Gratitude, Attitude, Courage: What Summer Camp Taught These Two About Marriage w/Kate & Cole Kelly

Okay. Cole? Kelly, how you doing?

Good. Zach, how are you?

Where are you?

Athens, Georgia.

Is that where camp is, or is that just where you live right now?

No. Camp axes up in northeastern Pennsylvania. We just really don't like shoveling snow. So we we live where I grew up, although Kay actually grew up just outside of Seattle.

Oh, yeah. What did you grow up?

I did in Bellevue. I went to Seattle Prep for high school.

Oh, right. Yeah, we we just were empty nesting now. So our kids are leaving, but I, I know we're prep is. And that's cool. Did you did you where did you go after that? After prep.

I went to Dartmouth.

And then how did you end up in Athens?

I know you and me both. Zach. I met cool through a mutual friend, and I was living outside of Boston at the time, and she said, oh, you have to meet Cool Kelly. And I said, why, he lives in Georgia. And now here I am, 21 years later. Here she is.

Right on.

Yeah. Are you outside of Seattle?

No. I'm in. I'm in right now. I'm in Green Lake, so. Okay. This is my counseling office that I am in Green Lake. And then call your Athens, like, born and bred. Or. How did you end up there?

Yeah. Georgia born and bred. Although we lived in Maine, I did nine years in Charlottesville, Virginia, when I was doing my undergraduate, and I did master's degree in sports, like up there, and then seemed like all roads lead back to Athens at some point. Although we lived in Boston, we first got married, lived there for five years, and I got again really tired of shoveling snow. So we decided to move away and I said, okay, I want to move south, but, you know, we'll pick wherever you want. And she wanted picking Athens, thank God. And it's funny, both of us, we've traveled, we've we've been in a lot of different homes growing up a bunch of different times. I mean, our parents just seemed like to move everywhere. We've been in the same house now for 21 years, which.

Is that crazy?

Crazy. But I think it's probably because we spent every summer moving back to camp. So yeah, you know, it's like we've got two different worlds. We always say we have two New Years. We have a, you know, New Year's on the calendar. And then when camp is down, the kids get home safely. It's like it starts another new year for us.

Yeah, I want to hear all about it. I, I can't resist. I grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, so I know Charlottesville. I mean, I drove through there on the way to college. I went to a memory, so I was there for four years. I always tell people that, UVA was our biggest rival, but we were not their biggest rival. Like, and then, of course, Athens is the home of REM. Yeah.

That's right.

Tell me, tell me you have, like an REM story, a good one. Do you have one?

So. Well, I actually grew up playing golf. And Bill Berry, the drummer. Yep. Turned out to be a golfer. Okay. You know, I actually played nine holes with him one time when I was in high school. And, you know, I didn't make a big deal out, you know, about him being who he was and he didn't know who I was and worked out fine. Yeah. And I said, well, why don't we play for something? I said, how about this? Well, if I win, you guys play prom, and if you win, I'll go on tour with you for the summer. And he's like, how about for a lemonade stand?

Yeah. That's awesome. So how old is he relative to you?

I think Bill is probably maybe about 10 or 12 years older than I am. Okay. He was at.

That point. Yeah, I guess that's right.

Had kids and everything else. My my cousin actually is works for the the band. He actually runs there their fan club and has.

So yeah I read about two thirds of their they just put out a biography at Ram biography. That's kind of the definitive one. I know there's tons, but this was like the most. So it's been really interesting to learning about those guys and kind of their origin story and who they who they were as individuals and who they kind of became as a band. So that's fascinating.

Yeah, I mean, they were rock stars. I saw I'm a testing park in Atlanta, and I mean, it was it was an awesome show. I mean, they they know what they're doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. So you're in Athens, you spend time at camp I want to hear all about. I want to talk about summer camp. Geez. Okay. Can we talk about something? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, why? Why summer camp? How did you end up in summer camp together?

I knew I wanted to be in education. I love being around kids and teaching, and I just didn't want to be in a classroom. So when I graduated from college, I went to a boarding school, and I got to coach three sports, and I did admission and ran a dorm, and I just loved that. And then I had a summer off. And so I thought, well, I'll just try summer camp. I didn't grow up going to this kind of a camp, you know, where you go for eight or 9 or 10 years and you go the whole summer, and I just fell in love with it. It was the best part of teaching and education to me, are like the life lessons and the friendships and developing skills for your, you know, growing up time. And I just I can't imagine anything better than getting to educate in a place where kids want to be doing the things they want to do, surrounded by people who are really invested in their just human flourishing.

But it's not just the kids that you really enjoy. You also enjoy working with the.

Staff, their kids.

For their kids. Well, their kids just like college age kids.

Yes.

Yeah. So it's a really interesting we get kids when they're six, seven from all over the world. Most of them stay for seven, eight, nine years. So you're really getting to be a part of somebody's growing up.

They stay for a week at a time, month at a time, both like.

Anywhere from three weeks to six weeks. Six weeks the longest that they'll stay with us. But then, like, we've got a young lady, this is her 15th summer camp, and she's 22 years old, right?

Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. How did you decide that you were on board?

Well, I met Kate and I was like, whatever you're doing, I know. So I had done. I'd play college golf. I'd been a golf coach at the University of Virginia for a little while. I went back at my MBA, and in the process of doing my MBA, I was coaching all the youth sport teams in Athens, Georgia, like the little leagues and basketball and all this other stuff. And I realized I wanted to work with kids, I wanted to run a business, but and I wanted to teach, but I didn't want to be in a classroom either. And when I met Kate, she was talking about this camp experience, and I had gone to camp for one week, one summer, my entire life. It was great. My father said, great, but you had fun.

It's time to go to work. It's like, yes sir. I was like, okay. And we got into this camp thing and it just was perfect. And it wound up. So we were hired originally because Kate is Kate, she's one of the best camp director operators in the country that no one knows about, because she doesn't like to be in front of people and.

They know until now, you're telling your whole story to 7 billion people that listen to my podcast every week, right?

I know the whole world knows.

Now, finally, finally that. And so they hired Kate because they thought, you're going to be a great camp director. And it's funny, the guy who hired us told us the other day, said, Cole, you're you're the best be side, you know, hire we've ever had. I'm like, okay, I think that's great. Yeah, but turns out Kate was so much better at running the show. Yeah, and I was better in front of the family. So we actually ran a girls camp, and I grew up with a brother. I didn't know anything about girls, but we ran a girls camp for five years, and all the phone calls would come to me because I could work with the parents and work with the kids. And basically, how are we going to make this work? And she would make it all work. So it's been a lot of fun.

Yeah. So what is it now? Tell me about your camp.

So we're at camp. We're actually was founded in 1953, and one family ran it from 1953 until 2008. And it went from zero to awesome to a fight within the family. And camp was kind of dying. And at 2008, we show up or 2009, it should say we show up and been able to grow it back. So now we have about 450 kids a session. We have children that come from 15 states and 14 different countries all over the world. It's a we really focus on some very specific values. We talk about being grateful, talk about choosing your attitude. We talk about building your courage. So those are the big things that we focus on gratitude adds and courage. And we chose that because we're not it's not a religious camp.

It's a place where we're trying to help parents build good humans. And we thought when you look across kind of Western Civ being grateful, choosing your attitude, how you respond to things and building your courage, those are values that everybody can hang your hat on and can lead to a bigger, better life. So we really focus on finding young staff members, these 19 to 22 year old young men and women that can come. They already had that worldview in their head, or they're excited about putting it in there, and they're excited about showing that to the kids that come to camp. And so that's been, you know, kind of our process.

Do you it's not a girls camp. So any more girls boys and girls.

Three boys. So we had to switch to a coed camp.

You, your children had you mean as children, your own children?

Yes. Yes, yes.

And have they grown up at camp?

Each one of them lived in a cabin for ten years with the same kids. Our oldest son is 22, and he and his soon to be wife work at camp full time. And they're having a wedding in August at camp. And about half the people in the wedding are his camp bunk mates.

I love that, yeah, I love that. Do you? Is it under snow? Is that. Were you just joking? Like, is it, is it? You said we live in Athens because we don't like being under snow. Is camp under.

For about eight months? It is.

Yeah. Northeastern Pennsylvania is pretty cold.

So yeah, that's still like in the heart of, of like there's plenty of stuff there. It's not like you're over in the. Oh yeah. On the Ohio side. Like there's New York is right there and Connecticut and everything else is like it's like little. Okay.

Yeah. So we're three hours from Central Park. We're three hours from the Liberty, Liberty Bell. And in Philadelphia, you know, so we got a lot of kids that come from those areas. And our staff members, you know, a lot of our staff are from overseas. We actually rent busses for them on their day off during orientation. We take them to New York City.

Because that's.

Kind of what see, it's pretty great.

Yeah, yeah. And do you have staffers that are like campers, like campers that become staff members? Certainly.

Yeah, we do for sure. It's not the majority, but we have 10 or 12 every year who come in. Our youngest son will be on staff for the first time with about ten of his friends from his age group.

I think in total this year, of the 225 staff members we have will have about 55 that are formerly campers. You know, which is the best you see. You literally see them grow up and then you them provide that experience for other kids.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My kids grew up. They didn't I wouldn't say they grew up at camp, but they they were active for a handful of years at camp or Kyla, which is a YMCA camp on Orcas Island. If you don't know, you're from Seattle. So you might know that. But but yeah, the same thing. You know, they just go and they have this whole like immersion experience of being away from us parents and being away from technology and phones and rules. Like there are certainly rules, but they get to like, live into new rules and learn how to do new rules. And I just think it's it's very cool, what have you. So you've been there. My math is shortage said 2009. So it's 25, 26 years.

Well we've been at this will be our 17th summer in total. We've been in camping since 2000, Lois, since we got married 2002.

So what have you learned about gratitude? Like what have you learned about gratitude, particularly as it comes to say for the two of you?

I would say that it's a practice. I think it's one of those things that people talk about. But you need a system and make it a habit. It's really easy to do it every once in a while. It's a lot harder to build the habit where it's the way you see the world. And that's what we get to do at camp, and we have a lot of time. And so we have a lot of opportunities. Every night, our counselors write down the things that they're grateful for on the bunk log when they're giving us information about their kids. So it's trying to train yourself to see the world that way. And that's that's what we do at camp.

And it seems to be the one practice that has the biggest impact, not only on the kids, but also on the staff members. Yes. So that when they leave, they'll come back the second year, say, I am a totally different person here then I am at my college, university or wherever I am because here we literally, like everybody here, practices it and it makes us feel better. Like you physically feel better, the more grateful also slows you down, you know? Which is one of the things that I find really important, especially this day and age, when, you know, my phone is literally ringing in my back pocket right now, it closes down and makes us thankful for the things where our we actually can breathe and feel better.

How did the two of you do it in in your in the off season between the two of you, do you have a log that you fill out every night?

We don't. We do it. This is what we wrote our book about and we just tripped on it because we were dating long distance originally and we didn't know each other very well. So I said we got at the end of the day, just tell me three things you were happy about, really, just so I could kind of connect and say, understand who he was and what he appreciated and like. And then we would say one thing we appreciate about the other person. And that was started 26 years ago before we were married, really just to get to know each other. And we just fell into that system that ended up being the thing that I think has sustained us through, you know, three kids and working together and, you know, all the ups and downs of life. And so that's the system that we created, and it's the best thing we've done.

And it really I mean, so we when we first started dating, I was in Athens, Georgia, Kate was, you know, and where were you? Western Massachusetts.

Western.

And so that was a great piece of appreciation, actually came later. We actually added the appreciation of listening to Alison Armstrong, who works a lot with with women, teaching them about men and how important it is for men to feel appreciated in the relationship. And so we were, frankly, we were going through a rough time in case, you know, we need to add this on. I appreciate this. And that made me feel like it was great knowing her, her gratitude. So I knew kind of more I could lean into some things that makes Kate happy, but also then to be able to hear what she appreciated about me that day, that that opened me back up as well.

So yeah, and I think, I mean, we did The Five Languages of Love at one point when we were early in our marriage, and he's the words of affirmation person, and I'm not, and it's just not a part of the way that I operate. And so it forced me into, you know, giving him the love that he needed in the way that he did that wasn't supernatural for me to start with. So that I think that made a big difference.

For us. Yeah, that's pretty cool. A lot of people stop there. A lot of people go, oh, that's not my love language. I don't know how to do that. And they stop, you know, they don't actually learn how to speak somebody else's love language. So the thing that you added appreciation on to was the three happiness. So tell me about what that is.

That is truly just the three hobbies. Kind of like Martin Seligman. Three good things. I mean, we certainly didn't know that when we started, but it was the habit of ending the day, being appreciative or noticing the things that were good. And so it truly just started like, tell me three things that made you happy today because I wasn't around you. I didn't know what your day looked like. I didn't know what you liked. And so then at the end of the day when he was like, oh, I was really happy to talk to my brother on the phone, and I was happy to get to play a basketball game. And I was, you know, and then it was kind of the roadmap that you develop over time.

I mean, now I know 25,000 things that has made him happy. And that's the thing where when he would say one and you're like, oh, that made you happy. You know, he's like, oh, when I travel and you put clean sheets on the bed like that made me so happy. And I thought I would have never known that. So I'd do it every time he comes home. Because it's a five minute thing.

Yeah. Why not? What do I have a couple I'm thinking of right now, and I've tried to introduce. I'm always learning cool things from different couples that I get to talk to, and this is so easy and so practical and it makes so much sense. But they're going to say, I don't know, it just feels kind of weird. Like it feels awkward to do that. It feels artificial. Like, how do you help people with that piece of resistance?

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's very awkward to walk, you know, but we, you know, we learned that through practice. And it was very, very helpful for us. And thankfully we can't remember it now. As adults, we remember all the things that we try to get better at, but yet we also know that if even the right foods are going to make me feel better, I got to go through the discomfort of doing that or saying no to that second part of French fries or whatever it is. So when you can see the benefit is so great at the end for spending literally two minutes, three minutes a night just thinking about the cool things and then listening just a little bit over time. It actually builds intuition just because you get so often now we have had friends that have tried it and they're like, it's really hard.

You know, one part is like, nope, it's not doing this. It's just not the way I communicate why it's important. You know? And those are the situations that we're kind of being our heads up against that. You know better Wells like, why why can't you do this? It's just a very simple thing.

I can see the resistance, though, because if you're not in the habit of doing it, when it's your mindset, how are you looking at the day in the world? And, I mean, we had one friend who was like, I can't think of three things that made me happy. And so then it was like, okay, go so small, you know, like, were you driving to work and you saw the sunrise, you know? Did you hear your kids laugh in the other room? I think some of that is paying yourself and then really what it did for us. And it is a little awkward at first. I'm scanning the day for the things I appreciate about coal, because you can't say the same thing day after day after day. And so I'm constantly looking for the best in him, which isn't always the natural setting for people.

And so I think it's like, oh, is that worth it to me to train myself to scan for the good because it's a little bit uncomfortable. It would be so weird to end a day now and not do it. I think it's like when you get in and I can't. I really can't imagine it. Even if coal's in China or Japan or somewhere else, I text him before I fall asleep. You know, these are my hobbies and this is something to create about you. And so I do think that you have to see the value in being a little uncomfortable.

And that's been through the good and the bad and the challenging and everything. You know, the part, all the stuff. It really has become such a habit for us that it's it's kept us close, you know, when we're running summer camp, you know, with, with 675, you know, souls at camp, you know, we start the day at 630 in the morning. We end the day, you know, at 1230, 1:00 every night. And it's literally like, what we have is this I love you.

Yeah.

And you get up and you do it over again.

So yeah, I was going to say, when do you do it? And who's in charge? Like do you, do you have a is somebody the boss of the happy. Do you have.

A first. Yeah. Okay. And so you know if I go back I'm like, oh I'm going to go to bed. What were you happy. You know I love that versa. However whoever is ending the day first.

So it's not a contest or it's like what's your day to do it. That would I could see how that would be. Probably.

It is interesting. You know, Kate has had moments where she's falling asleep, you know, after the three happy's. But I didn't get my appreciate. So it's like.

Hey.

You forgot the appreciation. Yes.

But I do think if you're a person who it's a little uncomfortable for, if you'll try it for one month, I think you'll get to the point where you're like, I really love for you to say the interest rate about me. Like, I didn't know it would fill me up as much as it does. You know, as a person who's not a words of affirmation, it still is really meaningful to have him stop and to say, you know, even if it's something that he saw. Like, I really appreciate how you talk to our son. You know, when he was frustrated and you think, I can't believe you even saw that, you know, and regularly you would never communicate that. You know, there's a lot of stuff, I think, that goes in our head that you just wouldn't say out loud unless there's some system in place.

Yeah. And then also there are moments where like, I'll think, okay, they're like these 6 or 7 things I saw today that I appreciate about Kate. Which one would you like best? But that's not the point. So I think that I like the best or appreciated the most. So it's interesting how stuff comes up. Like you're not trying to do it to please the other person. You're really trying to do it for yourself and communicate that. And I think that practice, you know, that's where the relationship comes from, right? It's all about this practice that we do over and over and over again.

Preaching to the choir man. It's my it's the thing I say the most to, well, to my own self and then to my clients. It's like, this is you can learn how to do this and everything we know how to do. We learned how to do so. All right. So gratitude attitude talk to me about attitude. How does that how does that play for the two of.

You came through my training in sports psychology. I got to work with guy named Bob Rotella, who is one of the dons of, you know, golfing performance, if nothing else. Okay. And he kept talking about the young people that he worked with in Special Olympics. He's like, they choose to be happy. And that's all it is, folks, is a choice. And he had us read all these different books and and it all came back down to you get to choose. William James said that the greatest thing that was ever discovered from a psychology standpoint is that the human mind is what gets to choose what it focuses on. And so why would you choose to focus on something bad?

So when we were talking about, you know, what's most important for our kids, if we can leave our kids with a couple things, the understanding that they get to figure out how to react in any situation. I can't remember the man who wrote me and Viktor Frankl Ministries from eating. He talks about how they're stimulus, and there there's a response, and you have to get to the point where you understand how to control the space between the stimulus. Yeah. And we.

Feel like that's wisdom.

Can leave with that. We've made the world a little bit of a better place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how do how does that show up for you guys? How does how do you navigate the difference between stimulus and response and your own relationship?

I think it's the pause, really I do I think that it's just training yourself to pause for a moment, you know, how is this going to land? What's the intent versus the impact here? And some of that comes with time and maturing. But I think that for us, the greatest, I think really fast. My brain I process quickly. And so when we're in a conversation, you know, I've learned to pause and let Cole think through in the way that he does. Yeah, because he's just probably a little more thoughtful and a little bit slower to come up with where he wants to end up. And so I would say the pause is the.

Yeah. And I think for me understanding the difference between. So again back to Allison Armstrong. She's talking about men versus where men are very single focus you know. And that was evolutionarily very important for us. And we could track things through the air and we could focus on and go through pain or whatever it is to bring back the kill, if you will. Whereas women are much more diffuse, aware, and they're seeing the pillow on the floor. The kid is crying, I got to get dinner. I've got to think about 7 or 8 different things, whereas I really have to think about one. And I would get frustrated. Kate would come to the office, I'd be typing an email to a family, and she'd go right into her talk and be like, what is going on?

Like she finally you learning that? Yes. Helped it. So I think understanding those base foundational facts were really important for us from an attitude standpoint, because now I don't have a bad attitude when I know she's waiting for me. You know, like, I'll see you the quarter mile, I'll finish what I'm doing. I'll turn it. She gets my full attention and the same thing. Now understand, when I walk into a room, keeps thinking about 6 or 7 things, and my job is, how can I make one of those easier? If I can make one of those easier, then we're going to be in a better place. Yeah, because that's all I can do at a time is one.

Yeah. Because. All right. And then courage, talk to me about courage.

And courage is the muscle that we don't do a great job of teaching our kids. I think we're super afraid now to let them fail and have natural consequences. And everything seems like such a big deal that we try and rescue and snowplow and fix things. And I think that allowing them to build the muscle of courage to step outside your comfort zone is the only place they grow. I mean, I would tell you in 20 some years of working with college kids, they are less and less competent or capable or.

In 2026 and they were in 2016 or 2006, is what you mean?

Totally different world. And my guess is it's the parenting that they just have not been allowed to fail. You have constant contact with your parents. Every decision you make, you go back and you text them. You think about it. I mean, we were allowed to make a lot of mistakes. And through that, you know that it's okay, you know, and this generation does not. They're absolutely terrified of a misstep. So camp is a great place to say step outside where you're comfortable. Do something you know that doesn't.

Feel great. It's the best place in the world to make mistakes, because you're in an environment that's built for you to make mistakes and deconstruct a little bit and go from there. I tell kids all the time when they think about going to camp for the first time, it's like, right, well, what do you love to do? And let's say a kid says, I love to play the piano. I say, okay, great, you love it. So I love it. My favorite thing to do. So okay, you're going to go to a recital and you're going to do your piece. If I tell you right now that you're going to screw up two notes, but at the end everybody's going to clap and be like, that was awesome. With that frustrated, it was like, well, yeah, I'd be frustrated, but would you stop not do it?

I don't know, I still do it because I love it. Camps the same way. Like, you know, you're going to miss home like, so you're going to miss home for just a little bit. But yet you got three weeks to go do the things you never get a chance to do with all these kids from all the world, by giving them a sense of context and how to kind of relate to that, they start to build a little bit of that courage. And we talk a lot about courage, not just about climbing up atop the climbing tower. Get up and walk for the first time. It's about making a new friend. It's about going to a situation that's brand new. It's about saying no when it's hard. It's about saying yes when it's hard. So that's the courage we're really talking about. We just happen to do it with all these great activities around.

Yeah. Okay. Well, you know what's coming. How have the two of you had to demonstrate courage in your own relationship toward one another?

Oh.

I think you do it every day. It's a choice. I think it's the courage to be vulnerable, to say the thing. You know, that is hard to say. To really reframe and to look at all the things you appreciate. And I think it's just it's really takes a lot of courage to do your marriage well because you're constantly exposed and vulnerable.

Yeah, yeah. You're wide open all the time. And also it takes those times where you're you're so beat up with other things, not from the relationship, but yeah, you actually still have to put your best foot forward or you have to say, I don't have it. Like I really need help right now. And from a male standpoint to speak about me, that's a hard thing to do. I think Kate says a lot. I'm a pretty good communicator for a guy. It's still incredibly hard to do because, I mean, I want to seem capable and, you know, prepared and all the fun things. And there's times I just don't have it. So it's hard. It's hard and important.

What's your least favorite part of running camp?

No, I don't know.

But at least favorite, I just have a fear that somebody will get hurt. Really. I mean, that's I love the parts of it. I love the relationships, I like the hard things. But we have other people's children in our care. Yeah. And that's a huge responsibility. Like all the time I'm thinking about it. How do you mitigate risk in every way that you can, while still allowing people to stretch and grow? There's a lot of risk at camp, and there's a it's somebody else's hurt walking.

Into your camp. And I think a lot about that all the time. Yeah, I think for me, certainly that's very, very high list. I think the thing I like least is when you have to separate with somebody, you know, whether it be a staff member or a kid, you know, we're we're educators first. You know, we want to make sure these kids are in Saff, are learning to be good humans and learn how to live within, you know, certain expectations. And when children or staff either can't or won't do that, that's a really hard thing. I think the worst thing, especially when, because I meet in person every child before they come to camp in their home or at a coffee shop or somewhere. I want to spend time with them and their families. And if I get the wrong read from somebody and I say, all right, I'm going to let this child into camp, even though I'm probably not going to go well.

And then it doesn't go well, I hate that. So that's actually taken a lot of courage from my standpoint over the course of the last couple of years where I've said no to families, what I've met said, you know, we're we're just not the right environment, you know, for your child or for you parent because you need so much. There's a certain level independence that's, that's required to go to camp. But it's take a lot of courage for me to say, you know, no, thank you for your time. You're not coming to equate it's not invitation. And as a person who likes to please people and say yes all the time, that's that's a challenge.

How many kids do you have? You have 600 some kids.

We have 450 kids and 225 staff.

And you meet everyone in person before they come to camp.

First time? Yes, your first time campers. So this year we'll have 150 new kids that come from all over. And, you know, I spent the year traveling and visiting with families and that that took a lot of courage from Kate, to be honest, because I'm I'm gone, probably I was told by a flight attendant on Delta last weekend that I fly more than their pilots, and that was not a great thing to hear, but it's but it was important to us. This is our family, you know, and the community that we have. We want everybody to thrive there. And not every kid can go and be independent and be kind. And we have high expectations for our kids. You know, if you're going to come into our community, you're going to be a person who adds value. And yeah, so it's important.

That's bonkers. Like that's a that's a pretty commitment. So and you haven't shifted to like, oh, I'll just meet them on zoom. You've elected not to do that.

Yeah yeah I do. We had to in 21 and 22. Yeah. Because the Covid situation and we found that the kids coming to camp and it might have been a big combination of lots of things, but I didn't know them very well. When parents call and they were concerned I didn't have a connection with them as well. I didn't like it as much or frankly, our retention wasn't nearly as good. So I told Kate I was like, we have to get back to me the way we used to do this.

Yeah. And so, Kate, you mentioned, like, you've seen that college kids are less equipped. Now, how about for you call visiting with families. Have families changed over the last 20 years.

Yes.

Are they less equipped or are they more equipped? Like how is how does that work?

Parents are are less confident. You're seeing more parents be friendly with their kids rather than being the, you know, authoritative. You know, we don't want authoritarians, you know, as parents, but we want people that are authoritative. They understand that their kid can do hard things. And I think that's one of the really biggest parts about this for us is that parents, as Kate said, the risk is we're taking a, you know, we're providing the experience in the community for your children, and that's the biggest responsibility there is. You as a parent, have to feel trust in us that they're going to do it. If we have a family that is going to be on top of us, call me every day like twice a day, which has happened. That's not the right fit. You know, I'm happy to do that for a little while, but it's going to get to the point where parents need to trust us.

Yeah, I'm pretty clearly 20 years ago, parents were making the decision about where the kid went to camp, and now it feels like kids are making the decision about where they're going to camp. In most places, you say that's more consistent, more consistent, and that's that's, you know, again, a game. I'm not going to play it. So I had a family say, well, come sell us. I'm like, no, I don't sell. I tell stories and I invite, but we don't sell. Yeah, right.

That's crazy. You said your oldest son is getting married this summer at camp.

Camp?

What? How are you telling him? What? What advice do you have for him and his and his bride?

Yeah. Our sons, who have girlfriends already do their three happiness and appreciation. And they have since they started dating this. Our son Cole and his fiancee Sydney have been dating since high school, and they've put this practice in place and they're really far along on being able to communicate and be thoughtful about each other. Well. And even our middle son, who's, you know, 20 years old and working full time, he's got a great girlfriend. And he called, you know, Kate, not too long ago, I was like, mom, we've been doing the three Happy's I love it. This is like, we really know each other. This is incredible. And you know, this is a 20 year old, you know, young man that. Yeah. You know, his fellow lobes definitely are not there yet. Yeah, but it's neat seeing that experience and bear fruit for him.

Yeah. That's cool. So you're optimistic about where they're headed in terms of you know it's it's it's cool that you're talking about three boys who are figuring this out. I've got two girls. And you know, in my practice two, it seems like women and girls are way ahead of boys in terms of like, emotional intelligence and the ability to kind of do relationship. And is it as simple as just unlocking, I don't know, intention around. I don't I don't I'm not doing this on purpose. It is as simple as lacking intention around gratitude and attitude and courage. Like, is that the thing that we need to instill in the in the next generation of, you know, people, humans?

I'm a big Tony Robbins fan. I think a lot of it is mindset. I think it's deciding what are you aiming at and how do I get there? And for us, the three happy center is the system. Yeah, that got us in the direction that we wanted to go. And so for me, I think it's more that I think it's like the boys know that they want to be a good partner for their wife. And you know, when you can say to them, all right, you're going to get a roadmap, you're going to get, you know, a lot of these things. They're invested in it. I think when you're young, like as a 22 year old man, he really wants to make Sydney happy. That's a really important to him at this stage. And they're kind of learning together how to communicate.

You know which a normal. 22 year old boy isn't ending the day saying, you know, I really appreciate that you went to the restaurant I wanted to for dinner. Yeah. You know, so when I think you're starting to build that, I think the other piece for young men, and this is something I got through Michael and a couple others that I read a lot about, especially because we had three young boys.

How do you how do you build good men? And I'm a firm believer that women are smarter in a lot of ways. They're more emotionally connected. I think we men have all the same emotions. We just have a hard time getting there in terms of how to communicate that. And I really think we as a society are missing the ball in training young men, because for a long time you were raised either in a hunting group or we were more agrarian society with uncles and aunts and grandparents and your work and fields, and you're working hard jobs and you're working next to older men, young men or older men, and they're teaching you because if

they don't teach you, the community is going to suffer. Now we're down to the point where we don't expect or need as much or enough from our young men. So like when our boys, we have a big Jewish population at camp and it's fabulous. A lot of bar mitzvahs and mitzvahs. And so we did some research on that. It's like there's nothing like that for our boys, you know, because we're not Jewish. So we Katie actually worked together. We built basically, in some ways a Christian bar mitzvah where we were literally going teaching our boys for eight weeks very specific things that they had to do from from changing attire to cooking a meal to sewing button to balancing your books along with us as Christians, going deep into the New Testament and understanding what does Jesus ask for?

A young men? And we actually had, gosh, probably a dozen or so young men and their fathers do it with me and one mom. That was great. So we spent a lot of time thinking about how to intentionally prepare boys to become young men. And I think that that's what's really missing, especially for, you know, most of society. And I think the Disney movies didn't help the girls very much. I think the idea of like the fairy tale and he can read your mind and he's going to know all the things that that just is not real. And I think we don't do a very good job of just being honest about its work. You want to find somebody that you share values with, you know, and that you want a similar path going forward, and then you're going to work at it all the time, every day.

You're going to wake up and make a choice to, you know, be a good person in your marriage. And I think that the fairy tale idea and the idea of cool should just know what makes me happy. It's a recipe for disaster.

So what's your what's your plan? Are you going to run camp until you tell your old and gray and they're going to get buried there, like.

The camp mom? And then I just get to do all the fun things instead of all the hard things. But I can't imagine not being there at this stage of life. Yeah. Just it's we're very fortunate that we found something that fulfills us, like we really enjoy it. Kate loves trying to make things better all the time. And I really like interacting with with people and teaching. And, you know, it's one of those things where it can be a family job for a long time, and hopefully our boys want to get into it. And in that case, mom, you know, Kate gets to be camp mom and I get to mow the grass and drive the bus, so it'd be great.

Well very cool. So you guys have a book. Tell me. Tell us about your book and how to find it. And and if you want to tell, it doesn't sound like you need to recruit too much on camp on the camp side of the equation, but.

For good families and good staff. Look like you'd be great.

Yeah. No. I'm retired. I'm retired from my my daughter, she she's an actress. And she, you know, went to school to study theater and she wants to be on Broadway and the whole bit. But she did the thing that everybody does when they graduated from college, she got her first job at summer camp. And so she was in the woods in Virginia. She was in forget exactly where she was. She was north of, I want to say Chantilly, but I think that's wrong. And she was teaching Shakespeare in the woods to kids who were just like, you know. And I was like, Abby, this is perfect. This is a perfect summer job. Just go. Just be in the woods and do.

Yeah. So the book was it's called three Happy and Appreciation. It's, you know, a very descriptive title. People can find it on Amazon. So we have actually two different copies. We've got our versions. We've got one for families because we feel like it's such an important practice to start when our kids are young. You know, when you go to bed or around the dinner table, you just talk about what we have for today.

Yeah, yeah.

What do you appreciate about mom and what I appreciate about you? And we also have one for couples. So three happiness and an appreciation for couples. We think it's a great gift for a newlywed couple or people are just got engaged or just starting to very simple short little books, all based on a whole lot of research that we didn't we didn't even know until we actually started doing this. And then we started researching about relationships like, oh, wait a second, this, you know, John Gottman talks about this, you know, all the pieces and, you know, so it's been a neat process to put that together in a very easy to read two little book that you can find on Amazon and give to to anybody.

Very cool, very cool. Well, I'm happy to have spoken with you today and really to learn more about how you guys are making it work. It's always a delight to talk to people who are just choosing actually to live in the upside, you know, versus it's so easy right now to get caught up in the downside. And there's a whole new word called doom scrolling that we've all kind of given ourselves permission to indulge, when maybe we ought to just think about what makes us happy and what we're grateful for. So I'm glad to have that conversation with you and to be able to share it with other people.

Thanks. Thanks for having songs that.