Using Stats To Master Counseling - First Class Counselors #81

Find full show notes and links at: https://gocamp.pro/first-class-counselors-pod/using-stats-to-master-counseling

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How You Can Become A Data-Driven Leader

This episode dives into the numbers behind great counseling, from safety ratios to camper retention. By treating camp as a measurable social business, staff can identify their strengths, improve their safety efficiency, and track their personal growth throughout the summer. They discuss how to turn qualitative experiences into quantitative success to help every staff member become a first class counselor.

Key Takeaways:

• The Behavioral Closing Rate: Professionalism is measured by how effectively a counselor can resolve behavioral issues and communicate them through proper reporting channels.
• Conversions and Friendships: Success can be measured through camper return rates and the intentional fostering of friendships that last beyond the summer.
• Personal Special Powers: Every first class counselor has a unique magic factor, whether it is a specific skill like ceramics or a jack of all trades ability to facilitate any program on the fly.

E.G.E.L – Ever Growing, Ever Learning:

Oliver: Sorting Hat-Type Ceremony

Matt: G.M.I.C (Great Moments In Camping!) 

Sponsors:

Ultracamp
Camp is about changing lives, not chasing paperwork. Ultracamp builds tools that make camp smoother for today's camp counselor and tomorrow's camp leader. Learn more at https://ultracampmanagement.com/firstclass

Host Links:

• Matt Wilfrid, Executive Producer of Podcasting at Go Camp Pro
• Oliver Gregan, Executive Director at YMCA Camp Winona

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We go for bruises and not scars. Yeah, kids, kids get scraped when they're running through the woods at full speed because they're doing that and they can't do that in their like suburban area that they're from.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

You have a magic ability. You have something special about you. What is it? That leads us kind of into that reflection of yourself. How are you doing, right? What are the stats of your self-care?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

This is First Class Counselors, another innovative podcast brought to you by Camp Hacker. First Class Counselors is dedicated to young and up-and-coming camp efforts. By equipping and empowering our on-the-ground staff, camp directors can rest easy knowing that our campers are having the true life-changing experience that parents expect. Find our show notes and our blog for camp leaders and professionals at camphacker.tv.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Camp is about changing lives, not chasing paperwork. Ultracamp builds tools that make camp smoother. For today's camp counselor and tomorrow's camp leader, learn more at ultracampmanagement.com/slash first class counselor.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Welcome to First Class Counselors, where we give camp counselors insider tips and advice on how to make a camper summer the best it can be.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

And whether you are brand new to the camp world or you have been tracking your stats for a while as a camp staff member, we know that self-improvement and growth mindset is built into the DNA of every great staff member, or as we say here, every great first-class counselor.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

My name is Oliver Griegan. I'm the director of camping services for the YMCA Camp Westwood, which is with the Potucket YMCA in Commentary, Rhode Island. We are rebuilding Day Camp that plans to introduce overnight camp in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

My name is Matt Wilfrid. My pronouns are he, him, and I'm the executive producer of podcasting and a consultant with Go Camp Pro.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Yeah. So as a self-proclaimed nerd, and to be honest, we host a podcast, Matt. I think like it's pretty obvious we're camp nerds. Yep. Um, we love to look at the camp numbers. Like as a camp director, there's a lot of things that you'll track. You follow budgets, you want to know what your returning campers are, how many new campers you are, what are the cost benefits of adding a new program. These are all numbers that as a camp director you track all of the time. But camp is a social business, right? It's hard to measure how well maybe as a counselor you're doing. What are the things that a counselor can track? Much like, say, an athlete, you know, from the football side of me, right? We track how many tackles someone makes, how many receptions, how many touchdowns they score. So all of those are things that we track. You know, Matt, I know is a big baseball fan, so he might be looking at swing percentages, right? There was a great movie called Moneyball, where like they showed what statistics did for sports. And the question for us comes into well, how do we track those things for counselors? What are the numbers behind what makes a good counselor or say a first-class counselor? So that's what we want to get into today. So at the end of this, maybe you can make yourself into a baseball card and we'll see how it goes. But Matt, what do you think about trying to put some numbers behind the skill of counseling?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

I like it. I think it's super fun. And, you know, at the end of the day, as a camp counselor, you don't one of the one of the things people think like the job of a camp director is glamorous, and you're right, Oliver. A lot of the time it's like looking at a spreadsheet and trying to make data-based decisions. And I think, you know, are are we expecting you to walk around with like a spreadsheet and trying to like track? We were joking before we started recording, like, are we tracking the number of sneezes? And does that make you a good counselor because you've staved away, you know, communicable disease? I I don't know. You know, we could make that argument. But on on this podcast episode, I think we're gonna recognize a, we say this a lot, that there's so much you can't control as a a camp counselor. Like, you can't control the weather, you can't, like, you're not there for every interaction between the campers. You know, you can't control certain aspects, but we do want to give you like tangible things that you might want to think about over time. And a lot of this will come from like self-reflection and and looking back on situations that have happened. And, you know, we're not asking you to to track every single little detail, but there's things that you should be able to point to. So on this episode, we're gonna talk about how can you measure safety, how can you measure things regarding camp camper behavior, what things can you measure in terms of like our kids coming back to camp and and what can we actually point to and control in in that scenario. Oliver has a great little segment about what is if you were like a magic card, what would your magic power be? So we'll talk about that and relating to camp magic, and then we'll talk about some of the self-care stats that you can track as the summer goes on. So it's an action-packed episode. Oliver, I think we're ready to dig in.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Yeah, I think it's really cool. We're gonna start with safety. And I think one of the things as we go through all these sections that's important to understand is like in science, we have causation, which we know is that there's a direct cause, and then we have correlation. And a lot of the time when we're looking at these statistics, you know, we're hoping to get enough correlation in all of this that it has maybe some proof to you with how you're going about doing stuff. So for for those science geeks like me, try to think about like, hey, maybe we don't always find a causation, but we might find a correlation behind how we're counseling and what that leads to, right? So sorry, you know, the science in me just has to make sure we get all of our you know preliminary stuff in there. So let's talk about safety as a counselor and how can you measure it? So I think there's a lot of things that you could measure, right? You know, how do you maybe score your safety spiel? Are you efficient in it? Well, how much well, how long does it take you to introduce an activity, right? Because if you can do that quickly, concise, quick, concise, hit all of your key points, right? That's a really strong way to show your efficiency because now your kids are getting more activity time, right? So if I can do a spiel, right, about like how to put on a harness and I can do it in under a minute, but I still cover all of the details, I still perform physical examples, I still have a couple good one-liners in there that gets a giggle, right? But I can get people into those harnesses a little faster while covering my information. That's a really good way to maybe like score yourself. I think on that note, let's go into that scoring of maybe like health safety, right? So we talk about the like making sure we're maintaining the camper's ability to go to the bathroom, that they're staying hydrated, that we're checking the heat index. So, how are you scoring yourself maybe on those things, right? So, for example, if you know that the temperature for this week is above 90, Matt can give Celsius out there for everybody else. But if if the temp's going to be above 90, what's your hydration ratio for the day, right? How many water stops do we make per day based off of this temperature, right? So now as a counselor, you might share that to a future counselor. Be like, yeah, when heat index is at this point in time, my average hydration is about five times per morning and five times per afternoon, or eight times per afternoon, because it gets a lot harder, hotter in the afternoon. Those are things that you can track. And now you're sharing and you're giving a numerical value to maybe a guideline for another counselor or for yourself as you move into the future, right? Same thing goes with something like maybe a bathroom break, right? We as directors all the time talk about, you know, you want to go to the bathroom during transitions, right? That's the key time to go. But when you guys go to bathrooms, bathroom breaks, are you tracking the stats on your campers for which ones are going to the bathrooms at which time, right? It seems like an odd thing to do, but all of a sudden you start to find out that camper Connor and your mind, as you're tracking the stats, Connor goes to the bathroom at least four to five times per day. And you having to allocate for that becomes part of you as a counselor, finding those statistics. So I think those are really cool things that you get to measure and you can relate them to health, right? So find those things throughout the day. Even if it's something as like, how many bread rolls do I know that my table is gonna eat tonight? And that's like a fun statistic, like we do naturally. Like we are like, oh, like I've got the I've got the 14-year-old boys. We're going through at least three baskets per night. And now to go to the next level of being a great counselor, right, is obviously some of those things are private, like you don't want to be bringing up like how many times Connor's going to the bathroom, but you could bring up the statistics with your cabin and they can track some of those fun things with you too, right? So that are that are health safety related. Like, how many times did we apply sunscreen today, right? Based off the UV index is so all great ways to do safety checks. But Matt, you have some really important things here about the physical safety and preventative measures that we can take to stop injury. So can you get into that?

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yeah, I I wanna I want to just pick up on a couple of your things, just plus one. I love I love the like getting campers involved in the things that are appropriate to do so. And I think I think there's some health and safety stuff there as well. So, first on getting campers on board, things like how many water bottles are we drinking today? And it's not like we're not competing to how many bread rolls because that's not good for food waste, and we're not like drinking so much water that we're making ourselves sick, but it's like, you know, can we hit this goal for the day? And everyone is contributing towards this goal of the number of water bottles and the number of times we apply sunscreen. And are we are we doing that? The the health and safety thing, like, are you are you taking a clipboard of how many times your campers are going pee? No, that's not what we're suggesting. But if if you know that like your example was Connor goes to the bathroom four to five times a day, and all of a sudden, like Connor is not going to the bathroom, that that is something that's actually helpful to have. And it's not like you're not going to the camp healthcare provider, you know, the the nurse, the doctor, and saying, Oh, Connor's not peeing, but it's something to have in the back of your mind. Is Connor hydrated enough? Because if they're not going to the bathroom with that same regularity, like again, you should not be like walking around with a clipboard and tracking the number of peas, but it's something to keep in the back of your mind because if Connor, you know, can't get out of bed in the morning or like is super tired or, you know, gets hurt, that's important for the healthcare provider at camp to understand that that might be a cause. Again, that's there's a lot of things to keep track of as a counselor, but there's a value to keeping track of some of these things. I also wanted to pick up you you said we're not we're talking about health and safety at this point, but I I really I want to encourage people to listen to our episode about facilitation, and we'll make sure that Ryan puts the link to that episode in the show notes. Thank you, Ryan. Because things like how many kids are engaged or how many times was someone like disengage, we talked so much about engagement in that episode, and like that is a quantifiable stat that you have, for the most part, you have control over as a facilitator. So I really love that. And not valuing speed over correctness when it comes to safety, like you said, Oliver, I think is is really important. So tracking the right stats. So you talked a lot about, you know, kind of like some of the preventative things that we can do with bathroom breaks and hydration. But again, we can't control everything. And injuries are gonna happen, you know? But when we look back after an injury happened or something or an incident happened, what what are things that we could track of like how did we do the best we could to front load preventable injuries, right? So, like, you know, are we encouraging, did we adequately encourage people not to run on wet surfaces if they're wearing crocs? Like I worked at a camp where there were decks everywhere and they were pretty new decks. So as soon as the rain hit, it got slippery, and then people wear crocs all the time. Like, you cannot run on a wet surface in crocs. You will slip, you will hurt yourself. So, did did I did I say that? Did I clearly explain the safety parameters in a game? Did I explain the boundaries? Did I say watch out for like we don't go near the lake in this game, or or you gotta watch out for the for the cliff, or we don't go on the ropes course? Just those types of things in reflection. How did I do in in terms of that? Because sometimes, again, you can't track everything all the time, but going back and looking at your checklists of did I did I do that appropriately? And you know, how did how did you respond to things like emotional safety issues in your cabin? So we'll we'll talk about camper behavior next, but like were you were you putting yourself in the best situation to be aware of conversations at the table that were happening or in rest time? Was I being was I correcting in the right way at the right speed? So we we did an episode, a whole episode dedicated to like when campers say things that are inappropriate. Like, did I respond to that in the right time at the right speed? Have I been doing those types of things? And just that, like in the education world, we call this self-reflective practice, right? And it's it's you know, you're tired as a camp counselor, you do a lot, the job is really hard. But what makes a first class counselor is someone who's like thinking in this retrospective way of like, was I doing all that I could, even when something like big and maybe unpreventable actually happened? How did how did I, you know, cover my bases there? And that's just really helpful from a director's perspective. They're gonna ask you those questions after an incident happened anyway. Like, what were you doing? Did you do the best you could in that? And it's just always great to be like, yeah, yeah, I thought I thought about these things. So that's why I like this kind of stat tracking conversation, even in the the sphere of safety stuff.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Yeah. And it's it's useful once you start getting those stats. So, like, even here at Westwood, we have something called an out report, and a lot of childcare facilities have it. But you know, at the end of the summer, right, like I can actually go back and see which ones of my counselors had the most out reports, right? I can break it down by you know which cabin groups had it. So I like can know, like, oh, counselor Steve has a like five percent injury um you know in his cabin group, where Stacy has a 22%, right? So I can start to see a correlation behind okay, maybe I can see that Stacy Stacy's not being the safest counselor because her campers just seem to be getting injured more likely. Now, obviously, there's a thousand things that come up and there's way more variables, right? Causation, correlation, right? And we'll talk well, and and I have more stats like this later in the podcast, but it's really cool when you're able to be able to see those things, and all of a sudden you say, Oh, there's some outliers that are starting to show up here. There's something, what's going on? Maybe I can go and talk to Stacy and see, like, hey, Stacy, I just noticed that you had a few more injuries, and then all of a sudden I look at one of her kids and I go, I see that one child has made up 15 of your injuries this summer.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

I know what's going on here, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yeah, I know. And I think as a good director, and I know that we have some camp directors that listen to this too. It's not, I I really love Oliver that you're you're saying don't just like take the number and make an assumption of what the story is that Stacy is an unsafe person. Because my brain also goes to like the complete opposite. Maybe, maybe Stacy is encouraging like healthy risk taking. And and there's in The Anxious Generation, they they quote a camp director that says that we go for bruises and not scars. So, so you there is that idea of like, yeah, kids, kids get scraped when they're running through the woods at full speed because they're doing that and they can't do that in their like suburban area that they're from. So, you know, I I think making sure if you're a counselor listening to this and your director's like, oh, your director's a nerd like Oliver, I'm just gonna make fun of you, Oliver, because you're my friend. But if they push up their glasses and they say, Well, I notice you have a 22% uh injury rate in your cabin, you know, it's okay to say to your to like have some of the reasoning why, not in a defensive way, but again, it's just having a conversation. So I think that's that's super smart.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah, I'm just changing names, but the percentages are real. The and I think there there is this benefit to it, right? Like you you also have to question your ability as a statistician when it comes to some of these things, right? Like our injury report is self-reporting from counselors, or it's an incident that causes them to have to go to like our camp nurse, right? So that's how those things are reported. So if Stacy is a really good reporter, and I believe it was counselor Steve was the other, is not a good reporter, or he, you know, tells kids, you know, yeah, just brush it off, right? Um, those things affect your statistics, right? So I understand the variables in there too. So this is just a science class now at this point. But so I I think going getting out of the safety conversation and and moving into our next one, there are a lot of things that you can still go in and try to track to make sure that you're providing a healthy, safe environment for your kids to come in. So and part of this is just Matt and I trying to think of creative ways you can do it. So, like there might be someone out there who'd be like, Oh, you should actually track this. Reach out to us, let us know. Because um, like the more cool stuff you can snap, the more we can freak an omic camp, right? Um so moving to our next one. We have handling camper behavior. How do we track this? Is it social, right? Like, how do you track your ability to handle a kid who's maybe misbehaving or making sure they're a a good camper is being seen? Uh Matt, tell me a little bit about like how would you measure this statistically?

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, I I I guess again, it's like what even though you can't control things, there's still things that you can like you can track. You know, if and I think from the positive and the negative side, like how how how many times did my campers like encourage each other? How many times did my campers like celebrate each other's achievements? How many times did they like burst into song? How many times did how many smiles were at the lunch table? Right? And the opposite. How many times was my were campers like, did they say mean things to each other? How many times did they did they interrupt each other? Like, and and again, we're not like don't get lost in the sauce and and think that that tracking is the only thing that matters, but it can be nice to celebrate those kind of wins throughout the week because we usually know that camp that behavior improves throughout the week if if you're setting a good environment, if the camp has good culture, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe, maybe there is like one positive and one negative thing you can track and and kind of keep that in your mind. I think keeping it like simple for yourself is gonna help you stay present in the moment rather than just being a data tracker. And then I go back to the kind of like looking at your own self-reflective practice, like when camper behavior happened, how many times did I follow the plan of like what what we do in terms of how to respond? We in in our behavior, we've done a bunch of behavior episodes this season. You know, did I do the first right thing when it came to camper behavior? So when they said something, did I follow the script that that we say when it's like, you know, we don't say that at camp or whatever your whatever your camp says is your script? Did I keep my cool? Did I remember that I am teaching kids with how I respond to behavior? So did I did I show up the best that I could in that in when when those things happened? Basically, that that idea of modeling the type of behavior you want your campers to do, you know, in the way that you interact even with other staff. You know, like that was always a thing when I was a director. It's like, you know, some some camps, there's tons of different camps out there, right? But some camps are like no hugs, like we don't give front hugs. Like that was a thing for a couple of years at a camp that I worked at. Like it was always giving side hugs just to encourage that like healthy, you know, giving hugs is okay, but we do it on the side to maintain appropriateness. But then all of that goes out the window when you have staff like run at each other and give each other full like jumping spider hugs, right? So, like that that's not modeling the type of behavior that you want the campers to use. And that's kind of a way that, again, campers are gonna be campers, they're gonna do their thing. You can't influence everything, but you can also influence yourself, how you respond and how you model for camper behavior. Hey, first class counselors, listeners, listen up. Ultracamp has a free resource just for you. That's right, the frontline staff, the counselor's survival checklist, packed with tips on communication, time management, camper care, all of those practical things that we talk about on the podcast all the time. Great counselors often become great directors, and the habits you build now will set you up for that path. Ultracamp is designed to make camp life easier. Things like keeping schedules and assignments organized, helping leaders communicate clearly with staff, making sure families stay informed so that you can focus on the campers. When camp runs smoothly, you can grow into the leader you were meant to be. Check it out at ultracampmanagement.com slash firstclass.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

There's so many different things that you could potentially track. And even those things that you're trying to track of like, did I keep my cool? Well, did I keep my cool? I'm not sure that right. And it's really tough to find the numbers in that. And I I love that you brought that kind of up because a lot of times when like a statistician is trying to measure something, they try to find like the statistic, right? The thing that is measurable, and then they use that as a metric, right? Like we don't just say that the economy is healthy, right? Like we track the GDP, right? There are a thousand other metrics to measure the health of like how a country is doing, whether it is their birth rate, whether it is their educational success, right. Like we have a thousand metrics, but generally speaking, you know, a lot of people kind of pick like the go-to's to trying to talk about a certain thing. So when you're trying to handle your camper behavior, right, what's the statistic that you want to try and track? And and for all of these, what's your metric for safety? What's your metric for camper behavior and in our future topics? So that's something too that Matt just made me think of for the statistician bros out there who are just like, How do I track all this stuff? It's like you don't need to track a thousand different numbers as you're walking around. You need to find your core ones that can help you out a lot. So for me, when it comes to can't handling behavior, we have camp behavior reports. So our counselors can report if uh if a camper was acting up or there was a situation that happened, if it was bullying or anything like that. So again, it gives us something to go to. And much like we were talking about for safety, it gives us percentages, right? Like, what are we handling? How are we handling it? All that kind of stuff. The really important thing is that communication score. Like, is it reported, right? Was it documented? We have something to go back to, and we're we're being able to compile these the statistics here. And I think that communication, right, is part of that statistic as you handling a behavior, right? It is enormous for you as a counselor to say, like, I did talk to the person who I needed to talk to. I did make sure the information was put up, put up that ladder. So that I think that's a great metric when you're trying to judge how did I handle camper behavior? I communicated it to the right people, right? So you can score that, like, oh, I handed in my report. I hand I put in my my behavior report. I made sure that was in. The other thing you can also track for you, like personally, is like, what's my closing rate on a on a behavior, right? Like, was I able to calm this camper down, or was like, did I need to pull in somebody to help? And again, like there are so many variables in this, like you need to get a very large data set to get a good correlation report. It can't be like one week of camp. But if you look at the summer as a whole, when it's all said and done, and you look at your behavior reports and you can go through and kind of say, okay, I handled this one, I handled this one, I had to call in Oliver for this one, but I handled this one, I handled this one. Okay, so my director call rate is seven percent, right? That's pretty gosh darn good for counselor. You're down below 10% on this. Like for my own studies, you're doing pretty good as counselor. Again, it goes to report, what are you handling, what kind of outliers, what kids are you serving, right? All those things are are are varied and you need to have comparisons with other counselors, so that gets a little bit more complicated as well and what they're dealing with. But again, like you're you have to grow this data set. So, like a lot of the times, I'm not gonna look at this for one week of a counselor, right? I'm looking for the nine, 10 weeks that we're having summer camp. And and I think that's a really powerful for thing for thing for you to have as a counselor.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

And I can I think Oliver, can I jump in just for a quick second here? I I think it's also, you know, we are in in we're pulling back into our like researcher brain or non, we're not, we're not researchers, but we, you know, when when when you're designing like statistical criteria too, it's making sure you're measuring the right thing as well, too. Because it's it's what was your closing rate? I love that idea of like, are you doing it? But but again, you can't just say what was my closing rate. I think the actual thing you're measuring is did I close because it's we want to ask for help. I think asking for help is actually the side we we've talked about this as a sign of a great first class counselor. Did I close the things that I should have closed on my own? Essentially, because you like the mark of a success is not having a high or low closing rate, it's having the closing rate appropriate to the type of behavior that you that you encounter, right? So, like a kid missing home in like the average missing home case, that is something that a counselor should be able to at least do the first like triaged first steps before having to call in the at the head counselor. But like an extreme bullying or like physical violence, you should be going and getting help for that kind of thing. So just making sure that as you're designing these stats, that you're just like kind of pre-considering some of those factors that might skew your data set. We're getting so in the weeds here, but I I think it's important to like be easy on yourself sometimes too before you look at a stat at face value.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

Yeah, it's really hard when you take a qualitative experience, right? Like, how do you rate your happiness level one to five, right? Right. And then you make it a quantitative where you now take that one to five rating and you go, Well, I you know, on average, my campers all said they were a three, right? Yeah. And it's really because you add stats to camp, all of a sudden, all of a sudden camp is cold, right? It's not this warm, welcoming environment. So, you know, if you've never seen these statistics before or you're not taking track of them, and it there is some qualitative experience that has to go into grading these a lot of the time. So all of a sudden you do have to ask, well, where do we get this number from? Where do we where does this 7% come from? Where does this 22% come from? Like what how are we and it's like, well, there's some qualitative observations that we had to make in order to determine that this was going to be the statistics. So like there's it, there, there's a variance there, right? So even like if we take poll numbers for an election, right? I am such a nerd.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

When we take polls for an election, there's so many things that we question. So, like we will you'll a poll will they'll typically call about a thousand people, right? That's a data, that's the data set. There are 320 million Americans, and they are going to make a data set on a thousand. So you already know what is this math that we're doing, right? And then from there, they have to calculate what's our variance, right? So if we have a 44% approval rating, there's still typically a 5% variance on either side. That means it can be as low as 39% or as high as 49%. There is a lot of leeway that we do with statistics that like has to be understood, but we're not looking for the direct answer. We're looking for the hey, typical ballpark. And that's why we talk about those data set, right? It can't be a week, it's got to be the whole summer. It has to have some form of consistency in how that poll is made, how that data is is pulled in. But at the end of the day, like that poll, when someone calls and says, Hey, what's your approval rating of you know, this person, like you know, your local senator, and how you ask that question can even affect how they answer, right? If I say, Hey, what do you think of your senator? It's a very open-ended question, or I could ask a leading question is like, Do you believe that your senator is doing his job? Right, might change that answer. So you got to think about all these things. This is just becoming a show on statistics. I love it. The nerd of me is like, yeah. But I really hope that you guys can find some of these things. So going into that real quick, just how you track the method of solution though, for each situation, right? So going back to where where we before we got into a tangent, but if you're tracking that closing rate, something else that you could potentially track is how did you close, right? How did you get this camper to feel better and want to return to camp? Like, and you can figure out kind of like how you handle things as a counselor. Like, did you do it because you held steadfast? You're like, no, guys, we have to leave. We're we're getting out of the cabin. This is uh let's get on the deck, let's get moving. You know, that's a check in that steadfast box. Did you negotiate? You say, hey guys, if we're able to get to such and such on a time, I promise I'm gonna get you guys all extra ice screws at lunch today, right? Did you do something preventative? Did you know that my cabin has a hard time leaving? So I said, Hey everybody, five-minute warning. Hey everyone, three-minute warning. I expect everyone on the porch in 60 seconds, right? You track those things of how you handle situations as a counselor. All of a sudden, you can get an idea of what type of counselor you might be. I think that's really great. And then Matt had brought up really quickly about like how we observe behaviors, and that's and how do we qualitatively do that into a quantitative way? There's a human being, his name is Michael Branwein. We all know him, he's the Lord and savior of camp camp stuff. His book is everywhere, his books are everywhere. But he has a book called Learning Leadership. Inside, he has these core values, and inside of those, he says, Hey, if this is the value of teamwork, these are things people say, these are things people do. If you need help to try and identify those things, go to his book, go to those. That is how I encourage my staff to evaluate each other because they are measurable things, right? You can see, you can hear those things are happening. So there are many other ways that you can show those types of qualities. Michael Branwe's book is not all-encompassing as much as we would love it to be, but it does give you the groundwork to start observing these skill sets out there in the action, and you can you can even evaluate yourself. So those are all ways that we can handle camper behavior. I could talk about those all day. Let's talk a little bit about the kind of business of camp. How do you get kids to come back to camp, right? Like, how do you get kids who want to come to camp in the first place? What are you doing as a counselor to, and what are you doing as a measurable? So the classic camp director one is you know, how many kids are returning to camp, right? I had so many kids come. This is how many returned. A lot of directors like to track first-year campers, how many first-year campers transferred over to second-year campers. Those are all really good statistics. You as a counselor can track your cab, and this is something that I actually really do because I do personally feel like this is a great metric. So I will look at a cabin group or a or a day camp group, and I will say, all right, there were 10 campers in that group, seven of them returned. So that's a 70% retreat retention rate for week one for counselor Mike and Paul, right? And then the next week, Mike and Paul, their cabin had a 60% return week and then a 40% return week. And then after I have nine weeks, I have an average of what Mike and Paul's cabin's return rate were. So again, I get a large data set and I can find out, you know, what they were doing throughout the summer that made kids want to come back, right? A lot of camps will be really happy with a 70% return rate on that. But if I'm comparing them to other cabins, I might see they were 70, another cabin was 40. I might need to go and talk to the 40. And I might even be able to, I might be having that conversation week four of camp because I'm tracking that as we go along. The other thing is like, why are my kids coming back? I think camper satisfaction scores are really important. So we do weekly evaluations from our campers before they leave on Friday. They do an evaluation. I get those. So even if like if I go into it's not just about whether or not they come back to camp, but was your cabin group happy? Right? Did they score it well? They're not just you as a counselor, a lot of staff will be like, Well, they they rated me really high, and then everything else is bad. Well, that's still a sign to me as a camp director that the person who's providing them the camp experience might not be doing the full job. So, like that is something that I track as well. And again, variables, numbers are cold, they're not always friendly, but it is something that for me as a camp director, I'm always keeping an eye out for. How can I how do I know if my counselors are doing a great job? How do I know my camp is doing a great job? So I think those are really some of the things that are really fun to see if you're a camp that sometimes has open beds or open day camp groups. If a camper only signs up for one, two, three weeks early in the summer and then they sign up for weeks later in the summer, they have that availability. I call those conversions. Those are campers who converted from say a one-week camper to a three-week campers, four-week camper. So that may be because they have a counselor who does really well in the cabin, just because they really love the program. So something that can happen too for campers is called a conversion rate. So they're a camper who maybe signed up early in the summer for one to two weeks, and then they want to come back to camp later in the summer. So we we I call that a conversion. It would it's a camper who wants to come back. Camp wasn't good enough for just one or two weeks. They convinced their parents they want to come back later. Not all camps can do this, like some are full, there's no space in the bunks or in the in the day camp groups, but it is something that you as a camp director or even as a counselor can be tracking and being like, oh man, I did get you know, a I did get four campers who wanted to come back later in the summer. And it's just a fun way to know that you're doing a little bit of sales on camp as well. And another, this is a fun metric that I actually kind of did as a counselor. I didn't I can't really do as a director anymore, but like last day of camp, how many of my campers exchanged contact information or intentionally made sure that their parents did it for them so that they have a friendship that's going past the end of camp? And like I definitely would push for this. I would say, hey guys, don't forget to get the contact information from your friends you made during camp so you can meet up with them throughout the year. I definitely could put the opportunity out there, but I'm definitely in my head was always going, okay, how many of my kids made friends this week? Right? Because I'm fostering friendships. So I think that's a great stat to track and is a great reason for why kids come back as well. So, what are some things that you're doing or you're tracking as far as kind of the marketing skills of a camp counselor, I guess?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yeah, totally. I I think first of all, let's let's just be clear about you you can't control for a lot of the reasons why a camper might not come back, right? You have a family's finances, maybe there's competing like sports, you know, it's just camp might not be accessible, camp might be full, the parents might not have or caregivers might not have registered. There's a lot of things that are hard to control in this thing. And your camp might not do the same kind of tracking that Oliver is talking about. I think every camp should do camper surveys in some ways. The challenge is like, are you surveying campers and then what are you doing with that data? I know there's camps out there that do these like nice surveys and then they go in a filing cabinet and no one ever looks at the numbers, which is like, why are you doing it then? And and as a counselor, you might not get to see the results of some of those things. They might not share the satisfaction scores. You might not quite like know if a camper converts, you might not know some of those things. And if you do, that's awesome. I I'm trying to think of like when I was like a working at a very small kind of bootstrap budget camp that if a camper, if a if a counselor came up and asked me for like the satisfaction scores, I might be like, okay, thanks for thinking of that, but that's not realistic. So I'm gonna introduce another like statistic score kind of thing. In in measuring like economic success or stats in general, you have things that are called lead indicators versus versus lag indicators. So a lag indicator is like a result of something that has happened. So a camper coming back to camp or a camper rating something highly, that's a that's a uh well, the real lagging indicator is like, did they come back to camp? That's like something that you can see in the future. A leading indicator is like something that leads up to the good thing happening. It's a trend, something we know that will drive the result that we want to see. So if the result that we want to see is a camper coming back to camp, here are some of the trends and the things that you can do as a counselor that like set up the best condition for a camper to want to come back, right? And it's easy to think about this when you think about like, well, what makes campers want to come back? That they had a great experience, that they made friends, and that maybe they made a connection to you as a staff member. We know we know those are three reasons why campers love coming back to camp. So, what are some of the things that you can do to help put your like thumb on the scale in that way? So, this is a checklist that you can carry around in your pocket. Put your campers' names down and make a checklist. We're not tracking bathroom stats here, but did I have me as a counselor, did I have one real conversation with each kid in my cabin every day? And did I get to know something special about them that week? And did I encourage them to reach a goal or unlock a new skill that was unique to them? Right? That that is that kind of specific like attention and care for their experience is going to make that week really special. No matter whether your camp has like laser tag or a blob or a big ropes course, or if you're a nature-based camp, every counselor can do that. It doesn't matter the program, it's it's people. And on and on that same vein, did I give specific opportunities every day for kids to make connections with each other? So when I was like divvying up the chore schedule, did I pair up campers intentionally or did I just let them pick their same friends all the time? There's reasons why you might want to let them pick their friends, and but there's reasons why you might want to say, like, oh, I'm doing a seating arrangement at lunch today. Everyone gets these nice little place cards, but you'll notice that we move those around every meal so campers have a chance to sit with people. You know, did I leave them wanting more? Did I hype up camp for like the feature things? Like when you get to the next age group, you will get to do this, or next summer you can, you know, you'll be even better at archery, or you'll get to do this new thing, or you could go on this harder canoe trip. Did I hype up those things? And those are all ways that you are supporting campers, wanting to make the choice to come back. Because ultimately, for the most part, it's their caregivers that are ultimately making that choice, but you want to make the camp experience so great that kids, like on the way home, are already bugging their families to register, right? And and then you are doing the most you can as a counselor. Like you are the reason. We say this, I think at the top, or we used to say it at the top of every intro. You really are the reason that kids choose to come back to camp. And and it's it's because of the experience that you help create. So if you can do some of those things, then you're giving yourself the best possible shot.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Yeah, I love the I love that information, right? Like that is the that is statistics I think you could put on a baseball card, right? If you have that checklist and you as a counselor are checking those things off that you're doing those things, right? Like that's your batting average, that's your shots on goal for the hockey fans out there. I try my best. Yeah, I'm uh I need Matt the Canadian to be like, yes, that's that's how hockey works.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

I think so. Not the biggest sportsing guy, but you know.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

But I think I think tracking those is phenomenal. And I think a lot of times when it comes to the sales of camp, a lot of camp counselors get a little bit scared of like that there's metrics there and that they're an important part of that metric of trying to get a camper to want to come back. And what I love about that list is it is the core of what camp is already. Like it is the reason why you are a camp counselor. You are not just selling the you're not selling a zipline, right? You're not selling a boat, you are selling, hey, these amazing things that make camp special. You as a counselor do those. This is where you have your impact, right? You can track those things. Have that conversation every day with a kid, right? Give them an opportunity. All all like unlock those new skills. These are ways that you sell camp in your own way as a counselor. So great, great stats to to be going off of there. A little bit of a different one here, but if you are a basic are you a card collector or anything like that, there's also like this magic factor. We talk about in camp all the time. A lot of camp people say, like, oh, you can't explain how it really works. But there are some things that are the magic factor of camp, right? And there are action items behind them if you really take the time to kind of look. And we kind of want to go into like how can you statistically look at the magic of camp, which is very cold, right? Like, that is statistics, like you were taking the thing that makes it special that we say you can't put words into, and we say there's a numerical value behind it. Like, sorry, you're not magical because you scored under 50%. Like, what? Um, but it's also a really good way to look at it on this end. So I think sometimes that magic factor is maybe not specifically what you're doing, but the actions being taken. So I think counselors are doing something special each week that is just for your cabin, right? You know, isn't going out for a night of stargazing, is it having a storytelling night? Is it having a the sneak into the dining hall event for your cabin group? These um are big moments in that group that make things so special. And it's not the camp director who's gonna do it. Like you might need to get their permission. It's not your leadership staff member, right? Your village coordinator who's gonna be running this. They might get you the supplies for it. But this is just for you, just for your group. What are you doing that makes it a little bit more special for them? And these can be like the big event of the week of like, oh, we're gonna seek into the dining hall, or it can be the accumulation of a bunch of small things, right? It's hey, I read to my kids every week from Harry Potter, right? We or every night, Harry Potter. We read a chapter a night, that's what I did to put them to sleep. That's what made it special, right? That's you doing something that's a little different. It has that special touch of you and your cabin. I think too, another one is your ability to provide program. There's kind of two different ways to track this. I feel it's the strength of your program facilitation. So, like, I am the arts and crafts guy, I am great. If you need to do ceramics, this is all a lie. I am four bullet crafts, you guys. I can do ceramics in a heartbeat, I can do candle making, we got painting and drawing. I there I am a core strength in that department, right? High score, right? And on the flip side, this is kind of more where I am, is the number of activities you can facilitate. I make the joke all the time. Like, there's not a program at camp at camp, I can't run, right? You need to go down to the waterfront. I can lifeguard, get you in a canoe, we can paddle, we can go have a blast. If we are gonna go do candle making, I can make a candle, right? Like I get the job done, right? So there's that jack of all trades, you know, scoreboard there. And just like in in baseball or football, right? In baseball, like you have depth. Designated hitters. You have a guy who walks out there because he is good at hitting a ball. And then you have your I don't know, like your short staff who's great at fielding, decent hitter, runs the bags real real well. They have a a general amount of skill that can get correlated across the board, right? So I think those are magic factors. Co-satisfaction, how well do you treat your co? That's a great score. You know, if you and your co-work really well together, that tag team becomes even more powerful. It's really hard to get that statistic. It's really hard to get someone who's going to rate their co on an honest level because they sometimes feel as though they might be hurting someone's feeling when they get that um information. So that's a really tough one to navigate. What kind of steps do you take for first-time campers, right? I think that's a magical part. How do you introduce your community to someone who's never been there? I think that's a huge part of being a magical counselor. Of what steps do you take? Having that having a checklist there. Pre-season practice. What are you doing before the season starts? Right. For those who are really big football fans, baseball fans, there's the preseason, right? There is all this time that you gear up. And to be honest with you, we know some players are not going to be successful because they didn't show up for training camp. Right? They they didn't take the extra time and doing OTAs, you know, off-team practices. So those are really important things of what you're doing to create that magic. Are you setting yourself up to do that successful thing? And then during staff training, have assessments, right? You know, ACA has a great assessment sheet that you can print off and is required if you're in ACA accredited camp. You gotta be able to do skills assessment for specific skills and stuff. So you can use that as your document. But skills assess skill training, right? Like how well are we doing these activities, you know, or getting a rating, getting a score on those things are all different ways that you can assess yourself for that magic factor that makes you that that counselor who can do things. And and like a magic the gathering card, it's kind of like a special ability, right? What is your you know, what's your power, what's your toughness? If you tap your card, what kind of special? If nobody knows magic, I'm sorry, but it's a great card game. Kids love it. But if you tap, you know, what are you able to do that makes you different from everybody else? I think a way to think about that is certainly right there. So that's my magic factor. How do you do the math behind it? Matt, what are some things that you think about?

SPEAKER_01 46:11

I love this. Like I can't stop thinking about like Pokemon cards and just what they're like, because every Pokemon is great. They have their their hit points, they have, I don't know, I'm I'm gonna get things wrong if I keep going down this room. They have like the things about them, but they have special powers that that they can do that other people can't do. So I would encourage people to think about like what's your what's your special power out there? And is it like guitar guy or you know, like those, like you said with the arts and crafts thing. But I think like everyone brings a personal skill or a passion that is really unique to them. And we talk about this all the time that like a great counselor is someone who can share their passion with kids when that when that passion is like appropriate for camp, right? Where maybe, maybe you're like an esports person and that's that's kind of hard to share at a you know camp where there's no Wi-Fi. But you know, how can you share something special about you with kids and bust those out? So I like that framework of thinking about what your special power is. And and maybe it's not a stat, but it's just like being able to bust that out is is helpful on its own. And and a lot, I've given a lot of like self-reflection advice in in this episode. So this is kind of your after-the-fact stat to track. But you know, often when as a director, we sit down with our our staff teams, the people that we work with every week. And what I like to do was a couple exercises. And there was one summer where I asked the staff, I said, I want you to get ready for this. I said this at the at the end of the first week. I said, at the end of next week, I I'm gonna ask the question, what did you do this week that you are proud of? And I want everyone to be able to raise their hands, and I'm gonna call on a couple people. And and don't raise your hand if you if you like maybe don't feel that and like you know, that there's self-esteem is a thing. But like, I want you this week, it's it's proud. Next week is what did you do to elicit like the wow factor from your campers? What did you do this week where you went beyond your job description? Or like some of those big kind of aspirational things that could be the theme for the week. And whether or not your camp director does that, pick pick one for yourself or pick a couple for yourself. And and upon reflection, when you're reviewing your game tape, Oliver, that's what they do in sports, right? They look at how they played. Okay, good. You know, you can play this, the, the tape of your week in your head and say, okay, did I did I elicit the wow factor? Did I point, did I help a kid discover their passion? Did I do something that I'm proud of? Did I did I use my special power? Those types of questions. Uh again, those are kind of the if you're doing those things, you're creating that magic factor. Those are some of like the lead indicators that you're creating, that you're creating magic. Because I mean, ultimately, I I believe that I think can't magic is a thing, but I think the the thing is, you know, the connections and the friendships and and all of those things. So if we're doing those things and we're, you know, we're going above and beyond to create the wow factor, that's where the magic comes from. So, you know, it it's not, I don't think it's so much about like checking a box or tracking numbers in this category, but it's, you know, I think in all of this like statistics talking that we're doing, whether or not you're collecting the numbers, what we're talking about is thinking intentionally about what we're doing. It's this, I'll go back to it, it's the self-reflective practice. And the fact that you're doing it and thinking about it sets you apart and just knowing you're being intentional about thinking about that. That is going to make you a better counselor, regardless of like your numbers week to week. The fact that you're doing these things and thinking about it is is like standout all on its own.

SPEAKER_02 49:59

And I to close this topic, I think the thing that makes it special is is you are special, right? Like when you are doing data-driven things, there are things that make each person special as a counselor. And I'll I'll refer to football as like my go-to kind of I've already used the magic, the gathering, but for the sports people out there, right? When you're on a football field, there's guys of all different shapes and sizes out there playing the game. And you need that because every position all across the board, you need people who can do different jobs to make the team successful. So understanding of like where you fit into that cog to make sure that the team is successful and the kids have a great summer at the end of it. So just understand like you have a magic ability, you have something special about you. What is it? Right. So that leads us kind of into that reflection of yourself. How are you doing? Right? What are the stats between of your self-care? And Matt, I think, is going to take this one home. The only thing that I would really say here is uh that I track is how often do you lose your own personal belongings? Like, that's the one that gets me. It's like, all right, how many times do I lose my water bottle today? Or nope, I'm four towels deep this summer already. You know, like that's that's my like self-care. I'm like, okay, I realize I've started forgetting things. Okay, right. And then how many showers do I get? That's another camp one. But I'll leave this one to Matt to really take us home to kind of finish off the day. What are the things that you can track for yourself, or how are you doing, right? So you don't lose your self-awareness of your personal self.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Yeah, I'm gonna get out my metaphorical soapbox and put it down for a second. So for those of you who are watching, I'll I'll try to raise myself up like a an inch here. So one more little like economy, you know, scientific kind of thing, not scientific to think about. Oliver, you mentioned like how countries track GDP, your gross gross domestic product. And I am a big subscriber, I wouldn't say I'm like a complete acolyte, but the degrowth model really pokes some holes in the way that we say that we're doing as a country. And when we use GDP as an indicator of a country's wellness, GDP doesn't track how mentally well people are doing, right? It doesn't track how like mothers are doing within their first year of childcare. It doesn't track like, you know, it prioritizes like destruction to grow a country. And I'm not, you know, I'm gonna get off that part of my soapbox, but I think how well we are doing as staff members is ultimately one of the most important things, right? It's the same, like you can't help someone until you've helped yourself. And and I think our industry, the camp industry, prioritizes like, look, even I said it earlier. Did you go beyond your job description? Like we prioritize this like hustling, grind, capitalism, culture, and those types of things. We we have to prioritize our wellness. We we just we just have to. So why not track some stats for yourself? Here, did I drink enough water today? Did I did I empty my water bottle three times by the end of the day? Did I drink three liters of water? On a hot day, did I drink four? Did I use my break or my rest time appropriately? Or did I just drink like six Red Bulls and like go for a run because I thought that's what I had to do? Did I ask for help? Did I ask for help at the right time? Or did I ask for help because I needed help? What's something that I'm proud of myself for? What's something that I would redo from the day? What's something I'm looking forward to tomorrow? Like, I really think if you ask yourself those six questions at the end of the day, like I mean, I wrote those questions in in like 30 seconds, but if you ask those six questions and you kind of track that over the summer, you know, you know what? I'll I'll even say the way when I was a director, when I did my check-ins with the staff that I supported, I asked them like mentally on a scale of one to five, how are you doing today? Physically on a scale of one to five, how are you doing today? And it's like the least scientific method because all the all those numbers are subjective, they're self-reporting, it's based on how they're doing in that moment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there is something to be said that if if Oliver, if if I'm working with Oliver and I say, Oliver, how are you doing today? And he says, I'm a I'm a three mentally, and then the next day he says he's a two, there's a point of conversation there to be had. And and maybe you're not a leadership staff member listening to this, but even for yourself, like write in your journal. I was a, I was a I like 10 because it gives you a bigger number. And even if you were a seven yesterday and you went down to a six today, oh, like what happened? What what what do I, you know, what do I think that I could be doing? Or should I be asking for help or should I be drinking more water? Those types of things just just to take care of yourself. This is this is like I call it, I've said it before, it's heart work, right? It's hard work and it's heart work that we do here. And you can't lose track of taking care of yourself along the process. It's it's not going to be easy, but there's ways we can make it easier on ourselves. And I think you can track some good personal wellness stats to help yourself out with that. I mean, I get I think I already stepped down because my legs were tired, but I'm a little bit lower now. I'm off that soapbox.

SPEAKER_02 55:13

It's a good soapbox to get onto. It is uh we're in positions where we care for other people, and then we sometimes forget to care for ourselves. Right. Um, it's the penance of altruism. Um, okay. With that being said, let's get our eggle in for the day. It's our ever-growing, ever-learning. It's a game, a trick, a tip, a song for counselors to become better every single day. To start us off, I've got the sorting hat. You know, classic Harry Potter, everyone knows about it. It doesn't have to be a hat if you don't want it to be, but there is something to be said for kind of giving everyone like a sorting ceremony, right? You know, if we do this naturally at camp already when kids check into their cabins or they get into their groups, sometimes those groups have names, sometimes those cabins have names, sometimes they they have their own little culture. So, and that's where I want to kind of highlight on this is the cool thing about having a sorting hat ceremony and having these groups that people get into is that it can give them some form of identity when they're at camp, right? And I think it's a really cool way to do it. If if you think about Harry Potter, right, each house collectively has its own air. Now, granted, Slytherin's gotten a bad rap, it's kind of changed over the years, but you know, they're clever, they're you know, they're determined type of people, but that's coming from a Gryffindor trying to be nice here. But giving somebody an identity that at least they can start to work with really helps. And we see this happen all across our world, whether it's you know, I'm what's your star sign, right? I'm an Aquarius, you're a Capricorn, we're obviously not gonna get along, but it's not about it's not about the conflict of it, it's about the identity that someone can get from these types of things. And I encourage you to maybe find ways to sort people, but then encourage that it's still a collective, right? Like, yes, you have this, but you're still part of the whole. And I put that into a lot of different stuff because it's it's really good to have people who have their groups, and then it's your job as a counselor or a director, whoever, to to make sure that those groups still get along. It's friendly competition at the end of the day, but it gives them an identity.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

And I think, like I said, that that team identity is good, and and pick whatever source material works for you. You know, Harry Potter can be problematic if you look at like J.K. Rowling, and I think you can believe that trans lives matter and you can love Harry Potter. I think both of those things can exist at the same time. So choose the material that feels appropriate for you, and that's what I'll say about that. My egg go for this episode is called A Great Moment in Camping. And this comes from a Canadian camping professional named Jeff Bradshaw. And I think it was adopted from a couple different camps, and and it was brought to my home camp by Travis and Beth. And a great moment in camping, or we called it a GMIC for short, was when at the end of the week we sat around in a big circle and we reflected on the great moments in camping. Not just the good moments in camping, but the the categories for a great moment in camping was recognizing people for going the extra mile, recognize recognizing people for building a camper's self-esteem, and recognizing for putting people first. And it had to fall into one of those three categories. And our directors were like militant about that. It had to go into those three categories. So it wasn't just like, oh, hey, shout out to Oliver for like watching my kids while I went to the bathroom. It was like we really pushed staff to think deeper about it. So the classic story is that it was a like a wet, cold, rainy day. They were down at the waterfront, everyone was getting their life jackets on, staff had their life jacket, and a kid looked at the wet, dripping life jacket hanging on the clothesline. And the kid started to like cry because they had to put on this wet, cold life jacket. And the director was down at the waterfront and watched as a staff member looked down at their dry, like personal life jacket that they had brought from home. And they looked at that camper and they unzipped their life jacket and just walked up to the camper and said, Hey, I found this life jacket here. You can wear it. And they took a deep breath and put on that cold life jacket and zipped it up and got with their kids. Like that is a great moment in camping. So I chose that one because that's part of the self-reflective practice that you can do as a great counselor. Or if you want to do that with a couple staff members or suggest that to your director, the credit goes to Jeff Bradshaw from Camp Winona in Ontario, Canada. That's my angle.

SPEAKER_02 59:35

There we go. Well, if you enjoyed today's show, we would be so grateful if you left us a review wherever you are listening to the podcast. Your ratings and reviews not only tell us what you like and don't like about the show, but it helps boost our rankings and helps more people discover the show.

SPEAKER_01 59:50

And don't forget that you can find all of our show notes at gocamp.pro slash FCC. Ryan, thanks so much for your work editing this and keeping track of all the different things that Oliver and I mentioned. It it is a job, and I'm so grateful for your support in helping us get this episode out there. Make sure you check out all the other great things GoCamp Pro is doing. I will give a quick plug. If you check out the Camp Hacker, all one word, Camp Hacker podcast feed. We've started producing this new show called Intentionally Intentional Leaders, where we do a bit of a spin-off of the wild card show from NPR. And myself and Travis, whoever is hosting, gets the guests to roll a 20-sided Dungeons and Dragons dice. And then there's like some pretty cool questions that we have assigned to those numbers. And it helps you get to know kind of the personal people behind some of the Go Camp Road podcast hosts, some leaders in the industry. I just recorded one just came out with Jordana Grossinger, who's the co-host of the Daycamp pod. Just like really cool insights and quirky things about the people behind all the cool things in camping that's happening. So there's my plug. You can find that at gocamp.pro slash camphacker, or if you go to go camp.pro slash podcast, you'll find all the different podcasts that we're putting out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:05

Winter is a great podcast listening season. And I actually just listened to the J Camp pod about community marketing. It's what I've been preaching for for two or three years now. And uh well, longer than that, to be honest, but it is a great podcast that they put out, and I sent it to all my staff to be like, you need to listen to this to reinforce what I already tell you. You know, the life of a camp tractor. But with that being said, thanks for listening to our podcast podcast, everybody. Remember, camp is camp and camp is all good.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

First class counselors is brought to you by Beth and Travis Allison, Summer Camp Leadership Training and Marketing Consultants. Thanks for listening, friends.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

Hey Camp Ros, we love that our industry is built on sharing. In order to foster that spirit, we hope that whenever you share an idea that you learn from the Camp Hacker Podcast, conference, summer camp professionals group, or wherever else, that you're quick to give credit where credit is due. That way, we can all encourage more camp pros to share the tips and tricks that will make camp better.