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The Dream Camp Director
After speaking with 50+ camp directors and traveling the country visiting camps, I’ve developed a sense for what makes a camp director succeed. With this perspective, if I were to craft my dream camp director, I’d call upon six components from these camp standouts… The heart of Shibley Day Camp’s Heath Levine – Just as…
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Guest appearance on the Lake of the Woods & Greenwoods Camps Podcast
My recent discussion with Noah Friedland of Lake of the Woods & Greenwoods Camps recently went live, check it out here or wherever you listen to podcasts. Noah, a campus director at the four-camp masterpiece chronicled about by This American Life, was nice enough to invite me on the podcast after we crossed paths at…
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Experts Unplugged: Leadership in Camping
I had the pleasure of kicking off a leadership speaker spotlight series ahead of the Tri-State Camp Conference. Joanne Newborn from Newborn Evolution, in collaboration with ACA New York / New Jersey, is highlighting the stories and perspectives of select 2024 conference speakers, and I was delighted to chat through some of my favorite musings…
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The 3 things Mohawk Day Camp got ABSOLUTELY right
A start to a new year is a great time for reflection. Reflecting on my time as a Division Director at Mohawk Day Camp this past summer, here are three things Mohawk got ABSOLUTELY right. Summer Staff Structure Mohawk employs hundreds of seasonal staff members each year; training, motivating, and retaining these young adults is…
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The Power of Expeditions – Interview with Clay Colvig
Clay Colvig from Colvig Silver Camps The phrase “summer camp” evokes a very specific image for many people – large campfires by a lake, eating in a mess hall with hundreds of other campers, making life long memories in your cabin. But what if there was more to overnight camping than this conventional picture? Recently…
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Combatting False Nostalgia
False nostalgia is the cognitive bias that leads us to incorrectly remember the past, portraying it as more favorable than it was. False nostalgia is a dangerous disconnect between experience and recollection. While it’s easy to notice when others are wearing rose-colored-glasses, it is much harder to recognize this fallacy in ourselves. Some examples of…
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Feedback at Camp – Interview with Sarah Horner Fish
Feedback is a gift. I expand upon this concept highlighted in a previous blog during a recent interview with Tom Sawyer Camps’ Executive Director Sarah Horner Fish. What stood out most about Tom Sawyer’s counselor evaluation process is that staff are consistently providing each other structured feedback. Rather than merely receiving feedback, as is the…
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Camp’s Golden Metric
In an earlier blog post and in this podcast, I mentioned adoption of a single golden metric as a tangible practice that camps can learn from Corporate America. As a reminder, a golden metric is the key measure of success for a company, defining the relationship between the customer problems and the company’s offering. Golden…
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My First Podcast Episode
Look Mom, I’m on a podcast! The Camp Consultant’s first podcast appearance recently went live, check it out here on the Go Camp Pro website or wherever you listen to podcasts. Liberty Lake Day Camp owner/director Andy Pritikin was nice enough to invite me on the podcast after we crossed paths at an ACA NY/NJ…
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Takeaways from WAIC conference
I recently had the pleasure of presenting at and attending the Western Association of Independent Camps (WAIC) annual conference, and I’m inspired to quickly conduct a retrospection on the experience. While this blog post focuses less on the intersection of business and camping, one of my goals for my blog is to “document my unique…
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The Camp Consultant 