Want to Propel Yourself Forward? Try Play Says Tammi Leader of Campowerment
Show Snapshot:
Tammi Leader had a big career as an Emmy-award-winning producer at the Today Show and Warner Brothers. But by her early 50s, she was burned out and ready to reconnect with the spirit of joy, optimism, and camaraderie that animated her youth. Tammi launched Campowerment—a camp for grownups—that infuses friendship, connection, community, and the spirit of the campfire into everyday life. And in doing so, she lit a new spark in herself and the 15,000 women who have made Campowerment a part of their life all year long.
In This Episode We Cover:
1. Think camp is for kids? Think again. The magic of camp –connection, community, teamwork and play – is a winning recipe at any age.
2. How Tammi pivoted from a big TV career to become a camp director.
3. The celebrity endorsement that rocketed Campowerment to media darling.
4. A day in the life of grownup camp. No bug spray needed.
5. How the pandemic pivoted Campowerment to new digital offerings.
6. The joy of being silly.
7. Why being part of a group is good for the soul.
8. How to get involved with Campowerment.
Quotable:
Sometimes you just gotta take a leap. From a blank piece of paper, I created an idea that I believed whose time had come. We created a community of purpose-driven people who show up for themselves and for each other to share experiences that are infused with friendship and life’s grounding lessons and the spirit of the campfire. What could be better than play and camp?
It is so unbelievable what happens when you give yourself permission to be silly and to play and just drop your masks and just be who you want to be as opposed to who everybody thinks you are.
Transcript
Katie Fogarty (00:01):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women on life after 50 who are unafraid to age out loud. I’m your host, Katie Fogarty.
Were you a sleep-away camp kid growing up? I was. I went to an old-fashioned bare bones summer camp in the Berkshires and I loved every minute of it. The camp was low frills but high, like off the charts high, in spirit, camaraderie, rituals, and community. So, when I learned about Campowerment, a sleep-away camp-inspired experience for grown-up women to reignite their lives, I was all, “Do they have bug juice?” Today’s guest is Tammi Leader, who spent three decades as an award-winning TV producer before she took a huge leap, stepping out of the TV studio and back into nature, to create Campowerment. She’s here to offer an IRL bunk note about the importance of having summer fun year-round, through live and digital transformative expert-led experiences, powered by play. Welcome, Tammi.
Tammi Leader (00:58):
Hi Katie, I’m so happy to be here.
Katie (01:00):
Tammi, I’m so excited to have you here. I know we did a pre-call, we had so much energy. I loved what you’re doing, your excitement. We were both camp kids, right. We know the magic of camp. But I want to ask you why you decided to bring camp and retreats back into your life, into the lives of other women?
Tammi (01:20):
Well, let’s put it this way. It’s summer right now, but I believe that camp is in our bones and in our blood all the time. I was a camp kid like you, and completely obsessed. And what I loved about camp as a kid is it wrapped life lessons into fun and games and we all connected in a bit of a community without our parents who could tell us who we were supposed to be and we could be who we wanted to be. As a producer, I had come in contact with hundreds of experts, women who had impressed and inspired me, in all my years of TV, especially at The Today Show. And I used to say to them, I’m coming back for you one day, because when I’m done with this TV gig, I’m gonna start camp for grownups that are going to be infused with friendship, family, life’s grounding lessons, and connection and community.
And so, sometimes you just gotta take a leap and from a blank piece of paper, I created an idea that I believed whose time had come. And with my mom and with my daughter, we started this thing as a family and now created an entire family of about 15,000 people—a community of purpose-driven people who show up for themselves and for each other, you know, to share experiences, lead by experts, that are infused with friendship and life’s grounding lessons and the spirit of the campfire. What could be better than play and camp?
Katie (02:38):
Nothing, absolutely nothing. It’s funny, when I created this for the social media assets that I use to share about my August programming, I received several direct messages, several emails from people saying, “Oh my god, I wanna do grownup camp.” People got really excited about that idea because they either have watched their kids experience it, maybe they went through it themselves. They sort of long for that kind of connective tissue because we’re coming out of a period of sort of, you know, dislocation of sort of being alone and camp is such a group and community experience. So you mentioned that you were at The Today Show. Tell us a little bit about your TV career and you know, why you decided to segue into Campowerment at the age of 53.
Tammi (03:27):
So, I started in news and had spent many, many years at many news stations, mostly NBC, I spent the crux of my at NBC. But when I was at The Today Show, I’m a storyteller, and I would come in contact with people who really, I helped to see very clearly that women had raised the bar, our generation of women anyway, those of us at a certain age, as you know, [Katie laughs] have raised the bar so high for ourselves that we’re never getting there. We wanna be smarter and wealthier and skinnier and all these things that no matter where we go, it’s never enough. In Miami, which is where I’m from, we used to call it nunca sufficiente. And it’s like, no matter where we go and what we do, like when is enough, enough? So, I decided to gather all of those people, I saved my Rolodex in the old days of Rolodexes and I used to say to these experts, I’m gonna come back for you and you’re gonna pay it forward, now that we’ve put you on the map on national television, I’m gonna ask you to share what you’ve shared with people, once you get on the Today Show and you have a book deal or you have a very successful practice in whatever you do. I’m gonna ask you to come back and play with us and I’m gonna produce experiences lead by you, wrapped in play and fun and games and joy. And decided that this is what women needed, and now more than ever. We’ve been doing this for 8 years, but now, post-pandemic, it is unbelievable how many people really want to reinvent, want to find resilience, and want to live life bigger and better in the next chapter, whatever that looks like. You know, what we thought was the good old days, or we thought we were stressed out when our kids were little and we didn’t have enough time for ourselves and how we would long for those days now. Life is so busy, digital has done that to us.
So, we created these in-person camp retreats, started in Malibu, have been all over the country. We rent out kids’ summer camps in the off-season and when COVID hit, we pivoted to digital, only because we didn’t know if this would ever, the spirit of playtime would ever translate to Zoom. But nobody thought anything would translate to Zoom. We were contacted by literally hundreds of people in our community who said, “Please help us stay connected to our camp people. There are no friends like camp friends.” And the Campowerment people are really connected in a way that is insane. They come back, we have a 60% return rate because the women keep coming back for s’more as we say, [Katie laughs] because there really is nothing like it. I don’t really know why nobody did this before me, I never thought I was gonna be the one that created camp for grown-ups. And there have subsequently been other brands like this, but nobody does it as we do. Because every single person who shows up to Campowerment live experience or digital experience matters, and they bring themselves, their whole selves, their honesty, and their vulnerability to the whole experience. And the idea is that we go deep and then we play, and then we go deep, and then we play. And there’s a connection and a bond that’s built that’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen anywhere in the whole world, ever. It’s amazing.
Katie (06:38):
Yeah, I mean, except for camp. I think you really, I’ve done a lot of professional development work myself, I’ve attended classes, I’ve taught them. My day job is I sharing your career story and professional branding. I see that all of those types of professional development have a role in your career toolkit. But this notion of tapping into joy and creativity and resilience--and taking time to think about your life and your experiences in a different way and feeling like you’re with a community of like-minded women--is so amazing. When you’re with a group of people who are going through an experience together, is when you’re sort of open and vulnerable and enjoy yourself more. I do see that kind of connection so, I think it’s so smart that you were able to tap into this. Walk us through a little bit more about your programs and offerings. What does it look like? Because you say, and first of all, congratulations on pivoting during the pandemic from in-person to largely digital events. But what do your programs look like? What are your digital offerings? What does a retreat entail?
Tammi (07:43):
So, I’ll start with the digital stuff just because that has really blown our minds. We do six programs a week, live, interactive, highly interactive. So as I said, everybody who comes matters, whoever shows up really brings their own energy, and their own vulnerability and their own experiences into what we call the spirit of the campfire. It’s very easy for us to think that everybody’s got it better than we do. That’s sort of human nature right. But when you sit in a circle or a workshop or an experience with other people who are going through similar experiences to you, or sometimes even more difficult, it helps you see you’re not alone and there’s something about that struggle to juggle life, when you know you’re not the only one that really brings, helps you really propel yourself forward. We bring in experts, and I’m a producer, so I work with them to actually create and curate an experience that is centered around playtime and community and connectivity through the whole thing. So, on the digital side, let’s say, we do tapping with a trauma therapist who can help you sort of release some of that stuff. We talk about saving marriages, we talk about parenting adult kids and caring for aging parents, especially through the pandemic. We learn how to silence our inner critic and quash fears of the unknown. Everybody’s scared of what’s next, we don’t know! We learn to let go of control that we don’t really have, it’s about how to respond and not react. You know, we talk about death and dying, we actually wrote our own obituaries in one of our workshops and circles. We learn how to have hard conversations and forgive those whose views collide with ours. I mean, some of this stuff sounds deep and heavy but we create it, we package it around games and around shared experiences. So, everybody participates and you walk away with really an ability to shift your mindset. There’s no homework. You do the “work” around the fun and around the joyful connectivity within the programs actually. We dig deep and you bare your souls with each other through fun. We also do have fun. We have DJ themed dance parties, we’ve cracked and revved ourselves up in passion parties, which are hilarious, we’ve—
Katie (09:53):
What’s a passion party? [laughs]
Tammi (09:55):
Oh, a passion party is fun. That’s a sort of a sex toy-related—
Katie (10:01):
Ahhh!
Tammi (10:03):
But you know, we don’t talk about this stuff.
Katie (10:04):
Oh my gosh, Tammi, I have to stop you for a minute. I had this wonderful woman who came on who writes for the AARP and she was telling us how she did a whole thing on them. And they were required to call them marital aids. [laughs]
Tammi (10:16):
Oh, that is hilarious. No, no, no. This woman who is, she sells over a million dollars in sex toys a year, she’s one of the largest distributors of something called Bedroom Candy, and she’s hilarious, and she makes it fun.
Katie (10:32):
Of course! It’s supposed to be fun it’s a sex toy!
Tammi (10:35):
It is but it’s, when do you sit around and talk to your friends about orgasms or vaginal dryness?
Katie (10:40):
Oh excuse me, I talk about vaginal dryness on this show constantly. [laughs]
Tammi (10:44):
Oh okay, well all I’m saying is she brings out stuff that like, I mean, we had one, some of this stuff is unbelievable. And they go. Participation is what makes it so much fun. You know you end up, some of these people we have never met. Many of them have been to camp and they do the digital side because they want to connect with us and with their people. But for many, it’s strangers who morph into trusted friends. We have a couple of rules, both online and live at camp. One of them is you can’t say what you do for a living for the first 24 hours of camp.
Katie (11:19):
That would not work in New York City, by the way, that’s everybody’s first question.
Tammi (11:22):
But it does, I’m telling you it does, and here’s why. Because so many high-powered people get there and nobody is blowing smoke up their tushie the first day and all of a sudden they realize, oh my goodness, I really am not who I think I am or who my job title says I am. And it forces them to go deep into, “Who am I really?” With these people who don’t know what I do and it’s really interesting. But we’ve also, through the digital stuff, we’ve sort of fessed up shamefully to holding implicit biases we didn’t even know we had. And that was, you know, our BIPOC sisters shared their truths with us and said, you guys think you don’t see color, that’s bullshit. There’s a lot of impact-related stuff. We hit about 75 different areas of life and it’s really, really fascinating and fun and interactive and we never have enough time. It’s incredible. That’s at campowerment.com and that’s digital stuff that we sell monthly memberships and it is like being in a space and place where you are accepted for who you are, and it doesn’t matter where you’re struggling or what you are going through at this point, they are always gonna walk away feeling better than you did when you got there.
So, we’re finally going back to live in-person camps. We also do corporate retreats for men and women, which is fascinating and interesting. But the in-person retreats which are coming back, we have one in November in Ojai, California and for that, oh my goodness, that’s really gonna be a big one because people are just so jonesing to get connected and be together again. We have an expert talking about how to be your own energy healer, one about the alchemy of joy. We have a colorectal cancer surgeon talking about stress and your gut. We have an amazing OBGYN and fertility specialist talking about menopause boot camp, we do aging with grace, we have meditation, yoga, fitness, wisdom walks, journaling, redefining your sexuality, breath work, fireside chats, drum circles, a cacao ceremony. Really, really, cool, fun stuff. And that’s met with, we used to call it “color war” in the day, you can’t really call it that anymore, they’re like competitive Olympic games. We have a lot of competitive stuff because people just want to play, they want to laugh, they want to go back to a time when life was lighter and more fun. You know, we dress up in costumes, and there’s so much silliness that surrounds the deep diving and I think that’s what makes the experience so incredibly powerful. And sleeping in cabins, [Katie laughs] that’s a trip and you know, by making people a little bit uncomfortable, we find that that is where the growth and the movement happens.
However, we did this year, finally, by popular demand, roll out something called Fancy Camps. So we now take over fancy, very high-end, luxury guest ranches, and we do similar programs, more intimate—the regular camps have about 150 people, these smaller fancy camps are about 40 people with a smaller number of experts. But it’s just a connective bonding experience and everyone who comes to Campowerment leaves there feeling better than when they got there with a roadmap to reignite their life.
Katie (14:43):
Tammi, so I’m curious. Is Fancy Camp slightly more like spa treatments and luxurious? And regular camp is it like cabin and more like, campfires? Is there a difference between the two beyond just the size?
Tammi (14:57):
Yes, in regular the Retreat Camps, we are in cabins and you share community bathrooms and we do have people giving you massages in a cabin if you wanna do that as sort of an up-treatment. In the Fancy Camps yes, there are magnificent spas and the food is fantastic. The food is really good actually at regular camp, we don’t serve beans and wienies, we really go out of our way to serve healthy, good food. But the food at the fancy camps is out of control and off the chain [Katie laughs] and you’re in a big beautiful comfy bed, and you have a big bathtub and you can either share a room or you can be by yourself. So it’s an upscale version, but the actual diving deep and the games and the fun and the workshops and the circles, we do have campfires and we have all of the trappings that come with camp. And when we do s’mores we don’t do Hershey’s chocolate and graham crackers, we do you know, Biscoff crackers and gourmet sea salt chocolates with our marshmallows.
Katie (16:02):
That does sound fancy.
Tammi (16:04):
It is fancy, it really is. We do that at regular camp too, I don’t wanna call it regular camp, because real camp, camp is really what defines us and it’s that spirit of how you feel like a camper that really propels you forward and helps you want to get out of your own way and revamp what you wanna do, be to yourself to the people around you. It really just helps you redefine boundaries and reinvent yourself in a way that perhaps you may not have thought about before. We like to say: you don’t get what you want when you go to camp, you get what you need, and you probably don’t even know what that is when you arrive.
Katie (16:43):
Absolutely. I’m sure there are so many eye-opening moments too. When I spent some time on your website I noticed that you offer your programming against several content pillars. You’ve talked about some of them already: purpose, love and belonging, joy, impact, balance. How do you create balance in your own life? Have the lessons from Campowerment helped you manage the stress of being an entrepreneur? You’re running a business.
Tammi (17:11):
I’ll tell you, I just wrote a blog about this yesterday because I lost my keys on Saturday at the farmer’s market. I was with my daughter; I live in Philadelphia. And she said to me, “I can’t even believe you’re not miffed about this.” I was digging through plums and peaches trying to find them and she said to me, “You’re not even freaking out, you’re not even stressed.” I said, you know, I have finally learned, and it’s only because I run these programs every night with experts, so I feel like I’m getting coaching every single day for the last year and a half and I feel like I’ve integrated this work into my life and it has really slowed me down, Zenned me out, helped me to understand that we can only control how we react to things. We’ve all learned this year that we have no control over anything really. So, I feel really blessed that this is my life and my job and I get to do these workshops every single day and sit with experts and be part of a community of people who are lifting each other up. So, for me, I’ve integrated into my life in a way that I don’t know that I would have done that if I wasn’t running it myself, but it has been just a joy to every day be checking in with different people. Sometimes there’s 40, sometimes there’s 5, but there’s always an expert there mitigating the conversation and really giving us, really challenging prompts and ideas to think about along with lessons that we do wrap around the idea of interconnectivity and fun and so, this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me and my life and I didn’t mean it for that to be.
Katie (18:47):
You sound like you’ve learned so much. We’re gonna move into a quick break, when we come back, I want to hear more about how you learned to be the CEO of this new company. We’ll be back in just a minute.
[Ad break]
Katie (20:07):
Okay Tammi we’re back. So, you had a big career in TV. You were a producer on The Today Show; you’ve been running Campowerment for 8 years. How did you learn how to run a business and be a CEO because you stepped into this new role at age 53, is that correct?
Tammi (20:22):
I did. And I called myself the Chief Empowerment Officer. I actually did this with my mom and it was an idea that we had had. I just went and found this beautiful spot in Malibu, booked the place, had no idea how we were gonna fill it. I just knew that if we built it they would come because I knew what I needed and as a producer I was running a talk show in LA and I saw every day, women were so desperate to be able to say, hey I didn’t sign up for this, this is harder than I thought. But everybody else seems to have it going on and I really don’t. So I didn’t know very much about business, but we are all capable of starting whatever we want, built around a passion that is our superpower. Mine was connecting people and collecting really brilliant people and putting it into experiences that I knew were going to be fun. So, what did I know about business? Not very much.
Katie (21:17):
What do you know about business now? A lot more?
Tammi (21:19):
A lot, a lot more. My daughter, who was a brand strategist for Toms, when it was Toms shoes in the early days and then was in advertising is now the CEO of the company and she calls me now the Chief Vision Officer because I’m the idea person. I have all the relationships with the experts and I produce all of the events and she kind of runs the business side. So, my mom was the one who pushed me really to, let’s just do this. We used to have a non-profit together and she was a college professor and she used to say, “Wouldn’t it be fun to work together?” I said, “I’m a journalist and you’re a college professor, how is that going to be?” And when we came up with this idea, we decided to just go for it, and then Oprah wrote about it. And I don’t have to tell you when Oprah magazine writes, we were in an article called “50 Things That Make You Say “Wow” and it blew the lid off this. Then The Today Show came and CNN came and then we started tog et crazy, crazy media exposure, not because of the programs and because of the experts but because of my experience, which I thought was really weird, of being a summer camp-obsessed grown-up [Katie laughs] who wanted just to go back to my childhood happy place, and that seemed to be the story that was resonating.
We thought that this was really gonna be people who had been to camp before, who wanted to reconnect with their old summer camp friends and have reunions. It wasn’t like that. The majority of the people who come to Campowerment are people who never got to go to camp as kids and who always wanted that experience and they are not recreating the experiences they had as kids, they are reinventing their lives in a way that they weren’t able to do as kids. So, that’s the really interesting part, that so many people have never experienced a sing down or a drum circle or an Olympic competitive game with pie-eating contests and throwing Cheetos on your shaving cream-covered head, [Katie laughs] or climbing up ropes, you know, it is so unbelievable what happens when you give yourself permission to be silly and to play and just drop your masks and just be who you want to be as opposed to who everybody thinks you are. And that to me is what is propelling Campowerment and what is taking us into the entire next dimension.
The digital thing really surprised us, but we recognized how people just want to connect. Community is so important, especially right now as the world is so divided. To find your people, people who will support you, who will back you no matter what, who will not judge you. It’s that stranger on an airplane theory, right. You’re with people who don’t have any vested interest in you, they don’t know your people, so you can talk about how disrespectful your kid is, or how unhappy you are in a situation, or how this relationship is not working for you, and nobody’s gonna tell and nobody’s gonna judge. Everybody’s just gonna rally around you, because isn’t that women do Katie?
Katie (24:19):
Of course, and I love the idea. Actually, this is so interesting. You’re talking about how people come who haven’t done camp before and sometimes they’re coming alone because they really want permission to be vulnerable in a way where they’re not gonna maybe be judged by their inner circle. So for all of our listeners right now who are tuning in. My show, it’s listened to by women who are probably 45 to 65, that’s the range that I get from people when they share. If someone was listening right now and thinking, I’m kind of intrigued by this, I need some community. What could they expect to find? Who is this for? Is it 45 to 65? Is it for midlife? Is it for people who want to reinvent?
Tammi (24:58):
It is, that is our demo. We have some younger people, but when you’re a young mom, you don’t have time to focus on yourself. It’s about self-care in a way that so many of us have gotten to a certain point in our lives where we say, “Okay, I’ve achieved what I needed to, I got my kids through school,” or, “I’m okay, I’ve already made my mark professionally, now, what’s my purpose? What was I put here to do?” We really gear this towards people who come alone. Every one of us, when you walk into a place, you think of yourself as a seventh-grader walking into a new school, in the cafeteria, with your tray, looking around going, oh no, I don’t have any friends, where am I gonna sit? So we really designed this around people who have come alone. We put the people who come alone together so they all can feel awkward together and bond immediately and those who come again and again and again, which they do, sometimes they stay with their friends, sometimes they branch out. It’s not cliquey, there are no mean girls here. This is a place where you can come to let your hair down, to grow, and explore in areas that you would never even think about delving into. Like, who thinks about their ancestral roots and how to you know, take that into consideration when you’re trying to break some bad habits or when you’re trying to perpetuate some things that have been passed down that you haven’t been able to do. A lot of this stuff, energy healing, if you really wanted to explore that you would have to go and invest time and invest money to go get a one on one situation. When you do these experiences with other people, it really helps you see where you wanna hone in on. It’s very rare that you can get a buffet of offerings in one place, in one weekend that is so diverse and so different with people who are going to not judge you, completely accept you and play with you.
So, it’s a really, really fun, exciting place that doesn’t, I’ve never seen anything like it and that to me is the most fun part. That’s why we’re continuing to do this. Unfortunately, I lost my mom a year and a half ago and I wasn’t sure if we were even gonna continue this because she was the sage village elder of our community but to give you an idea of the power of this community, 45 women flew in from around the country for the funeral, people who didn’t know her before Campowerment.
Katie (27:21):
That’s so special. You have created that sense of community. So, you say people come back, 60% return rate. Do you have people who have been coming every 8 years, do they bring friends with them? Do they return solo? What are you seeing from your repeat customers?
Tammi (27:36):
We’re seeing a lot of different stuff. The majority of the people who come back, come back every year. And we do a couple of camps a year. We just launched this Fancy Camp and about half of them were people who had been to camp who just wanted some of the luxury. Some of the people were people who said I’m not a camp person but I love what you do, but I’m not gonna go get naked in front of women in a cabin.
Katie (27:58):
I’m not getting naked in front of women in a cabin either. [laughs]
Tammi (28:01):
Right. So, you don’t have to, there are actually bathrooms if you wanna go in them. But Fancy Camp is really, you know, look, you go to a fancy hotel, and you spend $500 a night and you get no food and you get no entertainment and you get no nothing. You can sit and watch Netflix at night or order room service and you could have a really nice relaxing experience. That’s not what this is.
This is about coming into a place and a space where you can fuel your own soul, get reignited by experts who are going to impress and inspire you and get you motivated, put fire under your tush, or you can hang out under a tree and connect with other women who share experiences as you have. One of the first camps we did, we sat in a circle, there were about 4 or 5 women there who had children who were “other” as we called them, parents of queer kids. And they sat around and had never been able to talk comfortably about that. Three hours later, they’re still sitting under the tree and really learning from and sharing with each other, about things that they were never able to talk about. And so you end up finding the people who go to the same, you know it’s a journey, there are three or four things every hour and a half to go to, so it’s a "choose your own adventure” kind of experience. But sometimes, you’ll have gone to three things in a row and you’ll see the same people are in the same workshops with you and then you start to go, wow we must have a lot in common, and that’s where the conversations begin, and that's where we can learn from each other. Women are not so willing to say hey, I’ve been through x, y, z and I’ve had a really hard time. But when somebody else says, I’ve been through that, I’ve been cheated on, I’ve lost a child, I’ve done whatever, we as women all surround them and we want to help each other. We’re not so willing to be vulnerable sometimes when It’s about us, but when there are other people in the room that can learn from our experiences, we’re right in there. That’s what women do.
Katie (29:56):
Yeah, that’s the beauty of a group too, I think. Sometimes you hear this group used in a negative way, like “group think” or sort of that peer pressure. But a group can be lovely and supportive. My kids go to a camp, my daughter goes to a camp that’s called Chimney Corners. Their logo is a “C” for chimney and they use it because it’s also an open circle, it’s this idea that you’re gonna be welcomed into this group and surrounded by love and support. It’s so powerful. As you shared, when people are sharing their vulnerable moments or sharing things that maybe make them alone in their own community, in their own families, to have that camaraderie and that connectivity is I think, really part of what makes camp so special. I’ve got three kids, the idea of taking two to three days to spend with yourself, with your thoughts, meeting new people, lighting yourself up is such a valuable gift to be able to take time for yourself.
Tammi (30:59):
It truly is, it truly is. And it enables you to really delve into spaces and areas that you would not in your everyday life go. In the beginning, we get a lot of letters from partners and husbands saying, “I don’t know what’s in the water up there.” We literally got a letter like this, “When my wife told me she was going to an empowerment camp I thought, oh just what she needs, more empowerment. She left, and she left me with a whole long list of things I was supposed to do with the kids and I did none of them. She came home early and there were dishes piled in the sink, and she literally got down on her knees and said thank you for not being a loser, for not being a cheater, for being a kind, loving husband and father, and by the way, I have sex toys in my backpack, [Katie laughs] we’re putting the kids to bed early.” Which is so interesting, but it’s about appreciating what you have and when you sit with other people and you really see what people are carrying, the burdens they’re carrying around, it really reminds you to stop complaining and to just appreciate where you are in your space and life and open up doors and options for you to step into them. That’s what we do. And nature of course is such an incredibly grounding force. But we just open the door for people to walk through it. It’s up to them to take the step to walk through it, to elevate their lives, all we can do is create and make the space for them. We did a circle last night called a “Milestone Circle," which is a monthly circle for our digital members and a lot of times, people come and they say, you know, I didn’t really do that much last month and I’m feeling lackadaisical and unproductive and through COVID I’m watching all these people reinvent and do things and I’m not doing anything and it only made me feel worse. And throughout the circle they were sharing things like oh I did this, I created a website. And all of a sudden, but the end, and it happens every month, everybody felt better than coming out than they did going in.
Katie (32:51):
I love it.
Tammi (32:51):
Because we recognize that we can lift each other up.
Katie (32:53):
Yes, we absolutely can. Tammi this has been so much fun. Before I have to let you go, I wanna do a quick speed round with you. I’ve been doing it at the end of all of my episodes this season, it’s been a ton of fun, and I would love to wrap up with you.
Tammi (33:08):
I never say no to a game Katie.
Katie (33:09):
Let’s do it! All right. Top bunk or bottom?
Tammi (33:15):
Bottom.
Katie (33:16):
Hand-held flashlight or headlamp?
Tammi (33:19):
Phone, how about that? That’s the only way we let phones in.
Katie (33:23):
That’s smart. Trunk or duffel?
Tammi (33:26):
Duffel.
Katie (33:27):
Okay. Campowerment digital offering you want to try yourself?
Tammi (33:32):
Oh my goodness, just did one going, “What if everything went right?”
Katie (33:38):
Ooo, that’s a good title. Favorite retreat location to date?
Tammi (33:45):
Ojai, California.
Katie (33:47):
Dream speaker for a future Campowerment retreat?
Tammi (33:50):
Gosh, Glennon Doyle.
Katie (33:53):
Oh my gosh, I’m coming to that one. [Tammi laughs]. I love her, I love her, that would be amazing.
Tammi (33:57):
I know, me too.
Katie (33:58):
Tammi, how can our listeners keep following you, learn more about Campowerment and all your offerings?
Tammi (34:04):
So, we are Campowerment, not to be confused with Camp Empowerment, people call us that all the time. We are Campowerment, one “P”. It’s like camp and power. campowerment.com is where we are on all social platforms, and our website is campowerment.com. check out the digital offerings, we post them six weeks in advance and that is a great place to start. We are learning that people who are not so sure they’re ready to put their toe in should start there, get a feel for who is in our community, how it rolls, and some of the topics we cover. And I invite everybody to check out Ojai in November, it’s November 10-14 and we are about three-quarters full but we have no doubt that in the next few weeks we are gonna be completely full and it’s gonna be, as they say, as our campers say, it’s the largest dog pile in Campowerment history. We are so excited to just get together and hug each other and just sit under trees and reconnect again in person in real life.
Katie (35:02):
That sounds divine. Thank you, Tammi.
Tammi (35:05):
Thank you for having me, this was really fun Katie. Thanks.
Katie (35:08):
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women over 50 who are aging without apology. This also wraps our august shows and our theme of summer fun. We kicked off the month with travel pro Pavia Rosati who shared ideas for summer escapes, closer to home. Literary podcaster, Zibby Owens walked us through beach books not to miss. Best-selling author Angie Kim shared her midlife creative pivot from law to novel writing. And Jenny Rosenstrach dished on drool-worthy summer recipes and plant-based eating. It was such a fun month. Join me next Monday as we kick off September conversations with experts on sleep and beauty.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then: age boldly, beauties.