Wednesday, NHS CEO/President Bob Denike and all of us here celebrated his 25th year of working at NHS. Below, he explains in his own words how he got his start at NHS… and it wasn’t at the top.

“I first met NHS founder Richard Novak at Winchester Skatepark in 1977, he was with the “S” that day, Jay Shuirman. I was 15 years old. They gave me a set of wheels to test ride and when my Mom saw us talking, she pulled me away and told me to never talk to those guys again. They looked pretty wild back then; long hair, dark glasses, beards, smoking, and she was just being a Mom. Well, I did not listen to her. (Good decision number one for me.) I remained in contact with Richard and NHS off and on all the way through college. After graduation, I had a “real job”, working at Frito Lay in L.A. and I absolutely hated it. One weekend in 1986, I decided to go to an ASR tradeshow and I ran into Rich at what was the craziest tradeshow booth at the show. It struck me that a few people working at the NHS booth were either severely hung over and/or drinking beer in the middle of the day. Getting a taste of what I had been missing, a couple weeks later I resigned from Frito Lay (good decision number two), telling them “I need to pursue my dreams”, which at the time consisted of skateboarding, playing music, drinking beer and hanging out with my future wife Kay. One day, Rich called me at the skate shop where I worked and said “come work for me, I need your help.” It was 1987, at the peak of the skateboard boom craziness. It’s sort of funny now, but the day I started working at NHS (good decision number 3), it all started to slide and NHS went into an industry downturn. Was it me? That painful business slump was the continuation of my education. Looking back now at those times, Richard was the teacher, I was the student and the business was the class room. My first desk was in a hallway next to the bathroom. People would walk by and steal my pens and stapler off my desk all the time, basically torture the new guy all day and I soon realized I was near the bathroom because it was also my job to clean it once per week. Starting at the bottom was an understatement, but that was the Novak program. But here I am 25 years later, surviving many ups and downs and I would not change a single day of any of it.” -Bob Denike

The fruits of labor: Employee signed Dot T and lottery tickets

Checkout that frontside photo incentive!

Congratulations Bob!