Lately, I’ve been buried in the design and production of three brand new books from The Youth Cartel. This pushes our active catalog to 8 titles and we’ve got a lot more really exciting things coming pretty soon.
Practically speaking, that means that I’ve been heavily involved in designing covers, layout, setting them up to sell, and actually getting them printed and in stock.
This year I’ve ramped up the amount of speaking, training, and consulting that I’m doing with organizations, churches, and individuals.
Not to sound cheesy– but it’s fun seeing how God mashes up my skills and passions to help people practically.
And not to sound self-promotional– but this is my blog and I don’t know any other way to do it.
Here are some examples of what I’ve been doing or have cooking.
Let’s hang out at the Campference.
Yes, there will be skeet shooting.
Middle school pastors and shotguns. A perfect combo.
Open is a series of open-source styled events that we do at The Youth Cartel. We shamelessly favor regional trainers, basically turning the normal youth ministry training event upside down. No one gets paid, all of the speakers notes (sometimes audio) are shared on the website, the process for becoming a speaker is open, and we even post the budget online.
Lots of news from The Summit this morning.
After months of work I’m itching for some feedback. What do you think about any one of those four items above?
I don’t really know what Lent and Will Smith have to do with anything. But, being Ash Wednesday, I did wake up with Lent on my mind.
And apparently 1990’s populist rap.
So putting my 1990s-ness with my thoughts about Lent and apparently this makes, Getting Lenty With It.
Despite 30,000 miles in air travel in January a major narrative in my life was two Lenten products we just released at The Youth Cartel.
If chasing dreams is the folly of youth I want to be forever young.
I’m chasing some dreams right now. I’m unashamed about it. For too long I sat on them, taking little action in their pursuit or even allowing myself the mental capacity to dream about these dreams.
Perhaps I was convinced they weren’t worth chasing? Or perhaps I lacked the wisdom, skills, knowledge, or intestinal fortitude? Or– worse yet, perhaps I was convinced that dreams that I had wouldn’t make a difference and were therefore meaningless to pursue?
In a week we’ll be underway with Open Boston.
18 presenters are taking the risk with us. About 100 folks have signed up to come… we’re really hoping another 50-100 take the leap this week. (For Open Seattle we went from 60-130 in the week prior to the event.)
Together we see the value in flipping the typical youth ministry training event on its head, favoring local voices of innovation over national ones; unpublished experts over published ones; frontline learnings versus polished and tested presentations.
No one is getting paid. No one is making a career out of this. And all of the presenters will, at some point, make a transition from learner to teacher and back. (Meaning they’re coming as both learners and teachers.)
We’ve got a little sale going at The Youth Cartel store, having fun with this fiscal cliff silliness in the news. If you’ve seen stuff that we’re doing and wanted to check it out, this is a great time to do that while saving a little money. Discounts start when you buy $20 in stuff. And the discounts get better with the more you spend. Pretty simple and fun.
I started the Cartel store a little over a year ago and it’s steadily grown. At first we had spurts of orders, like when a new product released or something like that. We’d have 20 in one day and then none for several days. Now we get 5-15 orders per day during the week and 1-2 on weekends. It’s not a lot but it is a part of every day. With our publishing line growing in 2013 I expect we’ll see that double again.
Literally, when you place an order, the McLane family takes it from there. (It doesn’t go to some third-party company to get packed up by people in a warehouse. We’re a family business.)
I print the order, one of the kids goes to the hallway closet, finds the books, and packs the order. They bring it back, I weigh it, and print out the postage label. Each day I either schedule a USPS pick-up or I drive the days orders over to the post office. Sometimes I make a morning and afternoon run to the post office.
On top of that, we keep the books on the store, manage the inventory, purchase shipping supplies, and we’ve develop relationships with our various suppliers.
My goal is always that the kids will eventually fully run the store. It’s well within their capabilities to pack and ship orders. (And at $.50 per box it’s a nice steady stream of income.)
This week, I added to Megan’s duties as she’s now in charge of keeping inventory, updating a Google Docs spreadsheet, and alerting me of things which are low so I can re-order them. She gets it. Supply & demand. She pointed out that we need this sale to work well because we have too much of some books.
Next, they will learn how to weigh packages and print shipping labels. And after that I will teach them how to re-order shipping stuff themselves.
Here’s the thing: They do a great job. I consistently get good feedback on our orders. And people love getting the little toys/treats Megan and Paul stuff in the boxes. And they really like contributing to the family business. It’s fun for them.
It cracks me up a little when people quip about child labor laws and all that stuff. (We’re totally legal, by the way.) To me? It’s the other kids that are missing out. We’re having a blast with it and I love seeing the business grow with their capabilities. Heck, I’m looking forward to one of them coming up with our next great idea!
2012 will be remembered around the McLane house as, the year of the book.
First, I partnered with Jon to write Good News in the Neighborhood which came out in May. Then I partnered with Marko to write A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Social Media which arrived yesterday.
If those two projects were bookend, starting a publishing line for The Youth Cartel was sandwiched in the middle.
From the very beginning, Marko and I talked about doing some stuff in publishing. But we didn’t necessarily see that as starting our own line of digital and physical products. We were more thinking we’d work with other publishers, helping shape a Cartel voice into a wide variety of publishing efforts. (Actually, something we do quite a bit of.) It wasn’t until last Winter that we decided to include publishing our own products as part of our publishing plan. I’ll be the first to admit that when we decided to go forward with publishing some of our own stuff I had no idea what I’d agreed to.