Every time I walk into a camp staff training, I know what the staff is looking at first. My socks. I wear no-shows socks. You know the kind that disappear inside the shoe and the ones that frame me as the elder millennial I am. The staff is wearing crew socks. Stoop socks or quarter length, the full-leg ones. So they notice the second I walk in. I could go buy new socks, but honestly, I don’t want to and they wouldn’t look right on me. So I just acknowledge it out loud at the start of the...
about 10 hours ago • 2 min read
Staff training has started for a handful of camps, and is still a few days away for most. The night or nights before, you can’t quite name why you’re feeling on edge, but maybe you are. Even with decades of experience and (maybe) a few wisps of gray hair, there’s still this nervous feeling right around now. Know what I’m talking about? It showed up for me even recently on a phone call. A camp director hired me to lead his training. He wanted a prep call to demo what we’d be running that week....
14 days ago • 2 min read
I was touring a camp last summer with a non-profit CEO. We’d just walked her property together for an hour or so, looking at programs. I told her she was a good CEO who cared about camp. She said, “How do you know that?” I looked down. “Your shoes.” She was wearing sneakers. The Sneakers Test Do sneakers tell the whole story? Yes, I think sneakers tell the whole story. She was dressed to be on the property all day. The tour was the smaller thing she happened to be doing. It doesn’t matter if...
21 days ago • 2 min read
There’s a shift happening in how parents experience their kids’ lives. Most camps don’t see it. The ones that do are moving ahead of the others. This is a structural thing. Technology drove it, and it’s reshaping every relationship parents have with their kids’ world. I’m a parent myself. I’m inundated with information about my kids. Everything has an app. Everything has a group chat. And I see camps every week trying to operate as if that’s not the reality. Silence Has a Cost Notifications...
28 days ago • 2 min read
A camp client wanted to know how parents are using AI to research their camp. So we sat down and “pretended” to be a parent (even though I am a parent!) looking for a camp like his. Simple prompt: “Tell me if [Camp X] is the right fit for my 12-year-old daughter.” What came back was eye-opening and definitely something all camps need to understand, and understand quickly. The AI framed its response as “my honest take, parent to parent.” As a reminder, AI is not a parent. The Audit I ran it...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
The great John Wooden won 10 NCAA basketball championships 12 years UCLA. Even armchair fans know him as one of the greatest coaches of any sport in history. And he spent a ton of time teaching his players how to put on their socks. You read that right. Putting on socks. The best basketball players in the country. This wasn’t some sports metaphor. He literally sat down and showed them how to put on their socks. Before practices, before games, Wooden would go through properly seating a sock on...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
I get a certain kind of phone call this time of year. Camp season is close. Staff training is around the corner. Enrollment numbers are what they are (and can be increased!). But the calls from camp pros spike without fail. The presenting problems look different each time. There are staffing gaps, marketing that isn’t converting, or a gut feeling that something is off, but without a crystal-clear way to fix it. All of these camp themes show up, but the subtext is almost always the same. What...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
You wouldn’t think of summer camping as lonely work. After all, camp is where kids and staff are running around all summer with constant energy, smiles, laughter, all of it. But leaders in the big chair often don’t have anyone to talk to. At least about the things that actually matter for your camp. Executive directors, program heads, owners, board presidents. The higher you sit at your camp or program, the fewer honest conversations you might get. Sure, camp is generally a happy place, but...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Nobody calls camp people entrepreneurs. But that’s exactly what they are. Think for a couple of seconds about it. Small organization. Often, one leader at the top. Limited resources. Trying to sell someone on a vision and a dream. Figuring it out as you go. Wearing twelve hats because there’s nobody else to wear them. That’s a startup. And that’s what working at a camp looks like. The outside world would never describe it that way. But the job fits the definition perfectly. How You Got to...
2 months ago • 3 min read