Transcription
Donald: Good to have you with us.
Well, thank you, Steve. And uh, congratulations again for being on the billionaires list.
Oh, good, good. We always underestimate you, but uh, you do. But that's okay. All right. Those who deal with you underestimate you and live to regret it. It's always good to be underestimated.
Uh, your own business. Your father was successful in real estate, obviously been highly successful. Uh, what did you learn from your father?
Well, he loved to work, and he was happy. He was a happy man. He wasn't, you know, one of these guys—and I know many of them—and you know many of them; they're in their psychiatrist every day. I say, "What do you do?" My father was a worker, and he, he loved to work. He'd work on Saturdays, he'd work on Sundays. He just liked it. He'd go to church, but after church, he'd go and work. He'd go check a building that he was putting up in Brooklyn. You know, he was mostly in Brooklyn and Queens, and he just loved it. And I think more than anything else, not because of what he taught me—he taught me lots of different things—but I watched him be a happy man and work until he was like literally 93. He was 93 years old when he died, and I said to myself, "That's a pretty good formula," because I have a lot of friends, they take vacations for six weeks and eight weeks and three months, and they're never happy. So I watched my father. So I like to work.
Gets to your uh, children. You have three of them in the business now. How did you uh, did you coax them? How did how did that come about? 'Cause usually if a parent wants you to do it, kids say no. If you want it, I don't want it.
You know, I was I was blessed to have smart children. They did well in school; they got good marks; they didn't have problems. But also, I would—what kind of environment you create for that to happen? Because you have a lot of smart kids who just—right. You have many smart kids that don't do well, and you have some kids that aren't so smart that work very hard that do very well. I I've seen it many times, but I've I've been recognized for having done a good job. Now I have five children, but the three that're in business, and a lot of it's because of the success of The Apprentice, where they go on and people get to know Ivanka and Don and Eric. But a lot of that was early upbringing. I'd always say to him, "No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes," and now I add for Barron, and I I just drive him crazy. I'd say every time they'd leave, "No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. Repeat after me," and I'd have to repeat. They go—Ivanka would go, "Dad, will you leave me alone?" But I drum it into their heads, and you know you have to get back, you have to get through those artificial barriers. I call artificial bears because you can do something about it until it's too late. Once it's in your system, it's very hard to stop. Like I don't drink, and it's very easy for me not to drink. I tell people, "What are you drinking for? What are you drinking for?" And they don't even understand what I'm saying.
Because how did you—it's amazing when people see you, they can't imagine—no, no, no alcohol.
Oh, would I be in trouble if I was a drinker with my life? No, no, no, no smoking. Yeah, no smoking. Well, I had a brother, I had a brother Fred who was sadly an alcoholic, a serious alcoholic, and he was the best-looking guy you've ever seen. He was much older than you. He was much older. He was 10 years older than me, 11 years older than me, and he was as good-look a guy as you've ever seen. He w-he had everything going, the best personality. I have like a bad personality compared to Fred, but he started drinking, and he also smoked a lot, and but he he started drinking, and I think it started in college frankly, but it got progressively worse, and he was really unable to stop, and he'd always tell me, "Don't you ever drink." So he was much older than me, and it really has an impact, you know, when you have that kind of an age difference. But he'd point, "Don't you ever drink, and don't you ever smoke." He'd add the smoke in it because he smoked and he drank, and it hugely affected his health and hugely affected even his look and his, you know, the whole bearing. And every time you'd see me, you'd say, "Don't you ever drink," and don't you. So I never drank. I I mean, I really—when you talk about my father, I learned a lot from my father, but I learned a lot from my brother Fred, and he set an example. It wasn't maybe the example that people would think, but it really was, in its own way, an example.