Order my USA TODAY Bestselling book: toxicgrit.com TOXIC GRIT: How to have it all and (actually) love what you have. It will help you create a new approach to ambition and find space for all the diverse parts of yourself. Join 75K+ others who read my newsletter 🧩 Life's a Game at amandagoetz.com. It’s full of free tips to play the game of life at a whole new level. In 2018 I found myself at the height of my marketing career with 3 kids under the age of 4 and filing for divorce. In a world telling me to find alignment......I realized that was impossible. The work version of me didn't want to leave early to go be with the kiddos. The mom version of me didn't want to miss a moment with them. I wanted to be fiercely independent and yet also wanted to find love again. Other versions of me didn't want to feel responsible for anything or anyone. This diversity within me led to the creation of my Character Theory Framework. This framework helped me to create space for the 10 characters that make up the movie of your life:  The CEO → wants to pursue big goalsThe Partner → desires companionship  The Soloist → cares about personal growth and development The Caregiver → deep desire to take care of others and show up for themThe Goddess → wants to be desired and pursue pleasure  The Lazy One → loves to couch rot, no goals whatsoever The Socialite → values connection The Creative → desires creation and creativity The Doctor → your inner health &amp; wellness character The Explorer → craves novelty And it helped me. I was able to let go of the idea of balance and give permission for hierarchy, boundaries and the transition sequences necessary to embody these diverse characters. So I put it all in a book and it was an instant best seller!! I'm so excited for you to create space for all parts of you and to see ambition as multi-dimensional. Follow me here for advice as I build a multi-hyphenate life as a CMO, Author, Mom of 3 and getting married again. 

Amanda Goetz

I took a month from posting to really sit with myself and think about what I wanted for 2026. Here’s why….

I spent a lot of the last year in survival mode. 
After a divorce with 3 small kids I was always proving. Pushing. Needing to provide for my family. 

But now I’m on stable ground and yet my nervous system hasn’t caught up. I still feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

That I need to prove I’m worthy. 
That I need to prove I’m smart. 
That I need to prove why I’m here. 

So this year my word is ENOUGH. 

And I’m going to spend the year learning what enough looks like. 

To be enough. 
To earn enough. 
To do enough. 

I love my new CMO role. 
I have a new exciting writing project this year. 
I’m hosting season 2 of the Girlboss podcast. 
And my weekly newsletter is a constant creative outlet. 

That’s enough. 

More isn’t always better. 

So if you are also planning to drive the speed limit in 2026 - follow along here as I’ll be sharing what I’m doing and learning along th way.

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

No alternative text description for this image

I’ve been struggling with 2 things lately:

1) it’s clear that when I spend less time on social media, my mind is clearer and I can write from a place of curiosity and purpose. 

But then when I contribute to social media I feel like I’m feeding the beast that is stealing our curiousity and clarity. 

2) The loss of social from the media. 

The closer I got to big creators, the more I found out about the “teams” behind their posts and replies. I can also clearly tell when someone is using AI to reply to posts. 

So what are we actually doing here? 

The point is to connect and inspire. To evoke thoughts and inject nuance into conversations. To drive awareness to things that people may not see from their seat in this world. 

Anyway….if I’ve been a little MIA on here it’s because of these thoughts. 

I deeply crave meaningful conversations and I am trying to find the right medium to having them.

Another great episode of Ambition 2.0 with @girlboss and Malissa Clark 

Check it out anywhere you get your podcasts!

🗣️ Repeat after us: You can love your job and still be a workaholic.

In this episode of Ambition 2.0, Amanda Goetz sits down with Malissa Clark, a professor at the University of Georgia, Director of the Healthy Work Lab, and author of Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business—and How to Fix It, to break down what workaholism can look like in real life (spoiler: it’s not just about working long hours). 

They get into the sneaky “working light” tasks that we tell ourselves don’t count as work (like sending emails while watching TV or checking Slack between errands), how leaders accidentally create always-on teams, and so much more. 

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/eKd9rtCv 

💻 Or watch the episode on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eRqNjSN6

Continuing on my journey of “enough” - it’s important you plan your work around your life. Not the other way around. 

I approach my yearly planning the same way I approach building a marketing calendar as a CMO. 

I slice the calendar in 4 ways:

- Annual tentpoles & events
- Quarterly launches
- Monthly beats
- Weekly non-negotiables

Reminder: Use this link to get your 🧩 Life's a Game Planning calendar. ⬇️⬇️

Open article: 🧩 Life's a Game: Your 2026 Game Plan by amandagoetz.kit.com

Today’s newsletter has already gotten more replies than I normally get. I think this topic resonates…

Check it out and let me know. ⬇️

https://lnkd.in/eHCRCS4b

graphical user interface, text, application, chat or text message

Loved this convo with Alexa von Tobel - check it out and let me know what you think!

In this episode of Ambition 2.0, host Amanda Goetz sits down with Alexa von Tobel—the founder of LearnVest (where she raised $75M and successfully sold it to Northwestern Mutual) and current founder and managing partner of Inspired Capital—to unpack the resilient mindset that has shaped her successful career, from founder to venture-capital veteran.

Alexa dropped out of Harvard Business School and poured her life savings into LearnVest, a multimillion-dollar business idea—despite warnings from nearly everyone around her that she was making a big mistake. She did it in the middle of the 2008 economic recession, no less.

🎧 Watch or listen to the full episode, now live on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts! 

https://lnkd.in/eq-wEGjd

Open video: From Harvard Dropout to VC Powerhouse: How to Bet on Yourself with Alexa von Tobel | Ambition 2.0 on youtu.be

From Harvard Dropout to VC Powerhouse: How to Bet on Yourself with Alexa von Tobel | Ambition 2.0

Co-founder & CEO @ Revenue Roll

3rd-generation entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Tie.

Tie helps ecommerce brands de-anonymize their highest-value web traffic with names, email addresses, advertising IDs and demographic attributes. We’re trusted by brands like Macy’s, Cozy Earth, Crunch Fitness, Caraway, and Baby Brezza.

On average, our customers de-anonymize up to 90% and grow their cart abandonment list by 225%. Join them: meettie.com.

Michael Diesu

How most people start the first work day of the year: barrage of Slacks and email

How Tie started the first work day of the year: yacht party!*
.
.
.
*Day one of our first company offsite of the year.

Tie's first company offsite of the year is officially wrapped! Here’s a look at some of the highlights from 2025:

- Our team grew a lot. We went from 12 people in January to 38 people by the end of the year (and we’re currently hiring!) Not only did we welcome new IC talent, but we added several new members to our leadership team.

- For the second year in a row, we more than doubled our annual recurring revenue.

- We successfully rolled out a new brand identity — a new name, website, brand guidelines, the full works.

- We helped customers identify and send 100s of millions of emails to high-intent shoppers without ruining their domain or brand reputation.

- We held our first leadership team planning offsite in Miami.

There are countless people responsible for such a great year but a few people really made outsized impact:

Jared Thomas, Richard Tester, Anthony Georgiades, and most importantly, the entire Tie crew who were truly the difference makers.

Here’s to a new year of more wins, fun, and growth! 🚀

“If you’re taking a break for the holidays, you’re not going to make it.”

That’s the tweet a founder recently posted on Twitter.

If you’re an early-stage founder or if you consider yourself a Type A workaholic, read this carefully:

We've romanticized the grind: the all-nighters, the "I haven't taken a day off in two years" badge of honor, etc.

When Tie was just getting off the ground, I would pride myself on how hard I worked. It was acceptable then because the category already existed and we were competing against established players.

I told myself I’d rest when things calmed down.

But things never calm down. Not if you're building something that matters.

The companies that need you most are the ones where the urgency never stops. The milestones keep moving. The pressure keeps building.

If you wait for permission to step back, you'll never step back.

Eventually I realized that if my business couldn’t survive a week without me, I don’t really have a business at all. 

I took more vacation time in 2025 than I have in any other year (combined) since co-founding Tie. And part of my 2026 New Year’s Resolution is to take a vacation every 100 days or so.

Time off is not meant to be treated as a luxury, and it doesn’t make you lazy.

It’s really a competitive advantage because you come back recharged, sharper, and with a new kind of energy than you’d have when you’re running on fumes.

If you can't take a few days off every quarter, ask yourself why.

Is it because your business actually needs you every single day? Or is it because you haven't built a proper foundation that lets you step away?

I’m late… but here’s my 2026 In & Out (pricing edition):

In: Pricing tiers based on difference in incremental value (e.g. revenue or new use case).

Out: Add-on pricing based on non-essential, additive features.

The expectations around ecommerce software have quietly been changing for over a year now. My bet is this year, we really see things come to a head.

Brands will expect vendors to justify how pricing increases correlate to tangible value in their business that they weren’t getting before. Those that can’t do that, will get chopped for cheaper alternatives.

Agree or disagree?

I shared this at the beginning of 2025 and it’s still true in 2026…

The most important email marketing rule today is “clean more, send more > clean less, send less”.

If you’re practicing good email hygiene — meaning, you’re segmenting your audiences and focusing on the highest-intent shoppers — your overall sends per month should stay relatively constant.

Great product + bad positioning = crickets.
Bad product + great positioning = churn.

Unless you’re already a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, you have to get both right.

Last year, our team discovered a concerning email statistic: 

50% of IP-based locations are wrong.

The same data brands are using to personalize experiences, segment customers, or make shipping decisions.

Think about what that means:

You’re sending weather-based promotions for New York to someone who actually lives in Miami or you’re using geo-targeting for ads but half your audience is being served content for the wrong location.

This isn't a small edge case… it's potentially half your customers.

IP addresses alone are no longer a reliable data source to build your email or ad strategy around. 

In 2026, you have to be tracking multiple signals to understand who their customers really are.

Data privacy regulation is the white elephant in the room when it comes to email marketing.

Eight new US state privacy laws went live in 2025. GDPR keeps evolving. CCPA keeps tightening.

Still, most brands are evaluating identity tools like they're buying more data.

Higher match rate = more emails identified = more people to market to.

That's the frame. More is better.

And look, I get it. When you're trying to prove PMF and hit your first million in revenue, compliance feels theoretical. New emails are concrete — something you can use to grow your business.

But what if the game isn't about getting more data? What if it's about doing more with what you already have?

The average e-commerce brand is sitting on years of purchase history, browsing behavior, email engagement. They know who their customers are.

The problem isn't that they need to identify more people. It's that they're not using what they already know effectively.

So instead of solely flooding brands with more third-party data to manage, we’ve been focusing more on enriching the first-party data they already have.

It’s the same people who have already shown high purchasing intent or maybe even have a purchase history, but now the brands are armed with a better understanding about who they are and their interests.

With less risk of ruining your brand reputation or running afoul of compliance rules.

The regulations aren't going backwards. In fact, what's acceptable today probably won't be acceptable in 12 months.

We made a bet at Tie early on that it's smarter to build for where regulations are headed than optimize for today's match rates (e.g. first-party enrichment, explicit consent, respecting opt-outs at the infrastructure layer, etc.).

Does that mean lower match rates than competitors playing fast and loose? Yes, intentionally. 

But we're also not worried about our customers waking up to a compliance nightmare.

For the last decade, every e-commerce growth marketing playbook told you growing your email list endlessly was a good strategy. They're wrong.

Pop-ups on every page. Aggressive lead magnets. Discount codes for sign-ups. 

The bigger the list, the better the business, right?

Not anymore.

Brands are sitting on email lists with 100K+ subscribers and seeing 15% open rates. They're sending to tens of thousands of people who signed up for a 10% discount two years ago and haven't opened an email since.

Here’s a hard pill to swallow:

Most people on your list don't care about what you're sending. They signed up for a deal. They’re not browsing, or engaging, and they haven't bought. But brands keep emailing them anyway because "list size" is still the metric everyone tracks.

There’s a shift that's happening now among the smartest and most durable brands. 

They’re focusing on understanding shopper intent instead of chasing indiscriminate list growth.

Instead of asking "how many people can we email?" they’re asking "who actually cares about this message?"

The people browsing your site multiple times in a week or who’ve made repeat purchases care.

The person who signed up for your email list 18 months and never clicked anything doesn’t.

When you send emails indiscriminately, you’re training your actual customers to ignore you because you're drowning them in messages meant for people who were never going to buy anyway.

The best brands are segmenting by behavior, not just by list membership. And they're seeing better results with more targeted sends than they ever got blasting their entire list.

If you're still measuring success by list size, you're optimizing for the wrong thing.

Was a pleasure sharing the stage with these legendary marketers talking all things retention.

Thank you for hosting such a fun event Hamza Naqvi!

Our customers at Amplify Founderverse said it best: mass emails are dead.

Kyle Brucculeri, Ben Bolognini, and Kyle Turadek shared how they define what a great customer looks like using Tie — from attributes and buying cycles to real purchase behavior — and then use that insight to personalize every message and their retention strategy.

When you can show up at the right moment for the right customers, building loyalty gets a whole lot easier.

taplio

The Battle

Amanda Goetz

Michael Diesu

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAmanda Goetz's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMichael Diesu's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Amanda Goetz

Michael Diesu

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

Performance ScoreMichael Diesu's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAmanda Goetz's LinkedIn Performance