The Story
Matt Giovanisci makes over $1 million a year with one website - Swim University - teaching people how to take care of their pools and hot tubs. He built it while working at his 9-to-5 job until his boss found out and fired him.
- •"My boss found out about that and fired me. I was like 'oh okay, I'm going to put everything I have into making this work.' And then from there it just kept going up."
Matt worked at pool companies since he was a kid, eventually becoming a marketing director. He realized he could scale the advice he gave customers in-store by writing blog posts and making videos.
- •"I thought I could do this at scale if I just wrote this as a blog post or made a video about this."
The Business Model
Swim University is a media company focused on pool care education:
- •Blog posts (SEO-driven)
- •YouTube channel: 225,000 subscribers
- •Newsletter: 100,000 pool owners, 2-3 emails/week
- •Courses: 3 pool courses, 1 hot tub course
- •Physical book (launched last year)
Revenue streams:
- •YouTube AdSense
- •Affiliate marketing (mostly Amazon)
- •Courses (bulk of revenue)
- •Book sales
The Early Days
Matt was self-admittedly a terrible writer:
- •"My grammar was terrible. There was no periods, nothing, no commas. It was just poorly written from someone who knows how to talk but doesn't know how to stop. Kind of like written by a third grader."
But he could build websites in pure HTML and make them look professional. He worked hard to improve his writing.
First year after getting fired: $20,000 (supplemented with website design)
Second year: $40,000
- •"I was like, I have a real business."
Monetization Journey
- •Started with AdSense - Easiest first dollar
- •Moved to affiliate marketing - Didn't like how ads looked
- •Created first product - PDF for $50 (no sales), dropped to $24 (lots of sales)
- •Pool Care Handbook - Video course + ebook combination
- •Printed book - Now the majority of revenue
- •"The majority of how we make money is through the course material and the books."
Content Strategy
The same strategy since day one:
- •"It's the same exact thing I've been doing since day one. It's just content. Put out as much content as I possibly can create."
The content flywheel:
- •Start with long-form video script
- •Record long-form video (1/week)
- •Re-record bits for short-form (3/week)
- •Post shorts on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn
- •Turn scripts into blog posts for Google
- •Capture emails from traffic
- •Send 2-3 emails/week to newsletter
- •Run ads to supplement
His best-performing video is a simple PowerPoint with no script - just his thoughts on pool care from start to finish.
- •"What that tells me is it doesn't matter how good your video is, it just matters if the content is good."
Building in a Boring Niche
- •"No one wants to get good at taking care of their pool or skimming a pool. They just want to swim in the pool."
Matt's approach:
- •Be short and punchy
- •Be entertaining to keep attention
- •Get people from "pool's disgusting" to "pool's clear and safe" quickly
- •"This is not a hobby business. I can't do an hour-long podcast where we're just riffing about pool care because no one's going to listen."
Finding Your Niche
Matt's advice: Walk around your house and write down things in your room.
- •"Pick something that you know and that you're at least interested in. Because when the going gets tough, at least you like the topic a little bit."
Tools
- •Asana - Everything is in it (even when to take out trash, pay credit cards)
- •Google Drive - All files in cloud
- •WordPress - Website
- •Semrush - SEO
- •Rank Math - WordPress SEO plugin
- •Lasso - Affiliate links
- •ChatGPT - Business partner for decision-making
- •Klaviyo - Email list ("the best")
- •"I use ChatGPT as a business partner. I talk to it like a human and ask it questions to help make decisions on things that I don't think about."
Family Business
The team is just three people - all family:
- •Matt: Everything else (on-camera, email marketing, podcasts, articles, website, admin)
- •Steph (wife): Long-form scripts, short-form content, edits/publishes YouTube
- •Brother: Short-form edits, customer service
Everyone gets paid the same:
- •"Nobody feels super inferior. I don't feel like a boss. I don't need to make more than everybody else just because I own the company. I want everyone to be taken care of."
Day in the Life
- •Wake up 7-8am
- •Stay in bed until 9am watching TikToks
- •Make breakfast, coffee
- •Work around 10-11am
- •Done by 5-6pm
- •Sometimes work in the brewery (behind the house)
- •No weekends unless super pumped about an idea
Challenges
- •"Just the slowness of it. It doesn't want to skyrocket. It's just like a huge boulder that I've been slowly pushing up a mountain for 20 years."
Matt struggles with wanting to push hard and then burning out. The business "just needs what it needs and does what it does."
Side Projects
- •Roasty Coffee - Applied Swim University playbook, got to 100K uniques/month in 2 years, sold it
- •Money Lab - Podcast for documentation
- •Brew Cabin - Passion project he doesn't want to monetize
- •"The thing that I'm really actually passionate about should just be my thing for me. As soon as you turn it into a business, as soon as the financials bleed in, it starts to become a little bit... yeah."
Key Advice
- •"Keep making content. Just keep making content. Get better at writing. Keep making videos. Because I keep stopping, I keep shifting, I keep thinking 'oh this will solve the problem.' But no - every time I make content, business moves, business is good. When I don't, that's when it suffers."
On lifestyle vs. business:
- •"Think about lifestyle over business. I don't think about money as the outcome. There's a million things I could have done to make way more money, and that would have been a nightmare to manage and I would have hated my life."
Resources
- •Swim University: https://www.swimuniversity.com/
- •Money Lab Podcast
- •Brew Cabin