How Did I Get Here by Tony Hawk, Pat Hawk

successful ad campaign with me as the link. It included TV ads and a five-page “advertorial” for Rolling Stone magazine that rolled in some of my endemic partners like Quiksilver and Nixon watches.
    The Wise Old Adolescent
    I’ve been making a living through skateboarding for more than 25 years now, and throughout my career there’s been one essential constant: I skate. I’ve lost teeth, endured concussions, fractured my pelvis, and flayed the skin off my shins so many times that doctors think I’m a burn victim. But I still try to skate every day, even though I’m over 40 now. It’s not like a religion or anything—I simply follow the advice that I give other people all the time: do what you love. I now make a very good living doing something that I would gladly do for free (and for many years, I did just that). I’ve been extraordinarily lucky that way.
    I’ve also been lucky that my sport of choice, along with other action sports, continues to grow in popularity. Skaters have gone from a fringe culture to a mainstream success story. Shaun White’s been on the cover of Rolling Stone, and I’ve been profiled in Forbes. Today, more kids ride skateboards in North America than play Little League Baseball.
    And of course Madison Avenue has noticed. In 1986, Sports Illustrated reported that the skate industry had combined annual sales of about $300 million. By 2010, that same figure had grown to more than $4 billion. My video game series alone has done more than $1 billion in sales since inception.
    I’ve been fortunate in that most of the large endorsement deals I’ve signed over the years have been with sponsors who understand how much I like to ride my skateboard—and who see that it’s good for everyone’s business (and my soul) if I’m out there riding my board instead of attending meetings or doing press tours. It’s no coincidence that their sponsorship dollars have helped to underwrite events and products that often require me to get my friends together and skate: the Boom Boom HuckJam shows, the Birdhouse team tours, the Gigantic Skatepark Tour and Secret Skatepark Tour TV shows, and the annual fundraising events for my charitable foundation, which features a private halfpipe demo in the backyard of a Beverly Hills billionaire.
    To me, that’s the best possible kind of brand management. Because no matter how much our sponsors trust us to strike the right balance between mainstream and core, battles inevitably arise over the way a logo should be tweaked or a photo should be cropped or a model should be posed. Even when such exchanges are entirely civil, we’re bound to have conflicting opinions, bound to struggle in the search for compromise.
    But when I’m up on the ramp, those issues don’t get access. Somewhere deep in my subconscious there resides a wise old adolescent who understands that such concerns are ultimately meaningless. Or let me put it like this: Up there on the ramp, I don’t have to worry that someone in a suit’s going to wander over and tell me how to skate. That part they leave up to me.

7
    THE DENIM DEBACLE
    Some business ideas that didn’t quite fly
    Skate companies are typically started by pro skaters who want to leave their own creative stamp on the culture, make some money, and—perhaps most important—maintain their street cred. “Keeping it core” remains the unwritten theme of nearly every skate (and surf and snowboard) start-up business plan. Of course, that often leads to liquidation. Mock their naïveté or praise their principles—either way, most action-sports companies come and go quickly.
    But every now and then a young exec will get it right: retain his authenticity, turn a profit, and plant seeds for a new style that spreads vinelike through the culture. Among skaters, Steve Rocco did it with World Industries (although he was more interested in shock than style), Tod Swank