CEO The Good – Optimization for top brands like Nike, Xerox, Adobe, The Economist & many more | Author & Speaker | 6'7" 🏀 | Jr Olympic 🥇🥋 | jonmacdonald.com | 📘 Latest Book 👉 thegood.com/oito

Every bad digital experience costs you money. My mission is simple: remove them all until conversion becomes inevitable.

I founded The Good 16+ years ago to turn user insights into revenue. We're the trusted Digital Experience Optimization advisory for household names like Adobe, Nike, Xerox, Intel, and The Economist.

Together, we've generated hundreds of millions in additional revenue by optimizing the full digital journey from first touch to retention.

I've written three best-selling books on conversion optimization and am a frequent keynote speaker at Google, Autodesk, and industry events worldwide.

Also building tools for UX researchers and consultants. Currently in beta: Clipses.ai. Turn user interview transcripts into shareable video clips in minutes. Helping teams eliminate hours of rewatching footage.

Folks will tell you I love to compete: I'm a former college basketball player (and still playing on a club travel team) and won the USA Jr Olympic gold medal in Taekwondo when I was 10. But, business is the ultimate sport.

Book a 15-minute optimization strategy call → https://thegood.com/contact/

📨 DM me to start improving the digital journey of your website or app… or to debate LeBron vs Jordan as the GOAT.

Jon MacDonald

I'm over 40. I still play on a travel basketball team. But not for nostalgia. It's survival.

Running a business means carrying stress you can't physically release.

You can't outwork a client who ghosts you. You can't fight a bad quarter. The competitive energy builds up... and you just absorb it.

For 16 years, I've needed somewhere to put that pressure.

The basketball court is mine.

After my hardest days, I lace up and forget everything else. I have to. When someone's driving to the basket, I can't think about the deal that fell through or the hire who didn't work out.

The game forces me into the present moment. Nothing else exists.

Win or lose, my company is fine the next morning.

That mental separation is the point.

Exercise alone won't do this. Running doesn't reset my brain the same way. But real competition, with real stakes and real opponents, flips a switch.

The buildup releases. Perspective returns.

Every founder I know who's lasted 15+ years has something like this. A place where competitive energy goes and business stress can't follow.

Find yours.

Digital Experience Optimization + AI Browser Agent Optimization + Entrepreneurship Lessons | 3x Author | Speaker | Founder @ The Good – helping Adobe, Nike, The Economist & more increase revenue for 16+ years

I've been reading r/Entrepreneur all month. The burnout is relentless.

Founders doing everything right. Exercise. Sleep. Healthy eating. Still completely exhausted.

One CEO just closed a funding round and doubled their team. Should feel great. Instead, lower than ever.

Another said they can't afford extended time away. Too much to do.

2026 is starting heavy.

The common thread: isolation.

Carrying the weight of employees' mortgages. Investors' expectations. Making decisions that affect everyone while having no one to process it with.

I know this spiral. I've been running The Good for 16 years.

Working less didn't help me. Optimizing my morning routine didn't either. Finding people who actually understand the weight did.

Entrepreneurs' Organization. Smaller mastermind groups and forums. People who've faced the same decisions and will tell me when I'm being an idiot.

Not for networking. Not for referrals. For reality checks when I've been too deep in my own head for too long.

The founders burning out aren't weak. They're just alone.

If that's you right now, find your people. It's the best investment you'll make this year.

Trevor Lawrence failed spectacularly. But still scored a touchdown.

Watch the play.

He stumbles. Crashes to the turf. Gets back up. Runs it into the end zone.

That's optimization in seven seconds.

Your biggest wins hide behind your worst failures.

Failure is the engine of optimization. Yet most companies treat it like a disease. They punish mistakes. Hide poor results. Celebrate only wins.

They're optimizing for the wrong metric.

Every failed test reveals what customers actually want. Not what we assumed they wanted.

Jeff Bezos put it simply: "Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day."

Research confirms less than 50% of experiments at Amazon, Microsoft, and similar companies improve the metrics they're designed to improve.

Most experiments fail. Even at the best companies.

The difference is they don't treat failure as defeat. They treat it as data.

Google cancels most new products. Netflix tests hundreds of features you'll never see. Booking.com runs over 1,000 experiments at any given moment.

They fail fast, learn faster, and win biggest.

The magic happens when you systematize failure.

Make it cheap. Make it frequent. Make it expected.

Run that risky play. Test boldly. Document everything.

Because the only real failure is never running the experiment at all.

Claude has made half of my authority playbook worthless.

I've spent 16+ years building credibility as an entrepreneur. Published 3 books. Spoke at conferences. Built a content engine.

Half of those signals mean nothing now.

Books? Anyone can have AI write one in a weekend.

Conference keynotes? The audience can ask Claude the same questions afterward and get a more detailed answer.

Thought leadership content? We're all drowning in it.

The old authority formula (credentials + content = trust) is breaking.

But here's what I've noticed still works:

Original frameworks. The thinking you've done that nobody else has.

Specific results. Numbers from real work, not just case studies, with specifics on how you got there.

Relationships built over years. The people who've seen you perform.

Decision-making under uncertainty. AI can synthesize information. It can't (yet) make the final call.

The entrepreneurs building real authority in 2026 aren't collecting credentials.

They're demonstrating judgment.

I'm considering writing another book. Not for the "author" credential.

For the thinking it forces me to do. For the frameworks that come out of it. For the conversations it starts.

The credential is worthless. But the process... that is still invaluable.

You can improve conversion rate while making customers hate you.

I've seen it happen.

The dashboard showed green. Time on site up. Funnel flowing. Revenue growing.

But support tickets told a different story.

Customers weren't happy. They were confused. The extra time on site was people hunting for answers they couldn't find.

Analytics can't see suffering. But AI can scale the search.

So, use AI to cluster your qualitative data.

Feed it support tickets, on-site search queries, call transcripts, negative reviews.

Look for repeated phrases that predict churn:

"I thought it would..."
"I can't find..."
"Why is it asking for..."
"I already entered that..."

These patterns reveal friction your funnel metrics hide completely.

If your team only reviews numbers, you'll keep shipping silent damage.

Here's a prompt you can copy to get started:

"Analyze these [500] support tickets. Group them by common user frustration themes. For each theme, provide: 1) the specific phrases users repeat, 2) estimated frequency, 3) which part of the product/journey it relates to. Rank by potential business impact."

Paste your data. See what your dashboard can't show you.

I found a client's bestseller buried in a 47 item dropdown. But it drove 90% of their sales.

This is choice overload in action.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz proved that too many options paralyze decisions. When faced with overwhelming choices, customers don't choose better. They choose nothing.

Our client had exactly this problem.

Their "Shop" dropdown listed dozens of products with no hierarchy. Just an alphabetical wall of text.

Their flagship product sat somewhere in the middle. Invisible.

The serial positioning effect explains why this matters. We remember the first and last items in any list. Everything in the middle blurs together.

So we restructured their navigation.

Core products moved to the first and last positions. Secondary items organized by customer intent, not internal categories.

Result: $1.4 million in additional annual revenue.

Same products, same traffic, and same checkout.

The only change was removing a psychological barrier customers couldn't articulate.

Your customers make 35,000 decisions daily. By the time they reach your site, they're already exhausted.

The fix is simpler than you think:

Limit top-level nav to 7 items (the brain's processing limit).
Put your most important items first and last. 
Structure around customer goals, not internal departments.

Don't ask them to work harder. Guide them to what they need.

I poured 15 years of hard-earned lessons into Behind The Click. None of them were "the big idea."

First-time authors think they need one transformative insight to justify a book.

That's backwards.

A book isn't one idea explained at length. It's dozens of smaller ideas organized into a coherent argument.

Behind The Click has 4 main sections: Discovery, Information-Gathering, Decision-Making, and Post-Purchase.

Each section answers different questions customers ask along their journey. Each question required its own chapter of tactics and psychology.

That's not one big idea. That's a system of interconnected insights.

Here's the test I use: if you can explain your expertise in one conversation, you don't have a book yet. If explaining it takes 20 different conversations, you do.

My first book started as one simple belief: companies should sell, not just market. That belief required exploring awareness strategies, sales psychology, digital journeys, and conversion principles.

One belief. Dozens of supporting ideas.

Your "big idea" isn't a book.

It's the thesis that ties your smaller ideas together.

Our best product ideas never came from market research.

They came from watching clients struggle with the same problem over and over.

At The Good, we've run thousands of customer interviews across 16+ years. The analysis was always valuable. The video editing to create highlight reels was always... painful.

Researchers spending entire afternoons hunting through footage to find one quote. And, we heard the same complaint from internal teams at client after client.

So our team built Clipses. Interview footage to highlight reels in minutes, not hours.

This is how The Good Ventures portfolio works. UserInput, CommerceCritiques, now Clipses. All born from patterns we saw repeatedly in client work.

Consultants have an unfair advantage for building products.

You see problems dozens of times across different industries, team sizes, and budgets. That pattern recognition is more valuable than surveys or focus groups.

You're not guessing what people need. You're watching them struggle with it in real time.

If you've seen the same frustration 10+ times across different clients, pay attention.

That's a product signal hiding in plain sight.

Time is money, but in SaaS, it's also the key to success.

Over half of downloaded apps are uninstalled within 30 days. Why? Users aren't experiencing value quickly enough.

Accelerating time-to-value isn't just about faster onboarding. It's about creating those "Aha!" moments that turn casual users into loyal customers.

The best SaaS companies are mastering this art through personalized experiences, optimized registration processes, and strategic quick wins.

They're not just building products. They're crafting journeys that lead users to value faster than ever before.

Are you still making users wait to see your product's true potential?

Learn how to speed up your time-to-value and reduce churn in our latest article. Your users (and your bottom line) will thank you.

Click through to discover the strategies that are transforming user experiences and driving SaaS success.

View newsletter: Digital Journey Insights

Learn how strategies like optimizing onboarding, personalizing the user experience, and implementing quick wins can improve SaaS product time-to-value

Open article: Accelerating Time-to-Value: How SaaS Products Get Users to ‘Aha!’ Moments Faster by Jon MacDonald • 8 min read

Accelerating Time-to-Value: How SaaS Products Get Users to ‘Aha!’ Moments Faster

Most SaaS leaders get trial cancellations wrong.

They think users leave because the product isn't good enough. So they add more features. Build more capabilities. Polish the UI.

But the data tells a different story.

Users rarely cancel because your product lacks value. They cancel because they didn't experience that value quickly enough, clearly enough, or in a way that made sense for their specific needs.

The distinction matters more than you think. Because if you're solving the wrong problem, no amount of product development will move your conversion rate.

Here's what actually reduces trial cancellations: systematic optimization of the experience itself.

Our latest article breaks down the five-step framework we use to audit trial experiences and identify exactly where users encounter friction.

Learn about trial optimization and get the five-step audit framework to optimize your SaaS free-trial experience, reduce cancellations, and improve co

Open article: How Do You Reduce Cancellations During SaaS Free Trials? by Jon MacDonald • 11 min read

How Do You Reduce Cancellations During SaaS Free Trials?

Chase Dimond

Top Ecommerce Email Marketer & Agency Owner | We’ve sent over 1 billion emails for our clients resulting in $200+ million in email attributable revenue.

I help brands make more money with email marketing.

I’m a Co-Founder of Structured, an ecommerce email marketing agency. Since launching in 2018, our team has helped brands send billions of emails and generate over $200M in email-attributable revenue.

We’re a top agency partner for platforms like Omnisend and Klaviyo.

Shopify featured me as a top email marketing influencer. I’ve also received LinkedIn’s Top Voice Award for Email Marketing, and Favikon has ranked me as the top email marketer across social media.

Some of the brands we’ve worked with include:

Poo~Pourri
Eight Sleep
Health-Ade
Mixtiles
Vessi

If you’re looking to hire an experienced email marketing agency, you can reach me here:

chase@chasedimond.com

——

Outside my agency, I run a number of other fast-growing businesses. I’m fortunate to have over 750,000+ followers and subscribers across my social channels and email newsletter.

I’ve worked with companies including:

LinkedIn
Amazon
TikTok
Gamma
Alibaba
Zapier
ClickUp

I work with a small number of paid sponsors and partners each year.

If you’re interested in exploring a potential fit, please email me with details:

chase@chasedimond.com

Founder

My newsletter is your no BS guide into what's working in email marketing - I'll give you the latest tips + tactics to help you drive more revenue from your email marketing channel. 

Sign up (it's free) here: https://chasedimond.com/chase-email-newsletter

Working with smart people is great.
But it is not enough.

Because intelligence can solve problems.
But humility and kindness build cultures where problems don’t have to exist in the first place.

Here’s why it matters so much 👇

Kind and humble people:

They make collaboration effortless.
You don’t waste energy defending ideas or egos. 
You build together - faster, cleaner, and with more trust.

They create psychological safety.
When people feel respected, they speak up, share bold ideas, 
and admit mistakes early. 
That’s how teams innovate and grow.

They inspire long-term loyalty.
People don’t leave companies - they leave toxic dynamics. 
Working with grounded, genuine teammates keeps great talent around.

 Ways to practice kindness and humility at work:

Listen more than you talk.
You don’t need to have the loudest voice to have the strongest impact. 
Listening builds connection and earns respect.

Give credit - generously.
Acknowledging others’ work doesn’t diminish your own. 
It multiplies the trust and energy in your team.

Keep learning.
The moment you think you’ve “arrived,” you stop growing. 
Stay curious, stay open, and never let success make you unapproachable.

Kind people build strong teams.
Strong teams create big results.

Top Ecommerce Email Marketer | $200M+ Generated via Email

If your job costs you your peace,
it’s too expensive.

You deserve a job that lets you sleep peacefully at night -
not one that keeps you awake questioning your worth, your future, or your sanity.

A healthy career doesn’t rely on:

 ❌ burnout
 ❌ constant anxiety
 ❌ toxic expectations

A healthy career is built on:

 ✔️ clear boundaries
 ✔️ supportive leadership
 ✔️ meaningful work
 ✔️ respect for your time and well-being

Your job should challenge you - not drain you.

It should grow you - not break you.

And it should fit into your life, not become your life.

If your work steals your peace, it’s costing you more than it pays.

Funny how your brain has unlimited energy
for worst-case scenarios.

It can write entire disaster scripts at 3 a.m.
With dialogue.
With consequences.
With a soundtrack.

But ask it to imagine things going well
and suddenly it needs evidence, references, and a peer review.

That’s not intuition.
That’s anxiety pretending to be preparation.

You don’t need to stop overthinking.
You just need to stop letting it bully you into pessimism only.

If your mind insists on spiraling,
at least make it spiral in both directions.

Same brain.
Different hypothesis.

Image credit: bywiseword

Reality:
A small, ordinary action.

LinkedIn:
A “high-impact initiative” with “key learnings” and “next steps.”

Clear communication beats inflated language.
Strong professionals don’t need to oversell normal work.

Say what you did.
Say why it mattered.
Move on.

Clarity builds trust faster than buzzwords.

Image credit: TheSecretAcct on Twitter/X

It’s not about collecting business cards or follower counts.

It’s about building bridges with people who get it - who challenge you, inspire you, and open doors you didn’t know existed.

The right network doesn’t just grow your career - it expands your mindset, your confidence, and your opportunities.

Here are 12 ways to build powerful, authentic connections:

1️⃣ Lead with curiosity. Ask, don’t pitch. People love being seen and heard.

2️⃣ Add value first. Share insights, introductions, or encouragement before asking for anything.

3️⃣ Show up consistently. Comment, engage, and participate where your industry hangs out.

4️⃣ Find your communities. Join professional groups, Slack channels, or niche forums.

5️⃣ Attend events strategically. Go where your next mentor, collaborator, or client might actually be.

6️⃣ Follow up. A short, thoughtful message can turn a conversation into a relationship.

7️⃣ Be generous with your expertise. Give more than you take - it builds reputation fast.

8️⃣ Don’t chase status. The best opportunities often come from peers, not big titles.

9️⃣ Stay authentic. Pretending to be someone you’re not is the fastest way to disconnect.

1️⃣0️⃣ Keep it human. Share stories, not sales pitches.

1️⃣1️⃣ Support others publicly. Celebrate others’ wins - it builds goodwill that lasts.

1️⃣2️⃣ Play the long game. Relationships compound like interest; nurture them with time.

The truth? You’re one conversation away from a completely different path.

Image credit: Tim Stoddart

The advice I wish I could’ve given myself 8 years ago:

Create a culture people never want to leave.

Yes, you can’t keep everyone with a 0% turnover rate. 
Let’s face it.

But what you can do is build an environment people don’t want to walk away from.

Build a culture that makes employees:

↳ Recommend it to their friends as the dream job, 
↳ Stay, even if the paycheck isn't perfect yet, 
↳ Come back when the conditions are right.

Think about it:

👉 A competitive paycheck might keep someone for a while, 
But a toxic culture will drive them away for good.

👉 You can offer all the perks, but if the culture is unhealthy, 
Nothing will make your best people stick around.

People stay where they feel valued.

It’s not just about the money—it’s about creating a workplace 
that makes people excited to show up every day.

♻️ Share this post with your network if you agree. 

 Credit: Victoria Repa ( go follow her )

Small habit.
Big impact.

The way you speak to yourself
every morning
becomes your baseline.

Speak growth.
Speak calm.
Speak possibility.

It adds up.

Image credit: Wordofwise_ on Twitter/X

“Hire the people that…”

Interesting how the list skips:
– constant availability
– performative hustle
– being the loudest voice
– working 24/7 for optics

Great teams grow from maturity, not heroics.
From people who communicate clearly, take ownership, and move in sync.

Ego slows teams down.
Trust speeds them up.
Psychological safety keeps the work moving.

Hire for reliability and collaboration first.
Everything else gets easier after that.

Nobody talks about this part enough.

You can do it tired.
You can do it frustrated.
You can do it unsure.

You just can’t do it if you quit.

Keep going.


Image credit: Dearme2_ on Twitter/X

Here’s a hard truth most people avoid:

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not moving forward.

I learned this the slow way.

Early on, I tried to get everything right.
Perfect plan.
Perfect timing.
Perfect execution.

And progress?
Basically stalled.

Things only changed when I gave myself permission to be wrong.

To test ideas that might flop.
To ship work that wasn’t perfect.
To learn out loud instead of waiting in silence.

Mistakes aren’t failure.
They’re feedback.

The people doing the most interesting work
aren’t avoiding mistakes.

They’re just willing to make them faster.

Safe paths feel good.
But they don’t teach much.

Growth always comes with friction.
That’s the price of trying something new.

Image credit: Tomas Gorny

Marketing is great they said…


P.S. If you write emails and you’re looking for inspiration, check out:

inboox.ai

“It wasn’t a waste of time if you learned something.”

That’s easy to agree with in theory.
Harder when the lesson came with lost money, bruised confidence, or a year you won’t get back.

Still - experience has a way of paying later.

It sharpens your instincts.
It changes what you tolerate.
It shortens the gap between seeing a red flag and acting on it.

Not every chapter produces visible wins.
Some exist to quietly upgrade your judgment.

And that upgrade shows up in every decision after.

10 years of rejection.

That's how long Squid Game's creator spent pitching his script.

Studio after studio said no.
Too dark. Too violent. Won't work.

Then Netflix took a chance.

28 days later, it became their most-watched show in history.

A decade of "no" turned into a $900M yes.

Most people quit after a few rejections.
They assume the silence means the idea is bad.

But rejection isn't a verdict.
It's just timing.

The right opportunity doesn't always show up first.
Sometimes it shows up tenth. Or hundredth.

If you're getting rejected right now, consider this:

You might not be wrong.
You might just be early.

Keep going.


Image Credit: Amy Sussman/WireImage; Noh Juhan/Netflix

How to survive marketing in 2026.

Open your laptop.
Check Slack.
Three notifications in…

…and you already feel behind.

Sound familiar?

In 2026, “digital marketer” doesn’t mean one role anymore.
It means the entire agency in one tab.

Copywriter.
Strategist.
Videographer.
Social media manager.
Designer.
Editor.
Analyst.

All before lunch.

From experience, the problem isn’t a lack of skill.
It’s the expectation that one person can do everything at once and do it well.

Burnout doesn’t come from hard work.
It comes from an impossible scope.

The marketers who survive aren’t the busiest.
They’re the ones who set boundaries, prioritize ruthlessly, and stop trying to be great at everything every day.

Because marketing isn’t about doing more.
It’s about doing the right things consistently.

Agree?

Most marketers track a ton of metrics.

Very few know which ones actually matter.

Here are 7 worth paying attention to, plus how to improve each one:

(bookmark this)

Our email domains kept getting blacklisted at my agency.

Everyone assumed we were sending too aggressively.

After diving into the data, we found the real issue.

18% bounce rate.
From a "verified" list.

We had bad data.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁:

Deals lost during 2-3 weeks of rebuilding.
Hours spent verifying and cleaning lists.
Teams questioning their skills when it's not their fault.
Buying new domains every month.

We thought this was just how outbound worked.

Then I saw a friend's company sending thousands of emails each week.
Same domains. Month after month.
Strong deliverability maintained.

They were using Prospeo.io's data.

SMTP handshakes verify emails before you send.
BounceBan removes risky addresses automatically.
Weekly updates catch job changes that kill domains.

After testing several providers, Prospeo consistently delivered the cleanest data.

Our domains have been going steady for months now.
Data prep time cut by 80%.
Bounce rates dropped from 18% to under 2%.

Clean data isn't just about deliverability.
It's about keeping your team confident and productive.

What hidden costs is bad data creating at your agency?

Brand partnership • Top Ecommerce Email Marketer | $200M+ Generated via Email

6 Copywriting Techniques You Can Leverage for Your Sales Pages:

No alternative text description for this image

January hits different for ecommerce founders.

Sales slow down. Costs don't.

You're staring at:
- Depleted inventory
- Q1 expenses stacking up
- Ad costs that won't wait
- Cash tied up in last quarter's orders

The revenue will come. But the bills are here now.

This is the ecommerce cash flow trap.

Most founders either:
→ Wait it out and lose momentum
→ Take on debt with rigid terms
→ Give up equity way too early

That's where Wayflyer comes in.

Capital in 24-48 hours. Non-dilutive. Flexible repayment based on your actual sales.

No giving up ownership. No waiting weeks for bank approvals.

You restock. You scale Q1 ads. You keep the momentum going.

$6B+ already deployed to brands like yours.

If your cash flow is playing catch-up, get your offer today: 

https://lnkd.in/gJsgPrrm


#WayflyerSponsor

I used to think GTM complexity was just part of the job.

Multiple tools. Manual handoffs. Workflows that took hours to build and days to fix.

Last week I tested Apollo's AI Assistant on something different: workflow creation.

Instead of clicking through menus and configuring triggers manually, I just described what I wanted in plain English.

The AI built the multi-step workflow in minutes.

What used to require:
→ A GTM engineer
→ Multiple tools stitched together
→ Hours of setup and testing

Now happens in a single conversation.

Same thing with building prospect lists, creating sequences, or analyzing campaign performance. Describe what you need. The AI handles the execution.

Most teams are still doing GTM the old way. Clicking through settings, connecting triggers, testing each step manually.

Meanwhile, the fastest operators are just talking to the AI.

GTM shouldn't require an engineering degree.
It should require clear thinking and the right tools.

Join the beta waitlist:

https://lnkd.in/gW2ZeEUb

#ApolloAIAssistant #ApolloPartner

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