Subscribe to the Immersive1st newsletter for new openings and smart job search tips. Hiring? The next issue will show how your organization can reach the right candidates.
Camp is a confidence thing
|
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 the Calls Are Really AboutConfidence. That’s really about it. Confidence. A problem they can’t see their way out of. Something they haven’t experienced before. Or something they can’t solve alone without an outside voice. Unless you’ve been in these roles, it’s hard to conceptualize what running a camp actually feels like. The sheer weight of a full summer program. So many different things that can go sideways at once, and above it the loneliness (yes, loneliness) of being the person everyone else looks to for answers. These calls aren’t from someone in freefall or anything close to it. No, this is just the natural camp cycle. A director or exec has something a bit stuck. And they need to talk it through with someone who’s worked with and seen the nitty-gritty of 80 camps, watched the same patterns play out everywhere. What Happens When We TalkMostly, I’ve found that camp people (at every level) just need to air it out. Sure, there’s always a straight read on what I’m hearing and a few ways they could approach it. Are any of these things catastrophic? Not really, no. People in this work just need to talk it through with someone who’s seen all levels of a camp operation before. I take these calls constantly. People sit on stuff for weeks, thinking they should figure it out themselves. Then we talk for 30 minutes, and something becomes clearer, and that confidence kicks back in. Because so much of the time, that’s what’s needed most. Book a CallIf you want to talk through what you’re sitting on, book a call with me, David, or Hunter at Immersive1st. Thirty minutes. No pressure. We’ll figure out if there’s a path forward together. Sincerely, Sincerely, Senior Consultant at Immersive1st Learn more about Immersive1st's Approach |
Immersive1st
Subscribe to the Immersive1st newsletter for new openings and smart job search tips. Hiring? The next issue will show how your organization can reach the right candidates.
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...
A few summers ago, my (at the time) fifth grader went off to overnight camp for the first time. Of course, excitedly, I shared with other parents at school pickup, expecting similar vibes. Nope. Instead, I got questions like: “Why would you let them go that far away?” “Why would you send them away for so long?” “How could you trust someone else with your kid overnight?” And these parents knew what I do for a living. They see LinkedIn. They know I run a consulting firm working with summer...
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....