Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - How Pro-Skater Paul Rodriguez Thinks About Job Security

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

When Paul Rodriguez became a pro skateboarder at 17, he was told he would only have a career until he was 30. But along the way, Paul made strategic decisions to play the long game. On Nely Galan's podcast Money Maker, Paul shares how he built his career for long-term success, and his advice for people who want to bring in some extra money, but don't want to start a side-hustle. Never miss any gems on Money Maker, and subscribe here: https://link.chtbl.com/_9U0OQh1?sid=MM Want to start investing, but don't know where to begin? Go to moneyassistant.com and meet Magnifi, your AI money assistant, designed to help you make a plan for your financial goals. Want one-on-one money coaching from Nicole? Book a meeting with her here: intro.co/moneynewsnetwork 

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated, if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you.

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Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Being a pro athlete has always seemed so glamorous, but the illusion recently has been shattered by athletes like Simone Biles speaking up about the mental toll. On a recent episode of

her MNN pod Moneymaker, Nellie Galan interviewed pro skateboarder Paul Rodriguez about the career path of an athlete. But beyond that, he talks about how to diversify your moneymaking opportunities and streams of income, which is especially important in industries like sports where longevity is, well, often shorter than most would like. So whether you're athletic or you're hand-eye challenged like me, I wanted to share this episode because it is packed with money gems. Here's that conversation. Welcome to Money Maker, the podcast that gives you the tools to enrich your life in every sense of the word. I'm your host, Nelly Galan. Let's get started.

I'm very excited to speak to someone who I'm happy to say I've known since he's eight years old. We're aging ourselves. The goated, the legendary skateboarder, Paul Rodriguez, who happens to be my stepson and is the brother of my son. So we've known each other for many years. And I'm the only person I think that used to call you. I still call you, but not in public, Munchkin. It's all good. I passed that age where you feel embarrassed by it.

Now I'm older and it's endearing and I love it now. I know you love it. So I have to say it's very beautiful that I went on your, on the site of Nike where you're one of how many athletes that's had 10 shoes. I think it's only like five, right? No, I think maybe like eight, maybe I could be wrong. But that's very few. I'm the only one under six feet tall. That's what I'm most proud of. I'm very proud of that too. And I read what they wrote about you and I thought how beautiful, and I don't even, knowing you, you haven't even read it. So I thought I'd read it to you. It says, it takes more than talent to turn opportunity

into legacy. Making an immediate impression in his early teenage years, Paul Rodriguez has stacked video parts, trophies, and milestones at a staggering clip. Through his 10 signature shoes with Nike SB, P-Rod always is finding innovative ways to balance tech and function. He continues to drive his career forward by remaining modest, yet fiercely independent. Wow. I thought that was a very beautiful, truthful way of describing you. You are a very modest person. Thank you.

And very introverted. I'm super shy. Super shy. Yeah. And yet you're very successful, but in a a quiet very unassuming way which i think is quite beautiful and i have to say so let's talk about when you were eight years old okay it's time to reminisce yeah i remember the first night i met you perfectly you do i remember perfectly what was i wearing you were wearing a polka dot dress black with white polka dots no yeah i

remember that so i was at the time dating your dad. Yeah. And I remember that you were so old for your age that you used to give me advice like you were my therapist. I remember those days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember you saying, no. Yeah. My dad's never going to change.

You better accept it. You were like my little therapist. Yeah. And you and I would go to the movies a lot. For sure. Right? We hung movies a lot for sure right we hung out a lot together and i and i even remember with you with your first skateboard i think i'm one of the people that bought you your first did actually you did talk about going

into an emerging field an emerging sport an emerging business who knew you just loved it there's something to be said about just following that instinct timing right and i don't know why you connected with that skateboard and then you took off but then a few years later you were wanting to leave high school to go pro and i remember being very upset about that um maybe maybe because i think i had finished high school two years early i had left school as well i didn't get to go back to school till many years later when I finally got a master's and a doctorate. And I felt like, and it's funny because you and I talk about this now, I felt like I had missed some years in my

life emotionally, that later on it was very hard to catch up and I didn't want that for you. I can feel that. I do feel that, but not about school. Right. Because you didn't like school. No, I hated school. But you're, it's funny cause you're a very learned person and you love to learn. I do love to learn. But you just didn't like to learn that way. I just love to learn what I want to learn. Well, and you were very lucky because let's talk about that moment. You started skating and you really found your thing. Yeah. And so was it like, is it like love at first sight? Yes. So going back to when I first met you that first night, I had just come home from watching the Bruce Lee story called Dragon.

And George, remember George, he took me to go see it with my cousins. And when I got home, that's when i first met you and i was so excited about having just watched that movie because i was super into karate at that time i was bruce lee is still one of my biggest heroes of life and so my personality as far back as i remember was any hobby i had in my mind that was my calling so in my mind, that was my calling. So in my mind, I'm doing karate. I want to be a great martial artist. I wanted to do action films like Bruce Lee and do that. And then next phase came, I found a guitar. Oh my God, I want to play guitar. I want to be, oh, Jimi Hendrix. He's my favorite. I want to be one of the greatest guitar players ever, have an amazing band and

be great at that. And then after guitar,, skateboard came into my life. Oh my God, same mentality. This is awesome. I love this. Who are the best people? Eric Costin, Andrew Reynolds, Tom Penny, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yes, I want to do this. Matter of fact, I don't know if you remember, I remember when you were pregnant with this guy right here, I tried to convince you to name him Tom after my favorite skater tom penny i was like i was like please just name him tom name him tom that's the best name ever you're like no absolutely not i was like please name him tom i wanted him to be named tom so hey tom so you're kind of a hyper focuser is what you're telling i guess yeah you don't like what you don't like and then when you like

you like you go all like, you go deep. It's all the way. You go deep. Which I've learned to be a problem after that. I've had problems in life after that with that mentality. But for whatever reason, nothing else came and took my attention. Like, you know, it was martial arts and guitar and then guitar and then skateboarding. But for whatever reason, nothing else came and took my attention off of skateboarding.

And it just- Skateboarding did it for you. Scratched my itch, whatever it was, yeah. And I remember that everything was happening so fast because it went from being like a non-sport sport to all of a sudden you were getting called to be on teams and you were getting asked to do skateboards for people. And like, it all became very big very fast it's or it seemed that way like it kind of snowballed right yeah yeah and very quickly you had to make a lot of very big grown-up decisions like leaving school sure yeah talk about a little bit about

that how did that come about like why did you have to leave school now that we've had years so we can have therapy yeah yeah i love it um why did i have to leave school i didn't have to but i had to you know in my heart in my soul i had to um i just remember like telling my mom for at least two years mom like once i got my first little taste of sponsorship which was not really much. This skate shop told me they would sponsor me. And what that meant was, we'll give you 10% discount on whatever you want to buy in the store. But in my mind, that was like, oh, that means I'm going somewhere. That's the first drop of blood in the water. And I'm a shark.

And this is going somewhere. That's a sign. Keep going. And so I remember telling my mom, like, please, can I get home studies? I promise I'll do my work. I wasn't going to do the work. I was like, I promise I'll do my work. But think about this way, mom. If I can skate more hours a day and I will get better faster, then I'll become pro. And then I can take care of all the bills, take care of all the family. And like, I was just trying to figure out any way I can like, yeah, any way I can like

convince it and make it a compelling story. But also that was true. You do the math. Like, you know, you just, if I, instead of going to school for six hours, if I have those extra six hours a day to skateboard, I'm obviously going to get that much better every day. And all my friends and all the other kids who have the same dream as me, they have to go to school and they're in school. So they skate less hours than me.

You were going to beat everybody. In my mind, I was going to out skate them, outwork them. And it was just a natural progression. Of course, I'm going to get better because I'm spending more time doing it. But let me ask you, a lot of people decide to, I want to be a basketball player. That doesn't mean it's going to happen. So there has to be also like an innate natural ability. Don't you think or not?

happen so there has to be also like an innate natural ability don't you think or not i think my what was natural for me is just the enthusiasm for it like that that the like i didn't look at it as like you have to have work ethic you got to be disciplined that was like i didn't even need to be but how about athletic ability sure i i definitely have a certain athleticism but like it's not like i'm like seven feet tall i mean even right now to this day i'm five foot seven you know it's not like i had any obvious like physical thing that trait that made me like boom like if i wanted to be a football player or whatever you got oh this guy's built like a like a like a house you know this guy's super tall. He's going to be basketball, whatever.

There was no obvious trade. Sure, I was coordinated and I was athletic. But there's a lot of people like that. And I know a lot of people like that who never took that to the next level. So sure, I was given some gifts. And I think everyone's given a gift, whatever their gift is. But if you don't have a passion for whatever that gift is, you're not going to turn that gift into a gift. That's true. I found something like I couldn't at the time when I was that young.

Everything's the biggest deal. I couldn't live without it. I had to do this all the time. Couldn't not do it. So it wasn't like work ethic or discipline. It was just like i have to it was so it's like something something you would do for free just because you loved it i did yeah absolutely but but success came really quick yeah and you started making money quick yeah

and so let's talk about being a kid at least what i thought was money yeah well yeah for you for that at that moment was money and And I mean, at what age? Didn't Nike come in pretty early in the game? Like you were 16 or something, right? Not that early. I signed to Nike when I was 19, but I turned pro at 17. And I started when I was 12. So between 12 to 19, that's only seven years.

That's pretty quick. And you just talked about it takes 10 years to become great at anything that's right and so like thank god i was able to have home studies those those extra six hours a day of skating made me reach what most people would have accomplished in 10 years in seven because i was able to cram those extra hours that amounted to the same time that they would have done in 10 but i did it in seven you know it's all but also the the the sport itself was kind of growing at the same time you were growing you were like it was right in i mean at that time tony hawk was like the only one that we'd hear about he was he pretty much still is the only household name like i'm relatively well known but like tony hawk is still the only real household name as far as skateboarders

go but then all of a sudden when you got into it it became a whole other thing right and so how did you deal with because you're very even keeled and even then you're very you're very old soul in a way thank you so i remember you being 16 and 17 and coming to talk to me and saying, what do I do about this money? And like, what do I do about the accounting? Yeah. And I remember we talked a lot about it and I just said, don't go crazy because as we know, these things have a beginning, middle and end.

100%. And we talked a lot about how to manage your money. How did you have that understanding that that was something you were going to have to deal with? When you're very young, when you're like a teenager, you want that flashy life. You are so not like that now. Yeah. I mean, you have your toys and stuff.

Yeah, sure, sure, sure. But you are very, you're pretty conservative. Yeah, sure, sure. When you're younger, you definitely want the glitz and the glam and that. And don't get me wrong. I still want a certain level of opulence, but I don't need like the over the top ridiculousness. So from that point, when you start getting now agents and managers and whatever, and all of that, I mean, I know a lot of athletes that have lost

everything and have you, one thing I've always thought about you paul is that you've always attracted good people to you do you think that that's your intuition do you think that's just been i don't know i think so and me personally i believe in god and i always have believed in god and i don't necessarily subscribe to any certain religion, but I always believe in God, always stay prayed up. And I just look at it as like, Kobe said this line one time a long time ago. He said, the harder I work, the luckier I get. And I just felt like I was just in alignment with what felt right to me.

I would stay with my prayers, stay working hard. And I can't take any credit for that. Yes, the right people came to me. I was born in Southern California, the home of skateboarding. I was born right in the epicenter of it at a specific time when it was starting to blow up. I was young, and at the time, I was considered a prodigy. And just all those factors factors there's so many of those factors that i am not in control of but it just so i can't say that i attracted it to me but

i just felt like i was moving in alignment with what my soul was yearning for and it just came and so you know some people say sometimes people get anointed or things happen to them in the right place at the right time and all that. But that doesn't mean that the rest of life is easy. No, no, no, not at all. And it wasn't easy because you really worked for it and you worked really hard. Yeah, it's very difficult. But then there's a whole other side of life, which, and you and I have talked about it a lot and we love it, which is the money side of life. and you and I've talked about it a lot and we love it,

which is the money side of life. And the money side of life, we know, because we've talked about this a lot, isn't just, yeah, you've had this very successful career, but an athlete's life, we know, has a beginning, middle, and end. And we've talked about a lot how you had to really be very cognizant of that. Sure.

Because if not, then you wake up like so many people the day after that it's over and you go, what happened to all that money? Yeah. And we've seen that happen. You and I have both known many celebrities and many people, and many of them have ended up with no money when they've had so much money. So when did you start or did it come to you or did you start? I know you always had a simpatico with investment and money. You'd always come over and see me and go,

no, you're buying buildings and what are you doing? So you had an interest in it. And I know that you also have always been self-taught in that you've gone online and gone and heard Rich Dad, Poor Dad and podcasts and Tony Robbins. And you've had the privilege of hanging out with Kobe and other. So from all of that stuff, what were you gathering? If you try to remember, what were you gathering as your other part of life?

So back then, you know, I was the only child. Well, you know, I had my half sister, but I wasn't really living with her. I didn't have a big brother in the house. I didn't live with my dad. I would see him when I had time to see him. I was very much a loner. I could be social, but I was shy, as we talked about. I would be watching these movies these bruce lee movies

and i would be i would make in my mind in my mind bruce lee's my big brother so i'm just gonna follow him and do what he does and then i you know muhammad ali i love him he's my big brother i'm just gonna emulate him and then you know as i got a little older i got into music and hip-hop jay-z oh he's my big brother i love jay-z like and i just made these all these my heroes my imaginary big brothers and i just tried to do what i thought they would do right and the more i learned about jay-z about how he owned everything he did he full ownership um and controls every every move he makes he's his own boss. And I was like, whoa, what if I can do what he does in that world, but what if I can do it in my little world here?

What if I can be my own boss? What if I can own a brand? What if I can have money that comes in while I sleep? What if I can do all these things so that no matter what, I can do all these things so that no matter what, I can always skate. You had Jay-Z, just as an example. Talk about how you manifested exactly that ownership in your own life. Sure.

So early, early on, even before I had my first skate sponsor, my Uncle Dave, he used to take me around to skate contests, and he would just do it off his own dime and just drive me two hours away it was like little league of skateboarding he would just take me buy hotel rooms take me to skate contests and everything and at one point I was like I want to start my own skateboard brand how would that be so cool and he invested you know at the time I thought it was major money he probably invested two three grand we got a couple skateboards printed up and he would drive me around to different skate shops and i would ask hi i just started a skateboard brand you guys want to buy it a couple of them

thought it was cute and said you know what how about this we'll put you on consignment this is how i learned what consignment was like how about this when we sell the board we'll give you the payment for what the board costs we'll do that and like so i would leave like one or two boards and it would be nice to be cute a couple of them sold so early on i wanted to have my own brand i just thought it was cool like i could design my own graphics and you know make it look the way i want it to be and then eventually a real actual board brand came asked me to ride from and be sponsored i had to tell Uncle Dave, hey, Uncle Dave, sorry, I got actually sponsored. I'm going to ride with you. I remember him being like, I just invested in this.

You're going to leave me with all these boards? I was like, sorry, I just got to go with this. That was my first hard conversation. Business disappointment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let somebody down. Exactly. So I don't know.

For whatever reason, that was always in my mind. Even before skating, I always liked doing lemonade stands. I just liked the idea. You had an entrepreneurial. I guess so. I guess so. I just liked. You didn't know how to call it that, but that's what it was.

I liked the idea of just having cash. That's simple. I just knew from a little kid age, I wanted to be rich, plain and simple. No matter how you, I just wanted to be rich and live the life I wanted. Hold on. Moneymaker will be right back. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash,

but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up

a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Me again. If you are loving this conversation and i know you are duh don't forget to subscribe to moneymaker the link is right there in the episode description

let's get back to the show so you you start there with the primitive products i mean i guess that's that was pre-primitive that was very very, very early. Primitive, yeah. It was like 2008 when Primitive started. So you went from basically sort of like some licensed stuff. How did Primitive come about, which is your brand and your company? Primitive came about after I signed to Nike. My friend Andy, who was one of the founders of Primitive, he was the manager of this local shop shop that i was sponsored by and when i signed to nike he came to me as like hey man like i got all these years of retail

experience uh i know the shoe market now that you're signed with nike we partner partnered up we can open up a really cool sneaker store i'm'm telling you, it can do good. And I was 19 at the time, and I was like, I don't know. At this time, I'm thinking. And you were allowed to do that even though you had Nike? Yeah. And I was thinking at this time, I was thinking before I actually gave into the idea, I was thinking I didn't understand what passive income was yet. I was thinking earned income was just the way to go.

And I was like, well, in my mind, I was making a lot of money. And after a few years went by, I started learning a little more. By the time I'm 22, he had still been on me about this idea. He was like, hey, man, I'm telling you, we can do this. Talk to Nike. We can open up a sneaker shop, get the coolest Nike shoes in there. And I'm like, at this point, I'm like, okay, yeah, I start realizing, like, you know what, I thought 30 was like the end of my career. And I was 22. I'm like,

eight years from now, it'd be good to start getting something going. So by the time I had to retire, in my mind at 30, I had to retire. And I should have something like ready to go because I don't ever want to get a job. I don't want to have to ever do what I don't want to do. So I said, okay, let's do it. So we talked to Nike. They said like, give us a business plan. Show us that you're serious. Okay, what's a business plan?

And so we went, we found an accountant who is now actually the CEO of Primitive to this day. We found an accountant. He showed us how to make a business plan. He helped us with the business plan. And we presented it to Nike. And they were like, wow, this is cool. And they were just like, yeah, okay, you're serious.

Even that story is like a one in a million because the chances of you meeting someone and then even finding an accountant and that it all works out is almost miraculous because most entrepreneurs have nightmare stories of their first partnership. During the whole primitive thing, you also decided to start getting involved with or investing in a lot of other things. So how did that come about? Is it that when you're an athlete, people come to you and are there a lot of things you turn down? Did you have an instinct for like, I think that's a great business? Because you've had pretty great luck in the things you've chosen. I have. I would call it naive.

I was naive in a lot of ways. I was also still young enough and early in my career where if I took risks that didn't pan out, I still had time to recover. I didn't know that at the time. Now looking back, I know that. But like the first after primitive, first other real thing I tried, I tried to start this wallet company with three friends of mine. I love those wallets. Marquisa Wallets. So yeah, myself, my friend Jason, my friend Naja. We tried. We didn't invest. Actually, I did.

Now that I think about it, it was a lot of money. I probably invested like maybe $90,000 in it. And we tried to get it going. We were trying. We tried. But long story short, it didn't work. And we try to get it going. We're trying. We try. But long story short, it didn't work. It failed. I lost that money.

But I look at that as like I could have spent that money trying to go to an Ivy League college and learn about business. But I guess I spent that money and I still learned about business in another way. So I look at that as like that was my college. Chalk it up to that. I don't have any student loan debt, anything at least. So that was cool. There's just one and done. So that failed, but I don't know, it didn't scare me because I still was young and I still really believed in myself and my skate career that I was still going up, going strong and that it's okay. So you had a meat and potatoes

business. Exactly. Which for me was TV. And instead of you investing in real estate, even though you did invest in some real estate, you decided to invest entrepreneurially. Sure. In assets that would make you money while you slept. That's all I understood because I only saw my favorite pro skaters started companies. They were the ones who sponsored me. Oh, you started a company? Oh, in my mind?

Oh, you're rich? Oh. So in my mind, I thought that's how you get rich. It's the only way is to start brands. But that's a lot of work. That's not passive income because you have to work to make that thing work. Right. But in my mind, I thought like, oh, yeah, make a brand.

It's easy. You can do it. Anybody can do it. And I found out, no, you can't. Even if you have buzz and you have a good following, if you don't understand how to make infrastructure work and margins and the numbers, the tedious stuff, if you don't know how to make that work, then you're going to fail.

So I tried that, and then the one that really sparked me up was in about 2000, what was it? Nine or 10. My friend who I want to get on this podcast, Mikey Taylor, the real estate guy, he calls me up. He says, Hey, I just went on this trip, uh, with this guy, Josh, I think you might've met him. And I met Josh a couple of years before he was doing these videos for for schools editing and filming them and it

was about like athletes who don't do drugs and you're trying to inspire the kids to like stay clean and whatnot and i had met him but somehow josh was also a surf filmmaker my friend mikey pro skater also but loves surfing he ended up on a surf trip and these guys met and they clicked and they started talking and like they got to talking like oh you know paul i know paul oh paul's my friend okay cool and that trip they were talking like entrepreneurial like we should start a brand of course that's how we think coming from our industry gotta start a brand start a brand that's the way to make money they're like what do you want should we do backpack company no there's already a lot of backpack companies in our industry like what else do they sung? Should we do backpack company? No, there's already a lot of backpack companies in our industry.

What else do they have? Sunglass company? We've got tons of sunglass companies in our company. And so the way they told me the story is they were in a hotel room. They were sharing the hotel room. And they were going back, throwing out, what about this kind of company? No, what about this kind of company? No, it's too many, too much competition.

And so they, ah, it's getting late. Let's turn off the lights go to sleep and they go to bed and one of them pops up turns on a light and says what about beer and he was like what about beer you're right like has anyone in our industry started their own beer and no i don't think so i mean action sports people surfers skaters bmxers even though we are athletes beer is heavily flowing in the industry and that's how it started so that's so he called me they didn't know anything about that not a clue so they called me on their way home and they said hey paul with josh they told me the whole story like we have this idea you want to meet with us

let's talk about it okay so i meet with them they're my friends i whole story. Like we have this idea. You want to meet with us? Let's talk about it. Okay. So I meet with them. They're my friends. I know these guys, like we have this idea, big idea. Like we want to start a beer brand. I'm like, okay, I like beer. Fine. And then, and then we go and we start trying to do the research. How do you make a beer brand? What do you do? And in the skateboard world, you find a manufacturer. They make the wood. You just have them make the boards for you. They put the screen.

You just provide them with the graphics. They'll print out whatever you want, send you the boards, pay them. So we found a brewer, a contract contract brewer and they made all the beer we were just going to make cans may put our logo on market our label we found out nope no margins of that no money in that we tried to visit different breweries everything we could and my friend josh quit his job he stopped being a surf filmmaker he moved down to san diego from ventura and mikey and myself invested money each to basically fund him quitting his job and only doing this every day and he turned from a filmmaker who knew nothing about beer into a genius in beer like that he focused

the way you focus in skateboarding on beer and that's actually the only way i gauged on how to work with people that's actually a point i missed out when we started primitive when my friend andy kept talking to me about this and i kept saying no no i'm not ready i'm not ready finally when i gave in what made me realize is like he's so passionate about this he feels the way about this that i feel about skateboarding and i know how i feel about skateboarding and i know how it worked out oh this has got to work out then if he feels the way about this that I feel about skateboarding. And I know how I feel about skateboarding and I know how it worked out. Oh, this has got to work out. Then if he feels that way, you can't stop us.

So that's how Josh ended up being. He, he became a genius. He moved his family to San Diego. Took all these risks. Took all these risks. And did you really, did you believe it was going to work out? I did. Because of his passion.

I did. I did. And it did. It his passion i did i did and it did it did it did and so what we found out at the end of the day we found out like man we if we want to make money in beer we have to make our own brewery because that's the only way you're going to get better margins and we have to figure out how do you get distribution that's the name of the game in the alcohol world is getting distribution, and it's hard to obtain. So we did another business plan, figured out what does it take to open up a brewery, blah, blah, blah. And we realized we're going to need about $2 million.

We were like, damn, how are we going to get $2 million? And that's the first time I was involved in a raise, in a capital raise. So you've had like a parallel life and you've learned all about entrepreneurship in this parallel tracks and you were able to keep both, which listen, I say mission and money and you have to have money at the same time. Mission doesn't always go with money.

No, no. Sometimes it does. Especially in skateboarding. And sometimes it doesn't. No, no. And so tell everybody what happened with the brewery. So the brewery, long story short, we went, we raised the money. And the way we did it, looking back now, it was genius, but we didn't know it was genius.

What we did is we went all to our athlete friends, our surfer friends, skateboarder friends, snowboarder friends who are all well-known in our world. And we asked them if they wanted to invest so all of them became ambassadors instead of us paying them to sponsor them said hey invest in all of us have ownership and we all have social media followings we all have these biz we all have big fan bases we can invest in this bet on ourselves and market this thing through our lifestyle and what we found in the beer world they didn't understand marketing the way we understand coming from brands all they thought was like giving coasters to local bars and putting up banners was their marketing and

the beer was would sell itself and in some cases that's true in our world like we made a catalog we made a couple t-shirts we made our different skews of beers. And we presented it to this distributor called Stone. And they thought we were like geniuses. We've never seen any. A catalog? It's like we invented what a catalog was. And they were like, we've never seen any company do this. And they started distributing us.

And we would just post social media, make really cool videos, content. So how long did you guys keep the company? That started, we opened the doors in 2012 of the brewery in san diego and in 2015 um cores light came and bought us out wow what a great story three years three years later cores light came out bought us out and i never knew about uh investing and you have to re-up because we need to do another raise and dilution and so when i found out about dilution i was like what like we have to do another capital raise to just keep flowing and i was like i didn't want to uh lower my i thought i

didn't want so they come in my percentage is going so every time i just kept re-upping i kept reinvesting more so i became the second highest shareholder in the brand at that time there was one guy who just was already really rich and crazy businessman i couldn't keep up with him as far as the reinvesting but i ended up becoming the second person out of all the investors like the second highest paid on the payout which for me was crazy. And it was just naive of just keep throwing money at it. Keep that. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was just like, I, I don't know. It was, it was, uh, it was, so you've lived this very intense double life and it's gone very well. And so now you're in a very different place in your life and you're still in skateboarding.

But how is it when you get to the point where you're saying, I'm at this place in my life, but I also now slowly have to do other things? Sure. Because you still have a Nike deal, you still have all these things, but you're older than you were, right? Yeah, unfortunately. So as an athlete, I mean, luckily you were doing both things at the same time anyway. So it's not like a big shock to your system, but how do you see your life going forward the next 20 years?

And you and I've talked a lot about also the fact that when everything comes to you so early in your life and such blessings come early in your life and then you're hit with lessons and how do you then begin the second half of your life both on a money note but also catching up emotionally because you almost missed a lot of your childhood 100 i did it i did for sure um i don't have an exact play-by-play explanation how to do that i guess my approach has always been like i'm in this moment whatever this moment presents now i'm just going to try to work through what whatever that is and get through that and get through that next thing you know after years and years of doing that you look up and you realize oh my gosh look at everything

that's happened and it all worked itself out i guess i've come to just first of all faith lie on god no matter what it's somehow some way it's all gonna be okay all gonna be okay no matter what even when you think it's not okay even if you're you know at the end of the day i believe even even when you die, it's all going to be okay regardless. So this is a game. So to a certain level, you have to take the heaviness out of it and treat this life as a game. Don't treat it recklessly. But also don't put the most utmost over-the-top importance pressure on yourself because at the end of the day, whether you're the so-called greatest, amazing, most accomplished person in the world, or you're the so-called worthless,

most bum people in the world, it's all going to end regardless. It's all going to be done and we got to go to whatever's next. So for me, I found comfort in that realization to a degree. It's where I can freely operate without feeling like it's going to be the worst thing ever if it goes wrong. So you've invested a lot in other businesses and in other drinks and other things, but going forward, what floats your boat in terms of, you've told me that you're interested in looking at real estate. You're looking at, but you, you are even kind of, it sounds to me like you really want to double down on this entrepreneur or the assets or the passive income for sure so talk about it so what i've realized is i'm not an entrepreneur

i am an investor well see that's a very good thing to realize yeah not everyone wants to be an operator no i'm not an operator i want to do what i want to do when i want to do how i want to i don't want to be on the phone i don't want to be answering emails i don't want to be having meetings with finance guys and credit lines and just don't care about that at all obviously i know it's necessary but i want to invest in the people who love to do that i want to find those people who get off on that. Yes, I'd love to be an angel. But I think of those people as my angels that I can invest in.

Because thank God you love to do it because there's no way I would want to ever do that. So I would like to put more gas on your fire. That's the way I look at it. So I want to be an investor um and it sounds like you're still smelling and looking for your next big passion which could come for sure for sure for sure because then you'll deep dive again but that's why i want passive income so i have the freedom to find my passion how if i want to go you know to a buddhist monastery and spend six months meditating i want to be able to do that if that's my passion that's right and not have to care or whatever it is we've

been lucky because i'm one of those people too that i have worked for other people at times but for the most part in my life i've worked for myself and and i feel like when you're one of those people that is contrarian when you work for other people you're like whatever you should really work for yourself once you've already experienced working for yourself there's no going back there's no going back it's very tough yeah um but i want to know because i know you have a lot to say to like a young person like i know you've said it to your brother lucas what do you think what have you learned both good and bad like what would you say is important to to find that road that gives that fulfills your mission and your money what are the most important things

you've learned um because you know you can say follow your dreams yeah the money will come but that's not true not true no it's not true because it's not true for everyone yeah and it's also we have to be careful when we say that in the united states because if you're a girl in afghanistan and you want to be the greatest singer in the world and maybe you are maybe no one will ever ever hear you in a massive way yeah i can't i can't say i can't speak from other people's circumstances i was born in fortunate circumstances. I was happened to be born geographically where my dream happened to be. So a lot of things were already in line, but I also do not know a lot of people who were born in so-called aligned circumstances and never did nothing, blew it all. So for me, what I've learned is it comes down to your attitude, how

you see something, how you frame up your circumstances in your mind, how you see it. I'm in a good position. Let me take advantage. Or I'm in a bad position, so I'm screwed and can never get out of it. Then you just condemned yourself by thinking of that way. I'd like to think if I was born in whatever you might label as bad conditions that I would have had still this mentality that would have dreamed my way out of it. So where am I going with this? What would I tell somebody, their money and their mission? I actually don't know what I would say.

I would just say find whatever you feel like you're in alignment with. And if money is something you desire as well, I mean, everybody desires money, but like you have to really want it as well. And I don't mean taking it or stealing it from nobody. That's not the way to live your life because you want having money. You want to be happy too. You want to be able to go to bed at night with a good conscience. Otherwise, having all the money in the world but feeling terrible about yourself, you're living in hell. I'm going on a tangent, sorry. Well, I'm going to tell you what I see that you may not,

the things I've seen that you have. First of all, you have worked in a very highly disciplined, monastic, 10 hours, 12 hours a day, and have created mastery around specific things. So you have to talk about the discipline of sticking to something. Yeah, absolutely. But here's the thing that I can't take credit for. Like I said earlier, it didn't feel like discipline.

It was an urge. It was a calling. I had to do it. If I didn't do it, I felt sad. I felt depressed. I felt lost because I am very lazy. If I'm not interested, I am lazy. If I don't want to do it, ask me to answer an email. It's not happening. If I don't want to do it, I will not do it. But if I want to do it, I will do it and outdo whoever in it because I just have to in it. I get off on it. I have to do it. So I would say that's where you start.

You find that thing that you feel like you have to do. You have to do it, whatever it is. It doesn't matter if you love making hot dogs. You know, we all know the place Nathan's Hot Dogs. It's a huge hot dog stand. I'm sure the original Nathan made a great living off it and killed it. The guy just loved grilling hot dogs. Well, I also think you have made a big deal out of attracting, or you could say attracting, or finding, or learning,

or just wanting to learn things and attracting a team. It's impossible to do everything yourself. Even now with your skateboarding life, you've created a team. Yeah. And literally a team of kids that skate and also a team that handles all that. Yeah. So you have not done, you've done, there's part of what you've done that is a singular athletic thing, but it is not alone.

You're surrounded. That's what I've learned about a team is if you want a real successful team, nobody needs to step on anybody's toes. You're put in that position to do the best at that position. And your teammate who's in the other position that complements your position

needs to just be the best at that position. And if everyone just stays in their lane and is the best at who they are in that position, when you guys combine your powers doing that, you can't be stopped. So I never try to act like I know more than my lawyer or my CEO. I may have a different opinion, but if they explain it to me in a certain way, I hear you. Okay. Well, you're the expert in that field. I don't quite understand it yet, but I know that you're great at what you do. So, okay, let's give it a shot. Sometimes you're right. Sometimes you're wrong. But at least if we all can come together, make a decision. I think making making a quick concise decision is better

than making no decision at all because at least if you make a decision and it's not the right decision you can at least know that okay well we can fix this let's go to the let's do something else real quick don't get stuck in like paralysis analysis paralysis or whatever that's called you know what i mean and um i don know. That's so you have been both a successful athlete and a moneymaker. And so we want to inspire other people to do it. Yeah. So what are you open to the universe for what's next? I mean, obviously you're still doing what you're doing, but right. Are you open to whole, a whole? 100%. And then how about for someone like you that has lived so much so early, what's left to do and what is left to learn in your personal life?

Because I think that's what all of us that have achieved early. The learning never stops. You don't figure all out at once in life. Never. Right? The learning never stops. So if one part of your life is really, it's worked out. Then the other part is really not worked out.

People need to know that. We're all a little out of balance. That whole thing about being even and everything, it doesn't usually happen. Jack of all trades, that type of thing. But you're a master of none. And that's just thing but you're a master of none you know and that's just the sacrifice you make like i i i think i'm sensing what you're referring to like i i've made so much um progress in one area but in in my love life it's it's been a it's been a lot of

failed businesses should be called a lot of failed businesses in my love life but uh we know that that's what happens when we over hyper focus on one thing then we have to work on the other yeah but you're still very young okay and you're very successful and now we have to it's it's like me going back to school so i could become congruent and i had to almost stop working for a while so that i could grow up finally yeah but see you had the the matureness to understand that that's what you had to do well and you had the financial freedom to make that choice that's right and i want people to hear that it's not that money makes you happy no but money gives you the freedom to make really good decisions 100

that's why it's important but it also gives you the freedom to make really good decisions 100 and that's why it's important but it also gives you the freedom to make terrible decisions if you yeah money i think it can accentuate what you're already it like puts us a magnifying glass on how your brain already works if you're already dysfunctional and somehow you come into money you're just going to get on a fast track to more dysfunction right if you're already healthy and centered and well balanced internally and you get money, it's just going to accentuate that in a better way. That's why you have so many athletes that have money and then they blow it all and they buy things that are depreciating and all that. And I think for me that I've, as you know,

I've never been grandiose. Money for me is freedom to make choices and make better decisions. Yeah. But I am so proud of you. Thank you, Nelly. To have known you since you're eight years old. And I look forward to many, many, many more years and beautiful businesses and also beautiful in every way you are. Thank you, Nelly. You are very zen and very old soulish,

as is my son. Yes, he is. That's why you're both brothers and you're both a gift in my life. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. You've been a gift in ours and we appreciate and love you.

Moneymaker is a production of Money News Network. Moneymaker is written and hosted by me, Nellie Galan. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Thanks for listening. See you next time. you you