Meet Jordan Ball | Surf Instructor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jordan Ball and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jordan, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Hi, my name is Jordan. I am the founder of the Independent Surfer, we are a surf education company at the forefront of surf coaching for beginner and intermediate surfers! The creation of the Independent Surfer is a very interesting story, so I hope you’ll stick along for the ride. The idea of the business started way before we had any sort of offering, or even existed. It all started when I got fired from my first job as a surf instructor 8 years ago. Long story short, I needed to do my surf instructors course in South Africa, where I am originally from, at a very specific time of the year because they only offered the course once a year. Unfortunately, this coincided with the busiest time of the year for the company that I was working at, so my boss, who – to be honest, I didn’t like anyways, gave me an ultimatum: “either you stay here and work, or go and do the surf instructors course and get fired.” Obviously, I chose the latter. Looking back on it, we were well-staffed, I gave him more than three months notice, and it was only going to take a week. But, getting fired from this job was the second best thing that ever happened to me. Notice how I mentioned second…the best thing is still to come, so stay tuned.

Fast forward a year and I started feeling a little restricted with my progress in South Africa. So, I started looking into travelling abroad to continue my surf instructing career; enter Surf Camp Lombok. As a side note, I still hadn’t started the Independent Surfer yet, but my time at Surf Camp Lombok (arguably the best surf camp in the entire world) was very fruitful. For those of you who don’t know, Lombok is a little island in the Indonesian archipelago that neighbours it’s much more famous cousin, Bali. The camp laid the foundation for me to continue on the progression train and I gathered so much information by working 14 days on and one day off. Yes, in the USA this would be considered illegal, but in Indonesia, there isn’t much regulation. I am not exaggerating when I say I worked 16 hour days for 14 days, and had one day break between camps, which ran for two weeks at a time, over a five month period. Fast forward a couple of years, everything was running smoothly, I had learned so much from my experience in a very short period of time, and I eventually put in an offer to become a partner at the Surf Camp. My trajectory was looking pretty good, until covid hit.

Within the space of a month, the surf camp was completely shut down, all tourists had left Indonesia and the surf camp, which I had just invested in, was sitting dead in the water. Ironically, this was the best thing that has ever happened to me. With nowhere to go, lockdowns in South Africa, a free, empty surf camp to stay at, surrounded by some of the best surf in the entire world only a five minute boat ride away, I decided to stick around and start the Independent Surfer. Our initial goal was to create a comprehensive online course to not only offer surfers the ability to improve their surfing during the lockdown but to also offer them accessibility to some of the best surf education in the world. Fast forward a year and we were sitting with a finished course and not much traffic to our website, until I started posting short form surf tips on Instagram. In 2022, our instagram account gained 100,000 followers in just one month. Yes, you heard me correctly, I really don’t need to exaggerate here. We now have 162,000 followers, a very successful online course and host 5-star surf retreats all around the world.

It has been a crazy ride up until now, and I have no doubt that it will continue to be crazy ride in the future. I hope this story inspires you to never give up and there really is light at the end of the tunnel. I will leave you with one famous saying, and it goes: ‘it’s always darkest before the dawn.” Before each and every major breakthrough in this story, I had immense hardship that I had to overcome, and the only way you will ever fail, is if you give up – so don’t!

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Our main focus is a business, is helping surfers that want to rapidly improve their surfing in a short space of time. To do this, we have created a lot of structure around the learn to surf process, especially for beginner and intermediate surfers, that you don’t typically find at local surf schools and most surf camps around the world. Unfortunately, most people miss the fact that surfing is both technical and theoretical similar to ballet or gymnastics, there are very specific techniques that you can only learn through many years of experience, we basically speed up this process. One would say that you can gain two years of surfing experience in two weeks.

Everyone has a different story, a unique experience with surfing and our goal at the Independent Surfer is to first identify your ability, not only to create a detailed syllabus around the technique and theory that you need to learn, but to also know where to surf and what kind of conditions are suitable for your specific level as a surfer. Once we have outlined your ability, we get to work on creating a detailed syllabus of theory classes, in-water coaching sessions and video analysis sessions to turn weaknesses into strengths and speed up your surfing progress.

Over the last 3 years we have created and perfected detailed presentations that walk you through complex surfing concepts, step-by-step making surfing achievable for anyone and everyone. We are constantly revising our theory classes so that we offer a better product every time we give a presentation. The best part is that I am constantly learning new things from new clients, because everyone has a unique problem that they encounter. with their surfing ability. Our next goal is to create a standard for surf coaching that the world has not seen yet. This will allow us to offer surf coach training and certification that is well above the standard seen today.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I don’t eat out too much but I will give out a few surfing secrets in Southern California. The first is, if you want to score Lower Trestles with little to no people out, head out there on a random weekday afternoon when surfline is showing poor to fair after a long weekend of competition. Chances are, surfline got it wrong and it won’t be on most peoples radar.

Low tide afternoons at Ponto are also majic, if you get out there before 4pm, you’ll probably be the only person out with exceptionally good surf, especially in the fall.

My wife and I froth on good Vietnamese food, and there is a really good pho place in Oceanside called Pho House. Last tip would be to back a pre made Chicken Tiki Masalah and a bottle of wine to take with you for sunset surfs at Lowers, you wont be dissapointed!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
This is really a tribute to my wife, Kimberly. She is an incredible woman, who finished college in just two years and paid off her student loans in one. Before the age of 30, she managed to buy herself a house in San Diego county, one of the most unaffordable states in the United States. She also owns a large piece of land in Indonesia, which we are currently building on, and is in the market to buy her third property. She is the biggest inspiration in my life and the secret sauce that held everything together during covid. If it wasn’t for her supporting us during this time, I wouldn’t have had the time, or the space to put all of my effort into creating the Independent Surfer, which up until this year, didn’t earn us any money.

I continue to look to her for inspiration and hope that everyone has that kind of support system to chase their dreams. There is no one in this world that is self-made, there is always someone in the back-round that supports you in one way or another.

Website: https://independentsurfer.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/independentsurfer/

Facebook: facebook.com/Independentsurfer?_rdc=1&_rdr

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJFVoEwLUXRMUf_70f8ebIw

Image Credits
Photos By Stephen Clausi