Marketing Operators

“There’s so much that I took for granted. It’s such a different playbook.”
What happens when two operators who’ve helped build nine-figure brands start again at zero? Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (advisor and former CEO, Jones Road) compare notes on two new launches: Ridge’s Gut Culture and Cody’s Winks.
They get into six hard lessons from the early days.
(1) Building with a lean team. (2) Earning credibility when nobody knows the brand. (3) Finding a message that gets clicks. (4) Testing offers before the data is conclusive. (5) Making subscription economics work. (6) Dealing with high ad costs. Cody shares what’s happening at Winks just weeks after launch; Connor explains what Ridge learned from six months of building Gut Culture.
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Haus 
https://www.haus.io/operators 
NeonPixel 
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Operators Portal 
https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard
Operators Newsletter 
https://9operators.com/

Why do experienced operators still overcorrect on average order value? 
Varun Kundra (Co-founder, Aftersell by Rokt) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road) to break down the pricing missteps that quietly cost real revenue and the metric worth watching instead. 
The hosts compare years of pricing tests at Ridge and Jones Road. They cover three ways to bundle for more revenue per order. Varun explains why image heavy upsells beat plain offers, plus a subscription upgrade converting at 20% to 30%. Connor and Varun wrap with a teardown of Winks, the brand behind Operators Build. 
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Aftersell 
https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 
Haus 
https://www.haus.io/operators 
Operators Portal 
https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 
Operators Newsletter 
https://9operators.com/

“We just had a hundred thousand people buy in the last 60 days.” 
What does the future of retention marketing actually look like by 2027? 
Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) unpack what Postscript’s AI memories mean for retention marketing’s future. They map out a 2027 playbook built on personalized experiences, even as TikTok Shop’s creator economy hits a breaking point. 
Postscript is building unified profiles instead of fragmented SMS data. That shift promises holdout testing and customer lifetime value tracking. RCS already shows early lift in live tests. Meanwhile TikTok Shop’s incentive structure is pushing affiliates toward burnout. 
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Aftersell 
https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 
Haus 
https://www.haus.io/operators 
Operators Portal 
https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 
Operators Newsletter 
https://9operators.com/

“Don’t let perfect measurement get in the way of good marketing” 
How do Ridge, HexClad and Jones Road each structure Black Friday, Cyber offers differently? 
Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) share how holiday marketing campaigns pull their ecommerce brands in completely different directions. 
Shark Ninja becomes the opening case study, spending big on creator activations without measuring returns. The hosts counter with their own tactics, mixing steep weekend deal drops with full brand rebuilds between sales. The riskiest move this season turns out to be a discount that costs a brand its most loyal customers. Cody dives into Winks, a fresh sleep brand he and four other 9-figure executives are building from the ground up, and introduces Operators Build, the show capturing the entire journey from scratch.
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Haus 
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Proppel 
https://www.weareproppel.com/operators 
Aftersell 
https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 
Operators Portal 
https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 
Operators Newsletter 
https://9operators.com/ 
Operators Build 
https://9ops.co/ops-build-ytplaylist
Winks 
https://getwinks.com/

“It is so incredibly easy to not drive incremental results the week of Black Friday.”
Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) share how they are approaching Q4 planning.
Before scaling Black Friday, Cyber Monday spend, both HexClad and Ridge test incrementality with real control groups. That same discipline shapes their AMER vs CAC debate, since neither wants to scale spend that isn’t truly incremental. Also, AG1’s new gummy launch steps up, and so does its cannibalization risk. 
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Proppel 
https://9ops.co/weareproppel 
Operators Newsletter 
https://9operators.com/