The Day Camp Pod - From Go Camp Pro

RE-RELEASE: Open Houses and Camp Tours - Day Camp Pod #2

• Go Camp Pro • Episode 137

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Make your first impressions, your best impressions.

Welcome back to the Day Camp Pod!

Whether you’re joining us in our beginning season, or if you’re reading this in the vast nethers of the future, we’re so glad you’re here!

Open Houses are time and time again, one of the best ways to get the final “yes” from potential camp parents. If done well, parents will register their child, if done REALLY well, they will tell their friends, family and friend’s family that your camp is the place to be this summer.

However, the intentionality required to pull off a great camp open house should not be underestimated. Here to help you steer the ship toward the shores of success are our Day Camp Pod Pros, Andy, Ehren and Sam! Tune in to this episode to hear answers to:

  • What’s the goal of your Open House?
  • What guideposts do you use for your open houses? Camp Fairs? Price Breaks?
  • How can you make an Open House an event all in itself?
  • Who are you marketing your camp Open Houses to? How can you specifically recruit them?
  • What are you going to do to make your tour stand-out?
  • How do you train your staff to give the best tour ever?
  • How do you intentionally end your tour?
  • What is your client follow-up process like?

Get your pens, paper and Evernote documents out, because this one if FULL of ideas you can implement this season!

Do you have any Open House hacks? Let us know in the comment section!

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SPEAKER_03

This is the Daycamp Pod from Go Camp Pro, bringing you the best ideas, strategies, and discussions in the daycamp industry. You can find our show notes at daycamppodcast.com.

SPEAKER_04

Hello, Daycamp professionals, and welcome back to the Daycamp Pod. I'm Anthony Pritikin, the director of Liberty Lake in the Philadelphia suburbs of New Jersey.

SPEAKER_01

I'm Sam Thompson from Crystal Lake, Illinois Park District Camps.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm Aaron Glossteen from Camp Robin Hood, located just outside of Toronto in Canada.

SPEAKER_04

And together we're the triumvirate of experienced daycamp professionals who have joined forces to provide a forum for daycamp professionals to share ideas and best practices across North America and beyond. For today's episode, we will be discussing daycamp open houses and tours, a topic we can all relate to. We'll be sharing our thoughts in just a minute, but first.

SPEAKER_02

The Daycamp Podcast is brought to you by CRS, Commercial Recreation Specialist, your go-to resource for the latest programming and recreation solutions to ensure your campers thrive. For more info, visit CRS4rec.com. CRS the number 4 REC.com. CRS is serious about fun. AMSKI is a leading insurance and strategic partner for many of the finest camps in America. AMSKIE partners with camps to provide public relations, legal, medical, behavior support, and more. Experience the AMSire difference. Learn more at AMSkyre.com. Campminder has the most robust offerings of features out there. But more importantly, every feature works together to create a full, seamless system that helps camps run more efficiently. Visit them today at campminder.com.

SPEAKER_04

Okay, Daycamp Open Houses and Tours. Here, I just wanted to start out uh by giving my sort of marketing philosophy and how it relates to the open house and the tours. Um, I see everything that I do in regards to social media, in regards to advertising, in regards to all the feelers that I'm putting out there during the years, that is directed to get people to my website, to libertylake daycamp.com. And once they're there, the goal of my website is to get people to come visit. And I think that we have a unique opportunity as day camps because we're located in the neighborhoods of the people that we are soliciting. Whereas our poor friends in the resident camp business, you know, they're driving up and down, you know, flying out to different states, sitting in people's uh living rooms, and uh, you know, it's an interesting thing. Um, we can have people come to us. And even if it's not the best of times, meaning like the middle of the winter, you know, when it's not going to look anything like the summer, they can still get a good feel for uh your camp and for the people that run it. So once they're at my camp, then I can do that, I can show who I am, right? And then it's incumbent upon me to get them to, you know, as I use the quote all the time from Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, to sign on the line that is dotted. Right. So the first question I was gonna throw out there to the to the team here is what is your goal at your open house, besides the kind of things I mentioned. What what's your goal in getting people out there and and the experience they're gonna spend with you for that that half hour, that hour and a half, or whatever? Anyone want to take that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, so I think for for us, I the main goal is to uh just to you know get people on our site um and experience you know what we uh what we're promoting, which is uh an environment that is you know that is um an outdoor setting, a little bit different than some of the you know other camps, but essentially, you know, we we want people to see uh our facilities and our people and just to get to know what makes us special. That's that's our our main goal, I think.

SPEAKER_01

For um for us, it's developed differently over the years. We um I had I hadn't thought about doing tours, but two of my facilities uh are available where the rest aren't. Um so I'm gonna start trying that. But our open houses originally were just going through the Penn Handbook meeting that's been happening the week before camp started. Um so they were already signed up three years ago. We turned into doing it early in May, trying to get new people and doing it at the park site and doing activities all day long. Um but for us we kept finding out that it was only our people who are already signed up that were coming. So I'm changing it this year, and I can tell you more about that later.

SPEAKER_04

That's awesome. You know, I mean Sam has a unique uh camp situation compared to Erin and my own, in that she runs a municipal program, a program run by her township and all. Um, and of course, they use uh the facilities for all different things. But I think that there's more camps in the country and maybe more listeners that are listening to this that are that are in your situation than ours. So hopefully they'll they'll learn from some of the things that Aaron and I are doing. Um, I think it's also an opportunity having an open house is an open opportunity for parents to see that like you're real serious about what you do, that you're like like a camp professional. I I think that most people see camps as like this, you know, little daycare thing or whatever. They don't really, unless they went to camp themselves, they don't have a good mental model of what this thing is. And when they come and see these year-round youth development professionals who are super passionate about what they do and organized in the experience that they get, I think they can find that they're they're like, wow, I didn't realize this was such a thing, you know? And uh in the world of private camping, then then hopefully they'll say, now I see why it costs so much. So anyway, um, so Sam, you mentioned that uh and and I and a lot of day camps are like you that they don't generally do their open houses until the spring when the weather's good and people are like, oh my god, what am I doing with my kids this summer kind of thing, right? And yet on the other extreme, there are camps that have already had open houses, you know, in the fall for next summer, right? Um, I I could tell you what I've done, um, my model that I'm uh content with at this point is that we start in January, towards the end of January. Um, I try to so I try to position my open houses on day uh the week after a big campfair, because we go to about you know three or four camp fairs. So if I'm doing a big campfair, I want to be able to give them a card and say, hey, next weekend we're having an open house at our place. And that seems to work very well. And we do them basically about every three weeks up until the spring, right? I think our last one is just you know a week or two before uh staff orientation starts. Uh and then of course I run a renaissance fair on my site, which my friends tell me is the biggest camp open house of all time, uh, because you know we get a lot of people out for that too. So, Aaron, when do you do your uh open houses? When do you schedule them?

SPEAKER_00

So for for us, we've we we have basically uh three set times when we do it. So our first uh open house was just a couple weeks ago. We do uh an October uh open house that uh coincides with um uh coincides with our one of our registration sort of uh registration points where we have an October um you know the savings that we offer and uh it's a it's an opportunity to give uh you know just give people uh uh a fun experience in the fall for their families. A lot of you know people are going pumpkin picking and apple picking in the area where we are. So uh we sort of capitalize on that uh on that opportunity and try to get some uh you know early registrations in at that same uh same point. Um but we've we've really you know over the years we've done some soul searching just to try to figure out you know what that uh uh fall open house is all about, and we're still you know, we're still trying to uh uh I guess um you know pinpoint our our our our our messaging and our our approach to that because uh some in in the past we've done full tours and full uh structured uh um uh structured setup for that day. And then you know, other years we've just done uh you know come and jump on some bouncy uh inflatables and uh eat some uh you know eat some cotton candy and that kind of thing. So um it it's a it's a it's an interesting an interesting day for us, but our real sales, you know, sort of selling uh you know the experience um open houses are uh in June. So we do one at the beginning of June and one uh just before camp starts where we have an opportunity to show camp as it will, you know, as close to as it will look when the kids arrive as possible. And uh those are those are the those are usually for the really serious, uh almost committed, are almost already signed on the dotted line, if not already signed on the dotted line that kind of experiences. Um so I think we have we still have an opportunity to uh to do some more. Um, I I like the idea of what you're saying, Andy, about just you know doing uh frequent open houses throughout the throughout the year. I think there's definitely some merit in being able to bring people up there as much as possible, see, you know, really meet, you know, us, the people that, you know, are professionals doing this all year round and uh get to see um you know our our connection. I think I think there's a real statement made by you know somebody being available in January to take a to give a tour of the camp. Um, because you know, like you said, most people, um, you know, most camps that are not uh um you know not not you know doing this all year round. They have seasonal directors or whatever, they they don't even have the people necessarily to give um tours throughout the year. So I think that that messaging alone, sorry, that uh ability alone sends a strong message.

SPEAKER_01

I think with us too, our competition in our area, the one thing that sets us apart is that we have a lake. So when we start talking about tours, I thought I should really be showing them this unique part of our camp that nobody else has. So I'm definitely going to start doing that in the winter so they can get an idea.

SPEAKER_04

So so Aaron, you don't have any tours at Camp Robinhood from January until the June thing historically.

SPEAKER_00

So it's it's um it's been I know you're in the land of the ice and snow up there. Well, I usually come out of my igloo for a few hours every day, but no, we um we we have the ability to to go to our site. It's uh it does get a lot more snow than we get in the city. So um trekking around there is is challenging. The uh the guy, we have a site manager that uh you know that that that's there all year round and he's he you know only plows a small area of uh of snow in the winter. So it's a bit of a challenge when it comes to snow and walking around. But um at the end of the day, um if if we get a request, somebody who's really unsure about uh sending their uh child to our camp unless they uh can visualize what the site looks like, then we will do you know a one-on-one guided tour. But we haven't, you know, we haven't put um an emphasis into um promoting that. We we we've actually steered away from that as much as possible. And I think that uh I think that you know your approach, uh, like I said, I I think is is probably uh you know probably makes sense and something that we should explore, and even if it's getting some snowshoes or something, so that uh you know the the parents and kids can come and just you know walk around there more easily.

SPEAKER_04

I think that could be kind of well you certainly have a lot of tennis rackets, right? They could use those instead of snowshoes.

SPEAKER_00

So many, so many tennis rackets.

SPEAKER_04

So um we we touched on some interesting things I want to delve into a a little further here. Um, the um, first of all, the fact that Aaron's camp is in Toronto that that does create issues. People don't realize. Um, when I helped start the camp in Boston, Everwood, um, I gave them the same sort of uh outline of how to do their open houses and stuff. And I didn't realize that basically, like from December through March, there's like six feet of snow everywhere. It's like it's crazy. And and and the whole concept of like having your maintenance people like keep that thing safe and presentable, that is a big deal, no doubt about it. Um, it in my case, I don't have six feet of snow, but even if it's six inches of snow, it does present you know issues with ice and things like that. And it takes a lot of work for my maintenance crew and commitment to do that. Um, Aaron mentioned uh something about um his tour, his his fall event, which I just did one also. We just did a Halloween one too. And his doing these open houses, these these uh fall events, spring events, whatever you are, based on the lines in the sand that you have created for your enrollment um tuition bumps, right? So um I was brought up in day camping as a professional on Long Island, okay, which is like the epicenter of insane competition and like unbelievable facilities and super smart people. Um, so my mentor at the time was Ben Applebaum, and what he used to do, he we literally had about six price breaks. We had the super early, the early, the winter, the late winter, the early spring. And I thought he was nuts. But what he did was put these cheap little psychological trick lines in the sand so that parents, you know, could so when you're giving a tour, you could say, hey, you know, by the way, the price goes up on Monday, you know, and even if it's 50 bucks, there's something about that that people will just be like, oh, the price goes up, you know. Oh, we don't want the price to go up. Well, will you give us the same price if we sign up on Tuesday kind of thing? Well, let me think about it, you know. So um those lines in the sand are super important. And um, and I think it's uh you're selling yourself short if you just have one price. This is our price for the year. That if you move it around a little bit, um, it it really helps push people over the fence. Uh, another thing I want to say was the events um that he's talking about. Um, I agree. It's great getting people to come to your camp for events. And when you have an event, it's not just new people, but it's also returning people. And it's your returning people who are already drinking the Kool-Aid and who are already super psyched about camp. Um, and I sort of stole the idea from my man Dane Pickles up at Everwood of having each open house be an event in itself. So, for instance, our first open house that's set is at the end of January. It's on the weekend, the weekend between the um the uh the NFL and AFC uh football championships and the Super Bowl, so it's a free weekend, and we bill it as a tailgate, a Super Bowl tailgate party. So people come out to our site, we do a barbecue, so they can get hot dogs and hamburgers, right? We're tossing a football around. If if it's not too bad with the weather, we'll have the rock climbing wall and maybe some other some, you know, an art kind of project. And then we're giving tours. So when these inquiries are coming in, right? So these leads are walking in and they're seeing this situation, they're also seeing, you know, a couple of dozen or maybe more families who are returning families who love the place, who are hugging the directors and oh, I'm so happy to be back here and all kind of thing. And it really creates an amazing positive vibe for the place. And also it makes it there just more people there. So it's not this like weird, stagnant, oh, we're having an open house on a Saturday, and um, you know, 12 people show up and it feels like a ghost town. Like if you have this amount of people there to start with, you have a few dozen people there to start with, it feels like more like a party.

SPEAKER_02

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SPEAKER_00

I don't know if I don't know if you guys have uh either of you have tried this before, but you know, we've we we tried uh something that they some of the a lot of the sleepover camps uh in this area do, which is running um you know events in the city at different locations, whether it's a you know a video launch at a movie theater or um you know or uh some sort of a fun you know fun fair that you plan inside of a school building or a gym or something you know along those lines. We've done we've we've done different things like that over the years and uh you know it's nice it's nice to bring the community together. Um, but we don't know necessarily if it you know we don't do it annually because we don't know necessarily if it's been you know a success from a you know from a the standpoint of bringing in new uh you know new families and you know or or or even you know from a PR standpoint, just keeping families connected, if they'd rather you know come to our site and do stuff at the site to make the connection of exactly what the event's about. Um you know, I think that we've sort of uh settled on the fact that if it's not at the site that people aren't really connecting um the event to you know camp to our camp. Uh so um you know I don't know if I don't know if the you know if you guys have uh toyed with those ideas, um, but uh you know, some a lot of a lot of the sleepover camps are doing that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. We have done those things in the past. They they cost a lot of money. Um, they often don't bring out the big crowds. Um, but yeah, they're worth trying, certainly. We do a movie premiere, we do our video yearbook as a movie premiere. Um, and I've been at other camps that have done circuses and all kinds of cool stuff. Um, but it doesn't bring the kind of crowds you would think. I tend to agree with you, Aaron, that if it's not at your site, you know, it it's it's tough. Um, another thing about my January open house, by the way, is that it has been the last three years our biggest open house. Bigger than anything in the spring. It brings out the type A moms who have been researching camps for a year, right? They all come. It's it's and and they sign up, right? They're ready to go. Like this is the for them, the open house is like the rubber stamp. I just want to make sure that what I'm seeing and hearing is all true. You know, that their four-color printing and their website is actually real, legit, right? So I I think that's sort of cool. Um, some of the camps in the uh New York tri-state area, like I said, with the super competition, Long Island, Westchester, Rockland, North Jersey, they actually their day camps will choose a weekend day. So let's say a Saturday or a Sunday, and be open every single Saturday or Sunday throughout the year. So it's just an open thing. They're they're just telling people, hey, we're here every Saturday, you know, from 10 to 2 or something like that, just to make it easy for people. You know, one of the uh great expressions that I heard at a uh workshop, at a tri-state workshop one time about marketing, is you need to roll out the red carpet for people. You need to make it easy for them to sign up as opposed to be, as opposed to putting in roadblocks, you know, unintentional roadblocks all over the place. And if they want to see your camp, you know, I appreciate that Aaron said, like if I if I was a needy parent and I called and said, Oh, I really want to see the place, he would, he would do it. He would let me see the place. But there's a lot of parents that are more introverted, more quiet, and they're looking on your website. And if they don't see an open house date, or if they don't see when they can come, they're not gonna necessarily ask. Because I put it on my stuff all the time, too, that we give tours anytime, seven days a week by appointment. Okay, how many of them do I get a dozen, maybe two dozen during the course of a year, right? But putting those actual dates in drives people to those dates and you drive your social media to those dates, you drive your marketing to those dates. All my ads have when that next date is on it, all my Facebook ads, all that kind of stuff. I use the metaphor to my colleagues all the time. I say, think about your college friends when you talk to your college friends and you say, We should get together, right? Yeah, we should get together. But if you don't say on November 29th, we're getting together at Joe's house, then it ain't gonna happen, right? Saying, yeah, we should get together, call me, we'll get together. It never works out. So so I apply that logic to my camp.

SPEAKER_01

For me, um, some of my reasons for doing my open house, uh, number one, the parents want to want to know more information about your policies and all that. And they don't want to see me do a slide presentation anymore that's gone by. So this year I'm gonna record it and have the link on my website. So if they if they don't want to read the parent handbook on the website, they can go to the video and I'll hit the highlights. Um the second reason they would So this is where we're going to do an outside of this where we also basically go to their rival consultation, get their teachers and meet their counters, and then we're going to have everyone get an account and do dismissal. And now we had to get police to do traffic control for dismissal. And part of it was parents not cooperating with the policies that we had. So I think if we run them through arrival and dismissal that week before camp and the kids and the parents get to meet the staff and they get that so important t-shirt, we're going to try it that way this year.

SPEAKER_04

I gotcha. So you're talking more about like this is for the people who are enrolled. An open house for people who are enrolled, right? So we do that, we do a meet and greet night. We do a meet the counselor's night. All right. And we go, we don't go as far as you do with that kind of thing. And I also do a new parent orientation where I just talk their ears off for two hours. What I'm talking more about is the open houses for getting people to come, like like for for new people. One thing I I recommend to all of you out there in uh podcast land, um, if you get a chance to go to a lifetime fitness, okay, they're popping up all over the place. It's a high-end workout place, right? High, high end, okay. Um, it's it it's it go there and act like you're interested in potentially signing up to be a member of Lifetime and go through their tour and their thing. It's it's really amazing and it's really high tech. And um, while Sam's was was right, I don't I don't think people want to sit there and look look at slideshows so much. These guys have this interactive giant screen that they touch and it place videos at each part, and it is really mind-boggling and very, very much like millennial, you know, brain process kind of thing. Um and super professional, and shows that you know the money that you're gonna spend because it ain't cheap, is going towards something really, really good, right? Okay, so in regards to all right, we're so we're having an open house at your place, okay? Um, and there's gonna be new people coming, okay. So, you know, in how to prep your place and and and and make it look inviting to these people. Um, and I'm not talking like just uh an individual tour or something like that. I'm talking like we're having a big open house on this state kind of thing. Um, it takes a lot of forethought to make it super inviting. Um you know, between we get those like uh the air dancers, the giant, you know, things that wave their arms, you know, on the street. Um we put out pictures um of what camp looks like in the summer in various areas. So I have one over at the lake because you gotta imagine if you come in and see my lake in January and it looks like an Alaskan tundra, right? Um but I have but then I put a big frame thing that shows kids boating and fishing and swimming and stuff like that with big smiles, it just paints, it helps paint the picture, right, for these things. I think you know, especially in this day and age, we're in the Instagram age, right? Pictures just mean so much. Um, also, I think a very important thing is having a sign-in sheet. And I recommend this for every single camp. Have a clipboard with a sign-in sheet at the door of your office 24-7, so that when somebody comes in, because you're gonna get walk-ins occasionally asking about it, can you just fill out the sign-in sheet really quick so we have your information, right? Because there's nothing more frustrating than spending time with people, right? Whether it's on the phone or if they come and drop in, or you give them a tour, whatever, and they leave and you have nothing and no way to follow up with them, right? So that's just a very simple thing that Mark Maggie from Black Bear Lake showed me uh 15, 18 years ago that that stuck with me, that I I try to be militant with my people about.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the uh the sign-in sheet, and uh, you know, we found even that um you know, if you can incorporate like uh an iPad into that uh sign-in process to ensure that your you know the the the the legibility of somebody's uh name or email address is uh is there. I think for that for us it's been a successful uh good way of good way of investing a little bit of money into having that iPad as a sign-in. Uh and there's some good services online that allow you to to uh compile uh names and uh add them to you.

SPEAKER_04

You got one, Eric?

SPEAKER_00

Um yes, I can't remember it, but I'll I'll uh I'll I'll add it uh to the notes since so that you guys can see it's a great service uh that we've been using. And we use it actually at some of the campfairs also um with the same iPad, just uh smart allowing people to sign in because we've we've actually lost you know uh uh so many names with uh you know one or two letters that we can't read in the uh in the email address.

SPEAKER_04

And we're really big in the Indian community, and some of those people have very long names, and you really hate having to spell them wrong because they had bad handwriting when they signed in.

SPEAKER_00

For sure. Yeah, so it's a great thing. So yeah, I'll get that service in a in a few minutes. But um, you know, something that you know we've all we've had a we've had a fear of um, you know, when we have our open houses and the camp is the camp is not uh doesn't look like the you know like it should in the summer, whether we're doing construction or just because of snow or or you know wet facilities because of uh you know rain at that time of year. Uh we always have a fear that uh you know that that camp's not going to be presented in the way that we want it to look, and people will, you know, will be uh uh you know scared off because they they see a facility that doesn't look uh you know that doesn't look like it should. So I you know, Andy, I love that idea of uh of showing pictures. Um uh we also you know we have a lot of video content that we've created over the years that um you know that we tr we always steer people towards our our videos when they uh when they have a question about you know about something specific. So uh we've tried to each year you know make videos uh as concise as possible based on the questions that we're getting. So uh so so you know for us, well, we don't do a lot of tours in the winter, as I mentioned, um the videos have been a good stand-in for you know for for uh for tours as far as we're concerned. Uh but obviously um you know having as we have this discussion, you know, I I I agree with uh you know with with like I said before with Andy in terms of you know getting people on on tours is the is the best way to sell it. So the videos are have been something for us, uh, you know, uh a stand-in for us. But uh you know, we're gonna look at uh we're gonna have to look at some more tour touring opportunities as well.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So so so when we're touring people, we're touring a family, we're not just touring the parents, right? We know that, you know, in in the end, we've seen it enough that at the end of the tour or at the end of the day, mom is kneeling down to their little six-year-old and saying, So what do you think, honey? Right? So we're we're also we're we're smoothing the kids just as much as we're smoothing the parents. And I think it's very important that um you incorporate something, some interactive things on your tours, um uh to get the kids to have a good time too. So they're not just listening to this 50-year-old guy rattle on for an hour, right? So, like I said, rock wall. If we have a portable rock wall, we can move it wherever we want, right? Fishing, right? If the if the lake's not frozen. Gaga, we have a portable gaga court that we can move anywhere. Um, we do an Earth Day open house in April, and the kids come and plant trees, little baby trees throughout the camp, right? And then again, uh shout out to Dane at Everwood. They end their tour days, because remember their tour days like mine, they're sort of like reunions, also. They end their tour days at like 2:30 or 3 o'clock down on their beach of their lake with a campfire, and they do an interactive campfire singing songs and stuff, like you would do a real campfire, right? Which is super awesome. And and because of that, people come to these open house things at Everwood and they stay for a couple hours to to make it till the um to the campfire, so they're not just coming and going, right? Um, art and also not not every kid's athletic, not every kid wants to sing. So some kind of art project or some kind of uh STEM kind of thing is always a good thing too for the kids.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

When we were doing our Saturday ones, we would have the portable climbing wall and uh a suspension bridge and gaga and an art project and food. Um we do important, yeah, some camp food and um so what do you mean?

SPEAKER_04

Wait, wait, what kind of what do you mean camp food?

SPEAKER_01

Well, our cookout, you know, hot dogs and bug juice and you know, the good stuff. That's some either uh puppy chow or something like that.

SPEAKER_00

For for us, the food actually has uh like providing that barbecue has been a great way to uh ensure that people are signing in, checking in because we give out a ticket for uh for barbecue. So smart, you know, in order to tip. Oh, I clapped. Good tip. Um yeah, so that's that's been a great way to to to uh you know just get those sign-in names on the on our list.

SPEAKER_04

That's awesome. Um yeah, we do uh we you know we're we try to be healthy, so we do a lot of fruit and things like that and healthy things. Um and uh and because we're so tech free, that's why we sort of hesitate with the iPads and things like that. But I think we're gonna go that way. I think that's really smart. I'm I'm stealing that one, Aaron. So besides your year-round staff, do you bring in seasonal people to give tours on these days?

SPEAKER_00

For for us, for us, we definitely do. We have um we have what we have a group called our leadership team, uh, which many camps have. And uh those are people who uh they're they're seasonal stop, but we, you know, they're involved, they're they're invested in us, and uh we meet with them during the during the winter uh several times and uh you know get their input as as we plan for for the summer. Um and those people um you know are committed to to uh you know being at all these open houses that we have and uh delivering the you know, we know that they're the people that are going to deliver the message the way, you know, with the way we want and deliver the uh provide the you know provide the great uh you know the great uh feeling that uh you know that we want camp to be um the way we want camp to be presented. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

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SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think I think something that I something that I picked up at uh Tri-State a few years ago uh at the conference was uh was that idea of you know really, really finishing the tour strong and uh you know, whether it's you're one of your most senior people that are giving the tour to uh find you know find the the one of the directors um and and just have it have an opportunity for them to, even if it's three, four minutes, to just say hello and uh um you know and offer them a you know a drink or or uh you know a cookie or something. It's I think it's been a a really nice way to end the tours and to you know just to show a put a face uh you know to the um you know to uh you know a face uh to the to the operation that we run. And uh it's it's it's it's a great uh I think it's been a great technique that we that we've used.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. And parents need to know what the deal is. Like, how do I sign up? Like, how does the deposit work? Is it refundable? You know, because that's their big question is always like, when do I need to sign up? And meanwhile, you're like, God, six months ago, you know. So so putting, you know, explaining the the whole process. So what we do at our camp is uh we lead them around and bring them back into the office where I have an administrative director, my man, that's in charge of registrations, basically. And he talks in very sort of black and white, this is the next step, this is the process, kind of thing, so they can understand that and also just hear it from another voice. Um, and it that's worked out pretty well. And and we do give a tour discount. So if you come for the tour, then you get a discount. Um, and you know, we usually say, you know, by this day, you know, by Monday. We used to back, you know, when we started about 17 years ago, we used to have little laptops all over the place and they were signing up on the spot since the recession, not so much. We still get people signing up on the spot. We do have laptops, but not as many out. Most of these people want to go home and discuss it and do it at home. And especially since the camp registration form is, you know, a long form anyway. I don't, you know, it's hard for them to be finding their emergency numbers and things like that while they're with you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think I think uh, you know, one just to just to go uh just to uh sort of add on to what I was saying before, I just one one I've got the comment many times before that uh you know the idea of having um the idea of having all those questions answered um or having somebody who can um you know who you can say, okay, you know, I I thank you for taking the tour with me. Here's the you know owner of the camp, and he can answer those three questions that you uh you know that you asked me that I didn't know the answer to. And um I've heard the I've heard feedback from you know several parents who've said, I can't believe the owner in the middle of this, you know, in the middle of this crazy busy day, you know, had five minutes just to talk to you know to our family. And uh, you know, they I think that that touching that touch point is uh you know is is is critical to uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I mean Sam, to me, like if I came to a camp tour and didn't talk to the woman that's been there for 32 years, you know, I I would feel shortchanged. I mean, frankly, because I mean what a great selling point that you are, you know, the continuity, you know, that they've had at your camp with you.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And with us, the paperwork part that you were talking about, our registration by necessity is the park district registration, which is really really short. So all those other forms, all the emergency forms of medical and whatever, they can do later on online. So at least it's a quick turnaround and not so um they don't need their emergency numbers and everything ready when they register, which has helped a lot.

SPEAKER_04

Um so so I guess my point with the end of the tour, though, just to be really concrete about this, is that we hire a lot of really nice people and they give a real nice tour and they make the parents know that we're really nice. But then in the end, we're running a business and they need to sign on the line that is dotted. So there needs to be some concrete instruction to your tour givers about like we got to get these people to sign up, and this is how we do it, this is how we explain it, this is who we hand it off for. We can't miss that opportunity. And and we don't want to come off like used car salesman, you know, and be like, oh, sign up today, and blah, blah, blah. Like too much, but we gotta have a little bit of that. We really do. Um, another thing, get it being concrete, is that you're walking around with these people for 45 minutes, let's say, okay, or or whatever. You're gaining information about that, right? It's not so crazy for the people giving tours to be to take notes about this family. So if you can get those notes into your database about that family, man, that's gonna be a big help. If you found out that it's a divorce situation, right? And the kids living with their father in the summer in your neighborhood. Like, my goodness, that's a really good point for when mom calls, right? You know, so so all that kind of stuff really important. Um, I don't like taking notes while I'm talking, it seems weird to me. I I come back to my desk real quick and I write it down in between tours if I can. Or I'll look at the list, the sign-in list, and I'll and I'll write notes in that you know at five o'clock after the thing's over. Because that leads me to my last thing is follow-up. Because then you can't just wait around for these people to potentially sign up. You need to reach out to them. And I'm not saying you gotta call them in this day and age where nobody wants to get a phone call, but you could at least email these people in the least.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And go ahead, Brian. No, no, go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I was just gonna say, um, you know, we have rain outline, which is um text messaging. And today I send out a message to all my campers from last year that it's 212 days till camp. And that's all I said. So it sent that out, got them thinking about it. And so that's kind of um following up throughout the year.

SPEAKER_00

That's good. Yeah, and I think I think also, you know, um if you if you take an if you're taking notes and uh you know and you're able to follow up uh you know unexpectedly, like you know, you have a you have a kid you're giving a tour and the parent uh has a lot of questions about uh or or mention or even just mentions casually, whatever it is that you know that the kid has a an allergy, and you know, there's always been concerns about the allergy. Like imagine if the camp nurse can uh you know follow up and just say, you know, just so you know, this is what we do at camp. We have uh, you know, me and my team here throughout the summer, we would, you know, do a lot, you know, do a lot of uh um uh if uh information sharing with you before camp, you know, what um and and we'd have we have all these procedures in place to ensure that uh you know you know the the allergy will not be an issue for uh you know for your for your child. I think you know, doing those things, um, you know, for us doing those things has has has really uh you know paid off.

SPEAKER_04

Right. And um we had someone similar to that uh last year, Aaron. I gave a tour to a parent. The child was a seven-year-old girl, eight-year-old girl, something like that, competitive swimmer, like hardcore, like it's gonna be in the Olympics one day. And the parents' big concern was by coming to my by my camp, are they is she gonna be maintain her stamina? Is she gonna be able to swim as much as if she didn't come to my camp and went to the swim club and to swim team practice every day, right? And I put I immediately put her in touch with our our head of swim, and and he told her how we would work it out and how we would do all this kind of stuff, and it worked out great. She ended up being one of the greatest campers we ever had last summer. Um, but if I had missed that opportunity to follow up, I don't know. She probably would have been like, I don't know, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and we're and we're fortunate we have these all these great people who, you know, their seasonal staff, whether it be the nurse or the swim, you know, the swim directors, and they're they're you know, they're excited about the opportunity to talk camp during the you know during this uh winter months. So um, you know, reaching out to them is never a you know, never a burden for uh for those people.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. All right, so that was good. There's plenty more to talk about. We could talk about camp tours forever. Um uh moving on to our last part of our podcast. Okay, we have a day camp program idea. Of the week, all right? The DCP. All right. So we uh the three of us uh think about it during the week and we come up with an idea that we could share with you. You guys can apply to your camps, you know, pretty quickly, relatively quickly and easily. All right, so mine is we started an activity. We're an elective-based camp, so kids choose things for a week at a time at our camp generally, besides special events and swim and and and there's other things. But the older you get at our camp, the more electives you get. Uh, and they're week long. And one of the electives we start with six-year-olds is learn to ride. And it's a bike riding elective where kids learn how to ride a bike. And I gotta tell you that since we started this thing about seven, eight years ago, that we have taught hundreds of kids how to ride a bike. Now, is that a sad statement about society? Maybe, but it's the real deal, right? Parents are busy, okay? They come home six, seven o'clock at night, they are overbooked, okay. Um, they live in neighborhoods that may not be conducive to bike riding, like Aaron gets a lot of kids from Toronto, right? Um, and we get kids from Philadelphia. So providing an environment where kids can learn the basics, right? And get started. And on Monday, be totally scared and never been on a bike before, and by Friday be riding around in circles in our parking lot, it's unbelievably magical. And it's it's really the essence of camp in many ways because it's challenging them, it's pushing their limits, it's getting them to achieve things they never thought that they can do. It's giving them, I mean, confidence by the mountainful, right? And you know, one of these episodes, uh, we're gonna talk about inclusion and special needs kids because I know Sam does a lot of that at her camp too. And to see a kid that's on the autistic spectrum, like even kids that are not even mild, like even like like legit on the spectrum, right? Be able to do it. I mean, it just it makes their entire summer and it's magical. The the one tough part about it is the staffing of it, of course. You have to find some serious soldiers to put out there on that field. Um, my staff affectionately calls learn to ride, learn to run. Um and we we do start it off on the grass. So they they start off on on like really uh shortcut grass because easier to fall on. And we give them knee pads and helmets and elbow pads and all that kind of stuff. Um, but when they get going and they're at that first intermediary level where they're like they're teetering, but they're riding, like someone needs to jog with them. It's important. So that's mine.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing. I you know, it's such an important part of their childhood. I hadn't thought about the fact that they're not getting it elsewhere anymore.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's really sad.

SPEAKER_00

That's uh I love I love that uh I love that idea. That's fantastic. We really we we used to have a biking specialty, and you know, we were we were struggling with how to keep it alive because the kids were you know traditionally coming with the basic skills already, and then we were doing mountain biking through the you know through the wilderness areas and uh Yeah, we have that too. Yeah, and we couldn't, you know, we we we ended up uh discontinuing that specialty because of you know the struggle of you know of of kids not knowing how to ride and not us not having the resources to uh you know to teach them. But if that was the primary focus of the uh elective, I think it's a fantastic way to you know do all this, you know, do all those things that you're saying, building confidence, etc. Yeah. Um so my so my um program idea, uh I I'm gonna follow in your footsteps, Andy, of steel admitting that I stole this uh from somebody. I think this was uh Chris Thurber potentially from uh one of the conferences I attended. And uh we do this with the staff uh every year um as a as a great team builder. Uh sing I call it Senior Hard, I don't remember the original name, but uh we put the staff into uh into relatively large groups, maybe you know 20, 30 staff in a in a group and uh put them in separate areas of the big field. And uh we just list um words. We just you know name off words and uh the staff have to come up with uh with a song that uh that has that word incorporated into it. So um they get get 30 seconds to come up with as many different options of of songs with that word in it as possible. Um and then we go to each group and give them a give them a 10-second opportunity to sing the song that uh you know that they came up with. And so uh going um, you know, the reason they have to have multiple options available is because that song can only be uh used once. So if one group takes their idea, the next group has to have something else on the back burner to come up with. And so uh it's just you know keeping in keeping in in line with the importance of song at camp. Um it's a great way for us to introduce uh introduce music into uh into the staff uh you know uh uh consciousness during pre-camp and uh it's a really fun, you know, fun activity. And uh everyone ends up, you know, we usually end up allotting uh you know half an hour for this, and we end up going 45 minutes or an hour sometimes because it's uh you know so much fun for everybody.

SPEAKER_04

So that's yeah it that we've done it too. It's a slam dunk for staff orientation. Absolutely. Uh speaking of slam dunks, shout out to your Toronto Raptors. They're doing great.

SPEAKER_00

They are.

SPEAKER_04

All right, Sam, you're up.

SPEAKER_01

All right. So um we always look for a service project for older campers um to do every year. And there's things like the um Habitat for Humanity has one called a brush with kindness, where they can go paint fences for older people or that kind of stuff so that they're not in danger. Um, but usually those are only on the weekend. So um this year, uh live like room approaches, it's uh an organization that makes blankets for dogs with cancer. And so they provided the material. Um and basically the kids take two sheets of material and you put four inches and four inches up along each border. So it takes a while to get all the way around the borders, and then you take both blankets and you tie a knob on each of the so you end up with this beautiful blanket, and um, then the campers made cards for the dog, for the family of the dog, um just saying hope you feel better, or you know, um, they were really cute. Some of the stuff they came up with. They drew pictures. Um I included a video on our notes that shows the project so you get a better idea than my description of how you make the blankets, but it was a project that took a whole week, um, kept them really interested. They could do it outside on the grass, they could do it inside, and then they made the cards and um the families, some of them responded and were very happy that they'd done it.

SPEAKER_04

So all right, that's great. That's super awesome. Um, you know, we have an awesome team program of entering ninth and tenth graders. We're always looking for neat service projects for them to do. Um, you know, part of part of their curriculum is service uh and and part of our mantra to them, you know, it's a leadership program, and to lead is to serve, right? It really is. And the older we get, the more we understand that. And if we can instill that into our teens, then that's really great. All right, thank you very much. That's been it. We want to thank our executive producer, Travis Allison, for helping get this show out to you. Check out our show notes and this and other episodes at daycamppodcast.com. Uh, and if you don't want to miss an episode of the Daycamp Pod, you should subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever else you get your favorite podcasts. And iTunes reviews are super important. We would love it if you click the ratings and reviews button to show your Daycamp brethren some digital love. So thanks again to Travis. Check out his other podcast at GoCamp Pro at Camphacker.tv. And we will see you all real soon. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03

The Daycamp pod is brought to you by Beth and Travis Allison, summer camp leadership training and marketing consultants. Thanks for listening, friends.