With his lead in the polls slowly evaporating, Donald Trump is vowing he has a backup ready if his run for the White House should come up short.

During a recent "Today" show interview, Trump stressed that he will go back to his life as a business mogul, should his political aspirations prove less than fruitful.

"There's no question about that," he said. "But right now I think it's working very, very well."

Still, Trump was forced to admit that retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and even former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina are both surging and picking up ground on him. In a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this week, Trump stands in a virtual tie with Carson, registering 21 percent of the vote to his rival's 20 percent. Fiorina checked in at 11 percent.

"It's an ebb and flow, but I'm leading every single poll and most of them by a substantial number," Trump added. "Can I keep that going? I have no idea but I will try."

When further pressed as to whether or not he has the fortitude to last over the long haul, particularly as the situation becomes more tense and competitive, Trump grew philosophical.

"Well, I'm a practical person, Matt, if I see things aren't going well, like for instance, there are people right now in the Republican party, who are not doing well -- I don't think it's going to change for them -- at some point you have to get out," he said.

Perhaps even more telling about the shift in momentum, Trump's poll numbers once surged as high as 32 percent, as reflected in a CNN/ORC poll earlier this month. Back then, Carson's numbers stood at just a paltry 9 percent.