Most pool company owners don’t grow up riding tractors through Israeli farmland, pioneering a lawn mowing business at age 11 or establishing call centers in Nicaragua. But Shai Egosi has never done things the conventional way.
The turnaround chief executive, and exiting owner, of Pool Perfection in Largo, Egosi has built a reputation in Tampa Bay not just for beautiful, efficient pools, but for creating a construction company that runs more like a tech startup. As he prepares to sell the business he rescued from the brink, Egosi reflects on a life shaped by hustle, risk-taking and the drive to constantly reinvent himself.
Roots in Rural Israel
Egosi was born in Kfar Kisch, a small agricultural village in northern Israel. He was the eldest of his parents’ three children. His parents met after military service, mandatory for all Israeli citizens, and took advantage of a government program aimed at blending Jewish and Arab communities in underdeveloped regions. As young farmers, they were given cows, land and a modest home.
“It was a beautiful place to grow up,” recalls Egosi. “We had horses, donkeys, rabbits, pigeons, chickens, anything I wanted that I could raise.”
Though the family farm began as a traditional agricultural operation, Egosi’s father soon transitioned it into a more modern venture, importing packaging machines from the United States.
“Very quickly, my dad realized that he wasn’t going to make any money with cows,” Egosi says.
“He was probably one of the very first guys in Israel to have a computer and then a fax machine,” he adds, and he often brought young Shai along on sales visits across the country.
By age 11, Egosi had caught the entrepreneurial bug. He launched a lawn-mowing service with a push mower, quickly graduating to a riding tractor. “My dad made me give him 50% of what I earned,” he says with a laugh. “It was his machine, after all.”
He kept meticulous notes, tracking every job and shekel. Eventually, together with his father, he built a small trailer out of old bicycles to haul his growing arsenal of gardening tools. Egosi became the go-to kid for yard work across the village.
School, however, didn’t hold his interest. “I was a terrible student,” he admits, laughing. “The only classes I liked were woodworking and art. But the teachers all loved me.”
It’s easy to see why, what Egosi may lack in academia, he makes up for in his determination, work ethic, innovative thinking and personality – when he wasn’t causing trouble, that is.
“I was a troublemaker in school, big time. I would cause a lot of trouble. At one point, all the girls decided to beat me up, like all of them, because I’d snap their bras,” Egosi says, again laughing. He causes less trouble these days.
Coming to America
When Egosi was 13, his grandfather, a former pilot and agricultural engineer who had moved to the U.S., helped the family immigrate to Phenix City, Alabama. It was, Egosi says bluntly, “the worst place a 13-year-old Israeli farm kid could end up. “This was 1988 in one of the smallest cities in Alabama.
He didn’t speak a word of English but supportive teachers created a custom curriculum and allowed him to skip classes he didn’t enjoy because he buttered them up by doing favors, like bringing strawberries and cream as offerings to detract from his less-than-optimal academic skills.
“That’s what taught me that I can always do things a little differently because, for example, any classes I didn’t like, I would work a deal out with the teacher.
His father, meanwhile, sold Encyclopedia Britannica door to door and became the company’s rookie of the year and runner-up rookie of the world, despite the language barrier. Read that again: an Israeli immigrant who spoke no English became the top-selling Britannica Encyclopedia representative in a small town in Alabama in the 1980s. Egosi comes by his grit honestly.
“He didn’t know the culture, didn’t know the language but he was still the number one salesperson. Watching him taught me that you can figure anything out,” Egosi says.
The family later moved to Tarpon Springs, Florida, where Egosi felt more at home among the Mediterranean community. There, he transformed into a straight-A student at Tarpon Springs High School and eventually approached the high school administration with a bold request: to drop out. Instead, they enrolled him in Florida’s early college program and he began full-time classes at St. Petersburg Junior College, now St. Petersburg College, at 17.
While working in the college’s computer labs, Egosi was referred to a retired stock market investor named David King, who needed help understanding his new computer. Their initial meeting lasted from early Saturday morning until 8 p.m., that same night.
“He became like a second father to me,” Egosi says. “He taught me what my dad couldn’t, how to navigate business in America.”
With King’s encouragement, Egosi began building custom computers and networking systems for local businesses. He was soon recruited by a small tech company called Intermedia Communications, where he rose to lead the IT department. During his tenure, the company grew from 50 employees to more than 5,000, before being acquired by MCI.
After several years, and a stint in Miami, Egosi returned to Tampa Bay to help his brother launch a call center. That venture eventually led to international expansion and, for several years, Egosi lived and worked in Nicaragua and Panama, managing call center operations and developing proprietary software.
But it wasn’t all rosy, Egosi admits. “We fly to Nicaragua, and we make it to our house in the middle of the night. And Naomi, (Egosi’s wife, at the time) wakes up in the morning for the very first time and sees where she lives. And she’s crying, saying ‘Where have you taken me!?’”
She softened when she realized she was able to have several maids on staff to help with the kids, house chores and cooking, understandably so. The family adapted and the children entered school.
But the instability of those regions including riots, rolling blackouts and unreliable infrastructure, brought the family back to Florida, where Egosi continued working in tech and began searching for a business he could grow, close to home.
An Imperfect Opportunity
In 2018, that opportunity arrived in unexpected form. Naomi wanted to install a pool at their home, in Lutz, and, while exploring options, Egosi was introduced to the struggling owner of a local pool company called Pool Perfection.
“I had been wanting to do something with more social impact, and I wanted to have employees, maybe build something. I was stagnant. So, I thought, ‘why don’t I just do something? Why don’t I go ahead and entertain this idea, with the pool company? We’ll give him a loan and kind of see what happens,’” Egosi says, recalling the early debate on whether to dive into the deep end of Pool Perfection.
Sensing a chance to turn around a faltering business, he and his brother extended a loan to help stabilize the company.
“Three months in, it was clear we weren’t getting our money back,” Egosi says, laughing. “So, I started going in every day, waking up at 5 a.m., driving to Largo (from Lutz), and staying until 7 p.m. I had no idea how to build a pool, but I knew how to build a business.”
He eventually bought out his brother and took full control, despite the company being $700,000 in debt. What followed was a complete reinvention.
“I felt personally committed to the people who bought pools from Pool Perfection. I’m like, “I’m going to build your pool! End of story. I don’t care what happens; I’m $700,000 in debt now, but we’re going to figure out a way to make this work. And the first thing I needed was software to keep track of the many moving parts involved,” he says.
Drawing from his tech background, Egosi applied a startup mindset to the company: digitizing every process, implementing chat-based communication systems and designing proprietary software to manage projects.
“I had to overcome incredible resistance,” he says. “The team saw me as this outsider. But I didn’t care. I just kept showing up and teaching them how to succeed.”
He introduced what he called “kickoff meetings” with every customer, tracked projects in real time and built a culture around instant feedback and public recognition.
“Construction workers don’t typically ‘heart’ things in a group chat,” he says. “But when you build a culture of celebration, that changes.”
Under Egosi’s leadership, Pool Perfection cut its average pool build time from 4 to 6 months to just under eight weeks, on average. The company now maintains more than 60 active projects at one time, and five-star reviews are shared and celebrated company-wide. In 2024, the company had revenue of nearly $12 million.
But more than the systems, speed and dollars, Egosi credits the transformation to one thing: loyalty.
“I had to learn how to lead in a way that made people want to be here. We fixed the process so people could thrive in their roles, and they felt that,” he says.
Just Keep Swimming
After years of 18-hour days balancing construction by day and software development by night, Egosi is preparing to exit the business. The recent sale of Pool Perfection, which is still in the final stages as this story is being written, will provide financial security for both him and his four children. His eldest son, Natan, is marketing director at Pool Perfection. Egosi and his wife amicably divorced, after 24 years of marriage.
“We built a great life together and we still talk all of the time,” he says. “But this next chapter is about focus.”
His plan? To take the software he built and scale it, nationwide. He wants to help other construction companies transform the way they operate, just as he did with a pool company in Largo.
He describes his children being born in two phases, one with the strict dad and one with a little less control, as age can do that to a person. Natan, who is joining the interview on the day of TBBW’s visit, adds, “He needs to bring his point system back,” and laughs. Shai’s response? “Things got busy!”
When he’s not being dad, or the boss, Egosi navigates the dating world as a newly single father in 2025. He leans into charitable giving. But getting him to elaborate might take some nudging.
Egosi has quietly helped those in need throughout his career; customers falling behind on payments, subcontractors going through challenging times. “We don’t advertise it,” he says. “But we help when we can. If I see someone struggling, I try to do what I’d want someone to do for me. Quietly.”
At home, he’s also focused on being present for his youngest, a daughter, now 14, and also staying rooted in Tampa Bay.
“I always wanted to exit. That was the goal. But I stayed a couple of years longer because I cared. Now it’s time,” he says.
For Shai Egosi, the work was never just about pools. It was about proving that no matter where you start, you can build something that lasts.
