Over the holiday season I had some time to work on my “side gig” — SDG Games — my business designing and selling educational board and card games for the glory of God. I originally launched SDG Games in February 2021 with the release of Journeys with Jesus. Over the past three years I’ve launched an additional 4 board and card game products and a free web-based game.
Heading into 2024, the SDG Games business faced a number of challenges:
– The games are too expensive and delivery times are too long
– Margins are incredibly thin
– Product awareness is very low in the target market
If a client described a business like this to me, my natural response would be “why are you even in this business?” To answer my own question — most of the games I’ve created first for me — to help me learn specific Biblical truths. I enjoy designing them, enjoy playing them with family and friends, have learned a lot, and want other families to be similarly blessed by the games. Given my commitment to my main consulting business, I can’t spend too much time on SDG Games, but I do want it to operate better and bless more families.
With that context, I put on my consultant’s hat and set about solving the performance challenges while keeping it a simple business that won’t distract me from my main focus on consulting. Over the past few weeks I’ve specifically focused on improvements in three areas:
– Production
– Distribution
– Marketing
Click the link below to read the full article, but the short version of those improvements involve:
– a major refresh of the flagship game,
– a new production approach for a brand new game,
– a new supplier,
– a new website, and
– a new online store.
It was a lot of work over a few weeks but I think it sets the business up to be more successful without requiring much of my attention.
Click here to read more about how I approached the challenges.