“We weren’t doing a good job showing the value.”

Where does a new brand find trust when it can’t claim a bestseller like HexClad?

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) compare a scaled HexClad funnel with one from the weeks-old Winks. Step by step, they trace how each one builds trust across ads, landers, offers, and upsells.

Winks has a premium product, yet customers couldn’t see why it was worth the price. HexClad earns that trust before the click, with Japanese creators and a bestseller hook. The weeks-old brand has to build the same trust with a fraction of the proof.

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“Two of our winners have entered for free. They never purchased anything from us.”

How did Ridge turn a 6-week Tony Hawk partnership into an 8-figure sweepstakes lift?

Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) break down how sweepstakes campaigns became eight-figure growth engines for their brands. They cover celebrity deal structures, creative production, and revenue lift across every category.

Tony Hawk’s deal doubled Ridge’s TV response rates and pushed partner-page ads to 40% of Meta spend. HexClad gets the same proof differently, running year-over-year holdouts and entry tiers that reward bigger purchases. Both track how sweepstakes shoppers scatter into unexpected categories, forcing a rethink of acquisition strategy.

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“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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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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“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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“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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“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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What changes when a single marketer creates as much value as an entire department?

Reza Khadjavi (Founder & CEO, Motion) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road) to explain why he built Runneth, an AI agent meant to eventually replace Motion’s own product. He walks through the context engineering behind that shift and what it means for marketers.

Motion scrapped its own revenue targets right after a record quarter, betting the whole company on AI agents. Reza explains how markdown files and organized repositories turn those agents into something closer to a new hire. His advice: skip the Mac Mini, move to the cloud, and put close to 10% of payroll behind AI.

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