571: 2024’s Biggest Winners and Losers: Who Crushed It and Who Crashed?

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The biggest winners of 2024 were Nvidia, Elon Musk, anything AI-adjacent, Walmart, YouTube and TikTok creators, and breakout personalities like Caitlin Clark and Simone Biles. The biggest losers were Amazon FBA sellers who only sell on Amazon, SEO-only blogs, chain restaurants like Red Lobster and TGI Fridays, department stores like Macy’s (which closed 150 stores), the NBA (down about 58% in ratings), X/Twitter, and anyone who paid $180 to Netflix to watch the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight stream buffer for three rounds.

This is our first annual awards episode, where my co-host Toni Herrbach and I picked the best investments, worst investments, best products, biggest life hacks, and biggest personal changes of 2024, plus who crushed it and who crashed in the broader economy and ecommerce world. The through-line across almost every category is the same: brands and creators who stayed tuned to what their audience actually wanted won, and the ones that were tone-deaf lost.

Below we cover our best and worst investments of 2024, the best products and life hacks we adopted, the biggest personal changes we are making in 2025, and the biggest ecommerce winners and losers you should actually be paying attention to.

Key takeaways

• Amazon FBA sellers who only sell on Amazon were the biggest ecommerce losers of 2024. Amazon rolled out new inbound placement, low-inventory, and returns fees, plus AWD (Amazon Warehousing and Distribution) had a disastrous holiday season.
• Nvidia was one of the best stock investments of 2024. Steve owned it for a decade before it went vertical, on the theory (from being a gamer) that Nvidia dominated GPUs.
• High-yield savings accounts, including business accounts like Highbeam, were an underused everyday investment. Rates were as high as 4.5% before cuts.
• The best AI life hacks of the year: ChatGPT and Claude for coding and writing (Steve retired his human writers), ElevenLabs voice cloning, and SearchGPT replacing Google for research.
• Biggest ecommerce winners of 2024: Nvidia, AI-adjacent companies, Amazon the corporation (not Amazon sellers), Walmart, fast-casual restaurants like Cava and Shake Shack, and creators building on YouTube and TikTok.
• Biggest ecommerce losers: pure-SEO blogs (killed by Google AI Overviews), chain restaurants, department stores, X/Twitter, and anyone who bought a car or overpriced real estate at 2024 rates.
• The one big shift Steve made in 2024: automating custom-print product creation with a ChatGPT-generated script, so he can target every occasion Hallmark-style at scale.

Best investments of 2024

The best investments of 2024 for us were Nvidia stock (up massively for the year), high-yield savings accounts like Highbeam for business cash, and personal-growth spending like better walking shoes and paid podcast subscriptions. Financial returns and personal-growth returns both count.

Steve has owned Nvidia for about a decade because he was a heavy PC gamer and knew the company dominated GPUs. That thesis paid off well before AI took over, and 2024 was the year everyone else caught up.

Toni’s biggest win was moving money out of a low-interest checking account into a high-yield savings account. On the business side, Highbeam (a bank built for ecommerce) let cash coming in and out of the business earn interest, sometimes as high as 4.5% before the rate cuts.

The overlooked category is personal growth. Buying better walking shoes, subscribing to more podcasts, and putting money into small quality-of-life upgrades produced the best return-on-investment of the year for Toni. Cheap in dollars, big in daily effect.

Worst investments of 2024

The worst investment of 2024 was any luxury European car whose warranty ran out (Steve’s BMW), plus buying a car or overpriced real estate in a market with sky-high interest rates. Toni’s best move was the car she almost bought and didn’t.

Steve’s BMW hit about 50,000 miles, had a catastrophic timing-chain failure right after a $2,500 repair, and BMW refused to help. There was a settled lawsuit on that exact model, but BMW is not legally required to notify owners of settled defect lawsuits. Steve had his son in the car when it started failing.

Toni almost bought a car in 2024 and is glad she didn’t. Interest rates were sky-high, prices were volatile, and used-car values had further to fall. The best investment can be the one you skip.

Real estate in 2024 was a mixed bag. If you had to buy, you probably paid too much at the front of the year. If you sold and downsized (Toni sold her house at the top of the Florida market), it was one of the best financial moves of the year.

Biggest personal wins of 2024

The biggest personal wins of 2024 in our world were selling a house at the top of the Florida market (Toni), automating product-listing creation with an AI script (Steve), and moving family members closer to home (both of us). One is a huge financial win, one is a productivity multiplier, one is a life-satisfaction win.

Toni watched her local Florida market for six years and sold her big, expensive-to-operate house right as it flipped from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market. She then rolled the proceeds into another renovation project. Selling at the top made a large amount of money and cut a stack of ongoing operating expenses.

Steve’s biggest win was a script that automates custom-print product creation for his ecommerce store, Bumblebee Linens. Before the script, every new printed product needed manual Photoshop mockups, a written description, a title, and an upload. With the script, ChatGPT writes the description and title, the image gets Photoshopped onto the three products they print on, and it all uploads automatically. The end goal is to have a printed product for every occasion Hallmark ever invented, because Hallmark literally invented most of those occasions and built a business on it.

The other big win was moving Steve’s mom into his neighborhood, and doing it at a good price after a rainy open-house week and a listing agent who mispriced by $500,000 kept other buyers away.

Coolest moments of 2024

The coolest moments of 2024 for us were bucket-list travel and one bucket-list sporting event. Steve went to the Super Bowl (Niners vs. Chiefs) and the Paris Olympics. Toni was in Budapest for New Year’s Eve, skiing in Austria for her birthday, and in Denmark during Christmas.

Steve had wanted to go to a Super Bowl for years and finally justified the ticket cost because the game was one of the best in recent memory. Paris was his first trip to the city, and beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower was worth the trip on its own. Olympic basketball was the letdown of the trip because the U.S. only sends its top NBA stars, so every other team plays without theirs and the level drops.

Toni’s happiest coolest moment was less flashy: sitting in an outdoor Christmas-market cafe in Denmark with heaters, heated seats, and blankets, watching people. Those are the moments you cannot put a price tag on.

Steve’s other coolest moment was smaller and closer to home: his daughter made the honor roll for the first time in her life, in high school, after years of struggling. That one you cannot buy tickets to.

Best life hacks of 2024 (AI, voice, and morning routines)

The best life hacks of 2024 for us were using ChatGPT and Claude to write code and long-form content, cloning your own voice in ElevenLabs, a phone-free morning routine with five minutes of guided breathing, and following The Points Guy for travel-hack email tips.

Steve used ChatGPT to code a loyalty program for Bumblebee Linens and a two-step spin-to-win pop-up. The new pop-up increased his email opt-in conversion rate by roughly 3x to 3.5x. He also uses Claude specifically for creative writing, where it beats other tools by a wide margin.

He cloned his voice in ElevenLabs so his overseas assistant can type in any script and get a voiceover that sounds like him, which is only useful if you make content, but if you do it is transformative. The newest ElevenLabs model handles intonation and pacing well enough that the clones are hard to distinguish from the real voice.

Toni’s non-AI life hack is the morning routine. Get out of bed, do not check your phone, walk in the sun, and do five minutes of guided breathing. She was a breathing-work skeptic 18 months ago and it changed her mornings. Her other life hack is following The Points Guy for travel-hacking emails, which is how she has flown almost free to most of her trips.

Best products of 2024

The best products of 2024 for us were noise-canceling insulation (yes, really), Bose open-ear hook-around headphones, and SearchGPT as a full replacement for Google. The two physical products are personal; the third one changed our workflow.

Toni’s construction-related best products came from renovating her house. Sound-dampening insulation (rolled wool-style batting) was the standout: cheap-ish, easy to install, and huge quality-of-life gain if you are building or remodeling.

The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds hook around the back of your outer ear and do not go into the canal at all. That means you can walk, run, cycle, and still hear the world around you. For anyone who dislikes in-canal earbuds like AirPods, they are a genuinely different form factor.

Steve’s best product of the year was SearchGPT, OpenAI’s AI-search product with citations. It has replaced Google entirely for him. Perplexity is also strong, but SearchGPT’s answer format has less clutter and better source citations for his workflow.

Biggest personal changes for 2025

The biggest personal changes we are making for 2025 are exercising five days a week (Steve, using Nintendo’s Ring Fit as one of the workouts) and shifting toward more networking and in-person events (Toni). One is a health system, one is a professional-growth system.

Steve used to play ultimate frisbee weekly, but the group got old, people started getting injured, and the game died. He now plays tennis once a week and does the Ring Fit exercise game on Nintendo Switch on the other days. The goal is five workout days a week, mixed across tennis, weights, and Ring Fit. Gamifying exercise works when nothing else does.

Toni wants to shift, not overhaul. Small tectonic-plate-style movements that create outsized results. Her concrete moves: filling out a wall calendar in one session with a friend for accountability, attending more events, and getting out of the house more (she is a natural introvert who will not leave for weeks if left alone). Steve is going the opposite direction because his kids are still at home and playing volleyball four to five nights a week.

Biggest ecommerce losers of 2024

The biggest ecommerce losers of 2024 were Amazon FBA sellers who only sell on Amazon, SEO-only blogs killed by Google AI Overviews, chain restaurants like Red Lobster and TGI Fridays, department stores like Macy’s, X/Twitter, Aaron Rodgers as a personal brand, and the NBA. The common thread across almost all of them is being tone-deaf to what the audience actually wants right now.

Amazon FBA sellers took the biggest hit of any group we work with. Amazon introduced multiple new fees this year (inbound placement, low-inventory, returns), Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) failed most sellers during the holidays, and Amazon recently announced it will only reimburse the raw cost of goods (not customs duties or freight) when it damages your inventory. FBA fees now take about a 61% cut of seller revenue on average.

SEO-only blogs are the other quiet loser. Google’s AI Overviews now answer more queries directly, click-through rates on informational content have collapsed, and pure-SEO sites without an email list, community, or social presence lost significant traffic in 2024. This gets a whole post to itself later.

Chain restaurants (Red Lobster bankruptcy, TGI Fridays down), department stores (Macy’s closed 150 stores), and traditional indoor shopping malls all lost to more focused, better-run competitors. Fast-casual chains like Cava and Shake Shack ate their lunch. Outdoor plazas held up better than enclosed malls.

X/Twitter lost users in 2024. Whether that reverses in 2025 is debatable, and Steve is more bullish on X than Toni. And the biggest loser in pure entertainment terms was anyone who stayed up to watch the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight on Netflix, which buffered so badly that Netflix earned its own spot on the list.

Biggest ecommerce winners of 2024

The biggest ecommerce winners of 2024 were Nvidia, Elon Musk, anything AI-adjacent, Amazon the corporation, Walmart, fast-casual restaurants like Cava and Shake Shack, and creators on YouTube and TikTok. If you were building on YouTube or TikTok in 2024, you had the best distribution tailwind of any channel.

Nvidia and AI were the trades of the year, and Elon Musk went all-in on the election and it paid off in political access. Amazon the corporation is a winner (double the operating income year-over-year in Q2 alone) even though Amazon sellers are a loser. The distinction matters.

Walmart is coming hard at Amazon and is a genuine 2024 winner in ecommerce. Fast-casual restaurants held their price points while chain restaurants slashed and stumbled, which is why places like Cava and Shake Shack kept traffic while Red Lobster went bankrupt.

On the creator side, YouTube and TikTok both had huge years (with the caveat that TikTok’s U.S. future is uncertain). Personal winners include Caitlin Clark (who single-handedly raised WNBA revenue), Simone Biles, Ilona Maher (rugby, then leveraged into massive social followings), and pommel-horse guy Stephen Nedoroscik, who all turned Olympic moments into durable content businesses.

What the 2024 winners and losers actually teach ecommerce sellers

The through-line from every winner and loser of 2024 is the same. Winners stayed tuned to what their actual audience wanted and adjusted. Losers stayed tone-deaf and defended their old model. That is the entire lesson.

Amazon-only FBA sellers who stayed on-platform got squeezed on fees. Sellers who built a brand off-Amazon (a Shopify store, an email list, a YouTube channel) had a second lever to pull. Bumblebee Linens survived because most of the business comes from wedding and event planners via word of mouth, not from Amazon rankings.

Traditional chain restaurants raised prices into a squeezed consumer and hoped nobody noticed. Cava and Shake Shack held pricing and served food people actually wanted. The same test works for ecommerce: are you raising prices while your product experience is getting worse, or are you holding the line and improving?

The Caitlin Clark and Ilona Maher lesson is worth internalizing if you make content or run a brand. Both took one moment of attention and converted it into a durable content business (WNBA franchise value, social followings, Dancing with the Stars, brand deals). Most people get 15 minutes and let it evaporate. Turning attention into a system is the whole game.

Frequently asked questions

Who were the biggest ecommerce winners of 2024?

The biggest ecommerce winners of 2024 were Nvidia and anything AI-adjacent, Amazon the corporation (whose Q2 operating income roughly doubled year-over-year), Walmart (which continued to close the gap with Amazon), and content creators on YouTube and TikTok. Fast-casual restaurant chains also outperformed the traditional sit-down chains.

Who were the biggest ecommerce losers of 2024?

The biggest ecommerce losers of 2024 were Amazon FBA sellers who sold only on Amazon (hit by multiple new fees), SEO-only blogs (crushed by Google AI Overviews and lower click-throughs), chain restaurants like Red Lobster and TGI Fridays, and department stores like Macy’s, which closed 150 stores. The NBA had a rough year in ratings and X/Twitter lost users, though X may rebound in 2025.

Why were 2024 Amazon FBA sellers the biggest ecommerce losers?

Amazon introduced multiple new seller fees in 2024, including inbound placement fees, low-inventory fees, and updated returns fees. Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD), pitched as the fee-saving alternative, failed most sellers during the holiday season. On top of that, Amazon announced it will only reimburse the raw cost of goods (not customs duties or freight) when it damages seller inventory. FBA fees now consume roughly 61% of seller revenue on average.

Was Amazon a winner or loser in 2024?

Amazon the corporation was a big winner in 2024, with Q2 operating income roughly doubling year-over-year to $14.7 billion. Amazon third-party sellers, on the other hand, were the biggest ecommerce loser group of the year, since almost all of Amazon’s profit growth came from higher seller fees and advertising revenue, not from actual ecommerce sales growth (which was up only about 4.6%).

What was the best AI tool of 2024 for ecommerce?

The best AI tools of 2024 for ecommerce work were ChatGPT (or Claude) for coding and content, SearchGPT to replace Google for research, and ElevenLabs for voice cloning if you make video or podcast content. Using ChatGPT to code a Shopify or Klaviyo automation (like a new opt-in pop-up) can lift conversion rates by 3x or more without hiring a developer.

Are chain restaurants really dying in 2024?

Traditional sit-down chain restaurants like Red Lobster and TGI Fridays had a very rough 2024. Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy and installed a new CEO to restructure, and TGI Fridays closed multiple locations. The chains that thrived were fast-casual concepts like Cava and Shake Shack, which held their price points and served food people wanted, while traditional chains raised prices as service quality declined.

What is the biggest lesson from the 2024 winners and losers?

The biggest lesson from the 2024 winners and losers is that being tuned in to what your customer actually wants beats every other strategy. Winners (Walmart, Cava, Caitlin Clark, YouTube creators) adjusted quickly to changing demand. Losers (Amazon-only FBA sellers, chain restaurants, X/Twitter, Aaron Rodgers) either stayed defensive or ignored the shift. For ecommerce sellers, the practical takeaway is to build off-Amazon channels (email, social, brand) so you have leverage when a platform decides to raise fees.