Introducing Camp Girl Boss

#028 - Julie chats with Emily and Aryelle to talk about Camp Girl Boss. Camp Girl Boss teaches leadership and entrepreneurship to middle school girls.

Emily Breedlove is a Serial Entrepreneur who transforms communities through empowering women and girls to embrace their own Creative Magic. Her work ranges from the Founder and Global Champion for Camp Girl Boss to serving as the first Female Director of ScaleUp WNC a 90-day business Accelerator in Asheville, North Carolina. Emily sees Disruption as the highest form of public service and she advocates regularly for people to boldly innovate whenever possible.

Aryelle is an undergraduate student at UNCA studying Community Justice and Entrepreneurship. She is an active community leader, as she has lead several marches and events including the 2019 Asheville Women’s March. Aryelle is the author of "A is for Awkward: A Guide to Surviving Middle School," where she works to support k-12 students in resiliency and empowerment.

Links:

Sparkle Hustle Grow
Camp Girl Boss
Camp Girl Boss Facebook

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Transcript

Julie: 0:29

So you want to launch a subscription box and don't know where to start? Girl, you are in the right place. I'm Julie Ball, a subscription box coach and your host here at Subscription Box Basics, a podcast for new and aspiring subscription box entrepreneurs that want to avoid overwhelm. So grab a coffee, some pen and paper and let's have some fun! Hey everyone and thanks for tuning into another episode of subscription box basics. I'm your host Julie Ball and today's episode is super special to me. A couple of years back, a local entrepreneur friend of mine launched a summer camp for middle school girls that just, it just spoke to my heart and to my mission of of the bigger picture of Sparkle Hustle Grow and it's called Camp Girl Boss and it teaches all about leadership and entrepreneurship to middle school girls. And today I've got part of the Camp Girl Boss team here with me. So I'd like to welcome Emily Breedlove, founder of Camp Girl Boss and Aryelle, camp counselor. Hey ladies.

Emily: 1:30

Hi!

Aryelle: 1:31

Hey!

Julie: 1:31

How's it going?

Emily: 1:31

Awesome. Thanks for having us.

Julie: 1:34

Yeah, thanks for joining me. I'm super thrilled. This has been something that I've been a part of for a couple years now and I just love what you're doing. So a lot of our listeners will be hearing about this and meeting you guys for the first time. So let's start with some introductions, Emily.

Emily: 1:51

So I am a mompreneur. I'm a mother of two and I've been a serial entrepreneur for way too long before I really even knew what it was. yeah, so, I worked specifically in, business development and public relations and Camp Girl Boss has been what started as a labor of love and now has just become a phenomenon, so much bigger element of my business. but it's actually actually is a nonprofit, so I get to wear both hats and just riding this roller coaster that is Camp Girl Boss.

Julie: 2:24

So awesome. All right, Aryelle.

Aryelle: 2:27

Yeah. So I am, Arielle I am the Camp Girl Boss counselor. So I facilitate the lessons that we hear in Camp Girl Boss and I, I work with some of the girls to, to just think about the things that are, they are really passionate about that excite them that they want to lead with. I am also a college student at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and I am the author of"A is for Awkward: A Guide to Surviving Middle School". And I am just here to support Camp Girl Boss in any capacity I can. I am so passionate about this project. I've seen it change lives and it's changed me too.

Julie: 3:05

That's awesome. Well what a powerhouse group of gals. Again, thanks for joining me. And let's, let's just talk about Camp Girl Boss cause some people are, you know, they here it's an entrepreneurship and leadership camp for middle schools, but you know, what is it on a bigger level? It's like you said, it's changing lives. So Emily, do you want to tell us more about the actual camp and we're actually how it's pivoted and changed a lot this year.

Emily: 3:30

Well. So it started as a week long day camp, right? For middle school girls between 10 and 13. And we've been hosting these camps all across our region for the past two years. Aryelle and you Julie, you guys have been part of our local camps here and what we found. Yeah. So I just have to say too that having a 19 year old involved, there are things that Aryelle can say that a mom can't say and the girls love hearing it from a 19 year old. So she definitely brings a lot of that fresh perspective. That's what we found is that, you know, creating a space for us to be able to show up with these girls at a time when they are really trying to, get comfortable with their ideas and get comfortable with showing up in a big way. this is the age where girls decide whether or not to be big or whether to be small, right. Where they're really testing kind of the volume of their personality. And so what we've seen, I know it's such a big thing. and what we've seen with this camp is that, you know, entrepreneurship is a really great gateway topic. So we're able to, to use entrepreneurship as a way of, of talking to these girls about topics that are very challenging to talk about. looking at leadership, looking at wellness, looking at boundaries, looking at conflict resolution, looking at money and how to have impact in the world. And so it's, it's really presented this great opportunity to meet girls at this time, at this age, we surround them with powerhouse women and really talk about how their ideas have power, their voices have power and that we value them. And, it really can be transformational in the way that, that it's tackled. And so being able to see that we were really onto something when we started this camp. Gearing up for this summer, we were getting ready to do a national rollout where we were hosting a hundred camps all over the country, but then COVID happened, right? And so we're actually really lucky in that we had already built an online training system for all of our women that we had to onboard and train all of the camp organizers. And so we already had kind of the digital version of all of this material. And so we were able to very quickly pivot to restructuring this camp. So that is 100% virtual. And that went from, you know, hosting a hundred camps was already hard. but you know, we were only hosting about 1500 girls through those 100 camps. Moving it completely virtual was what opened us up to be able to make this available for a hundred thousand girls, which is like mindblowing, right? We would have never tried to tackle this this year. but especially now that these girls are home, they're stuck at home in a really challenging space. You know, we, we really had to choose to make this available to the girls that just cause they're sitting in their living room doesn't mean they have to stop dreaming big.

Julie: 6:24

Right!

Emily: 6:24

And yeah, really making it accessible and, and opening it up to the country. In a way that we weren't really expecting, but ended up being a huge blessing. So, it's, it's pretty cool.

Julie: 6:34

That's awesome. And I, one of the things I think about a lot with Camp Girl Boss is that, personally I thrive in community and I know a lot of the women that I work with also do. And having someone to ask questions to and to throw ideas against the wall with or just sometimes get a hug or a high five from that says,"you're doing a good job". I think it's so important to surround these girls with that positivity. When I know a lot of other areas of the world, they're, they're being brought down. Yeah. So that's one of the big things I love about it. So, okay. Who, one of you could tell me about what does a week long, what are the week long camp look like? What are some of the topics that you cover and what is the transformation during the week?

Emily: 7:19

Aryelle, why don't you do that one?

Aryelle: 7:21

Yeah, totally. so we cover topics from what is entrepreneurship. A lot of times when we actually start camp, the girls don't even know how to pronounce that word cause it's big and it's tricky for sure. but we start with that what is entrepreneurship? What is being an entrepreneur? And then I think the transformation is that they go from kind of being vague about this term, not really knowing what it is to becoming an entrepreneur. we talk about things like financial literacy, which I learned from every time that I've had to teach it or any time that we have to learn. talk about in camp. we talk about public speaking. why is this important? We talk about, logos and designs and graphic designing and how that's important element of your business. We also really focus in on who are you, who are you?, What are you passionate about? What are the things, what are the changes you want to make in the world? And use those driving factors to drive what you build because your business will be sustainable if you have that underlying passion. If you find your why and for able to do that, you will create something incredible that you will continue to be excited about and gain momentum on.

Julie: 8:38

I love that. I remember when when I was doing a mentorship where I would come in and I would sit with some of the girls at lunchtime and stuff, learning their why and seeing the changes that they wanted to make in the world. I mean mind blowing. I was so impressed by the percentage of girls that had social good, like baked into their business that, were tackling real problems with their product or their service. And it was just, it was so inspiring to see it pan out. So, okay, so you talked to them about some marketing, some branding about carving out their concept of what their actual business is about. And then you take it a step further though, right? Cause you guys like do, do you, websites and tell them how to talk about their business. So tell us a little bit more about that curriculum.

Emily: 9:29

Well. So, you know, we, we saw very early on that these girls don't just want to talk about making money, right? From day one, they want to talk about making a difference and that, right? Exactly. And so, you know, this is the generation of influencers, right? They're raised by influencer celebrities of what's on YouTube and what's on Snapchat and Tik- tok and, and so, you know, they have a very different idea of being visible. And so, you know, we help kind of walk them through the different levels of opportunity and what goes with that of what is an entrepreneur? What is a thought leader? What is an influencer? How do you really get grounded? And the element of prosperity within each of those things that, how you create, the sustainable model for yourself based upon the kind of way you want to show up in the world. And so part of that is teaching them how to use the same digital tools that actual entrepreneurs use, right? That these girls, if it's not online, it doesn't matter, right? The world does not exist if it's not online. And so what we've done, especially with this camp is that we are able to really lean on the same platforms that we use as entrepreneurs to teach these girls how to create a custom logo on Canva. how to build a single page WordPress website. Yeah. How to create an Instagram social media marketing calendar and an editorial calendar. how to use Dropbox in order to share files, how to conduct a Zoom webinar, right? These are the, the same exact tools. And to be relevant, you have to have these pieces, but that this is also for this generation. This is their currency. They're not looking for a brick and mortar, right? They don't want to write a business plan. That's not why they're doing this. And so we had to really lean into what is their language right, what are their values? And what do they find fun? They look at the world through the lens of social media. And so if we aren't teaching them the elements of like what are hashtags and how do you build a marketing strategy that looks at social media marketing and web design and selling a product and having impact. So partnering with nonprofits, you know, this is, this is the world that they want to play in. And so, you know, it was surprisingly easy to take the same platforms that we were using in the classroom and bring them into this virtual camp because they were the same exact platforms that it was just expanding out our Canva templates and expanding out our WordPress sites. but that at the end of the camp, the girls have created all of those things. By the end they have a logo, they have a headshot, they have a website, they have social media marketing campaign, they have an editorial calendar. Like most adults, both adult women, we don't even have that for ourselves. And these girls will, by the end of nine weeks, they will have, if they wanted to have a full blown business, they would have it.

Julie: 12:27

Okay. So that was going to be my next question. How long does participation last? Because the, in the past when we did the in person camps, you would show up for five days straight and it was like, game on, let's do this. So what if five all day long.

Emily: 12:40

So what we did this year is we, we extended it out so that the girls have nine weeks to complete the camp.

Julie: 12:49

Okay.

Emily: 12:49

For those super aggressive type a personalities, they could still do it in a week if they wanted to, but we recognize that now it's a different model. It's, you know, them making time, popping in and out, taking a few hours going back and working in their playbook. we did, we did want to make sure that we still honored some of the, the programmatic integrity that came with the printed book, right. Of the actual drawing in, drafting your logo and, and having journaling prompts and giving them time to kind of write in the tactile printed book. Yeah. That's a powerful thing for these girls. And so when they register, we then mail them the, the Girl Boss box, which has, the printed playbook, which is 110 pages of activities and journals and all this great stuff. all the material that goes with the videos.

Julie: 13:40

Okay.

Emily: 13:40

So all of the training is done in Kajabi where we have over 40, educational videos of Ella, who's my 10 year old daughter who's walking the girls through the process. And so she interviews with Aryelle and you were one of the interviews, you and your daughter.

Julie: 13:55

Me and McKenna. That was so fun. Thanks for including us.

Emily: 13:58

It's awesome. well, so the girls I'm work through those videos in conjunction with their, their printed booklet and then they have all of the material in order to tackle using the digital tools. so we've tried to pair all of the different ways in which they can engage with this content. But then the best part is we now have an online community of thousands of girls that are going through the process. And so we have an online forum. We're going to live stream every week. So we've got actual real world girl bosses as well as some girl boss celebrities that are gonna come on and do a live stream interview with the girls. I mean we're trying to really make this as engaging as possible because for a lot of these girls they are stuck at home.

Julie: 14:35

Yeah. So does it have a start date and an end date then? Or is it an ongoing thing?

Emily: 14:40

So it is ongoing. It's, so camp starts June 1st we will only be in camp until mid September. So we're committing every Monday we roll in the next batch of girls. And so when you sign up, you pick the Monday, then what you want to start, we're going to shut down, sign up for each one about 10 days before because we then have to mail the packets out. Right. So you pick your week that you want to start, you then have nine weeks from that start date. All of the live streaming will then be recorded and available. So if you miss some of the celebrity interviews, she can still go back and view them.

Julie: 15:10

Perfect. Okay. And what's the cost to enroll?

Emily: 15:12

So it's 99 bucks, nine weeks for 99 bucks. But on top of that, we are giving away 50,000 scholarships for this.

Julie: 15:21

That's unbelievable. Tell us how that works and how we can get that out into the community.

Emily: 15:26

Yeah, so you know, from Dave one, we've really believed that if a girl is of age and she wants to be part of this camp, we want to make it so that she can, we've always had half all of our seats, half on scholarship. and we fundraise. We make it possible. So what we're doing with this camp, you know, we are nonprofits and we work with a lot of great partners. and we're able to, to ensure that, so we have a thousand scholarships per state. so there's 50,000 altogether. the codes are super simple. It's literally your state abbreviation plus 1000. So for us it's NC1000. You can get in as long as there scholarships available, you can use it. And so that gives you full access. For the nine weeks, I'm with a 100% scholarship. and then we also, we're just constantly, collecting donations. So if you would like to sponsor a girl boss, it's 99 bucks to cover a girl. but yeah, I mean it's, this is literally a hundred thousand girls across America, which is crazy.

Julie: 16:22

Unbelievable. Okay. So if someone wants to either sign up, donate, become a partner, they all should just go to CampGirlBoss.com right?

Emily: 16:30

Everything is there.

Julie: 16:30

Okay. Awesome. And then you guys are also on Facebook,

Emily: 16:35

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We're everywhere. We're eventually going to create a Tik-tok channel. But first I have to learn what that is.

Julie: 16:42

Yeah, good luck.

Emily: 16:42

That's why I have Aryelle.

Julie: 16:49

So, Oh my gosh. Okay. That's so much good information. so those are ways to support are to share the information about the scholarships. sponsor a scholarship at$99. and then there's other ways to become partners, right?

Emily: 17:05

Yeah. So to be a partner, you're able to be what we're calling our Camp Girl Boss ambassadors, which are the cheerleaders all across the country that are helping, yeah. To spread the word. And what's really cool too is that, you know, when we are able to reengage again, we will go back to hosting camps. And so, we want to make sure that women who are passionate about this are able to get into the ambassador program, help spread the word in their community and that are in place for when we are able to then release a local camp. if they're interested, they're already in the list. So it's, if you are interested no matter what, what level it is, you're able to sign up for the newsletter or partner as an ambassador. And yeah, we've got a great, a lot of great stuff that can help make it easier to spread the word.

Julie: 17:50

Awesome. All right, everyone that's watching or listening, I challenge you to go over to CampGirlBoss.com right now, after you're done listening and, sign up to become an ambassador or, or think about how you might be able to make a tax deductible donation to the group. So, that is your challenge. before we wrap it up, I wanted to bring up one point, that I remember very specifically about when we were all together that in the curriculum. You guys work in self care and mindsets and it is so important because as entrepreneurs we suffer burnout when we do too much on when we're not taking care of ourselves. So Aryelle, tell us a little bit about what that, what that mindset training or what the self care it looks like, both when it was in person and how you've translated that to the online space.

Aryelle: 18:41

Yeah, I think one of the biggest misconceptions, about girls at this age are that they don't want to talk about big things are that they don't know what they're capable of. That is so false. Girls want to build their own empires and during that they want to take care of themselves too. And so talking about that is a really important element of camp. We talk about the importance of having boundaries and that sometimes as women we're taught that, you know, you have to say yes to everything. You can't say no, it's a sign of weakness or some, some sort of thing like that. And we teach them actually saying no is a good thing. Saying no is an act of self love and self care that is so beautiful and that will help to sustain your business and just to seeing your passion, your mission, your underlying why being able to take care of yourself is so critical to being an entrepreneur. If you lose that self care, if you lose that self compassion, you use it for your customers, you use it, you lose it for your employees. So being able to have that base will create a sustainable business model for them and it will also create an incredible healthy, beautiful life for these girls too.

Julie: 19:50

Definitely, well said! It's so important to have that self care and I'm glad that you're baking it into this and teaching them early because so many of us are learning it in hindsight, you know?

Emily: 20:01

Well and Julie, I want to add too that that the girls get a copy of Arielle's book, which looks at some of those concepts. Yup. Because she does such a great job of really framing out some of these big topics like resiliency and and self-love. We made sure that everybody gets a digital version of her book.

Julie: 20:19

And that book is called"A is for awkward" Right?

Emily: 20:21

It's"A is for awkward".

Julie: 20:22

Yeah. I love that! Y'all, this is such an amazing organization to support and I'm so thankful to be a part of it and to be able to chat with you ladies today. Moms, get your girls signed up. Boss ladies get involved by becoming a partner and then anyone and everyone can make an impact with a tax deductible donation to Camp Girl Boss. So again, head over to CampGirlBoss.com and we'll be sure to include all those show links or all those links in the show notes. Ladies, it was such a pleasure to spend some time with you today and on behalf of my community, thank you so much for your commitment to the next generation of girl bosses.

Emily: 21:01

Oh and thank you so much for your support, Julie.

Aryelle: 21:02

Yes, thank you so much.

Julie: 21:04

Of course. So I hope everyone that's listening feels inspired by today's message, and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye.

Emily: 21:11

Bye.

Aryelle: 21:11

Bye.

Speaker 3: 21:21

[inaudible].