Shai Egosi explains how a loan he made to a struggling Florida pool builder turned into a six-year turnaround that took Pool Perfection from $3M to $12M in sales before his 2025 exit. Along the way he built his own software, Workflow Perfection, to organize the chaos, cut build times from eight months to six weeks, and turn customer experience into his biggest competitive advantage.
00:31 – Intro: Rob welcomes Shai Egosi, whose meeting in El Salvador led to this episode
01:47 – How Shai went from software career to pool company owner through a loan gone sideways
04:01 – The six-year scale from $3M to $12M in sales, exit completed July 2025
04:34 – What Shai is building now: Workflow Perfection, a management platform for construction companies
05:19 – The real growth constraint in the green industry: finding people who buy into the vision, not just collect a paycheck
06:33 – Why a well-built "castle" attracts good people before you even have to sell them on it
07:56 – Focusing on customer happiness over the physical task ("Don't build them a pool")
10:28 – How to delight customers with simple, consistent basics instead of grand gestures
11:37 – The real starting point of the turnaround: paper everywhere, 40% of time lost searching for information
12:52 – Setting up project-based communication channels (WhatsApp) instead of one messy company chat
13:52 – The personal touch: Shai calling every customer himself right after kickoff
15:05 – Automated Monday morning project update texts, now AI-assisted
16:34 – Why organized data is also what makes AI actually useful
17:04 – Starting with Trello, then building custom software from real field problems
19:02 – Timeline of the gains: Trello to Workflow Perfection, then COVID hits and demand spikes
20:15 – Friday breakfast meetings where the whole team learned and improved the software together
21:15 – The compounding payoff: profitability, five-star reviews, and standing out while competitors failed during COVID
22:47 – How to actually start: get the right people in a room and map the full information flow
24:59 – Getting a skeptical team on board with new systems
26:02 – What Workflow Perfection does: phases, materials tracking, inspections, commissions, chargebacks
27:36 – How a clean system made Shai's own exit smoother (read-only buyer access, no surprises)
28:56 – What it actually takes to onboard a system like this, and how fast teams feel the impact
31:29 – Where to find Workflow Perfection (workflowperfection.com) and how to reach Shai
32:02 – Book recommendations: Bold, Build, Abundance, and Never Split the Difference