Trump 2.0
Raised frugally and put to work at an early age by his famous father so he’d learn the value of a dollar, Donald Trump Jr. is now a vice president in his father’s company, and very involved in the new Trump International Waikiki hotel, which opens at Beach Walk this week
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“It’s pretty funny. It’s a great little dynamic, so maybe we have another developer coming.”
Trump Jr., who shares many physical traits with his dad (minus the trademark comb-over hair-style), describes his own relationship with his father as probably unconventional.
“It wasn’t always a relationship where we’d go play ball in the back yard,” he explains. “So it wasn’t a very typical father-son relationship in that sense, but if I wanted to spend time with him, I’d follow him around on job sites.
“I’d follow him around when he was working, and I think that was a great kind of early hands-on experience on what I wanted to do in life.
“People are always like, ‘Do you want to go into real estate, really? Why would you want to do this?’ It’s all I know. It’s what I grew up doing, so it ended up being something probably very helpful.”
Being the son of Donald Trump undoubtedly has its perks. But carrying on not just the family business but also the prestigious name comes with a lot of high expectations.
“People assume various things about you before they get to know you, whatever it may be, and there’s always that silver-spoon notion,” says Trump Jr. “But there’s also perks, and that definitely helps open doors for business. Like anything in life, there’s the bad and the good. You have to take advantage of the good and minimize the bad.”
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Trump Jr. may have been lucky to be born into wealth, but he knows the Trump empire was not built overnight. He saw firsthand the endless hours his father worked, and he understands the high standards and work ethic his father expects of his employees, including his own children.
“We were brought up rather frugally and understanding the value of the dollar, contrary to what a lot of people would probably believe,” says Trump Jr., who started working in the family business at age 13.
His first job was a three-month assignment during the summer as a dock attendant at the Trump Marina Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, earning minimum wage and tips. He did that for two years before moving on to landscaping.
“The best professional advice from my father is love what you do,” notes Trump Jr. “If you want to be successful at anything, you’re gonna have to really love it. If you don’t, you’ll never put in the requisite hours, you’ll never do what it takes to be successful or to get something accomplished.
“You’ll love it if your job is basically your vocation as well as your hobby as well as your passion. And I think there’s a lot of truth to be said for that. I think a lot of people say ‘I want to go into investment banking because I want to make millions of dollars.’ But they hate what they do, and three years later they realize they’re burnt out and they can’t do it anymore, and they’ve really lost an opportunity that perhaps could’ve been used for something else.
“I love what I do, and I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t. My father has always said he would fire me if he knew I didn’t like it, because he knew he wouldn’t get out of me what he could from someone else who actually wanted that job. He would never run a company to subsidize myself or my other siblings.”
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Trump Jr.‘s parents, Donald and Ivana, divorced in 1992. Today, Ivana keeps busy with her two companies, Ivana Inc., which manages her appearances, and Ivana Haute Couture, which markets her line of products, including her line of cosmetics, accessories and fragrances. She also writes a column, Ask Ivana, for Globe Magazine and is working on the Ivana Great Barrier Reef Resort in Australia.
“She’s based in New York but she travels the world, so I see her, when time allows, when I’m in NewYork,” says Trump Jr. “Unfortunately, it’s probably not as often as I’d like, but my wife actually brings the kids over to her place a lot more because I’m either traveling for work or stuck in meetings most of the time. So she still gets to be with her grandkids probably more than with me at the moment.”
Trump Jr., who jokes he can probably put on a suit faster than jeans and a T-shirt (he wore a tie to school pretty much full time since he was in the first grade), describes himself as a very informal person outside of the office.
He says his grandfather Milos Zelnicek (from his mother’s side) also was very influential in raising him and credits him for his adventurous side.
“Growing up in New York, in my family it probably would’ve been very easy to get jaded,” he admits. “But I had that great experience with my grandfather, who is from the Czech Republic and lived in communist Czechoslovakia, and he saw the life that we led in New York and made sure to pull me out before I started working.
“I spent two months with him in the Czech Republic in the mountains at his cabin and really understood that the life that I led in New York wasn’t necessarily the norm for anywhere else in the world. That was a great balancing experience for me - making sure not to take anything for granted and recognizing how fortunate I was at a very young age to be in the position I was.
“And I really want to try to make sure I instill that same value into my kids, because if you watch TV and you see what’s going on in the world, you can imagine it would be very easy to get jaded quickly.”
But now with two little tots of his own, Trump Jr. admits he’s not as interested in those outdoor activities he was once into.
“Becoming a father has changed me definitely much more than I probably would’ve ever thought,” he says. “I used to have much more of a wild side in terms of the extreme sports I like and the things that I used to do. I’m a licensed pilot. I used to jump off cliffs and mountains with parachutes, and now I’m just kind of like, those things are great, been there done that, broken every major bone in my body. But now you kind of look at things a little bit differently - if something happened to me, it’s not so much concern for myself, but what happens to my children if they don’t have the paternal side of the family.
“My wife does a great job, but you need a little bit of a combination, so it definitely changes the way you look at things.”
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