Proof to Product 395 | Navigating Profit Margins, Burnout, and Tariffs with Jessica Totillo Coster, eCommerce Badassery [Part 2]
May 15, 2025
Jessica Totillo Coster, an eCommerce consultant and podcast creator who helps product brands with online and wholesale strategy, joins to dissect how product businesses actually make money. They unpack revenue mix trends, founders not paying themselves and how to start fixing that, burnout and balancing life with business, and concerns around tariffs and supply chain disruption.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Not All Revenue Streams Drive Growth
- Lower-performing revenue streams (licensing, workshops, dropshipping, affiliates) often distract from core wholesale or D2C sales.
- Diversification helps, but it can also dilute effort if infrastructure and team are insufficient.
Pausing Profit For Personal Sanity
- Katie paused a profitable mastermind during COVID because it wasn’t working for her personally, despite peers urging her not to.
- She prioritized personal needs over revenue and regained focus later.
Start Paying Yourself Regularly
- Pay yourself something monthly, even a small automatic draw, to build the habit and prevent burnout.
- Calculate personal needs plus business overhead to set a realistic revenue target that funds both.