Setting 2026 Goals, Incrementality Lessons from BFCM and Amazon Brand Bidding

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Marketing Operators – Ep. 91

Title: Setting 2026 Goals, Incrementality Lessons from BFCM and Amazon Brand Bidding
Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker
Date: December 23, 2025

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Overview

This episode dives deep into year-end and forward-looking planning for high-growth brands, with candid discussions around 2026 goal-setting frameworks, key post-BFCM incrementality lessons, the ongoing complexities of brand bidding (especially on Amazon), and emergent tools like Shopify Sidekick. The hosts share practical, sometimes granular, approaches to org design, testing, marketing measurement, and adapting to the AI-infused ecosystem, all in the context of the operator’s seat at scaling DTC businesses.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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Shopify Winter Editions & Sidekick’s Evolving Role

Discussion Begins: [00:00] | In-depth Product Analysis at [06:43]

• Shopify Sidekick is transforming from a data assistant (“data democratization”) into a full-featured, proactive, chat-driven agent that empowers non-technical users throughout Shopify’s admin.
• The democratization of data makes previously complex, technical reporting and analytics more accessible to every operator.
• Notably, AI-driven analytics and gen AI creative features are being rapidly built out, with integrations for workflow automation, creative generation, and even AB/theme testing now natively within Shopify.

Quotes:

• “There's too much data in today's digital marketing ecosystem to the point where it kind of paralyzes a lot of marketers. ... Sidekick is democratizing data and the ability to pull the information you want and then action it quickly.”
  — Connor MacDonald, [07:50]
• “Sidekick clearly just being like the chat interface to like all the tasks you need to do as a, as a… SMB Ecomm brand. But I just, I was surprised at how powerful they're making it.”
  — Connor Rolain, [10:07]

Tactical Perspective

• Used Sidekick for cohort analysis, quick campaign reporting, and recurring team training.
• Tools like Motion’s AI Tagging for creative analysis are reducing the manual burden of reporting ([05:24]).

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Incrementality Lessons from BFCM – Real-World Testing

Discussion Begins: [20:36]

• Ridge ran a scaled, geographically split Facebook (Meta) ad spend test during BFCM to determine true incrementality of holiday spend.
• Key Learning: Scaling up ad spend by 50% over BAU (business as usual) was clearly profitable and incremental; scaling by 100% produced no profitable incremental lift, with high confidence intervals.
• Takeaway: Critical to not over-scale purely based on seasonal demand. There’s a sweet spot where incremental spend becomes unprofitable—even during the highest-earning periods.

Quotes:

• “It's really easy to scale up ad spend, still have a great mer, but that additional ad spend actually didn't drive any incremental profit.”
  — Connor Rolain, [20:56]
• “You found that sweet spot… next year you can use to flight your budget. …We're going to scale up 50% from the prior period headed into this peak moment. Not 100%.”
  — Connor MacDonald, [22:52]
• “I respect the confidence to run it during that week… because I think I've always felt like, hey, we don't want to miss out on opportunities or, like, it's not the time. So I think that's awesome and great.”
  — Cody Plofker, [23:39]

Postmortem & Generalizing Learnings

• Similar tests run on other brands and geographies showed reproducible results ([25:45]).
• Emphasis on retesting, conservative scaling, and not generalizing from a single product/category.

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Amazon Brand Bidding – A Costly Competitive Reality

Discussion Begins: [31:13]

• Amazon increasingly bids on brand terms—sometimes outbidding actual brands during BFCM and on generic queries, with aggressive promotions outpacing brands' own sales.
• This often shifts sales volume from DTC to Amazon, distorting year-over-year results and misaligning internal forecasts.

Quotes:

• “Amazon was performing significantly above their original forecast and goals … Amazon had more aggressive promo messaging in those search ads … than what the brand was running for their Black Friday sale.”
  — Connor Rolain, [31:13]
• “Amazon was outbidding us on our own branded terms… We made a fuss about it to our Amazon reps … they are doing it way less now.”
  — Connor MacDonald, [33:29]

Strategies & Adjustments

• Some brands push back with their Amazon reps for relief.
• Others shift spend and increase vigilance on both on- and off-Amazon brand terms.
• Growth teams pair search analysis with incrementality testing across platforms to guide allocation.

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Brand Search Incrementality: Is Bidding on Your Own Brand Really Worth It?

Discussion: [26:44], [28:44]

• Multiple tests showed almost no incrementality in brand search campaigns, even during heavy promo periods:
  • Shutting off branded paid search saw 66% of paid brand search traffic move to organic with “no discernible revenue impact.”
  • Heavy monitoring recommended during promos, but otherwise, often unprofitable.

Quote:

• “Almost no incrementality. Even during the same… It was like a $700 cost per new. And then like even, even total was like, you know, it's like tiny bit incremental, but like, barely.”
  — Cody Plofker, [28:24]

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2026 (and Beyond) Planning: Frameworks, Org Design, and Execution

Discussion Begins: [35:57] (especially deep dive at [49:02])

Annual Planning Approaches

• Hybrid financial, strategic, and org plan:
  • Projections by channel, cohort, new/repeat, inventory.
  • “14 big rocks”/cornerstones/objectives with responsible owners.
• Strong alignment between executive vision and functional heads, but practical annual plans are recast quarterly based on learnings and new data.
• The process is fluid—long-term goals (2–3 year timelines) are shaped by near-term tactical needs and sometimes decided months ahead of “calendar” deadlines.

Quotes:

• “I got essentially 14 big rocks, 14 things that we're really going to focus on and change. Org plan. Here's who we're going to need to do it… Then financial plan. Then it goes into a budget for us. It's like, all right, if this goes successful, here's the capital investment.”
  — Cody Plofker, [36:15]
• “You need to have your hiring plans dialed in, at least having some semblance of what your budget is… 2025 recapping done… really understand what the data points say about your business.”
  — Connor MacDonald, [40:37]

Strategic Goal-Setting Tools

• Pyramid of Clarity (from Asana): Mission > Strategic Filters > Objectives > Initiatives ([49:02]).
• Objectives often intentionally span multiple teams/channels, building cross-functional accountability.
• Owners for each “big rock”; project managers supplement to run cross-functional cadences.

Quotes:

• “I think the best objectives actually do span multiple channels... You’re assigning per channel and now you have like really strong tactics that ladder into this overarching objective that spills into… different channels.”
  — Connor MacDonald, [62:48]
• “We have, you know, we use after sale in our, in our post purchase upsell… My VP Commerce is like, hey, you are tasked with finding opportunities to expand margin. Here’s five ideas. The main one here is let’s make more profit off current dollars.”
  — Connor Rolain, [53:11]

Real-World “Big Rocks” Examples

• Become customer obsessed: Establish customer advisory panels, systematic feedback via Facebook groups and surveys ([57:17]).
• Become creator focused: Building internal studios, hiring a chief creator officer, TikTok shop rollout, expanding affiliates, integrating creators in organic & paid.
• Aggressively scale owned retail: Opening 15+ physical stores.
• Margin expansion: Testing shipping thresholds, price testing bundles, post-purchase upsell optimization.
• Organizational structure: Assigning KPIs and responsibilities, with project management paired to C-suite or VP “owners.”

Quotes:

• “If you're making all your decisions based on customer feedback, it's going to be hard to lose… Same thing with creators—if you're just working with a high volume of creators and really infusing them into your DNA, you're going to be better off.”
  — Cody Plofker, [57:17]
• “That's what builds our finance and then per each channel… Ecom, I want to test 10 CRO things a month or rebuild our quiz… the supporting things that ladder up into the big rocks but sometimes are tangential.”
  — Cody Plofker, [57:53]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Sidekick is democratizing data… empowering non technical people to be really good at data.”
  — Connor MacDonald, [07:50]
• “I don't think these AI data things are perfect… there is some hallucination. You just gotta really know your numbers and validate it.”
  — Cody Plofker, [11:07]
• “Almost no incrementality. Even during the same… It was like a $700 cost per new. ...Do not let me run another brand [search test].”
  — Cody Plofker, [28:24]
• “Amazon had more aggressive promo messaging in those search ads… higher than the brand was running for their Black Friday sale.”
  — Connor Rolain, [31:13]
• “We have like a constellation of stars that you're trying to work with. …That's what this is. Like we've got two that we can kind of use to guide ourselves…”
  — Connor Rolain, [26:27]
• “We have our mission, our strategy filters (e.g., only plant seeds that can grow into giants), then objectives, and then you layer your initiatives underneath.”
  — Connor MacDonald, [49:02]
• “The process is fluid… annual plans are recast quarterly based on learnings.”
  — Connor Rolain, [48:07]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Shopify Sidekick, Data Democratization: [00:00], [06:43]
• AI Tagging & Creative Analytics: [05:24]
• Incrementality Testing BFCM: [20:36]
• Brand Search Incrementality Lessons: [26:44], [28:44]
• Amazon Brand Bidding Dynamics: [31:13], [33:29]
• 2026 Planning, Org Design, Big Rocks: [35:57], [49:02], [56:46]
• Cross-Functional Execution & Project Management: [64:46]

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Tone & Style

Candid, in-the-trenches operator conversation. Heavy on real-world examples, testing frameworks, and decision criteria. The hosts are direct, humorous (with recurring in-jokes about “conjoined triangles of success” and food rating debates), and focused on actionable processes.

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Conclusion

This episode provides a masterclass in DTC operator decision-making—balancing rapid experimentation (incrementality tests, brand bidding analysis) with long-view strategic planning (“big rocks,” Pyramid of Clarity, cross-org cadence). It’s a transparent view into how some of the industry’s top operators and growth leaders are using data, AI, and rigorous frameworks to prioritize for growth, all while acknowledging the unpredictable realities of e-commerce.

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Transcript

[A]

Toby just tweeted about it. Shopify released their winter editions and there seems to be a huge focus on Sidekick, which I think is interesting. What's your current take on Shopify Sidekick in the Shopify ecosystem?

[B]

I think that the term I keep using is like data democratization. It's like that's what Sidekick is doing. I actually think that there's too much data in today's digital marketing ecosystem to the point where I think it kind of paralyzes a lot of marketers.

[A]

Anybody else noticing that Amazon is bidding more aggressively on brand terms than any pattern?

[B]

Yeah, this is not a problem for us this year, but in the last couple of years it's. It was a huge problem, like Amazon was outbidding us on our own branded terms.

[A]

What would you say is the single most important thing for a CMO or growth lead to do before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st?

[C]

I got essentially 14 big rocks, 14 things that we're really going to focus on and change Org plan. Here's who we're going to need to do it. Here's new roles we're going to need, here's changes we're going to need, and then financial plan. Then it goes into a budget for us. It's like, all right, if this goes successful, here's the capital investment.

[A]

All right, we are back. Episode 91 of Marketing Operators. We've got a bunch to talk about.

[C]

I want to talk.

[A]

I have a house test. I want to talk through Amazon bidding. I was thinking we could maybe hit. Shopify just released their winter editions this morning. So I'd love to get your guys read on that. Maybe we get into some 2026 planning. The agenda was a little bit more difficult because typically I just steal whatever Cody's talking about on Twitter, but all he's been saying is how much he's enjoyed Mexico City. So, Cody, glad to have you back. I need you tweeting about more ecom content for future for the sake of the pot.

[C]

Sorry to let you guys down. I'm back, though. Back and focused.

[A]

What was your final take on Michelin star restaurants and in Mexico City versus street tacos?

[C]

Dude, I'm. I'm just such a child. I'm just so. I can't fake it anymore. Like, my wife was like, so happy going to these, like, fancy ones and it's just like, kills me inside. And I, like, try not to ruin her experience, but I'm just like. It's just like so average. Like, we had one where it was like a $500 dinner. She loved it. Probably nine out of ten. For me, it was like a three out of ten. The next day, both of us. Tacos. Three tacos, $10 total. It was like a nine out of ten. Like, I just couldn't stop smiling. I just love those, like, hole in the walls. Like, that's for me. I'm just. But I'm just. I just. I have a very, I guess, uncultured palette is what someone said on Twitter.

[B]

Cody, I saw you went to. I saw you went to Contramar. I went to Contramar when I was there last. Last New Year's, and it was pretty. Pretty unreal. Did you have a good experience?

[C]

So it was actually great. I really liked it. But I don't eat any seafood, so I got. I got cheese quesadillas. They were pretty damn good cheese quesadillas.

[A]

Like a big glass of milk or something.

[C]

Yeah, right. Like, yeah. I didn't take my kids on this trip, but if I did, that's probably what my daughter would have gotten.

[B]

That is so funny. I'm pretty sure they're, like, a Michelin star. Maybe they're not Michelin star. They're like. They're pretty. I think they're pretty well known.

[C]

Did you have that dessert? That, like, strawberry cake thing?

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

It was. It was outstanding.

[B]

I just remember we were trying to book a reservation, and, like, we were just walking through the neighborhood, and we're like, all right, let's just walk by and see what's going on. And we walked up and, yeah, just come take a seat. You're good. And it was like three of us, and we just sat right down. It was awesome.

[C]

Yeah. Highly recommend it. That was a bunch of people. It's like, you have to go to.

[B]

This place that's in. Dude, the whole, like, Roma Norte neighborhood is so cool. It's so, like, laid back, calm, and it's so built for digital nomads. Like, all these little apartments on the second level of these buildings. Every single cafe there is, like, built for a digital nomad working from their computer. Like, plenty of space. Like, enough of a buzz where you're not annoying people if you're, like, on phone calls. It's like, it's a digital nomads dream over over in that neighborhood.

[C]

It seems like it. No, it seems like it's beautiful architecture. One. One last thing. I'm sure people don't want to hear me talk about this all day, but, like, I post on my Instagram stories, like, all the. All the tacos and ratings. And I had people be like, dude, like, give me, give me a list. Like, I'm going in a few months. I need this. I'm like, dude, this is a street taco. This is not like a. A restaurant or like a vendor. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know where I am.

[A]

Yeah, just in the cross streets.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Just look around. You'll find it.

[A]

Well, sweet. Before we jump into it, I'd like to thank our sponsors, Motion, Rich Panel, Prescient Aftercell and House.

[C]

Hey, Connor. I don't know if you know this, but there's a lot of talk about creative diversity right now on all platforms. We've been talking about it a lot. Andromeda, I don't know if you heard about that. It's apparently a. A Greek legend, a Greek myth, but I believe it is something that Meta has done that. Obviously. Obviously. I'm kidding. But everybody's talking about creative diversity. Everybody's talking about Andromeda and how the game has changed. We are all focused on it. I think there's not a D2C who does not know it at this point and how important it is. And being able to test, measure, do creative diversity, get a high volume of diverse assets is really the name of the game. And I'm super excited because Motion has just rolled out AI tagging, which helps to simplify it as our volumes go in. Diversity is going up. We have more different types of styles. I know you're a big name and convention guy. I know that you think they're the heart and soul of DDC brand. But another casualty of the AI era, Motion now has AI tagging, which simplifies all of your reporting. Automatically tag stuff just makes it easier to splice data. I know you were just saying. Actually you sent it to your team. I sent it to my team. What are your thoughts on AI tagging so far?

[A]

Yeah, no, totally. And Motion's premier sponsor, we're supposed to say nice things, but legitimately, as soon as I got the video from them, because we got early access, sent it right to my team. I'm like, this is. This is the way to go. It makes the comparative analytics just so much simpler. I was just looking at it this morning. Bucketing between ugc, lifestyle photo with text, product photo with text, all these different breakdowns that we used to have to labor over to tag and automate and then. And then break down the reports by those dimensions. It's all kind of working out of the box. So you Got it. Totally right. We were talking about creative diversity all the time. Producing that, I think is a big challenge for brands right now. Analyzing that, just as big of an issue. And AI's motions AI tagging system is a great solution for it. So if you want to check it out, go to motion app.com and let them know that the marketing operator sent you. So I didn't. I didn't put this on the agenda until about 20 minutes ago because Toby just tweeted about it. But Shopify released their winter editions, the Rene Issance. I don't know the. I don't know the proper pronunciation of that. Renaissance with AI in the middle. And there seems to be a huge focus on Sidekick, which I think is interesting because, Connor, you were just talking about that yesterday. Um, are you. What's your current take on Shopify Sidekick in the. In the Shopify ecosystem?

[B]

Wait, did. So they just announced it? Because I. It's been out for a while, but they just. Okay, so they're just, like, giving it its official moment under the sun.

[A]

Well, what they're doing here, I can even share. Share my screen a little bit because the. They do such a fantastic job with these launches.

[C]

Have they released ever, like, their. Have they released on their site yet, like, all the updates? Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So, like, this is what we're looking at here. And it's just. It's so. It's so we're looking at this, like, Renaissance painting, but they got like, skateboards and there's this like, pink color pop that they're like, kind of branding. And then what. I mean, Connor is like, Sidekick's been out for a while. It's been announced, but there's a whole section here of it getting even better. So, like, it says it will be providing insights proactively, will be a big one that you can get Sidekick to build custom apps for you. There's a lot of developer tools being released around it. So it's just really interesting to see how prominent of a role Sidekick will play in the Shopify ecosystem. And I just wanted to hear your quick take on how you guys have been using it recently. I mean, this. This all points to it getting even better and more powerful over time.

[B]

Yeah, well, I. I keep, like, I forget who put this out there yesterday, and someone said, I, like, responded to it or co. Tweeted and someone responded to me and said more data is good. I actually, I don't necessarily agree with that. I think. I actually think that there's too much data in today's digital marketing Ecosystem to the point where I think it kind of paralyzes a lot of marketers and in reality you need to know like the, the handful of KPIs to track and try to optimize against. I think that the, the term I keep using is like data democratization. It's like that's what Sidekick is doing. It's the same thing that Shopify did for and Facebook ads did for entrepreneurs. You know, however long ago. Like they made it, they get, they made it accessible for anyone to like launch a brand and a product and see if it could like perform in the market. I think it's the same thing here. Like this is just empowering non technical people to be really good at data. So like I use it a good amount. Like one of the most recent examples as we just launched our cocktail shaker, so I was doing like text to data queries where I was saying asking like all right, how many total products have we have? We sold what's the split on repeat versus returning and then I had it add in like a UTM layer as well so I could see what the first, first repeat split was and then also like what the breakdown was for all of our marketing channels. And then I taken that and I'll use it in our like follow up performance report on the cocktail shaker. So I know my team, I've also been like training up some of the hexclad team on it and like our ops team's using it. A lot of people are using it now. So it's just, I think it's democratizing data and the ability to pull the information you want and then action it quickly. Whereas prior to Sidekick or really any of these data tools that are now adding text to like data query like LLMs, you just had to know how to navigate the platforms and like set up the reports, which is not, I mean you just need like, like anything. If you don't know how to do it, you don't know how to do it. So you don't even know how to necessarily do that anymore. Which I think is really exciting because it's just making anyone able to be at least like a decent enough data analyst to make good decisions and to pull the KPIs that are indicative of the thing you're trying to do. So I, it, it's making me excited because I think it's just going to empower a lot of people totally.

[A]

And I guess what I'm kind of, maybe it's obvious in hindsight, but what I was surprised by looking at it is like what you're describing is totally true. The democratization of data and building reports and then where it seems like it's going, it's just like democratizing everything you can do within the admin will just be a chat interface. Like they have examples here where it's, you know, analyze how my discount codes are actually performing and if I'm leaving money on the table, like I guess that's a form of reporting. But this is create social media content to promote my top selling product. So it's like it has access to all your products. There's some images in there, whether they're you know, studio shots or lifestyle images. So like it can begin producing stuff for you. So Sidekick clearly just being like the chat interface to like all the tasks you need to do as a, as a, you know, it's probably one of those things where it's best for like small and medium sized E Comm brands. But I just, I was surprised at how powerful they're making it.

[B]

Yeah, with the E Comm brand is going to become even more practical. Like the Create model is, is going to become even more practical with a, with a tool like this.

[C]

Well, that's. Yeah. By the way, Connor, I did tweet about Sidekick. Black Friday probably got lost in the shuffle. I just want you to know I was doing my job. You missed that one. I'm fair. No, I think it's awesome. So like right now our data analyst is out on, on, on pat leave. So it's like stuff I would go to him for. It's just you just jam away. And Sidekick like built, you know, even just like built analytics dashboards. Right. Where you can kind of like get a little bit more customized in Shopify and like drag and drop and built like build like a slicer report easier. I wish. So we use for our data warehouse, for our BI tool, we use Power BI because it's I guess cheap. It's so bad. Like I think these Shopify analytics is actually so good. I'm like really impressed. It just doesn't have like all of our data in there. It's not like a warehouse. So it doesn't have like spend data. I like so badly. Wish they would have that. I know like when Harley was on like limited supply a bunch of, you know, years back, he was like, hey, like we're not necessarily building for you guys. Like we're building for like, you know, the, the smaller brands. But that would be a wish. I guess I just have to find a BI tool that like is as good as that. But no, I think Shopify is goaded. The only thing that I think you have to be careful about with any of these AI data things is like there is some hallucination. So you just gotta really know your numbers and validate it. But yeah, it seems like it's going from like a, an analyst tool, like a data tool. I feel like it's like that's number one. It seems like with what you're saying it's like then getting a little bit more insights or proactive and then the third layer is more of like a full agent where it seems like I want to dive into these updates. Like there's actually some, some image, you know, some gen AI, some even code code stuff which is, which is very cool because I had that, I had that idea. Like, I don't know about you guys. Like I don't think we're really, our dev teams when we work with an agency are like using AI that much in terms of like cursor and everything. But I had this idea and I told Drew from Intelligence, I'm like, I wish I could just go set up a test 10 intelligence and just be like, just, just you know, use an AI to be like make ad review stars here, hide them and like they're doing a little bit. But it seems like Shopify is like going in this direction.

[A]

Yeah, Shopify rolled that out. I don't know which section it's online, but like native AB testing in the theme which is also kind of crazy, also great for like small and medium sized businesses which I think it's been hard to. We do, we do intelligence tests where we are doing theme tests. So we have a, we have two GitHub instances and then we're loading both those in and run a test via Intelligence. It's like, it's really just not that it's not a very approachable method for someone who's doing $2 million a year. And it does feel like native A B testing is like a focus for Shopify as well, which it just seems cool. I was super stoked on all these updates.

[C]

Yeah, I think it's cool. And I think like I remember when like Shopify rolled out native subscriptions, right? Everyone's like, oh, this is going to kill all the apps. Like I don't think that's their intention and I think it's like you said, it's trying to make it more accessible for like smaller, smaller brands. But like for brands that need more sophistication, there's going to always Be, you know, that's obviously also a huge revenue source for Shopify. So they can't really kill them.

[A]

Okay, the last one I just want to hit quickly from this update because we just talked about it a couple weeks ago is talked about Shopify Collective and the popularization of selling other brands products on your Shopify store. We just came out with a dad Gang collab.

[C]

I saw that. That's awesome.

[A]

So cool.

[B]

Which is.

[A]

Yeah, so, so we have a. We have a dad Gang branded wallet on ridge.com that they're able to sell on dad gang.com I think via Shopify Collective. So just super simple, you can place the order on dad gang.com that order gets routed back to our normal fulfillment. We're able to fulfill that order and we're able to like increase the surface area with, with which we sell stuff like no operational complexity. And they seem to be leaning into that heavy in two ways. So one is just Shopify Product Network, which is like maybe a slight rebranding of it. I'm not sure. And then the other thing I thought was interesting was shop campaigns. It seems tied to like shop campaigns. This feels like a, almost like an extension of the Shop app. The advertising tools that they're building out, they're going to increase the surface area with which you can, you know, get your products across the web. And then there might even be like bidding or rewards or you know, you're effectively paying a CPA for something like the product network. And I think that's a super exciting thing largely for smaller brands. Although, you know, Ridge is an example of implementing it just this past week with that game.

[B]

I'm excited to click around in here and see all the. I love how they've done this. First off, the parallax is just so cool. Um, so shout out on the good ux.

[A]

It's so sick.

[B]

It's awesome. Yeah.

[C]

But yeah, go ahead.

[B]

I'm gonna, I'm gonna like come through all these different like prompts they have and just plug them into our Shopify store and kind of see what kind of output it can. It can give. Cause I'm looking now. I like build an effective email marketing campaign. Help me optimize my ad spend by analyzing channel performance.

[C]

This one is. I'm just going through the page. Shopify Sim Jim app. Simulate shopper behavior with AI agents that use data from billions of purchases and get actionable recommendations before going live. That's sick. If that works.

[A]

Yeah, totally.

[B]

We.

[A]

We've looked at a couple things like that. Trying to like improve our QA or like even, even kind of like CRO processes because it seems natural. It's like they're going to be able to build out like agentic workflows that just like pressure test all your stuff, click on all the random buttons, figure out what's broken, what's not, identify what is like maybe intended or unintended behavior. So it's just cool to see it getting embraced by.

[C]

Yeah itself. Really cool. All right, cool.

[A]

I want to touch on that. This will come out in whatever a week. So I think we'll be relatively on top of the topic here. All right, listeners, let's talk about the next couple months. Holiday spending is naturally going to slow down, but sales volume can still remain high as you get through shipping cutoffs, as you get into the new year and as you crush your Q1 targets. One of our focuses at Ridge will be squeezing more revenue from every customer that we've been acquiring for so long. And that is where After Sell by Rocked comes in. It's the one click post purchase upsell platform trusted by over 40,000 DTC brands. And here's how it works. When someone just bought from you, they're already in buying mode. They trust you, their card's on file. All you do is show them the right offer at the right time with zero friction. No re entering payment info, no extra pages. Just yes. Add this and boom. Done. Brands are seeing up to 30% AOV lifts. And when you're running volume during the holidays or into 2026, that can compound fast. And look, Jones Road Ridge True classic hexclad. We're not running Aftershell because it's trendy. We're running it because the unit economics work and the data is undeniable. But here's the kicker. Beyond the AOV boost, Aftershell unlocks Rokt monetization suite. Pure profit with zero work Rokt thanks. On your thank you page, 30 to 50 cents in pure profit per order. Rokt pay plus another 20 to 25 cents per order. No impact on convers. It's found money. So here's what you do. Go to aftercell.com operators right now. Activate Rock to Thanks or Rock to Pay plus and get the full after sale suite for free. Run it, check your numbers. Then you can come back and tell us if you want to turn it off. But I already know what you're going to say. Okay, so we've been talking a lot about bfcm. We're starting to do some of our postmortem Stuff. We all talked about this on the pod a couple weeks ago when we were talking about scaling into Black Friday. So I just want to follow up with the. So we're bringing back tests of the week first one and a quarter. And so what it was. And then I'd love your guys perspective on maybe what you would do with this information moving forward. The premise of the test was I've been skeptical that the marginal return on ad spend of our ad dollars during BFCM might not be as incremental as we'd like that. It's really easy. This is a period of time where you're capturing all this demand people have known about. We ran it for our rings product. Right. So you've known about the rings for a long time. There were so many people ready to purchase. It's really easy to scale up ad spend, still have a great mer, but that additional ad spend actually didn't drive any incremental profit. So that was the premise of the test. The way that we did it was we split out the country into 10%, 45% and 45%. The 10% wasn't a holdout that got like our BAU spend. So we still spent in that small segment. And then we tested scaling up 50% and and tested scaling up 100%. Now what we found was the 50% scale up was extremely incremental and profitable. Happy with those results, 100%. We got a noisy read. But based on the information that we have, we think it's unlikely that that was incremental and profitable. So the main takeaway is we'll probably want to run this test again in the future to like get true clarity. But, but if we just want to take a directional read here, it's likely not advantageous for us to be scaling up as much as that in, in previous periods, at least four rings during bfcm. And it depends on how often you want to be applying that sort of logic. So that was the main thing, what we want to do also in the future, and I think this is interesting, we deliberately made our BAU like quote unquote holdout 10% because we wanted to spend more. Like it would be a costly experiment to say hey, only a third of the country is going to get this like lower spend threshold when in reality we probably would have gotten more clarity around the read if we'd split the country into even thirds. So what we're also doing right now in this like t gifting period is just being a little bit more conservative with like setting that baseline roas so that's what we have right now. That's a follow up on the test. I know there's a lot of debate on Twitter about like whether you should be, how aggressively should you be scaling up? This is a pretty good data point for us that says it's somewhere in between that, like we probably can't scale up as much as we'd like. We have to be conscious of that marginal ra. So what do you guys think of that? Have you experimented with anything similarly? And if you were in my shoes, what do you do with this information moving forward?

[B]

Can I ask a question about the test design?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, so you say three cell stack spend test. So this is a entire like every channel. Right. So you had your.

[A]

Just meta.

[B]

Oh, just meta. Got it. Just meta. Got it, got it, got it, got it. That makes sense. I think, I think your conclusion's right. So you're, you were basically trying to understand like does scaling up during the actual peak moment drive incremental sales or is it all the spend that we did headed into peak moment and you guys validated that? No, actually spending up during this five day clip is driving incremental orders at a profitable incremental cost per order. But you saw diminishing return. Like you saw, you liked what you saw from 10% scale to 50% but then didn't see a good. Maybe it wasn't, was it, did you get like a readout on the hundred percent, but it was just like the cost per order. The cost per incremental order was like not profitable anymore. Is that what you were saying?

[A]

That's exactly what we saw.

[B]

Got it now.

[A]

Now the one flag. And also shout out Noah from house because he crushed the like, deeper explanation. And we worked really closely with their team to kind of interpret these results. They really stressed that the, the confidence interval around that 100% sell readout was really big, so it could go anyway. It's plausible that these actually were more incremental than, than the, this readout shows. And that's why they, they encouraged us to test it again with that larger 33% kind of BAU holdout. But what we found technically is that that 100% scale up, the more aggressive scale up was no longer profitable.

[B]

I don't know if I have anything additional outside of what you already concluded. Right. Like I think you found that sweet spot though, which I think then next year you can, you can like use to flight your budget. So it's like, all right, we're going to go, we're going to scale up 50% from the prior period headed into this peak moment. Not. Not 100%. So I think you just have a much more confident, like, how. How. How much do we scale up? All right. We're not going to triple budgets, but we're. We might. Yeah. One half them.

[C]

And this was. This was in. This was us or a different region.

[A]

This was in. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. This was. This was our rings business in the US and then to clarify the dates, it was 11:26 to 12. 1. So it was really just like the six days of BFCM where many people are scaling really aggressively. We just wanted to tear that out a little bit and see what was our marginal return. A different levels.

[C]

I respect the confidence to run. To run it during that week, because I think I've always felt like, hey, we don't want to either miss out opportunities or, like, it's not the time. So I think that's awesome and great. And it's like, I know that you've talked about having the. The suspicion of prior years of just kind of weighting down your average and overspending. So it's like, I feel like that's.

[B]

Do you.

[C]

Do you feel like that's, like, a really positive learning that you. You'll take into, you know, future promos?

[A]

It's probably makes me feel more conviction around being conservative when it comes to scale, especially, like, and then it just depends on how widely do you want to apply that. And we can obviously run this test at many other times in the future. Like, we might want to run it again going into the Father's Day shipping cutoff, something like that. There's another really big period for us where we can technically scale and have a great mer, but I would maybe be skeptical about the marginal return of those additional dollars. But, like, for. Yeah. Black Friday next year, when we're planning budgets, like, we have this, I think, valuable data point that says, hey, let's. Let's not be as aggressive as we might have been in the past.

[C]

Do you feel comfortable kind of generalizing that across the rest of your business from going from rings to everywhere else?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so that's the big one where it's like, you say you're giving me some credit for running it the week. The weekend of Black Friday. I mean, we did do it on a. On a significantly smaller category where it's like, running this test would just be potentially much costlier for, like, our EDC business, which that weekend is 10 times bigger than rings. So it's probably, like, directionally I think it can be helpful for edc. I think it is. I think it's conviction around this idea that scaling into high volume periods we should be skeptical of and we can apply that to edc, but it's probably not like, hey, instead of scaling as much as we do, we're going to scale to half of that. That's probably a bit too aggressive of an interpretation, but like 75% of it, maybe 70% of it. We might feel more confident in budgeting.

[C]

It out that way. Did you run a, did you run a similar one leading up to it in Canada? I thought we talked about that on one pod.

[A]

We did, yeah. Okay, so we did. We, we ran both, we ran rings in the US and EDC in Canada and both got basically the same result. So you can, we might have more conviction knowing that the EDC business in Canada also had a very similar readout. That might give us more conviction to approach the wallet business, the EDC business, in the same way in the U.S.

[C]

Yeah, I think, yeah, if you get kind of reproducible results across a few, a few different setups, I think that kind of makes it, have more sense because yeah, I remember that when I was actually thinking about that and I was like, can you, can you infer Canada to us? Because like, obviously that market's going to be way smaller. So I feel like that's, that's a bigger thing, but I think because you've got it on both of them.

[A]

Totally. And that's like when we did the, the Meta Summit, the Performance Summit earlier this year, there was that great quote where someone was like, you don't really have like a North Star magic. You have like a constellation of stars that you're trying to work with. And like that's what this is. Like we've got two that we're, we can kind of use to guide ourselves a little bit.

[C]

So I got one, I got a, another test of the quarter. So we ran our fourth brand search test ever ran it during promo period because I'm like our, our journey. Originally we ran brand search two years ago. Not really incremental, but like we kept it live because we weren't spending that much. We launched TV ads. So maybe this was, maybe that was. Yeah, two years ago, year and a half ago, we launched tv. We started spending multiple grand a day on tv. We're like, all right, it's, we, we, we now want to test. It's probably incremental, but like we're spending enough where we, we need to know not incremental shut it off.

[B]

Right?

[C]

And then I think we ran a third one. Oh, and then we shut it off. We saw 66% of paid search traffic or brand search go to organic search. Really? No. No discernible revenue impact. But we had all these like resellers, scammers, stuff like that in shopping. So, like, we're going to test just brand shopping. We got to compete with them. No incrementality there. Even though, like, we hated how it looked. So this fourth one, I was at this house event that Olivia hosted like a few months back, and somebody was talking about how they found different brand search results during promo period compared to others. You know, which makes sense. There's, you know, you're generating all this demand. You don't want to lose out on it. There's going to be other people bidding on it. I remember even like a year ago, Zack stuck actually like texted us. It was like, about us. He was like, hey, this looks pretty bad that you guys like don't have brand search, you know, because like you people are searching. And so I was like, all right, like, let's, let's test it. Like, this felt like a lower risk one to me because it's like, worst case scenario, we just lose a little money. Almost no incrementality. Even during the same. It was like a $700 cost per new. And then like even, even total was like, you know, it's like tiny bit incremental, but like, barely. So I told, I. I joked with Olivia on Twitter. I'm like, do not let me run another brand.

[A]

Dude, you teed that up. Well, I was on the edge of my seat. I really thought you were going to come back and be like, oh, yeah, it was incremental. Now we got to figure out how to do it at like different points throughout the year.

[C]

Yeah, that would, I guess, been a harder, harder decision or whatever. But no, just, just none. And I'm so happy. Now I have to go to my Google reps and be like, guys, stop telling me to spend to do it. Here's data, a bunch of data.

[A]

You've got a full galaxy of SARS brand search up being incremental.

[B]

Do you, do you do any of it, Cody? Like, are you at $0 spent on, on brand search terms or are you spending like a little bit just to be there?

[C]

I gotta check. I was looking at like the notes while I was in Mexico City of like of a call and I think they're like, oh, we're gonna run it like a 20x r us and I'm like, I don't even know, like what's, what's the point, you know? So I, I, I think it should be done.

[B]

Yeah. Lately every marketer I talked to says the same thing. The pressure's on, Budgets are tight, goals are higher than ever, and I have to prove what's working, not just report it. That's the new reality of marketing. You can't afford to rely on guesses or platform reported results. You need clear, unbiased, causal proof of what's actually driving growth. And that's exactly where House comes in. Incrementality testing is the scientific way to measure true impact. It is the most unbiased way to understand true impact, to see what's moving the needle and what's just noise. So you can reallocate spend based on fact, not faith. All of the marketing operators use House for their incrementality testing at Hexclad, Jones Road, Beauty and Ridge. And it's becoming a core part of the modern measurement stack. House helps you run real experiments across your channel so you can answer questions that actually matter, like which channels are truly driving incremental revenue and which are just taking credit. How much should I really be spending? Meta, Google and YouTube. What's the Halo effect of ads on Amazon or retail sales? And how should I structure my campaign so every dollar goes towards real measurable impact. What sets House apart is the combination of unbiased, rigorous science and marketer friendly design. The math under the hood is very complex, but the platform itself is very, very simple. You choose your question, you launch your test in minutes and you get clear actual results you can actually use. Plus, every customer, every brand gets a dedicated measurement strategist. And I will tell you what, the House measurement strategist team is very dial, they are very strategic, helping you set these tests up in a way where you're going to get statistically significant results that are actionable and ultimately they're someone who has lived in the world of growth and they know how to translate data into strategy, interpret the results and build a repeatable culture of experimentation across your team. Any world where every marketing dollar is under a microscope, you need to know what's real, measure what matters with House by going to House IO operators, that's H a U s IO operators and start allocating your budget with confidence.

[A]

I've got a good segue here because I think it's more applicable to our businesses. Connor. But so this came up same idea. Olivia asked on Twitter. This was, this was a couple days ago. Anybody else Noticing that Amazon is bidding more aggressively on brand terms than in the past. Now you have to pay Google Text to prevent the Amazon tax. Really kind of messed up when you think about it. And I said this was like really under discussed. And basically what I got added to a thread with Olivia and the brand that was kind of like had this question and what they were finding, and this is exactly what we found at Ridge in the past is Amazon was performing significantly above their original forecast and goals. What they found was like, and this was more anecdotally it seemed like Amazon was more active on their brand bidding terms. And on top of that, Amazon had more aggressive promo messaging in those search ads. Amazon was talking about the percent off of like the category on Amazon which was higher than what the brand was running for their Black Friday sale. And so I thought that was super, super interesting. And what we've seen in the past. So I pulled this data because we've experienced the same thing where all of a sudden Amazon is like what we would look at is Amazon EDC growth outpacing EDC growth on dot com. And it's like, why would that be happening? And this is like a really big reason why it does, at least for us. And what we've seen over the past four years, when Amazon bids on our terms, they always get a high top of page rate, not absolute top of page, but they're showing up in like the top two, three links. It's always like mid 90%. In 2022 they only had 20% impression share, 23, 39%, 24, 64%. And then this year they were at 60%. So they basically, they bid. They always bid aggressively when they bid and now they're bidding three times more than they usually do. And I was saying on top of that, because we're running TV and top of funnel meta ads and YouTube, we're actually driving more brand queries, like disproportionately more brand queries. We're driving more queries and Amazon's bidding more aggressively on those. And basically whenever Amazon wants, if we're not thoughtful about our own brand search bidding, they can like pad their own stats and achieve like more significant growth than than we would have otherwise forecasted. Because Connor, I feel like you guys have to be in a similar bucket. You have to be thinking about that trade off a little bit.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, we had. This is not a problem for us this year, but in the last couple years it was a huge problem. Like Amazon was outbidding us on our own branded terms. You know, you can go in and like see the like, who's bidding on your terms. And we were, we made a bit of a fuss about it to our Amazon reps and I don't know who they kind of like sent that back to, but they are doing it way less now because we were, we were pretty, we were pretty, we were pretty upset with them about it. Like last year and the year before with how much they're bidding on our terms. We can go down this route if we want. We don't have to. What we noticed is that we actually swung the pendulum too far non brand inside of Amazon where like we were looking at the delta between impressions and clicks on our brand terms and like the percent of clicks that we were getting in Amazon on our branded search terms had dropped a lot year over year. And so that's where we actually beefed up where we said oh crap, we swung too far down brand because now we're not, we're only getting like 70 to 80% of the clicks on our brand terms. So we actually beefed up in Amazon brand term bidding which is again a different topic here. But we did not have to, we didn't worry as much about Amazon this year but again I think it's because we made a stink about it last year and I think they, they've like stopped bidding so aggressively on our terms. We've also in turn spent more money on off Amazon media opportunities. So it was kind of like, you know, we're playing ball with them so I think they're playing ball with us a little bit more now. But yeah, yeah, something we dealt with like in last year more than this year.

[A]

Yeah, that's super interesting. We're, I guess we don't have that sort of pull with Amazon. We got to figure that out.

[B]

But yeah, anyway they have so much. They have, I mean we talked a little bit about this like the amount of off Amazon media that you can like it's insane how much media they have. You know, online video, streaming tv, prime video, sports. Like we're meeting with our Amazon reps today and we might get into this in a little bit with like the, the like 2026 strategy setting stuff. But I am like thrilled with all the media that they have and we're going to continue to invest more and more there. So as long as they stop bidding on our brand terms they can have more of our media and in top funnel and that's the deal we've made with them. Love it.

[A]

I'll have to give that a Shot. All right, you guys Want to talk 20, 26 planning?

[B]

Yeah, let's do it.

[A]

All right, so Aaron Orndorff, our beloved boss at the operators network, put some of these questions together.

[B]

Maybe.

[A]

Cody, I'll kick it to you first. I'm going to go with the second question we have here. What would you say is the single most important thing for a CMO or growth lead to do before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st?

[C]

CMO or growth lead? I mean you gotta have your plan. You know, it's, it's probably gonna come right combination from CEO. Like it's not just marketing is, is not the only growth lever. So you know, ideally it's this C suite being really, you know, dialed in. But I mean, yeah, you gotta have your plan. We start, you know, I wish we started earlier. We start October probably. Of planning it, I think we're a little behind the eight ball. Usually it's like, it's, it's a very, it's like finance driven. Usually it's like CEO, CFO who will be driving the plan, meeting with, you know, department heads, figuring out what's our, you know, product channel, market expansion strategy, you know, what, what does that look like from, you know, however you do it, Whether it's, you know, cohort modeling, new versus repeat, probably some combination of that as well as more of a, you know, demand plan, which is looking at it from inventory. Obviously you know, that channel as, as well. But I think you have to have your numbers and, and be like, okay, like based on how the business is currently grow, growing, right. This is what we think is going to happen. It can't be overly optimistic where it's like, oh, you know what? We're going to do all this CRO stuff. We're going to take it from a $70 cac to a $40 cac. Like you can't do that. But I think you first got to know where you're at and then, you know, if you don't like it, like you got to make some changes. Like I don't like everything that I'm seeing right now and, and to get to really the numbers I want to get to in the next two years. Like, I mean that's, that's actually the other thing we're trying. I don't know how far out you guys plan. I'm sure hexclad plans further at this stage, but we're, you know, we're newer business and both you guys, like, I don't know if we need a five year Roadmap, we need a two to three at this point though, you know, and it's always going to be changed. And like we, I think we've, I've been too short term in it, but so I think, you know, the financial plan is one thing, but I think from a marketing plan it's like if here's how I and I share, I, I tweet about this a little bit but like first for, we have a board meeting today and so it's review, right? Here's, here's where we're at. Here's our numbers, you know, analysis. Here's why, right, Like Connor, you did a really good example, a really good job with like the Amazon stuff, right? You can't just be like, oh, this is down or this is up. It's got to be like, here's, here's why, here's data, here's an intuition or here's a hunch, right? And so there's a bunch of things that I think that we are not doing well that we want to get better at. You know, we are not necessarily adapting with social platform changes. You know, we're not changing our channel strategy as a brand. We're not showing up in the right ways or places. Right. That's why. And then boom, here's here's action plan. And it's the same thing like I would expect from like, you know, my director growth. Hey, here's how we're pacing for the, for the month. Here's why I think, here's what I'm gonna do about it. Like I think anyone should be accountable to that whatever level. I'm just responsible for the whole company. But I think anyone should really be able to have that and show to their, their higher ups of whatever their jurisdiction is. So it's, here's what we're going to do. I got essentially 14 big rocks, I know you call it cornerstones, but like 14 things that we're really going to focus on and change org plan. Here's who we're going to need to do it. Here's, you know, new roles we're going to need, here's changes of our org we're going to need and then financial plan like that. Then it goes into a budget for us and it's like, all right, if this goes successful, like here's, here's the capital investment that that's going to take. So that's how I'm approaching again I'm you know, CEO level. But I think from a marketing perspective, obviously like definitely want you guys to share more. But a lot of that is going to be driven by, you know, marketing. What's our channel strategy? How are we going, you know, what do we need to spend? What's our creative strategy? Because obviously that's such a big part of it. What are new channels we want to be launching, all that kind of stuff.

[A]

And just to clarify, financial plan basically like revenue and spend targets by month across whatever dimensions you care about, returning customer, cohort based, et cetera, full P.

[C]

And L. But, but yeah, that's a.

[A]

Big part of it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, totally.

[A]

Org plan. What are the. Or actually maybe I'm trying to think how they ladder up into one another. Financial plan. 14 things that you want to improve. Love those. And then org plan is like what are the people you need to do both the financial plan and whatever else you, you need to be improve. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's a good one. Connor. How are you guys thinking about it? Or, or, or the. Just a question again. What, what are you as head of growth at Hex, Glad, what do you feel is most important to nail down before the end of this year going into 2026?

[B]

I think. Well, last year is funny because we had the super bowl campaign so like we got it. It was tough to like balance all the, the yearend wrap and then also the 2026 planning stuff. So this year it's a little different. I think hiring plans like definitely need to have that stuff really dialed in. Not every last detail needs to be figured out but like having your hiring plans dialed in, at least having some semblance of what your budget is, I mean you can't hit the ground running in January if you don't like have some total revenue and ad spend targets. So those two things definitely you definitely need to have your 2025 recapping done and like have not only have done the work but also have ingested the work and really understand like what are the data, what, what are the data points saying about your business? What went wrong, what didn't, what didn't go that well? What did went really well based on those data points. I think all those things you have to have like done headed into, headed into the new year. I don't think you necessarily need to have like every last bit of your 2026 plan completely finished, but you should have like a lot of momentum on it and like it should be coming together to the point where you need like another week or two to like really finalize it and sit down with the team and like distribute what the plan is so that that's where we're at right now, where we're like we have our hiring plans pretty dialed in. We're starting to like have our budgets for the year dialed in. We're about to get like head first into reporting and recapping over the next two weeks. And then we'll also kind of with a little bit of overlap, like probably starting in a week or two. Like I've been doing a lot of 2026 planning but like starting to meet with the team to talk about kind of like what I think are the big, I call them like objectives. I think it's the same thing as rocks. Like here are the big like things for the year and then we'll like really start to crystallize and operationalize around those as we hit like the first week of January. Black Friday, you're about to crush it. The real job is keeping that momentum going past Black Friday, past Holiday and all the way into next year. Prussian helps brands turn peak season wins into predictable profitable velocity. Powered by a suite of proprietary machine learning models and a causality first validation layer, Prescient reveals what actually drove Lyft. It combines surveys, it combines multi touch attribution and incrementality and then it forecasts for your next dollar of media will drive real incremental profit. Top brands like Coterie, Guess, Hexclad, Jones Road Beauty, Mary Ruse and many more are using Prescient to quantify halo effects across Shopify, Amazon retail so their teams know exactly where to reinvest. So what actual questions can Prescient help you answer? Let's dig into it a little bit. Question number one Do I need to increase, decrease or reallocate spend for the shopping season? Prescience shows the optimal media mix to drive the strongest Q4 performance whether your budget grows or shrinks. Question number two where should I put additional Q4 budget? Prescient delivers recommendations based on current BSM dynamics, your vertical and your optimal ad spend allocation. Question number three Compression measure cross channel effects, especially between Shopify and Amazon. Yes, Prescient uniquely tracks halo effects and ad impact across both platforms, revealing where to dial back and where to double down. This is actually one of the very first problems that Hexclad onboarded with Prescient to solve is understanding the total impact across both dot com and Amazon over ad spend. Precious models are benchmarked against $6 billion in ad spend. So the recommendations you are getting aren't just theory, they've actually been tested against billions of real Media dollars. And if you are ready to see where your next dollar media will drive the most profit, visit prescient AI.com/operators to forecast your growth with Prussian.

[A]

Okay, so the one thought that I had because we just, we had, we did two days this week with the executives in Los Angeles and we're doing a bunch of 2026 planning and I, I, I'm with you Connor. Or we're all on the same page here. But like it feels like it's all kind of like I feel like at Ridge we're working on multiple timelines right now, right? Like our paid media team right now is like they are worried about the day to day of closing out our holiday sale. We're worried about our post mortem on Q4. I think that's a really important one where like you don't want to overlook you just had your most important period while everything's fresh in mind. Like you should be auditing and debriefing on what worked, what didn't. So you have all that information for next year. Our goal is to have that done by December 18th and then you have yeah, high level objectives for 2026. But then at the same time you bring up the super bowl, which I think is a good one. Like we have things going live in January that like we needed to start a month and a half ago and it's like, and we need to be like we needed to have like what is essentially a 2026 goal if we want that to go live in January. Like that should have been decided three months ago. So I can't help but feel, I've been feeling recently like Bridge has actually gotten way better at working on those multiple timelines because it historically I think I've been too like monolithic in how I've approached it. Like we used to like show up January 3rd or whatever and like have not worked on the January campaigns that much because we were just so focused on Q4. And it's only now at this point where it's like our time and our team is just distributed across so many different timelines that I feel like a lot of our 2026 objectives had to have been laid out a long time ago. Do you guys, do you guys feel that at all? It just, and, and I guess it's dictated a lot by like, like accounting, right? Like taxes where it's like, yeah, we have a financial gear that we need to close when in reality like a lot of like the day to day of the org has to be spread on like A way different sort of fluid timeline.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't. I don't. I don't mean to like say that like, we have our full plan even done. Yeah, I think you. You articulated that really well. Like, I used to think, like, we needed our full budget done like December 31st. Like, we actually finalized it in. In January, even like in February of like our official. But yeah, you can't get started. Like, if you have a January launch, you gotta. We try to be on a three, four month timeline. So, you know, we're doing shoots now and been doing strategy for months. And it's product development timelines are the longest. Those are often two years out. So those are working on. Then, you know, operations team has something different. And also I think level where you are. Where, you know, if you're. If you're manager, media buyer, you're probably mostly focused on right now, still held it. So if you're a director, VP of growth, you're. You're thinking, all right, I gotta. I gotta check in on what's going on now, but I gotta plan a little further out. And then if you're C suite, you're probably like, hey, like, what. What are we doing in 2028? Like, at least there's probably some part of your brain that's thinking about that. I guarantee you your manager of growth is not thinking about 2028. Totally. But that's also a startup too, right? Like, no. No matter what level, like, there's some. There's. There's some amount of. Hey, I still need to know what my pacing is today.

[A]

100. No, there's. There's no way around it. That's why I'm like. Like I always say that New Year's. New Year's is one of my favorite holidays because, like, there's a little bit of a side tangent. But like, New Year's is one of my favorite holidays because it's so. I think it's so cool that culturally we take it as this moment to like, feel like we can reinvent ourselves and you set these new goals and resolutions and things like that. Like, I think it's a. It's just awesome that we like, culturally center ourselves around that. But then the feedback is always like, well, you should be kind of doing that all the time. Like, you shouldn't wait till the end of the year to like set your.

[C]

Your.

[A]

We have 12 things at Ridge and we talk about this a lot where it's like, you can be re. You know, Cody, you reforecast the next Month on like a monthly basis where you're like constantly adjusting the strategy. There are things once we wrap up our anniversary sale in March that we'll learn from, that we'll adjust the 2026 plan for. So I just, I think it's kind of funny we at least spend a lot of time thinking about these yearly plans when I almost think like, the quarterly adjustments are just as important. And at least at Ridge, I think we can like improve around the systems around that. Sick. All right, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta.

[C]

Agreed. No, no notes. Agreed with that.

[A]

Yeah, 100%. Okay. Connor, in terms of like more tactical goal setting. You've talked about this a bit on the podcast in the past. Can you walk through how you guys do it at hexpad? I always, I tease you about the Pyramid of Excellence. I forget what it's called, but walk us through it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So we, I, I was taught this framework called the, the Pyramid of Clarity. It's just a goal setting framework the same way that okrs are are. It's just a goal setting framework. It's just like gives you a, a step by step kind of approach and like something to lean on. I don't think there's a right or wrong way, but we, I, I like that framework. I think the guys from Asana like came up with it and it works for us. So it basically the, the different levels of it are you have like your mission, which is kind of like what are you trying to accomplish as a brand, right? So like for us, it's like we're trying to like bring premium, like bring, bring, make cooking enjoyable for everyone. Like bring premium cookware out to the world. Your strategies then are like how you're going to do it. So these are like meant to be filters, right? It's like everything that you decide to do should like pass through one of these strategic filters. So like a good example of, of our, one of our strategies last year was like only plant seeds that can go grow into giants. So like that's a, like a, a strategic filter. So like, Cody, you've talked a lot about this where like in the past you've made the mistake of investing in channels that didn't have upside for us at Hexclad. Like, that's a really helpful filter because we're always getting like, hit up about new channels, new media opportunities and then, well then we move down one level. So like that's what I'm doing right now is like, I'm writing like our strategic filters kind of as we recap 2025. Like I'm writing our strategic filters and then you go down one level which is the objectives. I think that's like probably the equivalent of your guys rocks. The objectives are like the actual like only plant seeds that can go into giants. That doesn't actually mean anything like tactically speaking but the objectives are more of like the tactical goalposts along the way. So for example, like let's go back to that only plant seeds that can grow into giants. Example. That would be like the strategy and then an objective that would ladder into that would be like we want to spend X dollars on Amazon's non like Amazon media opportunities or hey, we want to, we want to like lawn. Like we want to validate Pinterest with a holdout test and spend at least X. Like that would be more of like a tactical objective. And the idea is that each objective you said or each rock, whatever you want to call it for the year has to be strategy aligned with at least one strategy and then, then you move in. So that's like that's what I try to have filled out for our 2026 planning. Like that's what I'm reviewing with the team. I'm the one writing the strategic filters and then I, I'll review those with the team and then I will write my own objectives for each part of the growth team and have each channel lead do the same. We'll come together and talk about it and agree on it. That's what I try to like have done as we go into 2026 and then basic. Yeah.

[A]

Do you have, are you able to share any of the 2026 filters that you're thinking about?

[B]

Yeah, let me. So like going, going back to one of your questions from the doc here. Connor, you. Let's find it here.

[C]

I love that. I love that one. Don't plant trees that won't turn. What is it?

[B]

Giants that won't turn it only plant seeds that can. That can turn into giants.

[C]

I really like that and just like how it's said.

[B]

Yeah. So all right. So one of, one of the examples. So you asked for some examples here. So for. So one of the wins we had from last year was diversifying our media mix. I think we, we reached more new people than we ever have this year and like you can see it in our traffic data. So one of our big strategies for this year is reach more new people in channels with upside. That that is like probably our lead strategy that is going to drive objectives in paid media. It's Going to drive objectives and affiliate. It's going to drive objectives in influencer. Like that single strategy will spill into probably 3 or 4 of our growth marketing channels. So then like within a specific. And I don't have all of our objectives written yet, but what I, what it's probably going to turn into is I'm going to set like goal media mix objectives. Not like too rigid.

[A]

Totally. I, yeah, I think that's super helpful. One thing, and I don't know your order of operations, but one thing I did this year that I found beneficial is I almost started. What I've been, what I've been doing for the last like six weeks now is there's so much stuff that, that has come come to mind that I thought about like slacking the team. Oh, hey, next year we should like care about this thing and but at the same time I don't want to distract anybody from Black Friday. Whereas like it frankly wasn't important on November 5th that this person hears from me what I'd like to see from them in February. So I have a list of 130 things that like mine and those are, those are kind of like initiatives or maybe some of the objectives that you laid out, Connor. And they're just like unstructured. And what I'm actually doing now is now I'm like structuring them. There's very common themes. Like one of the ones that I'm excited about is like, I think there's a big opportunity for margin expansion. I'd like to be testing shipping threshold across our different categories. I'd like to be doing more price testing on bundles. Things like that I would like to do. We have, you know, we use after sale in our, in our post purchase upsell just things like that. My VPV comments like, hey, you are tasked with finding opportunities to expand margin. Here's five ideas. But like the main one here is let's make more profit off of our current dollars. And at least I found that valuable because I always find it difficult to identify the six filters that you're supposed to.

[B]

Well that. So in that scenario, like I think like optimized margin expansion would be like the, the objective and then you would basically assign like initiatives for a bunch of. Because there's like to your point, it sounds like there's a bunch of different ways that you could do that, a bunch of different markets. So like then you would be like, all right, and here's the. More like here are the very specific initiatives or the ways that we're actually going to like the objective is not, cannot, is not always super specific. Right. It's like, hey, we want to expand margin was the way verbiage you said.

[A]

I think that was basically what I said.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Margin expansion and then you have like very specific ways you could do it of like test into optimized shipping threshold in this market. Like that is the initiative is like the actual tactical thing you're going to do here. So it sounds like that's how I would think about that. But that's an interesting objective.

[C]

I like that.

[A]

All right, I want to give a shout out to Rich Panel because they've quietly become one of the most impactful tools we use at Ridge. You know how SaaS companies love raising prices for the same product every year? Our old support platform did that one too many times. So we made the switch over to Rich Panel and the results have been fantastic. Our SaaS build dropped by about half and once they rebuilt our workflows with automation self service routing, our cost per ticket fell 70%. Same team, same volume, totally different outcome. BFCM this year was our smoothest we've ever been. We've done the most amount of sales, we had the most amount of queries, but with routing we had a lower cost per ticket and our NPS scores have never been higher. The team handled everything without the usual panic and our CSAT has been sitting around 96% every week. And what I really like is that Rich Panel isn't just software. They bring a playbook, they rebuild your workflow, set up your AI, handle migration and training and you can be live in under two weeks. The lift is basically zero on your side and they're launching returns portal soon, which I'm really excited to test because returns are one of those sneaky P and L items everyone ignores until it begins to cost you real money. If you want to cut support costs in half and run a leaner, more efficient operation, head to richpanel.com demo and they'll take care of everything. Cody, what are some of your 14 things?

[C]

Yeah, so, so by the way, here's how I started because same thing, like you don't want to just like bug your team with everything AI. Like I, I have like a doctor that's like far away. So like every other week I just have like an hour long car ride and I'm literally just like transcribing, like hey, here's what's in my mind. Or like I'll go on a walk and then take that and then just like distill it.

[B]

Down.

[C]

But like, that's been like my outlet to be like, hey, let me park these ideas somewhere. Like, I need to get it out of my head. I need to talk to somebody about it. Like, I don't have anybody I can bug right now about it, you know, because we're in August and I'm thinking about our. Our next year.

[A]

So.

[C]

So that's kind of part of it. And, and you know, this board meeting I have say essentially goes it really has built it into an, you know, 80 page deck. And so a few of ours, I think of of them as big rocks. Like, I'm not as structured as. As, you know, as the conjoined triangles of success. But it's like he's here. Big Ross, number one. It's kind of like, all right, these are the things that if we do those and do nothing else, like, very unreasonable that we won't succeed. Right. Number one, become customer obsessed. The way that we make decisions here I don't think is good enough. And there's a lot of just guesses or this is what we want to do. Every. Everything starts with the customer. I know you got to this at Ridge where you have your avatars and you're like, hey, what would Ed think of this? Right? So we're gonna. We're gonna. That's, you know, I'm just calling it our action plan, but like, it could be more formal. Like, become customer obsessed. Okay, what does that look like? So on the slide, we're gonna set up a customer advisory panel. What's that look like? Well, we're gonna have a group of customers. Loyal customers are gonna be opt in give us feedback. It has to be very, very easy. If we have to go and set up a klaviyo, like a survey and like brief a retention person every time, it's gonna be impossible. So I set up a Facebook group, 250 customers in it. I'm essentially just spamming them with surveys. Just like I've done like five, six so far in like three weeks. Just been incredibly helpful where I can just kind of have my assistant build a survey. We've got the action plan, which is kind of the objective. Become customer obsessed. We've got. Okay, what does that actually look like? Right? What. What am I actually committing to? And then the. To me, the most important, who's responsible for it. So like, are my SVP and marketing will be responsible for that. I just got it piloted, but like, that's showing that next one is become creator focused. I don't want to say Obsessed again. But like, you know, it's just, it's a creator economy. We are, you can kind of live and die by that, you know. And so like we just need to be so much better there. And so, you know, I just think about even something like a comfort, like if we had even a third of the Discord group that they had, if we had, you know, whatever 5,000 people. Like it's just unreasonable. It's like it would be, it would be hard to lose if you, if you. That's what I think. If you're making all of your decisions based on customer feedback, it's going to be hard to lose. You know what I mean? You're at least going to be pointing in the right direction. Same thing with craters. If you're just working with a high volume of craters and just like really infusing crater into your DNA, like you're going to be better off than if you're not, you know. And so like this one is a little bit more broad, but it's like what does it look like? Well, considering a chief creator officer, kind of something like you know, you guys have done at Ridge or something like that. We're going to build an internal studio here and have it be filled with creators. You know, we're going to, we're going to do a lot more affiliate, you know, launch on Tik Tok Shop because you kind of, that's where the creator attention is. You know, like that one kind of permutates through a bunch of different channels and goals. But it really all starts with the core of that aggressively scale owned retail. We're going to try to open 15 stores. VP Retail is going to be responsible for that. It's invest in future demand. We're going to, you know, do stuff and invest money in trying to improve brand tracking metrics. That'll be, you know, a goal. I'm trying to think. I mean but those, those are kind of a core of them. And then what we'll do is those will turn into people's KPIs. Here's who's responsible for it. If we don't have the person, it's a question mark. That's what builds our org plan. Totally right. This is what builds our finance. And then per each channel, I don't know what to call them but they're essentially the non big rocks. But like all right, cool. Like E Com, what do I want to do on E Comm. And maybe it's not the big rock where it's like okay, if I do this we're going to hit our goals as a company. But like hey, we want to test 10 CRO things a month or we want to rebuild our quiz. Like those will be like the supporting things that sometimes they ladder up or often they ladder up into the big rocks, but sometimes they're just tangential. Hey, you know my growth team, I just think a really good growth team looks like we are just constantly testing incrementality across different platforms. Like that's just something I believe we should be doing. And if we do that over 12 months for house tests a month, like we're going to be much better off than if we're not doing that.

[A]

I have a question on the being creator focused. You said the way that that gets executed is just across so many different like teams and channels. What do you think it looks like? Like who are you thinking of as leading that initiative considering it's like so cross departmental and like what does leading look like?

[C]

This is not flesh out. So we just hired a SVP of marketing who starts in January. So anything marketing is under her. I almost see it as like you have your creative director. We have a creative director and they work across channels. It's almost like lateral to them and it's almost like they're a creator director and it's like creators in touch. Organic, social, paid social. Where I'm trying to figure out is like where creator sits. Because. Because yeah, creator can be earned, right? It can be earned kind of like organic. It could be. You know, you could use creators on your own social. You could use creators for your, you know, for on. On E Comm. You can use creator for paid social. You can do like affiliate as well. So it's like I'm trying to figure out where that sits. Is that next to creative? Is it the same? I think it's a little different than creative. Where does that sit with Influencer? I think it's probably one and like Influencer just becomes creator. It's like anything that's like partnerships, influencer, creators all under one and then like those are the sub departments. So that's something I'm going to flesh out with with a new SVP of marketing.

[B]

I think there's something you like. I think what we're kind of unpacking here is like I think the best objectives actually do span multiple channels. Like to your point Cody, that spans three or four different channels and that's where having the initiatives, right? It's like all right here like because like again without that, like that's a. That's a great objective, but it's not tactical until you go one like, like sub indent over. And then you end up with like. And here's all the. Like here's the two paid media initiatives that ladder into this. Here's the three influencer ones, the two affiliate. So then you end up with like, you know, you're assigning it per channel and now you have like really strong tactics that ladder into this overarching objective that spills into like three or four different channels. And some objectives are like more. More cut and dry. Like like a single person. Right. But others, like I think the best ones are actually not. They are. They are spilling into a bunch of different channels and like creating a much larger outcome than let's say, you know one plus one plus one equals ten is. Is. I think that's what those objectives that span multiple channels do. It just creates a lot of cohesion and a lot of people rowing in the same direction.

[C]

Yeah, like, like for example, like for, for rich. Like margin expansion. I would imagine that's not just an ecom thing.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Like, Right. But there can be supply chain stuff right there.

[A]

The org level. Yeah. In the case of mine, like my list is all like basically e common marketing related but it could just be an entire org.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with that. I'm sure like yeah, you guys have similar ones that it's like this is not just across one but I think it's still important to have one person who's responsible for it. I think sometimes that's more challenging. Right. It's like hey, we want to be, we want to be creator obsessed. Well like that's almost all marketing. That's at least like easier to do that. But still like I want, I want our product dev team getting creator feedback on products. You know as well, like it is harder. So you do have to have those swim lanes. But I still think you got to have like one person who is going to own the initiative. Yeah.

[A]

No. And I mean we do the exact same thing. And I was curious. I'm trying to, I'm trying to farm you for information because I'm like what is it even? Are there monthly touch bases? Is this like, is this owner of the task checking in across the entire org and you know, let's say margin expansion was an organization wide effort. Is my VP of E. Comm working with our supply chain manager to like make sure that they are working in the same direction? I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to look like.

[C]

I'm Much better at coming up with the ideas and then like, let's put together and then I'll, I'll. I need somebody, whether it's a chief of staff or coo, who's. Who's then handling it and kind of figuring out the cadence. But yeah, I do think there's gotta be some. Some meetings where people are presenting that. It's like, hey, here's the progress I'm making, here's what I'm accountable to totally weave.

[A]

And we could wrap it after this. But like, I was, I. I was advocating for you get like an exact. Like a C suite or VP owning the task and then also pairing them with like a, like a project manager. Like we have a. We have a project management team internally. Because I'm like, I don't think it's necessarily the VP of E Comm's job to now be scheduling all these meetings and discussing with all these people. It's like almost having administrative support in maintaining this project, I think is really key piece. So I've been advocating for that. That layer of sort of infrastructure. Well, sick. That's 20, 26. We should do more episodes or segments on each of our lists of things.

[C]

Yeah, that would be a good one. Yeah, we. We just pick like four each.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I've got a bunch that we could share. We could go through the Conjoined Pyramid of Excellence.

[C]

That would be a fun one.

[A]

What is that from? Conjoined Pyramid of Excellence.

[B]

That's from Silicon Valley.

[C]

As a Conjoined triangle. As a success. Because it's up.

[B]

Yeah, it's exactly classic.

[A]

All right, guys, let's call that an ep.

[B]

Great. Sounds good.

[A]

All right, thank you again for tuning into another episode of Marketing Operators. We look forward to seeing you in episode 92, 93, 94, 95. We'll make it to 100 eventually. Thank you to our sponsors, Motion Rich panel, Prescient after sell and House. And as always, please, like subscribe, share with your friends and family. We will see you again next week.