Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter |
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A dad scheduled a call last month through the Calendly link at the bottom of a camp newsletter.
During the convo, he talked about being referred to camp three years ago. Kid didn’t come, but (thankfully) he never unsubbed from the list.
“We read the emails every week,” he said. “Don’t stop doing those.”
His kid is planning to come to camp this summer.
Told this story to the Write for Camp group in our final session last week. 12 camp pros, six weeks of pushing to write more about camp.
Doubling Down on What Works
Been pretty open with all of my camp pro peeps here lately about the things I’m avoiding.
YouTube videos I’m definitely not recording right now.
Worker bee tasks I’m using to dodge CEO work.
The guilt spiral of feeling bad no matter which mode I’m toggling on or off.
All true. Still working on it (I swear!).
But watching this cohort reminded me of something else: It doesn’t always need to be sitting around fixing what’s broken. Sometimes, it’s doubling down on what already works.
Newsletters work. I know they work. That dad proved it. You reading this proves it.
Yeah, I spent weeks feeling guilty about not doing YouTube instead of just maybe writing a couple more emails, some more newsletters going out to camp families.
The camp pros in this cohort? Some had the same pattern.
They know their camp stories matter. They know parents want to hear from them. They know how to talk camp, camp, and more camp in ways that build trust.
It’s just tough as hell to do it consistently for the same reasons YouTube (and other stuff) is a pain in the ass for me.
So with this in mind, wanted to throw out five takeaways Doug and I had over these last six weeks.
# 1 → Permission to Hit Send
So this is a just yet another reminder to everyone here:
Camp pros don’t need more ideas. They need permission to hit send.
Every director showed up with stories. Tons of them. Years of summers worth of material.
Some struggled with the blank page. Others had drafts they’d never sent. The issue wasn’t the same for everyone, but confidence came up a lot.
Structure and prompts helped. Knowing what format to use made it easier to start.
#2 → Talk First, Write Second
Strong drafts come sometimes come from talking it out. In breakout rooms, 1:1s, voice-to-text tools.
Not from staring at a blank Google Doc and being like, “hmm, what to write about today?!”.
Camp people already talk like storytellers. Doug and I spend hours talking and texting about camp every week. Recording it and doing business with what we find in those conversations.
# 3 → Templates Work
Formats crush and do away with that blank page mentioned three sentences ago. Using simple ones like “5 Things I Love About Camp,” or “What Happened / Why It Matters” makes things exponentially easier.
Constraints create freedom and structure let’s that authenticity come through instead of sounding like a camp robot.
# 4 → Drop the Brochure Language and Format
Your camp already has a language. Use it. Sounding professional is all good, but when you write like you (and your camp) talks then it just sounds way better.
Walls of text don’t cut it. Rhythm, spacing, and visual breaks win. They are much more aligned with how people actually talk.
# 5 → Momentum Beats Mastery
Success isn’t who writes the “best” camp newsletter. It’s going to be who keeps sending them.
Going from idea paralysis to shipping regularly was the goal and we’re already seeing it happen. The act of sending changes confidence, their relationship with families.
Writing about camp is practice for how you lead camp. Imperfect, in motion, real.
Once Again…You’re Already the Expert
Camp pros understand what it means to be a kid AND a parent right now.
Working at camp means seeing what’s happening to childhood. You know why weeks at camp still matter.
This already happens all the time in cabins, on tours, in convos with families.
It all just needs a delivery system.
Newsletters let you build trust over time. They let families get to know you, your values, what you stand for. They turn strangers into people who’ve been reading your emails for a year.
And then one day, they schedule a call.
What You Have
Stories. The kid who was homesick on day one and leading songs by day three. The staff member who figured out how to help a struggling camper. The moment at the campfire when something shifted.
Insights. What you’re noticing about kids, about parents, about the world they’re growing up in.
Bridges to bigger concepts. Connection, resilience, belonging, identity. Camps tackle these every week during the summer.
What you might not have: the system to capture it. The confidence to hit send. The permission to write like you talk instead of like a brochure.
That’s what changes when you start writing consistently.
Not perfectly. Consistently.
Three Years to One Call
That father who called? His family didn’t enroll immediately when they heard about camp three years ago.
They read and stayed on the list.
Now they’re coming.
Not every family responds right away. Some read quietly for years.
Trust takes time.
Maybe the answer isn’t always doing the new thing that’s so easy to avoid.
Maybe sometimes it’s just doing more of what already works.
We’re already the experts. We already have the stories.
Write them down and hit send.
You got this,
Jack
P.S. We’re running Write for Camp again in January.
Six weeks, learning to write newsletters that connect with families.
Registration will open in November. Interested? Let’s go! Just click this link or the button below.