Hi! I'm Stephanie! I'm passionate about building impactful partnerships, enabling businesses to grow, and making sure the social impact community thrives. With over a decade of consistently generating seven and eight figure annual revenue for companies, I understand what it takes to drive success.

Over the last 15 years working with non-profit, government and for profit businesses, I've developed a unique process for building community and generating revenue through a partnership growth mindset. I've been fortunate to develop programs and partnerships that have touched lives across the globe, from India to the United States and beyond. I've created thousands of ecosystems and opportunities that unite governments, educators, employers, and donors to make tangible change.

I believe that together we can achieve great things and am committed to paving the way for a more inclusive, impactful future.

Stephanie Wilson

This weekend I’m spending time at the ISET National Gathering, and I want to name how meaningful it is to be here.

Being in this space is a reminder that workforce development is not just about programs, funding, or outcomes on paper. It’s about people, place, and self-determination. Indigenous communities have been doing this work for generations, building pathways rooted in culture, community knowledge, and lived experience.

What stands out most is the care and intentionality behind the conversations. 

Listening comes first. 
Relationships come before solutions. 
Progress is measured not just by numbers, but by trust, relevance, and long-term impact.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn, to listen, and to be present in a space led by Indigenous voices and priorities. 

Moments like this quietly reshape how you think about the work and how you show up when you return home.

#ISETNationalGathering #ISETGathering2026 #Indigenous #WorkforceDevelopment #Community

Thanks to Jelly Academy for organizing such a collaborative space and to Digital Moment | Moment numérique for the opportunity.

Cross-Sector Growth Strategist | $100M+ in Government & Partner Funding Secured | Nonprofit • Tech • Education • SaaS | Founder – The Uplift Collective

The last five days have been full.

Full in the sense of listening carefully, asking questions, and sitting in rooms where people are genuinely trying to figure out how we do this work better.

Across different events, sectors, and conversations, the thread has been consistent.

How do we build systems that actually serve people, not just programs?

How do we prepare for the future of work without losing sight of the humans navigating it right now?

How do we move past performative solutions and into ones that are grounded, inclusive, and durable?

There’s also a reality I’m hearing more clearly now than ever.

Funding is tight. Budgets have been cut. Teams that once sent three or four people to conferences are now sending one. Many are attending virtually, not by choice, but by necessity.

I’m genuinely grateful to conferences and organizers who make that possible. Access matters. So does recognizing that for many organizations, showing up at all right now takes intention and sacrifice.

What that’s changed is the weight of being in the room.

More people are carrying insights back to their teams. 

More responsibility to listen well, synthesize, and translate what matters into action. Fewer spectators. More stewards.

The conversations I’ve been part of haven’t been about trends for the sake of trends. They’ve been about tradeoffs. Priorities. What we protect when resources are constrained.

Spending this time with practitioners, funders, educators, Indigenous leaders, and workforce builders has been a reminder of why this work matters to me.

Not because the answers are easy.

But because when conditions are tight, clarity matters even more.

It was so great to reconnect, meet new people and learn from so many amazing individuals! Until next time friends!
Wendy Baker Darian Kovacs ♾️ Allain Lauzon Mary Stack, BA, CPHR Jasmeen Sidhu, Ph.D. Allan Govender Virginia Gluska Ulrike Bahr-Gedalia Eleanor Hawkins Nausheen Ali Fatima Saadeddine, MBA,PMP,CHRP,ESPT  Jade (Jadelyn) Psutka Allison Bear BComm Barbara Wilson,🍁CCDP® Lisa Stephenson-MBA, CRSP Kelly Johnson

It was unfortunate that so many people had travel cancelled so they couldn't attend after all - I see you!

#Cannexus2026 #ISETGathering2026 #Community #NonProfit #EmploymentServices #Indigenous #Learning

undefined undefined

The Uplift Collective

https://www.upliftcollective.ca/the-partnership-blueprint-five-proven-steps-for-forging-successful-partnerships

the-uplift-collective

I grew up in a small town in rural eastern Ontario.

When I finished high school, I had no idea what I wanted to be. I just knew one thing very clearly. I did not like school the way it was structured. Sitting still. Being talked at. Memorizing instead of doing.

So I took a year off after high school to try to find my way.

It felt uncomfortable. Most of my friends knew exactly what they wanted to do. Everyone was heading off to university. I felt behind. A little lost. Like I had missed some memo everyone else received.

After that year, I still did not know what I wanted to be “when I grew up.” But I did know I needed some form of post secondary education. I needed skills. I needed momentum.

I chose college and enrolled in executive administration.

It was hands on. Practical. I learned a lot. I worked three jobs to cover rent and school. I learned how to manage money because I had to. Those years shaped my work ethic and my sense of responsibility in ways I still carry with me.

After graduating, I got a job working for a municipal councillor. What started as a role turned into six formative years. It exposed me to government, policy, community, and how decisions actually get made. That path eventually led me into the nonprofit world, where I found my purpose. That part of the story is for another day.

For a long time, I was embarrassed to say I did not have a university degree.

I was screened out of jobs automatically because it was mandatory. I questioned myself more times than I can count.

Do I regret not going to university?

Yes and no.

No, because I do not think I would have thrived there at that point in my life.

Yes, because there were real opportunities I never got access to because I did not have that piece of paper.

Both things can be true.

I am sharing this because I see so many people feeling pressure to follow a single definition of success. A single path. A single timeline.

Education matters. Credentials matter. But lived experience matters too.

Learning by doing counts. Working your way through school counts. Taking a longer or different route counts.

There is no one right way to build a career.

Chart your own path. Pay attention to what energizes you, not just what looks good on paper. 

Choose the pathway that works for how you learn, how you move, and who you are becoming.

#CareerPath #Employment #FindYourOwnPath #NonProfit #Education

Photo is me from 2008, still trying to figure things out.

We have a beautiful owl that lives in the trees near our driveway. Usually across the way. Easy to admire from a distance.

Last night, I went out to grab wood for the stove before bed and nearly jumped out of my skin. 

He was sitting right on the front porch railing. Completely still. Just watching. Probably hunting. Definitely unbothered by me.

I froze. Slowly backed into the house. Turned off the lights.

Then I stood in the dining room, in the dark, and watched him for a while.
No noise. 

Just this quiet, unexpected moment of sharing space with something wild and calm and entirely unconcerned with my plans for the evening.

It was incredible.

Sometimes the best moments are the ones that do not mean anything more than exactly what they are.

#Wildlife #NotAPhotographer #CountryLife 

Alyx Parks and Stephanie Martin - I thought of both of you immediately after it happened.

Some of the most valuable parts of my work live in the things I no longer consciously think about.

After years of building, reviewing, defending, and negotiating government budgets, so much of what I do has become instinctive. 

You stop noticing the hundreds of small decisions you make because you have internalized how funders think, where flexibility actually lives, and which details quietly matter most.

Recently, I had the chance to sit with that experience and write it all down. 

Not the big frameworks or the obvious rules, but the small things you only learn by doing the work. 

The wording choices that reduce scrutiny. 

The assumptions that do not need to be over engineered. 

The places where people think they are locked in, but are not.

There was something unexpectedly grounding about translating years of lived experience into something clear and usable for a client. 

Not to impress. 
Not to overcomplicate. 
Just to make the work easier and less stressful for the people doing it.

This kind of work reminds me why I enjoy what I do. 

Helping smart teams feel more confident, more capable, and less constrained by rules that often feel heavier than they actually are.

If you have ever felt weighed down by process or rules that seemed immovable, I promise there is often more room to breathe than it appears.

#BudgetDevelopment #ProposalDevelopment #NonProfit #GovernmentFunding

One thing I think everyone should try at least once is learning someone else’s job.

Not the polished version. The real, day to day work. The setup. The decisions no one talks about. The small things that keep everything moving quietly in the background.

When you work in teams, so much of that effort becomes invisible. Systems run. Tools connect. Processes exist. You rarely stop to think about how much experience and judgment it takes to make things feel that seamless.

Until those people are not there.

And you have to do one small piece yourself.

You realize how many choices live inside what once looked simple.

Lately, I am spending an absurd amount of time learning tools.
Not the exciting kind. The tiny, fiddly ones. Payment systems. Tool connections. Settings I did not even know existed.

Learning to do something you have never done before, or something that was always someone else’s role, builds more than skills.

It builds appreciation.

It changes how you show up the next time.

#ProfessionalDevelopment #GrowthMindset #Entrepreneurship

I really hate getting a no.

Not because I expect everything to work out, but because I put a lot into the work. Time. Thought. Energy. And more than that, belief. I care deeply about what I do and about the teams and ideas behind every proposal. That makes the no’s land harder than people realize.

Early on, I took them personally. Every declined submission felt like a judgment, not just of the work, but of the care behind it. And honestly, I still feel that sometimes. Loving the work makes you more exposed, not less.

What changed over time was not the feeling. It was what I did with it.

I started sitting with the no’s longer. Looking for patterns. Paying attention to what funders questioned, what they ignored, and what clarity actually meant in practice. Every no taught me something I could not have learned any other way.

That learning adds up. Today, more than 40 percent of what I work on gets approved. Not because the no’s stopped hurting, but because I stayed curious instead of shutting down.

Lately, there have been a lot of yes’s for clients. And I feel genuinely excited for them every single time. 

I also know the no’s will come again. They always do.

When they do, I will feel them. And then I will learn from them.

Because caring about the work is not a weakness. It is the reason the yes’s mean so much when they arrive.

#GovernmentFunding #BusinessDevelopment #ProposalDevelopment

I’ve learned that authenticity isn’t about having a fixed identity. It’s about staying honest as things shift.

I have spent years being the reliable one. 

The person who could hold a lot, absorb uncertainty, and keep moving anyway.

That works. Until it does not.

Because eventually you realize how much energy it takes to live up to a version of yourself that was built for other people’s expectations.

Letting go of who you think you are supposed to be does not mean losing drive or ambition. It means releasing the pressure to look a certain way while you are building something real.

Authenticity is not a reveal or a brand decision.

It is a daily choice to show up aligned, even when that alignment keeps evolving.

And that choice changes everything.

#BeTrueToYourself #Authenticity #Leadership #NonProfit #StartUp

One of the best parts of a panel on AI and the next generation at the AI Policy Conference yesterday was that it did not try to wrap anything up neatly.
Instead, it named the complexity.

AI is already embedded in education, work, and daily life. Young people are forming relationships with systems that shape how they think, learn, and see themselves. Institutions are trying to respond in real time, often without data, shared frameworks, or room to pause.

At the same time, many of the loudest predictions about jobs and disruption have not fully materialized. Change is happening, but unevenly. Slowly in some places. Abruptly in others.

What emerged was a quieter but more useful set of questions.

How do we equip young people to be creators, not just users?

How do we protect without pretending we can stop what is already here?

How do we build literacy, judgment, and human skills that remain valuable no matter how tools evolve?

There was no single answer, and that felt right.

This is long-term work. It requires humility, collaboration across disciplines, and a willingness to sit with uncertainty without defaulting to fear or hype.

If there was a through-line, it was this: the future will be shaped less by the tools themselves and more by how thoughtfully we choose to integrate them.

Panel participants:
Justin Hendrix, Tech Policy Press
Shingai Manjengwa, Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute
Namir Anani, P.Eng., ICTC-CTIC
Laurent Charlin, Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute
André Côté, The Dais at Toronto Metropolitan University 

Thankful to Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute for access to the AI Policy Conference and for putting together such a great event!

#AIPolicy #YouthAndAI #Talent #GovernmentofCanada

Creativity is my word for 2026.

Creativity in how I approach work, rest, and everything in between.

Creative problem solving.
Creative contracting.
Creative time off.
Creative experiences.

Creativity is what lets you ask better questions instead of accepting the default answer. It is how you find options where others see constraints. It is how you design work and life in ways that actually fit.

In 2026, the only box is that there is no box.

More room to experiment.

More permission to rethink how things are done.

More trust in the idea that there is almost always another way.

Here is to a year of curiosity, flexibility, and building something that feels as good as it works.

#Focus #GrowthMindset #HeresTo2026

I never thought I would be an entrepreneur.

In fact, quite the opposite. I was convinced I did not have the “it” that founders and leaders are supposed to have. 

I wanted stability. The person who imagined working for others my whole life and being perfectly content doing that.

And for a long time, that made sense.

What I did not realize then is that entrepreneurship does not always look like taking big risks. Sometimes it looks like taking responsibility. For your values. For your time. For the kind of work you want to put into the world.

I did not wake up one day wanting to start something of my own. I arrived here slowly, through experience, through necessity, and through a growing understanding of what I needed in order to feel grounded and aligned.

Entrepreneurship was not a goal. It was a response.

And maybe that is the part we do not talk about enough. Not everyone sets out to build something. 

Some of us end up here because staying the same stopped being an option.

Did you ever picture yourself doing what you are doing now?

#Entrepreneuship #CareerFocus

Woke up to a weirdly satisfying thing this morning.

I’ve had a watch since July that tracks something called body battery. 

I’ve seen it end the day at five more times than I’d like to admit.

Today I woke up at one hundred. First time ever.

That’s it. That’s the post.

#WeekendVibes #QuietWins #SlowDown

READ THE QUOTE IN THE IMAGE!

Now read it again!

Who. You. TRULY. Are

NOT the version that feels easiest to explain.

NOT the version that keeps everyone comfortable.

NOT the version that fits neatly into a role you learned to play well.

Being yourself is not about being loud or visible all the time.
It is about being honest. With your values. With your limits. With what actually matters to you now, not who you were five years ago.

I have learned that the more energy you spend trying to meet expectations that are not yours, the dimmer everything feels. The work. The relationships. Even the wins.

The moments where things start to open up again usually come from a small shift. 

Saying no when you would normally say yes. Choosing alignment over approval. 

Letting yourself evolve without needing to justify it.

Your light is not something you manufacture.
It is something that shows up naturally when you stop hiding parts of yourself to fit the room.

And the right rooms do not require you to dim it in the first place.

#BeYourself #BeAuthentic #ISeeYou #Leadership #Teamwork #BetterTogether

One thing I keep coming back to in conversations lately is timing.

A lot of organizations are doing the right work. Strong ideas. Capable teams. Real demand. And still, things are not moving the way they expected.

Not because they are doing something wrong.

Because the system itself is in motion.

Calls are delayed or quietly reworked.
Programs get folded into other initiatives.
Priorities shift before anything ever reaches a public intake.

From the outside, it can feel confusing. Like you misread the landscape or missed a signal. In reality, the rules are still being rewritten.

This is where patience becomes strategic.

Not passive patience. Active patience. The kind where you keep preparing, strengthening, and paying attention while resisting the urge to force momentum.

A lot of the work right now is helping teams sit with that uncertainty without spiraling. Adjusting plans without abandoning them. Staying ready without trying to rush a system that is not ready yet.

Sometimes the smartest move is not to push harder, but to hold steady until the timing catches up to the work.

#FundingStrategy #GovernmentFunding #NonprofitLeadership
 #StrategicPlanning #SystemsThinking

Join an upcoming FREE workshops to better prepare for what's coming!  https://lnkd.in/e_KQt4jg

Stop beating yourself up!!!

Don’t think you do that?
Here’s what it actually looks like in real life:
- Replaying a conversation on the drive home.
- Second-guessing a decision you already made with the information you had.
 - Assuming a mistake says something about who you are, not just what happened.
 - Feeling like you should have known better, been faster, clearer, stronger.

Sound familiar?

We’ve been taught that self-criticism equals accountability.
That if we’re hard on ourselves, we’ll improve faster.
That pressure produces excellence.

But more often, it just produces exhaustion.

Beating yourself up usually shows up when expectations are high, outcomes are uncertain, and you’re carrying more responsibility than anyone sees.

It’s a signal.
The problem is that self-criticism rarely makes us better.
It just makes us smaller.

So how do you stop when you catch yourself doing it?

1️⃣  Name what’s actually happening.
 Instead of “I screwed this up,” try “This didn’t go the way I hoped.”
 Facts calm the nervous system. Stories inflame it.

2️⃣ Separate intent from outcome.
You can have good intentions and imperfect results at the same time.
Both can be true. Only one needs fixing.

3️⃣  Ask one forward-looking question.
Not “What’s wrong with me?”
But “What’s the next small adjustment I’d make if this came up again?”
That’s it. No spiral required.

If you’re trying to be a good person and you try to do the right thing, that's all that matters.

Growth doesn’t require punishment.

It requires honesty, rest, and the willingness to keep going.

And if you’re reading this thinking, “This sounds like me” then it probably is.
You’re not alone, and you’re not doing it wrong.
Be a little kinder to yourself today.

#BeKind #PersonalGrowth #FallingNotFailing #SelfImprovement #Leadership #Teamwork

You may not control the events that happen to you
 but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

That choice is one I see leaders, founders, and builders struggle with more than almost anything else.

Because a setback can quietly turn into a story about who you are.
A hard moment can shrink your confidence if you let it.
One decision, one missed opportunity, one tough season can start to feel permanent.

But it isn’t.

You’re allowed to be impacted without being defined.

You can acknowledge what hurt without letting it harden you.

You can learn from something without carrying it as proof that you’re not enough.

Resilience isn’t pretending things didn’t affect you.

It’s choosing not to let them take more than they already have.

If you’re in the middle of something heavy right now, this is your reminder

You’re still standing.
You’re still growing.

And YOU get to decide what this chapter means next.

#NonProfit #Leadership #StartUp #GrowthMindset #Resilience #NonProfitLeadership

I watched a video and could not stop thinking about how early we learn to edit ourselves.

Kids start out loud, curious, unapologetic. They ask strange questions. They take up space. They are fully themselves without checking the room first. And then, slowly, they learn when to quiet down. When to blend in. When to stop standing out.

What stayed with me is how familiar that feels in the professional world.

At some point, many of us learn the same lesson.

Tone it down.

Stick to the playbook.

Do not be the odd one out.

Over time, that sparkle does not disappear. It just gets managed. Contained. Brought out only when it feels safe or appropriate.

And yet, the work that actually moves things forward is almost always shaped by people who think differently. 

The ones who question defaults. 

The ones who see patterns others miss. 

The ones willing to sound a little strange before they sound right.

If you have ever felt yourself shrinking to fit a role, a title, or an industry norm, consider this a reminder. 

That part of you is still there. It has just been waiting for space.

BRING BACK THE SPARKLE!!

Step off the well worn path.

Nothing meaningful has ever been built by people who only followed the herd.

https://lnkd.in/emWvkws2 
His Youtube Channel to give him a follow: https://lnkd.in/ehb-AESd [I couldn't find the above video on the channel]

#BringBackTheSparkle #BeYourself #BeAuthentic

If you have ever hit a word limit halfway through answering a funder’s question, this is for you.

One of the hardest parts of writing proposals is answering every part of a funder’s question while staying inside a tight word or character limit.

Especially when appendices or extra attachments are not allowed.

You cannot skip components. You also cannot explain everything.

So when space is tight, here is a rule that helps.

Every sentence must do more than one job. Ideally three.

A strong sentence should:

 1 describe what you are actually going to do

 2 signal eligibility and alignment to the funder’s priorities

 3 imply milestones, outcomes, or credibility

If a sentence only does one of those things, it is a candidate for removal or compression.

This is how you stay compliant and persuasive without running out of room.

It is not about writing less.

It is about making every sentence work harder.

If you have ever hit a word limit and wondered what to cut, start here.

#ProposalDevelopment #GovernmentFunding #NonProfit #Charity

Growth is what you do with what happens.

That is how better decisions get made over time.

#WednesdayWisdom #GrowthMindset

One thing I wish more people understood about funded projects is how messy they usually are behind the scenes.

From the outside, a successful contribution agreement looks clean.

A defined plan. 
A neat timeline. 

It gives the impression that everything is stable and predictable.

That is almost NEVER the case.

Most funded projects are delivered while markets are shifting. 
Project timelines wobble. 
Plans get pulled forward or pushed back. 
Teams make trade offs in real time, often without the luxury of perfect information.

What funders are really assessing in those moments is not whether risk exists. It is how it is understood and managed.

Strong applications and delivery organizations are not the ones pretending everything is fine. 

They are the ones that show judgment.
An ability to adapt without overreacting. 
A plan that can flex while still holding together.

There is a skill in knowing what to surface and what to hold steady. 
In demonstrating resilience without amplifying uncertainty. 
In showing that the work will continue even when conditions are not ideal.

Funding success is rarely about having a flawless story.
It is about proving you can keep moving when the story changes.

#Resilience #NonProfit #GrowthMindset #StartUp #GovernmentFunding

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?

taplio

The Battle

Stephanie Wilson

Jon MacDonald

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreStephanie Wilson's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJon MacDonald's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Stephanie Wilson

Jon MacDonald

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);}Stephanie Wilson's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJon MacDonald's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreStephanie Wilson's LinkedIn Performance