Like seemingly half the world, I got into baking sourdough bread during the pandemic.

I can't tell you how many terrible loaves I baked before I hit on a decent “formula” that worked for me and was easy to do. Now we get a fantastic batard every time.

Well, every time except today.

Last night I made the mistake of making pizza while I was supposed to be shaping the bread and popping it in the fridge overnight. And I plain forgot to do it.

I woke up this morning to a big lump of overproofed dough.

I'm going to bake it anyway, but it's a good reminder not to take on too many things at the same time. You'll inevitably mess one of them up.

But there's perhaps a more important lesson that applies just as well to building courses.

Because even though I messed up this loaf, all I've really “wasted” is maybe 10-20 minutes of my time and the cost of 400g of flour.

If today's loaf doesn't work I can quickly rustle up some more dough and get going again and have one ready tomorrow.

When it comes to courses it's important to start with that “rapid testing” philosophy.

In particular, you never know whether your course is going to sell until you offer it to people to buy.

Probably the biggest mistake you can make is to spend months and months creating tons of content and trying to make it as perfect as possible before market testing it.

It's much better to do your research, then create a course outline and offer it for sale in advance of building it – for example as a live online workshop.

If enough people sign up you create the content and run the workshop. Then turn it into a more official course afterwards, confident that it'll be a good investment because you know the demand is there.

If not enough people sign up you refund the small number who bought and go back to the drawing board. Rather like me with my sourdough.

Following this rapid testing approach means you're much more likely to hit on a course that will sell. And it gets you out of the trap of being so invested in your initial idea that you just keep trying to make it more and more perfect and never get it to market.

You'll see that rapid testing philosophy echoed in many of the interviews on the Course Builders Hub.

I'll say more about rapid testing approaches for courses in future posts – including what to do if you've got trapped in the perfectionism loop and haven't managed to launch your course yet.

But for now I just wanted to re-stress that if you haven't created or launched your course yet – it absolutely won't take you months and months. You can have a simple workshop designed, sold and delivered in weeks.