Being paid for a course we're still building is an odd (but awesome) moment in business

I've just received our first payment from the platform we're hosting our upcoming online course on. Which is a tad awesome. It's something very new for our animation studio, which is typically in the service industry i.e. we don't sell standalone products and typically spend 4-16 weeks on individual projects.I posted here last week, blooming chuffed to have had our first-course sale despite the course still being mid-production. To have my course idea on 'How to start your own animation studio' verified by a paying student signing up was really very cool.The course won't go live in full till October, as I want to ensure it both looks/sounds good, is entertaining (if I can muster that) and also chock full of quality content to help the new entrepreneurs produce a viable business plan.I'd decided to run a course presale to further test the market and see if the demand I thought existed really did before investing more time and money. I did wrestle with the idea, as trying to sell something before it exists in full seems odd, even when saying that clearly on the course pages. Though on reflection it's no different to the likes of a Kickstarter campaign, just one you're running yourself. So, ultimately that first sale meant an awful lot.Now some 12 days later. We've had 14 students sign up for the course using our Earlybird offer. It's a huge deal for our studio, as I'd taken the decision to turn down paid projects in August and into September to free myself up (and some of the team) to work on the course production and take an educated punt. (*I didn't turn down all projects... some regular clients are far too good to risk losing :-)I'm hoping there will be a little boost in course signups before the Earlybird offer ends on Monday. Either way, the presale approach has been a success in as much as it's confirmed there is a market for this sort of content and it's really exciting to see where it takes us over the next year.There's a lot of late nights ahead as we finish writing and finishing design assets and do the filming for much of the content at our studio over the upcoming weeks.It's all very exciting though and I just need to navigate some of my normal work and get it all launched. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy