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expert-tips-eric-noski.md

expert-tips-eric-noski-md.md

Expert Tips — Eric Noski

Source: Eric Noski — Clay's earliest employee, runs the largest Clay usage (37M rows/week, 6M+ emails/month)

The 6 Rules for Clay Tables

Rule 1: Conditional Formula on ALL Paid Integrations

  • Even if it's just "first name must not be empty"
  • Always build this habit to avoid wasting credits
  • This is non-negotiable

Rule 2: Use Functions (Advanced Feature)

  • Send data to a separate table → run workflow → send data back
  • Allows changing a workflow once for 15+ tables
  • Avoids modifying each table individually

Rule 3: Save ALL Paid Data

  • To your CRM or a platform like Supabase
  • Supabase: $30/month for 11.4M+ records
  • Clay doesn't save your data like Apollo/ZoomInfo
  • You will reuse this data — save it

Rule 4: Use Scheduled Sources for Evergreen Campaigns

  • Put your entire TAM in HubSpot ($15/month)
  • Create an active segment/list
  • Let the campaign run automatically
  • No more manual CSV uploads

Rule 5: Don't Use AI When Formulas Will Do

  • Cleaning data → Formula
  • Combining data → Formula
  • If/then statements → Formula
  • Scoring leads → Formula
  • Abbreviations (New Jersey → NJ) → Formula
  • Everything JavaScript can do = Formula

Rule 6: Formulas = JavaScript

  • If you need a complex formula: screenshot → ChatGPT
  • The AI formula generator is powerful but sometimes ChatGPT does better

8 AI Prompting Rules

Rule 1: The 10-Minute Manual Research Rule

  • Ask yourself: "What would I do if I researched this person for 10 minutes?"
  • What information would I look for?
  • THEN automate that with Clay
  • Never guess what you could do with Clay

Rule 2: AI Does Only ONE Thing at a Time

Bad:

  • Claygent that checks site content + decides if e-commerce + classifies industry

Good:

  • Claygent #1: Retrieve site content
  • Use AI #2: Is it a CPG?
  • Use AI #3: What products do they sell?
  • Use AI #4: What industry?

AI "farts" if you give it too many tasks. GPT-4 mini costs almost nothing — separate the tasks.

Rule 3: Safeguards When Not Enough Context

  • Use a keyword like "purple" when nothing is found
  • "If no case study found, output 'purple'"
  • Makes downstream filtering easy
  • AI will otherwise say "No information found" in 100 different ways

Rule 4: ALWAYS Use Examples in Prompts

  • Even a mediocre prompt becomes excellent with examples
  • Manually research 3-4 examples
  • Include them in the prompt
  • Shows AI exactly what you want

Rule 5: Use the Metaprompter

  1. Go to ChatGPT
  2. Explain what you want to accomplish
  3. Ask: "Create a prompt for this"
  4. Then ask: "What questions do you have to improve this prompt?"
  5. Answer the questions
  6. Improved prompt

Rule 6: For Difficult Prompts, Ask for Reasoning BEFORE the Answer

  • "Tell me the reasoning why you think it's this kind of company before you give me the final answer"
  • AI predicts the next word
  • By explaining first, it has time to answer better

Rule 7: Prepare for Edge Cases

  • 20% = putting integrations together
  • 80% = adjusting the AI
  • Most fail because they think the opposite
  • Review constantly — as soon as an output doesn't please → adjust the prompt

Rule 8: Use GPT-4 Mini for EVERYTHING

  • Advanced models are benchmarked for solving calculus
  • You just want to say "I saw on your website you help fitness enthusiasts breathe better"
  • GPT-4 mini handles this perfectly
  • Fix everything with prompts, not with more expensive models