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Hey Fastlane Insiders! 👋
Let's be real—it's December 18th. You're probably sprinting to the finish line, trying to close out Q4 while staring down 2026 planning. The last thing you need right now is more "fluff" in your inbox.
So today, we're cutting straight to the money. Specifically, the money you might be accidentally burning without realizing it.
Here's the uncomfortable truth most brands miss until they dig deep: you're likely paying partners to take credit for sales that were already happening. I'm talking about funding Honey, Rakuten, and Capital One Shopping to intercept customers in the final minutes of checkout, while the creators who actually drove discovery get nothing.
That's just one leak. Today's edition is all about plugging the holes—from affiliate cannibalization to checkout friction to cash trapped in dead inventory—so you can step into 2026 leaner and more profitable.
Here’s the fast track for this week:
🎧 The $20 Billion Mistake – Josh Kennedy exposes why most affiliate programs are broken and how to stop funding partners who game your attribution.
📦 Beating Amazon on Speed – How Shopify Plus brands are using Uber Direct to offer 1-hour delivery without building a massive logistics network.
💰 The Year-End Money Hunt – A simple 7-day audit framework to find hidden profit in your discounts, app stack, and inventory before year-end.
🔥 Tool of the Week – Trustoo helps you turn one-time holiday shoppers into repeat buyers with gamified rewards and referrals in minutes.
📡 Industry Pulse – Temu opens up to 3M Shopify sellers, TikTok Shop eyes $20B, and Shopify flips the retail media model.
If you're wrestling with invisible profit leaks or trying to figure out where your next growth lever actually lives before the year ends—this one's for you.
Let's jump in. 👇
🎧 New Podcast Episode! 🎧
The $20 Billion Affiliate Mistake Most Brands Are Funding Without Knowing It
That $100K in "attributed revenue" lighting up your affiliate dashboard? Here's the uncomfortable truth: a massive chunk of it would have happened anyway—without you paying a single commission.
You're funding Honey, Rakuten, and Capital One Shopping to sit in the final five minutes of checkout, intercept customers who were already buying, and collect fees on purchases that were already in motion. Josh Kennedy calls this the "$20 billion mistake"—a systemic flaw where loyalty platforms and coupon sites game last-click attribution while contributing zero incremental value.
Josh founded Imagine Marketing in 2020 after working at a "premier" affiliate agency and discovering that its top 10 revenue partners weren't driving new customers—they were just harvesting existing demand. Coming from outside the traditional affiliate world gave him fresh eyes to spot what insiders had been ignoring for decades: even high-performing programs are quietly draining profit through lower-funnel cannibalization.
Since launch, his team has generated over $10 million in documented revenue by flipping the entire model. Instead of recruiting through networks and hoping partners promote you, they reverse-engineer discovery through search research—identifying where your customers are already looking for solutions, then building direct relationships with content creators who have real traffic and influence decisions before checkout.
In this episode, I unpack:
Why 2/3 of affiliate partnerships drain profit instead of driving growth
The attribution flaw making cannibalization invisible (and how to fix it)
Josh's framework for auditing your program and spotting partners gaming the system
The search-first strategy behind $10M in real, incremental revenue
Why Q4 and Q1 are the perfect windows to launch or restructure your program
The brands winning with affiliates aren't recruiting through networks and crossing their fingers. They're building direct relationships with upper-funnel content creators who influence purchase decisions at awareness and consideration stages—where real incrementality actually lives.
→[ LISTEN NOW ] and discover how to stop funding partners who steal credit for sales already happening.
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💡 Knowledge Drops of the Week 💡
How Shopify Plus Brands Are Finally Beating Amazon at Its Own Game
Amazon trained your customers to expect delivery in 1–2 days. In major cities, they now expect items in hours. For years, that speed advantage felt like an insurmountable moat—reserved for companies that own planes, trucks, and warehouse networks spanning continents.
Here's the shift happening right now: Shopify Plus merchants are closing the speed gap without building Amazon's infrastructure.
They're using Uber Direct combined with strategically placed local inventory to offer same-day and even one-hour delivery in their top markets. The results? Measurably higher conversion in delivery zones and stronger repeat purchase as customers retrain their habits away from marketplaces.
The numbers back this up: Uber's research shows 80% of U.S. shoppers want a same-day delivery option when buying online, and 66% of companies adding it report higher conversion rates. Speed isn't a luxury feature anymore—it's a conversion lever you can control.
The playbook that's working:
Strategic local inventory placement — Brands are staging stock in their top 3 city clusters using retail stores, dark stores, or multi-node 3PLs, then routing orders by proximity instead of shipping everything from a single warehouse
Uber Direct integration for courier speed — The Shopify Plus app lets you tap Uber's courier network to offer one-hour, same-day, and scheduled delivery directly in checkout with real-time tracking—no dispatch system to build
Smart delivery economics — Limit one-hour delivery to high-AOV orders and tight zones, set free same-day above a threshold (like 1.5× your average), or charge a fair rush fee where speed justifies it
Visibility in the full funnel — Surface the promise where it matters: "Same-day in [city] if you order by 2 PM" above the fold, on PDPs, in cart, and baked into paid social and email creative
The brands winning here aren't treating fast delivery as a "nice-to-have" support feature. They're treating it as core infrastructure—a growth lever that directly impacts conversion, repeat rate, and how trustworthy your brand feels compared to marketplaces.
→[ Read the Full Breakdown ] Plus a 90-day playbook brands are using to match Amazon’s speed.
The Year-End Audit That Actually Finds Hidden Money (Before 2026 Planning Locks In)
Q4 is almost over. You have maybe 10 days before 2026 planning hardens, budgets lock in, and your team commits to forecasts that might be built on leaky foundations.
Here's the question most brands can't clearly answer right now: "Where, exactly, are you leaking profit?"
The leaks are almost always the same. Sloppy discounting that trains customers to wait for sales. Bloated Shopify app draining $500+ monthly. Checkout friction killing conversion on mobile. Cash trapped in slow inventory. Weak lifecycle flows that allow "invisible customers" to slip through the cracks after a single browse or purchase.
Late December is the perfect moment for a fast profit diagnostic. You have nearly all your Q4 data. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind you. Patterns in your discounts, tools, checkout, inventory, and flows are visible now—not hypothetical.
Here's what "normal" looks like across Shopify and DTC brands in 2025:
70–80% checkout abandonment
10–25% of abandoned carts recovered by email/SMS
4–8× inventory turns per year for healthy brands
If you're far off these ranges, you likely have money sitting in plain sight. The brands I work with regularly find $3K–$5K monthly (small brands) to six figures annually (7-figure brands) just by running this simple, 7-day framework.
The five audit areas that find cash fast:
Discount policy and margin leaks — Pull Q4 promo data by campaign and sort by total profit, not revenue. Create three buckets: keep (evergreen offers that grow LTV), cut (deep discounts creating low-margin spikes and one-time buyers), and cap (set 2026 guardrails on max depth and promo windows)
App stack bloat and paid tool waste — Map every paid app and external tool with monthly cost and owner, then apply one rule: "one primary tool per core job." Kill duplicates and low-ROI tools quietly draining $200–$1,000+ monthly and slowing your site
Checkout friction destroying conversion — Identify your top three drop-off points in the funnel (cart to checkout, payment, add-to-cart rate), then ship quick fixes: show shipping estimates earlier, enable guest checkout, remove non-essential fields, and test all payment wallets on mobile
Dead inventory trapping cash — Pull 90- or 180-day performance reports and tag SKUs with more than 90 days of stock at current sales pace. Move them through bundles with best sellers, private VIP offers, or limited clearance channels—not sitewide blasts that wreck your brand
Email and SMS flow gaps — Run a simple test: sign up, browse, add to cart, abandon, place an order. See what actually fires. Then tighten cart abandonment timing to under 60 minutes, add basic post-purchase cross-sell, and build a 30–60 day win-back flow
You won't rebuild your entire operation this week, and you don't need to. The goal is to identify leaks, decide what to fix in the next two weeks, and what will become a 2026 project. Then step into the new year with fewer leaks, clearer rules, and a tighter grip on your unit economics.
→[ Read the Full Playbook ] and get the 7-day profit diagnostic plan you can run before year-end to uncover hidden cash and protect margin heading into 2026.
🔥 Tool of the Week 🔥
Turn more visitors into customers
Trustoo is the ultimate review platform built for fast-growing Shopify brands to build social proof and boost sales.
Higher response rates with fully customizable review requests. Display reviews in a way that’s fully customizable to your brand. Boost retention with smart discounts and referral tools Increase store visits by displaying star ratings on Google Search. Photo & video review, google seo, 24/7 support and more.
Enjoy 40% off for your first month and 15-day free trial
⚡ Industry Pulse ⚡
Every week, I come across strategies and insights that are just too good not to share. Here's what caught my attention this week.
Temu Opened Integration for Nearly 3 Million U.S. Shopify Sellers to list and sell through its marketplace in 30+ markets. As tariffs and regulatory pressure squeeze China-direct imports, Temu is hedging with its Local Seller Program—enabling U.S.-based fulfillment with one-click product sync, real-time inventory updates, and automated order management across 600+ categories. Worth exploring if marketplace diversification is on your 2026 roadmap.
TikTok Shop Sales Are Forecast to Hit $20 Billion in 2026 and $30 billion by 2028, making up nearly 20% of U.S. social commerce this year. By 2027, TikTok Shop will represent a quarter of all social commerce sales, with half of U.S. social shoppers expected to purchase on TikTok in 2026. The platform's ability to blend shopping and entertainment is driving spontaneous, frictionless purchases with 700M+ primed buyers already scrolling. If you're not testing shoppable content yet, 2026 might be the year.
Shopify Rolled Out Product Network, a new advertising marketplace that flips the traditional retail media model. Merchants now earn Shop Campaign credits by hosting other sellers' dynamic product ads on their stores—managed directly through Shopify admin. The innovation: Shopify is creating a retail media ecosystem within its own network, letting smaller brands appear on larger brands' surfaces while established stores unlock new revenue streams. If you're a mid-to-large merchant with decent traffic, this could monetize visitors who don't convert.
Until Next Thursday
Here's my takeaway this week: The brands winning right now aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets.
They're the ones who stopped tolerating invisible leaks.
They audited their affiliate programs and cut partners stealing credit. They ran an app audit and found thousands trapped in dead tools. They matched Amazon's speed without owning warehouses.
Clarity beats scale every time…
When you know where profit is leaking and where attribution is lying to you, you stop burning budget on hope and start investing in systems that compound.
The window to fix Q4 is closing, but the door to a leaner, more profitable 2026 is wide open.
Here's to finding that hidden money.
Happy Holidays
Steve
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