Just a marketer trying to master AI in 2024 🦾 | Host of AiDrivenMarketer.com

Marketers everywhere are being told “learn AI.” The question is: learn it for what?

The real opportunity isn’t learning every tool... it’s understanding how AI changes how content is created, distributed, and consumed.

I’ve spent the last few years helping marketing teams adopt AI—from podcast workflows to full content systems and teaching thousands through The AI-Driven Marketer.

I help marketers turn AI from chaos into clarity by automating the busy work, amplifying their creativity, and clarifying their message.

👉 Subscribe to The AI-Driven Marketer newsletter for hype-free lessons on using AI in your content strategy at https://AIDrivenMarketer.com/

👉 Or start with my free 5-Day AI Fundamentals course at https://danchez.com/course/

Dan Sanchez

Quick ChatGPT hack.

Create a Project for each area of your.

I have projects for fitness, faith, my cars, house, work, clients, and even my family. 

Why?

Because ChatGPT does better with context.

Not just any context, but the context that's needed for the particular topic. So, if you want superior answers, you need to give it the right context for the right conversation.

I just set up a new project for my two cars yesterday and I always have the same process. The goal of the first conversation in a new project should be to collect the context for all future context and then compile it into instructions for that Project. 

Now, every future conversation I have about my cars with ChatGPT doesn't need all the basics. It knows the makes, models, years, milages, and basic history. It can now guide me accordingly.

Once you do this for a half dozen of the different areas of your life you are actively managing, you'll find that ChatGPT will be helping you navigate them all much faster and more accurately. 

Have you tried this yet?

#Danchez

PS - Want more details? I just elaborated on this whole process in the most recent episode of the AI-Driven Marketer. You can find it YouTube or any place podcasts are available.

You Can Be AI-Driven AND Human-first. Join me & 5k others to leverage both at AIDrivenMarketer.com

A podcast has the power to be a book publishing machine.

You just have to be thoughtful about the process.

You're already sharing your expertise on the show.

But, if you organize them correctly, those transcripts become more than content you can repurpose downstream into social.

They can be published upstream into a book.

You still have to outline the book the normal way, but instead of writing your first draft, you can speak it. 

AI can do the rest of crafting amazing chapters and even making strategic rewrites, restructuring and condensing. 

It's still your stories, expertise, frameworks, and personal experience. 

AI is just the ghost writer. 

That's what Ken Freire and I did with Own the Show and we want to show you how we did it in our live event this Thursday. I'll show all the steps I took, including the ones that are still manual that you might have to hire out.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/eUqsUpRG

I will not be holding back what I learned and will be sharing the good, the bad, and one ugly detail you'll want to hear before you start the process. 

#Danchez

PS - If you're wondering if the book is any good. You can judge it for yourself. Take a look: https://ownthe.show

I'll be vibe coding all future websites. 

I can't go back to drag/drop after this.

This is a simple HTML site, but it could build a backend CMS if it needed to. 

I can hand code a whole website if I needed to, but this is better. 

It not only understands how to code, it knows how to design. I gave it the book cover design and asked it to build a website based on it. 

I can even give it vague instructions like "animate this box with some kind of subtle glowing thing" and it does. It used to take me hours of research just to figure out what was possible and a few more hours to bring a thing to life.

Now I just ask.

#Danchez

PS - Book went live on Amazon yesterday. Still waiting on Audible/Spotify, but you can get the full book/mp3s here for free: https://ownthe.show/

Don’t let FOMO fool you.

All this AI stuff is hype.

Give it two months to see if any of this is still being talked about.

If you are breaking apart your personal systems and mapping a few of them to Custom GPTs, you are on the right track. (Or any of the equivalents. IE projects, Gems.).

If you’ve already done that a dozen times, start learning how to vibe code landing pages in Replit.

If you’ve done that a dozen times, maybe play with one of the things below. 

Don’t let the hype machine distract you from mastering the proven tools and shipping real results with AI.

#Danchez

graphical user interface, text, application

Building CustomGPTs are still the most meaningful

way to use AI and most people don't do it.

Maybe it's a Google Gem, Claude project, or a ChatGPT project. 

Doesn't matter. 

In 2026, this is still the one skill that separates beginner AI users from advanced ones. 

I'm not talking about simple, throw some context in it, custom GPTs either. I'm talking about ones that mirror important processes for you, so by the time you have a half dozen of them you feel like your workflow is supercharged.

Very very few people use them like this.

Once you figure it out though, you'll never go back. 

And the learning you get from doing this sets you up for full automation and/or vibe coding later. Without it and you'll won't be able to do those well. I promise.

Please, please, please go watch a dozen videos about how to build robust custom GPTs on YouTube. Then find one important process you use daily and try to build a custom GPT that speeds up that process dramatically. 

The first time you do it will be painful, but it will be worth it.

Also, it's not technically hard at all. What's hard is thinking through your process and bringing clarity to the individual small steps you take to accomplish a task or project. 

Don't let another year go by without building this skill.

#Danchez

I just did market research with AI for a company that I worked with 15 months ago.

Same project. Same questions.

15 months ago I did it manually. Interviewed the creators/founders, surveyed the audience, spoke to the audience.

That was before reasoning models and deep research AI tools.

This time I had AI do it.

When I compared AI’s results to my old notes… AI was far more thorough and accurate.

I know. 

I had done it manually before and knew the brand.

Deep Research is one of the best tools AI has for marketing and nobody talks about it.

It’s the thing we all needed to do but didn’t, because it took too much time. Now it’s easy and I don’t think anybody does it still. 

🤷‍♂️

Are you?

#Danchez

One step AI can't do for you.

Is print layout design. Not yet anyway.

Fortunately, I have a background in Adobe Indesign. 😅
I never thought I would open this app again, and may have had to ask ChatGPT more than a few questions about where such-in-such button was these days.

I haven't been promoting this new book heavily over the last few months because I honestly wasn't 100% sure going from podcast to book would even work. 

But, the first version is now live online: https://ownthe.show/ 

And coming soon to Amazon Kindle, print, and Audible. 

I've learned so much in he process, that I'm far more excited sharing the AI lessons learned on AI-Driven Marketer than promoting the book. 

It's up now though for your full review. 

The best news? It only gets better from here.

#Danchez

If an AI Bubble bursts... awesome.
If it doesn't... that's cool too.

I don't really care.

But, if it bursts, I'll only double down. 

Some people might go the other way at that point, but I'll keep pressing in because I'm seeing the fruit of using the tools and I can't go back.

Even if we never get another update, we will still have 10 years of innovation built on top of the tech we have right now.

It would honestly be great to get a breathier from the speed of change too! 

What we have right now is amazing. 

What we get this year will be insane.

Video models that are as clear and accurate as our image models.
Voice models that are near real time and can reason.
And I bet we will see more AI that is proactive this year.

Who knows what else they have in store. 

I'm good either way.

#Danchez

Most frustrating part of Google Gemini..

If you start with deep research or a canvas... you can't go back.

Not without starting a whole new chat anyway. In ChatGPT, you create multiple canvas' in one chat which is really handy when you want the context to build on itself for each subsequent document you need.

Why does it do this?

Any Gemini experts know?

#Danchez

PS - Yes, you can save it to a doc and pull in that doc later (one of the things I love about Gemini), but it's a slower process and makes it difficult to hunt down any of those conversations later. It's also much slower.

Ashley Faus

Director of Integrated Product Marketing, Atlassian

Marketer, writer, speaker by day... singer, actor, fitness fiend by night!

I've handled all aspects of marketing strategy and execution, from product marketing, to demand-gen, to content and events. I love telling the high-level stories that resonate with an audience and connecting the dots between types of assets and distribution channels.

My writing has been published on TIME, Forbes, The Journal of Brand Strategy, and The Muse, and I've spoken on various marketing topics for INBOUND, Harvard Business Review, and MarketingProfs.

Visit https://ashleyfaus.com/ for more information about my book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI".

(Views are my own)

Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

Funny how we only ever hear the first part of that^^ quote, often said with a derisive tone.

Nobody wants the "master of none" 😬

And yet... I proudly claim the moniker of "marketing generalist"!

My superpower is connecting the dots, working across multiple teams, and integrating across channels.

If you need someone who sits at the intersection, I gotchu.

And this is why I'm always slightly surprised but delighted when I'm recognized in a specific marketing discipline.

My current title is "Lifecycle Marketing", but I contributed enough PMM-related content to earn a spot on the 2025 Product Marketing Influencer list.

And Alt Marketing School offers courses across allllll the marketing disciplines, including trendier topics, like the creator economy.

Personally, I think we're in a generalists' economy right now.

With teams running lean, leaders looking to bring in more AI and automation, and the rise of the fractional or solopreneur, generalists are making a comeback!

So cheers to all the folks who are making their mark in each (or every) discipline 🎉 

See the Alt Marketing School list: https://amschool.click/top

See the Product Marketing Alliance list: https://lnkd.in/dTmpNtJ5

Buy my book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI": https://amzn.to/4jqaKDW

Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio at Atlassian

I almost ended up naked onstage 😳

I was playing a bride, wearing this ridiculous '80s-style dress (pictured below), with a dropped waist, heavy beading, and a ridiculous train.

And on opening night, the zipper down the back of the dress started coming undone...

Inching.
Down.
My. 
Back.

And no one could help me 😬

I felt the sleeves start to slide towards the edge of my shoulders.

I felt an unpleasant breeze on my lower back.

And I realized that I'm just hoping I don't end up naked in front of the audience.

So... when I tell you that I've had things go wrong onstage, I'm not talking about a momentary hiccup with the slides or stuttering over a few words or going blank on my next sentence 😅

What this means for you, as a professional sharing your knowledge at a conference or Town Hall or QBR: it's gonna be ok.

YOU CAN DO IT!

At minimum, you won't end up naked onstage.
And the audience probably won't even notice a flub!

I get a lot of questions about how to overcome the fear, swallow the nerves, and feel confident stepping onstage.

One of my counterintuitive exercises is to catastrophize.

What's the WORST thing that could happen?

How would you react (and recover) if it happens?

Thinking through the worst-case scenario takes the surprise and sting out of it, because usually, it's not that bad.

And now you know how to react 😎

I said I ALMOST ended up naked onstage... handily, I've had a lot of practice reacting to things going wrong.

I straightened my posture to widen my shoulders, put my hands on my hips and across my chest to keep the dress from slipping off completely, and angled my back away from the audience to maintain a little dignity.

And then I asked the costumer to secure the zipper before the next performance, 'cuz we're not trying to have things go wrong twice 💃

Wanna be on a podcast? 

Drop your name and topics in the comments 👇👇

What hosts want to know:

💡 What's your expertise and unique angle?
🎤 Can you speak in an engaging way?
📣 Will you help bring in listeners?

Don't have prior appearances? 

I gotchu:

--> Go live on LinkedIn or post a short clip to share your advice

--> Confirm that you'll share about your episode on LinkedIn (and any other channels where you are active, like a newsletter, website, etc.)

Let's connect some hosts and guests!

(Full disclosure: I'm trying to streamline my inbox a bit, so my goal is to make this an easy place for folks to connect without a middleman 😀)

AI can be the epitome of a productivity mirage.

It FEELS productive to craft the perfect prompt, thinking of all the details that an LLM might need to tailor its response to your specific use case.

It FEELS like progress to refine and refine again and refine just once more for perfection.

It FEELS like insight to ask, "But what about _____?" over and over again.

And. Yet.

Blathering on with the chatbot is not, in fact, DOING anything.

Did you actually use all that research that it pumped out for you to take action?

Did you make the updates to the slide deck or blog post, based on the recommendations?

Did you go to the event and see for yourself whether your ICP actually attends?

I've been struggling with this mirage over the last few weeks 😳

In particular, I'm sparring with Claude to improve my talk track and slides, based on session scores and audience comments from my fall speaking engagements.

I feel like I've been so productive!
I spent so much time typing!
I considered so many angles!

My slide deck has not changed.
My speaker notes are not updated.

And as I go back through the chat history, I'm left feeling a bit overwhelmed, annoyed, and generally unmotivated to take the necessary action to ACTUALLY IMPROVE.

AI is only as good as the action it enables.

You can "doom scroll" and "water cooler chat" and "push pixels" around in an LLM just as easily as any other tool (maybe more so 😅).

Don't fall prey to the productivity mirage.

There are MANY smart marketers in the world.

They have great ideas, they've executed impactful programs, and they've written useful books.

The difference between what they share and what I share is literally THEM and ME.

It's not just about the idea.
It's about the person sharing the idea.

WHO says it is just as important as WHAT they say.

People trust people like themselves.
People resonate with different people.

So using your authentic voice, talking about your lived experience, and sharing your unique expertise is the reason someone trusts you, follows you, and listens to you.

If you're looking to be more visible, get more opportunities, and accelerate your success in 2026, you gotta listen to this episode 😀

Thanks for hosting a great conversation Wednesday Women!

Hear the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/e-BwQmxb

Join my Stanford class, starting on Jan. 26: https://lnkd.in/eCe697Zx

Buy "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI": https://amzn.to/4jqaKDW

Got big goals in 2026? 

I joined Erica Anderson Rooney to talk about my career journey, and I gave some SPICY takes:

♟️Chess vs. Checkers promotion advice

☑️ Minimum Viable Action (MVA)

💡The trouble with "bright" girls

✨ The real pitfalls of perfection

This episode tackles a few more personal issues than my usual fare, so if you want a candid conversation to kick off the New Year, I gotchu 😎

Listen to the full episode: https://lnkd.in/eMp-UCs5

Exercises to help you speak confidently: https://lnkd.in/e8wvrZpD

Grab my book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI": https://amzn.to/3YjquAk

"But what if they build a personal brand and then leave!?!"

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

This is common pushback on not only allowing employees to share their insights, speak on podcasts, build a following on LinkedIn, etc., but encouraging and enabling them to do this.

The ironic part is that these statements are usually sitting alongside a mandate to "get the employees sharing company content on social media"!

Here's the thing: NOBODY wants the soulless company content 😬

Not the employee you're nagging to share it.
Not the viewer scrolling the feed.
And frankly, not even most of your users.

People want to hear from people, which means helping your employees share in their unique voice is a much better approach, all the way around.

And yes, some employees will attract recruiters and brand collabs and advisor offers, such that they might just decide to leave your company.

But the valley is small, and careers are long!

These former employees might become customers, partners, investors, or brand champions... there's so many ways to exchange value 🙌

And in the age of AI?
HUMANS are even MORE important!

I covered several related topics in my conversation with Finn Thormeier on The Executive Brand podcast, tune in for more details on:

- Why and how to build internal influencers
- The 4 pillars of thought leadership
- Choosing the "best" B2B creator

Rant: Freakin' LinkedIn, you are BUGGY!! Pull yourself together!!

I've noticed that when I schedule posts, they often show up wonky.

It un-tags accounts that I at-mention.

It replaces images and videos with link previews.

The formatting in generally is just not what it looks like in the preview.

But apparently, now it's DOUBLE POSTING content?!?!

I schedule a post, went to "post now" and fixed the issues noted above, and then published... only to find that it apparently posted the same content, but with the mistakes, later in the day.

WHHHHYYYY!?!?

I didn't catch it in time to delete the rogue post, so I figured I'd ask if anyone else is seeing this janky behavior.

It's VERY frustrating.

I'm using native features and trying to follow whatever stupid rules the algorithm randomly enforces.

But good grief.

FIX THE BUGS.

/rant

"All effective marketing is human-centered. While we're busy being distracted with shortcuts, Faus helps us refocus on what matters." ― Seth Godin, Author “This is Marketing”

"Trust is under siege from nearly every angle. Yet marketers like you and me want (need!) to build trust with our audiences. The question is... How? Ashley draws you a map." ― Ann Handley, best-selling author and Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

"Most of the go-to playbooks are outdated, but it's hard to find a replacement for stale marketing practices. Ashley constructed a powerful new set of frameworks, along with practical advice and real-world examples. "Human-Centered Marketing" brings us back to what actually matters: the people behind the screen." ― Nancy Duarte, best-selling author and CEO of Duarte, Inc.

If you've been on the fence about grabbing a copy of my award-winning book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI", this is the perfect time to buy 😀

On Wednesdays, we keynote 💃

Honored to present keynote session at B2B Marketing Exchange with ADWEEK, talking about human-centered marketing!

Grab your tickets with special pricing through Feb. 16, and yes, you CAN sit with us 😎

"Don't panic, bring a towel."

We're going on an adventure!

Join me on January 14 to talk about the B2B creators you need in your galaxy this year.

I'm talking with Nadia Davis, MBA from CaliberMind about how to:

👩‍🚀 Find the RIGHT voices for your marketing mix

🚀 Build a thought leadership program that delivers the RIGHT outcomes

💫 Measure the RIGHT metrics across B2B creators

Register for free: https://lnkd.in/eYsKtvYN

taplio

The Battle

Dan Sanchez

Ashley Faus

Followers

Posts

Engagements

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Performance ScoreDan Sanchez's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAshley Faus's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Dan Sanchez

Ashley Faus

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Dan Sanchez's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAshley Faus's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreDan Sanchez's LinkedIn Performance