President Trump offered almost a dozen pieces of life advice during his Thursday evening commencement speech to graduating students at the University of Alabama.
Mr. Trump first suggested to the students not to waste their youth, because success can come at a very young age.
“I was 28 when I took my first big gamble to develop a hotel in midtown Manhattan, the Grand Hyatt, and it worked out incredibly well. But I was very young at the time. I was like a very young person in sort of an old-person business.”
Mr. Trump went on to name other notable successful people in business and politics, including Steve Jobs, who founded Apple at age 21, and Walt Disney who founded Disney at age 21.
“James Madison, James Monroe, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, they were no older than 25 when they began the journeys that etched their names into the history books for all time,” he said. “So to everyone here today, don’t waste your youth. Go out and fight right from the beginning from the day you leave this incredible university.”
Mr. Trump also advised that the graduating senior “love” what they end up doing in life.
“You have to love what you do. OK? I rarely see somebody that’s successful that doesn’t love what he or she does. That way you really like work. It isn’t work. It’s fun,” he said.
Additionally, the president said it was important to “think big” in order to be successful.
“If you know you’re going to do something, you might as well think big, because it’s just as tough if you think small,” he said.
“I know a lot of people that thought small. They’re very smart. I know others that weren’t nearly as smart, but they had a better picture of the big picture, because it’s just as hard to solve a small problem as a big problem, and it’s just as much energy and everything else except the result is going to be a smaller one.”
The president suggested to also work hard and offered up retired golfer Gary Player, who he described as a “great athlete,” as an example of his point.
“He wasn’t as big as other men. He was actually on the small side … But he worked very, very hard. He made up for it. He never stopped and he won 168 golf tournaments,” Mr. Trump said.
“He made a statement years ago that I read, and I thought it was sort of an incredible statement. He said, ‘It’s funny, the harder I work, the luckier I get.’ Think of that, the harder I work, the luckier I get,” the president said. “So, you really have to work hard and you’re going to be successful.”
However, Mr. Trump cautioned the 2025 graduating class not to lose their momentum.
He told the sad tale of a fellow real estate developer, William Levitt, who became successful and decided to retire too early, sell his business, but later went bankrupt.
He recounted talking to Mr. Levitt at a party about what had happened to him.
“I went over and talked to him, and I said, How are you? He goes, ‘Donald, I’m not well.’”
“I said, ‘so can you come back?’ He said, ‘No, son, I lost my momentum. I shouldn’t have done it. I lost my momentum.’ And I never forgot that expression. He lost his momentum. If he would have kept going instead of selling and relaxing, he probably would have been three times bigger than he was, but he lost his momentum,” the president concluded.
Other pieces of advice Mr. Trump gave the class of 2025 University of Alabama students were: have the courage to be an outsider, trust your instincts, think of yourself as a winner, be an original, and never give up.
