EVAN: [00:00:00] A, I think when you’re young, you’re just a rubber band. So, you’re not getting injured as much and your lighter. So, one fall can affect a kid differently than it would an adult if they fall in the same way. And I think, second, is like the map that is presented visually to a kid in a generation versus another generation. So, you know, a kid that was presented like the map of tricks that had been done in skateboarding 20 years ago is fully different than the map of tricks that’s presented to a kid coming up in skateboarding today.
[Intro Music]
Intro: [00:00:48] This episode of the Smart Athlete Podcast is brought to you by Solpri. If you’re active at all, whether you’re running or simply out walking for the day, you’ve probably experienced one of the number one problems that active people have, and that’s chafing. Solpri’s all-new, all-natural anti-chafe balm solves that problem while feeding your skin the vital nutrients it needs to be healthy. If you’d like to stop chafing once and for all and treat your body right, go to Solpri.com to check out the anti-chafe balm today. And that’s S-O-L-P-R-I.com.
JESSE: [00:01:25] Welcome to the Smart Athlete Podcast. I’m your host, Jesse Funk. My guest today is a former pro freestyle skier from 2009-2014. I haven’t talked to many skiers aside from Doug Lewis back in Episode 102. So, getting into winter sports, happy to have him here. He’s also the co-founder of Cintri Media. Welcome to the show, Evan Schwartz.
EVAN: [00:01:46] Yeah. Thank you very much for having me today, Jesse. Looking forward to the conversation.
JESSE: [00:01:51] Absolutely. And so you’ve seen a little bit of the things I’ve done. You know I kind of come from an endurance sport background. And anybody that listened to the episode with Doug Lewis, back on episode 102, knows that the only thing I know about snow is how to build a snowman, basically. I don’t know anything about snow sports. I mean, I’ve obviously watched them, but just no personal familiarity at all. So, is it simply a matter of like, you grew up in an area that’s big on that? How do you get started skiing, let alone freestyle skiing?
EVAN: [00:02:37] Yeah. Good question. I’m sure you can build a great snowman [inaudible 00:02:43] that kid there. But it started when I was really young. My dad has a huge passion for skiing. He loved it so much, still loves it. I always saw it as like an escape from work. So, he’d just take me up to Vermont, because I’m from the east coast, originally, born in New York. It’s like three and a half hours up north to Southern Vermont to Stratton and we would ski almost every weekend starting from like three years old. And my mom, it’s kind of funny, like I ended up going down the freestyle route later in life. Love my mom to death, but she’s afraid of heights, which is kind of funny.
So, when you first start, so she’s not really much of a skier because she didn’t like the chairlift as much but when we first started out, you don’t really need to take a chairlift, you can walk up a little hill and kids skis down. And I had like a lot of issues actually like stopping on a dime and I would just blow right past them and not know how to stop. So, what she would do is she busted out a chocolate bar when I was three years old.
And she’s like if you stop in front of me and you don’t hit me, you get a bite of the chocolate bar. If you hit me, you don’t get a bite. So, she trained me like a dog, which is kind of a funny way to start. And then quickly grew past that, was able to start taking chairlifts with my dad. And yeah, that’s really where the passion for the sport started. And just saw it as a — saw the escape that he got from it, and I’ve just followed in his footsteps.
JESSE: [00:04:17] So, I guess educate me a little bit. So, you’re three when you’re just kind of learning the skills, doing the bunny slope. Is it age, is it skills? Like, at what point do you graduate to saying, okay, now it’s cool to take the chairlift and start doing some bigger hills.
EVAN: [00:04:38] Yeah. I think a lot of it is not up to me at the time at least. I guess it’s dependent on how well I’m doing. But parents had to have a vision for ultimately like what the next step is until I put you in the right place at the right time. So, like beyond fortunate for their support in that manner, and just always seeing where that next step was and being able to position me there. I always just gravitate and try to excel, like through that and pass to the next step. And yeah, just loved the sport so much at the time. It just meant everything, it still means a lot to me too. But especially as a kid, it was definitely life.
JESSE: [00:05:23] Your chocolate story kind of reminds me of — So, the very first season of the show — I guess I should say every year, I have a question I ask every single guest and the question changes every year. And the first year I was asking everybody if you could only choose one recovery food for the rest of your life, what would it be? And most people would choose some kind of like, not nutritionally recovery, but like a pleasure food; pizza or beer or ice cream or something. So, that makes me wonder, is it like, did it become a long term thing where you’re like, you completed a run and you’re like, it’s time to go get a chocolate bar? Did that become a thing or?
EVAN: [00:06:11] No. It’s kind of funny. I’m not much of a chocolate guy anymore. I switched over to the other side. I like sweets like Starburst and Skittles. That’s like my go-to if I need some sugar, but I try to stay away from that stuff as much as possible, try to keep it healthy. But if I have to cave in it’s definitely like for a pack of Starbursts or even Mambas as well. Love that type of candy.
JESSE: [00:06:37] Nice. Are there like — Before we got going, I was telling you about my friend Todd. He’s been on the show a couple times, Todd Buckingham, and his kind of love of cinnamon rolls. That’s his post-race ritual, whether it’s local triathlon or national championship, he goes and finds a new cinnamon roll. And I would say the vast majority of endurance athletes I know, they have some kind of celebratory thing after a race. Is that a thing in skiing, where you’re all like, let’s go — I don’t know. Because in my mind, I’m like, let’s go warm up so let’s get hot chocolate or like a drink or something. Is that a thing that happens in skiing?
EVAN: [00:07:29] I think the celebration gets a — Maybe if there’s like any success, a little bit bigger than that [inaudible 00:07:35] So, I think just like action sports definitely gravitate more towards a party lifestyle as well. I try to keep it as healthy as I could. But if you’re over 21 and there’s some success there, maybe step over to the party and have some fun and make sure that you’re not skiing too hard the next day so you have some time to recover.
JESSE: [00:07:58] Yeah. I think sometimes it’s hard to, I don’t know, maybe not relate, but like to visualize or really understand, I’ll call them cultural differences between the sports. I think endurance athletes, maybe we’re just too tired to do anything. But racing for two, four, eight, 10, you know, depending on what the event is, hours, and you’re like, okay, I’m going to go take a nap now. Versus like — How long does a typical run take you? I know when I was talking to Doug, the downhill runs are a couple of minutes, even though they’re anaerobic the whole way down.
EVAN: [00:08:38] Yes. So, like for half — I mean, it didn’t really last more than 30-40 seconds tops which is really, really fast. So, it’s a sprint ultimately. I did a lot of slopestyle as well which is more the jumps and the rails too. That could be a little bit longer, just depending on the size of the course. That could be anywhere from 40 seconds to a minute and a half. But yeah, I think it’s — Yeah, it’s definitely like a different type of energy because I definitely go for runs as well. And I’m dead after three-five miles, which is probably nothing for you. That’s where you get started. [crosstalk]
JESSE: [00:09:17] [inaudible] short run this morning is like three miles for recovery — [crosstalk]
EVAN: [00:09:20] Yeah, exactly [inaudible] type of energy. I feel like freestyle athletes or action sports athletes are more just like a bunch of wild monkeys who are very calculated at what they do to be able to make it happen. But it’s definitely a different type of energy. I mean, always high octane. You know, even a large component of the sport too is even like skiing at night as well, at all hours too just — whether you’re filming some jumps, whatever it might be to get a unique shot on camera. So, training isn’t always necessarily as black and white, like from a nine to five type of thing. So, the energy is, I guess, pretty sporadic on when you’re actually going out and doing your sport too.
JESSE: [00:10:10] We got a lot to get around to, but thinking about Cintri because I’m trying to figure out how do you get from freestyle skiing, I mean, like actual sport culture to now I’m running a media company. So, I’m wondering like, were you guys taking video yourself and the tricks and stuff when you were doing it because I saw the reel of you and we’ll try to have a link down in the description if you want to check out that reel of Evan. Is that kind of the natural progression where you’re like, I’m already learning how to shoot all this video, so let’s do this for other people?
EVAN: [00:10:50] Yeah, definitely. So, like as time progressed, I just kept, you know, after being a little kid just kept skiing all the time. And just I think like, natural Alpine racing really wasn’t for me. It’s like a little bit more traditional approach where you’re just skiing perfectly through runs on gates. And I was always like, kind of a little kid just jumping off of the side of all of the runs, as well. And so I just gravitated to finding my own path a little bit on the slopes, and I think my parents definitely saw that at an early age.
So, really just like love to jump, love jumping, and just like, quickly, got a lot better at it, started jumping on trampolines a lot, and really like translated all of that, I guess that awareness over to skis. And really started to learn how to make that happen too.
And I think like overtime just started entering events. That really allowed me to, like really just find a track to keep excelling. And I think 17, won Junior Olympics, which is a pretty cool opportunity. And I think that was really when social media was starting too.
And think like taking your own film, whether someone else captured it, or if you’re bringing a camera up on hill to film yourself, film friends, whatever it might be. And started really getting a little bit better at taking that content, editing it up in a clean way to like present it online. Whether it be YouTube, Facebook at the time, there wasn’t really an Instagram yet. It was just really helpful to just get notoriety. And get sponsors and just make a name for yourself in the industry as well.
And like that, over time like that, obviously, the social media revolution has just catapulted people’s careers in sports, whatever it might be, and like really democratized fame as well. And I think just like there’s a huge correlation between like filming the types of angles that you capture, and like the type of flow that you feel when you’re doing action sports, whether it’s skiing, or even if it’s skateboarding. It doesn’t have to be skiing, per se. But there’s like a transitional flow that is quite similar.
And we were just like getting a lot better at filming ourselves on hill and like just relaying that back into post production and editing content that just looked really cool. And putting your sponsors logos on those videos too. And so just like really started building that skill set simultaneously, like more on the back half, like really in the later half of my career in skiing.
And after a while, injuries started to set in. And just really started to think about the next chapter in life past skiing. And after, like right at senior year of college just decided to come up with a company name, put ourselves out there and just started creating content for sponsors within action sports, then some like non-endemic sponsors to the industry. Then I moved to Boston and we’re creating content for companies that aren’t even necessarily in action sports, more mainstream sports. And then just like a variety of companies that have nothing to do with sports and like the company started to really take off.
But we found our niche really in short form content, so anything like really below three minutes. But we were exploring a few different realms here to see how we can do long form in house and different things in the works that [inaudible 00:14:48] share with you in the next few months or so. But yeah, it was a very natural evolution on how everything kind of picked up. It wasn’t like one day I’m going to start a company and it had nothing to do with my past life. It was just very, very natural how it grew from a passion in sports directly into a profession that helped my career in sports, and then sports helped my career. So, it was quite cool how that evolved.
JESSE: [00:15:20] Like, in some ways, I’ll say we have kind of have similar threads there were it’s like, I had my kind of like own entrepreneurial bend, I already had a company. Like I design card games and board games, and still competing and trying to earn my professional license in triathlon. And then just experiencing problems on my own and starting Solpri, which is now associated with the podcast here. And I didn’t ever have, at least in the beginning, I didn’t ever have intentions of like being real big. I was just like, triathlon is expensive, like if it could just help me pay to go to races and like compete. And it’s grown bigger than that. But not that it’s huge yet.
So, it’s always interesting how different people find their paths into owning their own business, and the kind of like, organic connections that you almost can’t force. It’s like you engage life in a certain way and then you just kind of come upon the opportunity. Well, I think some people miss those sometimes is that you also have to be able to grab that opportunity, not just see it and then go, oh, that’s nice and then walk away. You know what I mean?
EVAN: [00:16:44] Yeah. I mean, just like anything, just probably — Everyone has some sort of vision for what they want to do. But like the actual execution it just takes a lot — It takes like five times longer than you had anticipated it to. Definitely taken way longer than I have thought, but I still feel like we’re on a great path. But if I could give myself five-six years ago any advice it’s like, just be as patient as you possibly can. Because my vision of it at the time was like, oh, yeah, this will take off in a minute. But that’s not the case.
JESSE: [00:17:21] It’s going to explode. Yeah. Well, I think — Man, I think some of it’s like, simply a matter of that’s how it works for most people. Especially because we’re both bootstrap companies. Neither of us has taken VC capital, and just spending a ton of money on ads. It’s just negative dollars just to get eyeballs on things. You know, there are obviously those companies and they blow up quickly. But they also have the tendency to blow up and go bankrupt because they never reach profitability. So, they can’t survive. It’s either they become this unicorn or they cease to exist.
So, I think some of it’s just the nature of the route that you’ve chosen. Just knowing that it takes a while for word of mouth to get out, for networks to be built. And you already, you know, I think you got hooked up doing stuff with Red Bull, because you already had some of that network in the sport. And that’s a connection that — Like, if I tried to start your company, I don’t know anybody at Red Bull. I’m definitely not getting in with Red Bull. So, some of that organic work you did just from doing the things you do kind of put you in a unique position too.
EVAN: [00:18:38] Yeah. Thank you. It’s not even me, right. I think like all of Cintri, a lot of us come from action sports background too. Like my co-founder, Mark, he was the one that actually had the connection there with Red Bull [inaudible 00:18:54] at UVM. And then one of the directors that we work with, Tyler… as well, he has a great relationship with Red Bull too. So, it wasn’t even me in that instance. It was those guys making it happen.
But I think just like the core of our DNA is just all of us come from action sports, in a sense there. But yeah, they did a lot of the great work that you see on our website as well. So, appreciate all the success that they’ve achieved and given back to the company.
JESSE: [00:19:26] So, as a business owner when I was kind of getting ready to talk to you and kind of saw just the — in information I was looking through before actually looking through any of the reels that you’re doing content video for companies, I’m like, okay, well, what are you actually doing. Because if I say Harmon Brothers, you probably know who I’m talking about.
But the average person would be like, who? The people that did like the videos for Squatty Potty and Purple and that kind of thing. So, like there’s that kind of media company that’s doing branding and like direct sales and like that is not what you’re doing in the slightest. It’s definitely brand association, but it’s not like, here’s a product, come buy it.
So, tell me, and maybe this is boring for the average listener, so sorry if it is. But I guess it’s my show so I get to ask the boring questions. Like, where do you fit in to the kind of content side of companies since you’re, at least from the reels I can see it’s not just like, hey, buy Red Bull or what. Like, it’s a little more sophisticated than that.
EVAN: [00:20:39] Yeah. I mean, simply, we create the commercials and the advertisements more on the creative side. So, we’ll script out what a commercial will look like, we’ll completely map out every detail of it. And then whether it requires film, or 3D animation, or a combination of the two, we execute according to the script and the plan that we have in place. I think like 20 years ago, if Procter and Gamble puts out a commercial it’s one staple commercial that they have for television. But even a company like that today, just because of social media, one commercial now could equate to like, technically 20 different pieces of content that they’ll distribute on 20 different platforms.
So, they might have an ad that they put on Amazon Prime from the same shoot that they did for a commercial that you’ll see on television. And then that same piece that they’ll take from that, and then transform it in a different way for Facebook, transform it in a different way for Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever it might be. And that’s really what we helped do. So, if a company comes to us, and they asked us to create a commercial, it’s not just like one commercial. There could be like 30 different pieces of content from just that one campaign that we do with them, that they just distribute on a multitude of different platforms. But ultimately, it’s to help them drive awareness and sales to their company, but we’re strictly on the creative side for that.
JESSE: [00:22:22] I was thinking about — You’re talking about trying to do I’ll say longer form but even if you’re like 10 minute pieces, I would consider that long form for like the style that you do. Is that like, say you take your director hat off and you put your skis back on; is that a short documentary on Evan and his story and how that tie — it’s like sponsored athletes. I don’t know whose current with Red Bull in skiing but say you take one of their athletes and you do a piece on them, is that what you’re thinking about long form?
EVAN: [00:23:00] Exactly. Yeah, we’re not creating movies, or like hour-long documentaries yet. Perhaps in the future. But I think right now, we just got to play to our strengths and where we’re really succeeding that’s really around short form. And then just like the next natural phase for us, is maybe a bit of that, like you said, mini documentary, just these mini stories that can be anywhere from five to 15 minutes long.
JESSE: [00:23:29] Just look at the style of what you guys make, to me, that seems like the next step. But it’s not my company and I have no perspective in terms of like making these videos. I have no idea. Like, the closest touchstone I have is like, I do a very pinch, a bit of like scoring. I’m more orchestral. I don’t do the kind of scoring you guys do. So, I guess I did want to ask about that too. So, again, to the listener, if this is boring, sorry. But how are you guys putting your music together with your stuff? Because I mean, it’s always going to be like high action, rock or hip hop, like those different genres that have a lot of energy. Or are you just like going out, getting stock pieces and then cutting to it or do you have somebody on staff that’s doing that?
EVAN: [00:24:23] We don’t have anyone on staff right now. We work with a bunch of other companies that will help with that. We also use a — There’s a variety of different platforms too which — where we’ll license music as well. We do all like audio effects internally though. So, if like we film you walking up your stairs, but when we filmed it the audio from your feet actually hitting the stairs sounded a bit funky, someone in our team might literally take a completely different sound bite of feet hitting the ground when you’re walking and overlay that in to make it have more of a natural effect or just make it seem a little bit more real or cleaner to the viewer too. So, we take on the effects but we don’t score our own music internally.
JESSE: [00:25:18] And just because of where you are size wise, I’m just curious how that works. And like I said, it’s not — It’s something I’m personally interested in, though I’m not familiar with, like constructing music for those genres. So, I can’t be any help to you, unfortunately. But it’s just, I see it, and I’m like, how is that done? I want to know. I want to pick it apart and figure it out.
EVAN: [00:25:41] Yeah. It’s definitely a really awesome space to be in. Like, we love it. It’s kind of interesting that you say that. We’ve been working on a few movie trailers as well. And we just did our first movie trailer for a remaster of a movie called not Animal House, but Animal Room by director Craig Singer, which is really awesome. And we worked with Akeem Draper and David [inaudible 00:26:23] media partners, and they did all the music scoring for that, which is really cool. So, this is a movie from — it was the late 80s or 90s actually. It has like Neil Patrick Harris in it as well, Amanda Peet and it should be coming out here in the fall too. And I think the trailer was just released. And we’re starting to do a lot more trailer work as well. We feel like it’s a very natural — It’s also a very natural fit for the type of content that we create.
There’s a lot more music scoring involved in trailer creation from what we’re realizing versus like the commercials that we’ll produce for a consumer goods company, which is great. And then I don’t know if you saw like the recent movie, The Tomorrow War on Amazon Prime. It has like Chris Pratt in it, a very successful actor as well. We just did an influencer piece for him just around the movie as well.
My co-founder, Mark, did the editing. And we actually partnered with Saylor, which is a media company in Los Angeles around that too. So, that was like really awesome. And that’s like really where we’re seeing a lot of the music scoring happening is more on that side of the business. And we have a lot of content that we haven’t released yet, but sometime this fall, we’ll make a true announcement around it. But I guess a sneak peek here on your podcast.
JESSE: [00:27:54] Nice, nice man. Yeah, I know, for — since I kind of hang around composers and people that want to get into film and stuff, it seems like a lot of them, like the foot in the door is oh, I’m scoring some trailers. You don’t often get your foot in the door by well, I’m doing a full length film as your first project. It’s just — ‘cause you’re not proving, you know. So, I think on your side, it’s also like, that makes sense too. You’re already doing short form, so like let’s cut some trailers. So, we’re going from 45 second pieces to a minute and a half, two minute pieces. And then like building up that storytelling ability.
EVAN: [00:28:39] We could be executive producers on movies if our parents were founders of massive technology companies. That’s another way to get into it. But if you’re building it from the ground up, yeah, this is the natural path forward.
JESSE: [00:28:56] Yeah, that’s awesome, man. I have to jump back a little bit, so it’s kind of a hard cut. But before we talk — we were recording officially, you’d mentioned that you had met a previous guest or you know or are friends with a previous guest, AK Ikwuakor, back on episode 106. Hopefully, I did a little bit better job with his name this time. So, I wanted to ask how did you meet him? Because you said when you came to Boston, he was like one of the first people you met. He’s a track guy. You’re like freestyle skiing, like the sports don’t really collide very, very often. So, I mean, how did you get in touch with him?
EVAN: [00:29:39] Yeah. I mean, AK is the best. He’s been such a — he’s been instrumental helping me get plugged into the Boston scene as well when I first moved here for over four years ago. Outside of his success in business and in sports, just a really nice guy. So, lucky to know him. But I mean, I think we both were just networking like crazy in Boston because we were just both trying to meet as many people as we can, great people and like grow our businesses too. So, I forget who actually introduced us a while ago. It may have been an agency partner. And we grabbed coffee a couple years ago and just stayed in touch. He’s given me a ton of advice.
I mean, he gives massive presentations on just like how to improve like sales acumen, public speaking, etc. So, he’s been a huge help there too. And I think he just moved out to Los Angeles and has a really nice new gig as well in television too. So, I’m excited to catch up with him after this podcast and learn a little bit more about what he’s up to. And my co-founder, Mark, is actually based out in Newport Beach, so I have to make a trip out there and visit both of them.
JESSE: [00:30:59] Nice. That’s why I just — Sometimes I’ll have people come on like yourself, and they’ll say, oh, yeah, I know so and so. And like my assistant does the research and you’d ask like, how does she find all these things? And those are sometimes — We don’t find some of those connections, because they’re — I don’t know that there’s any way to find them besides asking. And so it’s always fun when I have kind of accidental connections or incidental connections between guests. And I’m like, oh, that’s neat.
EVAN: [00:31:31] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s a small one too. I mean, Boston is like — it’s obviously a big city, and people see it as a big town too. It definitely has a town vibe to it. It’s very small and in nature in terms of just people and connection. So, yeah, it’s great to meet people like AK.
JESSE: [00:31:53] Yeah. So, I wanted to ask you about kind of what you’re doing nowadays, sports wise, physical activity wise. I think you’d said, I listened to a podcast with you on the Executive Athlete Podcast with Ken Lubin talking about just the impact and kind of — and even earlier in our conversation you mentioned like injuries creeping up and just the impact that freestyle skiing has on your body where it’s like, you’re probably not going to be 90 years old, doing flips and stuff like, dropping a halfpipe. So, I mean, I’ll say, left the sport behind. I’m guessing you probably still ski from time to time, but like, what are you doing nowadays to stay active kind of keep that going?
EVAN: [00:32:47] Yeah, freestyle skiing is not like a pastime sport like golf where you just keep it going doing flips at age 70. Maybe there’s some savages out there that are able to maintain it. If you know hum, Tanner Hall. But other than that, no, it’s not for the faint of heart. So, I mean, yeah, I had a bunch of injuries more toward the end. It was like more ACL tear and then just shoulder dislocations. That’s really what honestly kind of sidelined me. I think it held me back a little bit, but try not to make too many excuses. Yeah, like really the story behind the injuries were in — I had like a bang out year in 2008 and 2009. You know, I was doing a lot of World Cups, like a bunch of top 10s and World Cups, and then got a top 10 in AFP World Championships in 2009, qualified for [inaudible 00:33:45] World Championships here in 2009.
And then tore my ACL really quickly after that, and like shoulder dislocations too. And I went back to school at UVM and I was like, all right. Well, I love to ski but it’s a very young person sport. And I don’t know, I was a bit over it, mentally. But then I saw that it became an Olympic sport, like while I was healing back up. I was like, you know, I mean — and I just started missing it even more, like aside from it being an Olympic sport.
I was like, all right, like I feel like I still have so much left in me. I’m only like 20-21 years old here. [inaudible 00:24:24] very young and still in great shape. So, I tried to make a comeback, did a couple more years of competing, did the Olympic qualifiers in, was it 2013 — 2014 for Sochi, which was the halfpipe debut for skiing in the Olympics. They chose four guys. I think I was like around the eighth guy so I didn’t end up making the cut. But it was an awesome ride, and then just decided that it was — just over the sport.
I mean every day, every year the tricks that are being done by like these girls and guys on skis is just, in all action sports, is unreal to see the progression. I just honestly didn’t know if I could continue to keep up at that pace nor did I have my heart in it. So, I thought that was just like the perfect break off point. But like, still kept jumping a little bit like can let it go fully. But I would say 2017-2018 I really didn’t do as much jumping anymore. And it’s kind of like really become a recreation sport into present day. But the injuries for me were like really around the ACL and the shoulders. But staying in the best shape possible, trying to eat well and work out as much as I can, so maintain a healthy body till my last breath.
JESSE: [00:36:00] I think about like trick improvement and I haven’t — I watched the winter Olympics, but I don’t watch the sport much. I don’t actually watch a ton of action sports, or really sports in general, oddly enough. I kind of live in my own little bubble. But thinking about, I feel like I just saw a video of like a 12-year-old kid, this is obviously skateboarding but like a 12-year-old kid completing the first 1080 and Tony Hawk is there to congratulate him.
And it made me wonder because this kid’s 12, are the more extreme tricks, is it a young person sport because size gets in the way as you get older, you get a little bigger, you’re carrying more muscle? Like, with that comes power but then like, you’re fighting against gravity.
Like, is it a young person sport, in part because they have to grow up in it and kind of get those specific muscle powers for the tricks? Or is it like, just because they haven’t been broken by injuries yet? What is it that that makes it, you know, because 12 is pretty damn young to be landing a huge trick like that. And I’m sure there’s probably standouts in skiing as well, that I just simply and completely unaware of. So, I mean, what would you attribute that to?
EVAN: [00:37:37] Yeah. I mean, A, I think when you’re young, you’re just a rubber band. So, you’re not getting injured as much and your lighter. So, one fall can affect a kid differently than it would an adult if they fall in the same way. And I think, second, is like the map that is presented visually to a kid in a generation versus another generation.
So, you know, a kid that was presented like the map of tricks that had been done in skateboarding 20 years ago is fully different than the map of tricks that’s presented to a kid coming up in skateboarding today. Like maybe the 360 was like one of the most crazy things to think of, like 30 years ago on a skateboard. So, no one’s going to be trying 1080s, that’s unfathomable.
Now that there’s such a higher level of difficulty being done on a day to day basis in skateboarding, it just seems more feasible because everybody’s doing it, type of thing. And I think that’s like the same thing in investing or like in business too. Like, a couple people started tech companies and then they realize success, and more people start doing it. Then like, now everyone has a tech company, or everyone’s trying to create a tech company because it’s the way to get wealthy. It’s the same thing. There’s like a different map presented to the youth in today’s age than there was 20-30 years ago. And just seeing others have that, just seeing that possibility already be done makes it easier psychologically, I think to break through to that next barrier.
JESSE: [00:39:19] Gotcha. Evan, before we run out of time, if you watched AK’s episode, you know the question already. But this year I’m asking everybody, how do you stay motivated after failing to reach a goal?
EVAN: [00:39:31] Oh, man, that’s such a good question. Maybe like there’s — I feel like I’m a sensitive guy, but at the same time, like I think I’m good — I think a lot of it is like compartmentalizing as well, and just like loving what you’re doing. Yeah, that’s it at the end of the day. If you don’t love what you’re doing you’re just going to walk away. But if you like really love what you’re doing, it’s just, you just see failure as like a lesson. I know that sounds like a bit of a cliche but it honestly is just like — it’s just the all time motivator.
If you actually are attracted to what you’re doing and you really want to continue doing it regardless, like you’ll just keep coming back regardless. I mean, obviously, the successes definitely are highs and everyone loves celebrating a success. But if you can just be happy doing what you’re doing, regardless of the highs and the lows, like that’s how the real success actually does come and you can get over a small fail.
JESSE: [00:40:33] Sounds good man. Evan, where can people get in touch with you, check out what Cintri’s doing, all that kind of stuff?
EVAN: [00:40:40] Yeah. Our website is Cintri.media. So, that’s C-I-N-T-R-I.media. And all of our contact information is on that website as well. We have a Contact Us page too. I would love to talk to anyone that’s interested in learning more and just wants to chat it up, or even interested in a collaboration with Cintri too.
JESSE: [00:41:04] Sounds good, man. Thanks for hanging out with me today.
EVAN: [00:41:07] Yeah. Thank you, Jesse. Appreciate the time as always.