By T.J. Prieur
“Do what you love and the money will follow.”
It’s an old truism, but for Ross Byrd, founder of Surf Hatteras, there is truth in the truism. Byrd, an avid life-long surfer grew up in Virginia Beach and graduated from the University of Virginia. After graduation he took a job working with homeless people in the Charlottesville area.
“My work was so intense, weird, dangerous, and it was my first year of marriage. We were both really stressed out,” he says about himself and his wife, Hannah. So when a friend from home came up with the idea of developing a summer surfing camp for teens, Byrd was ready.
“I had the summer free, so I’d be the director on site. That’s how the plan started. I ended up basically designing the camp, and then suddenly he backed out.”
By coincidence, Byrd ran into another friend a few days later, and after telling him about the camp idea, he asked Byrd how much money it would take to get the camp up and running. “I said $5-6,000 and he lent me money. That’s all it took,” he says.
The first year, he adds, they “squeaked by and broke even” with about 30 kids in the program. But each year since they have done better.
This year, by late April they had already filled 110 of the 120 available openings for the eight sessions which begin the week of June 13. They take a maximum of 15 students per week and have a staff of 10 people. The two to one ratio not only insures safety and individual surfing instruction, it also helps to insure that each camper has a special experience, learning about himself, his peers and nature, explains Byrd.
The week-long sleepover camps are open to both boys and girls ages 12 to 18. Campers live in a large house a few steps from the beach at Rodanthe, North Carolina. All surfing skill levels are welcome.
It is always a temptation for a business to get bigger, but Byrd wants to resist.
“We never want to have more than 15 kids in a week,” he says. However, he has thought about other ways to expand, such as spring break surfing trips to Costa Rica or other surfing spots or opening other camps with the same model in other locations.
Byrd credits Internet advertising with much of the success of his camp. “The first year we had a print brochure because I thought every camp should have a brochure,” he says. But they also opened a website and it didn’t take long to notice that while the print brochures were bringing in almost no customers, the website and Google ads were bringing in most of the business.”
“Our marketing strategy has been to dabble and see what works,” Byrd explains. He has taken classes and has read as much as possible about internet advertising. He works to refine his keyword searches to get the biggest bang for the least amount of bucks. His website has attracted campers from almost every state in the country as well as from Germany, Hong Kong, and France. That’s not bad, considering his current advertising budget is still only about $4,000 a year.
Byrd was the director of high school ministries for Galilee Church in Virginia Beach for three years, and now during the winter months he serves in the same capacity at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville. He sees his work with Surf Hatteras as an extension of his ministry.
“It’s our vision and purpose; it’s a ministry and always will be, but not in the overt or even covert Christian sense. We aren’t going to get you here and make you do Bible studies. We aren’t outwardly religious at all,” he says.
“We’re about loving kids where they are at and helping them to be in an atmosphere where they can experience relationships, fun and beauty in a way they never have before. It’s a week of their lives where get to know each other and us and share the joy of surfing.”
