S5E70
· 37:19
Hey. It's Matt from Money Lab. Welcome to the show. I am in the brewery again just because I don't need the whiteboard today, and I kinda feel like being out here instead of being in the basement. And I wanna talk about the month of March and what I plan to do in the month of April for my business.
Matt Giovanisci:Now for the month of March, I just today's April fool's day. And on the 1st day of every month, I go through and write down a bunch of KPIs that I track in my business. One of those includes traffic. And I had lost about you know, I've been saying that because of the, the helpful content update and just the all around fuckery of Google. I've been down by 50%.
Matt Giovanisci:Well, now I'm down by 30%, which is not good, but it's not 50, so I guess I'll take it. That said, revenue was higher than last year. And the reason for that is I've been running ads, and I've been pretty good at it. So we've been making a lot of revenue, but I am still I still overspent for the month because of because of ad revenue, and we ordered a bunch of product, and we shipped a bunch of product. So shipping costs kind of just all this backlog of stuff.
Matt Giovanisci:Tell you what, a ecommerce business is a very cash intensive business, and I was not prepared for that. But here we are. So we are, yeah. So so the end of the so for the month of March, which is a a notoriously not a good month for us, we're starting to ramp into season, but it is still off season by by a cup by 2 months. And I think we did roughly 50 k, which is pretty good.
Matt Giovanisci:No. I think we did upwards of 60 k, which is pretty good for us because, again, off season. But most of the sales or the most of the revenue was, attributed to ecommerce, our physical product business, because of this aggressive ad campaign that I'm running on Facebook. So that's that's what we can attribute that to. But it is profitable, but not by much.
Matt Giovanisci:So that's there you have it. Now the other metrics I track were email sign ups that was about the same as last year, which is also good because traffic is down by 30%, but but, email subscribers is the same. So we have made up so we're getting the same amount of email subscribers even though our traffic is down. So that must be that must mean we're getting them through other means like Facebook ads and, Google ads, and we're also getting them through YouTube and the like. YouTube is better than last year, which is good.
Matt Giovanisci:It's the only Google product that actually is helping us this year. And, yeah, social media, we grew, but, you know, who cares? I tracked those metrics, but, again, who cares? So, basically, the the post mortem of March is the the some of the stuff that I did was I mainly focused on this April fools campaign, which, you know, if you listened to my last episode, it was like, meh, alright. You know?
Matt Giovanisci:You know? But now that I've done it, I have it in place, I can keep using it, so that's pretty good, I guess. But, yeah, a lot of my time was spent there doing that work. And so now that we're heading into April or now that we're in April, and I've the last, I did an episode where I was sort of figuring out how to leverage my time better. And that is the core focus of of April, essentially, which is do more with less time.
Matt Giovanisci:So some of the things that I've decided that are of the utmost importance when it comes to March is we need to test new offers. So right now, we have been running a, you know, new subscribers will get a 50% discount on our on our course material. I think that I'm kind I'm I'm kind of sick of the discount stuff as a as a brand and as a person. I need to come up with a better solution there. And I think my my ultimate goal for this year is to make up in revenue what I lost in traffic.
Matt Giovanisci:So basically, if I'm if I'm gonna lose 30% in traffic, I'm gonna gain 30% in revenue. And there's a handful of levers I can pull, but the most I think the most, the best one I can pull first is is crafting a better offer and doing some sales page optimization and running ads. Those are my 3 those are my 3 things. So there's also some light design work that I think will enhance those sales pages. But other than that, I think it's crafting a better offer.
Matt Giovanisci:And I think it's so let let me go through each each each phase here. So I'm not gonna worry about running ads because I don't think I have a good enough offer for the core people that are coming through to to run an ad against. Right now, or at least the last time I checked, my OTO, which is the sales page directly after somebody subscribes, that sales page is getting, it's a 50% discount and it's timed. I think it's a 24 hour, like, countdown timer. That is getting a 2a half percent conversion rate.
Matt Giovanisci:In the summer, it gets around 3a half to 4 because, obviously, we're in the off season, but and people are, like, signing up in preparation, but are not ready to buy, and so those people need to be rehit. So as far as that particular OTO, it's reliable, it works, But I would like to test different offers, because I think that I could raise our profit and revenue without sacrificing conversion. So one of my ideas is so so for context, that particular offer right now is a $98 product. It's a $98 video course that you can get for in the in 24 hours for 50% off, which means that I am making $49 per subscriber, who buys at, you know, 2 to 3%. Let's just call it 3.
Matt Giovanisci:Now so that means I make a $150 for every 100 subscribers that I get. Alright? That sucks. It just sucks. Now it's something.
Matt Giovanisci:You know, I can run ads on that, but, you know, that means I'm I have to get a dollar a dollar per email address, which, you know, I am getting, but it's like I could be doing I could do a lot better on the revenue side. So my first idea is to make it full price, but they get a free book, a free physical book. I I think doing add ons is going to be better than doing discounts. And I don't I don't know if that's true. I'm going to AB test it.
Matt Giovanisci:And I also I'm also gonna test another big swing at the same time. I'm gonna test, you know, I know people say don't test 2 different variables, but, also, you wanna test test screams, not whispers. So I wanna test a better offer and a shorter sales page. Now I might do those different at different times because I think I'll find out very quickly about the offer, if it works or not, whereas a sales page might take some time. So the reason for doing the free book is it's it's kind of a problem, but I get to increase my revenue by about 25%, because a book costs me about 20 to $21 to send.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay? Now the book retails at 49, but they're getting it for free. So to them, it's a 50% it's a $50 discount, which is exactly what they're getting now, except they're not getting a physical book in the mail. So I truly think it's a better offer. However, I will profit 25% more.
Matt Giovanisci:Because now I only you know, I'm they're they're paying $98, but the discount in my brain is only 20 to $21 as opposed to 50. So there's well, actually, that's more like 30%. So, actually, I don't even know if that that math works out. I'm not a mather. So that's the first offer I'm gonna test.
Matt Giovanisci:I really fucking hope that works because it it because, 1, I would like to make more profit, and 2, I think a shorter sales page is gonna work from the data that I have. I have, and I also think my sales video sucks, which I can probably get rid of completely. But if I make a good sales video, I might be able to really hone in that offer and really drive it home. So I'm kind of hoping that I can really dial in that particular OTO. Now I'm wondering now so the the the only issue with that is, yes, I technically will make more money if if I sell the exact same amount.
Matt Giovanisci:If the offer like, let's say it converts at 3% at the same, you know, the same rate. Well, now I make, let's say, let's call it $75 for for every for every person who buys. Right? So 75, 75, 75, 152, 25. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:Is that right? Something like that. So instead of a $150, you know, for a 100 subscribers, I'm making 225. So, therefore, my, you know, cost per lead can I have room to breathe there? My my my CAC is a little better.
Matt Giovanisci:Yeah. So my CAC's a little bigger, baby. It's gross. So I I that's my that's that's my plan. The only downside to that particular offer is that if it does well, great.
Matt Giovanisci:How but I have to ship books, which means I am buying I have to keep an inventory. I have to, you know, pack and ship every day, and it could get wildly out of hand very fast. But it is a book, so I am shipping media mail. I just went to the post office, and I learned some stuff that I can just bring a giant box of product. As long as I have the manifest, I can give that to them.
Matt Giovanisci:They can scan it, and it gets all of their all the people in place, and then we're good to go. So I'm like, alright, not a big deal. You know, does require me to do more work, but I we make more money. So I'm I can I can live with that? And then if it works, then I'm just gonna start running ads towards it.
Matt Giovanisci:Now the only thing I haven't really figured out yet, but I I think it's worth again doing a test, is the organic sales. So we are getting people right now, even though it's off season, to just buy the courses, all the courses, organically. Meaning, they're not they're not being hard sold anything. They're finding our website, however they're finding it, clicking courses, and buying our course at full price. I would like to test a 3 tier option.
Matt Giovanisci:I've done this in the past, but and I didn't see any results, but it was the off season. So I would like to do a test where I improve the sales page first. So at least like, hey, we're we're starting with a good baseline. Then I'm gonna split that off and do, you know, just the course at $98 or, you know, course plus book or or, like, just book, course plus book, which, you know, I think the value speaks for itself, and then all three courses plus book. So and that's gonna be much, much higher.
Matt Giovanisci:So I think that that might we'll see how that goes. I'm a little nervous about my audience not understanding pricing tiers and and getting to analysis paralysis because, you know, not for nothing. Like, I've heard this this 3 tiered pricing structure works very well in the young man's game. But I now notice that even Netflix has 3 tiers, and all of these, like, you know, streaming services are doing it. And if they're doing it, I mean, their audience is wide.
Matt Giovanisci:And in fact, probably skews a little older. But my audience, I think, even skews older than that. So I'm worried about testing that, but, you know, it's the the the best time for me to test is gonna be, like, April, May, June, July. So I gotta be pretty fucking nimble with with those tests. Because if one's not working, I gotta I gotta cut it because it's gonna eat into my revenue for the for the for the year, and I don't want that to happen.
Matt Giovanisci:Now I've mentioned this before, but another focus of mine is to get out of the chemical business. I just don't wanna be an ecommerce business the way that I am right now. It's kind of like haphazard. It's it's it's half assed. You know, there's there's a part of me that feels like I fucked up a lot in that in that department and would have done it differently had I wanted to start over again, but I just don't think I want to run an a traditional ecommerce business mainly because I don't want the debt.
Matt Giovanisci:And that's just something that I dealt with many years ago when I was hiring a lot of people. I quickly went into debt because I was overspending on writers at the time. Now now this is a classic mistake where and I've learned my lesson from this, which is people were you know, like, when the getting's good, you spend. And I was spending in the summer, and then the winter time came and things came crashing down because that's what happens in the pool business, and I was like, oh, I can't sustain sustain this. So I had to, like, cut and run, but I learned a lot from that experience.
Matt Giovanisci:I learned an absolute ton from the ecommerce experience. I I'm gonna miss it because I really wanna do it, and I have so many ideas. It is just not my area of expertise. I am really good at retail, and I could run a very successful online ecommerce business. But if I'm developing those products myself, that is where I that is where I'm not good.
Matt Giovanisci:What I don't want is to just white label goods. I want to if I if it's me, I want to invent things, but my skill set is not in that department. I don't know anybody in manufacturing. I don't know any chemist. I don't and and to be quite honest, I don't I don't really have that much interest in it because it's not a product that I use.
Matt Giovanisci:But if I I could see myself getting into something like this if it was like, let's say, home brewing, and I was and I wanted to develop a product that I could use in my brewery because then I'd be able to battle test the hell out of it. Whereas with pools and hot tubs and chemicals specifically, like, really can't battle test it, and I just don't find it as cool and as appealing as I used to. In fact, what I find cool and appealing is to go really hard into the digital realm and really think through what it is to be the absolute best digital platform for pool care. And that is something I can control and I do know how to do. So that's that's where I'm I'm basically, you know, all of these things that I've tried for the most part.
Matt Giovanisci:They worked and they would work if I put my effort a 100% into them. But the thing that has continued to pay the bills for me is the one thing that the entire company is based on. And whenever I do these, you know, tangential projects, those main ones don't get enough attention and improvement. And I think if I just keep removing things from my to do list and ruthlessly focusing on one thing to the point where it is so good that it is it is just absolute it's an absolute crushing machine, then I just think that's the way to do it. Instead of being good at a bunch of of things or, like, half assing a bunch of things or throwing products together.
Matt Giovanisci:I think every product needs to be as best as it can be. Now I say that, and, immediately, I'm I'm I'm hit with the thought of I thought you were gonna work less, and, yes, I am. And by removing the amount of things that I have to do to keep the machine going, I am reducing the number of things that I need to do and ruthlessly focusing on the ones that absolutely work. And that I know I can increase conversions. I can increase revenue.
Matt Giovanisci:I can, you know so as we turn up the lever, or as we turn up the the volume of videos and articles and podcasts and all of the other free outbound attention grabbers that we're doing, as we're just cranking through that, behind the scenes, I am turning up the quality of all the things that are on the paid side, and turning up how we, you know, how those things are offered or what those offers are to people. And if I just, you know, again, remove all of the unnecessary shit right now and just focus on that, on the funnel, on the one funnel, and getting that message clearer and getting that offer better and getting that sales page to convert easier because my messaging is clearer. And that's just sending all of that traffic we're working on all into one pinpoint and just driving people through that funnel, and then just constantly improving it, I just think that that is absolutely the way to scale Swim University without new product development, without new ways of getting attention. It's like we already have those things. The machine's in place.
Matt Giovanisci:It's going. The the we're we are driving traffic, albeit 30% less, at least on Google, but we're driving all of that traffic into one fucking thing. And my job, besides all the other jobs I have, my my one job is to turn those turn that traffic into paying customers. That's it. That's the main that's the main gig here.
Matt Giovanisci:Now to go a little bit further, I mentioned, obviously, crafting a better offer, improving sales pages, but there's some other stuff too. That's improving email, which I've been doing. I also think, by the way, that the reason that our revenue was so good in March despite the traffic loss is because email just fucking works. But there's a lot of things that I'm not doing that I just need to do, need to put input need to put a process in place and actually do. That is offer crafting and promoting those offers.
Matt Giovanisci:That's that's pretty much it. And so revenue is gonna be high because I'm getting rid of chemicals. I'm gonna be aggressively selling that. But once they're gone, then it's really all gonna be digital. And what I'm what I'm hoping is is that so it's funny because we we really scaled up.
Matt Giovanisci:We I think we went from, like, half a 1000000 a year to, like, 850,000 to almost a 1000000 when we introduced physical products, but we took a significant hit in profit. So that wasn't a gain in profit, that was just a gain in revenue. And I was like, wait a minute, I'm not making any more money. Right? That's when I learned about ecommerce and and how cash intensive it is, and I was like, oh, okay.
Matt Giovanisci:Well, alright. Well, now I don't wanna do that. That's too much. Especially when I had this other thing that's, like, basically, it's, you know, it's almost a 100% profit. It's, I say, it's 95% profit because, you know, when you pay for all the services and you pay for the credit card fees and, you know, it's ended up being about 95% margins, which is fucking insane, especially because, you know and and that doesn't include, you know, the cost of doing business and the cost of employees and all that stuff.
Matt Giovanisci:I understand. But as far as a product goes, margins don't get better than that. And so instead of me, again, for the last few years, my focus has been spread across all of these different products and testing and trying different things to sell those products, and spending money to keep those products available. But now, yes, we're gonna lose revenue, but we're gonna drastically reduce our monthly costs because we are not paying for product, we're not paying for shipping, and all we're do and then and we're distilling all of our marketing into selling one thing, that is 95% margins. And if I can get that even higher if I can get the if I can get the the revenue of that to be even higher, the LTV or the, you know, I yeah.
Matt Giovanisci:Basically, the LTV, if I can get that higher, then, yeah, we're we we'll be good. And then at that point, it's really not about there's I don't think there's a lot that I'm gonna be able to do on the back end besides new product creation, you know, like tangential products to help support the main one. But then it's just attention. That's that'll I mean, that's the game we're playing now, but that's the only game we're gonna be playing later. Once once the the fun and I've and I'll say this.
Matt Giovanisci:Once the funnel's dialed in, you know, and we have a reliable conversion rate And and, you know, that conversion rate's gonna be different from every traffic source. But once we have that, then the name of the game is just gonna be attention. I've also been well, that can do I'll save this for another conversation, but, yeah. So that is my focus for April. If I had to boil it down to daily tasks, right, I'm gonna still do my podcasts.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm gonna record my videos. This is not this is not getting in the way of any of that. So I'm gonna publish my articles, but I don't have to do any stunts. The all of my stuff is gonna be behind the scenes for April. And that it's gonna be improving sales pages, mainly 1, 1 sales page.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm going to be testing an offer or multiple offers to see and and how fast I can get that going. And then once I got it dialed in and I got it I feel pretty good about it, then I'm gonna personally be scaling it with ads. And then once that's good, then you know? And and if I had to go even further to say, okay. What be yeah.
Matt Giovanisci:But what do you mean by improve the sales page? So I can tell you that it's going to be 1st and foremost is offer offer crafting. 2nd is gonna be, tightening the sales page, literally, like removing things that I can see in crazy egg through a heat map that people are not paying attention to. So just removing fluff, essentially. I'm going to be creating a new sales video because it absolutely needs one.
Matt Giovanisci:Based on whatever current offer, I'm going to be possibly changing the headline, although I think my headline's pretty good. I think there's not really many, variations. I think that one works, but I think if I use that same headline, make the sales page a little bit tighter as far as, like, removing unnecessary bits and bobs, creating a new sales video, and then putting a better offer in place with a, you know, maybe testing even different deadline funnel, timers, like maybe a 15 minute timer versus a 24 hour, that would be a big enough hit. I think that would I think that's gonna work better. I also think that there are other offers that I could even do that are even better than that.
Matt Giovanisci:And then that means I'm gonna, and then, you know, basically get my upsells going, testing those, getting those better, and then that's really it. Once I have that dialed in, which I I think I can do in a couple of weeks, honestly, we'll see. I mean, I'm it's testing. We have a lot of traffic going through it right now, so it's now's the time. Like, April's gonna be the time to do it for sure.
Matt Giovanisci:And then, if I can if I can drive people through it and I can get a better conversion rate than what I'm currently at, then and I'm and and making more revenue, then I'm I'm golden. And I and I have a strong feeling that it's gonna work. And I think I'm just gonna test like, the first variable I'll test is the offer. The second variable I'll test is the sales page shortening or the sales page, like, you know, changing the video, changing the like, every you know, like, basically making the sales page better. And then the third thing I'll test is the timer on the the deadline because I don't want that offer to last forever.
Matt Giovanisci:It needs to have some sort of scarcity or urgency, and I don't have scarcity. I just have urgency because sale goes away. So, yeah, that's the that's the move. I also think, yeah, that's gonna be the move. And then after that, it's probably gonna be, like, email sequences, because there are some they I I do need a different email sequence from somebody who subscribes and sees that offer versus somebody who, just subs like, we're gonna I'm gonna change one of the things I actually have to do this week is, we are going to and this is all this is also part of, like, ruthlessly focusing on something.
Matt Giovanisci:We don't really make a ton of money on our hot tub course. It is not it is it is if anything, it is clouding our message, our messaging, especially outside of our website. So for the summer, I'm going to turn this the home page into a pool only page where right now it says, you know, you're pulling hot tub problem solved, and then it gives you 2 options to go to pool and hot tub. And we really could be using the home page as a lead capture system, and we're doing a pretty bad job at that. I don't think, you know, I might try to do a lead magnet on the home page.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm probably just gonna do a newsletter. And so those people that come through the newsletter will go through a different funnel in the email or a different sequence than the people who subscribe for the cheat sheet for obvious reasons. And, yeah, so that's essentially I think the home page is gonna lead to to a lot more subscribers than we're used to, which is good because right now, the home page doesn't get us any subscribers because there's no way to subscribe on the home page. And so once I have that, that's gonna be all pull subscribers, and, yes, they're gonna get introduced to the to the offer, but they're not gonna receive a cheat sheet on the other side. They're gonna get they're probably gonna get dumped, you know, pretty pretty quickly into the helpful newsletter.
Matt Giovanisci:And, also, I think, I need to, update my onboarding sequence. I think it's too long, and I think there's too many promotional things in there that are not useful for us that actually don't even help us and just in fact, it probably just hurts us a little bit. So that's it. I have a lot of work to do in April, but I have a feeling that April's gonna be a month where I go pretty hard on sales, essentially. And then after that, it's gonna just be the summer it's gonna be a summer of status quo, which is basically just publishing, like a shitload.
Matt Giovanisci:And then in the off season, come September, October, we are going to go into hibernation mode, which is gonna be tough. So so it's gonna be this summer is gonna be the summer of hoarding cash because we're gonna need it to survive the winter Because, you know, we're not gonna be as aggressive with we're not gonna have the hot tub chemicals to support us anymore. We'll still have the hot tub stuff, and, obviously, we still get some pool sales, but it's obviously way less. So for the summer or for the wintertime, we're gonna hunker down. We're still gonna do our we're still gonna be publishing.
Matt Giovanisci:We're just gonna do we're gonna work on the product, all the products, meaning meaning all the courses, and get those, you know, if anything, that might be all we do. We might, like, kind of we might scale back with content in the winter because it just doesn't we just don't need to do it as often, And then, you know, scale the the the course itself, like, the offering. And then we have some other stuff coming out too that I haven't mentioned, but, you know, those are still in the works, but those could be, you know, a big opportunity as well. Secret projects. Anyway, that's it.
Matt Giovanisci:Godspeed for April. Let's fucking do it. I'm out.
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