The Camp Interest Process to get interest and offers from college camps

Alright, so today I'm talking about the camp process, how to get interest and scholarship offers from camps. And if you don't know who I am, I'm Trent Laura. I'm a former college quarterback. I now run your first scholarship where we help families get their first scholarship and more. So this is going to be a straight, unedited video. I'm going to dive into it. I'm going to give you the full take and so take whatever golden nuggets you can from it. If you're driving, then just try to take away one thing. If you're not, I recommend you take notes. So let's dive in. So the camp process is most. I'll kind of go into what most families do first and then we'll talk about what the scholarship standouts do, the ones that actually really crush the recruiting process. So most families, and if you're doing this, like, you know, I'll definitely share with how you should fix this. But most families just kind of like they pick a few local camps, maybe they got like a couple email invites or Twitter DMs that they, you know, fly out for and think it's more worth their time. But most of the time, like, you're just kind of grasping at straws at these camps. And I know this because I've done it with my process too. It's just like you feel like you got some interest from the school or they sent you some emails and you're like, okay, well hey, there's schools there. We should be able to get one interested in us. And so we're going to take a chance and go out there. Like most of the camp process is just relying on, on hope and luck. Like you hope that you go there and crush it and that a coach offers you afterwards. And oftentimes families are just completely frustrated after this camp. That's what really kills a lot of recruiting, is they get extremely frustrated. They saw a bunch of other kids get offers, a bunch of other kids get better conversations and you walk away from the camp super frustrated, hoping that the next one goes well. And then just the same thing repeats over time. You go to 10 camps over the course of the summer and you walk away like, dang, like that was a complete waste of time. And so, or maybe you have a couple of things that like did happen and you're hoping those can turn into scholarship offers later down the line, but really you just don't, you don't have anything real, real intangible. And so I think that's just not the way that you should go about it. That's not what camps are meant to be. And so the camp process, the. That gets interest, that gets offers is what I teach to my families inside your first scholarship. And so what it, what it essentially is, is if you haven't heard of the 8020 principle, it's also known as the Pareto principle. It's just the idea that like 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. And that applies heavily to camps. I mean, it applies to everything. Like, if you really think about it, but especially in camps, it's a big thing because most people think that 8020 is you perform really well at the camp and that's where you get your all your offers and interest. And that's definitely an important part is performing well at the camp. But really the 8020 is what happens outside the camp. That's what a lot of people miss out on. And now you may think, oh, he's talking about connections, he's talking about that. No, I'm talking about just you building these relationships with the coaches before the camps and after the camps. Like, that's the biggest thing. Like, if you go to the camp with no interest and then you walk away right after the campus end and talk to no coaches. Yeah, your camp is going to go terribly. And so like, you have to prioritize gaining interest before the camp to make sure that coaches actually know who you are. And then after the camp, you have to talk to coaches and close that deal and turn it. Not necessarily are you going to turn everybody conversation does scholarship offer but turn it into real interest or at least get closer to the truth. Just be aggressive in your recruiting. And that's just a big mistake I see a lot of families make is like they put all this effort into believing that they're going to go to the camp and impress. And realistically, if you don't, like truthfully, if you do not run a 44 and are just an absolute hidden gem, and maybe you believe that, but like, realistically, if you are not like just an athletic specimen, no amount of effort you put into that camp is going to impress a coach enough to offer you there without seeing your film, without knowing who you are, where you're from, just having a more elaborate evaluation than just what they see at the camp. That's just the truth. If you're on Twitter, you see people talk about this all the time. If you're going to camps expecting to get offers, especially at like an FCS or an FBS camp, you are going to get disappointed. Because if you do not already have clear, genuine interest from these schools, they're not going to offer you. That's just straight up the facts. So what you need to do instead is instead of relying on luck and hope and that you're going to crush the camp and all these coaches are going to be hitting you up after the camp, before the camp even happens. Weeks, weeks before camp season even starts. And I'm saying this in June, so camp season's already started, so sadly, you can't get ahead on this. But you need to be reaching out to coaches. You need to be seeing what camps are actually going to be worth your time. And the real tactical stuff is like, a lot of people will reach out to coaches and they'll get the camp invite, which doesn't mean anything. Like a graphic doesn't mean anything. A coach can send you a graphic anytime. It takes five seconds. You need to figure out if the genuine, the interest is genuine, real, and try to ask more questions. You ask more questions, you get further along in the process. You try to push more and more and more. I'm not saying being rude or anything like that, but you need to ask real questions and try to push for more in that process because otherwise you're going to think that there's real interest. Then you show up to the camp and realize that, you know, hey, you kind of just got strung along. That's the last thing that you want. And then again, you continue that process. You get down to a real solid camp schedule where, hey, you know, there's a real, real interest there because you've had amazing conversations. You've figured out you've gone past just a general camp invite and had them commit a lot of time and energy and effort into you to recruit you. And now you have a solid camp schedule. You go to the camps, you impress because now they're actually watching you at the camp. And then after the camp, you close that deal. And so a lot of the app post camp stuff, like, I think a lot of people think there's like a secret hack on. Like, say these words and you get a scholar. Like, that's just not how it works. It's legitimately. You can't force a scholarship. Like the camps, like the kids that are getting scholarship offers, most of the time they pretty much had the offer beforehand and they told them, like, hey, if you come to the camp, you'll get an offer. If you come to the camp, we'll value further and most likely we'll get like, they have that clear direction. So if you're not getting that clear direction, then don't expect an offer. Your goal is ultimately just to move the process more forward. Like that's always your goal. Just move closer to a scholarship offer. Move closer to a scholarship offer. And so here, when you get to that, that conversation, your goal here is just to transfer confidence and figure out like, what do you need to do to get to that scholarship offer? What do you need to do to move forward in that process? And by doing that, you'll walk away with a more clear direction and the coaches will walk away impressed with your confidence, with your ability. And that's what you want, that's your ultimate goal. Because then you go into the season, you have that under your belt, you continue that relationship throughout, and then you have more film and then boom, that's when you can close the deal with the scholarship offer. Because ultimately, like game film is going to be the most important thing. Like camps are great because you get, you're getting an in person evaluation, you get all that stuff. But like when the pads are on, that's when things really matter, when you're in game situations. And so they need to see that game film oftentimes. So that's really. The camp process is like focusing on the pre camp and focusing on the post camp, the during camp stuff. Yeah, there's some stuff you can do to definitely increase your chances of getting noticed and getting attention and just making sure to stand out. But like the camp process comes down to like making sure camps, coaches, you're going to the right camps that you know coaches are going to be paying attention to you. Before, during the camp, you're making sure that you're standing out to the coaches and then after the camp you're having conversations that allow you to close that deal and turn the eyeballs, the attention into real interest and hopefully scholarship offers. But just ultimately real interest is the main goal. And so then you continue turning that interest into offers down the line. And so that's the entire camp process broken down from a broad interview. I mean, I could go on and on. I ran a workshop not too long ago about camps and how to get interest from them. And I mean, I think it was only two hours long, but I could go on for 10 hours because it's just a very intricate process and there's a lot of different things that go on to it, but that's really from a broad overview what you need to do. And so if you're, if you're missing any of that, you're not gonna get anything from it they're going to be because if you're missing the pre camp stuff then you're going to the wrong camps they don't know who you are and it's hard to get that the day of the camp it's built months ahead of the camp bare minimum weeks and the during camp obviously you need the during camp because if you mess up the camp like nobody's going to offer you and then after the camp it all comes down to you know talking to the coaches correctly because if you mess up that part the conversations are going to stall out and you're not really going to get anywhere with them so make sure you focus on those three pieces if you do that right you'll walk away with interest and you'll have a much more productive camp process without wasting your time, energy and money and all that so hopefully this helped if so appreciate you make sure to like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next one Peace.