[Applause]
I had attended a dinner party recently
and I was engaged in conversation with
another dinner guest describing plans
for my new business when the other
guests politely interrupted looked at me
somewhat bleary-eyed and asked why on
earth would anyone want to start a new
business especially in today’s volatile
economic climate and and more so at my
age so I pondered that for a moment and
while the purveyor of the question
wasn’t necessarily expecting a response
I offered one because after all at my
age I had one to give and because it
wasn’t the first time that I had
encountered someone who had questioned
what it is I wanted to do it whatever
age I happen to have been at the time
but let me go back to the beginning of
my story now long before I ever knew
words like entrepreneurship or marketing
or customer relationship management or
profit and loss I was putting all of
those into practice as an eight year old
growing up on Chicago’s far north side
now my early entrepreneurial endeavors
included lemonade stands
use toy sales sidewalk carnivals and
magic shows and despite my aversion to
attending birthday parties as a child I
often performed as Razzles the clown
entertaining children at the very
birthday parties I dreaded attending now
it was all of these early
entrepreneurial endeavors that provided
me with three valuable resources that
most other kids my age simply didn’t
have confidence audacity and money my
own money now my first real job came at
the age of 13 scooping ice cream making
banana splits and milkshakes at Suzy’s
ice cream parlour on Devon Avenue at 14
I was selling fresh-cut flowers on a
busy street corner on Sunday mornings
and like most American kids my age I
delivered newspapers after school on my
bike at 15 I was folding t-shirts at a
shop that printed t-shirts but I’m
convinced that this day the only reason
I got that job was because the owner was
fed up scolding me for throwing rubber
baseballs
at his back door next I got a job
folding trousers at a men’s clothing
shop and by my 17th birthday I had had
no fewer than a dozen different jobs
mostly in the retail sector turns out I
was pretty good at selling things and
folding things
at 18 I graduated from high school and
moved to Phoenix Arizona and I took a
job working for an insurance company now
it was around the same time that I had
started taking my writing more seriously
and it fashioned myself and my writing
after my favorite writer Franz Kafka who
like me was a fairly awkward young man
from a middle-class Jewish family who
had worked for an insurance company
evenings I delivered pizzas and played
in a punk rock band two things I’m
pretty certain that Franz Kafka didn’t
do about a year later I moved to Los
Angeles seeking fame and fortune and I
formed what would become a pretty
popular local band now while living in
Los Angeles and playing in a band in the
1980s was an amazing experience playing
alongside groups like Red Hot Chili
Peppers was even more amazing but I
always had a steady job always had a
roof over my head and always had food on
the table now during the six years I
lived in Los Angeles I had about 15
different jobs for example bank teller
three retail jobs two warehouse jobs a
security job and jobs as an Accounts
Payable clerk bicycle messenger pizza
delivery boy again and aerobics
instructor okay but remember this was
Los Angeles in the 1980s and everybody
was doing it
now truth is that I change jobs quite
frequently and really because my
interests changed quite frequently and I
always seem to be running into
interesting opportunities but I always
had a job always worked hard and always
pay my bills on time at 23 I decided to
travel abroad for the first time and
this provoked one of the very first at
your age moments in my life now while my
parents and friends were all supportive
of my travel plans it was actually my
grandfather who harbored some doubts and
he remarked at your age shouldn’t you be
in college or starting a career
well I only planned on staying in Europe
for two or three months
or until my money ran out but ended up
living in Spain for the better part of
two years earning a living selling
Levi’s 501 jeans and used electric
guitars that my mom would ship over from
Chicago but that was the life of a
wandering minstrel
now I returned home at 25 and enrolled
at the theater school at DePaul
University in Chicago a college freshman
at my age there ironed my bachelor’s
degree in playwriting now I know what
you’re thinking that a degree writing
place for the theater probably wasn’t
the the smartest career move
but that degree did allow me the
privilege of staying on at University
where two years later I earned the
somewhat more respectable degree of
Master of Arts in English and history
which was a degree that actually led to
my first teaching job and one that’s
probably the most memorable as it was at
the very high school where I had
graduated from nine years earlier that’s
me in 1992 at Stephen T Mathur High
School where I became mr. Morris the
teacher for the very first time as
opposed to nine years earlier when it
was mr. Morris why are you late for
class again mr. Morris where’s your
homework yeah that happened
[Music]
but that was just the first of many
stepping stones in the field of
education that 25 years later have
brought me here today to this
institution capping a teaching career
which has provided me with a quarter
century worth of satisfying respectable
work unparalleled experiences and a
level of income which has provided me
the opportunity to seek out lots of new
adventures for example at the age of 30
I self-published my first book a
collection of poetry based on the life
of my great grandfather an Eastern
European immigrant who came to the
United States in 1923
now having gotten married five years
earlier my spanish wife and I decided to
relocate to Valencia Spain and five
months after my 34th birthday the first
of our two children was born now if
there was one failure in my life it was
the failure of my first marriage after
13 years but that failure also created
opportunities opportunities for personal
and spiritual growth and an opportunity
to rethink reevaluate and reinvent
myself and start over even at my age at
40 I decided I was ready for yet another
change ready to seek out new frontiers
and when I informed the director of the
school I had been teaching at the time
that I wouldn’t be coming back in
September that I decided to open my own
school while she politely interrupted
looked at me somewhat bleary-eyed and
said start your own school at your age
so I opened a small English language
school in my neighborhood in Valencia I
hired two teachers signed up about 50
students and got the school up and
running now about the same time I
started up another small business based
on my lifelong love for bicycles so I
went out bought a dozen bikes and these
aluminum frame trailers that attach to
the backs of the bikes were inside hung
a double-sided billboard and I launched
Valencia’s first bicycle advertising
agency and while I had the bikes and the
resources I also started up a
full-service bicycle messenger and
delivery service now by the end of my
first year I had a team of 10 cyclists
riding my bikes all over the beautiful
city of Valencia Spain delivering
printing jobs newspapers groceries
prepared meals all while promoting my
clients which ranged from supermarkets
and shops the city zoo and Valencia’s
renowned city of Arts and Sciences now
at least once a week I rode an
advertising bike I ran messenger routes
delivered organic groceries and taught
English classes all while being the
primary caregiver to my two young
children which meant preparing lunches
every day picking them up from school
taking them to swimming lessons violin
and piano classes and playdates now in
2008 I observed a sharp decline in
business and this was around the time of
Spain’s economic downturn now it was at
the same time that I had reconnected
with a former colleague who I had worked
with in a school in Valencia now she was
Dutch and like me had married a Spaniard
and like me got divorced around the same
time I did so she had moved back to
Spain after having lived abroad for a
couple of years she called me up one day
and said she’d be traveling down to
Valencia and she thought it would be
nice to see me and my kids who she had
known since they were babies so we met
up enjoyed a splendid afternoon a picnic
lunch played with the kids
and reminisced and I suppose you could
say the rest is history at the beginning
of the following year we moved to
Liverpool England together and in
December of that year the first of our
daughter’s was born so at the age of 46
I became a father for the third time at
my age the two years that we spent in
Liverpool I taught Spanish at a local
primary school and was the Liverpool
correspondent for a well read a local
cultural newspaper that was based in
London always looking for new and
exciting opportunities
two years later we moved to the
Netherlands and after having had a
couple of part-time teaching jobs I was
asked if I could teach a couple days a
week here at Hotel School of Haig during
the first 10-week block of the new
school year it turns out they were short
an English teacher so naturally I
obliged I enjoyed the experience
immensely and at the end of that autumn
block they hadn’t phoned me that they
hadn’t found a new teacher yet and would
I mind staying on for another ten weeks
now if my calculations are right that
was four years three months and nine
days ago
and Here I am signed on for another ten
weeks now but that wasn’t the only gig
I’d have in Spain in in the Netherlands
I founded the hague international
singer-songwriter festival in 2012 which
ran successfully for two consecutive
years and not so successfully after that
it happens but it was amazing the
festival featured 300 singer songwriters
from 40 different countries and was held
in 35 venues in seven Dutch cities and
to this day one of the most incredible
experiences of my entire life
then about a year ago I had an idea and
one that would inevitably change the
course of my life and it was something
related to not teaching not writing not
singing not entertaining but to bowties
now I had first started wearing bowties
in 1993 oh well okay so maybe it was a
couple years before that I had taken a
job at a Children’s Hospital in Chicago
I was teaching in the day school of the
department of child psychiatry where as
you could imagine wearing long neckties
so it would be considered both a hazard
and a nuisance so I went out and I
bought my first bow tie this one
but it wasn’t it wasn’t so much my love
for bowties that inspired me to actually
start making them it was a story about
shoes and a famous actor that did
now having always wanted to make things
with my hands and never expressing any
real natural ability to do that I
remembered reading an interview with the
British Irish actor Sir Daniel day-lewis
you might know this story like me Daniel
day-lewis enjoyed making things with his
hands and one day he approached the late
Italian master shoemaker Stefano Beamer
and asked him if he would teach him how
to make shoes so Daniel day-lewis picked
up moved his family to Italy and he
apprenticed under one of the greatest
master craftsmen of the day so I figured
if Daniel day-lewis could learn how to
make shoes in Italy I could certainly
learn how to make bow ties here in
Holland so a year ago I began a new
journey seeking out new horizons I
designed the collection of six bow ties
that were made in a small workshop in
the South of England I’m now working on
my second collection which will be
handmade right here
in Holland some with these very hands as
I’m now learning how to pattern cut and
sew now if you’ve never worn or tied a
bowtie before I can imagine that the
idea might seem a bit daunting but like
anything new and untried or unsure
it’s about the doing the taking of risks
the failing the succeeding the learning
and the dreaming it’s in all of those
where life happens so be brave sing a
song write a poem eat some ice cream
fold some trousers tire boats I do
whatever it is you have to do and do it
on your own terms
in your own time and remember never stop
dreaming because take it from me dreams
really can come true even at my age even
at your age
thank you very much
I had attended a dinner party recently
and I was engaged in conversation with
another dinner guest describing plans
for my new business when the other
guests politely interrupted looked at me
somewhat bleary-eyed and asked why on
earth would anyone want to start a new
business especially in today’s volatile
economic climate and and more so at my
age so I pondered that for a moment and
while the purveyor of the question
wasn’t necessarily expecting a response
I offered one because after all at my
age I had one to give and because it
wasn’t the first time that I had
encountered someone who had questioned
what it is I wanted to do it whatever
age I happen to have been at the time
but let me go back to the beginning of
my story now long before I ever knew
words like entrepreneurship or marketing
or customer relationship management or
profit and loss I was putting all of
those into practice as an eight year old
growing up on Chicago’s far north side
now my early entrepreneurial endeavors
included lemonade stands
use toy sales sidewalk carnivals and
magic shows and despite my aversion to
attending birthday parties as a child I
often performed as Razzles the clown
entertaining children at the very
birthday parties I dreaded attending now
it was all of these early
entrepreneurial endeavors that provided
me with three valuable resources that
most other kids my age simply didn’t
have confidence audacity and money my
own money now my first real job came at
the age of 13 scooping ice cream making
banana splits and milkshakes at Suzy’s
ice cream parlour on Devon Avenue at 14
I was selling fresh-cut flowers on a
busy street corner on Sunday mornings
and like most American kids my age I
delivered newspapers after school on my
bike at 15 I was folding t-shirts at a
shop that printed t-shirts but I’m
convinced that this day the only reason
I got that job was because the owner was
fed up scolding me for throwing rubber
baseballs
at his back door next I got a job
folding trousers at a men’s clothing
shop and by my 17th birthday I had had
no fewer than a dozen different jobs
mostly in the retail sector turns out I
was pretty good at selling things and
folding things
at 18 I graduated from high school and
moved to Phoenix Arizona and I took a
job working for an insurance company now
it was around the same time that I had
started taking my writing more seriously
and it fashioned myself and my writing
after my favorite writer Franz Kafka who
like me was a fairly awkward young man
from a middle-class Jewish family who
had worked for an insurance company
evenings I delivered pizzas and played
in a punk rock band two things I’m
pretty certain that Franz Kafka didn’t
do about a year later I moved to Los
Angeles seeking fame and fortune and I
formed what would become a pretty
popular local band now while living in
Los Angeles and playing in a band in the
1980s was an amazing experience playing
alongside groups like Red Hot Chili
Peppers was even more amazing but I
always had a steady job always had a
roof over my head and always had food on
the table now during the six years I
lived in Los Angeles I had about 15
different jobs for example bank teller
three retail jobs two warehouse jobs a
security job and jobs as an Accounts
Payable clerk bicycle messenger pizza
delivery boy again and aerobics
instructor okay but remember this was
Los Angeles in the 1980s and everybody
was doing it
now truth is that I change jobs quite
frequently and really because my
interests changed quite frequently and I
always seem to be running into
interesting opportunities but I always
had a job always worked hard and always
pay my bills on time at 23 I decided to
travel abroad for the first time and
this provoked one of the very first at
your age moments in my life now while my
parents and friends were all supportive
of my travel plans it was actually my
grandfather who harbored some doubts and
he remarked at your age shouldn’t you be
in college or starting a career
well I only planned on staying in Europe
for two or three months
or until my money ran out but ended up
living in Spain for the better part of
two years earning a living selling
Levi’s 501 jeans and used electric
guitars that my mom would ship over from
Chicago but that was the life of a
wandering minstrel
now I returned home at 25 and enrolled
at the theater school at DePaul
University in Chicago a college freshman
at my age there ironed my bachelor’s
degree in playwriting now I know what
you’re thinking that a degree writing
place for the theater probably wasn’t
the the smartest career move
but that degree did allow me the
privilege of staying on at University
where two years later I earned the
somewhat more respectable degree of
Master of Arts in English and history
which was a degree that actually led to
my first teaching job and one that’s
probably the most memorable as it was at
the very high school where I had
graduated from nine years earlier that’s
me in 1992 at Stephen T Mathur High
School where I became mr. Morris the
teacher for the very first time as
opposed to nine years earlier when it
was mr. Morris why are you late for
class again mr. Morris where’s your
homework yeah that happened
[Music]
but that was just the first of many
stepping stones in the field of
education that 25 years later have
brought me here today to this
institution capping a teaching career
which has provided me with a quarter
century worth of satisfying respectable
work unparalleled experiences and a
level of income which has provided me
the opportunity to seek out lots of new
adventures for example at the age of 30
I self-published my first book a
collection of poetry based on the life
of my great grandfather an Eastern
European immigrant who came to the
United States in 1923
now having gotten married five years
earlier my spanish wife and I decided to
relocate to Valencia Spain and five
months after my 34th birthday the first
of our two children was born now if
there was one failure in my life it was
the failure of my first marriage after
13 years but that failure also created
opportunities opportunities for personal
and spiritual growth and an opportunity
to rethink reevaluate and reinvent
myself and start over even at my age at
40 I decided I was ready for yet another
change ready to seek out new frontiers
and when I informed the director of the
school I had been teaching at the time
that I wouldn’t be coming back in
September that I decided to open my own
school while she politely interrupted
looked at me somewhat bleary-eyed and
said start your own school at your age
so I opened a small English language
school in my neighborhood in Valencia I
hired two teachers signed up about 50
students and got the school up and
running now about the same time I
started up another small business based
on my lifelong love for bicycles so I
went out bought a dozen bikes and these
aluminum frame trailers that attach to
the backs of the bikes were inside hung
a double-sided billboard and I launched
Valencia’s first bicycle advertising
agency and while I had the bikes and the
resources I also started up a
full-service bicycle messenger and
delivery service now by the end of my
first year I had a team of 10 cyclists
riding my bikes all over the beautiful
city of Valencia Spain delivering
printing jobs newspapers groceries
prepared meals all while promoting my
clients which ranged from supermarkets
and shops the city zoo and Valencia’s
renowned city of Arts and Sciences now
at least once a week I rode an
advertising bike I ran messenger routes
delivered organic groceries and taught
English classes all while being the
primary caregiver to my two young
children which meant preparing lunches
every day picking them up from school
taking them to swimming lessons violin
and piano classes and playdates now in
2008 I observed a sharp decline in
business and this was around the time of
Spain’s economic downturn now it was at
the same time that I had reconnected
with a former colleague who I had worked
with in a school in Valencia now she was
Dutch and like me had married a Spaniard
and like me got divorced around the same
time I did so she had moved back to
Spain after having lived abroad for a
couple of years she called me up one day
and said she’d be traveling down to
Valencia and she thought it would be
nice to see me and my kids who she had
known since they were babies so we met
up enjoyed a splendid afternoon a picnic
lunch played with the kids
and reminisced and I suppose you could
say the rest is history at the beginning
of the following year we moved to
Liverpool England together and in
December of that year the first of our
daughter’s was born so at the age of 46
I became a father for the third time at
my age the two years that we spent in
Liverpool I taught Spanish at a local
primary school and was the Liverpool
correspondent for a well read a local
cultural newspaper that was based in
London always looking for new and
exciting opportunities
two years later we moved to the
Netherlands and after having had a
couple of part-time teaching jobs I was
asked if I could teach a couple days a
week here at Hotel School of Haig during
the first 10-week block of the new
school year it turns out they were short
an English teacher so naturally I
obliged I enjoyed the experience
immensely and at the end of that autumn
block they hadn’t phoned me that they
hadn’t found a new teacher yet and would
I mind staying on for another ten weeks
now if my calculations are right that
was four years three months and nine
days ago
and Here I am signed on for another ten
weeks now but that wasn’t the only gig
I’d have in Spain in in the Netherlands
I founded the hague international
singer-songwriter festival in 2012 which
ran successfully for two consecutive
years and not so successfully after that
it happens but it was amazing the
festival featured 300 singer songwriters
from 40 different countries and was held
in 35 venues in seven Dutch cities and
to this day one of the most incredible
experiences of my entire life
then about a year ago I had an idea and
one that would inevitably change the
course of my life and it was something
related to not teaching not writing not
singing not entertaining but to bowties
now I had first started wearing bowties
in 1993 oh well okay so maybe it was a
couple years before that I had taken a
job at a Children’s Hospital in Chicago
I was teaching in the day school of the
department of child psychiatry where as
you could imagine wearing long neckties
so it would be considered both a hazard
and a nuisance so I went out and I
bought my first bow tie this one
but it wasn’t it wasn’t so much my love
for bowties that inspired me to actually
start making them it was a story about
shoes and a famous actor that did
now having always wanted to make things
with my hands and never expressing any
real natural ability to do that I
remembered reading an interview with the
British Irish actor Sir Daniel day-lewis
you might know this story like me Daniel
day-lewis enjoyed making things with his
hands and one day he approached the late
Italian master shoemaker Stefano Beamer
and asked him if he would teach him how
to make shoes so Daniel day-lewis picked
up moved his family to Italy and he
apprenticed under one of the greatest
master craftsmen of the day so I figured
if Daniel day-lewis could learn how to
make shoes in Italy I could certainly
learn how to make bow ties here in
Holland so a year ago I began a new
journey seeking out new horizons I
designed the collection of six bow ties
that were made in a small workshop in
the South of England I’m now working on
my second collection which will be
handmade right here
in Holland some with these very hands as
I’m now learning how to pattern cut and
sew now if you’ve never worn or tied a
bowtie before I can imagine that the
idea might seem a bit daunting but like
anything new and untried or unsure
it’s about the doing the taking of risks
the failing the succeeding the learning
and the dreaming it’s in all of those
where life happens so be brave sing a
song write a poem eat some ice cream
fold some trousers tire boats I do
whatever it is you have to do and do it
on your own terms
in your own time and remember never stop
dreaming because take it from me dreams
really can come true even at my age even
at your age
thank you very much
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