, Trump actually has made quite a lot of money doing something besides writing and pushing his books, unlike most other authors in the "you're-going-to-be-rich" genre.

Trump's second book this year is The Way to the Top: The Best Business Advice I Ever Received. I'm convinced that one piece of advice Trump got from his publisher was to write really easy-to-read books. In fact, this is an argument I've had with my own publisher for years as we've watched titled like Who Moved My Cheese rocket to the top of best-seller lists. "Write it simple, stupid," is really fine advice in my view, and someday I hope to employ it.

The extent of Trump's writing for The Way to the Top is the introduction, in which he explains that, "You can't know it all. So I asked the brightest, most successful businessmen and women I know - and some I don't know - what was the best business advice they have ever received." Trump writes that he was both surprised and humbled by the response he got. And I'm sure he was delighted as well with so much free material to fill his book with.

Most of the advice, alas, is pretty predictable. Predictable isn't always bad, though, and it's not unpleasant to thumb through the book. I thought Jack Valenti had some particularly interesting comments for Trump. Valenti, incidentally, is the president and CEO of Motion Picture Association of America. The best advice Valenti got was this: "Never take a job just for the money. Always strive to take a job doing something you truly love to do. If it's money you seek, it will come to you in barrels-full, because if you love what you do, you'll no doubt do it very well and folks who want the best will beat your door down to employ you."

Trump rephrases this advice this way: "Don't follow the money. The money will follow you." Valenti says following that advice has given him a great life, and it's still getting better. In my case, this would seem to suggest that I should stick to writing, but following Trump's latest examples, I should probably not take myself to seriously and write something really gratuitous, or at least pretty obvious.
I'm not sure I can bring myself to follow that advice, but if my next book has the words "rich" and "cheese" in it, you won't be surprised, I'm sure.

(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Asian Professionals into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).

Copyright © 2004 Michael Alan Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.

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