The Brave Ones: Tony Hawk, Professional Skateboarder

[Music] I think the the bravest thing that I've ever done is to chase a skateboard career into my adult life and learn the value of perseverance through my years of skating ha for the indian the millions of trying to learn these tricks a lot of times seems impossible so when it came to making a living and doing what I had to do I was ready to persevere and put myself out there I had no backup plan so I hope it keeps working my heart and soul is still in skateboarding and so I go to a lot of skate events skate exhibitions skatepark openings it could be a little chaotic people have these really high expectations of you when you put yourself in this position of being a great skateboarder can't say that I'm honestly ever prepared for it even in the early early age when people came up and said well I'm a big fan he was kind about it we go up and sometimes it's like a rock concert [Music] he enjoys what he does I like being around people to enjoy what they do and ton is definitely one of those people if you're a real skateboarder at heart and you spent the time and you put in the time and you're with guys and you're going out and taking trips with him trying new tricks and trying to progress the sport they'll embrace you and I think toni has got that genuineness about him he's been around since the beginning and this is what he's loved to do he's the same person I met when he was 12 years old you know just a humble kid that did this loves skateboarding and just wants to skateboard for fun [Music] [Applause] first time I got a serious injury was when I was 10 years old I got a concussion knocked out knocked my teeth out and I remember vividly waking up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and thinking oh what trick was I doing oh man I got a I gotta learn how to do that better his relationship with pain is very different than mine like it was not I'm never skating again this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me am I gonna live Mike it was just like oh next time I skate I'm gonna figure out how do you rock and roll's better knowing through experience I know how hard skateboarding is and how dangerous it is and how much it hurts when you fall and I think that was a defining moment for me and really kind of what set the tone in terms of my perseverance and my stubbornness through the years it was like I'm not gonna give up on stuff even if it's to the risk of my own body in health I'm gonna learn to do these tricks he was really stubborn he had a lot of energy but was so stubborn that sometimes he was hard to be around he just needed something to stimulate him and and in fact my parents believe that skateboarding sort of saved that hyperactivity that was going on my older brother was my link to skateboarding initially because he started skating because he was a surfer in the 70s and sir skating was sort of bred from surfing especially pool skating I had this old banging fibreglass skateboard called a banana board and I gave it to Tony it wasn't like he stepped on it and suddenly angels were singing he was skating in the driveway and little ramps little two-foot ramps but he discovered a skatepark that had been built a concrete skate park nearby I saw these guys flying out of into swimming pools and that was my WoW moment where I was like I want to do whatever they're doing he saw the challenge and he and he kind of realized how much effort it was going to take to get good at these bigger pools I was playing Little League at the time my dad was the president of the Little League of our community and I started skating and then my dad was supportive of that but at some point those two things clashed Tony came to him and said no dad I don't want to play baseball anymore he's gonna skate and my dad god bless him said okay dad sort of worked through the season and then spent every single day taking him to that skate park Frank Hawk man he was definitely on the circuit definitely known as Tony's dad my dad was very proactive he saw a lack of organized events in skating at the time which there were so he got some of the Maine skate companies together to at least form a series of skate contests he was very involved with Tony's life and I think that's why Tony is who he is because of that love and that support from his family he just saw what it what it gave me in terms of my self-confidence and my motivation and my passion but he also saw that it gave those same things to a lot of my friends who all felt very out of place we didn't fit in with mainstream sports with mainstream culture and we all love skating and he saw this band of misfits that that were very creative proactive people and thought they need their own place too my experience as a pro skater in high school was very isolating on one end you have this sense of celebrity I would go to events and people would ask my autograph and take pictures and then I would go to school and I was a ghost in the school hallways he had teachers telling him you know this is the mistake the skateboarding thing and he was already making more money than them he skated differently than than other skaters he was very creative and it was doing things kind of thinking outside the box I was known for creating all these new tricks and in the skate world at the time that was not cool that was considered circus stuff so they literally called me my tricks circus tricks it was a style that that at first people kind of weren't too stoked on I guess it was my first experience with haters if nothing else in hindsight had benefited me later because I was prepared for the onslaught of hate that became my way for endorsements from my style for my age from my you know for for so many things it was hard to watch him come to grips with the fact that he was probably the best in this field technically and in terms of athleticism as he grew up and as he matured it kind of developed into a style that people actually mimic now a skateboard bad language for a while but it's back now and stronger than ever high tech skateboards that go for a hundred and fifty dollars end up more people than ever are skateboarding there are an estimated 10 million so called wheel hair when skateboarding started to hit mainstream and movie people started coming out and like police academy for contracted us to do some stunt work in it that was cleaning the cube that was thrashing it was kind of cool to see how big skateboarding grew but the rad thing that was was our checks were going here we became hugely successful for our ages when things started to take off I was about 16 17 when suddenly it was a genuine income and a genuine career so we were starting to make a lot of money in the late 80s and and that was all because of all the popularity of skateboarding and all the fans that were dedicated to you know supporting our brand I bought my first house when I was 17 still a senior in high school it seemed insane because we were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as teenagers and traveling the world and we had adoration and we had success and that can be very toxic for someone our age for sure a lot of young athletes who get a lot of money you know they completely blow it he kept his head together you know he was a young adult pretty early I think our only mistake was that we thought it was endless and so we approached our spending in our life as if [Music] he was making six figures and then he was making no figures I was left with two mortgages a son on the way and everything felt very scary it was a time in the late 80s where everyone wanted our autograph and when 90s came in nobody wanted our autograph [Music] [Applause] Tony Hawk does the rating skateboard champion s-mint now for his head true eight years I guess I won the last around 1991 is when we started to feel the pinch of skateboarding's popularity starting to wane 90's came around and skateboarding you just went drop super big I was left with two mortgages a son on the way and everything felt very scary our board sales went from like $15,000 a month to like am I even gonna sell boards this month my income was literally jobbing in by half every month because I was based on royalties he was making six figures and then he was making no figures like really quickly with a young family what can I do to rearrange my life so that I can continue to skate and it was more just cutting living expenses and taking every single job that came along and that means like I would go to demos in Six Flags parking lots for a week in st. Louis and get paid $100 a day for three skate shows a day there was a time in the late 80s where everyone wanted our autograph and when the 90s came in nobody wanted our autograph I look back at it I don't look at it as a struggle it was just more of a necessity and I was still getting to skate for a living I could sense that skateboarding was starting to come back a little bit in popularity in about 1995 because I started getting more calls to do exhibitions he actually leaned into the sport and got a second mortgage on his house and started a skateboard company what was the turning point where all of a sudden turn into a money machine well around that time just before the X Games I started my own skateboard brand even though that seemed like the worst idea in the world the reason I started bird house was because I thought my career was ending as as a pro skater and I wanted to curate my own team because I felt like I had a good eye for talent we put together a solid team we went on tour we would all share one hotel room six of us to avange open a parking lot of a skate shop skate for an hour he was kind of living off of his wife's income and you know he had this Taco Bell allowance where he wasn't allowed to have fancy meals that's it I had sprained my ankle at the demo before the one we were going to and I thought I'm gonna push through I'm gonna do this I sprained my other ankle at that demo and so as I'm driving me from the demo I am driving with ice on this angle and thinking is this it that was one of the hardest times and definitely a defining moment in that I ended up skating with ankle braces on and making it work and off we went I would say 1998 we started the turning point for me in terms of having more opportunity more offers more endorsements when suddenly Bagel Bites in Club Med were calling me you know I knew something was up this is a whole different beast when I started working for Tony I felt that he needed the kinds of things that anybody who was having any kind of fame I don't care what kind of celebrity it is he would need management he would need an agent he would need a publicist for sure I don't think a lot of people understood skateboarding in that they thought it was more like being a frisbee champion or a yo-yo champion and so a lot of what our work was together was about educating the media on the detail that goes into skate and that's when things really took off in terms of not not necessarily just financially but but in terms of establishing that we have that sort of value that we have that sort of reach as skateboarders and as action sports stars so to speak and that this is serious business I think Tony Hawk is like at the forefront of action sports and I think a lot of marketing people and TV people thought this is a guy we can get behind good-looking talented and he's really good on a skateboard ESPN created the first X Games which would they call the extreme games Tony was kind of like the role model for ESPN in the X Games and it really projected who he was in the industry outside the people who didn't really care about skateboarding time [Music] at that point in my life I had competed for twenty years it was like I don't want to I don't want this to define my life they decided they were gonna have a Best Trick a minute I had a strategy because I knew that there was one trick that I could do I made that trick very early on and then I went to a even harder trick and I made that one within a few tries and then it was like where do I go from here and the announcer says something like hey what about what about nine hundred pulling off a nine hundred in itself is very dangerous because it is such a hard trick to rotate and then to land on your skateboard coming back downhill down the ramp the reason it's so hard is because you're spinning two and half times in the air so you need to get plenty of height and when you get that much height you are blind to your landing twice this is the trick that not just Tony but a lot of guys had been chasing for ten plus years tried a few around after the fourth or fifth time I realized that I had a consistent spin the amount of attempts he tried and it was on national TV and it was over and over again time expired by the time he was like on his fourth or fifth try and he was just about him he was just starting to get into his dog anybody that knows him well knows the look you can see us before he drops in for his run like doing this like the magical vibes over his head he said to himself I'm either gonna make this trick or I'm gonna go to the hospital an ambulance [Applause] it was the right place at the right time and it was a monumental tricky in skateboarding you know two and a half rotations above a half I've never done it before in the sport and I just the fans just pushed down the gate and they all stormed the halfpipe and they lifted him up in the air and carried him around it was really incredible one of the biggest moments in action sports and technically he had nothing to do with the contest it was a one guy trying to make a trade we started working on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater I'm pretty sure in early in 1998 nobody really thought that this game was gonna be a gigantic hit it was supposed to be sort of a you know a nice little knockoff skateboarding game with Tony Hawk and a few other skaters as Activision started getting closer to release they felt like they had a hit on their hands and so they offered me a flat buyout of $500,000 for future royalties I just said to Tony and he said to me what you know what do they know at Activision that we don't know I had never heard anyone speak the words half a million dollars to me so to me it just sounded like a gazillion billion like it seemed unreal that anyone would offer that and so I told my god I know I want to let it ride I believe the first game did an excess of nine million units which back then was just gigantic and it was huge right after I denied that offer they started talking about a sequel the technology was there and it captured I guess the essence of skateboarding but pro skater 1 and 2 were enormous not only financially for Tony but he involves so many people that he was friends with and I think that's why the skateboarding community embraced him so much it wasn't just about him he brought so many people along for the ride the whole video game thing brought skateboarding to a whole other level that was a real game changer and that's where Tony couldn't really walk through an airport anymore Tony couldn't sit and have a meal without a group of people coming over to the table for autographs I don't have the number on actual units of games sold I know that they've done over a billion in sales and and absolutely I've seen my fair share of that but I'm in no way a billionaire from our video game so Tony Hawk what you get with him if you you hitch your wagon to Tony Hawk as a brand is you get one of the most influential skateboarders you get a guy that's progressing the sport and he's an icon between my sister and I we started a few businesses we started all kinds of things because we thought there was a broad audience Tony Hawk incorporated his five divisions ranging from skateboards and apparel to arena tours you're branded products sold more than 275 million dollars last year Hawk clothing yeah hot clothing was cool I mean it was just another bizarre thing just seeing a bunch of people wearing your name you know and I still see it to this day it's pretty funny nine hundred films ride channel boom of Hakeem tour the skating culture is a bit anti-establishment did you worry about being a sellout when you became a CEO I don't ever believe that that Hawk has ever been a sellout of anything I think he believes and everything that he does and he doesn't do it for money he does it for the passion of it and the money is just the icing of the cake you had told me up until my 30s the skateboarding might be an Olympic sport I would never have believed you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thanks for coming out for the Tony Hawk foundation walk amigo grand opening I've made some key investments in recent years mostly because I I do want to have some sort of exit strategy from all this and it's mostly just of how do I choose it it's it's intuitive I invested in nest before they were bought and I invested in Blue Bottle coffee and then Nestle bought a controlling stake of that and cashed us out and then a few tech startups as well home Bay I have a few other like restaurant types of stuff here in San Diego one in Newport block amigos I want to thank Jack amigos and Michael Nicole for supporting Tony Hawk foundation like he said we've been doing the work for the last 18 years now in the late 1990s early 2000 he was making really good money I think it was my sister Pat who said you know maybe it's time to actually start giving back this work that's giving you so much and so I went to him and said give me a cause he goes why get it right off the top of sand he said I'll tell you a cause they're building skate parks and cities and they don't know what they're doing for the most part the skate parks were built in more affluent areas they weren't designed very well they clearly weren't in consultation with the local skaters on the design I thought I could change that we decided to create the Tony Hawk foundation we're going to do was help to fund the construction of skate parks and low-income areas of all around the nation we kind of started on a whim we the the seed money came from my appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire a celebrity edition and we just started figuring out how to make our resources go the furthest because our money doesn't necessarily build an entire skatepark but it usually gives them the endorsement they need to get more funding Tony's not only giving especially low-income areas a place to do it but lending his expertise in how to get it done in raising money to do it in a design process the planning process I think 35 percent of the skate parks in America have somehow been touched by Tony's foundation among the six to eight million dollars that we've given away that has actually helped to gain over a hundred million and other funding we come to you live from the red carpet in Monaco for the Laureus Sports Awards 2019 well the Laureus World Sports Academy is an organization of former athletes we're a group of 68 men and woman who had time trying to make a difference to this world through sport how vital a sport for good for the world let alone for the world of sports part of the Laureus Academy is that we do this this work for kids in underprivileged areas trying to get them into sports of all kinds and I've seen a lot of the work firsthand and I believe in it tiny and I went to Sierra Leone just after the finish of the Civil War and the things that he was doing with the kids on the skateboard was just for not all the smiles that brought their faces and just really brought home how important supporters Tokio will host the 2020 Summer Games with new events bringing even more athletes together on the world stage its allotted to confirm officially baseball/softball karate skateboard if you had told me up until my 30s the ski burning might be an Olympic sport I would never have believed you it just seemed too too avant-garde too edgy too unstructured and that's what I loved about it skateboarding going to the Olympics in 2020 they're gonna be people that are gonna say we don't want to be a part of it it's too corporate and as long as the sport feels like it's being taken care of I think Tony will be one of those guys at the forefront of that to make sure that the sport is taken care of and not taken advantage of the Olympics need skateboarding more than skateboarding needs the Olympics this could do for your Summer Games what snowboarding has done for your Winter Games and at this point like you need our cool factor more than we need your validation and I was saying that openly to the IOC and they they made it happen work and I'm glad it's finally happened I think Tony had a big part to do with that I see the Olympics getting so much respect towards skateboarding that it brings it into the schools I think it's a wonderful opportunity skateboarding is one of those sports that you can do anywhere it's a it's a low investment sport and it's good fun one of the interesting things about Tony's career is that he's a multi-generational performer and so he has a following of tweens teens young adults and then older people have grown up with him and had posters of Tony on their walls Tony Hawk has just been good for the sport because the sport has been good to him and he's given back so much whether it's through his foundation whether it's through contests with her sponsoring athletes he has been good for a sport that has been very good to him he's still skating and you know putting him putting it all on the line when he clearly doesn't have to and he's been doing it for thirty years plus and you know slam after slam still getting up still doing it just because he loves it and I'm just glad that at his Tony Hawk that that was a person that was chosen by our industry and chosen by the fans and out of everyone that I've ever met in our sport he's the right guy for it the fact that he's willing to carry that flag into a lot of public arenas and take all the heat that comes with that that's that that's a whole different kind of bravery but it's courageous as hell that was the responsibility that I was happy to take on because I felt like I do speak openly honestly about skating and what you see is what you get I'm 50 like I get it I'm not the most relevant skater I've lived it I've lived in my whole life it has become my life in a lot of ways [Music] [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: CNBC International TV

Views: 84,678

Keywords: CNBC international, CNBC Life, tony hawk, tony hawk 2019, tony hawk 2019 interview, tony hawk 2019 skating, tony hawk questions, tony hawk qa, tony hawk worst injuries, tony hawk youtube, tony hawk interview, tony hawk interview 2019, tony hawk skateboarding, tony hawk documentary, tony hawk history, tony hawk story, tony hawk net worth, tony hawk net worth 2019, the brave ones, the brave ones cnbc, the brave ones season 3, the brave ones tony hawk

Id: CAwZfJ1H2M0

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 17 2019