Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - From Skater to Entrepreneur ft. Greg Lutzka | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

In this episode of Coffeez for Closers, we hang out with Greg Lutzka, a pro skateboarder with a long list of contest wins and a reputation for technical skill. Originally from Milwaukee, Greg packed up and headed to Southern California at 18 to chase his skateboarding dreams.But Greg’s story doesn’t stop at skating. He’s also an entrepreneur, running Lutzka’s Garage, an online shop for motorcycle parts, and teaming up with brands like Saddlemen and Bassani Exhaust to design custom products.We talk about his move from the Midwest, life as a pro skater, and how he’s turned his love for action sports into a growing business.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Skating isn't just about shredding the pavement, it's a lifestyle, a passion, but let's be honest, it doesn't always pay the bills. So how did Greg Lutska go from clearing $2 million in a year to building a real estate empire while most skaters are just trying to make rent? Thank God I met like my neighbor Ben that got me into buying real estate. Because at the time we were buying these condos, 50, 60 grand. Now they're worth almost 200. Meanwhile, most skaters are struggling to stay afloat because the industry just isn't built to sustain them.

Most skaters, professional skateboarders, aren't really eaten, are not financially getting taken care of well. So what's the difference? Why are some skaters broke while Greg Lutzka is out here playing 4D Monopoly? It's not just luck, it's strategy. On this episode of coffees, we break down what separates skaters who grind the rails from those who grind toward financial freedom. Welcome to the show. Yeah, I think, I mean, any skateboarder, action sports athlete, football player, any of that, kind of stuff, man. It's like you, you have a short window to really make it and make some money doing

what you love to do, right? Because your legs give out or, you know, new kids come on the block, whatever it is, or you could get hurt. So I think it's very important to invest the money that you're making in the career that you're at. And one of the things that I did throughout my whole career over the last 20 years was constantly investing into real estate. I love real estate. I bought my first home when I was 19 years old in Huntington Beach, which I still have to this day. That property has more than doubled in value. And, you know, long story short, we have a game plan to sell that right now. It's been a condo if it's an only doubled in value. Yeah. Yeah, it was a condo that I bought for 300 and I think it was 320 grand back then. And I remember I'm from the Midwest, right? So in Milwaukee,

Wisconsin, properties there are a lot cheaper. So a condo that's 300 and some thousand dollars back then was like, I don't want to say a mansion, but like a huge property in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. So my dad was like, man, this seems like very expensive for a condo. But it was like, actually one of the cheaper condos that I found in the Penny Saver, the little panther that they gave out in Huntington Beach. And it was actually the lowest HOA and it was in the Huntington Continentals. The lowest HOA and one of the one of the lower priced condos actually in Huntington. And I got it for 300 and some grand, 320 grand. And you have the beach?

Berkerson Adams area. So it's not too far from the beach. And I live there for a couple years, right? And then I end up renting it out. And over the last, you know, the last 15 years, it's doubled in price. So we have a game plan to sell that condo. I don't owe too much on it. And then reinvesting that money doing a 1031 exchange and those got those out there that invest in the real estate know what that is. You basically won't have to pay that capital gains tax on that money that you make because we have a beautiful government that loves to take half your money. Unless you're an investor. Unless you're an investor.

So what I do is I always 1031 exchange it into a bigger property. So I have a game plan with that property to invest now in the Midwest where I have been investing a lot. into over the last couple years to an apartment complex. So essentially we're going to take that one unit turning into multiple units to have more cash flow. Just, you know, I want to 10x my portfolio where it's at now. So I'm making moves to basically build even more of a real estate empire than what I already have and had built over the years. But real estate is a powerful thing. You just got to know what you're doing with it.

You can't just, you know, just invest wherever and you got to run your numbers and you got to work with a great company. like yourself and with the mortgage capital that can go out there and get you good rates that can save on those fees that um yeah it's the fees and they're you know that's really where you get killed when the numbers own pencil and that's what i liked about you immediately when we started working together is like yeah your business acumen was on point yeah yeah yeah and what here oh no no no i got to work with joe but it's it's been a great relationship to start um and i think another thing i was going to say is like you really got to know the markets you know like i used to invest a lot into Arizona and the prices have gone up there quite a bit. And if you're going to do your typical

people out there that want to get into real estate, put your typical 20% down or 25% down, you need to calculate in how much you're spending on the property, right, what your mortgage is going to be, what your property tax is going to be, what your insurance is going to be. If it has the HOA, tie in those numbers and also leave a little space for 10% for a management group, a vacancy, those kind of things, because a place like Arizona where I used to, to invest into and put that typical percent down, all your expenses might be more than what you're bringing in from rent. Yeah. So you can actually be in the negative and losing money every single month and really

mess up on investing into a property like that. Where I invest into in the Midwest, you know, we're buying these duplexes. And essentially, after running the numbers, you know, one unit. So I'm buying a two units. And we just closed actually on a threeplex Monday, two days ago. But essentially, I buy these duplexes. One unit almost pays for all the expenses, right? The other unit is kind of where you're making a little bit of cash flow. And because the interest rates are a little bit higher right now when the interest rates drop, we're going to gain equity in the company or in the in the property. We're going to do a cash out refinance. Get back a lot of that cash that we put into the property and we're going to reinvest it into a next property. And we're going to get a lower

interest rate. So we're essentially going to save some money on possibly with our monthly payments. and we're going to get cash back. We're going to reinvest into the market. And that's called the birth strategy. Buy, buy rehab, refinance, reinvest, right? And that's what a lot of people do. But you got to know your market, right? Because if you buy in a market like California and your expenses are more than what you're

bringing in on your rents, you're going to be losing money. So I think that's where a lot of people kind of get confused on, okay, I'm going to invest in a real estate and they don't look at the market and where they're investing. And I like states like, you know, like Ohio or Michigan or back around. I'm from Wisconsin where it's a lot cheaper and you can get, you know, these duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, apartment complexes for a lot cheaper than places like that where people are flooded. You're not getting fourplexes here in Costa Mesa. No, no.

You'll be losing money, you know. And then, you know, I like working with you. Obviously, you're a good buddy of mine. And you do a great thing with, with real estate with the mortgage industry. And you're one of the top in the, you are the top actually company in the country. In the country. So it's crazy how we met. And we met the buddy of ours, David Metzler.

Metsler. So, you know, you saved me a lot of money on the fees. You went out there, got the lowest interest rate we could possibly get because, you know, buying an investment property is different than buying a personal home, right? So working with you guys. They got a pencil. That's got a pencil. There's no wiggle room for a bad deal.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Especially right now where, you know, you got to make sure, you know, there's no room to be slipping because it is it is a tough market out there in the real estate world prices are high interest rates are high expenses are high um property taxes are going up so you just got to be very interest is going up interest is going up yeah no we haven't even started the show yet i haven't even asked my first question my opening question we already dove into the nitty gritty yeah so i like to start the show which we're five minutes in yeah uh with the opening question just to get some people

understand how who is gregg yes so the opening question for you gregg is uh how do you start your morning. What's your morning routine? It's different every day. You know what I mean? Like lately it's been a lot of Zoom meetings. I wake up. You know, I usually make an Asahi bowl. I work with Sam Bazaan, but I love Asahi. So I do the sugar-free assa-seye. So I usually eat something light. We're having a lot of Zoom meetings right now because we're starting to film season two of my TV show that's on Fuel TV. But every day is different. I try to skate as much as I can. Some days I'm not able to skate. Some days I'm working on product designs for new products that are coming out. Um, it's just, you know, every day is a little bit different. Some days I'm traveling. You know, I just got back in Houston, Texas from the aspire tour. That was really cool. Uh, but essentially, you know, I love skateboarding. I love riding motorcycles. I love mountain biking. So I try to, I try to incorporate, you know, keeping my happiness and being sane and doing the things I love to do. Um, and then also like handling business and growing, you know, the ideas. Yeah, the ideas I have with the TV show, um, you know, with with with the real estate, you know, expanding it. Um, and then. And then also like handling. And, you know, the idea. Yeah. The idea is the idea. Yeah. The idea is. Um, you know, um, you know, um, um, with, with the real estate. You know, um, um, expanding that whole, that whole empire has been a big passion of mine and seeing that grow has been phenomenal. Taking some of the money that I'm making in other categories, you know, in skateboarding

and investing that into real estate has really become, you know, one of the things that I focus on because I know that one day skateboard money is not going to be coming in anymore. You know, these legs aren't going to be able to jump down, you know, what you see on the screen here, you know, 10 stairs, 15 stair handrails, like that's just not going to happen. But I love skateboarding. It's a passion of mine. It's gave me opportunity to travel the world. I'll skate to the day I die, but I don't think I'm going to be competing for the rest of my life. You think you skate at 75? I'll always skate, man. I'm going to be skateboarding. I'm going to be snowboarding at the mountains. I'm going to be riding that mountain bike. I'm going to ride that Harley

Davidson motorcycle to the day I die. Like that's what I live for. That's what I love. That's in my blood. You know what I mean? So along with that came other passions and business was one of the big passions of like how to invest my money properly, learning from that, protecting my assets, you know, making sure, okay, am I investing in the right properties in the right market, but don't put these in your personal name, get these out of your personal name, put these into an LLC. Do you have them on a separate LLCs or one? I have them in different LLCs and then I have them held by a holding company out of Wyoming. So you have anonymity. And then from that, I have it all held by a living trust. So I'm the beneficiary of those. So essentially, these properties aren't

in my name. So if someone were to come after me personally, they can't really get those properties because you can't sue a person, you know, individual and an S or an LLC, a corporation at the same time. If someone in the LLC and the property were to sue myself or the LLC, I should say, they can't come after my personal home and my personal bank account or anything like that. So you keep those completely separate. So you're protecting yourself from renters coming after you personally, only be able to come after what's in the LLC possibly. and you protect yourself from if you were to do something out there in the world for that person to come after your investment properties because it's a business now.

You can't sue the business. You can sue me personally, but you can't go after the business. You know what I mean? So it's very important to kind of understand how that works and structure yourself properly to protect yourself on both ways. You know what I mean? So that's something that I've learned a lot more over just recently and working with Anderson, advisors, has been a great group that I've worked with. personally where I hired them, I put these properties into land trust, which means they're basically in a land trust, which is not public record of having my name.

And then that land trust is actually, the properties are held in the LLCs, right? So we have land trust, we have LLCs that they're held under and then we have a Wyoming holding company that holds those LLCs and then it's held by a living trust. So it's pretty, it sounds complicated, but once you learn how the structure works and you work with a good law firm that sets that up properly, You're pretty well protected. I mean, there's other ways to protect your assets more, and that's opening up an asset protection trust that's like out of the Cook Islands.

That's very expensive to maintain every year and very expensive to set up, you know, $15,000 to $20,000 to set up, I think it is. Man, you got a lot going on. So you're dialed. I could go into that because I've been, you know, this is stuff that I've recently been setting up for myself. And I think it's one of the smartest things that I've done in my entire life was protecting those assets because I worked so hard for those assets over the last 20 years and I'm

still building that portfolios. I want to protect that. And after I'm done with skateboarding, what am I going to do? I'm going to manage these properties. And I'm going to make sure, like, you know, taking care of my renters, making sure the properties are protected. No one could take them. And then also like having those to, if I have a family and kids someday, you know, I'm not married. I don't have any kids right now. But, you know, someday down the line, those kids will inherit those properties and they won't go through probate because they're through the through the trust right so they're not going to go through probate but then also the the structure of having those things protected through the LLCs and through the holding company and through the land trust that structure

is already set up for them where they're land trust too yeah and personal residence trust so my property is in a personal residence trust so you know I protected kind of everything with all that stuff so yeah I mean that's something that we could go ahead talking hours about but that That's something that I think is very important that people should understand out there that own, number one, own their own personal home. I think they should put it in a personal land trust. I think is a good idea. And then also, if you own your own home, you definitely should have a living trust that that should be held. Because if you pass away one day, it's going to go through probate. And that's not going to be good. You know, so. And having that infrastructure, if you have rental properties, put them on LLC just so, you know, you have all that counting right. You know, you open up your LLC. That property is under the LLC. You open up a business. Credit card, any expenses that go with that LLC with that home, you use that credit card. So then at the end of the year, you have your tax writeoffs, right? So say you're making $100,000 a year from this property, but then it costs you because

you had to buy air conditioning unit or you had to buy something to keep that property going. You had to rehab, I don't know, the bathroom or kitchen sink or whatever it is, the kitchen cabinets, whatever it is. You use that business credit card. You deduct those expenses. And you also deduct other things, management fees, right? You deduct your insurance. You deduct these kind of things.

You have these writeoffs. And that's how they're very wealthy at the end of the day end up paying almost zero money in taxes through real estate because they have all this real estate that they own. And then they offset it with their expenses. So real estate is a very powerful thing to invest into to have the cash flow, the tax writeoffs. The appreciation in the property is going to go up year after year.

Also, rent is going to go up year after year. Right. And then if you want to do, accelerated depreciation. So if you owe money and taxes a lot, you can do accelerated depreciation by doing a cost segregation study on the property. And then all of a sudden, you can boost from, you know, the amount of years. I think it's what, 30, 27 years of writeoffs or 30 years, down to like six years or to two years or there's bonus depreciation, you know. They're changing the laws with that right now, I believe. But there's ways to get depreciation writeoffs in the earlier

years of the property. So if you're, you're planning on buying a, buying a, let's say, apartment complex, like, and, and keeping it for five years, you might want to do that bonus depreciation because you have a game plan to sell it in five years. So take all that depreciation in the front end of the, the loan, you know what I mean, the front end of the years of owning that, you know what I mean? Man, I bet you all didn't know that you were going to listen to a skateboard or drop that much real estate knowledge on you today. You guys didn't, you guys don't know that, I'm sure on your, your fans don't know how smart you are.

Um, it comes to real estate and, and all that that much, but on a show like this, and we're with the CEO here of capital. We got to talk about real estate. I think he knows more than me. You know, I just like to talk about how you built, built all this. You, what age were you when you started your entrepreneurial journey? You were 20, 19? Uh, I think I started when I was eight years old, man. I love that.

I love the stories that started eight years old. Yeah, because, you know, I, tell me why you said you think you started eight. Uh, just, you know, I grew up. My parents had me play an ice hockey at a young age. I got into skateboarding around like seven or eight. Um, and then it was, it was, I wanted to be a pro skateboarder right from the beginning. So I was trying to like, like learn how to do these tricks at a super young age. And I was already sending in sponsoring tapes to get sponsored at like age 13 or 14.

Like I knew I wanted to be a pro skateboard. This is what I was set to be in life, you know? And I was looking up to guys like Andrew Reynolds and Tom Penny and Jeff Raleigh and Jamie Thomas and these kind of guys that had moved across the country or you know through i think andrews from where florida but jeff rollins from the guys are actually from europe so they moved out of there where they're from to california make it so that was like what i want to do i'm going to move from milwaukee wisconsin i'm moved to california and and become a pro skateboarder and i was trying everything to get man there was probably like a hundred famous skateboarders when you were young

of all there was not very many no there was there was a handful guys like i looked up to like skateboarders grown a lot now it's just like two weeks ago it was just in the olympics i mean yeah it's change i mean the first time was an olympics i think it was second time the guy who won uto it's so it's so crazy like he won both both of the first olympics he's from japan he's phenomenal skateboarder um but you know growing up in the midwest i was probably one of three four guys that skateboarded in my in my school so when i would tell the teachers i want to be a pro skateboarder was like what like and out here in california if you're telling your teacher you want to be a pro surfer skateboarder well the beach is right here and the volcom headquarters is right down the street you know and

easy here very common it's very common but there it's like whoa like i got doubted my whole entire childhood it's snowing all the time like when the heck yeah like not many skateboarders come from the midwest you know luckily i've had very successful um a successful run with skateboarding by just having that drive to never give up you know and moving across and taking chance in my life um that's that's one thing that i've done really well is like i had a vision and just kept going after and kept going after and knocked down the doors whether it was trying to get sponsored at a young age of 13 or dropping out of high school at 17 and moving across the country to California to make it as a pro skateboarder. What was that experience like dropping out of high school in 17 and go and accomplish a very far-fetched dream?

Yeah, that was there was no backup plan. It was pretty much my parents, you know, my parents are very supportive of what I do and they've always been that way. So they had like faith in me. But there was probably a point where they were kind of nervous like, I don't know if you should be drop it out. But, you know, at that time, I was starting to travel the world at probably 15 or 16 years old. I went overseas to Germany. I won my first pro contest at 16. I won like 50 grand.

I came back out of a BMW car. And I started flying out to California to visit Al Parton, who was with the Lenium Skateboards. And from there, he was giving me opportunity to get into like 4-1 video magazine, trans-world magazine. These, these basically everything that I was looking up to in the Midwest, like, oh, man, 4-1. Like, that's what I watched. So next thing you know, I had a 4-1 video part. And then, you know, I just met people along the way when I got here. Al was introduced to me to like top photographers, Dave Swift, Chris Ortiz with 4-1 and Trans World.

I got thrash her cover, you know, Nick Skirt shot that thrashor cover. I met my filmmaker, Mike Adolpe, Hoops, they call him, Dr. Purple Teeth on Instagram. He's filmed all my video parts from Oakley, our life to almost round three to the Globe video. pretty much everything that came out over the years of all those video parts he's filmed and guys like Chet Thomas and Rodney Mullen have really helped me expand into you know getting shoe sponsors getting my name on skateboards those kind of things like happened just one after another you know so there was just no looking back and I was determined and I'm still super determined that's how you got this the name for your new

documentary coming out one way ticket there's no one way ticket tell me about one way ticket Okay, so one-way ticket started as a passion project as an idea of I wanted to create a documentary kind of about my life and kind of show that anyone can make it if they put their mind to it. And I dropped out of high school and the name says it all that one-way ticket and how that came about, my favorite skateboarder is Chad Muska. And he's like, he just, we didn't have a name for the documentary to be honest. And he just said, you know, he took like that one-way ticket and just never came back. And Nick came out from shooting that interview with Chad Musk. and was like, I got the name for the documentary. It's one-way ticket.

I was like, what? That's so good, dude. Like, how? Where did that come about? He's like, Muska said in the interview, Chad Muska. And because, you know, he was filming these other pros, but I wasn't in the room when he was doing the interviews listening to what they were saying because I didn't really want to hear. I wanted the documentary to be very authentic and them to be able to express how they felt

about certain things in my career, what I was doing along the way. So when you watch the film, I wasn't, I supplied a lot of the, the content obviously for the skateboarding side of things, but all the interviews were very like done by those guys and what they wanted to say about me and my career and where I was at that time in the different chapters throughout the movie. But yeah, it was a full passion project. We didn't have a place to put it on any platforms. We just, me and Nick knocked it out.

We did the documentary. It's just like, all right, we're just going to throw it out there. And I was just going to put it on YouTube. be honest that that's kind of where i was going to where i originally was going to put it and then as the film was getting done it turned into a full-blown movie right and i was like well just submitted to this like newport beach film festival yeah right and and and and they called me back like two weeks later we were the first film to get into the film festival um with with for that year which was two years ago actually um and we sold out the movie theater we we won best action sports

film award um at that time i was like man we have something here we should try to get a out in the barracks you know the barracks is huge in skateboarding um they they don't they don't want to say they don't they don't post documentaries but they basically only really come out content that they've created which they didn't really create a lot of the stuff in here but there was a barrack section there is a barrack section in there that highlights because throughout the documentary we just highlighted a lot of the um the parts in my career with video parts with um and it has a storyline to it for sure like you got to see the documentary it's it's very authentic authentic. There's to the point, you know, there's a lot of ups and downs with being a professional

skateboarder. I talk about that. And then, you know, I met someone that hooked me up with a company that was able to get it on some bigger platforms. And they did a phenomenal job. So it comes out on August 27th. And it's going to be coming on Apple TV. So two years ago, this was a passion project of mine, like sitting in the room, going through footage like tapes and like putting this together to now it's like on coming out on the biggest platform in the world, which is Apple TV. And then also Amazon Google Play, DISH TV, and then they're working on trying to talk to break the code to get into like Netflix or Hulu or Airlines would be amazing.

But right now, I mean, I'm just, I just feel super blessed to have it out there for the public to see and inspire the next generation. It's a great story, and it's an awesome name. Yeah, yeah. Thanks to Chad Muska, Chad Muska, shout out to him because he came up with the name. And man, it's pretty cool to actually have it.

So I got some DVDs printed just for, to be honest, we're not even selling these DVDs or anything. I just kind of got them printed for personal use and giving way to friends and family. And nobody has DVD players. No, they don't. And Nick was like, I don't know, DVDs. Like I was like, dude, like I grew up in the era of, you know, VHS DVDs magazine. So like I love DVDs. And I posted a couple of times on my Instagram.

And people actually hit me up. And like, I'm like, all right. Like, and I actually have these boards too that I made a custom run of these skateboards. that are the one-way ticket skateboards and I sign these and you could hit me up on Instagram and I can get you one sent out. We don't have a website for them or anything like that because it really wasn't meant for that, but I'll sign them and then I'll just throw on a free DVD for guys that want a cool poster, I mean a cool, I should say, skateboard that hangs on their wall.

Yeah, yeah, that's, they're rad. We got one here and we're still working on getting that hung up. Thank you for that, by the way. Now, like, you've been like an athlete in the action. sports world. Tell me a story of like something, one of the craziest things that happened at one of these tournaments. Well, I mean, I've traveled the world. I'm on my fourth passport now, so there's a lot of crazy stories. But I would

like to say what was most impactful for me was where I really hit that dedication of wanting to take it to the next level was an understanding how many good skateboarders there are out there on this planet. Like there's a lot. Was going to the Tampa Am contest for the first time, which is the world's largest skateboard competition. And in our TV show, The Next Gen, on Field TV, that's about bringing up the next generation of skateboarders.

That winner actually goes to the Tampa Am contest, right? The best I've ever done in that contest, I think it was like top five. Maybe I got third one year. So I've never won that contest. But the first year I went there, I was winning all these like local skateboard competitions in Wisconsin at the Jamesville skate park and like four-season skate park. And I went to Tampa because I thought for sure, like, man,

I could probably do good down there. and I got super nervous. I actually won the worst fall award, and I went to go lip slide one of the rails, and my back truck caught and totally, like, racked. Like, you know, I didn't hit my nuts or whatever, but I hit, like, the side. I slay I'm pretty good, you know what I mean?

And it looked probably worse than what it was, but I remember Clyde Singleton, like, during the awards, was like, and Greg Lutzka, like, and it was $100, he was like, and he was $100 bucks. He's like, and Greg Lutzka, we could give this $100 then for the worst fall award of the weekend.

And I remember my dad kind of saying it's in the documentary, too, like it's probably not the recognition you wanted, but you got some recognition. And I went back to my hometown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for that next year and skated like a ton, dude, like every day at the skate park. My mom actually works for the city. So Neil, who wanted to start, create four-season skate park or start a skate park in our hometown, was having a very hard time of getting permits and getting approved and getting money and all this stuff. So my mom was able to get a $50,000 grant from the city to have a skate park in our

in our in our town because the city will grant money to certain businesses that are creating jobs for people and creating um you know basically building up the city you know for for i don't know certain cities offer that so my mom was able to get that approved so he was very grateful of that and he's like Greg you never have to pay to go skate or the four season skate park so that was like a huge bonus to me where i was like what like i don't ever have to pay to come here like like because you know i didn't grow up with like the richest family or anything but and they would have been support I'm sure of me going there every day, but I was like living at the skate park pretty much every day, all day there.

And that year really changed because I went back to Tampa the next year. And I think I got like top five. I met with Al Parton for Millennium. He brought me on tour right from there. And my career really jump started from being this amateur skateboarder to now going on tour to on my way turning pro. So what age were you when you turned pro? I turned pro at 17, I want to say.

I moved to California at 17. I was filming the almost round three. video but I actually went pro before I moved to California because I was riding for a lenium skateboarders. They turned me pro and I rode that with that company to the wheels fell off. That company ended up going out of business, unfortunately. And then Rodney Mullen found me from riding. I was riding for Globe shoes and Rodney Mollin found me like, seen my talent from riding from Globe, which he was on the same company. He was like, dude, we're starting this new company. We're starting this new company. We don't have a name for it yet, but we want you to ride for

it. And we're bringing in guys like Ryan, Dewan Song to be part of this company. I think you does thrasher now this they didn't they didn't announce what the name of the company was and then they started running ads and thrashar after he he brought us all to a big dinner. He's like the name of the company's be called almost I was like almost that's a random name but and he's like we're just gonna play off of it like almost a skateboard company almost a video almost blah blah so the company blew up it became like huge overnight like the and I was filming for almost round three but when that

came out my name was next to rodney mullen day one song ryan checkler chris has him these guys are big names in skateboarding so instantly overnight everyone knew who my name was in skateboarding and rodney warned that of me too he's like he warned me he goes i think when this video comes out your life's gonna change and i didn't realize what he meant by that but that is so true because when that did come out everybody knew who greg let's go was that just changed the trajectory for your whole life because everyone's everyone i mean even me as a kid i always followed like the rodney mullin versus day one song videos round one round two and then this round three video there was a lot of anticipation behind this thing and then rodney and day one brought in all these like like or i shouldn't say all these

other skiers but like four of us basically is the other kind of skaters that were opening up the video so all of us got like a lot of recognition overnight you know and then we and then we did a world tour so then we went to australia japan europe all throughout promoting the video so like not only was i really known in the united states but like worldwide like my skateboards with my name on it were selling everywhere like and and then i got a signature shoe with globe shoes because my name blew up my skateboards are selling then they were like okay cool we're going to give you a pro shoe because your name is selling very well on the skateboard so they're going to sell well on the on the footwear so i got to design my own custom signature shoe which that's where a lot of money is in

skateboarding is is you're selling decks and you're getting two bucks a board but the shoes and the royalties in the in the footwear game especially at that time uh were really really big so um that was just a game-changing moment. You never got your own shoe, though. I got my own shoe. You did? Yeah, yeah, that's what I was saying. They gave me my own shoe with my own signature line of shoes.

So over the years, I've ridden for, you know, globe shoes, K-Swiss, DvS shoes, Ossar shoes. I've had signature shoes on all those companies. So with the money I've made from that, that's where I took and I invested that into real estate. And then I also own four restaurants out here or four locations out here of Sessions, West Coast Deli. So we have, we have Mission Viejo Mall. That's one of our newer locations. We have Fashion Island. We have South Coast Plaza and we have Irvine.

When did you guys open in South Coast? That's one of our newer locations too. So those South Coast and Mission Viejo Mall are two newest locations. And we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary in business. So will you just open at South Coast? Probably like a year and a half ago. Yeah. Awesome.

Which side on the Apple sign? I don't know that mall that well because I don't go there that much, to be honest. But and I'm more of a private investor. Yeah. Like I don't deal with the day to day stuff. Matt, who is like the owner of the company. Like, and what happened there was I got introduced to Matt through a good friend of my, Robbie Crawford.

And I just loved eating sandwiches. So he had a, he had a, uh, his first location was in Newport Beach. And then the second location was in Huntington Beach. And he took out loans from the bank from these. And I started going to the Huntington Beach location, eating their sandwiches, promoting him on social media because they were just really good sandwiches. And he called my phone one day and was like, I'm looking at expanding.

this and we're going to bring in some investors and we want to invest with people that are like like minded as us and you're into skateboarding and surfing and snowboarding and those kind of things you know like we want to bring in athletes so then I hit up chet thomas who's a good buddy of mine and with with dark star skateboards and i showed him like the so this is a little secret that not a lot of people know but so i would get opportunities to invest in the companies throughout my career and because chet thomas chet thomas was a lot older than me and he was like a mentor to me So he kind of helped me out creating my, my escort, my corporation, for the companies to pay the corporation and then the corporation pays myself. So I ran my own business there of all these sponsors paying my S corp.

So I always looked up to him on because then you have better tax writeoffs and yada yada. So he founded tech debt. He was partners with tech deck in the beginning. He found a lot of skateboard companies, dark star skateboards. He also started investing in real estate as young age as well. So I always looked up to chat and I would always ask him like, hey, dude, like I have this opportunity. to invest into this nightclub, right? And it was actually the new sutra, which is called Time.

He looked at the paperwork and he's like, eh, I don't think I'm going to do this one. So I was like, eh, I'm not going to do this one either because I just followed lead because I was like, if he's not doing it, I don't think I should do it. He's, you know, 10 years older than me. He's had good investments and he's lost money on some of his investment. Yeah, those investments, those fun party ones are never. Never good. But when you're young, you're just making money, you know, with skateboarding, you're trying

to figure out where to invest this money. Yeah. You think everything is a good investment. Yeah. Right. So he helped me kind of steer away from those bad investments. And put it all in real estate. I mean, yeah, but but then when I showed him sessions West Coast deli, he's like, whoa, I think they have something here. I think this is going to be a good investment. Yeah. I'm going in.

So I was like yeah, yeah, I'm going in too. You know, so like I followed suit of like kind of showing him certain investments that I got offered and then like following kind of suit from him. He's not taking it. I don't think I'm going to take it, you know, because I wasn't like a pro at investing or anything like that. I didn't want to lose my money. So I've always asked for advice from him. And sure enough, you know, sessions now we own four locations. We're opening another one. There's only four sessions.

Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There's six locations. I'm a partner of four of them. So there's six sessions West Coast delis in Orange County. I love sessions. Yeah, but me and Chet Thomas and a few others are basically investors in those four locations. Do you get your own sandwich at sessions?

I mean, Matt. A signature. Oh, you know Matt. The Matt. The Medaw. Yeah, you know Matt. So, no, I don't have a signature sandwich with them. But that is one of my favorite sandwiches that he makes.

Yeah, the Maddock is a really good sandwich. And a secret out there that I think why this particular, so why this does well, I think. And Matt has been very strategic about this. Our first location, well, our first location that I've invested, the first location that I invested into was he had a LLC called Sessions 2.0. So he had his two locations that he started with the loans. And then he started Sessions 2.0, the LLC. Yeah, owns these other four locations that I'm partnered with. So the first location was the Irvine, the Irvine Woodbridge location.

And we do, we do, actually that's one of our best selling locations, to be honest. And we do all the catering to all the hospitals there. Well, that one we have overhead. We pay rent there. But what he did was he partnered with, and the first one was Fashion Island with Macy's. Next, the Macy's had like some kind of deli or something that wasn't doing that well. but he partnered with Macy's. And this was during COVID to be able to not have to pay any rent to have this location,

but we pay a percentage of the sales, a higher percentage of sales. So he took that structure and it was working very well. And then he worked with the Mission Viejo Mall. Then he worked with South Coast Plaza Mall. That's awesome. So we don't have to pay the mall basically. What about, what about Fashion Island? I mean, we don't pay any rent.

We just pay a higher percentage of sales to the partners that we have there. So yeah, so that's kind of cool. So if we get a big shutdown and the world shuts down like it did during COVID, a lot of people lost their businesses because they were still having to pay the rents. Where with us, with those three locations, other than the Irvine one, the Irvine one, we have rent there. But he structured those deals. So it's built on sales, percentage of sales. So don't ask me how he did it. He's a great negotiator.

Yeah, so he's a good negotiator. So that's been a very good, you know, because restaurants are like a lot of restaurants. fail too just like nightclubs do so um we've made certain good moves like that or matt has made very good moves like that decision making to um to to to just you know to have never actually heard of a restaurant doing that just the percentage of sales yeah that's what he did i think he partnered with the event of i think in the beginning he partnered with macy's because they they had this little spot that macy's owned when you go through fashion island yeah yeah and it's in a really rough location because it's you just walk right past sessions for such a great location yeah well it's by the

Elevate. It's like leaving the mall. So it's right by Macy's. So that was vacant for a while there. And it's our smallest location. But he worked with them and we opened it up and it's been a big success for us. But he works something out with Macy's or the mall right there. And then he, I don't know, pitched it to South Coast Plaza and to Mission Vio and these other places. So he was able to do that deal. Have you had proof of concept that worked? Maybe you had proof of concept. So things like that. In life, I feel like when you're investing or you're getting in things, you really got to run your numbers, you really got to be strategic of what you invest into. And you've got to be able to negotiate your stuff. Even for I have a management group, for instance, in Michigan.

And they take 10% of all my rents from my properties, right? But now I'm getting into more units, right? So now we just close on that triplex. And I said, okay, well, because I have so many units with you guys now, can I get a lower percentage on instead of 10% can we go down to six or eight and they denied it. They said, no, we're not. We're here at 10 and I just kept knocking at the door. I said, well, look, I'm looking at buying an apartment complex. I'm selling my, my condo in Huntington Beach. And I'm going to buy a big apartment complex here. I want you guys to manage it. But there's

other companies out there that will manage it too. I'm sure they will give me 8%. If I bring this portfolio to them, they came back and they said, you know what? We'll do it for 8%. So now my new, my new property, that's a triplex. I got 8%. Originally, they said it wasn't going to happen. So in life, you know, everything's negotiable. And that's how it is with that. That's how I live my life. Everything's negotiable. So what you see in the agreement is always is not always what you have to sign.

And I kind of taught my dad that too, like earlier on in my career. Like he's like, well, the contract says this. I was like, yeah, that's what the contract says. But that's not what we're going to sign. I said, we're going to go back and negotiate this. So I learned from one of my managers that I had for like six, seven years, seven years. I would say Todd Honi, he helped bring a lot of big deals to the table. I mean, he brought Oakley to the table, Toyota to the table.

He did a lot of my big deals, right? And I learned a lot from him. So after we started working with all these different brands, Visa cards, Jose Cuervo, Monster Energy Drink, all these big brands, I learned how he negotiated my deals. I learned how he built my pitch decks. And then I, after I would say about seven years, I went on my own and started representing myself and going to get all these deals done for myself, right? So I did my own skateboard deal that's now in Walmart.

I did my own Harley-David deal, my own aqua-hydrate deal where I left the energy drink business, and now I'm a partner with aqua-hydra and actually have ownership in the company. So when they sell, I actually going to make a significant amount where when I was at Rockstar, they could just cut my pay and all of a sudden I walk away, I get nothing, right? So, and I'm actually launching a master class about this to teach the young generation of how to negotiate your deals, how to go get those sponsorship deals. How do you become a professional skateboarder, you know, because it's not an easy, industry to crack into. And you know, I've been in for 20 years. I've made mistakes and I can help

this next generation out to show, hey, look, this is what I've done to make it and get with these companies. This is how I negotiate my deals. This is how I build my pitch decks. And I'm actually going to be doing it on the school platform. When is this coming out? We're launching it here in the next couple of weeks. So basically in the next two weeks, I'm going to be launching it. And you're going to give away decades of experience. Yes, yeah. On this platform. And one of my things of like growing up as a kid, you know, was, and I learned, learn this from Al Parton at 16 years old. He, he, he ran a company called P-U-P-U-P-I-L, people uplifting people in life, right? And I live by that my whole entire career. And people have helped me out my entire career to get to where I'm at. So, like,

I feel really good about coming out with something like this to help out these next generation of skateboarders that are very talented, to be able to go negotiate their own deals, to be able to go get the sponsors they want to work with and to build a very successful career out there in skateboarding you know and this not even this master class it can translate to pro or guys that want to be pro snowboarders pro bmxers motorcross riders anything in the action sports space you can actually take the knowledge that i'm going to be giving in this class and i'm going to be going live once a week and explaining all the different things that i do to get my deals and real life experience of what i'm working on now and how i'm getting sponsors for my new tv show

NextGen that's on Fuel TV and season two. And then you can also book one-on-one strategy sessions with me where I will sit down with you and actually strategically go through real-life moments of what you're dealing with and why this isn't working to how to structure things a little bit differently and approaches that will work and that have worked for me in the past and really being engaged with my community and to really help out these next skateboarders coming up. That sounds awesome. Now, after all this success, all these properties, you're still grinding, you know, on a skateboard, still still touring.

How do you continue to find motivation to do all this? Oh, man. I just have so much like drive and passion for what I do, you know. Very passionate. Probably the most passionate skateboard I've ever met. I just love it, man. I love skateboarding. It's, it's given me a life that I can only dream, you know.

I've always had this like vision and this dream to be a pro skateboarder as a kid. So to make it a reality has been like literally a dream come true. It's taking me around the world. You know, like I said, I'm on my fourth passport now. So I've been everywhere, Japan, China, Europe, Australia, Dubai, you name it, Africa, Brazil. I've met a lot of really cool people along the way that have, you know, helped me out to take my skateboarding career to the next level. I think you're meeting a lot more people now that are really changing your life, the scope of your life in the entrepreneur space. Yes, very true.

someone like yourself. Me, and then all these masterminds groups you're attending. Yeah, so I go to a lot of the mastermind groups. I've been doing a lot of public speakings lately, and I've been networking very well with people that are just outside of just the skateboard industry. And it's taught me a lot. You know, I just got back from the Aspire event that was in Houston. That was a really awesome, awesome event.

I would love to speak on stage at that event someday. You know, I've seen Lance Armstrong up there, and he's got a good story with what he's done. And I think I have a really good story with skateboarding and how I can, you know, be impactful and really inspire others. And they teach a lot about how to save on taxes, how to invest in the real estate. I think one of the guys that that's there is a really good friend of yours and you're going to be creating a business with him, which is Dan, Viceroy. And I met him at the VIP dinner and he was a really nice guy. And I met some of his business partners, Eddie and Nick and Andrew was on stage. I didn't get a chance to meet Andrew.

But a lot of these guys are like, you know, really killing it and inspiring others and helping others as well. That's what it's about. And that's what this group is about is just serve, serve others. Nobody has a profit motive. You just have a servant's heart. Absolutely. You know, and I think when you help others out naturally and you have good intention in your life to do good for others, the abundance will come. Exactly.

You know, but it's not about the abundance. It's really about going out there, helping others. And for me, that's how I feel because so many people have helped me out along the way and to achieve my dreams and my goals. goals and are still helping me out along the way, which you have helped me out tremendously on being able to qualify for loans to get to get rid of those fees. What's Dave Meltzer says, you're going to do more to give more to give more and you'll just keep getting more. Exactly.

Yeah. And more will keep back too because I give back to like David's charity and, you know, doing good things and just being a good person. You know, I think, um, I'm all about the law of attraction, you know, and and putting good energy out there and working with good people, good, like minded people that are. good-hearted, you know, I think that it attracts, you know, and you attract more people like that, you know, and when you get a negative, that negative mindset or like, I can't and I won't be able to do that, I think people go down like a weird road. But if it's like you have the mindset of I can and I

will and I'm going to, things happen. You know what I mean? So when you put that kind of energy out there, you got to be careful what you talk about, what you say to the universe because that's what's going to become the future of yourself. So people don't think that. People wake up with the morning, man, this sucks or that sucks. And all of a sudden, their life starts going down a negative direction. They're not realizing that every day. They're manifesting their own reality. They're manifesting their own reality.

But in a negative way and negative things are happening. But if they switched it around and manifested, you know, production, positivity, those kind of things attract into the world. But it's a feeling. It's a, it's, you have to live and breathe and feel it. You can't just wake up out of a feeling of negativity, but then speak. positively, but you're not feeling it or you're not living it, but you're just saying it to say it because you think, you have to live and breathe it. You have to, like, live by it and your emotions have

to attach and with the universe of what you say and really feel it. And then it will come to tuition. That's awesome. Yeah. Now, let me ask you this. What, like, I like to ask someone's mantra in their life. Like, what do you think your mantra is? What is it? What mantra do you live by in your life? I live by, oh man, I would say just never giving up. Like, I don't give up. Like, it's so crazy. Like, I'll be like, getting these skateboards in Walmart was so difficult and, and it was not an easy process to do.

And no one has skateboards in the big box retail stores other than Tony Hawk, right? It's almost nearly impossible to crack the code to get in the big box retail stores. To get in a Walmart. But I didn't give up. I wanted to get in there. I knew I was going to get in there. I knew the boards that were in there weren't the best, because I grew up buying my first skateboard at Walmart.

It was a Nash and it had plastic trucks and the wood wasn't the best and the wheels didn't really spin that well. And you know, these are high quality boards. These are better boards than any other entry level board in the market of skateboarding. And they only sell for like 35 bucks. They come with a free fingerboard for the kids because as a kid, I was growing up playing with finger boards in school.

It's got a QR code on the front that if you scan that, you can learn 10 free trick tips. I play with finger boards now. Yeah. Same with me. Actually, yeah. So I mean, they're great. They're the original fidget spinner. Yeah, exactly.

So we just created a really good product and we gave extra value to it with the QR code to learn how to skate because a lot of these, this is for a kid coming up, just getting their first skateboard. But it's a good skateboard. Yeah. You know, my first good, my first skateboard was kind of a Nash skateboard that had plasticy trucks. There really wasn't good wood. And that, that honestly, that experience of having a junkie board as your first board can, traumatize you. Yeah, it almost can take you away from wanting to skateboard.

So this board you can buy for your kid and he's going to have a good experience and he's going to love skateboarding. So that was one of my goals. There's like really to help out that next kid that's coming up, even at a younger age than being like a mastermind or master class that I'm creating, I should say, the skateboarding master class was to actually help out the beginner beginner kid as well to get a good quality skateboard at a very affordable price that parents can afford. Now, what would you tell your younger self, you know, what advice would you give your younger self to get if would you, would you say go going to skateboarding or? Um, advice that I would give my younger self would be, um, you know, I started making pretty good money as a, I guess I started investing as a young guy to a young, you know, as a teenager, but like, you know, 19, 20, I started buying my first properties. But I think I would have, I think I would have invested more. Yeah. You know, because because back then I was investing. But I don't think my mind was set on building my future of the age of being 40 or 50 or 60 or whatever.

I think, you know, at that age when you're making money, you think it's never going to go away. Yeah, you think you're always just going to be a professional skateboarder. Yeah. So I was buying things like, and I was strategic with it. Like I bought a Bentley and I bought from Jared at JSTAR. So I got a good price on. I bought it. I didn't really lose money on that.

I think I had the Bentley GT for bought it for maybe almost 100 grand. And maybe I lost like 15 grand because it didn't really depreciate that much. I had it for four or five years. So I guess some of my things some of my cars and stuff that I bought I didn't really lose that much on But you can you definitely can if you go buy a brand new Bentley for 300 grand and then you try to sell it four years later It's not gonna be three you're not gonna just lose you're selling that for a hundred grand Yeah, exactly so I think that's a good move you bought it use that already had depreciated Yep and it barely barely depreciated and I had fun with it

I bought jewelry and stuff I think back then me and check learn ponderies are buying jewelry I don't even really wear much jewelry nowadays Nor do I really care about it So I think there's just certain things. And, you know, when you buy in Bentley's and jewelry and these kind of things, these aren't assets, you know, and it tracks the wrong people into your life, you know, the wrong women or whatever it could be the wrong friends. You know, you have people with the wrong motives being around you, I guess you could say. So that's like one thing that I would look back is if I could tell my younger self or a skateboarder that's coming up and starting to make money in skateboard or even if you're not in skateboarding,

you're doing something that you're making money, but you're just spending it on like these, I don't know, Gucci flip-flops. or whatever. I don't know. I don't buy that kind of stuff. I don't buy designer shades or any of that stuff. So, but I would just go back and want to, like,

tell my younger self, basically to invest more into assets and not into things that are just going to be more conservative about stupid things. Yeah, but you've got to live your life. You know, life is short. If you work hard,

you got to live your life. And it was a dream of mine at one point to have like a big pool in the backyard. I had a six-bedroom house and Mr. VAL with a huge pool, 10,000 square foot lot, mini ramp, all this stuff.

I was in a jumbo loan, right? I had high property tax. I had all these bills because I had pool guys and all this stuff. And I had that for about five or six years. I was making a crazy amount of money in skateboarding. And I was like, man, I had this Bentley. And I was investing into real estate because my neighbor, Ben, got me investing into these condos that I had,

or that I was buying every single year. And thank God I had Ben as my neighbor, by the way, because he was the one that was really pushing me to invest my money. And if I didn't have him, I probably would not be where I'm at now with having the financial freedom through real estate. But I got to a point where I was like, I think I'm going to sell this house. I think I'm going to sell this car.

I'm going to take the money and I'm going to go invest more. And I'm going to go buy more property in Arizona. And I'm going to invest into other markets. And I'm going to downsize my car to like a, I think what I buy like a BMW five series or whatnot, which wasn't. And I bought it used. So I went from selling this thing for like 85 grand to buying like a $35,000 BMW used. So like a five series. So decent, nice few years, few years.

a few years earlier than whatever year it was, you know. So, and then I took the money and I downsized my property from like jumbo loan, like $800,000, $800,000 home to like a $600,000 home. So I took the $200 grand, invested more into real estate. Got rid of the big pool and all the big, the overhead, I guess you could say. Yeah. So I basically just tightened up my lifestyle, invested the money. And thank God I did that because now I have more properties.

I have more passive income coming in now. that I'm able to live off of where I don't have to ever worry about pretty much making another dollar in skateboarding or anything. Those sponsors could go away. And now it's more just like, okay, cool. I'm just going to skate because I enjoy skateboarding. I love it. I don't have to feel like I have to go win another competition to take money home to survive

or even have to have sponsors to really survive. You know, and now my main focus is just like, okay, cool. How do I help out the next generation of skateboarders to be able to live their dream and get them to where they want to go and have to. have good intentions doing it of like getting them good skateboards at a young age as a kid or being in a master class where they can learn how to go get sponsors and learn how to basically build this foundation to be a professional athlete and how to expand it. And then also learning at a level where I'm at where I'm doing licensing deals. And I can talk about that. What's the difference

between sponsorship and licensing? There are completely two different things. I could essentially help someone out from the age of a young kid that just wanted to get his first sponsor to how to expand to get bigger sponsors and think outside the box than just the core market of skateboarding into more the corporate world of the energy drinks and all those kind of deals to also licensing deals and going into how I got into big box retail and really building products in that space as well, which is a whole other, whole another can of worms that you're opening up that is not easy to open by any means. And to be able to crack all those codes and have that knowledge to be to share with the world is is my 20 years of experience.

Yeah, 20 years of experience. Yeah. That's awesome. Let me ask you this. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received in your career? I'd say from Chet Thomas. He's always giving me good advice to like, you know, to open up to create a corporation, have these companies paying the corporation.

And there's reasons behind that because the corporation is kind of where you're making your money from their sponsors. If your skateboard flies on and hit someone in the in the street, they could come after and sue you, but where's all the money that you made in your career is actually in the corporation? So you have some liability there. It's kind of like having liability, liability with your rental properties and having them in LLCs. You can do that this way too with your career. So protect the money that you're making as a pro athlete, right, from accidents like that that could happen, right? And that's just an example. I'm just putting that out there.

But people can't, you can't sue a person. Protect the money that you make. Protect the money you make. Athletes, influencers, actors, listen to his advice. Correct. And, Also, by doing that, you can also have tax write-off. So creating corporations like an S-corps, you can have tax write-out. So I have a business card and because I'm skateboarding during the day and I'm out filming, I have to eat. I'm hungry, right? Yeah.

So I go buy food, right? What is that? It's a tax write-right-off. Yeah. So I'm making X amount of money and I'm writing off my food when I'm out skateboarding. What else am I doing? I'm driving my car. I got to what?

I got a pie gas. Yeah. I deduct my gas, right? I have an office because I have Zoom meetings, right? What do I do? I write off the square footage of the office. I have internet. I have to write off the internet.

I have a cell phone. I have to write off my cell phone bills. So you also now you have all these deductions that you can do. So now you're making X amount of money. And instead of getting taxed as a person, as an individual, I should say, and having no write-offs, you have right-offs this way. That's the same thing with real estate. You put your real estate into LLCs. You have a business card.

You deduct these expenses to fix up the properties and to do certain things. That's how you lower your tax bracket. So essentially you're lowering, you're making. money and you're lowering the amount that you're paying taxes and you're also keeping it, keeping protection of keeping those assets or keeping that money and not letting someone take it. Amazing. And that's, that's awesome, awesome advice. And, you know, that is the message that we need to have in the celebrity community now.

You know, it's just, yeah, they don't know what to do with their money. 99% of them. And you know what? You're one of the few people I've met in that community that's really leveraged themselves correctly. Yeah. And made a future for themselves after sports or, you know, when the, when the show's over. Yeah, well, thank you for that.

Because, you know, I never really had a plan B. And I did not have a high school diploma or, you know, like I only had one job in my entire life was a paperboard. I knew like, I'm not doing this. Well, that's not going to buy any real estate. No, that's not going to buy any real estate. So I always knew like I didn't have a plan B. So like take this money, invest this money, protect this money, get these assets, protect these assets, do it right. and keep pushing and not care what anyone thinks.

So like when skateboarders back when I was kind of coming up, like riding for the energy drink companies weren't that cool, right? Me and Ryan Shekler and some of these guys, Paul Rodriguez were the only, Jeremy Rogers were the only guys that had the Rockstar Energy Drink logo or the Red Bull logo or the Monster Energy Drink logo. And you know what the other skaters said? Ah, these guys are selling out.

These guys are sellouts, right? Because we were going, getting these deals from Oakley, Rockstar Energy, Toyota, skating the due tour on NBC and it was kind of like there was a big push between like guys that were going to like the corporate side of skateboarding I guess you could say corporate companies and then the core

industries and it wasn't as cool to transfer over you know and now you look back right and you look back at that and now if you don't have an energy drink company on your head and you don't ride for Red Bull you're whack are you even a pro athlete yeah so we were the first that really kind of started this shape this and dudes weren't saying it was that cool

and they're probably kicking themselves now like, man, we should have row for those companies because now they're, I have some real estate. Now they're just like they're, they're old. They're waiting tables. Yeah, they're waiting tables. They're older and they're like they're not going to get those deals at the age that they're out now. And now the industry has went into like, you know, if you don't have those drink companies,

are you even a pro skateboarder? You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think, I think that's like a, you know, one of those things that you should always just go after what you want to do, what you believe in. And there's always going to be someone on the side of you that's, It's going to talk shit or judge you for what you're doing, but you just got to have your dream, your vision and go after and don't ever let someone sidetracked you or kind of throw you off the rail of where you want to go and stay on that train and keep going. And don't care what anyone thinks and just keep going after your dream and make it a reality.

I love that. A couple last questions I like to ask everybody. What's a personal goal that you have for yourself and what's a business goal that you got? Personal goal would be things I'm working on right now. You know, I haven't drank alcohol and I want to say almost 100 days now, right? Which is great. And I'm not saying I'm never going to drink again. But I feel like there's a lot of people out there that live their lives that they work all week at their 9 to 5 job.

And because they worked all week, they feel like, okay, it's the weekend. It's time to party. It's time to let loose, right? There's so many people that I meet like that. And I guess being a pro athlete, you kind of make your own schedule. And there's times where like I was skating contest. And I'm like, contest is over. It's time to rage.

It's time to party. and celebrate, right? And I think one thing, and that's okay, I think you should celebrate your wins, but I also think you should take care of your health. So now I kind of pick and choose the times where I'm going to go out and if I'm going to drink alcohol because the next day, my body's going to fill it, right? I'm 39 years old. I'm not 22. And, you know, it takes me like two, three days to recover. I have a sauna in my house that I go into after if I go out parting because I want to get the toxins out of my body as quick as possible because I don't want to feel like crap, right? So I think one thing for my personal would be my health and taking care of my well-being to live a health to what I'm going

to do now right in my 30s is going to is really going to ultimately going to my 50s and my 60s 60s of where my health is going to go right so I think one thing is focusing on taking care of your body is a very important thing and eating organic foods I've been eating a lot of organic foods taking care of what I eat so cutting out an alcohol stopping soda I haven't really drink much soda barely any soda and I kind of you know everywhere you go in this world there's soda machines you go to wherever um in and out for instance or wherever right and that's not the best food by any means but they market it like it is it's better than the McDonald's i'm sure it is or whatever but uh everywhere soda machines that's terrible for you tons of sugar tons of crap so drinking a lot more you know

waters juices doing a lot of juicing eating organic foods minimizing the uh drinking as much alcohol and going out on the weekends and and when you do these kind of kind of things your production or you're just getting that production. You're getting way more productive, I should say. Because you're not feeling drained. You're not feeling sluggish. You're eating healthy. You have energy.

You just feel more alive. And so that's something it takes. And if I were to tell my younger self, I would have told my younger self that take care of your body more and stretch and eat good foods and don't party as much. And those kind of things will really help you get to the destination where you want to go quicker because you won't have those distractions. And you'll just feel better every day of your life. Right. So those are things that like I'm working on right now and have been working on to just eat cleaner. Now party as much, right?

And just take care of your body. So you can live a healthier life later on and be more productive right now to have a more secure future. And, you know, live a good life. As far as business, I would say I'm focused on right now helping out the next generation of skateboarders through my, my entry level skateboards, through my masterclass that's going to be on school.com. That's S-K-O-O-L.com. Because I never heard of school. I just heard about this a couple months ago.

I was like, whoa, this is a really cool platform. And the only reason why I heard about that was because I was found other entrepreneurs that are on that platform that are teaching really cool things that I wanted to learn about. And I actually bought a course about real estate through Richard Garcia and learned a lot about how to get real estate even at cheaper pricing with tax deeds. going to tax deed auctions, you can get real estate. So if you're at a point where... Have you went to a tax deed auction?

There's one actually in Michigan next week on the 22nd that I was looking at attending and learning more about buying at foreclosure properties and tax deed auctions, right? FaceTiming while you're there, well, yeah. Yeah, so I'm not saying these properties are going to be in Michigan next week. Are you? Yeah, so I'm not saying these properties are going to be the best shape. But if you're not in the best shape in Michigan. But if you're in a point and you're not able to afford a $200,000 duplex and you want to try to get a

property. Maybe there's a way that you can get a taxi property for, let's say, a couple grand. Maybe they both, maybe bulldo those the, bulldoes the property down, spend some money on that, and then sell the land. There's probably ways to make money in the taxi space. And I can't talk about it because I'm not in it, but I'm learning more about it. But the moral of the story is I buy courses and I buy people's courses because I want to learn more information about education. You educate your education. Education. Yeah. And education, you can't, you know, getting education, it's priceless, right? Yeah. And that's why. why I invest into like Richard's course and understanding how he invested and how he scaled his

real estate business because I want to scale my real estate business. And if I can provide people out there that want to scale their skateboarding career and kind of what I've done and they could essentially talk to me at a very affordable price, you know, so I'm not charging a lot of money to be on the school platform for my course. We're still looking at what the pricing is, but it's not going to be. It's going to be peanuts. It's going to be peanuts. Like we're looking 20 some bucks a month, maybe 40 bucks. I don't know. We don't know the exact price. I don't know the exact price yet, but I'm not doing it to really make a bunch of money.

If I'm only charging $22 to be part of this course, you know what I mean? It's more a passion of mine to help out this next generation of skaters and give them. And I like talking about it. I like being an entrepreneur. I like talking about how to crack the codes to make success happen. So that's a huge passion of mine. And then I guess a big passion of mine is really scaling that real estate business. But I'm not really using these other things with the

the skateboards or the master class to scale the real estate. I'm actually selling some of my properties that I bought in over the years, taking the gains there and putting those gains into bigger complexes. Love that. Yeah. So it's, it's one of those things that I've been investing in real estate for almost 20 years that I bought a lot of these properties at a very low price, especially in Arizona, that they've more than quadrupoena in price where I could actually essentially sell those

and now upgrade to 1031. Yeah, 1031, I'm into bigger complexes. scale that way. And I learned from Richard Garcia about that and how he's done that. And it's, it's very intriguing. It's very cool. Um, so yeah, that's how I would scale on the business side of things of really building out that real estate empire is a big goal of mine. Love it. Now, last question is the easy one for you. When you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you? Um, you know, you've grown a lot throughout your whole lifetime, you know, I really have and I feel like I've grown a lot. And I'm still growing every single day. And I, I just want to do better.

every single day for my own well-being and for others you know and i want to leave this this world with a good legacy that i helped other people out along the way and i did good for myself and others you know that's it man that's that's the way to live god bless you bro keep dominay i'm proud of everything you're doing proud of the new school project proud of you for uh really being a real role model for for athletes for celebrities for you know for other influencers because You know, a lot of them are lost souls. So, yeah. God bless you.

Keep dominating. Keep winning. And I'm here to help anything you need. We got you. Coffee's for closers. Greg Lutzka, everybody.