About Our Family - Cummings Camp Programs

Here To Serve®

We’re Buddy and Nikki Cummings, co-founders of Cummings Camp Programs. Twenty years ago, we started launching, scaling and selling successful companies. Now, we’ve got a track record of building top-performing teams, creating cultures people love, managing seasons of crisis, and nearly anything related to starting, scaling and maintaining an industry-leading business.

We believe that the more you persevere, the greater your success. As entrepreneurs, we leveraged our challenges and risks into rewards. Most recently, we started a “mom-and-pop shop.” Then, we grew it. It became the largest employer and #1 independent service provider in the renewable energy industry. Along the way we were at risk of losing it all more than once! In one extreme season, our team managed to rise from struggling to survive our worst year ever, to breaking revenue records . . . in just 12 months. Shortly thereafter, we were honored to receive the California Small Business of the Year Award from the Small Business Association.

When we announced our retirement in 2019, we were 38 and 42 years old. We had gone from a handful of team members to more than 500 employees nationwide, all rallying behind a vision and executing it with passion. That company continues to grow and dominate the industry.

Of course, we worked very hard and it wasn’t always easy. Still, we’ve loved every minute of our journey of service. For us, that’s what it’s all about–teaching people to be Here to Serve®.

We love sharing our secret sauce, our Mission: Here to Serve®. We care. We care about our teams, our clients and our communities.

We believe that Servant Leadership is the best form of leadership. In this new chapter, we’re living the dream with our three kiddos — “Chasing the Stoke” and living life to the fullest.

Instead of relaxing on a beach, we’re committed to sharing what we’ve learned with you. We remember what it was like early on, and we are Here to Serve® you: the Dreamer, the Renegade, the Risktaker, the Doer – the Entrepreneur!

We are here to help you build the business of your dreams, so you can live the life of your dreams!

Here to Serve®,

Buddy & Nikki

Our core values

We believe when you focus on service, a thriving and profitable company is a natural result. Our team and community are our highest priorities. Our primary question: Through our work, do those served grow as individuals? Are their organizations and teams stronger, healthier and more empowered to live out their mission? When we live by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, we are in alignment with our mission and one another.

We live by the motto: Chase the Stoke. We celebrate our culture and believe that when we are driven to do our work well, we’re liberated to live life to the full. Achieving our highest personal and professional purpose requires doing the work, mastering consistency and a healthy dose of stoke chasing! Hard work equals luck, and we work hard, but at work and at play, we’re all about living out the adventure!

We work hard to deliver quality, life-empowering content to those we serve, but if we aren’t having fun and growing, what’s the point? Jack Kerouac wrote, “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb the damn mountain. We believe in courage, dream chasing, leaving it all on the field, GRIT and finishing the race with NO regrets.

We celebrate collaboration and encourage feedback. We value creative input and know that we are better as an organization when an environment of approachability is fostered. We believe in morning Rituals, goal-setting, discipline and coffee. Without purposeful planning, we’re less likely to get where we’re going, or know we’re there once we’ve arrived. Wayne Dyer said, “Our intentions create our reality.” We believe in living and working with intention to create and achieve our highest purpose.

About Nikki

Oh Hey!

I’m Nikki Cummings, proud mama of three stoke-chasing kiddos, and wife and business partner to my best friend, Buddy. I’m an entrepreneur living my dream come true on the Gulf of Mexico in Pensacola, Florida. I love spending time on our ranch in California and jetting off on new adventures with my tribe. I hold coffee sacred. I love all things chocolate and am crazy for antique stores and flea markets. My perfect day involves a beach, the sun, no makeup, a motivating book and drinking from a coconut, while watching my family live their best lives.

Who am a kidding? Yes, this is all true, but even when I’m living out my perfect day, I’m thinking about business. As an entrepreneur, we do it for the pursuit, the hustle and the pure love of the game!

Before becoming Cofounder and CEO of Cummings Camp Programs, serving entrepreneurs as a trainer, speaker, coach and business consultant, I started businesses from scratch. I started my first company in high school. For nearly twenty years, my partner Buddy and I built teams. We celebrated successes and weathered seasons of crises. We navigated the growing pains that come with scaling a “mom-and-pop shop” into a large organization that became the #1 business in our industry. This Included learning what to do–and what not to do–when positioning a company to be sold.

My expertise is in helping develop and execute systems and practices to help companies streamline efficiencies, improve accountability and communication and stabilize operational infrastructure for scale. As a business owner, responsible for the day-to-day, it can be difficult to get above the weeds to look out at the horizon. Sometimes, it’s helpful to have another set of experienced eyes helping you identify areas for improvement and assisting in creating and executing the plan to completion.

As an entrepreneur, who is married to an entrepreneur, you can imagine the conversations around our house! We talk about two things: Business & Business — the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, the battles and the victories. We are always looking for new opportunities. . . .and new challenges. I believe GRIT is something that cannot be bought, but it can be earned. And, GRIT trumps everything else!

Our greatest passion is people. When you are a real leader, the members of your team thrive. Selecting and growing the teams have been my biggest reward and the secret to our success! Our Here to Serve® philosophy is at the center of everything we do. We believe that when your team feels valued, engaged and aligned with your vision, your company is unstoppable.

The seeds to serve other entrepreneurs were planted early on. Our journey has equipped us for this service. Today, we have the expertise, experience, desire and honor of serving you — the Renegade, the Dreamer, the Risk Taker, the Doer. Our intention every day is the same: To help you Define the Business of your Dreams, so you can Live the Life of your Dreams.

Here to Serve®!

Nikki

About Buddy

What up Friends, Entrepreneurs and CEO’s!

My name is Buddy Cummings, and I am blessed to be living out my calling of helping you discover, recover or uncover what excites you most in life! Then, I have the honor of helping you design your business to maximize your God-given talents and passion around that outcome. The goal is not to work harder, but smarter. This ultimately gives you the precious time to live out your dreams freely with your family and loved ones, Chasing your Stoke. I relentlessly strip away the boring, stressful stigma of owning and managing a business that feels like a job, helping you define and design a role that gets you genuinely excited to go to work each day. I want nothing more than to light you up about chasing your dreams and supporting you to avoid wasted time and resources.!

Looking back, I can remember wasted YEARS of being stuck under a “glass ceiling” of self-imposed isolating barriers at the various stages of growth (or lack thereof) in business. Rarely was it a quick tweak or physical adjustment to fix. More often, it was a mental shift in thinking and execution. 20 years later, having broken through so many of these layers, I am stoked to show you how to break down these walls and achieve progress efficiently.

I see myself as a tour guide through the business jungle. One who has lived here for decades and now has the desire to show others the path that has already been made. It’s painful to watch my fellow brothers and sisters in business trying to navigate their way through the jungle, with no visibility, exhausting themselves trying to clear a new path when there is a clear-cut road right next to them. As a business coach and consultant, I always come from a place of non-judgement. In the past, I have nearly killed myself, wrecked my wife and lost everything trying to stumble through my own jungle looking for my so-called success.

I feel most impactful working with CEO’s who’ve founded their own companies as bootstrappers. I care about your grit and the risks you have taken and are willing to continue to take. I come from the school of hard knocks. I believe in checking my ego at the door and I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. Teamwork makes the dream work! I love the humble scrappy hustlers who may not know 100% where they’re going or even how to get there, but know quitting isn’t in their DNA.
I am passionate about working with leaders who want to grow/scale to the moon. I fully understand fear and doubts, but I hate comfort zones and limits. I am most effective or impactful where strategy, coupled with the right teams, are needed to grow.

I love people! Helping others develop unstoppable teams with a culture of hungry lions waking up every day ready to fight for their tribe, lights my heart on fire! I believe that when leaders find and develop the right people, then get out of their way, magic happens. There is nothing better than watching those hungry lions, motivated and aligned to hunt for the right opportunities to get your organization closer to your vision for your business and life!

Now, let’s go get it!

Here To Serve®

Our core values

About Nikki

Nikki

About Buddy

Buddy

Chasing our stoke

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