I still remember the day I clicked “purchase” on a Thinkific subscription during one of those irresistible Black Friday sales. It felt like the start of something big, something that would catapult my business idea from the back of my mind into the real world. After all, online courses were “the future,” right? If you weren’t selling a course, you were behind the curve.
But here’s the kicker: we’re months down the road, and that Thinkific account is still waiting for me to upload something—anything—that qualifies as a course. I can’t count how many times I’ve stared at the dashboard, fiddled with modules, only to close the browser and promise, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
The Myth of the Perfect Tool
As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to believe the right tool is all you need. If we just find that perfect learning management system (LMS), the ideal marketing platform, or the ultimate productivity app, everything will fall into place. We wait for the silver bullet that’ll save us from our own inertia. But that perfect tool is like a mirage—the closer we get, the more it moves out of reach.
For example, SMART Goals are something I’ve lived and breathed for years. They helped me get promotions, lose weight, and set up a stable framework for personal projects. I assumed everyone else out there would see SMART Goals as the holy grail of productivity. So I built an entire course around them—lectures, worksheets, checklists, the whole shebang.
And guess what? The market didn’t magically come knocking. My 500-hour labor of love just sat there, collecting digital dust. That’s when I started questioning the entire approach.
Enter Eric Ries and the ‘Fail Early, Fail Often’ Mindset
I picked up The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, which is practically a rite of passage for entrepreneurs. Ries has this concept that’s deceptively simple yet radical if you’re used to “perfecting” your product before launch: build half a product, then hit send.
The idea is to test demand before fully fleshing out something that might sink months of your life—only to discover nobody cares. If no one cares, you pivot before the real damage is done.
I realized I’d gone about it backwards. I built a whole course without checking if there was a real market. I didn’t measure interest, gather feedback, or validate the concept. I just assumed what worked for me would work for everyone else. Classic entrepreneur’s trap.
The Tool Chase Continues
Not long after, I discovered a laundry list of new “solutions”:
- GPT for Idea Generation
- Gemini AI for Deep Research
- Canva for Quick Ad Creation
Each tool promised to solve a different puzzle piece of my business. GPT could help me brainstorm course ideas, Gemini could dig deep into research, and Canva would let me create polished ads in minutes. Finally, I thought, “This is it. This is the trifecta of tools I need.”
But if you’re not careful, you turn into a tool collector, forever tinkering and never shipping. You know the type: the aspiring writer who’s always downloading the latest novel-writing software but never actually writes a novel.
A New Approach: The MVP Experiment
Determined not to repeat my earlier mistake, I embraced the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach.
- Idea Generation (with GPT)
- Instead of spending weeks in brainstorming mode, I feed GPT a seed of an idea and let it expand.
- I ask GPT to question my assumptions, even provoke me a bit. That often yields angles I hadn’t considered.
- Market Testing
- Using Canva, I whip up simple 1:1 square ads offering a quick PDF or mini-ebook in exchange for an email.
- I set up a $3/day Facebook campaign—just enough to see if anyone cares.
- Data-Driven Decisions
- If the ad flops, I move on. No heartbreak. No wasted nights developing a course no one wants.
- If it picks up steam, I flesh out more details. Maybe set up a 5-email welcome series to gauge real interest.
- Pre-Orders
- I still don’t build the full product. Instead, I offer pre-orders.
- If people buy in, that’s my green light. If they don’t, I pivot.
But What About Gemini AI?
Gemini is another piece of the puzzle—particularly if I’m venturing into new territory and need in-depth research. GPT’s great for instant brainstorming, but Gemini can refine prompts and dig deeper for real data.
I’ll say, though, that no AI tool, no matter how sophisticated, can replace the grunt work of actually talking to potential customers. AI might help me compile data, but it won’t attend a meetup, chat with folks in my target audience, and note the nuance in their expressions when they say, “Sounds interesting, but…”
The Community-First Strategy
There’s also an alternative approach I’ve seen folks swear by: building an audience first. They start a Facebook Group, a YouTube channel, or a blog—giving away valuable content for free, building trust and authority. Once they have a following, selling a course becomes drastically easier because the audience already sees them as an expert or a trusted friend.
In that route, no fancy paid ads are necessary initially. You just show up regularly, share genuine insights, and let the community form around your voice. Then, when the time is right, you say, “Hey, I’ve got a course.” And people buy because they know you.
Four Months In: What I’ve Learned
I’m about four months into this new strategy—combining GPT, Canva, email marketing, and a splash of Gemini. It’s been a learning curve:
- I’ve discovered that process trumps everything. Tools are just cogs in the machine.
- SMART Goals might be universal, but the specific market for a full-blown course is narrower than I assumed.
- People vote with their wallets. They can’t always articulate what they want, but they know it when they see it.
The biggest takeaway? You only have to be right once. But to get there, you might have to be wrong a dozen times—wrong about your course idea, your target audience, or your “perfect” tool. The key is to fail fast, fail cheap, and keep going.
Final Thoughts
“The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma” is real. We chase after that one tool, that one silver bullet that’ll solve our problems. But the truth is, it never stops. If you don’t learn how to evaluate and pivot quickly, you’ll bury yourself in technology, half-built courses, and unlaunched campaigns.
At some point, you just have to pick a direction, set a small budget, and pull the trigger. If you succeed, great. If you fail, at least it was quick and relatively painless. Then you pick up your tools, pivot, and try again.
The only way you truly fail? If you stop.
