Every few weeks I come across another video telling people exactly the same thing: "Validate your digital product before you build it"and I understand why that advice has become so popular, but is it always right?
If you are starting an online business with no clear expertise and no idea what you want to teach, it is excellent advice. Talk to people to discover their problems. Build an audience and learn what they need before you spend months creating something nobody wants.
But one day I caught myself asking a different question. What if you've already spent twenty years becoming the expert?
If you are a plumber, a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a veterinarian, an accountant, a photographer, a teacher, a life coach, or someone who has spent decades mastering a hobby, are you really supposed to ask strangers on the internet whether you know enough before creating a digital product?
I really don't think those are the same situation at all and that realisation completely changed the way I think about digital products. This is all just my personal opinion of course but sometimes we need to consider what we know from having worked for years with clients - don't we?
The Internet Often Treats Everyone the Same
One of the biggest problems with online business advice is that it assumes everyone is starting from exactly the same place Someone searching for "how to make passive income" is very different from someone who has spent thirty years solving the same problems every single day. The first person is looking for an opportunity and the second person already has one from their own lived experience but maybe they just have not packaged it yet and so those are completely different starting points.
Building Djangify Changed How I Think About This
I built Djangify for myself so that I could create and sell digital products without having to pay a platform. Nobody asked me to validate whether I knew how to build software or whether anyone wanted software like mine, I decided I wanted it so I built it. Down the road, after speaking to other people about it who showed an interest I wondered if anyone else would use it, and that is when it became a marketing question.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised the same principle applies to almost every profession.
Experience Comes in More Than One Form
When people hear the word "expert," they often think about qualifications, experience and years of working with clients and that of course is important
But there is another kind of expertise that deserves far more respect than it often receives and that is lived experience. Someone who has restored classic cars for thirty years has knowledge that cannot be learned from a weekend course and someone who has spent forty years gardening has accumulated thousands of tiny lessons that beginners would love to shortcut.
A parent who successfully homeschooled children for years has practical experience that many families would happily pay to learn from so expertise is not only something you study, sometimes it is something you build over many years. If your experience consistently helps other people solve a problem, it has value.
Four Levels of Expertise
One framework that has helped me think about this is what I call the Four Levels of Expertise.
Level 1 – Curious Beginner
You are learning, exploring and discovering what interests you.
This is where validation before building often makes the most sense because you are still discovering where your knowledge can genuinely help other people.
Level 2 – Lived Experience
You have spent years doing something like a hobby or overcoming a challenge in your own life. You may never have called yourself an expert, but your experience has depth that beginners simply do not have.
Level 3 – Professional Expertise
This is where your knowledge becomes part of your career. Clients pay you for your knowledge and trust you. People come to you because you solve problems repeatedly so you already know your expertise has value because people have been paying for it.
Level 4 – Recognised Authority
This is where your expertise expands beyond your own clients and maybe you teach, speak, write or are published and you become known for helping people solve a particular problem. You are the tax expert helping someone understand how to minimise their tax liabilities or a nurse who has spent years working with patients suffering with diabetes and advising them on how to eat for health.
So, when you look at those four levels it is easy to see why the further up this framework you are, the less you need to validate whether your knowledge is valuable. Instead, you need to validate how you package that knowledge.
Validate the Offer, Not the Expert
This is the distinction I wish more people talked about and that is that experts do not need to validate their expertise they need to validate their offer.
Those are completely different things because your expertise is everything you have learned over years of study, work, practice, mistakes, successes, and experience and your offer is simply how you present that expertise to the market through things like your branding, promise and positioning.
Those things should absolutely be tested so you understand that if your first product does not sell, it doesn't automatically mean your knowledge has no value, it may simply mean the title did not connect, or the promise was unclear, maybe the audience was wrong or the right people never found it. All of that is feedback that needs refinement.
Coaching Taught Me the Same Lesson
Looking back over the years I spent working as a life coach, something else became obvious. I never became better because somebody completed a survey. I became better because every conversation taught me something and every coaching session revealed another way people became stuck. Plus I had my own lived experience of overcoming some of the things I now make digital products about like negative self-talk.
That is exactly how digital products work. Your customers help you improve the packaging but they do not decide whether your years of experience suddenly count. As long as you are willing to listen carefully, improve and stay curious your digital product will do well.
Expertise Does Not Replace an Audience
There is one thing I do agree with the "validate first" crowd about and that is having an audience makes almost everything easier and I know this from experience.
After stepping away from life coaching for many years, I eventually decided to return. I knew exactly what I wanted to teach because I had written the workbooks, built the website, and created the products but what was missing and what I didn't have anymore was an audience. I had to start again.
Looking back, if I could change one thing, I probably would have started sharing ideas on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and my blog a little earlier. I would have begun rebuilding trust and letting people know I was returning to life coaching long before I actually did but not because I needed permission to create the products but because I needed people to show them to who might turn into buyers.
If you already know your subject, there is nothing wrong with creating your products while you build your audience. In fact, I think that is what many professionals should do. Just understand that when the products are finished, the next job begins, which is helping people discover they exist.
Google Is Looking for Experience Too
Google's own guidance encourages creators to produce content that demonstrates first-hand experience, expertise, and original insight while focusing on helping people rather than simply trying to rank in search results.
That should be encouraging for professionals because nobody can copy your years of experience and nobody else has your exact career, mistakes, lessons, or stories. Those are your competitive advantage.
The same is becoming true in an AI-powered world. When almost anyone can generate a generic article, genuine experience becomes even more valuable.
One Story That Still Stays With Me
A few years ago I made a decision that surprised a lot of people. I put almost everything I owned into storage (later, I sold all of it) and I bought a van, had it converted into a camper, and for a period of my life I woke up somewhere different whenever I wanted to. It was one of the freest periods of my life and looking back, I realise why. For the first time in a long time, I had stopped waiting for somebody else's permission to live differently. I trusted my own judgement.
Oddly enough, I think many experts need to do exactly the same thing with their knowledge and stop waiting for strangers on the internet to decide whether you know enough because you probably earned that confidence years ago.
None of this means you should ignore your customers. Far from it. Listen to every question, notice the language people use, pay attention to what they struggle with and what they complain about and improve every version of your product. All of that feedback is invaluable to help you validate your offer, not your expertise.
Getting Started
If you have spent years building professional knowledge, practical experience, or deep lived experience that genuinely helps other people, you do not need permission to begin.
Create the product and publish it and get yourself a Djangify Shop if you need a place to sell it.
