Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Awesome. He. Thanks for being here today. I'm so excited to have our conversation. You have such a unique story, so let's just dive in. You skated at a high level, apparently.
But I'm just curious, when it comes to skateboarding, is that something that you got into at a really young age? Were you on these, like, you know, five year olds that somebody gave you a skateboard and you just took right to it?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: No, like around 11, I think it was. And it was to just hang out with my older brother that kind of hated me and I just wanted to do whatever he was doing.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Oh, that's fantastic. When did you, like, at what point did it enter into your brain that this is something you could actually make a living at?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Well, our generation was the first real generation where money was being made, thanks to the Bones Brigade and Thrasher magazine and Santa Cruz NHS were the first international distributors. And they were right down the street from us, basically 45 minutes away. I grew up in Pacific Grove, California, had a good gauge of how good I was compared to how good the other guys were that skated for the local shops. You kind of earn your way in as a grom and you're terrible and everybody hates you and you're trying to figure yourself out. Once you start getting as good as them or better than them, you kind of earn the respect of the group. And then kind of what happened in my generation around, I would say I was like fifth grade. So was that like 1985, 1986, skateboarding kind of hit this peak and then fizzled out. I was literally the only skater left in the whole Monterey county area. I kind of bridged this gap from generation to generation. Then the new generation started coming up and I was still the only skater in the area, but I was sponsored by then. My first sponsor was Dogtown. And then I got sponsored by this company called H Street. They kept me going. And then I actually have a crazy tragedy story within the industry. Things kept happening where I didn't find out until 30 years later why my career didn't blow up the way it was supposed to.
But things work out the way they work out.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: I ended up always on the fringe trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: I was always the best guy in the area, but my career wasn't taking off because people weren't showing up when they were supposed to. And then I find out 30 years later, like, oh, we picked up this other guy who just completely revolutionized skateboarding. This guy Pat Duffy. This company, Plan B, was supposed to pick me up and do this big surprise reveal to the whole skateboard world at the San Francisco contest. And they never showed up. I found out it's because they found this guy, Pat Duffy, who was doing other crazy stuff.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: And they went and picked him up. Back then, the communication wasn't the same. We didn't have cell phones. We didn't have all the direct communication. So they didn't connect with me for, like months. And then after that, they had already launched the company and I had kind of gotten forgotten about.
So I had to restart over and over again. By the time my career really started to take off, I was 23, 24. That's when God showed up in my life and gave me my wife. And then I had a kid. I was doing my Thrasher interview with Luke Ogden, the editor. I had everything lined up to to be a successful skateboarder, but my priorities had changed. Now it wasn't about me. It was about what God wanted and taking care of my wife and my son. I had another one on the way I looked at the end of my life if I kept skateboarding and I didn't like what I saw. And so I just prayed about it and gave everything up with no plan but to follow God and that God was going to provide me and my wife. We talked about like, well, what are we going to do next? And I said, you know, I was never been a school guy. Should I go to school, or should I just learn how to run a business? I just learned how to run a business after running other people's businesses for a couple years. Bike retailers, I got a reputation, specialized in Cannondale, and all these companies started wanting to work with me. I started sharing all my thoughts and my opinions because I could actually articulate how the products worked from a consumer sense. And also I worked in the industry so I could talk about like, well, this is how we should tweak it and make it better. I did a lot of things that revolutionized the bike industry, like different saddle widths.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Kind of at the forefront of a couple industries. Then, because you were in the skateboarding industry and segued out just in the 90s, biking really started to explode.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I got into that around 2000 and revolutionized that through research and development. And then right before the housing market tanked, we took all of our money out of the the house and started a bike shop.
Then the housing market just tanked. But our business was profitable from day one because of relationships that I had. We served our community faithfully from 2007 till2022. And we just sold our business to Trek. I saw the writing on the wall during COVID when all the other stores were closing doors and liquidating product. I went from $8,000 orders a week to $80,000. Like I maxed out my credit limit and we sold it all in the first week because we were the only store that was open. This was like March 2020, right before the lockdowns. And then the lockdowns happened and we had all the inventory and everybody else was closed. And so we went from doing like 1.4, 1.5 million. We tripled that in the first year.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: We went from doing, you know, I did an $80,000 order and the, the national sales manager from Trek calls me, goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, we're not sending this to you. You need to make a payment right now. Like everybody else is closing their doors and like locking down and like, tell me what's going on. Made the payment, told him to send the product. We sold all of that product within like 48 hours. I then put in $150,000 order. He goes, dude, I'm flying out there right now. So he hangs up the phone. He comes out the next day, comes in my store. We have hundreds of people in the store and a line out the door. And he's like, dude, what are you doing? This is insane. Tells me about all the lockdowns and everything else happening throughout the country. This is what I think is going to happen. They're going to lock everything down, but people are going to go outside. And I gave them this idea and they wrote an email and sent it out to all the truck dealers. And because of that, when I told them, I'm like, I'm out. I don't want to do this anymore. They bought our business at top dollar and we were able to go back to school and start my other passion, which is people. And now I'm becoming a clinical psychologist.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: I didn't have a bike and I was looking for one in January and February of 2020 and. And I wasn't able to get one until July of 2021.
Had I known, I would have went to a Trek shop.
Well, that's got to be pretty gratifying to start something that, especially in Western culture, it's like, always go to school. But the fact you're like, I'm going to wait on school and I'm going to start a business and run a business and then build it, make it successful, you could probably say the whisperings of God was coming at you going like, hey, be ready. And you were there. And. And then to be able to sell your business successfully. What a fantastic journey. So many people don't have that experience. So why was it then after you, you know, because most people would sell business and be like, I'm good. I'm retired now. I'm going to hang out right at the beach. So why move on to people, the calling to. And how are you wanting to show up for them?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Well, really, a lot of my story was I came from a really broken home. Divorced when I was 3, and my mom moved in with her parents here in pg. My dad stayed in Utah and just a horrible, horrible childhood. I was black sheep. And despite all of the blessings that I had and where I lived, I was very intelligent. I'm so grateful that I had a principal that intervened in my life. She could see that I was having just a horrible time as a child, and she intervened in my life. I just learned this recently, within the last couple years, at her service. She paid for a psych eval and an IQ test for me when I was in third grade.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: And I just thought, you know, I'm in third grade. I thought all the kids did this. I learned later that she had done this for me. She got me put into this program called elp, which then turned into gate. We were the pilot program. I got moved to a different school so that I could have a male teacher. This woman intervened in my life, completely changed the trajectory in my life. And, you know, I had very high iq. I had all this other stuff, and I was put in honors, but I didn't like the systems. Like, I was this high justice kid because I had been betrayed and abandoned by my caregivers growing up. I had to vet every authority that came into my life. And authority doesn't generally appreciate that. They want, you know, I. I have positional authority. You give me respect because of that. And I was like, nah. And I had a really strong will, which is why I worked so well in skateboarding and all the other stuff. I dropped out of high school even though I was a 4.2 student back in 1990, which being a 4. 2 then, like, you had to be in honors and all this other stuff. And I dropped out when I was 15. I was like, I'm done. Like, I had one too many teachers that were trying to make me an example so that they could feel better about themselves. And I'm like, you know what? I'm done with this. And I was already making like six grand a month skateboarding at that time. I'm 15 years old and making more money than my mom, so I'm like, why would I go to school? That's why I left school. It's not because I didn't love school. It's because I didn't love the people. I didn't understand why people that were in charge, that were supposed to care, you know, for our history and pass on our history to the next generations, why they were so dysfunctional. I spent a lot of time pursuing psychedelics and pursuing religions and pursuing truth. That was my journey in life. I wanted to know what was truth.
I was in and out of jail. I got busted for skateboarding, I got busted for drugs. I got busted for all kinds of stuff. Assaults, wrong place at the wrong time, small town. Once you get a target on your back, it's bad.
When God showed up, he saved me from myself. I tried to do everything I could figure out, and the world systems didn't work for me. They were empty in the vain. I could see that they would cost me my soul. Even though I didn't have a language for it, I could feel it, and I knew it to be true. So when God showed up and said, I have something that's real, I was like, prove it. That was September 26, 1997, and God has proven worthy every single day since then. I've just followed him and done everything I felt God was saying, and he's given me so much more than I ever thought I could get. And, you know, when I. Everything that I've done, like, walking away from my skateboarding career, that was following God, learning how to run a business, that was following God. All of the stuff I was able to commit and. And invest in, the industries I was working in was all God. And so I was doing pastoral work while I was doing these other careers, because it's always about the individual. You know, what you and I talked about is, like, the world says you got to make it big. Everything's got to be the bigger, the better, the more successful you are, you know, the more money, the more stuff, the more fame, the more whatever. And I knew that that was false because I knew people that were billionaires and they were empty inside. I knew people that were super famous and they were empty inside. They hated their lives. And so it was kind of great growing up next to pebble beach, one of the wealthiest places in the world, and seeing people with all the money and status and fame, hanging out with Clint Eastwood And Bill Murray and stuff. When I would work at the AT&T Pro Am as, like, a banquet guy, and we would sneak into the parties afterwards, and I would just see these wealthy people just acting like insecure little kids at high school, just trying to one up the other guy and one up. And I'm like, this is so vain, fake, and empty. It's always been about pursuing things that, like, I felt like, had eternal matter and eternal value.
And God just kept showing me that when I would do that, when I would pursue people at the individual level and I would love them according to the principles of the kingdom, that's real satisfaction. That's real purpose and real meaning in life. Everybody talks about what's the meaning of life, and where do I find my purpose? It's in God. It's too easy for people. And it comes at the cost of, like, submitting that it's that easy.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: You know, Jim Carrey, his journey is amazing. He comes pretty rough childhood, and you could tell he went to Hollywood to fill the hole with fame. And one of my favorite quotes from him was, you know, I hope that people become rich and famous and get everything they ever dreamed of so that they can see that that's not the answer. And then it was about 10 years after that that somebody was asking him, like, man, you haven't been in a movie forever. And he was like, yeah, because I'm enough. And that's something you never hear an actor say. I am enough. I have enough. I've done enough. I don't need to win an Oscar. I don't need to have a liquor brand. I don't need to have a clothing line. I don't need to be on Instagram. I don't need to do this stuff. And it was kind of like making fun, because every celebrity has a clothing line and a liquor line and all this stuff. And he was like, I don't need any of that. And I'm looking at going, man, talk about someone who's really evolved over his career. So I love what you were saying. It kind of comes to mind when you're talking about, like, you know, how easy is it really? Like, if you submit to God, it's actually pretty easy. Like, I feel like you have a book in there that's like, you know, the easy life instead of the hard life.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: It's simple.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: It's not easy.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: I love it. So what you're going like, so I love it because you, you know, you kind of had that, the fame and the fortune at a Young age, and you're like, that's not what I want. And then you.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: You.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: You got into having your own shop and being successful business owner. And along the way, you were coaching other people in. In sports and in biking, right? So you're working and you sold the business. So now that you're doing your pastoral work, you're going to school. Like, what's sort of your vision for this next decade?
[00:15:00] Speaker B: So psychology, deliverance, helping people heal. You know, like the work of Kabor Mate and Vessel, Vander Kolk and a lot of those guys, you know, that the body does keep the score. And, you know, when I look at, like, the big systems, when I look at the micro, the macro, the meso, you know, the systems of the world, you can't fix the meso and the macro, the middle and the big systems. Yeah. This goes back to Bill from Alcoholics Anonymous, who came to Christ on an acid trip and developed the whole AA system. He said it was just downloaded from God, and that's how he came to develop the AA system. It's to know the difference between what you can control and what you can't.
And I think that's the secret to life is that's where anxiety comes from. That's where depression comes from. That's where all strife, human strife, comes from not knowing the difference between what you can control and what you can't. When you really break it down, you can only control yourself and your attitude. You can't even control your breath. You can't make yourself go to sleep. You can't make yourself wake up. And when you realize that stuff, that's where you kind of got to learn how to submit to God and go, okay, I. I don't even have control over these basic things for me to exist on this planet. When you start looking at how existence itself, right, you go back to Kierkegaard and you realize that existentialism, the whole. Why do we have this constant sense of dread once we realize we're gonna die?
And in our society, we don't talk about it.
We're terrified to talk about death. It's like politics and religion. You're not allowed to talk about it or like, oh, you're bringing me down. But actually, it's what my book is about. I. I wrote this theory of psychology. It became a framework that I use with all of my clients. I call it teleology. And it's because psychology, when I came into it about five or six years ago, it was still very compartmentalized. Like, I do Psychotherapy, and I do cbt. And it's like, people don't work like that.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Positive psychology, yes.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I do mindfulness. And I'm like, this doesn't work like that. I said, if you're a bike mechanic and you show up with one Allen wrench, you're not going to fix 90% of the problems.
If you're supposed to be a mechanic, a human mechanic, Right. And you're working with the soul because that's what the psyche is. Right? The mind is just the secular term for the soul. When you're looking at a human being and you're saying, I'm going to use this one tool, you're so naive. So I started writing this theory of, how am I going to do therapy with people? How have I done therapy with myself? What did God do for me? God said, look at your end and then go back to your beginning. Figure out how you got to where you were, your origin story. Because all of us see life through narrative, through story. He goes, and then reframe your life to how I made you.
Because that's where your identity and that's where your value is. And once you know that. Right. I have. I do these assessments with my clients. Attachment style, adverse childhood experiences, and the enneagram, which is personality development. Yeah, I get all that. And that's my matrix for understanding their origin story and how they developed as a human being. Then I ask them to imagine their end.
What I've learned is some people are so stunted by their trauma that they can't even imagine the next day. They're so stuck in survival mode that they are living outside of their threshold of capacity because they're in survival mode. They're hyper vigilant or they're hypovigilant and they're depressed.
And so they escape through alcohol and smoking weed, just numbing out. And video games and technology has continued to make that more available. And then the other people, they're so hypervigilant, they get stuck in the success mode. I need to do more. I need to write another book. I need to win another award. And that's the Jim Carrey's, right? When you take all that away and you realize that you are enough and that God has made you enough, how do you strip away all of the interference? That's what trauma is. It creates emotional and cognitive distortions.
How do you strip away those distortions? And that's when I realized, like, oh, it's all about psychology. And so I went back to school, ironically, right at 46 years old, and now I'm a 4.0 student. But I'm seeing the same institutional issues, except now they're indoctrinating you with gender ideologies and all this other stuff that's like. It comes from a good place, but it's not done responsibly. And so now they're just damaging new generations in different ways. And so it was this crazy journey, and I'm halfway through my graduate program right now, and that's my new journey. My wife is coming along with me, and we're seeing just massive. Like, I do therapy at my church. Wow. With mostly boomer generation, which is really interesting because they're the most underserved generation because they don't believe in psychology. They think it's mumbo jumbo, like, magic. But I can explain it to them in a very practical way. And they're like, oh, I love this. And we're seeing.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: I think there's also.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: They grew up with the.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: The stigma. If you're seeing a shrink, it's because you were crazy or you had a mental illness. And they also were a part of that generation where we still had mental health institutions. It's like, oh, if you go see a therapist, they could commit you. So you don't want to tell them that.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: It's interesting. You know, I love what you're talking about with the, like, ultimately, it's just removing the. The blocks to. To becoming the best version of yourself.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: That was one of the lessons that I learned as I was coming out of my 20 years in Hollywood. From an acting standpoint, when you look at an actor, it doesn't matter how successful you get, you're never really successful. Here's the game. For people that aren't familiar with how it works with actors, when you go to Hollywood, you're just desperate to get on set in any way that you can. And so you fight to become an extra just to be on set around the big show. And you do that for a while, and then you're like, oh, but the guys making the most money are the ones that have their SAG card. So I gotta get the SAG car. And they try to get the SAG card and that, but then they're like, oh, commercials is where it's at. So then they'll spend years trying to get in commercials and get good at commercials. And I've had friends that have done this where they're, you know, they work three days a year and they're making 150,000. And they're going, you know, I really would like to get on a TV show. And so here they are, three days a week, 150,000. But they're not happy. They get a guest spot here and a guest spot there. And I'm like, oh, God, I really want to be a guest. I should be a co star. I need to be a co. And then they get the co star, and then they're looking around going like, well, I'm just as talented as the guy that starring in the show, making sure I need to be starring in the show. And so they find. Then they become the star of the show.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: And.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: And I'm laughing because I just remember the interview. The actors from the Big Bang Theory, you know, the last three years, they were all making 1.25 million per week.
And I remember at the height of that, watching one of the main stars of the show, and they're like, my God, you've just set these records and you're making 30 million a year. And he said, yeah, it's really amazing, but I really want to do movies. And it's so hard to break in the movie industry. And I'm like, oh, my God, this guy's making $30 million a year. And he's like, but I really want.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: To be doing this.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Now, here's the funny thing about all of that. When you look at the movie stars, the biggest critique you hear from everybody is that guy is the same in every movie. That girl's the same in every movie.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: They're just playing themselves because they're being.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: The best version of themselves. So you have all these guys pretending to be actors and taking this acting very seriously. And the guys that are crushing it and making the most money are the ones that are just the most authentically themselves.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: So that little bit of a tangent, but I'm like, it's all about.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: No, I. I love it. Your insight's spot on. I'm tracking everything you're saying 100%. Well.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: And that's what I love about the work that you're doing. Can you work with somebody and then shorten that time frame so that instead of being Jim Carrey, where you're 55 or 60 before you have the realization, can you get someone there by the time they're 30? Because if so, man, what's that life going to look like?
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Well, that's the stipulation right there. You just brought out what my wife and I were talking about this morning on our trip down here. You have to Be willing. If you're not willing, there's nothing you can do. Yeah, there's literally. And that's the whole prodigal son.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: That's that Jonah guy. What happens when you're not willing?
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Exactly.
He was willing, but he was begrudging.
He hated the people, but he was willing to serve God.
He hated the people that he was saving.
So even he was willing. But at the end he was bitter that God saved his enemy.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Any modern application?
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: That's a great analogy. This has been a fantastic conversation. So you have your process. If someone wants to engage with you, where can they go to find out more about you?
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Well, right now I have my email. I don't do social media. It's all about just connecting with me one on one. I am a man of integrity and a man of my word. I don't believe in these systems. And then participate in the system.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: If you have an email you want people to use, we can drop it here.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: It's just my name at Gmail Doc.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Well, you know, from a selfish standpoint, like when we gonna get your book done?
We gotta get this thing out into the world. I love it.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: I'm just looking for the right person to partner with. Written a book and I know that it's unfinished, but all of the raw stuff is there. I have about 250, 300 pages done. I even have it broken up into chapters, introduction all the way through. There's a couple new chapters that have developed since I've been done because I've been done for about six months.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Tell me how that.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: I'm just praying and waiting for somebody to come along that's going to help me finish it.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Well, the year ahead it'll come out and we'll have you back on so we can talk about version 2. I see your co author in the background there. She's trying to be sneaky. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: It was my pleasure. Thank you so much.
