← Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
From Skater to Entrepreneur ft. Greg Lutzka | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby
01:04:08
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- [00:03]
A
Skating isn't just about shredding the pavement. It's a lifestyle, a passion. But let's be honest, it doesn't always pay the bills. So how did Greg Lutzka go from clearing $2 million in a year to building a real estate empire? While most skaters are just trying to make rent?
- [00:18]
B
Thank God I met, like, my neighbor Ben. That got me into buying real estate because at the time, we were buying these condos. 60, 50, 60 grand. Now they're worth almost 200.
- [00:26]
A
Meanwhile, most skates, skaters are struggling to stay afloat because the industry just isn't built to sustain them.
- [00:31]
B
Most skaters, professional skateboarders, aren't really. Are not financially getting taken care of.
- [00:37]
A
Well, so what's the difference? Why are some skaters broke while Greg Lutzka is out here playing 4D Monopoly? It's not just luck, it's strategy. On this episode of KO fis, we break down what separates skaters who grind the rails from those who grind toward financial freedom. Welcome to the show.
- [00:56]
B
Yeah, I think, I mean, any skateboarder, action sports athlete, football player, any of that kind of stuff, man, it's like you. You have a short window to really make it and make some money doing what you love to do, right? Because your legs give out or, you know, new kids come on the block, whatever it is, or you could get hurt. So I think it's very important to invest the money that you're making in the career that you're at. And one of the things that I did throughout my whole career over the last 20 years was constantly investing into real estate. I love real estate. I bought my first home when I was 19 years old in Huntington beach, which I still have to this day. That property has more than doubled in value. And, you know, long story short, we have a game plan to sell that right now and rent a condo.
- [01:37]
A
Feels it only doubled in value.
- [01:38]
B
Yeah, yeah, it was a condo that I bought for 300, and I think it was 320 grand back then. And I remember I'm from the Midwest, right? So in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, properties there are a lot cheaper. So a condo that's three hundred and some thousand dollars back then was like, I don't want to say a mansion, but like a huge property in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. So my dad was like, man, this is. This seems like very expensive for a condo, but it was actually one of the cheaper condos that I found in the Penny Saver, the little panther that they gave out in Huntington beach and was actually the lowest hoa. And it was in the Huntington Continentals the lowest HOA and one of the, one of the lower priced condos actually in Huntington. And I Got it for 300 and some grand, 320 Beach, Brookhurst and Adams area. So it's not too far from the beach. And I lived there for a couple years, right. And then I ended up renting it out. And over the last, you know, last 15 years, it's doubled in price. So we have a game plan to sell that condo. I don't owe too much on it. And then reinvesting that Money doing a 1031 exchange. And those got those that out there that invest into real estate, know what that is? You basically won't have to pay that capital gains tax on that money that you make because we have a beautiful government that loves to take half your money.
- [02:48]
A
Unless you're an investor.
- [02:49]
B
Unless you're an investor. So what I do is I always 1031 exchange it into a bigger property. So we, we. I have a game plan with that property to invest now in the Midwest, where I have been investing a lot into over the last couple years, to an apartment complex. So essentially we're going to take that one unit turning into multiple units to have more cash flow. Just, you know, I want to, I want to 10x my portfolio where it's at now. So I'm making moves to basically build even more of a real estate empire than what I already have and had built over the years. But real estate is a powerful thing. You just got to know what you're doing with it. You can't just, you know, just invest wherever and you got to run your numbers and you got to work with a great company like yourself and with the mortgage capital that can go out there and get you good rates, that can save on those fees, that, yeah.
- [03:37]
A
It'S the fees and the, you know, that's really where you get killed when the numbers don't pencil. And that's what I liked about you immediately when we started working together is like, yeah, your business acumen was on point.
- [03:46]
B
Yeah.
- [03:47]
A
Hold on. What here? Oh, no, no, I got to work with Joe. But it's been a great relationship to start.
- [03:52]
B
And I think another thing I was going to say is like, you really got to know the markets. You know, like I used to invest a lot into Arizona and the prices have gone up there quite a bit. And if you're going to do your typical people out there that want to get into real estate, put your typical 20% down or 25% down, you need to calculate in how much you're spending on the property. Right. What your mortgage is going to be, what your property tax is going to be, what your insurance is going to be if it has a hoa, tie in those numbers and also leave a little space for 10% for a management group, a vacancy, those kind of things. Because a place like Arizona where I used to invest into and put that typical percent down, all your expenses might be more than what you're bringing in from rent.
- [04:35]
A
Yeah.
- [04:35]
B
So you can actually be in the negative and losing money every single month and, and really mess up on investing into a property like that. Where I invest into in the Midwest, you know, we're buying these duplexes and essentially after running the numbers, you know, one unit. So I'm buying the two units and I, we just closed actually on a three plex Monday, two days ago. But essentially I buy these duplexes. One unit almost pays for all the expenses, right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Other unit is kind of where you're making a little bit of cash flow. And because the interest rates are a little bit higher right now, when the interest rates drop, we're going to gain equity in the comp or in the, in the property. Property. We're gonna do a cash out refinance, get back a lot of that cash that we put into the property and we're going to reinvest it into a next property and we're going to get at a lower interest rate. So we're essentially going to save some money on possibly with our monthly payments and we're going to get cash back, we're going to reinvest into the market. And that's called the burst strategy. Buy, buy, rehab, refinance, reinvest. Right. And that's what a lot of people do. But you got to know your market. Right. Because if you buy in a market like California and your expenses are more than what you're bringing in on your ren, you're going to be losing money. So I think that's where a lot of people kind of get confused on, okay, I'm gonna invest in real estate and they don't look at the market and where they're investing. And I like states like, you know, like Ohio or Michigan or back where I'm from, Wisconsin, where it's a lot cheaper and you can get, you know, these duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, apartment complex for a lot cheaper than places like that where people are flooded.
- [06:05]
A
You're not getting fourplexes here in Costa Mesa.
- [06:08]
B
No, no, you'll, you'll be losing money, you know and then, you know, I like working with you. Obviously, you're a good buddy of mine and you do a great thing with, with real estate, with the mortgage industry. And you're, you're one of the top in the, you are the top actually.
- [06:22]
A
Companies in the country.
- [06:24]
B
In the country. So it's, it's crazy how we met and we met through a buddy of ours, David Metzler. Metzler. So, you know, you saved me a lot of money on the fees. You went out there, got the lowest interest rate we could possibly get. Because, you know, buying a investment property is different than buying a personal home. Right. So working with you guys, they got.
- [06:42]
A
They got a pencil. That's got a pencil.
- [06:44]
B
There's a pencil.
- [06:45]
A
There's no wiggle room for a bad deal.
- [06:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Especially right now where, you know, you got to make sure, you know, there's no room to be slipping because it is, it is a tough market out there in the real estate world. Prices are high, interest rates are high, expenses are high, property taxes are going up. So you just got to be very interesting. Interest is going up.
- [07:05]
A
So, you know, we haven't even started the show yet. I haven't asked my first question, my opening question. We already dove into the nitty gritty.
- [07:11]
B
Yeah.
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A
So I like to start the show, which we're five minutes in.
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B
Yeah.
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A
With the opening question. Just to get so people understand how. Who is Greg?
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B
Yes.
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A
So the opening question for you, Greg, is how do you start your morning? What's your morning routine?
- [07:25]
B
It's different every day. You know what I mean? Like, lately it's been a lot of Zoom meetings. I wake up, you know, I usually make an Asahi bowl. I, I, I work with Sambazon, but I love Asahi, so I do the sugar free Asahi, so I usually eat something light. I, we're having a lot of Zoom meetings right now because we're starting to film season two of my TV show that's on Fuel tv. But every day is different. I try to skate as much as I can. Some days I'm not able to skate. Some days I'm working on product designs for new products that are coming out. It's just, you know, every day is a little bit different. Some days I'm traveling. You know, I just got back from Houston, Texas from the Aspire Tour. That was really cool. But essentially, you know, I love skateboarding, I love riding motorcycles, I love mountain biking. So I try to, I love snowboarding in the winter. So I try to incorporate, you know, keeping my happiness and being sane and doing the things I love to do and then also like handling business and growing, you know. Yeah, the ideas I have with the TV show, you know, with, with the real estate, you know, expanding it, expanding that whole, that whole empire has been a big passion of mine and, and seeing that grow has been phenomenal. Taking some of the money that I'm making in, in other categories, you know, in skateboarding and investing in that, that into real estate has really become, you know, one of the things that I focus on because I know that one day skateboard money is not going to be coming in anymore. You know, these legs aren't going to be able to jump down. You know, what you see on the screen here, you know, 10 stairs, 15 stair handrails, like, that's just not going to happen. But I love skateboarding. It's a passion of mine. It's gave me opportunity to travel the world. I'll skate to the day I die, but I don't think I'm going to be competing for the rest of my life, you know.
- [08:59]
A
You think you can skate at 75?
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B
I'll always skate, man. I'm gonna be skateboarding. I'm gonna be snowboarding at the mountains. I'm gonna be riding that mountain bike. I'm riding that Harley Davidson motorcycle to the day I die. Like, I, that's what I live for. That's what I love. That's in my blood. You know what I mean? So along with that came other passions. And business was one of the big passions of like, how to invest my money properly, learning from that, protecting my assets, you know, making sure, okay, am I investing in the right properties in the right market? But don't put these in your personal name. Get these out of your personal name. Put these into an LLC.
- [09:29]
A
Do you have them on a separate LLCs or one?
- [09:31]
B
I have them in different LLCs. And then I've. I have them held by a holding company out of Wyoming, so you have anonymity. And then from that I have it all held by a living trust. So. And I'm the beneficiary of those. So essentially these properties aren't in my name. So if someone were to come after me personally, they can't really get those properties because you can't sue a person, you know, individual and a s. Or. And a LLC, a corporation. @ the same time, if someone in the LLC and the property were to sue myself or the llc, I should say they can't come after my personal home and, and my personal bank account or anything like that. So you keep Those completely separate. So you're protecting yourself from renters coming after you personally. Only be able to come after what's in the LLC possibly. And you protect yourself from. If you were to do something out there in the world for that person to come after your investment properties, because it's a business now, you can't sue the business. You could sue me personally, but you can't go after the business. You know what I mean? So you. It's very important to kind of understand how that works and structure yourself properly to protect yourself on both ways. You know what I mean? So that's something that I've learned a lot more over just recently. And working with Anderson Advisors has been a great group that I've worked with personally, where I hired them. I put these properties into land trust, which means they're. They're basically in a land trust, which is not public record of having my name. And then that land trust is actually. The properties are held in the LLC, right? So we have land trust, we have LLCs that they're held under, and then we have a Wyoming holding company that holds those llc, and then it's held by a living trust. So it's pretty. It sounds complicated, but once you learn how the structure works and you work with a good law firm that sets that up properly, you're pretty well protected. I mean, there's other ways to protect your assets more, and that's opening up a asset protection trust that's like out of the Cook Islands, that's very expensive to. To maintain every year and very expensive to set up. You know, 15 to $20,000 to set up. I think it is.
- [11:30]
A
Man, you got a lot going on, a lot of you. You're dialed.
- [11:34]
B
I could go into that because I've been, you know, this is stuff that I've recently been setting up for myself, and I think it's one of the smartest things that I've done in my entire life was protecting those assets, because I worked so hard for those assets over the last 20 years. And I'm still building that portfolios. I want to protect that. And. And after I'm done with skateboarding, what am I gonna. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna manage these properties and I'm gonna make sure, like, you know, taking care of my renters, making sure the properties are protect protected so no one could take them. And then also like having those to. If I have a family and kids someday, you know, I'm not married. I don't have any kids right now. But you Know, someday down the line those kids will inherit those properties and they won't go through probate because they're through the, through the trust. Right. So they're not going to go through probate. But then also the, the structure of having those things protected through the LLCs and through the holding company and through the land trust. That structure is already set up for them where they're.
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A
Land trust too.
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B
Yeah. And personal residence trust. So my property is in a personal residence trust. So, you know, I protected kind of everything with all that stuff. So yeah, I mean, that's something that we could go and talk hours about, but that's something that I think is very important that people should understand out there that own, number one, own their own personal home. I think they should put it in a, a personal land trust, I think is a good idea. And then also if you own your own home, you definitely should have a living trust that, that should be held because if you pass away one day it's going to go through probate and that's, that's not going to be good, you know, so. And having that infrastructure, if you have rental properties, put them on LLCs, just so you know, you have all the accounting, right? You know, you open up your llc, that property is under the llc, you open up a business credit card. Any expenses that go with that LLC with that home, you use that credit card. So then at the end of the year you have your tax write offs, right? So say you're making $100,000 a year from this property, but then it costs you because you had to buy air conditioning unit or you had to buy something to keep that property going, you had to rehab, I don't know, the bathroom or kitchen sink or whatever it is, the kitchen cabinets, whatever it is, you use that business credit card, you deduct those expenses and you also deduct other things, management fees, right. You deduct your insurance, you deduct, you know, these kind of things. So you have these write offs and that's how they're very wealthy at the end of the day and end up paying almost zero money in taxes through real estate. Because they have all this real estate that they own and then they offset it with their expenses. Y so real estate is a very powerful thing to invest into, to have the cash flow, the tax write offs, depreciation in the property is going to go up year after year. Also rent is going to go up year after year, right. And then if you want to do accelerated depreciation, so if you owe money in Taxes a lot. You can do accelerated depreciation by doing a cost segregation study on the property. And then all of a sudden you can boost from, you know, the amount of years. I think it's what, 30, 27 years of write offs or 30 years of rest down to like six years or to two years or there's bonus depreciation. You know, they're changing the laws with that right now, I believe. But there's ways to get depreciation write offs in the earlier years of the property. So if you're planning on buying a, buying a, let's say an apartment complex like and, and keeping it for five years, you might want to do that bonus depreciation because you have a game plan to sell it in five years. So take all that depreciation in the front end of the, the, the loan, you know what I mean? The front end of the years of owning that. You know what I mean?
- [14:58]
A
Man, I bet you all didn't know that you were going to listen to a skateboarder drop that much real estate knowledge on you today. You guys didn't know. You guys don't know that. I'm sure on your, yeah. Your fans don't know how smart you are.
- [15:08]
B
Yeah, I don't, I don't talk about real estate and, and all that that much. But on a show like this, and we're with the CEO here of capital, we got to talk about real estate.
- [15:17]
A
I think he knows more than me. You know, I just like to talk about how you built, built all this use. What age were you when you started your entrepreneurial journey? You were 20, 19?
- [15:28]
B
I think I started when I was eight years old, man, because I love.
- [15:31]
A
That, I love the stories that started eight years old.
- [15:33]
B
Yeah, because, you know, tell me why.
- [15:35]
A
You said you think you started at 8.
- [15:37]
B
Just, you know, I, I grew up, my parents had me playing ice hockey at a young age. I got into skateboarding around like seven or eight. And then it was, it was, I wanted to be a pro skateboarder right from the beginning. So I was trying to like, like learn how to do these tricks at a super young age. And I was already sending in sponsor me tapes to get sponsored at like age 13 or 14. Like I knew I wanted to be a pro skateboard. This is what I was set to be in life, you know, and I was looking up to guys like Andrew Reynolds and Tom Penny and Jeff Raleigh and Jamie Thomas and these kind of guys that had moved across the country or, you know, you know, through, I think Andrew's from where? Florida. But Jeff Rawling, some of the guys are actually from Europe. So they moved out of there where they're from to California to make it. So that was like what I want to do. I'm gonna move from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I'm moved to California and, and become a pro skateboarder. And I was trying everything to get.
- [16:24]
A
Man, there was probably like a hundred famous skateboarders when you were young. Of all, there was not very many.
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B
No, there was, there was a handful of guys like I looked up to. Like skateboard has grown a lot now. It's just like two weeks ago it was just in the Olympics. I mean. Yeah, it's changed.
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A
I mean, the first time I was in Olympia Olympics, I think it was time.
- [16:39]
B
Second time, the guy who won Utah, it's so, it's so crazy. Like he won, he's won both, both of the first Olympics. He's from Japan, he's phenomenal skateboarder. But you know, growing up in the Midwest, I was probably one of three, four guys that skateboarded in my, in my school. So when I would tell the teachers I want to be a pro skateboarder, it was like, what, like. And out here in California, if you're telling your teacher you want to be a pro surfer skateboarder, well, the beach is right here and the VULUM headquarters is right down the street, you know, and very common. So it's very common. But there it's like, whoa. Like I got doubted my whole entire childhood.
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A
It's snowing all the time. Like when the heck.
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B
Yeah, like not many skateboarders come from the Midwest, you know. Luckily I've had very successful, a successful run with skateboarding by just having that drive to never give up, you know, and moving across and taking chance in my life. That's, that's one thing that, that I've done really well is like I had a vision and just kept going after and kept going after and knocking down the doors. Whether it was trying to get sponsored at a young age of 13 or dropping out of high school at 17 and moving across the country to California to make it as a pro skateboarder.
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A
What was that experience, like dropping out of high school at 17 to go and, and, and accomplish a very far fetched dream.
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B
Yeah, that was, there was no backup plan. It was, it was pretty much my parents, you know, my parents are very supportive of what I do and they've always been that way. So they had like faith in me. But there was probably a point where they were kind of nervous Like, I don't know if you should be dropping out, but you know, at that time I was starting to travel the world at probably 15 or 16 years old. I went overseas to Germany. I won my first pro contest at 16. I won like 50 grand. I came back, got a BMW car and I started moving or flying out to California to visit Al Partnan who was with the Lenium skateboards. And from there he was giving me opportunity to get into like four in one video magazine, Transworld magazine. These, these, these, these. Basically everything that I was looking up to in the Midwest. Like, oh man, four one. Like that's what I watched. So next, you know, I had a four in one video part. And then, you know, I just met people along the way. When I got here, Al was introducing me to like top photographers. Dave Swift, Chris Ortiz with four one and, and Transworld. I got Thrasher cover, you know, Nick Skirt shot that Thrasher cover. I met my filmer, Mike Adalpe Hoops, they call him Dr. Purple Teeth on Instagram. He's filmed all my video parts from Oakley Our Life to almost Round three to the Globe video. Pretty much everything that's come came out over the years of all those video parts he's filmed. And guys like Chet Thomas and Rodney Mullen has, have really helped me expand into, you know, know, getting shoe sponsors, getting my name on skateboards. Those kind of things like happen just one after another, you know, so there was just no looking back and I was determined and I'm still super.
- [19:22]
A
That's how you got this. The, the name for your new documentary coming out, Oneway Ticket.
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B
There's no One Way Ticket.
- [19:28]
A
Tell me about Oneway Ticket.
- [19:29]
B
Okay, so Oneway Ticket started as a passion project, as an idea of. I wanted to create a documentary kind of about my life and kind of show that and anyone can make it if they put their mind to it. And I dropped out of high school and the, the, the name says it all, that One Way Ticket and how that came about. My favorite skateboarder is Chad Muska and he's, he's in the, he's in the movie and he's like, he just. We didn't have a name for the documentary, to be honest. And he just said, you know, he took like that One Way Ticket and just never came back. And Nick came out from shooting that interview with Chad Musk and was like, I got the name for the documentary, It's One Way Ticket. I was like, what? That's so good, dude. Like, how, where did that come out? He's like Muska said in the interview, Chad Muska. And because, you know, he was filming these, these other pros. But I wasn't in the room when he was doing the interviews, listening to what they were saying because I didn't really want to hear. I wanted the documentary to be very authentic and them to be able to express how they felt about certain things in my career, what I was doing along the way. So when you watch the film, I wasn't. I, I supplied a lot of the, the, the, the, the content obviously for the skateboarding side of things. But all the interviews were very like done by those guys and what they wanted to say about me and my career and where I was at that time in, in the different chapters throughout the movie. But yeah, it was a full passion project. We didn't have a place to put it on any platforms. We just, me and Nick knocked it out. We did the documentary. It's just like, all right, we're just gonna throw it out there. And I was just gonna put on YouTube, to be honest, that that's kind of where I was gonna, where I originally was going to put it. And then as the film was getting done, it turned into a full blown movie, right? And I was like, well, I'll just submit it to this like Newport Beach Film Festival, right? And, and, and they called me back like two weeks later. We were the first film to get into the film festival with, with for that year, which was two years ago actually. And we sold out the movie theater. We, we won best action sports film award at that time. I was like, man, we have something here. We should try to get it on the barracks. You know, the barracks is huge in skateboarding. They, they don't really do, I don't want to say they don't, they don't post documentaries, but they, they basically only really come out content that they've created, which they didn't really create a lot of the stuff in here, but there was a barrack section. There is a barrack section in there that highlights. Because throughout the documentary we just highlighted a lot of the, the parts in my career with video parts with. And it has a storyline to it for sure. Like you got to see the documentary. It's, it's, it's very authentic. There's, to the point, you know, there's a lot of ups and downs with being a professional skateboarder. I talk about that. And then, you know, I met someone that hooked me up with a company that was able to get it on some bigger platforms and they did a phenomenal job. So it comes out on August 27th and it's going to be coming on Apple TV. So two years ago this was a passion project of mine. Like sitting in the room going through footage like tapes and like putting this together to now it's like on coming out on the biggest platform in the world which is Apple tv and then also Amazon, Google, Play, Dish tv. And then they're working on trying to talk to break the code to get into like Netflix or Hulu or airlines would be amazing. But right now, I mean I'm just, I just feel super blessed to have it out there for the public to see and inspire the next generation.
- [22:39]
A
Great story and it's awesome. An awesome name.
- [22:42]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Though they. Thanks to Chad Muska. Chad Muska shout out to him because he came up with the name and man, it's, it's pretty cool to, to actually have it. So I got some DVDs printed just for. To be honest, I. We're not even selling these DVDs or anything. I just kind of got them printed for personal use and giving away to friends and family. And then I posted.
- [23:00]
A
Nobody has DVD players anymore.
- [23:02]
B
Nah, they don't. And Nick was, was like, I don't know DVDs. Like I was like, dude, like I grew up in the era of you know, VHS DVDs, magazines. So like I love DVDs and I posted a couple times on my Instagram and, and people actually hit me up and like I'm like, all right. Like. And I, I actually have these boards too that I made a, a custom run of these skateboards that are the one way ticket skateboards and I sign these and you could hit me up on Instagram and I can get you one sent out. We don't have a website for, for them or anything like that because it really wasn't meant for that. But like I'll sign them and then I'll just throw on a free DVD for guys that want to. A cool poster. I mean a cool, I should say skateboard that hangs on their wall.
- [23:40]
A
Yeah. Yeah, that's. They're rad. We got one here. We still working on getting that hung up. Thank you for that by the way. Now like you've, you've been a, like an athlete in the action sports world. Tell me a story of like some something. One of the craziest things that happened at one of these tournaments.
- [23:59]
B
Well, I mean I've traveled the world. I'm on my fourth passport now, so there's a lot of Crazy stories. But I would like to say what was most impactful for me was where, where I really hit that dedication of wanting to take it to the next level was and understanding how many good skateboarders there are out there on this planet. Like there's a lot. Was going to the Tampa AM contest for the first time, which is the world's largest skateboard competition. And then in our TV show, the Next Gen Unfield tv that's about bringing up the next generation of skateboarders. That winner actually goes to the Tampam contest. Right. The best I've ever done in that contest I think was like top five, maybe I got third one year. So I've never won that contest. But the first year I went there I was winning all these like local skateboard competitions in Wisconsin at the Janesville Skate park and like Four Season Skate Park. And I went to Tampa because I thought for sure, like, man, I could, I could probably do good down there. And I got super nervous. I actually won the worst fall award and I went to go lip slide one of the rails and like my back truck caught and totally racked. Like, you know, I didn't hit my nuts or whatever, but I hit like the side I slammed pretty good, you know what I mean? And it looked probably worse than what it was. But I remember Clyde Singleton like during the awards was like. And Greg Lutzka, like it was 100 bucks. He's like pulled 100 bucks out his back pocket. He's like, and Greg Lutzka, we're gonna give this 100 bucks then for the worst fall award of the weekend. And I remember my dad kind of saying, it's in the documentary too. Like it's probably not the recognition you wanted, but you got some recognition. And I went back to my hometown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for that next year and skated like a ton, dude, like every day at the skate park. My mom actually works for the city. So Neil, who wanted to start, create Four Season Skate park or start a skate park in her hometown, was having a very hard time of getting permits and getting approved and getting money and all this stuff. So my mom was able to get a fifty thousand dollar grant from the city to have a skate park in our, in our, in our town because the city will grant money to certain businesses that are creating jobs for people and creating, you know, basically building up the city, you know, for, for, I don't know, certain cities offer that. So my mom was able to get that approved. So he was very grateful of that and he's like Greg, you never have to pay to go skate or the four season skate park. So that was like a huge bonus to me where I was like, what? Like, I don't ever have to pay to come here. Like, like, because, you know, I didn't grow up with like the richest family or anything, but. And they would have been supportive, I'm sure of me going there every day. But I was like living at the skate park pretty much every day, all day there. And that year really changed because I went back to Tampa the next year and I think I got like, top five. I met with Al Partnan for Millennium. He brought me on tour right from there. And my. My career really jump started from being this amateur skateboarder to now going on tour to on my way turning pro.
- [26:40]
A
So what age were you when you turned pro?
- [26:42]
B
I turned pro at 17, I want to say. I moved to California at 17. I was filming the almost round three video, but I actually went pro before I moved to California because I was riding for a Lenium Skateboards. They turned me pro and I rode that with that company until the wheels fell off. That company ended up going out of business, unfortunately. And then Rodney Mullen found me from riding. I was riding for Globe Shoes and Rodney Mullen found me, like, seen my talent from riding from Globe, which he was on the same company. I was like, dude, we're starting this new company. I mean, yeah, we're starting this new company. We don't have a name for it yet, but we want you to ride for it. And we're bringing in guys like Ryan Sheckler Day One song to be part of this company.
- [27:21]
A
I think you does Thrasher now this.
- [27:24]
B
They didn't. They didn't announce what the name of the company was. And then they started running ads. And Thrasher, after he. He brought us all to a big dinner. He's like the name of the company to be called Almost. I was like, almost. That's a random name. But. And he's like, we're just gonna play off it. Like, Almost a skateboard company, Almost a video Almost, blah, blah, blah. So the company blew up. It became like huge overnight. Like the. And I was filming for Almost Round three, but when that came out, my name was next to Rodney Mullen Day One song. Ryan Sheckler, Chris Haslam. These guys are big names in skateboarding. So instantly, overnight, everyone knew who my name was in skateboarding. And Rodney warned that of me too. He's like, he warned me. He goes, I think when this video come comes out, your life's gonna change. And I didn't realize what he meant by that, but that is so true because when that did come out, everybody knew who Greg Lutzka was.
- [28:10]
A
That just changed the trajectory for your.
- [28:12]
B
Whole life because everyone's everyone. I mean, even me as a kid, I always followed like the Rodney Mullen versus day one song video, Round one, round two, and then this round three video. There was a lot of anticipation behind this thing. And then Rodney and day one brought in all these like, like, or I shouldn't say all these other skaters, but like four of us basically as the other kind of skaters that were opening up the video. So all of us got like a lot of recognition overnight, you know, and then we, and then we did a world tour. So then we went to Australia, Japan, Europe, all throughout promoting the video. So, like, not only was I really known in the United States, but like, worldwide. Like, my skateboards with my name on it were selling everywhere. Like, and, and then I got a signature shoe with globe shoes because my name blew up. My skateboards were selling. Then they were like, okay, cool, we're gonna give you a pro shoe because your name is selling very well on the skateboard. So they're gonna sell well on the, on the footwear. So I got to design my own custom signature shoe, which, that's where a lot of money is in skateboarding is, is you're selling decks and you're getting two bucks a board. But the shoes and the royalties in the, in the footwear game, especially at that time, were really, really big. So that was just a game changing moment.
- [29:18]
A
You never got your own shoe though.
- [29:20]
B
I got my own shoe.
- [29:21]
A
You did?
- [29:21]
B
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was saying. They gave me my own shoe with my own, my own signature line of shoes. So over the years I've written for, you know, Globe Shoes, K Swiss DVS shoes, Osiris shoes. I've had signature shoes on all those companies. So with the money I've made from that, that's where I took and I invested that into real estate. And then I also own four restaurants out here or four locations out here of Sessions West Coast Deli. So we have, we have Mission Viejo Mall. That's one of our newer locations. We have Fashion island, we have South Coast Plaza and we have Irvine.
- [29:52]
A
When did you guys open in South Coast?
- [29:54]
B
That's one of our newer locations too. So those South coast and Mission Vio are our two newest locations. And we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary in business.
- [30:03]
A
So you just open at South Coast?
- [30:05]
B
Probably Like a year and a half ago. Yeah.
- [30:07]
A
Awesome. Which side? On the apple side or.
- [30:12]
B
I don't know that mall that well because I don't go there that much to be honest. But. And I'm more of a private investor.
- [30:17]
A
Yeah.
- [30:17]
B
Like I don't deal with the day to day stuff. Matt, who is like the owner of the company, like, and what happened there was. I got introduced to Matt through a good friend of mine, Robbie Crawford. And I just loved eating sandwiches. So he had a, he had a. His first location was in Newport beach and then second location was in Huntington beach. And he took out loans from the bank from, from these. And I started going to the Huntington beach location, eating their sandwiches, promoting them on social media because they're just really good sandwiches. And he called my phone one day and was like, I'm looking at expanding this and we're going to bring in some investors and we want to invest with people that are like, like minded as us. And you're into skateboarding and surfing and snowboarding and those kind of things, you know, like we want to bring in athletes. So then I hit up Chet Thomas, who's a good buddy of mine and with, with Dark Star Skateboards. And I showed him like the, the. So this is a little secret that not a lot of people know. But so I would get opportunities to invest into companies throughout my career. And because Chet Thomas is. Chet Thomas was a lot older than me and he was like a mentor to me. So he kind of helped me out creating my, my S corp, my corporation for the companies to pay the corporation and then the corporation pays myself. So I ran my own business there of all these sponsors paying my S corp. So I always looked up to him on. Because then you have better tax write offs and, and yada yada. So he, what he founded tech. He was partnership with Tech Deck in the beginning. He founded a lot of skateboard companies, Dark Star Skateboards. He also started investing in real estate as a young age as well. So I always looked up to chat and I, and I, I would always ask him like, hey dude, like I have this opportunity to invest into this nightclub, right? And it was actually the New Sutra, which is called Time. He looked at the paperwork. He's like, I don't think I'm gonna do this one. So I was like, I'm not gonna do this one either. Because I just followed lead. Because I was like, if he's not doing it, I don't think I should do it. He's, you know, 10 years older than me. He's had good investments, and he's lost money on some of his investments.
- [32:03]
A
Yeah, those investments, those, that, those fun party ones are never, never good, but never good.
- [32:07]
B
But when you're young and you're just making money, you know, with skateboarding, you're trying to figure out where to invest this money. You think everything's a good investment. Yeah, right. So he helped me kind of steer away from those bad investments and put.
- [32:17]
A
It all in real estate. Yeah, but.
- [32:20]
B
But then when I showed him Sessions West Coast Deli, he's like, whoa, I think they have something here. I think this is going to be a good investment. I'm going in. So I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm going in too. You know, so like, I followed suit of like, kind of showing him certain investments that I got offered and then, like, following kind of suit from him. He's not taking it. I don't think I'm gonna take it, you know, because I wasn't like a pro at investing or anything like that. I didn't want to lose my money. So I've always asked for advice from him. And sure enough, you know, Sessions, now we own four locations. We're opening another one.
- [32:51]
A
There's only four Sessions.
- [32:52]
B
Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There's six locations. I'm a partner of four of them. So there's six Sessions West Coast Delis in Orange County.
- [32:59]
A
I love Sessions.
- [33:01]
B
Yeah, but we. But me and Chet Thomas and a few others are basically investors in those four locations.
- [33:07]
A
You get your own sandwich at Sessions. I mean, Matt has signature.
- [33:10]
B
Oh, you know, Matt.
- [33:11]
A
The.
- [33:11]
B
Matt.
- [33:12]
A
The Met.
- [33:12]
B
Yeah, you know Matt. So, no, I don't have a signature sandwich with them, but that is one of my favorite sandwiches that he makes.
- [33:19]
A
Yeah. And the Maddock is a really good sandwich.
- [33:21]
B
And, and. And a secret out there that I think, why this particular. So why this does. Well, I think. And Matt has been very strategic about this. Our first location. Well, our first location that I've invested. The first location that I invested into was he had a LLC called Sessions 2.0. So he had his two locations that he started with the loans, and then he started Sessions 2.0, the LLC that owns these other four locations that I'm partnered with. So the first location was the Irvine. The Irvine Woodbridge location. And we, we do, we do. Actually, that's one of our best selling locations, to be honest. And we, we do all the catering to all the hospitals there. Well, that one, we have overhead. We pay rent there. But what he did was he Partnered with in the first one was Fashion island with Macy's. Next. The Macy's had like some kind of deli or something that wasn't doing that well, but he partnered with Macy's. And this was during COVID to be able to not have to pay any rent to have this location. But we pay a percentage of the sales, a higher percentage of sales. So he took that structure and it was working very well. And then he worked with the Mission Viejo mall. Then he worked with South Coast Plaza mall.
- [34:27]
A
That's awesome.
- [34:27]
B
So we don't have to pay the mall, basically. What about rent?
- [34:31]
A
What about Fashion Island?
- [34:33]
B
I mean, we don't pay any rent. We just pay a higher percentage of sales to the partners that we have there. So. Yeah, so. So that's kind of cool. So if we get a big shut down and the world shuts down like it did during COVID a lot of people lost their businesses because they were still having to pay the rents. Where with us with those three locations other than the Irvine one, either. Irvine one. We have rent there. But he structured those deals. So it's built on sales, percentage of sales. So don't ask me how he did it, but he's a.
- [35:01]
A
He's a great negotiator.
- [35:02]
B
Yeah, so he's a good negotiator. So that's been a very good. You know, because restaurants are like. A lot of restaurants fail too, just like nightclubs do. So we've made certain good moves like that. Or Matt has made very good moves like that. Decision making to. To. To just, you know, to have never.
- [35:21]
A
Actually heard of a restaurant doing that. Just a percentage of sales.
- [35:23]
B
Yeah, that's what he did. I think he partnered with the event. I think in the beginning he partnered with Macy's because they. They had this little spot that Macy's owned. When you go through Fashion Island.
- [35:32]
A
Yeah, yeah. And it's in a really rough location because it's. You just walk right past sessions for such a great location.
- [35:38]
B
Yeah, well, it's by the elevate. It's like leaving. So it's right by Macy's. So that was vacant for a while there. And it's. It's our smallest location. But he worked with them and we opened it up and it's been. Been a big success for us. But he worked something out with Macy's or the mall right there. And then he, I don't know, pitched it to. To South Coast Plaza, into Mission Video and these other places. So he was able to do that deal. Yeah.
- [36:01]
A
Proof of Concept that worked.
- [36:02]
B
Maybe he had. Yeah. Proof of concept. So I. Things like that, you know, so you just gotta. In life, I feel like when you're investing or you're getting in things, you really got to run your numbers. You really got to be strategic of what you. And you got to be able to negotiate your stuff, even for. I have a management group, for instance, in. In Michigan, and they take 10 of all my rents for my properties. Right. But now I'm getting into more units. Right. So now we just close on that triplex.
- [36:25]
A
Yeah.
- [36:25]
B
And I said, okay, well, because I have so many units with you guys now, can I get a lower percentage on. Instead of 10, can we go down to six or eight? And they denied it. They said, no, we're not. We're. We're here at 10. And I just kept knocking at the door. I said, well, look, I'm looking at buying an apartment complex. I'm selling my. My condo in Huntington beach, and I'm gonna buy a big apartment complex here. I want you guys to manage it, but there's other companies out there that will manage it, too. I'm sure they will give me 8% if I bring this portfolio to them. They came back and they said, you know what? We'll do it for 8%. So now my new. My new property, that's a triplex, I got 8%. Originally, they said it wasn't going to happen. So in life, you know, everything's negotiable. And that's how it is with.
- [37:03]
A
That's how I live my life.
- [37:04]
B
Everything's negotiable. So what you see on the agreement is always. Is not always what you have to sign. And I kind of taught my dad that too. Like, earlier on in my career. Like, he's like, well, the contract says this. I was like, yeah, that's what the contract says, but that's not what we're gonna sign. I said, we're gonna go back and negotiate this. So I learned from one of my managers that I had for, like, six, seven years. Seven years. I would say Todd Hani helped bring a lot of big deals to the table. I mean, he brought Oakley to the table, Toyota to the table. He brought. He did a lot of my big deals, right? And I learned a lot from him. So after we started working with all these different brands, Visa, Visa cards, Jose Cuervo, Monster Energy Drink, all these big brands. I learned how he negotiated my deals. I learned how he built my pitch decks. And then I. After, I would say about seven years, I went on My own and started representing myself and going to get all these deals done for myself, right. So I did my own skateboard deal that's now in Walmart. I did my own Harley Davidson deal, my own Aqua Hydrate deal where I left the energy drink business and now I'm a partner with Aqua Hydra and actually have ownership in the company. So when they sell I actually going to make a significant amount where when I was at Rockstar they could just cut my pay and all of a sudden I walk away, I get nothing. Right. So. And I'm actually launching a master, master class about this to teach the young generation of how to negotiate your deals, how to go get those sponsorship deals. How do you become a professional skateboarder? You know, because it's not an easy industry to crack into and you know, I've been in for 20 years, I've made mistakes and I can help this next generation out to show, hey look, this is the, this is what I've done to make it and get with these companies. This is how I negotiate my deals, this is how I build my pitch decks. And I'm actually going to be doing it on the school platform.
- [38:43]
A
When is this coming out?
- [38:44]
B
We're launching it here in the next couple weeks. So in the, basically the next two weeks I'm going to be launching it.
- [38:48]
A
And you're going to give away decades of experience.
- [38:51]
B
Yes, yeah.
- [38:51]
A
On this platform.
- [38:52]
B
And one of my things of like growing up as a kid, you know, was. And I learned, learned this from al Parton. At 16 years old, he, he ran a company called Pupil P U P I L People, Uplifting people in life. Right. And I lived by that my whole entire career and people have helped me out my entire career to get to where I'm at. So like I feel really good about coming out with something like this to help out these next generation of skateboarders that are very talented to be able to go negotiate their own deals, to be able to go get the sponsors they want to work with and to build a very successful career out there in skateboarding, you know, and this, not even this master class, it can translate to pro or guys that want to be pro snowboarders, pro BMXers, motocross riders, anything in the action sports space. You can actually take the knowledge that I'm be giving in this class and I'm going to be going live once a week and explaining all the different things that I do to get my deals and real life experience of what I'm working on now and how I'm getting sponsors for my new TV show, Next Gen, that's on Fuel TV and season two. And then you can also book one on one strategy sessions with me where I will sit down with you and actually strategically go through real life moments of what you're dealing with and why this isn't working to how to structure things a little bit differently and approaches that will work and that have worked for me in the past and really being engaged with my community and, and to really help out these next skateboarders coming up.
- [40:16]
A
Dude, that sounds awesome.
- [40:17]
B
Yeah.
- [40:18]
A
Now after all this success, all these properties.
- [40:21]
B
Yes.
- [40:22]
A
You're still grinding, you know, on a skateboard, still, still touring. How do you continue to find motivation to do all this?
- [40:30]
B
Oh, man, I, I just have so much, like, drive and passion for what.
- [40:34]
A
I do, you know, Very passionate. Probably the most passionate skateboarder I've ever, I've ever met.
- [40:38]
B
I just love it, man. I love skateboarding. It's, it's, it's given me a life that I can only dream. You know, I've always had this like, vision and this dream to be a pro skateboarder as a kid. So to make it a reality has been like, literally a dream come true. It's taken me around the world. You know, I've, like I said, I've been, I'm on my fourth passport now, so I've been everywhere. Japan, China, Europe, Australia, Dubai, you name it, Africa, Brazil. I've met a lot of really cool people along the way that have, you know, help me out to take my skateboarding career to the next level.
- [41:09]
A
But then I think you're meeting a lot more people now that are really changing your life, the scope of your life with. In the entrepreneur space.
- [41:15]
B
Yes, very true.
- [41:16]
A
Someone like yourself, me, all these masterminds groups you're attending.
- [41:20]
B
Yeah, so I go to a lot of the mastermind groups. I've been doing a lot of public speakings lately and I've been networking very well with people that are just outside of just the skateboard industry. And it's, it's taught me a lot. You know, I just got back from the Aspire event that was in Houston. That was a really awesome, awesome event. I would love to speak on stage at that event some someday. You know, I've seen Lance Armstrong up there and he's got a good story with what he's done. And I think I have a really good story with skateboarding and how I can, you know, be impactful and really inspire others. And they teach a lot about how to save on taxes, how to invest into real estate. I think one of the guys that, that's there, that is a really good friend of yours and you're going to be creating a business with him which.
- [42:01]
A
Is damn vice is Dan.
- [42:03]
B
And I met him at the VIP dinner and he was a really nice guy and I met some of his business partners, Eddie and Nick. And Andrew was on stage. I didn't get a chance to meet Andrew. But a lot of these guys are like, you know, really killing it and inspiring others and helping others as well.
- [42:19]
A
That's what it's about and that's what this group is about is just serve, serve others. Nobody has a profit motive. You just have a servant's heart.
- [42:25]
B
Absolutely. You know, and, and I think when you help others out, naturally you have good intention in your life to do good for others. The abundance will come.
- [42:33]
A
Exactly.
- [42:33]
B
You know, but it's not about the abundance. It's really about going out there helping others. And for me that's how I feel because so many people have helped me out along the way and to achieve my dreams and my goals and are still helping me out along the way. Which you have helped me out tremendously on being able to qualify for loans to get.
- [42:50]
A
There's much more. What's Dave Meltzer says you're gonna do more to get more, to give more and you'll just keep getting more.
- [42:58]
B
Exactly.
- [42:58]
A
Yeah.
- [42:59]
B
And giving back too because I give back to like David's charity and you know, doing good things and just being a good person. You know, I think I'm all about the law of attraction, you know, and, and putting good energy out there and working with good people, good like minded people that are good hearted, you know, I think that it attracts, you know, and you attract more people like that, you know, and when you get a negative, that negative mindset or like I can't and I, I won't be able to do that. I think people go down like a weird road. But if it's like you have the mindset of I can and I will and I'm going to, things happen, you know what I mean? So when you put that kind of energy out there, you got to be careful what you talk about, what you say to the universe because that's what's going to be come your, the, the, the, the future of yourself. So people don't think that people wake up in the morning, man, this sucks or that sucks and all sudden their life starts going down a negative direction. They're not realizing that everything they're manifesting their own reality. They're manifesting their own reality but in a negative way. And negative things are happening. But if they switched it around and manifested, you know, production, positivity, those kind of things attract into the world. But it's, it's, it's a feeling. It's a, it's. You have to live and breathe and feel it. You can't just wake up of a feeling of negativity, but then speak positively. But you're not feeling it or not. You're not living it, but you're just saying it to say it. Because you think you have to live and breathe it and you have to like, live by it and your emotions have to attach and, and with the universe of what you say and really feel it, and then it will come to tuition.
- [44:28]
A
That's awesome.
- [44:28]
B
Yeah.
- [44:29]
A
Now let me ask you this. What, like I, I like to ask someone's mantra in their life. Like, what do you think your mantra is? What is it? What mantra do you live by in your life?
- [44:38]
B
I live by. Oh, man. I would say just never giving up. Like, I, I don't give up. Like, it's so crazy. Like, I'll be like. Getting these skateboards in Walmart was so difficult and, and it was not an easy process to do. And no one has skateboards in the big box retail stores other than Tony Hawk. Right. It's almost nearly impossible to crack the code to get in the big box.
- [45:01]
A
Retail stores to get in a Walmart.
- [45:02]
B
But I didn't give up. I wanted to get in there. I knew I was gonna get in there. I knew the boards that were in there weren't the best quality skateboards because I grew up buying my first skateboard at Walmart. It was a Nash and it had plastic trucks and the wood wasn't the best and the wheels didn't really spin that well. And you know, they're high quality boards. These are better boards than any other entry level board in the market of skateboarding. And they only sell for like 35 bucks. They come with a free fingerboard for the kids. Because as a kid, I was growing up playing with fingerboards in school. It's got a QR code on the front that if you scan that, you can learn 10 free trick tips.
- [45:35]
A
I play with fingerboards now.
- [45:36]
B
Yeah, same with me, actually. Yeah, so I, I mean, they're great.
- [45:40]
A
They're the original fidget spinner.
- [45:42]
B
Yeah, exactly. So we just created a really good product and we gave extra value to it with the QR codes to learn how to skate Because a lot of these. This is for a kid coming up skate, just getting their first skateboard. But it's a good skateboard. Yeah, you know, my first good. My first skateboard was kind of a Nash skateboard that had plasticky trucks that really wasn't good wood. And that, that, honestly, that experience of having a junkie board as your first board can traumatize you. Yeah. It almost can take you away from wanting to skateboard. So this board you can buy for your kid, and he's gonna have a good experience and he's gonna love skateboarding. So that was one of my goals. It was like really to help out that next kid that's coming up even at a younger age than being like a mastermind or master class that I'm creating. I should say the skateboarding master class was to actually help out the. The beginner. Beginner kid as well to get a good quality skateboard at a very affordable price that parents can afford.
- [46:37]
A
Now, what would you tell your younger self? You know, what advice would you give your younger self to get if. Would you. Would you say, go into skateboarding or.
- [46:46]
B
Advice that I would give my younger self would be, you know, I started making pretty good money as a. I guess I started investing as a young guy to a young. You know, as a. As a teenager. But like, you know, 19, 20, I started buying my first properties. But I think I would have. I think I would have invested more.
- [47:03]
A
Yeah.
- [47:03]
B
You know, because. Because back then I was investing, but I. I don't think my mind was set on building my future of the age of being 40 or 50 or 60 or whatever. I think, you know, at that age when you're making money, you think it's never gonna go.
- [47:16]
A
Yeah. You think you're always just gonna be a professional skateboarder.
- [47:18]
B
Yeah. So I was buying things like, and I was strategic with it. Like, I bought a Bentley and I bought from Jared at J Star. So I got a good price on, I bought it used. I didn't really lose money on that. I think I had the Bentley GT for. Bought it for maybe almost 100 grand and maybe I lost like 15 grand because it didn't really depreciate that much. I had it for four or five years. So I guess some of my things, some of my cars and stuff that I bought, I. I didn't really lose that much on. But you can, you definitely can. If you go buy a brand new Bentley for 300 grand and then you try to sell it four years later, it's not going to be three, you're not, you're not going to just lose.
- [47:48]
A
You're selling that for 100 grand.
- [47:50]
B
Yeah, exactly. So I think that's a good move.
- [47:52]
A
You bought it used, it already had depreciated from.
- [47:55]
B
Yep. And it barely, barely depreciated. And I had fun with it. I bought jewelry and stuff. I think back then me and Sheckler and Paul Riggs were buying jewelry. I don't even really wear much jewelry nowadays, nor do I really care about it. So I think there's just certain things and, and you know, when you buying Bentleys and jewelry and these kind of things, these aren't assets, you know, and it attracts the wrong people into your life, you know, the wrong women or whatever. It could be the wrong friends, you know, you have people with the wrong motives being around you, I guess you could say. So that's like one thing that I would look back is if I could tell my younger self or a skateboarder that's coming up and starting to make money in skateboarding or even if you're not in skateboarding, you're doing something that you're making money, but you're just spending it on like these, I don't know, Gucci flip flops or whatever. I don't know, I don't buy that kind of stuff. I don't buy designer shades or any of that stuff. So. But I would just go back and want to like tell my younger self basically to invest more into assets and not into things that are just going.
- [48:50]
A
To be more conservative about stupid.
- [48:52]
B
Yeah, but you got to live your life. You know, your life is short. If you work hard, you got to live your life. And there. It was a dream of mine at one point to have like a big pool in the backyard. I had a six bedroom house in Mission Vio with a huge pool, 10, 000 square foot lot, mini ramp, all this stuff. I was in a jumbo loan, right? I. I had high property tax, I had all these bills because I had pool guys and all this stuff. And I had that for about five or six years. I was making a crazy amount of money in skateboarding and I was like, man, I had this Bentley and I was investing into real estate because my neighbor Ben got me into investing into these condos that I had or that I was buying every single year. And thank God I. I had Ben as my neighbor, by the way, because he was the one that was really pushing me to invest my money. And if I didn't have him, I probably would not Be where I'm at now with having the financial freedom through real estate. But I got to a point where I was like, I think I'm gonna sell this house, I think I'm gonna sell this car, I'm gonna take the money and I'm gonna go invest more and I'm gonna go buy more property in Arizona and I'm going to invest into other markets and I'm going to downsize my car to like a. I think what I buy like a BMW 5 Series or whatnot, which wasn't. And I bought it used. So I went from selling this thing for like 85 grand to buying like a 35,000bmw used still like a 5 series. So decent. Nice few years, few years earlier than whatever year it was, you know, so. And then I took the money and I downsized my property from like jumbo loan, like 800,000, 800 some thousand dollar home to like a 600, 000 home. So I took the 200 grand, invested more into real estate, got rid of the big pool and all the big, the overhead, I guess you could say. Yeah. So I basically just tightened up my lifestyle, invested the money and thank God I did that because now I have more properties, I have more passive income coming in now that I'm able to live off of where I don't have to ever worry about pretty much making another dollar in skateboarding or anything. Yeah, those sponsors could go away. And now it's more just like okay cool, I'm just gonna skate because I enjoy skateboarding, I love it. I don't have to feel like I have to go win another competition to take money home to survive or I even have to have sponsors to really survive, you know. Now my main focus is just like, okay, cool. How do I help out the next generation of skateboarders to be able to live their dream and get them to where they want to go and have good intentions doing it of like getting them good skateboards at a young age as a kid or being in a master class where they can learn how to go get sponsors and learn how to basically build this foundation to be a professional athlete and how to expand it and then also learning at a level where I'm at, where I'm doing licensing deals and I can talk about that. What's the difference between sponsorship and licensing? They're completely two different things. Yeah, I could essentially help someone out from the age of a young kid that just wanted to get his first sponsor to how to expand to get bigger sponsors and think outside the box than just the core market of skateboarding, into more the corporate world of, you know, the energy drinks and all those kind of deals to also licensing deals and going into how I got into big box retail and really building products in that. That space as well, which is a whole. Nother whole. Another can of worms that you're opening up that is not easy to open by any means. And to be able to crack all those codes and have that knowledge, to be able to share with the world is. Is my 20 years of experience. Yeah. 20 years of experience. Yeah.
- [52:05]
A
Yeah. That's awesome. So let me ask you this. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received in your career?
- [52:12]
B
I'd say from Chet Thomas. He's always giving me good advice to like, you know, to open up, to create a corporation, have these companies paying the corporation. And there's a. There's reasons behind that because the corporation is kind of where you're making your money from. Their sponsors. If your skateboard flies out and hits someone in the, in the, in the, in the street, they could come after and sue you. But where's all the money that you made in your career is actually in the corporation? So you have some liability there. It's kind of like having liability, liability with your rental properties and having them in LLCs. You can do that this way too, with your career. So protect the money that you're making as a pro athlete. Right? Protect from accidents like that that could happen. Right. And that's just an example. I'm just putting that out there. But people can't. You can't sue a person.
- [52:53]
A
Protect the money that you make.
- [52:55]
B
Protect the money you make.
- [52:56]
A
Athletes, influencers, actors. Listen to his advice.
- [53:00]
B
Correct. And also by doing that, you can also have tax write off. So creating corporations like an S corp, you can have tax write off. So I have a business card. And because I'm skateboarding during the day and I'm out filming, I have to eat. I'm hungry, right? So I go buy food, right? What is that? It's a tax write off.
- [53:16]
A
Yeah.
- [53:16]
B
So I'm making X amount of money and I'm writing off my food when I'm out skateboarding, what else am I doing? I'm driving my car. I gotta. What? I gotta buy gas. So I deduct my gas, right. I have an office because I have zoom meetings, right? What do I do? I write off the square footage of the office. I have Internet. I have to write off the Internet. I have a cell phone. I have to Write off my cell phone bills. So you also. Now you have all these deductions that you can do. So now you're making X amount of money. And instead of getting taxed as a personal ass, as a person, you know, as an individual, I should say. And having no write offs, you have write offs this way. That's the same thing with real estate. You put your real estate into LLCs. You have a business card. You deduct these expenses to fix up the properties and to do certain things. That's how you lower your tax bracket. So essentially, you're lowering. You're making money and you're lowering the amount that you're paying taxes. And you're also keeping it. Keeping protection of keeping those assets or keeping that money and not letting someone take it.
- [54:12]
A
Amazing. And that's. That's awesome, awesome advice. And, you know, that is the message that we need to have in the celebrity community now. You know, it's just. Yeah, they don't know what to do with their money. 99% of them.
- [54:24]
B
And you know what?
- [54:24]
A
They're one of the few people I've met in that community that's really leveraged themselves correctly.
- [54:30]
B
Yeah. Well.
- [54:31]
A
Made a future for themselves after sports or, you know, when the, when the show's over.
- [54:37]
B
Yeah. Well, thank you for that because, you know, I never really had a plan B. And I did not have a high school diploma or, you know, like, I only had one job in my entire life. Was a paper boy. I knew, like, I'm not doing this.
- [54:48]
A
Well, that's not a. That's not gonna buy any real estate.
- [54:50]
B
No, that's not gonna buy any real estate. So I always knew, like, I didn't have a plan B. So, like, take this money, invest this money. Protect. Protect this money. Get these assets, Protect these assets. Do it right and keep pushing and not care what anyone thinks. So, like, when skateboarders, back when I was kind of coming up, like, riding for the energy drink companies weren't that cool, right? Me and Ryan Sheckler and some of these guys. Paul Rodriguez were the only. Jeremy Rogers were the only guys that had the Rockstar energy drink logo or the Red Bull logo or the monster energy drink logo. And you know what the other skaters said? Ah, these guys are selling out. These guys are sellouts. Right? Because we were going, getting these deals from Oakley, Rockstar Energy, Toyota, skating the Dew Tour on NBC. And it was kind of like there was a. There was a big push between, like, guys that were going to, like, the corporate side of skateboarding. I Guess you could say corporate companies and then the core, core industries, it wasn't as cool to transfer over, you know. And now you look back, right? And you look back at that, and now if you don't have an energy drink company on your head and you don't ride for Red Bull, you're whack. Are you even a pro athlete?
- [55:52]
A
Yeah.
- [55:52]
B
So we were the first that really kind of started this shape, this. And dudes weren't saying it was that cool. And they're probably kicking themselves now like, man, we should have rolled for those companies because now they're.
- [56:03]
A
They have some real estate now. They're just like, they're. They're old, they're waiting tables.
- [56:06]
B
Yeah, they're waiting tables. They're older and they're like, they're not going to get those deals at the age that they're out now. And now the industry has went into like, you know, if you don't have those drink companies are even a pro skateboarder, you know what I mean? Like.
- [56:18]
A
Yeah.
- [56:18]
B
And I think, I think that's like a, you know, one of those things that you should always just go after what you want to do, what you believe in, and there's always going to be someone on the side of you that's going to talk or judge you for what you're doing. But you just got to have your dream, your vision, and go after and don't ever let someone sidetracked you or kind of throw you off the rail of where you want to go and stay on that train and keep going and don't care what anyone thinks and just keep going after your dream and make it a reality.
- [56:44]
A
I love that. Now, a couple last questions. I like to ask everybody. It's what's a personal goal that you have for yourself and what's a business goal you got?
- [56:54]
B
Personal goal would be things I'm working on right now. You know, I haven't drank alcohol and I want to say almost 100 days now. Right. Which is great. And I'm not saying I'm never gonna drink again, but I feel like there's a lot of people out there that live their lives, that they work all week at their 9 to 5 job, and because they worked all week, they feel like, okay, it's the weekend, it's time to party, it's time to let loose. Right? There's so many people that I meet like that. And I guess being a pro athlete, you kind of make your own schedule. And there's times where like I was skating contest And I'm like, contest is over. It's time to rage. It's time to party and celebrate, right? And I think one thing and that's okay, I think you should celebrate your wins, but I also think you should take care of your health. So now I kind of pick and choose the times where I'm going to go out and if I'm going to drink alcohol because the next day my body's gonna feel it, right. I'm 39 years old, I'm not 22 and you know, it takes me like two, three days to recover. I have a sauna in my house that I go into after if I go out partying because I want to get the toxins out of my body as quick as possible because I don't want to feel like crap, right? So I think one thing for my personal would be my health and taking care of my well being to live a health to, to what I'm going to do now, right. In my 30s is gonna co. Is really gonna, gonna ultimately go into my 50s and my 60s, 60s of where my health's gonna go, right. So I think one thing is focusing on taking care of your body is a very important thing. And eating organic foods. I've been eating a lot of organic foods, taking care of what I eat, so cutting down on alcohol, stopping soda. I haven't really drink much soda, barely any soda. And I kind of, you know, everywhere you go in this world, there's soda machines. You go to wherever, in and out for instance, or wherever, right. And that's not the best food by any means, but they market it like it is. It's better than the McDonald's, I'm sure it is or whatever. But everywhere soda machines, that's terrible for you, tons of sugar, tons of crap. So drinking a lot more, you know, waters juices, doing a lot of juicing, eating organic foods, minimizing the drinking as much alcohol and going out on the weekends and, and when you do these kind of, kind of things, your production or your, you're just getting up production, you're, you're, you're getting way, you're way more productive I should say because you're not feeling drained, you're not feeling sluggish, you're eating healthy, you have energy, you just feel more alive. And so that's something it takes. And if I were to tell my younger self, I would have told my younger self that take care of your body more and stretch and eat good foods and don't party as much and those kind of Things will really help you get to the destination where you want to go quicker because you won't have those distractions and you'll just feel better every day of your life. Right. So those are things that like I'm working on right now and have been working on to just eat cleaner, not party as much. Right. And just take care of your body so you can live a healthier life later on and be more productive right now to have a more secured future and, you know, live a good life. As far as business, I would say I'm focused on right now helping out the next generation of skateboarders through my, my entry level skateboards through my master class. That's going to be on skool.com that's S K-O-O-L.com because I never heard of school. I just heard about this a couple months ago. I was like, whoa, this is a really cool platform. And the only reason why I heard about that was because I was found other entrepreneurs that are on that platform that are teaching really cool things that I wanted to learn about. And I actually bought a course about real estate through Richard Garcia and learned a lot about how to get real estate even at cheaper pricing. With tax deeds going to tax deed auctions, you can get real estate. So if you're at a point, where.
- [60:22]
A
Have you went to a tax deed auction?
- [60:24]
B
There's one actually in Michigan next week on the 22nd that I was looking at attending and learning more about buying at foreclosure properties and tax deed auctions. Right.
- [60:33]
A
Facetime me while you're there.
- [60:34]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. So I'm not saying these properties are.
- [60:36]
A
Going to be in Michigan next week, are you?
- [60:38]
B
Yeah. So I'm not saying these properties are gonna be the best shape, but if you're.
- [60:41]
A
They're not in the best shop in Michigan.
- [60:42]
B
But if you're in a point and you're not able to afford $200,000 duplex and you want to try to get a property, maybe there's a way that you can get a taxi property for let's say a couple grand. Maybe they both, maybe bulldoz the, bulldoze the property down, spend some money on that and then sell the land. There's probably ways to make money in the taxi space. And I can't talk about it because I'm not in it, but I'm learning more about it. But the moral of the story is I buy courses and I buy people's courses because I want to learn more information about.
- [61:11]
A
Educate you, educate yourself education.
- [61:13]
B
Yeah. And education, you can't, you know, getting education, it's, it's priceless, right?
- [61:17]
A
Yeah.
- [61:17]
B
And that's why I invest into like Richard's course and understanding how he invested and how he scaled his real estate business. Because I want to, I want to scale my real estate business and if I can provide people out there that want to scale their skateboarding career and kind of what I've done and, and they could essentially talk to me at a very affordable price, you know, so I'm not charging a lot of money to be on the school platform for my course. We're still looking at what the pricing is, but it's, it's not going to be peanuts. It's going to be peanuts. Like we're looking 20 some bucks a month, maybe 40 bucks. I don't know. We don't know the exact price. I don't know the exact price yet. But I'm not doing it to really make a bunch of money if I'm only charging 22 to be part of this course. You know what I mean? It's more a passion of mine to help out this next generation of skaters and give them. And I like talking about it. I like being an entrepreneur. I like talking about how to crack the codes to make success happen. So that's a, it's a huge passion of mine. And then I guess a big passion of mine is, is really scaling that, that real estate business. But I'm not really using these other things with the skateboards or the master class to scale the real estate. I'm actually selling some of my properties that I've bought over the years, taking the gains there and putting those gains into bigger complexes.
- [62:31]
A
Love that.
- [62:32]
B
Yeah. So it's, it's, it's one of those things that I've been investing in real estate for almost 20 years, that I bought and bought a lot of these properties at a very low price, especially in Arizona, that they've more than quadrupled in price where I could actually essentially sell those and now upgrade, yeah. 1031 them into bigger complexes and scale that way. And I learned from Richard Garcia about that and how he's done that. And it's, it's very intriguing. It's very cool. So, yeah, that's how I would scale on the business side of things, of really building out that real estate empire is a big goal of mine.
- [63:01]
A
Love it. Now, last question is an easy one for you. When you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's gonna tell you?
- [63:10]
B
You know you've grown a lot throughout your whole lifetime, you know I really have and I feel like I've grown a lot. I'm still growing every single day and I, I just want to do better every single day for my own well being and for others, you know and I want to leave this, this world with a good legacy that I helped other, other people out along the way and did good for myself and others, you know.
- [63:29]
A
That's it man. That's, that's the way to live. God bless you bro. Keep dominating. I'm proud of everything you're doing. Proud of the new school project, proud of you for really being a real role model for, for athletes, for celebrities, for you know, for other influencers because you know a lot of them are lost souls. So God bless you. Keep dominating, keep winning and I'm here to help. Anything you need, we got you coffees for closers.
- [63:55]
B
Greg Lutzka everybody.