We were lucky to catch up with Rick Reeve recently and have shared our conversation below.

Rick, appreciate you joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Beach Elite was started because others asked me to help their kids learn volleyball. I have never had business partners with this business. It has grown organically and has a reputation of having love for teaching kids above profit or status.

Most clubs has multiple owners, charge a lot of money, want only the best athletes, want to only win their matchtes and be the most winning club in their area.

Beach Elite has only one owner and found, which is me. And to date, Beach Elite has programs in three major cities (Salt Lake City and St George, UT and Huntington Beach, CA). I don’t know of any other club that has that many locations with one owner. One of the negatives of being a business owner is it owns you a lot of the time and that has definately been true for us. But a sign of a good owner is they will dedicate their life to a cause because it’s their passion.

At the beginning I charged next to nothing and still to this day our dues and fees are lower than our competitiors. May clubs say they put kids first but we put our money where our mouth is.

We like to help the underserved kids, the ones that were looked over by other clubs, didn’t make a team, have some internal struggles with family or personaly life, or sit the bench a lot. Our club is to give them an opportunity to play volleyball, build their confidence, mentor, help them have a great childhood and hopefully it propels them into being great and productive adults in their communities.

We focus on progess, how they handle losing and winning, and not how many wins and losses they have.

We only have a few teams every year to help keep quality control with both our athletes and our coaches.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Please tell our readers about yourself:

Born in Los Angeles, CA, grew up in Atlanta GA. Found a love for volleyball in my early teens. My youth advisor at my church was a volleyball coach and would often string up a net in our church gym during our weekly youth nights and let us play. Volleyball wasn’t big in my area then so I played competitive tennis, swimming, baseball and golf. It wasn’t until college that I started playing more indoor vollebyall.

I moved to Huntington Beach,CA in 2002 and quickly made friends with and played beach volleyball at the pier. I was brand new to competitive beach and had a great group of friends be patient with me as I figured it out. I centered my day around playing at the pier.

how you got into your industry:

A friend at church asked me to teach her neice how to play volleyball as she’d never played before and wanted to make her school team. I told her to come down to the beach and I’d do my best. She ended up making her high school volleyball team! My friend then instilled in my mind something that would change my life ” You should coach volleyball. You are so great at it!”

With that seed implanted in my mind I started assisting a friend that was a local high school coach. He eventually gave me a team. His Dad passed away a week before I was supposed to start coaching so training me was not on his radar. I remember the first day I coached my own team. He pulled back the curtain in the gym and there was my team of freshman girls, handed me a clipboard with their names, said “Good luck” and walked away.

I used online resources, went to friend’s houses many times that were past coaches and they spent time teaching me rotations, strategies, etc. I stumbled along that first year of coaching but fell in love with it.

I went to work for a local volleyball club coaching a boys team in Newport Beach, CA. All of the parents on my team loved my style and asked to coach their sons on the beach as well. I asked the indoor director if that was ok as I didn’t want to step on any toes if they had beach volleyball programs. He said it was ok. So I started teaching my boys at the beautiful beaches of Newport. The word got out and more and more kids starting showing up. What was one court turned into 4 courts. We were bursting at the seams with court space. The drive between my house in Huntington Beach and the courts in Newport were on Pacific Coast Hwy and I’d always pass by open beach space. I prepared a business proposal and went to the Huntington State Beach offices and presented the plan. They quickly approved it and just like that, we had leased space to build a facility for more kids. We build 8 courts. That lasted only a year or two and we kept adding courts and eventually got up to 15 courts. During Covid we expanded to Southern Utah and Northern Utah.

What type of products/services/creative works you provide?

Club Indoor Volleyball for youth ages 10-18 in all 3 locations
Club Beach Volleyball for youth ages 10-18 in all 3 locations
Beach Tournaments in Huntington Beach California and Lehi Utah
Indoor tournaments in St. George Utah
Beach Leagues for youth and adults in Lehi UT and St. George UT
Summer Camps in Huntington Beach, St. George and Salt Lake City
Adult Beach Classes in Lehi and Huntington Beach

What problems you solve for your clients?

Our 3 fold mission is learn, work hard and have fun. For youth with teach them the game, help them build confidence and love for volleyball and team sports. For adults we provide training and a good enviornment for them to have a great time, make friends and play volleyball.

What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients to know about you?

I am proud that I have help impact so many children’s lives for good. I’m blessed that I’ve been able to provide them with a place and experience that hopefully they will remember for their whole lives. I’ve had this club for 11 years and still friends with many of the kids I tought that long ago. Many are playing in college and it’s fun to watch them play on tv, or go to their games and suprise them by saying hello after and getting a huge hug from them and hearing the words “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me to get to this point.” I get invited to their weddings and birthday parties as well! Life is about relationships and I cherish every relationship from this wonderful career I have.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Life is about learning how to successfully pivot! Life gives you plenty of curve balls and ruins your plans. The trick is to adapt,pivot, evolve or whatever you want to call it. The quicker you realize this reality and quicker you can be at peace.

During Covid unfortunately California came down really hard on youth sports as well as many other businesses. To hear that youth sports was non-essential really hurt. Kid’s growth and development is always essential and I then pivoted to looking for areas that did want our services to be essential, and that’s where Utah came into play. I contact friends in both Salt Lake City and St. George and they said my services were greatly needed in their cities. So I moved away from California to St. George. Amazing things happend when I lived there for a year. Utah Tech University hired me to be an assistant coach for the Womens Volleyball Team (D1) and I was able to gather valuable collegiate coaching experience. I opened up Beach Elite in the community and we were an immediate success, so much that the next year a bunch of my coaches took the kids and made their own club. That hurt as well. But life is about adapting so we did just that and started adding more beach volleyball in St. George and focus more on younger beginners.

After a year in St. George I moved to Salt Lake City and added the club there. And it has been a big success as well.

These additions to the club would not have happened if Covid “aka a curve ball” hadn’t happened. It’s so important to take a curve ball, adjust to it, and hopefully hit it out of the park!

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I was taught to spend less than you make and stay out of debt. That advice prepared me for starting the volleyball club. Luckily my initial capital was about $20k to start the club (volleyballs, nets, carts, boundary lines, gear, uniforms etc)

But with other businesses I’ve started I learned quickly that if you can’t trust your investors, don’t accept their money. Make sure your parenters/investors are trustworthy invdividuals that share the same vision as you.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.beach-elite.com
• Instagram: beach_elite_socal , beach_elite_vball_utah
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/7FDvJbpHK8RPmveB/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beach-elite-volleyball-club/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@beachelitevolleyballclub2559?si=UQo9CTFUxSSqfEGu
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/beach-elite-volleyball-club-huntington-beach?start=20

Image Credits
All pictures are by me