5 Screw-ups That Tell Us Donald Trump Should Not Teach Business Degree Classes

Donald Trump is pretty much a household name these days. Everybody knows he is a celebrity/businessman of some sort that enjoys firing people on reality television shows. The fact of the matter is that Trump is much better at being a celebrity than he is at doing business. The man has more failed business ventures than anybody else who isn’t living in a cardboard box, yet he somehow manages to keep getting involved in new enterprises. While these 5 screw-ups prove that the Trump shouldn’t be teaching business degree classes anytime soon, you have to admire the man’s persistence.

GoTrump.com

Companies like Expedia and Travelocity have proven that search engines that help plan vacations and travel can be very successful. Well, they can be successful until Donald Trump decides to get involved. He started GoTrump.com in 2006 to provide the public with ways to travel in style, as Trump himself likes to do. Apparently too many potential users thought traveling like Trump meant they would have to get terrible hair pieces and act like asses, so GoTrump.com ended up shutting down in under a year. Garden gnomes are better at endorsing travel websites than Donald.

Trump Airlines

Donald Trump once purchased an airline company, which didn’t seem like a bad idea since the airline had an established customer base. Anyone with a business degree will tell you that it is easier to take the reins of an established company than try and build one from the ground up. Unfortunately for Trump and his wallet, he decided to change the simplistic utility of the aircraft that passengers seemed to enjoy and instead spray paint everything gold, from seat belts to bathrooms, in an attempt to class things up. He also painted his name on the sides of the planes. It is hard to tell which of these changes passengers hated more, but they made their displeasure known by flying on other airlines. Trump Airlines was eventually turned over to creditors, who were much more responsible owners than Trump had been.

Trump’s SoHo Condos

Donald Trump’s company, Trump Organization, worked with Bayrock/Sapir Organization LLC to sell some condos in New York. If Trump had remembered anything from his business degree classes, he would know that there are certain rules and ethics involved in these sorts of deals. These rules include presenting potential buyers with accurate information about what it is they are considering buying. Trump instead lied to buyers about how many of the condos were actually sold in an attempt to make buyers feel more secure, which resulted in Trump and his partners getting sued by the people they duped.

Trump Magazine

Part of business is finding a niche and filling it. Few businesses display this more clearly than magazine companies. Each magazine is geared to a specific demographic, such as people that like sports, fishing, or naked women. Donald Trump created his own magazine, apparently targeting a little known demographic of people who want to read a magazine run by Donald Trump. This market turned out to be smaller than Trump predicted, and Trump Magazine ran out of subscribers in 2009.

Trump Mortgage

Running a large business is not a one person operation. Even The Donald can’t do it all on his own, so he hired E. J. Ridings to run his mortgage company, Trump Mortgage, when it started in 2006. The problem was Ridings had absolutely no experience running any sort of business whatsoever. The only thing that should have been on his resume was that he was apparently really good at making fake resumes. Either that or Trump forgot rule #1 of anybody with a business degree, make sure your employees are qualified. Having your company run by an inexperienced huckster usually doesn’t work out too well, and Trump Mortgage closed for good in 2007.