The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 353: Scott Hamilton—I Never Got to Drive the Zamboni

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

The Olympic gold medalist and four-time national and world ice skating champion is the most upbeat and cheerful human ever, and he shares his amazing journey from a sickly, smaller-than-average kid to an Olympic champion, what it's like to survive two forms of cancer, and why he claims the brain tumor he was born with was the greatest thing that ever happened to him.  

Here we go with episode number 353, the way I heard it. It's called, I never got to drive the Zamboni with our good friend, Scott Hamilton. Because Chuck, I don't know, maybe I'm taking liberties, maybe I'm overreaching, but I now think we can call Scott Hamilton our good friend. I think everybody that meets Scott Hamilton feels like a good friend. Scott Hamilton just exudes a confidence and a welcoming nature from the minute he signed on to the minute he said goodbye. he was a delight to be around and he shines.

He pops. His little bald head exudes something that is joyful. He's full of joy, this man. He is a joyful dude. And really, this comes out in our conversation. Guys like him, people like him, are really part of the reason I wanted to do this podcast or at least change the format a couple years ago. The world is just full of people that I want to talk to.

And I found myself sitting across from Scott about, I don't know, maybe five, six months ago at Dave Ramsey's house down in Nashville, just outside of town. And it was just one of those dinners. You don't think you're going to have that kind of dinner. I didn't even know Scott was coming. I just thought it was half a dozen of us. And Dave was like, I'm going to invite some neighbors over. Well, his neighbors are Scott and Tracy. And suddenly, you know, you're sitting across from a gold medal winner. And I had questions. But he had questions. Like, he went to school on my ridiculous career, and he had so much to say about microworks and about dirty jobs. And it was just a really fun conversation. And I said to Mary, if we had cameras here or like

microphones, that would have been a great podcast. And she's like, hey, dummy, you have microphones. Why don't you just invite him on your podcast and do that? So that's what's happening today. We're going to talk about everything from his Olympic triumphs to the singular joy of falling flat on your face or your back. five times in three minutes, which is some kind of record. That's a lot. That's a lot. I don't think he disagree with the statement that he learned more about failure from figure skating than success.

Absolutely. And it's not just figure skating we talk about. It also talk about, you know, his bouts with cancer and cancer in his family and, you know, his foundation that's fighting cancer. He's a guy who survived a lot of things. What did he say one time? He said, I made testicular cancer look cool before Lance Armstrong. Yeah. No, he's had a front row seat to some things that most of us can really just dream about on a competitive level.

And then a whole list of things most of us would dream about in the form of a nightmare on a health level. And he's persevered. Anyhow, you're going to like him. It's impossible not to like this guy. He's a national treasure, Chuck. That's what he is. Absolutely. He's Scott Hamilton.

And among his regrets are the fact that he never got to drive the Zamboni. You'll find out why. Right after this. Do do do do do do do do. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss the rotary phone?

Well, get over it. genie is out of the bottle, the poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid. AI is here to stay, and every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at net suite.com slash Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free.

It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise resource planning software out there, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. With NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, GROC or Claude or Chat, GAPT, whatever else is out there, to connect to your actual business data, all of it, and automate all of those tiresome, time-sucking, soul-deadening manual processes. This is AI built into the system.

that's currently running your business. Learn more at netsuite.com slash Mike. And while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at netsuite.com slash mic. That's netsuite.com. Ask Max if you can come over here in San Francisco to just do some adjustments on my. Might need your help in San Francisco, Max.

If it's not too much. I would absolutely love that. Yeah. Careful what you wish for. Do you pay for my stuff, though? That's the question. It comes in price. Absolutely.

Everything does. Yeah. Well, listen, then, first order of business, Scott. Yes. Have we? It's so hard to know when to begin and where to end, but I do think the fitting way to begin this is to dedicate the episode. However, it turns out to Max Hamilton, your 15-year-old son, without whom we'd be. Max, yes.

Yes, we'd be engaged in some form of sign language or kabuki. So thank you, Max, for making the microphones work. They gave you a big old thumbs up. You're good to go, yeah. I don't think Hero is too strong a word to use. Definitely not. And it's funny because, you know, I'm of that age where we're just sort of immigrants to the, you know, digital world.

And he's so native. When he was two years old, I'm doing the Olympics in Vancouver. He goes, FaceTime, Daddy, FaceTime. My wife's aunt was looking after him, and she said, oh, Max, I'm so sorry, honey, I don't know how to do that. Okay, he's two years old. I said, no, let it just get out of the way. Let him do it. He turned the computer on. He launched the application and he initiated the chat. I said, all right. It's time for me to just get out of the way. Because all I can do is screw him up at this point.

Let me ask you something about this. As a guy who became, highly skilled in a very specific discipline. Do you think it's possible that you became willfully ignorant of so many other things as a result? I like toys. I like toys just like every other guy. I want toys. And these are great fun toys. And they're, you know, they're tools and toys. But it's funny, I'm computer savvy. But when it comes to all this hooking up a soundboard and having like a dedicated mic, like, I'm not there yet. yet. Like, I use other people's stuff. You're like 64 years old, right?

No, I'm 65. Made it. Medicare. Woo! I'm good. This is good. Health insurance. But look, let me make this point. I'm right behind you, and I don't want to abdicate.

I don't want to be one of those guys who just says, ah, you know what? I'm too old to learn this new thing. But I can feel it, man. I feel it every day tugging at me. just let somebody else figure it out, let somebody else make the connection, let somebody else find the cable. So I can work on the thing,

A, that I think I'm good at, and B, that I like. Is that a thing you have to fight against? Well, I think it's bandwidth, right? I mean, how much bandwidth do we have? When you get into, like, all of that, like, I didn't really drive the Zamboni, but I skated on the ice, right?

I never really edited my own music. but I skated to it. I didn't really ever, you know, I didn't do my own choreography, but it was good choreography. And I didn't really make my own skating outfits, right? Because that would have been... That would have been weird.

That would have been way over the line. So, you know, but I still wore them. You know, it's okay not to do everything. It really is. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Well, the extent of my prep for this conversation came really in two steps. The first one was completely serendipitous.

we met, apropos of nothing, at dinner about four or five months ago at our mutual friends home, Dave Ramsey. When I left, I said to my business partner, Mary, I said, you know what? The only thing wrong with that dinner is I didn't have a chance to talk more with Scott and Tracy. You got such an interesting story that I just wanted to get into it. Not that that qualifies or constitutes prep, but that's partly why you're here. The other reason is that I just watched you after that dinner do a backflip. on the interwebs, and then I just watched it again here. So clearly, you're not really homo sapien.

You're not really from this planet. Yeah. There's a lot to jump into, but mostly, as Chuck will tell you, the dirty little secret of this podcast is to find a way to get paid to talk to people I wanted to talk to anyway. Anyway, anyway. You are. Well, hopefully it'll go well.

I thought, you know, dinner was amazing. I just love listening to your stories and just, you know, how you built your life. And it really is hilarious that, you know, we just think we're going one direction. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, how did I get here? It's so tempting, though, right? To get to a certain age and look back. And for me, anyway, to resist the temptation to tell you how I did it, whatever it is, like this idea that, you know, there was some master plan, your life, from an outside observer anyway,

is even more convoluted, from a gold medal to this. crazy odyssey you've been on with your health, your journey and faith, everything. When did you realize or have you yet that the plan, if there is one, is not yours? Early, very early on. Yeah, it comes down to that whole, you're always kind of trying to figure out how you fit in with the rest of the world, and especially when you're a kid, and when you're the smallest kid in your class, and you've just spent four years mostly in and out of hospitals, you really don't know how you and where you fit in. And then by a really odd set of circumstances,

the Bowling Green State University built an ice skating rink and to give my parents one morning off a week where they could sort of recharge their batteries and sort of pour into their own kind of mental health. I mean, four-year journey of hospitals with, you know, your first adopted son, it had to be horrific for them. You know, no answers at the end of it. So our family physician said they needed a morning off.

He came up with a way for them to do that. I went to the rink. And it was there that I kind of go, oh, I can do this. This is equal ground. I'm always the last one picked for all the kickball or whatever, you know, front yard football. You know, always the last one chosen because I was always the smallest of the weakest one. But, you know, then I get on the ice and it's like, okay, I can do this as well as the well kids. And then I realize, oh, I can do this as well as the best.

athletes in my grade. I'm a rinkrat now. I'm not going anywhere else. I'm going to be right here. And it was my first taste of self-esteem. And so I just wanted more and more of that. How old were you? I was nine. So at nine, you know, you're starting to kind of transition out of your sort of, you know, totally innocent, you know, days into kind of being more self-aware. You know, I got a lot of teasing from all the hockey players. Back then, it wasn't glass around the ranks. It was chain link vents. So yeah, it was a little bit horrific, just all the teasing and everything. And so I played hockey for three years as an answer to their teasing because I knew I could skate better than all of them. It was three years, but it was two neck braces. So I realized by the time

I was 12 that it was time to, yeah, not do that anymore. And so when you start marking time in neck braces, you know that you've entered into a slightly different world. But the cool thing was, I was 12, and now they realized that I had more access to girls than they ever would. And so they kept going, hey, hey, there's a competition this weekend. I go, there is. And I go, are those girls from Cleveland coming in? I go, they are. Can you introduce me?

So now I went from being twinkletoes to being, like, you know, match.com. It was hilarious that, you know, it just, everything just sort of changes. If you just pick, you know, stick with something long enough, it'll evolve into something completely different. And so, you know, skating went from being, you know, I was sort of teased and then I wasn't teased anymore, but I wasn't very good, and I would do okay regionally, sectionally I was average.

Nationally, I was a disaster. And it just, you had to work, I had to figure that out. And, you know, falling five times in front of 17,500 people in my first year at nationals was probably not something that would make me think that I was ever going to do anything in the sport. But you just shake it off and you try it again. That was five times in one routine, right? Yeah, three minutes, three minutes.

Yeah. It's hard to get up that many times in three minutes. So I was kind of like, you know, it was like that loser. Yeah. Yeah, and I just kind of had that rep. It was funny because right after that competition, the men's champion on the senior level that year is a guy named Gordy McKelland.

We all kind of idolized Gordy. he was really cool and all the girls swooned over him. And we just thought Gordy was awesome. And he won his first nationals. And so a bunch of us, you know, 14, 15-year-old guys are at this after party to celebrate Gordy's victory. And one of the guys I was with leaned over and he said, hey, go grab me a beer from that table. And I just said, it's right there.

Get it yourself. And he goes, no, no, no. I have something to lose. You don't. So I was like, okay. that's who I am now. Okay. Let's rise above this too. So in anything, you know, you've got to fail in order to learn. You've got to fail in order to kind of understand what resilience is and somehow you grow stronger. So I grew really strong in those years because I was coming in last and falling

a lot in front of a lot of people. I want to just, yeah, spend another minute or two on that if I could because when you fall five times in three minutes and you don't know when you start, that you're going to fall at all, you know, walk me through the different emotions, because I know there are probably various shades of horror. You fall once, and you probably think, ah, you know what, I can recover. I can make them forget that. But then what happens, two, three, four? And do you get to the point where you're like, well, look, that was number five.

It's conceivable I could fall. I guess five more times. I can just keep pulling. I just totally ran out of music. The problem, you know, it was really funny because in skating, If you fall once, you're kind of like, well, now you're out of the medals, you know, because the guys that are going to win the medals are going to skate clean. And they go, okay, well, I'm not going to do that.

And then the second time, it's like, ooh, this is really a disaster. And you can hear the crowd going, oh, you see, that particular night was unique as well because Janet Lynn, who was the most popular woman athlete in the world at that time, was competing in her final U.S. nationals. And they put my event, the novice boys event, as the event right before the senior ladies, championship where there was a standing room only tickets because everybody wanted to be in the building for her last nationals. So they weren't there to see us. They were there to see Janet. And it was beyond capacity. So when you hear the echoing, oh. And then you fall again and it's like, oh. And then the O's like about fall three, the O goes to, oh. And then the fourth O is oh, come on. It's like, oh.

And then the last one is, you can do this. You know, like they go from feeling sorry for you to rooting for you at the end. And then I couldn't feel my legs because I've never seen that many people in my life. So I was scared out of my mind. And I got off the ice and my coach said, I got nothing. You've never even done that in practice. There's nothing I can say to you right now except we'll just try to figure out what's next. And, you know, I'm like devastated.

My mom's getting hugging me. And I'm just like, oh, I never want to skate in front of people again. ever. But you did. Yeah, but I did, yeah. And then I came in ninth the next year a novice, but I only fell twice. And then the next year I was seventh and junior.

I beat two guys who were humiliated that Hamilton beat him. And then the next year, well, that was going to be my last year in skating because my mom was diagnosed with cancer. She said, we had one year left. So I said, okay, I'm not really crushing it in the sport. You know, there's no future for me in this anyway. on the junior level and I'm toward the bottom. So she goes, we'll get you through one more year and you'll graduate high school this year.

And then next year you can go to the college here because it's free for us since we're both professors. We can afford that. So I went back to my training center. My coach had retired and a new coach came in and he scared me to death. He was a very disciplinary type of coach. And he was just mean and he was a great coach. And we became really good. His name was Evie Scottfold.

He was actually Nancy Kerrigan's coach, but he scared me to death. And we actually became really good friends later on. But that year, he just sort of put me through the paces. And I just, I was so scared of him, I'd just submit it. And I go, I'll do whatever you want me to do. And it was funny. Right before that Nationals, I landed my very first triple ever.

It was a triple Salkal. And I landed it, and I was like jumping up and down. I was just finally, it's like bucket list. I had a triple in my last year of skating. Woo! And this was at Sectionals. And Evie called me over, and he goes, don't ever do that again.

It's like what? And he goes, don't celebrate. You want your competitors to think you do that all the time. And it's like, okay. And I was like, okay, all right, I won't do that again. So I'm going out from my program at the Nationals now. It's in Colorado Springs.

My mom's in the corner of the ring, and she's got a sling on because they removed her left breast and the inside of her left arm and she's wearing a wig because the chemo took all her hair. And she had this biggest smile on her face. And I go out to do my warm up for my long program and Evie grabs the back of my pants and he pulls me off the ice and he goes, don't warm up your triple sow.

And I was like, why? And he goes, because we don't want to know if it's there or not. We just don't want to know. And I go, okay. So I didn't want to work good coaching, I guess. You know, we don't want to know if the jump is there or not. So we'll just do it in the program. You know, that's good coaching.

So I go around. Shoot the rehearsal. And then I go around for my triple sow cow and I just remembered thinking, well, this is my last competition ever. Might as well throw it. So I threw this triple sow, and normally my view on the landing of the hardest jump in my program at Nationals was of the ceiling because I'm laying flat on my back. But this particular time I was looking right in the audience and I was like, I laid on my triple sound. I got so excited. I forgot to screw up the rest of my program.

And I won Junior Nationals to there. There was a bunch of guys that were very like, what just happened? like this can't be happening. Hamilton wins nationals. So I won juniors and then... What did your mom do, Scott? She was really happy. It was my last competition ever.

We know that's not true, but it was my last competition ever, and she was so happy all week. And I just thought she was on massive medication. I just, how was this woman even standing up after everything she's been through? But what I didn't know was on her way to nationals, She connected in Chicago and met a couple who were very wealthy, love skating, and heard about me

and wanted to take over the, they wanted to sponsor me. And so she knew it wasn't my last competition, but she didn't tell me until after it was over. This couple invested in me when I was still really ranked at the bottom. Like there was, I was not anything at that point. Why? Because they just. Why did they bet on you? It wasn't a bet.

it was more like they'd heard that my family was a, you know, a good family, that my parents are both school teachers and hardworking and pouring into others. And they just like to, you know, use their wealth for good. And they realized that I probably had potential, but I hadn't touched it yet. And they just said, hey, we'd love to, you know, get behind us skating and see where it takes him. And so they stepped in. And that first year on the senior level, I was, I was a disaster.

I was 18. I was in my very first apartment, you know, kind of living in an apartment on my own, which I had no capacity to pull that off. And then I'm sponsored completely. So like, it was just a mess. And then I went to Nationals that year and I went right back to my old ways.

I came in 9th, you know. It was the last competition my mom ever saw me skate in. And it was May. That competition was in January. It was in May. I'm sleeping on the couch in our family room because we had a lot of people there to support us. I was in a room to about 3.30 of the morning. And then my brother-in-law, I woke me up and just said, your mom's gone. And I just thought all I could say was I know. I don't even know I responded that way.

I just felt that she was no longer with us. And so I went for a walk. And in that walk, I just decided that I was going to be who she always dreamed I could be. I wasn't going to be this loser anymore. And so I just, I got obsessed. Man, I just, I showed up at the rink early. I did long part of run throughs in the summer in altitude. I was just on fire just to honor my mom. How old are you at this point? I was 19. And from then on, I was on the podium.

That year I was on the podium. I went from ninth to third the next year at nationals. I made it to Worlds where I came in 11th. And then I didn't make it the next year because I was injured most of the year. Had a great nationals, but I didn't. and I got behind and then my coach I could sense had given up on me a little bit

and so put his attention elsewhere and so another coach came in and said hey if you want to come take for me and I'm okay I ask my sponsors I go if I moved to Philadelphia you'd still be behind me and they said of course so I moved to Philadelphia

and I took from this guy who'd never had a national competitor like that before and he was well respected but he just didn't have that pedigree that my coach, you know, kind of got me the sponsor had. And I made it to the Olympics in 1980 and saw all the fun things that happened there. And I thought if I came in eighth,

that would be like winning the lottery. And I came in fifth. And then I went to Worlds and came in fifth, which is I was the third guy in a three-man U.S. team and had no chance of meddling. So fifth was amazing. And then I woke up one morning that spring and I realized that the top three guys

that all retired from competitive. I had to do skating. So all I had to do is wake up and I'm ranked second in the world. And it was like, what do I need to do to be number one? And that was get better. Wait, wait, wait. Before you tell me that, I just want to go back for a second. So I better understand the role of a sponsor in your world.

In those days, what kind of dollars are we talking about? Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you. about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Row gently criticizing her oldest son for his longstanding and well-established commitment issues. You'll learn about the latest offer from Pure Talk, which includes unlimited talk, text, and data for just $3499 a month with no contracts and no commitments of any kind. You can see why I love these guys.

If, on the other hand, you have better things to do with your time than watch my mom and me be impossibly charming together, then allow me to remind you here, without all the cleverness and charm, that unlimited talk, text, and data on a blazing fast network for just $3499 a month really is an unmitigated bargain from an American wireless company that keeps all their customer service in this country, supports our veterans in a meaningful way,

as well as the MicroWorks Foundation and allows me to exploit my own mother in a national advertising campaign. Do what my mom did. Get yourself unlimited high-speed data for just $3499 a month at puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. It wasn't much back then because I skated at the Philadelphia Skating Club. Well, no, originally I was skating in Colorado. I was taking from a guy named Carlo Fossi. He actually had four Olympic champions.

He had Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, John Curry, and Robin Cousins. And he thought he wanted a great American guy. So he was influential as well in me getting this sponsorship, if I would come and take from him. But after three years, the first year was devastating because I was so bad.

The second year, I made it to Worlds, and he was really excited. And then the third year, I got injured. and he just sort of, I think he just lost a little bit of interest. And, you know, we had a great friendship, great relationship. I said, you saved my skating career. If you want me to stay, I'll stay. If it's okay to go to Philadelphia, I'll go to Philadelphia.

And he said, I like Don. He's a good friend of mine. He never said stay. And so I was like, okay, if you tell me to stay, I'll stay. But if you don't really care either way, then I'll just go to Philadelphia. So I went to Philadelphia. and from that, like from the Olympics on, I made it to the Olympics that year. And then he was kind of regretting, letting me go.

And then starting at the end of October of 1981 to March of 84, I never lost a competition. And so he was really regretting it then. All right, but wait, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean you've said this word a couple times? Take. I was taking from. It's an expression of I was his student. He was my coach. So I was taking lessons from him.

So taking lessons? So taking what, knowledge? Taking wisdom? Taking experience. Taking whatever he had to offer. That's kind of what a coach's relationship is. And with Carlo, he was very much, you know, he was, there was international skaters from, I mean, it was like skaters from Japan and Italy and Canada.

And my goodness, all over the world, we're coming to, you know, just take from Carlo. And people would, you know, they would take lessons from him. they would take instruction. They would take advice. They would take whatever they could get from him. It was called taking from. And that's the expression of learning. I've never heard the transaction referred to like that,

the sharing of anything from knowledge to emotion to, look, maybe even money. I mean, you were taking from the sponsors who, and this is the point I wanted to make, Scott. You were chosen by your parents and you were chosen by your sponsors. that's interesting to me, you know, because so many of us are not. We're born of or we somehow are brought into a thing. That's a good point, actually. To be affirmatively chosen and to affirmatively receive slash take, you know, I just think that's an interesting metaphor for living.

Yeah, it is. You know, we were always taking, you know, we're taking from each other constantly in many different forms, you know, whether it be, you know, we take French, from someone, or we take inspiration or receive, you know, receive, take, kind of in the same way. Yeah, man, but those are different houses on the same street. Yeah, I love that expression. And I love language.

And so I just think this idea as somewhat of a bloody do-gooder, or at least somebody who tries to make a difference, it's very easy to think of yourself in terms of, well, look what I'm going to give. And, you know, look what I'm going to share, right? And there's an arrogance in that where the receiver has to somehow adopt his or her own mindset for that. Are they going to passively receive that which is being offered, or are they going to take that which is up to be taken? I just wonder if there's something in that that distinguishes maybe a gold medal from a bronze or an athlete from an audience member. That's all luck in timing, yeah.

Right? And so much of it is that relationship, right? It's, you know, you see so many, you know, classic, like all those teams that had John Wooden, oh, my goodness. They came out of their bed than they ever could have been, had it not been for him. And then you've got other relationships where you have the great player that makes, you know, the coach kind of shine, you know.

So there's always kind of that give and take. You know, it's funny with my coach, Don. who I left Carlo to take from Don. We had a really strong friendship, but the main thing I had with Don that I never would ever have with Carlo was Don was 100% all in. I was going to be his focus,

I was going to be his intention, I was going to be like he was going to put everything he had into me because he saw untapped potential and he was going to get out of me in some way, shape, or form. So when I went to Don, my leash was about two inches long. Like he was, you just,

Now, I want to know how you're eating. I want to know how you're, when you go to sleep, I want to know, we got to get you in a mode of really just structured discipline. I was like, yes, sir, yes, sir. Whatever he had to offer, I was just taking it in. And it was really wild that that year, he got me over my hatred of compulsory figures and got me to love them.

And in that year that we started the run, it was remarkable because he kind of started like letting more of the leash go. You know, he saw me sort of starting to get into a situation where I was kind of owning it more than I'd ever owned it before. I was always just, tell me what to do and I'll do it. Now I was like, I'm at a point where I can step into something and say, well, now I kind of know who I am. And he felt, I think, and he even mentioned it long after all of this was done, that, you know, he got to a point where he realized he was really good for me. And then he got to a point where he realized he was really good for me. and then he got to a point where he just wanted to stand back and not screw it up.

This to me, Scott, this is so interesting. Quick sidebar. I just watched a documentary called Beckham. Have you seen it yet? I'd love to see it. I recommend it. It's so interesting on so many levels. But one thing that struck me is how a coach at any given time can.

be the perfect coach. And then one day, they're not. Maybe you took all you can take from them, or maybe they've served their purpose and whatever your evolution is. I don't know, but I hear stories, you know, guys like Wooden, for instance, who could be different coaches to different players on the same team at the different time. Or at the same time, who knew that they needed to put this one on a short leash and this one on a long one, right? And then others who never bent. but who were still very, very successful. And it was really up to the player to realize, okay, I've learned all I'm going to learn, right?

You mentioned Evie and Don and Carlo and, you know, are you a composite of all of them? 100%. The first real coach, when I left home six months a year to Illinois, that first year I made it to nationals, actually, I had a coach who was an Olympic champion. I think a two-time Olympic champion. His name was Pierre Brunet.

He was from France, and he was the most structured, elegant, intelligent man. I think I've ever met. Pierre Brunet was from France. Is that what you're telling me? Yes. He won, actually, yeah, he and his partner, Andre Jolie, won the Olympic gold medal

in pair skating. And he became this phenomenal coach. And I went to Illinois to take from anyone who would teach me in this particular camp. And he taught me, but he was really good at teaching technique on figures. He designed blades. And he was really a craftsman and a science. but he was elegant, awesome, amazing guy. He was just over my head.

I loved him. I respected him. I would do everything I could. But I was kind of a lost sort of teenage kid, just trying to figure it out. And then he was so specific, and he would never give up on a lesson until he felt like he'd broken through

and he got that, whatever that was, into my head. So there'd be lessons that would last two hours sometimes. He just would never give up until you got it? okay, you got it, you got it. He wasn't the best fit for me at the time, but a lot of the seeds that he planted early on, like I would, oh, when I got to a point where I could actually mature into my skating

and sort of applying things better, I would say, that's what he meant, and I would put it into my skating, and it would work brilliantly. But at the time, you know, you're 14, you're 50, whatever, you're just clueless, you know. And, you know, when I see young people now that are sort of driven and like Max, my son Max, he's driven, he's like, he's really eager to learn and grow and learn and grow and grow and grow and grow. He's totally interactive and he's just, he's a sponge.

He's just taking it all in all the time and he's able to apply it. And it's like, why did you get that gene? I didn't get that gene. I just said, like, I was just such a moron at those ages. And Pierre, here's an example of that, he would ask me, because you start a figure, like you'd start your figure on your right outside edge, and then to show their mastery of the figure, you'd start it on the other foot, on the left outside edge.

And I could never, I'd have to go like, okay, I'm right with my right hand, so it's the other foot. Like it took me that long to figure out, which was my left and my right foot. I just had no capacity to do it. And so when I'd have a figure lesson from him, he would make sure that I had a white lace, and my left skate. So I would know my left foot from my right foot. That's how clueless I was back then. No wonder I was coming in last in Nationals.

I had no idea what I was doing. And so, you know, Pierre gave me a lot, but at the time, I just couldn't receive it. But everything that he gave to me, I remembered in a way. Carlo brought out rhythm. Carlo brought out timing. Don brought out discipline and structure and ownership.

And all of that thing was this beautiful. beautiful porridge of just wisdom and knowledge and technique and everything that I could tap into when I needed to tap into it the most. And so all of those incredible coaches, you know, it's like Evie taught me how to show up on time and be accountable and submissive. Like just submit. I'm telling you what to do. You do it and you'll be fine. Just do it. He was good that way. But Carlo was more about, he was transactional in a way, but he was also more about really just building a rhythm and a technique in the rhythm.

And it was really effective. But the thing was about Carlo, he came over after the plane crash in 61 that took our entire world figure skating team. Yeah, he was one of the coaches that left Europe and came over to kind of pilot the ship in America. He lived there, like he moved there in 61, 62. And when I took from it, it was like 1976. and he's still spoken very broken English.

Like every sentence was in plural and past tense. Like I would push off for a figure and he'd say, keep it right to arms forward. Like by right, keep it, keep it? Like, keep it. Everything was plural in past tense. It was hilarious. I adored Carlo and we, you know, years later, after the Olympics,

he said to me, he goes, you're the biggest mistake I ever made was letting you go. I said, well, you're kind of saying that. And we became really great friends. I adored Carla. He was so much fun. And he had the best sense of humor. And I would go and do shows for him, whether it be in Italy or wherever he wanted me to go.

But it's just really great that you're able to keep all that's been poured into. If you're able to hang on to it in some way, shape, or form, it'll show up at some point in your life. And it'll be like, oh, I know what to do now. Somebody told me that 12 years ago. Yeah. But isn't it also interesting? I don't know if this is a theory or this is just something I heard from a great singer years ago with regard to technique and regard with everything you just said. He said, don't forget in the course of accumulating all of this expertise, knowledge, and technique, don't forget to forget it.

Because ultimately, his point was if you're in the audience and you're watching a performance that you will live. later recall as great, it won't be because the person checked all of the technical boxes as they were doing it, right? And this is what's so interested me about your sport because it is evaluated under that kind of microscope where everything is dissected, evaluated, played back in super slow motion and analyzed. But the artistry, like the really great skaters, when I look at like like Dick Button, right? It's like, those are his skates right there.

You can see him. Those are Dick Button's skates. Somebody gave them to me. Like it's a box. There's no skates in there. But the box, he had his own line of skates. And so that's one of my favorite things is Dick Button skates.

He's a skater of all time. I don't know anything about your sport, really. In fact, I got questions about the Sal Cow. Don't let me forget. I need to know where that came from. My point here is with any of the great performances I've ever seen, including you doing that backflip, I didn't see you technically doing anything.

I just saw you doing something I know I can't do, something that was otherworldly that kind of made me tear up a little bit. To me, that's not technique. That's like the sum of all those things jammed together and some version of art. You know, it's the 41,600 falls. There you go.

No, but it is. And you get up 41,600 times. You learn to process failure differently. it's finally getting to a position where you can do something and I tell this that, you know, if I'm teaching a lesson or something to any of our kids, I said, you remember the first time you landed an axle? And they'll go, yes. And I go, do you remember how when you landed it,

all of the sudden, every cell in your body changed to the point where now it makes sense. It didn't before because you're trying to figure out how to get in the position to make it happen. And then all of a sudden you did. And now you understand what that. rotation feels like and it's like aha and then it's like everything changes like everything changes because it's possible and it's the same with doubles and it's same with triples and it's the same with all these rotational jumps it's like you've got to break through that hesitation you've got to teach your body what it feels like in order to spin in the air three times around and stop and land backwards on one foot

and make it look effortless right so it's all this crazy stuff right but you do it enough times and then all of a sudden it's like what you're saying is you just turn off your brain and you just let your body do what you've trained it to do and all of it is in preparation it's you know some of those worst recurring nightmares of like oh you have to skate again it's like what no I'm 65 and I haven't I haven't done this in like you know 13 years it's like there's no way no we need you to get out there and we need you to skate it's like uh no I guess it's dangerous because you have to be consistently doing these things so your body knows exactly the timing, the rhythm, the feeling, all of it, so that all you have to do is just set it up and then it happens on its own.

When did the sport change in a way that was relative or commensurate to say, Roger Bannister, breaking the four-minute mile? What was the moment? Was it Dick? Was it Button? Oh, Dick Biden was the greatest skater of all time. I don't even hesitate when I say that. Tell me why. Because the foundation of skating has always been, like when you go back to when it was first in the Olympics, when it was all this, they would carve these patterns on the ice. And the competition was carving these patterns on the ice and then tracing them and then doing all these things. And then people like Ulrich Salcow realized that, wow, you can actually, I could jump in the air.

and I could land, and that could be part of my routine. And Axel Paulson, Axel Paulson, same, like Alois Lutz, and all these people, they started coming up with these jumps that they would invent to put into their programs to make it a little bit more athletic. And then, you know, Sonia Henney came out, and she just said, I don't care about any of this figure stuff. I'm just going to go out and put on a show. And she became this sensation that was unbelievable.

And then on the heels of that, Dick Button said, this isn't an activity on the ice. This is an athletic endeavor. And what he did, and his coach wasn't even a skating coach. His coach was a ski jumper in Lake Placic guy named Gus Lucy. He taught him how to jump and how to spin and how to do all these things. And Dick Button introduced and invented so many of the things that people do today. And he was 25 years ahead of the rest of the sport.

Like the guys that came in after him were great. Hayes Jenkins was great. David Jenkins were great. But Dick's, he set the bar. And it was just remarkable. The quality and just the explosive amplitude that he'd get out of his jumping was just unbelievable. Like, if you're a big jumper in skating,

you can jump as high as your knee. He would jump as high as his mid thigh, effortlessly. And then he would land. And everything was very proper and very elegant back then. But his spinning was amazing. His jumping into spinning was amazing. And his jumping was next level with tributtlessly. and everything that nobody had ever seen before.

So Dick Button was the guy that was the catalyst that changed skating forever. And in that, I think he's the greatest of all time. Now, I don't want to take anything away from anybody else, but no one will do what he did for the sport. Nathan Chen took it into the quads. Nathan Chen was a phenomenal, is a phenomenal athlete, and did in rotation jumping

what no human being has ever been able to do before. And then on his heels came Ilium, Melanin, who's American skater, did the first quad-axon competition. So that I never thought I'd see in my life, but I saw it. And it was just like, this is for freaks and mutants. This has nothing to do with human beings actually doing these things anymore. These are just wacky people that I think some alien species dropped off on the planet to do these crazy things.

Because in my estimation, they're impossible, but they do it effortlessly. And in that, they're phenomenal. When is the last time you saw anyone in any sport do a thing that made you clutch your metaphorical pearls and go, it's happened again? Yeah. I mean, like whether it's Simone Biles or what, I mean, there'd be one for sure. Yeah, yeah. That becomes addictive, doesn't it? Like the search for that.

Well, you know, you look at like the Mary Louretton's, you know, and I pray for her. I guess she's having some health issues right now. you know, just her explosive personality within her sport. My wife and I got to go to Beijing for the Olympics and saw Michael Phelps' first gold medal swim. And, you know, in one way, it's a bunch of guys just splash around in the water if you don't have the commentary to kind of like be purging you along, right?

So it's a bunch of guys, splash, splash, splash, splash, so he comes out and he wins. But this guy, you know, when he's standing up on the blocks to go out to swim, you're looking at this guy and he's just like, everything about him is meant, like physically, is meant to do what he's about to do. His physical makeup is just so perfect for swimming. He's got the long torso, the short legs, big feet.

I mean, it's just like, this guy is just built to swim, and then when he hits the water, it's just another gear. And it takes, like, Usain Bolt, when you see him come out of the blocks, you know, in a sprint, you're thinking, he's in second gear. You know, he's not even in first gear. He's in second gear because it's dried and it's everything. But then as you see it sort of pick up speed,

it takes your breath away literally, just watching this guy just went by everybody. Those types of performances. And when you see like the Connor McDavid's in hockey, when you see Patrick Mahomes and what they can do in their relatives, in their sports, and you see these great baseball players and all of it is just so surreal

and so superhuman, you know, that's why you watch, and that's why you're drawn into all these sports. And the second anyone takes that away, people lose interest. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company. But he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed. and labeled as domestic, and decided to fix the problem.

The result was a company called Good Ranchers. It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranches and promises to deliver high-quality American-grown meat for a fair price. Today, that promise, and Ben's absolute determination to keep it, has not only propelled good ranchers into the top tier of meat delivery companies,

it's fueled enormous awareness among mediators. like me, that we have all been affirmatively deceived by policies that allow imported me to be marketed as domestic. That's the reason I switch to good ranchers. If I'm being honest, though, I doubt that I would have stayed this long had the quality not been so exceptional. Every single cut I've devoured from good ranchers has been straight up delicious, and every morsel was raised on a small American farm or ranch. Give them a try. Subscriptions are affordable and flexible.

In fact, if you start your plan today, you'll get free meat for life and $40 off your first order. Just use code mic at good ranchers.com. Free meat for life, 40 bucks off your first order. Good ranchers.com. American meat delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get good ranchers now. A-ha!

What worries you most today about the state of professional sports in general and in your own chosen? I don't know. I think growth is such a, you know, it should be a four-letter word, you know, in a way. You know, you look at Olympic rights fees now and they're in the billions of dollars for one Olympics. How do you pay for that? Well, you got to get it back in advertiser dollars. and you've got to get it back in sponsorships. You got to get it back in all these things, right?

And now when I competed, and again, not the grumpy old man at all. That's not the point I'm trying to make here. When I competed, all eyes were on me and Bill Johnson on that day. That was it. We were the gold medalist of that day, and we got all the attention, you know. And Olympics then was appointment television,

meaning that it was only on one place you could get it and you had to watch it. Now it's on 24 hours a day, on five or six different networks, because that's the economy of the sport now. I worry that it's almost gotten to the point where it's too much. You almost take it for granted.

And I came back from, I was covering the Olympics in my basement, actually, this last Beijing Olympics for the Winter Olympics because COVID, everybody was home or in Stanford. And I did a speech in Reading, Pennsylvania. I go, hey, everybody, did you watch the Olympics? I go, I watched the Olympics. And I raised my hand, and not one hand went up.

Wow. And I thought, we've got a big problem here. And even, you know, I don't even know if you're aware of this, but the figure skating team competition that kind of went into a tailspin after Camilla Valliva was, it became apparent that she failed a drug test. The drug test, sure. There hasn't been an awards ceremony yet. Didn't know that.

How long ago was that, a year and a half? Yeah. Yeah. There's no leadership right now. the Olympic movement. And I'm really worried that the Olympic movement is going to be diminished without strong, forward-thinking leadership. If it's all about growth and more money and more money and more money and more money, and I think they're losing the product, you know, and all of that. And I do think that, you know, you look at what used to cost $2 to get into a baseball game is now $200,

and how many people can afford that. And you look at, you know, sort of, again, the growth of the industries, and it's great that they're financially strong and well, and the players are doing better financially, but how is that sustainable? You know, at the end of the day, the common person should be able to have access to all of these sports, and that's less and less possible. And that's a concern. And again, I'm not being the grumpy old man. I'm just looking at this as how is this sustainable if it's going to be 15 to 20% growth

a year? It's not. I wonder if there's a lesson in there, like with your coaches, right? Like the populace, the masses, we can only consume so much, whether it's streaming services or Olympic events or whatever it is. And when we get too much, we just kind of seize up, right? We just can't get through it. I think about the X games and the way they evolved, right?

And I think about my own self three weeks ago in the middle of the night flicking around, couldn't sleep. You know what I landed on? It wasn't an Olympic sport. It was cornhole. Cornhole, man, that saved COVID for me, cornhole. That was just awesome. Me too. Sponsored by that bean company, and I sat there for hours watching his knuckleheads through bean bags through a little hole. And then, oh man, if you ever stumble across like the dart champions, you know, five or a lot. Triple 20s, baby, triple 20s. Yeah, man. all day long. So I wonder if when it tips and when the critical masses go, you know what, I don't care when the next ceremony is. You wore me out. You made me tired. Tanya Harding,

you screwed that up for me in a way. You know what? Baseball, that strikes screwed it up. You know what? Bob Ursay, when you took the Colts out of Baltimore, you screwed that up. You know what I'm doing now? I'm watching Cornhole. And I think a lot of other people are too. It's always fun to kind of, and that's why curling took off in the Olympics like it did. Those guys, they were like the wretched refuse. Nobody wanted these guys to be in the Olympics, and yet they win the gold medal. It was awesome. And it just like, I can do that.

You know, it's like anytime you see a sport and it's like, I can do that. And it was so funny that the rank that we have in Antioch and Tennessee, just during the Olympics, they set up curling just for fun just to have people come out and just have curling. and they couldn't keep up with the demand. It was so much fun. People just left that. But, you know, there's always going to be that where, you know, it's the common man.

We just have to watch something that entertains us and that inspires us. And when things get kind of out of our reach, then it's like, me, okay, let me find something else. And if it's cornhole, great. I mean, it's just, you know, these guys have their earbuds in so they can focus now, you know, they've got their headphones.

on something. Right. They got their playlist and they're so dialed in. Honestly, I think it's one of the, I hate to say profound. Let's go with salient. But like that's the difference. When I saw you do the backflip, when I see you do a triple salkow or whatever the heck it is. There's fairy dust in this, right? It's magic. No way, no how am I ever going to be able to do that. But give me a broom. Give me a, a broom and let me prepare, you know, as that, whatever you call that thing, the stone and the curling things. I can't do it as well, but I can see myself. In fact, I did it for an episode of a show, and I loved it. So there's something to be said for the magic of true excellence and the attainability of true passion. But there also has to be in the conversation, which it's been lost a little bit my industry is when I turned pro, there was nothing for me. The guy that signed me to my first contract for the ice capades held his nose while doing it.

He didn't really want anything to do with me, but he didn't want me to go to the competition and kind of lose face or whatever. So I got signed to the ice capades and he said, you know, you're just going to be like everybody else. You're going to miss shows and you're going to do this. You're going to do that. And it's like, no, I'm going to be the best employee you've ever had.

And I realized that there was a void that needed to be filled in skating because I would always go out and I'd look through the curtain and I would see, you know, kind of how many people were in the audience. And there'd be always that guy sitting there with his arms crossed, look at his watch and kind of checking out the audience to make sure none of his friends were there because he didn't want to get, you know, roasted. And I said, and I thought, and this is kind of a really important thing,

I think, for anyone to kind of just maybe be tempted by it. a little bit, those men were underserved. Those men weren't being catered to. And I thought, if I can build my skating around just appealing to these men, right, just to give them something that they can say, I like that. That was cool. If I could work hard enough or if I could be strategic enough or if I could, you know, learn how to do a backflip on skates, if I could do all these things, if I could bring those men in, I can skate for as long as I want. because now, like, this untapped market is now kind of going to get into it. And it's so funny that that was sort of my mindset.

It's got to be cool. It's got to be broadly accessible. It's got to be fun. It's got to be athletic. And it's got to be, there's got to be some elements in it that these guys are going to go. That's, I like that guy. And so now I'll be at Nashville airport. I'm telling this.

It happens all the time. It happens all the time. A guy will come up to me and say, are you a skater? And I go, yes, sir. And he goes, I thought you looked familiar. I don't watch that stuff. I'm more like football guy. But my wife, my wife loves you.

Can I introduce you to my wife? I go, absolutely. So the guy will go and he'll get his wife. Honey, look who's here. And she'll look at me and she'll look at him and she'll look at him and she'll say, I'm sorry. I don't know who that is. And it's like, I win.

I win. I got him. And he won't admit it, but I got him. And then that's kind of how. That's how I was able to tour for 20 years. I'm convinced of it because we've got to look at areas like people. It's like we've got to grow in places where and be appealing to groups that may never, ever want to see our sport.

And in that, it becomes growth and it becomes exciting and it becomes, you know, more just broad. And it's fun to dream like that. And, you know, I didn't even get picked up for my third year in Ice Capades. The new owner only wanted women. so they let me go. No option, just goodbye, good luck. And so I was able to, you know, I learned enough and I'd prove myself enough that I was given a chance to build a tour called Stars on Ice and and it's still out there. I got questions about that. But again, you're just around the edges,

I think, of another really great point. And it really rhymes with everything we've been talking about. But it's this idea of growth and the idea that part of what I think attracts people, to very specific or nichey pursuits is their inherent smallness, right? I mean, Chuck and I paid our dues in the Barbershop Harmony Society. And I know people who are crazy for square dancing. And I can go down the list of these, right? And then what happens when it gets too big? And I don't know what too big means, but you sure as hell know it when it happens.

Because all of a sudden, it doesn't feel like a thing you discovered. It doesn't feel small and special. You don't feel like you're in on your own private little thing. Now it got too big and so forth and so on. So I just wonder, whether it's cornhole or figure skating or something in between, isn't that another dichotomy, another risk that's always there to be managed? Yeah, and I think every, if you do something really well, you'll have your moment. There'll be a period of time.

They're freaks, right? There's Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond, you know, 50 years later, they're still selling out arenas all over the world, right? Those guys, but you have other people that, you know, they're really great and they're solid, but they have to be strategic about where they play because they're just not going to draw the same as they used to. You know, during the heyday of Stars on Ice,

we would sell out arenas clean all over the country. Like St. Louis had 19,600 tickets sold. one year. And I didn't know there was an arena that sat that many people, but it was the first time I stepped on the ice and I felt like I was six inches tall. I just felt like, oh my goodness, I'm being swallowed whole by this audience. And sure enough, you know, we sold out Madison Square Garden clean five years in a row. It was a happening thing. And then all of a sudden, sort of the bubble burst. And audiences went down 45%. Why? You know, different skaters, maybe you're not in the show anymore and whatever. There was enough of a change and enough of a shift. There wasn't that same

momentum and excitement around it. So I think you've got to be strategic and I think you've got to be really smart about who your audience is and how to maintain them and how to secure them and how to keep them, you know, interested that you care enough about them where you're not going to give them the same old stuff year after year after year. Engaged. Engaged. How do you keep them engaged? Yeah, and with, you know, my role models weren't skaters. You know, what one was, Gordie McKellen was a great role model for me as a way he entertained. But, you know, I thought if I could be blue collar and just roll up my sleeves and get to work like Springsteen, I could build an audience. And if I showed joy every single time I was on the ice like Neil Diamond does from the stage, maybe I could keep an audience.

And if I was inventive and crazy and I just didn't really care about staying in a lane and I was really just going to be all over the map and trying to, you know, discover. different rhythm, styles, comedic, or whatever, and just be unpredictable like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and his solo career, then I could probably create even a greater type of longevity. And all of those things, you know, they work. You know, it's just being strategic and smart and really trying to be humble enough and work hard enough to kind of initially build an audience

and then try to hang on to them in any way you possibly can. But what about this? I mean, there's such a distinction there in keeping the audience of fans that you've always had and building a new audience of fans who weren't fogging a mirror when you were winning gold medals, right? This is something I think about a lot right now. I'm not done yet, but I'm older than I've ever been, and I would like to do another show. And I have to answer a pretty fundamental question, which is, should I do something that I think will appeal to the guy who came up to you in the airport, right, on behalf of his wife, right?

Should I do something for people who I'm pretty sure were watching me crawl through sewers 20 years ago? Or should I try and do something for, you know, Gen Z, people who don't know me? I honestly don't know what the answer is because over here, in the four-letter word called grow or growth, which is technically more, but, right, I got advertisers who are saying, ah, the key demo, this is what you need to. do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But over here, I've got the people who I think have been in my world for the last 20, 30 years. Do you think about that when you're flying through the air, hoping not to fall for the sixth time in three years? Well, I got to a point. I was 20 years in. My son was six months old. And I was just Center Ice, Madison Square Garden. It's like, something's wrong here. Next day, I was at NASA Coliseum. And it's like,

what is it? I've never felt like this before on the ice. What's wrong with this? And it's like, I don't belong here anymore. I need to be home. I want to see his first steps and I want to hear his first words. And I want to be, I've worked long and hard enough to be a dad that can be there for his first years. And so I decided in that moment in Nassau Coliseum, I go, this is it, I'm done. And I stepped away. And it was remarkable that I kind of figured, it's time to shift gears. And I wanted to shift gears in 2001 when I did this big farewell tour, but then 9-11 happened and it sucked the air out of everything.

You know, nothing was happening. People were staying home. They didn't want to go out anymore. They wanted to stay home. And so I realized that in all those transitions, you know, it's really difficult to kind of sacrifice, you know, sort of this popularity or this idea that you're a focus of something or you've got this audience or whatever.

It's really hard to step away from that. It really is. But how do you find it in other ways? And in that, you know, I did the broadcasting for nine Olympics, and I really love it. And I'd love to do another Olympics. I'd love to do another Olympics, but that's not up to me. But in the rest of it, it's like, how do I give back to my sport?

Well, I've got the Skating Academy at the Fort Ice Centers, you know, with the Nashville Predators here in Nashville, and we're growing. And I'd love to continue. you to grow that and give back to my sport. And then what else? Well, I lost my mom to cancer and I survived. And so what do I want to be a significant influence activist in the cancer space.

I didn't pick it. It picked me. So game on. Let's go. And so, you know, I've got the CARES Foundation where we raise money for right now. We've done a lot of things in CARES. We built ChemoCare.com, which helps people understand better what they're going through. with chemotherapy because it's written in eighth grade,

Ingris in Spanish, and with any language in the world through Google translate. But, you know, giving people education and cancer, giving people support through my fourth angel mentoring program, all those are at the Cleveland Clinic, Tosset Cancer Center, and then now finding a cure. And it's just like we really believe that our immune system holds the key to curing cancer, period.

And we're really investing in immunotherapy. We're very small, high-impact organization, that is very collaborative and we do well, you know, working with others because cancer isn't a me problem, it's an us problem. And so, you know, I figured if there's any way that I can leverage anything I was able to accomplish in all of my me years of take, as we discussed earlier and receive, if there's any way I can flip the script on that and now give back to all those people that may or may not know who I am, but, you know, the ones that remember me, maybe leveraging that relationship into maybe saving their grandchild's life or their child's lives or their lives.

You want people to take from you. Yeah. Please. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure. But if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA, making a real different. on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before with hundreds of chapters and schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students

participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. In high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it.

You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself and see, too, how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic.

That's skills, USA.org slash Mike. I'm talking skills, U.S. skills, U.S. skills. USA. People should understand. We can talk as much or as little about it as you want. I want to be respectful of your time. But, you know, my mom had breast cancer, fought it, caught it early. Oh, I'm so glad she got early.

You obviously lost yours, and I can only imagine the impact that had. But that was the beginning of your journey. I mean, testicular cancer, brain cancer, three times. I mean, I don't even, yeah, I don't think we've talked about testicular cancer on this podcast yet. I made it cool before Lance Armstrong, so there we go. I've got a Lance Armstrong story for another time, but honestly, this was, was the testicular diagnosis prior to the first brain episode? Yes, it's really wild. So testicular cancer was the greatest thing that ever happened to me easily. I was just so unsettled.

And I was kind of, the tail was wagging the dog in my life big time. I knew that I wasn't living. I was sort of answering all the celebrity and answering all the kind of stuff that comes with, you know, being well-known or selling out arenas or whatever. I was kind of like stuck in that mode of being that guy and not who I really felt like I was organically. And so when cancer hit, it stopped me dead in my tracks

and it made me rethink everything. And I thought, you know, I lost my mom to cancer and here I go. I'm going to, same thing is going to happen to me, happened to her, and it didn't. I survived. And in that, I learned so much. And in that, I decided that I needed to kind of make sure that my next steps, my next phase in life, my next life was going to be the one that was organic to who I am and what I'm about. And in that, you know, I got married and started a family and life just became more real than more kind

of surreal or artificial. And in that, I just started giving back. And it was right after, I think my son was 14 months old, I was diagnosed with my first brain tumor. And that was frightening, ignited my faith in a huge way. Oh, my goodness. I just fell so in love with Jesus during that time. It was just incredible. I always believed in God, but it was there that I really went all in.

And then they did radiation on that. And then six years later, it came back. and this time it was surgery, and the surgery had a complication. And in that complication, right? Yeah, I had to have nine cerebro angiograms. Basically, my groin got invaded more times that summer. Well, I can't really tell that joke on this program.

But anyway. You'd be surprised. Yeah. But anyway, it was nine surgery summer, and then I went blind in my right eye for a day, and they were able to get some of it back. and then six years later it came back again. And now I'm looking at it for the third time.

And this time, my faith ignited in a really cool way. And all I heard when they were giving me options was get strong. They were giving me a surgical option. All I heard in the back of my mind was get strong. My whole spirit was just saying, get strong. I go, I need to be listening to this. Please just shut up. Emotionally, spiritually, physically.

Emotionally, all of it. And I did D all the above. And so everything I do now, I really try to be focused on everything I do now. If it's going to have any quality at all, there has to be a physical component to it, an emotional component to it, an intellectual component to it, and a spiritual component to it. And if any of those legs of the chair are missing, I'm probably, I'm not going to be successful in sitting in that chair. And it's been remarkable that so many things have happened, so many doors have opened, so many doors have opened, so many, And so many remarkable things of just, or maybe I'm just seeing it differently now,

but for the last seven years, that tumor has not needed any treatment at all. It grows and it shrinks and it shrinks and it shrinks and it grows and it shrinks and it grows and it grows and it shrinks. And it's like, I can't explain it. I do think when we don't know where to look, you know, for a solution to our problem, up isn't bad. It really isn't.

I know as much about brain cancer as I do about figure skating. but I'm... Me too. I'm super curious. Given the schizophrenic nature of the tumor you've described, did the doctors, do the doctors know when it first presented? Like, how long have you had this thing in your head? I was born with it.

Holy crap. You're kidding. Remember my childhood illness that put me in hospitals for four years? Can you imagine if they would have found that tumor in the mid-60s? Dude, they'd have taken the top of your head. off. Oh, totally. Yeah. And my head's way too pretty. You know, first all those scars. You got a perfect bald head. Yeah, there you go. Oh my God. Wait a minute. So that's, that's, that's a thing. That's a thing. That's a thing. I was born with it. I know. It blows my mind, too,

because how am I going to get mad at this brain tumor when it made or allowed every great thing in my life to happen? If it weren't for that brain tumor, I never would have stepped on the ice. If it weren't for that brain tumor, I wouldn't be the size that I am. If it weren't for that brain tumor, so many things that in my life would be completely different. My faith walk would be different. Everything would be different. Nothing in my life would exist as it does without that brain tumor. So the joy of the struggle. I'm kind of, I love that brain tumor. You know, it's a nuisance at times. But generally, I have to be grateful in all things. You know, if I'm struggling now, I've got to be grateful. If I'm, if I'm going through a good easy period,

I have to really be grateful. Because the one thing I think when I see a lot, especially when you're, you know, you just step into the world of social media, you know, you see a lot of things and you see a lot of people that are hurting and that are lost, that are, you know, just trying to show everybody how great they're doing or how funny they are.

You know, it's an artificial world. It's not a real world. But a lot of people have dedicated their lives to it. And that's fine and that's good, as long as we understand that, who we are is meant to be in a community, really honestly interacting and serving others in the best way we possibly can.

And if we're not doing that, we're missing out on the greatest quality of life you can have. I always say that the greatest gifts given are to those that'll never know its origin. And so almost everything I do right now in the cancer world, a lot of the research that we fund, a lot of the answers that we find, it's really fun to share those

with an audience that needs, desperately to hear those words. You know, like funding glioblastoma multiform brain cancer, you know, it took us a long time to find a researcher because it's such a short-lived cancer, you know, it takes people quickly. Yeah, that how are you going to research it?

Well, one of the first things they found out with glio, oh my goodness, I'm getting, is that it's not genetic. So people, like in breast cancer or in colorectal cancer, it's genetic. You know, you have to keep an eye on things because you may have the genetic makeup that, you know, you're prone to it.

But with glial, there's no genetic markers. So all of those children and grandchildren who lost relative to glioblastoma, they don't have to worry that it's now in them already. And that's all, you know, research. That's how we find things out. That's how we solve problems. And that's all my foundation does now.

So all of those things of just being able to, as a taker, you know, for all those years, to now step in more of a role of a giver, whether it be what I've learned on the ice to our students at the academy or to a research scientist that's going to find a solution to somebody's problem. It's all about, I'm really trying to get as many donors

as I possibly can because that's how you solve these problems. But I've never taken a penny for anything I've done with CARES ever. I don't even take a, you know, for anything, if I teach a lesson and I have to try, charge and I don't want to because I don't want to take a lesson opportunity way from another coach. And it's complicated. But as far as the skating academy itself, I don't get paid for that because I just want to give back and I want to make sure that anybody that wants to get on the ice can get on at a reasonable price because they don't have to pay me. So there's all of that.

How do you know, Dave, Ramsey, just to sort of land this plane and bring it back to where we started? How did you and I wind up in a suburb of Nashville eating steak and having a big night? That was a great dinner. Dave lives well. Dave's a good man. Well, it was funny because when I came to Nashville, you know, we had one child. We wanted another one. You know, we came to Nashville because I didn't want to raise my son in L.A.

Because I didn't think I had the skill set or the capacity to raise him in a city like Los Angeles, right? So we moved to Nashville. My wife has relatives in Memphis and Knoxville. Nashville and all over Tennessee. So I figured to be a great place for support. First thing I do was get a house. Second thing I did was get season tickets to the Nashville Predators. Nice. I've been on tour. I could never do that before. Now I can actually be a season ticket holder. So I got season tickets and I sat down in the two attacks zone corner where I could look right at the net. It was perfect. This guy sat next to me. His name was Bill Hampton.

And he did a lot of big work for Dave Ramsey. And so Dave's seats. were two sections down. So between periods, one time Dave came over and he said, hey, I'm Dave, Ramsey. I go, hi, Dave, nice to meet you. And I'm Scott and I introduced myself. And we talked for a little bit and we talked about hockey and talked about sports. And he walked away and Bill goes, you don't have any idea who he is. Nope. I go, is he famous? He's a nice guy. And he goes, yeah, he's Dave Ramsey has a radio talk show where he helps people get out of debt. And he's really blowing up. He's on fire right now. And it's like, wow, that's so cool. I bet Dave Ramsey. That's really awesome. So we just started spending more time together and we'd have dinner and we'd get together for

whatever. And it was just a really nice friendship. You know, I'd, I just always like Dave and Sher. We'd go to their house down at Tim's Ford Lake and spend a day and my kids learn a water ski down there. And he's just a great guy, you know, and it's just so funny how it's small. He wants people to take from him, honestly. I mean, everything I've seen him do, it's not a ministry in the strict sense of the word, but he is afflicted. Right? Yeah.

He's afflicted in the way people get when the agitation is born of a belief that they have something, like they have something, whether it's insight or wisdom or knowledge or hope or something. He really believes that he has something that can dramatically improve the lives of a lot of people. And he's touched countless lives in that. And, you know, he's teaching, he's grown up entrepreneurs, and he's taking, and he's still learning. He's still growing. He's still, everything that he's experienced that put him into that space of Financial Peace University, now he's able to take all of those stories and all of that impact and all that capacity of growing his business and doing it in a way like when Sharon and I would go to pick up the barbecue when we're down at Tim's Ford Lake,

I'd offer her to pay and I'd pull out a credit card and she's like, no, no, no, no, no. And she'd pull out a little envelope with cash in it. They don't just talk it, they walk it. And, you know, and he wanted to buy the building where they had their first studio. He said, I don't have enough cash yet. I can't do it unless I buy it with cash. And everything he does, like he built this house, it's all cash.

It's like every builder's dream, right? I'm just finding it increasingly satisfying at this point. point in my life to talk to people who walk the walk. I don't care about the size of their bank account at all, but I do care that they put their money where their mouth is. I'm going to be back there, Scott. I want to say April. He's doing one of his big events again.

So I'll give you a heads up. It would be great to reconnect and have another dinner. It's probably his on trade leadership big event. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to be there? My son Max and I went last year and he was networking the whole time. Yeah. Nothing like watching a 15-year-old entrepreneur just networking like crazy. I mean, that's just like... Well, that kid didn't learn how to hook up that microphone by osmosis, man.

He must have been asking questions. What he's doing, it's really wild. A quick Mac story real quick because he's madly in love with Jesus, right? He's just everything, he's just really... He told me before he said, Dad, I'm going to be a multi-multi billionaire. And it's like, I bet. Yeah, I go, that's great, Max. I go, and make sure you do good things with that money.

And he goes, you know, Dad, you're going to have, I'm going to buy you any car you want to have, I'm going to set you up, you're going to have the best nursing home that anybody's ever been in, you know, that type of, I go, thanks, buddy, I appreciate that. And then he came to me, he goes, I don't care if I make a nickel. I go, what? He goes, I just want to serve the kingdom. I just want to be, I want to bring as many people through Jesus. I want to save as many people as I can.

And I just want to preach. And I just want to affect lives in a really positive way. And it's like, wow, that's amazing. That's just incredible. So in that, he had a little nest egg. We did a couple ice shows together, and he got paid for those types of things. And he goes, Dad, he goes,

I was with some guys tonight. He's doing a trip to Brazil mission trip, and he needs to get funded. And I gave him half my money. I got, you what? And he goes, well, I mean, you've always said that if we invest in the kingdom, I'll come back tenfold.

And I go, I believe that. And I go, are you sure? And he goes, oh, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, it felt kind of weird doing it. I just couldn't do anything else. And I said, great. So about two months after that, he came home one day and he's laughing. He goes, I go, what's up?

And he goes, a couple of guys just gave me about $10,000 worth of gear for my podcast. I'm like, why do they do that? And they go, they just felt called to it. Wow. And I'm like, okay. Well, as I said, it really works. So it's just that. It's like, the more we step.

into kind of the mysteries of the world instead of like the absolutes or whatever propaganda we're ingesting in any given time. It's really fun to just be able to be in the presence of someone else and just try to serve them in any way possible. And, you know, Mike, you've done that in a really cool way. You know, you've elevated people that really had no voice. Even now, you're an interested listener, and you're putting things out there that can really bless people in unique and unexpected ways. And I'm really grateful that Dave brought us together, and I can't wait to see you in Nashville again soon. Well, it took me five seconds, and thanks, by the way. Maybe five seconds to realize that you would be a great contribution to that effort. I think you have a lot to

say you've got an unexampled and super interesting life. I love the way you've played the cards. you've been dealt. Thank you. All of them. Thank you. Also, two of your own and two adopted. Is that right? Yeah.

We had my first son, Aiden. He's training M.MA. He wants to hurt people, which I'm not sure I care about that. And then Max, Miracle Max, like he came off after testicular cancer and a pituitary brain tumor. So there's really no way he should be on this planet. But, you know, Miracle Max. And it was 2010, I was, it was, Max was two.

I was at U.S. figure skating championships in Spokane. I called home to check in and Tracy was sobbing. And I go, what's wrong? And I go, is the kid's okay? And she said, yeah, they're fine, they're great. You're not watching the TV? And I go, no, I'm working. I don't.

And she said there was an earthquake that hit Haiti. And I think 250 to 300,000 people died in 30 minutes. It's like, I mean, it's. It's unthinkable that that level of catastrophic death could happen that quickly. But the homes, the way they're constructed, and it just, it was catastrophic, like, in ways that you can't even describe. She was, I have to get down there. I have to serve. And that's her heart.

You know, I mean, she married me, so obviously she's really good at charity. But we waited until, you know, the professionals left until her need or her, what she could do down there kind of became apparent. and she's been hated 28 times. And in that, she fell in love with these two little kids, brother and sister. And I went down there, you know, to kind of serve as well, and fell in love with these kids and realized that we were meant to bring them home. And so it took us a bit, like almost three years, I guess, but we finally got him home.

And now we have four kids. And my oldest son Paul is, he's in the workplace, he's long. She's trying to figure it out. And Aiden, as I says, is MMA. And my daughter just started college. And she's in political science and wants to be a lawyer and change the world and maybe go back to Haiti and fix it, you know, and good luck with that. And then my little guy, you know, he's just...

What do you call him? Evangelizing. Tell Max. Yeah, Max. I'm proud of all of them, you know, in their own way. You know, I worry about them. You know, it's hard growing up in this culture. And, but, you know, we all have an identity.

and we have to leverage it in every way we possibly can. So here we are. We put the front of dysfunctional. Once more with CARES. Where do people go? How do they help? Yeah, Scottcares.org. We do events all over the country.

I just got back from Las Vegas. We did an event with the Golden Knights there, skate to eliminate cancers. We do them all over the, anybody that wants to host one, they're really fun, they're easy to do, and we raise a lot of money doing them. We always, anytime we do a skate to eliminate cancer

in a city, we leave half the money or 40%, 50%, in that community with our charity of choice partner to do the work within the community. And then the other half goes towards funding research. And so I went to Alaska for two days. That was a really long trip for two days. And I've got Santa Rosa coming up. Last year we were given the honor of celebrating Charles Schultz's 100th birthday, what would have been his 100th birthday.

We did a skate to eliminate in a show there, which was really great to be in his rank and do all that. And we're going back again next month. And then I've got my signature event in Nashville. On November 19th, we do live country music. This year it's country music with Nathan Chen's coming in and all our Olympic skaters are coming in to skate to live music. It's unbelievable when you mix live iconic music like Trace Atkins,

Jody Messina, Dina Carter, C. Warner, the frontmen. They're all coming in to do their big songs from the 90s. 90s country was changed country music forever, and now we get to celebrate that with our skaters and hopefully raise a ton of resource for cancer research. And we do events and we take donations. We have a fund called the 1984 fund where people can come and sign up

and donate $19.84 a month. Is that a callback to Sarajevo or well? Yeah, 1984 was the year. That was my podium. and now it's my platform. Hey, that's not bad. Yeah, in marketing now, too. A podium to a platform.

And by the way, I didn't even ask you about this. Doggone, we're so out of time. But, you know, you mentioned music right at the top of this thing. I don't write the music. I don't do the costumes. I don't do this. I don't do that. But I remember your 84 short form.

And it was such a weird mix. It was music. It was spoken word. It was like, I don't need, it was just a bully bass of sound, and you danced to it beautifully. I'm just going to guess music is a big part of your life. Huge. Yeah, it's, I got, you know, it's kind of my best friend all those years that I was training. And so now I've gotten to, through all our shows that we do, we do live music skating shows, you know, through all of them, I've gotten to work with so many of my heroes.

I invited Jonathan Kane to do the show. and he called me the week of and he said hey and I go oh no please don't tell me he's going to cancel and he goes hey I was talking to Neil Sean about this and uh you'll show like journey oh yeah journey and I go um oh I hope Neil didn't object to him doing this and he goes Neil wants to come and I was like okay so I might have just wet my pants a little bit but um so near comes and they're doing don't stop believing and I'm standing on stage right, and Neil turns, and that guitar lick at the beginning of Don'tSy, that ninn, and he turns, and he looks square at me and he leans in, and he plays that whole thing to me.

And I was like, Lord, take me now, because it doesn't get any better than this, you know. But it's every genre. It's been remarkable. And there, people walk out and they'll say, why didn't you tell me? This is amazing. I go, I did tell you, but unless you're there, it's hard to really understand. Some things you got to see. Like your podcast, some things you got to see.

Like you drive in a Zamboni. One day, that's what I want to see. That's what I want to see. Well, I can't thank you enough, Mike. You're a good man. You're a good man. Don't hang up. We've got to make sure all of your brilliance uploads properly, but this will

officially end another episode. Brought to you by Max Hamilton. Adios. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go on and live and leave us. a review I hate to ask, I hate to beg,

I hate to be a nudge, but in this world the advertisers really like to judge, you don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do

is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not too. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you got to do is leave a quick Even if you hate it. Five-star. Especially if you hate it. Thank you.

America's first pledge was freedom. Jeep still carries that fighting spirit. With the Jeep Declaration of Deals, we're pledging our allegiance to the American people with great deals on the luxurious Grand Cherokee, with available three-row seating, premium craftsmanship and tech that turns every drive into an adventure, or Jeep Wrangler with legendary 4x4 capability and open-air freedom.

Because freedom deserves the vehicle built to carry it. Jeep, there's only one. Hurry into your local dealer for the Jeep Declaration of Deals. Jeep has won more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV branch. Jeep at the Jeep Grill or registered trademarks of XAUS LLC. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers

and no room for shipping delays. That's why Granger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-Granger. click granger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones do get it done.