We recently connected with Lana Allen and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lana, thanks for joining us today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you as a business owner?

I believe all “failures” are opportunities to learn something valuable or insightful. These are lessons we can apply when we find our niche. In my case, the most useful ones have been learning to work as a team. This is a lesson the universe had to drill into me in very unkind ways…. because I don’t listen. I didn’t delegate well and I was slow to ask for help. My business partners Rishona and Leilani hold me accountable so I can remain communicative and collaborative.

Between us three, we’ve held an array of jobs: hospice nurse, cable installation, owner of a nonprofit, independent contractor, therapist, sex educator, and so on. A reoccurring theme we’ve all learned from previous jobs is having a team the team operates in their strengths. When Rishona and I worked in a longterm care psychiatric facility, there were instances of EVS staff meddled in the role of therapists. The kitchen staff attempted to do the tasks of CNAs. This created absolute mayhem! Residents exploited inexperience and miscommunications for their benefit.

Everyone and every role is vital for the success of a company, team, or project. My partners and I all have vastly different strengths. They are both very vocal about how to best utilize their particular skills effectively, especially Leilani. I’m appreciative of that energy because it’s helped me evolve personally and professionally. We have a lot of moving parts in the works but we’d love to shine a spotlight on our adult summer camp, Camp BYOB. The next one is August 23-25. We’ve really been pulling together all of our shared experiences, failures, and successes to make this one the most memorable yet!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

As a trio, Rishona, Leilani, and I run three interconnected businesses but for the sake of this article, we’ll focus on Camp BYOB. We are an adult summer camp for ages 25 and up. Our mission is to combine nostalgia, comradery, and the power of play to create a space for reconnecting with nature, stress relief, and inner-child healing. Growing up, summer camp was the place you went after a long school year to let your hair down and make life-long friends. It’s the same here, but add drinking, body paint, strobe lights, raves, costume parties, and over 40 different activities! Camp BYOB is what you make it. Choose your own adventure; meditate, turn up, get active, meet new people, party, shop with our vendors, or relax. Our hope is to build a community of repeat campers from all over the world that reunite every summer for new experiences and big surprises– and we’re well on our way.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Rishona and I are sisters. She’s FAR older (by two years lol), so I don’t have any details about our first meet. Leilani went to the same high school as us. She was in my Spanish class. I didn’t have much interaction with her before she abruptly had to change schools. I do vaguely remember her standing up to our teacher after he raised his voice at me.

Social media happened and we were passive friends on there before learning our families know each other and grew up in the same tightknit community. We also discovered we have 10 of the same natal placements…which I guess you’ll only care about if you’re into astrology.

Fast forward and the three of us were intoxicated singing 90s songs about heartbreak. It’s a family affair, I think that’s why we collaborate so well!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

As I mentioned earlier, I was never good at delegating. If someone didn’t do a task correctly, i thought it was easier to fix it myself instead of teaching them and waiting to see if they got it right this time. As someone who has been an entrepreneur for decades, this is a terrible and draining quality to have. It left me depleted and disconnected from my team.

I took leadership classes to better serve my team and our customers. Thankfully, Rishona and Leilani will gladly call me out if they see me slipping. They’ll nip it in the bud before it can reach the rest of the team

Contact Info:

• Website: Linktr.ee/campbyob
• Other: The linktree has all of our relevant links

Image Credits
Jwardfilms04@gmail.com Jonathan of JWard Films