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[LWN] 💰 The $100,000 Mistake I Made at McDonald’s

[LWN] 💰 The $100,000 Mistake I Made at McDonald’s

Lunch With Norm's Weekly Newsletter - Amazon News & Updates

July 07, 2025 • Estimated Read Time: 16 minutes

💰 The $100,000 Mistake I Made At McDonald’s…

What you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:

💰 The $100,000 Mistake I Made At McDonald’s [True Story]
🚨 The Do’s and Don’ts of Prime Day!
🔥 Get Reviews Before You Launch [Vine Update]
😱 Chaos in the Amazon Software Space
🤖 How to Create On-Brand Images [AI Walkthrough]

Kevin King and I have invited 7 of the top AI experts. They are going to show you how the top 1% are using AI to dominate Amazon.

Don’t miss out on this LIVE Training → July 10 2 pm ET

💰 The $100,000 Mistake I Made At McDonald’s [TRUE STORY]

When I was a teenager, during my college holidays, I worked in my dad's woodworking factory.

He had a few big contracts, but one that really stands out was a major project for McDonald's head office in Toronto.

We were tasked with redoing their theater seating, which was a pretty huge deal for the business.

Now, the day of installation came.

We were hungry and we could not find a McDonalds.

Our supervisor decided to grab something at Burger King.

Instead of eating there, we brought the food back with us and ate while installing the new benches and chairs.

At the end of the day, the supervisor, thinking he was being funny, tossed all the Burger King bags into the McDonald's trash bins.

We thought it was a harmless, funny little prank.

But come Monday morning, my dad got a furious call from a McDonald's VP, who was not amused in the slightest.

They were so upset that they cut all ties with us and held back a six-figure payment for 180 days.

The lesson here?

Brand loyalty and understanding your client's culture is no joke.

What seemed like a small, funny act to us was a huge deal to them, and it really drove home the importance of respecting the brands you work with.

Enjoy the rest of the newsletter.

— Norm

P.S. If you haven’t yet,I highly recommend you subscribe to Kevin King’s Newsletter for more updates.

	Billion Dollar SellersCutting Through the Clutter for the World's Top Amazon & E-Commerce Sellers

👇THE TOP MUST READ STORIES THIS WEEK 👇

🔥 More brands turn to ‘tariff engineering’ to avoid higher import taxes - Read More

📢 TikTok to launch US-Specific app in September called “M’ - Read More

💰 Nearly half of suppliers plan to increase prices due to tariffs - Read More

👮The rise of vendor fraud in a world of AI and trade chaos - Read More

🚧 Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of fake review detection - Read More

🤝 Walmart commits to sourcing $10 billion of India-made goods each year by 2027 - Read More

🔥 Get Amazon Reviews Before You Launch!

You can now get Vine reviews before your product even launches on Amazon.

That means you can launch with up to 30 real customer reviews already on day one. Just imagine how much of a boost that gives your conversion rate, ranking, and overall momentum out the gate.

✅ The Do’s and Don’ts of Prime Day❌

✅ DO Use Amazon PPC Aggressively

Increase bids and especially your Top of Search placement before Prime Day.
Use the momentum from the 30% sale to improve conversion rate and rank.

❌ DON’T Pull Back on Ads Before Prime Day

Many sellers reduce PPC around July 4th—don’t follow them. That’s your window to win cheap traffic.

✅ DO Focus on Your Top Sellers

Apply the strategy only to the top 20% of products that generate 80% of your results.
Same goes for campaigns—scale only your most profitable ones.

❌ DON’T Discount Everything

Avoid spreading resources across all products. Focus only on top performers to maintain profitability.

✅ DO Send External Traffic

Drive traffic using:
- Email blasts (2 emails per day on July 7)
- Google Ads with headlines like “30% off on Amazon – Pre-Prime Day Sale”

❌ DON’T Ignore Organic Ranking

The whole pre-Prime Day push (PPC + discount + external traffic) is to boost organic placement.
If you're not ranking already, this tactic won't work.

✅ DO Submit Prime Day Deals in Advance

Set up a 20% off Prime Day deal for July 8–11.
Don’t skip this—shoppers actively look for “Prime Day” tagged listings.

❌ DON’T Forget to Turn Off Pre-Sale Coupons

Make sure the 30% off coupon ends the day before Prime Day, so your 20% Prime Day deal takes over.

Dr. Travis Zigler did a great breakdown that I recommend you watch

🎉 Wheel of Kelsey Draw

This week’s 🎁: Access to Fluencer Fruit for 1 Month

This takes 5 seconds to try out your luck below. Feeling lucky?

🚨 Reply to this email with “#wheelofkelsey”

We spin the “Wheel of Kelsey” every Wednesday at 12 pm ET on my YT channel "Norman Farrar”.

😱 Helium10 Announces Major Changes to Affiliate Program, Sparking Industry Backlash

In a recent update to its affiliate program, Helium10 has announced the removal of lifetime recurring commissions for partners.

Going forward, affiliates will now receive a one-time commission per referral. Existing recurring payouts will not be grandfathered in.

This change were allegedly quietly communicated via an email framed as a routine affiliate update, leaving many long-time partners blindsided.

Social media posts were making rounds on Linkedin over the weekend.

Several affiliates who have supported the brand since its early days report significant financial losses—some upwards of $15,000 per month.

Industry insiders are questioning the timing and structure of the change, speculating that it may be tied to broader financial objectives following private equity involvement.

For a company built with the help of its affiliate community, this shift raises important questions about long-term partnership strategy.

75% of shoppers don’t go past the first page of Amazon when searching.

How do you outrank your competitors?

To beat out your competitors in 2025 it’s necessary for Amazon brands to heavily invest in external traffic strategies. One of the best external traffic platforms is Stack Influence which uses A.I. and a dedicated community to automate thousands of collaborations per month to help you increase your Amazon external traffic, generate UGC, and scale your recurring revenue like never before.

Top Amazon brands like Thrasio, Unilever, and Magic Spoon have been able to get to #1 page positioning on Amazon and increase their monthly revenue as high as 13X in as little as 2 months.

Here are top reasons why brands love to work with Stack Influence:

📈Increase Amazon listing search positioning (drive high volume external traffic sales)
🤑Pay influencers only in products (stop negotiating fees with every influencer)
📸Generate branded image/video UGC with full legal rights (no timeframe or usage restrictions)
🤝Develop affiliate relationships (easily identify top influencer candidates to work with in the long run)
🤖Automate influencer collaborations from A-Z (save over 175 management hours per month)

Don't believe it? Check out the results from the Blueland Micro Influencer campaign which generated a 13X ROI scaling up influencers on Amazon. After successfully raising investment on Shark Tank Blueland turned to Stack Influence to boost their Amazon sales and become a top selling listing using Micro Influencer marketing.

Increase your Amazon listings ranking for targeted keywords and multiply your organic recurring revenue in 2025!

Get 10% OFF by signing up this month

🌎 Where in the World is The Beard Guy?

Can you find Norm in the picture below? Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see the answer!

😮 The Main Image Fix That Made $19K…

My favorite takeaways from Colin Raja (you can find the full ep on YouTube):

Use ChatGPT to Simulate Buyer Questions Before Writing Copy
Matt suggests asking AI tools like ChatGPT:
“What would someone ask if they were looking to buy this product?”
Then build your image stack and copy to directly answer those specific questions.
Your Listing Should Speak at a 4th Grade Reading Level
Amazon AI prefers simple, direct language. Avoid technical jargon or marketing fluff. Focus on clarity over cleverness so your listing is easily understood and featured in AI summaries.
Reorder Your Bullet Points Based on What Buyers Actually Ask
Don’t rely on your assumptions. Use real customer data (reviews, Q&A) to reorder bullets based on what shoppers care about most—put the most-searched answers at the top.
Run Your Listing Through Claude or GPT to Surface Gaps
Copy your live listing into a model and prompt:
“What questions does this listing leave unanswered?”
Use Image Captions That Reinforce Buyer Questions
Add small text overlays to images that mirror the buyer’s thought process—like “Will this fit my car?” or “How long does it last?” These help with both visual scanning and SGE inclusion.

🤖 How to Craft On-Brand Images Using AI

Say you want to create an eye-catching visuals to showcase the launch of a new wellness course. We want each image to match our brand’s calming, creative vibe, something stock graphics never quite deliver.

By specifying both the “medium” (watercolor painting) and “style” (minimalist, tranquil) in ChatGPT, we generated a set of consistent, professional-looking images for our campaign in minutes.

Step-By-Step Guide

1 . Describe the Scene Clearly

We hit the “Create an image” tool inside of ChatGPT 4o, and started with a simple, clear description of the scene: “A woman meditating on a hill at sunrise.”

This first image will set the foundation for any prompt.

2. Choose the Medium for Texture & Feel

Next, we picked “watercolor painting” as the medium. This created soft, blended textures and a calming mood—perfect for our wellness brand.

3. Add Style for Mood & Consistency

We layered on the style: “minimalist, tranquil style.”

This stripped away any clutter and focused on calm colors and clean lines, matching our new course’s tone.

FACT: More than one-third of organizations are already using generative AI to create images, mainly in marketing, product design, and branding roles 

4. Mix and Match for Exploration

Curious about other looks, we swapped in “oil painting” for a richer, more classic vibe, and “digital illustration” for crisp, modern graphics.

As you can see, each combo produced a totally new feel.

5. Ask ChatGPT for More Options

Whenever we felt stuck, we just prompted: “List 20 different types of mediums an image can be created in.”

ChatGPT gave us a menu of choices—clay art, pencil sketch, collage, and more—making it easy to experiment

6. Iterate Until It’s Right

We then combined different mediums and styles, tweaking prompts and previewing results until we had a full set of visuals that felt cohesive and professional.

This entire process took under 30 minutes—no designer needed.

Looking for more AI trainings, bootcamps, and softwares? Check out Futurepedia

🔥 How a $2,500/hr Google Ads Expert Scales Real Businesses

Here are my favorite tips from this episode!

Optimize for Profit using Contribution Margin
John tracks profitability down to the SKU and channel level using contribution margin instead of chasing a target ROAS. He layers in fixed costs and customer acquisition costs to understand the real return on each campaign.
Set Up Campaigns Based on Business Goals
Rather than letting Google automate too early, John builds campaigns aligned to funnel stages: cold awareness, warm retargeting, and LTV-focused remarketing. Each campaign has its own KPIs and conversion paths to avoid signal pollution.
Use Smart Shopping and Performance Max Only When You Control First-Party Data
John recommends feeding these campaigns only when you can close the loop: tagging conversions properly, sending back offline data, and owning attribution modeling. Without this, Google’s automation trains on junk signals.
Test Landing Page Conversion Before Scaling Budget
Before pushing ad spend, John runs micro tests to validate landing page performance—especially on mobile. If conversion rates aren’t healthy, scaling will only magnify the waste.
Treat Google Ads as a Scaling Tool, Not a Product-Market Fit Finder
John only ramps campaigns once product-market fit is proven. He emphasizes that Google can amplify growth, but it can’t fix weak offers, unclear messaging, or poor lifetime value economics.