Meet Ryan Houston of RCE

I linked up with my best friend from middle school, Craig Posey, who I heard was ‘killing it’ in the event world. We had a talk about starting something together and within 5 mins we were already planning what we wanted to do ten years from now, as a team. It was a match made in heaven! It was settled that we wanted to go into business together, which is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Craig, like me, is very hardworking, focused, determined to be successful, and sees no ceilings and no limits on how far we can go. For the next year I took a job I hated so I can survive, and start our business at the same time. I did not let anything stop me. I worked before work, during work, and after work on our business. Being tired or busy was never an option for me. If I had a day off it was all dedicated to RCE. I was willing to do whatever it takes to make my goals come to life.

After a year, I told myself it’s all or ALL. Having a side job helped, but I would rather be broke for a little while and put 1000% energy into my company’s success than have a side job and not be able to give all my attention to RCE. I truly believe in Craig, myself and the company. Craig agreed and we decided to quit our jobs at the same time and go hard on the company. This is where my years of being a socialite came full circle. Having so many connections with people who we’ve met over the years and creating real genuine bonds with them have proven to be one the best things about the company. We have met such beautiful, amazing, intelligent people along the way who were more than willing to not only support what we were doing by coming to our events but also giving us advice, contacts, connections, and plugs to people to partner with. With this, we were able to put on some amazing events and create a space where everybody can come together to network, meet new people, laugh, dance and have real FUN.  I’m so thankful to everyone who is now a huge part of what we’re doing.

Now people are starting to learn about RCE. People are coming to the events and seeing that we are spreading nothing but love and positive vibes at everything we do. We want to change the whole idea of “Hollywood” where people are afraid to even talk to somebody. We want PURE FUN. We don’t want to just create an event or a party, but we want to create an experience. We want you to leave feeling so good and maybe you will have met a couple of new, really great friends. We want to create a safe atmosphere where people can go and be themselves! Come and be YOU. Be your best self. No worries, no fear… just fun! This has and will open up more opportunities for me to do things like model, act and make appearances under the RCE brand, always representing and creating new bridges between me and the world. I see our brand growing internationally and becoming a global company. I want RCE to be the helm of all things entertainment.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We have definitely had our ups and downs. One being starting your own company is a lot of work, a lot of sacrifice, with not a lot of help. It’s just the two of us. No staff, no budget and still needing money for everyday life. The struggle is trying to have money to pay our bills AND give the company the attention and time it needs to grow and be successful. This is the biggest hurtle. We are producing full events with very little budget. And the thing about events, to make them good you need money. You need money to make important things happen. That’s where we have been hustling the most. We work very hard and sometimes we have to take money out of our own pockets to make our events great. We have had to take some losses for the sake of building the brand, to make sure the name is strong. But that’s ok. We know in the end it will all be worth it, and it will all come back to us. We believe in what we’re doing, so the more we do the harder we work and the more wins we accumulate, because people have the most amazing time at an RCE event. That is what has kept us going. People enjoy our events and now people know us.

RCE – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We specialize in coming up with amazing, exciting brand NEW ways to bring people together to have fun. We create an experience that people can’t get enough of and they go home knowing that our RCE event was the highlight of their week, month or year. We are also a networking company, meaning we like to bring people out from all walks of life, especially in the entertainment industry, so that they can connect. We want to create a space where you can not only have a good time, but also advance your success by being able to meet people who can help get you to the next step in your own career.

One thing I’m so proud of is the type of people we attract to our event. We always get compliments on our crowd. We love good energy and good people! We don’t discriminate, we welcome anybody who wants to smile and have a good time. And everybody who leaves an RCE event feels special, like they had an experience of a lifetime. What also sets us apart from others, besides our beautiful crowd, good energy and our really cool event ideas that really WOWS people, is that we truly care. I genuinely want to do it for the people. I want to create events that make people feel free, get away from the stresses of life and just have fun. I often walk around my events and just sit with people and talk to them. You never know what that can mean to somebody. So this isn’t just a way to make money, its a way to bring joy and happiness into peoples lives. Give them something to look forward too. And when the company is BIG, we will create a community in L.A. under RCE.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Honestly being a black-owned business brings me joy having people in the community tell us that we inspire them to go after their dreams, and that seeing us do it makes them believe that they can do it too. That makes me really proud and humbled. It also definitely makes me work even harder because I know my success will somehow be tied into the success and happiness of others, so I have to work even harder.

But my proudest moment is the creation of a Day Party called “Good Vibrations.” I’ve always wanted to do a day party since the moment we started RCE, but nobody in LA would allow us to do our events at the ‘established venues’ because we were “unknown”. We finally got our chance when we met Roman, the owner of “Tree house” which is a beautiful downtown event space. Roman so kindly gave us a shot. We did our first ‘Good Vibrations Day Party’ there, hosting about 100-150 people, and we made ok money! Most owners would look at that and be like you guys are done. But Roman afterwards was like “I loved your crowd, and from what I saw of how you ran the event, the crowd and your energy and personalities…..I believe in you guys and I see the potential in what you guys have here”. I could have cried! Sometimes all it takes is for somebody to believe in you and give you a chance. We continued to be us and work hard and two events later we had 400 people there! The place was packed with beautiful, intelligent, fun people having a great time. Roman came up to me and said “See your killing it! This is amazing! Keep up the good work.”

To hear that, look around at a packed house of people laughing and having a good time, hearing people say “this is the best event in LA” is a long way from where we started.

That is absolutely the BEST moment of my career, so far. And I know there is so much more to come.