Chris Naugle

Is someone coming in to cover it?

And he says, no.

And he says these words.

He says, I own the place, so I can close the place.

I'm like, no.

I know some of you are like, well, yeah, duh.

But I'm just this young entrepreneur, and I did not yet understand that that's what an entrepreneur can do.

They call the shots.

They don't have a boss.

So we went riding, and now all of a sudden, the only thing I can think about is I need my own shop.

This is 1992, just to give everybody relevance.

November of 94, my shop, Fat Man Board Shops, obviously fat clothing became Fat Man Board Shops, opened in the Lockport Mall.

And the only way that place opened is I didn't have any money.

It didn't come from a wealthy family.

And every place I tried getting a loan from, family members and banks said no.

Except for my mom, who had nothing but the house we lived in, and she literally put the house up for collateral so that I could get an SBA-backed loan.

This is November of 94.

Now I'm going to go really fast.

From that point, I lived what most people would only think of as a dream.

I was a pro snowboarder traveling the world, getting paid to do it on someone else's budget while I'm running my own skateboard snowboard shops with my buds and literally like on off season, I'm running a skateboard shop skating and then in season I'm traveling