 Alright guys, what's up, Sean Enux here. Shouts out to all the new subscribers. This is a bit of a different video. I haven't really spoken about this before on my channel. Before I start, this isn't like a sob story of why I didn't get sponsored or whatever or that I wish I was sponsored or anything like that. I'm just gonna explain to you guys how it is in Australia and how it was for me skateboarding and growing up and whatnot. So yeah, here we go. But since I was like a young kid, my dream was to become a pro skater. Like in my head, I was just like, yeah, I'm gonna be a pro skater. This is when I was like in grade two, grade three, I was already like, yeah, I'm gonna be a pro skater. I've been skating now since I was six years old. So that's like a long time. Obviously I skated on and off as a child. I started to skate consistently probably around 12, 13. I had some friends to skate with and stuff. But before that point, it was just kind of, I could skate the local football field up the road. There was a little two-stair drop and there was some ledges and stuff for the older kids used to skate at. So I just used to roll around there and kind of like acid drop off the stairs because I couldn't ollie yet. So probably when I was about 14, 15, 16, I started to get really better at skateboarding. Our local park La Mia, it's like a big BMX park. Like it's massive. It got built around the same time. I started skateboarding almost, give or take a couple of years. Obviously I'm not a transition skater, so I would walk from my house. It was about a 20 minute walk through the bush and I would skate the flat ground in the middle of the park back when the park was smooth and you could skate it like a skate park. Now the road just here is probably smoother than the park. I had all my tricks down pat. Like I had kickflips, heel flips, tray flips, burial flips, burial heel flips, nollie heel flips, nollie kickflips, front side flips, backside flips. Like I had a lot of flip tricks on lock back then. I did have a few crews to skate with. Like I had a crew from when I was about 14, 15, 16. Ready? Can I just have one more go? Hey Blake, who are you gonna sue? You're gonna sue us. Now get off of here. Hey, park down the fucking road. Go use it. Yeah, fucking put that camera away. Then I had another crew from about 16 to 19 and then now I have another crew from about 19 until now. So there's been a few groups of different skateboarders in the area. I hit 16, 17, got into my first relationships and stuff, had girlfriends and then I slowed down skating as you do. I kind of lost interest a bit. The longest time I spent off board is probably about nine months. When I was 18, I started my apprenticeship and the job I was at back then. So that stole a lot of my time as well. So I couldn't really skate. I could only kind of skate from my work back then to the train station and whatnot. Yeah, when I was about 12, 13, there used to be this local that skated Lamea, believe it or not, and he shredded. His name was Rob Kenworthy. And he was the first person that I seen, like in real life that got sponsored. He actually got sponsored by Element, if I'm not wrong. Element would send a box to our local skate shop back then when it was still there. It used to be called Snow Scene and Element would send him a box and he'd bring the box to the park and open this box. And back then I used to look at him like a god because he was sponsored and he was getting free product and stuff and I was like, wow, but I just didn't make the connect of how do you go from skateboarding to being a sponsored skater to become a pro skater? That doesn't really happen in Australia. Fair enough, in the 90s we had some Australian pro skaters, more vert skaters like those of Papas Brothers, Jake Brown, who else? Few others, I'm probably forgetting a bunch. From 2000s like onwards, like the mid to late 2000s, there wasn't many pro skaters coming out of Australia. To think of now, who's pro from Australia? Jake Hayes from Sydney, Dean Berman from Sydney, Shane O'Neill from Melbourne, Tommy Flynn from Brisbane, who else? There's a few more from Brisbane, probably more from Melbourne as well, but that's probably like, I can count them on my hands. There could be more, if you guys know more Australian pro skaters, let me know in the comment section below. Oh, and can't forget, Dolan of course, Dustin Dolan was like the OG Australian, moved to California, become pro skater. I just didn't make that connect. I figured like, I didn't think, I knew I worked hard at skateboarding and stuff back then, but I didn't make the connect on how to get better at skating and how to get further in skateboarding, which is extremely hard in this country. We don't have the right amount of people that are into skateboarding for it to become like a real industry here. Those Australian dudes like Jake Hayes and Shane O'Neill and Berman, they all moved to California to become pro. It's like where you have to go to become a pro. You have to leave Australia and go to California and skate and become pro. I'm forgetting like, the Australian companies like folklore to have pros. Is that Ricky Glaser? Dude, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right. He shreds, he does a lot of technical stuff and he does have his own style. He's a pro for folklore. Growing up skating, I would do it religiously, but I didn't make that connect. Like I said, a lot of other kids would do it too, but it was more of a thing to pass the time. Like no one was really trying to push to like become successful in skateboarding. Like sure enough, we all got better and stuff and we learnt new tricks, but no one was super, super into like skating and filming tricks and like putting out footage and stuff. A lot of people lost interest and it was more of a pastime. Skateboarding isn't like, in Australia, skateboarding is just more of a pastime or a hobby. It's not like a real thing where people like throw off. I remember when I was in California and I was at Vance, Indoor and I seen Frankie Vleani. Vleani, Vleani? I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name properly again. Yeah, I seen Frankie and I seen Robert Neal and I seen Christian Hussoi. Not on the same day, like on different days, but all skating vans, Indoor and to see pros at parks over there is like a common occurrence. You never see pros skating parks in Australia. Like once in a blue moon, you'll have a demo at Waterloo and some international pros will come about and skate but you'll never see pros skating Sydney unless it's like Chima. There's another pro I forgot about, Chima. Chima was another one. He got pretty successful skating here and then I think he moved over to California and then it just went further and then he become pro for real and yeah, you know how that goes. The differences between being a pro skateboarder in Australia and being a pro skateboarder say in the States, it's chalk and cheese to be honest. Purely for the fact that we don't have the foundation of enough people being into skateboarding here for the industry to bloom like it has in California. That being said, skateboarding did come from California so it doesn't take a genius to figure out why skateboarding is so massive there. That's a birthplace of skateboarding. How have you been sponsored now compared to back then is very different. Back when I was like 14 years old and I was skating, I thought, oh, if you get sponsored, that's it. You've made it, but it's like, that's not true at all. Like you've been sponsored. That means that whoever is sponsoring you, the company or the local shop or whatever, they've seen potential in you and they wanna push you and support you to go further. So they're sponsoring you and they're giving you, they're hooking you up with free stuff if you're lucky. A lot of places will just be like, oh, you'll get like 30% off and a t-shirt. But that's more than nothing, I suppose. But what I'm trying to say is like, how have you at now is, like I said, you get sponsored, you get some gear. Whoever's sponsoring you, they believe in you, they support you, they wanna see you progress. And also, if people see you skating and you're riding, say, a board from such and such, people will see that and they'll be like, oh, that dude rides, I don't know, such and such, skate shop board and he's sponsored by them. Wow, I wanna go there and shop. I wanna go there and buy a board. I wanna go there and buy a t-shirt. Like that's how it works. They use you as a means to kind of promote their product and their shop and whatnot. Like that's really what it's all about. Just the differences in skateboarding here compared to over there, like even with evening, I've had kids in the States hit me up and wanna ride for evening. And like, I've had no one in Australia even asked to be like, oh, are you gonna have like a team? Are you gonna put on like people that skate? Nothing, like, it's just a different way of thinking about skateboarding over there compared to here. Yeah, basically I was like, since I was a kid, I was like, I'm gonna be a pro skater. I'm gonna be a pro skater. And then just not me being able to make the connect or to be able to see people do it in real life as a kind of guide. Whereas kids in the States, by the time they're 12, 13, they're like shredding and they know that they wanna make a career out of it and they know how to and they see it. They see success in person. Every in Australia, you don't see much success in real life because for one, people don't really try to do anything different in this country and two, people don't celebrate success here. They're not used to it and they don't understand it. Whereas in the States, people see success all the time. Like there's so many people from there that are successful. So over here, people don't really understand success and they tend to shun it. Trying to keep this on topic. I keep going off topic, guys. And there's gonna be so many people in the comments section just whinging about, oh, it talks so much. Go to this part in the video to find out why whatever. There's gonna be people in the comments section as well that say a lot of nice things. So thank you guys. Appreciate the nice words, you know. But yeah, I just never made the connect of how you get sponsored and kind of get that ball rolling. I just thought it would happen naturally. Where in some times it does happen naturally but you can definitely work towards something like that. Remember having all my flip tricks on lock and being like, what do I need to learn now? I know all these tricks and then my interest in skateboarding started to drop. It's because you're not pushing yourself to learn new tricks. So one thing about progressing is you need to constantly be pushing yourself to learn new things and you skate around people that are at the same level as you or better than you to be able to push you to progress. Shouts out to all the new subscribers. Means a lot to me. Really trying to push this channel more. Trying to push everything up further for this channel to kind of get where I want to be. That's not here in this country. If you guys are new, be sure to go check out the rest of my videos and subscribe and drop me a thumbs up, drop me a comment. If you guys know of any other Australian pro skaters now, drop me a comment. I just want to get like a rough list of how many there are in the world. Pretty much wraps it up for this little convo right now, guys. I hope I didn't gnaw your ears off of all my babbling on. But yeah, thanks for watching the video. Shouts out to all the new subscribers. Stay tuned. There's gonna be more videos. So glad you guys are digging the channel and digging my content. So yeah, thank you again. I'm gonna stop talking now because my mouth's dry, I'm gonna go skate. But until next time, guys, thanks again for watching and I'll see you all in the next video.