The 7 Essential Systems Every Profitable Product Business Needs.

In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what really builds a thriving, profitable product-based business—and spoiler alert—it’s not just more Instagram reels or new packaging.

After decades in this industry, from fashion lecturer to founder, and coaching hundreds of creative entrepreneurs through my Roadmap to Profit program, I’ve identified the 7 key systems that separate profitable brands from the ones stuck in hustle-mode.

I call it thelotco Method, and today I'm sharing each of these systems with you—including how you can spot your weakest link and what to fix first.

You'll learn:

• Why vision (not just vibes) is the first system to set up
• What your brand really needs beyond a cute logo
• How pricing can make or break your entire business (even if your products are selling)
• Why relying on just one sales channel is risky
• How to attract traffic without burning out on content creation
• What numbers you actually need to know
• And the often-forgotten system that allows you to finally take a break (yes, really)

These are the systems that have helped my clients go from kitchen-table businesses to stocked-in-store and scaling with ease. If you’re done flying by the seat of your pants and ready to build something that actually pays you—this is for you.

🎧 Listen now and DM me @thelotco to tell me which system you're focusing on first.

✨ Want the full roadmap? My Roadmap to Profit program is now open—get access to the templates, coaching, and tools that help you build all 7 systems, without the overwhelm.
👉 FIND OUT MORE HERE

📚 Plus: Don’t forget to grab my free training: “How to Build a Thriving Product Business”

00:00 Introduction to Growing Your Product Business

00:46 The Seven Systems for a Profitable Business

02:19 System 1: Vision and Goals

03:59 System 2: Brand Foundations

05:27 System 3: Product and Pricing

06:51 System 4: Sales Channels

08:27 System 5: Marketing and Traffic

09:51 System 6: Money Management

11:38 System 7: Systems and Support

12:38 Conclusion and Next Steps

Transcript

1. The 7 Essential Systems Every Profitable Product Business Needs

In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what really builds a thriving, profitable product-based business—and spoiler alert—it’s not just more Instagram reels or new packaging.

After decades in this industry, from fashion lecturer to founder, and coaching hundreds of creative entrepreneurs through my Roadmap to Profit program, I’ve identified the 7 key systems that separate profitable brands from the ones stuck in hustle-mode.

I call it TheLotco Method, and today I'm sharing each of these systems with you—including how you can spot your weakest link and what to fix first.

You'll learn:

• Why vision (not just vibes) is the first system to set up
• What your brand really needs beyond a cute logo
• How pricing can make or break your entire business (even if your products are selling)
• Why relying on just one sales channel is risky
• How to attract traffic without burning out on content creation
• What numbers you actually need to know
• And the often-forgotten system that allows you to finally take a break (yes, really)

These are the systems that have helped my clients go from kitchen-table businesses to stocked-in-store and scaling with ease. If you’re done flying by the seat of your pants and ready to build something that actually pays you—this is for you.

🎧 Listen now and DM me @thelotco to tell me which system you're focusing on first.

✨ Want the full roadmap? My Roadmap to Profit program is now open—get access to the templates, coaching, and tools that help you build all 7 systems, without the overwhelm.
👉 ROADMAP TO PROFIT

📚 Plus: Don’t forget to grab my free training: “How to Build a Thriving Product Business”—link below or in the show notes.

 Hello and welcome to today's podcast. My name is Melissa Robbins. I am going to bring you an episode today all about how to grow and scale your product business. When I talk about product businesses, I'm always referring to product-based brands or retail stores. So whether you've got an e-commerce store, whether you only wholesale your brand, whether you have a lifestyle physical store where you have lots of different brands in store or all , these conversations are all relevant to all of those different types of people. And maybe just thinking about starting a brand or maybe just one of my supportive listeners, like my like my cousin Jane., Thanks for listening, Jane.

Whether you are thinking about starting your own store, whether you're currently running your store, whether you've been running your brand for 10 years, five years, one year, or you're just thinking about starting out. Hopefully this gives you some insights and tips about how to scale your business.

What we're talking about today is diving into something juicy, which is all at the seven systems you need to grow a profitable product based business. Now these are the real deal behind the scenes systems that I use with my coaching clients in my Roadmap to profit program inside my Thrive training.

It's a method which I have terms thelotco method, and I'll go into what that means as well in a moment, but it's all about. The real things that people use. And this comes back to also a long way back when I used to be a lecturer in fashion business. These are the sort of. Elements that we went through in a year long program to really make sure that if you had that concept and idea, how did that become a business?

What did it look like and did you have all these elements ticked off? And at the end of their end of year project too, the students were all marked across all these systems. So this is where it comes from. It comes from years of working with different clients, developing, the education side of it.

Really mapping out the business steps as well. So it's all working together. And of course, when you start your business, you don't think, oh, I need to build a system. I need to, create those seven systems that are gonna make my business strong. You probably start with an amazing product idea.

You are probably a creative and you're like oh, you love pretty things, or you love curation and you wanna bring together an amazing mix of brands in your retail store. Yeah, but you haven't really thought about necessarily all these different systems that you need to have in place. If you've hit that growth ceiling or your burnout trying to do all the things, this is the golden ticket of what you need.

You need to have these things in place to scale without the chaos.

And so let's walk through what those systems are.

Number one is your vision goals. You've gotta start with the big picture. And it's the compass that guides every decision you make 

When you don't know what your destination is, you'll be constantly chasing every shiny object. One week it's Pinterest, next week it's wholesale back to reels and trying to go viral. Now you've added 12 new skus 'cause you're like, I need to add new products to my mix. Otherwise, no one's gonna buy the ones that I've got.

It's exhausting.

What we wanna do is we wanna reverse engineer your goals. If you know what to focus on, if you know what the actual key elements or key analytics key things you're focusing on, it makes everything else in your plan a lot easier. You can map out your goal a lot easier.

I remember sitting with one of my clients at the life and style business couch, which is coming up again soon. And we looked at, all the different numbers in her business, what it looked like right now, and where she wanted to go.

And after figuring out all the different numbers, the average order values how many, how often her clients would buy, and we're looking at wholesale specifically at this time, we looked at, what she needed to focus on. And for her, she already had. Once the customers were on board, they ordered regularly.

They had a good average order value and over that annual period of time, they had a really good lifetime value. But what we needed to do for her was just focus on getting more of the clients on board. So all her focus was going to be, was just getting new clients on board, and of course, servicing the ones she had to get them to order more.

Often and to order more each time, but it was just purely focused on just adding more wholesale stockists to her list. She wasn't gonna try and do anything else for that, 90 day period that we were working on. It was just focused on that. So when we had that vision and the goal of where we're going, it made it a lot easier for her to know where to spend her time as well.

Number two, brand foundations. This is the soul of your business, and it's not just your logo. And I've had other episodes talking specifically about brand, and I'll keep extending on this all the time because it's such a crucial element. Your brand is how people feel when they discover you. It's the emotional connection.

It's the way your product looks, it sounds, and even smells when it arrives at the door. What is that customer journey like? How do you make them feel? What do they aspire to? Is your imagery aspirational?

Does your packaging reflect the quality of your product? Does the packaging attract the right people? In the first instance, when people see it? Does your language that you use in your emails, on your website, does it all work together? That is all what your brand story is all about. 

I had a client recently. We've just been working on , a whole rebrand for her. When we first looked at the brand, it was very organic. It was beautiful, but it was just too much going on in her packaging. The color palette wasn't right. It didn't really reflect where she was anymore, and so we did a whole rebrand looking at all different packaging, all different color palette.

Changed her logo, completely changed what her aesthetic was on her website as well. What language she started to use in her messaging as well. It felt like her again after we'd gone through this process. The confidence she had in contacting new stockers or creating that catalog or having the photographs, on her website completely uplifted, which made a huge difference in the way people responded to her brand as well.

So

your brand system includes. Your mission, your values, your tone of voice visual identity, and when all these align, magic can happen. So that's number two in the systems.

Okay, number three is product and pricing. Of course, you need an amazing product and you need a unique selling. Proposition for your product, you need to have something that's different about you, whether it's your design, , whether it's a completely new product, whether it's your packaging, whether it's your story,

whether it's the combination or the collaborations that you do. You need to have something unique about you. This is where I get fired up because you cannot build a profitable business on underpriced over-designed, unprofitable products

you cannot create a profitable business if you don't have the right margins in place. If you are trying to sell your product for a really low margin, you are never going to be able to afford the other systems that we're gonna have in place coming in soon. Your sales channels and your marketing,

you're not gonna be able to spend on those areas if you don't have the right margin in place.

This part of the system includes your sku strategy, like what different skus that you have, how many in your range. Some people start with too many. What your pricing model is, what margins you have in place , 

do you have a limited edition? . And the product life cycle that you have. I've seen so many brands making 10 k months, but they're still broke. And why? Because they're best sellers weren't profitable or they were spending all their time making the wrong products. We need to do your numbers, audit your numbers, understand what's working, cut what's not selling, and double down on what does.

One of my clients dropped 30% of her product line and her profits doubled. It's not about doing more, it's about doing more of what works.

System four is sales channels. Okay, let's talk sales. If Instagram shut down tomorrow, would you still make money? This system is all about diversifying where your sales come from, your website, your email list. Wholesale accounts, markets, product, collaborations, other marketplaces, pop-up stores, physical retail stores.

You've gotta have a mix of different sales channels.

Lots of people start out just doing markets, which is great. It gives you great customer feedback, it gives you a really good idea about what are your bestsellers are, what are people responding to, who your customer is as well. But we don't want that to be your only sales channel because if you are.

Spending all your time at markets, then you're probably exhausted you don't have any time with your family and then you don't get any sales if you're not actually going to the market. We need to have a system in place where markets can be one of the elements of what you're doing and a way to build up your email list and a way to build up your presence online and to figure out how to sell online, the client I was talking about, who was only doing markets, we pivoted to wholesale and online and made more in one month than the previous quarter that she had at the markets. It is about repeatable customers, a lifetime value of those customers, and getting people to come back again and diversify.

So all your eggs are not in one sales basket.

And your mix is gonna be very specific to your product because not every product is gonna suit every type of sales channel. So it's about being very specific and that's what we go through in my method as well, where we talk about, which of the different products work for the different sales channels.

And we also make sure that it's set up to work without your constant presence. That is another crucial factor because you don't wanna be relying on you as a bottleneck for all those sales as well. Number five is marketing and traffic. If you don't have any traffic to your website, you've got no sales.

This system helps people actually find you, whether that is on your own website or wholesale or the other places where you're selling your product,

whether you use Pinterest, SEO, email reels, influencer outreach. You don't need to do them all, but you do need a constant flow of traffic and you need to know where your customer's attention is, to know where to best spend your time as well. And I want you to think like, where do my people hang out? How can I show up for them consistently and with value? And also, how can you shop in multiple places because . We know that it takes more than one exposure to a product or a brand or a website or a solution for us to actually pick that and make a purchasing decision.

Having a marketing system also means that you've got a plan in place and that you're not constantly creating new all the time. You are repurposing, you are batching different things. You're using one bit of content across different types of marketing. You are not just a content machine who's just putting out on social media all the time.

You build systems so the content works for you and it works for you long term as well, and gives you back time so that you are, being so much more proactive than reactive about your content machine, about your marketing plan, about your marketing strategy.

And if your marketing feels overwhelming, it's probably 'cause you don't have a plan in place and you don't have ways to constantly communicate with your customer. And I'm not just talking about sales or promotions, but other ways to nurture your customer and get in front of them in multiple ways.

Alright, number six is your money management.

Here's the truth. Most people don't track their numbers because they're afraid of what they'll find, but your money system is your CEO dashboard. You need to know what your margins are. You need to be able to get good reports from the systems you're using, whether that is Shopify, whether that's Xero, whether that is your accounting system that you use, whether you have your own inventory management.

We need to know what's happening. When I start with a new brand, one of the first things ask what are your best selling products? What are the margins on those products? What is your overall gross profit margin in your business? We need to know these numbers to be able to know where we need to make tweaks, changes, what to focus on, what to work on where the growth possibilities are in your business as well.

You need to know exactly where your cash is going. you need to be making sure that you're paying yourself and paying yourself properly. I had a client who hadn't paid herself in two years, and I'm sure there's many of you out there who are very similar as well.

But after we ordered a pricing and added in some revenue tracking activities. She finally hit consistent 10 K months and took her first wage. And I encourage everyone to start paying themselves even a tiny bit. It can make a huge difference to you and your motivation

and your ability to track profit. And one of the things I love, I also highly encourage. Is the Profit First System, because it means that you do have profit first and you don't spend more than what you actually have. It's a great system and plan to put in place. And I'll link the episode that I. Dive deeper into that as well.

And within that money management, we've gotta also work on your money mindset. You shouldn't be ignoring your money. You should be respecting it. Be grateful for the money that comes in. Be grateful for the bills that you have. You've got a tax bill 'cause it means you're actually making money.

There's all sorts of things that you should be doing with your money managing that money, tracking that money, understanding your data and your numbers so that you can make better business decisions.

Number seven is the . Systems and support. And this is the last one and maybe the most important one. Because hustle doesn't scale. Your systems do, and this includes your shipping process, the automations you have in the standard operating procedures that you have in place. It lets you take a day off and know that your business won't burn down.

You wanna be automating, repetitive tasks. Create workflows, free up your mental load. This is the difference between hustling constantly and running a business that can breathe without you, even if you're solo. You don't have to do it all manually. The system is about building sustainability.

Even if it means you've got standard operating procedure for how orders get packed for how you open your retail store you should have workflows set up for when a wholesale customer contacts you or when you onboard a new customer, what that looks like. You should have a automated system for your when orders get processed.

All of these things should have organization. Because, and it does take a little bit of time at the start, but the better you do it at the start, the easier it is to scale your business as well. And it doesn't have to mean a huge team either, but we have to have a system in place.

So those are the seven systems, and I'm just gonna repeat those for you. So starting off, we have the vision and goals. You've gotta know where you're going to be able to make a plan and reverse engineer your goals that you want to achieve. Number two is brand foundations. It's a soul of your business.

You have to make sure that you have a strong brand and identity and really understand who your customer is and who you're talking to. Number three is your product and pricing, and that includes your packaging. That includes the way you share your products, the way you talk about your product, your messaging in your product, and all your margins and numbers in place as well.

Number four, is your sales channels. Have you diversified? Have you got a number of different ones in place? Are you not just relying on one sales avenue? Number five is marketing and traffic. Do you have a system in place to make sure that you are not just relying on, say, social media? If you don't show up on Instagram, are you still able to attract customers to your website, to your stockists, to, actually sell your product?

Number six is your money management. Making sure that you understand your numbers, you track your numbers, you really undertake CEO activities of analytics and data and make better business decisions because you know what's happening in your business.

And number seven is systems and support, all of those things in place working together. What team do you have? What standard operating procedures do you have? What workflows do you have? What automations do you have? How do they integrate together?

And you don't need to build them all in, one week or one month, but it's about which one do you really need to focus on first? Which one do you need to help you? Which one is the weakest right now in your business? Start there, fix that one, and you build on that next layer.

Every product business needs structure to grow, but it doesn't have to be boring. When you build your systems your way with clarity, creativity, and a solid plan, it gives you the freedom that you probably started the business for in the first place.

DM at the lot Co. And tell me what system you're working on right now or that you're struggling with or that you need some help with. If you wanna go deeper inside my Roadmap to Profit program, which is open right now, I walk you through all these systems, I give you all the templates, all the coaching.

All the tools and support to make sure that you're covering all these things in detail. And the businesses that I've helped over, the last five years in my consulting roles,

So many of the businesses that have helped. Build these solid foundations and put these systems in place, have gone on to become multimillion dollar businesses. But they couldn't have done that , if they didn't have the right systems in place and they weren't able to scale, because there would've been too many roadblocks for them to get to that stage.

So start building one, one step at a time. It shouldn't be overwhelming, but at least you know what sort of things you need to have in place. All right. You've got this. I hope this has helped you. I dive deeper into this in my Thrive training. You can grab free training, which is building a Thriving Product Business, and the link will be in the show notes as well, all below if you're watching on YouTube.

All right, thank you so much. I look forward to sharing more with you next week.

1. Why Your Product Biz Isn’t Scaling (And the Systems That’ll Fix It)
2. The Systems Behind a Million-Dollar Product Business
3. From Burnout to Bankable: 7 Systems to Scale Your Brand
4. TheLotco Method: My 7-Step Framework for a Thriving Product Business