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You are here: Home / Archives for Product Launch

Product Launch

An Illustrated Earth for Summer Sunday School & VBS

Adam Walker Cleaveland 2 Comments

As we discussed last week, many churches haven’t figured out the solution to the problem of summer Sunday School. Well, actually, there are many problems tied up in this one program:

  • Who will teach? Many churches want to give their teachers a well-deserved break from teaching, since many will do it throughout the school year. Many churches have their Christian Education hour during worship (which we are not fans of – but we know it’s a reality for so many churches), and so teachers enjoy having the chance to actually be in worship during the summer. And some churches believe they have a very small pool of potential teachers; if the regular teachers don’t teach in the summer, who will?
  • Who will come? Will anyone come? Everyone knows we’re not in the Field of Dreams-era of church and program life anymore. In the past, you could build a program, and the people would come. That’s simply not our reality anymore. Will young families come to worship in the summer? Some will. Some won’t. And it’s quite possible that even fewer will come if there are no options for their kids. Regardless of the theological implications, many parents covet those 45 minutes when their kids are in Sunday School and they get to feel like adults again, sitting in worship, singing, praying, and hearing a sermon.
  • What will we teach? So what do we teach in the summer if we’re going to go ahead and try it? Do we invest in expensive church curriculum, some that are over $300 just for the summer months, when we don’t have a guarantee of how many children will show up? How do I order pamphlets/lesson sheets for the children when we have no idea what our numbers are going to be?

It’s not an easy decision.

But…

Illustrated Ministry is trying to make that decision a little bit easier for you this summer with our new product, An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation.

An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation

Summer Sunday SchoolWe wanted to create a resource that could work for you in a variety of settings, with any number of children participating. We wanted it to be flexible, adaptable and fun. But more importantly – we wanted it to involve little to no prep time. With An Illustrated Earth, if you have children that show up for Sunday School, you will have a quality resource you can use to have a fun and engaging Sunday School class with them, and you won’t have had to put any time into the preparation of it. Likewise, if no one shows up next Sunday, you don’t feel frustrated or bitter, because you didn’t have to spend any prep time on the class, and so you can just save that lesson for next time.

An Illustrated Earth can be used throughout the entire summer as a summer Sunday School program. However, because of the way it is structured, it could also be used if you’re creating your own Vacation Bible School and are looking for content and activities. It could also be used as an intergenerational activity throughout the summer as well. There are many possibilities.

Below are a few details about An Illustrated Earth, but for all of the information, including a list of the stories that will be used, be sure to check out the product page for An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation.

Summer Sunday School Solution: An Illustrated Earth

An Illustrated Earth includes three modules of four lessons each. The theme is celebrating God’s Creation, and so you will find stories about creation, food, plants, water, and animals. Each lesson includes the following:

  • Opening Gathering Activity
  • Bible Story
  • Questions for reflection
  • Coloring (either small sheets or large posters)
  • Short prayer

Coloring Options: There will be a coloring component for each week (12 different designs), and you will have the option of just having kids color a small version, or order large coloring posters. The digital downloads of An Illustrated Earth‘s modules will come with 8.5×11 versions of the coloring designs. But you will also have the opportunity to purchase large 36″x24″ coloring posters as well. If you know you will have multiple classrooms, you may want to purchase more than one set of the posters, or make sure you also purchase the digital files so you can print more of them.

To learn all of the details about An Illustrated Earth, please be sure to check out the product page, which will include a listing of the Bible stories the curriculum focuses on, as well as to learn about the different ordering options for the resource. We are really excited to share this product with you, and we are confident this will be a very strong curriculum option for both churches that regularly have a summer Sunday School program, and for those who have been thinking about it, but haven’t yet figured out how to pull it off in their context.

Please Share!

We would love your help getting the word out about An Illustrated Earth. Please just take a few seconds and share about this on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!

An Illustrated Earth is your summer Sunday School solution. This 3-module, 12-week curriculum celebrating God’s creation…

Posted by Illustrated Ministry on Tuesday, April 12, 2016

An Illustrated Earth is a new resource for summer Sunday School or VBS programs. 3 modules, 12 weeks and coloring! https://t.co/Ub66gtSv7u

— Children’s Ministry (@IllustratedCM) April 13, 2016

Top 10 Lessons Learned from my First Product Launch

Adam Walker Cleaveland 1 Comment

November was the first major product launch of Illustrated Ministry. To say everything went smoothly would be…well, it’d be a major understatement. But I definitely learned a lot and wanted to share some of that with you. So, here are my Top 10 Lessons Learned from my First Product Launch (in no particular order).

1. Make an educated guess about how long you think it will take to create your product. And then double that.

What I needed was a production calendar. I wrote down everything that I needed to do, all of the illustrations I needed to draw, but I just didn’t think through how long everything would take. Case in point: I spent four hours drawing the three wise men. Now, I really like how they turned out, but did they need to take four hours? Nope. Was I planning on them taking fours? Definitely not.

I also didn’t take into account just how long it would take to put everything together once it was all done. Formatting the documents, getting all of the files in the formats I wanted them in and just organizing everything. So, make a guess and then double it. And that should be closer to being somewhat realistic.

2. Expect problems.

I don’t think I was expecting problems. So when I began to encounter them – it kind of freaked me out. Staples was a little late getting me my order of 125 sets (625 sheets of 4’x3′ posters) and when I went to pick up the 6 cases of packed poster tubes, I was so frustrated to find that they all had a dark black line on the bottom of the poster. Someone at the production center apparently didn’t load the paper correctly. So, it took almost another week to get all of the posters reprinted and delivered to me.

I couldn’t have prepared for that, but realizing that things like that are just probably going to happen…it will help you deal with them a little bit better.

3. If you’re shipping something, do your research and know all of your options.

After this initial product launch, I almost want to stick to strictly digital product launches in the future. Having an actual physical item to ship added SO MUCH time to everything. Getting all of the supplies, driving them to the post office and just dealing with all of it was more work than I had imagined. I did some research into the best way to ship, and I thought that the USPS would be the best way and most economical.

I can’t say that I would have chosen something different initially, but I wish I did a little more research. And even if I had still chosen the USPS, I didn’t realize that I could schedule pickups from the post office. I knew you could do that with UPS, but that would have saved me a lot of time and hassle and who knows, maybe the post office wouldn’t have lost 30 of my poster tubes if I had done that…?

Product Launch

4. Don’t use the USPS.

For now, I’m sticking with UPS. Maybe the USPS is better when it’s not November/December and I may try again with packages that aren’t poster tubes, but I feel much better about UPS (although I’m sure that there are plenty of people with horror stories about the UPS as well…).

5. Support local businesses…when it makes sense.

I’m all for supporting local small businesses. Hell, I’m now a small business. But I don’t think it always makes sense. I definitely buy almost all of my stuff with Amazon – and that is primarily because of the prices and the convenience.

In searching for a printer for my posters, I met with a small shop in Evanston, and they initially thought they could give me a much better price than Staples. However, Staples was able to meet their price AND they were willing to print, collate, roll, stuff the posters and tape up the poster tubes. I couldn’t turn that down. And I was supporting a local Staples store – and I was developing some good relationships with the staff and managers of the store.

Especially when you’re starting out with a new business, I think there are just some things that make more sense to get from a large provider who can give you the type of savings and deals that you might need as you get started.

6. Contrary to popular opinion, all-nighters are not super helpful or productive.

I only pulled one legitimate all-nighter, and honestly, it was the first all-nighter I’ve ever done. The latest I stayed up in college was 4am working on an art project. But I thought I could finish up everything I needed to do in one all-nighter. NO WAY.

And then I was absolutely exhausted the next two days. So it was not very productive for me. It probably also didn’t help that my almost 4-yr old son was having problems sleeping and kept walking into the office and scaring the heck out of me!

All-Nighters-with-a-3-year-old

7. Starbucks Refreshers.

If you do need to pull an all-nighter, let me suggest the Via Refreshers – Strawberry Lemonade. They’re not necessarily the best thing you’ve ever had to drink – but they definitely contain a pretty serious boost in “natural” caffeine. I had two servings of that drink from 10pm-6am and it totally did the job.

8. Get help. No, seriously. Get help.

I needed help. And lots of it. Even just slapping mailing labels on tubes – it would have gone so much faster if I’d had a few friends help me out – or gotten some of the youth from Sarah’s church to make a few bucks and help out.

There’s no shame in asking for help.

Thankfully, I did have help through this amazing community that I’m apart of called Fizzle. I joined this group at the end of the summer at the recommendation of my good friend Kevin (who is also an amazing coach if you’re looking for someone!), and it’s been such a worthwhile $35/month for me. The forum alone has been a huge resource for me. It’s been the place where I could go and share issues I was running into, get support and encouragement, and just have people who have been through launching a business before to talk with.

9. Pay a little extra to make your life easier.

If it comes down to saving a few bucks, or paying a little more to simply make your life a bit easier…pay a little extra. I’m trying to imagine how long it would have taken me to collate, roll and stuff all of the poster sets that I had…and I was actually thinking about doing it myself for a little bit. Next month for An Illustrated Lent, I plan to hire a few people to help me simply get the stuff out the door. Sure, that will cut into the profits from the resources, but I think it will make it a lot easier for me, and it will probably be fun too.

10. Show your work!

I’m a big fan of Austin Kleon’s book Share Your Work. As I was going through the process of drawing the illustrations, shipping poster tubes and everything else in between, I made good use of Instagram to share the process of the creation of the products. It also allowed people who were getting interested in what I was doing to see a little behind the scenes, and get a feel for what this was going to turn into.

Those are my Top 10 Lessons Learned from my First Product Launch. You probably have your own lessons – and I’d love for you to share those in the comment section below.

Product-BehindTheScenes

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