I joined AI Automation Society Plus expecting something substantially different from what Nate puts out on YouTube for free. What I got was basically the same surface level content, just behind a paywall. If you've watched his videos, you've already seen most of what's inside. Save your $99 a month. The upselling is relentless and honestly the most annoying part of the whole experience. I lost count of how many times I was nudged toward some higher tier offering. At one point he tried to convince me to buy a $10,000 mastermind. Ten thousand dollars. For what? More of the same recycled content with a fancier label? It feels like every interaction is just a funnel to get you to spend more money. The group calls are a joke. Nate regularly shows up late, which is incredibly disrespectful when people are paying monthly for access and carving time out of their schedules. If you're charging premium prices, the bare minimum is showing up on time. The content itself is shallow. Whenever something new drops in the AI space, Nate covers it in the most surface level way possible. There's no depth, no nuance, no real technical understanding. If you're looking for someone who's actually at the cutting edge of this stuff, this isn't it. And that gets to the bigger problem. Nate makes the vast majority of his money teaching people how to build AI automation businesses, not from actually running one himself. It's the classic "those who can't do, teach" situation. Hard to take business advice seriously from someone whose main business is selling you business advice. Then there's the community. I was hoping for a group of serious builders I could learn from and collaborate with. Instead it's mostly complete beginners, which would be fine on its own, but a surprising number of them are constantly trying to sell you their own services or pitch you on some side hustle. It feels spammy and unmoderated. Overall I feel like I wasted my money. There's nothing here you can't find for free on YouTube, including Nate's own channel. Don't fall for the upsell.

I came into Justin Guitar as a complete beginner. I'd never picked up a guitar before and honestly wasn't sure I'd stick with it. But Justin's teaching style hooked me right from the start. He has this way of breaking things down that makes even the trickiest concepts feel totally manageable. He never rushes through anything, and you can tell he genuinely cares about making sure you understand what you're doing before moving on. The course structure is really well thought out too. It never felt overwhelming, which I think is the biggest reason I actually stayed with it. Each lesson builds naturally on the last one, so you're constantly making progress without even realizing it. One day you're learning your first chord, and before you know it you're stringing together full songs. The best part for me was how quickly I was able to play actual music. I'm not talking about scales and exercises, I mean real songs that people recognize. I started playing for my girlfriend and she was genuinely impressed, which was a huge confidence boost and kept me motivated to keep going. If you're on the fence about learning guitar or you've tried before and given up, I'd say give Justin Guitar a shot. His approach just works, especially for beginners. It's the kind of course that makes you feel like you can actually do this, and then proves you right.

Maker School was another disappointment in the same vein as AI Automation Society Plus. I joined hoping for a serious program that would help me build real skills, but what I got was a race to the bottom freelance program dressed up in AI branding. The information is consistently outdated. AI moves fast, and Nick is always a few steps behind. By the time he covers something, the tools have already changed or been replaced entirely. You're essentially paying to learn yesterday's stack. If you follow along and build what he teaches, you're going to show up to client calls pitching workflows that are already obsolete. Just like Nate, the upselling never stops. There's always another tier, another program, another offer being dangled in front of you. It becomes clear pretty quickly that the real product isn't the education. You're the product. The whole thing is engineered to extract as much money as possible from people who are just trying to learn. The freelance angle is the worst part. The program basically teaches everyone the same cookie cutter approach to landing automation clients, which means you're competing with every other Maker School graduate for the same bottom of the barrel gigs. There's no differentiation, no moat, nothing that sets you apart. It's a race to the bottom on price, and Nick doesn't seem to care because he's already got your subscription money. And that's the fundamental issue with both of these programs. Nick, like Nate, makes the bulk of his income from teaching, not from doing. He's not out there running a cutting edge automation agency and sharing hard won lessons. He's repackaging surface level knowledge and selling it to beginners who don't know any better yet. Between Maker School and AI Automation Society Plus, I've learned one valuable lesson: if someone's primary business model is teaching you how to make money, they're probably making most of theirs from you. Skip both of these and spend your time actually building things.

Welcome everyone! I spent a lot of money on online courses over the last few years, and I wanted to make a community where we can talk about different online courses that we should take and ones that we should avoid based on our own personal experiences. If you have any ideas for which things you'd want to see in this community, then leave a comment down below and we'd be happy to get back to you.