AI Video Creator's 30-Min YouTube Funnel Makes $42K MRR on Skool

Rourke Heath runs GenHQ, a Skool community teaching how to generate great AI videos.

It has 439 members paying $97/month—that's $42,583 in monthly revenue.

His funnel is brilliant because it doesn't feel like a funnel.

A 2-Part YouTube Content Strategy to Drive Skool Sign-ups

Rourke creates 2 types of long-form YouTube content, each serving a different psychological purpose:

Format 1: Expert Interviews (Social proof through association)

• Expert Interviews like Netflix Exec Reveals How AI Can Help Creatives Make Money

• 30 minutes free on YouTube, full hour-long conversation in GenHQ

Format 2: Technical Tutorials (Competence demonstration)

• Technical Tutorials like How To Create Ultra-Realistic AI Lip Sync Videos

• 30 minutes of working tutorial on YouTube, complete workflow inside GenHQ

Using the Zeigarnik Effect: How Incomplete YouTube Videos Drive Skool Sales

Most creators either give everything away for free or gate all their best content. Rourke does neither.

The 30-minute mark is strategic. It's long enough to deliver genuine value and build trust, but short enough that viewers are still in "learning mode"—not satisfied, but hungry for more. When he mentions the rest lives in GenHQ, it doesn't feel like a bait-and-switch. It feels like an invitation to go deeper.

This taps into the Zeigarnik Effect: our brains obsess over incomplete tasks.

You've invested 30 minutes, you're halfway through, and your mind craves closure. The $97 suddenly feels like a small price to pay.

The Art of Invisible Selling: A YouTube Strategy to Pre-Qualify Skool Members

The real genius is that Rourke never "sells" in the traditional sense. There's no pitch deck, no aggressive CTA, no countdown timer. Just a casual mention that more exists elsewhere.

This works because he's selling to people who are already pre-qualified. If you've watched 30 minutes of an AI tutorial, you're clearly serious about learning this stuff. The conversion isn't about convincing—it's about providing a clear next step for people who are already bought in.

Similar to how Merge Mansion disguised its sales process within gameplay, Rourke buries the transaction inside education.

After all, the best sales pitch is the one that doesn't feel like selling at all.

Top Tweets of the day

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"The fast fashion era of SaaS has begun." ~ Sam Altman

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Substack saw this early on whether by hook or crook. When production becomes easier, consumption is the only thing that matters.

Everything will move to paid now. Those who can offer it for free have better economics behind them and extremely high LTV.

This means only big companies can afford to do this or someone whose paid users can offset free users costs.

I've seen that Affinity (Mac only alternative for Photoshop) and JetBrains DataGrip are giving their products away for free but its only because they have have made their coin for 10+ years.

Microsoft did this for decades. Gave away Windows for free and hosted piracy keys on their own product GitHub.

Cursor gave away free yearly discounts to students for the same reason. And Google is giving Gemini away for free for a similar reason.

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Nothing is real anymore. Everything is fake.

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