Summer’s over for many of us.

The final bus drove down the road, the last parent came for pickup, A&C is cleaned up, ropes and harnesses put away, soccer balls all back in the containers, Lost & Found emptied.

Quiet. Done. Deep exhale out.

Look, we can go on all day about the magic of camp. Life-changing moments. Skills kids develop. Basically running childhood development boot camps disguised as fun. Yada, yada, yada.

We all get it.

But can we talk about what we actually just pulled off from, like, a business perspective?

Because if someone pitched “do a summer camp” as a startup idea, you’d think they’d lost their mind.

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What is this business model?

Think about it for two seconds. You’re running a town that sometimes completely rebuilds itself every 2-3 weeks with entirely different people.

New residents, new dynamics, new problems to solve.

Half your “customers” are 8-13 years old, come in as complete strangers, and live on site.

The other half are parents who spend the entire time at some intersection of super pumped and also terrified about what’s happening to their kids.

You have to kind of invent everything yourself because there is no playbook titled:

“How to Keep 200 Kids Happy, Safe, and Engaged While Coordinating Meals, Activities, Medications, and Emotional Meltdowns.”

As far as I know, there isn’t any Harvard Business School case study covering any of this (if there is, shoot it my way).

On any given day, you’re wearing about fifteen different hats:

→ HR manager (hiring and 50+ staff, many of them teenagers, oh and make sure they get along)

→ Facilities coordinator (pools, dining halls, cabins that house actual humans)

→ Child psychologist (homesickness, friendship drama, developmental stuff)

→ Safety officer (insurance, protocols, risk management)

→ Motivational speaker (keeping morale up when it’s raining for the fourth straight day)

→ Financial planner (making a ton, or all your revenue in 10 weeks)

→ Logistics wizard (where are 200 kids supposed to be at 2:47 PM?)

And that’s just Day 0 and Day 1.

You’re designing systems for relative chaos. Weather that changes everything. Staff who don’t show up. Kids who need different approaches. Food allergies. Injuries. Homesickness that hits kinda hard at 11 PM.

Every single thing has to feel magical and spontaneous while running on military-level precision behind the scenes.

Most businesses have the luxury of serving one type of customer with predictable needs. You’re simultaneously managing the expectations of anxious parents and the emotional needs of their kids (who may all want completely different things).

Thriving, not just surviving

Most businesses would collapse under this complexity.

But these summer places don’t just survive. Nah, they create experiences that kids remember for decades. They create a space that, to their community, is known as just one word: Camp.

The fact that we pull this off every summer is freaking nuts.

If you can figure out how to run a summer camp, you can probably figure out how to run anything.

Seriously.

You’ve mastered systems thinking under pressure. You’ve learned to manage up (parents), down (staff), and sideways (kids who have their own ideas about how things should go). You’ve built cultures that work even when everything else is falling apart.

The people who truly understand what you just accomplished? Other camp professionals. That’s about it.

So yeah, if you’re feeling a little burnt out right now, that’s completely normal. You just spent months being everything to everyone while making it look effortless.

You’ve earned whatever rest you can grab. Put your feet up. Take a long walk with no destination. Crack a cold one.

And sure, come fall (or even starting now, maybe tomorrow), we’ll wake up and hit the grind again. It’ll be time to start getting kids to camp soon enough. To roll it all back. To give parents and kids a place they can’t find anywhere else.

Because even though it’s “impossible”, it’s also the best job in the world.

You got this,

Jack

​WriteFromCamp.com​

P.S. Speaking of people who get it, we’re putting together a writing cohort this fall for camp professionals who want to get better at telling these stories.

It’s going to be good. We are sending out more details tomorrow.

If you’re interested, throw your name on the list and keep an eye on the old inbox.

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