Audit and Build Your Lean Stack

1. 01

   Current stack audit: list every tool you are currently paying for or using regularly in your marketing operation. For each one, note the monthly cost, the primary job it does, and your honest assessment of whether it is producing value that justifies its presence. Apply the five selection principles to each one.

2. 02

   Gap identification: list the specific marketing functions from this chapter that your current stack does not handle well. For each gap, write whether the right solution is a tool, a process improvement, or a hire, and explain your reasoning.

3. 03

   Optimal stack design: using the seven-function framework from this chapter, list the specific tool you will use for each function in your stack going forward. Note whether it requires any cost change from your current setup. List the integrations you need to build between tools to create a connected system rather than a collection of disconnected tools.

4. 04

   The thirty-day stack action plan: what specifically will you do in the next thirty days to move from your current stack to your optimal one? List each action, who is responsible, and when it will be done.

5. 05

   Your AI Marketing Co-Founder How to use AI to multiply output without losing the brand that makes people follow you Every founder who has spent more than a few hours with a capable AI tool has experienced the same moment. You give it a task, it produces something competent, and you feel a complicated mix of impressed and unsettled. Impressed because it is genuinely good. Unsettled because if it is this good, what exactly is the founder’s job? The answer to that question determines whether AI becomes the most powerful tool in your marketing stack or one of the most expensive mistakes you make with your brand.

Answer these in whatever you already use. The PDF is the same questions with room to write, and the Notion template is the same again if you would rather type.