Decoding Tony Hawk’s mindset in 72 minutes

fourth game got released it got me in the top ten of sales right away and he said the first three are still in the top ten and i said what does that even mean and he's like this is what it means and he slid a check across the table for four point five million dollars that's how made my i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in and like a days off on a less travel never tony back can we show you something really quick just so you understand how real this is all about to be oh sure so we're business nerds but at least one of us has grown up watching you and show you why i like talking to you this is me skating can you see this video wow that's awesome so that three stacy flip race yeah i'm thirty seven years old damn so look there's a six stair jealous that's amazing there's that was that the riverside park right there riverside skate park i've moved right by just and i go every saturday and sunday sick i'll meet you there so you can teach me how to relearn three sixty flips yeah right have you skate there a bunch i can't do him on flat anymore i i i can only do on banks well that's more impressive but i grew up watching you forever and so it's pretty cool that we've we've intersect at the strange place called my first million where we talk about business and stuff but i'm so excited to talk you i know sean is too yeah actually sam i have a funny story so i've met tony once many years ago now like ten years ago we went on a trip to ethiopia with charity water yeah so i was like i know that face yeah so we're in the middle of nowhere it's like there's no there's no service there's no nothing there's no water right that's why we're there there's no water in these these villages and we're on the side of a mountain to kinda do a hike and this guy's is like tony hawk a he recognized tony hawk k on the middle on the side of a mountain in ethiopia a place where they didn't you know they didn't even have anything it was credible and and the funny thing was the whole trip was like a bunch of who's is like oh this guy created it's spotify this great can do this nobody knew anyone except for tony hawk you got recognized on the side of him i thought that was unbelievable that was a fun trip i had never experienced anything so remote for sure but also how like you know with the whole mission of a life changing water like it was it was insane we got to fix wells that was wild yeah we got to see the water come out for the first time in a and a when the guys are like blast and stuff of that it it was amazing how how'd you get looped into that tony i was a a big donor to charity water and i had actually sponsored a well in the name of my daughter who was very young at the time she's now in college but we got to go visit the actual well and people were were thanking me on my daughter's behalf and it was it was really cool that's one of the the the amazing things charity water did and this is really not about charity is kind of a business lesson you know when scott started charity water he had no background in charity but he decided like hey why he just asked himself the question why don't i give to charity bar he's like well i think the main thing is you don't know where the money goes you kinda give it it's black box you just sort of you hope something goods happening but you never really feel the impact see the impact and so what he was doing was you know if you donated you get like a gps tracker of exactly where in the world your thing was going you would see the flow meter of how much water is coming from your well once it comes online and then you know for for people like tony who were doing like a a full well you know he do these once on a lifetime type of things you could go see it go see the place and go talk to the people who are like the beneficiaries of this and i just think that that was such a unlock for him and why charity one of the reasons charity water was able to do so well as a nonprofit compared to the kinda of standard operating procedures of nonprofit yeah i agree well also i mean coming from having my own foundation i see how more engaging it is to have to know where your money goes like there's money that goes to research and that's hard to track and it it obviously has value but when we do skate parks you have literal concrete proof of where your money goes and here it is and you can go renegotiate it what year did you start doing that two thousand two okay and how many of you built oh wow it's getting close to a thousand that we we have contributed to yeah could you actually talk about that because i'm at this point in life where i've always had i'm like yeah i'd love to give i'm a good person i'm gonna give but then it was always when i was younger i was like well i'll give later right like not now let me first let let me first get behind then i'm gonna then i'm gonna give and i realized pretty free recently like man the get in mind never stops as you probably just have to start giving even maybe before it feels totally comfortable to do so it get going back in two thousand and two when you said you did that was it like had you kinda like made it made it or is there never have made it you know how what's the right way to think about that i think it has to start with a passion of what affected you in your life or or how did you overcome something or what did you see a void of in my case my skate part was the skate park that i grew up near was my found it it was my salvation like that was the place where i felt like i belonged it was obviously the place where i honed my skills but more importantly i found my crew there and and skating wasn't cool in the the early eighties and and we are a bunch of mis biz out cast like you know as cliche jo putting you in trash cans and stuff like that and like it's all true but we found our friends there and and our support system and and it was just a safe place and you know not just for skating but but to hang out and so when i found myself having this crazy success i could see there was obviously a lack of skate parks because because cities and even parents haven't hadn't really accepted skateboarding as as valid yet and i just thought this is my the best thing i can do is provide these facilities for kids who feel distant franchise for underserved areas that was it that was the idea we had no idea we were doing my brother actually my brother and my sister and i just sort of started it on a whim and started figuring out projects that that already had some legs or were their were seeds planted for escape park and they were up against a lot of opposition from the city or from the community and we could give them at the very least an endorsement and a a validation so the early grants were ten thousand dollars five thousand dollars but that was enough to give them some sort of incentive and and acknowledgment and and usually that pushed it over the at least pushed it through to an approval process and we learned as we as we as we went along and and we end up getting more big donations from corporations and in any any contracts that i entered into in terms of endorsements at the time and made sure that ten percent to twenty percent went straight to the foundation or that they were able to give even more i mean no i you sure you guys know skate parts ever work here do you live near one it's bottled like twenty years ago new york city skate park what yeah now there's a bunch of them and skateboarding is very cyclical i don't know where we are in the cycle right now but it doesn't feel like it's down that's for sure well i think that most of the parks twenty thirty years ago were temporary structures we're now building them into communities into the landscape out of concrete i feel like they're more here to stay than ever in those early days you're talking about like you know when you were kid just go to skate you found your crew it was it obvious that you were good i mean you became the michael jordan of your sport i just kinda wanna know about that like would anybody have known could have seen that when they saw you at those early days probably not in the first couple years i was pretty bad i was i was i was just kinda of fl i didn't understand what style was or or how to create it in my skating all i cared about was tricks and so whatever it takes to do tricks the body mechanics of that aren't pretty you know what i mean how how do you spin your board around how do you turn this way how do you to go that way and it was all just like that's all i cared about because that what it was just like that was fascinating to me that there were things that hadn't been done yet that were possible and that i could do them at an early age it wasn't until probably my third and we're real third year of skating that i started to get some recognition i started to you you know everything then was competition based so your value your ranking that was the only way people were gonna notice you and i started moving up the ranks in fact when i finally got sponsored by the bones brigade i was an amateur i i won the amateur series that year and i owe lot of stacy per because he recognized something in me that maybe i didn't even see he saw me doing some innovative tricks they weren't big but they were interesting to him but i guess what he saw in me was that i was always frustrated and he saw that i was determined and that i had the ten to to keep out something until i get it and and against you know even against my own safety we we talk a bunch charlie mu one of the best investors he like has this line where he's like take something serious that most people don't and that's like a really good way to get outs size returns and it definitely i mean that's obvious that's what you did skateboarding was not popular at all and it seems like you took it serious but did you have any mental attributes that you think stood out amongst the other good guys at the time hey i wanna tell you about something pretty cool we have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast so hundreds of episodes the team at hub hubspot went through they pulled out all the simple relatable interesting profitable ideas that we have brainstorm and they're all available for download for free just click the link in the description below thank you to our friends at hubspot for sponsored this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys back to the show i think i was just relentlessly determined yeah i just never gave up and you know through repetition through failure i i had to figure these things out and and i didn't know that was such an attribute of this time it just felt like more of a an obsession and even even just just doing things i wanted to do when i a kid like my mom would say or her friends would say like your kids a nightmare he doesn't he won't give up and she's like well he's just very determined and so she saw it as a positive that is what kept me a afloat or at least motivated even through success because there's a mindset especially in skateboarding word you wanna make it right you wanna you wanna get on the cover t you wanna you wanna have a good video part or you wanna win a contest and if you get to that goal you might lose your incentives i didn't care so much about those accolades i cared about learning new tricks so the day after a contest like a big one maybe even if i had won i'm back on the ramp trying some new tricks like i'm on to the next one sean there's this word that skater use a lot people use the word progression like you really progressed i thought you were gonna say like a skater slang you just like a skater phrase we use progression but i i got i i got much stranger ones but go ahead but you would think of like kind of like a punk rat kid being like progression man that's right you just you progressed and the idea skating is interesting because like let's say you ollie down a two stair it's like if you very easily can be like alright i can do two let's see if i do three okay i do three let's say i can do four and like there's in skating there's very much this like incremental progress that's very measurable and and it's really exciting and so like when i was skating as a kid that's one thing i remember was like progression and i remember what's i wasn't great i was fine but i remember what separated me from someone who's amazing and then there's a whole other category which is tony of like these people who are never satisfied with where they progressed to it was always like now what now what now what and it kept going and those are the ones i mean those the ones that that have the longevity and those are the ones that that kids look to because they're not just basking in their glory right you know we we often will talk about the the upside of greatness the the outcome of greatness what it's like to to do all the great things but very and really do you get to understand the price of greatness so i wanna ask you about the price of greatness that you know there's a guy who i went to he went to the same high school i did he made it to the nba for one year you don't even know his name joel alexander probably never heard of this guy you know had just a little vacation in the league but he was he goes on tiktok and he says here's what my life looked like from the age of nine and he said every day this was my schedule this is what i did this was these were my rules i had for myself and he's like this is what it took plus i had a gross spurt got to six eight so plus the natural gifts here's all the work that it took to get to the level i got i just want people to understand that i really love these videos because for for those who enjoy the work it's like oh here's a blueprint i can follow here's a frame breaker maybe that maybe i'm capable of doing more and for others who don't wanna do the work it's like don't even don't dream about that stuff because this is what it takes if i ask you what what's your version of that what was the price of greatness when you were sort of eight nine ten eleven twelve years old what did your life look like as soon as the bell rang i figured out a way to get to the skate park that was it i was at the skate park until until either my mom got off work which was usually late because she were she worked at the night school call is community college or until they closed and i was able to get a ride home from someone that was sixteen that was it i was there all all day and and i mean a lot of times i would forget to eat i wasn't trying to be skinny but it was like skate eating was just a distraction that was that was time away from the pool right i think the difference is is when you're working towards something like nba you know that there's this there's this goal and there is professional there's there's income there's fans whatever it is to reach the top of skateboarding at the time i did it it meant that you got your picture in a magazine that it i mean you would truly like first place for a a competition was a hundred dollars and i wasn't pro so like i i'm just trying to get free gear that's the goal when you're i know that i mean you you you were making some money when you're were sixteen seventeen eighteen i wanna ask about that i that that did eventually come and and i got to ride the wave of skateboarding growth and popularity which was incredible and was you know something that i never dreamed of because that's i guess that's the that's the point is you when you were a kid in those days skateboarding you couldn't dream of being a famous because no one was what did you think you'd be doing at like age forty were you like i gotta just have fun now and maybe i'll you didn't even think about it oh i yeah i mean my ultimate i i guess what i saw for myself i was i was always really good at mathematics thought i'd be a math teacher because i always helped my friends with homer that was it like i i i wasn't aspiring to you know some professional level it was just more like oh i'm good at this and that will probably be my career trajectory and then once i was sixteen money started to come in through royalties and suddenly realized that i was i live making more than my math shirt you age seventeen i've noticed this trend and this is actually something that i has always surprised me we had this guy named david rubin signed on at the other day he's like a billionaire guy who started a really successful company and we've had a bunch of like really incredibly successful people on and i've asked this question many times like where did you think it was gonna go and almost all time every time the answer has been like magnitude smaller than where they ended up i think there's just like famous scene with jeff bezos and he was pitching his first investor when he was starting amazon and he was like you know guy if we really nail it i think this company can make a hundred million dollars a year i really think i can do it or if you look at like uber early pitch deck it's like if this goes well and like the number was like thirty or forty or fifty million dollars a year or something like that and it's so interesting to see that like when you have these huge outs sized great results very rarely is the person who's doing it prediction even remotely in that stratosphere oh no i please i mean my first year as a professional skateboard order i had six hundred and forty dollars in the bank from my contest earnings and i went out and bought myself a honda scooter so that i could get to this skate park by myself and not have to rely on my parents for rides because that their hours were not in tune with how much i wanted to skate during that grind period i've i've heard i've read read somewhere like you had like sort five dollar a day budget like for four well that came later so i i went through this this first wave of success which was i i like to a credit to back to the future like when back to future came out in eighty five kids wanted skateboard i mean marty mc invented the skateboard and and a lot of kids that was their first glimpse of what's possible so there was this sort of wave of popularity that happened like eighty six to ninety ish and i was by then a young adult i suddenly i own two houses i had motor of ramp set up and then things dropped off very quickly in ninety one my income was dropping by half every month and what were you like nineteen in nine i was i was twenty two by then what were you making leading up to that and then what did what did it have to oh wow i would say probably in in my desk year was in the hundred thousands ish you know in the late mid eighties late eighties that was i was like lawyer salaries sort of thing and i had no vision of saving for the future so i was like taking all my friends on vacation and buying the newest car and then flipping that one and buying another one and not flipping it i mean paying depreciation and and and buying another one and and you know going on shopping spree sharper image and you know i i had the in of youth on my side and then all of a sudden it went down i mean i guess for if i had to give you an example i was making about fifteen hundred dollars a month from my shoe sponsor air walk they they would call me every month or so and say oh you know we really gotta cut you down a little bit so then that went to a thousand and then two months later that went to five hundred and eventually ended into up with three hundred within the same year time span and as that's happening what are you that's happening i'm i'm struggling to pay my mortgage i'm taking every odd job i can and by that i mean well okay so this is this is nineteen ninety i'm twenty two i am officially too old to be a featured skateboard order like in commercials because they thought it was just a good thing mh but i would but because they knew my name i would get hired as a hollywood consultant so i would i mean i remember this one shoot vividly i i they asked me to build a build a long ramp so that the skater could go through the frame of this thing they wanted and then they were gonna i think drop glitter or something down as you did it and so they gave me five hundred dollars for two days of work and they gave me a hundred dollars to build a long ramp i built a long ramp in my driveway i borrowed someone's truck drove it to hollywood set it up in this park set it up exactly where they wanted and then they said okay can you jump through the frame a couple times so we can see what looks like okay so i do the trick that eventually this younger kids gonna do and he does it and i drive the ramp ramp home and paid my mortgage down one hey let's take a quick break you know that feeling when strategy is done the brief is written everyone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content that someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow well the breeze assistant from hubspot can help it works right inside hubspot you can draft campaign copy blog posts emails all in your brand voice all using your actual customer data so you don't create just content you create content that converts check out hubspot dot com the agent customer platform for growing businesses there's this crazy story where you bought a house when you were seventeen and you're like i mean that wasn't insane because you were a senior high one had a house but what's crazier is that your father supported it i think you said it was maybe even his idea or he was like his idea and i know it was his idea and what because he saw that i was careless with my income i wasn't saving for taxes either well and that's what i wanted to ask about your dad because like sean and i are young parents and like i think your dad was like he founded like the national skateboard association he encouraged to get a house like he that sounds like the most part of dad ever what have you learned anything about parenting from him on like how to like encourage your kids to do what they love oh of course i mean well he was he was the journey example of of supporting your kids even though they're doing something that isn't necessarily going to be a career but to support them in their passions my older sister journey was a singer in high school and he would he would carry it like he was the rod you know he was he was a navy pilot from world war two a child of the depression had a really rough childhood of him on his own so he went all in when he had kids and he was obviously very frugal with his money i mean my mom had to raise four kids on a on a navy salary u while he was away but yeah i learned i learned that you know you just jump in and and and try to connect i mean you know my kids they they all but they're all in into different stuff and and like my my daughter is in the theater and i would take her in new york and go to all the shows with her i i don't wanna go to broadway shows you know what mean like or that wasn't that wasn't something that was like my first choice going to new york but but i wanna experience it with and i wanna understand it and now she's at usc studying theater so it's it's that kind of thing and and i definitely learned it by example for my father when i was seventeen there was a new development of homes going up of duplex near where my parents lived and my dad said i think that it would be a good idea to to try to get one of these homes and i can cosign sign for you because you're not eighteen and i mean all i heard was your new your own place you know and it me like wasn't it about wasn't about the financial future was more like oh my god i have a place to party and you know you're senior in high school with your own place you're the popular one now yeah nobody's just putting you in trash canada in so so you when you were in this kind of the the the downside of it though you're you said you're twenty two you're doing these kind of odd jobs just to pay the mortgage i mean did you consider quitting at this point are you just like i don't know i'm what was your mindset then and what you tell yourself to get kind through that period i well i never considered quitting skating because i never started skating for money so even if i had to find a quote real job at the time i was gonna find time to skate that that was just you know that that was ingrained in me that was that was that was my zen that was my my escape so what i told myself was you better start learning other skills and i did i i learned how to edit a video i actually had a kind of primitive video editing system but i could do video effects and stuff so i took some all jobs doing that as well i actually ironically edited a commercial for any nec c turbo graphics which was a video game system at the time because my friend worked for them and said hey tony you could do this for a tenth of the cost that you're gonna pay and i and i did it and so it was just stuff like that like i just was trying to hustle and and making ends me i mean i by then i had a child i know i had to provide for so it just forced me into gear but all along i kept skating have you ever and i'm i know i'm harp on this but there's there's you and then there's this guy named rodney mu sean have you heard that named rodney mu no he's another he there's him and tony or on the mount rushmore with two other guys but it's definitely him and tony on the mount rushmore skating he's like tony but was for flat ground so he i think maybe the kick flip he invented but he invented so many more things and there's this like talk where he gives and you could see it's i think it's on ted and you could see how obsessed he is where he talks about being i think he was raised in the midwest somewhere with all flat ground and he florida florida sorry he he grew up on a farm in florida and he's like obsessed i know what it's like yeah and that's what i was gonna like you guys are very similar and i'm always fascinated by this obsession and this like because you see it and everyone who's great you have to have a combination of talent luck and this like obsession have you ever like analyzed that personality type about what makes you or someone like rodney tick and how it's different from the average person i i haven't other people have tried i i recognize it like i've i've seen it in younger skater where i know that oh they're they're going to they're going to make it but what what are the tells because you're not there with them everyday so how do how do you pick up on that there's a they can't quench their desire and they do some of the craziest stuff they do some of the hardest things and they just have this look of intensity not joy it doesn't look joyous us that's what it is you know rodney like he he created the flat ground ollie he created the kick flip the three sixty flip the the impossible and he did it and he was on to the nest one it's so funny you're talking about that not feeling joy because you you're like a a very happy nice guy but then in ninety nine i think when you did the nine hundred one of my favorite like clips is not actually the nine hundred but you see i'm always fascinated by this like lock in moment you see you on top of the ramp and you looks like a different person you do not seem joyful you are just totally in the zone and i was always curious what allows you or what do you feel like when you truly lock in and you have to perform i think it was on live tv i i remember watching it i don't remember if it was live or not be of all these people there like i'm always curious what you tell yourself before you have to do something great with all this pressure on in order to lock in because it seems like you change to a different person but i think what what do i tell myself i tell myself this is the one every time and i am way past testing this and if i feel like i mean there's so many elements especially to that trick there's so many elements that's just like you gotta have the right amount of speed you gotta have the right snap you gotta have their trajectory you need enough height to be able to see your landing zone but at some point you take all those things for granted and you know you were going to commit to it even if one of those things isn't right which i did obviously in that moment several times or a dozen times to and you look at it are you fearful you don't see failure that's what it is i i do not see when i when i'm doing that i don't i don't consider consequence i don't consider that i might be too tired and give up i don't consider that i might seriously injure myself because once those thoughts enter your head they can spiral out or that that is the that will be the the actual outcome of this i knew in that moment that you're either i'm either gonna make this drink or you're gonna carry me unconscious out of the serena what were the odds of success of that trick i well for me the odds up to that point in my life the odds were a hundred percent that i'm gonna get hurt if i tried to make this because every other time that i tried to make it i got hurt so you had you had never done it before that moment no in practice nothing never no no no one had no one had made it completely and and ridden away but i knew i mean the last time that i i fully committed to was a few years before that and i broke my rib on a ramp in a warehouse at around two pm on a weekday and i had to go pick up my oldest son what he was he was a little then at preschool barely able to breathe because i had broken my rib and i and like he's he's waiting for me so i had to go again get like that that was the sort of state of things in nineteen ninety four and then fast forward and no one's watching like i just did it because i wanna to make it and then fast forward five years and it's on this huge stage on live espn like it just made those sense but i blocked all that out because it was like i'm finally the threshold of doing this thing that has plagued me for ten years and i have the support of my peers which i mean i think i think what people saw in that moment that that is much bigger than what i did is they saw that there's this this pursuit the sport that yes it's competitive but it's there's so much in it and the progression of it is dependent on a collective effort and so what they saw was like well this that seems cool i i feel like a lot of kids saw it like this seems cool like you skate with your friends you competing against them but they cheer you on and you can do stuff that no one's ever done i don't know i you know i i hope that that was the bigger takeaway from that moment oh this is crazy to me so i okay so i'm not obviously i'm not like sam i'm not a skater i didn't you yeah but i paid a attention to this just because everybody did at that moment it was cool i had always assumed just because i was like didn't really look that much into it to be honest but i just always assumed that i knew nobody had ever done it kind of like in competition or visibly i didn't know you had never done it in practice not even like that yeah i'm closer to the the gap between like kind of the expected objective result which would have been you break your river worse and then like the glory of of actually pulling it off in this moment that doesn't even make sense to me that blows my mind that you even tried it like what was the what was the thought process the reason i tried it i i'll tell you the reason i tried it is because it was a best trick event we had twenty minutes my best trick at the time was a burial seven twenty which means that your body does a double spin seven twenty and your board does nine hundred that's what it that's what the burial all means mh i had made that once in my life and so i i was like that's my best trick right i did it i did it halfway into the event i didn't expect to be able to make it even possibly so the fact that i did it i didn't really have anywhere to go and if i remember correctly the the and the on side announcer not the not the on air announcer but the on announcer dave duncan who has been announcing skate competition since the eighties he he called me out and he's like let's see one of those nine hundred to attempts tony and i was like dude like cut the hell things really you you know i we can't do it you know i never haven't done it but i thought yeah why not that's that is the next stage of what i wanna do and yeah i tried my first couple were just for the crowd it was just more like here this is what it looks like to spend two and a half times around because i i can i can bail out of them safely it's when i really start to commit to him is when they start getting dangerous and i would say within my probably like fifth attempt something click that every attempt was was consistent usually we're skating on these rick ramps their you know one wall is kind of revert one walls over revert they're not that wide like you know this was state of the art at half pipe that we had never really been able to ride in those years and i felt like wow my speed is consistent my spin is consistent like before i i would get maybe one good try out of five and i had to commit to that one good try and now all the tries were good so i guess i can commit again i thought you know somewhere around the sixth attempts i i thought alright i'm gonna i'm gonna commit to these landings and and see how it goes right you know i knew that the time was up i thought we were off air because they said you twenty minutes so i figured okay that's the live feed right but that wasn't that wasn't the incentive for this the incentive for this was to finally get past this this milestone or this hurdle that had plagued me for so long so when i finally made it you know i knew that it wasn't part of the competition i didn't think it was on air to live tv it was just finally this relief that's what you saw it was just like and and my first thought was i never have to do this again i'm free i'm free from this burden free of this little did i know watch what you wish for because let know everywhere i went man that's all the ones the following years people were like do a nine hundred wait so were you able to just do nine hundreds from then on like you you do them occasionally but they always took several tries and they didn't always work out sometimes i would just get exhausted and it didn't work or the ramp is too slippery or whatever dude sean you should see it now now there's kids that would do like back to back like is it what's after nine hundred ten ten twenty they they they do nine hundred they you back to back nine hundreds yeah one kid did a kick flip body barrel all nine hundred you know i mean in the middle of the nine this like a roger ban now they know it's possible or like it's yeah you're bad that's what it was always and but that is the the through line of skateboarding you we we keep building upon what we saw which is the exactly what i did but the era that i grew up in a three sixty was the most you could spend and then mike mcgill did the five forty and then i did a seven twenty and then fourteen years past in between that in a nine hundred so i discovered you through your video game i used to play it every day after school all the dream cast i love that thing that game was incredible can you tell a story about the video game and i i understand it there was like a you know because there's a business podcast there was like a moment where they tried to buy you out or like your royalties out could you just tell the video game story of of the tony hawk game well i mean you're talking about my first million that that's yeah that's where it came from mh without question the well the story of the game it started actually more around nineteen ninety seven i got a call from a a video game designer i i would say more like a code who was said i wanna i you know i worked on this engine for skateboarding i wanna see if you would go pitch it with me as a game to publishers and console console manufacturers and i was all in i mean i i loved you know i was i was arcade kid there was an arcade ski park and the last game that had been released up to that moment was skater die for comm or sixty four so we're we're years past that we were coming into home consoles more now and and this the the what he had it was on a laptop it was it was keyboard controls it was like the skater just kinda carving in around bowls it was it wasn't great but it was it was something and and the graphics looked better than anything that had been previously released so i went with him two meetings we met nintendo we met a few software publishers and just no takers i mean it was almost embarrassing the conversations that we were having with these people because it was like i remember one one guy said skateboarding is even popular why would a skateboarding video game be popular was this before the nine hundred yeah yeah yeah this is like this is like ninety seven ish and i didn't have a good answer to that and and this guy that i was working with god really frustrated and he just said look i gotta i gotta find a job like i said i don't think this is it i don't think this is what's happening and i i kind of agreed with him like i don't really wanna go to these pitch meetings either because they're just kind of degrading and he said aaron but i do remember when the last thing he said to me said i feel like your name is now planted in the video game world as someone who would like to work on a game or do a game and and if someone does one they'll probably call you and i was like sure and about a year later i got a call from max and they said we heard you're working on a game and i was like i'm not but i want to and they said well we are we are working on a game that is skateboarding and we would like you to come see it and see if you wanna be involved and and i went up to act they had just released what was it called apocalypse with bruce willis like literally featuring the the likeness and voice of r willis which was kind of a that was a new thing were they big and they said the game no the company active division no now now they're huge i mean they're their biggest hit before that was pit fall okay but was it like dozens or hundreds of employees more like dozens wow they had just been taken over bobby ko actually just just took over the company and i think bought it for much less than they ever expected and they were just trying to make something new happen and like i said i mean you're talking about pi fall i was like that was mid eighties the good thing about that was that they were open to kinda anything they didn't have this cookie cutter approach that this is how we make popular games they have to be first person shooter they have you know they didn't have the call of duty mindset mh so they were willing to let us kinda go crazy with a skate so i went up there and the very they handed me a controller and a modified playstation and the first version of what became t hp that i got to play was bruce willis on a skateboard with a gun strapped to his back doing all kick flips across the desert and it was amazing i mean it was it was like as soon as i did i was intuitive the controls were intuitive i was like i said i was doing i was doing meth errors no you weren't willis was doing with this yeah method yeah if he was and i thought this is this could be the coolest thing ever first skateboard orders and like everyone told me at the time skateboarding was not popular but i set out to make a skateboarding game that hardcore skater themselves would appreciate that was it that was it was awesome like i don't know if you know the sean but all the levels they were those are real like skate spots like when i moved to san francisco i was like i saw third in army on tony pro skater i gotta go skate it or like that's how i got introduced to like gold finger and like a lot of these bands that was awesome and then like you know list steam or andrew reynolds jeff reilly like all these skater that were on there they were like my guys now it it it it created a whole thing it was pretty wild because it was like authentic to like the skater nerds could talk about it but then like anyone was into it it was it was it was pretty crazy have you given that sweet spot where the hardcore you know enthusiasts you know respects it but it's broad enough where a guy like me who's never skateboard didn't know these are all after parks i just could use and have fun right like a pixar movie where it has two two different people can watch it and get it both enjoy but at two totally different levels yeah and and i didn't really expect it to resonate with non skater i knew it was a fun game because i had play video games were whole life but i also knew that it was niche and skateboarding was still kind of more alternative and and whatever you wanna say but i will say that i got lucky in i mean i got lucky in all kinds of ways but but one way was i had just done a couple of big marketing campaigns promotions for brands that that i believe in but but their campaign was cheesy in terms of how represented skateboarding because they wanted you know it was it was madison avenue and they they had their take on what skateboarding was and i just went along because i'm finally getting paid you know to to to do something with skateboarding and i but i didn't feel like it it had skateboarding integrity in mind or they didn't really care about it and so i told myself if i get any more big deals from big companies i'm going to i'm going to demand that i have final approval over what goes out that was a daring move at that time because skateboarding was still you know x games but everyone else knew better of how to do commercials and campaigns and stuff and so the very first contract i signed with that approval demand was act activation and like i said they were kind of throwing everything against the wall so they said okay we'll we'll we'll trust him and then as the game started to get developed as it started there was kind of a buzz in the air about it i actually i mean it's been a long time so i'm not getting in trouble anymore but i burned copies of it from my friends while we are developing it so like a few of my friends have beta versions of t p and i actually modified their playstation so they can play it because i wanted fee honest feedback from real skater this is before we actually chose the characters and they would let other people play it and prominent skater and at some point there was a buzz in the skate industry about the game they just called the game and i knew that we were on to something if hardcore skater are excited to go by a console to play this game and then as as activation started to as we were getting close to the release date they started sending it to game review magazines you know media outlets whoever would would pay attention and started getting insane p feedback i mean they were getting reviews of like nine nine point o not you know perfect ten whatever and right before the release they called me and said we wanna offer you a buyout of future royalties my guess so what does that mean they said we wanna offer you a half million dollars and then you won't get royalties going forward at that time of my life someone saying a half million dollars sounded like a half a gazillion dollars like i had never heard anyone speak those words unless they're talking about some fantastical person that we will never meet but i had just bought a new house i had got i got a mortgage i could finally afford i had some decent prospects with sponsorships with a competition i was still competing and i thought no i'm gonna let her ride like why not and that's how i remember first million do you remember or can you recall the day after the first game or a few games in or a few years in where you started making money where you're like oh wow life is different now because of this game sure yeah i would say definitely after the second release where things exploded with interest and also just in terms because because of that people knew my name more in the general public and then suddenly i was getting offers to do bigger campaigns i mean i was getting invited to red carpet premier you know just random stuff that made no sense to me it was exciting but it was also just kinda like this is a weird level of fame that i'd never expected or even wanted but i will tell you that when when the fourth game was released if i have this right i had lunch with with my connection at at act actually went la it's like i really wanna talk to you about about the game and and the future of it and fourth game discover released it got me in the top ten of sales right away and he said the first three are still in the top ten so at that time four out of the top ten games were t p and i still i don't what does that even mean and he's like this is what it means any he split a check across table for four point five million dollars was that life changing yeah was it the same feeling as the nine hundred just relief or this time you had some joy i mean it's joyous it's you know i i never did it for that though so it wasn't like oh okay that's it i'm finally i finally made it it was nice to know that my family would not have to to stroke thanks podcast is brought you by my ends at mercury they make the world's best banking product i think you know this already i used mercury for all of my businesses i think i like maybe seven or eight businesses we use mercury as our business banking across all of them and now they actually just launched a personal banking account so i have my personal account there i moved off of wells fargo in chase i'm just all in on mercury why i like products that are easy to use i like products that get me and the problems that have so like very easy to make a joint account with my wife very easy to spin up virtual cards one click and i get savings yield it just has all the stuff that i need in one place so if you're looking for the best banking product on the market it's stephanie mercury i will fist fight any way to who dis disagrees me on that go to mercury dot com slash personal and learn more mercury is a fintech not an fdic insured bank banking services are provided through choice financial group and call them an a members fdic not many people were doing the type of thing you did like you're actually in a way one of the first kind of influencers to have a product or a brand right now like you know today that's very very common but actually you're you're one of the kind of early success stories you know that that was super strange i mean people would talk about tony hawk and they're not talking about me even the game designers and and the people were act would be like oh for the next tony hawk i'm like hi well it's a very it's a it's a very strange thing because there's like wayne g michael jordan tiger woods lance armstrong tony hawk like that's a very and then maybe like kelly slater for surfing but it's a very strange thing i'd have to imagine you guys wearing out once a year you stick together face of the sport yeah dinner that we do like you put your hands in the middle like your rain touch wow yeah that's some illuminati no but my name was associated with games like jordan is you probably associate with shoes right but it was wild and and i think at some point i embraced that more i was trying to you know make it more like this not me that's not weather but i i'm proud of the the series and i'm proud of what i brought to it and i'm proud of how it affected kids at a form of age like like you said people discovered a certain type of music they discovered a love for skateboarding i think also a fan based discovered an appreciation for skateboarding that maybe they never had and that was the that was the tipping point for for skateboarding because before that the only people that skate were that loves skating were skater right you could not explain the nuances of a kick flip to a non skater before nineteen ninety eight they didn't care like what why are you still playing with that toy and after that it was like people tuned in and they appreciated that like there there became a reference rodney mu finally you know he was like the odd ball freestyle kid and all of a sudden was like nope he created this these tricks in this language well i think one of the things that for me at least you know i don't think i ever cared about the skating but there was always something that you know i think the great athletes to the great performers transcend the sport so to me what you did was not about skating but it was about the idea of going for it like you didn't just wow like that that guy really cares he's really going for he's putting he's taking risk you know his courage it's cool there's like bigger ideas that you can attach to that you could use in other other ways and don't give you an example i think recently you talked about how you know you're skating you broke your femur and you had this great tweet about like coming back and just trying to do a kick flip again and then i think the way you said it was like it was so satisfying when you finally were able to do it coming back from the injury you're older now and like this is a trick that you could have done in your sleep before but now it's hard and it was so satisfying to pull it off and you're like find your kick flip and you know i'm not skating but i could take that and i can use that though i could find that right now that was inspiring yeah well i think it was more i i had a bad recovery the when i broke my leg i my bone actually moved out of place it was it had been set with a titanium rod and i just got back out there too soon so i kinda sabotage the healing eight months later i had to have a reset again and redone again so i never really even got to the kick flip stage and that first go around and then when i got a reset and i started to do a proper recovery and wait enough time when i did it it was so hard like it was so you know scary painful it was ugly like it's not the kick that you wanna promote it was just more like i did a terrible sloppy one but i did it and i think that's what i was trying to convey is like find your kick flip it doesn't have to be perfect it doesn't have to be the dream that you have set for yourself but get to that stage because then there's more to offer there's more to get to after that can you kinda give a a rundown of what like the tony hawk and empire is right now we had rob on rob d a while ago and we've become buddies with him and you guys seem similar where you have like it appears as though you have like a a fantasy factory like you have the warehouse with a ramp and you got a team there what's the whole business now well bird skateboard is my first company that i started in nineteen ninety two i've got a bird board right now by the way oh thank you you're keeping us alive and then i do a lot of speaking engagements kinda like rodney that's what rodney bread and butter is now really and so i'm doing a lot of those i do we do it we have a charity skip our project we have hawk shoes back in the mix we have hog clothing as well and we do a lot a lot of licensing we have our own video production company nine hundred films who have done stuff with like liquid death pretty much anything that you've seen of me out there q and all ridge walls stuff like that it's it's done through nine hundred films and and also just skate content and then i have my ramp i mean really that's the the the that's the pinnacle of the office what you say i have my ramp what does that mean that's like i have i have my own half fight yeah okay i have my own half five in the warehouse of the office office the crown is like that literally when i hang up with you guys i'm going there to skate i'm not going there for a meeting i'm not going there for some sort of pitch or concept it's i'm going there because wanna skate but i think you've done some good angel investments too right yeah i i i've definitely gotten lucky in that i get to i you know i i i sort of know some of the the main silicon valley players that i've met through the years and they've invited me to invest in some stuff that that i was interested in and probably wouldn't have had a a weigh in what are some big ones nest blue bottle well liquid death but they're you know they're still trying to figure out with what they're doing events dot com i think it's about to go public and and a bunch of others and i'm still holding doc sign is one of them doc yeah that's a basic do you you know when you when you kind of think about because it looks like you did a bunch of different business venture some work some did normal as an entrepreneur sure yep if you think back now like what what was common about the ones that worked and what was common about the ones that didn't do do you find a through line or kind of a signal there that you can now look out for more not always no i mean i would say restaurants have been the risk but also i can't stay away what did you do or what have you done i am vet well i invested in a few some didn't work what one specifically counter i don't know if you guys ever have been there but yeah they they started a few chain they started a few in san diego and i invested in two of them and that didn't work but currently chicken hawk is is our nashville hot chicken restaurants it's here in anita that i'm super proud of and it's it's you know it the menu speaks for itself people love the vibe it's the vibe is like nineties skate we have a bunch of videos playing i have a bunch of my sort of trophies and artifacts on display there but i would say what has worked is if it's something that i am truly passionate about and that i can contribute in more ways than just money the those seem to be the ones that that do well enough and the people behind it i mean that's what it is it's just like you know there there's sort of a dream team of people that i know and if they tap me to be involved in something even if something i know nothing about i'm in and and then not those don't always work either but but for the most part their success rate is is unparalleled yeah i'm a i'm a huge bird fan but rob when he was on he was like man skateboarding particularly decks like it's a really hard business like the margins are small and if i remember correctly oh yeah decks have been like sixty dollars for like twenty years like the price has always been the same they're still sixty bucks and i was fourteen there were sixty dollars can you tell us the the origin story of it and what was like the peak in terms of how big it was and what's it ever even good even at its peak yeah well it the the first few years of bird house were pretty bleak in fact i had a partner at the time per who was also a pro skater and he we had some heavy discussions i would say it within the third or fourth year of being a business that we we can't keep doing we can't keep cutting our salary for one but we definitely can't lose money i got lucky that he had a business degree and he was able to to keep it afloat and then when the x game started we saw an uptick of interest which actually brought us into finally being profitable around ninety seven ninety eight and then when the video game was released i do remember having this conversation with them too where i said you know we gotta include our skateboard in the game as as options and he said well they should be paying us and and i was like they don't have any money you know they they weren't throw money around at the time and also i disagree agree because i feel like this could be the ultimate marketing tool once this gets out there people will know what bird houses is and a lot of you know some of the skater in the game were bird house riders of course but also because i believe there were some the best of the time and that is what happened when that game got released our sales went ballistic i mean that those were the those were the heyday of bird house in terms of recognition in terms of the consumers wanting it probably ninety nine to two thousand five ish was sort of the peak and but i've kept it going all through the years even through the harder times you know through being creative doing licensing trying to supplement the paying riders through other licensing of my own because i still love it you know even it's not it's not yes rob wright it is not a profitable business but i don't care hey i don't know if you saw this story about novak djokovic of it and it was i think it was djokovic it was some was either him or one of the other top players and they were he was in a slump or he was kinda falling out of love with the sport and his coach or whatever had a great conversation with him which was like you know when you when you got into this and you were at your peak you know was it because you were winning was it because you wanted these titles was it what was the thing he's like no i just love to swing the racket and he's like do you still love to swing the racket it's like i love to swing the racket he's like well then you should just go out there and swing the racket and he like got back on form and it went back to the top and kinda like red discovered the love of the game had did you did you have moments like like you said like after this jets i'm gonna go skate it seems like you whenever never i never lost my interest in skating not not once in fact at some point all of the other stuff i was doing especially when the video game was was hitting was just distracting from my actual skate time and and i had to schedule it out and i remember like there was a video that these guys wanted me to be in and i thought it was important it's like a more core video but but it was like they they were offering me to be have a little section in it and i was looking at my schedule and i was like i have i have from one pm to two pm next thursday that's all i can give you and i remember thinking like this kinda of sucks like right that that's how i have to schedule my skating it used to be i i just did it when i wanted to i learned to shift that priority through later years i mean in all kinds of ways mostly to to spend time with my family but but also to find time to skate in a meaningful way not just for a video hey i wanna ask you about internet culture because i grew up watching like four one one videos and like basically sean like before the internet like there was magazines like t and then there was trans world and they would put out i don't think t did it but these these companies in in audio and bird house would put out these escape videos quarterly annually or they would have like monthly video it was obviously a video magazine and you'd have to go to the escape shop and you'd have to buy it and it was all word mouth and it was awesome because you start falling in love with these skater because they would show personality like it was almost like a combination of skype video music video and home video and then eventually occasionally it'd be stunt which is how jackass kinda came to be but it was really cool because it was like sort of like vlogging before youtube came around and it was very impactful to me and then there was like z's like t which is a magazine that's still around they were that they were pretty amazing and it's sort of like when youtube it was first e bombs world and then youtube but when it started getting popular i remember thinking this is just escape videos this is like what i like it was very it was so interesting how this like sub culture diy culture it didn't directly become mainstream but it definitely influenced the thing that influenced the thing do you know what i mean oh for sure i think that yeah skating it was it's just it was just a bunch of rag tag creative people trying to find an outlet and and it's funny you said z i someone just gave me this this is my z i created in nineteen eighty two that's awesome and my friend had one copy of it and that's what we did like we it was this is before you know there were no ski magazine so i just created one so what be what's in that what what would be in it mostly pictures of my friends skating at our local park del omar i even like fake some ads like i i made an any ad of independent writers indian didn't pay me anything to do this in fact my brother worked at a newspaper at the time i used all of their resources to make these happen and then you would distribute them where i can remember what you guy i put i put them on display at the skate park because they're at that time del skate ranch was the only park open in southern california so i just put them on display and i think that i sold them for fifty cents and at one point the skate park manager said hey do you want the money from your magazines and i have like thirty dollars and i was so excited but did you did you meet any of the early internet company guys like like the like youtube or anything like that because it seems like there would've been a lot of crossover between in the world the one the one guy i met in those early days was kevin rose because he he was a har skater when he was doing dig and he actually got me to go to my first comic con because he wanted to do an interview with me and it's funny because other live san diego and i avoided comic con like the plague because of all the traffic but he and i got close and and he's the one who led me into blue bottle that's a good hook up hey you said you you do like corporate speaking or you do speaking gigs what's the main message you try to get across at those well i kinda it depends on what it is if it's a keynote i'll take people through my story for the most part and and try to give some examples of turning points and decision making but also i i fine tune it to what their theme is right so i'll pick specific stories to to lean into depending on what their messaging is and then sometimes i just do what they call fireside chats like with the mediator i'll take questions from the audience that's more fun for me because you can go different places with that and on different tangent is there anything that you're gonna look forward to now in terms of like business or in terms of like a accomplishments that you haven't done yet what's keeping you up at night oh wow yeah i i don't have like lofty goals really i just trying to you know keep it moving i i'm still skating so i i think that that's probably you know as as ridiculous as it sounds when i'm closing in on sixty here that i still wanna learn some tricks but like i i try to trick yesterday and i'm gonna go back at it today it's not it's not some high impact spinning move but it but it's something that that gives me joy and and incentive but but in terms of more life stuff i mean we have a grandchild now and that is i understand why people gus about being grandparents because that is the most fun thing ever and so i wanna make time to be available to him and and also to still provide for our family so i'm trying to find that that's always the challenge but i'm up for it i've been kinda depressed over last twelve months when i go out and skate now it takes so much longer to warm up like to get my hips swarmed up it's crazy and then every time it's well when you when you when you close in on fifty eight some days you just don't warm up you don't get there there that that's that's what you have to look forward to you pack it up like that no you don't pack it up you just have to take what you have what like whatever you got that day you have to take and me like alright that's all i can get like i used to go and i'm like i have to try one new trick and now i like i can't get hurt because i gotta lift my kids up later today and so like if i feel pressure it takes forever to get my hips activated and warmed up it sucks man it sucks it's the only time that i felt old is skating i well i i feel you there but but also i do have some techniques for for warming up pre skating that that have helped me in my last five years for sure that i can share with you but maybe maybe this is the next the next thing this is the next depending hawk pro skater it's a skating it's for stretching a skating for aging video series that you create dvd straight to v maybe and we you can just distribute it to the tens tens of people out there who are yeah you know forty plus skater that are trying to still keep it well one of my friends pro skater was a pro skater in the nineties he actually asked me like do you have any tips for sci and i sent him all my stretches i do before i skate like i just set my phone up and it's like here's is this one this one and make sure homes are out dude i'm not joking i need that alright here well you wanna it you wanna see you show you when i know alrighty give it to us this is this is the the first one can you see you right here yeah alright yep get on one knee going forward everything is straight through your back even your neck you you're trying to push upward with your head and your neck turn down and then you hit hands out twist them out keep them twist keep pushing out like this okay all that tension for thirty seconds right are you leaning forward and everything nice forward it yeah you continue forward do with the other one three seconds but before your hips you wanna do one out too like this oh there you go okay alright i'm gonna do that nah that's that's like the quickest one wanna i'm gonna go to riverside the skate park and sometimes they i go to hopkins which sean in new york city hopkins it's kinda like it's a little hardcore like the guys are are can be rough if they're really good i'm gonna do that and i'll be like guys tony tony told me like it's okay i don't i don't think guys get don't know if that's gonna get you the leverage that you think it is but like could say it either way i tend to i tend to do them outside of the skate space and then i come in more warmed up like that i'm already wearing a helmet so i'm older than everyone i'm wearing a helmet so i already get like in the club i already got a little luck why is tony's foundation building huge stretching areas and to all the parts that they're building but i but i'd feel you in like you're that you're when i go to skate park i usually go before ten am because that's the time when it's crusty the old dudes full pads and you know they're not they're they're stoked you're there they're not gonna give you a hard time or anything or it's parents with little kids yeah so that's to me that's the those are the prime hours like like eight to eleven am at the skate art and sean one of the fun i like having shawn here because i can explain skating one of the fun parts when you're a kid is when you do streets skating you go to like corporate buildings and you jumped down the stairs and hand rails and stuff and it's you always get the police call and so part of the culture is kinda like avoiding getting that done to you and like the confrontation i don't do that at all anymore because i'm like i don't want someone to take a photo where i look stupid i don't want a confrontation so i'm as i'm softer than cream cheese now it's only skate parks also i i don't wanna look bet but to to your advantage there are way more skate parks than ever yeah have way better street obstacle so you're living in the best timeline for that but that was like the most fun as a kid with skating until you get the police called and running from the cops and going have so many tickets what would what would a ticket it be like trespassing i'm i got i gotta ticket it for skating on the boardwalk of the beach in oceans side for a hundred and fifty bucks in nineteen ninety that's ridiculous that was and i'd paid it to avoid going to court to try to fight it because i was like i guess you can't skate on the boardwalk i thought this is california i thought like we were living the dream have you been arrested no i got i got a speeding ticket in georgia and this is around the same time like ninety two ish and i mean i was i literally rented a geo metro i got a speeding taker for going seventy in a fifty five and the guy looked at my license and immediately like his whole vibe changed because was from california and he's like oh i'm taking this guy down and he goes well different from california i can't write you a take it you're gonna have to come to the the sheriff's department and put me in a holding cell wow for twenty five hours and then well he just he just said like he couldn't process whatever it was whatever its excuse was couldn't process he could process us a a driver's license from california and i had to pay cash to get out and i was like well how do i get cash and luckily there was someone with me who was one of our team riders and i handed him my atm card i to go get as much as you can out of the out of an atm please right now and so he had to drive into this little town get whatever i can get two hundred bucks come back and i pay the fine let us go i think you got hustle my friend it felt like i a shake down yeah it's like when the when you're at of strip club and they wanna give you a lap dance answer it take you straight to the atm and then to go in the back it'll like i mean it wasn't but yes don't to answer your question was jail kinda well not you work what we'll we'll take that as a yes tanya i gotta say we've done like a thousand episodes of this podcast the you are one of my favorite guys to ever have on you you're you're oh i appreciate that's a fun hang super humble just a good time and i i really appreciate this like this was a lot of fun for us yeah thank you thanks for help me and i know and sam i wanna compliment you for hiding how exciting this is for you i know you you let a little bit of it out but like sam is like you know he's gonna have to call a doctor after this it's it's lasting for more than four hours here so sam good job keep doing those three stacey flips don't lose them i'm gonna try and do them him until him i'm fifty and it was you know you're my hero as a kid and i still look up to you so i definitely was getting on the inside talking to you so i i really appreciate it i appreciate a bad ass well thank you that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rude world i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day's off on a less travel never looking back alright let's take a quick break i wanna tell you about marketing school it is a podcast that is part of the hubspot podcast network and it is run by neil patel and eric too and these guys are both mark who are running businesses and so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it this is the podcast for you check it out wherever you get your podcast