From the Archive: Tony Hawk: Mastery, Failure, and the Trick That Changed Skateboarding

15:43James Altucher:give up what would you have done uh you had all you had done for 10 years prior yeah skateboarding

15:49Tony Hawk:i i had gotten pretty good at doing video editing and i actually had my own little system and so i started freelancing for other skate companies so i was literally making the skate videos of our competitors for a little cash and then you know it seems like it would never have come back or

16:09James Altucher:maybe this is not true but what do you think would it have come back without the first version of the

16:13Tony Hawk:extreme games on espn i don't well that's the definitely x games help raise the profile of skating you know x games the first one was the extreme games in 1995 and they were just throwing anything out there it was like bungee jumping and eco challenge and sky surfing and stuff that i just don't associate with skateboarding at all but through that test and through them kind of weeding out the random sports they're thrown in there. Skateboarding always shined through. I feel like that that was one of the highlights and that's one of the events that the kids really enjoyed watching. And I think they really enjoyed, you know, they were jaded with pro athletes at the time.

16:55Tony Hawk:Like they seemed unreachable. They seemed like they weren't even people that you could talk to. And they saw us in those days killing ourselves, trying, you know, just for the sake of a trick or for a score and being excited because we did well there was you know for almost no money and i feel like that shined through you know there was something very real and tangible about that and kids you know it was the mtv generation short attention span instant action and so that was like the perfect storm that combined with our video game release four years later i mean that was like the perfect storm of of awareness and of popularity do you think i also

17:34James Altucher:feel like skateboarding maybe had a little bit more of a subculture to it compared to like bungee jumping or something like that like i hope so yeah well it seems like there's there was

17:42Tony Hawk:music clothes for sure yeah well there was definitely a lifestyle associated with it and there was there was an attitude and and there was a culture that that was born out of you know punk rock 70s pool skating clothes surfing and so when did you decide okay i'm going to dominate

18:00James Altucher:every area of it and... That was never a... That wasn't your world plan?

18:05Tony Hawk:That was not a conscious decision, no. This is what's going to happen.

18:08James Altucher:Like, what did start happening? Like, when did you start to realize, oh, yeah, this is now happening?

18:14Tony Hawk:When our first video game got released, we worked on it for a few years. I was hugely proud of it, and I knew that the skateboarders would like it, but skateboarders just started calling it the game, and I knew we had a hit then, where it was like, did you play the game? Have you played the game? That's what they would talk to each other. And I knew that that was something. I think when I knew it was beyond anything I ever imagined, we released our fourth game and the previous three titles were still in the top 10.

18:46James Altucher:So how many total games have you sold with your company? I don't know. I know it's been a billion in sales,

18:53Tony Hawk:but I don't really know the exact number of units.

18:57James Altucher:Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It would mean so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at altitra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

19:18James Altucher:Dinner time. It's where little moments are cherished. With Blue Cash Preferred, get 6 % cash back at U.S.

19:25Tony Hawk:supermarkets and bring everyone together. I did say everyone. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash Explore-BCP. Terms and cashback cap apply with Blue Cash Preferred.

19:36James Altucher:So as you're learning to be essentially the world champion skateboarder, you learned all these techniques of excellence. What do you think kind of translated over when you started trying to get better at business? I think it was... I'm sure you fell sometimes. Oh, yeah, for sure.

19:50Tony Hawk:I think it was the idea of not being afraid to fall, of taking risks and that adrenaline rush. Even in business or throw money like we did this tour, the Boom Boom Huck Jam, where it was skateboarding, motocross, and BMX in an arena setting where I just designed this ramp setup and no one was going to push the button to hit go on that thing. So I designed this crazy ramp setup and it was like, well, we need to get someone to underwrite it. I'm like, no one's going to underwrite it. You got to go. And so I wrote a check for a million dollars for the ramps. and it worked out yeah that's the ramp that's at my office today the same ramp it's the it is ask anyone it's the best ramp in the world so what was what was like a bad yeah we pay for

20:36James Altucher:what was what was a bad decision that you made early on in the business wow well when we had

20:42Tony Hawk:birdhouse was under the umbrella of blitz distribution which my partner and i also started and we really liked doing other startups so we we started other brands like baker skateboards hookups flip which all are still around today and he really wanted to do he he had a friend who was a designer and he wanted to do high-end denim and it was right when you know the the cool washes were coming out and and it was very boutique and i i followed his lead i said yeah because the designs were cool and he was definitely ahead of his time little did we know that not everyone wanted to pay$200 for jeans and that it was going to keep costing us money to produce and basically the jean company sucked away our profits for about two years and we sold it for our debt and so I learned that I'm not good at high-end denim or it could have been, do you think it was maybe like off culture a little bit?

21:43Tony Hawk:yeah, a little off culture too, yeah, I mean it was definitely way outside of our expertise but we were, you know We knew this guy was a good designer. We knew he knew what he was doing. We just didn't realize how much it would cost.

21:55James Altucher:And then this is related to, particularly around this mid-90s time, you were starting to get criticized a little bit because you were the first skateboarder to really take sponsorships from everybody.

22:06Tony Hawk:King of the sellout.

22:07James Altucher:Yeah, so how did you, A, how did you make decisions in terms of what brands you would sponsor? And B, how did you deal with essentially the haters?

22:16Tony Hawk:Well, so the haters, is I've had a lot of criticism all through my career because firstly for my style when I was a kid, like I said, I was a scrawny kid, so I didn't have the surfer style that everyone really liked at the time. I was like...

22:30James Altucher:I have that style, but you know.

22:32Tony Hawk:That's why you're such a legend. Yes, there you go. So my style was all about tricks. And then I just got criticized, but eventually sort of found my strengths and did really well in competition and kind of just shut everyone up in that way. so I was already used to that so when it came around and I started getting big endorsements from non-skateboard companies that was the first cry of sellout and it was like you guys I'm in my 20s I've already been through this cycle before and I got to make luckily it was the 80s and there wasn't any YouTube but I got to make plenty of mistakes then and I didn't hold on to my approval rights with the products I was doing so I was just signing my name to stuff and people were just making junk with my name on it.

23:19Tony Hawk:And so when it came back around to do these bigger endorsements, I held on to final approvals. And I had to fight for it. And through that, I feel like I... Who would you have to fight with for that? Because you had your own company at the time. Well, like if I was promoting stuff, I mean, I did endorsements with Frito-Lay, McDonald's, Bagel Bites, you know, all these different brands. and I had to fight for final approval over every single thing that had my image, which was a battle for sure, but I'm lucky I did. And so I feel like I kept my integrity through those years. But, and also at the same time, what I was trying to tell people is, you know, I'm not, it's not like I'm suddenly deciding that I'm, you know, I've lost my moral compass.

24:09Tony Hawk:If you had offered me a McDonald's sponsorship when I was 14, I would took it in a heartbeat. I love McDonald's. I still do I don't care that's the thing it was more like the things that I really enjoyed and what I was into those were the things that I was willing to promote

24:25James Altucher:so then along this time Activision comes along or maybe other video game companies and then how did you decide that seemed like a huge opportunity what happened next?

24:36Tony Hawk:that was just intuitive I had a couple of interests from other companies to do video game and I saw what they wanted to create and basically just kind of waited because I knew that there might be something better. And Activision called and said, hey, we're doing a video game, skate video game. We heard you might be doing one or you're looking around. Why don't you come see what we're working on? And so I went to their office and they just did a video game with Bruce Willis called Apocalypse that I guess tanked. But the engine was the basis of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. So the first thing I ever saw was Bruce Willis with a gun strapped to his back on a skateboard, riding through Wasteland, doing kickflips.

25:18Tony Hawk:And when I was playing it, I knew immediately, I was like, this is it. This is how it should feel. This is intuitive. The controls were already kind of mapped out, but not the way that I would have wanted. But I just felt like if I can lend my resources to this, this is the game.

25:34James Altucher:So how many iterations back and forth before you finally had it to where the skateboarder in the video game was performing how you would perform?

25:43Tony Hawk:About a year. About a year back and forth.

25:46James Altucher:You didn't feel like, okay, it's good enough. You just wanted to, you felt it? No, I dove in.

25:51Tony Hawk:I was living that video game. Like I was definitely, I was talking to them every day. They were sending me, well, we were on a PS1 then, so they'd send me these burn discs of an update every week. And I would play it and give them feedback. And it was a blast. I mean, it was like, and then I, you know, had to, I had to teach Neversoft all about skating. So they would have like these company outings to the skate park and the guys would break their ankles and it was fun.

26:18James Altucher:So it still seems at this point, like, you know, the X Games were still ramping up literally and you were, you were participating in them in every year. But then there's this one event that happened at the relatively advanced age of, I guess, 31 or 30 in 1999. you you on your 12th try you hit what's called the 900 you want to describe what what that move was because that then it seems like that catapulted everything to another level yeah for sure well that was another and was that a luck thing would you say i mean not luck that you know i had been trying 900s for about 10 years i mean literally i i tried my first one in 1989 i remember exactly

26:57Tony Hawk:where i was in boris france and i couldn't really get myself to commit or spin fast enough but i I knew it might be possible one day. Just to describe, what is it? It's basically two and a half spins in the air. So you go up a ramp, forward, spin around, like kind of two and a half somersault. And then as you come back down, since you're coming down the same wall, you come down forward. So 720s had been done. I did my first 720 in 1985. And so that was sort of the natural progression of spinning would be 540, 720, 900. and there were only a handful of us that could even try it through the years and so in the years i'd say like 95 to 97 there was this race for the 900 and there were there were all these guys that were trying it and we all got destroyed like we just you know i was breaking ribs and throwing my back out and i'd go i'd go with a camera crew and you know it wasn't like it wasn't like big production it was just more like hey do you mind shooting photos today do you mind shooting video

27:57James Altucher:okay let's do it but shooting a video of you breaking bones basically pretty much yeah i had

28:01Tony Hawk:the video of my first one it was in 1995 the first one i ever really put down on the wall i was leaning too far forward and just crashed into the bottom and broke my rib so i by 99 i'd kind of given up on it i liked it i liked that it was possible but it was like i i gave it everything when i would do it you know and i just thought i i'm not capable of doing this and so when the best x games had a best trick event that night and my plan was to do a very old 720 which is basically a 720 with spinning your board an extra 180 so your board does 900 almost there and i did that very early on in the event and that was all i had planned because that was my hardest trick at the time that literally was my best trick and so i just started spinning 900s more for the crowd and the announcer actually kind of go to me into it too he's like come on let's do it okay here he goes and as I was spinning it, every spin was consistent and that's usually not the case.

28:59Tony Hawk:Usually it's kind of one out of three or four that feel okay and so I just said, wow, you know, I could, maybe I could try to really make it and I knew from previous experience that if I shift my weight, if I don't, if I land the way I think I'm gonna land, I'm gonna land too far forward. So if I can shift my weight somehow during mid spin, I can even it out and land and I started figuring that out very quickly in the middle of X Games. In front of a national audience. Well, the time had expired by then. So by that time... But they kept filming. They kept filming, but I thought, really, I just thought like, okay, it's not going to count for this competition, but I still want to do it.

29:37Tony Hawk:And at that point, I was getting so close that I was like, I'm either going to make it or they're going to take me out on a stretcher. That was the only two endings to that night. And then I made it. And then after that,

29:47James Altucher:it was just like crazy. Like everybody...

29:48Tony Hawk:It was. I mean, that became like a sports center highlight. And they had never, you know, sport, like X Games was still like their bastard child for ESPN. Even then, it was, you know, it was bigger, but they were still like, extreme, bro. You know, it was all kind of silly. And then that, when that happened, it transcended skateboarding in terms of their recognition of it.

30:11James Altucher:And so, and this is while you were building this multimillion dollar, you know, clothing sponsorship. Well, no, no, no.

30:19Tony Hawk:So things were just starting to happen then, but it was, I mean, it was the most perfect timing. It was not intentional, but it was the most perfect timing because our video game was released two months later.

30:32James Altucher:It seems though it's what really is successful here is not any one thing, but the complete immersion across the board. So you're landing the best trick, putting out a video game, doing all the sponsorship stuff. So without all of it combined, probably wouldn't have created the huge business that you were able to create. Or what's your take on that?

30:53Tony Hawk:Yeah, I don't know if I would have become a business per se after that. I mean, that was, after that in the video game, that's when I became Tony Hawk Inc., which seems super strange, but that's just how it had to be. And then I was able to, well, that was a good out from competition, was that year. So then I got to explore more opportunities. And because I had this awareness, that transcended just the skate industry, I was able to open new doors and opportunities. And that's when we started the Boomhawk Jam, the tour. I started doing much bigger endorsements and I started the foundation. That was right around the same time.

31:29James Altucher:And how do you think, you think that same idea of immersion translates to many other areas? Like let's say even other sports or other activities. Like everybody here is an entrepreneur. And you know, how, what does total immersion mean? And like, what does the concept mean? I think it's it's just living living passionately and and and

31:52Tony Hawk:Diving in headfirst into whatever you're doing It's almost like you you're so you're so into it that you don't even realize it's being successful I guess that's how I feel about it when when those all those things are happening It was amazing to me But I just wanted to keep going and keep doing the next thing and learning even learning new tricks even today like i'm still trying to learn new tricks, but That's that's the drive And so as long as you're still trying to challenge yourself and still trying to improve on whatever you're doing, you'll keep being successful at it.

32:20James Altucher:So even though you're not doing the mega ramps anymore, are you still trying in some ways to improve every day?

32:26Tony Hawk:Yeah, because I've kind of shifted my focus to much more technical skating, more low impact.

32:32James Altucher:What does it mean? What's a technical skating?

32:34Tony Hawk:Technical is just like doing really complicated tricks with the board, but not at great heights. so new ways to flip it landing in grinds and combinations and things like that I mean stuff that I'm doing now I'll make one out of a hundred tries maybe but as long as I get on video it's good

32:53James Altucher:well I saw a couple months ago you built from scratch you had someone build it this downward spiral ramp which I had never seen before and then they show the video of you going on it again and again falling constantly and then moving the mattresses down lower and lower because you would keep crashing into the mattresses until finally they remove them how many tries did that take and you

33:13Tony Hawk:were 47 years old so yeah well that's something that i've see that that's an example of keeping creative control so that was an idea i had a long time ago because we'd done we do full loops like hot wheels loop right and we actually incorporated that into our huck jam tour and i thought what if you turn that sideways so you actually try to stick on a vertical wall like that and i i brought it to my guy who runs our ride channel video production he said hey you know we should ask sony if they want to do something like that and so we pitched it to sony and they said yeah we're in go for it you have here's the budget do it and so it was totally our our thing but funded by sony

33:55James Altucher:which was amazing do you always look for a partner like that um yeah i try to yeah i mean i don't want to pay for it i think that's a good lesson yeah and so they said yeah and it was funny though because we we put the thing up and and i i mean i was fairly confident but i didn't know if it was

34:12Tony Hawk:gonna work and they had all these sony suits they're watching which was super strange you know like these corporate sony dudes were just standing on the ramp like well when does this thing gets going when's the when's the big event and it's just me like slamming and cussing and

34:29James Altucher:and you were you were bleeding like in the video yeah there was blood yeah i mean i anticipated

34:34Tony Hawk:some falls for sure but if you really watch it from start to finish you can see that i keep getting further and further like figuring it out and then it finally worked so you know uh i have a

34:43James Altucher:final question and then i'm sure everyone here has has some questions but many people might not know your son riley is an incredible street skater which is a different style than yeah what you had mastered and watching his videos are incredible what was that like what would you suggest so i'm a father of a 17 year old what would you suggest as even advice like did you for someone who wants to kind of push their kid in a direction or not push but i don't know how to ask this like obviously this was happy to you a happy event that your kid was following in your footsteps did you push him in any way i did actually well i i had a heart to heart with him when he was about

35:23Tony Hawk:15 or 16 because he was riding motorcycles he was surfing he was snowboarding and he was way more proficient at skating he kept talking about how he's gonna try to get this motorcycle sponsor i mean i know freestyle motocross he wasn't that good at it but he enjoyed it but he kept talking about it and we didn't really have the resources to get him to the track frequently enough that it was really going to benefit him and he was also talking about like maybe a surf sponsor and i said riley i know you're good at those things but you're exceptional at skateboarding you're already way better than most kids your age and i know you like it's hard to go from beneath my shadow but you do have your own style you have your own direction and you know you don't have to follow my footsteps necessarily but you do have an opportunity here and i think that that was the that was when he really started to focus on skating only.

36:21James Altucher:And did you initially teach him some of the...

36:24Tony Hawk:He just grew up around it. I mean, when he was young is when we started Birdhouse when it was very lean times. And so if I got the opportunity to travel, he just came with me. So like when I'm talking about the Six Flags parking lot demos, he was over in the corner playing with his Power Rangers during my demos. That's not a joke. All right, well, I'm going to... It's kind of sad because I couldn't afford childcare, so... but then he you know he grew to love like that could have turned him away from it absolutely just that he was forced you know not forced to do it but it was just around him all the time it was like I'm sick of it but he embraced it he loved it

37:02James Altucher:well again there's this immersion aspect too he saw every part of the culture of it as well even more than these other sports

37:08Tony Hawk:yeah I think so

37:24Tony Hawk:Tony, I'd love to hear as you were like developing your businesses, who gave you some really strong business advice that would be, you know, people that we wouldn't really recognize or essentially people from maybe your industry as well or sports that kind of said, Hey, you know, I've had some experience in this as well. And maybe here's some things that you should be thinking about as you're kind of scaling up your own personal brand and some of these licensing deals that you've been doing and how that advice ended up playing out with some of the businesses well my sister helped me immensely she she used to be a singer she was a singer for righteous brothers and for michael bolton and so she really knew entertainment and when she saw things ramping up for me she just had twins and she said well you know i'd love to help you because you're kind of moving into entertainment like that's that's what's happening here even though you're still skating as much.

38:13Tony Hawk:And she was the one who fought for me to keep control of my brand. She's like, you got to keep control of, you know, cause she saw the stupid stuff I did in the eighties. Like there was a, there was a story I've told it, but I was working with this one company and they were making just terrible items and they were like ripping off logos and putting my name on it. And they're making wallets and key chains. And I went to their office one day cause I was sick of it. And I just wanted to say, Hey, you know, you can't do this. And they said, well, actually, yeah we can we signed your name we have free reign to do whatever we want with it and while he's talking i'm behind him i'm not kidding there's a roll of toilet paper this is tony hawk gear on it and i was like well what is that and he said oh well one of the retailers said you know so you put toilet paper you put his name on toilet paper and it would sell and so we made that for them like and he's thinking like isn't that funny i'm like this sucks and i that day went and paid to get out of my contract.

39:11Tony Hawk:But I learned from that, but I also learned, like I said, from my sister. She said, you got to keep your grave control. We have to stand hard on that in the contracts. And it's weird being a person and a brand, but that was how I really kept control of the brand. And I tell that to business startups all the time. Don't let someone else take what you have created because they're not going to take in the direction that you think they are or that you want them to, unless you really just want to cash out. So working with family, pros, cons,

39:44James Altucher:what's been the best part about it? What's the worst part that you can actually mention? Or what do you want to look out for? Because I work with family.

39:51Tony Hawk:Well, I mean, it's hard to have the, when things aren't going well, you don't want to have the blame game, obviously. And I think we give each other enough space and respect each other in terms of what our strengths are. But definitely we butt heads and, you know, that can be tricky because it's your family. But you just, I think you just have to have a mutual respect for what you're doing and not think that one of us is above the other in any time. You know, there are times when I first started doing social media, she just didn't really understand it. And then she saw how it blossomed and then she started figuring out better ways to use it as well.

40:30But like I, even today I had a conversation with her.

40:34Tony Hawk:I got invited to go to Snapchat headquarters on behalf of Nixon. And I don't really know what that means, you know, but I knew that it would probably get my Snapchat followers up because they're going to probably promote me, you know, on their main whatever page or on Snapchat. And so she's like, why do you, you know, you don't owe that to Nixon or this is a conversation we just had. Like you don't owe that to Nixon or Tilly's was part of it. And I said, yeah, but if I go there, then my Snapchat numbers will go up and that'll raise my, you know, that'll raise my value in terms of doing social media marketing.

41:14Tony Hawk:And that's been this really strange new venture is doing social media ads. And it's good money. It's crazy. And they trust me to do it in my own voice. So that's been a blast. But I need my Snapchat numbers up. we got cole over here hey tony i just don't have a question i just want to say thank you i watched you in the half pipe and i wanted one so bad i came to my parents and they said if i want a half pipe i had to pay for it so i was probably get sony to pay for it well so check this out i literally it was about christmas time i pulled mistletoe out of trees it was growing naturally and packaged them up and sold them door to door to save up enough money to pay for my first half pipe which was the creation and the the first thing i did entrepreneurially which launched my career that's awesome so i just want to say thank you because i'm one of millions of people you've done that for so thank you thank you that that is one of the coolest story about building around i've

42:14James Altucher:ever heard okay we'll take two quick ones so yeah my 10 year old self is super excited to be talking

42:20Tony Hawk:to you so that's great i had posters of you and your peers up on my wall and i'm curious as to what you think the difference is now looking back between you and those other guys that were up there of how you were able to make the moves you did to establish the brand and make the decisions and a lot of them did not did not fare so well or make the same decisions what what what do you credit that to now looking back i think that well for me early on i never rested on my laurels i always wanted to learn new tricks so even though i was considered number one competitor or number one overall or whatnot, that wasn't the drive.

42:54Tony Hawk:The drive was to keep challenging myself, to keep getting better. And so I think that's where some of my peers as well, they got caught up in the celebrity party aspect. And it was almost like they reached this pinnacle and it's like, well, that's it. There's nothing else. Or they lost their motivation. And I never lost my motivation because my motivation was just about tricks. It was just super nerdy. But that is what helped me sort of make it through those formative years and those times when I could have got caught up in the party. And I knew that, I guess I knew early on that I couldn't get into that aspect of it, like the whole party scene, because it was going to affect my performance and I was too proud of how I skated to be able to think that I want to do anything that would hinder that.

43:45we got our last one uh hey tony in all this mayhem you're like the bad guy right and he's a hell of

43:53Tony Hawk:a drug yeah no doubt so the pappas brothers you know they sort of make you the bad guy i was just curious about your side of that story and what your relationship was with those guys and you know some of the other old guys like alvin those guys um there's just so much that is left out of that you know and there's it was very easy for them to make me the this villain what they didn't say about that was that what he's talking about there's this documentary where basically the skater who got super strong out on drugs and so did his brother who killed his girlfriend and also killed himself and it's this really tragic story and i never spoke up about it because he was basically saying that i sold the idea for the 900 from him and i somehow banned him from the x games i had nothing to do with anyone competing in x games by the way i was a competitor and so in his version of this story, I methodically watched him try this trick, which I didn't really watch him.

44:49Tony Hawk:I watched another guy who was trying it because another guy was way closer than him, but then I watched him try it. I figured out how to do it. And then I saved it for the X Games and I got him banned. And then I did it. And my whole life and career was all planned out, including video games, including sponsorships. It was all a big master plan that I had at his expense. That's his story. And people that watch the documentary, they just believe it. They believe this, you know, this guy who was a hardcore drug addict. And it's just unfortunate. Like, I just didn't want to talk about it because the whole story is so tragic that it's like, who cares about this stupid trick?

45:26Tony Hawk:Why would I want to fight this? You know what I mean? Why would I want to fight this whole story or try to vindicate myself when there's just too much other important aspects to it. So what they didn't say was Danny Way was the first one to try 900. He's where everyone got the idea because he really was the first one to really get close to it. There were about five of us chasing it at the time. I was the first one that thought of it because I did a 720 first. So that kind of seems to go without saying that if I did a 540, I learned a 720, what's next? I better wait for Tuss to figure that out.

46:07Tony Hawk:So anyway, it's so weird to be talking about this. But so there were other best trick events during that time. And Tuss would show up and just try 900s during the best trick events. I knew better than to try a trick I've never done before in a best trick event. So he never placed in the best trick events because he was just focused on this one trick that he couldn't make. And I believe that's why they didn't choose him for the X Games because he had never placed. So he was not qualified to be in an event like that. But in his version of the story, that's the only best trick event that ever existed.

46:43Tony Hawk:And so that's, you know, it's just such a bummer. The bummer for me is that that is his reality, you know, in his distorted view. And it's not the truth. And I wish he could accept the truth. but we've kind of made some amends through social media recently I've spoken my side of the story only because the media was just coming after me and I was trying to be quiet and finally I was like okay here it is here's what happened but it's just it's weird man it's weird to watch it's weird to watch a whole sort of string of lies about you presented in that way I never thought there was something I'd have to deal with so

47:28James Altucher:I gotta let's

47:29Tony Hawk:answer it

47:30James Altucher:did i go on too long i got i got a last did i protest too much i got a last quick one about the hoverboard fiasco i guess that was one of the fiasco it was a little bit of a media thing were you aware that it wasn't i guess legit to some degree i mean

47:45Tony Hawk:okay so there's there are different levels to this you're speaking of the fake hoverboard video that other celebrities were involved with okay i got asked to do that because it was Funny or Die that did it. Funny or Die called me and said, hey, we have the original setup from Back to the Future hoverboard, the stunt rig. Do you want to do something? And Doc's going to do it. What's his name? Christopher Lloyd. I was like, yeah, Back to the Future stunt rig. Christopher Lloyd, I'm in. And it's for Funny or Die. So I'm thinking it's for a funny spoof video, right? They liked the way it turned out so much that they just presented like it was real.

48:26Tony Hawk:and then didn't say anything. And so eventually people figure out that it's fake, and they're all pissed at me. And all the heat came down on me because I'm the only one who's really accessible in that video and through social media. So talk about a hate storm. Like people were really, really mad at me. Like, you lied to us? How could you lie to us? Like their dreams, like as if this was their only dream in life was that a hoverboard was real. And I have shattered that completely. so I took it upon myself and I was like I'm going to just say what happened and I made this apology video so that was that and that was weird and then just a few months later this company called me and said hey we have a real hoverboard I was like I don't I don't want to be the hoverboard guy and they said well you know if you want to come ride it and I was like oh well we had just started our YouTube channel, Ride Channel, that was funded by Google.

49:25Tony Hawk:And I thought, well, that'd probably be a big boost for Ride Channel. Like, let's go up there and check it out. And so we went up to Los Gatos at Hendo and rode the real hoverboard, which is not anything like Back to the Future. It's super loud. It's impossible to control. But it hovers. And if you stand on it, it'll start spinning. So you can do 900.

49:52James Altucher:Awesome. Thank you very much. All right.

49:54Tony Hawk:Thanks.

50:09Tony Hawk:Pluto TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows.

50:14James Altucher:You swear? If I'm mine, I'm dying. This is the mindset.

50:17Tony Hawk:Free. This is the mantra.

50:19James Altucher:Free. This is the... With movies like Interstellar, Dreamgirls, and Gladiator. Are you not entertained? And TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents, and Ghosts. Pluto TV is always free. Huzzah! Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.