Visit and consult with enough camps, and you learn to pay attention to the small stuff. At Camp Turner in the Buffalo area, two small things told me almost everything about their culture. An archery shed. A bulletin board in every cabin. Walk into the archery shed and you’ll see the bows labeled and the arrows stored properly. If you were just passing it, I doubt it would stand out compared to so many other great facilities. But whoever set that shed up cared about it. Whoever uses it every...
13 days ago • 2 min read
I was visiting Camp North Star in Maine a few weeks back. Steve Bernstein, the camp director, walked me around the property, and every few minutes he would point at something and say: “The kids came up with that one.” Just camper idea, after camper idea. Because Camp North Star runs something they call Shark Tank. For anyone who likes the show, the mechanic is exactly what it sounds like. Campers get a formal channel to pitch camp improvements. Anything from small logistics to big program...
20 days ago • 1 min read
There is a camp for every child. But that does not mean every kid should come to your camp. Those two statements are doing very different work. Somewhere along the way, camp directors got these two mixed up. Most of the marketing I see reads like: our camp is right for anyone. Every kid should come here. We have something for everyone. Which is the fastest way to make sure nobody in particular sees themselves in your marketing. Your operational bar is that every kid who walks through your...
27 days ago • 1 min read
Took my family to lunch on Long Island last month. To get to our table, we had to walk through a dive bar. The floor was sticky. The menus were paper. The table was not clean when we sat down. And the clam chowder was the best I have ever had. Which is why it has been voted best clam chowder on Long Island multiple years running. I would go back tomorrow. This meal has something to do with your camp. When you are truly the best at one specific thing, everything else can be rough. The dive bar...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The Knicks won the NBA Championship. I’ve been waiting my whole life to write that first sentence. Two months of playoff basketball. Every game and minute mattered. Jalen Brunson (our hero) was locked in from tip to buzzer for eight straight weeks. Which brings me to your camp. You are in the exact same window Brunson was in. You just did not put a name to it. Most camp people I talk to still think of summer as the regular season with more urgency. Summer is actually a different animal...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
We dropped both of my daughters at camp last week. The 10-year-old was going for the first time. The 13-year-old was going for summer number three. If you asked last week which one would have more nerves, would have said the 10-year-old. Everything was new for her. Not quite. The returner was a bit more nervous. She was getting her last texts in with her home friends. Running through in her head whether the camp friends would still feel the same as last summer. Working the nerves out loud in...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Do you know how car insurance rates drop when you turn 25? Why that’s the moment an insurance company decides you are a fully formed adult who can drive a car safely enough to not charge you an arm and a leg? It is worth thinking about this when you are looking at your staff. That drop is not arbitrary. The actuarial nerds at the insurance company are not guessing. They have decades of crash data showing the brain piloting the car at 21 is meaningfully different from the brain piloting the...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Camp is humming along. Summer is cooking. And in the run of play, a staff member comes to you and asks for feedback on their performance. They want to know what they could be doing better. Great! This is the moment camp directors always say they want. And they believe it when they say it. Wrote a while back about the complaint that comes up most from camp staff. They never get any feedback. So when one of them walks up and asks for it directly, you, of course, oblige. Sit them down. Name what...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Today’s young camp staff are hyperaware of the moment a phone comes out. Think about a moment at your own camp. Something fun is happening at the end of a long day. But now marketing pulls out a phone to grab a quick photo. And then the mood shifts just a little. These staff are 17 to 23. They have spent basically their entire lives watching people get turned into marketing posts, or worse, into memes in someone else’s group chat. They notice the second a phone comes out. They notice when...
2 months ago • 2 min read