- [Sarah] So I hear when you're ready to drop in,
you calm yourself and you say like, "Who cares?"
Is that true?
- You know what it is? Honestly, 'cause at that point
I've already done so much of the practice
and the work to get to this point, like,
I need to say "Who cares and let's have some fun."
- Well, let's do it, let's have some fun.
- All right, all right.
- Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin
and welcome to Connections,
where we hear from some of the most innovative leaders
in marketing.
Today, we're in Mammoth, California,
site of the final Olympic qualifying event
for snowboarding.
So who better to talk and to snowboard with
than three-time Olympic gold medalist, Shaun White.
He's one of the biggest stars in the history of the sport,
but as you'll hear his success extends all the way
from the slopes to the business world.
You grew up in San Diego, which is not really
the snowboarding, like, hotspot, right?
- Yeah, no. Not at all.
But action sports were huge in that area, obviously
skateboarding, surfing and going to the local skate park,
like, Tony Hawk was there, like Bob Burnquist, Bucky Lasek,
and all these amazing people.
And so I was always kind of around, you know,
the best of the best in the sport.
And then when I would do the, like, weekend trips
from San Diego up to like Big Bear, Snow Summit
or Mammoth Mountain,
There were kind of smaller mountains
and whoever was in charge of running the show
at those resorts really let the park builders and designers
kind of have free reign.
Like Aspen, would've never been like,
"Oh yeah,
take the whole west side of the mountain
and build a giant snowboard park."
I would show up there and just do these laps after laps.
- And so I hear your first sponsorship deal,
like, your mom called Burton, like you were
seven years old? - Pretty much, yeah.
- And you got like a board?
- Yeah, my mom, Cathy,
she called Burton Snowboards
because they didn't have kids boards at the time, you know.
She's like, "My son is gonna be great...", whatever hype
she gave him and they gave me a board!
That was kind of the start of, like,
"Hey, well for giving you this board
maybe you should start doing some contests."
After that I was entered into these local amateur events
and I won.
You've been
in the public light since you were a teenager.
What's that like to be so authentic
with such a global audience?
- It's about being selective, which is difficult too
because you know, as an aspiring snowboarder
I wanted the big deals, I wanted these big interviews.
All these things, yeah! - Here's the money!
Here's the things!
- [Shaun] That as well!
It's just the kind of, like...
For example, after the Olympics I was 19, it was 2006.
I've won the gold that have my life changing
in front of my eyes.
And there were multiple talk show hosts that were like,
"Can we bring you in on over the rafters?
And we hang you... - like "I'm not a gimmick"
- Well, yeah.
And I was like, "Well... Like, no.
I'm not gonna do that." And they're like,
"What do you mean 'no'? It's like this so and so calling. "
I remember having to kind of stick to my guns
and say no to certain things, but in the long run,
I think it really set the tone for, well, this is my,
what I'm okay with.
- I feel like it's paid off.
You stayed true to who you were.
You were led by your values.
How would you tell people to
find that courage to say no?
To stay true to themselves? - Yeah.
I had a really amazing team around me.
My brother who's seven years older than me, Jesse,
he was always doing the next coolest thing.
He got me into snowboarding. He got me into skateboarding.
You know, he was always
very artistic and creative and so we joined forces
and he was kind of my sounding board for these things.
I think it's all about surrounding, like,
who you surround yourself with.
And people that are willing to tell you, like,
"This is a terrible idea."
- [Sarah] What's the secret to connecting with audiences?
- I just try to be as honest and real about it as I can.
If I'm having a bad day, I'm like,
"Yeah, I'm having a bad day."
It's not looking too good.
I can't see anything.
I don't want to get to the
bottom of the half-pipe.
And it's blowing wind and all these things
they're like, "How do you feel?"
And I'm like,
"I'm great.
So happy to be here."
I'm like, "No, like, I'm freezing cold. Like, I miss home.
I, honestly, it wasn't my day, but hey."
I'm not trying to put on the show.
Yeah. This is where I'm at.
- [Sarah] It's who I am.
- So you've done sport. You've done business.
I wanna go back all the way to the beginning,
'cause I learned that you were born with a heart defect.
- I was, yeah.
It's a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot.
And I had multiple surgeries to correct that
and I was told I was gonna be very inactive
and kind of, you know, sluggish child.
And I was always doing these stress tests and things.
I had a couple scares along the way
where I, like, I passed out on a soccer field.
The miracle of it all is my parents really let me
find my own boundaries, even after the soccer field incident
which was a lot more than was expected.
And so, from my second Olympic appearance in Vancouver
I told the story and I am so thankful
that I did because I got the most amazing,
I'm gonna tear up talking about it, but you know,
just messages from families like,
"Oh, we were going through this, you know, hard, hard time
with our family and our son or daughter, you know,
whoever relative found out that you had the same condition
or actually worse condition than they did.
And they are now breezing through it with flying colors"
when there's like a real life, sort of, ripple effect
where people can see me doing something
and maybe they get inspired.
Hope is now in their life.
I mean, that's such a awesome,
very real life thing. - Yeah, you changed lives.
You inspired people,
you gave them hope - I was really...
Yeah, I was really, really glad that I did that.
And now we see people, 'cause I have a scar on my chest
so I'll see kids on their mountain.
They're like, "Check it out!"
I'm like, "I got one too!"
Yeah, yeah. They call it the Zipper Clip.
- It is so inspirational and it it's so courageous to share
because it's so personal.
- [Shaun] Yeah.
- How important is that in marketing and business
to just always be yourself and to be personal,
to be vulnerable?
- It's so important.
And I think people nowadays, they really know.
They really do know if you're putting in that extra effort.
At what point
did you decide to move away
from being a spokesperson for other brands
and build a brand of your own?
- You know, it honestly was most recently.
I had these very long term deals
and I remember signing them thinking like,
"Oh, I'll be so old by then.
Whatever!" When you're 19 you think 30 is, like,
"I'll be playing golf
or whatever" - Oh, yeah. Ancient.
- Yeah. Yeah.
And so I remember 30 came around and I was like,
"I feel pretty good."
And I went, "Wow, like maybe this is that opportunity
to take all that knowledge and all that experience
of product development
and combine it and do my own thing, really.
Instead of taking someone else's ship and trying to steer it
in the way you want it to go," like,
"Hey, let's build our own boat here and really, you know,
take it where we wanna go."
I've teamed up with my brother, Jesse, to start a company
called White Space, a snowboard brand.
It's just so exciting to me.
I've always wanted to do this my entire career.
And I finally have the time and the right people around me.
It's like at the beginning again, it's like,
"Ooh! Someone ordered a board!
Like we sold two of these!" Like, you know,
it's so exciting.
Like every little gain, every little thing
is just so meaningful.
What did you learn
about the business of sports
and marketing as a kid?
- I'm so determined.
So whenever there's like something that comes my way
and they're like, "oh, this would be really cool to do,
but it's never really been done before" or
"Hey, what do you think of this?"
And I'm just so competitive that I want it to succeed.
So, I think I dive into it
and approach it in the same way where I, kind of,
pick it apart, take the little details.
So, like, if I was gonna learn a 1080 on the snowboard,
obviously, I would like work my way up to it and go,
"Okay, well let's start with the 180, then the 360
and kind of go- - And then you do it
more than once around.
- Exactly! Yeah, yeah.
But you kind of, like, I pick it apart.
So I would approach the business strategies in that same way
Like, "Okay, well what are people gonna, like,
what's the first reaction they're gonna see
if it's like, you know,
a snowboard or a pair of goggles or something?
Like, what's the, you know, marketing behind it?"
- Paying attention to those details that matter.
- Of course, yeah. It's the little things
- [Sarah] Goals are really important to you.
- [Shaun] Yeah.
- [Sarah] And I hear that you set, like,
a really serious goal, but then a fun goal.
- Yes.
- Tell me about that.
- The recent ones are pretty funny.
Let me hear them.
So, the big goal is obviously to win the Olympics
and then the fun goal was
I thought that if I did this Olympics, five Olympics now,
I would hope that I was such a well recognized snowboarder
that they would be forced to change the emojicon
on the phone to look like me.
So that would be the goal
is that they- - Do you have it
designed already?
- Not yet. We got a whole team of, nah, I dunno.
I just thought it'd be so funny
if I was able to pull that off.
So, that's the fun goal.
- [Sarah] Salesforce is partnering with team USA
and LA28 to develop deeper relationships between athletes
and their fans.
What opportunities do you think that, that we have to help?
- Well, I think that's so important, especially right now.
Like, there's so much distance between people
'cause of the way the world is with the pandemic.
And I think it's more important now than ever to be able to
connect with people in a real way.
- An athlete's career has a finite set of time.
How do you view business as a career
that can be long lasting?
- Obviously there's only so much time
an athlete can do his sport or her sport.
It's that inevitable thing
and you're trying to push it away as long as you can,
but I don't know, I think the nice part about business
is there's something to strive toward.
And I will say personally, like,
when I see someone on the mountain wearing a product
I've developed or I win a competition and I get that reward,
I feel it in the same sort of, I don't know,
excitement and gratitude for that moment.
Like, I sat and took the time to develop this product.
It went to the market. There's so much stuff on the market
and someone sat there and was like,
"This really best represents who I am and I love the style"
and all these things and they bought it.
Now you have a connection with this person.
So I really say it's one of the only other places that
I feel that same sort of excitement as I do as competing.
So, hopefully I can live on much longer than
my sporting career.
- [Sarah] So when a seven year old calls
and asks for a sponsorship-
- [Shaun] Oh, yeah!
I was thinking, it's so funny you said that,
I was thinking like, "Wow,
what if I'm that Jake Burton to me for someone else?"
I don't know. That would be amazing.