The Sevan Podcast - #668 - Aaron Kyro

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Will you drink coffee before the class tonight? No, because then I'm back up early in the morning tomorrow, you know. Bam, we're live. So in the middle of the show, you'll go back to CrossFit Livermore?

Yeah. And how many kids will be there? Anywhere between 16 and like 22. Oh my goodness. And you have to turn it on for them. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy.

Yeah. High energy, high patience. Jody Lynn. Hi, Sevan. Can you ask Aaron if there's any value in thrasher magazines from 2006 to 2009 my son has stacks and stacks i'm cleaning house interesting great question if uh value in thrasher magazines my mom ditched all mine great question uh it was amazing um aaron is a friend aaron is married to a very close friend of mine's friend and so i was at the house the other day and uh it was it was actually a couple years ago

i said i wanted to get him on and she said oh he's cool reach out to him in in the dms and see if you can get him on and i don't know year or two past year past no year podcast hasn't even been going for two years has it nope so maybe a year past six months past and she said hey she was over here the other night it was on her birthday my friend uh colette and she said hey did you get aaron on and i said no not yet. Having trouble getting in touch with him. She goes, oh, I'll text him right now. And she texts him and bam, four days later, here he is or some shit like that.

Awesome. Yeah. It stays like high school your whole life. I can't wait to get out of high school when it's no longer a popularity contest. No. Sorry. Now they've changed the word. It's called relationships, but you can call it what you want.

You can call it what you want. Aaron is a girl's name. I'll put that in my notes too. Because that depends on the spelling. Steven Plyler. Hi. Travis Bellinghausen. Vindicate.

Hi, Jody. Jamie Latimer. Elise Carr. Red Dow. The Shiz. Nora Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci.

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Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. Speci. bam alan kestenbaum hi agnes holmgren bruce wayne god what if we ever all got to meet each other wouldn't that be nuts you mean like some sort of live show at a place yeah god i dread that oh my god that would stress me out

it stressed me out during that meetup at the games. Stefan, will you ask Aaron about Scientology? I will not. I will not. Is he a Scientologist guy? I have no idea. I do have a lot of friends who are Scientologists. Not as many as I have that are Christians. Interesting.

I do have a lot of friends. I was friends with them for a long time before I even knew that. Undercover Scientologists. A long time. I do have a lot of friends. I was friends with him for a long time before I even knew that. Undercover Scientologist. A long time. I don't know. I mean, you don't know until you know. Serbia loves you. I love Serbia.

That's cool. My goodness. You got some reach. I remember when your Prez came on like six months ago or a year ago, and he was like i could believe the tv set or i could believe my common sense i'm going with my common sense open the country yeah i mean that guy is fucking brilliant and in your in your tennis dude uh jokovic is a stud what a fucking class act i appreciate him uh sebon podcast meet up at the ranch it's possible i think it's possible that's that's

kind of off the beaten path though devesh is gonna have a serious hard time um where's devesh i saw him i saw him hypothetically where would you have it at devesh uh my house just 11 miles up the road from the ranch? Yeah. Oh, man. That is a good question. I don't know. Where do you think? Yeah, I don't know. Way to reverse the question.

I didn't even have anything planned. It might be good to time it with some other big event so people could kill two birds with one stone, you know? Yeah. Like the games or something. Like if Locke Blues gave us some love and we got a stage or something he he's in scientology yeah watch braille for years he doesn't talk about it much but threw me off when i found out i had a flat earther on here the other day i really liked him i'm open i'm open it's a lot of labels being thrown around today i'm open i'm open i'm open i saw this video today uh that matt walsh put up he was on rogan recently yeah it's a video of two

cops putting handcuffs on a guy and matt walsh is like calling for them to be fired and the comments are just hating on the cops and i'm just it just made me really not like mashwall matt walsh you don't you don't know the situation at all you don't know if there's kids nearby you don't know the history of this guy the cops suspected that he might have a gun in his pocket and they asked him to show what he had in his pocket and the guy pushes back and then eventually it doesn't get too confrontational but the guy's just being an asshole right so the cops handcuff him and that's all you see in the video you don't know what happens you don't know if he gets arrested and it's just a list of fucking comments and thank

god it's three white people but it's just a list of fucking comments of people hating on the cops and that that's the problem in my mind i'm on the totally other side of the fence i'm on the side of the fence that do you want to pull up the video the instagram video yeah is it on the show i think it's on matt walsh's instagram no no it's not okay i'm on toe i'm on totally i believe that there's a partnership there and demanding for the firing of these cops. Like what if these are two 20-year veterans? Yeah, I mean there's just never enough context in those videos either. Sevan is pivoting to the left, desperate to breach that 20K barrier.

No, no, I'm not pivoting to the left. Well, okay, fine. I think this guy is pivoting to the left. Well, okay, fine. I think this guy's pivoting to the left. It's this one down here. Look, it's called, man, it's navigational. Man, it's a navigational aid. Go ahead and play it. Yeah.

Give me a sec. Here we go, people. So it's a guy just walking down the street with his jacket. What's this in your back pocket? I just saw you walking it. It's a navigational aid. What's the problem? You're a tyrant? So she gets she comes back with that quip. Yes, I am a tyrantrant she just she suspects he has a gun if i take her at her word at face value this is like a serious situation now all i picture is me driving by there in my car with my three kids if a cop thought that I might have a gun, I would so acquiesce.

It's nothing to me. They're just doing their job. If I'm at the pool and there's a bush there and it's that season that that bush is flowering and there's bees fucking everywhere, I don't come out with a can of Raid and spray down the fucking bush and say, well, I paid $6 to come into this public swimming pool, and so these bees have to die. How about fuck off? Yeah, but did she – because technically if you're walking down the street and a cop does ask you that and there's no reason for detainment. She says that she thinks he has a gun.

Oh, did she say that? I thought she said you got something in your back pocket there. Okay, keep going. Keep going. Okay. Okay. It looks like you're carrying a gun in your back pocket. I'm stopping to make sure you're carrying it properly.

Have you ensured that it's not a firearm? Pause. Pause. Okay. Jeff Baco, this is the problem with people. They just read into things. Sevan is against the Second Amendment. You heard it first here, folks.

No, I'm totally fine with it. She says she wants to make sure he's carrying it properly. Yeah. You notice how my judgment changed? Because I was like, well, no, she technically didn't say it. And then we played the rest of the video, and it played out exactly how it was supposed to for him to be detained lawfully. Right. Yeah. Okay. Keep going. Yep. My bad. the rest of the video and it played out exactly how it was supposed to for now hurt him to be detained lawfully right yeah okay keep going yep my bad all right no you keep turning so i can't see it you don't have to be to me yeah you don't have to be a dick to me and so he says you're

being one to me okay and she was not being a dick to him she was not being a dick to him first of all she's the fucking cop that doesn't mean you bow down to her that means she's working yeah she's working the streets why can't you just give him or her just a little bit of fucking leniency and the fact that they're just doing their job and give them the benefit of the doubt that they're they're trying to keep the street safe what about this oh uh oh yes yes ma'am i'm gonna turn around slowly it's just my walking cane i appreciate you for keeping the street safe what about that much better outcome in that scenario what about that and thank you ma'am for keeping the street safe can i get your phone number you got

a nice rack on you. Probably not that place. I can see your rack through your bulletproof vest. Okay. Let's go on. No, sir. I'm doing my job. Am I detained? Yeah, you are.

What's your name and date of birth? It does not matter. Yes, sir, it does. Do you have a crime? Would you like me to put you in here? He's right here. All right. Don't. Where put you in here? Call your supervisor, please. He's right here. All right. Don't you...

What did she stop you for? For a walking stick. Sir... And it could look like a weapon. She asked you to release it, okay? Now she's asking me for her ID. I don't need the ID. That's a reasonable articulated suspicion.

And in her... That I had committed a crime and committing a crime or it's not to do a crime sir and her suspicion was that you were armed okay and she's asking for your id well now she has verified that I am not armed so there is no I do have my ID but you don't need it okay pause so at this point they could have easily have let him go at this point they could easily let him go okay it's a stick they could have just let him go well they still haven't searched him so if there's some sort of somebody that called that witnessed him with the gun even though they maybe uh mistaken it in the back pocket he could still have one

fair enough fair enough okay uh it does not look like a police state. Not not in the slightest. No, not even. I mean, he started off by being rude to her right off the bat. He was confrontational. You know, Aaron Cairo is coming on, ladies and gentlemen, is coming on. Oh, yeah. Him and Daniel Brandon are coming. OK, go ahead. Action. Hi there. Okay, pause. Sometimes these cop videos are taken out of context, but in this case, they literally just arrested a guy. You dick fuck. We don't even know if they arrested him. You dumb shit, Matt Walsh.

These officers need to be fired immediately. excuse for this oh really they need to be fired because they pulled over a guy who's cantankerous for all they know they smell alcohol on his breath yeah really they should be arrested themselves when there's a total clear-cut case of abuse of power no dude you're fucking abusing your fucking power and you're spending your your you're spending your moral equity i just tried that out for size like this we thank you like this we need to make an example out of our offenders oh my god this dude is this this dude has swung so far to the fucking what what is wrong with matt was also has the woman cop ever seen a gun before and now he's just now this is just ridiculous yes yeah ridiculous how in the world did she make a mistake as a walking stick for

a firearm you are a fucking ding dong what kind of firearm did she think he was carrying he doesn't even have all the information that the that the officers have how would he even you know what i mean like there could be a whole context behind it somebody called identified him saw him earlier he was acting irate like there's so much information that we don't have uh putting handcuffs on on someone doesn't not mean arrest i put plenty of people in handcuffs simply to make situations safe yeah exactly that's for officer safety until they could search him figure out what's going on and maybe let him calm down a little bit elise car riddell brandon your wife doesn't count fair fair uh you guys in the car poor old man just minding his own business

and getting harassed by police i don't't see it that way. How do you – Hey, do you see that too? Do you see that too? That's how liberals think, by the way. That's how I was raised. Like if you have a house cleaner, it's like, oh, that poor Mexican lady. But this is because he's old. So Jeff puts the word poor in there.

Poor old man. Like you're better. Like you're – Jeff, you need to be on this show. I should pay you. You're so – you just throw up the alley this show i should pay you you're so you just throw up the alley oops alley oops also too if you go to the beginning she started nicely hi there can i talk to you for a moment like she was there wasn't no there was no aggression on on her part and then he made it confrontational immediately uh this is a good comment acid roads but cops

didn't see anything wrong or suspicious happening in all of 2020 riots. You're never going to please them. I think of you as a poor old man, too. Fair enough. Scroll down just a little bit. The guy is actually legally blind, and that's his walking stick. Tampa, Florida. Two deputies in Columbia County are under investigation after they arrested a blind man for carrying a walking stick they believed to be a gun. Body cam video showed the encounter between James Hodge and the two deputies on Halloween as they approached him on suspicion he was armed.

Hodge said he was out walking earlier that morning to get to jury duty, but it was canceled. The Columbia County Sheriff's Office said it was aware of the incident and that the sheriff mark hunter was troubled after watching the video the sheriff's office launched an administrative investigation into the incident on november 3rd well i would like to know what he was arrested for maybe priors if police violations are sustained at the conclusion of that investigation appropriate action will be taken while we understand the frustration the concern associated with this event please know we are working to resolve this matter as quickly as possible i mean to keep going keep keep scrolling down fair enough way out way out of line on the police officer's part

and the guy had every right to be irritated and snarky not way out of line and of course he had the right to be irritated and snarky. Of course he did. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Yeah. When she realized it was just a walking stick and the other officer did as well, they should have, uh, it should have been the end of it.

Okay, sir. We just wanted to make sure it wasn't a weapon. Thank you. Clarify. I agree. I agree. You could have stopped there.

Lawsuit. Great. Good. Good one. Deva. I put the American flag in there too it's um i saw this and hope he gets the justice he deserves like what he fucking has to put his hand out and have it slapped with a ruler for talking to police officers that way cops like these make it hard for good cops out there but

we get a little carried away with it huh i just it's it's i i just don't know what matt walsh is doing it's so disappointing seven did you work as the person recording the side effects of medicine for commercials talking at a speed i need to look oh okay sorry i get i get wound up i know that's a that's a good observation i appreciate appreciate the feedback i was actually thinking about trying to talk slower i like the energy i'm competing with andrew hiller uh look at this um look at number one on our live calling notes i i watched this video like 10 times i i don't want to tell you that this video aroused me this is an old one and it's like recently started repopulating again oh you saw this before i've seen this like a long time ago but i just

recently started seeing it again i don't want to say i was aroused by it because that would be too far, but I – it's fascinating to me. I mean I'm moved by it somehow, maybe not in my pants directly, but I'm definitely moved by it. Okay. What's the title of the – what's it say up at the top? No, can you scroll down in the – okay. You know you've made it when okay here we go the wonder woman one is crazy here we go oh so see how she bit her lip right there oh you better turn the music off we're fucked okay here we go

this this lip biting thing is that really a tell when if aaron cairo comes on and i go this, this lip biting thing. Is that really a tell when, if Aaron Cairo comes on and I go, I mean, I think it is like, it's more than just like a lip biting. That's, that's a whole demeanor there.

Wonder woman, wonder woman looks like she's about to explode. Look at her. Then she snaps out of it. Oh. Yeah. Gather your shit. Yeah, that's definitely flirtatious.

So good. Aaron Cairo Braille is to skateboarding what buttery bros are to CrossFit, in my opinion. I'm a fan of both, but there are subsets of both communities that don't like their vanilla approach. Curious how Aaron feels. Well, maybe I should show you this then. Will you pull up Aaron Cairo's most recent post? Let's see what you think about this one, Mr. Jack Sutherland.

let's see what you think about this one mr jack sutherland i don't i don't um i think he brings a lot of energy to it and his goal is to is is for introduction to skateboarding his goal is to make skateboarding the largest sport in the largest sport in the world uh oh no is that braille or is that aaron's no it is i think it's this one oh okay maybe it's this one it's like the audio overlay okay yeah well you push play listen to this this caught me so off guard listen to this. And now you are coming after me because of my privilege. But maybe you're right. Maybe I am privileged.

Because if I was born with your attitude, I never would have made it either. I quit my job. Let's hear it. Listen one more time. Let's listen one more time. I quit my job. Listen to this. You called me crazy. I started a business and you said it was stupid. And that business,

it went under and you said, I told you so. So I started another one and you said, some people just never learn, but that business took off. And now you are coming after me because of my privilege. But maybe you're right. Maybe I am privileged. Because if I was born with your attitude, I never would have made it either. There's nothing vanilla about that at all. I'm dying, Seve. I'm dying, damn dying damn savvy get out from under your rock is he referring to maybe like a live show oh no or maybe um because the lip bite because i didn't

i didn't know the lip bite meant uh yeah you're probably correct wonder woman is so hot yeah it really she really is out of control. Here we go. I can't feel that. Women are so powerful. If I bite my lip, people think I'm about to fart. Yeah, women are so, it's so, it's crazy. Yeah, that is dope, right?

That is dope. Yeah, who is he talking to? Yeah. Who is he talking to? It's a great question. I didn't expect to see that on his feed at all. At all. What time are you leaving? Seven. seven uh number two freedom of speech we'll just go through a little bit of live call and show while we wait for mr uh aaron to show up no no no hate on aaron he gave me plenty and plenty and plenty of uh of warning uh jason whitlock you all think they're silencing kairi over a tweet about a boring confusing documentary kairi is being silenced to let all the other bought and paid

for negros know they are not allowed to think for themselves sharing alex jones and refusing the vax are the real problem and and this is just the lack of freedom of speech it's it's And this is just the lack of freedom of speech. It's – we have to stop. We have to let people talk. I think Elon's going to do it. Did you see – they asked Biden about that today, if Elon needs investigating. Really? What is that? Did he even know what the answer or the question was he actually answered it he said it needs to be looked at i'm not saying it needs to be investigated it needs to be looked at so uh number four deadlifting look at this one these are three deadlifts i saw pop into my feed

this week i would like to share them all with you The final one we're going to see is a listener of the show, watcher of the show, and I would consider him a friend. Okay, this one's called Pull It No Matter What. Do we need volume for these or is it going to be music that'll... I don't know. No, either way.

Sure, I don't know. Okay, roger that. If it plays music, I'll go. Okay, roger that. If it plays music, I'll go. Deadlifting 135? That's amazing, right? I've seen a lot of weird deadlifting shit. I've never seen anyone spit like that.

Yeah, she's definitely throwing up there. I don't know if that's a little more than spit. How incredible is it that Fetterman won Pennsylvania? Hey, I read in the comments it only makes common sense. So if you have common sense, Bruce, then you would understand that. Number two deadlift. Number two. Number two.lift. Number two. Number two.

Here we go. Oh, shit. I opened a text I didn't want to open. thoughts yeah that's a little aggressive there i think they were that was a weird joke or something i don't know that's a good way to like tweak your back so that's a trap i've never seen that by the way that's a trap bar that's like on like a smith machine style track have you ever seen that no i haven't i've never ever seen that yeah it's like a why just so you never learn how to deadlift properly uh the appropriate way to use a trap bar all right let's watch one more time can we get audio again yeah

oh the dudes help him lift it i didn't notice that the first time let's hear what the guy says hold on keep it going i want to hear what the dad oh oh it's russian training all right now it makes sense as i say it all makes sense now mason mitchell some special people out there yeah this is this is a trap bar plus smith machine equals retarded the Sorry, the R word. Bring up Brian Shaw's latest YouTube video, 37. We need your opinion on what they are lifting. Okay, hold on. Let's watch

this last deadlift in this. And this is our own Jeffrey Birchfield. I think like he's a neurobiology professor at some college and CrossFitter. 500. Sorry, I can't do the cool music.

500 pounds. This is savage. Oh, wait a second. Wait, let's watch that again. Let's watch that again. He's pretty pumped. let's watch that again let's watch that again he's pretty pumped let's watch that again okay there was like a skip like almost like it wasn't real like it wasn't real you have to fact check this i have to fact check this did you see how like it missed? Yeah.

Well, you see it's, it's doing it right now. That's not my computer. That's the edit on the clip. Oh no, Jeff. Jeff,

we're going to, no, Jeff, no, no, no rep. Fake. Yes.

Fake is shit. Oh my God, Jeff. Oh shit. Oh, we're going to be the raw footage. Oh my goodness. it i'm gonna stick to youtube and send us the link uh you all see thor drop 700 pounds on himself back squatting oh no uh seven i will send you the video ah there he is. Send it to me.

Send it to me. Then I'm going to send it over to my lab at Hiller Fit for authentication. What's that called? The one police, the forensics for forensics. To get it verified. Kenneth, don't talk shit about Jeff. Too late. Too late.

Too late. Three minutes too late oh my goodness jeffrey send that shit over my goodness hey and jeff whoever edited that for you just fucking gut punch them just be like just walk up and it's just it's on youtube yeah i agree bryce the bar teleported until proven otherwise. And for all I know, there were some, he had some people lifting it on the ends, like in that little section. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, uh, uh, yeah. Yeah. Jeffrey's good at making fucking, uh, fake videos,

deadlifting videos. That's what he's good at. Reminds me of that dude that did one round of that thruster double under, then looped it. Remember that? Elise Carr, Redow, Savon seven let's see you deadlift 500 pounds okay wife let me frame it like that invite over a couple of my buddies and i'll you know what i'm gonna do 505 how about that look at all these fucking lovers of jeffrey birchfield coming to

his defense that's awesome jody lynn jeffrey's awesome great lift yep all everybody good stuff jeffrey kazavian joiner okay uh uh oh here we go awaiting on seven's 100 pound dumbbell snatch hey i got my shield up you keep those rocks keep throwing those rocks we got the 70 on the way it's only a matter of time yeah I did order a 70 it's on the way

uh Magnus Holmgren 3812 sorry for saying the wrong time stamp on the Brian Shaw video no problem uh can someone just put the link in the chat and we'll grab it and play it for everyone or let me see what is most recent video and what exactly are we yeah do i just type in uh brian brian shaw youtube yeah uh shaw strength

uh the grip gauntlet no kicked out of Planet Fitness with Jujimufu? Oh, that's three years ago. Hold on. What are you on the popular ones or something? Seven Hours Ago. Is Jujimufu's grip better than mine? Yeah, is that the episode? Is that the one? Oh, he said he time stamped it in the link.

What link? Time stamped. Oh. Oh, if you send it to my Instagram, there's no fucking way. What's the time code? I'm going there now. 38-12. Just drop it in the chat. I'm 38-05.

He said, yeah, it was that one. 38-12. Okay, here we go. I got it. You got it? Yeah, I got it. Bam. Here we go. I got it. You got it? Yep. Okay. Bam. Here we go. That's fair, yeah.

How much is that? 230 pounds? What did he say? Yeah, that's crazy. I'm going to pause it, though. It's going a little long. There you wow wow that's crazy that is crazy is that what you're talking about mag magnus i feel like that would instantly like strain my forearm and it wouldn't move it wouldn't move and i would strain my forearm yeah uh seven you going you getting mike penta on the affiliate series uh send me his instagram and my dms and i'll peep them i'll peep them jeff bako i saw brian sean in airport once which airport my kids um does he get two seats you think he? He makes Juju look like Sevan to normal people.

Fair. I'll take that as a compliment. Has he got the choir boys as his icon there? Did you see that icon? Oh, Johan Lopez? Yeah. Oh, no, no. Those are... Oh.

I think that's like some sort of military academy. He was probably a bad kid. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was in town for strong man event i did i did i did i did i saw braun shaw step on uh step on an airport once fair okay back to my back to my oh i gotta stop yes before i found it i i had you i was watching it i had it okay we we solved the riddle with Jeffrey Birchfield's deadlift. I'm glad we got to the bottom

of that. Let's look at... Oh! I wanted to tell you guys a story I don't know I'm not really fired up enough to tell it I thought of it the other day so someone sent me a link to this YouTube video that I made of Greg many, many, many years ago. And I don't know if I'd ever told the story, and I told someone the story, and they're like, have you ever told that story before?

And I'm like, no. Here comes the Glassman reference. Fucking Jeff. I saw that. I saw that too. I was like. Three, two, one. So basically what happened, it was 2000.

I think it was 2010. So 2009, I went and made this movie called Desert Runners. And it was going to require me to be gone for two weeks every single quarter. Hey, should we tell Aaron to reschedule? Deal. I mean, he still might. Yeah, it's been 30 minutes. But he said it was going to take a

little bit longer because then it's going to be a really long show for me okay let me text him yeah do you think it's rude i don't want to be rude i don't know i just would hate if he's like trying to jam home and he's like almost there you know and we're like hey let's reschedule okay i'm gonna see if i can i'm gonna see if i can i'm gonna see if i can what if i just call him yeah why, what if I just call him? Yeah, why not? What if I just call him? FaceTime him, just go all in on it.

Let me see. Let me see. I was looking up desert runners. I wonder if anybody's seen our house yet. You guys should definitely watch that. Oh, it hung up. I'll call him again. Yeah.

You can tell me he's live. Aaron. Hi. Hey. I got some. Yeah, I got this is Sevan. I got something I want to ask you. We're live on the air, by the way. I am so excited to have you on. I've got pages and pages of notes. And now I'm nervous that if I have you on now, I won't get to pick that wonderful brain of yours and go deep with you because we're rushed, but I don't want to lose you because you're such an epic get. So if we moved it to next week, would that be a dumb move? Could you give, advise me, give me some advises. Oh, you're cutting out there. Darn it. Let me, let me call you right back. I just got home.

Okay. Bye. Well, if he just got home, maybe he's going to jump on. I know, but here's the thing. I'm going to have to pee in fucking 60 minutes. Hit the commercial now. Yeah. So it was a 2010 crossfit game so in 2009 and at the end of 2009 i was

basically going to go i wanted to shoot these this movie called desert runners and i was actually going to direct it and shoot it and i had to go to the four gnarliest deserts on the planet it was the atacama in chile it was antarctica was coldest desert. Atacama was the driest. I went to the Sahara and I went to the Gobi in China. Yeah, there's the movie. And I asked them and I asked Tony Budding, who is the media director at the time, if I could do that. And he said, I can't remember what he said. I can't remember what he said. And he said, I can't remember what he said. I can't remember what he said.

And my turnout was amazing. I had this thing where I turned in a video basically every single day. The consumption of content that was needed to keep CrossFit. Oh, look, there I am. That's you right there, yeah. And that's in the Sahara. That's in Egypt. That's cool. Just a cute little boy in my 30s.

Just a cute little boy in my 30s. And so I – they said I could – I think that they said I could do it. And then like two months later, I got a note from Lauren Glassman and Tony saying they wanted to meet me in Prescott, Arizona to have a talk. And I went out there, and actually it was just from Lauren. Lauren said, hey, will you come out here and talk to me? And I said, sure sure and when i got to the airport tony was on my flight i was like oh this is weird and then we drove from the airport together to lauren's house and basically they fired me they said hey you're no longer an employee of crossfit you you are um now a um a contractor i did not say a word they're like are you going to say anything

seven and i just went quiet i did oh here we go aaron hey hi so what was your question so my question is this i i'm really excited to talk to you i've done a ton of research i want to pick that wonderful brand of yours and i want to get get deep about skateboarding about life about passion and i'm thinking that and my show is live so i'm 37 minutes into it now and i'm afraid if you come on i'm afraid if you come on now i won't get enough time with you but you're such a good get that i don't want to drop the ball well the flight got delayed until 11 p.m okay so we have time okay would let me say let me dare i say is rescheduling would that just be stupid yeah i think so okay perfect here comes the link fuck that idea cross that off the list we'll see you in three minutes bye

it's off to a great start you want to go pee now yeah you want to run the commercial yeah you don't even have to want to do crossfit you don't have to want to be a coach you don't have to want to be a trainer if you just want the operating manual to your body, it's not just Forging Elite Fitness. It's the operating manual to the human genome. You'll take this CrossFit Level 1 seminar and you will walk away inspired. From the second you leave, your entire life will change. You will make significant changes to your life because you are excited. You will start tweaking with your diet. You will start tweaking with your diet. You'll

start tweaking with your movement. You'll start tweaking with who you hang out with. Everything will take a shift. For some people, it'll be massive. For some people, it'll be a little bit. No matter what, you'll move towards a better life. Everyone is going to sense it in you that you are more accountable, more personally responsible, happier, more helpful, more thoughtful human being. And you'll be nicer to look at. You might talk too much shit about CrossFit, but... Dude, why didn't you tell me to get a haircut? Hey, my hair is getting kind of long too uh we have a new commercial coming out yeah that's what i was gonna address those comments

and say don't you worry guys don't you worry why was someone saying that no someone's like can we get another commercial can we do a second one or yeah yeah yeah yeah we've got them on deck son commercials for days i you'll start tweaking? Sounds awful. Yeah, I meant twerking. I meant twerking. Thank you. Allison knows. I fell asleep to the show last night, round two.

Here we go. Yeah, that's good. A whisper. A whisper. So, basically, what happened was I i went out there they basically let me go and i i my my output was fucking insane at that point like i like i was i was making probably 50 of the content that was on dot com it was just fucking nuts i don't know someone can go back and look so they fired me and they told me that they would pay me per video so over the next year

i went and did those four two-week shoots in those countries making that movie desert runners and i turned in enough videos at dot com at the rate they were paying me to make three hundred and twenty thousand dollars, that was 2000. Just living at home with my mom, you know? Yeah. It's fucking. They didn't do the math on that one, huh? Yeah.

Yeah. And that year at the games, they were paying me $250 a video to turn in. And I remember when I had turned in like 27 videos, I called Leaf leaf that was the guy that did the publishing on the front end and I said hey, dude I've turned in 27 videos. We're only halfway through the week. You guys still want me to keep churning them out He goes, let me check with tony and he said yeah At that point I made another I don't know 27 videos 2010 crossfit games were over I think it was this was 2010 by the way it could have been 11 but but it was definitely in carson and the the when the games were over tony said how much do we owe you and i said you know whatever 64 times 250 and he wrote me this crazy fucking email back

with with someone else cc'd on it telling me don't be a fucking smart ass with me i can do the fucking math you just know it's completely inappropriate for us to pay you that much and i wrote back to him like hey dude i asked you guys if you wanted me to still make content it's only 250 a video i fucking crushed it like blah blah blah right yeah yeah so i decided i'm gonna go at this point i i know greg but i'm not like i'm not super close with him so i i go out to visit greg i'm like, I need to talk. I need to just to talk to the owner of the company and talk to Greg. And I go out to Greg's house. And at that time, him and Lauren were going through a divorce. So she had moved into a house a couple blocks away. And I went and visited Greg and we hung out for a day and I said, Hey, can I just stay here for 30 days and make a short documentary about you?

And he said, absolutely. And I got paid my money. And then I got fucking hired back. And it was all downhill from there. Look, I'm like an old man itching my ear. So did Greg disapprove it afterwards? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He bought me a new computer.

He got me a 12-pack a new computer he got me 12 pack of beer he got me every time like yeah it was it was it was insane but that's awesome um yeah that was that was a fat that was fascinating time and that and so someone sent me that that documentary is in the journal somewhere on youtube somewhere did they send you the link? Can you send it to me? I want to watch it. I do not believe it. Oh, Jeff. Oh, Jeff. I thought it was a great story. Did we send Aaron the link? Yeah. It's funny.

I was just thinking the same thing, but it's here in my inbox, and I see you on it too. I'm just going to text it to him as well. Okay, and be like, hey, I emailed it to you. Yeah. Oh, you did? You FaceTimed it? On accident.

I'm too old to FaceTime. Savon, what are you doing Friday and Saturday? What am I doing? Oh, I'm doing Zello games on Saturday. Is tomorrow Friday? No, tomorrow's Thursday. So we have Jason Grubb on tomorrow morning. Yep. And then the rest of the live calling show yep jeff is greg holy shit holy shit i was after a plot twist you're freaking

me out you're freaking me out uh live chat for zellos games yeah i assume it was funny people were liking the fact that we like called and like uh they just saw the whole thing and i'm like okay do i run the commercial go peanut like that whole thing and i was thinking to myself buckle up for this weekend guys if you enjoyed that you're gonna see the whole production unfold right in front of you just like that oh it's gonna be so wild yeah i'm trying to schedule a show with Tyler Watkins, Mike Halpin, and John Young, and Brian Friend. I guess the games released some new shit about how they're going to pick people to go to the games. And the boys have their fucking panties in a twist. They're like, hey, this might not be good at what they've done.

So I can't wait to dig into it. I love to see them all riled up i think um um bob eubanks and adrian went on with chase ingram and bob eubanks dave eubanks whatever is bob eubanks the host of some show prices Price is Right? Yeah. I think it's something like that. Mr. Spin, friend was pissed. Oh. And – I don't know.

Nice chair in the commercial, Sevan. Is that the one your mom stained and – oh, quiet. My mom has more man skills than me. That's funny. My mom sanded and re-stained all my shit. Anyway, so I guess the Talking Elite Fitness guys also had Dave Eubanks on. And so I want to listen to all that before we do the show. So maybe I have to stay up late tonight because I want to have those guys on tomorrow.

Tomorrow evening? Can you hear me? I can. I can hear you. We do the show. So maybe I have to stay up late tonight because I want to have those guys on tomorrow. Tomorrow evening. Can you hear me? I can. We can hear you. Okay. Why isn't my camera working, though? What's happening?

Oh, you have a nice microphone, Aaron. Yeah. I'm trying. I'm trying. Yeah, you're killing it, buddy. I can just tell. Let's see. It was working so good.

If you go to the settings, it should give you the options there. Look at that exclamation mark he has in front of his camera. It's so daunting. Ladies and gentlemen, Aaron Cairo, 2005. In 2005, he published his first video to YouTube.

Oh, 2005. 2005, I thought it was 2006. It was a Hail Mary. Don't ruin my story, Aaron. It was 2005. It was a Hail Mary pass. He had just lost his sponsors and one last but last desperate look up to the heavens he put a video on youtube

with a bunch of bunch of vintage skateboarding shots oh shit Hey. Oh, shit. It's frozen. Okay. Bye-bye. Awesome. We're getting close, though. Kenneth DeLapp, 2005. Good year.

I was a sophomore. Is your sophomore year in high school? Wow. Wow, Kenneth. Yeah, I know. That's what I was thinking. Jeff just got out of jail. Jeff just served the nickel.

Aaron Cairo's got the Mississippi internet. No, this dude's in Silicon Valley. This guy's just right up the street from me. He's got the good shit. They pipe it in straight from internet heaven. He got the good shit. We it in straight from internet heaven he got the good shit we're so close to the cloud yeah yeah he lives under the cloud literally uh 2005 puts this video on youtube after losing his sponsors as kind of like a last ditch effort contemplating retirement which is better than

suicide retirement as a professional skateboarder always a better option and you guys have to understand what youtube was like in 2005 like if you got 500 views it was nuts yeah cat videos galore yeah you couldn't believe that someone was looking at your stuff and this video became the most popular skate okay fuck this show no it's good i still still relevant oh my goodness it was like i was in the middle of a blow job and our parents came home and he ran out of the room and I just felt this cock. Is that the garage opening? Yeah.

Oh, shit. Oh, my God. Jeff Baco, this production quality never disappoints. I hope Jeff. Here's what I think. I think Jeff has a bottle of booze. No, no. He's a recovering alcoholic.

He's an AA. But he's got a pack of cigarettes he's or something and like a a box of um uh um what goldfish a cigarette a box of goldfish and a tall glass of seven up with ice in it that's what i pictured do you see it like the real big box like the carton and then he has to have a two liter of sprite because if he's got ice in it you know he poured it from the fridge into its own glass it's not canned yes he's like a two liter butter oh i'm the drunk one not jeff all right you know my buddy mendoza that you met yes yes yeah we always joke about it and we, man, if we would have got on the vlogging

or just following him around, number one, we guaranteed that he wouldn't have lived through senior year of high school and like on, but we were like, that show would have just blown up. Like if just a couple of us just followed him out the camera, I used to make and take skate videos of my buddies and I would compile them for sponsor me. And then I would go to the local skate shops and I would get them sponsored because I was never the best skater.

I wasn't the worst, but I wasn't like the best. But a couple of the guys I skated with that still skate to this day were like incredible, right? Like just that next tier level. And that Mendoza guy was kind of big to be a great skater, wasn't he? No, he wasn't a good skateboarder. He just would have been drunken entities.

That's all his would have been. One time he was eating a piece of pizza and we were in Santa Barbara and you know this because you were like this and we were on the cliff and it was at halloween and i don't know how crazy halloween was when you were there but it was just crazy on all this i mean it's just the streets just nuts right and he's walking and he's walking with a bunch of girls and stuff and we're going down the by the hill cliff and he just falls off the side of a cliff oh people died like that every year yeah and everybody's in all these girls start screaming everything's nuts and then he just like claws his way back up and it's like fine it's insane aaron you're much more handsome on your instagram

you're much more handsome on your instagram oh yeah thanks You're much more handsome on your Instagram. Oh, yeah, thanks. Why does this not work all of a sudden? It's so weird. Okay, one more thing, and then we'll just use the regular. Not the good camera. Oh, oh, oh. Good on you.

Wow, I'm impressed. He's using the, what's that piece of equipment called? I should set mine up too. I think, did we use that once when we were in Newport doing a podcast, Sousa? It's that link, cam link. He's using his cam link. Oh, yeah. So you could use like a nicer camera to stream it.

Aaron's looking for that shallower depth of field. Yeah, I set this whole thing up, and it looks so good. And I used it in an earlier podcast. And this is what it is. It's the exact same camera, but a different, like the same model, but a different actual camera. And it just doesn't work. Oh, you know what it is there's something in the menu that you have to is it a sony

what kind of camera is it aaron no it's a canon there's probably something in the menu that you have to go into and switch it you want t8i okay there's something in the menu you have to go to and tell it you want it to um uh shell out its its data um through hdmi there's something in the menu you have to go to and tell it you want it to shell out its data through HDMI. There's going to be a mini HDMI. Menu from StreamYard? No, in the menu of the camera settings. Yeah. At least in the Sonys, you have to do that.

You have to tell it to, hey, talk to the HDMI, and then it knows to send that image to the computer. Or else it'll just send it to the back, the screen you have on the back. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And the camera talk begins. I think Aaron might be quite the camera buff too. Yeah.

I didn't know how to use these but this one is being tricky have you thought about switching to sony i think it's better for video to be honest not better for stills but on which one the sony have you ever thought about switching to sony On which one? The Sony. Have you ever thought about switching to Sony? Somebody's calling it.

Oh, yeah, we use Sonys. We usually shoot with Sony. Your mic sounds incredible, though. Yeah, his mic's great. Yeah. Okay, everyone, 20 burpees while we wait for Aaron to show his face. Well, just to conclude that story. Sorry.

No, you're good, man. Take your time. So Mendoza crawls back up the hill and is sitting in this lawn chair trying to gather himself after he fell off the cliff. And there was like these two dogs that kept just like hanging out by him. And we were like, why are these dogs hanging out by Mendoza? And as he comes, hey, there he is. Why were the dogs hanging out by him? Okay. I don hey there he is why were the dogs hanging out by okay i don't know if you want me to finish or not so the dogs are hanging out and then he kind of like

comes to a little bit and he's like halfway asleep whatever fell off the cliff and then he reaches into his pocket he realized he had a whole entire slice of pizza still in there oh wow that he's left at and then he just turns and looks and then just starts eating the pizza falls off the cliff and puts a piece of pizza in his pocket we just thought he was the dog whisperer but turned out he just had a piece of pizza in the pocket and glad we got it working oh i think his internet connection is fucked because he was sounding like a robot a little bit and now he's frozen in one position destiny uh kenn DeLapp 300 episodes

Sevan would be flipping out look how chilly he is oozing confidence well thank you a fancy camera thing and still looks like a Sony phone from the late 90s

I don't think he's using the fancy oh we're back we got movement Daniel Garrity Sevan is a legend this is a shit show but we can't turn it off i love you too uh aaron cairo needs to upgrade to a 2400 bod modem Wow. I think I had one of those. I never got used, but I think I had one of those.

God, that's old school Jeffrey. Spiegel, get out of here. Don't you do that to us. Oh my goodness. Douchebag. Come on, Spiegel. Oh my goodness. I can't.

This guy's so freaking cool. I can't. I can't hang up you heard it i called him and he's like yeah don't reschedule i saw you i saw your youtube channel you're lucky oh my god oh my god oh my god you know what i found the other day that we just talked about relatively recently tell me my stuff my starbucks apron oh wow hey that could be a good prop someday yeah yeah when we would bring in the eggnog we would wear the goggles when we would be at the steam bar. And every now and then someone would come and laugh and they would like kind of look at you.

They'd be like, why are you wearing the goggles? And we'd be like, ma'am, there was nothing, nothing funny about a retina burn. And they would be like, what? Look at it. Even Miss Medeiros is fucking getting in there throwing rocks at us. Drive to Boise, nothing but time. Oh throwing rocks at us drive to boise nothing but time oh maybe she's driving a boise yeah yeah she is she is okay here we go in connection fair enough we're just gonna use this camera success that's fine welcome to the show welcome to the show no thank you hey where are you is that is that you, where are you? I'm at home in Oakland, California.

And is that, uh, um, that's, that's your, uh, going to be your podcasting room right there. Yeah. I've been trying to set this up. That's why I was like, I should do a couple podcasts and do the reverse flow of the podcast so that when I start a podcast, that's why I'm like, I got to get my camera working. What's happening with this thing. Right now, this is just like the from the computer, which is terrible, but whatever. It's what I use.

I'm 600. I'm 600 shows. And maybe maybe I'll take that as advice right right off the bat from you. Well, we have like 500 cameras, right? So I hooked this up because I looked online and they said, yeah, you just connect a cable goes into the computer. And it's so weird because the other one just worked. No problem.

T8i same exact camera. Um, but then they were like, Oh, we want this camera to shoot at blah, blah, blah. So then I took it back that I swear this thing probably hasn't been used in five years. And then I started using it. Then they're like, Oh, we need to use that. And then, so then, then I grabbed the other one,

same exact model, but for some reason it just doesn't want to work. You said you use that other one before the, yeah. How long was that show that you did hours? Oh, interesting. Cause the Sony one had like a one hour time limit and it would always turn

off. So I'm like, okay, until I crack the code on that, I'm not messing with that. It will do that. Like if you're recording, I think this one has a 30 minute record limit, but the way that we did with that one, it wasn't a live show. So I was like recording my audio on garage band and then I just sent it to the person who was doing the podcast. Oh, cool. Totally different. Yeah. But then, yeah, sometimes I'd have to stop and start the camera.

Happy birthday. You turned 39 in September. Yeah, thanks. Uh-oh. What? I don't know. Just the way you said, yeah, thanks. 39?

I mean, yeah, it's good. 39. I think about it a lot. I was just thinking about it earlier i was like i'm gonna be 40 i was thinking i need to like make a big video part for 40 film something over 5 million subscribers on youtube with the goal of becoming the greatest spreader the purpose of braille is to make new skateboarders. Yes. And push skateboarding all over the world. You had it to be your goal to introduce skateboarding to more people than

anyone else on the planet. And I think you've done it. Yeah. The goal very specifically is even more specific than that. It's to make skateboarding the biggest sport in the world, which might literally be an impossible task. But I feel like you have to make skateboarding the biggest sport in the world, which might literally be an impossible task, but I feel like you have to sort of set the goal into an impossible task. Yeah. Because, you know, starting the YouTube channel is like, okay, let's hit the biggest YouTube channel. Okay. We did that. Then it was like, ah, it's kind of a bummer. You know, it's all these like inspirational quotes. It's like, enjoy the journey. And it's not the destination because

once you hit the goal you're kind of like oh what do we do now it's so true though you really gotta make a bigger goal bigger goal but yeah soccer is the biggest sport in the world okay just for reference and it's massive and if you look at where skateboarding is and the number of sports it's very very very small like i think pickleball and like badminton um is bigger dude pickleball is like everywhere now they're like shutting down tennis courts to put pickleball courts what is going on i don't know i just randomly saw we were skateboarding in ber Berkeley and there was all these people playing pickleball. And then, yeah, the world is an interesting place for sure. When I think of skateboarding, I think of it as sports. I think of it, it's tantamount to what physics is to studying and what the violin is to music.

It is an incredibly steep learning curve. It is incredibly difficult. There's, how do you, do you see it like that? Is that accurate? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I think that that is the biggest thing why skateboarding hasn't grown. I think there's like several factors

and I have like this broad scale like thing because you look at other things like soccer or basketball or football, like first of all they're part of the school system so they're part of like an already existing structure and so people go into school and then they're asked like when i went to school went to public high school i was asked do you want to play basketball or football you have like options right skateboarding is not an option it makes me wonder what if it was right right what if every skate

park what if every school had a skate park and a skateboarding program and i just think these things are so interesting to me because the skateboard industry is very you know well first of all people always like the skateboard industry hates you aaron you know i get things like that and then i kind of go well who is the industry? Cause I thought it was just a bunch of kids riding skateboards. Is that, I've never heard anything like that. Is that really true? There's, there's, that's a thought out there that the industry would hate you because you're pushing people onto skateboards? Yes. There is that kind of, there is kind of a funny it's a very interesting yeah it's just a very interesting scenario like how do i describe it um you know there's like

this called like core skateboarding right like okay so you were telling a little bit of my story um when i put my video on youtube and that blew up. So I moved to San Francisco to be a professional skateboarder. And being a professional skateboarder means there's a very specific set of rules. And there's a very exact way that you are to do this. You have many video parts, you have photos in magazines. There's a very like, there's no written rules, but they're all on written rules. And the companies that sort of run the industry, which would, I guess, make up what they're quote unquote, like the skateboard industry. But it's kind of hard to pin like, who's the skateboard industry?

Who's making the decisions kind of thing, right? And then when the internet came along, that sort of changed everything. The internet changed the whole world. And I always use the example of like Blockbuster. Not that the skateboard industry as it is, the core industry is like going down or going anywhere or going badly. Um, but Blockbuster was this big, you know, you would have never, you know, Friday night, you're going to Blockbuster. Now I'm really aging myself right no i remember that i remember that you could pick out

one movie sebon eric you get two you got an a it had that distinct smell yeah yeah and i think there's even like a story where like maybe netflix pitched blockbuster and was like you should stream movies and they were like that will never happen, and they offered to sell to them too. Offered to sell to them, that's right. And then where's Blockbuster now? Friday night's coming up. I want to go to Blockbuster, right? I'm just making the point that the internet

threw a lot of change into things. And because I grew on the internet and built a company on the internet, I'm sort of looked at as like went in alternate direction from other very established paths. Let's just put it that way. And the people that are running those very established paths may or may not agree with the way that I do things. In fact, sometimes I like to look at the established path and go, what are they doing? They're going right. Sweet.

I'm going left. You think you're contrarian at heart? What does that mean? You know exactly what you said. Like when someone says no, you're like, you know, someone says, don't look, you look. Someone says, yeah, I think so. Sometimes I use it as like a little you know skateboarding is also very mental and it's not that i'm into this thing of like oh i want to like make somebody

wrong or feel a certain way or anything like that it's just that like i don't know it's just kind of like a i don't know it's a funny thing but sometimes i'll be trying a trick and i'll be struggling with it where i can't land it i want want to make myself land it. And my friends will be like, Aaron, you can do it. You can do it. And then I'll be like, okay, tell me I can't do it. And then they say, Aaron, you can't land this. And then I will. Right. And it's just kind of like a funny thing, but yeah, I tried. I tried. i also think that people think that i like hate the skateboard industry or whatever i love skateboarding all parts of it love the skateboard industry any company all the rad skaters everybody doing awesome tricks i love it and that's what was i

was one of those kids trying to come up in that arena and then i failed coming up in that arena. And then I just went, Oh, that's a path. Let me can take that path. You know, it's that a famous quote on the wall of the schools, the path West taken, right? Less taken road, less traveled. Yeah. Yeah. The road, less traveled. There you go. And you talk about that in your TEDx video that there was a, there was a, uh, uh, something written on your high school wall saying, take the path less traveled and the second you're like hey i'm gonna take the path less traveled everyone's like are you fucking crazy yeah they say don't do that yeah don't do that yeah when i told my wife my wife i tell this story in every interview i swear when i told my wife i'm gonna quit my valet job i was working valet parking cars i'm gonna quit my valet job. I was working valet parking cars. I'm going to quit my valet job and

go in on this YouTube thing. She had like a very serious two hour, never do that. That is the worst idea you could possibly imagine. Um, where did you meet your wife? I met her at a party, Halloween party. And you're still with her still with her. Yeah. We've been married for 12 years. Wow. 12 years ago, you were parking. Wait, 12 years ago, you were parking cars. Yes. Well, let me see. Now, we've been actually married 12 years.

We've been together 15. So 15 years ago, 15, 14 years ago, I was parking cars. Where were you parking them? At this downtown restaurant in San Francisco. I forget the name of it right now. Oh, Wayfair Tavern. Shout out, Wayfair Tavern. Is that Pier 39 down there? No, it's on Sacramento Street. Okay. It's like near Sacramento and what's the name of it? Montgomery.

It's, it's, I have a really funny story about that also. Please. It's, um, I'm gonna, I'm terrible with names. And I park cars at the double tree in Walnut Creek, California. Oh, really? I don't think it's a double tree anymore, but there was a hotel there on main street. Oh yeah. Oh, really? I don't think it's a Doubletree anymore, but there was a hotel there on Main Street.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's this actual celebrity chef who runs this restaurant. And the restaurant is amazing. If you ever get the chance, go to Wayfair Tavern. Super good restaurant. And yeah, I'm at this. I have to park the cars. And then I open the door for everybody coming into the restaurant.

So I have this celebrity chef. And every time he comes in, I'll park his car and I I open the door for everybody coming into the restaurant. So I have this celebrity chef and every time he comes in, I'll park his car and, and I'll open the door for him. And then a couple of years go by and, you know, my YouTube channel is doing well. I quit the valet job and I just do on YouTube full time. And then I'm at, um, I'm at, his name is Tyler Florence, Tyler Florence, shout out Tyler Florence. Super good dude. And then I'm at, um, my booth at VidCon, you know, VidCon is that's the YouTube kind of conference. Yeah. Big YouTube conference. So YouTube says, Hey, you can come do a booth, blah, blah, blah. So I'm sitting there at my booth and this guy comes up to me and he says, Hey, I'm a huge fan. And I said, you are Tyler Florence. And he was like, yeah. And then I was like, I got to tell you this crazy story. I was valet parking at your restaurant for like years. And I just, it was probably like, had been like two or three years since I had parked there.

And then the look on his face was like, Oh no, did I be, he was always a really good guy, such a good dude. Um, but that was a skateboarder. I don't think he's even a skater, but it's, he's a chef. He's a celebrity chef. You know, he has several restaurants and he has like pro model pots and pans, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Dang. What a small world. Um, but yeah, he must be skateboarding a little bit or watching. Well, he was watching our videos for sure. You know, maybe his kids are getting into skateboarding. It's hard to say, but whatever it was, he was watching our videos. And then that for me was

such a like, Whoa, like reality shift. Like, wow, I really did something here. Tyler Florence, I used to open the door for him at his restaurant and now he's telling me that he loves my videos. That's cool. as kind of a latch ditch effort. You've told a story where your sponsors kicked you to the curb. Yeah. And it was kind of like a Hail Mary. Okay, I'm just going to put this on YouTube. And it almost sounded like you had started thinking of other directions, maybe filmmaking.

When that hit 350,000, were you just completely, and that was the most popular video in the history of YouTube for skateboarding at that point. Were you just completely, and that was the most popular video in the history of YouTube for skateboarding at that point. Were you just completely beside yourself? It was like a point of sheer confusion because it wasn't even like an intentional, like a Hail Mary kind of implies you're trying to do something smart. You were taking your clothes to the Goodwill. It was a total give up.

You were taking your clothes to the goodwill. It was a total give up. It was like, it was like, you know, the quote at the beginning of the video is when there's nothing left to burn, you set yourself on fire. It was my version of like, let's say I had a restaurant and then it totally failed. And then I just dumped gasoline on it and set it on fire. And then something in that fire went, okay, there's something here so yes i was beside myself i was very very confused because i had all at the same time like more recognition than i'd ever had ever you know coming up trying to come up in the skateboard industry is the hardest thing ever literal hardest thing ever there's not a lot of money to be made it's you know you know, you go to the, it's very, very tough and the competition is extremely tough. And yeah, so you're trying to get exposure. And I'm also at this point, sort of a very shy person. I've clearly gotten over that over the years. Did you get over that? Yeah. I mean, I've made 5,000 videos. Well, I didn't know if you were going to be like, hey, it's still a struggle every time.

Yeah. No, it's not. It's not at all. Like, I just got over it so much. Yeah, so, yeah. Yeah, so I was in this sort of shocked, confused feeling like, what do I do now? No validation from the industry.

Matter of fact, the fuck you get out. And then all of a sudden the people have spoken. Yeah. But what's interesting also is I was riding for a skateboard company called Real, which is owned by Deluxe Distribution, which is also tied into Thrasher Magazine. And the Thrasher Magazine is the biggest, best, most bad-ass skateboard company magazine there is. And they're sort of running the whole thing.

And that part of the reason why that video went viral and get this as super weird is they put it on the front page of their website. Oh yeah. So it was like, it was the same feeling of like, I just got kicked off. Basically this company, they're sort of like sister companies working together. Right. Right. I just gotten kicked off and then they put it on their website. Then it goes viral. And I was like writing for bones as well. And I remember bones put up bones wheels. Remember they,

they put up a poll, I think on like Facebook. This is real old school, right? Maybe even MySpace. MySpace. Yeah. They put up this poll. They showed my video part and then they're like, should Aaron Cairo be a sponsored skateboarder or professional skateboarder or whatever they said. And it was like 90% of people said yes. yes, it was like very highly rated, but they never did anything. It's kind of an interesting thing because a lot of it is like who you know and all that kind of stuff, which is I, now that I've run my own business and I look back, I kind of

go to myself, would I have put myself on at that point? I don't know. Would it be the right thing? Like should real skateboards have made me a that point i don't know would it be the right thing like should real skateboards have made me a pro i don't know probably not right probably not you know maybe it all just happened to fall into place the exact way it should have and we ended up where we ended up and i like the thing that i hope is not that like, I created this altar thing that like, and that's where like this contrarian thing can kind of come into play. Like I don't, I'm not trying to like counter man or counteract or be contrarian to the established pattern. I'm trying

to just bring more people in like, right. Right. That is good for everyone. But I think, you know, I haven't done a lot of these interviews and I haven't done these talks and I haven't really had a lot of time to just put all this information out there. So I think a lot of people think I might be like, ah, down with those guys, whatever. I'm not like that at all. I haven't heard that from anyone but um is that original video on this station yeah 100 it's the very first video on here if you type into the search bar aaron cairo braille skateboarding video part what if I just went to videos and ordered them by order? That probably works. Oh,

I'm over here. Let's see. Uh, if you go oldest, they've changed everything here. I know it's madness. Why did they do that? Okay.

I should have just listened to you. What, wait, where is the, uh, just go to that search bar. You got it. Okay.

Aaron Cairo, braille skateboarding and then what was the other part you wanted me to put in that'll probably do it just that let's see what comes up down go down i can't believe you put a video up in 2005 i I think it was 2006, but we'll see here. Okay. Okay, add to the end of that video part. Oh, yeah, you said that. I have too many videos. Okay, so the third one down. One, two, boom, right there.

God, that is incredible. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And how many videos are now on the site between four and five thousand and i have two channels too um why did you split channels why do you have two channels good do you regret doing that no i i wanted to make one it was more sort of a community channel and then it kind of just became like sort of a team channel um but no i don't regret doing it it's good oh you're right december 28 2005 december 28 2005 yeah wow for some, I kept thinking it was 2006. Okay. December 28, 2005. Well, it's three days. You were three days.

Yeah. And I got that 2005, I think, from your TED Talk. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's the video right there. And that started it all. Yeah. Crazy world.

Could you even monetize YouTube back then? No. That was the other thing. It was like, okay, I got this video. It got seen by a lot of people. But what do you do with that? What do you do with that now? I guess you try and get another sponsor and try and go the good old traditional route again. And I had basically the same exact thing happened. Got a new sponsor. They just randomly kicked me off. Didn't even tell me. Just cut ties. The new one. Yeah. Yeah.

And how long did that last? Probably like four months. Man. And just all of a sudden the deposits stop. Not even deposits because a sponsor means no money money it just means they give you free boards oh shit that's what i'm saying it's a rough road and and from there what is the development did you have the name braille then let's see uh in 2005 no um and then i didn't so then a friend of mine said you know you could make money on youtube and i said what does that even mean said yeah just monetize it and blah blah i didn't really understand it but i thought instantly thought

that's like shooting fish in a barrel it's the easiest thing ever i've only made one video at 350 000 views maybe i could make more and then i I just did just made a bunch and I really shotgunned everything I could think of, made every kind of video I could think of. And then I made the tutorials and those started going well, really well. The views I made was the kickflip video. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The first one that really did well, I'm not sure if it was the first tutorial i ever made but i really planned that out i was very strategic and then that did four million views or something like that and then i was like um i think i found my calling in life teach skateboarding could you monetize at that point yeah okay yes sir what year did

that happen the modernization of youtube do you remember my guess man it's been so many years i can't even believe it's 2022 and i'm almost 40 i still feel 13 yeah me, me too. I feel 10. I literally just got done riding skateboards and filming all day. Like stupid. Well, thank you for coming on here. I really appreciate it. Do you remember what year that they allowed modernization? Um, I don't, I was thinking my best guess would be maybe 2010. And would you been part of that beta? Like, do they reach out to someone like you and they're like, okay, we want you to test this out? No, I was definitely like, just starting like everybody else. At that time, you had to have a certain amount of, yeah, it was like, it was all these rules, certain amount of views. And then you had to like apply for all these different things and

connect them up. It was through AdSense, all kinds of stuff. And then they kind of simplified it and made it easier. That's right. I remember the AdSense. Yeah. Aaron, I want to go back to your now wife and your girlfriend. Yeah. You said you met her at a Halloween party.

And what year was that? It was about 15 years ago. Bad with names and I'm bad with time. Okay. So you were 25. Something like that. Yes. And, and, and how do you, um, did you remember the courtship process? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Share that with me.

Yeah. So I'm valet parking and my friend calls me and he goes dude i'm at this party there's this chick here you gotta meet her and i i what yeah yeah like cupid who's your buddy cupid um yeah i guess so i have i have friends looking out for me yeah and and he knew i'd been looking for a girlfriend because my past girlfriends, whatever stuff happened, didn't work out. So I was looking for a good, a good girlfriend. And he said, there's this girl here. I think you'd really like her. And I said, okay, I'm getting off work. And I just drove right up there. It was in Marin County, which is north of San Francisco. Totally random. Yeah. Cross the golden gate. Totally random. And I think my friends were also needed a ride home you know that was the other part of it so i got there yeah and i got there and there was this guy

and he had already asked her for her number and i just went you know and i i'm also like pretty shy at this point right but i just went like i don't'm going to ask her. And then I asked her and then she gave me her number. And then I called her. I was so scared to call her. I remember being at my house just being terrified. And then I asked her out on a date and then she said yes. And then I went out on a date with her and that guy that asked for her number ended up dating her friend. that asked for her number ended up dating her friend. So it all kind of worked out. So he dated her friend, I dated her. And then we went to this restaurant. Oh, it was so embarrassing. It was like, I was just so like shy and in my sort of shell. Right. And I remember I was like, oh, I'm going to embarrass myself telling this story. But I was like, I'll have the number 16. And then she was like, no, it's $16. And I was like, we're not at McDonald's.

That's the story she loves to tell. But that was our first date. And then that's good. Yeah. And then we dated for a long time. And then she was pressuring me really hard to marry her and i was like i'm never gonna marry you if you keep pressuring me never gonna do that because then it won't be me wanting to marry you i'll be in this confusion of am i doing it because you want me to do it and then she totally stopped and then six months later she went on a trip and i missed her so much and then when she came back, I just, boom, ring, proposed. And then we got married. Wow.

And then was it before you got married that you told her you were going to pursue this YouTube thing? You were going to quit your valet job? I think that was post-marriage. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So you were married. Pretty sure we were married already. I'm fascinated by the fact that she, when did she become a believer? How long did it take? Because isn't that important? I know we kind of established that maybe you have some country, you're motivated by a little like, hey, you can't do this. But, but at some point you need her to be a believer, right? Yeah. Do I need to be her to be probably. Yeah. Good question. Well, I remember, you know, okay, let's, let's run it

back a little bit. So I make that video and then I start making tons of videos on YouTube and it, it took me a whole year. So how the monetization works on YouTube for anybody who doesn't know is you make your money through AdSense ads. So your video goes up and YouTube puts an ad in front of it. And you as the creator get 55% of that revenue. And YouTube takes 45% of the ad. And if you have enough ads shown, you will make money.

People always ask, well, how much is it per view? How much is it per subscriber? It's zero per subscriber. That means nothing. And per view, it changes every single second, every single ad, because it's all different money. But you don't get paid any money until you have gotten $100. $100 is the payout threshold. So it took me a whole year of grinding pretty hard to make $100. So I think that's another thing that's important for people to understand. Because if somebody's like, oh, I'm going to jump into YouTube and become a millionaire. Like, okay, yeah, good luck. You can for sure,

but it's going to be a grind. It took me a year to make a hundred dollars. And then the next month, which I think is also important to understand, I made a hundred dollars. So a whole year combined to make my first a hundred, then one month to make a second 100. And I got to the point where I think I had made in one month $800. And I was completely floored that I made $800. And the valet parking was also owned by skaters. They totally understood. And it was super cool. And so I was working five days and then four days and then three days and two days. And as I made more money on YouTube, I would just drop days. Right. And even if I didn't like, you can also call your skater friend and be like, dude, I don't

want to work tonight. Can you pick up the shift? And you'd be like, yeah, bro, it's all good. You know, so I would do that. And then, um, and then eventually it was the decision to quit the job entirely and just push really hard on this. And yeah, she became a believer. Like she, like I tell this story now and she gets really mad because she says, well, you didn't really explain it very well, which is very, I'm sure it's very true.

You know, I was probably like, ah, I'm just going to make videos on YouTube. I don't even care, you know, whatever. And then she was like, you're being rash and irrational, et cetera. But once the actual, like, okay, now it's like a very set thing and real money is starting to come in. Then she's like, oh yeah, this is like a real thing. This is workable. You're making more money on this than you were valet. So that's totally fine. It's all good. And then she becomes a believer. And where does that intersect with your – and then tell me when the name Braille comes in and when that intersects with your vision of make this the world's largest – making skateboarding the world's largest sport. in the world's largest sport yeah so the name braille came in because i was trying to i didn't want it to be called aaron cairo because if you call something your name it's always just you

you know and you there's not so much that you can do with it but if you have a name there's many things you can do with it um so i i knew i already knew, like, I need to have a name. And I knew I wanted it to be something very random. If I could go back in time and redo all of this, I would not choose the name Braille. I would choose something that better describes teaching, various things like that. But right, but back then I just went,

I'm going to pick a random name. So the two names I had in mind were Toast. As random as that is. I like it. I like it. I like it. Yeah. And then Braille was the other one. And then I there's a common phrase in skateboarding. People say, I'm feeling this board. I'm feeling this spot. And then I kind of went, oh, Braille, it's kind of a play on words. And so the original thing was Braille skateboarding, I'm feeling it. Okay. Was the slogan. And it originally started because I was skateboarding. I moved to San Francisco, skateboarding. That actual first video was a combination of two video parts that I was working

on. And if I'm explaining anything that doesn't totally make sense, let me know. Because some people don't totally understand even a video part in the skateboarding world is tantamount to an artist's album. Like, Oh, you're a musician in your I'm sorry, video, you were using that term part and I couldn't follow it. Okay. Yeah, I probably should make a whole video explaining this. So a musician will play their instrument or do their band or whatever it is.

And they'll work for years, sometimes years, sometimes not years. And they'll put out an album. And that's their, they have worked morning, day, noon, and night to put out their best music and they put it into 10 or so songs, selling that album, et cetera. So in the skateboard world, your video part, that's your best tricks to a song. It should represent you. It should represent what you're about. And I was working on two of them for independent video filmmakers. One was called Seasons out of San Francisco. And the other one was called this video magazine called Ghetto Fabulous out of San Jose, California. I was filming for both of those at the same time.

So those videos both came out. And what the filmmaker would do is he would make the video and then he would get a DVD and he would sell the DVD for $2 at the skate spot. And I would just see this guy struggling. There's so much struggling in skateboarding. It's actually unbelievable. Sometimes you go, this guy, he's one of the world's greatest athletes. And then you go, how much are you getting paid? You're a pro. So these guys are, they back then are what I'm trying to do with my life and then i go how much you getting paid they're going yeah i make 200 bucks a month i'm going 200 bucks a month you can't eat on that you definitely can't pay your rent on that and so then i find out well that

yeah they're working two other jobs plus being a pro and i'm like these are the best of the best some of them right obviously there are some skateboarders that have the nike contract and plus being a pro. And I'm like, these are the best of the best. Some of them, right? Obviously, there are some skateboarders that have the Nike contract and they're making great money, et cetera. But it's fascinating just to see the interworkings of those struggles. And then I saw that with these filmmakers

and then I just felt for them. And then I thought, there's a better way to do this. I'm going to start a website and we're going to sell digital downloads. So that's what Braille was originally. I built the website and I was selling digital downloads of my friends' videos. Of your friends' parts. Yeah, of my of my friends' videos that I had parts in.

So, you know, it was and then I was trying to branch out and get more videos. But then you have to get the rights to the videos that there's all red tape and this crazy stuff like that. And then it and then YouTube came about by the random way of, you know, that video. But when I got kicked off, I pulled both of those video parts, combined them. I edited it, combined them with the weirdest music I could find. Ah, now I see. On purpose. And then I see it all kind of it was all so let me see if i understand

this you were featured in two independent filmmakers videos and in those videos there's a part that's the aaron cairo part i've seen this in surf videos too and it's your name pops up and a new song starts and you do all this crazy cool shit and everyone's standing around in their living room smoking weed watching you yes yes okay and then and so you took did they and were they okay with you taking their two parts absolutely okay and then you put it up on youtube um wow thank you for sharing all this yeah are you and then this i'm sorry video you said something in the beginning of this podcast you said you know i haven't done a lot of these interviews i haven't spoken out a lot and there were a couple things in there when i saw that I'm sorry video that were – it's a little bit of a soul-bearing video.

You're bearing your soul to your community. Yeah. And you say something about how you haven't been around for four years. Four years? No, no. Is that what you said? No. How long has it been?

It was probably close to a year probably around a year yeah okay i misunderstood sorry sorry um what does that mean that you haven't been around for a year and because from looking at your youtube it's still prolific and then and then and then you also bear your soul in there which i thought was fascinating which any pro athlete could uh glean a lot from this, about you're planning on having another part, but you're 39 and you come to recognize that it may not look the way you want it or the way the public wants it. So let's start with this thing.

Where did you go for a year? Yeah, so I went to school and I didn't go to like a traditional like, oh, I'm just like going to university. I went and I did some courses. I did some courses online. I went and I met with some CEOs. So my company, I was the CEO for Braille skateboarding for a very long time. And then also getting into part of why I didn't want to call it Aaron Cairo, right? Because then it's just me and all that I'm doing. That's all it is. So then I hired a CEO and then I put that CEO onto their job and said, great, you're the CEO, run all the business aspects of it because I want to skateboard. And then funny enough, I felt like that I was still sort of stuck into just running the business still. Now I'm back in the CEO seat. But what I went

to do to learn about how to run a business, because I'm just a skater. I'm a skater and I know how to make videos. And I ended up with this business under me and I made some good and some very bad decisions. Even with a CEO, I was still the founder, so I was making a lot of decisions. But yeah, I went and I did courses on business. I did courses online. I went and talked to CEOs. I learned everything that I could. My wife, her father, he's an awesome Jewish businessman, he's a he's a an awesome jewish businessman and he sold his business racist racist shout out stew rosenbaum sounds like a great dude sounds like a great dude he's such a good guy and he hey do you want me to tell you something real quick i want to put this in here i believe I believe that Jewish people breed – they find hard work sexy. Yeah, you'd think.

They find hard – yeah, they do. They find hard work and ambition sexy, and they know how to – they see – it's too that to say they see earning potential in their mates yeah it's it's too it's too modern but they see something that like you were saying earlier tantamount to earning potential but it's some caveman shit and it's the same thing my wife my wife's jewish i have three little jew boys and i'm the hardest she met me when i was homeless but i'm the fucking hardest work i'm a fucking maniac yeah yeah and so so i i just i see that and i'm like oh that makes sense you got scooped up by a jewish girl who she didn't matter whether you were valine she saw you were a lump of coal and she knew you were going to be a diamond

they just they know okay yeah i just wanted to throw that yeah i think that's very true yeah i think that is very true and your wife wife's very beautiful. Oh, thank you. Yeah, so. I get that a lot. How did you catch such a beautiful girl? I don't know, actually. I have tremendous earning potential. Okay, okay.

So you were gone for a year and there was another guy in caretaker of your baby. There was something you said there. What was the mechanism that made you feel like it was more work even though you had passed it aside? Yeah, I think all of these things, you know, it's, you ever heard that thing like hindsight is 20-20? Yeah, it's like when you're looking into the future, it can be very vague and mysterious and you have no idea what's going to happen. And being a business owner, especially through 2020 coronavirus lockdown, which did a lot of very interesting things, the skateboarding. Yeah. And keeping all of your employees going and keeping everybody paid and

paying for a warehouse. I have two warehouses. In fact, it's not as easy as somebody thinks. You know, I think a lot of people from the outside looking in, they just see this rave success story, overnight success, which I like, okay, I've been working so unbelievably hard for years and years. I've been skateboarding for 39 years. No, no, no. Sorry. 29 years. I'm 39 years old. Started at 10, 29 years skateboarding and working on my business. Oh, it's just, it's been brutal. Right. And I have made bad decisions in taking my company in some directions that were not totally right and correct. And if I could go back, I would reverse those. I would do it a different way. But a lot of those decisions were from a place of business CEO type stuff, not passion skateboarder. I'm running this company. That's how I love to do things type stuff.

Like you followed some shiny objects and saying, instead of staying true to your vision. any objects and saying instead of staying true to your vision yeah like i can i can just tell you some like please real examples um we had a series of toys release and target sold them so it was a pretty wild interesting thing and people just go oh you have toys in Target? Well, clearly you're like a billionaire. But it's interesting from my side of it because yes, we had toys in Target. The first launch of the toys in Target sold out, completely sold out. And then Target went, whoa, this is a good seller. Let's buy a bunch of stock. And then they bought so much stock. Season two did not sell out. And then season three, which was made, never got purchased. And that gets into a pretty rough situation where Target made these purchases. They want the item sold. Come on, let's go.

And then I'm like, am I working for myself and doing my passion project of teaching people how to skateboard? Or am I trying to sell toys for Target? It's a different direction. We went completely off the rails. And I kind of knew that that was kind of the direction, but you know, I see, I have this big passion. And then the way that people sell me on things like this, they go, well, how many people are toys and target going to introduce into skateboarding and i went i'm willing to know you're kryptonite i'm willing to give that a try and i can tell you it did it it did not no no it did not i did not add a bunch of youtube subscribers and get a bunch of people watching tutorial videos because I had toys in Target.

I just didn't. The numbers very clearly show. At the end of the day, you can say like, oh, this is cool or that's cool. But at the end of the day, the numbers are the hard statistics. It's black and white. You can't lie. You can't deny it. You know, so that I think hurt us as a company. I think it hurt us financially. I think it hurt.

Yeah. And it kind of took us down a path that we didn't necessarily mean to go on or need to go on. And nothing like, again, it's like no hard feelings to anybody that was involved in that project. It's totally rad. It was really rad also to walk into a target and see your brand on the shelf. That's also like pretty, uh, pretty,

what was the toy? It was fingerboards. Oh yeah. So if you know, on our web, on our YouTube channel, we do a lot of really weird boards. Yeah.

So we made weird board finger boards and they were sort of like collectibles and they were it was great like if i wanted to i could just market and sell those and i could do really great at those yeah i can type in like braille finger boards it'll come up for the thing i was just thinking of all the just the weird shit you guys have skated to yeah glass skateboards mattress all of these were made into finger boards yeah there you go that's an xbox oh so the finger boards oh it's kind of it was kind of like the cabbage patch kids of finger boards yeah oh that's kind of a brilliant idea. Wow. They were really cool. They were super cool. And honestly, if I wanted to just go all out and turn my channel into like fingerboard mania, I could have kept selling those and it would have done great. But on all these kinds of deals, like you have to understand to make fingerboards, it

does cost a lot of money. I don't have that money. I'm not, I don't have that money to even start it. So that means somebody else is putting that money forward and it's a business relationship with more than two entities. And then by the time any money filters back to me, I go, man, it wasn't really worth it at all. So then you have also the stigma of all the people thinking, oh, well, you have Toys and Target, you're a multimillionaire, blah, blah,aire blah blah blah and i go man i would have made more money if i didn't have them in there right did it damage your brand at all i think so affiliated with target uh it's well

honestly it's hard to say and it's not the right word either i apologize for using that word i should know that's okay that's. It's hard to say. Well, another thing that we did is we did a skateboard. Look at this chainsaw fucking skateboard. This thing's savage. Yeah. Yeah, it was actually really cool, right? Oh, God.

That's so cool. It's a brilliant idea. Yeah. Okay, sorry. Back to Target going there. Did it screw with your image yeah it's it's really hard to say but in that kind of sense we we get a little bit into like did it screw with my image for the skateboard industry as we were talking about it earlier

absolutely i mean those they are savage they hate anything that has to do with mainstream blah, blah, blah. It's total pure hatred. They tore you up on Reddit. They tore you up on Reddit in the cesspool called Reddit. Yeah. In fact, I need to get on Reddit. Don't. Do not. Some kid, he said, these kids send me rumors and they say like, Oh, this, I found this on Reddit. And they say, you're, I guess you're not on Reddit.

And I say, don't ever go there. It's pointless. It's pointless. Yeah. You think dude, it's YouTube without the videos. It's idiot land.

It's, it's, it is the grossest place on the internet. It's a vibe. That's kind of the, it's an unhealthy place. I think. Yeah. That's, that's what I get from it as well. But then I get some people, they think like, how do people think that what is written on Reddit is a real thing? And that's what also

makes me go, I need to do more podcasts. Oh, actually just talk about things. Uh, choose wisely on the podcast. Yeah. I mean, you are, you are a good talker, actually just talk about things. Choose wisely. On the podcast? Yeah, I mean, you are a good talker, but man, there's some out there that are just... So, Aaron, can you tell me about yourself while I sit back here? Go.

Oh, yeah, and then I just go and go on and on and on. Well, they want you to carry their podcast for them. I feel like it's the vast majority. The good thing, I think there's 2.7 million podcasts currently. And so it's – the last thing my wife ever wanted me to hear was I'm starting a podcast. Don't worry. I'll be able to pay the bills. It might be worse than skateboarding.

Do you pay the bills with your podcast? I do. Wow. Well done. Very well done. Thank you. But I had an amazing job. An amazing job.

I was in charge of everything forward-facing at CrossFit HQ. At CrossFit from when it was 300 gyms to 15,000 gyms. Wow. Yeah. So I had a very similar story to you. I went the filmmaker route, you went to skateboarding route and then filmmaker. I went the filmmaker route. I had to work out in traditional industry. So you went a different way. Yeah. I was a homeless guy who the day final cut pro came out. I bought it and I bought that black

G5 laptop that you can edit videos on. It was Final Cut Pro 1. I think it was 2002 or 2003 or something. And I was homeless. I plugged it into the cigarette lighter of a car. I bought a used car. Wow. And I learned.

It took me fucking two weeks to load all 10 DVDs. I'm not joking. I was on the phone. I was like, it was every penny I had from this fucking job i had where it was taking care of developmentally disabled adults it was nuts yeah well i started making movies and tv shows while living out of my car it was cool that is very cool that is the grind that is the grit that's the real i that's why when you say all this stuff and people don't know how hard you work like i know like you were there working and your eyes fell asleep and then you climbed into bed and then you slept a little bit

and then you got out and went back to yes yeah ted talk you call it passion yeah well yeah i do think that there's you know there's this other quote i think it's from um the apple dude the dude that did the apple he's like steve Jobs. Yeah. Steve Jobs. He's like saying, yeah, I don't think if you don't have the passion, I just don't think you would carry through with it because you have to be like kind of crazy psychotic or whatever. I'm butchering the quote, but yeah, it does, you know, that passion it is behind it. You know, you see some of these guys, you think, Oh, I'll just jump on Twitter and do some streams and make a million dollars. No, the guy that's making a million dollars on twitter spent 13 hours every single day for the

last 10 years and now he's making it somewhere it is there's grind in there it's real yeah your story i love that story the first year you made hundred bucks and in month 13, you made a hundred bucks. And when you say that, like as someone who walked that walk to man, month 13th, you can't even believe it. It's the happiest hundred bucks you ever made. Oh my God.

In fact, when I made two cents, the first two cents I made, I remember looking at the computer and going, Oh my God, I made this video and it made two cents. Yeah. And I literally had this thought,

I will make a million dollars because it just was so real to me that I, it felt like I could create something out of thin air and it made two cents. And then I was like, if you can create something out of thin air, just do it again and again and again, repetition 5,000 videos later. and again repetition 5 000 videos later how many how many unbroken bones have you had in your skateboarding career i saw a picture of your wrist yeah let's see they got smooshed so my wrist was a compound fracture which what does that mean exactly it means that these two bones basically smashed into each other and there was really no break there. It just, oh yeah, this is so stupid. I'm skating this ramp.

I'm doing all these tricks. I do a whole series of me learning tricks and this is footage from the security cam. That's why it looks kind of funny. And then I'm just randomly riding and do the stupidest fall, not even trying anything right there. And I, and I, yeah, break my wrist. I love this thing happens to the best of us. And, and, and so how many, how many, do you know how many broken bones you've had? Yeah. So I don't, I don't think I would count that as a broken bone compound fracture. Maybe

if we count that as one, we'll count that that as one and then i broke my foot in two places on one injury so that's three and how long ago was that uh 10 years ago oh okay yeah so i think it's probably three broken bones and probably bad, dude. Yeah, not bad at all. And probably 15 sprained ankles. That's the injury of choice. Knock on wood, never again. Thank you. Sprained ankles is the worst. Because when you talk about why, the sport does scare people. Yes.

Like moms are terrified. Like, you know, the kids dropping into a 10 foot bowl or eight foot bowl. And, uh, my wife struggles watching my eight year old do that. I don't blame her. She made that thing and now it's got face. It's just like jumping into a concrete bowl. Right. Right. Well, okay. Let me talk about that a little bit because statistically, um, you know, people go, yeah yeah people go oh well let's uh let's let our kid do football or basketball well statistically they're more likely to get injured doing football or basketball than skateboarding but skateboarding seems extremely

dangerous this is why like skateboarding itself literally needs a pr campaign like all the skateboarders need to get together and we need to decide that skateboarding is cool and it's good. And then we need to start talking about these things and telling the moms that it's not that dangerous and getting some programs put into the schools for kids to learn how to skate because it does teach a lot of very good life skills. When you were in that car and you were editing the

videos, you were on your own. It's the same. You have a skateboard, it's a piece of wood with some wheels. You're on your own. You're going to learn that trick. If you push through, it teaches persistence, you know, teaches you to go out every day, dedication, you fall, get back up, et cetera, all these things, really, really good life lessons. Um, but yeah, it's actually not that dangerous. In fact, the reason it does become dangerous is because you're not learning the tricks in the correct order. So that was a huge thing that I did. I went through and I mapped out what would be the correct order and I'm still, yeah, the progression of the tricks. And if you learn them in the correct

order and you wear a helmet knee pads elbow pads it's way safer than football basketball all of them you know because you're just you're just learning how to i say this all the time my videos it's a meme now um you have to get really comfortable riding your board and that's what people skip they go oh what do i want to do they want to learn a kickflip kickflip is so cool that's why kickflip how to kickflip had four million views everyone wants to learn a kickflip but before the kickflip there is a series of seven tricks which you must learn you don't and i you know i also don't want to make skateboarding into like this like i don't know it's not school it is very independent and it is do whatever you

want but there is a correct good path so i mapped it out as ollie front side 180 back side 180 pop shove front shove heel flip kick flip these are the seven tricks and you do. And what I say is if you want to learn how to kick flip, you'll learn how to kick flip faster by learning all seven tricks than if you just go to kick flip. You're trying to go into advanced calculus without learning how to do addition. And that's not good.

And that's where you get hurt because you're not ready for that. So the kid tries to drop in on a ramp. Well, he's not ready. He doesn't even know how to ride a board, so the kid tries to drop in on a ramp. Well, he's not ready. He doesn't even know how to ride a board. It's not going to drop in. He's not going to ride down a Hill,

but you just see, you know, you see these clips. Dude, Aaron, I see kids all the time. I know you see it too. So,

so basically what I did with my kids for the first six months of riding a skateboard, I had them ride one mile each direction along this path, along the beach every day for six months Yeah, that was it the first time that mile took three hours, right six months after six It was crazy. And after six months, it still took 40 or 50 minutes. The learning curve was insane They were tiny. He was five and a half Right, I see then we would go so now I see kids at the skate park now my kids ate

Yeah, all these all these crazy shit. Yeah. I see kids at the skate park who can do tricks that he can't even come close to doing. Right. When I see them skating in a straight line, they can't even fucking skate. They look like complete fucking goofballs. They look like popsicle sticks on the board. They have no bend. They have no style.

They have no oneness with the board. I see it everywhere. And I see kids actually parents dropping their kids into bowls and the kids can do it. But then the rides over and they get up to the top again. But the kid can't actually skate across the skate park. It's nuts. Right. Because they didn't.

That shit's dangerous. It is. It is. But even then, statistically. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Dude, you can't go to a collegiate woman's soccer team and not see a scar from an ACL surgery.

Right. All of them, 100%. They all got it. Right. Or whatever that surgery is with the line up and down the knee, whatever that. They all got it, 100%. Yeah. You ever lost a friend to a skateboarding accident?

No. Good. That's good to hear. Yeah. That's good to hear. Yeah. That's great to hear. And it's got to be snowboarding is another one that's crazy. Yes. I think it's kind of a similar thing, though.

Like if you learn it correctly and blah, blah, blah. I think anything if you learn it correctly. But sometimes when there's a lot of team sports involved, then there's all kinds of things because you have people smashing into each other. And like hockey, they're going to punch each other in the face. That's Injury City, right? Right, right. Different scenario. But if you really learn things correctly on the correct, learning it the correct proper way, you should be able to get very skilled at whatever it is you're trying to do.

way you should be able to get very skilled at whatever it is you're trying to do i i look at your instagram account and i'm looking at it and i've been i've been following you for about a year now uh maybe a little more maybe two years maybe i started yeah probably two years you popped on the radar i feel like you own youtube which i i so admire and it's so helpful if i type in skateboarding youtube the braille stuff pops up my kids absolutely love it awesome and you've kept your head how am i gonna get to this you've kept your head pretty clean and then i saw this uh i did not expect to see this here we go and i i can't tell you how much i appreciate this i i mean i'm projecting on i have no idea exactly what you're saying but i i think i know what you're saying and i'm projecting

on to what you're saying yeah but i i I really fucking appreciate this. Um, this video here that came out, uh, and I'll go ahead and play it here. Put my job and you called me crazy. I started a business and you said it was stupid and that business, it went under and you said, I told you so. So I started another one and you said said, some people just never learn. But that business took off. And now you are coming after me because of my privilege. But maybe you're right. Maybe I am privileged.

Because if I was born with your attitude, I never would have made it either. I quit my job and you called me crazy uh i i was just dumbfounded to see that i was like wow i saw the i'm sorry video and then i saw this and i said oh this this guy's uh this guy's going for it. He's something's going on here. Yeah. He's going for it. Can you tell me a little bit about that video? What was the inspiration for it? I mean,

there's a bunch of stuff there. It's a bunch of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Good comment about self-belief, but also a comment to like society. Yeah. That's what I see.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so in that, in my little description there, I said, my feed is full of inspirational quotes. And I do love these inspirational quotes. Well, love-hate relationship. But that was one that I just saw.

That wasn't my audio. That wasn't me talking. Oh, that's not you talking? No, that's not me talking. Okay. That's just one of those things that you just see the inspirational quote and you go like, I'm using this audio for this video okay um but yes all of these do have sort of like a very deep uh meaningful thing in my life that's why i choose them um right but yeah it's kind of like

that one specifically kind of goes back to my wife not wanting me, not thinking that doing this is a good idea. And just, I don't know, I feel like so many people in the world are in this situation, especially from my experiences, I see this time period of a person's life when they finish high school. And after you finish high school, you don't really know what to do. You're going to go to college or maybe not, but you have to choose a career and you have to go into the world. And I feel like that time period right there is so utterly confusing. It was for me. I was terrified. And I did go to university. I went for a year to film school. Then I dropped out to be a professional skateboarder. Um, but it was so scary. And I just want to inspire people to do what they think they should do.

Because I think oftentimes it's like the kid wants to be a musician or whatever he wants to be. And then his parents or the society or school or whatever is saying, you must be a lawyer, a stockbroker, a doctor, whatever, any of these things, right? And then they might not realize it until they're 40 that what they did, they didn't want to do that. And then they kind of wasted a good significant portion of their life, you know, and hopefully they didn't end up on drugs or in some bad condition because of that, which is, you know, now there's a lot of stuff, you know, mental health, et cetera, that can get into that kind of thing. But I do, and my Ted talk is very heavy on this as well, right? Um, the passion, you got to really just follow your passion. But I think there's so many, there's so little support out there, especially in skateboarding,

especially in skateboarding. There's this guy I was just talking to today who wants to work with us on some business things in Europe. And he was saying, yeah, I remember being a kid and going into the skate shop being utterly terrified. And I think what you're doing with skateboarding is you're trying to remove that. And it was dead on. Because yeah, as a kid, you go into the shop, there's so much stigma, people call you a poser. You know, it's not really, you know, if you want to start playing tennis, you get a new tennis

racket you're not made fun of. But skateboarding you are why do we do that it's kind of a funny thing right so we're trying to remove some of that like another kid on on um one of the social media platforms is a new skater he said why is skateboarding so toxic to people new skaters and uh it just is so I'm trying to make it less toxic, trying to make it more open, trying to make it, make this whole vibe of let's help the new people learn. Um, it's always nice when you go to a skate park and there's like a godfather there, there's like some 25 year old kid there. Who's like keeping the peace. Yeah. Hi to the parents. He says hi to the kids he picks up people's

boards he tells kids they throw your shit away kids like it's always nice when there's some kid there you know holding down the fort i i go to the scotts valley park in scotts valley california quite a bit yeah and uh there's there's a there's a dude there and all the kids now have taken lessons from him and he's just he's dope yeah so that guy is supporting the skateboarding scene yes huge yeah his name is luke and shout out luke yeah huge and if it if luke was not there who knows maybe that park would be empty but a lot oftentimes you have the best or dickheads would take it over. Dickheads would take it over. Right. And then that would eventually probably empty it out. And you know what he does too.

He doesn't, he doesn't be a dickhead back to them. He loves them. That's the, that's the key. Yeah. He turns them to mush. Yeah. Yeah. He, he, he, he turns them to mush. Yeah. It's cool. Um, we go to Sunnyvale once a week too do you know that part that's probably yeah of course yeah and and um and there's a guy there who holds the park down who's that who's in sunnyvale and he's he made a video with one of your buddies uh it's it's josh josh uh okay josh he does um skateboard lessons youtube channel yes what's it called yes but josh bolo maybe his last name and he did a video with you um one of my guys one of your homeboys yeah cool dude who does the blonde haired cat with the long hair what's his name ricky yeah ricky ricky grazier yeah ricky rickyza, mate. Straight from Australia.

Oh, Ricky Glaza, yeah. Yeah. But that dude holds down that park. Yes. Josh holds it down gnarly, yeah. Yeah, so we basically need that at every park and need that at every skate shop. And there's another, you know,

skate shops need to build their scene around their shop, even just to survive as a shop. And it can get a lot of, you know, skateboarding goes through these wild gyrations of very, very huge popularity, very, very not popular.

So in 2020, I don't know if you know this, but 2020 skateboard sales went completely through the roof. It makes sense. It makes sense. It was one of the few places we could go where the kids didn't have to wear masks. I mean, a lot of them still did, but you were free. Yeah. So the skateboard sales went so high that there became a demand, a very heavy demand for

wood, raw materials for all skateboard trucks, urethane. And it was every skateboard company in the world, including myself, was trying to buy skateboards because you couldn't even get the skateboards. They were selling faster than you could get them. So this 2020 was this huge ramp up. But now in 2021, you have this situation where every skateboard company in the world is overstocked and the skateboard sales died and now everybody has boards and they're not selling. And that's a tough situation to be in. Very, very tough. And to make it through that as a business owner requires extreme skill. And there's a lot of companies that you won't see make it through that sad to say hence the ceo school you start you created for yourself yeah and coming back on as the ceo and going okay

we need to sort of get back to our grassroots here and i'm working on this app i have an app right now and i'm getting it rebuilt and redesigned to be less of social media app, more of you're learning to skateboard and that's the end of it. And then I'm just going to be pushing this forward. Look at this guys. Look at this. Number three. The Braille Army showing so much love to the app. We are number three on the Apple store for sports.

This is crazy that you're in here next to these bohemoths. Isn't that crazy? What a day. Yeah. That was launch day. That was launch day. Not only skateboards. The parks got inundated with roller skaters too.

Which was kind of cool. What is the deal with that? The other day I went to the park. There were no skateboards. And only roller skaters. It's kind of cool they kind of vanished a little bit that the other day i went to the park there were no skateboards and only roller skaters this is a huge thing right now i think that was part of the the the sort of like hey you can't do anything you can't go to work and i think a lot of people were like hey i'm going to try something new and i started seeing all sorts of people show up with uh roller roller skates yeah it's cool quads actual roller skates yes the super hardcore ones call them quads four wheels not we're not talking roller blades anybody out there we're talking roller skates and with uh they brought in a lot of cool music yeah yeah so 2020 was really good area to get new people into skateboarding and i hope this is

the kind of thing like we have to have that mentality of when those new people come in we need to help them because they need to continue going because that's what i hear so much i used to watch your channel i used to skateboard but i i want to go how do we remove that they quit how do we just take out all the barriers that's making them quit drop out of school like my kids did my kids drop out i mean they're two five-year-olds and an eight-year-old they don't go to school they skate every day they skate jiu-jitsu test do you do other sports no not really no time do you lift weights? Yeah, but only for like, oh, I'm going to go really hard and try and learn this trick. I better lift some weights. It'll help me.

It's, yeah, everything's so like skateboarding is geared around that. How is your, how's your, what can you, how's your squatting? You squatting? How are your legs and your knee? No, I don't. Yeah, good question. I have no idea. I do nothing like that. I'll do push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups. I'm trying to work on my core strength because I'm having pain in my lower back.

Yeah. But not like I have no idea. I don't know what I can bench. I'm sure it's not much. But my legs are probably quite strong. Yeah. Yes. From skateboarding. Um, and you, and you, and you skate switch, I'm assuming. Yeah. God, that's so I'm not the best, but I can do it. Yeah. Yeah. So much healthier for you. Um, what, what about, uh, finding a CrossFit gym near you to rehabilitate you to rehabilitate,

to put you through the foundational movements of squatting, just something, just the. Yeah, good question. I have no idea when I, when I try squatting specifically, it hurts my knees and I know it's not supposed to, but it does. And then I go, I've never hurt. I've never injured my knees. I've never had knee pain, but when I do squats, I do have knee pain and I think I'm doing it incorrect. I actually have been thinking about maybe I'll do a video series of a 40 year old skateboarder. I'm so playing into this 40 thing. I'm not even 40 yet. Yeah. 40 year old skateboarder learning, you know, getting back and learning all the tricks I used to be able to do. In fact, I shouldn't even say that just learning new tricks. I can probably do all the tricks. It's like riding a bike. You know, even if I

don't skateboard for a little while, I can step back on and do some of the hardest tricks that I could do hard for me, you know, not sit talking about other people, but, but yeah. So I've been thinking about maybe getting a personal trainer and doing that. I think I need somebody to help me though. Yeah. I'll tell you this. Keep this in mind. Yeah. It's not biblical, but one of the things that you can do to help your back is to squat.

And the reason why it's hurting is just because you haven't done it. And to do the exact opposite of everything they told you when you squat you want to hold stuff in your frontal plane meaning in front of you and then when you squat your then your core will naturally get strong where it's supposed to be and that and that abdominal wall will not start giving you the support you need for your back okay as opposed to doing crunches. Oh, yeah. Crunch is no good? It's not that it's no good. I think you just want to get into functional movements. And a crunch, it's not bad, but it's not functional.

Squatting is functional because it's what you do to take a shit. Right. You know what I mean? And the second you can't do that, that's when you go to the old folks' home. Right. So you got to the old folks home. Right. So you gotta, so you gotta, you gotta,

you gotta continue being able to take, but I bet you they could fix that knee. How about bike riding? Do you do bike riding? No. I mean, I rode a bike today for a video. That doesn't really count.

No, nothing like that. You're, you're a businessman, professional athlete. How about, how about today sent somebody sent me a crossfit jump ropes oh and i've got a half pound one pound two pound maybe a quarter pound four different ones and i thought wow this is hard two pound jump. I went straight to two pounds. Of course. I was like, dude, so good, though. I was like, if I did this, I would be so ripped. No, I don't have any kids. I have two dogs which are being very quiet, unusually quiet downstairs.

Just for our podcast. Thank you, dogs. What kind of dogs? Border Collies.ies oh smarty pants yeah are you gonna have kids i always wanted kids my wife didn't want kids we went through this whole period where we're like we're gonna have kids we're not we are we're not and now i'm gonna be 40 and i feel like ah i'm gonna have kids now and my kids 10 and and then I'm 50? I don't know. It's still kind of up in the air, to be honest. I want to show you something. So I had my first kid at 43. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. Oh, this is good. My wife was 39. Okay. So my wife is five years younger than me. Okay. So I'm going to be 40. She'll be 35 right now.

She's 34, right? Math, math is a thing. Um, yeah. So I think that was part of it. You know, I think I was more ready than she was. And then now we're just kind of like, ah, maybe sometime it'll happen. Now we have our dogs and we're like, those are our kids. Yeah, yeah, that's how we started.

Yeah, we started with the dogs. Dogs, yeah. You would be a fantastic father. Yeah, a lot of people tell me that. You'd be a fantastic father. Is there anyone else on planet Earth who has your vision to make skateboarding the world's largest sport and to introduce more people to skateboarding or to introduce people to skateboarding as sort of like your, your life mission? Yeah, good question.

I think that there are, um, sometimes my friends say, Hey, I listened to this podcast and this guy's very similar goals to you. You should check it out. And, um, I never really get around to checking it out, but I do think there are. And I do, I think there's a way to sort of get all these people together. I've been trying to figure out how to do this. And I,

you know, I have like, I not only have my channel, but I also have a French channel. I have a Russian channel. I have many different channels. So I have probably like six or seven channels that all have over a hundred thousand subscribers and different languages. So I'm trying to really go, I've made all these tutorials. Let's, you know, for kids that can't

speak English, they need their, you know, Polish, they need their Polish tutorials. So I'm trying to spread it that way. But I think a better, maybe a really good way is to find the people with the common goals and go, well, what can you do in your area? This is a thing I'm going to sort of launch into in 2023, which were the question you asked me earlier. Am I glad I did the second channel? The answer is yes, because that's the purpose of it right now it's just second videos that we make but eventually what it should be and what it's supposed to be is the community channel you know i'll tell you this cool story i did this project with this guy here i'll grab this board real fast oh that's nice they just come off the wall like that that's really nice yeah you just pull them off the wall so there's this i get on facebook and i get this

i have this message from this um skater in africa and he's like, hey, I found your video. Learned how to skateboard. And then I started getting all these kids in my little village to learn how to skateboard. And, you know, they have pictures of them with, like, pieces of wood with, like, any kind of wheel you could imagine. Just fastened to this piece of wood in any kind of way you could imagine it. But he has this class of probably like 30 to 40 kids, which is a lot, you know,

and he's teaching them in this random village in Africa. And then I said, you know, I'm going to do a little fundraiser and I'm make this board, which I think turned out pretty cool. First try has the Braille skater. And we sold these and then sent all the sent the profits to him. And I tried to send him boards.

It was the hardest thing ever to get the boards to him. It took probably eight months. Oh, God. Yeah. So I sent the boards. They got stopped by the local government. And I wanted to go to Africa. And I actually hired somebody to go there and film a documentary with this guy.

And then I had the guy hired. I was about to buy plane tickets. Thankfully, I didn't yet. And he said, you know, the local king needs to approve the video shooting before you arrive and then it got into all of these legalities and then we just went we can't do this project but it's so cool because he went forward and got an amazing skate park built i mean this is like really yeah a cement skate park a cement skate park the name of his little the name of his organization is we skate mongu you can check it out on instagram we skate and the name of the

town is mongu m-o-n-g-u and you know it's pretty wild the stories because it's like these kids where are they gonna go they're gonna go street gangs, gangs, drugs, you know, the kind of stuff that's in the world. It's a rough place out there. And instead of doing that, they're learning to ride skateboards, which I think is so beautiful. Isn't, isn't Mongo when you have your foot in the back? No, that's Mongo. Very close.

Mongo. Okay. Yeah. Go. I mean, why is that bad? Why is bad it's not well okay if you're trying to do a trick that you need to set up really fast for yeah click that that's the park this dude got built look at this thing look at that's amazing oh these kids really skate yeah and that's a real park yeah dang that's no joke when i when i was doing this thing and sending him the boards i mean they were on the street literal street but that is a real skate park wow shout out johnny kalenga i don't know

if i'm saying your name right even after all these years and the wescape mongu so amazing look at that yeah i'm blown away yeah so i love you know i love stories like this i love helping people like that just supporting things like that that skate park will change that whole community right so i just go well we just need to do more of that okay mongo what why is it bad to skate mongo mongo it's a style thing you know if i were to say like technically is it bad no if you learn how to skateboard and you're pushing mongo who cares you're learning how to skateboard like let's get over it but there's a huge stigma and it's one of those things of like

oh you're gonna be a poser you're gonna be made fun of you're gonna be oh it doesn't limit your entire life no like the only reason it limits you is like let's say you're skating a set of stairs and there's very little run up. Then like you're pushing with your front foot, then you have to put your front foot on, then readjust your back foot. That's it. We're talking seconds. So if you push not Mongo,

you have your front foot on the board, then you're pushing and then you put your back foot on, you don't have to readjust your front foot. But if you're pushing Mongo, there's a period of adjustment but it's literally like that fast but it doesn't look cool it definitely doesn't look cool and anyone can attest to that you know but as a as a new skateboarder who cares right? Right. Learn how to skate. He's pushing Mongo. He can. Another thing about it is you can also learn to push switch better. If you learn to push Mongo. Oh,

because you're pushing with the other foot. Right. And some of the best skaters learn to skate Mongo. Hey, hate to say it. Chris Cole, he learned Mongo. He,

when he started skateboarding he was mongo and then and then and then he and then eventually he could do it all yeah and then eventually he just he had to change like if you're gonna have a professional career you cannot push mongo like that's just part of it look now someone's gonna do it just because you said you can't please do uh please please please please please like like andy anderson with his professional skateboard career wearing a helmet huge controversy blah blah you know the skateboard companies skateboard magazines going we're not gonna print a photo with a guy in a helmet no shit a hundred percent yeah i go to the skate

park and i see people without helmets and I just think you're a fucking ding dong yeah actually so Andy Anderson he's starting he went through I made a documentary with him hopefully I finish it but I made a documentary

with Andy Anderson about his run to the Olympics which happened in 2021 and now it's 2022 and i'm not done with the freaking documentary one of my thousands of projects i work on all the time this dude's cool as shit andy anderson he's the best yeah what a handsome kid yeah and so he you know his just to give you like a an idea like he would go on skate trips with the skateboard team, and the skate team would take his helmet every single day and piss in it, do anything they could possibly do to try and get him to take the helmet off.

So obviously if they pissed in it, he's not going to wear the helmet. So then he would go to Army Surplus Store and get any kind of thing that would substitute as a helmet and wear that. That's Andy Anderson's story um did he is there more to it than that did he make some sort of promise to his mom and dad that if they let him skate he'd always wear a helmet his whole life and he's and he's standing by it i think that it was his decision to wear the helmet and it wasn't really a promise to anybody not that i know of and i think he would have brought that up you know i interviewed him for this documentary for probably eight hours yeah nothing like that ever came up but it was more like it was his own personal

integrity and he wasn't going to change himself because others wanted him to change right you know there's this kid that I follow on Instagram. Probably shouldn't even say the kid's name, but he's been wearing a helmet and doing really crazy stuff. And then just recently I go, whoa, there he goes. Backlip the 13 stair handrail,

no helmet. And I go, he, we got into it. He got into the industry far enough where they said from here forward you are no longer allowed to wear a helmet and andy talks about this too there are you really telling me that someone would say that from the industry what do you mean am i telling you that that is a beyond like i can't even believe that yeah welcome beat someone's ass if they told my

kid that that is i would go over to whatever skateboard company, XY zones, whatever you name it. I'll go over to your house and I will knock on your door and I'll beat you in front of your wife if I heard you tell my kid not to wear a helmet. It's fucking asinine. There's nothing wrong with a helmet. They look cool. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a helmet. And Andy started a helmet company. We helped him launch it. Yeah. And Andy started a helmet company. We helped him launch it.

Yeah, cool. And the helmets are really cool. They are cool. And that's his thing. He's like, wanted to make a cool helmet. And he did. Aaron, I'm 50, and one of the only times in my life that I felt like an adult. I didn't even feel like an adult at my kid's birth as my wife popped him out on the living room floor.

I didn't even feel like an adult at my kid's birth as my wife popped them out on the living room floor. But I was at the skate park at the little, tiny, crazy, cute, adorable, amazing skate park in Aptos, California. I think it's called – I forget what it's called. You've got to go there. It's – oh, it's so cute. It's like by – it's across the street from an ice cream place called Mary Ann's. And there's the new Brighton one there that you probably have been to at some point in your life. They have the half pipe and then they have that flat pad. But this thing has everything. I'll say I'll text you a picture, mom. And I was there and there's a drop in. It's like a nine foot drop in to this. And it's a tiny park. And in the middle of the drop in, if you don't avoid it, I don't know know what it's called but there's this thing that looks like a giant nipple yeah yeah i think it is called a nipple is it okay yeah something like that and the sun that part of the that part of the skate park doesn't get

sun in the morning so it's moist there and this kid drops in and i'm the only parent there and there's like 10 kids there and then my kids and all the kids are older than my kids. And he drops in and he slips and he hits his head, back of his head on the nipple. Oh, worst case scenario. Yeah. And it feels like the skate park shakes. You know what I mean? Right.

Like it's like I hear it like dong. Yeah. So I'm looking at him and I'm waiting for like someone to run down there and help him and no one's no one's doing shit right and i hear and i'm just looking at him looking at him looking at him and i feel like my like my tear ducts turn on and i feel like my dad me like turning on i'm like who is this train and i hear him go i can't see i just that's it i just yelled stop everybody and i jumped down i jumped down into the bowl or to that area and uh i i stood him up and i said hey dude you're fine and i didn't i just talked to him i go you know where do you live what's your name get him out of the park like he sits there i'm like do you want me

to call your mom and i actually felt like an adult and that's rare for me right usually just a goofball um and then and then uh 15 minutes later i look over and he's he's he gets on his bike and he puts his skateboard in his handlebars and he rides off but no helmet right could i like that could be with him for like when he's 60 he could have a stroke from that hit yes yeah like there are some there are some definitely very very gnarly stories there was somebody that reached out to me wanted to tell his story on my channel. And he, I forget exactly what occurred to him, but it was some really, really bad brain injury type stuff.

That a helmet would have saved. Completely would have saved him. Yeah, and he wanted to, he wanted to read, this is a thing in skateboarding. He wanted to tell his story, but he was like, I will be ridiculed literally out of the skateboard industry for the rest of my life for telling my story about how helmets help people. And then this is like 10,

15 years after all of this scenario that he just like had just completely shut himself off from skateboarding. And he reached out to me and said, I want to tell my story. I said i said please you got to come down here we can make this great video and you know maybe maybe someday we can actually make that happen but it's just so it's just such a really to show to show skateboarding and how it is okay i'll reach out reach out to Andy. Yeah. Get Andy Anderson. He's the bomb. Okay. That's an, that, that's a, uh, it's, it's a shame. I had no idea it was that, uh, it was that I had no idea the helmet was that frowned upon. Yeah. That's even like a little, that's like a microcosm in the skateboard world. You know's very very hardcore like the attitude is like oh

if there's anything that makes it safer that is gonna make you weak you know we use a different word that they would use but you know yeah we're not trying to you know andy talks about that as well he's like anything that takes away the danger. That's why freestyle skateboarding actually talks about this in his documentary. Freestyle skateboarding kind of get pushed out of skateboarding because it's not dangerous. What's freestyle where you're just on a slab of concrete and you do your tricks like the Rodney Mullen stuff? Exactly. Early Rodney Mullen, very small board. And he's like the obstacle is the board.

So you're flipping it up on its side making do all these spins blah blah blah and that's he's like there's no danger in that the furthest you can fall is just falling to the ground um but you know it's not going down a 15 stair or up a huge mega ramp that's 30 feet tall which you know, is cool in its own sense. Um, but yes, freestyle is making a comeback. Some people say that I'm helping that come back. And I like to think that I am. It's beautiful. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's the stuff that boys and girls are doing now. Another example is there's these two really famous skateboarders, a brother and sister. I can't remember their names. Everyone. Ocean and sky brown yes how do i instantly know that and i shout out sky brown i see them skating without

helmets and then eating ice cream and i'm like how about you put a helmet on and don't eat ice cream like like like like i don't like i don't like i don. They do wear helmets, though. She does. When they're doing some crazy shit, they do. Yeah, yeah, you're right. But I see them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

She had a really bad accident, right? I'm not sure. I don't know. I didn't hear about that. I think she had a really bad accident where she was jumping from one ramp to another or something, or she slipped into the middle of a ramp or came off a big, steep ramp. And she was wearing a helmet, I think, when that happened. But yeah, it's like. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, and, you know, you could say Rodney got ridiculed for freestyle. Then he redefined street skating. Yeah, he literally lost his professional. Rodney has a great if you get a chance to watch any Rodney Mullen interviews or his TED Talks are incredible, talks about it. He lost his professional skateboard and then he went, oh, I'm going to take this to the streets and do these freestyle tricks in the street. And it's greatest thing ever. I show you just uh yeah and i don't wear a helmet when i'm skateboarding either i'm 39 shame on you and i don't wear a helmet and your mom your mom and dad say anything to you like now or back then now no how about your wife? Yeah. No, not really. What's interesting to me is I feel like and maybe this is just a bad excuse. Yeah. Rodney Mullen. Yeah. So a couple of months ago, I got to hang

out with Rodney for like two hours. No way. Yeah. That is amazing. Just just sitting at a table, just me and him. It was, it was, he was great. It's probably the third time I got to hang with them, but this time it was like, well, Hey,

when we were done, Aaron, this is just straight braggery. Yeah. Grab my, my crotch. When we're done, he's like, can I have your phone number?

Like get on my phone. Yeah. He's such a good guy. Such a good guy. Such a beautiful soul. Have you had a chance to talk with him? Very little. Yeah, it's a trip, right?

Yeah. Yeah. He's special, for sure. Very, very, very much so. A true genius. Genius. Yeah, he really is. Genius. Yeah, there's a few utter geniuses in this world, and he really is. Genius.

Yeah, there's a few utter geniuses in this world, and he's one of them. Okay, so back to let's talk about why you don't wear a helmet. What the hell is that? I'm judging the shit out of you. Go. Yeah, that's okay. It's good. Well, maybe this is just a bad excuse, but I feel like, so sometimes I go to a park and they say,

oh, you have to wear a helmet. And then I go, okay, I'll wear a helmet. And then I'm skating and maybe it's just getting used to it. Right. Um, but I feel more at risk of getting injured with the helmet because I've been skateboarding for so many years and it sort of throws off the weight balance, but I could just get used to that weight balance because I got a vert ramp in my skate park now, thanks to my vert skater, JD Sanchez, shout out JD. Yeah, it's a huge ramp. It's utterly terrifying. And I did a series on there. And every time I skated that the rule is no helmet, no ramp. You can't skate the ramp without a helmet. So I wore a helmet on there and knee pads and elbow pads everything because that's just terrifying to me but if i'm gonna skate street

which i've been skating for 29 years it's more terrifying for me to wear a helmet maybe it shouldn't be oh yeah i did see you wearing a helmet in that video where you hurt your wrist yeah we're all suited up which one of these is jd sanchez the top one this kid yeah check him out i think he just turned 13 let's go jd yeah keep that one right there in the middle yeah yeah this is at your facility no no this is a new trick he learned i'll show you my facility though oh what in the heck i don't even know what that is. You're like finger flipped it around the back, caught it with the other hand. Okay. Let's go to another post.

How do you meet a kid like this? How did you, do I stay on this Instagram account? Yeah. Stay on this Instagram and go down. So that, that's my facility, but the street side, but let's go. Oh, that right there to the right. One to the right. Yeah. That this is my ramp. My ramp built it with my own hands. Actually JD's dad built it. Shout out Danny. You're the best. This isn't Oakland, California. Yeah. It's actually in San Leandro, super close to Oakland, but yeah, you want to come skate the ramp tuesday night's vert night look at that kickflip indie double kickflip indie 540 wow yeah he's too good back to back 540 oh my goodness

mid the ramp jd you need to calm down he just went to argentina and skated in the world championship of vert and he is 13 years old and he placed 11th and that's not 11th for 13 year olds that's 11th for the whole everybody is this it um must be yeah what does it say in the thing it says my heat qualifier yeah there you go thing it says my heat qualifier yeah there you go god oh man my wife can't see this stuff why it's good i am my kid my kids can't see this stuff and then my wife will have a heart attack i know i gotta keep my wife um how do you meet a kid like this how does a kid like this and aaron cairo meet up yeah we make random videos we i mean we make so many videos we do a daily video um so we were making a video at a vert ramp and my my skate team was there and they just jd was there actually

jd's story is also really incredible um because i skated a lot at the fremontont skate park. We've made a ton of videos there. And I met him when he was probably six. And I have these old videos on my channel that are still there. And I taught this kid how to do a frontside 180, um, when he was six and then now he's 13 doing five forties on a vert ramp. And I just was like, I remember when i taught you to do a front 180 i bet you couldn't 540 if i didn't teach you a front 180 did he go kind of did you guys have like a five year gap where you didn't see each other or no you would keep seeing each other at the skate park every now and then i would see him but there was like a big gap where i didn't see him yeah it was probably it was probably two or three years and then then it was just, oh, random.

And then he said to me, you taught me how to 180. And I was like, what? And then I, okay, you're right. I taught you how to 180. Not only did I teach you how to 180, I made a whole video about it, which I love. I just love that. It's still there on YouTube and people can really see. And that's sort of a testament that what you know, when I'm doing it works.

Are both your parents still alive? Yes. And your dad had a God. Yeah. Congratulations. And your dad had a bout with cancer. Yeah. Yes. What kind and what kind of effect did that have on your life? Yeah. So the first time it was. A little shift here from JD to cancer. Yeah, straight from JD, 13 into cancer. Yeah, he had Hodgkin's lymphoma.

So, okay. So my dad, when we were growing up up we would make jokes about my dad we would say you know his name is jeff and my my friends were all terrified of jeff my dad is like a mountain man he's you know he instilled into me a very very hard work ethic like you do it yourself you work hard you make it go right you are your own person and that's just what it is and the world can be a rough place and you're going to make the best of it type of a viewpoint which at the time i hated him for it but now i love him for it probably wouldn't be anywhere without that viewpoint and um he got a military man was he a military man no he's not um but his father was okay so i

think that sort of came down from his father his father was was a military man which would have been world war ii okay yes yeah so my dad got he got hodkins lymphoma and when he told me it was like very i don't know, I didn't really know how to feel about it. Like thinking like, man, I think my dad might pass away. And then I remembered nothing can kill my dad. Literally nothing. He's been in helicopter crashes before. So my, my dad, he works in seismic. He's what they call a bird dog. And he goes and he watches over a group of people that are putting charges into the ground. It used to be dynamite.

I don't know what they do now. I'm sure it's not dynamite anymore. And then they map underneath the surface. So he would go to Alaska on these wild trips. And he's been in like literal helicopter crashes and then i remembered if a helicopter crash can't kill him cancer isn't gonna either um but yeah i think it was literally stage four which is pretty gnarly very yeah very gnarly cancer and then he he just beat it. Like, what the hell?

Did he go through all the traditional treatments? Yeah, he did. He did chemo. And he lives in Montana. I'm from Montana. He still lives there. Yeah. And he beat it.

And then, get this, and then he has to go to the doctor every six months. And so on one of his check-ins, they said, there's something going on with your bladder. We're going to check it out. And they said, Oh, you got going on with my bladder. Yeah. So then he ended up, he had bladder cancer. And my mom, my mom said, why does he have, how does he have bladder cancer? And they said, Oh, actually, I don't know. They didn't really tell you this, but when you do chemo, the radiation can cause cancer. So the cancer treatment from the earlier cancer gave him bladder cancer. That's what the doctor told my mom. You can imagine my mom wanted to punch this guy in the face. She was super pissed. And I just, you know, man. So then my dad had bladder cancer and then he beat that too. Now he's total cancer free. He's just, his nine lives, you know. Yeah.

Amazing. Look, Rodney Mullen says Aaron Cairo is also a genius. Not Rodney Mullen. We're doing our best out here. We're trying every day. What is it? It seems like you're at a. I was going to say transition, but maybe rebirth.

But with some point with Braille, you are you said in the in that video that I'm sorry, video that's already over a million views, I'm going to go back to instructional content, progressions, things of that nature. Do you know what the next two years look like for you? Three years? Six months? The rear view mirror, the hindsight is always 20-20. It's very easy to look back and very hard to look forward. But my plan is to sort of take back, well, I've already taken back the CEO position. I'm 100% owner of Braille Skateboarding. I always have been, but I did have a CEO hired. So now I'm going to be the CEO. I'm going to be running things very closely.

And I haven't even really posted that many tutorials yet. I've just been doing the weird. So the whole strategy is I do weird videos specifically. And when I say weird videos, that means I made pizza cutter wheels. I made cement shoes, cement block shoes. And I'm getting these ideas from the audience. So get back into communication. Yeah, yeah. What a great series. What was that series? You make it, we'll ride it? You make it, we skate it. Yeah. That's so awesome.

Yeah. So people make us random weird boards. But the whole strategy there is that people that are not necessarily interested in skateboarding at all or never would be, would see one of these videos. And then the idea is that they see us having fun and they go, maybe I want to learn how to skate. And then they find the tutorials and the rest is history. Right. That's my strategy. So my strategy is to do that better than I ever have before,

make better tutorials. And it's very geared around this app which i'm very dying to get it finished i'm having a lot of problems with coders i just lost my mike i just lost a coder who's been working on the app for years um i lost him to amazon shout out amazon and and then i just got a new one a friend can't you get some coders in the ukraine i'm joking not joking yeah it's good question i wish i had thought of that earlier because i'm so in debt to this app it is you know they get that like i mean they got like coders there who are like starved for work yeah i have no idea and they just run around and code from running from bomb. Oh my gosh. I actually do have, I actually have a Ukrainian who runs my Braille Russia channel.

And you know, when that whole thing hit, that was pretty wild. He, yeah, probably shouldn't talk too much about it. So he doesn't get nabbed. Yeah, was pretty wild very very wild now he's in a total different country safe thank god and he's super good dude braille russia amazing amazing how many employees do you have i had 30 and now we're cutting it back so now i think at this moment in time i'm down to around 21 congratulations yeah no that's hard I know that's hard but I know it feels good yeah it's yeah it's a lot of things I could say about it's tough and it's also very tough because a lot of people are you know and I hire my friends I went through that whole thing of hiring my friends. And then at some point you have to have this conversation like, hey, this is a real job. I'm really sorry, but when you come, you need to track your hours.

Right. Hey, hey, hey. be doing some sort of work situation you know and you know youtube itself is also changing the algorithms the platforms themselves are also changing tiktok came in and that changed the whole system so that also is put a huge that made it very difficult because if i you know, 5.7 million YouTube subscribers, but sometimes I do a video that gets 20,000 views. How is that even physically possible? Well, it is now because, you know, people's attention are going to shorts and to TikTok and various other things. So as a business owner, that is something that's very, very, it has to be very skillfully handled. Right. And I would love to just keep every single employee I've ever had and make it all work. And I hope that I can, can, but yeah, so we're going to, we're through, we're going to have to

go through in the next probably six months, a whole sort of restructure. And then that's going to be to do those things that I was saying, weird boards, tutorials better than I ever have before. And hopefully I'm building an app that really, really gives good support. Part of the app is going to be that the kid can send in his video and get coaching. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he goes, I'm like, I'm working on my Ollie and here I'm uploading my video and then I'm sending that to you. And within 24 hours, he gets an instant answer from a professional saying, here's what you need to do. Move your foot in this direction, change that work on this for 15 minutes and send me a new video. Like that. How did you know to give stuff away for free? When,

when Greg Glassman started CrossFit, he started giving everything away for free, filming all the seminars and the people over the hill told him he was batshit crazy. How did you know? And did people tell you, you were crazy giving it away free? Yeah, they do. And they still do. In fact, that's a sort of a thing I went through just recently. How did I know? I don't, that's a good question. I think it's, well, I think when you're, when you're building a business, it's very heavily reliant upon the amount of attention that you get. And so if you're giving away things for free, you do get more attention. And if you're just saying, okay, I make this video series.

I'm going to put it here, and you have to pay for it, so the thing that I'm talking about this app, that will be a paid membership. There's no other way around it because they have to pay the coaches. Well, that's what was cool. Greg gave everything away online,

the exact video of the seminar, and yet people still paid a thousand dollars to take it in person and selling out 30 a week all over the world and it was just like yeah see how that works yeah and he would even say yeah and it worked and that's basically what you're gonna do yeah have them all free on youtube it's like for me i can watch it for free on youtube i still buy it on apple i could watch it over at Netflix. I still buy it on Apple. I mean, it's like people like, yeah, there's something for everybody. Yeah, it's true. It is true.

There is that part of it too. So yeah, so interesting. Yeah. So I go, I kind of go, you can learn every trick and every tutorial I've ever made. I probably have the actual best tutorials. The tutorials on YouTube are very, very good. But then when you jump into something like this, it's more structured.

That's the only thing I go like, it's a little better for learning because it's structured. And on YouTube, you go like, oh, I'm learning how to do an Ollie and the next thing I've been on cat videos for five hours or whatever. Right, right. It gets random. So I'm hoping, I'm just really banking on this being like a really good service, like an actual, real, exchangeable, very good product. And so far it hasn't been. And that's one of the things where I go like, yeah, I did the toys and target. That was

whatever it was. And then I did try, I've been doing this app and it's been the part of my business that's been losing money the most because of paying all the coders and everything. But a lot of things start like that and then you go 20 years later, you're lucky you did it or glad you did it. Because on social media at the end of the day,

these guys change their mind and everything can change within an instant. All monetization on YouTube could go away overnight tomorrow. And then you literally have no business. So the strategy right now is to build my own thing, which people can then use. And it's a good service. Worse. They could charge us to be on YouTube. Yeah. They just completely flipped the script. Exactly. I love, I love that Elon is going to charge for blue check marks. I just,

I just, I just, I just loved it. It's just the case. Like, it's not a big, I don't love it for any political reason or anything. I just like, like, like, you know, people use the popcorn emoji when a fight starts in the comments. I just want to be like, oh yeah, this is going to be fun to watch how this unfolds over here. I love it too. Elon Musk is one of the people that I studied. I read the book about him. I listened to the book. I read some of his business moves and the things that he did. And I think it's super fascinating. And if you follow the story of Tesla, I mean, there's a lot of people that say, oh, this, that other thing.

But, you know, he went up against giants, literal giants. And we're talking about in an industry where people would have you literally killed. And he built this massive car company. Largest U.S. car company in the world. Yeah. And people can say, oh, he's this, that, or the other thing. But, dude, he did that. And they tried to keep him out of the car lot business and everything.

Man, they fucked with him, right? Yes. And that's just another industry. And I get fucked with all the time too. All the time. Lots of crazy wild things happen. And I just go, this is just another person in the industry that doesn't want me to succeed. And we'll keep it pushing.

Has anyone tried to buy you? No. I have had some. Yeah, well, I've had it been brought up to me. And I think it gets brought up and then I'm just very much like, no, I'm not going to do that. So just don't even bother. I'm so very cut it off right at the entrance of any question about that.

Are you offended when people ask you, like they're asking to buy your girlfriend or your baby from you? No, but it's, how do I describe it? It is kind of, I feel like if I were to sell Braille and then it goes on to some skateboard company and it's just another company in the mix of what they're doing,

it's kind of like me giving up on my goal and maybe someday I will do that, you know, maybe someday I will give up on my goal, but probably not. Like I literally think like, you know, what, what do you get excited about when you wake up in the morning? Like I wake up in the morning and I don't have this thing to get excited about, what am I going to do? Right. I'm sure I would channel that creative energy into something else, but I don't, I don't know. I really like having it there. And I really like creating on that. And I like the idea of, oh, I'm going to have all these different channels and all these different languages and help people all over the world, blah, blah, blah. different channels and all these different languages and help people all over the world,

blah, blah, blah. We have these incredible success stories like the kid in Africa and others. People say, we just did a little tour around the US and it's so cool to go to all these different places. And a lot of people- Did you drive that tour or did you fly? Drive. Oh, that's dope. RV. Yeah, it was so fun. It was incredibly fun. I was like, oh, we have all these skaters and Oh, that's dope. scared to sleep in tents i won't name names gabe cruz uh slept in the rv and we went skate park to skate park to skate park and it was so cool because you get there and then people say oh i was going through this deep depression i watched your videos totally pulled me out of it started skateboarding really changed my life around so cool all these stories like that you know so i can have somebody shit on me and tell me i'm a ruined skateboarding all day long and if i hear some stories like that, you know, so I can have somebody shit on me and tell me I'm a ruined skateboarding all day long.

And if I hear some stories like that, I just go, I don't care what you think. Doesn't matter. I'm going to keep going. Dude, those are ding dongs. Yeah. By the way, I've never heard any of that. I mean, my kids, maybe my kids are older, but my kids are five and eight. Yeah.

But Braille on and they'll watch it all day. Yeah. And I don't have to worry about my kids seeing anything that's like. It's the cleanest thing in their life. Yeah. Well, that's another thing that we purposely we did that on purpose so that parents could do that. And then because that brings more people into skateboarding and some of the other skateboard channels, you know, they're going gonna have drinking and drugs and profanity and all kinds of stuff and my kids already see that the skate park and i don't have a problem with that like yeah like i have a problem with bringing glass out

into the skate park but like if those kids want to smoke weed at the skate park and my kids smell like i actually don't care but but i'm not going out of my way. I'm not putting stuff on TV for them to see. Right. That's part of the culture. Yeah. And it gets into this thing of like, Oh, you're a skateboarder. Oh,

you have to do drugs, you know? And some kids just told me that recently they said this, the biggest, the biggest gateway drug that they know is skateboarding. I'm like, Whoa, I'm like,

Whoa, I couldn't even, they kind of got me. I, it was one of my listeners. Yeah. I'm like, whoa. I'm like, whoa. I couldn't even, they kind of got me. It was one of my listeners. Yeah. It's like, wow. Fascinating. But now, you know, back in the day, like, let's go back when I was here trying to become a professional skateboarder.

It was like, you got hurt. You were just, what were you going to do? You're going to drink and you're going to do a bunch of drugs. But now, skateboarding is in the Olympics. Skateboarding levels have really increased. You cannot do that. You get hurt. You're in the gym. You're working out. You're doing CrossFit. You're doing physical therapy. You're seeing the doctor every day. You cannot add drugs into the mix of that and still survive. This is where I think some of these things are really good. I'm very anti-drug. A lot of people think I do smoke weed, et cetera. I don't smoke weed.

I don't do any drugs. And I'm not going to sit there and tell everybody else that they can't either. People are going to live their own lives. But my strategy is just to make- Well, they're not good for you, Aaron. Yeah, that's true. Actually, they're harmful for you. Burning any object and inhaling the fumes, injecting drugs into your veins, popping pills.

These things are all harmful to you. Right. So I. Right. But there is a lot of people think, oh, marijuana makes you a better skateboarder. That's definitely a thing as well. I wanted to do a whole documentary and maybe i still will i i met this girl who is a physical therapist and she has all these statistical analysis data of what marijuana does to the system and how it reacts

specifically for athletes and i should make this documentary at some point and interview a bunch of people because there's also a lot of professional skateboarders that lost their career to drugs nobody Nobody talks about it. Not really. Well, some people do nowadays. Christian has soy documentary is amazing. Oh,

I haven't seen that. I have to watch that. That old ass one. You haven't seen that. No, I have to. Oh my God, Aaron,

you have to see it. It's that's the whole story. I just recently met him and he is just such a beautiful person as well. I love him. He's full blown born again now, right? He's yes. He came to the Braille house and did a video with us. Oh, that's awesome.

I wasn't there when he did, but then I met him later. And where were you? You were out gallivanting with Elon Musk. Yeah, probably. And then I, and then I went to do tour and I just was randomly walking to the hotel. It's probably midnight and Christian Hassoy is sitting in the lobby. And then I go, I'm going to go say hi to Christian Hassoy.

Why not? And then he was like, Oh, you're from the Braille. I went to your place, but it was so funny. My guys were telling me, so we do all the weird boards.

He literally walked in and they were like, Hey, Christian, we're going to do this. And he goes, what is this? And then he's like, Oh, this is a weird board. And he do this. And he goes, what is this? And he's like, oh, this is a weird board.

And he goes, no, like, what is this? And then they were like, oh, we do this YouTube channel and we have this skate park, blah, blah. And he was just like, so like, what in the world is going on here? We're like so oddball. Are people disappointed if they come to skate at braille and they don't get this especially a huge name in the sport like that and they don't get to skate with you probably yeah i think so i think sometimes they i'd be bummed if i came there and i didn't see you where is he yeah well you have to come up. You're not too far away, right?

No, I'm close to you. Yeah. You don't have to make a trip. I'm in Santa Cruz. I time it when you're there. Yeah. You got to hit me on the text and time it when I'm there. Cause I'm not always there.

And when, and a lot of times when I am there, we're just like very hardcore filming. You know, we have a schedule and it's, it's a thing. Daily videos. Do you publish same time every day? Live it's, it's a thing. Daily videos. Do you publish same time every day? Live at Braille 5 p.m. 10 a.m. every day. 10 a.m. every morning. A video goes up. Yeah. Probably for a very long time, 10 years, maybe. I don't know. I should look. Actually, I should look. We have never faltered from that that and a lot of people are telling us i should because my views have been dropping and they're saying oh you gotta not do daily i don't

know if that's a lie or not i have to when i reinvent the wheel here in the next six months i'll give some things a shot oh shit experiment wow yeah do you have do you have any friends um any other youtubers like this this cadre of guys you hang out with the 1 million to 20 million group that you're probably friends with or yeah i do and you guys did you guys brainstorm that stuff we do all the time yeah it's very interesting because right now it's like you know who dude perfect is the huge massive youtube channel they do trick shots blah blah oh yeah yeah they have probably 100 million subs or something close crazy even their even their views have been dropping i literally just go okay there are some channels that are growing but a good amount of people are have been dropping and tick tock i don't know if you know this it was huge news

but the the stat that everybody is trying to get is the watch time so tick tock just took over youtube and watch time not just happened probably a year and a half ago a year ago yeah huge huge thing yeah dude perfect what do they got there 50 60 million 60 million subscribers 58 4 yeah and their their views have actually also been dropping um so i look at all channels skateboarding related not skateboarding related and look at what they're doing how they're doing it and what's working what's not working and it's very interesting i just love that i love statistical analysis i love just the raw hardcore numbers i avoid tiktok like the plague yeah i probably should too but recently i've been on there it's true it's tough

tough well well maybe it's good for you maybe it's it's good for your business i just i don't yeah it probably is amazing for your business um it's interesting for your business. It is good. Yeah, it probably is amazing for your business. It's interesting that those don't monetize as – like the people, at least from my purview where I stand, a million TikTok – this is really – Yeah, throw out some numbers. Sweeping generalization. But a million YouTube TikTok followers is the equivalent to a sponsor to 100,000 Instagram followers. Now, that's just a big sweeping generalization. But I just don't get the impression that they think that those followers convert the way Instagram followers are. But maybe – is that how you see it too?

There's not as much of a premium on them. Yeah. Well, it's the raw numbers. Right, right. So I haven't really tested enough to be able to just give purely raw numbers from my own channels. Do you value your Instagram followers more than your TikTok followers. Um, not really the, the mindset that I have honestly is what I was saying earlier is attention is attention, right? So if you're getting attention, that's good. And just keep

going on that no matter what, kind of like, you know, the CrossFit, he's going to give it away all for free. And at some point that's going to come back to him some way somehow so if i i think i have like 880 000 on tiktok and on instagram i have like 980 000 um do i value the tiktok or value the instagram more than tiktok no but if we're posting a video, I could take the same video, post it on Instagram, and it'll do maybe 200,000 views. I could post it on TikTok

and it might do 20,000 views. But then a different video, vice versa, TikTok might do 2 million views and Instagram might do 100,000 views. So what it really comes down to at the end of the day is cold, hard statistics of just, you got that many people to view it. Right. And that was that much attention and that's good. Right. Um, but it is a very tough

thing because on YouTube, if I get a million views, I make money. And if I get a million views on Tik TOK, I make nothing. What about Facebook? Have they invited you to play with their, uh, their, what are they called? Their reels? Yeah, we do that too. Yeah. Facebook, Instagram reels. I mean, Instagram reels was paying for about two months and now they've made it. So I think some people have worked the system a little bit and got a good, healthy paycheck. I know some people worked the system a little bit and got a good, healthy paycheck. I know some of those people very well done.

And now it's like, oh, if you want to make a thousand bucks, you have to get like 12 billion. Right. They just ramped it up so fast. And it's kind of, you know, we do make money on Instagram. We do make some money on TikTok. We do make some money on Facebook. We do make some money on Facebook. We make the vast majority of money on long form YouTube.

Yeah. And now we're doing shorts on YouTube. And as of January 1st, shorts on YouTube are set to monetize. Do I think that monetization is going to be good? I really, really, really hope so. And I want to think so. I have my doubts. We'll see.

You're going to mix the shorts with your current station? Already are. Already are? Already are. Oh, and now they have all these different tabs. Yeah, it's new. They just recently did that. Yeah, that shit scares the shit out of me.

People start DMing me. They're like, where's this video? Where's that? I'm like, they're there. And I'm like, uh-oh. Yeah, it's going to be. I feel like the same thing that occurred when the Internet first occurred is sort of occurring again. Like there's a wow.

That heavy. It's maybe not that heavy, but it's pretty heavy. Yeah. You're going to see a lot of changes occurring in the next couple years and apparently we're going into some kind of a financial crisis you mean because they printed three trillion dollars in the last couple years i cannot yeah and there's some like inflation occurring and the economy is you know doing what's doing it's gonna be an interesting road your hindsight is 2020 what's ahead of you you're not totally sure so really be very very smart and talented in everything you do and work

your ass off yeah work your ass off and don't do drugs yeah and don't they slow you down it's like tying an anchor to you yeah if you're trying to be a professional skateboarder you're out there and you're 14 years old and you're starting to smoke weed and you think it's going to make you better. Trust me, it's not. I always wish that someone would have told me this. The thing about smoking cigarettes and doing drugs is it only has two endings. You have to quit, which is so hard. Yeah.

Or it kills you. Those are those are the two roads it goes down i wish someone would have told me that before i ever smoked my first cigarette did you ever smoke cigarettes no i never did my wife did very heavily nicotine i tried to get her oh it's so gnarly i tried to get my wife to quit and she was so tough on me that one i remember i'll never forget it i literally heroin smoke i was like you got it you gotta smoke and then she did and then she literally took one drag of a cigarette and she goes oh my god i feel so much better but she was literally going insane yes yes you have physical withdrawals you need to be like i i yeah i took me a shit shitload of efforts to try but once i finally i just basically said You need to be like, I took me a shitload of efforts to try. But once I finally, I just basically said, I need to be left alone for like three days. Yeah.

And I would be like twitching. My wife did a very similar thing. I literally thought she was never going to quit in her whole life. And then she did. She just literally quit. And I said, wow, fuck is well done. I've never been so proud of you. Or maybe I have, but that was i've never been so proud of you or maybe i have but that was

very i was really proud of her have your mom and dad told you how that they're blown away what's your brother think about what you're doing yeah he thinks it's awesome so the actual reason i did the tour was to go back to my hometown so when i was was 18, I got a skate park built in Red Lodge, Montana. You got that built when you were 18? Yeah. It wasn't the park that's there now, but it was just a slab of concrete, had a bench and a flat bar. In fact, they sent the bench to me and I need to find it. Oh, that's so sweet. Yeah. I got the park built. I went to city council. I did a whole presentation. I asked city council for $25,000.

Then I wrote a grant, got another $10,000. It was in the city paper. And then some 10, 15 years later, the park was all run down. It was wood ramps. It was crap. And then I met somebody randomly from Missoula. And he said, hey, I work with Montana skate park association. And I said, you know, I've been thinking we need to redo this red lodge park. And then I met, got hooked up with this guy named Kevin Bonk, super rad dude from red lodge. Who's on the city council. And we raised $200,000. Wow. And we got this park built right here.

And the reason I, you know, and then it got built. That's how much that park cost? That's it? $200,000? That seems affordable. It costs $200,000. Yeah, it is affordable. Dude, look at that neighborhood. Those homes are beautiful.

You think? Yeah, go back. This is where I grew up. Very, I mean. I can't control this thing. Oh, maybe I can. Let's see. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, very nice little

community. I love growing up. This is where I grew up. Red Lodge, Montana. This town has 2,000 people. It's a very small town. God, that's a nice park. This company called Evergreen that is just going around Montana and building these awesome skate parks. Thanks to this other organization called Montana Pool Service.

Shout out Jeff Ament from Pearl Jam. He donates a lot of money and he gets a lot of skate parks built in Montana. So Montana has some unbelievable parks. Oh, I think I've heard that story. Okay. Yeah. So Jeff donated 50. I donated 50.

And then we raised another 100 and we got this park built. And so I went back to my hometown and brought my whole team there. And we did a little sort of meet and greet, we call it. So a bunch of kids come out and we skate the park with them. And my dad was there, you know? Yeah. My dad was very proud of me. I think he was trying to hold back the tears kind of proud. Oh, that's love that yeah that's an adorable park did you did you have input in the design yes that little bowl in the center is trick yeah it's amazing we got some really good shots there if we ever edit this video we need to so montana huh so if

i was going to do something one year with my kids, be like drive to Montana and try to tour all the skate parks there. Yes. Do it and go camping and take them fishing. Montana is, have you been to Montana? I have. It's beautiful. And you got to hit Yellowstone National Park on your way. Yeah, it truly is beautiful.

Idaho. You ever think about moving on back out there? Take your wife to Idaho, Montana. Yeah, I have. And I think like it's it's sort of like therapeutic to go there. But I think living there, I don't know. Tough. Well, I'll tell you what living in Oakland will do now that I were I'm not afraid to offend you since I got everything I need from you.

Yeah, I grew up. I was born in oakland california yeah and i was in berkeley uh and i was in and i bought a home in berkeley and i lived in berkeley for a bunch of time and then i ended up moving down here and about six months into the pandemic i went up to berkeley yeah and what was it like craziest motherfuckers i've ever seen everyone's outside with masks on standing well i went to the park we were the only i saw 5 000 people that day were the only people without masks batshit insanity the evil looks people gave each other the shit people would say keep your kids away don't let your kids get close to us dude we're in fucking tilden park i i seriously felt like i was in a zombie movie

dude yeah i was like what has happened up here yes what did you guys see they i'm only 70 miles down the road from you i mean don't get me wrong santa cruz was pretty out there too yeah but what did you see it was so sad these smart people yeah it's the news it's the news they bought into it i was so sad for them yeah it was and i told and i told my wife i'm like oh my god i'm so glad we rent this house out and we don't live here like what if we would have been here with these i seriously couldn't believe it i seriously couldn't believe it i was in you know tilden park right i don't know where that is but i can get the the concept of it it's the berkeley hills the oakland hills yeah dude you got to go to tilden park it's right in your backyard you got to go up there it's amazing dude it's just oh they

got all four in there i just don't even know the tilden park yeah and you know they make those crazy skateboarding videos there where the guys are skating down the hills they have the gris they have the grizzly peak uh uh there's let me see if i can find no that's in san francisco no i know you've seen this let me valencia grizzly Peak Skateboarding But Oakland is chill Oakland you know I It is chill I'm not saying anything bad about Berkeley

Berkeley's insane But my you know I have I have my house And I come here and I create my videos And then I go to my skate park and I make my videos. I'm very like I'm kind of isolated into my own world. Yeah, me too. You just have your loop.

You stay in. Yeah. And I don't really, you know, if I go out and everybody's, you know, being. When's the last time you've been to Costco? Oh, when the day before we went on this trip because i went oh i'm gonna go to costco and buy a bunch of food for and when's the time before that when had you been there uh years yeah i haven't been in 20 years and i went a month ago yeah i couldn't even believe what i saw what what you know you which one did you go to which costco did you go to fairfield i think yeah you know what you saw you know

hey it's like disney it's the exact same people at disneyland is it i haven't been to disneyland either oh man you were you shocked were you flabbergasted when you went into costco no i don't think so all right I don't remember being like, oh, my God, what is this? But also, we do make these videos. We go into these stores. I mean, I don't know. The world is just a crazy place. It is. People are wild, you know?

They do drugs. Yeah, they do. They eat too many donuts. And there are a lot of donuts and a lot of sugar and a lot of food. And so there's a lot of wild stuff going on out there. Interesting place. I appreciate you coming on. Yeah.

Appreciate you skating the whole park with me from wife to family to drugs to dogs. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Thank you for doing what you're doing. Yeah. You're amazing. And I know that all my listeners are going to think I'm cool as shit because I had you on. And just wallow in that a little bit.

Nice. If there's anything I can ever do for you, if you're ever out this way, uh, you have my phone number, text me anytime. Yeah. Tell your wife. Thank you. I know she played a huge part in, uh, you coming on the show because of, uh, the mutual friend we share. Yeah. And it's a tremendous honor to meet you. You're doing, you're doing amazing stuff. There's no, there's nothing more virtuous with higher integrity than helping, especially in this day and age and helping people move and setting a good example for kids. It is the highest in my mind. Thank you. Yeah. I really appreciate that. All right, brother. And, and, uh, uh, are you going to stay up till you have to go to the airport at 11? Yeah, absolutely. It's only nine,

13. I'm going to get some dinner, which I haven't gotten yet. All right. And then we're going to do that. So what are we at? You're not at three hours and 14 minutes. We did not go for that long. We went as I came late. Yeah, we went for you and I went for two. I think we went 40 minutes before you came on. So you and I went two hours and 34 minutes. Yeah, cool. Awesome. So this just goes on. Where does this go? We're just live on YouTube now.

And then one of the guys on the back end will export it and put it on Spotify and iTunes in the morning. Oh, that's cool. That's really, really cool. So, well, sorry I missed the first 40 minutes. No, it's okay. The people who listen to the show are so fucking good to me. they just come on and we party oh yeah great so they're like they just sit there and talk shit to me like you're not gonna really come on and i just it's just fun you know what i mean oh yeah that happened oh it's just a party these guys are a party let's see let's just say we'll

say hi to a couple of uh bruce wayne says that's a nice skate park thank you swain i made fun of this dude earlier this uh my so-called fake deadlift short on youtube which is not edited got oh this guy deadlifted 500 pounds today and i made fun of him for it not being real but it is real but now he's telling me it has 1100 views i know it's real i just like missing him uh this guy says uh nice podcast um this lady alisa carver down give it to him savvy oh yeah they're making fun of me like i'm blowing you right now here at the end you know what i mean like give it to she got the lips so this is the posse nice so you got a good crew oh great crew great crew out here on the internet it's not always easy to get a great crew.

Oh, these guys are savages. They're so good to me. That's awesome. Yeah, so good to me. All right. I have a feeling our paths will cross again, brother. Yeah, thank you so much. Yep.

Cheers. Good night, Aaron. Cheers. Good night. I've had to pee for an hour. Guys. Thanks for staying with me. Incredible,

right? Holy shit. That's a cool dude. Uh, you know, uh, that guy's comfortable in his skin. Thank you,

Christine. The Sabanistas, Christine. The seven, he does Bruce Wayne. Oh, I should, the lip bite. Oh, you're right.

Oh, not blow. See, I just go straight to blowing. It was the lip bite. I should have done that by Aaron. Uh, all right.

Uh, tomorrow morning I have Jason Grubb on. Uh, I really liked having him on and he's doing some master's competition he wanted to come on and promote it so i'm gonna just tease him tomorrow for 30 minutes i'm gonna spin off and do a live call-in show uh jason is a really cool guy he's inspirational and uh he uh whenever i go to his'm like, man, this cat's real. There's no braggadocio in him. And, yes, it's only 12, 15 a.m. on the East Coast. Okay, so I'll see you guys, those of you who will be up at 7 a.m. Pacific Standard Time tomorrow.

I feel like we have a show tomorrow night, too. I really want to do this show with – oh, hold on. I'll call you. Uh, I'll call you back in a couple of minutes. Okay. Uh, let's see. I really want to do.

Oh, so I don't have anyone tomorrow night and we don't have anything scheduled for Friday. Cause I'm freaking out about the UFC show and then Saturday and Sunday, zealous games. And then Scott Schweitzer Schweitzer switzer oh i'm really excited about that on monday sean ramirez on tuesday i think it's his first interview since uh leaving the kind of leaving the crossfit games uh i think the guy on wednesday i have was

integral in pulling the troops out of Afghanistan. I think. I think that's who that is. Oh, shit. I haven't scheduled on two days. Uh-oh. All right. So we got to figure out what's going on tomorrow night.

I really want to do something with Mike Halpin, John Young, Brian Friend, and Tyler Watkins talking about what the hell is going on with the games. I know. I can't believe that came out of my mouth. Oh, darn. I'll come on. That's very nice of you. Oh taylor and jr is that tomorrow night oh shit i don't see that on the schedule is that on the schedule is that on youtube how come i don't see that you're right who said that with taylor and jr oh that is a great question i need to text those guys right now uh taylor

we're supposed to do a programming show okay i'm not gonna drag you guys through this i'll send the text now thank you bruce you're hired or whoever told me that. Yes, John Young. Yes, John Young. I'm actually missing John Young. Yes, John Young. Have Barbell spin on, too.

We are going to have Mr. Spin on during the Zealous Games. We've got a pretty cool schedule built. I'm pretty excited. I'm feeling even a little cocky about it. I'm like, yeah, look at our team. We roll deep. We roll deep we roll deep all right guys oh i want to say this the the kid we had on tyson bajan earlier in the year maybe it was last year he's travis travis bajan's son he won the harlan trophy last year. That's the division two Heisman. He is five or six touchdown passes away of breaking the all time college football passing or no touchdown record division one, division two, anything he's this kid is going to get

drafted first round into the NFL. He has a couple of games left in the season. He's going to become the all-time most passes thrown into the end zone quarterback in the history of college football. I don't give a fuck about football and I think that's fucking cool. I was listening to a coach being interviewed today, a football coach. He says he's been coaching college football for 27

years. He's never seen a better quarterback. Yeah, he's a senior this year. Tyson Bajan. I'll get him back on.'s uh shep shepherds shepherdstown yeah cool kid right like like like just a class act at the highest level unbelievable unbelievable all right i'll get'm going to get him back on too. Great kid. Get him back on before he gets so fucking big he can't come on the show. Okay. Actually, maybe we'll be so big we won't have him on.

That should be my mindset, right? All right. Love you guys. Talk to you soon. Lots of exciting things happening. Bye-bye.