When I first started my learning design business, I made a dumb mistake. I decided to create a course, but I didn’t connect with an audience. I didn't really even have an audience. When I launched, I realized that my audience wanted something different. I didn’t validate my learning offer before I created it.

After that mistake, I developed a process for prevalidating learning offers. Here’s why and how this essential step works.

Why prevalidate your course?

I don’t want your first learning offer to flop. You don’t want your first learning offer to flop. If you don’t prevalidate your course idea with your audience, you run a high risk of having your learning offer flop.

So go out and start talking to your audience. Have real conversations with your ideal student. Learn about their needs, their concerns, and the insights they have.

But to do this most effectively, you need a plan.

How can you prevalidate your course?

To develop a plan for prevalidating your course, you need to work through five steps:

1. Identify your ideal client — Who are they? I’ll talk more about this in-depth in a future blog post of this series.
2. Locate your audience — Are they in a Facebook group? Are they on Linkedin? Which platform(s) are you on? How will you connect with them? Be as specific as possible and, if you’re struggling to answer these questions, do some more research.
3. Connect with a group of audience members — Select at least 20 people to talk to. Email them, tell them you’re doing research, and plan a call with them.
4. Ask open questions — Before talking with your audience, prepare questions in advance. Ask about their concerns, their dreams, their learning preferences, and their thoughts on purchasing a program. Get to know them inside and out.
5. Thank the person and follow up — In this process, you’re building relationships. Nurture those! After talking with someone once, you’re likely to have more questions for them. Ask if you can follow up and if they say yes, follow through with them.

Before you leave this page, take action. Grab a piece of paper, whatever’s closest, and write down at least four people that you need to talk to in order to prevalidate your course idea.

After validating my course idea, I move on to preparing for my course launch — the topic of the next blog post in our series on creating learning offers.

Watch the Linkedin live stream or catch the replay for a link to a downloadable worksheet with specific questions, structures, and prompts to help you create your learning offer.

Feeling a little uncertain?

I can help you create amazing learning experiences that get results. For more information, book a discovery call. I’ll help you break through your plateau and boost your learning experiences, coaching programs, and digital learning offers.

I’d love to hear from you, connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or email [email protected]

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