Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Confessions from the Home Office. And today I have a guest that we've seen before. This is Austin Hill.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Hey.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Austin is my son. He helps me with a lot of marketing tech work at Market Momentum. And last week I put out a question on social media and said, ask us anything. And I only put it out once, everywhere. I didn't think we would get much. We got four questions and. And I thought maybe it would be best if Austin answered those questions. But before we go into that, if you like the podcast, if you will subscribe, follow, like, share, comment, put it on social media. We're getting some traction with the podcast. I feel like it's going, going well, and a lot of that is because people have been spreading the word to their family and friends and colleagues. So if you would do that, that would be fantastic. So, Austin, are you ready to answer a couple of questions?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Okay. All right, let's see.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: The first one is I see an option on my email marketing platform called Resend Unopened. I think I know what that is, but should I use it and what's the benefit?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's definitely a good option, mainly for platforms such as Flodesk, which we've used a good bit when working together.
Personally, I would not resend to a bunch of Unopened because people eventually get tired of it or they'll mark it as spam. So you really want to just send the important emails again to the list of people who haven't opened it or people it's not bouncing. Usually, like platforms such as Flodesk make you wait 24 or 48 hours at a minimum to resend.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: I would make it probably 48 hours just to give them a chance to open the email. Maybe they have a bunch coming in and they just need time to carve out some time to look over it. Right.
Your best option, honestly, is just give it a new title or make it something simple like in case you missed it in the title.
And usually that will help jump up your open rate after sending it a couple times if you end up having to do that. But I wouldn't do this for every single email. Like unsubscribes, mark it as spam. People who marked it as spam, they just put you at risk on the email platform you're using.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I've noticed that. I've had clients before that want to do that with every option, and I feel like that ends up hurting them long term. But, like, if there's a promo or something knew that we needed to, to get out there. I feel like it helps to do it once in a while and I think it's a good option. You know, I always feel like if I'm sending an email for my own business or for a client, I feel like everybody should open it right away. But when we look in our own inboxes, I mean sometimes it's the weekend before I catch up on promotional stuff, sometimes it's the next week. So not everybody's on our time frame.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: So.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: So that's enough. That's a good, that's a good suggestion. I don't know if all platforms are using that.
Most are, but I think you're right. I think at least 48 hours is the way to go.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: So number two, what's one piece of advice you have for people wanting to keep their email platform from being shut down? So such as like a flodesk or a mailchimp by the same as what they mean. I have some older data and I'm worried about getting shut down if I fire off a few emails to that older database.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Well, platforms are getting smarter and smarter. You do see a lot of platforms starting to use AI now since that's becoming such a big thing in our everyday lives now.
Definitely. Like don't send out mass emails to your Gmail or Outlook. Like use like a third party platform like such as mailchimp, flow, desktop, things like that. And you want to make sure you like clean your list. Like get rid of the unsubscribers, the bounced possible spam, whatever. When you send something out that way you know your account won't be tagged as, oh, this is a spam account just sending spam emails and it won't get shut down.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think that that's good, that's really good advice. So one person sent in, I guess they, they do similar to work to what we do. How do you recommend we keep assets organized for social media for clients?
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Well, there are definitely a bunch of ways to do this.
We use scheduling tools like Meta Business suite. You can do it in LinkedIn X formerly known as Twitter. Scheduling posts is a great way of keeping things organized and it helps you definitely work ahead.
That way you're not having to stop during the week or whatever. Like, oh, I gotta do a post, I gotta do a post. Like you can get it all right, scheduled out for the week.
We use Trello, you and I. But you found out Trello. That was probably what, maybe five years.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Ago a little while my Trello is Full of boards.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we have a bunch of boards on Trello. But that's a great way we keep things organized by client by client. Especially like keeping it organized day by day as well. Like Google Drive and Google Sheets is a good way to do it, but it can get really unorganized fast unless you're like on top of the organization because it's not really laid out for, you know, task management, day by day activities. It's more of just content, keeping content in there. So that's why we use Trello and I think it's worked great for us. I mean, you really don't need expensive tools to keep some social media organized. Like whatever you decide to do, you just have to use it the right way and what works best for you.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I really like Trello. I like how we can tag each other on individual cards. And it'll email. So if you're running through your email, you can check everything. I spend probably 30 minutes to an hour each week kind of planning out stuff for the next week or two and then link things to content and all that. And a lot of people use all kinds of tools, spend hundreds of dollars. I think Trello, that has a little over a hundred dollars and that's it. You know, and so it's the fact that we run all this off a hundred dollars a year is pretty amazing. But yeah, so good. I mean, and if there's something else that people want to use out there that's more pricey and has more bells and whistles, great. I think you just have to figure out what works for you. But we're all about keeping the overhead low around here.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: So number four, AI. I know you're doing some of this stuff with school right now. Austin's a computer information systems major. He's a, he's a senior. But what are the AI tools that you're seeing or using that, that you like?
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Personally, I like open AI's chat GPT.
A lot of people using it. They keep coming out with new models. I think their most current model is the 4.0model.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: They also have a beta version of that 4.0model where it can implement scheduling for people.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Because it's getting smarter and smarter every day. And they've also just recently released an extension of open AI. It's called Soma. It can do like it can do. It can generate, you know, AI photos or videos for you. You basically just, you give it a template or a prompt or just basically you can just type in, I want a Picture of xyz and it'll generate a bunch of different ones for you. That's been a new thing, but a lot of people use it in school work. I mean, I know we've used it. We've used another.
We've used another tool called Claude. Yeah, that one's been really good with generating, like, show notes for a podcast or help figuring out content, like the best way to words, like a post.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: And then Google's new recent tool, Gemini. It's okay. It's fairly new. There's still a lot of bugs. A lot. I've noticed a lot more discrepancies with, if you could say it like that, a lot more errors in it compared to Claude and Chat GPT. But it is fairly new. And I know that they are working on it constantly.
You know, like some, some of the AI tools that we're talking about.
It's. You can set up projects using it or just whatever. Like, you can set up outlines, whatever you need.
If you don't know how something needs to be said, AI is a good way to do it. But AI also does have some issues with that because they do like to use the same words.
Specifically with ChatGPT, there are a couple words that likes to use. I believe some of those words are overuses, like recently and like, therefore, like, you think, oh, those are pretty common words people use. But it's like every paragraph it's starting off with one of those words. So it's kind of detectable at that point. You don't even need another tool to detect if AI is being used there. You just know from those keywords it's using.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: I was writing a post this morning for the podcast that came out today with the defense attorney Laura, and everything sounded good, but then I needed to shorten it for X. And so I was like, oh, I'll go drop this into AI and. And get it to give me a shorter post for X. And the content was wrong. Like, I. I hit it and I watched it and I read it and I was like, I can't post that. That's not correct. So I was just like, screw it. I'll just go write my own instead of trying to correct it and do all this stuff. But you have to really be careful because it will slip up on you and you will get busted for doing stuff like that. So I've gotten even more cautious the longer I've used it.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of people just think, oh, I can put whatever I want in AI and it'll do it. For me, that's not the case at all. You like it is a very helpful tool. I use it a good bit, whether it be with schoolwork or if I have problem with programming. It's very helpful. It can also help you write code and break down things for you. But you can't rely it to do everything.
I've had it help me find sources for papers I've had to write in school. I've had it help me with like write, fix some lines of code, right? You, you can't just rely on it. You got to go back and look over it. It's not do it for you. It's, it's a helpful tool. You gotta, I mean, you essentially are doing all the work because you have to watch it because it will give you incorrect information. I've caught it plenty of times doing that.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Well, people make mistakes and so do AI programs. You definitely can't just go on autopilot with anything.
And I've noticed that I can start kind of picking up when people post stuff on LinkedIn that it's AI and yeah, so I think everybody just has to be really careful. So those are the four questions that we got in through social media. So my next question to you is tell me everybody or tell everybody here. You've told me a tiny bit about your senior seminar project that you're using AI for.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm in my computer science senior seminar this semester and essentially the whole class is just this one big research project where. And my professor was, you know, hit nail on the head. He's like, I really want this to be about AI because AI is about, is everywhere now. It's in, you know, security systems. Like if you go to Walmart, like there's facial recognition now, like for keeping up with like people like theft. It's a good deterrent for theft. A lot of people, like, it's just used everywhere, you know, on our phones, in our emails. There's AI that you spam for, spam detection. I mean, it's everywhere.
So he was like, find something that's really interesting to you, but it's got to be on artificial intelligence some way, shape or form. I'm like, okay, let me look for something that's really interesting. Well, the most basic thing a lot of people were doing was like, oh, predicting future stock prices, predicting the cost of living five years down the road or based on geographical location or sports statistics. Like a lot of that was just very, very overused. I'm like, well, in my free time, sometimes I will get on to the YouTube shorts. And I always see this stuff about like outer space, stars, different, like star types, galaxy, all that stuff. And I'm like, I'll do something about that because, you know, like, I don't plan on going into anything that deals with astronomy or anything. I was like, that's just a little bit of an interesting topic because, you know, star.
Now we're like finding stars that are light years away and all this stuff and trying to figure out what's what. There's all these different anomalies that we see in space. So I'm. My project is on how artificial intelligence can be used to predict different star types with a deep, learned approach. Essentially what that means is basically in my project I'm having like a CSV file like in Excel.
I mean, we've had like client list, email list, customer information, things like that. But essentially for my project, I'm. It's a big CSV file full of different star types and all their classifications and parameters into that.
And I will be programming a artificial intelligence model, essentially, or giving it instructions on how to identify those star types and give. Classify it, so help it. So it can help identify easier because currently, right now, you know, there's like equations people have to do by hand. And in it, there's a way to do it. It just takes a lot of time. It is, it is efficient. It just takes a lot of time out of your day doing it. This would, you know, provide that accuracy that they're wanting, but at the same time the speed that they need.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: So I'm going to be making something essentially called a convolutional neural network, which means it's, you know, the model itself can learn from past, you know, and it can predict. Go in the future when running to like. Oh, I know what that was when I did it, you know, a couple days ago. Okay, so I'll take that into account and then I will. It. It's like a brain, essentially. It knows, it remembers, it thinks it can put two and two together, essentially.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: That's crazy.
I didn't understand half of what you just said.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's a. It sounds really, really complex, but it's really just.
You have a computer program essentially and you. And it works like a human brain, but you just have to help it. Like, you have to give it direction on how to work like that.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Start raising head.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And essentially it. If you can master it, if you can get it working to a T, like it'll reduce, hopefully wipe out human Error and speed up that process. And it can also, you know, assist like identifying like way, like galaxy's way or further in our solar system. There's like these exoplanets that scientists and astronomers are like. I don't know what that is, but that's going to be really hard to figure out. It's going to take a lot of time. This will take that time out of the process essentially.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: So will this be something you can show me when it's done?
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Yeah, this will be something I can show because I can show my test like my test runs for it.
My output that I got from it because I do have already like a base outline like diagram of what it's looking for essentially like and all the things it can look for. So we can compare those to what I my output from the program to help, you know, figure that. Figure out what it is.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Grief. I hear your puppy barking.
So I can't wait to see that because that sounds. I have no idea how to do any of that stuff. So that'll be cool to, to see how all that turns out. So how far have you gotten into it so far?
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Earlier this month we completed the phase one which was just get basically an outline for our paper in our presentation of it.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: So far that's been done. Right now I'm working on phase two. That's going to be. I'll be presenting that I think right after spring break.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: But I gotta have it in right before spring break. So I'm currently working on, you know, my, comparing my two methods. I'm doing, comparing the old method to what I'm wanting to do. So I'm currently coding that, working that out and showing the later versus now and how it works.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Good grief.
That's cool. That's really cool. Well, we're going to switch gears for a minute. So if anybody knows Austin, they know. He knows all about tech, he knows all about politics. But we're not going to talk about politics. On Confessions in the Home Office. We'll talk about that after we sign off.
But the other topic that he knows is sports.
And so I have a few questions. Reggie, put these questions. That's my husband, Austin, stepdad.
And you can talk as long as you want, but I think this is more entertaining for Austin than talking about it and marketing tech. So you ready?
[00:18:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm ready.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Okay.
How well do you think the current defensive starters will adjust the new Tom Allen system at Clemson? And who in the upcoming freshman class do you feel will make the most.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Impact and why I definitely think it'll be probably a pretty easy transition with. When Clemson had Brent Venables as their defensive coordinator, they really had like an identity. Like you couldn't run on us, your quarterback was in trouble. Like Pocket wasn't going to be there for the quarterback at all. Like you probably had about 2, 3 seconds tops to do anything back there. With under Wes Goodwin, the former coordinator, we really, there wasn't an identity. Like we were all right. Like he worked out some things in the pat, like past defense coverage was a little better. But I mean, I'm gonna quote Nick Saban here. When our run defense essentially came down to like everybody ran through our ass, like through a tin horn, like we couldn't stop anybody. I mean could not stop anyone.
That is so I think with Tom Allen's coaching, you know, history, his experience, I don't think it's gonna be that much of a change for everyone. I think everyone's going to get into it pretty well. We have a lot of people returning, a lot of good players returning.
I feel like there'll be more of a culture and identity on defense. Offensively, you know, we kind of sputtered out a couple years, but we're. Last year we started to get it together. I think this upcoming season we're going to be back to where we were, if not better. And defensively I think, I don't think it's going to be a big adjustment. I think it's just going to be a big improvement essentially. And with the new guys coming in, there's not really a ton of like the freshmen I think that are going to make a huge impact. They might hopefully that they rotate in and out, get some reps in. But Clemson, you know, thankfully finally decided to tap into the transfer portal a little bit. We have a former five star coming in that we were recruiting. He's a linebacker from Alabama. He committed to Alabama over us. Didn't get a lot of playing time. And then once SABAN Left, Kaylin DeBoer came in and just didn't really do. He just didn't do much. So he came back. He came back and went Clemson. I think he'll be a big impact. And we have a lot of guys returning on defense too, like Peter Woods, TJ Parker, Demonte K. Park got a six year waiver approved by the ncaa.
Big dude.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Wait, what does that mean? I don't know what that means.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: He essentially has played, you know, he's ran out of eligibility. I think he got red shirted because of injury. Like gave him another year of eligibility, but I think he had a couple red shirt years or like injured years because you can only redshirt once. So he sent in like a waiver or like an appeal to get an extra year of eligibility and he was granted to him. So he'll be playing. He's essentially like a super, super senior at this point. I think he's been there since 2021. Okay, so maybe 2020, I'm not sure. But he's been there for a while so he's definitely, he's definitely going to be a big help to us. Our secondary, they're looking good. I mean we did lose a couple guys on the defense to the transfer portal, but I mean we just refilled them with new guys or. And a lot of our second string guys had a lot of reps last year in the season before. So I'm not really worried about our linebacker group is just scary. The new transfer from Alabama and then Wade Wood, as and Sammy Brown.
So I'm not too worried about. I think we'll be great. Clemson. I did see yesterday Clemson was the number one college football team in America that the most played the most freshman. Last season. Like freshman got the most snaps. Last season it was Clemson on both sides of the ball.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: That's awesome. Here's the next one. Dabo finally decided to use the transfer portal. Do you think this is a one and done thing or do you think you'll continue? Because we know Dabo is stubborn when it comes to the portal.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: No, he's going to keep using it. He's not going to be like these other schools. Like, gosh, during bowl season Marshall lost like 30 players or something to the transfer portal and I mean you can't really recover from that. But there's a lot of schools that just like paying money out the butt for all these players and then these players just don't even really produce for them. It's just money. It's just money grabbing now. Our recruiting has gotten a lot better with coaching staff changes. Dabo's really cleaned house, I think.
Gosh, I want to say like the only. There's probably like a short, small handful of people who are still on staff that Dabo kept like.
I want to say Mickey Khan, he's been there for a little bit. He's still there.
Like our strength and conditioning guy.
His last name is Batson. I can't remember his first name. He's been. He's still there. But like we have new OC CJ Spillers, running back Coach, we got Tom Allen now at defensive coordinator. There's Nick Eason, he's a former NFL player.
Matt Luke, the new O line coach, last year being his full first season, huge improvement to the O line, a lot better pass protection.
And they're all giving him different dabo, different ideas and different perspectives and what they want to do. And seeing that dabo, you know, took. What is it now? Three players from the portal.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Right?
[00:24:45] Speaker B: He's definitely, you know, he's listening to him and I'm not. Some people are like, no, he needs to use the portal and get, get new people for this position. This position, this position.
You can't develop anyone if you're, if you're just pulling in essentially free agents from all around the country. Like, you need have a strong group of guys. And Clemson was also ranked like the number one team with the most returning, like perf, like performance potential team. Like we have, we've all. We only lost, I think it was, gosh, four, maybe five players to the portal and like the average team lost maybe like 10 or more, right? So like we have huge player retention. People are staying, people wanting to stay.
Nil is getting distributed better. A lot of players, I mean, that's what college football is nowadays, is people wanting their money.
A lot of guys don't go pro or can't handle the pro or won't ever make it there.
So they're getting their, you know, payday now, which I think so. Personally, I think it's dumb. I don't like it. Whatever.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Change the game.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Changed the game. It's because a lot of guys come with the mentality if they just want a money grab. But Clemson's done pretty well recruiting this off season.
I've seen, you know, like, especially our O line coach. He's been all over the country. On my Facebook, my Twitter. That's all I see in Instagram too. Matt Luke's here. Matt Luke's there. Like he's recruiting. Dab is recruiting. Everyone's recruiting, recruiting well.
So I think he will, I think he will still use the Portal. I just don't think it'll be as much because he's recruiting well. But like he did this off season. Like, we need a big wide receiver. I mean, we got the two. There's two freshmen last year, TJ Moore, Bryant, Wesco. They're great big builds, but I mean like. And then a lot of our other guys are like shorter slot receivers. But he went out and got, he got a, like a six foot five guy. Like we need Someone like that. It's been a while since we've had someone like that. And then he got a new edge rusher and new linebacker and I think that's all we really need. And I think he'll still keep using it. I just don't think it'll be a.
It's not going to be a super big thing at Clemson. I don't think it ever will be the transfer portal being used. But as long as it gets used correctly, I don't have a problem with it and I don't see it being a problem.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Good answer. All right, you ready for the next one?
Given the outcomes of the first round of playoffs, do you think it's wise to have home field advantage for higher seed team or all neutral fields?
[00:27:35] Speaker B: I think it's appropriate for higher seeded teams to get home field advantage. If you make everything neutral field, neutral site, there's not going to be a bowl game for anyone at all. I mean we saw that this past College Football Playoff. I mean every new year's six bowl was taken by the College Football Playoff. I think the semifinal, the semifinal round and the national championship need to be neutral sites and give those other bowl games back to, you know, other teams because I mean they took all of them like they were like 10th rake team. Like, like Miami for example, they got left out of the playoff and they're playing in the freaking Pop Tart bowl because all those other bowls are taken. Like there's a lot of good teams and they're playing for these essentially just crappy bowl games that don't get a lot of attention and viewership. Like affects their brain. I mean it's not going to affect University of Miami's brand. Everybody knows who they are. But like some of these smaller schools had a good season. Like no one's going to watch the Reliaque ball. Like I don't want to watch that. I'll watch it if I don't have anything else to watch.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: But I think that it should be higher seed gets home field advantage until you make the semifinals. Like it was in the 14 playoff. You had the two semifinal games. Those are both neutral site bowl games. And then you have the neutral site national championship game.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Okay, one last question. Where do you see Clemson ended up in basketball? Do you think they'll make the Final Four?
[00:29:10] Speaker B: It's definitely possible. A lot of people hated on Brad Brownell. He's been there for a while, he is slept on. He is very underrated in media, in the sport itself. Like people don't Just don't know much about them. And Clemson's 22 and 5 right now. Like they have their best, like a really good starting record. Were ranked. We beat Kentucky, Duke and North Carolina all in the same season.
Reckon they were all at home, but Clemson's never done that. I don't know if Clemson's ever beat North Carolina and Duke in the same season ever.
A lot of people sleep on Clemson and basketball. We're very, very good. There are a couple games we've given up, which we had a little short run where we just slid down and dropped a couple games. But we're on a winning streak right now.
No one can stop us in the paint. I mean, Ian Shefflin's rebounding at a great rate. He's, I want to say he's probably like top 20, top 15 in the country in rebounds per game.
So he. We've done doing a lot better down in the paint. Defense has done well. Shooting's getting a little better. I'd like to see our three point percentage go up, but I think Clemson has a very strong chance to make a deep run in the tournament.
I've been seeing projections that we could be as high as like the fifth seed or as low as the eighth seed. I haven't seen anything below the eighth seed.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: But I think we'll definitely make a deep run.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Okay.
So what'd you think? Was that better than answering questions about tech, marketing? Tech?
[00:30:57] Speaker B: It's fine. It all came to me pretty, pretty naturally.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I figured. So that's really it. So this is kind of a different episode of Confessions in the Home Office. I definitely want to get those questions answered and hear a little bit about your project, but I knew you'd want to talk about sports a little bit if we got started.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: So.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Amazed how much you know because you definitely taught all that. You taught yourself every bit of that. So yes, definitely. But that's it for this week, so be sure to subscribe, like follow, share, comment, let people know that you're watching it. And I'll be back next week with another episode. Thank you, Austin. I appreciate it.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: See you later.
