So today I thought I’d talk about a friend of mine called Kate.

Meet Kate

Not everyone living in Whistler comes here to become a pro snowboarder. Many are just here because they wanted to wake up with epic mountains and amazing ski trails outside their door. They came for the lifestyle and quality of life.

Kate is one of those people.

On first glance there’s nothing remarkable about her life. She is a hairdresser from the UK who just decided that she needed a change, so she booked herself into a training camp in Whistler and spent a couple seasons training to become a snowboard instructor.

Fast forward a few years to today and it seems not a huge amount has changed. She still cuts hair, except now she does it in Whistler and she picks up shifts teaching snowboarding on the side. That doesn’t sound very epic.

So what makes her life epic? The quality of her life.

Quality of life means a heck of a lot

You know why people fall in love with places like Whistler? It’s not because they earn more (goodness knows most people in Whistler take a pay cut when they move there), but rather it’s because the quality of life is so much better.

Kate is doing mostly the same thing she was doing back in the UK. The difference is now she does it surrounded by snow capped mountains in a town of insanely friendly people where her days off are spent riding epic terrain like this:

Worth it? I think so.

You don’t have to live a glamorous life with a high paying job to love life. You know what gets me stoked and excited on life? The little things like being able to wake up with this outside my front door.

When you’re surrounded by the things that get you stoked on life, it’s only natural that it brightens up the rest of your life as well.

- Jed

From Hairdresser To Living An Epic Snowboard Life

As I write this he’s raised $980 of the $1600 he’s requested.

Hate it or love it?

Unsurprisingly, he’s getting a lot of mixed responses. There are people donating and congratulating the kid for being pro-active and there are a lot of people hating on him because he’s essentially asking for people to fund his holiday.

Now I personally didn’t donate because honestly I thought the video was bland and didn’t say anything more than “I like snowboarding, please give me money so I can go snowboard.” I’d have been more likely to give him money if his video went more into why he loves snowboarding, his dreams, how he’s worked towards it, his goals etc. etc.

However, I have no problems with what him trying to do a kickstarter type fundraiser to get money for snowboarding. Sure it’s a ’1st world problem’ but so are most of our problems and I can’t fault the kid for wanting to go to snowboard camp.

He saw an opportunity to try something and if he gets his money then good for him. That’s how most business in the world works and he’s not hurting anyone with his kickstarter project.

What do you think?

- Jed

Kid Starts Kickstarter To Pay For Snowboard Camp

You mentioned not liking the ‘business of snowboarding’ and the ugly things that happen behind the scenes with sponsored riders… can you give an example of what you mean?

Well basically I was referring to all the drama and nonsense that happens behind the scenes for the sake of making money in snowboarding. Many things are done for the sake of increasing profits without caring about the well being of sponsored riders and the long term impact on our sport.

I’ll avoid going in-depth or naming names because honestly that stuff just annoys me and I want nothing to do with any of it.

You did ask for an example, so I’ll give you one.

I have a friend who was sponsored pro with a small upstart snowboard company. At the time he was the more well known name and no one knew about the company. He was basically responsible for helping get them into the mainstream eye.

He stuck with them and helped grow their brand even when he could have gotten more money from other companies. However, as soon as the company got a little success they kicked him to the curb with no warning.

That’s just one example of the ugliness and it’s honestly pretty tame compared to many other things that go on behind the scenes.

Don’t get me wrong…

Now please don’t assume I hate snowboard companies that try to make money. I’m a capitalist and I’m 100% behind snowboard companies making tons of money. I don’t see anything wrong with making money from snowboarding.

However, I do believe there’s an ethical way to do business and often that line gets crossed for the sake of a few dollars. I don’t like all the short sighted decisions that screw people over and cut corners just to get a short term increase in profits.

So yeah… I hope that answers your question. As I said, I didn’t go too in-depth because hoenstly thinking about most of the ‘industry’ stuff gives me a headache, so I do my best to avoid most of it.

I’m happy keeping that industry drama and nonsense as far away from me as possible.

- Jed

The Ugly Side Of Snowboarding

Either that or the snowboard tutorials were so awesome that their combined awesomeness crashed the server, but I’m leaning towards the other reason :p

If you experienced slowness trying to get onto Snomie.com today, that’s the reason things were loading slow (and why the site was offline for a short period of time).

What does this mean for our ‘Snowboard Trick Secrets’ course?

Don’t worry, it’s not a major issue and I’ve fixed it already. I just had to move all the video hosting over to Amazon.com’s much more stable hosting service. A lot of huge companies use Amazon’s hosting service so it should be rock solid now.

To be safe I’m giving it a few days on the new hosting to make sure everything runs smoothly since the last thing I want is to launch the snowboard course and have you guys unable to access the training videos because of bugs or crashes.

Nothing major, just better safe than sorry, although it does feel like this launch is becoming some sort of Lord of the Rings epic journey with all these little snags that keep coming up at the worst times.

My apologies for the delays, you guys have been really patient so far so thanks for that! Looking forward to getting this course out in a few days.

- Jed

ps: If you have no idea what our ‘Snowboard Trick Secrets’ course is then I’d start here.

Oops – ‘Snowboard Trick Secrets’ May Have Overloaded Our Server…

In your opinion, what’s the hardest part of snowboard freestyle? What’s the one thing that you wish you could make easier?

Hrm, well there are a few ways to look at your question, so I’m going to give 3 answers. Obviously this is all open for debate, but these are what I would consider to be the hardest things in freestyle snowboarding.

What’s the hardest physical technique/skill to learn in snowboard freestyle?

In my opinion the thing most people struggle with is spinning. They struggle with really getting smooth spin technique mastered (which is actually why I dedicated an entire section of our ‘Snowboard Trick Secrets’ course to spin mechanics).

Everyone can huck spins, but it takes time, effort and a lot of practice to get to that point where you can pop a smooth 360 easily and stylishly every time. It’s a complicated skill with a lot of different pieces that are easy to mess up and ruin the execution.

To me that mastery of basic spin mechanics is one of the key signs of someone that’s a good freestyle snowboarder because I know it didn’t happen by chance and it took a lot of work to get all the parts of spin technique flowing together with that level of mastery.

What’s the hardest general skill to learn in snowboard freestyle?

I’d say knowing how to break down and learn new tricks safely is one of the hardest general skills to learn in snowboard freestyle.

This isn’t because it’s necessarily hard to do, but rather because it takes a certain degree of self control and thinking that most people don’t have until later in their snowboard progression.

It’s hard mainly because by the time we learn that skill many of us have already paid the penalty via injuries and crashes. Unfortunately for many of us it takes those injuries and crashes to make us realize there are smarter ways to break down and plan out the risks you take.

That’s one of the reasons why I focus so much on that area of snowboard freestyle in a lot of the blogs on this site, it’s because I’m hoping it’ll save at least a few people the injuries that most riders get before they learn those skills.

What’s the part of snowboard freestyle that you wish you could change?

Judging the speed of a jump. I wish I could take out some of the factors that complicate the process of getting the right speed when hitting jumps.

I sometimes envy skateboarders because their ramps don’t change speed like snowy run-ins. Skateboarding on wooden ramps tends to be a lot more reliable when it comes to controlling your speed and drop-in point.

With snowboarding you have to pay attention to different drop in points, how hard you edge, how hard you carve, whether you do speed checks, how fast the snow is that day and all those other factors that affect how much speed we have to take into each jump.

Get any of that wrong and you end up coming up short or overshooting a jump and that’s how a lot of injuries happen. Crashing in the landing rarely hurts, but crashing on the knuckle of a jump almost always hurts.

I think the tricky thing with getting the speed right isn’t so much that it’s hard, since most experienced riders get the speed right 9 times out of 10, but rather it’s that 1 rare occasion when you get the speed wrong that can ruin your day.

If I had a way to make judging the speed more reliable and less error prone to get rid of that 1 time out of 100 that you screw up the speed on a big jump, it would save me and every other rider a lot of headache and stress.

So yeah… that’s basically what I’d say are the hardest things in snowboarding. That said, I wouldn’t look at these things as a bad things. In it’s own way beating each of these challenges is part of the fun of learning snowboard freestyle.

- Jed

What’s The Hardest Part Of Freestyle Snowboarding?

For example, this sponsor me video was recently posted on snowboarding forum:

Now this guy isn’t a bad snowboarder by any means and he’d be above most snowboarders his age in general freestyle.

Let’s look at a second video though…

This is Zach Normandin. He’s sponsored and his riding is what would typically be seen as the required level for most entry level sponsored snowboarders:

So besides the fact the second video has a way better camera work, what’s the big difference in the riding of these two snowboarders? Style and execution. Look how much cleaner every trick is in the second video.

The big difference between a sponsored rider and your average good snowboarder is the ability to make their riding look smooth and stylish even on simple tricks. Watch a hundred ‘sponsor me’ videos and you’ll notice there’s a lot of hucked spinning, a lot of arms going all over the place and the general riding looks messy and forced.

That’s your difference.

But I’m not aiming to be sponsored…

You may not be aiming to be sponsored, but I think it’s safe to say most of us would like to ride like a sponsored pro snowboarder right? Well a big part of it starts with cleaning up your execution and style.

Bigger and better shouldn’t always be the goal. Cleaner and more stylish technique is just as important as learning new snowboard tricks and techniques to your skill set.

- Jed

ps: Still on track to launch our Snowboard Trick Secrets course by end of this week, don’t worry, it’s coming.

The Difference Between A Good Snowboarder & A Pro Snowboarder

I wish I had your life. There’s no snow here. I have to hook an old board to a tractor and pull each other down the dirt road.

So… why not make it your life if that’s what you want?

A little story…

As someone who loves snowboarding, I have a pretty epic life right now right? I get to snowboard 100-200+ days per year, travel the world, set my own hours and this all seems ideal for someone who fell in love with snowboarding 7 years ago.

However… let’s go back 15+ years.

Fifteen years ago I was just a small kid in Malaysia. I had seen snow maybe once or twice and never snowboarded. Malaysia is a tropical country and the temperature is about 28-30 degrees celsius year round. There are no ski fields in Malaysia.

When I was about 10 I moved to Australia. My experience with snow growing up in Australia was limited to 1 ski trip with my high school class. Most people in Australia have never even seen snow, we’re a lot more fond of our beaches and sunny weather.

Why am I telling you this? Well because up until 7 years ago I could never have pictured the life I have now.

I get how ridiculously awesome it seems to be able to work from anywhere, live in ski resorts and snowboard every day… and it is awesome, but it didn’t just ‘happen’ and I had no idea it would happen or any clue something like this was even possible when I was in high school and college.

But it is possible…

You have no idea where you’ll be in 5 to 10 years. Plan things out, figure out what you want and what gets you excited about life and make a way to get there.

Just because you can’t see how you might end up in that epic position, doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Do something epic with your life. It doesn’t even have to be snowboarding, but there must be epic things you always wanted to do… there’s no better time than the present to get started.

This blog and this website is about more than just snowboarding and if you’re a long time reader you’ll know that already.

Yeah I give snowboard tips and help other snowboarders progress their riding, but part of this whole thing is about showing others that it’s possible to take a different path, work hard and have an epic life doing the things you love instead of working the 9-5 in a mediocre job you don’t enjoy.

That’s why it annoys me when I get messages  like the one at the start of this blog. Someone killed that guys hope and dreams as he grew up.

When we were kids we believed we could become whatever we wanted. We dreamt of becoming astronauts or cowboys or billionaire space ninjas. Somewhere along the line many of us lose that imagination and belief and we settle for a mediocre job and a mediocre life.

Well screw that. You may be far away from an ideal situation right now, but who knows what the future brings with a little planning, work, and guts. You can do epic things and have an epic life.

- Jed

ps: Still working on how to become a billionaire space ninja… I’ll let you guys know if when I figure that one out.

Why You Have No Idea Where You Could Be Snowboarding In 5 Years

What’s a typical day like for you as someone who gets to snowboard almost every day and works from home? How do you balance work and snowboarding?

Interesting question, not sure if this is all that interesting, but happy to answer it. I guess the easiest way to describe my typical day is to go through it bit by bit.

Here’s what my typical day looks like:

• 8 am: Wake up, eat, walk to the lifts
• 8:30 am – 12 pm: Get my daily snowboard fix. Have lunch.
• 12 pm: Head home (however if the conditions are good or I’m feeling it I’ll keep riding until the lifts close at 3-4pm)
• 12:30 pm – 7 pm: Work. This involves work online on Snomie projects mixed with other online work involving websites/online marketing.
• 7 pm: Dinner and some free time to un-wind.
• 8 pm onwards: Answer Snomie email/twitter/fb messages, continue working on whatever upcoming Snomie project I’m currently working on
• 11 pm: Workout and shower.
• 12 am – 2 am: Sleep sometime around this time.

You can basically summarize my schedule as wake up, go snowboarding, come home, work on my laptop, sleep, repeat. I wish I could make this more exciting, but my days aren’t really special besides the fact that I get to go snowboarding most days.

I still have to work just like everyone else, the main difference is my workday starts in the afternoon after I get my snowboarding fix. Honestly, working for yourself is a lot of work because you don’t have a set ‘off the clock’ time like you do at many other jobs.

I guess snowboarding is the huge bonus of working for yourself though… I’m certainly not complaining

- Jed

A Typical Day At Snomie – Balancing Snowboarding & Work

Why is it that some up and coming pro snowboarders burn out and stop snowboarding or stop progressing?

Yeah… this is something you’ll see a lot among up and coming pro snowboarders. They kill it all through their early teens and one day they just burn out and stop riding. So what causes this?

Well, I can’t speak for every pro snowboarder who burnt out, but here are a few common reasons:

1) Their parents stole the fun out of snowboarding

Here’s the obvious reason… a lot of those kids get pushed into the competitive side of things by their parents.

They get pushed to the point where all the fun has been sucked out of snowboarding and they aren’t having fun snowboarding anymore, so they burn out and stop riding once they get away from their parents.

That’s just what happens when parents push their kids too hard and take the fun out of something they might have once enjoyed. We’ve all seen it happen to kids in many sports, and it’s an unfortunate part of most competitive sports.

2) The mental side of things took a toll

Most people know the physical toll of snowboarding, but there’s the mental side of things that can take a toll on you if you don’t balance out your riding. Unfortunately, sometimes this mental side of freestyle riding can get to some pros.

Thinking through difficult techniques and visualizing new tricks while facing very real physical dangers and risks every single day is very mentally taxing. Don’t get me wrong, the challenge and difficulty is part of the fun, but balancing out that mental toll is important too.

There’s a reason I like to take days off and just go screw about in the mini park or hang out with friends and lap easy groomers or take a break from snowboarding in between winter seasons. It’s all part of balancing out the mental strain and making sure I don’t overdo it.

It’s a big toll to take big freestyle risks every day and for some up and coming pro snowboarders the mental strain can suck the fun out of the riding if they don’t know how to balance it out.

3) They get sick of the business of snowboarding

Unfortunately, the business of snowboarding is not all fun and games like the snowboard videos can make it seem.

Like it or not, pro snowboarding is a business for most companies and for many pro riders it’s quite easy to get sick of the politics and business that goes on behind the scenes.

There’s a lot of ugliness that can happen on the business side of things and sometimes it can get to be a bit much for some pros who just want to snowboard without worrying about the sponsorship drama that goes with being a pro snowboarder.

After all, many pro snowboarders are just people who like to snowboard and some aren’t able or don’t want to deal to the drama and added responsibility that goes with being paid to snowboard for someone else.

One more thing…

Don’t forget that many pro riders who stop progressing or drop off the face of the planet aren’t necessarily stopping snowboarding. They may have stopped being a ‘pro snowboarder’ but that doesn’t always mean they stopped riding entirely.

Many riders who quit the ‘pro’ game keep riding and enjoying snowboarding. The only difference is they get their paycheck elsewhere and they’re having fun doing floaty 360s instead of working on that new triple cork.

Personally, I’ve found it’s all about balance. Keeping things balanced is important and even if you love something like snowboarding you have to know how to balance it out and not overdo things to avoid getting burnt out.

- Jed

Why Do Good Snowboarders ‘Burn Out’?

I replied and told him that money isn’t the main thing he should be using to decide if he snowboards and which job he picks. This is the reply I got:

NO! Its…its always about the… the MONEY!

Sorry, but this guy is going about everything the wrong way. Let me explain why.

1) Interest and skill comes first

You want to know the best secret to making money doing what you love (ie – snowboarding)? You don’t do it solely for the money.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s smart to have some idea of how you’ll make a living, but oftentimes the people who make money doing what they love never picked their path based on their earning potential. I had no idea I’d end up running a snowboard tips website 7 years ago when I quit Uni to pursue snowboarding.

I just loved snowboarding and was determined to find something within snowboarding that fit my skill set. I didn’t find my exact path until years later. It’s the same story for all my friends who make money doing what they love as well.

Did my friend Anthony over at VivoHeadwear.com start snowboarding aiming to start a beanie/apparel company that would go on to partner up with Red Bull? No, he started by moving to Japan to wash dishes at a ski resort because he loved snowboarding so much.

Did my friend Nev over at SnowboardAddiction.com start snowboarding aiming to make a very successful snowboard tricks company? No, he was snowboarding because he loved it and he started instructing to get a cheap lift pass in Whistler.

Your skills and interests are going to be different from everyone else’s and you have to find where your own skills and interests lie within snowboarding.

Heck, it may not even be in snowboarding. You could become a graphic designer like my ex-housemate and just live in Whistler while you work from home.

2) People with passion and skill will outwork you

Sure you COULD copy my path. You could spend the money to hire the same snowboard coaches I had. You could do the same back-to-back winter seasons I did and you could even start a snowboard website just like I did.

However, I love what I do and I have certain skills that suit what I do and you’re going to have an insanely hard time following the exact same path as me. Not to mention if you end up competing with me I can honestly say I’d outwork and outcare you because I love what I do.

It’s takes a lot of hard work to get to the stage where you can make money doing what you love and it’s going to be even harder for you if you don’t love what you’re doing and have the skills to perform within that task.

Just on my own journey with Snomie.com there are a lot of things that would suck and that I’d probably run away from if I didn’t love snowboarding and love talking about snowboarding.

• There was many days when I’m up at 4 am editing a video or finishing a blog
• There are many days when I have to answer the same question that I’ve been asked a hundred times
• There are days when the website breaks in the middle of the night and I have to stay up fixing it until the sun comes up

Now imagine doing all of that on a daily basis while also writing 300-1000 words on snowboard tips and training techniques every single day for 2 years. That’s going to suck if you don’t love investigating snowboard techniques and training methods.

You need to find your own path and where your own skills and abilities lie.

Sure you could still work hard and there are a small percentage of people who are able to overcome not loving their profession just by working very hard, but man… it’s hard enough to work hard at something you love, it’s going to be so much harder if you don’t have interest, passion and skill to back that up.

The bottom line

If you want to snowboard every day and make a living while doing it, great, but you need to find your own way to get there that suits your own skills and what you’re good at doing.

You know why I don’t worry about competition or copycats for Snomie.com? Because I’m confident in my own skill within this area of snowboard training and I know I love this enough to work harder and care more about this than anyone else who would try to compete against me.

Don’t forget that your passion for what you do tends to show within your work. I have no doubt that if I didn’t love snowboarding and love snowboard training, I would have quit a long time ago when things got difficult.

For example, I have a friend from highschool who loves nutrition and gym training. She’s opened a chain of nutrition stores and gyms and I have no doubt she’s raking in the money. With the way she’s going I wouldn’t be surprised to see her worth millions within the next few years.

However, I wouldn’t follow her path just because she’s making a ton of money. I workout, but I don’t love it like she does. I could copy her, but I’d just be going through the motions and I wouldn’t have the same passion for finding the best supplements or create the best gym experience.

I could probably do decently and make money, but I doubt I’d see her level of success within that field because it’s not my skill or my passion.

Don’t just copy someone else’s path in snowboarding for the money. You can look at their path, learn and get inspiration from it, but you have to find your own path and find where your own skills meet with what you love to do.

It’s not going to simple or easy to find something that you both love to do and that you are skilled at doing, but when you do figure that out you’ll find that working hard at it comes a lot more naturally and the money tends to follow later.

- Jed

ps: I just did the Snowboard trick tip dvd giveaway draw for this month. Was a bit late since I was travelling so much over the last week (only just got everything set up in Australia today). Congrats to Mikael, his name was first out of the hat.

The Wrong Way To Choose Your Snowboard Path