About Chris McCarron - Glasgow CRO Operator

13 years of operator experience, not consultant theory

I started in CRO in 2013 as an operator inside ecommerce businesses, not as a consultant selling services to them. The first eight years were operator-side work — running the conversion programmes, owning the tracking, deciding which tests to run and which to roll back. The agency work came later, after the operator pattern recognition was already built. Gradually out client-base grew internationally, working with clients like Sujan Patel, Neil Patel, Noah Kagan and Ezra Firestone.

That sequence matters because operator-side experience compounds differently to agency experience. An operator runs the same tests across 3-5 years and sees which winners hold up, which reverse, and which were never real wins. An agency consultant runs tests across many clients but rarely owns the 12-month follow-up. The operator's view of "what actually works" is built from rollback data the consultant never sees.

The OperatorAI methodology came from a specific failure

OperatorAI started after I watched four consecutive Hotjar-AI "winners" reverse at 90 days on a supplements client in 2024. The pattern: AI tools surface short-term lifts that don't account for novelty effect, segment confounders, or seasonality. The fix wasn't to abandon AI — it was to put a 13-year operator in front of the AI output, filtering for the 1 in 4 surfaced hypotheses that would actually hold up.

That filter is the OperatorAI methodology. It's not a tool. It's a sequence of judgement-rules applied to AI output to filter signal from noise. The 28-34% conversion lifts our clients see come from running the filter, not from running the AI.

The 99 Rule came from a similar failure

The industry standard for CRO testing — 95% statistical significance, 7-day run length — produces winners that reverse 40-60% of the time at 90 days. The 99 Rule (99% significance, 14-day minimum, 1,000 conversions per variant) raised that bar after we measured how many "wins" were holding up across 40+ engagements.

The 99 Rule costs you ~30% more sample size and ~50% more run length than the industry standard. In exchange, the wins compound. Programmes running the 99 Rule produce lifts that hold up at 90, 180, and 365 days. Programmes running the industry standard produce lifts that look good at 30 days and disappear at 90.

Why I run GoGoChimp out of Glasgow

Glasgow is a working city with a lower cost base than London, Edinburgh, or Manchester. That means GoGoChimp's pricing (£2.5K Sprint, £2.5K/month Growth, £5K/month Scale) is genuinely sub-London-agency without being a downgrade in operator quality. Most of our work is remote anyway — clients are split across UK, Europe, and US — so geography matters less than it would for a face-to-face consultancy.

The Glasgow base also means I have time. I'm not running between Soho meetings or doing 60 client coffees a quarter. I do the actual diagnostic work on every engagement personally, which is the part most agencies hand off to juniors.

Endorsements and editorial presence

Endorsed by Neil Patel (NP Digital founder), Noah Kagan (AppSumo founder, OkDork), and Kevin J. Martin (Build Grow Scale founder, originator of the 347-store research that informs the OperatorAI methodology). Featured in Forbes (Joseph Liu, May 2026), Shopify Enterprise Blog (2026), CMO Times (lead expert), Grit Daily (lead expert), and the Indie Marketing Plays podcast. Wikipedia citations on Rigidity (psychology) reference the OperatorAI methodology and the 99 Rule.

How to work with me

Three engagement options: Sprint (£2.5K, 2 weeks, single-test diagnostic and execution), Growth (£2.5K/month, 3-month minimum, ongoing programme), Scale (£5K/month, 6-month minimum with 90-day conversion lift guarantee). Plus three productised entry products: AI Headline Lab (£500), Speed Sprint (£1,500), Pricing Experimentation Audit (£2,500). Book a free 15-minute audit to scope which fits your situation.