Tony Hawk

The move

Tony Hawk ran vert skating through the 1980s. Then in the early 90s the whole sport fell off a cliff. Contests disappeared. Sponsors pulled out. By his own account he was nearly broke, living on a few dollars a day and watching his income vanish.

He stayed in. In 1992, right in the worst of the crash, he co-founded Birdhouse. Kept skating in a sport most people had written off as a dead fad.

1999. He lands the 900 at the X Games. First person ever. Same year, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater comes out. He hadn't just kept skating alive. He'd made his own name the front door to it, and licensed that name into a games franchise that put a skateboard in the hands of a generation who'd never stood on one.

Why it was risky

Every sensible read in 1993 said the same thing. Skateboarding is over. Take the fame and go do something with a future. Instead Hawk bet on the one thing he fully controlled, himself, and poured it into a sport the market had called dead.

The 900 was a physical bet on top of the money one. Skaters had been trying it for years. He fell trying it more times than he can count, in front of the biggest crowd of his life, before he landed it.

The numbers

He turned a dying sport and a shrinking income into a name that meant skateboarding, then licensed it into games, tours, brands and a foundation. Rodney Mullen refused to own what he made. Hawk made himself the thing and sold it everywhere. Both bets paid. Just in different currencies.

The lesson

The 900 wasn't the biggest risk. Staying in while everyone else left, and betting his own name on it before there was any sign it would work, was. Hawk backed himself when nobody else would, then owned the upside when skating came roaring back. R.I.S.K. is for people ready to go all in on the thing everyone else is quietly writing off.