Dylan Whitman

Let’s go!

CEO and Co-Founder

Inveterate.com - Creating a new category of loyalty program software for merchants to empower their most committed customers with an elevated level of customer experience. Backed by Vertical Venture Partners, Alpaca VC, Silicon Ventures, Centre Street Partners, SuperAngel, Pari Passu Venture Partners and a phenomenal group of eCommerce merchants and SaaS operators.

Dylan W.

Aaron Orendorff

VP of Growth at FERMÀT | Previously Shopify Plus (Editor in Chief) & VP of Marketing at Common Thread Collective + Recart

The power of content resides not in its direct ability to sell, although it can. Truly great content — the kind that drives leads into and through your funnel — galvanizes an audience through a consistent story … well told. One with people, not products, at its core.

Every piece of content has to answer two questions:

(1) What hell does it save its audience from?

(2) What heaven does it deliver unto?

That might sound a bit theological, but it’s the most visceral way to make your content about your audience instead of you. Why? Because …

Self-centeredness is a plague — branded content that screams branded. 

At the opposite extreme is content for the sake of content. Feeding the beast for no greater purpose than, “We’re supposed to make content, right?”

Business results come from content that above all rescues its audience from their fears, struggles, and pains. Moreover, it must do so prior to and independent of a purchase.

Together, let’s save your business, your audience, and the world … from bad content.

———

Aaron’s work has appeared on The New York Times, Mashable, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Lifehacker, Inc., Success Magazine, Content Marketing Institute, and more.

Founder

Simple Modern crossed the 10-year mark. 60M units sold. Between $2B and $1T in lifetime retail sales across Amazon, retail, and DTC.

Bryan Porter, co-founder, shared 30 lessons to mark the occasion. And most of them have nothing to do with growth tactics. No vague, fancy principles.

They’re about what survives a decade – leadership trust, talent density, brand durability, cash discipline, second-purchase thinking, and delayed gratification. 

I reorganized all 30 into the six systems that compound over time:

undefined undefined

Operators Podcast

FERMÀT

Head of Marketing

Vice President Marketing

Chief Content Officer, Operators | Fmr. Editor in Chief Shopify, VP Common Thread Collective, VP FERMÀT

President @ Simple Ventures. Co-Founder of Simple Modern.

The five people you surround yourself with don’t equate to business growth.

- More ads make your business grow
- More products make your business grow
- More reps make your business grow

There’s no shortcut. 

No “I’m around elite people, so I perform better.”

But when s*** hits the fan?
When you’re on the brink of throwing in the towel?

That’s when your five f****** matter.

Because it’s so sanity-producing to realize you’re not the only one who just got laid out.

One of them has been there.
One of them is in it right now.

That’s the 99th percentile outcome vs the 50th.

The safety net under it. Not the grind.

No alternative text description for this image

I spoke with a friend yesterday. Someone I admire. Who I look up to as an executive. 15 min into the call, we cried.

If I told you who it was + the brand they lead, you’d think they have it all together. Nothing but wins.

They don’t. And they aren’t.

So together, we cried.

Why? Because we both identify ourselves with results.

When the numbers are up, so are we. When they’re down, we’re crushed.

Worse, there was nothing either of us could do to fix things.

The sheer scale of what we’re up against in DTC is overwhelming. What few moments of success we experience make it feel like we’re in control.

But we aren’t.

- Market shifts
- Economic factors
- Customer confidence
- Political mayhem
- Technology mishaps
- Bugs, errors, and crashes

We pretend we can bend these forces to our will. That we can master them.

But we can’t.

We convince ourselves that our tactics, our strategies, our plans, our brilliance will save us.

But it won’t.

Failure exposes that.

The most painful part?

However high our highs …
Our lows are that much lower.

So, what can we do?

In the case of my friend, only one thing.

I couldn’t click enough ads or buy enough product to make a difference. I couldn’t turn on new offers, build new creative guaranteed to perform, or unlock new acquisition channels.

All I could do was be there with them and cry.

The beautiful thing is that’s exactly what they needed.

For me, though, you can do more.

You see, I don’t mass market to a consumer audience. In fact, if you’re reading this …

You are my audience.

On Mar 18th, I’m leading the Operators next online event. I don’t need millions to sign up. Just a few thousand.

When you see a Meta ad for the event, sign up. When you receive an email about it, sign up. When you get served an organic post by one of the hosts that I may or may not (but definitely will have) forced them to publish, sign up.

This is the link: https://9ops.co/pqifag

It’s going to be about growing your business through paid media — which (ironically) is the very topic that sparked my friend’s call in the first place.

So when I really think about it, maybe I could have done more to help.

I could have shared the link. I could have said: Sign up for the event to demolish …

- Every struggle
- Every fear
- Every insecurity
- Every doubt

Or, at the very least, we can cry together on Mar 18th: https://9ops.co/pqifag

PS, the lineup of 25+ ecommerce heavyweights is cracked. I hope you enjoyed this melodrama!

No one remembers anything you write or say online ... (unless you get canceled).

Say the same damn things in a slightly different way, over and over again. 

Repetition isn’t lazy. 

It’s kindness.

AI is not the advantage you think it is ...

Anything you multiply by zero is still zero.

Multiply below baseline?
You get worse. Faster.

Multiply mediocrity? 
Industrial-scale mediocrity.

Multiply low-quality output? 
Five times the volume nobody wants.

Multiply bulls***?
The stench gets overwhelming.

AI is a multiplier. Not addition. And most people have not reckoned with what that means.

Two things AI cannot replace:

1. Taste

Pacing, balance, the right turn of phrase, a piercing question. 

How you create empathy with your audience.

2. Subject matter knowledge

How the people you’re trying to reach actually talk about and experience the problems they’re facing. 

Without that, they sense it immediately. 

AI just accelerates detection.

High agency is disgustingly rare. 

And once you’ve worked with someone who has it, every task-completer after them feels like a downgrade you can’t unsee.

The first bar (on the “you must be this tall to ride the agency” scale) is almost insulting. 

Three ingredients:

1️⃣ Do the thing you said you’d do.
2️⃣ Do it when you said you’d do it. 
3️⃣ If it’s going to take longer, tell me before I have to ask. 

Clear those, and you beat 95% of everybody else out there. Maybe even more. Straight up. It’s embarrassing how few people clear it.

But the ones who change how a team operates don’t just finish what’s assigned. They focus on the outcome you really need and find better ways to get there.

- They understand the goal, not just the task assigned
- When they hit a wall, they source solutions before escalating
- They bring you things you didn’t ask for that make the work better
- They treat the constraint as a starting point, not an excuse

Recently, I handed a video editor one job: cut every podcast ad read to 45 seconds or less. Listeners were complaining ... Fair enough.

First version came back technically correct – 45 seconds – but choppy as hell. Hands jumping mid-sentence, cuts you could feel. Task completed, goal missed.

Sent it back with one note: Figure out how to make this smooth. Two iterations later, a 3-minute ad read came back at 43 seconds ... butter. They'd found AI tools I didn’t even know existed – sourced the solution without being told what the solution was.

Tools, tasks, and timelessness can be taught. 

The instinct to figure out and solve what wasn't assigned is rare.

Do I still get nervous on our big event days? Of course. More than nerves, fear. Questions haunt me.

- Will attendees show up?
- Will the speakers make it?
- Will all the tech work?
- Will I embarrass myself?

Here’s the only antidote I know ↓

Be of service.
Add value.

Honor the people who give us the one thing they can’t get more of — time.

The truth is that there are concentric circles within the @9operators x @M__Operators networks. Every level gets tighter and smaller.

Podcast watchers
Newsletter subscribers
Event signups
People who show up

THEN THE FOLKS WHO GO TO ONE OF OUR THREE BREAKOUT SESSIONS ↓

1️⃣ Executive Leadership
2️⃣ Marketing & Growth
3️⃣ Finance & Operations

For the hosts:

- Sean Frank
- Jason Panzer
- Mike Beckham
- Matthew Bertulli
- Connor MacDonald
- Connor Rolain
- Cody Plofker
- Mehtab S. Bhogal
- Katy Mimari
- Kristin Jerry-Swarek
- Jeff Hannam

Whether it’s 10 or 100 or 1,000 who join your sessions, those are the people who support us, who devour your words, who are coming to connect with you, to get value from you, who are bringing their struggles and challenges with them … to get your help.

Keep it loose + have fun.
Push people to ask questions.
Stay responsive to the chat.

I’ll say it again …

Be of service.
Add value.

Honor the people who give us the one thing they can’t get more of — time.

Let’s f****** smash this 😍

CEO of Ridge.com

President at Hexclad Cookware

Co-Founder and CEO of Simple Modern

CEO @ Lomi & Pela Case - Follow me as I talk about building my brands.

cmo @ ridge.com

Marketer // Head of Global Growth Marketing @ HexClad

Investing In & Operating Consumer Brands - We welcome complex opportunities others are unwilling or unable to tackle.

CEO & Founder at Caden Lane

CFO & COO - Caden Lane

NOBODY WANTS TO READ ANYTHING YOU EVER WRITE. They also don’t have time for it.

Plus, people are mean and stupid. Your audience will never give you the benefit of the doubt. If you make them think too hard, they’ll move on to something that doesn’t.

So, here’s 15 ways to earn and keep your audience’s attention in a world where attention is dying ...

1. Pique curiosity
2. Ask a question
3. Keep it simple
4. Varied sentence lengths
5. Varied paragraph lengths
6. Be provocative
7. Start with the “nod”
(what they already believe)
8. Or go for the hard disagree 
(confrontational)
9. Lots of line breaks
10. Even more line breaks
11. One line of text for big ideas
12. Explain in words
13. Then illustrate with examples
14. Group in 3s or 5s
15. Odd numbers past 20


Earn the scroll.

You’re not a better marketer than human nature. 

No tactic overrides that.

The best marketers build around what people already believe and purchase patterns that already exist.

HOW DO YOU SPEND MORE, PROFITABLY?

That’s the #1 question we get. 

On Mar 18, +25 ecommerce leaders with a combined media budget bigger than any European nation’s GDP are revealing their answers.

https://9ops.co/gnt9ao

Spoiler: Most of it ain’t in your ad account.

↓ Here’s the lineup

★ Sean Frank, CEO of Ridge
★ Mike Beckham, Simple Modern
★ Jason Panzer, HexClad
★ Matthew Bertulli, Pela x Lomi
★ Cody Plofker, Jones Road
★ Connor MacDonald, Ridge
★ Connor Rolain, HexClad
★ Mehtab S. Bhogal, Karta Ventures
★ Katy Mimari, Caden Lane
★ Cherene Aubert, Growth Capital
★ Bryan Cano, True Classic
★ Miranda P., GLAMNETIC
★ Jerel Blades, Growth at Tushy
★ Yingying Kuang, Kitsch
★ Olivia Kory, Haus Analytics
★ MacCoy Merkley, Portland Leather
★ Sam A., AppLovin
★ Russell Breuer, Spot and Tango
★ Sarah Carusona, BA Commerce
★ Jenna Habayeb, Posh Peanut
★ Perry Coneybeer, Axon by AppLovin
★ Andrew Faris, AJF Growth
★ Rico Mirabelli, DUDE Wipes
★ Steve Rekuc, Common Thread Collective

Executive keynotes. Lightning panelists. Live MOperators hotline. Plus, our step-by-step playbook to channel expansion.

I can’t wait to see you there!

CEO @ Growth Capital | SVP of Digital & Ecommerce @ ILIA | VP of Growth @ Bobbie

Head of Marketing, True Classic

Head of Growth @ TUSHY - hellotushy.com

VP of Marketing

Chief Strategy Officer @ Haus

Haus

100 Million Dollar CMO - Portland Leather Since 18 👜 | Scaled from $1M to $100M+ in Annual Revenue 📈 | Top 💯 Fastest Growing Digital Companies 22 & 23 🏆

Business Development @ AppLovin

AppLovin

CEO & Founder at Spot & Tango (We're hiring!)

CEO @BA-Commerce | Scaling 8 Figure Brands to Profitable +100% YOY Growth | Former Brand & Agency | Over $250M Media Managed

President at Posh Peanut (ex Ruggable, IPSY, Ogilvy, VF Corp) | Forbes Top 50 Entrepreneurial CMO | Top 100 Women in Business

Growth Marketing at AppLovin

Axon by AppLovin

I grow ecommerce brands profitably. Ask me how.

Digital Quarterback For Challenger CPGs

Director of Data | Common Thread Collective | Driving DTC Brand Growth with Data-Driven Ecommerce Marketing Strategies | Inventor & Engineering Background

Common Thread Collective

Isaac Medeiros built Mini Katana to $50M on organic content. 30B+ views across the internet.

Last month, he published an article on X arguing virality is dead. 

His thesis was fully formed. But I read it and thought ...

“F*** yeah! That’s a newsletter (almost).”

From there, I could see exactly what it would become with the right editorial layer underneath it.

Here’s what goes into turning an idea into something tens of thousands of operators can put into action.

Generated 20b+ Views & $50M+ in Sales & Now Sharing What I Learn Building Internet Native Brands

F Yeah Thats A Newsletter Almost

Want to speak alongside +25 ecommerce heavyweights in front of MILLIONS on Mar 18th? A panelist can’t make it.

- 5 minutes
- No slides
- All action

↓ Comment, DM, or email me
aaron@9operators[.]com

Also, you should sign up.
It will be very freaking good.

9operators.com

Operators Paid Growth Masterclass | Mar 18

For a long time, ecommerce operators kept their hands down. 

- They didn’t write about what’s working
- Didn’t share P&Ls on podcasts
- Didn’t host events and tell the truth

Why? Because the price of admission was vulnerability.

The work, wins, and losses were private. 

Now? Operators openly talk about how they sell things on the internet – through podcasts, newsletters, threads, and events – to the point where “talking about the work” has become a job in itself.

I’ve spent years inside this shift witnessing why this happened.

Here’s what made operator conversation valuable enough to turn into a full media layer:

Love Julia. And she’s not wrong ... for the top 5-10% of operators.

Taste and discernment are a moat for people who’ve already won the leverage game – high-level execs, ICs, and masters of their craft.

But if you’re trying to scale in consumer products? 

Adopting this viewpoint will not help you grow.

The fight right now is ...

“How do we get more creative that hits in the ad account to find more winners so we can spend more money and make more money?” That’s it.

And in B2B, it’s nearly identical.

Just replace creative with more and better:

- Outreach
- Prospecting
- Emails
- Organic social
- Landers

Content. Content. More content.

So we’re ripping at whatever the most acceptable-but-not-getting-canceled rate we can.

You know who really wins the game?

People who are mastering AI not at the expense of becoming less human, but using it to amplify the output of their humanity.

Debt used right is fuel. 
Debt used wrong is a Molotov.

Ecommerce debt — the version nobody writes because it requires really understanding how lenders behave when things break.

In this version, you ...

- Learn the difference between 15 weeks of runway and 3

- Find out that interest rate is the least important number on the term sheet

- Discover your lender’s litigation history tells you more than their pitch deck ever will

Five steps and a confession that makes a lot of sense once you get to the end ↓

5 Steps To Credit

Your dashboard is lying to you.

It can’t tell the difference between a bot click and a human.

Give every metric a haircut before you report it. The trust you build by under-promising is worth more than any inflated number.

If you run an ecommerce brand, you’re somewhere in this cycle:

Progress → Regression to the mean → Progress

The job is to know where you are in the cycle. Not to be the exception.

Tomorrow. 25+ ecommerce leaders. Ads masterclass. Free. Online. By operators, for operators

🏆 Growth keynotes
⚡️ 10 lightning panelists
🤔 Live MOperators “hotline”

Comment with your questions for the hotline! I’ll get em answered.

Sneak peek of what you’ll learn how to …

- Launch new accounts efficiently
- Unlock content & creative pipelines
- Craft new-customer vs LTV offers
- 3x your ad spend like a mf’ng boss
- Create a community-led flywheel
- Unite your media with retention
- Build 1–2 “peaks” each quarter
- Demystify + deploy incrementality
- Contribution margin by channel
- Attract influencers & affiliates
- Produce a flood of partnership ads
- Add AI into your creative process

Here’s the lineup ↓

★ Connor MacDonald, Ridge
★ Cherene Aubert, Growth Capital
★ Cody Plofker, Jones Road
★ Connor Rolain, HexClad
★ Mike Beckham, Simple Modern
★ Sean Frank, CEO of Ridge
★ Jason Panzer, HexClad
★ Matthew Bertulli, Pela x Lomi
★ Mehtab S. Bhogal, Karta Ventures
★ Bryan Cano, True Classic
★ Miranda Pettinger, GLAMNETIC
★ Jerel Blades, Growth at Tushy
★ Steve Rekuc, Dir. of Data CTC
★ Yingying Kuang, VP Mkt. at Kitsch
★ Olivia Kory, CSO at Haus
★ MacCoy Merkley, Portland Leather
★ Sam Appelbaum, AppLovin
★ Sarah Carusona, BA Commerce
★ Jenna Habayeb, Posh Peanut
★ Perry Coneybeer, Axon
★ Chase Mohseni, CreativeOS
★ Rico Mirabelli, DUDE Wipes

If you sign up, you’ll also get:

- Incrementality benchmarks
- Sheet template on what to test
- Our channel expansion guide
- The chance to nab a giveaway

Ridge, HexClad, Simple Modern, and Lomi have all donated. Plus, the awesome people at DUDE Wipes are giving someone a lifetime supply!

→

Open article: Operators Paid Growth Masterclass | Mar 18 by 9ops.co

Let me tell you my deepest, darkest secret. I run the newsletter behind this tweet. The one on the right with that handsome gentleman.

10,000s of subscribers. 60%+ open rate every single week. Often higher. With a CTR that would make you swoon.

And there is absolutely zero market research going into what I publish.

- No list of planned topics
- No deep research sprints
- No brainstorming sessions

Here’s my real editorial strategy:

I have access to seven operators who are constantly ripping content into the world – podcasts, tweets, threads, long-form breakdowns.

My only filter is which of those pieces is already at least 25% of the way to a full newsletter.

That’s it. 

That’s the entire editorial strategy behind the preeminent ecommerce newsletter.

Well, that and when they do a really good podcast with structure and tactical insights.

Speed over strategy.

Path of least resistance from an arsenal of people who are already producing fire.

And if I didn’t have access to them? I’d still be doing the same thing – just with a list of 10 ecommerce hitters I’m following on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Maybe sprinkle in a little Google Trends + some keyword research on long-tail terms associated with our niche.

I’m not whiteboarding or brainstorming. Just paying attention to what already works and making it better. 

Then, it turns into this.

No plan survives contact with reality. 

The crisis is 48 hours after you see you’ve missed your numbers. That’s when you either fix the problem or make it worse. 

Three operators broke this down on the podcast:

- Matthew Bertulli (Pela Case & Lomi)
- Jason Panzer (HexClad)
- Mike Beckham (Simple Modern)

Combined, they’ve navigated trade wars, covenant breaches, supply chain disasters, and years where nothing went right.

Here’s what they do differently when the forecast breaks:

→ Go ugly early

No drip-feeding bad news. No spin. Rip the band-aid off and overstate the problem if anything. People can handle hard truths. What they can’t handle is feeling managed.

→ Pair bad news with hope

Every hard conversation needs an answer to “why should I believe the future is better than today?” If people lose hope, you’ve lost them. The leadership around the miss is the failure, not the miss.

→ Diagnose the miss before you respond

Three reasons a plan breaks: the goal was bad, you didn’t execute, or the market moved. Different causes require different responses. Conflating them leads to panic decisions.

→ Know that satisfaction is relative

A $10M year is cloud nine for one company, catastrophic for another. Your team’s reaction to a miss is shaped by what they expected — which means the leader’s job started months ago when you set those expectations.

→ Accept that time in the game matters

The operators who navigate misses best have been through them before. If you haven’t, borrow from people who have. The playbook exists.

Planning is about building the judgment to respond when you’re wrong.

By the way, the full episode breaks down planning rhythms, bank covenants, and what “go ugly early” looks like in practice ↓ 

https://lnkd.in/gddHRtnj

taplio

The Battle

Dylan W.

Aaron Orendorff

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAaron Orendorff's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Dylan W.

Aaron Orendorff

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Aaron Orendorff's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAaron Orendorff's LinkedIn Performance