Mr. President, thank you for those amazing words. It's always very special for me to be back here in Cyprus. It holds a special place in my heart.
Your Excellency, President Christodoulides, Madam President of the Council Natasa Frederickou, Rector Demosthenous, distinguished faculty, proud parents, and most importantly, all the people that we're here for: students.
Let me start by being honest with you. When Rector Demosthenous called me out of the blue — thanks to my cousin Banos who's sitting over there — and said, 'Hey, I want you to come and give this speech,' I thought, 'Hmm, what on earth am I going to say? Why would they want me to be here of all people?' I mean, look, you've spent years listening to all kinds of brilliant academics, people with doctorates, people with all kinds of degrees, and decades of wisdom. And then, I guess for your excellence awards, they bring in the music business guy. So, you're probably thinking, 'Okay, what's this guy going to tell us?'
So, I figured the most useful thing is not to pretend to be somebody that I'm not. But, what I will be is a person that once sat in this very theater, here in Cyprus. It looked very different back in my day, just like you are, and somehow ended up going from those seats to running the Grammy Awards. And from that lens, hopefully I have a few things to tell you that I learned along the way.
Let me start a few things about the Grammys. Do most of you know what the Grammy Awards are? You've heard of it? Yes? Hopefully. Okay. Otherwise, my speech will make no sense.
Uh, but the Grammys — something that most people don't realize is that they're not about popularity. They're not about streaming numbers or who's trending or who sold the most tickets or who's wearing the fanciest dress, even though the red carpet is pretty cool to watch.
Uh, the Grammys is your peers — other artists, other creators, 15,000 voters of them — that look at your work that year and say, 'This is excellence in this field, in this category.' It's the highest form of respect because it comes from the people who do exactly what you do and know exactly how hard it is.
And that's why being here tonight resonates with me so much because that is what it's all about. The awards you're receiving, they're not about popularity. They're a recognition of excellence. So in a strange way, at least for one night, you and I are in the same business. It's the business of excellence.
When I started preparing for this talk, it made me think about my own journey from Cyprus, from right where you are tonight, to where I find myself today. As a young man, I actually stood at this very stage. I was at Smith.
I played in the army band and I played the trombone and I also performed some skits for my high school theater group. I had no idea, none, that one day I'd be back on this stage as president of the Recording Academy and the Grammys addressing you. So when I tell you that you absolutely have no idea where these seats will take you, trust me. I mean it literally. So fasten your seatbelts. You never know where you're going to go.
Look, when I was a young boy watching bootleg copies of Top of the Pops, becoming president of the Recording Academy was about as realistic for me as, frankly, landing on the moon. The people I'm lucky enough to call my friends today, back then they were semi-gods or frankly gods to me. I mean, I had big, big posters of a lot of these people. I had no idea that one day I'd be in the position that I'm at and call them friends.
So, I'll tell you how surreal my life is. Two weekends ago, I went to a baseball game with Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson, who's a fellow Greek. I mean, I was practically raised on Tom Hanks movies like Saving Private Ryan, Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump.
And then a few days before that, I went to our neighborhood restaurant in Los Angeles called Toscano and I ran into Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he's there cracking up jokes about how he and I go way back to when we were competing for Mr. Olympia. And I mean, okay, I think you know who Arnold is and you see me. I doubt that I competed with him at Mr. Olympia.
But then on Friday, last Friday, I was in Limassol with Constantinos Tsiouros and he said something that really stopped me. He said, 'Having you as president of the Grammys gives hope to all Greeks.' And that hit me because it reminded me that excellence is not a trophy or a diploma that you put on a shelf, it's a responsibility. And I think Rector Demos Sinos said the same words.
So, before you walk out of here tonight, make sure you hold on to that. Awards open doors, but it is entirely up to you to walk through them. And when you do, make sure you bring others with you.
So, with that, let me share a few lessons that I learned along the way on the road from playing the trombone right on this stage and then coming back to this stage full circle and addressing you.
Lesson number one: it starts with you. You can't control most things in life. You can't control the economy, your luck, who says yes, who says no, but you do fully control two things. And I'll paraphrase Rafa Nadal, the tennis player: you control your motivation and your concentration. So be hungry. Demand more from yourself than anyone else ever will.
When I got my first real break as a talent agent booking artists like Chick Corea and Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen, I knew I wasn't the most experienced person in the room. I wasn't the smartest person in the room. But I made a decision: I would simply outwork and outlast everyone. That's a choice that anyone in this room can make starting tonight when you walk out that door.
Lesson two: it's all about relationships. Look, my whole life I've loved bringing a bunch of strangers together, putting them in a room, and seeing what happens. If I have one superpower, it's about keeping my relationships.
Remember, relationships are like gardening. They need water. They need tending. They need cross-pollination. Just don't be calculated about it. Don't go 'networking'. Just be genuinely interested in people. Be more interested than worrying about being interesting because in the end, it's the quality of your relationships and how wide your circle grows that makes all the difference.
Whenever I look back and I think of all the new people that I met and that I now call friends, frankly, that is how I measure if I had a good year or not, if I'm widening that group of people that I know.
My third lesson is about being curious, being fearless. Everybody starts with nothing. Nobody is born an expert. Read constantly. Stay curious. Stay hungry. But remember that curiosity is not enough. You also need the nerve to walk into rooms you think you have no business being in and act like you belong there.
Curiosity is what made me a fellow at MIT Connection Science, at the Media Lab, is what let me sit across the table with a bunch of private equity firms and governments and negotiate deals. It's why I could dream up of a Berkeley campus in Abu Dhabi or New York and make it happen. A Grammy house in front of the pyramids and make it happen. Launch an online company when I knew zero about the internet in 1999 and make it happen. And as cliché as that may sound, if you can dream it, you can realize it. You can make it happen.
Lesson four is about living your life by design. Please don't live it by default. What does this mean? Most people just let life happen to them. Please, do not. Design the life you want to have and refuse to accept that you have to choose.
As I've grown older, I decided that I wanted to live my life both in Cyprus and in Los Angeles. So, I built a life that makes me do both. I love football and I love music equally. So, I helped create a partnership between FIFA and the Grammys for this World Cup.
I was wanting to give young people from this part of the world real hope. So, I helped make Berkeley Abu Dhabi and Berkeley Valencia a reality. Blend things. Stir them together. Make the combination nobody else thinks makes sense because magic is never in one thing. Magic is in the collision of two.
And my final lesson, number five, which also happens to be my lucky number, so I had to come up with a list of five: never forget where you came from. As the president said, this beautiful country of ours, right here is your center. It's your ground. It's the way you measure how far you have traveled.
For me, that is Cyprus. It's this island, this culture, all the people that have come before us. Our country, our island, is not some small thing that we somehow need to overcome. It is our superpower.
So, as you go out there, make sure you stay connected to it. Never, ever, ever forget where you came from. And if you think the action lies elsewhere, just remember that you are the action. Bring your full energy wherever you are.
Now, here's what I want you to do with all this. Somebody told me that in two or 300 years from now, in every discipline, people are just going to remember one name. So, in art, probably that's Picasso. Marlon Brando in acting, or Michael Jordan in basketball. Serena Williams in tennis. Steve Jobs, maybe, in technology. Elvis in music. I mean, you can dispute these names. These are my names.
But, what do they actually have in common? It's not just that they were great. It's that there is a before them and an after them. They redefined what it ever meant to be a painter, an actor, an athlete, a musician, a tennis player, an entrepreneur. The job description was frankly different after they showed up.
So, this is my challenge to all of you. Don't just be excellent at your profession. You already got that down. But, redefine it. Let there be a before you and an after you. Whatever field you walk into tomorrow, put your stamp on it. Put your country on the map. Combine the things you love into something bigger than yourself. And make sure you never, ever forget all the people that help you get there in the first place.
You've already proven you have the excellence. Those awards tell you so. Now go live it. Go make it a responsibility. Congratulations. I cannot wait to see what comes after you. Thank you.
