120: Claude Co-Work, ChatGPT Carousels & the Future of Content Creation with Austin Armstrong

Written By Elizabeth Marberry
Claude Co-Work, ChatGPT Carousels & the Future of Content Creation with Austin Armstrong

I am sitting down with Austin Armstrong, author of Virality, keynote speaker, founder of Syllaby AI, and someone who has generated billions of views across social media through short-form video strategy. 

We talked about what's actually working on Instagram in 2026  including how Austin uses trial reels to test content, his strategy for repurposing videos across platforms, and why collaborations are still one of the fastest ways to grow your audience organically. But we also went deep into AI. 

Austin shared how he's using ChatGPT's newest image generation update to create Instagram carousel posts in a fraction of the time, how Claude Co-Work is changing the way creators and business owners work with AI beyond just prompting, and how entrepreneurs can use these tools to simplify content creation without losing authenticity or personality. 

If you've been trying to keep up with all the shifts happening right now with Instagram, short-form video, and AI, this episode is packed with practical strategies you can start testing immediately. 

Listen on your favorite podcast app!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

02:11 How Austin went from MySpace at 14 years old to becoming one of the leading voices in AI marketing

07:31 Why every CEO and founder should be building a personal brand and how it lets you pivot

11:24 Why consumers increasingly buy from people who share their belief systems

13:20 What's actually working on Instagram right now: Austin's top strategies for 2026

13:48 How Austin reposts top-performing content and why one repost just hit 600,000 views

15:13 The tool Austin uses to download Instagram videos without a watermark

16:13 Why collaborations are still one of the most underrated growth tools on Instagram (and how to add up to 5 collaborators per post)

19:24 How Austin uses trial reels to A/B test hooks before posting to his main feed

25:32 How Austin is posting 3 times a day on Instagram — and how AI makes that possible

25:59 The exact process for using ChatGPT Image 2.0 to create Instagram carousel posts in minutes

31:11 What Claude Co-Work actually is — a plain-English breakdown for beginners

39:46 All about Syllaby — the AI video creation and scheduling tool Austin founded

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

  1. Reposting top-performing content is a legitimate growth strategy. Austin downloaded one of his old videos, reposted it with the same caption, and it hit 600,000 views. No new filming, no new editing. Just SnapInsta and a repost.

  2. Collaborations can stack up to 5 people and that's a massive reach multiplier. The key is finding collaborators with a similar audience and genuine organic engagement, not bots. You don't have to compete — grow together.

  3. Trial reels are best used to A/B test your opening hook. Post the same video with different first-three-seconds hooks, see which one performs, then push the winner to your main feed.

  4. ChatGPT Image 2.0 is a game changer for carousel creation. Find a high-performing carousel design in your niche, screenshot it, upload it to ChatGPT and say "use this design style as inspiration." It will generate a fully designed carousel deck that looks like 10 hours of Photoshop work.

  5. Claude Co-Work is agentic AI — it takes action, not just answers. Connect it to your Google Calendar, Gmail, Slack, and Google Drive, and it will brief you each morning, draft emails, research content, and run on a schedule — all without you prompting it each time.

  6. Personal brands let you pivot. Austin has gone from the addiction treatment marketing guy to the SEO guy to the TikTok guy to the AI guy and each time his personal brand audience followed him because they trust him, not just his topic.

  7. You don't need every AI tool. Do a time inventory first. Find where your hours actually go, identify the bottlenecks, and start with one tool and one use case. Let it become the new norm before you layer in more.

Links Mentioned:

A Truth You Need to Hear:

"Start with where you're at. Start with one tool, start with one use case. Let that become the new norm then build and build. You should absolutely not fear this stuff."

— Austin Armstrong

S3 Ep120 Transcript - Claude Co-Work, ChatGPT Carousels & the Future of Content Creation with Austin Armstrong

00:00

Today I'm sitting down with Austin Armstrong, author of the book, Virality, keynote speaker, founder of Syllaby, an AI platform that helps business owners create, schedule, and publish video content faster. He's also the co-founder of AI Marketing World and someone who has generated billions of views across social media through short form video strategy. We talked about what's actually working on Instagram in 2026, including how Austin

00:27

is using trial reels to test content, his strategy for repurposing videos across platforms, and why collaborations are still one of the fastest ways to grow your audience organically on Instagram. But we also went deep into AI. Austin shared how he's using Chad GBT's newest image generation update to create Instagram carousel posts and infographic style content in a fraction of the time. We also talked about Claude and Claude

00:57

and how that's changing the way creators and business owners work with AI beyond just simply prompting and how entrepreneurs can use these tools to really simplify content creation without losing authenticity or personality in the process. So if you've been trying to keep up with all the shifts happening right now with Instagram, short-form video, and AI, this episode is packed with practical ideas and real-world strategies you can start testing immediately.

01:27

I hope you're pumped, let's go.

01:31

Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole lead work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place.

02:00

Let's dive in.

02:11

Welcome back to the show. I am so thrilled that you have joined me for today's episode because I am bringing on the AI King. His name is Austin Armstrong. I know he's laughing at that, but that's how I think of him. This guy is an expert in the AI space. He is the founder of Syllaby and he is almost at 1 million followers on Instagram. So this man knows what he's talking about and I'm so thrilled.

02:39

to bring him on the show. and I met at Social Media Marketing World just a few weeks ago and hit it off and I knew I had to bring his brilliance onto the show. So Austin, welcome to Streadit. Elizabeth, thank you so much for having me on. You are just as amazing online as you are in person. It was an honor to meet you and hang out with you. And I'm excited to just nerd out with you for a little bit here and hopefully all of the listeners take some value from it.

03:09

Yeah, yeah, I'm so excited. I would love for you to share with us just a quick backstory as to how did you find your way into marketing and AI and this world that you're in and what you're really known for now. I'm going to paint this picture. I'm going to take it all the way back to my space where it all began. Oh my God, my space. I'm having a moment. I love it. And you are my people because

03:37

Every time that I bring that up, some people are like, what was my space? Or they, they're like, oh my gosh, I haven't heard this mentioned in a long time, but that's how long I've been doing social media marketing, which is crazy. So that's how I got stumbled into this. I was 14 years old and I had a computer in my room. was fortunate to have that. And I just started stumbling into different online communities. And I got on.

04:07

MySpace when it first came out and I started to see this community of people that were sharing each other's posts and growing a large following. I can't tell you why that was interesting and attractive to me, but it was, I needed it. I needed that validation and attention. And so I started to grow. started to join and get involved in those communities. I had hundreds of thousands of followers on MySpace.

04:36

Wow. I was able to monetize that in a lot of different ways. had an early software tool actually back then as well. And that's such an impactful time in your life. know, your like prefrontal cortex isn't even fully developed yet. I'm getting so much attention in this online world, making money. My mom thinks it's illegal. Some of it was, or borderline, you know. So I've just been kind of doing it ever since. So kind of fast forward to about

05:06

12-ish years ago is where I'd say my professional career in digital marketing and video marketing really started. So I was living in New Jersey. I moved across country to California, Orange County specifically. And it's where I stumbled into an internship at a video production, video marketing agency that specialized in the behavioral health space, working with therapists and psychologists and mental health experts and whatnot. And I loved it.

05:34

I loved the challenge of taking the life-changing information out of these experts' heads and creating YouTube videos about it. I just thought it was the coolest thing. And so I worked my way up from being an unpaid intern to a paid intern, to a part-time employee, a full-time employee, essentially managing and running that company. The owner of that company was my mentor. And so he really invested in me, sent me to

06:04

conferences and sales training. And I just loved it. And I kept learning and studying the greats in this space. We eventually became business partners where I started my first uh eight marketing agency. I started that about seven and a half, eight years ago, something like that. So I went from intern to business partner. That's when I really started to grow my personal brand again on social media. And I'll catch you up. This is what really led to the AI space. But in order

06:34

for me to comfortably get clients for my agency, what was really working was top of funnel organic content, sharing useful websites and cool software tools and design tools for business owners and entrepreneurs that brought them into my ecosystem. And it was a really natural pivot. And I just kind of got in a little early when Jarvis before Jasper and

07:02

Dali and Mid Journey and ChatGPT 2 before it even came in a platform that you could subscribe to. They started to come out and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm a sci-fi nerd. I love marketing. I can easily pivot to start talking about AI tools for business owners and entrepreneurs. And I started my own AI company about four years ago, three and a half years ago or so. And it's just been a whirlwind ever since I've just continued to grow and be obsessed with AI and

07:31

I've pivoted my personal brand a lot, but I've been full on in the AI space here for about four years and I love it and it's so much fun. It's such a game changer. It's a life changer, a business changer, all the things. And I'm excited to dig into AI with you, but you mentioned building a personal brand and that is so interesting to me because I have really noticed a trend in the past few years of CEOs, founders, know, personal brands used to kind of be

08:00

thought of, think, as like solopreneurs or, you know, people who are a team of ones. Of course, I'm the face of my company, but I'm really seeing it extend into like all of the markets where CEOs and founders are understanding the importance of building a personal brand. Tell us about that, because I know that there's a lot of people listening who are building their own personal brand. And like, why is that important? Because clearly you've really invested in that for yourself.

08:28

and you've prioritized that. Well, for me, it's my creative outlet, first of all. So I need to create content. I build businesses that allow me to create content. It is my outlet. I love creating content. So it's very easy for me. Now I recognize that that is not the case for a lot of people. There's a lot of very introverted people. They don't like to be on camera. They don't want to be the face. And I would challenge it a little bit. Like I understand where you're at.

08:58

But who better than to paint the vision of what you are doing, what you are building, than you, the founder themselves. People love the hero's journey. It's in our DNA, essentially. You set out to accomplish this thing. You overcome obstacles along the way. And hopefully by the end of it, you achieve your goal. You've slayed the dragon. You've acquired comrades along the way. know, storytelling 101.

09:27

And building your personal brand allows you to tap into those psychological elements that people really enjoy. So you're telling the story of your brand, of your business, of your product, of your service, whatever it is in real time. I'm also very build in public focus. I don't agree with stealth mode at all. I think you should be building your personal brand and it also allows you to pivot.

09:56

And move on to something next as well, which is huge. You know, I was the addiction treatment marketing guy for awhile. And then I was the SEO guy on Tik Tok for awhile. And then I was the Tik Tok guy for awhile. And then I was the short form video guy. And the last four years I've been the AI guy. I've been a part of a lot of companies in between those things, but as my personal brand continues to grow, I can divert that attention and traffic to whatever I'm now passionate about and whatever I'm now doing.

10:26

And that is the big part of the personal brand as well, is you can pivot it and you always have it as well. I love that. And that's why I love having a personal brand as well, is I feel that so many of us are these multi-passionate entrepreneurs and we have all of these different skill sets and yeah, we followed the breadcrumbs of our careers and we are always evolving and expanding. And when you've built a personal brand who is so invested in you and your journey,

10:54

And clearly they love how you teach and how you show up and how you dish out the content and build your community and all of that. Then when you do go through a pivot or you go through a launch, you you have that community there for you. And yeah, I think it's so important to do. And I'm so glad that we're talking about this. Yeah, just one other thing that I think is potentially really cool too. I forget who said this at social media marketing world, but what you were saying just triggered a little thought.

11:24

of people, especially younger demographics now, millennials and, and Gen Z and, and Gen X, they make a lot of their purchasing decisions based on businesses and people that have similar belief systems to them. Yes. And by having that personal brand, I can put out there, I'm a Christian. If you are cool, if you're not, that's your thing. Cool. I don't care.

11:52

that aligns with some people. I love to travel. I'm really into mixed martial arts. I am a nerd and I watch anime. so like, you know, some of these things you can purchase from the soulless enterprise company that, you know, doesn't really care about you. Or you can buy something from the person that believes in the same things that you believe, likes and enjoys the same things that you believe. you

12:21

have that connection with them. So that's just another level of transcending sales and why personal branding is so important too. No, I love that. I always say people buy people, not products or services, right? That's just what you described. It's like, you know, one of the biggest objections I think when people are new into business is like, well, so many people are already doing the thing I want to do. And I'm like, but there's only one of you, your perspective, your story, the way that you show up, right? And so

12:51

I love this conversation. I hope my beloved listener, this is serving you. You're meant to be here right now. I'm so happy you're with us. I want to pivot into talking short form video and specifically Instagram. know that you have grown a massive following over there organically, which is incredible. Share with us what you're seeing working right now on Instagram, like a couple of top tips that you have for our Small Business Owner listeners.

13:20

Oh my gosh. So, so many different things. So short form content under 60 seconds has been my bread and butter largely across every platform. Instagram too. Instagram reels drive the most subscribers for me. They drive the most sales for me through like DM automations and many chat and whatnot. Now I'm still posting a lot of images and carousels and everything there. I try to get out like two reels a day.

13:48

if I'm able to consistently, and then I'll mix in some images and whatnot. As far as specific strategies, one really simple thing, and we kind of talked about this on a pre-interview, it was just a really good reminder. I saw this credit where credit's due to Brock Johnson. He interviewed Adam Massari, the CEO of Instagram, and just flat out asked him, can we repost content? And he said, yes. And so I've been doing that a lot, but also,

14:16

even more frequently since I got that reminder. And so I just go back and look at in my analytics, you know, over the last 90 days, what videos have gotten the most organic reach, what have gotten maybe the most followers or maybe my KPIs, I just want to drive traffic. So what's gotten the most comments. And I just download that video and repost it. Same caption. Just last week I reposted one. It's at 600,000 views. It's a repost.

14:46

I didn't recreate anything. I didn't even reshoot it. I just downloaded it off Instagram and reposted it. So add that to your content strategy regularly. Nobody watches every single one of your videos. If you're sitting yourself like, Oh, I can't talk about that topic again. Or, you know, I'm going to get some complainers that already saw that video. Don't worry about that. Everybody is busy. They have their own things going on. Repost that sucker, that top performing.

15:13

video. You mentioned that there's this app that you use that downloads your video without the watermark from Instagram. Will you share that with everyone? Yeah. So, snap Insta. So I think it's snapinsta.to. But if you honestly, if you just do a Google search for Instagram, real downloader and do anything, and I just copy the URL of my own post and I paste it in there and I download it and I repost it. Super simple.

15:44

If you have a workflow where you save and organize all of your content, that's going to be slightly higher quality production value and all of that. But I create so much content. have to delete files constantly. I don't have like an organization system of looking back and seeing like, okay, this video performed well. Where was that original file? And can I find that? It takes me two seconds to copy paste link, download, re-upload. Doesn't take much time at all.

16:13

Yeah. So snap, snap Insta is that one or Instagram real downloader. My other like favorite strategy right now is collaborations. I think it's just so underrated. I do this for Facebook and we do this for Instagram, but a message group of people in my niche that's important too. They have to be in your niche. They should be getting good organic content as well. Organic reach. Don't collaborate with somebody that

16:42

got a bunch of bots on their account. That's not gonna help you out, right? They're actually getting good engaged viewership. It doesn't matter if they have slightly less followers or more followers, help each other out. You can add up to five collaborators on each reel or each post. And so we'll kind of go in order. So it associates back to the original account with your call to action in the comment section and in the description and all of that. But yeah, I'll do a post that I think is gonna go viral. I'll add.

17:11

Five of those people as collaborators, a lot of them have hundreds of thousands to million plus followers. And that really stacks the odds in the favor because those videos, those collab posts go out to all of our audiences and just really helps all of us grow together. It's also a great way if you're growing a new account as well and you already have an existing big account, sneak that sucker in there so that it just cross pollinates and sends people to the new account.

17:39

Yeah, I agree. That is a very under leveraged growth tool on Instagram. And I love how you highlighted that it should be people who share a similar audience, right? Because the whole point is that if we collab together, your followers, your audience, they're going to see my post and vice versa. So it's a way to extend your reach and get in front of more of your ideal clients or customers or followers.

18:05

So I actually did a whole episode on this recently, my beloved listener. So if you're listening and you're like, wait, how do I do this? I just dropped that in my three-part underrated growth strategies series. So check that out because it's definitely one of those things that I think we often forget about. Another example, a lot of my clients are in the wedding industry. Let's say you're a wedding photographer and you are filming behind the scenes content of a wedding.

18:33

What if you invited four other vendors who worked that wedding with you who also have active social media followings in your area. Now you're getting in front of all of their potential couples, right? In your local area. So this works really well for local businesses. It works fantastic for online businesses. And it's just all about aligning your audiences. So I'm really glad that you brought up that tip. It's so good. Absolutely.

19:00

I love the African parable, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And collaboration just embodies that. I don't even care if you're competitors. You know, if there's two different photographers, help each other out. Refer deals to each other. Help each other's Instagrams grow. You know, just grow together. Yeah.

19:24

That is so good. So I want to transition into talking about trial reels. I get a ton of questions about how are you leveraging trial reels? And I know you had shared that you've been really enjoying using that in your strategy. So can you walk us through exactly how you're leveraging trial reels to test content and grow your audience? Yeah, absolutely. there's three main strategies come to mind of how I've been testing trial reels since they came out.

19:53

I love this feature. What I was doing, and this has had diminishing returns for me recently, try this, see if it works for you. That same idea of repurposing your content rather than posting it again to your main feed and audience first, download those top performing videos and post them as a trial reel. The kind of theory strategy here is that that post organically performed really well.

20:23

once, it's likely to perform really well again in front of a new audience. And so I had a lot of success with that. Some of the millions of views early on, it's diminished quite a lot, but I still will do it from time to time to like make sure that is, is this really not working? The other thing that I have been doing, which I think doesn't really work well either anymore, cause it was kind of like a big hack is those.

20:51

looping seven second videos with long text overlays that take you more than seven seconds to read so it increases the view duration and just testing captions at scale. So you have one, you know, seven second clip, you edit the video with 15 different captions and see which one performs exceptionally better. And then you push that one to your main feed.

21:16

That has had mixed results for me that, you know, did perform pretty well for a lot of people. I think they've kind of pulled back from that. And then what I'm doing right now, which does seem to work well for me is using TikTok as uh a testing ground to test the opening hooks of a video. Sometimes I don't even post all of them. The TikTok first, I'll just edit in InShot or CapCut is what I edit on my phone. Same video.

21:43

but the opening hook, the three seconds is different. It's set in a more sensationalized way. Maybe the visual is a little bit different. Maybe it's a little bit longer. Maybe it's a little bit shorter. And just testing all of those, the testing of the opening hooks and seeing if that makes a real impact in the content before I push it to my main feed. This is also a great way if you're repurposing content across the board that you can post all of these A-B tests.

22:11

and see which one performs best. And then you can upload that on YouTube shorts or Facebook reels or a TikTok. If you want to go that route from Instagram first, it's just a great way to test content and get more out of the content that you're shooting. Yeah. So when you said you were AB testing your hooks, you said you were doing that over on TikTok. Are you doing that in trial reels as well? Yep. Got it. And when you are AB testing your hooks, this has actually been a recent

22:41

I feel like trial reels, keep changing the rules on us. um Which is just, you know, social media marketing, which is totally part of the fun. But I had taught to post like two of the exact same video, same audio. Let's say you were doing one of these shorter seven second trending audios, but then totally changing like the messaging on the screen, like what you were saying.

23:08

this started happening to me and some of my clients where they would kind of, you would get a notification like, oh, it looks like you already posted this before. Does that ever happen to you or like, is there a workaround for that? I haven't seen that to be honest. No, I haven't seen that notification. Okay. So I don't know if that's account based, but no. Okay. Yeah, exactly. This is where it's fun to have these conversations of like, is this happening to you? No.

23:36

I think part of why that may have been happening too is for a while what was working really well for me. Essentially, I would duplicate a video. I would post one to my feed and one to trials. And for a while that actually was working really well to essentially like double my reach and engagement. And then Instagram picked up on that and they're like, oh no, you just posted this. So I think part of it is like posting it straight to trial reels and then A-B testing hooks from there. Now, another question with trial reels.

24:06

Have you noticed, because I also have heard mixed reviews on this, some people have reported that, let's say a trial reel is popping off, right? You get that notification of, my gosh, this trial wheel is performing better than your previous reels at this 80 % or whatever. Share it to everyone, right? Or it automatically shares it to everyone. Do you notice that when it shares to the feed and it shares to everyone that it kind of kills the momentum of the video? Yes.

24:34

So my thoughts are if it's working, let it ride. Yeah. Why mess with what's working when it slows down from trial, then share it. Then you give it another boost. Okay. Yeah. That's what I do. I don't want to touch anything. If it's working, I don't want to touch it. Yes. Okay. I'm so glad you said that because I, I've started to kind of tell people like if it's working, if it's starting to pop off, like don't immediately share it. Like you're, it's so tempting. You're like, I want to share it with everyone. Yeah. Take a breath.

25:04

Well, so we talked about repurposing content, which is so, so great. I love that. I did want to ask about how often you're posting on Instagram. So you said two, you try to do two reels a day and then you're also doing carousel posts, correct? Yeah. So I try to get at least three posts out per day on Instagram to the best of my ability. We all get a little bit busy, but thank God for AI.

25:32

It just makes so much of this easier, especially now with Carousel. yeah, ChatGPT Image 2.0, which just dropped. It's brand new. If you use ChatGPT Image before, it was okay. And then Nano Banana was really the best, but the new ChatGPT Image generation is fantastic. And it's really good at Carousel creation.

25:59

especially because you can control the aspect ratio with a setting to just four by five or whatever you want. Four by five is what I typically do. So this is my exact process and flow. Actually, I will go in the Instagram discovery feed, look for a topic that either is trending or that I want to do a carousel on and I'll look at what carousels have already gotten a lot of engagements. And I just take a screenshot of.

26:29

the main cover and one of the template slides. And I don't copy it. I pull that into ChatGBT and I say, use this design style as inspiration. Create the image carousel for this. And maybe it's like five ChatGBT, like for me, it'll be like five ChatGBT prompts to do X, Y, and Z. I'll also ask another, either ChatGBT or I typically use Claude now anyway. Claude or ChatGBT will create those prompts for me.

26:57

And I put that in the image generation prompt. And so I am asking it recreate this cover image with, know, swipe right arrow, my handle in it, maybe have me on the cover, maybe just be Sam Altman sitting in a throne of computer chairs or, know, whatever. And then the individual slides and then a call to action slide at the end for the image. And it will create the whole thing for you. Now the finicky thing.

27:27

that you have to play around with is the first couple times that I tried this, it generated say all seven images in one shot, which was fantastic. Now I tried to recreate that a lot and I think they might've rolled back a little bit. So I switched to just creating one image at a time. But if you have that initial prompt, it's just as simple as create the next slide, create the next image and it will perfectly match the design inspiration style that you submitted in there.

27:56

And it's been working great. It's been working great. can create infographics with it. Text is perfect. The carousels are perfect. It looks like you just spent 10 hours creating this thing in Photoshop. Yes. Okay. So this is so fun, Austin. So after we did our pre-interview, which was recently, you told me about this and I had kept getting that notification from chat of saying this new image tool is here. And I just was like,

28:26

click out of it, because I was just like, I'll look at that later. And then after we did our pre-interview and you told me about, oh my gosh, it's killer for Instagram carousels, last night after my kids went to bed, I did this and I built out a carousel and I could not, first of all, I want to pause and say thank you for that strategy piece of you don't have to, like what I did is I looked at my podcast transcript and I said, there's this one teaching that I want to create a carousel about.

28:55

It knew my transcript, you know, I mapped it out. But I like your approach more, which is essentially doing your research to find a piece of content that's already gone viral. You know, it's already been resonant in terms of the design because carousel, you know, the design pieces is so important. And I will be honest, I've grown my audience and my brand on short form video. like carousels have just never been my thing.

29:20

So it's almost like for me, I feel like a newbie with it, right? Like I'm just like, okay, I'm an experiment. And my biggest objection to creating them was I would have to hire my assistant to build them out in Canva because that is just not the best use of my time, right? And so I was just like, these don't tend to perform well for my audience. They like me on video, but now, oh my gosh, this is a total game changer for us as busy business owners and founders because AI is making it so simple.

29:48

And so I just could not believe the quality of the output. Like it was so good. And it did do the thing where it put together a deck of nine slides on one JPEG image, but it was totally an easy fix. I basically talked to it and cause I speak into the AI and I just said, Hey, I need each of these slides on individual JPEGs and I need them to be at the highest resolution because the first time I did that,

30:16

the resolution wasn't great. It was interesting. And it gave me a zip file that I could download onto my computer. And it was like a folder of Carousel 1 through, slide 1 through 9. And I was just, and I posted it today and I was just like, oh my gosh, this is blowing my mind. This is why we love AI. So thank you so much for that hack. And I'm so excited for everyone to go and run with it.

30:41

Yeah, oh, you're so welcome. Way to take action on it. Yeah, I mean, you can do this on your computer and your phone. If you had the chat GPT app, it's very quick. It's great. Try it out. I'm so glad you took action and tried it. Yeah, thank you. So I want to talk about Claude, co-work really quickly or Claude in general, because I know that, you know, with different things going on in the news in the last couple of months and also just I've just noticed a really big shift in the market where everyone is talking about Claude.

31:11

and specifically Claude Cowork and this idea of instead of always prompting the AI, it's like setting the AI up to do these automated tasks for you. So I'm curious, are you using Claude Cowork for people listening who are like, what the heck are they talking about? Can you give us kind of like a baseline explanation of what it is and how it's different than typically prompting Claude or Chad Gbt? Absolutely, yes.

31:39

Claude Cowork is fantastic. This will be a lot of people's first consumer use case of agentic AI. Depending on where you're at in your AI journey, you go to chat GPT or you go to Claude and you type something in and it gives you an output and then you do whatever you want with that output. That has been AI up until about last year. Claude Cowork is their downloadable

32:05

program, so you have to download it onto your desktop computer. There's three tabs in there, so Claude Chat, which you can use on the app or on your desktop like you would, Claude Cowork, and then Claude Code. Claude Code is a whole separate area where you can actually write code and program things. But Claude Cowork lives on your computer through this application, and you can connect everything to it. So you can give it access to read and write.

32:35

folders on your computer. You can connect it to Slack. You can connect it to Google Drive and Gmail, any software tools that you have. It has full access to the internet. More recently too, and I just set this up last week, they rolled out dispatch, which allows you to access Claude Cowork from your phone. It may have been out for two or three weeks tops. It's a newer feature.

33:03

but it lived just on your computer. Now you can talk to it on your computer. So it basically gives you remote access from your phone, no matter where you are, as long as your computer is turned on and you give it the correct permissions and stuff. There's also a Claude Google Chrome browser extension as well. So you can have it take over your browser tabs and stuff. It can basically access anything that you want it to on your computer, through the software tools in your browser.

33:32

and do actions on your behalf. So some of the things that I use it for is I have it connected to my Google calendar. And every morning when I walk onto my computer, I have a briefing of these are my meetings for today. And here's some notes, here's some context about it. So I go into my day prepped. I don't have to go look at my calendar constantly and see what's going on. Claude does that for me. I have it connected into Slack for me. So I can see

34:01

Did I miss any important questions that I need to go back and respond to? Same thing with emails. It can look at what emails I haven't responded to and draft email responses on my behalf. I don't have it send on my behalf. I always have it just draft. I also just recently set this up. It's now helping me research and create content ahead of time. So I have it go out daily and scrape the internet on what are the top AI

34:30

breaking news stories today, write LinkedIn posts, write uh X posts about it, outline content for videos if I want to do that, and I can pick and choose whatever I want. You can also connect it directly to your Canva account as well, and then have it generate images for you using your Canva account and give it back to you. basically anything that you want to automate with it, set it and forget it.

34:59

It creates individual schedules, so it turns itself off, it turns itself on, it runs consistently, and it's amazing. So it's just such a great time saver. That is so cool. Yeah, I'm already just thinking about all the different use cases. And I think you can tell us in terms of getting started with something like this, I would imagine that you uh kind of identify like.

35:21

What is a repetitive task that I do every week that I could automate through the system? Is that the right question to ask yourself when getting started with this? There's two approaches that I would take. The first is doing a time inventory for yourself. And I think every individual should do this. If you're like, I don't have the time, do you know where your time actually goes? Most people don't like look at that analytically. So what a time inventory is, is

35:51

From the moment that you wake up until the moment that you go to sleep, do it for like two weeks straight if you can. Mark down every task. I woke up, brushed my teeth, took my dog out, I checked my emails, I recorded video content, I had a meeting, whatever. Start time, end time, how much time that took. Your level of enjoyment of that task, do you like it, do you not like it? Is it mandatory? So it doesn't matter if you like it or dislike it.

36:19

What is the dollar value associated with that task compared to how much you value your time? I think every professional needs to understand how much is your time worth. Quantify it. Put a dollar value on how much your time is worth. And then look at that and say, oh, I'm spending three hours a day checking my emails to get this output or checking my calendar or whatever.

36:49

I don't really enjoy it. Set up an automation task with Claude Cowork to do all of that work for you. So every morning you come, it's right there saved for you. You don't have to spend an hour. It can pre-draft you. So wherever your time is. The second thing that you can do is if you have been using Claude for a long period of time, it has access to your memory and all of your chats and everything. In dispatch, I had to do this, but in Claude, you can go into settings and privacy.

37:19

and export all chat history. So it gets a good understanding. And then you load those files into Cloud Co-Work or dispatch. So it gets a really good understanding of what you're already using Cloud for, who you are, what you are trying to accomplish, all of these things. And then you ask Cloud, based on everything that I use you for, based on everything that you know about me, what are some automation tasks that you think that I should set up?

37:48

And it will tell you. And then you can be like, Oh, I like this. This is great. Let me set that up. So smart. So smart. And I would imagine you can do that. Like I was always a chat to BT user and now I'm looking at cloud and I'm like, Oh no, like all of my data and all of my projects and all my chats are in chat. could, if I wanted to export that, like certain data sets out of chat and bring them into cloud and do what you just said. Correct? Yes, to an extent.

38:18

caveat, I haven't tried it specifically in cowork, but in the web-based version of Claude, it doesn't allow you to upload that large of a file size to it. So if like all of us have been using chat GPT for three years, four years, whatever, right? That's a lot of data. And once you have that compiled, like I think mine was like five gigabytes or something, something like that, huge file, Claude wouldn't accept it. And so

38:47

a workaround that Claude actually added, which is brilliant on their part when that whole like government thing happened. You can go into settings in Claude and they have an import memory area. And what it does is it just gives you a prompt that you paste that prompt into chat GPT and it searches its whole conversation search history and projects and everything. It gives you this big text response back with everything that would be important.

39:17

And then you just copy and paste that into Claude in the insert memory area. And now you've essentially taken all of the core memory insights from ChatGPT loaded into Claude. Wow. That is a smart move on their part. Cause they're like, how do we get these users migrated over here? Cause everyone has the same pain point that I do, right? Like where you're like, I have all my projects and everything is set up. And I'm like, oh, it's just like.

39:46

Devastating and I think I've come to accept that I'm just going to be paying for both tools and that's okay. I want to talk about your company, Syllabi. So tell us about it. Tell us about what does it do? Why do we need it? Tell us all the things. Yeah. So Syllabi lets you create, schedule and publish up to a month worth of videos in any niche to all of your social media pages in about five minutes. It came from

40:13

I worked in marketing agency space for a long time and frankly, I got burned out working in the agency space. It was very emotionally taxing for me, but I wanted to help people still. And I ended up looking at just all of the pain points of why a business needed to hire us in the first place. They know they need to be on social media, but they don't know what topics to create. They don't know what to say on camera.

40:41

They need help staying consistent and an accountability partner. They don't like, or don't want to do video editing. They don't want to publish to every single social media platform. They don't even like social media. They just want to be the expert that they are, grow their business and let social media bring them leads so that they can have that cycle. And I was like, well, software can do a lot of this.

41:10

And so that's where the idea came for syllabi. We've been around for about three and a half years going on four years now. And so that's what syllabi does. So it's a AI video generation tool. We have access to all of the new models, Google VO3, Cdance 2, Kling, Sora, is getting depreciated, Grok Imagine, Hyloo, all of the models in there, but it really is a workflow tool. So we have a keyword explorer. So if anyone's familiar with

41:39

SEO and keyword research. It's essentially that you can type in a service that you offer, a product that you offer, a pain point, some sort of keyword, and it will show you all of the questions that your prospective buyers or leads are searching for online with data to back it up. And then with one click, you can generate a script for that topic in my script format. It will generate the video for you.

42:06

AI generated imagery stitched together, AI video, B-roll. You can also use our video editor in there and edit videos yourself if you want and kind of use a combination of AI video B-roll plus you be the personal brand, however you want. And then full AI voiceover, basically the entire package video. You don't have to do anything. And then we're directly integrated with every social media platform as well. So it's a scheduler. So you can...

42:33

connect your YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook threads and schedule and publish them out. It will fully optimize the descriptions and titles of all those videos. You can add a call to action links in the descriptions of those videos. We generate thumbnails for you. My whole reason for doing it is that video and social media marketing has changed my life. I just want to provide the tools and strategies to help change your life as well.

43:03

And this is a tool that has helped tens of thousands of people create videos, make their first dollars online, not need to spend all of their time on social media and just kind of let it handle it. So it's been a very fun journey. Wow. I want to highlight something as the marketer over here, which is that I love how you described your ideal customer, right? Like your avatar in such great detail as to their pain points. And you knew those so well.

43:31

And then you identified a pain point and then you created a solution, like done for you solution that works without you, right? Your brain and all of your marketing prowess is in there and all your AI knowledge and leveraging all these different AI tools. And then you took it another step further, which is to connect it into all of these apps and schedule them. So it's a scheduler all in one and wow, like I love that. So congratulations on your company.

43:57

And I'm sure people are going to want to check it out. can you tell everybody, where do they go to first of all, connect with you? Cause I know they're going to want to follow you. And then how can they learn more about your app? Yeah. If you'd like to check out syllabi, it's S Y L L A B Y dot I O is the website syllabi with a Y. You can schedule a free demo if you're interested. It's very affordable, cheap tool as well.

44:22

And for me, I'm Austin Armstrong basically anywhere. Austin Armstrong.ai is my main website. If you just search for me, I am the nerdy with AI and glasses, Austin Armstrong. I am not the defensive football coach of the Florida Gators, Austin Armstrong. And I am not the six foot tall, curly haired relationship influencer, Austin Armstrong either. am that business nerd right there in the middle.

44:50

That is so epic. I love it. I love it. To close out the episode for someone who is wanting to use AI, but they're just feeling behind, because I know that that is just such a common feeling, even for me, who I use it every day, all day, every day, and then I'm learning about cloud coworking, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what is your message to that person who's like, okay, I want to do this, but I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed? What are your closing thoughts for us?

45:19

It's okay. We're all overwhelmed. We're all just doing the best that we can and everybody is going to be on a different pace. It's like literally my job to stay up to date. And if I'm at a conference for 24 hours, I feel behind because the news cycle is so crazy. So take a deep breath. It's okay. You don't need to use every tool. Do that time inventory process and really just start with what are the bottlenecks? Where can you get some more time back?

45:49

What do you wish that there was an AI solution for? And just start there. You don't need to fully automate agentic AI, everything, open-claw, you know, take your kids to school. Like you don't need to do everything. Start with where you're at. Start with one tool, start with one use case. Let that become the new norm and then build and build. But you should absolutely not fear this stuff. Even if you're anti-AI, I think it's important for you to understand it and just start playing with some of these tools.

46:19

Yeah. Thank you, Austin, so much for your wisdom and your time. I so appreciate you. And I know people are going to just be gobbling up all of your content. So thank you, thank you, thank you for your time and wisdom. Thank you so much for having me on, Elizabeth. You are such a shining star and I appreciate you. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Austin and that you are walking away feeling empowered and excited about

46:48

just some small next steps that you can take in growing your business, your personal brand, looking at your time, maybe implementing one AI tool that Austin shared with us today. Remember, success goes to implementers and just make those 1 % upgrades every day. I believe in you. Thank you so much for being with us today. And if today's episode resonated with you, please do us a solid, share it with a business colleague or a friend who's also trying to grow.

47:17

their business on social media and really understand how AI weaves into the work that we do every day. I so appreciate you doing that and I can't wait to strut it with you next week. Thank you for listening to strut it. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free monetize your IG guide where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram.

47:46

You can grab your guide at elizabethmarberry.com slash freebies. That's elizabethmarberry.com slash freebies to get my monetize your IG guide. If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.

Elizabeth Marberry
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