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Review of Nick Saraev’s Skool community: Maker School.
Who is Nick:
Nick is one of the main players on YouTube in the AI / business automation niche. As a solo freelancer in AI/automation he was bringing in $70K+/month. His main revenue ($400K+/month) is now from content/community although he’s now brought on staff to grow the automation biz to keep social proof as more than a content creator. He claims he stays personally involved in the biz to keep up-to-date for his content/community
What is Maker School and who is it for:
Maker School’s main selling claim is to give you a structured daily step-by-step program for setting up an automation agency (starting as a freelancer) and getting your first paying client. Nick has a money-back guarantee (as long as you provide evidence you’ve followed the program) if you don’t land a paying client within 90 days.
The stated target audience is beginners. My take is at least a 1/3 (prob more like ½) of the cohort has software dev experience, with another good slice having marketing/sales experience but not technical experience, and the remainder really are newbies. The youngest members I’ve seen are 15, the oldest in their 60s.
How is it organized:
The community’s got a pretty standard organization:
There’s a once a week community call with Nick, which is then recorded.
There’s a once a fortnightly sales coaching call with another guy (also recorded).
My take:
Final Verdict:
It's a high quality course/community at a cost that could be quickly recouped. If you know nothing about automation tools, expect to have to put in some out-of-course study time, but the community will have your back if you have any difficulties. (Alternatively, if you already can sell, you can always strike up a collaboration with a tech-minded person from the community). Rating: 9/10
Who is Nick:
Nick is one of the main players on YouTube in the AI / business automation niche. As a solo freelancer in AI/automation he was bringing in $70K+/month. His main revenue ($400K+/month) is now from content/community although he’s now brought on staff to grow the automation biz to keep social proof as more than a content creator. He claims he stays personally involved in the biz to keep up-to-date for his content/community
What is Maker School and who is it for:
Maker School’s main selling claim is to give you a structured daily step-by-step program for setting up an automation agency (starting as a freelancer) and getting your first paying client. Nick has a money-back guarantee (as long as you provide evidence you’ve followed the program) if you don’t land a paying client within 90 days.
The stated target audience is beginners. My take is at least a 1/3 (prob more like ½) of the cohort has software dev experience, with another good slice having marketing/sales experience but not technical experience, and the remainder really are newbies. The youngest members I’ve seen are 15, the oldest in their 60s.
How is it organized:
The community’s got a pretty standard organization:
- Communities (Introductions / Announcements / General Chat / Wins / Collaboration & Hiring requests / Bug/Automation help / Wins / Daily Accountability Updates / Roast Requests). The communities are very active and supportive. People who are struggling to solve a client/tool problem get lots of help.
- The classroom. This is very structured. It has a daily program and you are encouraged to build in public in the accountability community.
- Pre program: basically what to expect, how the program works.
- Resource Library: Info and templates to help you get started in various niches, recordings of weekly community calls with Nick, community exclusive up-to-speed videos (e.g. copy writing emails), recordings of Sales training calls with a member who’s a sales wiz, agency deep dives/roasts hosted by another guy, automation blueprints (in N8N and Make.com).
- Automation tutorials: these are a collection of Nick’s YouTube content
- Months (One..Six): daily program of what to do. Each day has a video, notes and links to resources.
- Month one: guides you in daily steps on how to launch a freelance automation business. Branding, niche selection, outreach via Upwork and cold email.
- Month two: Niche specialization, scaling outreach and sales, affiliate income streams and productizing services.
- Month three: systemizing operations (SOPs), expanding inbound and outbound lead generation, automating your own business processes, building authority and social proof, PR.
- Months four, five and six: The daily ‘do this’ guide is replaced with a set of resources and templates. The idea is one-size-fits-all is no longer appropriate as everyone is niching their business down, so there are now significant differences between businesses. There is still a daily outreach/sales guide. In Month six you get a 15 minute call with Nick.
There’s a once a week community call with Nick, which is then recorded.
There’s a once a fortnightly sales coaching call with another guy (also recorded).
My take:
- Monthly classroom content quality: IMHO the course is great at guiding the totally uninitiated through the business side of setting up and running an agency and how to think like a business owner. I think it is a bit less good in teaching how to use Make.com and N8N to solve client needs. The videos on the tech skills are great, but I think more of a structured program here would be helpful. The material is very up to date and Nick is quick to update topics if the environment changes.
- Community quality: IMHO it’s a great active community that gives actionable advice. This helps deal with my concern about learning tech skills: , the community is very responsive when people have a tech question and with a bit of work a total tech newbie should be fine. Nick is very active on the community.
- Access to Nick: like I said, if you ask a question on the community, he’ll respond. Together with his weekly community calls I think there’s plenty of access.
- Results: I don’t know what the drop-out/churn rate is, but there’s a constant stream of people posting ‘wins’. Those people have all kinds of backgrounds, including non-tech & non-sales newbies. It would be interesting to know what the average monthly revenue is.
- Cost: I think it’s now US$184 a month. It goes up occasionally but once you are in, you are grandfathered at that price. Of course there's also the cost of subscription to tools such as Make.com etc but Nick does have discount codes you can use. Also if you start with Upwork (recommended if you initially have no marketing/sales skills) be aware that there's a charge to submit proposals.
Final Verdict:
It's a high quality course/community at a cost that could be quickly recouped. If you know nothing about automation tools, expect to have to put in some out-of-course study time, but the community will have your back if you have any difficulties. (Alternatively, if you already can sell, you can always strike up a collaboration with a tech-minded person from the community). Rating: 9/10
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