The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Tony Hawk: The Man With The $1.4 Billion Name! Burnout, Obsession & Regrets

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

If you think about skateboarding, there is one name that will pop up in your mind: Tony Hawk. It’s the same name that fronts a billion dollar video game franchise. He has been called the Michael Jordan of skateboarding, and at the height of his career he was so dominant in competition that the real fight was for second place. But before skateboarding became the Olympic sport it is today and Tony the living legend that he is, he was an outsider in a sport for outsiders. Driven by his love of skateboarding and to prove his haters wrong, he created an entirely new path for the sport and brought it into the public light and popularity it has today. In this conversation Tony discusses his life’s dedication to skateboarding, the highs and lows that this commitment brings and how the sport has given back to him by teaching him lessons that he has used in both life and business. Tony Hawk: Instagram: http://bit.ly/3TRcn1V Website: http://bit.ly/3TQQYWM Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. I'm either going to make this or get taken away on a stretch. It changed my life completely. Tony, hold on. Were you prepared for that? How could you prepare for anything like that? Tony Hawk began riding a skateboard when he was nine years old. And when he turned 16, he was the best skateboarder in the whole wide world. Are you kidding me?

Being the outcast and the outcast activity, I got picked on. I got bullied. Even when I turned pro, I would leave high school for a big skate event. I'm signing autographs, and then I would come back and be a ghost in the hallways again. I just wanted to see skateboarding get more popular. But I got famous by accident. Suddenly, I was chosen ambassador. I was making income.

I owned a house in my last year of high school. So I was doing talk shows, and I was doing big appearances. My video game was a chosen ambassador. I was making income. I owned a house in my last year of high school. So I was doing talk shows and I was doing big appearances. My video game was a big hit. How much revenue? A billion dollars. Wow. The trajectory just seemed like it was never going to end. And then it dropped very quickly.

I was so hyper fixated on my skating. I didn't really work on my humanity. I was a machine and I'd go and do the event and win the trophy, go home. It didn't allow me to be myself very much. Did you lose people? Yeah, made them feel like they weren't the priority. And a lot of it was just being afraid of intimacy and I regret that. I started getting burned out in competition. The term burnout is used a lot these days. What did that experience teach you about what causes burnout it taught me that

tony i'm not sure if you've ever listened to this podcast before but i'm quite predictable with how i start these conversations and i'll I'll be transparent in terms of my rationale. When I read about a story like yours and I read about how much of an anomaly you were in many respects of your life, I always ask the question, why and how? Where did that begin? Where did that start? And having, you know, read right back into your your parents history and your history I saw signs of that but seeing as you're here best place to ask you can you give me the context that you believe was pivotal in shaping you to become the person that you are today I think early on I was I was obsessed When I first started skating, I found something that spoke to me.

I found a community of people that we were just a sense of self-confidence and the creative aspects around it. I just loved it. And all I wanted to do was, was it as much as possible. And there was no, there was no end goal. There were no, there was no fame or fortune in the cards because no one had ever had that from skating, even the top skaters. So what was it? It was just an obsession.

And I wanted to do it as best I could always. Even when I reached the top of the ranks of competition, I still wanted to get better. When you say obsessed, and the way you describe it almost sounds like it was medicine. Yeah, and in a lot of ways it was. I mean, I was a smaller kid. I got, we used to call it picked on.

I got picked on a lot, bullied. And I didn't excel that much in team sports i i just kind of was middle ground um if that and then when i found skating every time i'd go skate i got better at it and it was incremental sometimes almost immeasurable but i knew that i was getting i was each time i was improving and i couldn't say that about any of the other sports I was doing. I get, I mean, baseball, basketball, like, yeah, sure. Sometimes I'd score mostly. I wouldn't, but I never felt like, Oh, I'm really, I'm really getting to a different level of this. It was more like I did it because it was expected of me. And every time I skated, I got better.

Every time I would go to the park, I would learn some little new technique that would lead me to something else. What was that progression doing for you on a psychological level? It gave me a sense of purpose. It gave me an outlet for my energy and my frustrations. it gave my parents some much needed reprieve from my determination. That's what my mom put it in her best ways that I was difficult. I was always very thick headed. I wanted to do my things my way. I wanted to do on my terms. And she said when I found skateboarding. I wanted to do on my terms. And she said, when I

found skateboarding, I really found a directive for that. And, um, when her friends would say he's such a nightmare, she'd say, he's just very determined. Nancy, that is right. Yeah. Frank and Nancy, your parents, what was, what was your home life like with them um it was pretty quiet I don't know I um my parents were older when I was born so it kind of felt like I was raised by grandparents because my dad was 45 my mom was 43 by the time I was at an age where I was being very active and doing things. They were kind of in retirement mode. So, and they, I can't say they were, I don't know, they weren't close. It was almost like they were just roommates.

And so that definitely rubbed off on me in a lot of ways, but it just felt like, oh, this is just a functional household. It's not full of love necessarily. I'm the youngest of four. I sometimes ponder whether sometimes the youngest child of the bunch, because you were the youngest of three, right? The parents almost think that they've finished with parenting. Oh, for sure. In my case, my older siblings were all, my brother is closest.

He's 13 years older than me. So absolutely, they thought they were done raising children. I was not planned. And I think that my parents were kind of reaching a winter of their marriage even before that or just after I was born. So it was a little icy. And I think that because they were from that generation, those generations, you stay together no matter what. And so they did.

And it's not like it was terrible. Like I said, it just, it just wasn't that warm. I can also relate to not being necessarily planned. Was there ever a, were you ever cognizant of that? Is it like, were you ever aware that has, did that ever have an effect on your psyche that you weren't planned at all no i never thought about that i guess i i never i i was never that deep in my introspection to to worry or concern myself with that fact i just knew that i wanted to go skate you were really um really intelligent kid. I read that your IQ was like 144 or something. Yeah, maybe at one time. Which is surprising. Typically, I think of a child that has that void of independence, which it sounds like you had, of not necessarily being the best academically or in terms of smarts,

especially if they're distracted or preoccupied with something like sports, like skateboarding, one would think that academia or intelligence might fall by the wayside. Um, no, I, I always relied on that. I, I was in the, um, in the gifted classes, uh, growing up. And so I was with other kids that, that were of that same ilk. And so I always thought that my path would be more academia-based. I thought that I would be, I actually thought I was gonna be a math teacher because I excelled at math

and I liked helping my friends with it. So I thought, oh, maybe that's my trajectory. And then when I found skating, it wasn't that my academics fell by the wayside but it was more that oh maybe I have something else here and it really wasn't until I was in high school that I realized more of the potential of that I feel like skating these days is still is really cool now but having read back through your story it seems like it wasn't as it was not not at all in fact in my early high school days i had to hide my i had to i chose to hide my skateboard in the bushes behind the school um because i used it as transportation and because

i would get hassled carrying it around school um you know they would they would say not so nice things as i would walk stroll by with my skateboard even though i was starting to find some sense of success with it i i was actually at that point uh sponsored i had a company that was giving me boards that was sending me to events and even when i turned pro which meant that i was had my own skateboard model, it was just not cool. So it was cool in certain sex. Like I would, I would leave high school. I would go to, for instance, Houston for a big skate event.

And there's all kinds of skaters there. I'm signing autographs, taking photos. And then I would come back from that weekend and maybe even have won some some money to go to high school and be a ghost in the hallways again that's the kind of dichotomy I was living you talked about how the progress was like a motivating a driving factor that you know getting incrementally better every time you did it outside of the technical aspect of skateboarding what was the um the value for you outside of like doing the tricks and stuff what what what was like filling you up uh the the culture the community of it i

loved everything about it the i love the attitude the diy aspect the the renegade um attitude that you would you have to hop fences you know to go skate an hop fences, you know, to go skate at an empty swimming pool or to go skate a schoolyard. And it was just so, there was so much art and creativity involved. It was like any skater, it's most likely they're going to also play music or they're also going to be artists or do other interesting things. And so there was a soundtrack to it it was it was embedded in in punk music because that was the same sort of vibe and attitude that we had and um it was just more like oh this is this is my scene this is this is i have the sense of belonging here and i don't care if i don't fit in with my classmates or my peers and so you you started you got your first hand me down board at eight years old uh yeah like nine or ten yeah

from your brother from my brother yeah and by 12 you're you're sponsored um by sponsored yeah which which basically meant that i got free skateboards once in a while it wasn't some there was no contract or anything it wasn't like a million okay no and then at 14 um i turned pro but all that really meant was that i moved up a category in competition so there was there was sponsored amateur and then there was professional. And to be professional just meant that you were competing for a $100 first place prize money. At what point did you realize that you were good comparatively? I think it was, it would have been later on in my pro career when I started to figure out how to do these, what they called, they used to call them circus tricks, but I like to think they were more avant-garde. And I would do these sort of unique moves that I created, but I started to learn how to do them more in the air, like at an impressive height. And I think it was around, probably more around 16, age 16,

when I started to realize like, oh, I can do these things at heights that is reserved for very few. And I can do them on other terrain besides just my familiar home park. And I guess that's probably the point where I felt like I have something that is more valid than just a niche style of skating that only happens in at my hometown park. You know, when you think about why you were able to do that, like why you

were incrementally better or, you know, significantly better than your peer group. Have you ever figured out in terms of what they call talent, why that is, is it smart? Is it physical attributes? Is it? Um, I think it was that I, I wasn't afraid to step out of my comfort zone. And I also wasn't afraid to get hurt along the way. And I accepted that as part of the process. And I can't say that very many people did that. I mean, definitely, definitely my peer group, the ones that were skating at the time, they knew what it took to get that far and they were willing to take the hits for it. But also I like to explore other techniques that weren't comfortable or maybe that I even thought were cool because I wanted to learn everything. And so I would, I would start,

I would go off on these tangents of trying certain tricks or a board manipulation and then lean into that and do every single variation of that and then move on to something else. And then all of that started to combine into this trick repertoire that i that i had that was that was pretty deep you know they say when you if you want to master something you've got to do 10 000 hours yeah sounds like you did a lot of hours at that at that very i mean at some point i was probably doing just one trick 10 000 times we say all of this you know you said later in my pro career and then you said you were 16 yeah well i've had a pretty lengthy pro career but i would say that around age 16 is when

i started to come into my own and and was able to shut down any of the of the pushback or the haters so to speak, because they were all saying, oh, he's only good at his home park, or he only does these goofy little tricks. And at some point it was like, you can't really deny that I'm doing these tricks in the most difficult circumstances and consistently.

And so I had this run of success in my late teens that was, I thought, unparalleled. I mean, in terms of suddenly I was making income. I owned a house when I was still in my last year of high school from my earnings. And everything, the trajectory just seemed like it was never going to end. And then it dropped very quickly was never going to end. And then it, it dropped very quickly in the early nineties. And then I had a good three or four years were very slow, um, and, and touch and go in terms of trying to make a living, provide for a family.

Um, and then things kind of came back around in the, in the late 90s. So when I say early in my, or, you know, late in my career, there's a few stages of that. And that first stage is from 16 to 25? About 23. 23. Yeah. And at that point, I read that by 16 years old, you were the best in the world.

You were widely renowned. I had, well, I was ranked number one for a while, yeah. And it's tricky though. I mean, I don't like saying that just because skating is subjective and it's apples to oranges. So who's the best? That's all in the eyes of the beholder. I did well in competition.

I got good scores and I had a good run. I mean, I think you're slightly underplaying that because I you know I was reading through some stats and I read that 16 you were widely regarded as the best skateboarder in the world and by 25 you'd won 73 of the 103 professional contact contests you'd entered finishing in second place a further 19 times which is for me pretty freakish. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I had a good run, but also it's a specific style. So I was skating pools and half pipes. And then in the early nineties, street skating came into its own. And what you see today with people jumping downstairs on handrails, ledges and things

like that, that was just starting to blossom. And I realized pretty early on that that was not my strength and that my, um, ratio of success to injury was much higher doing that. So I, I kind of, I kind of gave it up. I was in it for a while. I was skating some of the competitions and I was doing a lot of tours and things. And then at one point, I was driving home from a tour. I had sprained one ankle almost to the point of breaking it, but somehow didn't. And then in the process of nursing that one, I was still skating because we were on tour. I rolled the other ankle trying to save this ankle and then I'm driving home with ice on both ankles with a car full of skaters and in that moment I thought I can't keep doing it this way

like this is not sustainable I'm not going to be able to be a pro skater much longer if I think I'm going to do this type of skating and so I'm gonna stick with more of the half pipe which is what i know even though that wasn't the popular way of skating i just knew that if i wanted to keep skating into my adult life i was gonna have to stick with with my expertise and i'm right in thinking from what you've said there that your skating career started to really take off, you know, 15, 16, kind of peaks at one point around that 23-ish age. I would say around 21, 22 is when it started to peak, yeah.

And at what point in that journey did you think, I'm going to skate professionally for the rest of my life? Was there a point where you go, this is my job now? You never? No. In fact, when I was 24 is when I started my company, Birdhouse. And I honestly thought starting a company was my way of sort of bowing out of the spotlight and not being a so-called professional skater. Because there was very little opportunity for me as a half pipe or vert skater to be doing anything. And I was trying to nurture a group of skaters that were mostly street and

trying to give them new opportunities and trying to, uh, have them promote our company as well. So I thought that I was curating a team and that I was going to be sort of the ringleader of it, but not be considered a pro myself. I never quit skating though. That was, that was just in my blood. And so at some point, a few years later, things started to pick up again. The X games happened. Um, they had a, they had a half pipe contest and I was still on top of my game. So after that, I started to compete a lot more because the interest grew. And then I was, I was winning a lot of events. It's we don't often think it's possible for a

sport to kind of experience a downturn, right? Commercial downturn, like thinking about the big sports of today, the NBA basketball, whatever it be, the thought that it could kind of have an economic downturn and put the athletes out of business for a while is kind of inconceivable for me. So most of my peers quit. In the 1990s? Yeah, or quit or not. I can't say quit.

Most of them found jobs. Because so what had happened in the skating industry, the commercial side of the business? There was a few things. I think that skating had gone through cycles in the past in the late 70s skating was the new fad it was like the if for especially in the us was like the yo-yo and it's the new toy and it's a transportation and you can do all these things and then and then that that fad kind of faded out and then in 80s, it became this thing because we were skating the empty pools, and there was this attitude and the music and the hairdos and the graphics,

and back to the future. And so that was another spike in popularity. And a lot of skate parks were opening in those days. And I think in the late 80s, the liability became too much for these skate facilities, and they just started closing very quickly. I mean, there was just a toppling of skate parks through, I would say, 89 to 91. And then there was no place to do it because there were no public parks. All these facilities are private.

There were few, but they were not good. And so all these private parks were closing shop and then we had as skaters had nowhere to go so that's when skating took to the underground and became more street centric your was your dad was working in the industry as well around this time he was in the in the 80s yeah he he helped to form the national skateboard association which sanctioned most of the events through those years how did how did he get into skateboarding just he saw he saw me and and he saw how much i loved it and he saw a very a serious lack of organization

um and he was always very supportive of his kids i mean my brother was a surfer he would drive him to the beach at dawn to to get the good waves my my sister was in a band he would he would be the roadie for the band and drive all their gear to the gigs so when i started skating he was all in on supporting it but he saw that it was just sort of chaos there were there was very little organization there were very few events and he saw a group of kids like me that loved it and had very little support something quite entrepreneurial about that like your dad founding yeah i don't i don't he never did it he never really got paid so you know to think that it was entrepreneurial it was it was more altruistic than anything

did that create a conflict of interest if or like it was hard yeah it was absolutely difficult for me in those years because i was doing well and then there was there were uh claims of nepotism um there was a lot of animosity and it was uncomfortable for me because my dad was always there and I was doing well so it would be one thing if I wasn't skating that well if I was just sort of mid-range but I think that all of that just drove me to get better and prove everyone wrong I mean I'd like to say that I didn't enjoy it, but it definitely lit a fire. It's interesting when people attack you in such a way or they try and discredit you, especially when you're, of course, only when you're doing well. It can evoke a series of responses in you.

Yeah, I was under a lot of pressure and a lot of accusations like that. And I just kind of put my head and a lot of accusations like that. And, um, I just kind of put my head down and just focused on my skating until, until I shut him up. Um, but even then it was, it was always tricky. You know,

it was like that. Then my dad, he got out of it. Um, and not long after that, he got sick and passed away and lung cancer. Um, but then the X games came around and like I said, I was still on top of my game.

And then I was the, I was sort of the one they were focusing on because my name had resonated from the previous generation. And then I was, I was doing well in competition. So then the other skaters were accusing me of hogging the spotlight i i'm i'm not choosing the programming here and so that was tricky too but i i think i learned so much from my early days of of sort of being the outcast and the outcast activity that that it you weren't really gonna i i i had sort of built up a resilience to all that but it's still difficult right like the outcast and the outcast activity oh yeah i felt very isolated yep in real that that's the word isolated but in real terms what does that look like for a young man who's doing something that he loved

got really fucking good at it so now there's they're pointing the camera at him there's all this commercial pressure what impact does that have on, on the love for it? Well, luckily I had been doing it for so long at that point and had seen it come and go that I was excited in the sense that skateboarding was going to get a new, a renewed interest. And if I was the conduit to that, then I'll accept it. I wasn't trying to get all the glory. I just wanted to see skateboarding be more accessible and get more popular. And so at some point, I don't want to say that anyone appointed me, but, but it was definitely, I was the chosen ambassador to skateboarding um because i could i could do interviews and i could speak on behalf of skating at its core but

also to a mainstream audience to make them understand why skating could be valid or why it would be a positive influence on their kids the one of the reasons you gave for why you love skateboarding and why it filled you up originally was because of that camaraderie though. And isolation seems to be kind of the opposite of... I was isolated in the sense that the hardcore skaters, the older generation didn't support me, didn't want anything to do with me,

but I did have my crew. I mean, it wasn't completely isolated. It was, I had a few friends that we all had the same sense of, of values and the same sort of directives for skating. So, um, I would bounce ideas off of them and we would come up with, with tricks together. Sometimes, sometimes it was just something that they were asking me to do. Um, but, but that sense of camaraderie is what I'm talking about. But it was a very limited crew. And yeah, I mean, I chose to do this outcast activity as a kid, already separating me from my classmates, my peers, kids my age.

You're like, skateboarding is so lame. Why are you doing that? Then I choose to skateboard. My style of skateboarding is not cool. It's considered a circus. I'm just a circus freak doing these little baton twirls with my skateboard. So then I'm cast aside from the skateboarding community. And that became isolating.

But all that stuff just would fuel me to, to get better. And I didn't, it's not like I'm thankful for it, but I accepted it and I went out to prove myself. I am, I sat with a motivation psychologist called Daniel Pink, and he was telling me one of the, they did these studies on people in terms of trying to figure out how their motivation fluctuates. And he was telling me one of the, they did these studies on people in terms of trying to figure out how their motivation fluctuates. And he found that when people get paid for something that was once a hobby, their love and motivation for it declines, which I thought was really paradoxical. I wouldn't expect when you get paid to do a hobby, you'd expect motivation to increase. I agree with that, except that when I got into skateboarding, no one was getting paid. No one was getting accolades. No one was getting attention. And so I never aspired to that. And what I see now is I see, I do see kids

that get into skateboarding with the notion that they will get rich or famous or, and are famous. And if they get any sense of fame or fortune, they lose their motivation. So I agree with you in that sense. But if you're getting into an activity, a sport, an art form or whatever, that has not been established, and it's not there's no clear path to success. I feel like your motivation is always just to get better at it. And and the money and the fame and everything that's all incidental to just being able to better at it. And the money and the fame and everything, that's all incidental to just being able to keep doing it. Did your love for it ever fluctuate?

Only when I started getting burned out on competition. Sometime around 1988, 89, I was doing really well in the events and it started to become repetitive for me. I would go to an event. I'd have to hide new tricks from my competitors and from the judges because at some point the judges were giving me scores based on what they thought I could do.

Not compared to everyone else in the event but just what they thought I was capable of. So if I came to an event with some new tricks and they saw me doing those new tricks and practice, and I didn't do them in my competition runs, I would get marked down based on what they, you know, based on judging me against myself. And that was fine. Like I accepted all that, but it was more that, that it got repetitive. It started to get, it started to suck the fun out of it because I was just this machine, like this competitive machine. And my competitors who I thought were my friends, I still do, were very much under the impression that, oh, well, Tony's just going to win. So

we're hoping for second. And they would tell me that. And they thought that that was a compliment to me. To me, it was just, it was crushing because it just meant that, that somehow they were separating me from the pack and the, the crew that I loved, like the, I love the camaraderie of the team and the camaraderie of all the skaters. And it was like, they're just pushing me out from that because they think that I'm on a different level or plan or whatever it was. And I, as much as you're,

you think that's a compliment, it wasn't. The term burnout is used a lot these days to just people use it in, in their jobs and works and hobbies and such. What, what, what did that experience teach you about what causes burnout? Um, well, it, it taught me that even if you're doing what you love,

it's not always going to be enjoyable, um, because of the pressure of success because of the self-imposed pressure that you put. But what it did teach me was the value of letting go. And when I let go of that, even as hard as it was, because my sponsors were saying, if you quit competing, you're out. There was no other path to success in skateboarding. You couldn't make a living on YouTube, on social media, you know, a reality show, whatever it was. It was just your competition rankings. That was it. That's what your success was.

And they told me, you know, what are you going to do? How do you expect to make a living? And I was like, I don't know, but I can't keep going this direction. And what happened was when I was, when I was removed from it, I started to appreciate the process of learning new tricks more. I started to appreciate the idea that I could be more creative and take more chances. And at some point I missed competing, but I had to sort of discover that within myself on my own terms. And then when I came back to competing, I let go of the idea of perfection. I let go of the idea that I had to do the best every single time.

And I took way more chances and sometimes it didn't work. Sometimes I didn't make the finals. But when I did make the finals i was doing it on a level that i was proud of i wasn't i wasn't phoning it in so to speak i wasn't being conservative with with my my approach and that became much more fun it was more risky but when it would work it was something that I was much more proud of. Is there, is there, is there, um, it sounds, it sounds a lot to me like you're, you had built this identity because you've been so successful and you almost had to kind of decouple from that identity, which always feels like a big risk to people in their jobs.

Yeah, it was, but, but it was either that or quit, quit altogether. Cause it was really weighing on me. It was very difficult. When you say very difficult, what does that mean in practical terms? You mean like sleepless nights? Yeah, and dreading events. Going to an event and dreading it. I mean, it's almost like Pink Floyd, the wall.

I was building a wall around everyone, around myself. And performing was just obligatory because everyone expected me to do it. Everyone expected me to do well, to win the event, whatever it was. And there was no celebration in that. There was no, there was nothing that, that made me feel elated. It was just, it was, I was a machine and I'd go and do the event and win the trophy, the prize money and go home and then go skate and go try to learn new tricks. That was the fun part.

But really what I was doing was just trying to prepare for the next event, which is probably another in a week or two away. It's quite surprising, but it's a story that I've heard over and over again, this idea that your success almost disconnected you from others and probably from yourself in many respects. And think i think about this a lot how when you become successful you can you need to be careful that you don't get disconnected along the way there's

lots of temptation with talent to disconnect yourself um whether you're a lawyer and you've just been good at being a lawyer and you end up 20 15 years down the line and you go what the fuck am i doing here and who have i become or you're a pro skateboarder and you kind of drift away from from the essence of what makes us feel connected oh for sure and i saw i saw plenty of my peers i think one thing that saved me is that i love the skating so much that i saw my peers get distracted with partying with the excess and they would start to lose their motivation and their, and their skillsets. And I recognized that very early on and thought, I don't want to go down that road because the skating is too important to me. This, I want to keep performing at a top level um and for sure i had

my i i had my distractions through my through my life and and through my adulthood my adult years but um but skating was always such a high priority that that i never lost that did you have to you talked about you've seen some of your friends at that time go down the wrong path because of temptations. Yeah. Did you ever notice yourself drifting down that path? Yeah, I think it was more the, when I got caught up in the fame of it all in more in the late nineties, early 2000s,

when my video game was a big hit and suddenly I was not just doing skate events. I was doing talk shows and I was doing big appearances and, and getting caught up in that level of fame is very disorienting. And I could see myself, I could see myself falling into that where it's like, well, I'm now, I'm a celebrity and now I will go to the red carpet events and do the, you know, and, and the clubs and all that. And I definitely indulged a bit in that, but at some point recognize that this is just not what I want to be doing. And this is not, this is not, not as fun as skating. And these are not the people I really identify with.

I mean, a lot of the people that I saw through those years, especially at the big events and stuff, all they really wanted was to be famous. And at some point, I got famous by accident. And it's not necessarily what I wanted. And at some point, I took inventory of that. And I realized that I don't really care you know what I mean like I don't care if I don't get into this VIP thing whatever it is like take it or leave it I um when I got a little bit of money I think I had my insecurities meant that I had to have certain beliefs fail me before I learned them so i was the kid that went to like got a little bit of money started going

to the nightclubs buying all the champagne leaves you feeling fairly hollow after a while if you're paying attention absolutely yeah i mean that's the thing is i just felt especially in through those years when i was going through the the fire of of culture, I never felt fulfilled. And you'd wake up in the morning, it's like, what was that? And also it was distracting me from my own kids. And I think that that's really what made me want to make a positive change in my life

is that I felt like I was not, I was there, but I wasn't really available emotionally to my children, um, as much as I could be. Cause I was so distracted with all this, all this other noise. And, um, I, I pulled it around. I mean, I was able to get back, get, be more connected, um, just be part of what they were doing, even on a more basic level. And that to me is way more fulfilling. It is. I mean, that's just, you know, I could, I could wax poetic, but I do feel like I feel so much more confident and fulfilled and excited about all those things to see my kids um to see my kids thrive than to care about getting invited to the oscars sometimes in my life anyway my partner's been the

person to point that out before i've noticed it in myself so my girlfriend will notice that i may be losing my way a little bit in terms of priorities and it'll require her feedback to tell me that I'm losing my way a little bit for me to really notice it in myself. Do you resonate with that at all? Um, I, I would say yes, if you were asking me five, 10 years ago, but now I do see it. I see it myself. I'm, I'm. I'm much more cognizant of it in my own choices. And it is wild. I mean, I never imagined that I'd be a pro skater past 20, honestly, because when you were a kid skating in my era, once you reach an age of responsibility you had to quit because no one

could make it it wasn't anyone's job right so to be skating in my 20s and then into my 30s was wild it was i mean i was in uncharted territory but i was still getting better at it and then when i reached my 40s it was like really still you guys still think this is okay for me to do and not that i was looking for that in that kind of approval but it was kind of a surprise and also i kept getting better at it in those years and then to be doing it in my 50s is just like a lucid dream it's crazy that um it's funny i kind of went through the fire it was like when i was a kid it was like oh you're pretty good for your age and then when i got into my 30s and 40s like you still skate like haven't you grown out of it and now when i'm in my 50s it's like hey you're pretty good for your age

when was your um when do you if you look back on your years of in terms of technical ability when was your professional peak or is it now oh uh i think it was in my probably in my mid to late 30s and early 40s because that's when i was still doing all of my high impact high risk moves but combined with highly technical moves. So I kind of had the gamut of the skating in terms of being able to do the big stuff, the dangerous stuff, and also the very technical stuff. And so as I've moved into my twilight years,

I don't know what you call this, but I've learned to, to focus more on the technical because it's, it's more low impact and it keeps me, keeps me healthy for the most part. I mean, I am, I am nursing, uh, I'm still recovering from a broken femur last year, but even that has taught me that I still love doing this and I still love it even if I'm not going to be at the top of the game or if I'm even going to be on video or doing it in front of people. sort of focused my energy more into the technical moves and and i would say that the tricks that i was learning before i got hurt were more appreciated by skaters themselves they weren't going to move the needle on x games or anything to get to your level in any industry if you were advising a kid that's maybe an artist a dj whatever when you look back on what it takes to get there what are the like core components of that level of mastery and success and like do you

you must have sometimes think like like why me because you know living such an anomalous life and becoming number one in anything i think i've seen it over and over again where people start to ask themselves the question like an existential question like uh sure yeah i every day but um i think to to answer your question the focus it takes is is pretty intense to to get to do especially what i do um for so many years and also i think that the ability to listen and to take cues or inspiration from others around you in terms of inspiring or influencing what you do. And I don't mean like, I'm not saying like borrowing or stealing styles or anything. I'm talking about just being open to, oh, that's a new way to do it and even collaborating with people.

What if we tried this or maybe you did that? And not just living in your own bubble because some people tend to do that. They have their way. They found how they succeed, how they keep moving forward and they stay in that lane they stay in that bubble and sometimes that works but for the most part you can only go so far with it and you've got to start to sort of branch out and see what

else is there in terms of your chosen activity sport art whatever it is um and i i love that idea that i'm getting out of my comfort zone and trying something weird and it's probably not going to work right away and it's probably going to be super ugly when i finally do it but i'm gonna get to a point where it's more natural what do you what's the balance between learning the rules of the trade i how it's already been done and learning to do it your way i always think this to become great do you need to like be the best at how it's done now or do you need to like add a little sprinkle of yourself well i luckily skating is so subjective that adding your own flair to it is always encouraged and And so for instance, there, there's some tricks, basic

tricks that, you know, 80% of professional skaters can do this one trick. But if you take a picture of one of them and put it on silhouette, I can tell you who it is because everyone has their own style of it. And what makes for a good style, subjectively? I'd say it's sort of the flow of the move from start to finish, including before you even leave the ground or the ramp or whatever it is, that you make it look like one, one fluid motion and that you can twist it, torque it a little differently than someone else. Um, but stay in control. That's what it's about. I it's, it, it's really hard to convey. And some of that has to be like, you know, talent.

I'm struggling with the word talent, but some of it. Oh, nature over nurture. Yeah. Sure. Everyone has their own different body types and their own thing, but you can see influences like, for instance, we have this girl on our team, Reese Nelson. She's very young, but she skates vert ramps. And you can tell who she skates with by her trick selection.

Really? Because she's influenced by the certain skaters that she's with. And some of them have very specific moves that are associated with them. And like she just learned kickflip nose slides. Alright, I'm going to go down into the weeds for you. She does learned kickflip no slides all right i'm just i'm gonna go down into the weeds for you yeah she's like hip no slides which is a signature move of a skater

named colin mckay and i and i literally said have you been skating with colin she said yeah he comes here in the morning sometimes and skates with me it's like there it is interesting when i when you speak to surfers they talk about how surfing is like a metaphor for life and they like wax lyrical about you know what that metaphor is is skating a metaphor for life uh it can be sure i i think the the value of not giving up the value of believing in yourself and the value of of working through your own challenges. I think that's probably the biggest metaphor. And for me, what I learned from it is also the value of taking risks.

You know, in the greater sense of becoming a businessman, I wasn't afraid to take risks skating. I'm not afraid to take risks in business. The value of not giving up and taking risks. I heard you spent 12 years trying to master one particular trick called the 900, which I think I did on the, on the video game back in the day when I was younger, which is like a two and a half, two and a half spin, two and a half spin trick. And it took you, you tried for 12 years. for 12 years off and on yes um from the first time i tried it had anyone done it before you no um yeah that was a battle um so i learned 720s in 1985 and the next stage of progression for that in terms of spinning and for skating would be 900.

What makes it so much more difficult is that you're blind to your landing zone twice when you do a 900. When you do a 540 or even a spot where you should be or to even know spatially where you are so it took me the first probably five years of attempts just to figure out where i was in the air and when i say five years i'm not talking about like every day it was more i would i would get fired up i'd had a good session or I was skating a really good ramp. And then I would try a couple. And they always ended in some sort of injury. You know, it was very hard to get out of it safely.

I broke my rib one time when I really thought I had it. But once I figured out that spinning, then I started to explore, okay, how do I get the landing? And that's when I started to explore, okay, how do I get the landing? And that's when I started actually pursuing it. I would say more in like the years of 94 to 96, I was actively trying it regularly. And when I finally thought that I had it, I put it down and then I broke my rib because I was leaning too far forward. And in that moment, I kind of gave up on it. That was in 96 because I thought I had all the pieces to it. I had every element I had in my head. I had, it was the, it was the right takeoff. It was the right setup. It was the right spin. And apparently I can't figure out how to, how to land it properly. So fast forward

to 1999, um, they're having a best trick event at the X games and halfway into the event, I did my best trick, which I had planned that I had only done once before. And it was a variation of a seven 20. It was, it was a very old seven old 720 so i did that trick and then i had 10 minutes left of this event i don't know where else to go from there except try what the next trick that i would like to do which is a 900 um and when i started trying it i'd say the first few attempts i just did for the crowd it was more more like, this is my next state, or this is what's next. Maybe it's not for me,

but this is what I would like to see done. And then somewhere around my fourth or fifth try, I realized that I'm always getting the right amount of speed. My snap is good. The snap is the takeoff when you actually leave the top of the ramp and grab your board.

Because a lot of times the snap is, if that's off, it's tragic. My snap was good. I can see the landing zone. And I thought, you know what? If I'm ever going to try to land this again, it'll be tonight. And if I break a rib, so what? I'm either going to make this or get taken away on a stretcher. Those were the only two outcomes.

And then when I did then try to land it? And for some reason, I never had that clarity because when I would go to try to make it, I'd get hurt and I'd have to go home. So in this particular instance, I didn't get hurt. So I thought, okay, what if I shift my weight towards the back back and then i shifted my way towards the back and i fell backwards and that was the epiphany because all i have to do is split the difference and then i made the next one all i have to do is split the difference i mean to a muggle like me make it sound easy what was that moment like? It was just a big relief.

I mean, it was definitely a highlight of my skate career, of my competitive career. But for me, it was just this weight lifted from me because it had always sort of hung on me that, oh, 900, it's got to be possible. And there were a few of us chasing it. There were other skaters that were getting pretty close to it too. Um, but no one had figured out how to ride away. Once you'd done it once, was it easy to repeat easier to repeat? Yeah. It took a while for me to do a second one. And then after I did my second one, then I could do it pretty regularly.

And at this time, you've got this deal with Activision bubbling away. At that time, we had been working on a video game for about a year and a half. So there was definitely a crazy synergy, perfect storm in that moment because I did that trick

that drew a lot of attention to obviously me, but not just me, but skateboarding in general and the X games. And then that was in June. And then we released, uh, what became Tony Ox Pro Skater in September. Wow. And I was watching the video of you saying that you called the guy Activision to ask him to include the 900 trick never soft yeah i i emailed him yeah that's a good story i i emailed uh never soft the next day and i said hey i did this thing um and i think that people are going to expect to see it in the game now and i know we didn't animate a 900 but i feel like if you guys have time to squeeze it in and we were already in beta with the game,

which meant that we were going to submit it to the console manufacturers. And once you do that, you cannot edit it. You can't alter it. Um, and I remember Joel, who was the head of never soft. He emailed me back right away and he said,

way ahead of you, you fucking rule. And then they got it in i mean and the rest is history right i guess i hoped i like to think i'm still creating it you know your father frank he'd been such an avid huge supporter of you up until that point but he didn't he didn't get to live to see the real all of this stuff after you were sort of 27 28 years old right no he he saw the first x games right and to him that was as big as things could ever get because he was a big sports fan not just you know obviously he loved skateboarding but he also loved team sports and um for him to see skateboarding on the sports network that was for him the coming of age

gosh i bet he couldn't have imagined what would happen i mean and to think that it's gone on to be such a uh beloved sport internationally and in the olympics i mean all that is is just beyond what he would have imagined. Do you, has it ever crossed, have you ever wished that he could have seen the, what would happen with your career professionally, but also in business? I think I'd rather wish for him to see the rise of skateboarding in general, because he was so integral in keeping it alive at a time when it was struggling, um, through, through sanctioning events. So, I mean, sure. My own success. Yeah. But, but I do feel like on a, on a bigger scale and more lofty terms, just the success of skateboarding is something that that

he would have been very proud of that that video game deal we all get emails and these emails often contain opportunities and sometimes we look at these emails we're trying to figure out if it's an opportunity or not sometimes it looks like an opportunity sometimes it's a waste of time sometimes it's just someone yeah wanting a meeting to pick your brain about something um as you reflect on your decision now in hindsight to proceed with that video game was there any close calls there was another group doing a game that had contacted me and I, um, I went down the road with them a little bit and realized that what they were trying to do was so much more, um, how to, how to explain it. It was more technically difficult to play because they were trying to truly emulate skating. And I felt like I understood that approach,

but at the same time, skating wasn't that big when we released this game or when we were going to release this game. And I wanted something that would be more friendly to the non-skater to play, to understand, to be able to just pick up and start doing tricks. And when I saw what activision had they had a very they had a very early version of a skater doing tricks the way it moved and

to me it was it was intuitive it was perfect it was like right away i started playing it i started doing tricks it was almost like it was it was away. I started playing it. I started doing tricks. It was almost like it was, it was an extension of, of my body to start doing this on that screen with that skater. And it's something innately felt right about it to me. And so, uh, was there a close call? I would say if Activision maybe had called me a month or two later, I might have already inked a deal. But I felt very lucky. On the commercial front, I read that you'd been offered a kind of a flat check. Well, when they were close to launch of the game,

they started to sense that there was buzz about it. It was already getting good reviews from, from previews of the, the game publishers. I mean, not the, the magazine publishers. So they knew they had a good game overall and they felt this, this surge of interest. And so they offered me a buyout of future royalties right before the game launched. Which at the time, they offered me a half a million dollars. And they said, what does that mean?

And they said, well, you get that right now and then no money going forward. And for me, having lived through some really lean times, when they say a half million dollars, to me, it sounds like a billion gazillion dollars. I mean, it wouldn't, no one had ever spoken those types of numbers to me before. Um, but I felt like I was in a pretty good place. I was, I was doing well in other ways. I was, I was still

skating a lot. I was doing events. I was, um, I had good endorsements. I was, I was doing, we had birdhouse was starting to actually be profitable. My skate company. And I had just bought a new house with a, with a, not, you know, I, I had a loan, but my loan was manageable. And I thought I'm going to take a risk because I'm doing okay. And I don't need that money right now. And even the timing of that, like if it had been just a few months before that, when I was looking at houses, maybe I would have taken that. Um, but I, I didn't. And that was definitely the best financial decision of my life. Because that game was a success to say that one's after it and the one's after it. Yeah. How, how, how does one that might not understand the scale of that success quantify in a, in a dollar amount, how many, how much revenue Tony Hawk pro skater generated in its, in its legacy?

I mean, I know that they they they talk about a billion dollars for activision um you know my take is not that grandiose but i am never going to complain it changed my life completely a billion dollars they they generated in sales that that was that was always their their big buzz yes so much i much, I mean, so much happens. Obviously that makes you financially free for, you know, but also you become like the Michael Jordan of skating. You are, you know, I was playing you on my video game on the other side of the world when I was, how old was I?

I'm going to say eight, roughly eight, you know, you, you become this global icon of a sport. And it's funny because I didn't know skating before I knew the video game. The video game was my way into even understanding that the sport existed. And I would play with my brothers. That's a, that's going from zero to a thousand in terms of notoriety for sure and and that was never lost on me I mean I felt very lucky to have my name synonymous with a video game and with skateboarding because I had devoted my life to it were you prepared for that no no I how could you prepare for anything like that? There's no way. I mean, to have that kind of success,

especially in video games, is reserved for someone like Madden or Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. I mean, to have it be your name was wild. And nowadays, I mean, we've come a long way. We did a remaster a couple of years ago. There is a whole generation of kids, I'm not kidding, that have asked me if I was named after a video game.

Would you tell them? Sure, that's what it says. If you were named after a video game. Wow. What advice would you have given yourself if you could have to prepare yourself? If you could just whisper it in your ear um i think i would have i would have told my younger self to work on work on your state of mind and your priorities with, with equal effort as you do your skating. I was so hyper fixated on my skating and getting better and my success in skating that, um, I didn't really work on my humanity.

I mean, in terms of my relationships and being present and, and maybe that's what it took to get that far. But I think I would just tell my younger self, like to, to figure out, figure out how to function more as a human than just a professional. Did you lose people? Yeah. Um, and also gained people through my changes and through finding my priorities. And I mean, honestly, I'm in an incredible place. I'm happier than I've ever been. And I have much better relationships with my kids, even though most of them are adults. And I'm just more reliable. What is, um, what is skating without the relationships? Like what is skating for you?

So if you were to, if I was to say, okay, you can skate forever and carry on doing your skating, but I'm going to take away the family and the meaningful relationships. What does life become then? That doesn't sound as fun. It's not the end all for me anymore. I love it. And I'm going to keep doing as long as I can. And probably still push myself in a lot of ways. But that is compartmentalized. And when I do it, I'm all in on it and I'm doing it. And then I

leave it there. I'm not just obsessing on it the rest of the day. I am. I've, I was speaking to a, I think a neuroscientist on this podcast who told me that the brain actually changes as we, as we age up until about 30, where I think for a male, it roughly stops changing when we get to 30. I think he, he said to me to me. And with that, our priorities change. So in our early twenties, we're like trying to get laid and like trying to do the things that will whatever. And then as we get into our thirties and beyond our priorities and life shift, did you notice with age, your priority shift or was it the children? I think I just noticed that I was stuck in a cycle of compulsive behaviors and something that, that I didn't enjoy and didn't feel like it was helping me to have good relationships with my family, with my kids.

And I think I just took inventory and thought I got to make a positive change. And so it wasn't, it wasn't like my brain was changing and I figured, you know, it was, it was more that I had to go get help, um, lean into therapy, um, figure out how to process all these things and how to, how to move forward in a much more, um, congruent way with my values. And I was able to do it. It took a while, but it was more into my 40s that that happened. What did therapy help you to realize about yourself and why you were exhibiting compulsive behaviors?

Did you ever figure out why? Yeah, I think a lot of it was just being afraid of intimacy. And a lot of that, I'm not blaming my parents, but definitely I didn I think a lot of it was just being afraid of intimacy and a lot of that. I'm not blaming my parents, but definitely I didn't have great examples of it growing up. So, um, I, I had to figure that out and, and, and, and how, well, how to be vulnerable. I think I was always very guarded. You and me both. It was, I mean, and also in those days of having this sort of unwanted attention, it made me more guarded because it was like, oh, I can't do any, I can't say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. And, and it didn't allow me to be myself very much. And I think I'm much more comfortable in my own skin now and able to, able to, to hold more interesting conversations do you've got children now so do you

you know i often think about like generational cycles i think about the like the intimacy or the emotional expression that i didn't learn from my parents and like a fear that i have had hanging over me is that i might replicate that for my children. Sure. Accidentally. Yeah. And, and I, I was definitely worried about that. Like my dad never, never said, I love you, never professed that kind of thing or, or was warm in that sense. And so that was more of my example to live by and through the years. And I was, I was very much kind of the same of the same and um at some point let go of that i still struggle with it now yeah you know it's it's funny again i've spoken to lots of just sort of childhood therapist gabble mate and um they talk about like these different types of traumas that we have and one of them is called goblins and the

other is gremlins and he talks about how goblins are usually before the age of 10 years old and they're very very hard to shake so they always kind of live there somewhere in us so even sometimes saying being intimate now or being vulnerable or saying i love you it's like it's difficult for me i get that it's uncomfortable yes i'm starting to get much more at ease with it though with practice with practice yeah and running the experiment i guess yeah and also i see i see how it makes my kids feel it makes them feel seen and and loved and and important and it's particularly important as i've come to learn if you want to have a good relationship with a woman or man but yeah yeah that's my girlfriend is very much the

opposite in terms of intimacy so it's kind of it's an ongoing friction what role has um your your wife played in the broader context of your professional success? Just a feeling of, well, she's just so grounded and she gives me a sense of home and she is very supportive, but also has her priorities intact. So when in, in deciding what to get involved with, she's my sounding board. Um, and, and she's the one who I trust the most with her opinion. And, um, and she understands that, that I am challenged in terms of my sense of intimacy and how to navigate fatherhood. And she has been so great in opening that up for me and helping to show me the best way to navigate it. And just that she's not swayed by fanfare at all.

At all. She could do away with it all together um and i love that and and i cherish that i guess that's what makes it feel like home right that all the noise is kept outside yeah absolutely i mean if you catch us on a saturday night we're and a lot of times, like, a couple of our boys are in college. One of them's in college up here in LA. One, we have many children. So,

let's just say that sometimes they'll come home for the weekend. And as much as we like seeing them, if you catch us on a Saturday night, they're downstairs watching UFC fights with their homies

and we're upstairs hiding from everyone. And we're asleep by 9 p.m that's pretty much our big raging weekend you know after you become the the icon of a sport um what does that do to your sense of identity I'm asking that question because now everyone assumes they know you before they've met you they kind of see you as this character from a game i think what you see is what you get with me i'm not trying to present some other persona and like i said in the past maybe i was more guarded with who i was or how i was trying to be and now i i think i'm just more much more natural and much more real. And, um, this is it, you know,

I'm, I'm super thankful for what I get to do. I do not take this for granted at all. And I know it could all be gone tomorrow. Um, but I'm going to seize opportunities and do the best I can with it. And, and in the meanwhile, try to promote skateboarding on a bigger level um but i know what you're saying and sometimes that is weird but at the same time i'm open to hanging out having a conversation you know bear grills yes so bear grills was the one that said to me that when he he's almost become synonymous with like outdoor activities like if your friend's like eating some mud you'd go i think you're bear grills yeah whatever and he said something interesting to me which has always stayed with me he said the the bigger my brand got the more self-doubt i got and that's kind of

the imposter syndrome right where uh you think like why me why is it all are you are they sure they got the right guy um and i understand I understand that, but at the same time, I think I've, I've been through enough phases of success and failure to know that whatever is coming my way or whatever it is that I'm putting out there, um, is real and is tangible. And so the self doubt is not, is more of a whisper. Success and failure. You know, you fail every day in terms of skating. Some of the big, big failures in your life post the video game coming out, because I think we've highlighted your story to appear to be just success, success, success, success, big break, success, success. What are some of those big failures that have occurred over the

last decade that we might not have been cognizant of? Well, I definitely have had businesses that failed just because they were either not the right time or they were, they were a little beyond my expertise. And I thought somehow, cause I had other success. I probably could do well in other, in other, uh, stages or in other, um, spaces, but I, um, I think that failure, yeah, you know, I've, I've had failed relationships and, um, learned a lot from those and, and was able to, to grow and, and hopefully amend my mistakes and hurting people. And I think that it's just a path of evolution. And so I mean, I've always learned to embrace my mistakes with skateboarding.

And in a sense, I do that with my regular life too but they embraced that the idea that i grew from them yeah yeah yeah yeah business there's a there's a business behind you even still today you have a big team um what is the the entrepreneurial side of your life currently what are your business ventures we have um hawk hawk apparel um which is tony hawk clothing um we have birdhouse skateboards birdhouse apparel is actually its own uh subsidiary um with a group um with a couple guys in las vegas that are doing it which is super cool um i have the skate Project, which is a foundation for public skate parks in low-income areas. I'm part of a lot of different investments and ventures,

things that I'm interested in. And it kind of, I can't say that it ebbs and flows. Some of them ebbs and flows, but for the most part, there's been a crazy trajectory lately. I mean, honestly, it's even surprising to me that people are still interested in what I do personally and also all the ventures that I'm involved with. We have this new tradition on this podcast

tony where we have these cards and these cards are based on previous guests um questions that they've left in the book for the next guest so basically every guest writes the question for the next guest without knowing who it is and we've turned it into these conversation cards and i'm going to be honest we you know we did this because listeners of this podcast listen, because they like slightly deeper questions and context. So it allows them to play at home. Um, I have, I think eight here. I'm going to put them in front of you and all you've got to do is pick one card. Okay. If you're willing to play and then answer that question. Okay. We got QR codes. Do I have to scan them? No, it's all good. The QR code just tells you who answered it. Which guest answered it. Let's see. What are some words you've never said to anybody?

Why haven't you said them and who should you have send them to? I think that I would have told my wife, even though I thought that I was going to, um, kind of turn my life around and change my priorities. Uh, I think that I would have told her that I was, I was really frightened of the, of the path or of trying to make those changes. And I think she knew it, but it probably would have helped to confirm that with words. And I think maybe it would have given her a better perspective on my vulnerabilities early on.

Because when we first started dating, I was still kind of chaotic with what I was doing and my approach to my career and my life and everything. And I made a conscious choice to make a positive change. And she knew I was doing that, but I don't think I let on how scary that was for me. Why didn't you tell her? Because I wanted her to think that I was so capable of it and so confident with it.

But you know what? I mean, she's too intuitive. She knew. Yeah, man, women. It's funny. It's funny you say that because recently I've ran the experiment of telling my girlfriend when I'm struggling with something. And I literally told like, I, it was, it felt like an experiment because I was always like

tough guy, like could never, you know? I think, I think that was it i was always i was always guarded and also i i managed to get this far with how it was functioning um i can't say it was it was the smoothest but you know so i i had some sense of control but uh i think it was more to give up that control was probably the more scary thing that I should have conveyed. But I feel like, like I said, we've come so far, especially, you know, we have a blended family and our kids have a blast. We have a blast. We cherish our time with them.

We cherish our time with them we cherish our time alone and um i think we have a really good uh i think we just have great communication and uh and intimacy so i you know she doesn't like me talking about her so that's as far as i'm gonna go with it i am i wrote in my diary the other day that i used to think vulnerability was um deep down inside me like tough guy who didn't really learn vulnerability from my parents or anything i used to think vulnerability was a repellent what i came to learn right is that it's a magnet yeah and that's when i say around the experiment it's deep in me i thought people would like run away oh he's weak he's whatever and what happens is the total opposite it's like you draw them into

you right i think i think what i learned one of the one of the things that went early on is that the bravery actually means sharing your feelings yeah yeah which doesn't seem to make sense because one would think bravery was the opposite but right i'm on that journey now the question that was actually left for you um what have you done recently for someone else nice easy one I'm on that journey now. The question that was actually left for you. What have you done recently for someone else? Nice easy one. Hmm.

I. Can't say Nintendo World. What's that? You can't say Nintendo World? Yeah, I took my Nintendo Land. Isn't that enough? Yeah. I, well, and I guess more materialistic, I bought my wife a new car as a surprise.

Oh, wow. I think that, what did I do for someone else? Probably on a bigger scale, I bought a skateboard at an auction that was a used skateboard that was hand-p painted by Kurt Cobain. Wow. Um,

for a guy he knew and the guy paid him $20 and a bag of weed to paint a skateboard. This guy had held onto the skateboard through the years. Cause I think cause more cause he was a hoarder, um, and dug it out of his storage not long ago and said, oh, this is that board that Kurt painted. I should put it up for an auction.

So I got wind of it. I bought it. And through the help of Francis, Kurt Cobain's daughter, I verified the authenticity of it and recreated it. And so I recreated this skateboard exactly, photorealistic, same shape and everything, and made 500 of them. And the proceeds from those skateboard sales

go to, half go to the Jed Foundation for suicide prevention, and half go to the Skatepark Project for public skate parks. So cool. So I feel like like what I do, I'm hoping that I did something for people to either, for those struggling with mental health or for,

and also for those who want a place to skate. And that's so cool. At last check, we've sold 300 of them, 300 out of the 500. I'm going to buy one. I would the 500. I'm going to buy one. I would appreciate that. Yes, I'm going to buy one.

I'll buy one today. Where do I buy it? And then for you to answer, then that would be your answer. Would I help people? I bought a Kurt Cobain reissue. How do I buy one? Tonyhawk.com in the store.

Don't. Amazing. Tony, listen, thank you so much for coming here today. It's surreal to meet you because you were you know you still are an icon in my eyes because you know it's crazy that I'm I'm from a little countryside village on the other side of the world and I was born in Africa and I was playing you on a game your game when I was just a young kid and you're the reason why as I said earlier you're the reason why I thought skateboarding was cool and I had an interest in it

you're the reason why at 12 years old i actually got a skateboard i was never able to skate i fell off a couple of times i quit i'm gonna be honest yeah but i bought the board and i had an interest in the sport because of you and your legacy and it's a legacy you continue to to create in many ways through business and through your philanthropic endeavors so thank you and thank you for your humility you know it's very easy to see how someone like you might be off in the clouds but from everything i I've seen, all the research I've done, you're, it seems like you've been seemingly untouched. And I guess maybe from what you said, your wonderful partner and your family deserves some credit for that because they, you know, clearly been a

grounding force. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you.