(upbeat music) - What's the advice to someone who's passionate about a thing that's not necessarily a revenue source for their life right now? - It's what's going to bring you the most joy and it's worth it. You know, I think it's, if you go to work and your work makes you happy, that's living the dream at any level.

And if it's very successful financially, great, that's just sort of gravy, but it's more about your peace of mind. And I think that if there is something that makes you truly happy and maybe you have to do something else to supplement your income, try to balance those things as best you can.

- Yeah, I've actually, I've turned my position on this in the past few years. I used to say, oh, go follow your passion, you know, find a way to make that your job. But if you have a job that allows you to follow your passion, not as a job, that's okay.

- Yeah, that's enough. - And for a lot of people, my brother-in-law went pro golfing and then hated it because it was his job and then got a job and just golfs on the weekend and loves it. And so I think for some people, even pursuing it to some extent can actually take away, I don't know if there was ever a moment in your career where it was like skating to win competitions and to win trophies was just too much and it took away the fun.

- Yeah, for sure, especially in the late '80s, I became a machine and it was very cyclical and it was like, all right, there's an event coming up next weekend. I've got to learn a couple of new tricks for the event because the judges saw what I'm, you know, they saw my current roster of tricks.

So I got to hide it from them and then unleash it in the finals. And then, but it became so formulaic that it really was not fun. And at some point I just pulled away and stepped away from it altogether because skating had become a job and it wasn't fun for me.

And then when I did pull away, I got very creative with my skating and I was able to really learn a lot of different techniques and a lot of stuff that I wanted to pursue, even though I wasn't making a living at it at the time. I mean, I kind of was, I still had signature skateboards and whatnot, but when you're not, in those years, if you were not competing actively, you were not going to get coverage.

You were not going to get career opportunities. But I was willing to let those go to just at least be happy with it. And so it gave me this new sort of new energy to come back to competing and with a different approach that was more, it was more, I don't know how to explain it.

I guess it was less careful and it was more risky. That was it. I came at it with a sense of, I'm going to just try everything. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I'd rather just do this and take the chances and have fun doing it. And if it works, then it's going to work awesomely.

The downside to that was that when I did come back to competing, it was when skateboarding was starting to take a downturn. So I came back with this renewed energy and I was winning a lot of big events. And all of a sudden it was like, what happened? Where's the crowd?

Where's the contests? - Where's the prize money? - You guys like, turn the machines back on. I thought this was cool. And so it was kind of like the wrong place at the right time. - But you probably wouldn't have had the career you had after that, had that not happened.

- No, no. Because in those dead years, I was skating more than ever. Having fun doing it. Learning new tricks and learning new techniques. It was just that I wasn't doing it in front of crowds because the crowds weren't there anymore. - Yeah, I think I'm very fortunate that, and I think you did the same with your podcast.

Like when you start a podcast, if you can start it not needing to be your job and your business, you can do whatever you want with it. You can kind of say, you know what? This podcast was not, you know, when I started it, I never thought I'd be going over countries as episodes.

And then I was like, you know what? I'm going to London. I want to talk to someone who knows everything about London. Let's make an episode about London. And then we did one on Japan. So I think when you really start to do what you're passionate about in your work, it sometimes creates an even better experience.

And people love these episodes and I never had an idea. - Oh yeah. No, I think, well, my cohost, Jason Ellis and I, we have a lot of, we have a lot of experience, obviously skating, but just life experience. He was, you know, had a totally different path than I did.

And when we have guests, especially with non-skating guests, we relate to them in different ways that people would not expect, but in a very parallel way. For instance, we had two wrestlers on, that's our most recent guests, and Darby Allen and Jamie Hayter. And people were like, why would you have them on?

And then when we started to talk about our experiences and our injuries, we were right in line and we were bouncing off of each other. And it was a really great conversation. It was fascinating, you know, and say what you will about wrestling or that it's made up or whatever it is, they are, those guys take as much abuse as skateboarders.

- Yeah, it was great. I listened to this episode. It was wild to kind of, I don't think I've gotten that behind the scenes look at wrestling. You know, it hasn't been a passion of mine, but it was super fascinating. And you don't have to say who, but I know there's some cool guests coming down the pike.

So if anyone's listening and wants to check it out. - Yeah, we have an insane roster coming up and I feel like now we're starting to hit our stride and we've been doing it a couple of years. So you're right, it wasn't something that we needed but we enjoy doing it.

And we did find that we had something unique to offer. We found a groove, we found an audience. It was just that we weren't doing all the right things with the algorithms and the, you know, the promotions. And so now we have a group, Malka, that is taking the reins on that and they've been doing a great job.

So we get to focus more on the content. - Podcast is great. I enjoy it, especially 'cause I have my childhood skate dreams still somewhere buried in my head.