Marketing Operators

Can you build a sports brand by saying no to most customers?  

Matty Martin (Head of Marketing, Cadence) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad), to break down what it takes to scale one of the fastest-growing sports hydration brands from scratch. Matty shares how he went from setting up the Shopify site himself to leading a full marketing team; all while sending every single email the company puts out.  

They dig into why Cadence stays focused on the athlete and resists chasing the hangover angle, how three redesigns in one year tripled sales at GNC, and the free-gift mechanic that pushed their subscription rate from 30% to 75%. Matty also walks through the brand’s expansion into Target and Walmart, its approach to omnichannel measurement, and why Candence’s athlete partnerships drive retail credibility as much as awareness.  

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Richpanel

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Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Rivo

https://www.rivo.io/operators

Prescient AI 

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

What if the most powerful customer insight tool in ecommerce is hiding inside your SMS program?

Mike Manheimer (Chief Customer Officer, Postscript) joins hosts Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) to dig into how brands are getting more out of their SMS programs. They cover what most brands are doing wrong about messaging frequency, how conversational commerce is reshaping the acquisition funnel, and why the data from texts may be the most valuable, untapped signal in right now.  

The conversation moves from holdout testing and subscriber LTV benchmarks to Postscript’s AI product, Shopper, and the surprisingly specific objections that are quietly blocking purchases. It also covers what RCS means for the future of mobile messaging, why org structure shapes SMS performance more than most brands realize, and the single thing a five-to-ten-million-dollar brand should do first to unlock more from the channel.  

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Rivo

https://www.rivo.io/operators

Prescient AI 

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

“If you’re not staying unhinged, you’re not building a memorable brand.”

What happens when a two-time Emmy-winning TV anchor walks away from the newsroom to help build one of the most talked-about baby formula brands in the country? 

Kim Chappell (Chief Brand Officer at Bobbie) sits down with Cody Plofker (CEO at Jones Road Beauty) and Connor MacDonald (CMO at Ridge) to explore what it means to build a purpose-driven brand in a highly regulated, deeply emotional category. Kim shares how a journalism career shaped her instinct for storytelling, why trust is her team’s most important metric, and how Cardi B landed in Bobbie’s inbox because she was already a customer.  

From navigating the 2022 national formula shortage — and the $300M in revenue Bobbie deliberately walked away from — to launching the first breastfeeding billboard in Times Square with Molly Baz, Kim breaks down how bold creative decisions get made inside a fast-moving startup. She also digs into Bobbie’s partnership philosophy, the brand values that guide every campaign, and why celebrating customer cancellations has become one of their most powerful retention moves.  

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Rivo

https://www.rivo.io/operators 

Prescient AI 

https://www.prescientai.com/operators 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5 

Operators Newsletter 

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Are you exhausting your audience or just exhausting your strategy?

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) dig into the mechanics of reaching net-new audiences on Meta, breaking down which lever moves the needle most: creative diversity, signal engineering, or landing page strategy. They also revisit a Ridge case study showing how optimizing for the wrong purchase event quietly cannibalized an entire product category’s growth.  

The conversation shifts to building a DTC marketing function from scratch, what the first senior hire should look like at a $30M consumable brand with deep retail roots, what to pay them, and how to think about the lifecycle marketing role that follows. They close on a standout YouTube incrementality test result where Amazon captured more than half the revenue lift, and what that pattern reveals about upper-funnel channels and where customers actually convert.

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Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators

Prescient AI 

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/

Are you exhausting your audience, or just exhausting your strategy?

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) dig into the mechanics of reaching net-new audiences on Meta, breaking down which lever moves the needle most: creative diversity, signal engineering, or landing page strategy. They also revisit a Ridge case study showing how optimizing for the wrong purchase event quietly cannibalized an entire product category’s growth.

The conversation shifts to building a DTC marketing function from scratch, what the first senior hire should look like at a $30M consumable brand with deep retail roots, what to pay them, and how to think about the lifecycle marketing role that follows. They close on a standout YouTube incrementality test result where Amazon captured more than half the revenue lift, and what that pattern reveals about upper-funnel channels and where customers actually convert.

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026  

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Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Prescient AI 

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

This episode is brought to you by AppLovin. Get access to the Operators channel expansion playbook, online masterclass, and up to $5k in ad credits here:

https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth 

Or, skip the waitlist and launch your AppLovin ads today with our Operators-exclusive link: https://axon.ai/en/9operators 

“Growth can actually kill a business that’s not prepared for it.” 

Bryan Cano (fmr. Head of Marketing, True Classic) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) for a conversation that spans the full arc of his career. Bryan breaks down the stair-stepping method for scaling without blowing up operations, what it looks like to rebuild a marketing org ahead of Black Friday, and how True Classic became one of the earliest brands to scale AppLovin to $100K per day in spend. 

Still an advisor to True Classic, Bryan also shares what he’s building next — an AI-first brand consolidator with a founding team he describes as an executive AI stack + a first product just weeks away. 

It’s a MOps Hotline special episode! Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) answer your most pressing questions. Especially how to get started. Connor MacDonald shares what he’s learning in real time from launching a new supplement company from scratch — no Ridge halo, no shortcuts.

The trio breaks down why organic distribution has become the non-negotiable foundation before touching paid, and how to think about scaling a Meta account from $500 a day to $1,000 and beyond. They also dig into the evolution from demand capture to demand creation, how to read the signals in your ad account, and why onsite CRO (conversion rate optimization) might be the most underrated lever in your whole growth stack.

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Prescient AI 

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Rivo

https://www.rivo.io/operators

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

What if the reason your channel expansion isn’t working has nothing to do with the channel?

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) break down what drives channel expansion decisions. They use the David Protein bar lawsuit as a jumping-off point to discuss bold brand marketing and the frameworks behind how DTC brands scale beyond Meta.

The hosts dig into why thinking about customers acquired — not revenue generated — changes how you sequence channel investment. They debate the biggest mistakes they’ve each made with channel timing and what they’d do differently if they were launching a brand today. The conversation gets specific about TikTok Shop affiliate structures, how organic content creation seeds better paid performance, and why baseball on linear TV is offering CPMs that rival platforms can’t touch right now.

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Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators

Prescient AI 

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/

“The market will tell you your hero — you can’t decide it.”

How do you build a brand after you've seen the inside of 30 others?

Connor Rolain and Cody Plofker sit down with Ari Murray, Chief Digital Officer at Salt & Stone, who spent four and a half years as Chief Growth Officer at Sharma Brands before going in-house. They dig into what it takes to lead growth for a single brand after years of running it for dozens at once.

You’ll learn when to hire an agency versus build in-house, and why the answer changes as a brand matures. Ari shares how Salt & Stone approaches acquisition without discounting, why discovery sets are central to their DTC funnel, and how she thinks about first-order AOV in a scent-driven category where customers can't smell the product before they buy. 

They also discuss session growth as a daily obsession, the real cost of dabbling in new channels without enough commitment, and why the line between brand and performance is too often drawn in the wrong place. 

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Aftersell https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Rivo

https://www.rivo.io/operators

Prescient AI https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel https://9ops.co/richpanel

Operators Newsletter https://9operators.com/

Are you making decisions based on data that proves causality or just correlation?

Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad), Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) dig into what it means to build a truly incrementality-first marketing organization.

They break down how to string together consecutive channel tests — using each result to build the next hypothesis rather than testing in isolation. They share real examples from their own accounts, including how a 20% budget shift to brand video drove a 40% lift in incremental results, why TikTok Shop is proving to reach a new audience for HexClad, and how Jones Road diagnosed and rebuilt a struggling Meta account from first principles.

The conversation also tackles the nuance of measuring upper-funnel channels like CTV and YouTube, when directional reads are enough, and how to build a culture where your team learns to think incrementally without being told to.

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026

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Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Prescient AI 

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/