For years, “Lunch With Norm” was a regular appointment with a bearded mentor, a series of experts, and hard-hitting education in what it really takes to build an Amazon/e-commerce business. With over 600+ episodes, top-notch guests, and sure, a few tech issues along the way, Norm Farrar has been quietly building a living history of what works and what doesn’t for Amazon sellers and brand builders.
This article brings together 10 big lessons that Norm takes away from Lunch With Norm.
Lesson 1: Know Your Numbers Like Your Business Depends on It
The first pattern Norm noticed, again and again: The best sellers are obsessed with their numbers.
Some sellers best revenue screenshots were actually their worst profit months. The sales numbers were great, but after everything hit the P&L, they had almost nothing left and sometimes less than nothing.
The sellers Norm respected most accounted for everything that quietly chews through profit:
- Landed cost (NOT just product cost)
- Inbound shipping and prep fees
- Storage, long-term storage, and removal charges
- Returns, refunds, and damaged units
- PPC spend, including the messy bits like branded defense and auto campaigns
- Coupons, promotions, and “just this once” discounts that never really end
- Unexpected charges that appear without much ado
Norm also realized that the high-level sellers didn’t wait for the quarterly or even monthly reviews. They had a pulse on the numbers on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. They knew which SKUs were carrying the business, which ones were dying slowly, and where the hidden leak was. When ad costs skyrocketed or fees changed, they could act quickly because they weren’t guessing.
Norm heard horror stories about packaging more than once. A seller would skimp on packaging inserts or use fragile materials, and then the return and damage rates would skyrocket. This was apparent in the 1-star reviews, negative unboxing videos, and refund rates. By the time they realized just how costly “cheap packaging” was, it was too late.
The top sellers, especially those in the eight-figure range, considered these “hidden” costs as fundamental levers. They experimented with box sizes, box material, and bundling options. They optimized for dimensional weight. They ensured that their listing copy was setting the right expectations so that the buyer knew exactly what they were getting.
Lesson 2: Build Systems
If there was one philosophy that resonated throughout Norm’s conversations, it was this: Amazon rewards systems.
Norm frequently quoted Scott Adams’ mantra: “Goals are for losers. Systems are for winners.” This mindset appeared throughout the most successful individuals. The guests who reached the top of the mountain didn’t count on motivation, memory, or bursts of energy. They created systems to make winning repeatable.
Rather than waking up and asking, “What do I feel like working on today?” they had structured rhythms:
- Account health and listing status checks every week
- Recurring inventory forecasting and purchase-order cycles
- SOPs for new product setups, keyword research, and launch strategies
- Standardized ad testing and optimization procedures
- Review monitoring and response playbooks
Amazon is a constantly changing environment. Fees change. Rivals appear. Rules evolve. The sellers who were winging it were stuck in permanent reaction mode. Those with systems could roll with the punches because they weren’t reinventing the wheel every week.
Norm also recognized the stress relief that systems provided. Early on, many guests confessed to being “on” all the time, constantly checking the app, responding to every dip, staying up late night after night correcting errors.
The guests who had made the transition from seven to eight figures always had the same story to tell: until they began documenting, everything was chaotic.
They went from “I just do it myself because it’s faster” to:
- SOPs for the creation and updating of listings
- SOPs for coordinating with suppliers
- SOPs for reconciliations, reimbursements, and fee audits
- SOPs for launch sequences and promotional calendars
Once these SOPs were in place, they could:
- Hire people to follow them
- Improve them over time
- Spot where the system broke instead of pointing the finger at a person
Lesson 3: Own Your Customer
Since the early days of Lunch With Norm, there were always vendors who were enthusiastic about their “hero product.” One SKU that was going to revolutionize everything. Sometimes it did, at least for a short while. But again and again, Norm realized that it was a trap to expand on the basis of one SKU without any brand strategy.
The most resilient guests asked, “What kind of brand am I building, and how wide can this logically grow?”
This thinking changes everything:
- You think in terms of a customer journey, not a one-time transaction.
- You lay out what your ideal customer is likely to need before and after your main product.
- You pick products that fit under a shared brand promise, rather than just random things that happen to have good margins.
Norm saw guests who began as product sellers grow into brand builders. This transition usually happened after a scare: a hero product was copied, a listing was suspended, or a category became more competitive. Guests who had a real brand strategy were less likely to panic. They had other SKUs, other touchpoints, other ways to reach their customers.
To own a brand is to own the relationship, as much as Amazon will permit.
Norm’s guests who did this well:
- Invested in post-purchase experience: clear instructions, helpful inserts, QR codes pointing to guides or videos
- Built communities off Amazon, email lists, social groups, content hubs
- Treated every customer as if they were a repeat customer, rather than a one-time sale
They also considered customer lifetime value in their calculations. A product that seemed mediocre on first-order profit calculations could be absolutely right if it resulted in two or three follow-up sales.
In a market where the level of competition is always rising and the cost of advertising is always creeping up, the brands that are only focused on the first sale are always chasing their tails. The ones that think journey first have a chance to compound instead of always having to start over.
Lesson 4: Make the Customer Your Editor-in-Chief
Winning sellers treated reviews and returns as data. Losers treated them as insults.
Each guest had horror stories of being slammed with 1-stars or return spikes. The difference was how they reacted.
Winners would:
- Read reviews in groups to search for recurring phrases.
- Categorize complaints by theme: quality, size, expectations, instructions, packaging.
- Ask, “What is the customer actually telling us?”
Then they employed that feedback ruthlessly:
- Making changes to the product on the next reorder
- Clarifying listing images and bullets to set expectations better
- Adding instructions or troubleshooting FAQs to inserts and detail pages
- Improving packaging to reduce damage or confusion
Over time, this made their businesses less copyable. A competitor could copy the tangible product, but not the hundreds of micro-adjustments that had been made over multiple reorders based on real-world feedback.
Lesson 4 : Converting Reviews and Returns into a Product Roadmap
Norm observed smart sellers use negative feedback as free advice.
Examples from the guest stories included:
- A product with repeated “smaller than expected” reviews: they added comparison photos, clear dimensions, and a size guide. Returns decreased.
- A product with assembly complaints: adding a QR code to a simple video tutorial not only reduced returns but also increased reviews with “easy to put together.”
- Packaging that had scuffed or dented areas: a small improvement in material and internal packaging protection actually paid for itself by preventing replacements and refunds.
Rather than asking, “How do we get more reviews?” these sellers asked, “How do we become more review-worthy?” This small but important difference in language helped these sellers move from gimmicks to improvement.
Lesson 5: Every Seller Pays The “Amazon Tax” (But How Much is Up to You)
Over 600+ episodes, one theme never faded: there is always another “hack” being peddled to desperate sellers. Giveaway blasts, review manipulation schemes, “push this button and rank #1” scripts…
Norm witnessed a lot of these come and go.
At first, in the early days of the Amazon gold rush, these strategies were effective. Many guests confessed that they had employed aggressive giveaway tactics, review groups, and manipulative launch strategies. However, the price tag was eventually due.
Norm began referring to these shortcuts and a whole series of avoidable mistakes as the “Amazon tax.” Either way, everyone pays to learn. The question is whether you pay in controlled, intentional investments… or in painful, preventable disasters.
Lesson 6: The $10 / $100 / $1,000 / $10,000 Work Framework
This was one of the most frequently mentioned frameworks:
$10 tasks:
- Repetitive admin
- Basic customer messages
- Routine listing uploads
- Simple checks
$100 tasks:
- Coordination and follow-up
- SOPs and timelines management
- Inventory ordering and vendor communication
- Project management
$1,000 tasks:
- PPC and media specialists
- Conversion-driven creative
- External traffic setups
- Sophisticated operations and data work
$10,000 tasks (owner-level):
- Brand vision and positioning
- Big partnerships and distribution agreements
- Recruiting leaders and creating culture
- Expansion decisions and capital allocation
- Risk management and contingency planning
If Norm’s eight-figure guests found themselves doing $10 or $100 tasks on a consistent basis, they considered it a red flag. Not because those tasks didn’t matter but because every hour they spent there was an hour stolen from the work only they could do.
This transition from seller to owner affected their ceiling for growth. A company that depends on the owner to handle everything cannot grow beyond their capacity.
Lesson 7: Cash Flow Discipline Is the Real Moat
If there was one subject that brought seasoned guests noticeably serious, it was cash flow. Many of them had war stories: times when sales looked good but cash flow was perilously low. A large PO met with slow payments, ad bills, and unexpected expenses, and suddenly they were scrambling.
Norm received a constant warning: you can grow sales and go broke at the same time.
Here’s how that story usually went:
- A product succeeds (what seems like a “home run.”)
- The seller’s orders rise significantly.
- They roll out new variations or SKUs without a genuine cash plan.
- They scale PPC because “it’s working.”
- The payment delays of Amazon, along with the larger inventory checks, are now beginning to bite.
- One setback, whether it’s a stockout, a fee change, or a misfired campaign, puts them into a cash crunch.
In many instances, the business appeared to be in good shape from afar. The revenue was increasing. The reviews were good. However, because the cash was not being forecasted and managed, the engine overheated.
Lesson 8: Restraint, Focus, and Treating Amazon Like a Real Business
Another subtle but powerful shift Norm saw in the long-term winners was how they framed problems. Early on, many sellers, especially newer ones came to the show asking, “What’s the latest hack?” Over time, the best operators started asking a different question: “What’s the constraint?”
Was the real bottleneck:
- Conversion?
- Traffic quality?
- Margin?
- Inventory?
- Offer clarity or positioning?
Instead of flailing at symptoms, they looked for the single constraint that was choking growth and fixed that first. That disciplined problem-solving mindset, paired with the humility to admit, “The issue is in my offer, not the algorithm,” separated the steady builders from the chronic complainers.
Norm also noticed that the winners learned faster than Amazon changed. They built feedback loops into their business: tests, reviews, data checks, and regular strategy reviews. As the platform evolved, new ad types, new policies, new search behavior, they adjusted with it instead of clinging to last year’s playbook.
Lesson 9: Creating a Network
One of the surprising results of Lunch With Norm was the way it changed Norm’s network.
Norm launched the show originally because he wanted to share what he was learning and help sellers become better business people.
But the effect…
- Norm met incredible new sellers and service providers every week.
- Relationships built that led to partnerships, collaborations, and referrals.
- His “network” became an extended circle of people who had actually had conversations together.
Norm noticed that people who had seen or heard the show felt like they already knew him. This made first calls warmer, faster, and more productive.
And as the show grew, the caliber of guests improved. Each episode was a gateway to another relationship. The network compounded in a way that cold outreach rarely does.
Lesson 10: AI Won’t Save You
In the latter years of Lunch With Norm, AI began to creep into almost every conversation.
“AI is going to absolutely change the game but not in the way many people think. It will make basic execution simpler for all of us while making strategic weaknesses more apparent.”
Some of the changes that were evident include:
Discovery is transitioning from keywords to conversations.
Tools such as Amazon’s AI-powered assistants are teaching consumers to ask natural-language questions like “What’s the best option for…?” rather than simply entering “keyword + size.” A listing that looks like a checklist will be beaten by a listing that answers a question.
Relevance is more about intent than exact match keywords.
Amazon’s own models are beginning to understand use cases, fit, constraints, and context. Descriptions that outline who the product is for, how it’s used, and what it solves will give AI better signals and probably perform better.
AI listing tools make it easier for every business.
Generative tools can now produce decent copy, and basic images are easier than ever to create. This means that “okay” content is now the norm. The edge is in better inputs: clearer positioning, better product information, actual proof, and tight expectation-setting.
On the advertising side, Norm expects more shopping content to be summarized and re-packaged by AI. Amazon is already experimenting with AI-generated highlights on product pages. AI will favor brands that are already operating like real businesses, organized data, clear offers, and disciplined messaging. It will punish brands that are disorganized.
“AI makes it easier to appear competent and harder to remain competitive without actual business fundamentals. People who understand their numbers, honor cash flow, build systems, and stay close to customer truth will use AI to move faster. The rest of the world will just make bigger mistakes, faster.”
A Final Note
The show may be over, but the impact is not. In the course of these conversations, these lessons remain true:
- Know your numbers.
- Create systems.
- Own your customer.
- Be brand first.
- Respect cashflow.
- Delegate and develop into the owner’s role.
- Use tools, such as AI, to leverage what already works rather than to avoid doing the work.
The sellers who listened, adapted, and humbly built better businesses are continuing that legacy, one clarified listing, one improved product, and one disciplined decision at a time.
If this article nudges you to finally clean up your numbers, to tighten a system, to start that brand you’ve been overthinking, then Lunch With Norm is still doing its job.
So here’s to Norm, to the guests, and to you, the seller who’s still grinding it out. The episodes are there. The playbook is there. The next move is yours.