Keith Klein

The Laurel Camps

“ It is not the strongest of the

species that survive, nor the

most intelligent, but the one

read that, and all I could think of was our yellow file box – the box that, for 30 years, has held our most important information. Inside the box lives index cards with details on every family and camper who has inquired about, applied to, or toured Camp Laurel in Readfield, Maine. The box was handed down from my predecessor, Ron Scott, to me. I, in turn, handed it over to my partners and directors, Roger Christian at Camp Laurel South and Jem Sollinger at Camp Laurel. I never really wanted to give up the yellow box, but I knew I had to. I had to stay with the times.

I also knew I had to give up my At-A-Glance Day-Timer. But I didn’ t. And I’ m pretty sure I never will. The Day-Timer is sacred. Even though I have an iPhone, iPad, and Macbook, I can’ t give up my Day-Timer.

So, even though I hold onto my Day-Timer, and Roger and Jem still take their yellow card file boxes back and forth between their winter and summer offices, they are more for a sense of security than anything else. They’ re like Linus’ blanket. We accept change, and we’ ve even embraced the change that Charles Darwin said was critical to survival at our camps. But, for us, it has to be change within balance.

Of course,“ business” itself has changed. The speed and flow of information, and access to what parents – our customers – demand, is more intense than ever before. And it’ s not about being the“ most current” or the most“ forward-thinking.” It’ s about time management and efficiency. With the short seasonality and frenetic pace of camp, we would be derelict if we didn’ t embrace change and leverage technology to run our businesses more efficiently and effectively. In truth, technology allows us to do what we really do best: spend time outside the office with our campers.

I’ m thinking about how long it used to take to return a parent call. It was a fouror-five step process, including speaking with a child’ s counselor, group leader, the nurses, head counselor, and so on. Now, because of the integration CampMinder provides, it’ s much smoother.

How many overnight camping trips has Johnny been on this summer? Got it. How many times, and for what reasons, did he check in to the Health Center? Got it. How did he do on the U-13 boys’ baseball intercamp two days ago? Got it. What is his waterskiing level? It’ s right here. Clearly, this accessibility doesn’ t take the place of personally interacting with and talking to the camper, his counselor, and group leader, but it certainly does allow us to skip the process of checking trip forms, intercamp records, medical files, and everything else we used to have to cross-reference.

Nowadays, our families can even answer many of their own questions themselves, simply by logging into their accounts through our website. Gone are the days of chasing after people for their forms and mailing or faxing new copies; it’ s all right there. The real beauty of it, though, is that our families view it as better customer service, but, on our end, it’ s a huge time-saver.

We have two camps in our group, with offices in five locations: Westport, Conn.; Palm Beach, Fla.; Gainesville,

Fla.; New York City; and Bergen County, N. J. Everyone’ s connected, and we don’ t even have to talk with each other that often. This is no great feat in today’ s technological world, and it’ s not unique to camping. But because we embraced change and technology, we can now run a better business. We’ ve used technology to our advantage to grow our camps, become more efficient, and understand data and analytics. As a result, we’ ve grown and become more profitable.

Let me explain:

Our sales, marketing, human resources, accounting, purchasing, and business development people can do their own thing independently from different locations, but they can all still be connected to our group. We still speak and coordinate with one another, but we can track each other’ s progress and not waste time with prolonged meetings. Each person knows what everyone else is doing every day. As much as we work together virtually, however, we still engage face-to-face a lot. As Steve Jobs put it,“ There’ s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’ s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone. You ask what they’ re doing, you say‘ wow,’ and soon you’ re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”

Embracing change and technology has allowed our business to diversify by entering new fields and making intelligent parallel-industry investments which, in turn, create greater profitability. I was personally slow to change, but I can say this with confidence: if we had not embraced technology, this would not have happened.

Jobs also said,“ Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Use technology to your advantage and help yourself become more efficient, grow, and, ultimately, become more profitable.

Keith Klein is the senior partner of The Laurel Camps in Maine. He has been going to camp in Maine since he was 10.

Keith Klein www. thelaurelcamps. com