18 Invaluable Lessons Skateboarding Can Teach You About Business and Life
This Activity Prepares You For Hardships
As a solo designer going through the inevitable hardships of opening and operating a business, I decided to reflect on what the activity has taught me along my journey. I’ve been skateboarding for over 15 years and although it is a physically demanding sport, I’m sure that if I’m still standing at 70 I’ll continue pushing along. Below are the 18 invaluable lessons that skateboarding has taught me in business and life. This is a feel-good article.
1) Never Expect Immediate Success
Our culture glorifies youth idols, but the reality is that these people are absolute anomalies. Success, traction, and actually ‘landing it’ usually takes a while, especially when starting and operating a business. Athletes and pop stars are celebrated for their youthful qualities, but most people don’t earn their income or provide economic value by competing athletically or modelling their impeccable bodies. Instead, most of us do it through the acquisition of knowledge, skill, and practice. The older we get the wiser we become, and that’s something that’s not espoused in Western/American culture. Did you know the average age of a CEO is actually 58 years old? Never expect immediate success, because hard things take considerable time and wishing they come quickly will only lead to let-down.
2) Practice With People Around Your Skill Level
Imagine wanting to get better at basketball and your only practice is playing one-on-one with Lebron James. You’re going to get crushed, every— single— time. It’s difficult to see any improvement when you’re constantly comparing yourself to giants or even competing with them. Don’t compare yourself to Bieber, Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk because these rises to success are extremely rare and lucky. Just like practising with Lebron, using these phenoms as a benchmark will lead to learned helplessness. Boxing managers know this as they slowly increase the level of the competition when trying to build their fighters record. To get better at something you should practice, learn, and ‘compete’ with others who are at or around your skill level. Grow slowly.
3) Practice Continuously
Skateboarding and other skills require constant practice. If you want to get better or even stagnate, you must continue to do it. Granted, once your muscle memory is built it will be easier to re-learn that skill — but a moderate amount of practice is necessary for you to stay at the same level or get better. This is also why you should never trust mentors or coaches who do not practice what they preach. If someone makes a living solely as a ‘coach’ there’s a good chance they can’t hack it anymore.
4) Take Care of Your Body
Eat well and you perform better. It’s that simple. Stretch, move, roll, and exercise—your body will thank you. Having an adequate range of motion both physically and psychologically will prepare you for accidents.
5) Iterate
Trying new things is the only way to progress in life and in skateboarding. Both big and small changes. Skateboarding is a constant process of failure and iteration. In fact, skateboarding is 98% failure (if not more). Most of the tricks you see in professional videos or in your Instagram feed have taken years to master and hundreds of attempts before they are landed. Life is the same way. You have to fail a lot, get up, modify, and try again. Once you master something, move on to new challenges.
6) Be Unique
Nobody likes a copycat or a plagiarist. Developing your own style and set of tricks/skills is what makes you valuable as a business, entertainer, or craftsman. That being said, emulating others is fine and can actually allow you to imagine incredible possibilities. That’s how businesses and sports evolve.
7) Style (Quality) Trumps Quantity
Style — the way you do something and the degree of prowess or ease at which you do it will always trump the technical achievement itself. Imagine a professional diver who can do a perfect backflip swan dive with no splash, while the other does a double backflip but lands in a belly flop. Which one really looks better and is rewarded more?
8) Be Yourself
Disregard social pressure if it doesn’t feel right. Stop caring about what other people want you to be because that will lead you to bad decisions and existential angst. Don’t settle with a partner and get married because you feel like it’s that time of your life. Don’t buy a house if you want to travel because you feel that’s the societal norm. Confirming to the norm will lead you to be utterly normal.
9) Learning Only Truly Happens Through Experience
You can spend your whole life reading, pontificating, and teaching others, but that’s not going to get you anywhere in life and business. Learning happens through experience — not what you read a book or hear from your teacher. One could read books on how to ride a bike for eight years, but until you hop on that sucker and try it, you won’t get anywhere. Learning happens through pain, perseverance, and experience.
10) Grow Slowly
Skateboarding, like life and business—should be built slowly rather than taking an immediate risk. I see this problem all the time with young entrepreneurs. They have incredibly high ambition and immense ego—thus they think they can rule the world in a matter of months. What ends up happening is they grow too quickly and end up in debt because of high overhead. Growing slowly ensures low risk and a solid foundation. The founder must know how all aspects of the business successfully run. Never hire quickly.
11) Be Present
Skateboarding requires one to be completely immersed in the activity, and this in a way becomes meditative. Like life, enjoy the damn ride and stop projecting or constantly ruminating — this will only lead to feelings of disappointment and regret. Life is like skateboarding — unpredictable but exhilarating when you’re in the moment.
12) Take Breaks
Red-lining it all the time leads to burnout…trust me. ‘Hustle’ culture teaches you to bust your ass 24/7, but without proper reflection and rest — you’re going to be toast. Once you feel your performance dipping, it is best to take a break, rest, and try again the next day. Overworking yourself both physically and mentally will lead to injury and burnout.
13) Freedom Trumps Power
Donald Trump may be one of the most powerful people in the world, but do you think he is free? No. He has to wake up every day and perform a bunch of tasks that someone else tells him to do. He has to attend press conferences, meetings, and generally be at the whim to the general public, all the time. The same goes for Elon Musk. Powerful? Sure. Free? Absolutely not.
14) Failures are Just Learning Opportunities
Skateboarders are extremely good at making asses of themselves — and this conditions them to be more fearless and resilient through life. Failing is absolutely necessary for growth, and it's important you frame failures as learning lessons that are inevitable and necessary. If you are too scared to try something new, you won’t evolve and discover new passions.
15) Some Fear is Perfectly Okay
A healthy amount of fear is absolutely okay because it prevents us from eating shit all the time and understanding our limits. Once you progress and get more experience, your fears will subside and you can conquer bigger and better things. Being risky isn’t being intelligent, and growing a business doesn’t necessarily have to be too risky.
16) Express Your Damn Self
Skateboarding is about going against the grain, challenging and expressing yourself. Skaters are taught at birth to look at architecture, culture, and society from a different lens. You have a unique chance in this life to leave a mark — your only chance. My advice is to try and leave a bold one.
17) Shit Happens
Not everything is your fault. Skateboarders know this because they can be rolling down a hill, doing everything right then boom — they hit a rock and fall on their face (on hard concrete). Not all misfortunes are your fault. Unexpected, unchangeable events will always happen and that’s just a part of life. Don’t be so hard on yourself because sometimes a failure, rejection, or mishap is not something you caused.
18) You’re Never too Old
Fred Astaire, a famous American dancer, singer, choreographer and actor started skateboarding at age 70, got a lifetime membership to the National Skateboarding Society and broke his wrist at the age of 78. You’re never too old to try new things, be silly, and push your limits. If someone ever says you're too old to do something tell them to go fuck themselves and keep pushing!
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I’m Jeff Davidson
I help companies design profitable digital products. Contact jeffdavidsondesign@gmail.com for project inquiries. You can also get free design lessons on my site.
http://jeffdavidsondesign.com/
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