Validate Demand Before You Build

You already know how to build a curriculum. That was never the risk. The risk is spending three weeks building a beautifully action-mapped course for a transformation nobody outside your own head wants badly enough to act on. Validation isn’t a survey you send to be thorough, it’s the one step that decides whether the other twelve lessons in this track are worth doing for this particular topic. Skip it and you’re action-mapping a hypothesis.

Pick one candidate topic you actually have earned expertise in, something you could teach without notes. Then go find out if the pain is real before you write a single objective.

Run pain interviews, not pitches. Ask about the problem, not the course: “How are you currently handling X?” “What have you tried?” “What’s that costing you, in time or money or stress?” Never open with “would you take a course on this,” because everyone says yes to a hypothetical that costs them nothing.

Approach the right sample. Ten people from your team’s Slack channel validates that people who report to you will be nice to you. Find people who are actually trying to solve the problem right now, with a duct-tape workaround, a competitor’s tool, or nothing at all.

Look for a specific signal, not enthusiasm. “Sounds interesting!” is noise. “I’d pay for that,” “I looked for this and couldn’t find it,” or a named dollar figure they’re already losing to the problem, that’s signal. Write down the actual words.

Avoid leading questions that fish for the answer you want. “Don’t you think X is hard?” gets you agreement, not information.