Tony Hawk: The Man With The $1.4 Billion Name! Burnout, Obsession & Regrets

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm either gonna make this or get taken away on a stretch.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  It changed my life completely.

• 0:10Steven Bartlett?

  Were you prepared for that?

• 0:12Speaker 00

  How could you prepare for anything like that?

• 0:15Speaker 00

  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. 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.

• 0:49Steven Bartlett?

  How much revenue?

• 0:50Speaker 00

  A billion dollars.

• 0:51Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  The trajectory just seemed like it was never gonna 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.

• 1:09Steven Bartlett?

  Did you lose people?

• 1:10Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  The term burnout is used a lot these days. What did that experience teach you about what causes burnout?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  It taught me that.

• 1:37Steven Bartlett?

  Tony.

• 1:40Steven Bartlett?

  Not sure if you've ever listened to this podcast before, but I'm quite predictable with how I start these conversations. And I'll, I'll be transparent in terms of my rationale. When I read about a story like yours and I read about how much of an anomaly you were in many respects of your life, I always ask the question, why and how? Where did that begin? Where did that start? And having, you know, read right back into your, your, your parents' history and your history, I saw signs of, 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?

• 2:21Speaker 00

  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 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 it as much as possible. And there was no, there was no end goal. There was no fame or fortune in the cards

• 3:04Speaker 00

  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.

• 3:25Steven Bartlett?

  When you say obsessed, and the way you describe it, it almost sounds like it was medicine.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  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

• 4:14Speaker 00

  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.

• 4:29Steven Bartlett?

  What was that progression doing for you on a psychological level?

• 4:33Speaker 00

  It gave me a sense of purpose. It gave me an outlet for my energy and my frustrations. And it gave my, my parents some much needed reprieve from my, from uh, my determination. That's my, that's what my mom put it in her best way is that I was, I was difficult. I was always very thick headed. I wanted to do my things my way or I wanted to do on my terms. And she said, when I found skateboarding, I really found a, a directive for that. And when her friends would say, he's such a nightmare, she'd say, he's just very determined.

• 5:17Steven Bartlett?

  Nancy, that is right?

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:19Steven Bartlett?

  Frank and Nancy, your parents, what was, what was your home life like with them?

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Um, it was pretty quiet. I don't know. I, um, my parents were older when I was born, so it kind of felt like I was raised by grandparents. Because my dad was 45, my mom was 43. By the time I was at an age where I was being very active and doing things, they were, they were kind of in retirement mode.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  So, and, and they, I can't say they were, I don't know, they, they weren't,

• 5:59Speaker 00

  they weren't close. It was almost like they were just roommates. And so that, I definitely rubbed off on me in, in a lot of ways, but, but it just felt like, oh, this is just a functional household. It's not full of love necessarily.

• 6:15Steven Bartlett?

  I'm the youngest of four.

• 6:19Steven Bartlett?

  I sometimes ponder whether, sometimes the youngest child of the bunch, because you were the youngest of three, right? Um, the parents almost. Think that they've finished with parenting.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure. In my case, my my older siblings were all my my brother was closest. He's 13 years older than me. So absolutely, they thought they were done raising children. I was I was not planned. And and I think that my parents were kind of reaching a winter of their 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 you stay together, no matter what. And so they did. And and it's not like it was it was terrible. Like I said, it just wasn't that warm.

• 7:10Steven Bartlett?

  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 it has did that ever have an effect on your psyche that you weren't planned at all?

• 7:24Speaker 00

  No, I never thought about that. I guess I never I was never that deep in my introspection to to worry or concern myself with that fact. I just knew that I wanted to go skate.

• 7:39Steven Bartlett?

  You were really, really intelligent kid. I read that your IQ was like 144 or something.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe at one time.

• 7:49Steven Bartlett?

  Which is which is surprising. Typically, I think of a child that has that void of independence, and 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.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Um, no, I always relied on that. I was in the in the gifted classes, growing up. And so I was with other kids that that were of that same ilk. And so I always thought that that my path would be more.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Academia based, you know, I thought that I would be, I actually thought I was gonna be a math teacher. Because I excelled at math and I liked helping my friends with it. So I thought, oh, 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.

• 8:57Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  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 use it as transportation and because I would get hassled carrying it around school. You know, they would, they would say not so nice things as I would walk stroll by with my skateboard. Even though I was starting to find some sense of success with it, I 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 was had my own skateboard

• 9:44Speaker 00

  model, it was just not cool. So it was cool in certain sects, like I would, I would leave high school, I would go to, for instance, Houston for a big skate event. And there's all kinds of skaters there, I'm signing autographs, taking photos, and then I would come back from that weekend and maybe even have won some, some money to go to high school and be a ghost in the hallways again. That's the kind of dichotomy I was living.

• 10:12Steven Bartlett?

  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, the value for you? Outside of like doing the tricks and stuff, what, what, what was like filling you up?

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Uh, the, the culture, the community of it. I loved everything about it. The, I loved the attitude, the DIY aspect, the, 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, a schoolyard. And, and it was just so, there was so much.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Art and creativity involved, it was like any skater, it's more, most likely they're gonna play, also play music. Or they're also gonna be artists, or do other interesting things. And so there was a soundtrack to it. It was, 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, this is my scene. This is, this is, I have the sense of belonging here. And I don't care if I don't fit in with my classmates or my peers.

• 11:27Steven Bartlett?

  And so you, you started, you got your first hand me down board at eight years old?

• 11:32Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, like nine or 10, yeah.

• 11:34Steven Bartlett?

  From your brother?

• 11:34Speaker 00

  From my brother, yeah.

• 11:37Steven Bartlett?

  And by 12, you're you're sponsored?

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Um, by sponsored, yeah, which, which basically meant that I got free skateboards once in a while. It wasn't some, there was no contract or anything.

• 11:49Steven Bartlett?

  Right, it wasn't like a million, okay.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  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, 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.

• 12:12Steven Bartlett?

  At what point did you realize that you were good? Comparatively?

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Um.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  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, these sort of unique moves that I created, but I, I started to learn how to do them more in the air, like at an impressive height. And I think it was around, probably more around 16, age 16, when I started to realize like, oh, I can do these things. At heights that is reserved for very few. And I can do them on other terrain besides just my familiar home park.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  And I guess that's probably the point where I felt like I have something that is more valid than just a niche style of skating that only happens in at my hometown park.

• 13:17Steven Bartlett?

  You know, when you think about why you were able to do that, like why you were incrementally better or significantly better than your peer group, have you ever figured out in terms of what they call talent, why that is, is it smarts, is it physical attributes?

• 13:33Speaker 00

  Um, I think it was that I I wasn't afraid to step out of my comfort zone. And I also wasn't afraid to get hurt along the way. And I accepted that as part of the process. And I can't say that very many people did that. I mean, definitely, definitely my peer group, the ones that were skating at the time, they knew what it took to get that far and they were willing to take the hits for it. But also, I like to explore other techniques that weren't comfortable or maybe that I even thought were cool, because I wanted to learn everything. And so I would, I would start, I would go off on these tangents of trying certain tricks

• 14:14Speaker 00

  or a board manipulation and then lean into that and do every single variation of that and then move on to something else. And then all of that started to combine into this trick repertoire that I that I had that was that was pretty deep.

• 14:29Steven Bartlett?

  You know, they say when you, if you want to master something, you've got to do 10,000 hours.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:33Steven Bartlett?

  Sounds like you did a lot of hours at that, at that very.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  I mean, at some point, I was probably doing just one trick 10,000 times.

• 14:42Steven Bartlett?

  We say all of this, you know, you said later in my pro career, and then you said you were 16.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  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's only, you know, 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

• 15:29Speaker 00

  terms of suddenly I was making income, I owned a house when I was still in my last year of high school from my earnings. And everything, the trajectory just seemed like it was 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, you know, late in my career, there's a few stages of that.

• 16:10Steven Bartlett?

  And that first stage is from 16 to 25?

• 16:13Speaker 00

  About 20, 23.

• 16:15Steven Bartlett?

  23?

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:16Steven Bartlett?

  And at that point, I read that by 16 years old, you were the best in the world. You were widely renowned.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  I had, well, I was ranked number one for a while. Yeah. And it's tricky, though. I mean, I don't like, 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.

• 16:43Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 17:02Steven Bartlett?

  Which is for me, pretty freakish.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  I, yeah, I mean, like I said, I had, I had a good run, but also it's a specific style. So I was skating pools and half pipes. Um, and then in the early nineties, street skating came into its own. And what you see today with people jumping down stairs on handrails, ledges and things like that. That was just starting to blossom. And I realized pretty early on that that was not my strength. And that my, um, ratio of success to injury was much higher doing that. So I, I kinda, I kinda 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.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Um, 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, I rolled the other ankle, trying to save this ankle. And then I'm driving home with these, with these, uh, with ice on both ankles. With a car full of, 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 gonna do this type of skating. And so I'm going to stick with more of the half pipe, which, which is what I know. Even though that wasn't the popular way of skating.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  I just knew that if I wanted to keep skating into my adult life, I was gonna have to stick with, with my expertise.

• 18:40Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm right in thinking from what you've said there, that your skating career started to really take off, you know? Fifteen, sixteen, kind of peaks at one point at around that twenty-three-ish age.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Around, I'd say around twenty-one, twenty-two is when it started to peak, yeah.

• 18:54Steven Bartlett?

  And at what point in that journey, did you think, I'm gonna skate professionally for the rest of my life? Was there a point where you go, this is my job now? You never?

• 19:01Speaker 00

  No, um, in fact, when I was, uh, twenty-four is when I started my company, Birdhouse. And I honestly thought starting a company was my way of, of sort of bowing out of the spotlight and not being a so-called professional skater. Because there was, there were very, there was very little opportunity for me as a half pipe or vert skater to be doing anything. And I was trying to nurture a group of skaters that were mostly street. And trying to give them new opportunities and trying to 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

• 19:41Speaker 00

  ringleader of it, but not be considered a pro myself. I never quit skating though. That was that was just in my blood. And so at some point, a few years later, things started to pick up again. The X Games happened. They had a they had a half pipe contest and I was still on top of my game. So after that, I started to compete a lot more because the interest grew. And then I was I was winning a lot of events.

• 20:10Steven Bartlett?

  It's 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, the thought that it could kind of have an economic downturn and put the athletes out of business for a while is kind of inconceivable for me. So

• 20:27Speaker 00

  I most of most of my peers quit.

• 20:29Steven Bartlett?

  In the 1990s because

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, or or quit or not. I can't say quit. Most of them found jobs.

• 20:36Steven Bartlett?

  Because so what had happened in the skating industry, the commercial side of the business?

• 20:41Speaker 00

  There was a few things. I think that skating had gone through cycles in the past. In the late 70s, skating was the new fad. It was like the if for especially in the US was like the yo-yo. And it's the new toy. And it's a transportation and you can do all these things. And then and then that that fad kind of faded out. And then in 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 then it 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

• 21:23Speaker 00

  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. They all these facilities are private. There were few, but they were not good. And so all these private parks were closing shop. And then we had as skaters had nowhere to go. So that's when skating took to the underground and became more street centric.

• 21:56Steven Bartlett?

  Your dad was working in the industry as well around this time?

• 21:59Speaker 00

  He was in the in the eighties, yeah. He helped to form the National Skateboard Association, which sanctioned most of the events through those years.

• 22:08Steven Bartlett?

  How did he get into skateboarding?

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Just he saw he saw me and he saw how much I loved it and he saw a very a serious lack of organization.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  And he was always very supportive of his kids. I mean, my brother was a surfer. He would drive him to the beach at dawn to to get the good waves. My sister was in a band. He would he would be the roadie for the band and drive all their gear to the gig. 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.

• 22:53Steven Bartlett?

  Something quite entrepreneurial about that, about your dad founding the

• 22:57Speaker 00

  He never did it. He never really got paid. So, you know, to think that it was entrepreneurial, it was it was more altruistic than anything.

• 23:06Steven Bartlett?

  Did that create a conflict of interest if all like?

• 23:08Speaker 00

  It was hard. Yeah, it was absolutely difficult for me in those years because I was doing well.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  And then there was there were

• 23:19Speaker 00

  claims of nepotism. There was a lot of animosity and it was uncomfortable for me because my dad was always there and I was doing well. So it would be one thing if I wasn't skating that well, if I was just sort of mid range. But I think that all of that just drove me to get better and prove everyone wrong. I mean, I'd like to say that.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  I didn't, I didn't enjoy it, but it definitely lit a fire.

• 23:48Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting when, when people attack you in such a way, or they try and discredit you, especially when you're, of course, only when you're doing well, it can evoke a series of responses in you.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I was under a lot of pressure and a lot of accusations like that. And um, I just kind of put my head down and just focused on my skating until, until I shut them up.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  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 of 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, I was doing well in competition. So then the other skaters were accusing me of hogging the spotlight. I, I'm, I'm not choosing the programming here. And so that was tricky too. But I, I think I learned so much from my early days of, of sort of being the outcast

• 24:55Speaker 00

  and the outcast activity that, that you weren't really gonna, I, I, I had sort of built up a resilience to all that.

• 25:02Steven Bartlett?

  But it's still difficult, right? Like the outcast and the outcast activity.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, I felt very isolated. Yep.

• 25:10Steven Bartlett?

  In real, that, that's the word isolated. But in real terms, what does that look like for a young man who's doing something that he loved, has got really fucking good at it. So now there's, they're pointing the camera at him. There's all this commercial pressure. What impact does that have on, on the love for it?

• 25:27Speaker 00

  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, a new, a renewed interest. And if I was the conduit to that, then I'll accept it. I, 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.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  I don't want to say that anyone appointed me, but it was definitely, I was this chosen ambassador to skateboarding. Um, because I could, I could do interviews and I could speak on behalf of skating at its core, but also to a mainstream audience to make them understand why skating could be valid, or why it would be a positive influence on their kids.

• 26:22Steven Bartlett?

  The, one of the reasons you gave for why you love skateboarding and why it filled you up, um, originally was because of that camaraderie though. And isolation seems to be kind of the opposite of.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Um, I, I was isolated in the sense that the, the hardcore skaters, the older generation, didn't support me, didn't want anything to do with me, but I did have my crew. I mean, it wasn't completely isolated. It was, I had a few friends that we all had the same sense of, of values and the same sort of directives for skating. So, um, I would bounce ideas off of them and we would come up with, with tricks together sometimes. Sometimes it was just something that they were asking me to do. Um, but, but that sense of camaraderie is what I'm talking about. Um, 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

• 27:13Speaker 00

  me from my classmates, my peers, kids my age. You're like, skateboarding is so lame, why are you doing that? Then I choose to skateboard. My style of skateboarding is not cool. It's considered a circus, like I'm just a circus freak doing these little, uh, baton twirls with my skateboard. So then I'm cast aside from the skateboarding community. And that, that's what became, that became isolating. But that, all that stuff just would fuel me to, to get better. And I, I didn't, it's not like I'm thankful for it, but I accepted it and I went out to prove myself.

• 27:56Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  I agree with that, except that when I got into skateboarding, no one was getting paid. No, no one was getting accolades, no one was getting attention. And so I never aspired to that. And what I see now is I see, I do see kids that get into skateboarding with the notion that they will get rich or famous, or and/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's no clear path to success, I feel like your motivation is always just to get better at it.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  And, and the money and the fame and everything, that's all incidental to just being able to keep doing it.

• 29:07Steven Bartlett?

  Did your, did your love for it ever fluctuate?

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Only when I started getting burned out on competition.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  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, I'd have to hide new tricks from my, 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.

• 30:02Speaker 00

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

• 30:47Speaker 00

  a different level or plane or whatever it was. And I, as much as you think that's a compliment, it wasn't.

• 30:55Steven Bartlett?

  The term burnout is used a lot these days to describe, people use it in their jobs, in works and hobbies and such. What, what, um, what did that experience teach you about what causes burnout?

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Um, well, it, it taught me that even if you're doing what you love, it's not always going to be enjoyable.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  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, 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, or 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 gonna do? How you expect to make a living? And I was like, I don't know, but I can't keep going this direction.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  And what happened was when I was, when I was removed from it, I started to appreciate.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  The process of learning new tricks more, I started to appreciate the idea that I could be more creative and take more chances. And at some point, I missed competing, but I had to sort of discover that within myself on my own terms. And then when I came back to competing, I let go of the idea of perfection. I let go of the idea that I had to do the best every single time. And I took way more chances. And sometimes it didn't work. Sometimes I didn't make the finals. But when I did make the finals, I was doing it on a level that I was proud of. I wasn't, I wasn't phoning it in, so to speak. I wasn't being conservative with my, my approach.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  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.

• 33:05Steven Bartlett?

  Is there, is there, is there, um, it sounded a lot to me like you're, you had built this identity because you've been so successful and you almost had to kind of decouple from that identity, which always feels like a big risk to people in their jobs.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  It was, yeah, it was. But, but it was either that or quit, quit altogether. Because it was really weighing on me. It was really, it was very difficult.

• 33:28Steven Bartlett?

  When you say very difficult, what does that mean in, in practical terms? You mean like sleepless nights or?

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and dreading events, going, going to an event and dreading it. I mean, it's, it's, it's almost like Pink Floyd, the wall. It's just, I was building a wall around everyone, around myself. And, and performing was just obligatory, because everyone expected me to do it. Everyone expected me to do well, to, to win the event, whatever it was. And there was no celebration in that. There was no, there was nothing that, that made me feel elated. It was just, it was, I was a machine. And I'd go and do the event and, and win the trophy, get

• 34:18Speaker 00

  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.

• 34:35Steven Bartlett?

  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 something, disconnected you from others and probably from yourself in many respects. And I think I think about this a lot, how when you become successful, you can, you need to be careful that you don't get disconnected along the way. There's lots of temptation with talent to disconnect yourself. Whether you're a lawyer and you've just been good at being a lawyer and you end up 20, 15 years down the line and you go, what the fuck am I doing here? And who have I become? Or you're a pro skateboarder and you kind of drift away from, from the essence of what makes us feel connected.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure. And I saw, I saw plenty of my peers. I think one, 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, 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. This, I want to keep performing at a top level. And for sure, I had my, I had my distractions through my, through my life and through my adulthood, my adult years, but, but skating was always such a high priority that, that I never lost that.

• 36:00Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have to, you, you talked about, you've seen some of your friends at that time go down the wrong path because, because of temptations.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 36:06Steven Bartlett?

  Did you ever notice yourself drifting down that path?

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, I think it was more the, when I got caught up in the fame of it all in,

• 36:17Speaker 00

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

• 37:02Speaker 00

  This is not as fun as skating. And, and these are not the people I really identify with. I mean, a lot, a lot of the people that I saw through those years, especially at the big events and stuff, they, they, all they really wanted was to be famous. And at some point, I, 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.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Like, I don't, I don't care if I don't get into this VIP thing, whatever it is, like, take it or leave it.

• 37:38Steven Bartlett?

  I, um, when I got a little bit of money, I think I, my insecurities meant that I had to have certain beliefs fail me before I learnt 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.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is that I just felt, especially in through those years when I was going through the, the fire of, of celebrity culture. I never felt fulfilled and you'd wake up in the morning, it's like, what, what was that? What, what good? And, and also it was, it was distracting me from my own kids. And I think that that's really what, what made me want to make a positive change in my life is that I, I felt like I was not. I was not to, I was there, but I wasn't really available emotionally to my children. Um, as much as I could be because 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.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  Get back, get, be more connected. 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 it, I do feel like, I, I feel so much more.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  Confident and fulfilled and excited about all those things to see my kids, to see my kids thrive than to care about getting invited to the Oscars.

• 39:13Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Um, I, I would say yes, if you were asking me five, 10 years ago, but now I do see it. I, I see it myself. I'm, I'm, I'm much more cognizant of it in, in my own choices. And it is wild. I mean, I, I never imagined that I'd be a pro skater past 20, honestly. Because when you were, when you were my, when you were a kid skating in my era, all the, 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 twenties and then into my thirties was wild. It was, I mean, I was in uncharted territory.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  But I was still getting better at it. And then when I reached my forties, it was like, really? Still? You guys still think this is okay for me to do? And not that I was looking for that in that kind of approval. But it was kind of a surprise. And also I kept getting better at it in those years. And then to be doing it in my fifties is just like a, a lucid dream. It's crazy that, 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 thirties or forties, like, you still skate? Like, haven't you grown out of it? And now when I'm in my fifties, it's like, hey, you're pretty good for your age.

• 40:56Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 41:04Speaker 00

  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 kinda had, I had the gamut of the skating in terms of being able to do the big stuff,

• 41:34Speaker 00

  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, it's more low impact and it keeps me, keeps me healthy for the most part. I mean, I am, I am nursing, I'm still recovering from a broken femur last year. But even that has taught me that I still love doing this and I still love it, even if I'm not going to be at the, the top of the game. Or, or if I'm even going to be on video or, or, or doing it in front of people, I still want to do it. And I still love it.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  But like I said, I've, I've, I've sort of focused my energy more into the technical moves. And, and I would say that the tricks that I was learning before I got hurt were more appreciated by skaters themselves. They weren't going to move the needle on next games or anything.

• 42:35Steven Bartlett?

  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, you must have sometimes think like, like, why me? Because, you know, it's 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.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Uh, sure, yeah, I, every day, but um, I think to, to answer your question, the focus it takes is, is pretty intense to, to get to do, especially what I do um, for so many years. And also, I think that the ability to,

• 43:26Speaker 00

  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, and even collaborating with people. And what, what if we tried this, or maybe you did that and, and um, not just living in your own, in your own bubble. Um, because some people tend to do that. They, they have their way, they have, they have, 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.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  And you've got to start to sort of branch out and see what else is there in terms of your chosen activity, sport, art, whatever it is. Um, and I, I love that idea that I'm getting out of my comfort zone and trying something weird. And it's probably not going to work right away, and it's probably going to be super ugly when I finally do it, but I'm gonna get to a point where it's more natural.

• 44:37Steven Bartlett?

  What, do you, 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, 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?

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Well, I, luckily skating is so subjective that

• 44:59Speaker 00

  adding your own flair to it is always encouraged.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  And so, for instance, there, there is some tricks, the basic tricks, that,

• 45:11Speaker 00

  you know, eighty percent 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.

• 45:24Steven Bartlett?

  And what makes for a good style, subjectively?

• 45:28Speaker 00

  It's, I'd say it's sort of the flow of the move from start to finish, including when you're, before you even leave the ground, or the, or the ramp or whatever it is, you know, that you make it look like one, 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, it's really hard to convey.

• 46:00Steven Bartlett?

  And some of that has to be like, you know, talent, I'm struggling with the word talent, but some of it.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Oh, nature over nurture?

• 46:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Sure. Everyone has their own different body types and their own thing, but, but you can see influences like, for instance, um, we have, we have this, uh, 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.

• 46:31Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Because she's influenced by the, the certain skaters that she's with and, and some of them have very specific moves that, that are associated with them and like she just learned kickflip nose slides. All right, I'm just, I'm gonna go into the weeds for you. She does her kickflip nose slides, which is a signature move of a skater named Colin McKay. And I, and I literally said, have you been skating with Colin? She said, yeah, he comes here in the morning sometimes and skates with me. It's like, there it is.

• 46:59Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 47:02Steven Bartlett?

  When I, when you speak to surfers, they talk about how surfing is like a metaphor for life. And they like wax lyrical about, you know, what that metaphor is. Is skating a metaphor for life?

• 47:12Speaker 00

  Uh, it can be, sure. I, I think the, the value of not giving up, the value of believing in yourself and the value of, of working through your own challenges. I think that's probably the, the biggest metaphor. And, and for me, um, 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.

• 47:47Steven Bartlett?

  The value of not giving up and taking risks. I heard you spent 12 years trying to master one particular trick.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:53Steven Bartlett?

  Called the 900, which I think I did on the, on the video game back in the day when I was, when I was younger, which is like a two and a half.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  Two and a half spin, yeah.

• 48:01Steven Bartlett?

  Two and a half spin trick. And it took you, you tried for 12 years.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  Off and on, yes. From the first time I tried it.

• 48:08Steven Bartlett?

  Had anyone done it before you?

• 48:09Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was a battle. So I learned 720s in 1985. And the next stage of progression for that in terms of spinning and for skating would be 900. The, the, 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

• 48:58Speaker 00

  about like every day. It was more, I would, I would get fired up. I'd had a good session or I was skating a really good ramp and then I would try a couple. And they always ended in some sort of injury, you know, you weren't, it was very hard to get out of it safely. I broke my rib one time when I really thought I had it. But once I figured out that spinning, then I started to explore, okay, how do I get the landing? And that's when I started 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, I broke my rib because I was leaning too far forward. And.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  In that moment, I kinda 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'd 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.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  I don't know where else to go from there except try what the next trick that I would like to do, which is a 900.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  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, this is my next state, or this is what's next. Maybe it's not for me, but you know, this is what I would like to see done.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  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. Cause 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 gonna 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.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  And something, there was something clicked in my head that said, why not shift your weight to your back foot during the spin?

• 51:50Speaker 00

  And then try to land it. And for some reason, I never had, 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.

• 52:01Speaker 00

  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.

• 52:13Speaker 00

  Because all I have to do is split the difference. And then I made the next one.

• 52:20Steven Bartlett?

  All I have to do is split the difference. I mean, to a muggle like me, make it sound easy. What was that moment like?

• 52:26Speaker 00

  It was just a big relief. I mean, it was, it was, it was definitely a highlight of my skate career, of my, 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 gotta 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.

• 52:54Steven Bartlett?

  Once you'd done it once, was it easy to repeat, easier to repeat?

• 52:57Speaker 00

  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.

• 53:04Steven Bartlett?

  And at this time, you've got this deal with Activision bubbling, bubbling away.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  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, but not just me, but skateboarding in general. And the X Games and then that was in June and then we released

• 53:33Speaker 00

  what became Tony Ochs Pro Skater in September.

• 53:36Steven Bartlett?

  Wow. And I was watching the video of you saying that you, you called the guy Activision to ask him to include the 900 trick.

• 53:42Speaker 00

  NeverSoft, 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 Stop, he emailed me back right away and he said, way ahead of you, you fucking rule. And then they got it in.

• 54:29Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, and the rest is history, right?

• 54:31Speaker 00

  I guess. I hope, I like to think I'm still creating it.

• 54:34Steven Bartlett?

  You know, your father Frank, he'd been such an avid, huge supporter of you up until that point, but he didn't, he didn't get to live to see the real, all of this stuff after you were sort of 27, 28 years old, right?

• 54:47Speaker 00

  No, he, he saw the first X Games 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.

• 55:09Steven Bartlett?

  Gosh, I bet he couldn't have imagined what would happen.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  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, is just beyond what he would have imagined.

• 55:26Steven Bartlett?

  Do you, has it ever crossed, have you ever wished that he could have seen the, what would happen with your career professionally, but also in business?

• 55:34Speaker 00

  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 through, through sanctioning events. So, I mean, sure, my own success, yeah, but I, 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.

• 56:11Steven Bartlett?

  That that video game deal, we all get emails and these emails often contain opportunities. And sometimes we look at these emails, we're trying to figure out if it's an opportunity or not. Sometimes it looks like an opportunity, sometimes it's a waste of time. Sometimes it's just someone, yeah, wanting a meeting to pick your brain about something. As you reflect on your decision now in hindsight to proceed with that video game, was there any close calls?

• 56:37Speaker 00

  There was another group doing a game that had contacted me and I

• 56:45Speaker 00

  I went down the road with them a little bit and realized that what they were trying to do was so much more.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  How to how to explain it? It was more technically difficult to play because they were trying to truly emulate skating. And I felt like I understood that approach, but at the same time skating wasn't that big. When we released this game or when we were going to release this game. And I wanted something that would be more friendly to the non skater to play, to understand, to be able to just pick up and start doing tricks. And when I saw what Activision had, they had a very they had a very early version of a skater doing tricks.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  The way it moved and to me it was it was intuitive.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  It was perfect. It was like right away I started playing it. I started doing tricks. It was almost like it was it was an extension of of my body to start doing this on that screen with that skater. And it's something innately felt right about it to me. And so was there a close call? I would say if Activision maybe had called me a month or two later, I might have already inked a deal. So

• 58:09Speaker 00

  but I felt very lucky.

• 58:10Steven Bartlett?

  On the commercial front, I read that you'd been offered a kind of a flat check.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  Well, when they were close to launch of the game.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  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.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  Which at the time, it was, they offered me a half million dollars. And they said, you know, well, actually, what does that mean? And they said, well, that's, you get that right now and then no money going forward. And for me, having lived through some really lean times, when they say a half million dollars, to me, it sounds like a billion gazillion dollars. I mean, it would, 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, I was doing well in other ways. I was, I was still skating a lot. I was doing events. I was, I had good endorsements. I was, I was doing, we had Birdhouse was starting to actually be profitable, my skate company.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  And I had just bought a new house with a, with, 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.

• 1:00:05Steven Bartlett?

  Because that game was a success.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  That one and then the ones after it and the ones after it, yeah.

• 1:00:11Steven Bartlett?

  How does one that might not understand the scale of that success quantify in a dollar amount, how many, how much revenue Tony Hawk Pro Skater generated in its, in its legacy?

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  I, I mean, I know that they, 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.

• 1:00:37Steven Bartlett?

  A billion dollars they, they generated in sales.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  That, that was, that was always their, their big buzz, yes.

• 1:00:44Steven Bartlett?

  So much, I mean, so much happens. Obviously, that 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 gonna 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.

• 1:01:15Steven Bartlett?

  The video game was my way into even understanding that the sport existed and I would play it with my brothers. That's a, that's going from zero to a thousand in terms of notoriety.

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure. And, and that was never lost on me. I mean, I, I felt very lucky to have my name synonymous with a video game and with skateboarding because I had devoted my life to it.

• 1:01:37Steven Bartlett?

  Were you prepared for that?

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  Or Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. I mean, it's, you know, to have, 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.

• 1:02:13Steven Bartlett?

  Would you tell them?

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Sure, that's what it takes.

• 1:02:17Steven Bartlett?

  If you were named after a video game. Wow. What would you, what advice would you have given yourself if you could have to prepare yourself?

• 1:02:26Steven Bartlett?

  If you could just whisper it in your ear?

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  I think I would have, I would have told my younger self to.

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  Work on, work on your state of mind and your priorities.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  With, with equal effort as you do your skating. I was so hyper fixated on my skating and getting better and my success in skating that I didn't really work on my humanity. I mean, in terms of my relationships and being present and, and maybe that's what it took to get that far, but I think I would just tell my younger self like to, to figure out, figure out how to function more as a human than just a professional.

• 1:03:16Steven Bartlett?

  Did you lose people?

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also gained people through, through my

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  changes and through my, through finding my priorities. And I mean, honestly, like I'm, I'm in an incredible place. I'm happier than I've ever been and I have much better relationships with my kids, even though most of them are adults. And I'm just more reliable.

• 1:03:48Steven Bartlett?

  What is, 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?

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  Um, that doesn't sound as fun.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  It's, uh, 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 it's 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.

• 1:04:30Steven Bartlett?

  I am, I was speaking to a, I think a neuroscientist on this podcast who told me that the brain actually changes as we, as we age up until about 30, where I think for a male, it roughly stops changing when we get to 30, I think he, he said to me. And with that, our priorities change. So in our early twenties, we're like trying to get laid and like trying to do the things that will whatever. And then as we get into our thirties and, and beyond, our priorities in life shift. Did you notice with age, your priorities shift or was it the children?

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  I think I just noticed that I was stuck in a cycle of compulsive behaviors. And something that that I didn't enjoy and didn't feel like it was helping me to have good relationships with my family, with my kids. And I think I just took inventory and thought I gotta make a positive change. And so it wasn't, 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 how to move forward in

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  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 40s that that happened.

• 1:05:52Steven Bartlett?

  What did, what did therapy help you to realize about about yourself and why you were exhibiting compulsive behaviors? Did you ever figure out why?

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  Um, 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, and, and how, well, how to be vulnerable. I think I was always very guarded.

• 1:06:19Steven Bartlett?

  You and me both.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  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, I can't say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. And, and it didn't allow me to be myself very much. And I think I'm much more comfortable in my own skin now and able to, able to, to hold more interesting conversations.

• 1:06:47Steven Bartlett?

  Well, 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.

• 1:07:02Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:07:03Steven Bartlett?

  Accidentally.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and I was definitely worried about that. Like my dad never, never said I love you, never professed that kind of thing, 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 at some point, let go of that.

• 1:07:29Steven Bartlett?

  I still struggle with it now.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Steven Bartlett?

  You know, it's funny, again, I've spoken to lots of just sort of childhood therapists, Gabor Maté, 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.

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  I get that it's uncomfortable, yes. I'm starting to get much more at ease with it, though.

• 1:08:07Steven Bartlett?

  With practice?

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  With practice, yeah.

• 1:08:10Steven Bartlett?

  And running the experiment, I guess.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also, I see, I see how it makes my kids feel, it makes them feel seen and loved and important.

• 1:08:24Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:08:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:08:33Steven Bartlett?

  My girlfriend is very much the opposite in terms of intimacy, so it's kind of, it's ongoing friction. What role has your, your wife played in the broader context of your professional success?

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  Just a feeling of, well, she's, she's just so grounded, and she gives me a sense of home. And she is very supportive, but also has her priorities intact. So when, in, in deciding what to get involved with, she's my sounding board. And, and she's the one who I trust the most with her opinion. And, and she understands that, that I am challenged in terms of my sense of intimacy and, and how to navigate fatherhood. And she has been so great in, in opening that up for me, and, and helping to show

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  me the, the best way to navigate it.

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  And just, she's not swayed by fanfare at all, at all. She could do away with it all together. And I love that, and, and I cherish that.

• 1:09:53Steven Bartlett?

  I guess that's what makes it feel like home, right? That all the noises kept outside.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you catch us on a Saturday night, we're and a lot of times like our a couple of our boys are in college. One of them's in college up here in LA. One of we have many children, so let's just say that sometimes they will 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 9pm. That's pretty much our big raging weekend.

• 1:10:30Steven Bartlett?

  Well, 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.

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  I think what you see is what you get with me. I'm not trying to present some other persona. And like I said, in the past, maybe I was more guarded with who I was or how I was trying to be. And now I 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 a bigger level. But I know what you're saying, and sometimes that is weird, but at the same time, I'm

• 1:11:30Speaker 00

  open to hanging out, having a conversation.

• 1:11:33Steven Bartlett?

  You know, Bear Grylls?

• 1:11:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:11:36Steven Bartlett?

  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 friends like eating some mud, you'd go, you think you're Bear Grylls, 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.

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  And that's kind of the imposter syndrome, right?

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  Where you think like, why me? Why is it all, are they sure they got the right guy? And I understand that, but at the same time, I think 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.

• 1:12:30Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Well, I definitely have had businesses that failed just because they were either not the right time, or they were, they were a little beyond my expertise than I thought somehow because I had other success. I probably could do well in other, in other stages or in other spaces, but I, I think that failure, yeah, you know, I've had failed relationships and learned a lot from those and was able to grow and hopefully amend my mistakes and hurting people.

• 1:13:26Speaker 00

  And I think that it's just a, it's just a path of evolution.

• 1:13:35Speaker 00

  And so I, I mean, I've always learned to embrace my mistakes with skateboarding. And in a sense, I do that with my, my regular life too.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  But they embraced the idea that I grew from them.

• 1:13:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Business, there's a, 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?

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  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, 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,

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  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, all the ventures that I'm involved with.

• 1:15:04Steven Bartlett?

  We, 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 a 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, you know, we did this because listeners of this podcast listen because they like slightly deeper questions and context. So it allows them to play at home. 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.

• 1:15:35Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:15:35Steven Bartlett?

  If you're willing to play and then answer that question.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  Okay. You got QR codes? Do I have to scan them?

• 1:15:42Steven Bartlett?

  No, it's all good. The QR code just tells you who answered it, which guest answered it.

• 1:15:49Speaker 00

  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?

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  I think that I would have told my wife, even though I thought that I was going to

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  kind of turn my life around and change my priorities.

• 1:16:14Speaker 00

  I think that I would have told her that I was really frightened of the path or of trying to make those changes. And I think she knew it, but it probably would have helped to confirm that with words. And I think maybe it would have given her a better perspective on my vulnerabilities early on.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

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

• 1:17:06Steven Bartlett?

  Why didn't you tell her?

• 1:17:10Speaker 00

  Because I wanted her to think that I was so capable of it and so confident with it.

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

  But you know what? I mean, she's too intuitive, she knew.

• 1:17:25Steven Bartlett?

  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, it felt like an experiment because I was always like tough guy, like could never, you know?

• 1:17:42Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  But I feel like...

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:18:30Speaker 00

  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 gonna go with it.

• 1:18:40Steven Bartlett?

  I wrote in my diary the other day that I used to think vulnerability was, um, deep down inside me, like tough guy who didn't really learn vulnerability from my parents or anything. I used to think vulnerability was a repellent. What I came to learn is that it's a magnet.

• 1:18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Steven Bartlett?

  And that's when I say around the experiment, it's deep in me. I thought people would like run away. Oh, he's weak. He's whatever. And what happens is the total opposite. It's like you draw them into you.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  Right. I think, I think what I learned, one of the, one of the things I learned early on is that the bravery actually means sharing your feelings.

• 1:19:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Steven Bartlett?

  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. Um, what have you done recently for someone else? Nice easy one.

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  Uh, I.

• 1:19:37Steven Bartlett?

  Can't say Nintendo World.

• 1:19:39Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 1:19:39Steven Bartlett?

  You can't say Nintendo World.

• 1:19:41Speaker 00

  Nintendo Land. Isn't that enough? I, uh, well, and I guess more materialistic. I bought my wife a new car as a surprise.

• 1:19:50Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  I think that, uh, what I, what did I do for someone else? Probably on a bigger scale.

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  I bought a skateboard at an auction that was a used skateboard that was hand painted by Kurt Cobain.

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  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 skateboard through the years because I think it's more because he was a hoarder.

• 1:20:21Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:21:02Steven Bartlett?

  So cool.

• 1:21:03Speaker 00

  So I feel like, what I do, I'm hoping that I did something for people to either, for those struggling with mental health, or for, and also for those who want a place to skate.

• 1:21:18Steven Bartlett?

  That's so cool.

• 1:21:19Speaker 00

  At last check, we've sold 300 of them. 300 of the 500.

• 1:21:25Steven Bartlett?

  I'm going to buy one.

• 1:21:27Speaker 00

  I would appreciate that.

• 1:21:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yes, I'm gonna buy one. I'll buy one today. Where do I buy?

• 1:21:30Speaker 00

  And then for you to answer, then that would be your answer. What I do help people? I bought a Kurt Cobain reissue.

• 1:21:35Steven Bartlett?

  How do I buy one?

• 1:21:36Speaker 00

  Tonyhawk.com in the store.

• 1:21:39Steven Bartlett?

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

• 1:21:59Speaker 00

  That's so cool.

• 1:21:59Steven Bartlett?

  You're the reason why, as I said earlier, you're the reason why I thought skateboarding was cool and I had an interest in it. You're the reason why at 12 years old, I actually got a skateboard. I was never able to skate. I fell off a couple of times. I quit. I'm gonna be honest.

• 1:22:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Steven Bartlett?

  But I bought the board and I had an interest in the sport because of you and your legacy. And it's a legacy you continue to, to create in many ways through business and through your philanthropic endeavors. So thank you and thank you for your humility, you know. It's very easy to see how someone like you might be off in the clouds, but from everything I've seen, all the research I've done, it seems like you've been seemingly untouched. And I guess maybe from what you've said, your wonderful partner and your family deserve some credit for that because they

• 1:22:34Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:22:35Steven Bartlett?

  You know, clearly been a grounding force. Thank you so much, Tony.

• 1:22:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.