We Built a Mini-Course in 14 Days. Here's How.
The 8-step system even beginners can pull off.
Most creators think that building their first digital course needs to take months of effort.
They think of studio lighting, expensive equipment, dozens of modules and endless editing.
All of that feels so overwhelming that they never even get started.
After generating 7 figures of revenue through courses, I can confidently say that most creators build the wrong products, and they build them the wrong way.
At Write • Build • Scale, we recently built and launched an entire mini-course within 14 days.
Our existing clients loved it, dozens of new customers entered our ecosystem, and the whole process worked because we followed a simple 8-step system.
My co-founder Jari Roomer has generated over $300,000 with mini-courses in his productivity business. One single 2-hour course called Procrastination Antidote made over $60,000 in 1.5 years.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through all 8 steps and show you exactly how we used them to build our latest mini-course, Substack Notes Simplified, in under two weeks.
But first: Why mini-courses?
Before we dive into the 8 steps, let me quickly explain why we’re so obsessed with mini-courses and why they might be the perfect product for you to create as well.
Most creators try to build massive flagship programs right out of the gate. They think of 10+ hours of content, dozens of modules, workbooks, templates, bonus materials… and they get overwhelmed. They never finish. Or they finish, launch, and nobody buys because they never validated the idea in the first place.
Mini-courses are different.
They’re fast to build. You only need 1-3 hours of content, not 10.
They’re easy to sell. They solve ONE clear problem at an affordable price.
People actually complete them. Mini-courses have completion rates of 50% or higher, while traditional courses sit below 10%.
And here’s the kicker: if someone buys from you once, they’re much more likely to buy from you again.
So a mini-course isn’t just a product. It’s an entry point. It’s how you turn strangers into customers, and customers into repeat buyers.
Step 1: Choose the Right Topic for Your Mini-Course
This is where most people mess up immediately by going too broad.
“The Ultimate Guide to Productivity.”
“Total Home Organization System.”
“The Complete Meditation & Mindfulness Course.”
Those are huge course ideas (and I’ve seen them all - published and collecting dust).
In contrast to those massive courses, a mini-course solves ONE painful problem in 1-3 hours. That’s it.
Jari’s bestselling mini-course is called Procrastination Antidote for a good reason.
It doesn’t try to cover all aspects of productivity but instead focuses entirely on procrastination - a specific, painful problem.
For our new course, we chose Substack Notes specifically because it’s such a specific and clear topic for our audience.
6 ways to find your winning mini-course topic:
1. Analyze your existing content. Look at what’s already performing. Which posts get the most comments? Which topics spark follow-up questions? For us, every time we wrote about Substack Notes, people wanted more. That was the signal.
2. Reflect on your personal journey. What problems have you solved for yourself that others still struggle with? You don’t need to be the world’s top expert. You just need to be a few steps ahead of the person you want to help.
3. Survey your audience using the 3-Question Validation Framework. Ask these three questions:
“What’s your biggest goal with [topic] right now?” — This tells you what transformation they want.
“What have you already tried that didn’t work?” — This shows where other solutions have failed them.
“If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing about [topic], what would it be?” — This reveals their deepest frustration in their own words.
When you see patterns across these answers (the same goals, the same failed attempts, the same frustrations), you’ve found your winning topic.
4. Mine your DMs and emails. What questions keep coming up? Those recurring questions are mini-course ideas hiding in plain sight.
5. Look at coaching and consulting patterns. What problems come up again and again? What do you find yourself explaining over and over? That’s a mini-course.
6. Build for THEM, not for you. Just because you’re excited about a topic doesn’t mean your audience will pay for it.
Jari learned this the hard way. Before Procrastination Antidote, he built a course on morning routines because HE was passionate about it.
He spent weeks creating it and launched the course expecting big results, but it only made $2,000 in total. Same niche. Same audience. But building a morning routine was not a clear pain point, procrastination was.
Your action for Step 1: Write down 3–5 specific problems your audience faces. Not broad topics but specific, painful problems. That’s your starting point.
Step 2: Validate Demand Before Building Your Course
This is non-negotiable. A validated idea is 10x easier to sell than a guess.
The worst thing that can happen is that you’re excited about your course idea, spend weeks or even months creating it, but you make zero sales because you never validated whether your audience is actually willing to pay for it.
That’s exactly what happened with Jari’s morning routines course. He built what HE wanted, not what his audience was willing to pay for.
Here are three validation methods that actually work:
Method 1: Look at your data. Which content consistently performs above average? Which content leads to questions? Questions mean people want to learn more. For Substack Notes Simplified, we’d been creating content about Notes for over a year. Every post, every livestream about Notes got more engagement than our other content. That’s data telling you something.
Method 2: Have real conversations. DM people who engage with your content. Ask them what they’re working on, what their biggest challenge is, and what they’ve tried that didn’t work. These conversations are more valuable than any marketing course you could buy.
Method 3: Run a pre-order campaign. This is the ultimate validation. Tell your audience you’re building something. Offer a discount for people who buy before it’s finished. If people pay money before it even exists? You know you’ve got something. If nobody bites? You’ve saved yourself weeks of wasted work.
If you’re brand new and don’t have a large audience yet, spend extra time here. Have in-depth conversations. Make sure people aren’t just interested in the topic, but actually willing to pay for it.
😵 Steps 1 and 2 are where most creators get stuck. Inside Mini-Course Accelerator, we walk you through the entire process — including the exact frameworks to find and validate your idea before you build a single thing.
Step 3: Create Your Course Outline
Once you’ve validated demand, it’s time to map out what you’ll actually teach. And here’s where I want you to resist every urge to overcomplicate this.
A great mini-course outline has 3-5 modules. Each module has 3-7 short lessons. Total length: 1-3 hours. That’s it.
The key question to keep asking yourself: What’s the MINIMUM someone needs to learn to get the result?
For Substack Notes Simplified, we built four modules:
Module 1: The fundamentals of how Notes work
Module 2: The different types of Notes you can write
Module 3: How to write Notes that actually drive engagement
Module 4: How to do all of this efficiently
Each module builds on the previous one - a clear progression from A to B.
Let me give you another example outside our niche.
Say you’re a home baker and you want to teach people how to bake sourdough bread.
You wouldn’t create “The Ultimate Guide to Baking.”
Instead, your mini-course might be: “Your First Sourdough Loaf in 7 Days.”
Module 1: Creating and feeding your starter
Module 2: Understanding the dough — mixing and folding
Module 3: Shaping and proofing
Module 4: Baking and troubleshooting common mistakes
Four modules. One specific outcome: a beautiful sourdough loaf. That’s a powerful mini-course.
Everything that isn’t essential to the core transformation can be part of a bonus package. In our case, this included a 30-day challenge with templates, access to a scheduling tool, and community access for feedback. Those added massive value without bloating the core course, and they made our offer more attractive:
Your outline is your roadmap. Keep it focused. Keep it actionable. You’re not trying to teach everything. You’re trying to get someone from Point A to Point B as efficiently as possible.
Step 4: Create Your Course Content Without Expensive Equipment
Most people think their course needs to look like a Netflix documentary. Studio lighting. Professional cameras. Perfect audio. Cinematic editing.
No.
Your customers don’t care if your videos look like they were filmed in Hollywood. They care about ONE thing: Will this course help me solve my problem?
That’s the bar.
Here’s our actual setup: Canva for slides. Loom for recording. A decent microphone. That’s the whole “production studio.”
Each video in your mini-course can be between 5-15 minutes - short enough to keep attention but long enough to actually teach something valuable.
For our course, Day 9 was our big recording day. Jari recorded all the core videos within 2 days, and by Day 11, everything was uploaded.
Remember: you can always improve your course later on. You can re-record videos. Add a workbook. Build a 2.0 version. But none of that matters unless you ship the first version.
Keep it simple. Create something helpful. Get it out the door.
Step 5: Where Should You Host Your Mini-Course?
This is the technical step, and it’s actually one of the easiest.
The most popular options are platforms like Teachable, Thinkific, or Kajabi. All of these can handle course hosting, payment processing, and student communication. They’re designed to make the whole process easy.
But here’s something important to understand: the platform won’t make or break your course.
What makes or breaks your course is whether you validated the idea properly (Step 2) and whether you can clearly articulate the value of what you’re offering and actually sell it (Steps 7 and 8).
I’ve seen people obsess over which platform to use, comparing features for weeks, when that energy would be much better spent on their sales page or their launch strategy.
Pick a platform.
Upload your videos.
Organize them into modules.
And move on to the steps that actually determine whether people buy.
Step 6: Pricing Your Mini-Course
This is where a lot of creators get nervous and often end up underpricing their work.
Here’s the mistake we see constantly: People think a lower price means more sales. So they price it at $19 or $27 thinking it’ll be an easy yes sale. But that usually backfires.
Low pricing can signal low quality. It attracts people who don’t value your work and won’t finish the course. Plus, it limits your income, forcing you to sell way more units to hit your goals.
Instead, price your course based on the VALUE of the transformation, not the length of the course.
Most mini-courses are priced between $27 to $150:
If your course solves a pressing, painful problem, $97 to $150 is completely justified.
If it’s shorter or more introductory, $27 to $47 works as an impulse buy.
Substack Notes Simplified was priced at $97 for the first launch because it solves a painful problem that our audience desperately wants fixed. They’re not paying for X hours of video. They’re paying for the outcome.
Remember: People pay for transformations and outcomes. Not for the number of video lessons. If your course solves a genuine problem, don’t undervalue it.
Step 7: Create a Sales Page That Converts
You can have the best course in the world, but if your sales page doesn’t communicate the value, nobody will buy.
Think of your sales page as a conversation with someone who’s on the fence. They’re interested, but they’re not sure. Your job is to walk them through exactly why this course is worth their time and money.
Here’s a structure that works:
Start with a headline that makes the transformation crystal clear. Not clever wordplay, just the outcome they want. Ours was: “Learn to write Substack Notes that drive engagement and turn readers into subscribers.”
Then, show them you understand their problem. Really get into their world. What’s frustrating them? What have they tried that didn’t work? When they read this section, they should think: “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m dealing with.”
Introduce your course as the bridge to the solution. What will they learn? What will change for them after they go through it?
Break down exactly what’s inside. Every module. Every lesson. Let them see the roadmap. Transparency builds trust, and when people can see exactly what they’re getting, they feel more confident buying.
Feature social proof prominently. If you have testimonials, use them. If you don’t have testimonials for THIS specific course yet, use feedback from your other work — coaching clients, community members, even positive comments from social media. Anything that shows you deliver results.
Add your bonuses. Remember those extras we set aside during the outline phase? This is where they shine. Templates, workbooks, community access — these overcome objections and increase the perceived value of your offer.
Create real urgency. Not fake countdown timers that reset. For our launch, we used a genuine price increase: $97 during launch week, $147 afterward.
By Day 13, our sales page was done. Mobile-optimized. Tested. Ready to go.
Don’t rush this step. Your sales page literally does the selling while you sleep.
Step 8: Launch Your Mini-Course
You’ve done the work. Now it’s time to tell people about it.
When we opened the doors to Substack Notes Simplified, we actually felt calm. No panic. No all-nighters. Everything was ready because we followed a clear system, and now it was time to proudly present our work.
We used every asset we had: dedicated live sessions about Substack Notes, a YouTube video aligned with the course topic, posts in our Substack chat, YouTube community posts, and Substack articles that tied into the launch.
Here’s the key insight: your content doesn’t sell the course directly. It PRIMES the audience. Your posts and videos get people thinking about the topic. Then your emails and direct announcements do the actual converting.
We didn’t post content saying “buy the course.” We posted about the power of Notes, why they matter, and what’s possible when you get them right. When people eventually got our sales emails, they were already warmed up and ready to join.
And here’s what happens after the launch: the course becomes an evergreen asset. You’ve built it once. Now you can sell it forever through automated funnels, content mentions, and whatever channels work for your business.
Two weeks of focused work can lead to an asset that generates income for months or years to come.
Let’s Be Realistic
Can YOU build a mini-course in 14 days?
If you’re doing this for the very first time, completely on your own, with no audience to validate with… probably not in exactly 14 days. It will take you longer.
But here’s the question I’d ask: What’s a few extra weeks if the result is an asset that generates income for months or even years?
The system works. Your timeline, however, is flexible.
Here’s a quick recap of the 8-Step Mini-Course System:
Choose a highly specific topic
Validate demand before you build
Create a course outline
Create the course content
Upload your course
Price your mini-course
Create a sales page
Launch
That’s it. That’s the entire system.
Your next step
You’ve just seen the entire 8-step system. Now imagine having the full frameworks, templates, and step-by-step guidance to actually execute it — without figuring everything out on your own.
That’s Mini-Course Accelerator. It’s built for creators who are ready to stop thinking about it and start building.
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