0:00 It's all the same in any business. I always say, so before my mom passed away, I got asked to speak at Harvard Business School. And I was like, I would just tell everyone to drop out. [Music] Welcome back everybody to an amazing episode of Careful Boys with Paul Gomez over here. Part three. All of us are jaw-dropped on his story, so we're just going to let him get right into it. remember pick up from part one and two to here where we're coming from. So you we had 1999 20201 we're like like killing it right had the had to adapt from the blink thing which was a disaster but it was huge but it was like but I thought quick on my toes so I got all the right bands
0:51 right stuff so 6 months and then I'm I'm getting away from that whole thing so I started this campaign cuz everyone's doing um like high athlete stuff this that the other. So I came up with this campaign called the essence of surf. So I always I love one of my favorite things is God blesses us with a wave. When it comes in it's a fingerprint on the earth. It only comes once. You'll only ride it once and it'll never come again. That's your own philosophy. That's my own philosophy. Cuz it is. It's like the wave comes and it's over and it's never coming again. So if you skate a ramp, if you snowboard, anything, that mountain's always going to be there. You'll find a new line, but it's always going to be there. Yep. The wave never comes again. Yeah. It's gone. And so the essence of surf like if I took every one of you surfing and all of a sudden if we'd all have 100% different emotions than how we that wave made us feel right so I started this campaign of essence of surf
1:41 where it's just like taking that emotion of a person on a wave and going this is the essence of surf this is the emotional connection with the wave or how you feel and then so then I started working on that when I said okay the essence of surf to me is like if I live in New York, that pool is my wave. If I live in the middle America, that river is my wave. That if I live here, this lake's my like that's my essence. So, we did this whole campaign on that and it just blew up again. Like everyone's like, "Oh, this is insane." Like the essence of what we're all born from the water. We're all water anyways. So, that campaign blew up. So now we're we're we're big like right same size as like where we're at with Billong like in like the nine figure mark like 36 months. Ridiculous. Nice. It's insane but terrifying cuz
2:32 back then you're on the hook for everything. There's no venture capitalism. There's banks you money back then. Yeah. So then Bob Bob's and then I got diagnosed with cancer and I was like never say you give your right nut for anything cuz they come collecting. I'll never say that ever again. Don't swear on it. Don't swear. Never say that ever again. Yeah. I'll give my right up for that. Yeah. You were in your 20s at this time? No, this I'm in my 30s at this time. Oh, wow. So, so this this is where it gets But I'm still doing the like my wife to this. Somebody called my I was walking the other day with my wife and somebody goes, "Yeah, Paul says, my wife goes, no, that's not true. He doesn't work 365 days a year." He goes, "The only time Paul's not working is when he's sleeping." Right. So full circle. So we have we have this company. It's crushing it. And Bob had
3:23 already had cancer. He had he had kidney cancer. I had testicular. So his surgery was a radical right nefrectomy. And my surgery was a radical right archioctomy. So they took my right nut. And my friend Saxon walks in right after I'm in the hospital at Cedar Sinai and he's like, "Oh, dude, that's a bummer." I'm like, "What? I got cancer." He goes, "No, you can't say de's nuts anymore. You can only say dnuts. That's like the most surfer friend thing to say. You can't say no. My wife My wife just goes like this. Are you serious? Like are you one of your friends? Yeah. Yeah. But also like what a great friend. Like those are the types. You can only say Dnut. So soon as he opens the door, he's been saving that one. You know, he
4:13 goes, "So, we we're Bob and I are sitting there, you know, all of us are talking about like this is really gnarly cuz go public. You're going public at this time." No, we're you go public at this time. This is when you go public and we're like, "Oh, dude, we'll get fired immediately." Why? I don't know. I left Quicks. I don't want to talk to Wall Street. Oh. Oh, I see. I see. You got to answer to the board. You got to answer to the board. Like, you're gonna I don't know. I don't know how to do this. Like, I dude, we'll be done. It's a wrap. And I go, "Oh, what's our favorite brands?" We're like, "Gucci." And I'm Gucci's got endless money. That's what we're talking about. Gucci's got end. Okay. Mobster Life. How does Gucci have every best real estate on the planet? Have fresh roses every day when you walk in there. Sell stuff that nobody buys and they never go out of business. Yeah.
5:04 Armenians. China. Italian. They're Gucci's Italian. Chinese manufacturing. We're not we're not talking about our money exchange. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's like so we looked at, okay, let's reach out to Gucci. Let's reach out to Levis's. Let's reach out to Nike. Let's reach out to like we just we just went down the list of brands that we thought were cool that would mesh with us. And people thought we were crazy cuz the first retailer we wanted to open when we started Hurley, everyone's like, "Oh, you're going to go in Pack Hunt. You're going to do this." I go, "No, I want to open Hollister." Was like, "Hollister is lame." And I'm like, "Not in middle America. Everyone thinks Hollister's surfing in middle America. We can get in Hollister and crush. True. We're going to grow like that, right? We didn't open Pakistan out of the gates and we still grew crazy. So you have that going on and we had a couple meetings this that and the other and then we get we get a call. We start going down the road with Nike and then
5:55 um we we have they want to have a meeting with us. So, myself, Bob, our designer, Leanne, rest in peace. Amazing woman. Um, our CFO, and a guy named Scott Olette, who's gnarly. Scott Ovette's an incredible person. And, um, we go to Nike September 10th. And, um, we're going in. So, if you go to Nike, MC4, Mac and Row 4 is where all the big whisks sit. All the gnarly guys. And he's the only one who has been there. Yeah. You know MC4, right? Mac and Row 4. No, I don't. Like you go into the thing and it's the building to the left. Like when you walk onto the campus, that's the main building where all the big head honchos sit. So maybe he never been to Nike. He's been lying to us. I went only to the building of innovation. Might have been built later. Oh, like you went to the hive. Yes. Yeah. How badass is that? So sick. It's pretty
6:45 sick. Hi. The high is ████ sick. Yeah. The sick is Yeah. We loved it. We loved it. We went we got invited. We loved it. We It's on the left. I've been to the Nike outlet in Oregon. Tinker and his brother. I love his brother. My goodness. Tinker's good people. the hive and all that kind of stuff that we we're not going to go down that story. We were in a group chat. We're in a couple group chats with him. He designed a shoe with I designed a shoe and I gave it away and that's a different story. I I designed a the Bruce Lee Kobe Bryant shirt cuz I know Bruce Lee's family and I gave it away. Yeah, Shannon. Yeah, Shannon's the best. He's also the best. Shannon's so I have so many crazy cuz I read the Tao Gi Kundo. That's amazing. Are you guys in that group threads here? Yeah, we uh I got a pair of Bruce Le's. I got a pair of Bruce Le to Bruce. That's so sick. Shannon gave me all of them. She's She's the best. She's a darling. She's so awesome. So, full circle. So, we go we
7:35 go to Nike and it's we're there and we're we're in the main conference room and I'm just me. I'm never not going to be me. And um so I'm I'm going to meet Phil Knight. Like Phil Knight 500 bucks college theist Nike. Pretty gnarly. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, we go there. It's Sandy Bode, God rest his soul, Mark Parker, uh, I think Tinker and his brother were there, and then a couple other guys, Don Blair, like the the the guys who run Nike. And we walk in there and we sit down and and Phil goes, "Okay, I've got 45 minutes a lot for you guys." Tom Clark, great mentor, same birthday. Um, so I'll get on Tom Clark. So he's uh Phil goes in 45 minutes, you know, so
8:27 take us through your deck. And I'm like, "Oh, was I supposed to bring this skateboard?" Like like like Bob and I are looking at each other like like we have like numbers, but like am I supposed to like have a deck? Like I don't know. Is it does he mean like skateboard or surfboard? like I'm like kind of confused and he's like and he's looking at me and I'm looking at Bob and he goes like you know like a deck like a PowerPoint presentation and I'm like I was just going to tell you how cool we are. It'll only take 20 minutes and I just tell you and all a sudden Bob's just like got this look on his face and Phil puts his hand on Bob's throat. He goes, "You're a little nervous, huh?" He goes, "Yeah, I feel kind of unprepared for this meeting." And he's like, "You don't
9:18 have a PowerPoint presentation. You don't have a deck." He's like, "No." And he goes, "This is going to be my best meeting of the day." Yeah. So sick. This is going to be my best meeting of the day. We spent the whole day with him and went out to dinner. That's cool. Before So he lied. He had more than 45 minutes. No, he just cleared he cleared the day. He was He like cleared He's like, "I want a hand." And so because Bob's a goes back to Bob being a famous surfboard shaper and how he like changed surfboards and through weight and through speed and through dynamics and everything else and they just nerded out and then I was hanging out with Parker wasn't the president at that time and Sandy and those guys were nerding out cuz Parker's like one of the biggest collectors of street art so he has he has like the gnarliest collection like Robert Williams and like you know Risk all these different people's art. What up guys? Come join our Patreon because
10:09 there's hundreds of videos dating all the way back to 2019. That's right. If you click on the link down below, you can join our Patreon, join us on the Discord, come chat with us directly, have a fun conversation, and this will help support the channel's growth and new ideas, and also tap into our closer community by joining our Discord and get the opportunity to suggest video ideas like the ones you've seen. Thank you guys. Join our Patreon. Help us out. Thanks. See you guys there. Say hi to me. So we do that, fly home that night, get home that morning, 9/11. Oh ████ that's crazy. So we're we're at work and we're just like, dude, what what do we do? Like we don't know what to do. Yeah. Like it's Dude, it's it's on. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the highest high of your life and then like the one of the lowest lows.
11:00 Well, it just it wasn't it just was the fact that it was like we aside from Hawaii. We'd never been attacked on our ground our our you know our ground. And I was just like and Bob and I pulled the whole cuz we love God. We pulled the whole group come together and we Hey, we're going to pray. Let's just pray. Like we don't know what's going on. We're And then everyone go home. Everyone just go home. So we're just kind of like what do we do? So we're we're tripped out, right? I don't even remember if it was a was that on like a Friday or I can't remember what day it was. It was a school day. It was a school day. It was a school day and I was just like this is this is insane. And then sure enough uh like a day later calls him the whole world's upside down. We want to make a deal. Wow. Wa. Wow. We want to we want we're in. We want we want to make a deal. Did you think you lost a deal
11:51 because of such? We didn't know. Wow. We didn't know. But if you look at back then in action sports how much So when everybody goes, "Oh, I'm selling my company to Nike." I just laugh. I'm like, "Yeah, right." No, you're not. Unless you're Unless Unless you're doing something that is a billion dollar play that's going to cuz when they bought us, I think they were like 30 billion and in action sports donut. They did zero. No money in action sports. Whoa. And then they so they bought us and then I was in you know they launched SB and 6.0 and all my all my skaters quit when Nike bought us except for a few. They thought you guys were like oh you're lame. I can't believe you sold out. Like the blink effect. Yeah. Like the blink effect. It was like there like I can't believe you guys would sell. Nike Nike is the devil. Blah blah blah. You guys are idiots. I'm like dude everyone's
12:43 been ripping Nike for years. DC, Osiris, Etnne, everyone's been ripping them for years. And then um so we went through the whole kind of Nike debacle of like trying to get it back together again. And then we just started doing really cool stuff with Nike and people were like, "Oh, that's cool." And then they launched SB. And when they launched SB, it was like I was I knew Lance and so they got Lance Mountain, Per Rod, Eric C. They got all the bangers, right? They all went to Nike because I don't care who you are, you all want to wear Nike. Yeah, right. Nike is pretty sick. And like Craig, you guys know who Craig Stes is? Craig Stick's like a very He's the guy did all the photography. He like created Dog Town. Oh. So Ste's like he sends him pictures every morning. But it was like like I would I would get Air Force once and I
13:33 would be walking around in them. He's like, "Oh, dude, you're running around like $20,000 shoes. I'm older shoes. I don't care. They're just shoes." I I've never been that guy. I my dream truck my dream car is in the parking lot. I drive a four-wheel drive truck. That's all I've ever wanted. When I sold the company, I bought my wife a Mercedes and that was it. Biggest piece of ████ I've ever bought. Sorry, Mercedes. You terrible. Whose decision? Hers? No, I just it was a gift. Like it was like, you know, my wife has dealt with me and still does to this day. Yeah. But um we did that and then we have the whole Nike thing and and a guy named Tom Clark who was like took Nike from 300 million to 8 billion. Wow. So he he sat me down one day and he's like cuz I I back then I had this really big personality and I kind of knew it all and I just sold my company and like every musician I know and I
14:24 could you know like tall you can walk go anywhere, right? And so he just pulls me aside one day. He's like, "Oh, you sold you sold the company." He goes, "You know how long people normally last when they sell their company at Nike?" And I'm like, "I don't know." He's like, "90 days, maybe 120 till they get get rid of them." And he goes, "I really like you." He goes, "I think you're super talented." And he goes and he goes, "I know you talk about your dyslexia." He goes, "John Hul, who runs Converse, same as me. High school dropout dyslexia." I told him, "These are the stats." But like most people, you know, that are like that are just like they they have cuz you have this different mechanism in your head to help you see things differently through a different vision. So my whole thing is everything I've ever done in my life is like, oh, there's this, this, and this. They don't have that. I'm going to do that. Right? Don't look in the bloody
15:14 water. Look in the blue water. But most people are afraid of blue water cuz it's like it's deep and it's scary and I might drown. It's like going to die anyways. I know God. I know where I'm going. So, I'm cool. So, it's like I look at that and we So, we we did that and we kept growing and growing and growing and then we we brought in a a CEO and that was the first year. So, you're brought in to grow Nike SB. No, I was brought in to grow all the brands like work together with all the brands and and and they had this thing that Tom or Bob and Tom had and they would hold a pencil when I start talking too much. They go, "Shut the ████ up." That was the drill. They would they would just I'd see it and they like we taking notes and all a sudden I' i'd be watch and they'd be like all like shut up. Right. Would you? Yeah. Okay, that's
16:06 good. It was good cuz Well, cuz I knew my days were numbered if I didn't. Fair enough. Like and I wanted to like So I don't have an education. I don't know anything. But now I have this opportunity to work with these incredible mentors at Nike. So they just started teaching me everything like I didn't know what that was like how what the multiples look like this that the other and then I I started watching how these things started. I knew it from like street smarts like I'm going to get this I'm going to step on it this much and this is how much money I'm going to make. So it's all it all evens out. Yeah. They just know fancy terms for what you're Everything is a fancy term. It's like it's just like this I'm getting this and this is what it's worth. It's it's all the same in any business. I always say, so before my mom passed away, I got asked to speak at Harvard Business School. And I was like, I would just tell everyone to drop out.
16:59 You're wasting time. Cut the mic. Cut the mic. Someone give me a pencil. Everybody in the pencil. Well, because at the end of the day, unless you're going to be a doctor, an engineer, Yes. something like that, everything like everything you're going to learn is through street knowledge or stories. Like when you started doing the clothing thing, I was like I'm like gnarly dude, go for it. You're I mean at that time you had you still have such a great brand, right? So you had this opportunity, right? But then it's you look at it's like saturation. So full circle, we do the Nike deal, blah blah blah, whatever. This is where the music thing really comes into play. So Nike, we're all as the owners, we're all sitting Bob owns the majority of the shares. so that other people have to break off and go, "Okay, this is this is what you're going to do. This is what you're going to get paid," blah blah blah blah blah. And it was like I wasn't
17:49 getting quote unquote go retire the rest of my life money, but I was getting good money, life-changing money, but not middle finger money. So, I go there and they're all sitting there and they go, "Okay, now everyone's got to be exclusively Nike." And I'm like, "What does that mean?" And they go, "You got to you you got to work 100%." I go, "Oh, I can't do that. I have concert tours that are out on the road right now. I make more a night than I make here in a year on merch. Like I have concert I have concert tours. Like I have bands on the road. I manage bands. I have I have all this stuff. So and I go to Bob's house. I'm like, "Hey, I can't make this deal. So I I'll just take my ownership and I'll bounce." And he's like, "What do you mean?" And I'm like, "Oh, I I can't make the deal. I I I can't I I have all this other stuff.
18:39 And after taxes, it's not even what I make doing this stuff, so I can't do it. And then Bob's like, and then so I call Tom Waller, who's the president of Innercope Records, and I go, "Hey, Tom." And he's like, "I knew Jimmy and Ted and all the guys at Intercope." And Tom's like, "Well, I'm going to go to Warner." So I'm going to go to Warner Brothers. I'm going to be the president of Warner Brothers. He's like, "How much money do they offer you?" I told him the number. He's like, "That's a lot of money." He goes, "Give me 24 hours." I'm like, "All right." I'm not even kidding. Like 20 minutes later, I'll give you that money started on record label. Oh ████ that's crazy. Under Warner. Under Warner. Wow. We're going to be right back as we transition into the music section of
19:29 this thing. Holy crap. We got a stretch, dude.
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