Tony Hawk: The Man With The $1.4 Billion Name! Burnout, Obsession & Regrets
Guests: Tony Hawk
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
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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 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 on 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 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 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 obsessed.
When I first started skating, I found something that spoke to me.
I found a community of people that were, we were just a bunch of misfits and outcasts that sort of fit together somehow.
And
I loved what skateboarding brought to me in terms of my sense of identity, my 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.
Um, and there was no,
There was no end goal.
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 just kind of was middle ground, 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– each time I was improving.
And I couldn't say that about any of the other sports I was doing.
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.
And it gave my parents some much needed reprieve from my determination.
That's what my mom put it in her best way is that I was difficult.
I was always very thick-headed.
I wanted to do things my way.
I wanted to do them on my terms.
And she said when I found skateboarding, I really found a directive for that.
And 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 your home life like with them?
It was pretty quiet.
I don't know.
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's 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, they, you know, those generations, you stay together no matter what.
And so they did.
And, and, um, it's not like it was, 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?
As in like, were you ever aware that, 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 never, I was never that.
Deep in my introspection to worry or concern myself with that fact.
I just knew that I wanted to go skate.
You were really, 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.
No, I always relied on that.
I was in the gifted classes growing up, and so I was with other...
kids 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 going to be a math teacher because I excelled at math and I liked helping my friends with it.
So I thought, oh, that is the– maybe that's my–
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 because I used it as transportation and because I would get hassled carrying it around school.
You know, 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 was actually, at that point, 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 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 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, what was like filling you up?
The culture, the community of it.
I loved everything about it.
I loved the attitude, the DIY aspect, the renegade attitude that you would, you have to 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 embedded in punk music because that was the same sort of vibe and attitude that we had.
And it was just more like, oh, this is my scene.
I have the scene.
sense of belonging here.
And I don't care if I don't fit in with my classmates or my peers.
And so you started, you got your first hand-me-down board at eight years old.
Yeah, like nine or ten, yeah.
From your brother?
From my brother, yeah.
And by 12, you're sponsored?
Sponsored, yeah, 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, I turned pro, but all of that really meant was that
I moved up a category in competition.
So 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.
And 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 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 smarts?
§02Transcript — part 2
Is it physical attributes?
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 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 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 had that was pretty deep.
You know, they say 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 very young age.
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 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.
Everything's the trajectory just seemed like it was it was never going to end and then it dropped very quickly in the early 90s and
Then I had a good three or four years were very slow and touch and go in terms of trying to make a living, provide for a family.
And then things kind of came back around 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 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 halfpipes.
And then in the early 90s, 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 ratio of success to injury was much higher doing that.
So 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, this is not sustainable.
I'm not going to be able to be a pro skater much longer if I'm, if I think I'm going to do this type of skating.
And so I'm going to 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 going to have to stick 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 at 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.
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 halfpipe 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 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 just in my blood.
And so at some point...
A few years later, things started to pick up again.
The X Games happened.
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 winning a lot of events.
We don't often think it's possible for a sport to kind of experience a downturn, a commercial downturn, like thinking about the big sports of today, the NBA, basketball, whatever it be.
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 I mean, I, most of, most of my peers quit in the 1990s because yeah, I, or, or, or quit or, or not, I can't say quit.
Most of them found jobs.
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, especially in the U.S., it was like the yo-yo.
And it's the new toy.
And it's transportation.
And you can do all these things.
And then that fad kind of faded out.
And then in the 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 a 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 dad was working in the industry as well around this time.
He was in the 80s, yeah.
He helped to form the National Skateboard Association, which sanctioned most of the events through those years.
How did he get into skateboarding?
Just he saw me and he saw how much I loved it and he saw a very serious lack of organization.
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 get the good waves.
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 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, about your dad founding the network.
Yeah, I don't, he never did it.
He never really got paid.
So, you know, to think that it was entrepreneurial, it was more altruistic than anything.
Did that create a conflict of interest?
It was hard.
Yeah, it was absolutely difficult for me in those years because I was doing well.
And then there was, there were 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.
Um, 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.
Yeah, I was under a lot of pressure and a lot of accusations like that.
And I just kind of put my head down and just focused on my skating until I shut him up.
But even then, it was...
It was always tricky.
You know, it was like that.
Then my dad, he got out of it.
And not long after that, he got sick and passed away and lung cancer.
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 doing well in competition.
So then the other skaters were accusing me of hogging the spotlight.
I'm not choosing the programming here.
And so that was tricky.
But I think I learned so much from my early days of sort of being the outcast and the outcast activity that you weren't really going to – 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.
Yeah.
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, just got really fucking good at it?
So now they're pointing the camera at him.
There's all this commercial pressure.
What impact does that have 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 it was definitely, I was the chosen ambassador to skateboarding 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.
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,
sent some camaraderie is what I'm talking about.
But it was very, it was a very limited crew.
And yeah, I mean, I was, 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 a skateboard.
My style of skateboarding is not cool.
It's considered a circus.
Like 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's what became, that became isolating.
But all that stuff just would fuel me to get better.
And I didn't, it's not like I'm thankful for it, but I accepted.
§03Transcript — part 3
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And I went out to prove myself.
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 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 do see kids that get into skateboarding with the notion that they will get rich or famous and or 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, there's no clear path to success.
I feel like your motivation is always just to get 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 in 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 somehow they were separating me from the pack and the crew that I loved.
I loved 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 plane or whatever it was.
As much as you think that's a compliment, it wasn't.
The term burnout is used a lot these days.
People use it in their jobs, in works, in hobbies and such.
What did that experience teach you about what causes burnout?
Well, it taught me that even if you're doing what you love, it's not always going to be enjoyable 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, that's what your success was.
And they, they told me, you know, what are you going to do?
How 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, um,
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 phoning it in, so to speak.
I wasn't being conservative with 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 a, 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 job.
It was, yeah, it was, but, but it was either that or quit, quit altogether.
Because 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 or it?
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 made me feel elated.
It was just, I was a machine, and I'd go and do the event and win the trophy, get 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 I think about this a lot, how when you become successful, you need to be careful that you don't get disconnected along the way.
There's lots of temptation.
With talent to disconnect yourself.
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 the essence of what makes us feel connected.
Oh, for sure.
And I saw plenty of my peers.
I think one thing that saved me is that I loved 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 skill sets.
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.
I want to keep performing at a top level.
And for sure, I had my distractions through my life and through my adult years, but skating was always such a high priority 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 when I got caught up in the fame of it all in...
More in the late 90s, 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 getting caught up in that level of fame is very disorienting.
And I could see myself
I can 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 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, when I got a little bit of money, I think 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 through those years when I was going through the fire of celebrity 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 not told 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, 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, to see my kids thrive, then to care about getting invited to the Oscars.
Sometimes in my life, 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?
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 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
When you were a kid skating in my era, once you reached 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.
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.
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 fifties, it's 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, I was 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, 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, 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, I had the, the.
The gamut of, of, of the skating in terms of being able to do the big stuff, um, the dangerous stuff and also the very, 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 focus more on the technical because it's more low impact and it keeps me healthy for the most part.
I mean, I am nursing.
I'm still recovering from a broken.
Confirma 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.
I still want to do it.
And I still love it.
But like I said, I've sort of focused my energy more into the technical moves.
And I would say 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 must sometimes think like
§04Transcript — part 4
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,
Sure, every day.
But I think to answer your question, the focus it takes is pretty intense to get to do, especially what I do for so many years.
And also, I think that the ability to...
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,
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 what...
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.
And 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 going to get to a point where it's more natural.
What's the balance between learning the rules of the trade?
i.e.
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, luckily skating is so subjective that...
Adding your own flair to it is always encouraged.
And so, for instance, there's some tricks, basic tricks, that 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 fluid motion.
And that you can twist it, torque it a little differently than someone else, but stay in control, that's what it's about.
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 no slides.
All right.
I'm going to go into the weeds for you.
She was like, Kim, no slides, which is a signature move of a skater named Colin McKay.
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 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?
It can be, sure.
I think 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.
Yes.
Called the 900, which I think I did 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, yeah.
Two and a half spin trick.
And it took you, you tried for 12 years.
Off and on, yes.
From the first time I tried it.
Had anyone done it before you?
No.
Yeah, that was a battle.
So I learned 720s in 1985.
And the next stage 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 720, you're only blind to your landing zone once.
And when you pass it twice, it's very hard to 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 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.
It was very hard to get out of it safely.
I broke my rib.
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 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 right takeoff, it was the right setup, it was the right spin.
And apparently I can't figure out how to land it properly.
So fast forward to 1999, 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 720.
It was a very 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 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 like, this is my next...
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?
Like, 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 finally try to make it somewhere around the, I don't know, ninth or 10th attempt, I fell forward again, but I didn't get hurt.
And something, there was something clicked in my head that said, why not?
Shift your weight to your back foot during the spin, and 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?
And then I shifted my weight towards the back and I fell backwards.
And that was the epiphany.
Because all I have to do is split.
But the difference.
And then I made the next one.
All they 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.
But no one had figured out how to ride away.
Once you'd done it once, was it 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 what became Tony Oxpro Skater in September.
Wow.
And I was watching the video of you saying that you called the guy at Activision to ask him to include the 900 trick.
Never soft, yeah.
I emailed him.
Yeah, that's a good story.
I emailed Neversoft the next day and I said, hey, I did this thing 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.
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 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 get to live to see the real, all of this stuff after you were sort of 27, 28 years old, right?
No, 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 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.
No, I mean, and to think that it's gone on to be,
such a beloved sport internationally and in the Olympics.
I mean, all that is just beyond what he would have imagined.
Has it ever crossed your mind?
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 in more lofty terms, just the success of skateboarding is something that, that he would have been very proud of.
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.
§05Transcript — part 5
Sometimes it's just someone, yeah, wanting a meeting to pick your brain about something.
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 went down the road with them a little bit and realized that what they were trying to do was so much more...
I don't know 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 early version of a skater doing tricks.
The way it moved.
And to me, 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 an extension 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 was there a close call?
I would say if Activision maybe had called me a month or two later, I might have.
I've already inked a deal.
So, 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 previews of the game publishers.
I mean, not the magazine publishers.
So they knew they had a good game overall.
And they felt 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, you know, 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, no one had ever spoken those types of numbers to me before.
But I felt like I was in a pretty good place.
I was doing well.
In other ways, I was still skating a lot.
I was doing events.
I had good endorsements.
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 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.
But I didn't.
And that was definitely the best financial decision of my life.
Because that game was a success.
To say the least.
That one and then the ones after it and the ones after it, yeah.
How does one that might not understand the scale of that success quantify in a dollar amount how much revenue Tony Hawk Pro Skater generated in its legacy?
I mean, I know that they talk about a billion dollars for Activision.
You know, my take is not that grandiose, but I am never going to complain.
It changed my life completely.
A billion dollars they generated in sales.
That was always their big buzz, yes.
So 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 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 going from zero to a thousand in terms of notoriety.
Oh, for sure.
And, and, um,
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, how could you prepare for anything like that?
There's no way.
I mean, it's...
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.
Yeah.
What did you tell them?
Sure, that's what it is.
If you were named after a video game.
Wow.
What advice would you have given yourself if you could have to prepare yourself?
You could just whisper it in your ear.
I think I would have told my younger self to...
Work on your state of mind and your priorities.
Um,
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 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 figure out how to function more as a human than just a professional.
Did you lose people?
Yeah.
And also gained people through my...
changes and through my, through finding my priorities.
And I mean, honestly, like I'm, I'm in a 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 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 was speaking to, I think, a neuroscientist on this podcast who told me that the brain actually changes 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 said to me.
And with that, our priorities change.
So in our early 20s, we're like trying to get laid and like trying to do the things that were whatever.
And then as we get into our 30s and beyond, our priorities in 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 I didn't enjoy and didn't feel like it was helping me to have good relationships with my family, with my kids.
I think I just took inventory and thought I got to make a positive change.
And so it wasn't like my brain was changing and I figured, you know, it was more that I had to go get help, lean into therapy,
figure out how to process all these things and how to move forward in a much more...
Congruent way with my values.
And I was able to do it.
It took a while, but it was more into my forties 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't have great examples of it growing up.
So I had to figure that out.
And 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 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, it didn't allow me to be myself very much.
And, and I think I'm much more comfortable in my own skin now and able to, able to, to hold more interesting conversations.
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 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 my example to live by and through the years.
And I was, I was very much kind of the same.
And, um, at some point,
let go of that.
I still struggle with it now.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
Again, I've spoken to lots of just sort of childhood therapists, Gabor Mate, and 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.
And also I see how it makes my kids feel, it makes them feel seen and loved 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, 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 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 deciding what to get involved with, she's my sounding board.
And she's the one who I trust the most with her opinion.
And she understands 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.
Um,
And just she's not swayed by fanfare at all.
At all.
She could do away with it altogether.
And I love that.
And I cherish that.
I guess that's what makes it feel like home, right?
That all the noise is picked 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 L.A.
One of, 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 icon of a sport, 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.
§06Transcript — part 6
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 think I'm just more, much more natural and much more real.
And this is it.
You know, 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.
But I'm going to seize opportunities and do the best I can with it.
And in the meanwhile, try to promote skateboarding on them.
Bigger level.
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 Grylls?
Yes.
So Bear Grylls 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, you think you're Bear Grylls?
Yeah.
Whatever.
And he said something interesting to me, which has always stayed with me.
He said the bigger my brand got, the more self-doubt I got.
And that didn't, I mean, that's kind of the imposter syndrome, right?
Where you think like, why me?
Why is it all?
Are you, are they sure they got the right guy?
And 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 is real and is tangible.
And so the self-doubt is not as, is more of a whisper.
Success and failure.
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 fail just because they were either not the right time or they were.
They were a little beyond my expertise than I thought somehow, because 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,
learned a lot from those and was able to grow 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 the idea that I grew from them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Business.
There's a business behind you.
Even still today, you have a big team.
What is the entrepreneurial side of your life currently?
What are your business ventures?
We have Hawk Apparel, which is Tony Hawk clothing.
We have Birdhouse Skateboards.
Birdhouse Apparel is actually its own subsidiary with a group, with a couple of guys in Las Vegas that are doing it, which is super cool.
I have the Skate Park 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'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 did this because listeners of this podcast listen because they like slightly deeper questions and context.
So it allows them to play at home.
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 sent them to?
I think that I would have told my wife, even though I thought that I was going to,
kind of turn my life around and change my priorities.
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, with words.
And, 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...
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, how scary that was for me.
Why, 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 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 that was it.
I was always guarded.
And also I managed to get this far with how I was functioning.
I can't say it was the smoothest, but, you know, so I had some sense of control, but 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 alone.
And I think we have a really good, I think we just have great communication and intimacy.
So I, you know, she doesn't like me talking about her.
So that's as far as I'm going to go with it.
I wrote in my diary the other day that I used to think vulnerability was deep down inside me, like tough guy.
I who didn't really learn vulnerability from my parents or anything.
I used to think vulnerability was a repellent.
What I came to learn is that it's a magnet.
Yeah.
And that's when I say around the experiment, 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 what I learned, one of the things I learned early on is that the bravery actually means sharing your feelings.
Yeah.
Which doesn't seem to make sense because one would think bravery was the opposite, but 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.
Um, 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-painted by Kurt Cobain.
Wow.
For a guy he knew, and the guy paid him $20 and a bag of weed to paint his skateboard.
This guy had held on to the skate.
board through the years because I think because more because he was a hoarder 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 the 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 skate park project for public skate parks.
So cool.
So I feel like, what did I do?
I'm hoping that I did something for people to either, for those struggling with mental health, and also for those who want a place to skate.
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 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 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.
That's so cool.
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 going to be honest.
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 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've seen, all the research I've done, it seems like you've been seemingly untouched.
And I guess maybe from what you said, your wonderful partner and your family deserve some credit for that because they...
Oh, for sure.
You know, clearly been a grounding force.
Thank you so much, Tony.
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
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§07Transcript — part 7
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