We Are Not Trying to Get Out of the Work

One morning I sat out in the parking lot and could not make myself open the car door.

It was not the work. I have worked hard my whole life and I like working and I sat there looking up at that building and thought I do not recognize myself anymore. I did leave that job, and it is why Campfire Concierge has Regional Managers instead of a building full of employees.

I was a Director. I built programs and policies and whole systems and I trained the people who still run them and all of it went out under somebody else’s name. I knew that going in. I gave that job my best hours and everybody I love got the leftovers.

Most people get to shut an office door at the end of the day. It took me a long time to see that I never shut mine, and I could be sitting on the couch with Michael and my family and still be at work in my head.

It was not a bad day and it was not a bad boss. They held me to a standard without giving me the authority to hold it and I watched the quality slip and staying meant signing my name to work I would not have signed off on. So I stopped trying to make it better and started working out how to leave.

If you are the one sitting in a parking lot right now, I know some things about you. You are not lazy. Nobody in that car is looking for an easy ride and I would bet money you would work twice as hard if what you were building belonged to you!

Nobody says that part out loud about people who want out. It is not the work we are trying to leave. The work belongs to somebody else and we want it back.

So when Michael and I built Campfire Concierge we kept coming back to that. We did not want a company of employees waiting on us to tell them what to do because that is the same trap with our name on the door. That is how the Regional Manager role started.

Here is where I have to be honest. I just told you what it did to me to pour years into something that carried another name. An RM carries ours. But the name was never the wound. I never needed my name on that building. What I needed was for the thing I was pouring my life into to belong to me, and it did not, and no title they handed me was going to fix that.

A territory here is not a line on a map. It is whoever you go out and bring in and the landowners and campgrounds you sign are yours to run. We bring the brand and the systems and a 14 module certification before you sign anybody.

And we are brand new. Starting from nothing is brutal and we are in the middle of that right now so I am not going to tell you it is built and waiting on you. Nobody is going to hand you a schedule either.

Go picture what you would actually want to run out there. Not the title. The thing itself.

Then go fill out the Regional Manager application. It asks where you want to work and what you have done and none of it locks you in. We answer inside 48 hours and I walk you through it myself. And if you would rather hear it from a person than fill out one more form, email me at haley@campfire-concierge.com. I will tell you how it works and what is hard about it, and if it is not right for you I will say so.

I would have loved for somebody to knock on my window that morning and tell me there was a real thing out there that could be mine. Nobody did, so I had to go find it myself. This is me knocking on yours.

What would you build if you got to keep it?