CLASSIFIEDS own @Des Dreckett is running a free live talk on how AI has changed making, producing, editing and marketing video, and how to start using it. I think it's worth your time if you make content. It's 30 minutes, then 30 minutes of live Q&A. Here's the reason he's doing it. A lot of creators use AI to write scripts and ideas, but very few have connected it to the tools they work in and given it real work. A UK survey of 1,000 small business owners this summer found that only about 5% regularly use AI tools that carry out tasks across their other tools. Meanwhile, most people still make video the way they did in 2022: a face-to-cam recording, their own B-roll, a long edit, captions, export. That works, but it takes a lot of hours, and that's where the gap is opening up. What Des will cover How most creators make video today, and what it costs in time. He'll use his own old workflow as the example. A short history of how each era of video making removed one barrier, and which barrier is left now. Making: going from a script to a finished clip, including generated B-roll, native audio and keeping a character consistent between shots. Producing and editing: what used to need a camera, a studio or a crew, and what editing looks like now, with a real before and after. Marketing: turning one video into shorts, a YouTube cut and posts, and testing what works instead of guessing. Where AI still looks like AI: hands, text, drift on longer shots, lip-sync, skin that's too smooth. He'll also cover where AI tools still fail on whole jobs. Des isn't telling anyone to drop their camera or chase every new tool. He's showing what's possible now and being straight about what isn't. Who it's for: creators, editors and one-person businesses who already make content. Who it isn't for: anyone looking for UGC avatars, AI influencers or an AI agency. When: UK: Monday 19 October, 8 pm (BST) / 19:00 GMT New York: Monday 19 October, 3 pm Sydney: Tuesday 20 October, 6 am

I just wrapped a live workshop called 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁, and the whole point of it was to stop people from doing what most of us do first: jumping straight into a tool before we know what we actually need it to do. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙥 𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙠𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙗𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 𝘼𝙄 𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝟰𝟱 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙨, but not by picking a platform. By writing a reusable role brief first. Before any tool gets touched, you get clear on the recurring job you want handled, what goes in, what should come out, and what success actually looks like. Skip that step, and you get generic results and a loop of re-prompting that never quite lands. To make that concrete, I built an 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿 inside the session. Eight questions, answered live, and it produces a role brief you can hand straight to any AI. Then I walk through an 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁, pasting that brief into a fresh chat, asking for a first task, and showing how to redirect it when the first attempt isn't quite right, instead of starting over. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝘂𝗽 𝗻𝗼𝘄, 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀, the 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿 and the 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲, 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗛𝘂𝗯. If you're 40 or over, running your own thing, and tired of AI feeling like one more moving target instead of something that actually works for you, this is a good place to start. AI Pathways Hub https://www.skool.com/ai-pathways-hub-4782/about

According to a recent Careerminds survey of 1,000 professionals who hold both a full-time job and a second stream of income, 64.1% of workers now build a side hustle out of job-security anxiety. While generating extra cash remains a primary goal (93.2%), the underlying motives have shifted dramatically toward defensive career management: - Layoff Buffer: 37.5% - Retirement Savings: 37.9% - Skill-Building: 34.9% - Passion Projects: 34.9% The trend is even more pronounced among younger corporate professionals: 69.4% of Gen Z and 63.6% of Millennials view their side hustle as career insurance. Recent data from the US Federal Reserve and financial media giant Bankrate confirms that secondary income among middle-income and university qualified professionals has surged well past pre-pandemic levels. What's your prime motivation for creating a Skool community?

📝You planned a 45-minute walk. ➡️Today you’ve got 15. 📝You planned to cook the whole healthy dinner. ➡️Tonight you need something much simpler. 📝You planned three strength workouts. ➡️This week, two may be realistic. You have two choices: 🔴Decide the plan “doesn’t count” anymore… ✅or adjust the size and keep the direction. That’s the kind of thing we practice inside my free community, Stop Starting Over Women 50+. Real consistency is not doing the full version every single time, it’s 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐎 𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐆𝐎𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐍. If you’re a woman 50+ who is tired of constantly starting over, come join us. Stop Starting Over Women 50+

Open your admin dashboard and look at the last 30 days. How many new members joined? And how many went from free trial to paying? If the answer is zero, switch back to free today. Here's why, in plain terms. Charging doesn't create demand. It filters it. A paid gate only works when enough people are already arriving, and enough of them already trust you, that some of them will pay to get through. The price catches people who were coming anyway. If nobody is coming through, the gate isn't filtering anything. It's just a wall. And a wall in front of an empty street tells you nothing about whether people would pay. So zero joins after going paid doesn't mean "paid doesn't work for me". It means you've got two problems the paywall is now hiding: → Traffic. Not enough people are finding the community in the first place. → Conversion. The ones who do find it aren't convinced enough to commit. Neither gets fixed behind a paywall. Both get fixed in the open, where people can walk in, see the value, and tell you what's missing. The rule I'd use: Stay paid only if it's converting. If it isn't, go back to free, fix traffic and conversion, and put the price back on once people are queuing at the door. What did your last 30 days show?