History is littered with bright, successful and hard-working entrepreneurs who have found it difficult to be accepted by their peers.

Hugh Hefner, the legendary publisher of Playboy magazine, built an empire worth over $200 million. But to many he will forever be remembered as a sexist pornographer rather than a uniquely successful entrepreneur, humanitarian and philanthropist.

Likewise Rupert Murdoch, a man whose ruthless demeanour divides opinion in the business world despite him having almost single-handedly modernised the world’s media, cracking open monopolies and oligopolies and bankrolling some of the globe’s most successful sports leagues.

Tony Hawk is the most famous action sports athlete who ever lived and is one of the few sportsmen to become a mainstream icon in popular culture. But he wasn’t accepted as one of the most successful businessmen of the late 1990s and early 2000s, by many, simply because he was still competing as a skateboarder nearly two decades after turning professional. That meant, of course, he had to carry a skateboard around on both personal and business travel.

For many, that piece of wood on four wheels represented a kid’s street recreation with no wider significance, apart from the fact a man in his 30s should have no place lugging one about on his shoulder.

“For many years, few adults took my career seriously,” recounts Hawk in his newly-published autobiography, How Did I Get Here? The Ascent of an Unlikely CEO, which records the skateboarder’s rise from a fresh-faced kid receiving his first skateboard to a global phenomenon who now reportedly boasts a net worth of $120 million.

“Even now, businessmen on airplanes frown when they see me carry a skateboard into first-class. At the same time, there will be a certain segment of skaters who write me off as a sellout. On the same airplane, they’d give me shit for not riding with them back in the coach.

“But I don’t stress about haters as much as I used to. Most of them have never met me and have no idea how much I love to skate, or how much time I still spend doing it, or how essential it is to my sense of self.”

“I think there was less in the sports industry,” Hawk adds, “but there was still a misconception that skateboarding is a fad and a trend, or even a kid’s sport: the sports industry tended to pass off skateboarding as something that wasn’t going to survive long-term so they didn’t take it seriously.

“It wasn’t until the last five years that the sports industry realised Madison Avenue is more interested in the top snowboarder, skateboarder or BMX rider than the top basketball player.”

It may come as a surprise to some but action sports, with generation after generation of athletes constantly testing the boundaries of what is impossible on skateboards, BMX bikes, skis and snowboards, is a significant sector of the sports industry that heavily influences billions of dollars of consumer spending.

In 1986 Sports Illustrated reported that the skate industry alone had combined annual sales of $300 million. Last year that same figure was more than $4 billion.

Tony Hawk became a professional skateboarder aged 14, starring in the sport’s first direct-to-video, ‘Bones Brigade Video Show’, a 1984 film that brought him into notoriety in skateboarding circles before the sport fell out of fashion in the early 1990s. But in 1995, when skateboarding was back on the upward curve and action sports had their own annual multi-event championships - the ESPN X Games - Hawk’s popularity was propelled outside of the action sports sphere. At the inaugural Games, Hawk won gold in the vert contest and four years later in San Francisco he became the first person to perform the infamous ‘900’ move (two-and-a-half mid-air spins).

The ESPN producers went great lengths to tell the stories of a few athletes at the inaugural X Games to make an emotional connection with viewers - and with Hawk being the best-known skateboarder at the time, an inordinate amount of time was devoted to him.

Hawk’s performances attracted plaudits within action sport circles and a wider audience on America’s biggest sports network, and saw him rise to fame to become one of the most marketable men in sport. He was one of the first men advertisers recognised as a vehicle to keep their brands “cool” in the minds of the youth; the youth of course being consumers who are wary of traditional marketing tactics but receptive to brands that truly embrace and support their culture. Successful suitors which tapped into the Hawk brand included McDonald’s, Hershey’s and footwear brand Adio.

For the full interview see the latest edition of SportBusiness International published March 1.