Jack's Camp Friends

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here It’s the beginning of the year but writing this at the end of the year (got that?). Good time to think about this newsletter. Been writing this for a couple of years, but over the last 18 months, every single Thursday. Most camp pros are drowning in emails already. So why add another one to the pile? Here’s the honest answer. The Problem Camp owners, pros, directors and staff are a pretty isolated group. We know our camps really well. The Y,...

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here Quick favor before we start: The great Dan Weir is running his staff survey again this year. So much great camp info comes from this. Summer Staffing Analysis Survey open until January 5th! Bonus: Everyone who fills it out gets access to the results with real data on how camp staffing is going. All right, on to the newsletter... Been thinking a bunch about the Hidden Curriculum lately. Which is to say I kind of think about the Hidden Curriculum...

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here New year. Same 47 (thousand) things on your plate. Camp directors are incredible at being busy. We aren’t always amazing at getting less busy. Remember that guilt cycle? Feel bad when doing worker bee stuff because you should be doing CEO stuff. Feel bad doing CEO stuff because emails are piling up. Result: nothing gets done well, everything feels half-finished. I’m really trying to think about this going into this new year. Don’t have it all...

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here Two questions come up in almost every new parent call at this time of year. “Is my kid ready for camp?” “Is it too late to start?” Easy to say these are questions about age or timing. But really, they’re questions about fear. Fear their kid will struggle, will be left out, or missed some weird invisible window. Knowing that makes them a lot easier to answer. “Is my kid ready for camp?” First-year camper at K&E last summer. His mom was an alum....

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here This post originally appeared on Write From Camp → A 3x/week Substack from Jack Schott and Doug Norrie about running a modern camp. Real examples. Zero (Legit 0.0) brochure talk. Check out Write From Camp on Substack here Like 15 years ago, Kevin Kelly wrote this essay that still hits today when thinking about basically any connection-based business. 1,000 True Fans. The idea: an artist or a band doesn’t need gajillions of followers. They need...

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here It’s Thanksgiving week, so it’s a good time to stop overcomplicating things. I got an email from Donald Miller (via Doug) a few days ago that made me realize I might have been thinking just a little/ way too hard about camp messaging. Miller’s the StoryBrand guy. He sends marketing emails about why businesses succeed and fail. This one was about how most companies get ignored, not because they have bad products, but because their message makes...

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here We're thinking about using a new anchor number in our camp messaging: 600 That's roughly how many summer days a kid gets in their entire childhood. The math? Kids typically go to camp from ages 8 to 15. About eight summers. Each summer is roughly 75 days → mid-June through late August. 75 days × 8 summers = 600 days. That's a little over two years of summer total. 600 days to jump in a lake, play Gaga, sing corny campfire songs, hike in an awesome...

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here Camp is a super tough sell when you really think about it. Parents just drop off their kids with people they don’t know. Pay sometimes hella money. Trust a bunch of teenage strangers. Let their hearts and souls disappear into the woods. Meanwhile, coding course down the street with a clear pitch: “Your kid will learn Python.” Sports club? “Professional coaches will improve their jump shot.” Academic enrichment? “PhDs teaching advanced math.” Those...

Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter Subscribe Here You know when you download a new mobile game (I’ll admit, I play these sometimes) and before you can actually play, there’s all this…stuff Login screen Username creation Permission requests Tutorial you can’t skip And you’re all, um: “Can I please just start having fun?” Some games get you playing in seconds. Others are like five minutes of setup before anything interesting happens. Games that reduce that gap? They win. The ones with too much...