Nathan Florence Might Just Be The Savviest Pro Surfer Alive

Nathan Florence is not your average professional surfer. 

But, what is your “average” professional surfer in 2022? The top surfers on tour are making millions of dollars while competing against surfers who can hardly find a sponsor and are crowd-funding their way around the world. 

Aside from the WSL, you’ve got freesurfers, vloggers, influencers, outdoorsmen, etc, all trying to prove their worth to brands. It’s not as simple as the better you surf = the more money you make. Skill doesn’t matter as much as it used to. As Nate says below, “I know athletes that surf a lot better than I do and they have no sponsors because they care so little for their social media channels. That’s a fact.” 

Earlier this week, Nathan gave us a breakdown of how YouTube revenue works for surfers. And now, here’s the rest of his wonderful and far-ranging conversation with Ryan Miller. 

RYAN MILLER: You strike me as one of the most forward-thinking surfers in the world right now. I dream of having five avenues of income. It seems like you have 50. How have you pulled that off? 
NATHAN FLORENCE: As a surfer, you have to know that your career can come to an end at any time. It’s a dangerous sport — especially for those of us who surf heavy waves. For that reason, you have to explore other ways of getting revenue. I quickly realized that content is monetizable. If you’re not monetizing content, then you’re not maximizing your streams of income. YouTube ad rev, Instagram ad rev, reels — all it takes is a little bit of research and you can make some money. 

I go out about sponsorship differently, too. I work with a lot of brands, I have a lot of stickers on my board, and I pretty much manage myself. I think surfers are a little too selective nowadays. You’ve got to give value to brands and get value from them while you can.

And anyone can invest. If you’re above 18, you can set up an account. You don’t need to put your entire net worth in there and embed it all on a next-day expiry option. You can take your time. With the internet, all the knowledge is out there. All it takes is a little bit of willpower to do the research and check out what is available to you and maximize that. I’ve learned from people like Shane Dorian and you, Miller. I’m always calling you with questions. 

I remember talking to you about this stuff years ago, and I could see you taking notes in your head. As far as I know, you were the first surfer on OnlyFans, and you got laughed at. Now you’re laughing all the way to the bank. 
Totally. And it’s not just a paycheck, but an insane way to market it. We all know what OnlyFans is mostly used for. Going that route with surf tips created a stir, which brought more eyes to it and more subscribers in. 

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No, Joe Rogan, he’s not showing hog. Instead, Nathan’s OnlyFans features exclusive surf tips and how-to guides about fear management, paddling, pop ups, and a play-by-play review of how he makes decisions during a Pipe session. 

Fuck, that’s so smart. You mentioned it before, but I wanted to talk about the logos on your board. You’ve got super core surf brands, like Vans and Pyzel, and then the other end of the board looks like a CrossFit competition billboard. What are your thoughts on that? 
Sponsorship can come about in different ways. A good example is GoPro. I bought one, started using it, and tagged them in clips. Some of my friends were like, “Why are you tagging them? They don’t sponsor you.” And I’m like, “I don’t care. I’m psyched on the content I’m getting.” A year later, I had a conversation with one of the guys at GoPro and they’re like, “You’ve been tagging us without asking, on the work grind already. We want to bring you on the team.” I don’t mind putting in the work and I’m not petty about that kind of stuff. With a lot of my brand partners, I build a relationship with them, even with a lower salary initially, and it pays off in the end. 

How do you view your role differently from most other pro surfers when it comes to providing value for brands?
Everything is content-based and comes down to the audience you’ve built. From the standpoint of a company, it makes complete sense. They look at you like, “How many eyes are on this guy? How many eyes are therefore going to be on our brand?” And they tier your pay based on that. I don’t think I’m very different — I just know that content creation, building an audience, and providing value to your followers is the best way for a surfer to propel their career.

So you’re the brand? 
Completely. If you’re striving to be a pro surfer and you’re not working on your social media channels because you think it’s lame, you’re going to have a very tough time. I know athletes that surf a lot better than I do and they have no sponsors because they care so little for their social media channels. That’s a fact. And that comes around to surfing as a community. 

You have to bring value back to the community, giving insight into things that the average surfer might not know. If you’re giving them that value, then you’re also giving that value to your sponsors. It goes all the way, which translates to your brands being happy, you being happy, and paychecks coming in.

Is it hard dealing with your brands and going, “Hey, here’s a million views on YouTube,” while they’re trying to scale you next to the guy that has 50,000 followers on Instagram?
They’re becoming more switched on. You can see it changing the surf industry. Before, if you were on Tour, then you were the elite — you were one of the top paid athletes, no matter what. Now, a lot of the people on Tour don’t even have sponsors. They’ve worked their whole life to get there, and now the brands are like, “Nah, we want a guy with a bigger following.” Which sucks, I get it. 

I build everything around social media because it’s literally bargaining chips in the end. Like, “This is my value. I have the analytics right here. I have my YouTube eyes on me, 1.3 million monthly unique viewers to my channel. I have my Instagram analytics.” Sometimes influencer brands come in and don’t even ask you what you do necessarily. They just ask for your analytics. That’s it. “Send me the screenshots, here’s your paycheck.”

Surf brands are more loyal to their athletes than that, but I do think they’re all savvy to it now. The more followers their athletes have, the more they can push their new projects, initiatives, new lines, etc. At the end of the day, you’re your own billboard and brand.

You’re into weight training. In a recent Stab interview, Italo said he believes weight training is one of the biggest reasons why he hasn’t had a major injury. Do you think that has any merit? 
I think Italo is 100% spot on. The ocean is unpredictable and violent and strong enough to do anything at any time, but I wholeheartedly believe I would’ve had several severe injuries if I hadn’t been weight training for so many years. There used to be a stigma about weight training and surfing. People thought you’d get too bulky or too stiff. I don’t think anyone who says that has any idea how hard it is to put on muscle mass. You don’t just do one bench press, then you’re yoked and can’t surf anymore. I’ve been lifting for eight years, and I barely even look like I lift at all. I’m not like some no-neck, can’t-turn-around type guy. 

When I was first learning about weight training, I read that your bones will become denser to handle the overload on your body. Your ligaments will thicken and become stronger because your body doesn’t know you’re just lifting weights. It might think you’re fighting tigers or something, that you’re in a stressful situation, and you need to get stronger.

Fuck, I almost quit photography because my back would hurt so bad from those long flights. Then I started lifting weights, and now I’ll grind out those flights no worries. Everything is feeling good. 
Dude, imagine being a surfer, rotating one way all the time. The imbalances that you create in your body are so bad if you’re not training to balance it out. A simple deadlift will correct most surfers’ backs. If you look at a surfer’s back that isn’t doing training, one side is this big lump of muscle. The other is this cavity because they’re fucking rotating one direction their entire life.

Tell them to do a squat and it does not look good, dude. One hip will cave in and one knee will cave in, because that’s how you stand on a surfboard. Your body has been trained to do that. Those imbalances can lead to injury. Most of the top guys are now weight training. John is weight training, and he’s learned that through his injuries. Gabriel weight trains. Italo is very public about his weight training. Leo weight trains, the stigma is disappearing. 

I want to talk about those Pipe to Jaws to Pipe runs. They look like the most exhausting thing ever — can you talk me through it? 
Every winter, there’s a few of these swells where it’s like, “Okay, let’s buckle in.” We’re going to surf Pipe all day on the rise of the swell. Then we’re going to pack our guns, get on a night flight, fly to Maui to get up at 5:00 AM, surf Jaws the entire day — and that sometimes includes hiking up and down that freaking cliff and all the beat downs of a massive Jaws sessions. Then we’re going to come in from that session, get back on a plane, fly back to Oahu, and surf Pipe again the next day. 

That’s terrifying. Have you ever looked at your profits and losses to figure out what those runs cost you?
No, but I can give you a breakdown pretty easily. It’s $300 – $400 for flights, $300 – $400 for a rental car. A few hundred for an Airbnb, unless you’re staying with friends. You’re going to spend $1000 for safety for the day. And you’re going to pay for your filmers ticket and expenses. So, there’s another $300 bucks. You could be looking at $2000 – $3,000 for a single-day mission. 

Are you paying for a second ski or boat to take you out?
If you go out on the boat, you’re going to pay another $1000 bucks for the day. If you’re hiking, then you’ll save that. I don’t mind the hike, but the risk of blowing it in that shore break and destroying your equipment is too much for me. I just want to have a full day out there. Hiring a boat or another ski is the way to go, but it’s expensive. 

I’ve been there and had guys paddle up to me on the ski and go, “Hey Ryan, do you have a fin?” And I’m like, “What? I’m a photographer. I could probably salvage you an extra cliff bar, that’s it.” It’s crazy how the whole day can be over because you blew a fin out on the rocks. 
The preparation takes a toll mentally. And on top of all the logistics, you’re going to surf Jaws and you’re wondering if this is the swell you die on. You can do as much risk assessment as you want, but at the end of the day, Jaws could kill you pretty easily if the board hits you. But it’s what you love to do, so you go and do it. 

The comedown is super gnarly after those trips. You get these massive adrenaline highs and then have such an endorphin release when you return home safely. The next day, your body is devastated and you’re just left like a shell. You go into a full depression for a few days. I’m sure a lot of people suffer through it. I’ve found that just going to the gym and doing something that will push you close to a red line helps a ton. 

We’re in an investing contest together, and you lost horribly in 2021 — down in flames bad. I don’t even know if I would call it investing because I think of what I do as investing — an old man buying old companies for a long period of time. You scare the shit out of me, to the point where Dorian called me and asked if we should have an intervention with you. 
Oh no. My mentors are worried. I probably have a gambling problem.

Can you tell me about your investment strategy? It feels like you’re a bit of a trend follower. Whatever’s happening on Reddit that week is what you’re onto. 
Ok, when I started getting really into it, I hit up Dorian because I knew he invested. I said,” Give me everything — every book, every guru, everything.” I ordered all the books, read through them all, and was loving it. I started trading and it was going well. Like, “These methodologies match my style. They’re working. I’m making money. This is good.”

In 2020, the market hit absolute turbo mode. I was doing okay, having some nice slow growth. But when I say slow growth, it was like 50% that first year. And you told me, “No, that’s not slow growth. This is crazy. Don’t expect this to be every year.” 

But as everything I touched turned to gold, I got crazier and crazier. Then I found options and I was like, “Oh my gosh, give me this jet fuel. I’m going to drink it all.” I went hard. I think I was at 300% on the year during the first few months of our competition. And I was like, “Holy smokes! I’m going to smash these guys. They don’t know what they’re doing. Fucking look at me go!” 

At the peak of it, I started thinking that it was insane and that I should get out. The next day, I had the biggest loss day in my entire career, dollar-wise, percent-wise, everything. It was crazy, because it turns to play money when everything’s going well. I saw the stocks I was in — those lower cap, fast-moving tech stocks — and I was like, “This looks like a topping.” I sold everything, cashed out, and everything plummets for two weeks. As things started to fall, I thought, “Hey, they’re all on discount trading.” My whole mindset changed. And so I went back in huge on margin, then everything gaps down the whole next week and I sell it. I’m like, “Damn! I went in too early.” It falls for another week, and I go back in, all on margin. Then everything gaps down again. And that continued for nearly six months. My portfolio looked like someone walking down the stairs because you could just see each time I went in big, and there’s the gap down.

I thought I had my rules and everything set, but all of that goes out the window when greed enters. I would get to a point where I’d be like, “I’m this much closer to this number, this goal, this whatever I’m trying to reach. Now I can go more. Time for a new goal.” That mindset set in and completely took over. 

I made every newbie mistake you can imagine. I revenge traded. I chased winners. I bought the top. I used margin and options, and I just murdered my account from being the leader in month one of our competition to being so far beyond the losing account, something like -75% on the year, numbers that I’m sick to look at. But in my head, I’ve learned these lessons and I’m hoping I’ll make a comeback in 2022. I’m just going to play it by new rules, new lessons learned. But my tuition fee was very high.

Last question: I know you’re a big media consumer. What’s the most impactful book you’ve ever read?
It’s hard to answer because I read a lot of different categories of books. Most of what I read is fantasy stuff like Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, A Wise Man’s Fears. But my favorite all-time fantasy series is Dune. 

One non-fiction book I learned a lot from was Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. I loved that book. He interviewed so many different high-level people and asked such good questions. It covers finance, health, and just pure wisdom stuff. And my favorite trading book of all time is How We Made 18000% in the Stock Market by William O’Neil and another guy. It was the first book Shane Dorian recommended to me.