Stop the Excuses: An AI Action Checklist for Marketers

Every week I talk to smart, capable marketers who agree AI matters, nod along about the skill gap, and then do nothing about it until next quarter. The intention is real. The action never shows up. So this one is short, and it’s a checklist, because the gap between people winning with AI and people watching from the sidelines isn’t intelligence or budget. It’s reps. The ones putting in the reps right now are quietly building a lead the rest will spend years trying to close.

Here’s the part nobody wants to hear: if you can talk to a chatbot, you can get good at AI. The only real question is whether you’ll do the work. Most won’t. This list is for the ones who will.

The checklist

Pick the ones you can start this week. You don’t need all ten by Friday. You need to stop reading about AI and start logging hours with it.

• Block 30 minutes a day to use AI. No grand strategy, just consistency. Put it on the calendar like a meeting you can’t skip.
• Pick one repetitive task this week and automate it. Pair a model with a tool like Zapier or Make and get it off your plate by next Friday. This is where the time actually comes back. (More on that side of things at the AI marketing automation pillar.)
• Steal five core prompts you’ll actually use. Stop collecting prompt libraries you never open. Five you run every week beat five hundred you bookmark and forget.
• Test the current top model against whatever you use now, on your real work. Run the same brief through ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini and your current default, then compare on a job you actually do. You’ll see the difference yourself instead of taking a launch post’s word for it.
• Set up one custom instruction or project folder. Ten minutes to tell the model who you are, what you do, and how you like answers. That time comes back on every chat after.
• Join one AI community. Learn from people a few months ahead of you. The shortcuts they share will save you weeks of trial and error.
• Track your time savings every week. Write down what AI handled and roughly how long it used to take. Small wins on paper are what keep the habit alive when motivation dips.
• Find your low-value tasks. The work you’d happily pay someone fifteen bucks an hour to do is exactly what should go to AI first.
• Schedule one hour a week for deeper learning. Treat it like a client meeting. This is the block where you go past “type a question” and start building real workflows.
• Stop waiting on permission. While the approvals work their way through IT, use what’s already in front of you. The reps don’t wait, and neither does the gap.

Look, I get it

I have a four-year-old and a wife who is not thrilled when I’m testing prompts from bed at midnight. Finding the time is genuinely hard, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But I watch the AI skill gap widen every single week. The people putting in reps now will own their next few years of work. The ones who keep saying “I’ll get to it” are going to look up and find the bar moved without them. That’s not hype. It’s just what happens when a skill compounds and you sit out the early reps.

If you want the map of which tool to reach for before you start automating things, that’s what I keep updated over on the AI marketing hub. Start there, pick a lane, then come back to this list and knock out the first item.

It’s not about which AI you pick. It’s about whether you actually use one.

That’s the whole game. Not the tool. The habit.

Start with one

Don’t try to do all ten today. Pick the single item that maps to whatever’s stuck on your plate right now, and do it before you close this tab. Momentum beats a perfect plan every time.

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Done making excuses? Come log the reps with me.

Every Friday I send one short email about the reps I’m actually putting in that week: the task I automated, the prompt that finally stuck, the model I tested and quietly dropped. No theory, no someday. If you’re ready to stop reading about AI and start using it, this is the room.

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