End of November with Great Progress – Update on DRP

Work on the video side of the project continues to progress smoothly, mostly because of Andrew`s diligence. He has to video each task in every lesson, many of which are single words on an individual page. He then has to manually designate the short sounds from the continuous sounds, frame each one to the proper size,  photograph each one and set up a computer file for each.

I take the files to Staples where they are printed, so that we can use them in the video presentation. It`s a slow, labourious process but so far we have completed 41 of 60 lessons of the first level of our digital product since early October.

We are currently 25% ahead of our projected production schedule. We might possibly get all 60 lessons completed in December.

On the software side, everything is being developed at the expected rate. We have had no technical glitches. We should have a fully functional prototype by the end of January. Then we will amalgamate the two separate pieces and test them extensively. When the bench testing is done, we will go to market.

Meanwhile, I am now starting to do the marketing research for the 8 separate market segments that are available to us.  Here is a list of the market segments. There are parents of at-risk kids – 10,million; homeschoolers – 1.5 million; public and private schools – 40 million students; charter schools – 3.5 million students;  behavioral therapists and therapy centres – no numbers yet; learning centres and tutorial services – no numbers yet; Rotary clubs who could supply schools or other settings – no figures at the moment; and half-way houses for prisoners, youth in trouble and foster children – numbers not yet determined. 

Did you know that in the city of New Orleans, 93% of students attend charter schools? There are 61 charter schools, one third of which have 50% or more of their students below the state standards for reading and math. In the top 19 US cities in which there is a significant number of charter schools, there are 1.5 million students, many of whom are behind in reading and math.

I will share more information as this plan develops. Once we have sufficient marketing research information, we will determine the order in which we will approach each of these segments.  Obviously, we will gather the low hanging fruit first in order to maintain revenue streams for our future. Given 93 million illiterate North American individuals, we will have no shortage of potential students.

We do not have a marketing budget, but we have many thousands of contacts that we have built up over the years on Linked-in, Facebook, Infusionsoft, and other platforms. We will use the funds from product sales to fund the advertising and marketing campaigns.

As always, we appreciate that none of this could have happened without the faith and financial support of our backers. As a result, we expect to put a highly functional solution in the hands of many people in many disciplines.

Thanks again,

 Michael