Sourcebooks

Toxic Grit - How to have it all and (actually) love what you have 
COMING OCTOBER 21, 2025!

Author

Be Clear Communications

We help progressive organizations and their leaders build robust digital presences that reflect their values, elevate their message, and reach the audiences who matter most.

Advisor

Anonymous

Chief Marketing Officer

🧩 Life’s a Game, HLG Projects

Marketing Consultant, Brand Builder, Creator and Author of Life's A Game: An anti-hustle newsletter about building a life on your terms. Personal and professional growth tips and frameworks delivered every Thursday at 8am.

Founder

The Post

Brought on by board as Fractional CMO to grow and scale The Post: the leading community for Leaders: Built By Sport.

Shaklee Corporation

Consulting with the global leader in health & wellness supplements working on innovation & partnerships and go to market positioning of new products.

VP of Marketing - Consultant

House of Wise

Empowering women to take control of their SLEEP, SEX, STRESS and STRENGTH with trusted CBD products.

Founder, CEO

Nue Life Health

4 month contract as fractional CMO to help with brand and marketing strategy.

Teal

6 month contract to help with positioning, team building and go to market strategy.

The Knot Worldwide

Following the December 2018 merger of XO Group Inc. and WeddingWire: We are The Knot Worldwide. With the mission of helping all couples around the world plan every aspect of their unique weddings, The Knot Worldwide is positioned to innovate and accelerate growth in the global wedding industry through The Knot, WeddingWire, bodas.net, and its family of leading wedding and lifestyle brands across the globe. The Knot Worldwide will deliver leading wedding marketplaces, wedding websites, planning tools, registry services and more to over 20 million unique visitors each month internationally through our brands. We're excited for all that is ahead for our brands, our couples, and our partners.

VP of Marketing

Amanda Goetz is a 2x founder, 3x CMO, brand builder and content creator on personal and professional growth and brand building, inspiring over 150,000 people every week through her social insights and weekly newsletter, 🧩 Life's A Game.

Amanda Goetz, was the founder and visionary behind House of Wise, a wellness company focused on creating space for more sleep, hotter sex and less stress. She started House of Wise during the pandemic in her garage, raised two rounds of venture capital and sold it in 2022 all while homeschooling three young children as a single mom.  

Born and raised in a single traffic light Midwest farm town, Amanda is a first generation college grad. Her dad is the town plumber & electrician. A self proclaimed over-achiever, Amanda worked three jobs in college while maintaining a 3.9 GPA and graduating early. 

Fast forward to 2017. Amanda found herself in NYC with 3 children under the age of 5 and navigating a divorce at the height of her career. Living life by a societally-approved checklist of success left her nearly broken. She spent the next 6 years unlearning hustle culture and learning a new way to approach her ambitious life. 

Amanda was the former head of brand for The Knot - the global leader in weddings. Previously, Goetz served as a startup founder building availability software for the wedding industry after spending years analyzing companies for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year program. She also worked for celebrity wedding planner David Tutera as Head of Marketing developing the go-to market strategy for his brands, licensing deals and client partners.

She has built an audience of over 150,000 in the startup and business community learning to live a life of ambition and success without subscribing to today’s hustle culture. She launched a newsletter called 🧩 Life’s a Game with Amanda Goetz to help high performers learn actionable tips for living a life of intention.        

Amanda’s been featured on Access Hollywood, The Skinny Confidential, Forbes, Business Insider and more.

Amanda Goetz

I stopped bringing my whole self to work. 
And I stopped bringing my work self to home. Let me explain…..

The work version of me is assertive, cares about deadlines, financial security and being at the top. 

The home version of me is silly, soft and cares about being the best mom and caregiver possible. 

Those two versions of me don’t often see eye to eye and yet we are constantly being told to find “alignment”. 

My book is about how alignment isn’t always possible. 

It’s about:
- awareness of the character that’s leading
- prioritization 
- focus on their character’s goals 
- timeline for how long you wjlm focus 
- transition sequences to the next character 

Check out my latest op ed for The Wall Street Journal in the link below. 

And if you struggle to make space for all the diverse versions of yourself - grab a copy of Toxic Grit now!

USA TODAY Bestselling Author of Toxic Grit | 2x Founder (acquired) 5x CMO | Mom x3 | Keynote Speaker | Subscribe ➡️ 🧩 Life’s a Game Newsletter

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Popping on to say this: for every day I spend offline during this post book tour spin cycle….

the more ideas start flowing. 
the less anxiety I feel about the algorithm. 
the more clarity I have about 2026. 

If you never stop to pause and look up, you might miss the beauty of the changing landscapes on the climb.

I'm creatively tapped after my book tour so I'm running a spin cycle. 
If you are feeling the same.....steal this below 👇

Story time....I've spent the two years: 
- writing a best selling book 
- publishing a weekly newsletter for almost 80k people
- conducting interviews for the Girlboss podcast - Ambition 2.0

In Toxic Grit, I talk about “spin cycles” as intentional seasons where you wring out the heaviness that’s built up....... the pressure, the stimulation, the expectations, the constant output.

It's not quitting.
It's not laziness.

It is maintenance.

A spin cycle is a defined period of time where you reduce your RPM so you can keep going without burning out.

Here’s what my current spin cycle looks like:

1. Lower the creative bar
No “big” new projects. I’m focused on maintenance mode only: my FT CMO role and my weekly newsletter. Everything else is being held until next year. 

2. Shift from output to intake
I’m reading more, listening to conversations, and paying attention to what’s landing with people instead of trying to force new ideas. 

3. Tighten my containers
Shorter work blocks, hard stops in the evenings, more white space on the calendar. The constraint is what gives my brain room to reset. 

(and resisting the urge to use that white space for scrolling)

4. Name what can wait
I have a literal list called “Not right now” for every fun, shiny idea that pops into my head. It goes there, not on my actual plate.

5. Redefine “progress”
During a spin cycle, progress is: rested brain, clear thoughts, regulated nervous system. 

Save this for the next time you feel tapped out and ask yourself:
What would a 2–4 week spin cycle look like for me?

What can I pause, simplify, or say no to so I can actually keep going?

This is the path to sustainable ambition.

The number one complaint from employees I talk to? Lack of context + micromanaging. 

I've been silently working in a full time CMO position since July and I can't wait to share more about it soon. 

But I wanted to share the operating rhythm that I have used for 10+ years to increase context and agency across the functions of marketing. 

EVERY WEEK: 

Monday: Async priorities 

I send out an async email called "managing up monday"
This email does 2 things: 
- everyone replies with their 2 main areas of focus for the week so we know where everyone's brains are at
- allows everyone to update the dashboard with previous week's metrics

Tuesdays: 1:1s and team chat 

All of our weekly meetings happen on the same day to get aligned for the week. Since we already know what people are focused on we can use this time to either remove roadblocks or brainstorm ideas. 

Wednesdays: Hallway chat

Now that we are moving and groovin' for the week we use 1 hour on Wednesday for a "sync'd Slack hour". This mimics the hallway chat where you casually ask for the updates and things you need from someone. 

By doing this in Slack at the same time you ensure everyone gets a prompt answer AND everyone gets line of sight into other things moving forward. 

Thursdays & Fridays are open for deep work and closing out the week. 

Thoughts?! 
What do you find that works for your team?

So excited for this event!! If you are in NYC - please come by for this powerhouse event with Girlboss and Her Workplace 

See you December 15th!

✨ NYC, we’re ending 2025 with a moment. ✨

​Join Her Workplace and Girlboss on December 15th for an intimate fireside chat with Amanda Goetz—2x founder, 4x CMO, and author of Toxic Grit—as we explore how to balance drive with joy, ambition with alignment, and growth with grace.

🎤 Redefine ambition without the burnout
📚 First guests receive a signed copy of Toxic Grit
🤝 Connect with women rewriting the rules of success
🍷 Sip Juliet Wine & enjoy an evening powered by Blu Dot

Close the year in a room that fills your cup and your ambition. 💛

Register here—https://lnkd.in/eYU9Xs6V

Toxic Grit isn’t a success just because I worked hard. (I mean, I did work hard but that wouldn't have gotten it to best seller status alone....)

It’s a success because people showed up for me.

Friends who posted the book without me asking.
Podcast hosts who invited me on before they read a single word.
Former coworkers who introduced me to the right editors or hosted events at their companies.
And yes....I had to actually put myself out there and ask for help.


Me asking for help on LinkedIn.
But here's the thing...

Most of the help didn't come from cold networking connections.

These were people I've kept in touch with for years.

People who I have checked in with when I didn’t need anything. I sent voice memos when I saw they were going through something. I celebrated their wins like they were mine.

So when it was finally my turn to ask?

The trust was already there.

A lot of people get networking wrong.

Even the word itself feels transactional. “Be in my network” is just code for: “I’ll contact you when I need something.”

But community?
That’s different.

Community is built when you show up before it’s convenient. It's when you give without tracking what you’re getting back. It's when we remember that humans aren’t LinkedIn headshots...…they’re living, breathing, emotional beings (likely going through their own shit).

I believe it’s more important than ever to have a community of people supporting you through the ups and downs and life yet it’s harder than ever in this current social media landscape.

And to all of those who have been that to me along the way....as I found myself a single mom of 3 kids under the age of 4....as I found myself moving to a new city with no friends or family....or as I shifted careers....

....I'm so thankful for you.

Today's newsletter goes into how I think about networking and doing it differently. 

Read it here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/ebw89dUw

graphical user interface, text, application, email

Being a CMO of a new brand launching in Q1 while planning a wedding on a book tour. 

AMA. 

🫣

I took a week off from posting after the first leg of my book tour wrapped and I have to be honest.....I am creatively zapped. 

Every time I go to post something, my brain just......fizzles. 

Is anyone else feeling this way?

My portfolio career Black Friday wish list.....

1. Wish = Less time on social media 
Must have ➡️ Taplio 
30% off today!! 

I barely log into LinkedIn these days because I schedule all my content on 
Taplio. Use code BF30 at checkout! 

2. Wish = Less time in email & scheduling 
Must have ➡️ An EA 

I use Athena EA for my services. Get $2000 off your EA using my link below. 

3. Wish = More time back for other parts of your life 
Must have = USA Today Bestseller ➡️ Toxic Grit: How to have it all and (actually) love what you have

I wrote this book to share all the systems I use to juggle work, life and everything in between. On sale today!!

This week on Ambition 2.0: we sit down with Erika Ayers Badan, former CEO of Barstool Sports, current CEO of Food52, bestselling author of Nobody Cares About Your Career, and all-around master of building a career entirely on her own terms. 

Erika shares candid stories from her time leading one of the most controversial (and successful) media companies in the world, what she’s learned about managing men and underdogs, how to stay emotionally regulated at work, and why she advocates for not bringing your whole self to work (compartmentalization can actually enhance your authenticity). 

🎙️ Listen to Ambition 2.0 here: https://lnkd.in/gsrfr7cC 
💻 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gGTD-pT4 

Don't forget to like, subscribe, and let us know your biggest takeaway (there's lots!) ✍️🙂‍↕️ 

Amanda Goetz

Kat Garcia

Kat Garcia (Kathleen Garcia-Manjarres) is the co-founder & co-CEO of Ground - the leading AI revenue growth engine helping consumer companies uncover untapped revenue. Venture backed in Silicon Valley and New York.

She previously invested, built, and scaled consumer companies alongside some of the world’s most influential companies at BCG Digital Ventures. Combining her experience as the interim Head of Growth for ventures, and consulting at Accenture, she has supported the biggest players from the likes of Essilor-Luxxotica, AMEX, Neiman Marcus, OXXO, and many more. 

Prior to working in the world of business, she spent a decade working in the entertainment industry as a television actress and independent recording artist. In 2016, she was the opening act for Young Money. Kat has been a content creator since 2006 with a passion for all things creative and analytical bridging both worlds through technology.

Founder & Co-CEO

The Year AI Actually Delivers ROI

This is the year AI investments finally earn their keep. I get to sit front-row as commerce quietly rebuilds itself - brand by brand - adopting AI across the stack. But here’s the hard truth: nearly 90% of AI pilots fail. Not because the tech doesn’t work, but because they never connect to what actually matters - revenue.

As a former Head of Growth turned repeat founder, I’ve spent the last 3 years inside the engine rooms of commerce - talking to founders, CMOs, and engineers - understanding their pain points, their numbers, and their skepticism. Everyone wants “AI,” but very few can answer:
 - Why?
 - How will this help my business grow?

“Productivity” isn’t enough. That’s why SaaS plateaued - too many tools, too few outcomes.

When Twitter was new, it was scary. When Square started, it was scary.
Now, AI is scary.

 As Jack Dorsey once said:
“When you say the word ‘technology’, we tend to put it on a pedestal. That pedestal makes it abstract. And that abstraction makes it scary. But technology is just 'tools'. We create the tools, and we give power to the tools. But we can also take that power away.”

That’s the truth at the core of what we’re building at Ground.
AI, AI agents, Agentic Commerce - these don't have to be buzzwords. They can be tools and new opportunities. And tools only matter if they work.

So the question I keep coming back to:
What was this tool intended to do?

And what happens when it finally works - really works - for the people it was meant to serve?

On average, 10% of online revenue is coming from Ground AI, as a new autonomous growth channel for the consumer businesses we power. We built Ground on ROI and a promise we can guarantee.

How are you using AI and is there meaningful ROI? 

--
Picture: Thanks to Perfect Corp for having me on your AI Panel. Clearly, I’m excited about AI 😄 2025 - the year AI delivers real ROI.

Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Ground AI | Polymath, ex-BCG, former Head of Growth

Silicon Valley is only now waking up to brand marketing.

For a place that prides itself on being the most innovative ecosystem in the world, I keep watching many pour tens of millions into startups with “revolutionary GTM” strategies… only to peek under the hood and find the most basic playbooks dressed up in jargon.

Let’s talk about it.

I’ve been in SF for a couple of weeks, and while the Agentic Commerce discourse is fascinating, the conversations around “building a brand” are surface-level. A brand is not a logo. It’s not a few nice photos on a website. And it’s definitely not edgy videos clipped for virality.

Four years ago, I built a 10,000-person waitlist for a consumer fintech app before writing a single line of code. How? Branding.

Before ChatGPT’s Sora, there was Reface. I used memes to personalize every welcome email -literally inserting each person’s face into content - to make the experience unforgettable and inherently shareable. It spread like wildfire.

That playbook came from two places:
👉 Hollywood, where I cut my teeth as an actress
👉 And Jack Dorsey’s Cash App, which turned marketing into cultural currency.

Jack Dorsey is, in my view, one of the greatest marketers of our time. By deeply understanding human behavior, he transformed Cash App from a money-losing product into a cultural juggernaut - blending utility with identity. It wasn’t just fintech; it was culture.

In 2015–2016, Cashapp launched $Cashtags, permanent usernames like $KatGarcia.

These worked like Venmo handles, but were public and brandable.

Suddenly people could share their Cashtag on Twitter, merch, or music lyrics - virality loop.

Example: Rappers would literally drop their Cashtags in songs or bios, and fans would tip them.

He tapped into hip hop culture which led to network effects and virality loops non-dependent on Meta and Google.

Today, I’m building Ground AI (AI growth layer for the Agentic Commerce era) and the emerging + enterprise clients we power understand this intuitively. Brand is their oxygen. Product is a commodity - but creativity isn’t. It’s what turns good products into cultural movements, and cultural movements into millions in revenue.

As both consumer and B2B AI enters its renaissance, brand is once again becoming the ultimate differentiator. Just like Liquid Death convinced people to pay $8 for a can of water, the brands that master brand equity and brand identity - from product to price to positioning - will scale fastest.

Because in a world where distribution is agentic and AI-driven, brand is the anchor that makes everything else work.

Jack Dorsey knows this intuitively well and it’s why this is Day 3 of getting him to invest or advise me in my building of Ground AI.

OpenAI, Lovable, and Silicon Valley quietly set in motion a shift that will redefine Commerce distribution forever. The $1T Agentic Commerce opportunity is leaving brands with a choice: adopt or be left behind.

Our team has been huddling EVEN more than usual lately… because something big is happening.

McKinsey just dropped a stat that’s turning heads in Silicon Valley: By 2030, over $1 trillion in U.S. revenue will be AI-mediated.

It’s not just a trend - it’s a tectonic shift.

For some of the most innovative businesses like MaryRuth Organics, Makeup by Mario, and OneSkin, THAT future is already here - because some of their revenue is already AI-generated, AI-mediated, and agentically driven thanks to Ground AI. 

After spending months building in NYC and now being back in Silicon Valley - the birthplace of so many paradigm shifts - a few things have become clear. 

Somewhere between swapping matcha lattes for Blue Bottle in South Park, three realizations hit hard:

1️⃣ The current commerce stack wasn’t built for an agentic world.
 Hyper-efficient, agentic-first brands will break traditional infrastructure and rebuild from the ground up. Humans won’t operate systems - they’ll orchestrate them.

2️⃣ Commerce will feel less like marketing, more like conversation.
 Agents that think, act, and transact on behalf of brands will become the new distribution layer.

3️⃣ The question isn’t if your revenue will be AI-mediated - it’s how much of it will be. Every major shift has lowered the barriers to entry - SEO, social, post-iOS 14. Each made it easier to start a brand, but harder to grow one.

Now we’re entering the next epoch: Agentic Commerce.

Imagine launching a store with Lovable + Shopify in a single click. No code, no ops - just creation.

And with OpenAI, your customers can buy through an AI agent - a conversation that closes the sale while you stay in the loop.

This shift means one thing: more brands will flood the market.

But growth? It’ll become harder, more expensive, and more fragmented. The old playbooks won’t work when agents - not ads - drive distribution.

So… what do you do?

There are many schools of thought, and this evolution will take time.

But one thing’s certain: if you want to drive meaningful revenue, you need AI agents operating where you actually have control.

That starts with your first-party data - yesterday, not tomorrow.

Let’s talk about it. 💭

#AgenticCommerce #AI #FutureOfCommerce #GroundAI #AIRevenue

We hit an important growth milestone at Ground today - and even though we weren’t all in the same room, it reminded me how it all started: trust before traction.

This summer, most of our team flew out to the mountains to connect and work together despite having workstreams around the world. We spent days learning from our advisors, fellow founders, operators - and most importantly, from each other.

My favorite moment? The bonfire.

We shared stories about the journey - the ups, the stumbles, and how Ground got its name. It was a reminder to stay grounded and to always find common ground, no matter how fast we grow.

Our mission has always been simple: elevate businesses to reach their full potential. How? Generating growth. Growth that lifts not just revenue, but people. 

Today, especially, I'm reminded of the work it takes to have an impact and it's not the destination but those incremental building blocks.

We did a thing! Join our company offsite as we build our tech and AI startup Ground 💥

We brought our NYC-based but globally distributed team together for our company offsite! Ground AI’s footprint stretches from Berlin to Brazil, with most of our team spread across continents.

This week was about more than just AI and tech - it was about forging bonds, learning from each other, and building the momentum to accelerate even faster. 

We planned many activities for the team from cliff hiking, cooking international dinners, exploring the mountains of Northern Canada (allo Mont-Tremblant!), to workshops. Some with our advisors and friends like Shivani Siroya of Tala shared her journey and advice on building one of the most influential and impact-driven technologies in the world. Her journey from inception to $300M ARR and building a billion dollar unicorn was so inspiring. We also had Charlie Feng of Clearco and now, @Agora share what makes an excellent startup team having grown his business to managing 600 employees. 

Our team is full of incredible builders from diverse backgrounds. Having everyone lead a workshop or share their takeaways from a Paul Graham essay helped us connect on a deeper level. From coding an ecomm site with Cursor and ChatGPT to exploring what good design really means, we shared, learned, and grew together.

We're the leading AI revenue driver for consumer companies and have created a new category - not by accident but because we have carefully unlocked milestones along the way and are stronger for it. World, watch out! 

#startupjourney #startup #teambuilding #startupteam #artificialintelligence

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The Battle

Amanda Goetz

Kat Garcia

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taplio

The Battle

Amanda Goetz

Kat Garcia

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);}Amanda Goetz's LinkedIn Performance

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