Episode Transcript
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the camp guys podcast. Glad you chime back in with us. I'm Jay Oliver, the executive director here at Crowders Camps. And I got on the table today, two guys. Noah Oliver.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Hey, how are you doing?
[00:00:49] Speaker A: And we have B. Hicks debut. Britain, Britain Hicks. Today we're going to be talking about a very special subject. I think every single camp leader that listen to this is going to need to listen to. What apps do you use? What software do you use? What's good? How do you communicate during camp? And luckily today we have one of the greatest graphic guys website guys in America.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Right?
[00:01:17] Speaker A: No, I'm talking about me.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Not me. Not me.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: I'm talking about you, B. Hicks. I'm not going to tell you his real name because then you'll look him up and try to hire him. And I just.
But does your camp struggle with technology? You know, are you a techie camp or you're not? And not necessarily like camp software. That's another question for another group of people. But let's talk about just like apps. And first of all, let's go to websites. Does your camp website suck? That's a great question.
[00:01:43] Speaker C: Very important.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: B.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Tell everybody what's the foundation of our website?
[00:01:47] Speaker C: Yeah, we use going off what you said. It's very important to have like a good space for. Cause like a website is like, that's probably. You think of like Instagram and Facebook. Website's probably the first thing a parent's.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Gonna go to the front door.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Yeah, that's the first thing you're gonna see. So that's a whole nother subject to talk about itself. What should be on like the front page and stuff. But as far as like softw, we use Squarespace. Squarespace is a very. This isn't a sponsored podcast, by the way.
We just use Squarespace.
But yeah, we use Squarespace. They have a bunch of great templates. I actually came in and the template that we've been using was actually pretty good. So I just kind of rolled off that. But it allows for a lot of customization, things like that.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you go to Crowderscamps.com right now you can see Bee's handiwork and also the special little gadgets and gizmos that Squarespace. Well, you know, B, we just can't afford that kind. That yalls website must cost you a fortune. It's $33 a month.
[00:02:47] Speaker C: It's not bad.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean the brainchild is you. You know, if you're still. If you're still using clip Art out there. You know, there's, there's guys that you can hire out to help take your organization to another level. But let's. Before, before we get into more content of apps and website stuff, let's talk about our creative team.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Right?
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Let's talk about those guys. Be you a summer staffer here a long, long time ago, you graduated college with a, with a whatever degree, graphic design, whatever. And then I hired you to be our marketing creative guy. And you've done an amazing job, by the way. I think I tell you that. Yeah, I think I tell you that.
[00:03:27] Speaker C: The first time, actually.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: No, Come on.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: That's a lot documentation right now.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: If you don't have the content and know you, I know some of you guys are thinking right now out there, you don't want people going around the room with cameras during worship and, and ruining mood and getting in the way. I get it. And you know, how many pictures can you have of the band? I get it. You know, you only need 20 and you're good. Not 200, but B. How do we set up? What do we, what do we need on our creative team to fuel you as the creative guy to keep our Instagram and branding up throughout the year?
[00:04:02] Speaker C: Well, well, first I think it comes down to two things. First, we need the capacity. We have a lot of camps going on during the summer, sometimes all at once. And so it can be a little bit difficult have a session going on here and have a session going on at Springs and then also adventure cams up in the mountain somewhere.
So just having those bodies. But then I think more importantly, and this is something that I've definitely seen with my time being here, is you gotta have the passion to like be here.
Like, you can be like talented with a camera, AV system or anything, but you just not have the passion to be here.
And that's just something that like, we really want to like have here on the creative team. Because if you have passion, you love what you do, it make not only makes their jobs easier, it makes my job easier because I don't have to tell them like specifically what to do. They'll just be like, hey, I'm just going to do this, this, this and this.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm at home looking at them like, wow.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Love minus load.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: That's great. That's awesome. I mean, just seriously, like sometimes I'm at home during the summer, I look at our post, I'm like, wow, that's great. So. And that comes from the passion, you know. But what about, what about the people that's just starting out, like, literally you're. You don't have. You got more text than anything on your website.
You know, should you trust a beginner, you know, somebody just maybe you provide the camera for them. You got to start somewhere.
[00:05:29] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, we've had. I can pour into this because we've had some creatives on our team who have not been like, kind of at that beginner level. But what I've always told myself is, no, maybe your stuff doesn't get posted, maybe your stuff doesn't get on the website, but you're getting experience and you're also getting poured into from a ministry standpoint.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: So, like, you could take like this experience from the entire summer, which it is a lot of experience. You're constantly shooting and take it into your, like, your resume or like, and just use it to build upon your, like, foundation.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah. If I, if I was you as a camp director and, you know, your, you know, your social media is not good, you know, your website needs some work, I would invest all of my time and resources into a creative director for the summer. And there's people out there in graphic design programs that, you know, maybe a first year, second year students. I mean, we had one guy that wasn't even accepted into the graphic design program at his college that was still a marketing guy and he did a great job. But there's some people out there that don't even get into graphic design programs that still have a passion. You know, you need a leader. That's what you need to be able to lead these creatives and to taking pictures and I think be one. We got a great leader and I just want to tell you thank you. So you can listen to this podcast over and over again and it should be boost you up, but I mean, honestly, everything rises and falls on leadership and you as a camp leader, maybe you've not looked at your website in weeks or months and you need to. You need to spend a good week going through there and being like, okay. When we started Crowders Camps, which was just Crowders RIDGE Back in 2014, I literally had some interns from Highland School of Technology here in Gaston county go out in the woods and take pictures of trails and trees and mushrooms as promo material. Awesome. That's all we had.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: So good.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: We didn't. We didn't have the slides. We didn't have the, you know, the high rope stuff. We didn't have the buildings. So we literally took pictures of moss.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Nice. Yeah.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: And it worked.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: I come to that camp.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah, a moss camp. Moss camp.com.
but it worked. All right, let's go into apps now. So, hey, guys, check your website. That's a nugget. Check your website.
Think about it, camper first. Think about it as parents reading that website. Is it good? Is it not good? Does it really stink? Yeah, go check it out. Now let's talk about apps. Noah, what's some apps that we communicate inside the staff with?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: So we use Slack. So this is the main app that we use. So you can have up to. We have up to about 80 people sometimes just on this app. So as our main source of whenever we need to communicate something, something changes in the schedule, reminding people what we need to do in the schedule. This is the app that we would use.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Does it send an upd. I mean, does it send, like, alerts?
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have this thing called the Slack bot. Really, really cool. So in the Slack bot actually can send out the schedule without our campus directors actually having to actually send it out. So it updates every single night around midnight, actually, and then they can check in the morning time of the schedule ready to go for the summer.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: So it sounds automatic stuff. Yeah.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty cool. Nate actually got that all programmed for us through Kent Wise to be able to it for Slack.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: So it works in with our camp software.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Yep, yep. It's really cool.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: So if you're camp and you guys got. Okay, we got one big, giant text message thing. We got b. There's a thing with Androids, Right. And iPhones. You can't get the same text message.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: It's better now, but in the past. Yes. And texting between Android and iPhone was very complicated.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's definitely probably caused some of you some issues in the past. So this app called Slack has been successful for us. What's some other apps as a camp that we use that other camps may not know about?
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Well, I know for specifically for digital signage. So around camp, instead of, like, a physical menu, we use, like, a TV mounted to the wall to communicate. Like what's on the menu for bucks or what's on the menu for the lodge. The app we use for that is Yodeck. So when you sign up for that, they will send you a couple of different devices. And essentially what you can do is load your stuff through their software, connect their devices to your tv, and basically run a schedule. So I can run, like, this TV's gonna turn off at this time, and this TV's gonna show this, this, this, and this. During these days of the week, these hours of the week.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: So you can put a Welcome J Baptist church on there too, if you want to.
[00:10:10] Speaker C: Yeah. So like, first day of camp, I know we used to, when we have retreats coming on the weekends, when we had a TV in the lodge, it would be like, welcome to camp. And then every week I would go in and change it. Welcome to Camp Blank Baptist Church. And it would just be something to be a little bit personal. But the yodek is the app we use for our digital signage.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: So some of you camp leaders, you may be thinking having somebody that manages social media, creative stuff is not necessarily high ranking on your staffing budget. I would totally disagree.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: It changes the game. It changes the game because you got to see that person as a revenue maker.
You know that, that if you're not putting out stuff, impressing parents, impressing group leaders, then they're not coming to your camp, so they're not signing up. So you, you, you really have to see a creative person, a marketing person as somebody that brings in inventory. They're almost like in sales.
And you know, from our services all the way down to our social, it's all, it's all about how we look professional. I love that. Now one app that I love that we use is Smug Mug.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Smug Mug.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, a little bit. Oh, I'm sorry. That is my phone. How about, how about you b. What do you think About Smug Mug?
[00:11:35] Speaker C: SmugMug is our photo services app. So all my photographers and stuff will take pictures, get content, and then drop it on SmugMug. And it's basically just a place to keep photos, videos. So we will take a whole bunch of photos throughout the week and then we will upload it to our SmugMug. And that is actually something you can put out publicly. So we will. We usually get a lot of questions. Be like, hey, where are you guys posting these photos? And we'll send them to our Smug Mug and we'll also post that on social media. But yeah, it's just a good service to again, just like have for me to pull from to get content for social media and all that stuff. And it's also a great resource for like a youth pastor and like campers to go back to throughout the year to get those camp memories.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: And you talk, you talk about organization. I mean, we go back, I think all the way to 2015.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: 16 in the smug mug.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: 16.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, 15. Well, I don't even think we had anybody taking pictures. That was our first year.
Barely any pictures of 2015 because we had so many things to do to get to camp, operable for that year, but it's organized in volumes. And it's even more organized, organized as it grows older because it's by the week, you know, so if Sarah, let's just say a young lady, Sarah, tragically lost her life and we knew that she came to camp June 16th of that year, we actually could go back, look through pictures for Sarah's parents or, you know, whatever, and put something up about her or whatever. I mean, so there's a lot of benefits to having that organization. And anybody can upload pictures. You know, they might not be great, but at least, you know, you can organize those in the cloud for yourself. We use, as a, as an organization, Google Docs, I think is one of the best things that's ever happened because you got everything all stored in one space. So if you, if you got. You're still using Word and Excel, I'm telling you, you need to move off all that.
[00:13:32] Speaker C: Get into Google Docs as that collaboration feature that's like. So if Jay's editing a document and all this spelling and grammar's off, I can go and be like, oh, check, check, check, check, check.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it is off. But it's just a great thing. Anything, anything else you guys can think of out wise or program.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's huge for our financial staff when it comes to home base. Yeah, home base is awesome because you have to. You're avoiding have to go to the office actually clock in. You can actually clock in on your app. So you can right in the kitchen, you can clock in right at the shoots for our shoot staff, instead of having to go all the way to Crowders Ridge to clock in in the office, you can actually just clock in at Crowder Springs, right where you're putting the tubes out. It's a very great feature.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So home base eliminates having to go to a time cl. And you know, if you're probably having trouble with your website, you're probably still using a time clock too, Right. In some situations we still do have time clocks here. We're trying to eliminate them all.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Our maintenance staff, we used to clock.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: In and we're trying to get everybody on home base. But home base is cool because in a certain mile radius right of the actual set location, you can clock in. So you gotta be pretty close to clock in. So you can't clock in 10 minutes out.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: They're gonna cheat us. They're gonna be like on the way to get paid to come to work.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: They got paid extra hour.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: That's not the based work. So that's, that's also a great program. Good, good call. That is a great program. PDF Expert for me because I'm always signing documents, always having to make contracts and have them sign. PDF expert 49.99 a year or I think it's a one time fee just to upgrade it. I can do anything. I can take a site plan that's got 25 pages, delete it down to just two. What I need to be to send into a particular contractor, sign it.
It's a beautiful program to use. PDF Expert y'all got.
[00:15:25] Speaker C: I mean me personally, I have a ton. So like being a creative, like of course I use the Adobe suite. So like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, all that stuff, that's basically what all our graphic content comes from. So anything you see on a shirt or like a screen, it'll come from basically those apps. Also for screen apps, for services, we use ProPresenter. So ProPresenter 7 it is. I will say it's not the most user friendly but once you can like learn all the ins and out it's. You can make, it can be as simple or as complicated as you make it.
You can go really deep into like how you're doing your transitions and stuff. It has a lot of like customization but it could also be like, hey, you throw an image in there and that's all I need.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: What's the best place for somebody to learn is it being YouTube?
[00:16:12] Speaker C: Probably YouTube and experience, that's basically. Yeah, I mean a lot of things when it comes to like creatives, you got to have your own personal touch. I mean, yeah, you get inspiration from other people, but it really comes down to like you. I mean again, passion. So like reaching out, like going out to YouTube, reaching out to other creatives and just like learning yourself.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. And I think our Adobe subscription per month runs around $67 and that, that's a whole lot better than buying the programs.
Plus a constantly saying upgraded. You know you're working in the cloud, right? All your stuff's pretty much in the cloud, right?
[00:16:54] Speaker C: It can be, yeah, but it's my computer and yeah, it does allow for that.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: I mean it's a great, great product.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: And I will say if you're not like creatively like photo, like the Adobe like cloud is not for like everybody. It's, I will say it is more professional based but I will say like other alternatives. If you're getting a beginner in There, like Canva is a really good one to start with. It has a lot of like templates you can use.
And, and like, as a Photoshop user, I recommend a lot of people to Canva because again, as I said, like, the creative suite is not for everybody.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we need to get.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: And it's free, so.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's free. That's always great. So there's, there's a, where there's a will, there's a way. And again, be's mentioned several times about passion.
You, you as a camp leader, you may not be passionate about the way you, your camp looks on social. Speaking of social, we only use Instagram and Facebook. We have followers on Instagram than we do on Facebook.
[00:17:56] Speaker C: I'm not really. It's getting close now.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Oh, is it? Okay, great, great. But you know, we don't use, we, we don't use tick tock do we be.
[00:18:03] Speaker C: We don't. I'm not a, I'm not an influencer. Maybe one day. Plus it's about to get banned. So like, what's the point?
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Right now we don't do, we don't do Twitter or nothing like that.
So everybody's on Instagram and Facebook. So guys, listen, just start there, you know, I mean start small and, and, and put something out there and that content's gonna be blessed. I.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: Something that's like really important is like you can, the summer only lasts especially for like a church. Only lasts for like a week. Yeah. But like you can make camp last like the other 11 months of the year. If you're posting about like memories of camp, like just constantly posting, reminding people of camp. Like that's the whole point of like camp social media is to remind, is to keep everyone constantly thinking about like, oh, camp, camp, camp, camp, camp, you know?
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's good. Well, this is some nuggets for you guys. Some apps that you can go check out, some programs, some software.
I went two years ago and from the financial standpoint, totally paperless. I took a splurge, went to Office Depot, bought a scanner, and we have zero invoices. Paper invoices. We have zero waivers. Yeah, waivers.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: We're huge.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Everything's digital and in the cloud. And what we have years. I call it the Vault. The Vault, Yeah. I have a huge Dropbox, not subscription, but storage. And we have from 2017 all the way down to 2025 now, the vault. And if anybody wants to see our financial receipts, our accounts payables, our loan documents, anything, it's all in the vault.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: It's easy to access too, other than having to find all that access at.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: My house, my truck, truck. We're all pretty much mobile offices now in this generation. I can be in my excavator, pull up a file and see it.
So I encourage you deeply to go digital paperless in your in your financial office as well, just because the organization's incredible. If you want to keep up with those boxes for seven years, great. But if you ever get audited or anything like that, good luck going through all that. Every month I download the statements digitally from our banks, from our loan statements. So everything things organized, I can literally put everything on a junk drive, send it to whoever for whatever reason I wanted to, and I'm done. So I learned how I learned that and it's been a huge blessing in the financial office. And of course we use QuickBooks for all of our camp financial accounting, all that good stuff. So I hope you guys have got a nugget from this episode. It's been great. If you have any questions or want to comment on anything podcastrowderscamps.com Love to hear a question. Hey, how do you guys do this? Hey. We want to answer it for you because we want to be a resource that we didn't have when we started out. We want to be a resource for you guys. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Check out the next one. Thank you. Have a great day, guys.
[00:21:08] Speaker C: See you.
