I spent 20 minutes adjusting AI eyebrows at 11pm. This is my life now. Here's what actually worked.
I work 9-to-6 and run a side business. I don't even know why I thought this was a good idea sometimes.
By the time I get home my 4-year-old is already in that mode where everything is an emergency, and by the time she's down I have maybe 90 minutes before I become useless. I've been spending those 90 minutes trying to make marketing videos that don't look like I filmed them in a panic. Which I did. Because I did.
I tried HeyGen and Synthesia first. They're impressive I guess but the avatars just look like someone who has been told to smile and is trying very hard to remember how. I spent way too long in the settings. Like, I adjusted the eyebrow tension for 20 minutes. Eyebrows. I am a grown adult who adjusted AI eyebrows at 11pm while my kid was asleep.
Then I just started trying everything. Sora, VEO, whatever came up when I went down the reddit rabbit hole. The deeper I went the more lost I got. At some point I wasn't even sure what I was looking for anymore, just clicking and rendering and being disappointed.
I remember seeing PixVerse mentioned somewhere in that whole spiral. I think a comment thread, maybe a discord, I honestly don't remember, and I scrolled past it. I was already demoralized and didn't want to add another thing to the list of tools that didn't work for me.
A few weeks later I was complaining to basically no one in a group chat and someone dropped a link. Same tool. I figured I'd already hit rock bottom with this so why not.
It's not, okay it's not perfect and I want to be clear about that. The audio flakes out and my voiceover sync is still a mess most of the time. Because of that I've basically just accepted that I'm in “good enough” territory for now. Character stays consistent most of the time, visual gets done, I do the voice myself and just try to make it work.
The thing that actually surprised me was I threw an affiliate link into my posts mostly as an afterthought and it's been covering some of the credit costs. Not life changing. But it's something concrete coming back which at this point I'll take.
I don't know if I'm cut out for this honestly. But I also can't afford to stop yet, so here I am.
Anyone else doing this whole solo founder + virtual spokesperson thing with a full time job? How are you not losing your mind.