Rourke Sefton-Minns aka Rourke Heath

Five pages before the one that worked

Rourke Sefton-Minns did not start with AI, or even with tutorials. For about two years he live-streamed himself sleeping every Saturday night, while a programmer made his bedroom interactive so viewers could set off his smart-home devices^[6][5]. He told Fast Hours that it grew to nearly one million followers and about $10,000 a month by the time he was 21, and that it burned him out^[6].

What followed did not work. He spent his savings on a ski-vlogging channel in the French Alps that he gave six months, then tried a celebrity-documentary channel, then worked briefly as an estate agent^[6][5]. By his own count he tried five social pages before the one that stuck^[6]. The names of those early channels are not public, so this page does not guess at them.

420 days in a row

The one that stuck began on 1 January 2024. He posted every single day for 420 days, starting with short Photoshop tutorials^[5]. A 23-second Short on Photoshop's upscale feature, posted that April, has passed 821,000 views, and a Google Earth Studio tip and a sketch-effect tutorial from the same months have each passed 170,000^[39][2]. Around day 150, Adobe's AI features pulled him fully into AI, and the channel became what it is now: fast, practical AI tutorials, mostly as vertical Shorts^[5].

Starting on January 1st, 2024, I posted every day for 420 days.

Rourke Sefton-Minns^[5]

Online he is two people with one face. On YouTube, TikTok and X he goes by Rourke Heath, with the handles @RourkeHeath, @rourke.heath and @rourke_heath; on Instagram, LinkedIn and Skool, and in most press, he is Rourke Sefton-Minns^{[4][42][5][6]}. Both names are him.

The numbers

His YouTube channel has 90,100 subscribers and about 21 million views across 33 long-form videos and 327 Shorts^[1][2]. The biggest single upload is How to Generate AI Assets in Artlist, a 45-second Short from January 2026 that has passed 11.47 million views; an Autodesk Flow Studio Short that swaps him for a CG character has 2.6 million more^[15][16]. His most watched long-form video is a Seedance 2.0 prompting tutorial with 337,000 views^[23].

TikTok is bigger again. His latest 300 TikToks, from February 2025 to October 2026, add up to about 237 million views, led by a #GooglePartner post at 71.8 million and an Artlist post at 66.8 million^[3][29][30]. Many of his biggest posts are brand partnerships, some marked #GooglePartner or Ad, and the brands that pay for them, Google, Artlist, Autodesk and others, are a credential in themselves^{[3][29][44][16]}. Third-party trackers estimate about 974,000 followers on Instagram and about 266,000 on TikTok; neither platform could be read directly, so treat those as estimates^[13][14]. On LinkedIn he has about 17,500 followers^[11].

GenHQ

In April 2025 he launched GenHQ, a subscription community for creatives learning AI, according to Net Influencer^[5]. GenHQ itself says it launched in 2025 with 20 modules ready on day one, and The AI Download reported that he built it in 60 days^[4][7]. It teaches AI video, images, lip-sync, audio, upscaling and worldbuilding alongside the business side: pricing, finding clients and delivering paid work, with live calls through the week^[4][10]. On AI LIVE Ep. 109 Chris Branch noted that its most popular module is how to find clients, not how to use the tools^[34].

The figures have moved fast, and they come from different places. A LinkedIn post in August 2025 spoke of 35 paying members at launch and then 97^[11]. Net Influencer reported more than 600 members and about $56,000 in monthly recurring revenue in December 2025^[5]. By August 2026 GenHQ's own about page claimed 1,600+ active members, 605+ documented member wins, 150+ modules, a team of twelve and the title of "#1 paid Tech community on Skool in 2026", which is its own claim^[4]. In October 2026 its Skool listing showed about 1,500 members, a 5.0 rating from 67 reviews and a price of $97 a month^[10]. Its stated mission is to create 100,000 jobs for creatives^[10][6].

The North Face, Vans, Timberland and Meta

GenHQ also trains teams. Rourke has run AI workshops for three VF Corporation brands, The North Face, Vans and Timberland, and talked through what he taught The North Face about creative AI on the Bad Decisions podcast in February 2026^[4][8]. Net Influencer reports that companies buy seats in GenHQ for whole teams^[5].

In July 2026 Meta named @rourke among the creators who worked with the Instagram team in New York to design custom AI effects for Instagram Stories, powered by its Muse Image model^[9]. Two days later he posted a Short about the instant-photo effect he had designed: "I designed an official AI effect for Instagram, and it's out now"^[20].

Starring himself

His signature is that he is almost always the subject. In July 2025 he showed viewers how to put themselves into Google Veo 3 by building a consistent AI character of himself and dropping it into product-ad scenes, a tutorial now past 209,000 views^[24]. Since then he has swapped himself into famous-film-style scenes, replaced himself with a CG actor, turned one phone clip of himself into new characters and settings with Higgsfield Genjutsu, and cycled through seven costumes in one armchair shot with Seedance 2.5^{[21][16][17][19]}. In August 2026 he released a cinematic short in which his AI double fights in a desert, dines at a classical banquet and walks through ancient Egypt, made from 50 AI image references^[22].

On AI LIVE Ep. 128 Chris Branch called it a new kind of personal branding: his AI videos are him as an AI character^[38]. He is equally clear about the opposite: on Ep. 118 Chris named him among the creators who will not present with an AI avatar of themselves, because, as Chris put it, audiences feel you didn't bother to make it^[36].

97 posts a month

The volume runs on systems. He has described making about 97 pieces of content a month, around three Shorts a day, with three editors, shooting about 60 takes per video and no scripts^[7][8]. He spends about six hours on the first 15 seconds of visuals, builds narrative loops for retention, and plans what to make with an idea system he vibe-coded with Claude^[5][6]. Claude also writes his Seedance prompts and shot lists, and he gives the prompt-builder skill away^[23][18]. Most videos end by asking viewers to comment a keyword, and ManyChat sends the link by direct message^[5][7].

We say no to 90 or 95 percent of brands.

Rourke Sefton-Minns^[5]

That reach is the business. Net Influencer reported up to $350,000 a month in branded AI content by December 2025^[5]. On Fast Hours in August 2026, in an episode billed as He Built an 8 Figure AI Business in One Year, he described twelve full-time staff, $350,000 to $600,000 a month in brand partnerships and about $150,000 a month from education; these are his own figures, not audited ones^[6].

Interviews, and the advice he gives

His channel also hosts long conversations: PJ Ace on Veo 3 prompting and $100,000+ AI adverts, Siddhi Sundar, formerly lead of Product Innovation Research at the Netflix Studio, on how AI can help creatives make money, and Google's Henry Daubrez on breaking into AI filmmaking^{[25][26][27][28]}. He has been the guest on Shira Lazar's The AI Download, the Bad Decisions podcast and Fast Hours with Rory Flynn and Drew Brucker^[7][8][6].

His advice to new AI creatives is blunt: find the client before you make the work, make two spec commercials a week for 90 days, post each one on LinkedIn with a how-I-made-this breakdown, watermark them with the tool you used and apply to the tool companies' creative-partner programmes^[6].

The only way you can fail is by not trying.

Rourke Sefton-Minns^[6]

A friend of AI LIVE

Rourke has not been a guest on AI LIVE yet, but he is a regular presence. Chris Branch called him a good friend of the podcast on Ep. 109, he watched Ep. 118 in the live chat, and on Ep. 124 he told the hosts that HUBRIS Creative Studio's music video Ichi Ni San Shi Go! Go! Go! was made by Chuck, one of his GenHQ members, who had submitted it to the show^[34][36][37].