building a creator pool before opening the gates

Quick context: we run a small AI/UGC ad agency out of Toronto. Mostly e-commerce brands and local businesses — the kind of clients who can't justify a $5k creative shop but still need ads that don't look like AI slop. The volume right now is more than our team can personally turn around. Product videos, AI spokesperson clips, before/afters, short-form Reels and TikTok ads — most of them are jobs we'd love to take but can't fit into our current pipeline. So we're doing the unsexy version of scaling: putting together a Discord of AI creators who actually know what they're doing, so we can eventually route the smaller jobs out instead of saying "sorry, booked." Right now we're only onboarding creators. No buyers in the server yet. We want to vet the supply side before a single client sees it — figure out who can actually hit a brief, who's consistent, and who's still leveling up but coachable. What's useful to know how to make: AI UGC-style ads (the bread and butter) Product / lifestyle short-form video AI spokesperson clips Before/after transformations Local business ad creatives Reels/TikTok ad cuts You don't need a big portfolio or a following. The bar is simple: can you follow a brief, hit a deadline, and care about the work getting sharper over time? We want the community side to actually matter too — sharing workflows, prompt structures, what's working in ads this month, not 2024 playbooks. We'd rather have 30 people sharpening each other than 300 lurkers. If that sounds like you, drop a comment with what you're best at making and we'll DM the Discord. Easier for everyone if it's out in the open first.