Growth Operations
Okay, So WTF Is Growth Ops Anyway?
Not a job title. Not a software stack. A way of figuring out what your business actually needs next.
India Hines · Hinesight Media
TLDR
The 30-second version
- Fractional is how I work with you. Growth ops is what I actually do.
- Growth ops is the behind-the-scenes work of connecting the parts of your business that have to work together for growth to happen.
- The point isn't a list of tactics. It's figuring out which pieces your business actually needs next, and connecting them to drive sustainable revenue growth.
- The work starts with the customer journey and works backward into the offer, the marketing, and the systems.
- Sometimes the job is strategy. Sometimes it's building and implementing the thing.
- The goal is a repeatable way to grow, without the founder having to pull a second shift to manage the day-to-day operations.
Fractional this. Fractional that.
Fractional CMO. Fractional COO. Fractional marketing.
And then here I come talking about being a fractional growth operator.
So first: what the hell does that actually mean?
Because those are two different things.
Fractional describes how I work with your business.
Growth operations describes what I actually do.
Think about a travel nurse.
A travel nurse may join a hospital for a specific period of time instead of becoming a permanent full-time employee.
That describes the working arrangement.
But they're still a nurse. They still have a specialty, responsibilities, expertise, and a job to do once they get there.
Same idea.
I can work with your business fractionally — for a project, for part of the week, or as an ongoing partner — while the actual work I'm doing is growth operations.
If you want the deeper breakdown of fractional work, I already wrote about that here:
Fractional vs. growth ops
Fractional is how I work with you. Growth ops is what I actually do.
Read: What the Hell Is Fractional Marketing, Anyway?Now let's get into the other half.
So… what is growth ops?
Growth operations is the behind-the-scenes work of connecting the parts of the business that have to work together for growth to actually happen.
And depending on the business, that can mean very different things.
·Your offer.
·Your positioning.
·Your marketing.
·Your customer journey.
·Your website.
·Your booking or sales process.
·Your CRM.
·Your appointment software.
·Your follow-up.
·Your automations.
·Your paid ads.
·Your content.
·Your retention.
·Your reporting.
·Your tech stack.
·Your team.
·Your next revenue stream.
The point is not to collect a bunch of tactics, but to build a system.
The point is to figure out:
What are we trying to do?
Does the customer actually want it?
What does the customer need in order to move forward?
What needs to exist behind the scenes to make it work?
How do we know if it worked?
And then:
Can we do it again?
That's growth ops.
Imagine trying to do all of this while actually delivering your high value service
Maybe you’re a stylist.
An esthetician.
A coach.
A doula.
An aesthetic provider.
A concierge medical practice.
A wellness business.
A specialist serving people with a chronic condition.
You already have the work people actually pay you to do.
Then there's everything else.
Did the person who filled out the form ever schedule?
Did the consultation turn into a sale?
Did the paid ads bring in the right people?
Where did the lead come from?
What happened on the website?
How long does someone usually take to buy?
Do they convert after one touchpoint or four?
Is the booking process making it harder than it needs to be?
Are we generating enough demand?
Or are we creating a bunch of attention that goes nowhere?
Did anyone follow up with the person who almost booked?
Did the customer receive aftercare?
Did they come back?
Can the appointment software do more of this automatically?
Do we know which part of the business is actually creating revenue?
And somehow, all of that is supposed to happen after you finish the work you're known for.
That's part of what I call the second shift.
Growth ops lives between the idea and the repeatable process
Let's say you have an idea.
Maybe you want to create a hair membership.
Or launch a virtual consultation service.
Or build a medical concierge or travel-health concierge offer for people who need more coordinated support.
Or start a Skool community around your expertise.
Having the idea is the easy part.
Now we have to figure out:
Who actually wants this?
What problem does it solve?
Did we validate that before spending months building it?
What should it cost?
What’s included?
How do we position it?
What does someone need to understand before buying?
What content do we need to create?
Is the content actually resonating?
Where does someone go after they see the content?
What happens when they get there?
Is the booking or checkout flow ready?
What systems need to be set up?
Do we need email?
Automations?
Appointment software?
A CRM?
A community platform?
Payment processing?
Onboarding?
What happens after somebody buys?
How do we roll it out?
How do we know where the first customer came from?
Why did they buy?
Can we trace the path they took?
What worked?
What didn’t?
And once we know what worked:
How do we do it again?
That's the difference between:
“We launched something.”
“We built a repeatable way to grow it.”
But sometimes you don't even have the idea yet
Sometimes the founder just knows:
I'm ready to grow.
That's enough to start.
We don't have to walk into the room already knowing the answer is a membership, a new service, paid media, corporate partnerships, a community, or something else.
We figure out what makes sense for the business together.
What do customers already want?
Where is demand showing up?
What do people keep asking for?
What can the business realistically deliver?
What has healthy margins?
What can grow without creating another full-time job for the founder?
What assets already exist that we’re underusing?
What part of the customer relationship has more value in it?
Growth ops is also investigation.
Sometimes the work starts with an idea.
Sometimes it starts with a problem.
Sometimes it starts with:
“I know I'm ready for something else. I just don't know what that is yet.”
What does growth ops actually look like?
Ten real conversations. Open one and you'll see the questions I'd ask before recommending anything.
Different founders, different problems, same first move: understand what is actually happening before deciding what to do.
Sometimes the job is strategy. Sometimes we build the thing.
That's another important part of growth ops.
I don't only want to tell you:
“You should automate this.”
Sometimes we're setting up the automation.
I don't only want to say:
“You should improve your booking experience.”
Sometimes we're implementing the appointment platform.
I don't only want to say:
“You should create another offer.”
Sometimes we're validating it, positioning it, mapping the customer journey, planning the rollout, setting up the systems, and launching it.
We build and implement.
And when a specialist is needed, part of the job is knowing who should be involved and how their piece connects to everybody else's.
My version of growth ops is rooted in the customer journey
This is where my version of the work looks a little different.
I usually start with the customer.
What do they need?
What are they trying to change?
What do they need to understand?
What do they need to trust?
What is stopping them?
What happens before they buy?
What happens after?
Then we work backward into the business.
What does the offer need to be?
How should it be positioned?
What should marketing do?
What systems need to support the journey?
What gets automated?
What needs a human?
What do we measure?
What needs to happen after the appointment?
What should happen if the customer disappears?
What should happen if they’re unhappy?
What should happen when they’re ready for more?
Because the customer doesn't experience your business as separate departments.
They don't care that one thing is “marketing,” another is “operations,” and another is “CRM.”
They experience one business.
So the pieces have to work together.
Which is also why “systems thinker” fits
Systems thinkers care about the relationship between things.
If we change this, what happens over there?
If we increase demand, can we fulfill it?
If we launch a membership, can the systems support it?
If we add another provider, what changes?
If we introduce AI, what should it actually improve?
If we run ads, what happens to the lead afterward?
If we add a high-value service, does the experience support the price?
If something works once, do we understand why?
And if we understand why:
Can we make it repeatable?
That's how we move from:
good idea
this actually works
we know how to do this again.
So what is a growth operator?
We’re builders.
Investigators.
Systems thinkers.
Problem solvers.
Sometimes strategists.
Sometimes implementers.
Sometimes the person asking the annoying question everybody skipped:
Okay, but what happened after that?
The job is not to give founders another list of things to do.
It's to figure out what matters, connect the pieces, build what's missing, and create a more repeatable way to grow.
Because more revenue is great.
But I'm interested in creating more revenue sustainably.
That means the business has to be able to carry what comes next.
That's growth ops.
Or at least, that's how I do it.
The receipts
Want to see it in practice?
The Dash Studio membership started the same way: numbers first, offer second. Or book a growth call and we'll talk through what fits your business.
Or take a look at how I work