08/18/2026
I would have loved someone to offer me this.
There was a morning I sat in my car in the parking lot and could not make myself open the door.
It was not that I did not want to work. I have always worked hard. I sat there looking at that building, and what I remember thinking is that I did not recognize myself anymore.
I was a Director. I built programs and policies and training, and I trained the people who ran them, and some of it is still running right now. All of it went out with somebody else's name on it.
I gave that job my best hours. Not the tired leftover ones at the end of the day. The good ones. Everyone I loved got whatever was left.
And it did not stop when I left the office. The calls came at night, and even sitting right there with Michael and my family, part of me was still at work. You can leave an office at the end of the day. It took me a long time to figure out I was not actually leaving mine.
What finally moved me was not a bad day and not a bad boss. I was being held to standards I was not given the authority or the support to hold. Quality slipping while I stood there and watched. Staying was going to mean putting my own name on work that did not meet my own standard, and I could not do it.
You know this feeling if you have it. You are not lazy. I would bet money you would work twice as hard as you do now if the thing you were building was yours.
That is what nobody says about people who want out. We are not trying to get out of the work. We are trying to get the work back.
That is where the Regional Manager idea came from when Michael and I started Campfire Concierge. We did not want a company full of employees doing what we told them to do. That is the same thing all over again with our name on the door instead of somebody else's.
I have to be straight with you. An RM does work under our brand. Campfire Concierge is on the sign and the booking page and the shirt. But that was never the wound. I did not need my name on that building. I needed the thing I was giving my life to to be mine.
An RM's territory is theirs. Their sites, their campground partners, their guests, the experiences they decide are worth building. We bring the brand and the systems and the guidance, because starting from nothing is brutal and we are living that right now. Nobody hands an RM a schedule. We are brand new at this, and I am not dressing that up.
But I know what this would have meant to me. Somebody walking up to that car and saying here is a real thing, and it is yours, and we will show you how. Nobody did. I had to go find it myself and that is a much longer road than it has to be.
So if you are the one sitting in a parking lot right now, this is me walking up to your car.
Application link is in the comments. Or skip the form and talk to me: https://lnkd.in/gmRQaReP. I will tell you how it works.
What would you build if you got to keep it?
