No Jumper - The Brad Simms Interview: Dominating BMX at 36, Mountain Bikes, Social Media & More

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Brad Simms talks about his successful career in BMX, staying consistent, friendship with Adam, making money in BMX, Benny The Butcher and more! https://www.instagram.com/brad_simms/ ----- NO JUMPER PATREON http://www.patreon.com/nojumper CHECK OUT OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5te... FOLLOW US ON SNAPCHAT FOR THE LATEST NEWS & UPDATES https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_... CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! http://www.nojumper.com/ SUBSCRIBE for new interviews (and more) weekly: http://bit.ly/nastymondayz  Follow us on SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ENxb4B... iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/n... Follow us on Social Media: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_... http://www.twitter.com/nojumper http://www.instagram.com/nojumper https://www.facebook.com/NOJUMPEROFFI... http://www.reddit.com/r/nojumper JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Q3XPfBm Follow Adam22: https://www.tiktok.com/@adam22 http://www.twitter.com/adam22 http://www.instagram.com/adam22 adam22hoe on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No Jumper, coolest podcast in world. And today I have an old friend of mine, Brad Sims, in the building. How you doing, Brad? Better than ever, man. I'm great. Thanks for having me back on here. Yeah, man. I had you on my old BMX podcast, TCU TV, five years ago or so,

which is kind of hard for me to locate in my memory. I believe Catfish was on it. Catfish definitely was there. I think a few other people. Yeah. I'm not sure if you still in contact with him. It feels like a million years ago. I think Chris Long was there.

It was a minute ago. Well, you said, what, five, six years ago? Yeah. So, I mean, a lot has changed in the last five to six years. A lot has changed. And one thing that stands out to me is that there's close to nobody that's pretty much, like, from my generation, that's still really doing something that is really making noise, BMX-wise, you know? Like, to make it to 36, you just turned 36, 37? 36.

36? 36. and to think that you were like totally killing it when we were both you know 19 and then you're still going in harder than ever right now I mean it's pretty it's pretty shocking to see yeah I mean I didn't even think about it until like earlier in the year or last yeah like the beginning of the year right so I was talking people when I was sitting down I was talking with uh stew and I was thinking back from like my generation like how many people are still active right and it's only only there's a few, but the majority have either moved on,

you know, working normal nine to five, or they just, I don't know, going off on some other adventure. I would say that, like, of the riders I was hyped on when I was, I don't know, 23. I mean, how many of them are still pro, never mind riding at a high level? It's got to be less than 1%. Oh, hands down. Yeah. Easily less than 1%.

How is that possible? How are you still riding so good? You really like and there's like a style there's a Brad Simms style that has sort of like become a thing at a certain point and if somebody were to spend a little while on your Instagram they would they would figure this out even if they didn't really ride BMX I think they'd be able to pick it out which is kind of like doing something that seems absolutely impossible on a spot that almost everybody else who rides bikes would not even do a single thing on. I think it's something that preserved a lot of my my riding. It's the fact that I didn't get to film and work with brands throughout my whole career. It's been on and off. Yeah.

It was always on and off. So I could, yeah, I'd sit around. I'd go place and do shit. But I would always just kind of have things in the back of my mind. I was like, you know what? Maybe one day. Maybe one day. So when that whole, like, yeah, last year when I decided just to say,

fuck everything and go do my own thing. Right. That's when I just started to unload. quarantine had a real big impact on the way that you chose to ride bikes or just how hard you were choosing to go in general that's how hard i chose to go in general right quarantine on the streets were empty i knew that was the perfect time to hit everybody as hard as i possibly could because everybody's on their phone yep everybody's on their phone people to board out of their minds and sitting in the house so if you didn't have a passion something to do outside of like your everyday job

or whatever and if you you know if you if you're self-employed you got to keep yourself busy doing one thing and the other sometimes you you know you get bored doing what you're doing but i wasn't bored i had just that motivation to keep going and going right it's crazy because i feel like you've always kind of been somebody who just had like almost like unlimited potential and you yourself kind of have to choose how much of it you want to let out at any given time Because even as a young dude, you were always this like freakishly strong dude who was basically capable of like muscling tricks out that nobody else could do just because you just had enough strength to really just like, you know, rip a fucking tail whip in a spot where somebody else wasn't going to be able to. Yeah. I've always been bigger than like the average router.

Right. You know, you're either, you know, short and stocky or tall and slim and I'm kind of right in the middle. just a little bigger than the average person who rise BMX yeah well you're small and then you but then you have like a really dense muscularity going yeah something like that for sure so um i wanted to okay so in terms of you sort of like having still been on this road of progression like do you look back at your career and see multiple different times where you thought about quitting oh at least let me see I remember when everything was kind of when I lost like all my deals and it happened early on.

It happened within like two years of being sponsored. Post, because it was Bulldog bikes and then it was Hoffman, right? Yeah. Do you remember when we first met in Philly? Yes. And we rode around. Yeah. When you're talking about like the website and everything, surely after I think a year later,

like I lost all my deals back then. Because you had a Target deal around that time too, right? Yep. Yeah. Rope for Target. And they were helping you a ton with the travel, which you were huge on at the time.

Yeah, they helped with a lot of that. And there was Hoffman. Then I guess that was like 2008, whenever the crash was. Right. So then a lot of that money dried up. And I didn't think about quitting them, but I didn't really know what I,

I didn't know what the next step was going to be. Right. Because of, you know, you just, you get a little afraid because, lack of income like all right do I go and get a normal nine to five or do I keep pushing right so but I think after that happened and another time I say there's been at least three three three times that I remember right and the biggest one would be right before the pandemic it was when things started to go sour with fit no before that before that that's when I thought about

about quitting when not quitting was just not trying to make this your job yeah just really I've been a whole industry like that because I mean I really I spent 10 years like a decade with no decent sponsorship right and BMX in general is like you know knowing what I know now about all the different things that you could do to make money and everything it seems like it would be kind of crazy to try to cobble together a good living from riding BMX and maybe it's one thing when you're you're 20 and you got you know your parents are helping you out and maybe you don't need that much money to to get through life and everything but I mean and and also it was one thing in 2008 because in 2008 there was definitely

a lot more opportunities in terms of shoe sponsors it was probably easier to get energy drink sponsor these days it's a lot more difficult to make a living as BMX writer now you either have to be like absolute absolute tippity top skill and popularity wise That's pretty much it. Yeah, there's no real in-between. And you have to transcend. And he's under right now, like, I've reached the highest possible place you can go in BMX without connecting it to something. And I've connected it to other things, such as the mountain bike industry going there.

I got sponsored by Iditas now. And also, a lot of rappers are starting to. engaged with me. Which is something I always wanted to see through my whole time doing the BMX website and everything. I always wanted to like figure out how to get rappers to

give a fuck about BMX or to realize how cool it was and I always felt like it was difficult to make that connection. So that's when I first had Benny the butcher I think to say something to me like oh I'd be fucking with your boy Brad Sims and I was like that's amazing to realize that somebody like you who's

super popular and has really has this very real background, etc. Is looking at a side of, you know, athletics, I guess, that he has nothing to do with and able to appreciate what you're doing, you know? That made me feel good about the future of BMX. Yeah, because that's when I knew something was different. When I remember when I dropped a video online

and it got like, I don't know, like 12, 1,300 comments on it or something. And some dude, some random person was like, yo, he said, you're so dope Benny DeBuscher. follows you and this is during I didn't really I wasn't listening to music like that then because I was so fucking driven and I wouldn't I couldn't I just had to ride to beat on my own drum really couldn't listen to you were that motivated riding wise that you weren't even really paying attention to that kind of thing no listen to music there's so many people that started following like rappers

and stuff I had no idea who were watching my page so some do say yeah you said you know you're so dope Benny the butcher is following you know I was like what so I went to I'm looking I was like really he is then I I started looking at other things. And I noticed Ray Kwan was in. I'm like, Ray Kwan. I'm like, legendary, that's crazy. Bucking and Rapids, Ray Kwan, there's like,

Ransom, there's Conway. Wow. And the list, like, was it, Farrah Munch? Like, the list was going on and on, like, top UFC fighters. Wow. And I'm like, these people are watching me. So I knew something was different this time around. There's like a different category of appreciation

that people can have where it's like, when you're doing things that are so impressive that people who know nothing about BMX could be that tuned in. Because I feel like a problem. It's a gift and a curse in BMX over the years is that a lot of BMX has become so technical that an average person would just have no chance of understanding what a crank arm to barren,

the manual, the switch whip is. They might know it looks amazing, but they don't, what are the odds of them actually, like getting it super low? But like you'd be doing some stuff that any idiot could look at it and realize that you're doing something really, really hard. And that's how I market myself online. Like I go towards like the mom and the pops, like the casual fans that people who are watching.

There's only a core rider is going to understand what you just mentioned. Right. Seven trick thing. If they see me jump off a building and land over here on this wall, they can do one plus one. But that calculus equation that somebody just fucking did on some crazy obstacle. don't know what that is right and for somebody like you i mean you could do a lot of that stuff and i'm sure you still will do a fucking ledge combo in a video here and there but it's like you only have so much energy and you're somebody with so much talent that it's like you could kind of direct it in whatever

direction you want and like at a certain point it just sort of clicked to you that doing stuff that was just shocking on sort of everyday objects would be more interesting to a lot of people than just adding another technical thing yeah because i didn't i didn't feel like that was moving needle. Like I watched it. I've seen a thousand technical things, but just straight bangers, putting it in your face

on a daily basis. I noticed which started moving me in a different direction. Yeah, because I mean, in BMX it's kind of like almost looked down upon for people to do tricks thinking about what they're going to get

from doing that trick. You know, like I'm going to do this trick and I'm going to use it in this way. I'm going to put this content on like this. A lot of young BMX kids, like ideas like, no, you're riding bikes and you're going to let a film or film you, and then they're going to do whatever it is they want to do with that footage. And you're kind of not even supposed to care or have any involvement with how that content of you is being used, which I feel like you're not a big fan of. No, I'm not. I mean, I got duped into that years ago, and these are, this is why when the pandemic started, that's when I just decided, I say, fuck everything.

I'm not honoring no more of these antiquated codes. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to post whatever I want online. Then I knew it was going to create a splash, but I know it was going to do what it did to put me in a position I'm in right now because people started. I was getting crazy hate from all kinds of directions,

from people I knew, people I was close to, and I was like, all because I'm posting on Instagram. Wait, what was the hate front from you? you actually posting crazy tricks on Instagram? Because there's always been a little bit of a stigma in BMX about that. You're supposed to save it for a full video part for people who don't know. A lot of it came from there. Yeah.

Because, yeah, I wasn't saving clips. And I knew if I didn't rebrand myself and get people to start rewatching my content, then I was going to eventually just fade away. Right. Because there's no way, because I won two Rout of the Year awards. I was like the only way that was going to happen is if I was in your face because had I saved up footage for six and a half seven, eight months, it wouldn't have had the same impact. Because you, I remember you were reposting stuff. Like I came out here, we ended up like I jumped over you.

Right, yeah. And that was on there. And it was just clip after clip after clip. So it's just a different impact. And some people won't just go and watch a five minute part. okay cool well if I get on open my phone up I can sit here and boom Brad's gonna post today is my post tomorrow and I'm in your face every day and you can't get away from it yeah because then I've had the conversation with people over and over and over where it's like dude can you believe

that Brad is really out there doing tricks like that every day like it just becomes a normal conversation and I can understand right from a lot of people's perspective it's it's better to wait it's better to put out this full cinematic video and I definitely see the value in that and you know I think of somebody like Dennis Anderson who probably had like one of the best video parts of the year for sure and I mean that was an incredible section and I wonder if it would

like I mean I guess Dennis's Instagram would probably be going crazy if he had posted each of those tricks singularly as a single trick instead he films this whole thing and puts it out and that YouTube video got like 2 million views or some shit like that so it definitely was successful for whatever he was trying to accomplish but

you know it's like who is to say that there's anything wrong with putting your content out in whatever fashion that you want, especially in this day and age where if I do a podcast, it's getting cut for Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook. So, you know, you're doing a trick. It's like there's a million different ways that you can put it out there into the world.

If anything, I would say that you could probably be even bigger if you leaned in to TikTok more to Facebook. I don't know, you probably post your tricks on Facebook and everything. But, I mean, there's a lot of different social apps that you can gain a profile on, And that's basically what it is to be a professional athlete these days. There is no media that's going to fucking do it for you. There's no magazine, there's no website that has that much clout that's going to change anything for you.

The platforms you need to appease are the social media platforms, really. Yeah, and that's where I went straight too. I don't do a lot with TikTok. I mean, I have one, but I don't do much on there because people flag my shit. Really? Oh, wow. Like, I'll have a video that we go viral in some, some idiot will flag it.

Wow, that sucks. That's crazy that that actually works these days. Oh, it does is like it just it gets flagged for dangerous acts. Right. Something ridiculous. Yeah, I guess some of the stuff you do, like being up on people's roofs and stuff, you can kind of see how the algorithm might not like that.

I guess, but I'm not really on people's roofs like that. Yeah. This is a little too invasive for me. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I knew what to do, and it was a media gravification and instead of being it being over long term just like this is going to create right the long term so because kids want to see the lifestyle you know they want to see the

they want it to be relatable like an average kid and this is kind of an old conversation but when it comes to BMX it's like kids tend to veer towards the stuff that they can understand and when you see a video and it's like six minutes of like i remember when i started to realize like oh these kids are impressed by a vlogger than a dude who's hammering out three minutes worth of bangers in a video part the view count reflects that and the number of people who are interested reflects that like that's that that was a pretty like unbelievable awakening for me in a certain way at a certain point because I just always been used to like oh if you get a bunch of tricks you put them in final cut and you put a song

and that's basically what that's the only way that you can present BMX it's interesting that you didn't go the vlog or route because I would have almost seemed kind of obvious, although I think that it's probably better image-wise that you didn't. I kind of thought about it for a minute, but I didn't enjoy holding the camera in my face. Yeah. If I had somebody just following me around, and I'm kind of awkward in front of camera too sometimes. So it's just, sometimes just not comfortable with it. Is there a part of you that, like, what is it that kept you really going with BMX all these years

and didn't decide to just do something else? Like, there's been so many people over the years are super talented riders, and at a certain point, they just kind of just aren't feeling it just doesn't seem worth it to him at a certain point what's kept you going either they're not feeling it or they get it means easy to get burnt out yeah you get you get you good i mean i've burnt out many times you've been super lucky with the injuries which is a huge factor yep very fortunate there um well here's thing i never never had anything on top of it i was like i don't want to leave the industry with you know um just a yeah, I have great memories and been around the world,

but I can't do anything with a passport full of stamps. Right. You know, I need to build a future for myself. And I was like, I'm not leaving until I get that. So that's what really, but that's what, that's what, that was another, like, moment that kind of drove me to that point. Right. You know, I'm like, I'm not going back to work in construction.

I'm like, I have options. I have an option. I was like, I can still ride this. like so right at the highest level I'm like I'm not going back to swinging a fucking hammer or working a jacket you know

so that's what it was and it was you know it was like it was it's fear you get you know you get afraid you know you don't know what you're going to do and I didn't even know it's like I'm going to get myself six months and if I can't change my life

at least make something better in the next six months then I walk away. And it's hard to do this without being outcome driven. Right. So I do almost anything without being outcome driven. Because you don't want to be at the skate park working on a trick and also thinking like, y'am, I'm doing this so that I can have something for Instagram today

so that I can get those likes and comments and feel like I'm relevant. But that's got to be kind of tempting to almost get into that mentality sometimes. Oh, you do get into it. I had to get into. I had to tap into that. You have to. There was no way. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm also like intrinsically motivated, but you have to, there has to be some kind of compelling reason there to keep it, keep it going. And you got to go. And I abandoned, during that time, abandoned probably everything. Like if you weren't on the same energy or trying to be, if you weren't around me trying to do the same shit or be helpful, then I just, we couldn't be in the same space. and I would look

I started looking I was watching a lot of stuff you're doing and I just I knew I was like we come from the same industry and I've seen like just the upward trajectory and everything that's been going on in your life and I was like I remember when you all had

the old spot sometimes you'd be in your room I'd see writing down stuff like we're making a plan and I'm like Adam definitely he makes plans he plans shit out does stuff

Then when my closest friend, Brandon, he also was a planner. I sat down with his father one night and his father was talking to me. He was like 70-some years old. He was like, yeah, he goes, you need to come up with a plan. So all these people who are more successful than me are planning. So I just sat down one day. I said, you know what, let me make a plan. I just started planning and just scratching shit off the list.

And one by one, things started to just come to fruition. fruition. I remember like that time period, maybe 2013 when I was first starting to realize that I really like wanted more for my life and I'd been running this BMX website for all these years and it was cool but I also like I just started to feel kind of dry and I just started to feel like I was capable and more and I remember like I would be choosing to sit in the house and not go out which was like you know at that time that was pretty much what our lives were like was you went and rode all day and then you went to the bar at night and that was it and I started to like not go to the bar and I started to stay in the house and I'd be watching

documentaries and I'd be watching other podcasters as before I'm doing podcasts and starting to like really get the creative juices flown of like okay what can I do that'll be bigger than where I'm at right now bigger than just bike riding etc and I noticed that when I started to do that there was a lot of people in my life who were kind of like would see me trying to dig out a better path for myself and we're almost kind of offended by it because you know they're going to the bar every night drinking themselves to death and meanwhile i'm choosing not to and people get kind of offended by that like without realizing it like they don't want you to find a new path they don't want you to like work on bettering yourself they want you to be dragged down to the level that they're at

and the BMX kind of has that as like an overall disease in a way where it's like there's almost like a stigma about being entrepreneurial or wanting to like really build something for yourself and i've seen that over and over with you over the years where i feel like you wanting to get paid what you deserve or you wanting to just ask for more, you wanting to be very clear about your demands is like quite often just painted as like you being an asshole or hard to work with or some shit. It's dehumanizing. The industry dehumanizes riders.

And I see that just with a lot of athletes, whether it's action, especially action sports. Nobody talks about numbers. You can't talk. You can't really discuss numbers. Someone like in contractual agreements and stuff. But if you discuss that stuff, it gets, but you can't, I mean, you create tension within the brand. Right. And if you want to transcend like you're doing, go off and try to do something different.

Another creative avenue, you do get, you get looked at people, people shame you. Right. In a way, like, well, why are you doing that? Like, that's not. Core. It ain't core. So props to you for building your empire. And, you know.

Appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, I just got like a couple of the right spots. Like, you know, I was just kind of like warming my way into that rap space, started to get a couple rapper interviews and I just started to like realize like, wow, you know, I had always sort of closed myself off mentally until like, oh, I'm a BMX guy and I listen to rap music and everything, but why would I ever think that I would have any kind of ability to go have conversations with people in that world, you know? And when I look back on it, I'm like, holy shit, that it was pretty audacious.

Like, why did you think that any of these people would be interested in talking to you? But I started small and sort of like built my thing and eventually got to the point where I was in that position. And even like, you know, especially like street rappers, I'll go back and watch an interview from three, four years ago. And it's like, oh, my God, I had no business doing this. Like what? I didn't know anything about that world. Now that I actually do, it's almost like, oh, I feel like as an interviewer, I'm kind of just getting started in a way. Yeah.

I mean, you have to have a certain level of ego. You know, I mean, ego, people look at it, look at ego as if it's universal. universally negative, but it's not. You need just enough, and you had enough of belief just to go out there. And you know what? I can interview Pat Poo's or Jada Kiss or somebody.

It takes a lot of ego to be like, you know what, I'm 36 and I'm still going to actually start really making moves in my career finally and, you know, making the moves that I was supposed to, that people thought that I would be done 20 years ago or 15 years ago or whatever. Like BMX riders are just not supposed to have a career that long.

That's why I find so impressive about you is that you still just had the actual skill to get all that shit done. Yeah, I mean, I'm surprised. Right. I'm surprised, but I knew it was there, but I just,

I think that was just, you know, timing. Like, okay, cool. I need to just do me and not entertain any of the noise and just go 110. Right. Do you feel like, For those who don't know, you have kind of a public falling out with your previous sponsor, Fit,

which is probably one of the bigger, more respected brands at this point. And, you know, I feel like the general consensus was, well, I don't know what the consensus is, but a lot of people are really, really shocked that you would sort of willingly go your separate ways just because you felt like you deserved more. The typical, like, notion of what your BMX career is supposed to be like is basically you get sponsored by a company like fit and you hold on until the last possible moment when they kick you off, right? Like, what was it about you that made you just decide, like, I'm worth more and I'm not going to just keep accepting a paycheck that I don't think is fair? Because I couldn't build a life from it.

And my goal was to get myself in a position where I can build a life. And, you know, we had a fall in now. It's just, it's a messy story, you know. There's another podcast with it. detailed in many hours worth of content. But it's like I want to, I'm trying to build a life. Like I want to buy a house. I want to get to the next stage of my life.

And I'm, there's other brands who I know I can work with who are, you know, there are plenty of eyes on me right now. And I know, you know, it'll work for me. Were you looking at other athletes or influencers and sort of just thinking like, I see them getting what they're worth? And a lot of times BMX is happy to pay people, you know, like 10% of what. what people might get in other sports. Was that part of it as well?

I kept looking at some of the top views, but I was looking outside of BMX. Right. Looking like, who, where can I go? How can I get what I need to make my life function the way I wanted to? So I started looking at, like at Nigel as well.

Nigel. He's had a great career. Very successful in what he's doing. Super early on real, like when you think about the kind of moves that he was making in 2012 or 11 or whatever. I mean, he was sort of like really early on realizing what it would be to be an influencer as a BMX writer, you know? Like you can go fuck with all these companies if you build an image for yourself, you know? He gets a lot of hate from industry, but he's a very important piece to it. And he and I talk a bit, you know, and same with Ralphie, but very high.

helpful and knowledgeable has knows everybody and even just the way how he moves around like everything is done at the highest level so just connecting with him more often um just just the way that everything how things are moving like i now i understand consistency more than ever at first i didn't i i wouldn't yeah i had probably some discipline issues but Like back in a day, then I'd go do something, then I fucking go off. But you didn't have social media to really give you any kind of structure. Because now, like for example for you, let's say you go, let's say you do five interviews, then you go silent for a whole month.

No. Can't happen, right? No, no, no, no. So that could happen. That would be fine pre-social media. Right, yeah. But now, no. And when that whole, when social media got into, you know, the bike game and all that stuff, that's when everything changed.

And that's the thing is that so many people in BMX were super resistant to the changes that came with social media. And you were described what your mentality was early on in the Instagram era because definitely it took a while for people to embrace it. anyone who did early on is probably winning as a result because there was a lot of appetite for BMX tricks on Instagram at the time whereas now it's pretty flooded flooded but

shit that stands up stands up you gotta do you gotta do what you gotta do now right yeah um fuck it took me I hated it because I would see you know young dudes just dropping hammers just dropping shit on it left and right I'm like what are you all doing because I was still stuck

I mean, I'm so way older than a lot of dudes who are just dropping stuff now. Right. So I would see that. I'm like, you all need to save this for a video part. You need to save it. Right. So I'm, you know, so old school mindset, not thinking about social media and how, like, like, how times are moving. How to rebrand and market and everything.

I'm stuck back there. Yeah. And I wouldn't say it, not until maybe two and a half, three years ago. But this year, that's when I was, well, 20, last year, that's when I just said, I don't care. Right. And I just went for Brooke. Yeah. No, I remember years ago, like, Began had an Instagram clip, and he just did a bunch of different, like, rail ledge setups at this one college, you know, all these, like, 60, 40 type things.

And I remember this, like, older BMX guy, industry, filmer, dude, whatever, and him just being like, this is fucked up. But you shouldn't be putting these things on Instagram. those are like real clips and just realizing like this is the this is the age gap right here because on one end we got like a 20 year old kid that did all these tricks first try damn near on the other side you have a dude who's telling him that he should have saved these clips that he did first try for his video part that might be out in a year or two and I was just like man it doesn't it's not going to pay to be an old head in the long run here like at some point you have to be able to look at what's going on in the internet and just realize like okay I

might have some antiquated ideas that might not serve me in the next 10 years of my life. Right. I still hear that all the time. I hear it. People, you shouldn't, you shouldn't use that. Like, really, that's for the gram? I don't care what I film. I will throw it on there.

So you're not holding on anything. I'll hold on nothing. Really? I'll go stable center right now and go drop something crazy and I'll put on there tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. Right. I don't care. That's your time? Roughly.

Whenever the peak hours are. That's the time when it does best? I just, nine, nine in the morning, 12, 3, something like that. I posted on the feed last night at 9 p.m. and got a reminder that late night does not work on my page. Yeah, it's not good. I don't know why I tried that.

I mean, your platform is way bigger than mine, but it's just not good, unless you're like Cardi B or somebody. I probably got like 20% of the likes that I would have gotten if I had posted in the morning, which is. Yeah, it's funny. It's funny. It's just a game. I look at it and people are like, oh, it's too, something like,

if you want to look at it that way, but. Me, my social media is the reason why I picked up all these new sponsors. Right. Why now I'm in the best position I've ever been in my entire career and I'm 36 now. And not really relying on the BMX industry at all. No. They could all say fuck you and you got your own thing going on. They didn't say that to me.

But they could, you know, like you're not dependent on, you know, for all these years in BMX in particular, it was like, the dudes you got to be pro are the ones. are the ones who for the most part kept their fucking mouth shut and just stayed by a company for years and years and it was you know i remember certain dudes that came out i remember kori wargowski came out to long beach all the talent in the world so goddamn good then we're talking like 20 20 2012 maybe and you know just like little personality things where he just didn't really didn't get along great with me and charlie krummlish and our our little squad like we got a little tough little scuffle like you know argument whatever not fight And then, you know, other little things like that.

And all of a sudden, boom, he's like, he's not sponsored and shit was all fucked up. And when I think back on that, I'm like, that's a tragedy that, like, he was basically at the whim of, you know, a handful of industry people liking him. It happens all the time. Like, I see it. You know, some people just might not have, like, a great personality. It might just be kind of, you know, weird, quirky. And, you know, it might be one of the best. But they don't either, one, they don't know how to market themselves to or,

they end up just kind of falling on the radar. Because you used to be able to be, like I remember you had a big chunk of your life where you wanted to do nothing but travel. It was probably over like 10 years ago. But you would put out a video apart maybe every year or two or whatever, but you were trying to be in Romania, Bangladesh, whatever the fuck it was that. You were just trying to see everything, bro. We never saw you in America for a couple years there.

I was. I had a stretch when I was probably gone. I think the longest stretch was two and a half years. but like within like five years I was really gone for like five years right just seeing in the world yeah just fucking run into this place that place you would have a girl in every

eastern European country was letting you stay with her for a while there but do you do you still have that desire because I used to be like that where I wanted to see every country and I wanted to be everywhere and at a certain point once I had seen enough of it I'm like oh all right like I don't it doesn't feel as like fetishized in my brain anymore to go see

all these different cities now as like I want to, I do want to go see more places, but now that my finances are different, I want to go back and experience them in a more luxurious way. Like a lot of places I went to, I was just roaching it. Yeah. You know, so I mean, I've been to 105 countries and it's not the same. Like, now I want to go. I don't want to move around quite as much as I, you know, I did at one time.

But now, like, I still want to go to some places I do a project. there, chill, you know, and be able to do it on my own time and not out of just survival. Right. Yeah, because when I think about it, like, I consider a BMX bike or a bike in general to be, like, one of the best ways to travel in the sense that, like, you know, if you drop me off in France or London tomorrow, it's like I could ride my bike around for 10 hours and just look at shit and just really, like, get to see how people are really living, get to see what the shitty areas are like what the rich areas are like but then at the same time when i think about a lot of my old days

bmx wise yeah i mean you're pretty much eating like you know street food or you know going to some random fucking mcdonalds or whatever and you know there is definitely times where i travel now where i'm like holy shit like i'm actually really seeing what the city's like because i'm actually going to just do a lot of the things that it's famous for just because we have money now yeah you're not roughing it like it's nice that's one thing um what i noticed and a talk I had with Nigel not long ago is BMX bike BMX biking also looks

crazy because there's not enough visual of people doing well in the industry not enough riders so you take if I really think about the number of riders who own houses not too many some but you need to see it doesn't have to be like super flashy like the rap industry and other people showing

you know jewels and everything and flying around throwing crazy shit. But people need to know, like, up-and-comers, that it is possible that riders are doing well. Last thing I want to see is, you know, my favorite rider working at, I don't know, Long John Silvers. Right. You know, how would you feel?

I mean, wouldn't you be fucking blown away if you, if you, if you, one of your favorite rappers was working at, I don't know, Wendy's? There are rappers who haven't had a popular song in like 10, 15 years that when people realize that they have a normal job, it's like in the headlines. Like such and such girl that was signed by Jay Z in 1998 works at Bloomingdale's. It's like, what makes you think that her putting out a song with Jay Z in 1998 would stop her from needing a regular job in 2021? But yeah, I mean, BMX has a very weird relationship with like materialism and wealth and stuff like that in the sense that like, you know, in BMA or in rap music, it just sort of celebrates it.

Like, the guy with the most money is somebody that's heralded. I remember, like, Stephen Murray had a little feature in ride, I think, where he was showing off his, like, tricked out SUV with, like, hella modifications done on it and stuff. And I remember, like, reading the letters or just, like, seeing the comments about it online. And it was just, like, I mean, him flaunting his wealth like, that was, like, you know, people are treating him like the Antichrist. Yeah.

Everybody can do it. Except for, like, if you come, if you're in this, within this industry, it's frowned upon. It's like, no, like, you shouldn't have, like, you shouldn't be doing it, or you shouldn't want that. You should, you can only have, you should be, you should have appreciation for what you get and not aspire to be anything more than that. And I see so much of this. And, yeah, it's toxic. That's why people, I think, why a lot of dudes end up. up with this crazy post-career depression.

They get there, they never ask for anything more. I mean, the squeaky wheel gets to grease. You said, you know, imagine had you not stop going to the bar every night and drinking and hanging around those dudes and coming up with a plan. How much different would your life be right now? I don't know. I genuinely, we would be kind of worried about it.

Same. Like, without that, like, sense of urgency? I started to realize honestly at a really young age that BMX industry-wise was kind of fucked up because me all through high school I'm worshipping Edwin Vinnie and Vic and I'm looking at Vicki Alla like he's a fucking god He had the best style he's doing the biggest rails

Like doing all these crazy-ass rail tricks that people weren't really doing He was like a god to me And then one day He's just kind of out and it's like Oh yeah he like stopped riding and he's like doing construction now Like Edwin kept riding and shit but like, you know, Vic was just gone. And I was like seeing all that talent go away,

probably because he went and got a job doing construction that was maybe making him like, you know, 70 grand a year or something, maybe more or maybe less. But like, you know, a good amount of money that he would be able to actually like live off of and even I remember reading about it at that time and realizing like he didn't have a mom or dad to just go like sleep on their couch.

You know, he's like he didn't really have that much of a safety net to fall back on. So you have one of the best BMX riders of all time of that era for sure. whose career is kind of cut short just because he didn't see any future in it. Yeah, it happens all the time. You know, and that's why, one of the reasons, I encourage the younger generation to figure out some sort of plan with it.

Because if it doesn't happen, like, also, like, pick up a camera, start filming. There's many places that people need filmers and so forth now. They need photography. They need many photographers. They need videographers. So the plan, like, B and the C or whatever it is, I have something else in there because, I mean, I relied on the one thing. Right.

But I was also so invested in, and I knew eventually like nothing was going to stop me from getting there. Right. Do you regret in some ways that you didn't sort of see the vision younger? Because I feel like, you know, if all of us knew what the Internet was going to turn into in 2010, We all would have been moving very differently. We would have done different things to take full use of these platforms that were emerging in front of us. No, I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I didn't because I wouldn't be ready for it.

Right. I wouldn't ready for it. I was too, I was way too loose back then. When I was moving, just traveling around the world, going everywhere, I was way too great. Everything that's, all these new deals and stuff is coming at me right now, I would have blown every dime. and I can guarantee you and I would not be riding

I would have burnt out and it's been done. Interesting. I wouldn't, yeah, I didn't have the upbringing for that nor did I have like financial literacy to deal with what's in front of me right now.

That's a really interesting thing for you to bring up because let's be real, we've seen a lot of riders over the years, maybe not even a lot, but like black man like the easiest answer to come to of like somebody who had a ton of talent get sponsored and doesn't really know how to manage this position that he all of a sudden finds himself in and that always killed me of seeing that with black where he was like too hood for his own good like he but he came up in this environment where he had these survival mechanisms and then all of a

sudden he sponsored and it's like the rules are totally different where you know you're in the industry and you're expected to act a certain way and he had like a super short pro career because of the fact that you know he didn't have like the the upbringing to necessarily teach him how to move in this world you know yeah you see a little bit of that in yourself so i understood the difference between business and um just hot i mean i knew how to move i'm not how to function but it was it mostly just had to do with my own personal education. I wasn't educated enough to really handle certain things that were going on in my life.

You know, like, there's no, if somebody, like, what was, what I have right now, like I said, if it came to me seven years ago, no question that I would fall flat on my face and be done with it. Yeah. It's been way too much for me back then. That's why I'm like, I'm kind of mind-blowing to see, like, Dennis Anderson. Dennis has been doing well for himself since he was, like, 14. Right.

And you, it doesn't seem like he ever had one slip-up. Mm-hmm. You know, you seem like just going, going, going. Like, their career is just fucking skyrocketing. And he just had such a good head on his shoulders, you know? Yeah, all of a sudden, he's like, okay, boom. Sorry if I can drink and they get. crazy DUIs or something.

I don't know, getting to a fight with somebody. Like, can create maybe some TMZ fall out with some chick or some shit. And, you know, but that never happened. Like, he's just been on one plane and just chilling. I mean, I don't know everything that goes on in his personal life. But he's had, you know, yeah, he's had good people around them. Right. mentality, you know, and in a lot of ways, I think, you know, where he came up in San Diego,

I mean, being a professional action sports out. athlete is more of like a normal path in life. I'm sure you felt like a black sheep at a certain point because of the fact that you chose to do this. Like this was a very out of the ordinary thing for you to decide to do with your life. Oh, yeah. Big time. That's a big difference.

Yeah, I would go. I remember, yeah, I would go out to dinner with some people and they would be like, man, you're really living the life. And I'm like, I am struggling to make ends meet. And because people want to talk about investments and stuff. I'm like, man, I can't talk about this shit. Like, I do not. Don't tell me about Bitcoin when I know that my bills are just barely paid this month.

Yeah, for real. Yeah. But I'm happy those days are a thing of the past, man. Do you think that the manager thing was a big turning point for you? Because now you don't necessarily have to be the one involved with negotiating? Yeah. Great time. I noticed when, yeah, when my page really started to fucking pop off and my numbers just tripled,

that's when when people started reaching out to me it was weird I was like something is just completely different managers

like athlete managers were reaching out to me CPAs um wow fucking accountants and something they know something's going on

man like they can smell it wow but yeah my the dude I work with right now solid um like actually like

cares about my career he He's not just not transactional obviously he wants to get paid to and stuff but right He's just not one of those dudes where he's trying to like fucking rob you for everything you get it's funny because there's been so many people that I've known in BMX over the years Throughout like the 2010s and stuff who would get a manager and then I'd have a conversation with them like a year or two years later and it'd be like yeah, they didn't do shit for me and I gave him 20% of my fucking income or whatever and didn't really do much form I feel like now though that's it's it is more obvious you know it's like I see sort of like

niche parkour guys or fucking you know I see it with rappers and producers and stuff where it's like oh like this dude has a ray band deal because this dude has like a you know a puma a couple of puma posts on his page right now just and he's just tagging puma and it's like you know these sort of like one-off deals or like you know just finding ways to be able to offer your value to different sponsors and like you know we always looked at it like oh A sponsor is a company that's going to give you X amount of dollars every single month, maybe some bonuses on top. But that's the whole thing. And if they sponsor you for a year and then they stop sponsoring you, you're like mad as fuck.

Like, they drop me. Because that one sponsor you lost back then was everything. Yeah. You know, you're like, this is going to make a break me. Like my career is going to, like I'm not going to have, I'm not going to be able to just survive doing what I want to do. Right. if I lose that one. Yeah.

So remember Levi's gets into BMX and it's like, you know, they sponsored 15 fucking dudes all at once. And now when you think about what Levi's would do if they were going to sponsor some BMX riders is they would pick like two guys, maybe one guy, you know, run some ads, see how it goes. It's like a bunch easier for them to feel it out,

you know, do some promotional posts with different people. I see brands dipping their toes in and just doing posts with different, not even just BMX skateboard and other things where like, you know, companies will just try it out. Gamers are doing everything. Yeah. Yeah.

What's the difference between you and a gamer if you get the same number of followers and likes as him? Because, yeah, maybe BMX is its own thing. Maybe you're not as big as the biggest gamer, but there's definitely gamers who have all kinds of sponsorships that have the same stats as you.

Why shouldn't you be in that environment? I feel like manager is a pretty obvious thing to get you in front of those faces, you know? Managers are good. The thing with you having a manager depending on how you have your deal structured. I don't know. Do you have a manager? I don't have a manager, but I feel like

I have a lot of managers in the sense I have a lot of different people who pretty much know that they could get a cut of the money if they bring me a deal. You know? People bring us Instagram post all day and they get like 10 or 15% of whatever. Like they get to take what they want. If they sell it to somebody for 2,000 and we get $1,600 or whatever, it's like, okay.

Yeah, having somebody that's supportive and who cares about having a good manager is a is a make or break yeah you know a lot of deals that have come to me without without him helping like structure deals and stuff i mean i could do it too right but having him on it definitely increases the compensation big time because it's embarrassing to ask for what you know you're worth and you feel like you're going to make it awkward especially just because we're used to being in the bmx world and stuff where It's like, there's something very uncool about saying, I think that I am worth this amount of money because I am this important. Yeah.

You know, it's just, it's looked down upon from the world we come in, we come from. And it is weird, but I'm better at it now. I'm not, like, I'm not afraid. I'll tell you, I'm like, straight up. Like, no. Yeah. I'm not doing it for that. Like, it feels good.

Like, I'm finally in a position where I have walk away power. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, you don't want to do it? Like, really? You won't do it for that? Like, no, I'm cool. Like, I actually, I'm pretty good without it. Being very confident in your rate is a good feeling.

I was at ComplexCon. Somebody's trying to convince me to do some bullshit. I'm like, I'll be honest with you. I don't leave the house for less than $20,000. Which might be a bit of a lie, you know. I'm sure I would drive downtown tomorrow for $5,000. I want me to host a show or some shit like that. But there is truth to it in the sense that if I'm going to take my night to go do something,

that I need to be very, very well compensated because I make enough money in other parts of my life that I know how much money I need to get in order to do something. So if you come out of some bullshit money, it's unbelievably easy for me to say no. Right. Yeah. I'm on board.

I can't say, no, I can't just... The 20,000 number just kind of came to me in that moment. I got to lead a hospital less than that. But I'm happy... Respect. Yeah. And I was capping. But, you know, it's like you need a number to shoot your shot with. And 20,000 might be

the number because this dude was weird and it's like if you're weird then I got to bring more people with me because I don't know what's going to happen in this environment really at a certain point in the rap shit it's like if you're getting paid a certain amount of money to go do something part of what you're getting paid for is to assume the risk of something weird happening knowing that weird things happen in these environments sometimes you know you need security somebody yeah that's got to be wild yeah even like the other night when I was chilling with was these like I had to be mindful of it. Do you mind if I post this?

You mind of that? Because I know how they move around out here. I mean, that's like a thing. People like, oh, you, I, let's hit the next lick and get the next rapper for his chains or whatever. And I wouldn't want to be. They tried to do it to Benny in Texas. Yeah. Yeah.

I've seen, I heard the whole thing. Yeah. You know, so I like, I wouldn't want to be, I'd feel bad if something like that happened on account of me doing. something fucking foolish you know there's so much shit that i think about now when i'm like we were really in like a lot of the worst neighborhoods in different cities oh for years with thousands of dollars with the camera equipment thousands of dollars worth of bikes and we really got by on just sort of the assumption that we're going to be all right not that nothing ever had i honestly never really had that many sketchy situations happen in bad neighborhoods over and over and

over i would have some dude from some project be hyped as fuck because somebody was grinding the rail in front of his apartment building, you know? Yeah. Not much of it happened. I mean, I've heard of people getting jumped in Baltimore people getting jumped by like 13, 15 year olds or whatever. They're like, oh, whatever, break, you know, you should go ride, um, you know, just go ride that area.

I'm like, no, I'm not. If you go to a poor enough area and you seem like a pussy, then yeah, it's probably going down. But if you seem like a respectable person and, you know, if you're not going to the absolute worst fucking trenches-ass neighborhoods, because those are the ones, too, that. You go to the worst ones, and I, and this is people. be like, oh, Brad, you should go, and you're black. I'm like, that means nothing.

I'm like, I'm not from that trap. I'm not from there. If anything, that's going to give them a little bit more leverage to try to pull some slimy shit if they did want to do some shit. And they're like, well, that's just 13. I'm like, yeah, there's 10, 13-year-olds and are the size of grown men. Yeah. And those 13-year-olds might have been placed there by grown men, if anything,

because grown men are not above having young guys do dirt for them. No, they are not. No. And if you hang around Baltimore, a lot of you, cities you will see young kids that will pull a strap on you in a spot so you know but you know what nothing is crazy is uh back to rappers uh legendary rapper styles um another one couldn't believe it tapped in with you we're talking but he he gave me his number and i was like yo here's my math And I'm like, I'm like, I'm not calling Stiles Pee.

You kidding me? Yeah. So I shot him a text, like days later. I'm like, I don't know. So he messaged me. I mean, I messaged him and he responded. And then I messaged him again. He didn't say anything.

So I hit up a biscuit. And I asked him and said, you know, it's like, is Stiles more like the, is he a phone dude or is he a text guy? Like, what is he? he's like man he's one of the realist dudes like he's just call that dude so I wait

I didn't call him I stood and call him I waited like two like two and a half weeks right right I was like all right I'm like let me call Stiles

and it's like a Saturday like three or four o'clock called him but the same time I was like please don't pick up don't pick up I was like

I just want to leave a little voicemail please don't make me do this right now you know but he fucking picked up he picked up and I'm like god damn Stiles P just answered the phone

right but chillest dude ever. Yeah. Just conversation was just flowing. We talked for like 30 minutes and I'm on the phone. I was like, how did you, like when did you like start seeing footage of me? Like how did you find out about me?

Because I asked him if it was if it was Benny. He said no, he wasn't Benny. But I think he just said he just randomly saw me on an explorer page one day. And I'm like, so I was like, yeah, I've been listening to your music for 20, for, yeah, for 20 years. Right. And I'm, I'm kind of, like, I can easily just listen to 90s, early 2000 rap. Yeah. I'm just, that's my, that's my era of music, right, you know.

So yeah, we chop it up, we talked for a minute. But one thing I noticed about, remember when I told you, I wasn't really listening to a lot of music like that. Yeah. For Zelda, definitely, like, inspired me to listen to. like more new shit because I wasn't really listening to anything like that then because I went down that rabbit hole because I hadn't I didn't know much about Benny's catalog at the time I just heard like a song here and there right same with Conway all of them then I started listening going down and I'm like hold on shit these dudes are fucking fire right then I tapped in with

Benny we started talking and like we've been in contact for a minute but all those dudes a solid because we grew up thinking that rappers were like superheroes you know and like unapproachable and like when you look at somebody like Stiles Pia it's like what is Stiles Pee? Yeah he's got this fame and everything but he's just a

solid dude who's you know he's interested in what's going on and the culture still and everything like I'm not that surprised that he would see you riding bikes and just be excited about it you know I was surprised because like maybe it's just more of me because like

coming from a from a fan place sitting at my computer like on AOL instant messenger you know 16, 17 years ago on the fucking chat listening to gangston and a gentleman

you know, I'm just sitting there he was so cool to me when I met him too and I was just like I've had that experience over and over with like other rappers I met but it always is surprising of like damn I grew up listening to you say the most gangster ass shit what and now I'm meeting you and you're so cool

like damn all right Yeah, I was I was blowing away by the coming. Same way. I met Conway in Houston. Same thing. Chill. Yeah. Another one.

But out of all, I haven't, I haven't met Benny yet. Oh, really? We just been kind of rapping. I told Benny about Casey from Austin, too. I was like, you'll like this kid too. And I noticed that afterwards they followed him right away. He followed Casey. I noticed.

Yeah, he's into it. What I feel like, because I noticed a lot of them. in the rap industry, a lot of rappers follow like Tony Hawk. So I feel like some of the most street dudes, like whatever they were doing, whether they were trapping or whatever, they were still like in the back,

like at home playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Yeah. The boys may not have known about it, but they were just like, they were into it. Everybody fucking knows Tony Hawk. Right. Riding a bike or a skateboard or whatever is such a universal thing that

I feel like it's very easy for normal. people to appreciate it. It just has to be contextualized in a way that makes sense to them. It's like, you know, and that's what is great about your Instagram is you can scroll through it and it's very, it's easy to comprehend. It's like clip after clip, but each clip is very, very digestible on its own. Whereas like to a rapper, if I showed them like a Gary Reynolds video part, it's like, it's going to melt their brain and maybe not in like a good way where they're going to like return to it over and over, you know? It's like, it's just, it's so much to comprehend And like the way that like, you know, me or you, if we watch a Flatlands section right now.

That's what is, yeah. We know it's amazing. It's overwhelming. But we probably couldn't name one trick. No. Nope. Maybe like one part of one trick. Yeah, I could never tell you what a whole link is on there.

Never. But yeah, you're right. And that's what it boils down to. And why they were being able to connect as well. I interviewed that dude. I don't know if you know, I'm the professor the other day who was a guy who was and one for basketball and everything. And he, you know, like things didn't work out.

He was kind of too small to make it into the NBA and stuff. And then he figured out his own path where now he has, he does, you know, a million views plus on each YouTube video he uploads. He has all these followers. He does huge brand integrations for Burger King and Doritos and all this shit. And it's like, think about that. That's a dude who is in his 30s now and did not absolutely fail at making it as the traditional path that you're supposed to take as a basketball player and built something for himself that

probably makes him more than the vast majority of the NBA. And your situation is very similar. You know, it's like you kind of like did the whole industry thing for a long time, realized it wasn't going to work, sat back and looked at it and had a vision for what you could build that would be different or better. Yeah. I feel like, yeah, it's kind of spot on. But that's available for people now.

It's just they have to notice those opportunities. But they have to really tap in on it and go. Like, nobody's going to hand you that shit. Yeah. I can't. I mean, I just count how many times I was just kind of sat there waiting for the next brand to save me. I was like, no, I got to go save myself. Yeah.

And that's when. And that's empowering. Because then you get to name your own price. I was listening to a fucking interview with George Clooney the other day. And he's just kind of talking about different things in the industry over the years that he didn't say this, that he felt like saying because he didn't want to, you know, not get work. And I was thinking about it. Like, you know, being an actor sounds like a sad fucking job in a lot of ways because your whole job is to just impress this handful of casting agents. And if they don't fuck with you, then you're out of business.

You know, same thing with comics, a lot of different people, you know, like the traditional thing was always that you just had to make your name this one way. And now it's like you could be a comic. like Andrew Schultz. I saw him get rejected basically because he wanted to have a Netflix special and shit. Goes on YouTube, makes himself super popping on YouTube to the point where the streaming services

have to come and just be like, okay, we're gonna give you the bag. We're gonna actually embrace you because you made it fucking obvious to us that you're important enough that we should be paying you. What Jordan say, be so good that they can't ignore you? That's real.

Let's talk about the mountain bike decision. because to me as a young and it's funny to think about how much my mindset has changed on things back in the day 2006 7 whatever I mean the idea of a BMX rider also riding mountain bikes hurt me in my soul over now I'm like why the fuck did that ever seem important to me I don't really remember but they just beat that shit into your head yeah the amount of he said also we come from the same generation they hated rollerblades and scooters and everything so much that it was like life or death you know It was like it's one or the other. Yeah. So you asked me how did that come about? Yeah, and was it a tough decision? Like, you know, you've always obviously identified as a BMX rider. It's a huge part of your identity.

But then at a certain point, you start getting an offer from a mountain bike company. I can't, I don't know, he became a no-brainer. I'm like, I'm getting older. I know I still want to ride bikes, but I know that riding mountain bikes will give me another five, ten years or more, you know. From sponsors with deeper pockets. That might not necessarily mean sponsors. Well, some of it, but also just having something to do. Yeah.

You know, it's fun. And, like, Christian got me into it. Oh, really? Yeah, we were in Santa Cruz a few years ago, and I thought about it. But back then, I was like, I can't afford this expensive as a fucking bike. Because back then, they used to, I mean, not back then, but when I was just riding only BMX brands and so, I didn't have that sort of income. And I started looking at the price of a mountain bike.

What are there, a couple thousand? Oh, they can range from anywhere from five to ten thousand. Wow. That's the thing. If you go to a park, the reason why there's so much more money in that, in that score is one, it's the income, but you're mostly dealing with people 30 plus who either married or they have a household income with two or three hundred. $100,000.

Yeah. You can go to a part. They can go, oh, baby, I want to bike or whatever. Let's go, let's go spend $15,000 on mountain bikes. So if you go to a park and you look around, it's $50 to get in

for most parts for the lift pass. Right. If you look around and say there's 1,500 people, there's a million dollars in bikes floating around at the park. No matter what you do, you go to a BMX, you go to a skate park. There would never be a million dollars in bikes there.

Right. And for me, just I can see the difference in them. Like, I want to have fun there. And like brands are looking for, they're looking to diversify. You know, there's not many black routers. There's not, there's no one like me in the bike industry.

So, and for years, dudes, people kept hitting me up and they're like, man, you need to get on a mountain bike, get on a mountain bike. And I was apprehensive to it for, for a minute. I was like, I don't know if I could actually do it. I don't know. But when I did went in road with Christian, I was like, this is fun.

and having, I'm an old school rider, so I've always ridden trails and skate parks and everything. So hopping on a mountain bike made sense. It was an easy transition. Right. It's fucking crazy. Like you will die riding mountain bikes. Like stuff out to side and rampage shit I was riding a few months ago,

I mean a month ago. Do you hold back a lot though because you don't want to necessarily get hurt doing doing a mountain bike shit? You'd rather get hurt doing some BMX shit? No, you just get hurt riding mountain bikes shit. It's just inevitable. Straight up. You just get, like I jump some, this big ass drop.

It's like, I don't know, 40 feet, long drop. And I watched somebody like case of shit out of one of them and. Gone. Fly you out. They had to fly them out. Yeah. You had to think. They just keep a helicopter on deck for horrific injuries?

A lot of stuff. You have to think this. when you're riding the street you're moving in maybe 510 when I'm on that when you're on a mountain bike you're going 25, 30 and more to hit depending on the trails you're riding

it could be 30 40 50 foot long there's a spot in South Africa they have 100 foot long jumps 100 feet just floating but when I'm when I started when the brand started talking with me and my manager we started

you know, shopping around or talking. And the day I made that post through the mountain bike industry was just like we've been waiting for you. Really? You specifically or someone like you? Say again? Like you specifically or that they had been waiting for a BMX pro? They had been

literally like been waiting. It was like they were just standing there and saying hey, we've been waiting. Like my Instagram, I didn't even know I had that much support from that industry. They were just watching. I had no idea. And so when I made that one post, it was just like 1,500 fucking comments. Like every top mountain biker in the world was just like, congrats.

Yes, we've been waiting. Like all this time, had no idea that sort of support was there. But also that's my page went from 150 to almost 400,000. Right. That extra 250 is not BMX riders. It's people outside of the MX for the most part. You know, once you really start going viral, it's the people who are not the hardcore fans of what you started off doing.

People who are just sitting at their desk watching shit. Like I ride around the cities and people are like, hey, I follow your Instagram. I'm like, what? Right. That shit was always, that's always kind of weird. Anytime, not I say weird, but it's just, I mean, you get it. I mean, we've been riding around the city before and people come up to you and with a photo. It's just, it's not, I guess it's kind of weird.

It's weird for me because when, I'm out riding BMX, I feel like such a normal person. And then, like, a car pulls over and wants to take a photo. And I'm like, oh, right, right. Random moms know who I am now. It's cool. You got to, you know, you just got to roll with it. The moms, they know, like the kids, people are just pulling up.

And I just like, hey, I follow you. And, like, I went to Rampage, and I didn't think that many people would actually know. But all these, like, parks I'm going, like, mountain bike parks and stuff. People know. Yeah. you know me like yep well you know this is funny though

I was I'm like Snoop dog is like have you met Snoop? No okay he looks like he's probably 6-8 yeah he's massive he's like tall he's walked by me before so

yeah just didn't didn't get the hello no next time he was in his own world he was traveling with his own momentum his own entourage I'm just sort of he was on a cloud he was probably just that too yeah but yeah I went to one park and this

he mistake me as Snoop dog I was like I'm 5, I was like I'm 58 Now that's racist I was like I'm 5 8 I was like Yeah

Jesus Christ That's hilarious I thought you were snooped dog I'm like no you did Did you get much Blowback and BMX from that Oh my God Really bad

Racist crazy racist shit Not from anybody that like is known Mostly like anonymous type A lot of yeah Some of them Not so anonymous. People

took, when that whole fallout happened and I went back and I made a I say what I had to say on there. One thing I said and I'm pretty sure people

miss shrewed my words. I said that because of what they did, I will most likely never ride for a BMX company again. Not that I'm quitting BMX. I'll just probably won't end up being sponsored by another BMX brand

because now I look like some fucking nutcase who is money hungry. Right. You felt like the door was kind of closing on you, whereas people took it as you were saying that you were closing the door? Yeah. So I'm like, I'm not quitting. It was just these are better opportunities for me. That was happening like all the crazy, the whack-ass memes

and stuff that were coming out day after day. And I'm just, it got to a point where he's like, So you get like you start growing like I don't know like that growth kind of gets lonely too sometimes especially like personal and you start moving like you start seeing money your life starts changing and then you start you start seeing a lot of envy and the hate and it starts coming from all different directions to the point where you like you almost makes you shut down a little bit. Right. But for me I didn't want to like I was still posting stuff but I was like afraid to interact with. with like fans because I didn't know what was coming. So this person had this to say or that. I didn't want to engage.

I'm like, man, I don't know what to do. So then it started coming from people I actually know. Like, when I grew up with, I'm like, yeah, I grew up with you. I used to go to the city all the time and kick it with you. Then all of a sudden, like, now you want to take shots at me online? Oh, man. That shit is a crazy-ass feeling. I've had that where it's like, I'll see somebody who, you know,

I slept on their floor 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and they got something shady to say about me in the comment section. And that's a weird realization. It's like, I thought we were friends. And it turns out that actually now I'm a famous guy and you're an internet hater. And that's weird. Like, I thought we were friends. Like, you could have been an axe murderer.

And I wouldn't have, like, posted the link and been like, oh, man, I knew this guy back in the day, you know? but I'm over here getting a little heat for something and you're just going to jump right in like okay like I see how things have changed I haven't talked to in 10 years okay sure but it is weird because like you

you think you're you think you're making friends all these years and you are but a lot of them don't really have the same intentions that you might you know not at all and some of them were just they were either they weren't necessarily rooting for you from the beginning anyway yeah and I saw that like I've been around these

during this whole knowing the whole rise what's going on now and everything happened in my life. Some of them like not once have I ever heard like a congrats. Right.

Like never know nothing. Just just, just you see him and I'm going to say damn you never ever had one positive thing to say about any of the stuff's happening. But you know if you look at it, some people just, they're happy,

they're cool with where you used to be. Think about how many people in your life now. Not necessarily in your life now. way cooler they were way more comfortable with you just being the guy from just to come up back in the day

right opposed to no jumper all this going on you know it can get weird it definitely get weird when people just feel like you people start to treat you like you are almost like a representation

of what they haven't accomplished like you're a walking talking manifestation of them not necessarily achieving their dreams. Or at least that's how I sometimes feel like people are treating me. Like I know this anger has to come from somewhere. A lot of times it doesn't really feel like it's coming. It's not because of the thing that you're claiming to be commenting about here. I think that this might have a little bit more.

And I don't want to take away from anybody who actually hates me or actually has an opinion against me because that's totally fine. You know, it's like I've done plenty of shit that if you don't like it, it's totally fine. I'm not just reducing you to a hater. Like your opinion doesn't matter because I hate when people do that about me. Like if I say, oh, some rappers whack or people are like, you hate him because he has more money than you. It's like, I mean, I could just not like him also, you know?

But there's definitely a lot of people who it seems pretty transparent. Oh, it is. I just, I get it from someone. You really took time out of your day to just send me a message to tell me, you hate me because I ride mountain bikes too oh I'm a traitor you call me a traitor because you know and the funny thing is that if you had got

a part-time job at the movie theater sweeping up popcorn and empty in the trash cans then you'd be making a lot less extra income but absolutely nobody in the BMX world would hate on you for that you know they wouldn't know and if they knew they wouldn't have be able to say anything bad about it but then you get a very I assume a quite lucrative deal doing something that's like, you know, quite similar to just what you've been doing all these years, riding bikes. It's not like you're doing it full time. It's not like you have to go ride a mountain bike every day.

And somehow that is enough that you need to be canceled. But, I mean, it's the same. Like, we come from the world that skateboarders hated us, so we hated rollerbladers. So the rollerbladers hate the scooters. And BMX riders hate mountain bikers. And the mountain bikers are kind of like, uh, like, why? Like, you guys think you're so fucking hardcore that. And I was that guy, you know?

Like, we hate to fix gears, a lot of us. Oh, the mountain bike, they're up here. They're just like, yeah, we're living. We're like, we're doing our thing. Right. We are, like, you all can keep that toxic shit over there. We're over here. We're trying to enjoy our lives and trying to build.

And I like it. And that's what I'm, that's what I'm on. Mm. So. I'm not getting dragged down into that sort of hating this atmosphere. I'm trying to, I know, I can't do this. I can't do this shit forever, you know? It's just, there's way too many risks.

involved. Like, your long, you know, athlete, your longevity's and dog years. How much of this, I'm riding concrete. How much do you think about what you might do after all this? Would you see yourself wanting to work in the industry? Maybe not BMX industry, but sort of sports in general

or with any kind of brand, you know? Maybe sports, do that. I think I'm going to get into real estate and stuff as well. Nice. Maybe do a production company. Do you look at yourself in the mirror and think, like, I can't, I'm not going to be able to do this in five years. I'm not going to be able to do this in 10 years. Is that something you even think about at this point?

Street riding. I just won't do it. Right. Like, I'm not going to, let's see, in 10 years. No. I'm not riding the street the way I am right now. Right. I mean, I already have arthritis in my left wrist.

Like, my body is breaking down. I mean, I can get out and go do whatever I want right now. But I know in 10 years, that's a long time to ride at this level. Is this stuff you would, do you look at old footage yourself and think I would never do that now about some tricks? Yeah. Like what kind of stuff? I'm picturing you icing up El Toro. And I'm wondering if you ran into El Toro that wasn't capped right now, if he was.

still have that enthusiasm because that takes that's a lot of peddling to fucking lean back and grind on your back peg up a 20 stair i don't know if i would although you didn't pull it for the record i didn't pull it i don't i don't know if i would go for that i may maybe some of like the crazy crazy gaps i wouldn't do like it doesn't feel worth it no maybe uh like that crazy wall right over the rail, see that metal grate. Oh, that was sick. Probably wouldn't do that again. That was a sketchy grate to ride down?

Yeah, he used to go over that rail to the wall. Yeah. Down as police officers around. Probably the main 180 on that ringcon rail, the flat rail top. I don't think I would probably do that again. That's so much shit. There's some things I post on Instagram

that I would probably never do again. Yeah, is there other Tricks that you've done that you're just like Well, you know, I spent a lot of time doing that trick And I don't think I'm going to do a better one than the one I just did So maybe that one's just done I'm not doing that trick anymore Yeah, that happens

Like what? That G turn over that rail I did Oh, yeah I just saw I saw shit I looked at stuff like I'm not even good at doing Like nose manuals Because the rail, it was like flat rail that's like damn near bar height, right? And like with a curb after it and you just did the 180 to backwards nose off it.

It's a 180 out. Yeah, I'm like, I just know how to do G-Term. I'm like, I'm not good at doing those manels. Yeah. But I know I've never seen anybody do this. I'm like, I know I have upper body power for it. And like, why no one has done this? So like, I'm going to do it.

Yeah. I did it. Kind of like Gabe was good at speaking things into existence. Gabe. Gabe. You know, RP Gabe. R.P. Gabe, man. He, he was very, very similar.

to you in the sense that he had like a real athletic background super physically strong and then also was good at riding you know I saw him do things I never seen anybody do like a there's like an old demolitionated I think where he tries to ice this like tall ass ledge over

a dirt gap and he's going over the bars and everybody else who rides BMX would either like step off to the side or dip to the side and roll on their side like that or whatever and he fucking just ducks and does a front flip like on the ground perfectly anybody else would have smashed their fucking head into the ground so

hard and he just with this perfect gymnast balance just did this forward roll and I'm like I've never seen anyone fall like that before that was unbelievable and I saw I actually him do that a lot of times over the years yeah I remember that he fucking did some crazy like somersault over some rail I think it was I don't know where it was that but he jumped over this rail and he just did a four roll. It was like 20 feet up. Yeah. I don't know if you remember it.

That sounds very familiar, you know. Something. Crazy now. So sad when you, like, lose somebody like him. I mean, he, honestly, he's another, what I was just saying about Vic, he's another good example, man. If Gabe could have been making $5,000 a month off bike riding,

he would not have gone back to the streets. He would not have started fucking around doing the shit that he was doing. Yeah. You know, it's just, he got into a couple different positions, sponsor-wise. It didn't really, you know, didn't fit coherently with some of the teams that got put on, you know, and then it just didn't really work out. It's a real shame. You know, I would have loved to see, like, the BMX industry be big enough to actually, like,

accommodate his talent. And that's kind of always been the thing with BMX is that BMX riders know how great the sport is. They want it to be every bit as accommodating to the pros as skateboarding. But then in reality, you know, it's not. the money is just not as significant as it is in skateboarding, so there's just a lot less to go around, so you end up with a lot of salty-ass individuals as a result. Yeah, and it's a race to the bottom.

And this is, yeah, I would love to change it, you know, to help. But it's hard to do that when I'm not really able to do it myself. Right. like I have to like I'm like I'm making I'm making my income from you know most from the mountain bike industry right yeah but also I've made a name big enough for myself to get over there to where these big corporate brands are willing to

yeah give me a shot whereas a lot of the dudes I know who grab you know they're on yeah they ride BMX they're great riders But they're not big enough to where they're not on the radar of Adidas or some of the brands or the new brands I'm signing with. They're not just not on the radar. It's not that they're not good enough. They're just, they don't have enough. There's not enough steam behind them for it to make sense to them.

And that's what's crazy about how BMX was when we were kids in the dominant media was magazines and VHS tapes is that you could be a silent guy. You know, think about like a mic tag. He's quiet. It's not necessarily like an intention hog on camera. He's just a badass rider, and that's it. And the magazine's going to put him on the cover doing a crazy-ass rail feeble or whatever, you know, rest of peace. And that was good.

He didn't have to be Mr. Personality. Nowadays, it's like in order for people to really become a massive fan of you when there is no like traditional media that's going to kind of hype you up, you got to put a lot of that, you got to do a lot of that yourself. And that leaves a lot of people left. behind because we always would have liked to think that BMX was not about just who's the most popular. Wow. In the social media age. It turns out that's pretty important. Yeah. If you do a, if you do a gap versus, you know, some kid with 500 followers does gap, it's like it might get

treated like it's the greatest thing of all time on your account and that kid who did it might not really get noticed. Oh yeah, we could go do the same exact trick. I mean, I have a platform of, you know over 300,000 and people who love you and people who want to see you see you win and a dude and the kid who has he could go behind me tomorrow we posted the same time in the morning he's got 4,000

I'm going to get 4,000 views in one minute he might get him and but he still has an outlet because one thing I've said before I'm like if you are that good there's really it's almost impossible to go unseen today but you have to really be that good

you have to really be doing something that really makes people stand up and pay attention. There's a lot of people who think they're like, just because they're good at something, they're good enough to just be paid for it. Sometimes you've got to do something else and you can pay for your passion. You're not going, you're just, you're not it.

Man, it sucks for them to hear that. You tell them because I've seen plenty of rides like, oh, yeah, I really want to, I want to do this and do that. I'm listening. I'm like, you're very, very mediocre at what you're doing. You need time. Like, when you get there, like you get there like you can't worry about being sponsored right now and like the pressure that comes

with it like all the the fucking adulation and the hubris and the bravado that comes with being like an elite athlete or anything you do is overwhelming so much there's so many people you know always they're in your ear they're telling you this praising you up ripping you down you're in a spotlight for any and everything you do and as soon as something fucking happens then you get some wild hate or whatever. So I'm like, really, are you ready for that? Do you want that? So.

It's a wild world. If you met a young dude right now, a young version of yourself, you know, an 18-year-old kid, he's got all the talent in the world on a bike, he's cool, he's got a little bit of an image. What would be your advice to him if he wanted to make it in the BMX world? Like what kind of direction would you want to lead him in? And he's super talented? Yeah, you see the talent. I personally see the talent.

Yeah, you believe he's got it. I would personally. Or has the seed of the talent. You know, he needs to develop it more, but he's there. He's right there. I'll tell him to, yeah, formulate a plan. What you ask yourself, what do you want from BMX? And also work at it as hard as you can,

but do not stick around longer than you need to. because even if I really think about it, I stuck around longer than I should have. You can grind as hard as you can for 10 years, but if you don't see it through to the 11th, you never know what's going to happen. It took really, for me, about 15. I stuck around way longer than that.

It's crazy because you came in, in a lot of ways, like on the tail end of the magazine video era in a lot of ways. You come out in what? 2004, 2005, when you're showing? section was like 2005 maybe six so you kind of like there's the thing we always talk about with rappers where a lot of rappers came out sort of like

as CDs were dying and before streaming blew up and in a lot of ways I consider you emblematic of the new generation of what it is to be a pro BMX rider where you're like very focused on your social media and you're able to get outside sponsorships and brand deals and that kind of stuff but there was like sort of like a dark era in between where we're at now where the internet is starting to make sense and it's like the path of monetizing your talents on the internet starting to make sense versus the magazine era

where it was like if they honor me enough to put me in the magazine then maybe brands will want to throw some money at me. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. With that. It is a, that was a weird era. But it made the most sense to me. It made more sense than what is going on right now.

Yeah. I mean, it was great because it's like, you know, I remember I got a. photo in a magazine some uh in dig actually it was like a new york city street scene report i let the photographer stay with me he took a picture in me ice in this ledge over this fucking curb island and i mean the way i felt from having a photo in dig in 2007 it's like you know it's not like anybody i could get the best instagram clip in my life and i don't know if it would compare to like just having one of the pages of the 150 pages or whatever that they have in that magazine and and you could get one of those pages like

That was like a really big feeling. Yeah, you get the full, the spread, the interview. Like, remember what was it? Go buy 10 copies of them, send one to your mom. That's why I did. I did that too. There was one year I remember. I had 50 magazine photos.

I believe it, yeah. What year do you think? Probably two, like 2009. Easily. Something like around 2009, 2010. Glory does. That was really towards the end of me. magazines in a lot of ways too.

I remember you kept talking about you like, you're like, magazine, that's just that. I know. I was so early on saying that and that was one of the biggest things that it was a big lesson for me in that you don't really get points retroactively for being right way ahead of time. Yeah, when you're ahead of the curve like that. I just knew magazines were fucked like at least, you know, way before everybody else and nobody else wanted to accept it because they were making money from it.

I had no horse in the game, so I didn't, I was just like, this shit is fucked. And you guys are basically defrauding your advertisers because you're lying about how many people are seeing this. That's what pissed me off as a person running a website. I'm like, we're getting all these eyeballs. You guys are getting thousands of dollars from these brands for fucking nobody seeing this shit. Moving what? Three, four thousand copies? Yeah.

I mean, it seems crazy to even talk about it now because it seems like such a fucking blatant scam that these magazines were getting brands to pay them all this, money. But hey, you know. I didn't really know. I wasn't hip to the guy. I didn't know much about that stuff. I just know that brands were getting paid. They would get a, you know, they'd pay them for, like a, for the inside cover. Oh yeah. Once you realize that the cover had way more to do with who was advertising.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, that's just crazy. Who was that did the full pipe? And they put like a dude up from GT doing like an air on avert ramp on the cover or some shit instead. That's why I knew something was a. I don't remember that I don't even remember who it might have been Morgan Wade

doing a whole player or something I don't remember maybe I don't know so what are you focused on at this point like what's it important for you that you want to accomplish you know before the end of the year over the next couple years

etc uh really now it's just kind of staying healthy um yeah get some properties

you start you know working on my you know Financial. You staying out here for the most part? No. Where you stay? Uh-oh. I've been living in Texas for a while.

Oh, okay. In Austin? Yeah. How's Austin these days? I'm pretty burnt out on, like, the riding there. Really? I mean, I spent one year riding 10 hours a day, like mostly downtown. Really?

Like, 99% of that footage from, like, all the, like, the North Coast. Is your petal out downtown? I recognize a ton of the spots, too. And that was part of what made us. seemed kind of cool to me as I'm like I know he's just pedaling around Austin that's exactly what I was on I was killing filmers because it was I was also riding in the middle of summer is on it's a hundred and five and Austin has no joke I'm pedaling 105 out except for I remember when I came out here we wrote the was the decree and radio station right and like see I hit some hit a few things out there but for the most part

yeah been in Austin I want to sometimes I think about coming out here I feel like it'd be good but it's not the best for, it's great for BMA, it's not good for mountain biking. Oh, yeah. So I've been trying to navigate two spaces. Like, if I, if I give, if I give 2020 energy,

BMX, there's no way I have, I can't do that for both. Right. You know, and the thing is the struggle with it, for me, to think about, it's, if I give that kind of energy and dedication to be, BMX when now the majority of my support comes from the mountain bike industry.

I don't know. I might not necessarily be a good thing. But would you, could you see yourself like just riding on mountain bikes and just leaving the BMX thing behind? If I live in a good place, yeah. Really? If you lived in a place that was like 100% mountain bike focused and there wasn't like a city to go ride street and. Like just all dope shit. Yeah.

It's that fun. It's that fun. and I'm also written BMX for 25 years. Yeah. Is it still hard for you to challenge yourself enough to have fun? You still go to a skate park, and it's easy for you to find some shit to work on that's enjoyable to you?

Depends on the party. Or is it more street these days? I'm not real, just raw street. If it's just a normal park name, no, I'm not really having that much fun there. I'll cruise around. I usually, if I go, if you see me at a park, I'm probably sitting there on my phone,

listen to music. I'm such an old head in the sense that I still I still will drive around behind buildings and take pictures of spots. But then I'm not even fooling myself into thinking that I'll actually go to one. This is ingrained in you. Yeah. Oh, I love just looking around to shoot. Yeah. But you might see something like, oh, cool, I'm just some brand in a photo or something. Oh, yeah. They do stuff on spots I find for sure. And I do, I still like have tricks. Like even like at the very beginning of the pandemic, I went out riding a few times with the guys did some tricks I was hyped on. And then I, like, basically exactly as the pandemic started,

I went to fucking smith up this ledge of the skate park, Phil's filming me. I pull a fucking tendon in my forearm, and I couldn't ride for like six months maybe before I really felt comfortable pulling up. And I just didn't really get back into the groove. Because for a while I was going riding like every weekend, we're really starting to feel good. And I don't know. Too busy now, huh?

Well, now with a kid, it's old. Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw you hurt. She had a birthday. Yeah. It can be tough to make the decision to go cruise around with the boys for eight hours when the kid is at home with the girl and she needs help. And, you know, it's like she's only going to be one for so long. You want to get those hours in.

Right. Another thing I was, what was it? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Yeah, I'm going to slip my mind. Yeah, that's all right. Not that crazy, though. For sure. Okay, anybody you want to thank?

Anything you want to put it? out there into the universe? I want to think, yeah, think my manager, you know, you know, where Brandon, anybody, John, anybody who's helped me, I appreciate you. Thank you for the interview. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah, team managers, you know, Adidas, Canyon, all the brands I'm, you know,

rocking with right now and all the future ones I'm going to be partnering with. And if anybody watches this and they want to go watch Brad old interview on the come of BMX channel I just want to throw it out there that if you do time stamps I would really like to read through what we talked about because it's kind of embarrassing

that I'll do an interview and then five years later I can't really remember anything I think this is different this is more like about the growth but I mean that interview was that interview we covered a lot of ground like you actually covered like my upbringing early days yeah early days and all that stuff and like crazy stories

you and skinny sneaking in the window yeah that um like the crazy like in story from bulgaria yes oh my god i was thinking about that when we were talking about like bad things not happening while we're outriding yeah that wasn't technically out right but you know another crazy thing you're talking about the whole social media like i did a taco bell commercial early in the year just because of that like they brand reached out i mean an agency reached out and like hey like yeah we just saw lots of clips of you really high in the air we thought that you'd be a good fit for a taco bell commercial i think i seen that one there's like film with a drone and stuff.

With that, like with the Russian arm. I was, I was playing everywhere. During NBA, doing NBA finals, NASCAR, shit. It was all over the place. You get to hear about it from everybody. You went to high school with or whatever. People are, yeah, people hit me up.

Yeah. That's tight. I need more commercials. That's a good bag? Yeah. Nice little one-off bag. Do you keep getting royalties afterwards or is it just something up front? No, I think there was too much talent in the video,

so they didn't do, um, they didn't they didn't want to keep it going because uh Nate was in there too oh Nate and I think Tyrone so you can't Nate Richter yeah that's not talent Oh stop No they didn't uh yeah they didn't Shut out Nate

Shut out golden days Yes But I wish they had keep it keep um They let it go because had they let it play out the whole year I would easily Quinn Tupper my Really Damn

It was a nice little bag There's a lot of bags out there there. They all know. Let's get to them, Brad. Let's get to them. Help me get some more of them. Let's go.

If anyone wants to sponsor, Brad, you want to give me 80%? Let me know. That's my management fee. I'm the talent. How you can just take? How about 20%? Just an idea.

Yeah. No, I'm good. I'm good. For sure. I'm excited to see what other footage you got coming out of the near future, man. Because being in the game for this long, it makes me appreciate the tricks you do even more for sure.

Because it's like, how much longer is you going to, keep doing this crazy as shit. I'm done today. Nah. You're not done. No, I'm done. No.

I still, yeah, I still love the shit, so, I'm here, you know. I got, I got support now. Let's go. I'm building, yeah, I'm building a life. It's a beautiful thing. Not a lot of people get to say that out of the bike riding world.

No, I am incredibly thankful. Yeah. For sure. Brad Sims, No Jumper, coolest podcast in the world. Check us on YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes. Like, comment, subscribe, nojumper.com. If you want to support, appreciate you, man. Much love.

Later. Appreciate you, too.