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

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Haus

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Prescient AI

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel

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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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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026

https://motionapp.com/thumbstop-pulse/creative-benchmarks-2026?utm_campaign=marketing-operators&utm_medium=sponsor&utm_content=creative-benchmarks-2026&utm_source=marketing-operators-podcast

Prescient AI

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Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Rivo

https://www.rivo.io/operators

Operators Newsletter

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