Jamie O'Brien Surf Experience Insider Interview with Kaikea Elias
The North Shore of Oahu, aka the seven-mile miracle, is home to countless surf schools eager to take visitors out on some of the most famous breaks in the world. Among them, however, one stands out for its incredible location, high-quality surf instruction, and best overall experience from check-in to check-out. We talked to Kaikea Elias, managing partner of the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience, about the evolution of the surf school from an idea to the real deal, what makes their experience unique, and what lies ahead for Jamie’s Surf Schools.
Q: Where are you from? How long have you been surfing for?
KE: I was born and raised in Kauai and have been living on the North Shore for the past 10 years. I’ve been surfing for 24 years, at least according to the story my mom tells, where I stood up on a wave the day before I turned two.
Q: When did you first meet Jamie O’Brien?
KE: Back in Kaui, I was a young surfer trying to make it, and there was this guy who worked with my mom and was into filming. He taught me how to edit and film, and it turned out he was good friends with Jamie. As I progressed in my career, I was probably about 12 or 13, he invited me over to Oahu to surf Pipe. He was shooting from Jamie’s house, so I got this opportunity to not only be at Pipe but meet Jamie. After our initial introduction, Jamie invited me to crash at his place for the night, then the week, and, eventually, it turned into spending more time at his house than mine. Jamie has always been cool about supporting kids and helping people, so it became this informal thing where I ended up, from age 14 on, living with him. We’ve been very good friends ever since.
Q: Tell me how the idea of the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience was born, came to life, and how you got involved with it?
KE: I tried to do the whole surfing thing, but I ended up going to college and getting degrees in entrepreneurship and finance. I’ve always been super passionate about business, and Jamie's dream has always been to have a surf school, so it’s something we've probably talked about for the last ten years. We wanted to do something different from a typical surf school, and we knew Turtle Bay was the best spot, so we told ourselves that this is a dream, but we’d only want to do it in Turtle Bay.
Then during Covid, when the hotel was purchased by Blackstone and closed for renovations, we heard there might be an opportunity. We scrambled to get a little business plan together and submitted it to the resort. They liked what they saw, and it went from an idea on paper in March to oh my god we are going to be open by June. Very quickly it went from a side project to a full-time job that required me to quit my other job at Redbull and Jamie to do all of the things he does to get up and running in just a few months.
Q: You call it the Jamie O’Brien Experience, what is the ideal experience you want your guests to have?
KE: The reason we call it the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience is because we wanted to refocus away from the normal model for surf schools, which is lower prices with as many people in the water at once, and instead focus on the experience as a whole. We charge a higher price point so we can create smaller groups to deliver a personalized premium experience. We have the opportunity to partner with a 5-star resort, we have the best equipment, the best instructors, and we’re the only surf school to have a water uniform and a land uniform. When we go over to our location in Kawela Bay, we drive beautiful custom golf carts and give the guests a tour of the property, the movies that were shot here, etc. We believe that a good surf lesson is standard, and we know our lessons are good, so we are focusing on everything else to make the experience the best it can be.
Q: What do you look for in your surf instructors? Tell me about your team.
KE: Prior to starting the surf school, I had never done a formal lesson. Having surfed my entire life, I am really comfortable in the water and what I noticed is that I was able to pick up [teaching] very easily because the mechanics of surf lessons aren’t super hard, what is hard is to teach ocean knowledge. For the team, we focus on hiring people that are born and raised on the North Shore, or at the very least Hawaii. We look for people who may not have the experience doing surf lessons or being in a surf school, but who are really good surfers and are comfortable in the ocean. We have an incredible head surf instructor who has been teaching lessons for 15 years, so we lean on him to make sure that our instructors can be good teachers. As long as we can make sure we have authentic, local, born and raised water people, we are confident we can get them to a level where they can articulate the sport.
Q: What is Shop Talk?
KE: What we’ve recently launched is Shop Talk on our website. It is a smorgasbord of things to know about surfing in Hawaii, and a place you can go to checkout and learn about how there is so much more to North Shore surfing than just surf itself. It helps build ourselves around this experience brand and be the one-stop-shop for everything you might want to do in Oahu and in or around the North Shore. We share a new blog every week on relevant topics that we think will improve our guests' experience, not just at our surf school, but of their time on the North Shore.
Q: Where do you go on your Ultimate North Shore Experience?
KE: We are lucky to have our surf school at Turtle Bay with some of the best beginner breaks, maybe on the planet, but we recognize that experienced surfers might be looking for a bit more. What is really cool about our Ultimate North Shore Experience is that we can put you in the supreme vehicle for a tour of the North Shore by an ex-pro surfer or somebody that has been here for a long time, and pick almost any break that fits your ability. We can do guided tours all the way from Laniakea or Chuns, which are a bit more gentle, up to more advanced breaks like Sunset Beach or Velzyland. Some people request surfing at Pipeline, however, that is not something that we provide because Pipeline is such a unique place where you need to experience it one on one. We are focused on more high-performance surfing where you can push your limits and be comfortable in the North Shore waves without suffering serious injury.
Q: Where do you see the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience in five years?
KE: That’s always been the big question. We’ve been very lucky to see the success that we've had after being open for four or five months, and a big part of it is the location, having the right partner, having Jamie’s brand, and the fact that we're able to have this surf school five minutes away from Jamie’s house. The vision for the surf school has always been to expand to more premium locations. In five years, we would love to see the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience in five to ten places, not just in the US, but potentially the world. We are really excited, but we need to be strategic in how and when we move because we recognize that the success we see here might not be replicated as easily. We’re not in a rush to expand and want to focus on finding the right places and partners that make sense and allow us to recreate what we have here, at least to some degree.
Q: What do you think about using Jamie O’Brien Twyn to help improve your surfing?
KE: I think that the Twyn platform presents an amazing opportunity for people to improve their surfing as they are able to interact directly with their heroes and ask them personalized questions that are relevant to their personal goals and gaps. If I had the opportunity to speak with an athlete like Jamie when I was learning how to surf, maybe I could have made the tour (laughs) but in all seriousness, I think that Twyn holds a lot of promise when it comes to people improving their surfing wherever they may be, and I’m excited to see how we can integrate it into our courses here at the surf school.
Want to book a lesson with Kaikea’s team at the Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience? Check out their website to see what experience is best for you.
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