S5E31
· 37:03
Hey. It's Matt. Welcome to Money Lab. Doing a little q and a today. I just went on Twitter.
Matt Giovanisci:Products and my ecommerce business. So that'll be fun to go over. I don't mean that sarcastically. I I actually do. Any plans to revive Brew Cabin is another question.
Matt Giovanisci:And what's something you always wish someone to ask you? So that's the 3 questions we'll go through. If anyone else comes in, I'll answer them in this as well. So let's talk with the first one. Have you seen any overlap between your info product and ecommerce business?
Matt Giovanisci:So specifically, they're talking about Swim University is my business. Teach people how to take care of their pools and spas. I feel like I I have to say that in every episode because you might be coming into this and you've never heard this show or know who I am or what I do. And on that particular brand, I have I have 2 products that I sell. I sell courses, and then I sell chemicals, specifically pool and hot tub chemicals.
Matt Giovanisci:Just a handful, not a huge line of chemicals, not a huge ecommerce store. And then for courses, I sell video courses mainly, and I also have a physical book, and we're also thinking about coming out with another one. And there's gonna be some more digital products in the future that are not related to courses. So have I seen any overlap? Well, I'm assuming that means do people who buy the course also buy the chemicals and vice versa?
Matt Giovanisci:And the answer is yes. In fact, that's that was kind of the idea, which was the courses that we sell are inexpensive. They're they're they're low ticket courses, and they're to help, you know, people take care of their pools and hot tubs. So we don't have a recurring business model. That's like, right now, that's not we don't have one.
Matt Giovanisci:And I thought, well, I don't wanna make my courses a recurring model because then I have to constantly update them or I have to constantly add to them. And I didn't want to create, like, a community because I just 1, I don't think it's a good fit for the industry. And, again, I don't wanna manage that and have this consistent audience asking me questions all the time, etcetera. And again, just I don't think it's a good fit. So I was trying to think, what are what are the what what is an a a type of recurring business model?
Matt Giovanisci:And it and for honesty, it would be a consumable for us. So that's why we decided to venture into ecommerce products. Mainly, like, I I don't call them ecommerce because everything I do is ecommerce. It's all online buying. What I call it is, physical products and digital products.
Matt Giovanisci:So products that I ship and products that I, don't, essentially. So example, he says, people building digital and physical products, SEO articles, driving d to c sales. Yeah. 100%. So, like, the whole idea, again, was to have the recurring business model, but also we, you know, we make a lot of money, promoting affiliate products, so mainly through Amazon.
Matt Giovanisci:And if you're familiar with Amazon, you know that the the getting ain't that good. Right? There are better affiliate programs, and we're a part of those, but, you know, for the most part, affiliate is sort of like icing on the cake for us. But I was like, alright. Well, hey.
Matt Giovanisci:What if I took some of my best selling products via Amazon and just made them myself and shipped them myself? And so, yes, I will say that sales are incredibly slow if we don't do one of 2 things. If we just rely on pure organic marketing, meaning SEO articles, rank, someone clicks an affiliate link or clicks a link to our product and just buys at impulse, it it's slow. It happens for sure, but it's like you couldn't rely on it for for any, amount of business. And and, honestly, the same goes for courses too.
Matt Giovanisci:I mean, like, yes, we get people who just come to the site and buy, but, you know, ultimately, no. So what we have to do is if you buy a course, we give you a discount on physical products and vice versa. If you buy physical products, we give you a discount on the course. So we're using that we're using these products as upsells to each other or cross sells, I guess, and we really make, a majority of our money when we sell these products via email. That's where we're getting most of our sales from.
Matt Giovanisci:And SEO is what brings in those leads. So, yes, in a way. So which naturally leads to, it's following up the tweet, would you do anything differently on the ecom side if you had to start over? Well, I did an episode about this, but I'll reiterate. Yes.
Matt Giovanisci:I would do a lot of things differently. Well, one thing I would one thing I would do differently is I would not buy a ton of inventory. I mean, I bought a ton of inventory, and I wish I had gone a little slower. I also wish so the other thing is I would have stuck with 1 product at a time and have each product that I sold be a complete solution product. So let me explain.
Matt Giovanisci:We have and I'm I'll just go on the hot tub side because that's the most that's what we have. So on the hot tub side, we have 3 individual products. Right? There's 3 different chemicals. They all do completely different things, but they're all related to the same task, which is draining and cleaning your hot tub.
Matt Giovanisci:So you should drain and clean your hot tub every 3 to 4 months, ideally. Right? And all 3 of these products aid you in that process. Now we sell them all separately on the site, but we have a 4th SKU where I took all of those products and put them into a kit. And that kit is a complete solution, and it is a single price.
Matt Giovanisci:I wish, in hindsight, that is all I did. I wish I would not have sold the individual products because it and the reason why is because it made inventory management very difficult. I I did not come from an ecommerce background. I came from a retail background. So I know how to buy retail products in the pool and hot tub space for a retail store.
Matt Giovanisci:Because, ultimately, I had previous sales to look at. When I came to these stores, I knew what sold the previous year, and so I would buy accordingly. This was completely new. So what I did was I bought originally 2 just 2 products, and I and I sold them both, and I sold out. But the I only bought, like, maybe, like, a 100 units of each, like, such super small, like, a test.
Matt Giovanisci:Sent an email out, sold out, and I was like, oh, great. But guess what? You go and buy now I'm like, oh, instead of buying a 100, I'm gonna buy a 1,000 because I get a discount if I buy in a larger amount. So now I'm sitting on a 1,000 units, and I go to send that same email. Well, guess what?
Matt Giovanisci:That I already blew that that list. That list already saw that offer. So I was like, right. So I just had to sell it, you know, slowly, which is fine, and we did. However, I wish I would have concentrated my efforts onto ecommerce business.
Matt Giovanisci:That is not like, I'm not trying to run a an ecommerce pool store where I sell, you know, chemicals and cleaning products, everything for your pool. I was trying to solve one very specific problem. And the other thing that I wish I had done differently is I didn't realize or, I guess, I was a little bit naive in how fast I could make things happen. I am so used to being somebody who can do everything. So if we needed to update a product, I can make the update and then, you know, craft it, print it, do all that, you know, do everything I need to do.
Matt Giovanisci:With physical products, every time I wanted to change something on the label, which I wanted to do literally every time I made an order, it's, like, well, you gotta pay for new labels to be printed, and you gotta pay for and that takes time, and it has to be approved by this person, and it has to go through this process. And I'm like, right. And it's really because I just wanted to make one small change. Like, I wasn't changing the color scheme, but, you know, I was just changing, like, oh, I want I wanted this sentence to read differently or I wanted this, you know, I wanted to add this little icon or I wanted to add a QR code to the bottle or something. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:That was such a pain in the ass and it required more money, and it drove it drove down my margins, essentially, or I guess it compressed them. The other thing is as I always wanted to improve the product. So every single time I would send out, you know, products, I would ask for feedback, and I'd get the feedback. And I'm like, alright. I know how to make this better, or or I would wanna innovate so much.
Matt Giovanisci:So, like, one of the things that I was really I didn't really like about the product that we had, it was it came in a little 4 ounce bottle. And I'm like, this bottle is weird. Like, who wants this little bottle? Like, it was just such an awkward thing. It looked different, but it's it didn't make any sense.
Matt Giovanisci:So I'm like, there's better ways to to package this product, to make this product easier to use. Right? Now I was able to accomplish that with this 4 ounce product. We ended up turning it into 2 ounce pouches because a bottle, a small 4 ounce bottle was actually 2 doses. So the smallest little tiny bottle lasted you almost half a year, if not more, almost a year.
Matt Giovanisci:So I'm like, well, I'd rather you have, like, little packets that you can just rip and dump in, and you don't have to measure it. And, like, then it's like, once I started thinking that way, it became like, wow. I remember you know, like, being in the industry, I never really had the chance to think through product design. But what was so I started really thinking about it and going like, oh, I have a million ways that we can improve simply the packaging, And or can we add this agent to the chemical to make it do this thing so that it looks, you know, so that it that it registers in the customer's brain psychologically that something's happening and, like, you know, it was all these things that I thought, can't we do that? And the answer is, like, yes, you can, but I was white labeling these products, and I'm still white labeling them.
Matt Giovanisci:So I am not in control of the product design, whether the chemical makeup of the product or the packaging of the product. And all of those tests and iterations cost money because you're not just buying one bottle and testing the market with it. You're buying, like, a 1000 to 5000 to 10000 units, and you're like, well, I better sell these because it's got my name on it, and who's gonna be able to sell this if it doesn't work out? So and it was just a lot of capital. What I realized late in the game was that, oh, this is a this is a debt riding game.
Matt Giovanisci:Now I don't have a warehouse. I have a a 3 p l, meaning I rent space at multiple warehouses around the country, and every time an order comes in through Shopify, it goes to this third party system called Flexport, which at one time was owned by Shopify, but now is owned by Flexport. And they ship the product. And it costs a lot of money to do that. So if I were to start over, honestly, I would buy in incredibly small quantities, like test quantities, and I would probably package things myself and ship them myself.
Matt Giovanisci:And as and it's and I wouldn't do it I wouldn't run ads, you know, because if I run ads, we sell, but we don't we we we lose. Right? I would do it until I had something that I was like, this product fucking rules. My customers love this product. And if they did, then I would find a way to scale it up and and take it off of my hands.
Matt Giovanisci:But I I just didn't do that. And I don't think I'm I'm not the right person for that. I'm not in that I'm not in manufacturing. I I I'm not near my the makers of the product. I can't have meetings, and I have no control.
Matt Giovanisci:And because I have no control over the product, it's difficult for me to to operate that business. So, yeah, that's what I would do differently is I would do it where I had a little bit more control in the beginning, get the product dialed in, and then scale it from there. So that's a winded answer, but, yeah, that's essentially what I would do. Alright. So going back, let's see what else we got here.
Matt Giovanisci:Any plans to revive Brew Cabin, or is it really finished? That is a, that is a hard hitting question for me because I didn't record this, but I spent a lot of time in here talking to myself, and and I'm I'm I'm upset. I'm upset by it. I I love home brewing. I I it's the thing that I do when no one's watching.
Matt Giovanisci:When no one's looking, it's it's I mostly, like, just for entertainment, I watch home brewing content. I listen to home brewing podcasts. Like, I'm a I love it. I absolutely love it. It is my actual passion in life.
Matt Giovanisci:It is so my it's I am so afraid to travel. Right? I'm not a good traveler. I get I have whatever that anxiety is when you have when you travel. It's like trypophobia or whatever.
Matt Giovanisci:I I thought, you know, when I die, I I I don't I I don't think I'll have any regrets, but I will have if I but if I have any group regrets, it will be one thing. And it will be I didn't go to to Belgium slash Germany to drink beer and experience that because that is truly my passion. So that also there's so there's a it's a double edged sword. On one end, on one side, I have my day job, which is swim university. I am not passionate about pool care.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm not in love with it. I just happen to know a lot about it. Right? And I've been doing it my whole life, and I've been building this brand for 20 years. And so, yes, it is what I do during the day, and I get to throw my creative energy towards it, and it is fulfilling.
Matt Giovanisci:But it's also makes money, and so there's stress involved with that because, yeah, at the end of the day, that creative energy better pay off. Right? And I'm in charge of that. I'm in charge of that thing paying off so that my family and I can survive. So there's a layer of stress to that.
Matt Giovanisci:Homebrewing is purely a passion slash hobby. And so when I decided to not end Brew Cabin, but basically put it on hold while I focused on Swim University, I thought that's a relief kinda because now I get to just home brew in silence, like, in my own world without having to have everything be content. You know? So I can come out here and just make a beer and not have to pull my camera out, and not have to in between mashing and boiling, like posting shit on Instagram, and it's like I don't have to do those things. So that in that sense, it's kinda nice.
Matt Giovanisci:But I am a consumer of home brewing content, and when I set out to do my content, I wanted to do something that no one else had done before. And when I think about all of the projects within BrewCabin that I could do, And had I and and I'm it's very self serving in 2 ways. 1, I get to do the project, which is good for me because it's an awesome project. But then the content itself, if I had found that content, I would have been, like, this is the best thing I've ever seen. And I've I I crave that in home brewing.
Matt Giovanisci:I crave quality, great home brewing content. And that can be articles. That can be podcast. That can be video. And I believe I believe so hard that I could absolutely crush that area that topic.
Matt Giovanisci:Like, I am willing to do things in in beer brewing for content that I don't think a lot of other people have the stamina for. Now, you know, it's not a general I just think I can do it. And that thought excites excites the living shit out of me. Unfortunately, it the the those projects that I'm thinking of and the the the type of content that I want to make for Brew Cabin requires such a monumental effort that it's it can't be a side project. And then and then I have to think, well, then when does my actual brewing kick in?
Matt Giovanisci:Like, when does my hobby start? My my my stress for the leaf. Right? Because hobby, that's what it should be. You know?
Matt Giovanisci:It's like people don't knit for business. They knit to relax, and that's what I do for that's what home brewing is for me and the drinking part too. So, like, yeah. I do have plans, but and it's and what makes me incredibly sad is that every month I log in to YouTube on the Brew Cabin account, and there are comments, And the channel keeps growing. There are 5 videos on this channel.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm almost at 10,000 subscribers, which is not a lot, but it is for the home brewing industry. And 5 videos. And I don't, I read the comments, and I'm like, I I wish I could live here. These the the nicest comments. Unbelievably nice.
Matt Giovanisci:And I don't get those comments at Smith University. I don't. I mean, I get some nice I get nice comments, don't get me wrong, but not at that level because I put because that channel, I put everything I had into it. And I feel like, if only I had if only I could do that again. And and perhaps it is and perhaps I I I could, if I remove the money aspect from it.
Matt Giovanisci:I don't know. Because the thing is is, like, I yeah. There are just things that I do in this room. I'm walking in my brewery now. And it's like I have the perfect set.
Matt Giovanisci:I have the perfect backdrop for video, and yet I, I don't do anything. I do it all for myself. So I don't know. Perhaps if I were to revive it and do it soon, I think, I would probably remove courses. I have a I have one course that I sell through Brew Cabot and people buy it and, you know, it's it's kind of organic.
Matt Giovanisci:I probably would remove that, give that to everybody, you know, who has it so they have access to it. Just take it off the site essentially. And I would just do Brew Cabin for as sort of like a journal for myself and and not tie it to income at all. And the the okay. So if I did that Right?
Matt Giovanisci:So, like, for example, I'm I'm currently working on a a, I'm doing my IPA tests all over again. So I spent 3 years brewing essentially the same style of beer in order to in order to master it. And then I wrote a huge article on it once I had 3 years of data and 3 years of trial and error, and I went, this is what I think makes this beer perfect. And I ranked number 1 for that phrase. So and and that's where most of my traffic still comes from because it's just that epic of, you know, it's like, again, 3 years in the work in the making of a a thing.
Matt Giovanisci:Right? But it didn't take me long to write it because I, again, I spent it was just my life. So I just wrote it as if, you know, hey. This is what I learned after 3 years of doing this thing. So there's that.
Matt Giovanisci:So another thing I I I learned, well, another thing I did was I built a keezer, and a keezer is a is a chest freezer that is a that turns into a that you can that has taps in it, essentially. And I wanted to build something that was really epic. So I decked it out with lights, it's got a glass rinser in it, like, I went nuts on this thing. Right? Because one, I wanted it, and, 2, I've never done it before, and I was like, hey.
Matt Giovanisci:Go big or go home. And I turned that project into both a video and a massive article on on exactly everything that I did. I don't rank number 1 for that, but I I rank number 2, and I'm like, you know, I could certainly rank number 1 if I tried. So, okay, I did those things. You know, currently, I'm working on an IPA recipe, and now I'm canning it and I'm packaging it and I have labels and it's like a whole thing in here.
Matt Giovanisci:I could write about that. And I don't know if it's SEOable, but it's like, oh, this is fascinatingly interesting. The video stuff and, you know, the blog, yeah, I could easily do that. The video stuff is where it gets harder because the things that I'm trying to do on video are are are insane, and they take up a ton of time. So I don't I don't know the answer.
Matt Giovanisci:It's a long winded way of saying it's not it's not finished. I am trying to as I as I'm getting deeper into Swim University and I am building out systems, I am trying to free myself up to do just more leisurely things and, you know, home brewing. And if that means if if I could use it as an outlet for journaling and whatever, then, yeah, I think I might do that. So the yeah. Yeah.
Matt Giovanisci:Alright. Moving on. What's something you always wish someone would ask you? That's that's an interesting one. I'll tell you this.
Matt Giovanisci:The reason I started MoneyLab is because, like, way back in 2016, I started MoneyLab. And part of the reason for doing it was I was this guy who had built Swim University completely behind the scenes. Like, I was on I was this swim university guy, but, like, I didn't want to be a part of the I didn't wanna be a part of the, the pool industry, but that wasn't my goal. My goal was to be a part of the online entrepreneur industry. Those were my peers.
Matt Giovanisci:Those were the people who I would go to conferences and they're like, oh, you're the guy who does this site. We all know this site because it's like you know, it's people know it within this community because it's it's it's a prime example of a niche site. Right? So or or an authority site. And that's really where I want it to be.
Matt Giovanisci:So I built I'm sorry. I built MoneyLabs as a way to express it basically break out from behind the scenes of some university and go, hey, guys. Look what I'm doing over here. I have I'm thinking about this thing differently. Won't you listen?
Matt Giovanisci:Will anyone listen? And and why was I doing that? Because I wanted the pat on the back. I wanted that. I wanted to be a part of a community because I was nothing.
Matt Giovanisci:I was a I wasn't nothing. I was alone. When you and and I I'm I'm maybe speaking to people who, experienced this already, but I I know I worked a job. I worked, you know, a job where I went into an office, and I talked to people all day. And then when I started some university, it was the reverse, like, complete reverse, where all day, I was home by myself and working on this thing.
Matt Giovanisci:When I would go out and hang out with my friends, no one asked me how my day went because of couple of reasons. 1, you're you work from home. Like, fuck you for 1st off, and that was a that was a thing way back in the day. Right? And 2, it was like, I don't know what to ask you.
Matt Giovanisci:I don't actually know what you do. Like, what do you do? Right? Like being a YouTuber at the time wasn't a thing. Like, being a creator wasn't a thing.
Matt Giovanisci:So they were like, I don't know. How do you have a website? Like, how do you even make money? In fact, I have a friend who I I just went back to New Jersey back in December of 2023. And my friend, one of my best friends who I know intimately who is you know, he was like, you know what?
Matt Giovanisci:I actually don't know how you make I know what you do but I don't know how it makes money. I'm like, are you serious? I'm like, oh, I do this. Sell courses, blah blah. He's like, oh, shit.
Matt Giovanisci:Yeah. I never I never knew. It's like, what the hell did you think I did? He's like, I don't know. You ran a website.
Matt Giovanisci:I was like, oh, Jesus. But that's the thing I bet people go like, yeah. Oh, I know you would do I know you do YouTube, but, like, I actually don't know how YouTubers make money. So I can understand that. But, yeah, people didn't know.
Matt Giovanisci:So point is is that no one asked me how my day went, what I did that day, wanted to know anything about my job, perhaps to protect themselves or just because, like
Matt Giovanisci:I don't know.
Matt Giovanisci:But then, like, the you know, I had friends that were accountants. I didn't ask them what the fuck they did all day. It's like, I know what you did. You're accountant. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:It's boring? Got it. You know? So I honestly wish people asked me about that. It it I all I want to talk about is is my work.
Matt Giovanisci:I I, I do love it. I love what I do. And, yeah, I wish more people asked me about my day and about what I did. I, you know, I love going on podcasts and talking about how I think about the world in what we do, like, not I don't you know? I have opinions about the world in general.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm not trying to be a philosopher. I just I'm you know, someone who's like, how do you think about content creation or what do you think about social media posting? Or what do you, you know like, what's your take on it? Or, like, what do you do? In fact, not even my take, but, like, just ask me what I do because I like just telling people what I did.
Matt Giovanisci:And it's maybe a form of showing off or, like, it's just show and tell thing. Like, I would always be somebody who, when I did a school project and someone and then the teacher would be like, who wants to share? It's me. I wanna share. Because I spent a lot of time on this, and I worked really hard on it.
Matt Giovanisci:And I don't want I don't just want it to be an audience of 1. I want it to be an audience of many. And I think that's because, ultimately, like, I'm a performer. That's and and and that in the performance aspect of what I do is translate it kind of behind the scenes. You know, I'm performing when I write a blog post about pool care, but no one knows that.
Matt Giovanisci:And the people who do and and get a value from it are, like, you know, people that just own pools and are like, hey. Thanks for what you're doing. It's like, alright.
Matt Giovanisci:Alright. Thanks. Yeah. You're welcome. You know?
Matt Giovanisci:But then I want somebody to be like, hey, Matt. How the fuck did you do that article? Like, what how did you go through thinking through that whole thing? And I went, oh, I oh, yeah. Well, I did this and I did that and then I did this and then I thought about doing this, but then I you know, that's essentially what this podcast is.
Matt Giovanisci:And a lot of this podcast is is postmortem, me me or post what I've done and and reciting that and going through it in a way to learn. And then the other side of it is I'm about to do something and I need to formulate a strategy before I do it. So this podcast sorta helps me in talking it out. You know? So, yeah, that's the question, is how did you do x?
Matt Giovanisci:How did you do this? I'll tell you, a very specific case. When I did my, I did a video for Brew Cabin that was about brewing a New England IPA, and I did it in the style of 2,001 in a space odyssey. And I worked for 3 to 4 months on that thing, studying Kubrick, like studying that movie and to, like, and taking notes, like, snapping screen I was watching it, snapping screenshots, taking notes, why this happened, did, you know, so much work. And I've released it to it wasn't one of my most popular videos, but the people who find it are like, wow.
Matt Giovanisci:This is amazing. I who would have ever thought these two things would work together? You know, home brewing and this movie. And what I did was, because I just needed to do it, is I wanted to show the magic trick because I was so proud of the crafting of the magic trick, meaning, like, what you saw on screen, that I needed people to see the behind the scenes. I don't think anybody watched it, but I I filmed like a 30 minute behind the scenes on just how I filmed and edited and animated everything.
Matt Giovanisci:Like, how I did every scene. And I just rolled through my timeline and just showed you, okay. Here's how I did this like, I here's how I animated how in the in the you know, I took this screenshot and carved these things out and, like, found this pulsing animation and what I just like, there was a there's a shot in the beginning of the of the of the video of a beer, and it took me all day to get that one shot. And it's all in camera. None of it's done in, like it's like somebody asked me how I did it because I just wanna tell people.
Matt Giovanisci:I just wanna be like, oh, thank you because I worked really hard on it. Here's exactly how I did it. And that's essentially what this podcast is. Right? It's like I'm sharing behind the scenes of, like, what I'm thinking about, how I think through things, all of that.
Matt Giovanisci:So I appreciate the questions, and I would like to answer more. So if you would, if you have any questions, please email me, mad@moneylab.co. Happy to answer your questions and do some random q and a's, because, like, you know, even thinking about things, you know, after the fact is is incredibly helpful for decision making going forward. So, again, matt@moneylab.co. Alright.
Matt Giovanisci:Bye.
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