Julian Hoeing is successful by most anyone’s definition. He’s got a beautiful family and his professional resume includes designing for Lamborghini and Audi as well as Apple. However, Julian essentially walked away all of this to design surfboards and surf.
For those who may be unaware… It is extremely difficult to make money in surfboards. The margins are small, and there is a huge amount of competition. Regardless, this Austrian born designer and engineer who grew up skiing and snowboarding decided it was time for a change towards all things surf.
This podcast is one of my favorites in a while. I literally met Julian when we sat down for this episode and ended up making a new friend. He’s super funny (certainly by engineer standards anyway) and we covered all kinds of things.
We discuss surfboard design and go through a couple of his newer models, the time Kelly Slater reviewed his boards and shared some of his own, favorite waves and boards, some Nosara stuff, wave pools, and I ramble about how most everyone is riding the wrong equipment and tease Julian about yoga. But the main takeaway in this episode for me is how Julian left the definition of what most people call ‘success’ behind to live his life more based around what he really wants to do, which is all things surf.
PS – Many thanks to Denisse Lashley for introducing me to Julian and setting this up!
My pleasure, Rich! Thank you for everything you do 🙂