As a freelance business copywriter, I’m small potatoes. My largest single assignment ever paid $15,000 (paid in full in advance), and I estimate I am still unpaid for about $500 of invoices in over two decades.
So here’s Donald Trump who has taken four companies into bankruptcy.
Don’t worry, The Donald is doing just fine. His companies went bankrupt but Donald-the-individual’s financial resources are H-U-G-E. Still has the plane, Mar-a-Lago, opulent New York City digs.
He says he loves debt. He loves to play with it. Regardless of what we’ve heard about his hands, he’s the biggest, baddest deal maker there is.
Some business pros say that negotiations should be win-win. Pathetic pansies! Trump is using his campaign to expand his message beyond TV shows and Trump University and teach us that effective negotiations are I-win-you-lose.
I understand that bankruptcy plays a valuable role in the economy. It enables business to take risk. It serves us better than debtor’s prison ever did. And I understand that Trump’s bankruptcies are perfectly legal.
What bugs me is the absence of humility. To deprive product and service providers of agreed-upon payment is nothing to brag about. And it is downright scary to see that many Americans aspire to do business like Trump.
But what do I know? I work from a modest home office in a modest suburban house where I make my own coffee and empty my own trash.
Not like business magnates who cockily negotiate with Trump.
Ah, the prestige of not getting paid for projects costing in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Of jetting out to NYC to gather with other bigwig creditors around a solid oak conference table outfitted with genuine leather chairs.
Not that Trump has ever offered to negotiate with me. Forgive my sour grapes.
Voters tell pollsters that Hillary is untrustworthy. But as best I can tell, she and Bill have paid their attorney fees and past campaign expenses in full. She’s my kind of crook.
Originally posted 5-23-16
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