AI Automation Society Community Review — by Nate Herk

The Largest Free AI Automation Community on Skool

AI Automation Society is a free Skool community of 305,600+ members built around no-code AI automation using n8n. Founded by Nate Herk in October 2024, it offers 100+ importable workflow templates and an active community discussion feed — all at zero cost. A paid upgrade path to AI Automation Society Plus adds structured curriculum, live support calls, and a job board starting at $94 per month.

What makes this AI Automation Society review worth reading beyond the community’s own marketing page: Herk went from publishing his first YouTube video to leaving a Goldman Sachs analyst role in under three months, built a community that’s now the largest of its kind on Skool by a factor of 36x over the nearest free competitor, and carries income claims that multiple independent reviewers have scrutinized closely. The free tier’s value proposition is genuinely strong — but the line between free resource and paid funnel deserves a closer look.

Who Is Nate Herk?

Nate Herk (full name: Nate Herkelman) is a 23-year-old AI automation educator based in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business in 2024 with a double major in Business Analytics and Marketing, then worked as a Business Intelligence Analyst at Goldman Sachs in Salt Lake City, where he built dashboards and process automations using tools like Alteryx.

His pivot to content creation happened fast. Herk published his first YouTube video in September 2024 and left Goldman Sachs by November 2024 — a compressed timeline that reflects genuine content-market fit rather than years of gradual audience building. As he explained in an Apify blog interview, “traditional automation hit a ceiling when tasks required reasoning rather than simple logic,” which drove his exploration of AI-native tools like n8n.

The credentials check out across multiple independent sources. Herk is a verified n8n Expert Partner — confirmed by n8n’s official LinkedIn account sharing his content — and is featured on Microsoft’s “Learn With” creator program, an institutional endorsement that carries weight beyond the typical creator economy echo chamber. He participated in n8n’s first official “Agentic Arena” game show, competing against Jack Roberts of AI Automations by Jack, a direct Skool competitor.

The Business Track Record

In January 2025, Herk co-founded TrueHorizon AI, a hybrid AI consulting and product studio. His personal website claims the company scaled to over $100,000 per month in revenue working with clients including Topgolf and BarkBox. He exited TrueHorizon in December 2025, returning to the Uppit AI brand he’d originally founded.

A Startup Series profile provides the most specific and verifiable data point about Herk’s actual agency work: four documented AI agent sales totaling approximately $23,000, with individual agents priced between $1,650 and $12,000. This is unusually granular compared to the headline claims.

Income Claims in Context

Herk’s marketing materials feature claims including “$231,000 in 30 days as an AI Consultant” and “over $1 million from AI by age 23.” Cross-referencing these figures with independent review sites reveals a consistent pattern: multiple sources, including ScamRisk and Ippei, suggest the $231,000 figure likely comes from course and community sales revenue rather than the AI automation agency model he teaches to AIS+ students. This is a meaningful distinction for someone paying $94 per month expecting to learn the agency playbook.

The TrueHorizon AI revenue claim ($100,000+ per month) appears exclusively on Herk’s own website. Named clients like Topgolf and BarkBox lend partial credibility, but engagement scope and contract values remain undisclosed. Our research found no independent financial reporting or press coverage to corroborate the figure.

What You Get Inside AI Automation Society

The free community’s classroom section houses 100+ n8n workflow templates available for direct import — covering marketing automation, sales processes, AI agent building, and operational workflows. These templates are designed for n8n’s visual workflow editor, meaning members can import them directly into their own n8n instances and modify them without writing code. The practical, hands-on nature of importable templates distinguishes AIS from communities that only offer video walkthroughs or conceptual frameworks.

It’s worth noting these are the same templates featured on Herk’s YouTube channel, organized for community access rather than offered as original course content exclusive to the community. For members who already follow Herk’s channel, the classroom functions more as a searchable library than a source of new material. For newcomers, the organized format provides a faster path to finding relevant workflows than browsing individual YouTube videos.

The discussion feed functions as the primary interaction layer. Members share automation workflows, ask technical questions about n8n, discuss AI agent architecture, and post project showcases. Content categories visible on the community page include “Start Here,” “Get on Nate’s YouTube,” and “Upgrade to AIS+” — the last of which signals the community’s role as both a standalone resource and a funnel to the paid tier.

AI Automation Society Plus: The Paid Upgrade

AIS+ operates as a separate Skool group with 3,100+ paying members. Based on our research across multiple third-party review sources, the paid tier includes a structured 5-step framework curriculum progressing from Foundations through Process Mapping, Workflow vs Agent Decision, Build and Validate, and Ship and Optimize. Members also get three weekly tech support calls, unlimited technical support, weekly live Q&A and networking sessions with Herk, guest speaker sessions, and a job board.

The premium tier of AIS+ adds a “One Person AI Agency” course, a “Subs to Sales” course, a 500+ tool discount bundle, and Google Cloud credits.

AIS+ has won the Skool Games competition in the Tech category four consecutive times across Q1, Q2, and Q3 2025, with top-5 placements in all three quarters. Skool Games rankings are based on MRR growth and community engagement metrics, making these wins a verifiable signal of both revenue performance and member activity.

The Community Experience

AI Automation Society’s scale is its defining characteristic. At 305,600+ members with approximately 1,500 online at any given time and 15 admins managing the community, it dwarfs every competitor in the AI automation Skool space. The nearest free competitor, AI Automation Agency Hub, has 8,400 members — roughly 2.7% of AIS’s size. That growth trajectory — from zero to over 305,600 members in approximately 17 months since the October 2024 launch — is among the fastest in Skool’s history for a free community, fueled largely by Herk’s YouTube audience of 595,000+ subscribers serving as a consistent acquisition channel.

That scale creates real network effects: more members means more template sharing, more answered questions in the discussion feed, and more project showcases to learn from. The community feed during our research showed active template sharing, technical Q&A about n8n workflows, and project discussions. The sheer volume of member-contributed workflows means that common automation use cases — lead capture, email sequences, data scraping, content repurposing — typically have multiple community-built examples to reference.

The trade-off of a free community this large is potential noise-to-signal ratio degradation. With 305,600+ members and 15 admins, individual attention is structurally limited in the free tier. AIS+ partially addresses this with its dedicated tech support calls and smaller group size (3,100 members), but the free community relies entirely on peer support and admin moderation.

One notable gap in our research: despite the community’s massive size, no Reddit discussion threads about AI Automation Society or Nate Herk were found during targeted searches. For a community with 305,600+ members that launched in October 2024, this absence of organic independent discussion on Reddit is unusual, though it may reflect the community’s youth or demographic platform preferences rather than anything concerning.

Is It Worth the Price?

The free tier’s value proposition is straightforward and strong: 100+ importable n8n workflow templates, an active community discussion feed, and access to a 305,600+ member network — all at zero cost. For self-directed learners comfortable working through templates and community discussions independently, this is exceptional value with no financial risk.

The paid tier is where the calculation gets more nuanced. AIS+ costs $94 per month, or $839 per year (approximately $70 per month, representing roughly a 25% discount over monthly billing). A 5-day money-back guarantee has been documented as promotion-dependent.

How AIS+ Compares to Alternatives

Against direct Skool competitors, AIS+ sits in the middle of the price range. Maker School by Nick Saraev charges $184 per month — nearly double — and was rated higher in a DimeSchool comparative review (5 stars vs. AIS+‘s 4 stars). AI Automations by Jack, run by Jack Roberts, offers a more beginner-friendly program at $77 per month. For those who want to stay free, AI Automation Agency Hub provides a smaller but active community at 8,400+ members with no paid tier.

Beyond Skool, learners can access n8n’s own community templates library at n8n.io/workflows for free, along with YouTube tutorials from multiple creators and Herk’s own channel. The n8n community forum also provides free peer support. For learners who want structured training without the Skool ecosystem, n8n’s own documentation and community represent a viable alternative path — though without the curated template organization and community engagement that AIS provides.

The value dimension earned the strongest score in our assessment, reflecting the genuinely exceptional free tier and the competitively priced paid option. The question isn’t whether you get value from AIS — the free tier makes that almost certain — but whether AIS+ delivers enough beyond the free templates and YouTube content to justify $94 per month.

Who Should Join AI Automation Society

The free AI Automation Society community is a genuine resource for anyone curious about AI automation with n8n. The template library alone provides more hands-on starting material than most paid introductory courses. For beginners and non-technical professionals, the combination of free templates, an active community feed, and Herk’s YouTube channel creates a comprehensive self-directed learning path.

AIS+ makes sense for learners who want structure and live support — the 5-step curriculum, three weekly tech support calls, and direct access to Herk’s Q&A sessions add meaningful value beyond the free tier. The annual plan at $839 per year brings the effective monthly cost to approximately $70, making it more accessible for a multi-month commitment.

Those already comfortable with n8n or seeking advanced enterprise-level automation training may find AIS+ less applicable. Multiple independent reviewers note the program’s strength is in foundational and intermediate content, not complex agency-scale deployments. And anyone drawn primarily by the headline income claims should weigh those against the independently documented $23,000 from four specific AI agent sales — a real but more modest figure.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line of this AI Automation Society review: it earns a Recommended verdict as the definitive free entry point to AI automation education on Skool. The free tier delivers genuine, no-strings value: 100+ importable n8n templates, a 305,600+ member community, and the backing of a creator whose institutional credentials (Goldman Sachs, n8n Expert Partner, Microsoft Learn) are stronger than most in the space.

The paid AIS+ tier at $94 per month offers a structured learning path with live support that competes well on price against alternatives like Maker School ($184 per month). The income claims in Herk’s marketing warrant scrutiny — the documented agency revenue is a fraction of the headlines — but the underlying educational product has demonstrated its appeal through four consecutive Skool Games wins and rapid community growth from zero to 305,600+ members in 17 months.

For anyone exploring AI automation with n8n, joining the free AI Automation Society is an easy recommendation — there’s nothing to lose. For those ready to invest in structured training, AIS+ deserves serious consideration at its price point, especially on the annual plan. Those seeking advanced or enterprise-level AI automation training should evaluate Maker School or direct n8n community resources as potentially better fits for that stage of their journey.