Ru Hill - The Rise of SURF SIMPLY RESORT in Costa Rica - How I Built My Small Business

Episode Transcript
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Anne McGinty (00:08):
Welcome to how I Built my Small Business.
I'm Anne McGinty, your host,and today we have Ru Hill on the
show.
Ru is the founder of SurfSimply, a globally renowned
boutique coaching resort inCosta Rica that has transformed
the way people learn to surf.
Unlike traditional surf schools, surf Simply takes a

(00:30):
science-based, technique-drivenapproach, breaking down the
complexities of surfing intoteachable, measurable skills.
This method has attractedeveryone, from complete
beginners to seasoned surferslooking to refine their craft
Beyond the waves.
Ru is a deep thinker onbusiness leadership and

(00:50):
intentional growth.
His grassroots journey fromcoaching out of the back of a
car to running a world-classsurf resort offers invaluable
lessons on entrepreneurship,scaling with purpose and
building a high-performing teamwithout sacrificing company
culture.
His resort has been featuredmore than once in the New York

(01:11):
Times, and if you want to checkout what you're missing, just
watch any of the inspiringweekly videos you can find on
the Surf Simply YouTube channel.
You can find a link through tohis business in the episode's
description channel.
You can find a link through tohis business in the episode's
description.
Before we get started, a quickfavor.
That means the world.

(01:31):
Whenever someone writes in, Ialways ask how did you find the
podcast?
And overwhelmingly.
The answer is the same.
A friend, family member orloved one shared it with them.
If you've enjoyed this episode,or any episode, could you do me
a quick favor?
Share it with just one personin your life who might love it

(01:52):
too?
If each of you did that, we'dinstantly double our
listenership overnight, allowingus to bring in even more
incredible guests and continueproducing content that inspires
and empowers you.
Just one episode to one person.
I massively appreciate it.
Ru.

(02:14):
I'm so excited to have you here.
Thanks for coming on the show.

Ru Hill (02:18):
It's really a pleasure to be here.
I was just listening backactually to some of the
conversations you've hadrecently and I really enjoyed
them, so I'm looking forward todiving back into your back
catalog after we speak today.

Oh, that sounds great and I am so excited to
hear your story.
So, speaking of that, can youtake us back as far as you'd
like to go?
You're from the UK and starteda surf resort in Costa Rica.
Where does this journey beginfor you, and how did the idea
for Surf Simply even come tolife?

Ru Hill (02:50):
So it's an interesting question because it's always
quite tricky trying to compresslike 30 years of professional
development into a few minutes.
But and I'm going to justshamelessly kind of do a flex
and show off here I was inviteda couple of weeks ago to go and
speak at MIT Sloan about SurfSimply, which was really cool,
and I was like super nervousbefore I went and it got me

(03:12):
thinking all right, well, whatparts of this project are
actually interesting in abroader business sense?
So I'll try and answer yourquestion, as I did for those
guys, by just talking about thethings that I think are more
broadly applicable, becauseobviously a lot of your audience
aren't going to be superinterested in surfing
specifically.
So I'll sort of like skirtaround those parts.
But I actually went to artcollege before I started surf

(03:36):
simply and I had this onebrilliant teacher and I think if
anyone's lucky enough to haveone great teacher in their life
then you're in the luckiest 1%of people in the world and this
art teacher that I had said tous you guys are just teenagers
and you really have nothinginteresting to say to the world
as artists yet.
So what I'm going to do isteach you how to be technicians

(03:57):
with all these differentmaterials, with paint, with a
camera and so forth, so thatwhen you've got something
interesting to say then you cansay it.
So when I started teachingsurfing a few years later and I
started doing it because I lovedsurfing I grew up going to the
beach with my grandparents whenI was a kid and I loved like
salty hair and sand dunes andjust all of that.
So I left London and I moveddown to Cornwall, which is sort

(04:18):
of the bit of England thatsticks out into the Atlantic
underneath Ireland where you getthe big fall swells coming out
of the North Atlantic, and Ithought, well, I'll spend my
summers teaching surfing thereand my winters traveling around
the world and surfing.
So I was living in this littlecaravan by the beach to save
money and I did that for sevenor eight years.
And while I was teachingsurfing I was really interested

(04:40):
in this idea of how you couldtake something as intangible and
subjective as art and you couldactually break it down into
mechanisms and teach it.
And I just saw a lot ofparallels with the way that
surfing was being taught orperhaps wasn't being taught, and
I was kind of uniquely placedbecause I was doing all of these
entry-level surf lessons thatyou may have done and you've

(05:01):
certainly seen at beaches whereentry-level surfers are sort of
learning to wobble in on smallwaves.
But I was also lucky enough tobe doing some work with the
British junior team and thatkind of like elite level
coaching is very different.
You're on the beach sitting wayback with a camera up in the
sand dunes and the surfers outin the water on their own
performing whatever drillsthey've been given and coming in

(05:21):
every half hour for feedbackand then going back in the water
again.
So there's this kind ofcoaching for like the beginner
one percent and the elite onepercent and there's really
nothing for the 98 percent inbetween.
And I'm using the present tensenow, but you know this was back
in 2000 and well, 1999, I guessthe year 2000 and so I became
really interested in the projectof trying to connect the dots,

(05:43):
you know, from that beginner 1%to that elite 1%.
And I was fortunate because thesurf school I was working at,
which started with three coachesand perhaps 30 people on a busy
day, expanded to 28 coaches andabout 600 people on a busy day,
two hour lessons a day with 10or 12 people.
So over that decade I taughtabout 15 or 16,000 people.

(06:05):
So with these just massivenumbers I could do this sort of
A B testing and tease out fromall of the chaos of the ocean
and different body shapes andpersonality types which coaching
mechanisms actually worked, andfrom that we sort of came up
with what we now call the SurfSimply Tree of Knowledge, which
actually is a kind of a flowchart of skills that sits on the

(06:26):
wall of the surf, simply resort, about 20 meters long and in
big relief, and kind of formsthe basis for our whole coaching
methodology.
The other thing that I wasdoing that I thought was kind of
interesting was I was teachingcoaches how to teach surfing and
it became quite evident thatanyone who was sort of capable
enough to command a year roundsalary and could really do

(06:47):
anything they wanted to wasquite quickly going to leave a
seasonal job.
So I thought, well, if I wantto create a center of surf
coaching excellence, which issomething I really wanted to do,
then I need to be able to, youknow, pay people year round so
that you know the best andbrightest can justify making
surf coaching the principalproject of their adult
professional lives, you know.

(07:07):
So that was how come I moved toCosta Rica.
And then the rest of it, I mean, is the story of a business.
I started teaching at the backof my car in Nosara in 2007, in
the car park, and graduallymoved to a shop space, borrowed
some money and bought somecasitas, some little sort of
places to stay, and startedtransitioning into doing week
long courses, built the team up,so with more coaches, and

(07:30):
brought in, you know, massagetherapists, gardeners, cooks,
drivers, and built the wholething up.
And now fast forward to today,and I've resisted and will
continue to resist the seductivesort of pull of people wanting
to invest and to scale, andwe've actually chosen to stay
quite small.
Our team is about 35 people.

(07:52):
We have a maximum of 12 surfersa week and two non-surfers.
We now are at a new facilitywhich was custom built by this
wonderful architectural firmcalled Gensler, who did Google's
buildings and various otherprojects, by this wonderful
architectural firm calledGensler, who did Google's
buildings and various otherprojects, and we actually built
this version of the resort thatwe're in now from the ground up,
as I think it's probably theonly sort of purpose built, high

(08:14):
end, luxury residential surfcoaching resort, if that's not
too many adjectives, and wecharge about $9,000 a week now,
which is about three X whatother people in the surf travel
coaching world are chargingAlthough it's, you know, it's
not a lot compared to fourseasons resorts and stuff like
that, but in the world ofsurfing it's a lot, and we're

(08:35):
booked out about a year inadvance and we have a wait list
every week of about 50 to ahundred people.
So the business is doing verywell.
But, more importantly, it's gotthis really wonderful team of
people that I really enjoyworking with, who are all
personally very invested in kindof making it incrementally
better week on week, which isjust a really fun project to be

(08:55):
involved with, and it's the mainreason why I've resisted the
urge to like grow it and expandit.
So there you go.
That's a seven minutecompression, as concise as I
could do.

I think that the way that you approach this is
that you really were consciousabout what you were trying to
create, and I can see how yourartistic background really
played into your decision-makingprocess.
I am really curious to dig in alittle bit more about your
philosophy behind why not toscale which I totally understand

(09:29):
and I really respect.
But I'm just wondering a littlebit more about what is the
guidance that makes you so sure.

Ru Hill (09:38):
Yeah.
So it's not just a goodquestion.
It's, like this been the singlymost important question in my
adult professional life and theshort answer is it's really fun
trying to make this whole thingbetter, more fun, more appealing
and exciting.
The endorphins in my brain fireup a bit more than the thought

(09:59):
of duplicating it, and onceyou've scaled something with the
exception of sort of softwareservices it's very difficult to
reiterate them once they're atscale, if they're actual
physical things in the realworld, you know.
So I really enjoy that projectand I really enjoy the project
of and this sounds kind ofcheesy, but I don't know a way
to say it that isn't cheesy youknow, having all of the team

(10:23):
personally really trying toimprove their individual corner
of the business, you know, andand standing back and have this
kind of philosophy of managementthat you should be the person
moving objects out of people'sway so that they can get better
at them, better at whatever, asthey do Right and at.
The analogy I really like is,rather than being a sort of a
King Joffrey handing out orders,you should be more like Alfred

(10:46):
to Batman, you know, you're sortof more like a butler who's
making sure that the Batmobileis like full of gas and that the
Batsuit is polished and readyto go, and then you know there
to offer a little guidance whenneeded, over a cup of tea.
But mostly you're trying tosort of stand back and let
people be the best version ofthemselves.
So I really enjoy that projecta lot.
Let people be the best versionof themselves.

(11:06):
So I really enjoy that projecta lot and I've grown very fond
of all of the people I work withand I love being part of this
team of, you know, 30, 35 people.
And then I was.
I was kind of thinking aboutthat on a very personal level
and I was thinking, okay, well,how could somebody else in a
different industry think about,like, what's the right way to
put it?
What are the right levers thatsomeone should be thinking about

(11:28):
needing to pull in their ownprofessional life if they're
asking themselves the samequestion?
Because all the things I justtalked about are very personal
to me and very personal to thisproject and are quite subjective
, and I came up with this kindof concept.
And when I say I came up withit, this was actually what ended
up being sort of the mainthesis of the talk that I gave
at MIT last week, so you cantell me what you think and

(11:51):
please shoot it down.
I came up with this idea ofthere being like four buckets
that you kind of want to fillprofessionally.
And and I like the idea ofbuckets because once they're
full, if you keep pouring timeand resources into them it's
just a waste, they're just kindof flowing over the side right.
So I came up with these fourbuckets.
I'll bounce them off.
You Tell me what you think.
There may be a fifth or a sixth.

(12:12):
I may change my mind in a year.
They're certainly not written instone, but this is where my
thinking took me.
So the first one was economicsecurity.
The next one was your health.
The next one was your status,and not the kind of two
dimensional status of who's gotthe flashiest car, but the kind
of authentic respect of peoplewho are close to you in your

(12:32):
life and people whose opinionsreally matter to you.
And then the last one, the mostimportant one, is the quality
of the relationships that youhave with the people that you
spend the most time with.
I can expand on any of those,but how does that land with you
that?

you spend the most time with.
I can expand on any of those,but how does that land with you?
You sound like an evolvedbusiness owner.
I don't know.
There's a maturity to yourapproach.
It's very heart centered and Ithink it can take people a
lifetime to get there sometimes,especially in America.
So you're in Costa Rica andyou've got a UK background, so I
don't know how that impacts theway that you are and the way
that you think, but here inAmerica it's like, as you were

(13:07):
saying, it's quite seductive theidea of possibly growing, maybe
franchising or popping uplocations in other areas.
But why Like really thinkingabout what will that bring you?
What will that bring yourcommunity?
I think the only bucket that Iwould maybe change the name of
is the one status or status.

Ru Hill (13:26):
maybe it sounded more like community to me or just
like authenticity rather thanstatus so I think that the word
status or status sorry, that'smy British isms coming out there
my husband's from New Zealand.
He says status too yeah, I thinkit almost makes you cringe
slightly to hear of it beingincluded in that list.

(13:48):
And and I think we all like tothink that we sort of don't play
those status games.
And let me offer like a counter, let me offer a pushback right,
a counter argument.
So there's that very surfacelevel kind of two dimensional
status game which we all thinkabout.
When we think about status,right, who's maybe got the
biggest salary or the nicest car, or you know the best job title

(14:10):
or whatever, right?
Or even in a social group or ina sports team, who's the
captain, who's the better player?
There's a very like surfacelevel status.
And if we take the example of,let's say, a Wall Street trader
who, somewhere in the middle oftheir life, has this sort of
crisis of existentialism anddecides to leave all of their
material possessions and go toTibet and study mindfulness in a

(14:30):
monastery, right, you could onsome level say, well, they've
walked away from all of thosestatus games and now they've let
go of all of that.
But I would put it to you thatactually it really will matter
to them what the other monks inthat monastery think about them
and even how they think aboutthemselves, and status will have
not been given up.
It just will have changed fromone minute it was about how nice

(14:52):
the car was.
Now it's about how present onecan be and how aware of one's
own maelstrom of thoughts one isable to be and how articulate
one can be when one talks aboutthat experience.
You know, and I see it all thetime down in Nosara and Costa
Rica, where Nosara is a littlebit of a hub for a lot of
incredibly successful people fora whole load of reasons, but we

(15:13):
get lots of sort of type ASilicon Valley, palo Alto, New
York, finance type people comingdown here and sort of stepping
away from, you know, theAmerican elite game.
And then they come down andthey start surfing and actually
you can see that the statuswithin the community is just as
important to them.
But status, I think, doesn'thave to be a negative thing.

(15:35):
It can be, for example and thisis something that I try to do
in Surf Simply that I make itvery clear that I give status to
people.
I'll talk deferentially andopenly give praise to people who
not only are hardworking andconstantly trying to be better
at whatever their particularprofessional area is, but also
people that are reallythoughtful and supportive to

(15:58):
other members of the team,making it like if you behave in
this way, you get props from,you know, the boss, the person
who's at sort of you know,arguably at the top of the
status pyramid within thatlittle community, and so that
behavior becomes okay in thisgroup.
This is how we behave, this iswhat gets you status.
This is what gets you respectand admiration and genuine

(16:18):
affection from people around you.
So I'm sort of expanding theuse of the word status and I've
stolen some of this from abrilliant book by an author and
I'd like to say, friend of mine,but he probably doesn't think
as fondly as me and I think ofhim, just that he doesn't know
me that well, but we'veexchanged a few chats.
But a guy called Will Storrwrote a brilliant book called
the Status Game and I read itand it really struck me a lot.

(16:40):
And I think, bringing it back tosmall businesses, I think that
as business owners, we think alot about things like salary and
perhaps time off and perks, andI certainly think about that
too.
I think you want your team tothink of you as fighting to pay
them as much as they can,fighting to give them as much

(17:02):
time off as you can give them,as the business can allow, so
they feel like you're theirchampion and you're in their
corner fighting for them.
And we do that as businessowners.
But it obviously costs us timeand resources.
But the one thing I think wedon't think about enough and
here I'm stealing from willstore almost word for word as
humans, we need status likeoxygen, because we've evolved

(17:23):
for 150 000000 years in thesehunter gatherer groups and if
you had low status and you wereostracized from the group, it
was a death sentence.
And if you had high status, youhad access to resources and it
was the chance to live longerand pass on your genes.
So it's really like deep, deepwired into us.
And as a business owner with ateam of you know 30 years I have

(17:43):
you can give status to peoplereally easily and it costs you
nothing.
And you can also rob people ofstatus by being thoughtless and
unkind and that will justthrottle someone's enthusiasm,
for you know dedicatingthemselves to your business, and
I think as small businessowners, we need to be really

(18:04):
thoughtful of that.
Have I talked for too long?
I'm going to give you two quickexamples, of course, okay.
So here's an example of how Ilike to give status to people
right.
Every week we make a video aboutcalled last week at surf simply
, and we put up on youtube andit's lots of shots of people
surfing and around the resortand we have three people with
cameras trying to capture thewhole thing.

(18:24):
I actually swim out everymorning with my camera myself
it's one of my favorite things,I do so and then at the end of
the week, pepe, our videographer.
He interviews any of the gueststhat are happy to be
interviewed and they talk alittle bit about the week.
We made this movie.
We put it on YouTube.
It usually gets like a thousand1500 views, which doesn't sound
like a lot, but actually theROI is great because even if

(18:46):
like 1% of those people come andstay with us and perhaps bring
a spouse or kids or come back afew times, you know they're
spending $50,000 or more, so theROI is actually really good.
Anyway, even if the only peoplewho saw the video were the
families of the people whoworked at Surf Simply, I think
it would still be a fantasticROI because it means all of that

(19:07):
team when they go back to theirhome, whether it's here in
Osara or in San Jose or inanother country, and their
family and their friends arelike oh, we saw what you do, you
know, and we read about SurfSimply in the New York Times and
we saw it on CNN and we saw iton the BBC.
And then we we saw who you'reteaching last week and we saw
that footage of you making foodor you know teachings that we

(19:29):
saw it all.
And like you're giving yourteam status within their people,
within their family, theirfriends.
The people are important intheir lives and I think that
that kind of status is is reallyhealthy.
I think that when we thinkabout status games, we want to
think like is the status gamewe're playing healthy or not
healthy?
And I think, on a personallevel, it's good to think about

(19:50):
playing multiple status games.
You don't have all your eggs inone basket, otherwise you can
start to get sort of a bitfreaked out when you feel like
you're going to lose status insome area and you become too
precious with it.
I think, on the flip side, wherea lot of business owners get it
wrong is it's so easy to justcut someone off in a meeting.
Talk down to them, dismisssomething that said, you know

(20:11):
which all signals to everyoneelse in the room I don't really
care about what this personthinks about me and I'm much
higher status than them, andjust that kind of
thoughtlessness.
We don't realize how muchdamage it can do.
And then you're sort ofscratching your head like, oh,
why does so-and-so want a payrise in order to be motivated?
Well, you could have given themstatus in that meeting.
That may have meant much moreto them than an extra sort of

(20:33):
percentage on their end of yearpaycheck.
You know, we're texting peoplelate at night just because
you're the owner and you've nowgot an idea and you want to text
at 11 o'clock at night whileit's fresh in your head, and
people are like, oh, this personreally doesn't care about my
life.
You know it's another way ofjust saying, hey look, I'm more
powerful than you, don't forget,just before you go to bed.
So I think that's the kind ofway I think about status and its

(20:55):
importance.

In the context in which you're explaining it, I
think it does make a lot ofsense.
It sounds like a mixture ofculture, respect, authenticity,
sort of like intrinsic reward,not monetary real connection.

Ru Hill (21:11):
Yeah, I can't claim to have authored a lot of those
ideas.
You know, sometimes you read abook and you've sort of a lot of
it.
You've been intuitivelythinking and it's like finally
someone has articulated what youkind of felt to be true.

Yeah, A hundred percent?
Yes, definitely.
I wonder, too, how much surfingitself, and just the, the sport
, the meditative nature of it,being at one with the water,
being in the water I wonder howmuch of that also just plays
into your overall sort ofbusiness structure and

(21:44):
philosophy behind leadership,because I think what you've
figured out is something thatshould be taught in business
school.
I think that there are a lot ofbusinesses now that are coming
out and they don't have thatalignment of like happy team.
You know they might have theeconomic stability as you were

(22:05):
mentioning.
Yeah, what does surfing mean toyou in your personal life and
just the way that you operate?
Is this where this all stemsfrom?
Or is this childhood Like whatmade you understand these key,

(22:29):
necessary components of runninga sustainable, really thriving
and like team, happy business?

Ru Hill (22:38):
Well, I think that there's.
There's certainly a lot of lifelessons that one can draw from
surfing, and I'm sure thatthere's a wonderful coffee table
book that could be put togetherMaybe I'll even put it together
one day with lots of kind ofstoic lessons that one can draw
from how much you have to put inand how inconsistent the
feedback is.
And I think that theinconsistency of the environment

(23:01):
with surfing and the ensuingfrustration is one of the most
important things you can drawfrom surfing, as opposed to most
other sports, cause I think youknow all sports like,
dedicating yourself to anathletic pursuit is just so
important.
It teaches you so much and itgives you self-esteem and it
teaches you how to pick yourselfup when you fail, and it
teaches you how much more youcan do than you thought you

(23:23):
could like.
When you think you're at yourlimit, you're usually about a
third of the way there, you know.
But surfing, I think, is uniquein so far as the environment
changes so much.
The ocean is such a big,uncontrollable variable.
I think that it would beanalogous to if you were being
taught to play tennis, butsometimes a tennis ball was
coming at you and sometimes itwas a watermelon, and sometimes,

(23:44):
instead of holding a tennisracket, you're suddenly holding
a spoon, and sometimes the netis there and sometimes it's not,
you know, or it's.
That's kind of what learning tosurf is like you know, for
example, if you really want tolearn how to get barreled, you
know which is one of my favoritethings in the world, probably
the most fun thing you can do onthe planet.
You know you might not have theopportunity to put into a

(24:05):
barrel for 18 months.
You know, if you compare thatto tennis and you're just like,
well, you can't have a ball for18 months.
Just, there aren't any.
So you know, that's that's kindof what learning to surf is
like.
To surf is like, and so I thinkthere is something in the
process of learning to surf thatforces you to have to let go of
I'm in charge and I want to doit my way because you just it

(24:26):
makes you realize how much isout of your control, and I think
certainly there is a goodlesson in there in business,
insofar as I think entrepreneursare generally tend to credit
themselves with their successesand blame other factors for
their failures, and I think thereality is that people like to
say how much of it's luck andhow much of it is hard work.

(24:46):
Right, that's the commonquestion people talk about in
business, and, at the risk ofgetting slightly philosophical
for a moment, I would say it's100% luck and it's 100% hard
work.
Like both things are true atthe same time, and what I mean
by that is, you know, I'mincredibly lucky to have been
born at a time where, you know,if I'd been born 10 years later,
I think it would have beenreally hard for surf simply to

(25:09):
create the kind of brandawareness that we did, because
there's so much noise on theinternet.
If I was born 10 years earlier,the internet wasn't around and
we couldn't have created thatbrand awareness.
I mean so lucky just to havebeen born when I was born.
But I was also lucky to havebeen born with a brain that,
when I stood on the beach andwas doing these surf lessons,
was interested in the project oftrying to connect these dots
together in terms of a coachingmethodology.

(25:31):
I could have not been born witha brain that was interested in
doing that, you know.
So in that way, I mean it's all.
It's all luck, right, but it'salso you have to work incredibly
hard.
You know I've worked harder, ashard as anyone that I've ever
met for like 20 years in orderto build this business, and so I
think it's important toacknowledge it's all luck
because it allows you to be muchmore compassionate towards

(25:53):
people that are less lucky thanyou and have a lot more humility
around what might seem to be,on the surface, your successes,
especially when everyone aroundyou is telling you you know?
Oh, you're so great.
You're such a kind of anentrepreneurial genius, you know
, and it's so easy to get caughtup in your own.
If you're someone who most ofyour friends are on your payroll
, you can pretty much guaranteethat unless you put some

(26:14):
guardrails in place for yourself, you're probably going to turn
into an asshole.
So I think remembering it'sluck and that you need to have
humility, I think is important.
So I think, whether you chooseto look at it all in terms of
luck or in terms of hard work,it's just a scale question.
You know, sometimes it'sappropriate to look at your
professional life through onelens and sometimes it's
appropriate to look at itthrough another lens.

(26:35):
I think that what reallybrought home to me the
importance of you know we weretalking about status and people
and how they feel and how youmake your team feel as an
employer, and I I actually hadan awful experience, but one
that I'm very grateful I had,which was about 10 years ago
when I was with my dad throughthe last months of him having
cancer and then dying, and itwas.

(26:57):
I was 34, I'm 46 now and and Iremember my dad at 34 and I had
this very visceral feeling oflike, oh, I remember him at my
age and now this is like the endand I, you know, I've lived one
to 34 and I've seen 34 to thefinish line.
I was like wow, that's reallythe whole thing and it there's

(27:17):
no way of saying that.
That communicates to someonewho hasn't had that feeling, and
I think most people have someversion of that kind of epiphany
at some point.
But it really does hit you andfor me, it caused me to go all
right.
What's really important?
Do I want to like, scale thisthing and be fabulously wealthy
and have that kind of status, oryou know, what is it that's

(27:40):
important to me?
And the thing that I feel isimportant to me and I think
there's good science to backthis up is actually the quality
of the relationships that I havewith the people I spend the
most time with and I'm single, Idon't have kids.
I'm very close with my niecesand my sister and their family,
but the people I actually spendthe most time with are the
people I work with and I havesome friends outside of work,

(28:01):
but realistically that those arethe people I spend the most
time with, and I think that'strue for a lot of people.
And I just thought I want tomake my relationships with them
and their relationships witheach other explicitly the goal
of the business.
And of course, it has to beprofitable, otherwise it's a
hobby, not a business.
But like this is selfishly whatI want out of my life.

(28:21):
This is this is what I'm goingto cash my success chips in for.
This is what's worth standingup from the table and walking
out of the casino for.
And so I've, you know, looked ata lot of behavioral economics
Daniel Kahneman and RichardWiseman and all of these kinds
of people to try and understandhow you can make a teamwork Well
.
I think everyone really enjoysit.
You know I really enjoy myrelationships with them.
You'd have to ask them how theyfeel about me.

(28:43):
But you know I feel like verylucky to work in an environment
where people genuinely reallyenjoy coming to work and working
with each other and no amountof zeros on my net worth.
So here I am already with thething that any amount of money I
would want to spend on if I hadit All right, sorry, that was
very clumsily phrased.
You know what I mean.

I mean this is so inspirational.
And I lost my dad three yearsago.
It was right as COVID-19 wasstarting and it was just sudden,
right.
I talked to him.
Seven hours later he was goneand I think, like what you
mentioned with when your dadpassed, it is so transformative
and it really does unlock thispart of you.

(29:22):
That's like what is importantand it is so beautiful that
you've figured that out foryourself and that you're also
able to quiet the noise ofsociety that is probably trying
to tell you that you should bedoing X, y, z, but you're like
no, because this is what isvalue to me, this is what, this
is where I get the most rewards.

(29:42):
So it's so inspirational.

Ru Hill (29:45):
Can I put the question back to you If you don't mind,
if you feel comfortable talkingabout it?
What?
What did you feel like were thethings that were really
important in your life aftergoing through that yourself?

So I would say, before my dad died I was very
motivated by money and when mydad died I reflected so much on
his life as an immigrant, as adoctor, as someone who spent
hours of his life on the sidecompiling old medical equipment

(30:16):
from hospitals that were justgoing to throw it away into a
landfill and he was sending itover to the Philippines because
it had a second life there.
So he earned a reward from theRed Cross and, when he wasn't
even on the clock, would go anddo rotations to see his patients
because he had so muchcompassion.
And I look back and since thatmoment when he died, the first

(30:38):
five days I sort of had thistranscendence experience where I
tapped into.
I don't know, maybe it was deepgrief and a flooding of
hormones in the body orsomething, but it also may have
just been that I was able to,like, sense things I couldn't
before and I could quote,unquote, sort of hear him

(30:59):
guiding me to be morecompassionate, find something to
do that's more heart centered,stop thinking about the money so
much and, as you're saying,with your buckets, it's like
kind of the stuff that you justmentioned.

Ru Hill (31:13):
Yeah, that's it.

And it was crazy that it took such a vast and
deep hole of grief to unlockthis in me.
And I have spoken to friendswho've lost people the same way
recently and they kind ofthought I was a little bit nuts
with the way that I spoke aboutthe grief and what it had done

(31:35):
for me until they went throughit.
And then they were contactingme and saying I had no idea you
were so right.
These things have beenhappening and like they're
exploring the meaning of life,finding purpose, finding
fulfillment, communityconnection and not making the
goal, as you're saying, zeros.

Ru Hill (31:55):
Yeah, that very much mirrors my experience also, and
I think of a lot of people, andyou know the way that I think
about it is, rather thanthinking, okay, one minute I'm
looking for the you know all ofthe zeros, and then the next
minute I'm sort of looking forsomething more nurturing to.
You know, my I don't know, usewhatever language one feels

(32:16):
comfortable with, but your sortof mental wellbeing or whatever
your emotional wellbeing, andit's kind of an either or thing,
and I actually sort of, justbecause I've got the sort of
brain that's that pulls at loosethreads, I was like, well,
actually, why did I want thezeros to begin with, rather than
saying like that was not theright idea?
Now I'm going to point the shipin this direction, but actually

(32:36):
rewinding right back to thesort of the beginning, you know,
cause no one, no one reallywould care about having you know
however many dollars in yourbank account if the dollars had
no value out in the real world,right?
So, just as a thoughtexperiment, so, so obviously
it's not actually the dollars,it's what you can do with the
dollars.
Then one needs to ask yourself,well, what do you want to do

(32:57):
with the dollars?
And you know, I think there's afew sort of low hanging fruits
in terms of just wisdom that onecan find on podcasts.
Hopefully, like this one,things, like you know,
experiences are more valuablethan buying goods.
You know, and I think that theone piece of advice that I find
the most useful is one of thebest things you can spend money
on when you've got an excess ofeconomic security is to pay

(33:20):
people to do the things that youdon't want to do, so you can
spend time doing the things thatyou do want to do.
And especially, you know, as Iget older, I become very aware
that I've got more money in lesstime, and so the trade-offs
become different, like the, theequations are different.
So, you know, rewinding back to, let's imagine, the most
ferocious entrepreneurialcapitalist that you can possibly

(33:42):
think of, I don't believe thatthat person doesn't want to be
happy as much as a human can behappy.
You know, which is, let's say,if you can be happy 30% of the
time you're doing really, reallywell, you know.
So I think that a lot of peopleget so in the habit of trying to
accumulate success mostly inthe form of money, but also in

(34:04):
the form of prestige and thatsort of two-dimensional shallow
status we talked about.
And then they get to a pointwhere they've filled the bucket
up, right, and now they could betrading the chips in to fill up
one of the other buckets, butthey forgot why they started
filling the bucket in the firstplace.
And they're really good atfilling the bucket, they're
really good at making money,they're really good at playing

(34:24):
that game and they forgot whythey started.
So they just keep kind ofplaying the game and they grind
on and on.
And the analogy I like is sortof like a, you know, a poker
player that's so good at pokerthat they're sitting alone in
the casino at two o'clock in themorning.
You know, winning more and moreand more money, but not really
thinking about, you know, thelife that could be lived out
there in the big wide world.
So rather than thinking of it interms of like I'm giving

(34:47):
something up and exchanging itfor something else I like to
think of like you know, fillingyour buckets in terms of your
status, your quality of yourrelationships, your, your health
, and then your economicsecurity too relationships, your
, your health, and then youreconomic security too.
You can fill all of those and bethe most secular, non-spiritual
, selfish, ferocious capitalistever, but just have a healthy,

(35:09):
science-based view about thefact that those are the buckets
that if, if you want to like, bementally well and feel good
about life most of the time, orat least a third of the time,
then you need to fill thosebuckets up, because you've
inherited this homo sapien brainthat evolved in these
hunter-gatherer groups of about150 people for 150,000 years,

(35:30):
and so you can choose themeaning of your own life in the
same way that you can choosewhat you eat.
But you have inherited thisbrain which will fundamentally
do well if you give it a certaindiet and won't if you give it,
you know, cheesecake all thetime.
Right, does that analogy kindof?
I'm seeing some philosophicalbackflips there, but does that
make sense?

It does and it aligns with a lot of the thought
processes that I've had, justfrom traveling to, maybe, places
that don't have as much andthen seeing extreme wealth
through the clients that I usedto work with and the dichotomy
between the two.
It's been a topic that I'vereally thought a lot about and I

(36:09):
agree with what you're saying.
It's like at some point, enoughis enough and how can I make
something better or like improvesomeone's life or give back or
do something more meaningful?

Ru Hill (36:19):
Yeah, and you know and I'm not meaning to say that
economic security isn'timportant, but it's a kind of a
curve and as your salary goes upI think the happiness that you
get from your salary sort oflevels off and it's you get
diminishing returns at somepoint.
And there was that study a fewyears ago which kind of drew
this line at $70,000, which Ithink is not quite actually what

(36:41):
the data showed in theparticular study, although
that's what the headline said.
It's different depending onwhat city you live in and
whether you have kids and allkinds of other variables.
But certainly you know, if yougo from $10,000 a year income to
$100,000 a year income, there'sa good chance you'll be 10
times happier.
But you're not going to be 10times happier going to a million
dollars.
And if you're not happy at amillion dollars, you're not

(37:03):
going to be happy with $10million.
So figuring out where you areon that curve and figuring out
whether you are still filling upyour economic security bucket
or whether now you've filled itand everything is just running
over the side and is a waste oftime and energy, I think that's
the useful question to askoneself.

It is a really great analogy and I could talk
about these things forever.
I would love to ask you some ofthe questions about just the
actual beginning of the businessand what it was like starting
out of your car and theneventually building.
Like how did you really makethat happen?
I mean, how much capital did ittake for you to eventually

(37:45):
acquire the land and get plansand build and hire staff and
brand and then launch?
And how did you get theresources?

Ru Hill (37:53):
Yeah, so I'm really comfortable talking about the
figures.
Actually, I think it's reallyimportant that people talk about
figures more.
I think that people quite oftenfeel uncomfortable talking
about it, but I think it'simportant so that people can get
a sense of where they are onthe playing field.
So I actually came to CostaRica in 2007 with about seven
thousand dollars that I'd savedup and I bought a 1992 Suzuki

(38:15):
Sidekick which nearly bankruptme getting it fixed and three
surfboards and I had about athousand dollars left in cash
and I was literally just pulledup on the beach with a sign sat
in my car and I would do lessonsat eight and at ten and at two
and then sometimes at fouro'clock and I would go back to
my little shack that I wasrenting and then I was trying to
build a website in the eveningsoff this old laptop that used

(38:38):
to overheat and I used to haveto shut it off every half hour
and put it in the fridge to coolit down and take it out again.
The one thing that was unusualto me I guess unusual compared
to other businesses that werestarting up, because obviously
there's lots of people doingsurf lessons was that this kind
of very systemized methodology,which I had not at the time
actually drawn up as a graphicbut was just a system I was

(39:00):
using to teach with, reallyresonated with, even back then,
these kind of like quite type apersonalities that were coming
down to Nosara and, very, veryquickly, a bunch of people at
Google and then at Facebook andthis is 2007.
So it's like no one's heard ofFacebook back then, right, I
think it was even called theFacebook then and I guess some
internal memo went round.

(39:20):
That's like no one's heard ofFacebook back then, right, I
think it was even called theFacebook then, and I guess some
internal memo went round that'slike hey, if you want to surf,
like there's this guy in Nosaracalled Ruhel who's like really
good, and a few people said thatthey'd heard of me through, you
know, work chats there andanyway.
So I was really really busy.
So, very quickly, within like amonth or two of having opened
the door of my car, I alreadyhad this like backlog of like at

(39:44):
the time, tens of peoplewanting to do lessons.
I'd way more demand, and that'sit's actually been true from
within like a month of openingin 2007, right up to, like you
know, right now in the bookingswere about booked out about a
year or so in advance and I, youknow, I put that down to the
fact that I spent, you know, thebest part of a decade figuring
out how to do this with, likeyou know, 15, 16,000 people.

(40:07):
So I talked to a lot of youngerpeople who were thinking about
starting businesses and theyquite often just want to sort of
skip over.
You know, the 10,000 hoursthing is very much a rule of
thumb, like the AndersEricsson's research wasn't
really what Malcolm Gladwellactually said it was, but I mean
it's kind of irrelevant.
The point is you do really haveto put a lot of time in to

(40:28):
become really good at what youdo.
You know, if that's a key partof your business which I think
it honestly is in 90% ofbusinesses, it's very hard to
find a way of growing a businesswhere you don't have some area
of expertise.
That being said, I think thatpeople often say well, I can't
start a business because I don'tknow enough about this.
And really most people canbecome experts at most things

(40:49):
with just the application ofenough time and curiosity.
So, um, you know, mostly youdon't have to be a genius to be
good at most things you justhave to apply yourself.
So anyway, I was very fortunatebecause when I was at school I
was very dyslexic and I haveADHD.

I do too, as you might have been able to infer
from our conversation.

Ru Hill (41:10):
And so I, you know, academically I did very poorly.
So when I started teachingsurfing with the exception of
art, which I never reallythought was going to be a career
I really had no other options.
So I was never like, oh, I'mteaching surfing, but maybe I
should go and finish that lawdegree or whatever.
It was just like I'm doing this, this is what I'm doing with my
life, and there's no, there'sno plan B, and I don't have the

(41:32):
option of doing anything else.
So I might as well just do this, and I feel like that was
actually kind of an amazing giftto have had, like that was
actually kind of an amazing giftto have had.
You know, as I said, I was verylucky to have met some really
smart people from from the techindustry who mentored me into
how to create an online presence.
So I was really fortunate tohave learned from some really
smart people and, honestly, alot of what I've done I think

(41:52):
that's made surf simplysuccessful has been really smart
people who otherwise I wouldnever be able to get in a room
with, coming and wanting tolearn how to surf and then
becoming, you know, friends oracquaintances with them such
that we can have conversationswhere I've learned a lot from
them.
So learning from my customers,in a most literal sense, has
been the secret weapon, I think,if anything.

What an incredible business and life you have that
you've set up for yourself.
So, okay, you had seven grand,you bought the car you only had
like a thousand left and you'reteaching lessons.
How long did it take for you tosave up enough capital so that
you could then create a resort?

Ru Hill (42:30):
Oh right, yes, Sorry, that's the ADHD kicking in.
So, yeah, I was very fortunateinsofar as I had the opportunity
to borrow about 200,000 poundsfrom an English bank right which
was guaranteed by some familymembers.
So I wasn't given any money,but I was able to borrow it, you
know, which was something a lotof people don't have access to,
and I was incredibly lucky, andthat was early 2008.

(42:53):
And I used that to buy thesefour casitas.
And then, of course, the 2008crash happened, which, for me,
was amazing from a businesspoint of view, because all of
these finance people got laidoff.
They came down to Nosara withtheir severance packages and
wanted to learn how to surf and,at the same time, I was earning
dollars and the pound crashedagainst the dollar after the

(43:14):
2008 housing crisis.
So nearly a third of mymortgage my 200,000 pound
mortgage nearly a third of itpaid off in a month, just when
the crash happened.

Oh my gosh.

Ru Hill (43:24):
Which was amazing.

There's that luck.

Ru Hill (43:25):
There's that, so I've been incalculably lucky, and I
think everyone has, if you stopand think about it.
But anyway, we stayed in thatfacility for a while, but it was
a little far back from thebeach and as we wanted to get
more and more high end and Ireally did always want to be
small and high end rather thanbig you know, I'd seen how that
surf school I worked at inCornwall affected the beach and

(43:47):
the community and I saw what itwas to have a growth business
with a finite resource, which isto say, space in the water, and
I just there.
That can be made to economicsmore broadly, but anyway, when
we decided to build a newversion of the resort which is
the version we're currently, inwhich you can see all the flashy
photos of on Instagram and onour website that was in 2016.

(44:10):
And I had quite a lot of peoplewho had got to know me through
the business offer to invest andit was really really like
seductive wanting to take allthis money that was being
offered, and I said no, but whatI will do, if it's okay with
you, investor, is borrow themoney and pay you a really good

(44:30):
rate of interest, but ultimatelyI will pay you back and retain
ownership of this whole businessso that I can choose not to
grow it.
Because I think in the US wehave this.
As Scott Galloway said it reallywell, we've decided that we put
shareholders first, customerssecond and employees third, and
that's that's what we've alldecided, and I'm not saying that

(44:51):
that's wrong.
But I do think it doesn't haveto be like that.
If you don't want to do it likethat like I don't think there's
anything wrong with growth, Ijust don't think you have to
grow.
You can just choose.
Choose to do it a different way.
It shouldn't be the default.
It should be a decision youmake proactively.
So anyway, I borrowed money andI borrowed about two and a half
million dollars.
I sold the old resort for abouta million, so I had about just

(45:13):
over 3 million to build what isthe current resort and that
borrowing.
We've got about a million leftto pay off on it, so that should
be paid off by about 2029,about when I hit 50.
And then that will feel reallygood.

That's amazing.
You just made it happen.
And how savvy that you knew youwanted to retain ownership.

Ru Hill (45:35):
Yeah, and I will say, actually I did give ownership
away to five members of the teamthat have been with me a long
time, so it wasn't that I wantedto hold all the equity myself.
I just didn't want to give itaway to people who were
specifically investing withgrowth and maximizing
profitability in mind.

It's more of a cooperative.

Ru Hill (45:53):
Exactly yeah.

Super cool.
So what has been the hardestthing that you've had to deal
with?

Ru Hill (46:02):
You know it's funny that the hard things are usually
very unsexy and unglamorous.
They're usually like details,you know, and it's, and
sometimes it's building things.
Like you know, the ceiling inthe back of house kitchen
suddenly fell down, or the thegrease trap is in the wrong
place and now we've got to digup the car park to move it.

(46:24):
Or, you know, really like notexciting.
Sometimes these things go wrongand they're like there's no
lesson to be learned here.
I just, I just need to fix it.
And some days, some weeks,there's, like you know, layer
upon layer upon layer, and thensome days you're just like it's
there's too many smalllogistical problems and I'm, I
feel totally overwhelmed andlike every business owner has

(46:46):
felt that feeling and I justlike everyone you know I'm
painting this rosy picture, butof course there's been like
times like that where I feltlike I'm at the edge of a
nervous breakdown, trying tojust solve lots of small
problems.
And it was really interestinglistening to your conversation
and I'm so sorry I've forgottenhis name, but the guy who was
talking about brokeringbusinesses and Lauren

(47:06):
Vandergrift.
Yeah, yeah.
It was really interestinglistening to his conversation
because he said something to youabout you know, rather than
thinking about walking away fromyour business, think about
empowering other people to solveproblems.
Yeah, those problems that cameat me.
I was like, well, actually I'mnot going to walk away from this
, I'm so happy with this bigpicture, but I just feel
overwhelmed.
I'm going to concentrate ontrying to empower people to

(47:28):
solve problems so it becomesmanageable long term, and I'm
really pleased that I did itthat way.
And when I heard him say it Iwas like, yeah, quite often I
think small business owners wantto sell because they're
overwhelmed, but actually ifthey empower other people to
solve problems and find theright people, then they don't
want to sell because suddenlythey start really loving it
again.
You know, the hardest thing forme, like every business owner,

(47:50):
has been when I've made badhires, when I've employed people
that didn't work out, and youfall over yourself trying to
make it work, trying to solvewhatever they say the problem is
, and then you realize all it'salways a different problem.
So maybe what they're saying isthe problem isn't the problem,
and at some point you're like Ijust need to get rid of this
person.
Like.
My responsibility to the restof the team is to fire this

(48:11):
person.
That's part of my job and Ithink people who talk about
businesses in the way that I'vetalked about mine very often
don't want to talk about firingpeople, because they like to
pretend that they're able toinspire everyone to be the best
version of themselves.
But sometimes you have to firepeople and I think you need to
like fire people quickly andhire them slowly is the old

(48:32):
cliche.
I think that when you firepeople, you need to make sure
that they leave with as mucheconomic security as you can
give them and that they leavewith dignity and that everyone
else who stays behind can seethat you gave them as much
dignity as possible when theyleft.
Again like thinking about whatkind of status you're giving
them within, especially a smallcommunity like the beach
community I live in here.

(48:52):
You know, when you fire someone, quite often like when you
leave a bad relationship, you'relike why didn't I do that two
years ago?

Yeah, it's because you believe in them and you
want to give them a chance, andso, then, that probably
blindsides you for a little bitlonger than it than it should.
Well, so, okay, you're a teamof 35 now, and what's your
operational season?

Ru Hill (49:15):
So that's interesting.
So that traditionally the busyseason in Costa Rica is the US
winter, sort of likeThanksgiving, until Easter more
or less.
And that's partly because it'sthe dry season down here, so it
doesn't really rain at allduring those months, and also
it's partly because obviouslyit's nice to escape the cold and
come down to the sunshine, butactually the waves here in

(49:35):
Nosara there's more swell, sothe waves are generally a bit
bigger from June to Septemberduring the summer months.

Oh, so you get a long season.

Ru Hill (49:43):
Yeah, and so although it's called the wet season,
coming from England, it'sactually very often less rainy
in the wet season here than itis in a summer in England.
It can rain all day, every day,for like months, you know.
So we're actually equally busyall the way through the year,
and part of that is becausewe've tried to keep the focus on
technical surf coaching andwe're like, if you come along

(50:03):
and it's cloudy and raining,you're still going to have a fun
and productive week.

Yeah, you're going to be in the water anyway.

Ru Hill (50:08):
Yeah, we've kind of, as a point of marketing
positioning, we've tried todetach ourselves from sunshine,
you know.
So the way we actually operateis we're open for eight weeks
and then we close for two weeksand everyone gets two weeks
break.
And then we're open for eightweeks and then close for two
weeks, and we do that all theway through the year, and then
we close september, october's,when it's quite rainy here.
So we close sort of the firstweek of september to the end of

(50:30):
october for six weeks.
So the whole team gets thesebreaks all together like 16
weeks paid vacation every year.
And what feels really nice frommy point of view is they often
go away on vacation together.
Actually, the two metrics thatI really like to use to measure
how well things are going is one, how long people have stayed
with the business right.

(50:51):
So like our average employeehas been with us for more than
eight years, which feels good.
The other is is how oftenpeople choose to go on vacation
with people that they work withwhen they're not working.
I feel like, just quietly, Ikeep a little unofficial tab of
that in my head.
That makes me feel good.

That is amazing.
You have set this up so well.
I mean, I don't really see anymore efficiencies or
improvements that you could make.
Are there any that you thinkare left to be done?

Ru Hill (51:20):
Oh well, I mean, like I was sort of alluding to before,
I think, what makes surf simplyreally good and you know, I'm
talking about it in very glowingterms because I'm very proud of
it and it's been my life's work, so I hope you'll thank you for
indulging me but what I thinkmakes it really good is not any
one thing.
You know this, this tree ofknowledge surf coaching
methodology was certainly aunique selling point.
But you know this, this tree ofknowledge surf coaching

(51:43):
methodology was certainly aunique selling point.
But you know, like when peoplesort of say, well, what's the
secret, it's like, you know,this morning everyone was out
surfing and we were like, if wecan get another 800 mil lens

(52:05):
further down the beach, then wecan capture all the ways
sideways so that when we'redoing the video feedback later
in the morning we've got twoangles on someone's foot
position rather than one angle.
It's like, okay, that's quitean expensive lens.
So like, let's figure out whenwe can get that in our media
budget.
Or you know, if know, if weswitch the mattresses over, then
the guests are going to haveless sore backs when they're
paddling out after they've beenpaddling the day before.

(52:26):
Or can we bring in anothermassage therapist and do two
massages per week for the guestsinstead of one.
You know just all these little,tiny, little improvements week
on week and the whole thingkeeps moving forward slowly and
keeps getting better.
And there's so much cool stuff.
I hate to sound like everyoneon every other podcast, but
there's so much cool stuff thatcan be done in terms of using AI

(52:47):
for video coaching,particularly with less
experienced coaches.
I had an hour long conversationwith chat GBT about how
artificial intelligence might beable to help with surf coaching
and it was so interestingChatGBT was saying to me well,
you know, I will be able, when Ican render video footage, to be
able to spot patterns of howpeople move and which patterns

(53:09):
they're consistently gettingwrong in terms of biomechanics.
So, being able to upload, youknow, we we have like five
terabytes of footage a weekright From our five cameras on
the surface.
If we could upload all of that,have ai, sort it into who's who
and then look for like bodymovement patterns that are
consistently being done by asurfer, and then we can isolate,
okay, well, which thing is themost consistent mistake and

(53:30):
therefore the first thing wewant to address, and then you
know, being able to use ar andvr headsets to like, put people
inside a wave.
And where should you be looking?
Can we see where your eyes are?
I mean, there's, there's somuch that can be done in terms
of improving the coachingexperience, even if nothing else
, so there's no, there's noshortage of things to keep
having fun playing with.

I think give us a couple of years and it'll be
pretty mind blowing.
So, just looking back at yourwhole journey, is there anything
that you wish that you hadknown before you started?

Ru Hill (54:05):
Yeah, and this is something that is is
uncomfortable to admit.
Whenever you start a businessand stick your head above the
parapet, right, you're alwaysgoing to have some percentage of
people who love what you do,some percentage of people who
are kind of ambivalent aboutwhat you're doing and some
percentage of people who reallydespise you for no reason that

(54:25):
you can put your finger on.
And you know I've got that,like everyone else, and I think
I've let it affect me way toomuch.
You know, and I'm sure thatagain other business owners can
relate to that feeling of youstart your coffee shop or
whatever your software servicescompany and someone's really

(54:45):
kind of coming at you, notbecause they know you or
anything about you, but you'vestuck your head up in the
marketplace at a certain timeand you're presenting in a
certain way and they don't likethat for whatever reason.
That for whatever reason and Ispent a lot of time and energy
trying to like, make that 1% ofpeople like me, you know,

(55:06):
because I felt so uncomfortablenot being liked and as I get
older I've just realized likesome people are just not going
to like you and that's part ofjust part of the noise and you
shouldn't let it keep you awakeat two o'clock in the morning,
and I and I know that in mylogical moments.
But you know, when you wake upin the middle of the night and
you're staring at the ceiling,those kinds of things can really
upset you.

(55:27):
And I and I wish that a youngerversion of me had known to just
like let yourself be lessaffected by that stuff and be
okay with a few people notliking you, assuming that you've
, you know, genuinely made agood faith effort to do
everything right and make surethat any dislike they have isn't
justified.
You know.

Every industry there's always going to be
someone, and I think youprobably experience it a little
more in the UK with the tallpoppy thing, which I know is
also an issue in New Zealand andAustralia just the hacking down
of, like anybody who is rising,but it takes so much strength.
I mean it's easier said thandone to not care what other

(56:09):
people say.

Ru Hill (56:10):
Yeah, and you know, since 2020, a third of all of
our net profits at Surf Simplyhave gone back into community
projects here in Nassara.
And telling you that now is thefirst time I've actually said
that publicly.
It doesn't say it on ourwebsite.
Maybe it's a British culturalthing, I don't know.
But I was always kind of broughtup wrongly to think that when

(56:31):
you're doing charity work orsomething like that, you should
do it for its own sake and youshouldn't publicize it.
Right, and actually I nowdisagree with that.
I think you should publicize itbecause it prompts other people
to do it too.
Right?
You know, if I put that on ourwebsite which I know I should do
and I probably will, you know,I hope other businesses in Osara
would be like oh wow, we shouldstep up and help too.

(56:52):
So I know it'd be a good thing.
But again, going back to what Iwish I had told younger me, I
wish I'd felt more comfortablesaying hey, like we're doing all
of this really good stuff inthe community.
But I always had this likecultural, maybe hangover of just
feeling super like, like an ickfactor about talking about that
stuff out loud.
As I said, I'm saying it to youright now.

(57:13):
This is the first time I'veever talked publicly about it.

You should definitely tell people about
what you're doing.
It's kind of the heart of thebusiness.

Ru Hill (57:20):
Yeah, yeah, now I know.

A third of profits is significant.

Ru Hill (57:24):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, it's really fun.
We have a kids club that we runthat does free surf lessons for
the local kids, and we've juststarted an intern program so
that kids from the local schoolswho want to become surf coaches
can come and do work experienceat Surf.
Simply, we're starting an elitecoaching program for local
surfers who want to go andcompete so, and then we work
with a women's health charitynearby as well and a local

(57:46):
schools project and areforestation project.
So yeah, but again you asked mewhat I should have done
differently and I wish I'd spentthe last 10 years talking more
comfortably about that, but itstill makes me feel super
uncomfortable saying it to youright now, like in this
conversation, that is sofascinating to me that it is,
though because I feel like thatis what, a lot of times, people

(58:07):
really want to know about too,when they're looking at a
business is like are they givingback in any way?

And if they are, how?
Because it's very revealingabout whoever is behind the
business.

Ru Hill (58:18):
Well, after I spoke at MIT, someone said to me why
didn't you mention anythingabout that?
Because they asked me about itafterwards.
And I said I felt uncomfortabletalking about it.
And then, when we had thisconversation scheduled, I
promised myself that I would sayit if it came up.
So you'll know this is you'relike, this is life therapy
happening right now, and you'llknow if there's a page up on the

(58:38):
website that I really followedthrough on what I said I would
do.

I hope you do.
It has honestly been so fun tohave you on here and I love the
way that you think aboutbusiness and life and I think
you have a very groundedapproach.
I really appreciate you takingthe time to share it with us.

Ru Hill (58:56):
Thank you so much.
I've really enjoyed ourconversation and thank you for
letting me, sort ofself-indulgently, wrap it off on
my ADHD thought trails.
I've had a really good timetalking to you.

Discipline now leads to greater opportunities
down the road.
Spot market gaps and connectthe dots.
Rue identified a lack ofcoaching for the middle 98%, not
just beginners or elites.
Mapping out solutions for anunmet need could be the

(59:39):
foundation of your business.
Scaling with intention matters,choosing to stay smaller,

(01:00:00):
refining internal efficienciesand priorit services, off-season
training or strategicpartnerships.
Resourcefulness fuels success.
As mentioned, rue startedteaching from the back of a car,
proof that a grassrootsapproach fueled by determination
can build something big.

(01:00:22):
Be a leader who removesobstacles.
Support your team by clearingthe path for them to grow,
improve and contributemeaningfully to the business.
Create an environment whereemployees feel valued.
Do your people see you assomeone who fights to pay them
well and prioritize theirwell-being?

(01:00:42):
A thoughtless, unkind employerwill throttle enthusiasm and
loyalty.
Rethink the traditionalbusiness hierarchy.
The American model often putsshareholders first, customers
second and employees third.
But you can design yourbusiness differently.
Be intentional about what you'recreating, whether in business

(01:01:06):
or life.
Consciously define what youwant and how you'll get there.
Seek wisdom from those ahead ofyou.
Get in rooms with people whoare smarter than you and absorb
what they know.
Get in rooms with people whoare smarter than you and absorb
what they know.
Dedication outperforms rawtalent.
You don't have to be a genius,you just need time, curiosity

(01:01:33):
and consistent effort to becomegreat at something.
Let go of the noise.
No matter what you do, there'salways going to be a percentage
of people who just don't likeyou.
But that's just part of thenoise.
Don't let it take up space inyour mind and find ways to be
less affected by that noise.
A close loss can shift yourperspective.

(01:01:53):
When someone you love passesearlier than expected, it forces
you to ask what truly mattersto me.
What do I value most in my life?
Check your bucketsProfessionally.
Rue mentions filling four corebuckets economic security,
health status or status, which Iinterpreted to be authenticity,

(01:02:19):
and community status, which Iinterpreted to be authenticity,
and community and qualityrelationships with those closest
to you.
If your buckets are full, stoppouring more in and redirect
your energy where it's needed.
Athletic pursuits teachbusiness lessons.
Surfing teaches adaptability,because the ocean is an
uncontrollable variable.

(01:02:40):
The same applies to business.
Firing with dignity matters.
When parting ways withemployees, ensure they leave
with respect.
And some book recommendationsfrom Rue the Status Game by Will
Storr and Behavioral EconomicsBooks by Daniel Kahneman and
Richard Wiseman.

(01:03:00):
That's it for today.
I release episodes once a week,so come back and check it out.
Have a great day.

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Ru Hill - The Rise of SURF SIMPLY RESORT in Costa Rica

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ru Hill - The Rise of SURF SIMPLY RESORT in Costa Rica