AIMinds #031 | Tony Hersey, Director of Marketing at Pinpoint Global

About this episode

Tony Hersey is the Director of Marketing for Pinpoint Global, a product designer, and overall digital handyman. For over 14 years, he's been obsessed with building useful solutions for clients like Prudential, Manulife, and MassMutual. Tony is relatively tall, and people seem to like him. When he isn't writing about himself in the third person, Tony plays drums for various metal bands and spends time with his wife and son.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Podcast addicts, Castbox. You can also watch this episode on YouTube.

In episode #031 of the AI Minds podcast, hosted by Demetrios, Tony Hersey shares his 14-year journey at Pinpoint Global. Originally known as Biznews 24, the company transitioned from video production to developing specialized learning management, certification, and compliance systems for the financial services and healthcare sectors. Tony discusses his evolution from production support, handling e-learning content and audio editing, to becoming the Director of Marketing.

Tony reflects on his early days at Pinpoint Global and how his role evolved from video editing to complex UI design, ultimately leading to a dynamic marketing position. He highlights how AI has enhanced both marketing and compliance processes, particularly through automated review systems and transcription services like Deepgram. These AI tools streamline compliance checks and expedite content verification, improving efficiency and accuracy.

The discussion underscores AI’s role as an enabler rather than a job replacer, showing how it enhances team performance and accelerates approval workflows, which positively impacts revenue generation. This episode illustrates the practical benefits of AI in optimizing workflows within a heavily regulated industry, demonstrating the intersection of technology, compliance, and marketing.

Fun Facts:

Adding an element of fun to the stress-test process, Tony recorded himself reading the challenging script through a Snapchat filter, merging advanced AI testing with a lighthearted twist. This quirky detail helped bring some humor to the rigorous task of evaluating transcription services.

Show Notes:

00:00 Editing scripts can be a drag, but necessary.

04:30 Switched cubicles, managed team, volunteered for new role.

08:05 AI is helping marketers do way more.

11:35 Finance industry cautious about new technology.

14:26 AI does the transcription work for faster review.

16:54 Transcribing and evaluating saves a ton of time.

20:42 Use automated tools to protect your brand.

23:15 Enterprise software for advisors - so cool!

More Quotes from Tony Hersey:

Transcript:

Demetrios:

Welcome to the AI Minds podcast. This is a podcast where we explore the companies of tomorrow being built. AI first, I am your host, Demetrios. And this episode, like every other episode, is brought to you by the number one speech to text and text to speech API on the Internet. That is Deepgram, which is trusted by the world's top conversational AI leaders, startups, and enterprises like Spotify, Twilio, NASA, and Citibank. We are here today with the director of marketing at Pinpoint Global. Tony, how you doing, man?

Tony Hersey:

Doing very well, thank you. I've had multiple cups of coffee, and I'm ready to do this now.

Demetrios:

That's what I'm talking about. I love that energy you're bringing to it. So I know you have had an incredible journey. You've been at Pinpoint Global for the last 14 years.

Tony Hersey:

14 years.

Demetrios:

What is fascinating to me is how versatile your whole tenure there has been. But maybe you can explain to us how you got the call to go and work for Pinpoint Global.

Tony Hersey:

Yeah, well, I mean, I started here from all things a recruiter finding my resume on monster.com dot. I don't know if you remember. Does monster.com even still exist? It might. I haven't been looking for a job for a while, like you just said, so I don't even know. But, yeah, it does happen. People do reach out from there, or at least they did, and got brought on in a production support capacity. Worked in there for a couple of months under contract. They liked me.

Tony Hersey:

At least I hope they did. I'm still here. And then I worked in a production support capacity for a number of years, just creating elearning content, editing audio, which I wish we had AI back then. Cause that was excruciating. And did that for a number of years. Became manager of the department, did that for a number of years.

Demetrios:

What was it like editing the audio content back then? Just as a little sidebar. And what kind of audio were you editing? It wasn't transcribing, was it?

Tony Hersey:

No, not transcribing. Editing. So we recorded. So for the various elearning presentations we would put together. Some of them had narration where it wasn't fun narration we do, and I think our clients will agree, we make training for the financial services and healthcare industry. So not the sexiest content. A little bit dry even, but important. Right, but important.

Demetrios:

Regulated. It has to happen.

Tony Hersey:

Yes, it has to happen. And so you can imagine the tediousness of sort of going through that script and being like, actually, can you take that again? You know, it's a five year surrender period. You said it was four. We got to do that again. So, yeah, a lot of that. And actually, so we would have outside talent, and then eventually, somebody was like, why don't you just do it? And so now it's me reading the scripts and editing my own voice. So I'm just gonna say I'm glad that ammunition was not close by.

Demetrios:

Yeah, for some people, that can be, like, worse than subjecting them to torture. I know for myself, I've had to get used to listening to my own voice because I edit podcasts.

Tony Hersey:

Hey, it's really weird.

Demetrios:

Takes a little getting used to, though. For sure does. So. So you were doing that. You were in the support role. You were editing, and then where'd you go? And, by the way, I still remember those monster.com commercials back in the day, and I remember literal cartoon. Yeah, it's incredible. I have not.

Demetrios:

I haven't really watched tv in a while, so I'm not sure if they still are running those commercials, but it feels to me like that company probably got bought a while ago.

Tony Hersey:

Probably. Yeah, they're not around anymore.

Demetrios:

Yeah. So I'll check that out, but, yeah, tell me, then. Where'd you go? What were you doing after that?

Tony Hersey:

So, I moved a couple cubicles over and started managing that department. And then I think I said that already, but after managing that department for a little while, the production and support department, I had overheard, some chatter from our engineering team that, they needed a dedicated front end, engineer, somebody who could do Css and to do, you know, designs, Ui designs, stuff like that, because they didn't like doing it, obviously, they could do it, but it. It wasn't what they wanted to do. They wanted to work on the fun and geeky stuff. So, I had gone to, my manager at the time. I said, you know, give me a shot. I have a background in graphic design, and, I don't know, Css exactly. I kind of know how it goes, but, you know, I don't know it yet, but give me a shot.

Tony Hersey:

And within a couple of days, they're like, we have four portals for you to design and implement. So a lot of. Lot of late nights, a lot of late night.

Demetrios:

So they trust you with those four? They just did. Yeah. Take it.

Tony Hersey:

Yeah. I mean, that's one of the advantages for being here for a number of years before that happened is everybody got to know me, and I have integrity, of all things, I have integrity. So that's nice. So they like that as well, after a while of working late and doing a lot of googling, everybody was very happy with the end result. And then over time, you know, I kind of became the director of product design. Did a lot of front end stuff, a lot of layouts, a lot of, lot more Css, got a lot more refined in how I did things over time because that's what happens with experience. So, yeah, that went really well and then recently stepped into a marketing role, so.

Demetrios:

And we should probably mention that you had graduated college with a design degree. Right. So it wasn't like it was totally foreign to you, was it? Totally foreign, like what you wanted to be doing and you saw your opportunity and you seized the day.

Tony Hersey:

Yeah, yeah. You know, I, it's, it's not often, I mean, how often do you hear the story where, yeah, I graduated college, I don't even use what I went to school for. You know, I, I went for nuclear engineering and, you know, now I bust tables, you know, or something like that. That's usually how the story goes, you know, I bagged grapes at market basket or something like that.

Demetrios:

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Tony Hersey:

So that was, it was nice to be able to, I mean, obviously things weren't stagnant, so I had a little bit of catching up to do because I hadn't done it in a number of years, but the muscle memory kind of kicked back in and learning the CSS and JavaScript and stuff like that kept things very fresh, which was nice.

Demetrios:

And what drove you into marketing?

Tony Hersey:

Honestly, like, I've always been pretty curious about why people do things. I mean, watch enough news and I guess that curiosity will come up in YouTube. But just what makes some designs better or worse than others, how the difference in some messaging can really make a difference, that kind of thing. So just how to get into people's heads to really communicate the value of what we're doing and. Yeah, I don't know, but was just sort of out of curiosity, I was a little reticent to jump in because it seemed like AI is going to kind of take over the field pretty soon, but for now, nope, it's just me.

Demetrios:

No. Yeah. The fun part about that is I think now what AI is unlocking for a lot of marketers is the ability to do way more with way less. And so it's not necessarily like it's taking over as much as, or at least this is how I see it. It's not that it's taking over as much as it is helping the marketer who has 20 things that they want to get done and now they're able to, instead of doing one or two of them, or if you're like me, trying to do five of them and doing none of them really, really well, you at least can now hopefully do five of them at a much higher quality bar.

Tony Hersey:

Yeah. And just to bring that back, that was my original fear, is that it was just going to wipe the whole thing out. As of right now, after doing deep dives in a lot of different AI software and stuff like that, I'm finding that that is what it is. It's an efficiency tool. It lets you do that crappy first draft that was going to take you a while to do, and you can do it in 30 seconds and instead go into edit mode and really refine the messaging there instead of agonizing over how to put everything together.

Demetrios:

So talk to me about the evolution of pinpoint global over these past 14 years, because I imagine it hasn't been the same product that has stuck around for 14 years or hasn't.

Tony Hersey:

Nope. No. I mean, we are so, we are specialists in a very niche field. We do learning management systems, Medicare certification systems and compliance management systems. Don't go to sleep just yet for the financial services and healthcare industry. So a lot of the things that we create, and when we create them come from needs and pain points and so on. So we mainly make proprietary systems that they're very feed and company data driven and we basically ingest those things. Company hierarchies, your job role, and we serve up the appropriate training and compliance mitigation tools to allow you to better do your job, basically.

Demetrios:

And 14 years ago, what was it?

Tony Hersey:

So it actually started as a video production company. It used to be known as Biznews 24.

Demetrios:

Then they pivot. That is a pivot.

Tony Hersey:

Big pivot. Big pivot. Yeah, yeah. So it was a lot of on site, you know, going to various, you know, talks, auditoriums, talking head style stuff, and we were film company news for them and they would put that on their website and, yeah, big pivot. Because again, just recognize the need. This is all well and good, but the future is in corporate training and keeping records and making sure that people stay in compliance and all this other stuff. And we just listened to what people needed and pivoted from there.

Demetrios:

So basically what I was thinking about is, how are you incorporating AI into the product? I know that there's the recommendation, but I would imagine the recommendation doesn't even need to be with AI. Sometimes, as everyone knows, there is that funny saying that the first rule of AI is don't use AI when you can't. So, yeah, how are you incorporating it in? Yep.

Tony Hersey:

So the main place that we are incorporating AI right now is with our advertising review system. And so just real quick, what that is, is anytime anybody has to submit advertising or marketing materials or has something that they want to put out there into the world for their firm, they have to submit it through a compliance process. So it has to go through various levels of supervision. The number of levels that it goes through can differ from firm to firm. And, you know, we basically have an entire suite of tools that allows the submission, the oversight. Everything's configurable. So however your firm does business, if you have three levels of supervision or 20 levels of supervision, we can automatically send it to whoever it needs to go to, depending on the status of the submission and so on. So the way that AI comes into that right now is with video and audio submissions, particularly in the transcription process.

Tony Hersey:

So somebody will submit a video that automatically gets funneled to you guys right now for transcription. You graciously and quickly send that file back, and we process that. And we also do some processing on top of that file where we have basically a lexicon library. It's just a definition of terms defined by the firm that will redline or yellow line, depending on the level of risk, the transcript that comes back. And so when it gets sent to review, the people reviewing it won't have to sit there, watch the entire video. They won't have to transcribe it first to really see what they're working with. And we are able to kind of surface the riskiest things that people said in an annotated PDF. And that annotated PDF is also linked so that any of the things that the system redlines, if they click on that, it goes to that point in the video and plays that.

Tony Hersey:

So you can see it in context to see if it really is a risk.

Demetrios:

So basically, me as financial advisor, fiduciary, I'm no longer Demetrios, I'm Demoney, basically.

Tony Hersey:

That's my perfect fiduciary business as DBA D money.

Demetrios:

Exactly. I am making videos for my clients, or I'm making, I'm sending out podcasts or voice notes, whatever it may be, to a distribution list. And in there, maybe I have some stock picks. And I say things like, this stock is sure to double your money or it's going to the moon. That type of language.

Tony Hersey:

Yeah, you go full crypto. Yeah, we're going to moon soon. You know, token unlocks coming in two months. Dump your bags before then.

Demetrios:

Yeah, that's getting redlined like crazy, I imagine.

Tony Hersey:

Big time. Big time. Yep.

Demetrios:

And so before I send it out to my distribution list, I upload it to your, or basically I have it go through as one of my steps on my distribution list. Like, basically it goes through that whole cleansing process and then it gets.

Tony Hersey:

Yeah, it's the very first thing that happens. As soon as the system detects audio or video, it gets sent off to you guys for a transcription. And then we process it and we evaluate the risks that are in it, and we automatically then send that to the next person up the chain, and they're able to, you know, look at those things. Like I said, in context, they can click on any of the things that were automatically found, make sure that they're actually risks or maybe they're not, and then either pin that back to the submitter or, you know, suggest changes. And actually, with the lexicon library, there are certain things where if the firm has seen them multiple times and like, oh, this is always a problem, but the solution is this, it will actually give you the recommendation of how to fix the thing that's wrong with the video. And so this whole process has been a huge time saver. Like four to five times the amount of time saved. Like they can start and end the review process within four to five times faster.

Tony Hersey:

Well, because what they were looking for, yeah.

Demetrios:

Somebody doing a podcast and spending hours talking about different ways that the markets are moving and things that they're bullish on, and then you don't release that, but somebody needs to review it. And if it's an hour long podcast, let's just say it's an hour long, which is pretty standard and typical, but God forbid it's like a three hour long marathon, and now you need somebody to edit that and be very, it's not just listen to the podcast, it's beyond the top of your game for something that could potentially get you into hot water.

Tony Hersey:

And so if you have, human error.

Demetrios:

Is a huge factor all over the.

Tony Hersey:

Place, especially if this is what you're doing all day. If your thing is reviewing these submissions all day, and it's not just like video submission after video submission, you've got flyers, you've got all kinds of different media coming your way, so you've got to constantly be switching gears. And then end of the day, some of these people review 20 videos a day. Wow.

Demetrios:

And you still have humans reviewing, is it?

Tony Hersey:

Oh, yeah, they have to.

Demetrios:

On your side or is it on the company that submits its side?

Tony Hersey:

It's on the client side, yeah. So the whole system's configured where, you know, we do a, you know, we do a fact finding thing where we say, you know, how is your firm set up for supervision? And we make sure that, again, since we have everybody's job role and what the responsibilities are in the system, we can make sure that those things are, you know, automatically sent to the right person depending on what's happening with the submission. So, you know, something wrong with this. I actually need to pend this to a subject matter expert because I'm out of my depth to get this, to figure out what's going on here. We can do that. We can send it to the next person up the chain. We can send it back to the submitter. Everybody gets notified.

Tony Hersey:

So it's really this big kind of automated hierarchy relationship thing that sits on top of the submission that basically follows it the whole way to make sure that it can get through this review process as soon as possible. Because until it does, you know, this potentially is, this is how these people are able to make money. They make campaigns and do advertising and stuff like that. So until that can go live, that is money. Not making it into the firm's pocket.

Demetrios:

It's a huge blocker. I would imagine, if the whole marketing engine needs to wait on approval every time anything goes out. And like you mentioned, it's not podcasts or audio notes or newsletters. It is anything you could think of.

Tony Hersey:

Like flyers and anything, anything that you're talking about the firm or your services for the firm, anything related to the firm, they're, you know, they're trying to protect their brand, so they have to make sure that everything is on the up and up. And, you know, there's a whole. There's a whole nother thing at the end of that. The. The small print that you see on everything, you know, disclosures, they have to be consistent. So there, there's a whole, the sort of end of the process or it's kind of squished in the middle there is validating that there is a disclosure that it's consistent. If there isn't one, it can suggest one based on the type of content that is and the content of the submission. So that's a lot of automated tools within that to try to keep everyone's sanity and to help these places be profitable.

Demetrios:

It feels like you are expediting the process considerably. And so I'd imagine that there are a ton of people that were doing it the manual way beforehand and probably not getting out that much content just because they were constrained. And it goes back to that thing we were saying before. Right. Like AI isn't taking the job. It's actually allowing people to create more and do more with less.

Tony Hersey:

Yep. And I mean, until, until financial services industries trust AI completely, I mean, there's always going to be people there too, providing oversight and everything. So it's still going to be just a tool. Yeah. And I mean, and compared to the manual process that people were going through for things like audio and video where they were painful, they would have to submit it. The next person up the chain would have to download it. They would manually transcribe things until they found a Microsoft transcribe tool, but they would still have to do that on their desktop. Then they have to go through and make sure Microsoft actually did that correctly so they still have to watch the video anyway.

Tony Hersey:

And then, so everything, every submission has an audit trail anytime anybody touches the thing that gets listed in a log. And so they would use that log to log a comment that says, you know, hey, at 113 you said this, I'm not so sure about this. So now you have that listed. You know that it's a problem, but you also, you can't just click on it and see the video. So you have to ask the submitter, probably download the video again or open it and have this on at this side. So everything, everything is just a very likely tedious process.

Demetrios:

Wow, sounds like a mess way that you're doing it allows for such like it. When I look at it, I think, yeah, of course it should be like that. Why wouldn't you want to have, we expect that type of product experience with almost everything else that we interact with. That's technology. Why wouldn't we expect to have that for enterprise software and for software or just like b two B software. And so it is really nice that you're going down that route to significantly expedite the whole process of getting things out the door for these financial advisors.

Tony Hersey:

And, yeah, so now we're on the hunt for some of our other compliance modules, trying to, trying to find ways that, hey, I can basically do that too. You know what I mean? Just laborious, tedious processes that are either manually done or there's just too many cooks in the kitchen and see if we can streamline that.

Demetrios:

I believe it. I believe it. Well, Tony, this has been great, man. I'm really excited for what you all are doing, and I appreciate you coming on here and talking to us about it.

Tony Hersey:

Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. I have. I do have a. Maybe you can splice this in. I do have kind of an interesting story about how we actually ended up selecting you guys.

Demetrios:

Oh, tell me.

Tony Hersey:

Yeah, I think we slimmed down the list from something like 25 to five different transcribers, and we wanted to make sure that you guys were, or that anybody was kind of up to snuff with the transcription. Obviously, the way that we did that, one of the ways that we did that is we went to chatGPT and said, hey, make a script that would trip up an audio transcriber. And what they gave us was, you know, five minutes of the most alliterative dribble that you've ever heard. Just unintelligible sentence one after another.

Demetrios:

Were you the voice over for this?

Tony Hersey:

I was, yes. I went so remembering your ears, it actually didn't take too many takes. I was kind of. I was kind of, you know, pretty satisfied with myself. But, you know, God forbid I screw up the wacky script. Anyway, so I get in the booth and I'm reading it, but I also, you know, filmed myself with a Snapchat filter because why not? Let's make it entertaining. Reading this stuff. And we fed it to you guys, and you processed it really quickly, and it was like 98 point something effective.

Tony Hersey:

And we're like, wow, this might be one to move on to the next round. Yeah.

Demetrios:

We need to look deeper. Yes. And incredible. Yeah, well, I love hearing stories like that.

Tony Hersey:

Awesome. Man.