Yes, absolutely, and I'd go further: validation isn't a course specific question. It applies to anything you're about to spend meaningful time, energy, or money on in your business, whether that's a course, a workshop, a retreat, a training, or a book.

Validation Is a Business Discipline, Not a Course Step

It's okay to have passion projects. What's not okay is confusing a passion project with an essential part of your business, because those are two very different categories of decision. If you're building something because the market and your ideal client have confirmed there's real demand, that's a business decision. If you're building it because you personally love the idea, that's allowed too, but call it what it is. The trouble starts when founders treat every idea they're excited about as though it's already been validated, simply because the excitement feels like evidence.

How Do You Know If People Will Actually Pay for What You're Planning to Teach?

You ask them, and you watch what they do, not just what they say. Conversations with your actual ideal client, not a general audience, about the specific problem you're proposing to solve will tell you more than any amount of internal brainstorming. Watch for language: are they describing the problem the way you're planning to frame the solution? If your framing doesn't match their language, that's a signal to adjust before you build, not after.

Can You Really Sell a Course Before It Exists?

Yes, and in most cases you should. Pre-selling, even informally, forces you to describe the transformation clearly enough that someone can decide whether they want it, before you've spent the hours building the full curriculum. If you can't get anyone to commit, even at a discounted or founding member price, that's real information, not a reason to build faster and hope the marketing fixes it later.

What If You Don't Have an Email List or Audience Yet?

Validation doesn't require thousands of people. It requires the right handful of people: your actual ideal client, wherever you can reach them, whether that's direct conversations, a small existing network, or relevant communities where your ideal client already spends time. A tiny, accurate signal from the right five people is worth more than a large, vague signal from the wrong five hundred. This is part of what I help clients work through in my custom consulting engagements, identifying who to talk to and what to actually listen for.

Want Help Validating What You're Building?

If you've got an idea and you're not sure whether it's market ready or a passion project you should put a pin in for now, that's a conversation worth having before you build. Book a discovery call and let's look at what the data is actually telling you.

How Many "Yeses" Do You Need Before It's Worth Building?

There's no universal number, but there is a pattern to watch for: consistent, specific, unprompted language from your ideal client describing the exact problem you're proposing to solve, paired with a willingness to commit something, time, money, or a spot on a waitlist, before the offering exists. A handful of enthusiastic maybes isn't the same as a smaller number of committed yeses.

Being a creative, intelligent person means you'll likely have more ideas than you can pursue at once, and part of becoming experienced in your field is making the tough call: I want to do this, but it doesn't make sense right now. Putting a pin in something doesn't mean abandoning it. In five years, the market might tell a different story. Right now, the market is telling you where the greatest opportunity actually is, and sometimes that's not the idea you're most excited about. Learning how to package my expertise into a course means being honest about that distinction every time.

Every education based business is also a business, and businesses that skip validation don't fail because the founder lacked expertise. They fail because enthusiasm got mistaken for evidence. Validating what you build, whether it's a course or a conference or a book, is how you make sure the thing you pour your time into is something the world was actually asking for, not just something you were ready to give.