“We used to try to win every day. Now we’re willing to sacrifice entire months.”

What does it mean to optimize ad spend when there’s no universal answer?

Michael Ting (GM of DTC, JAXXON) joins Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) to challenge one of the most common assumptions in ecommerce email marketing and paid media: that there is a single optimized ad spend. There isn’t. The better question is what you’re trying to achieve and over what time horizon.

Michael walks through how JAXXON uses cost per email signup to make confident budget decisions, spending aggressively into slow seasons and monetizing that list when it matters most. The conversation also covers decision quality frameworks, doubling AB testing velocity, and how daily performance reporting builds operator instinct over time.

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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

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

“The digital deliverables have outpaced production company knowledge.”

How do you build a repeatable content creation process without hiring a full agency?

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) break down how they approach content production across every budget level; ranging from $50k brand shoot days to $100 iPhone clips that outperform everything else in the ad account.

The episode covers the full content production stack: multi-team shoot briefing, on-set creative strategy, and the in-house studio advantage. The trio also gets into clipping, AI-generated UGC, and whether dead internet theory is already shaping how products go viral.

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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

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

“We’re not hiring less because of AI. We just expect each hire to be more productive.”

Is AI shrinking your marketing team, or just changing who belongs on it?

Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) get into how two of the most operator-driven brands in ecommerce are rethinking their AI marketing team structure heading into the second half of 2026.

They cover which roles are compressing, which are expanding, and what it actually looks like to build a leaner growth team that outputs more. Cody breaks down the CRO program he runs with one person that used to require six. Connor explains why HexClad hired more people after building an AI-powered seeding system, not fewer. And both share how they think about headcount requests now, and what they make teams prove before saying yes.

Powered By

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

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/