Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk joins the One Question Podcast to discuss the importance of embracing failure and perseverance in both sports and professional life. Tony shares personal stories of overcoming obstacles, including setbacks in his skateboarding career and business ventures. He argues that failure is often the best teacher. He encourages middle and high school students to learn from their mistakes, pursue their passions with dedication, and see challenges as opportunities for growth.

Michael Horn

Today’s guest is a true pioneer in the world of sports, sports and youth culture. None other than Tony Hawk. Known as one of the most influential skateboarders of all time, Tony turned a passion that many dismissed as a fringe hobby into a global phenomenon. He was the first to land the iconic 900 spin and helped bring skateboarding into the mainstream through the X Games, through video Games, and through his own foundation that builds skate parks for kids across the country. Whether you know him from his tricks, his brand, or his relentless drive, Tony’s story is one of turning obstacles into opportunity. And before we bring him on, I’m delighted to have Julie Lammers join me as my new co host of this podcast. Julie was recently named as President and CEO of ASA.

So, Julie, first, congrats. I’m thrilled to do this with you on your own career journey. And second, I’ll let you welcome our guest and ask him our question for today.

Julie Lammers

Thanks so much, Michael. I’m so excited to be doing this with you and excited to have Tony on our podcast. So, Tony, first off, thanks so much for joining us. We’re so excited to learn from you. As Michael was saying, so much of your story and the sport of skateboarding more generally is about overcoming obstacles and persevering through failure. What advice do you have for middle and high schoolers and how they can do the same in their professional journeys?

Tony Hawk

Wow. Well, skateboarding is mostly about failure. And I think the best, well, the best thing we can do with that failure is to learn from it, is to embrace it. I think that’s the key. Yes, you can resent your mistakes, you can regret them, but ultimately you have to embrace them because that’s the only way you’re going to grow and get better. And I mean, I’ve had some catastrophic failures. I’ve had crazy injuries, but in some way, I’m thankful for all of them because they each taught me a lesson along the way. I’ve had failures in business too, and learned a lot from those.

Take for example, sometime in the late 90s, early 2000s, my partner at Birdhouse Skateboards and I decided we were going to do high end denim jeans. We didn’t know anything about the fashion world, the apparel business. We just knew that this designer that we were friends with made really cool jeans and suddenly realized after putting a lot of money into production and spending a lot of our resources and a lot of time, that people don’t really want to buy $200 jeans. And we didn’t have a lot of outlets, retail places for them, and we ended up having to sell the whole company in order to pay the banks back for the money we loaned from them. So that was a lesson in kind of staying in my lane. But when I say stay in my lane, you mean if you’re into something, your passion, whatever it is, your hobby, learn everything about it, even the stuff that seems boring and that you might not need because it’s going to benefit you in the end. That’s what I learned about the secret of business, about being in business in general.

And so it’s my passion. And I, like I said, I really am thankful for the failures along the way because it taught me so much to appreciate the success even more. So I hope that helps. And like I said, don’t try to fail. But if you do fail, treat it as a lesson, and at some point, you look back and you go, man.

I’m so thankful that I got through that, that I had the resources to get through that, and that I also had the capacity to change and learn. All right, that’s my pitch. I wish you guys all the best. Keep the hustle, stay motivated, and keep challenging yourself. See ya. Oh, and do a kickflip.

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