216: How Perseverance & a Letter of Honesty Saved this Pizzeria (Nick Sarillo of Nick's Pizza & Pub)

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Background on Nick Sarillo of Nick's Pizza & Pub:

Nick Sarillo is the CEO of one of the top ten busiest independent pizza companies in per-store sales in the U.S. In an industry in which the average annual turnover rate is more than 150 percent, Nick’s Pizza & Pub boasts less than a 25 percent employee turnover rate. He is a leading expert in leadership, organizational culture, employee engagement, and executive development. He also serves as a mentor and coach to entrepreneur's, CEO's, and leaders from technology startups to the health and fitness, retail and manufacturing industries.

Nick is a TEDx speaker, and has delivered Keynotes across the country for rooms of up to 1,000 people. He shares real-life ideas, strategies and processes that can turn any business into a successful, high-performance organization. His book, A Slice of the Pie, tells the story of how he built the extraordinary culture of Nick's Pizza and Pub and shows how anyone can follow his methods. A Slice of the Pie will help transform even the smallest, simplest, and most ordinary business into a successful, high-performance organization.

As a certified Gestalt Coach, Nick understands how to tap into the individual potential to guide leaders on their journey of self-improvement. Through the Trust-and-Track Institute, Nick and his team offer personalized, one-on-one executive coaching to leaders all over the world.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

  • [1:40] Nick Sarillo, 58 years old, is the owner of Nick’s Pizza and he has been in the restaurant business for 25 years. He has also written a book called A Slice of the Pie – How to Build a Big Little Business.
  • [3:49] After college, Nick went into the construction business. This background gave him the engineering mindset to create effective systems for his restaurant business.
  • [6:18] Austin points out that Nick is one of the few people on his list that he has wanted to have on this podcast since 2017.
  • [8:53] Nick recalls his early days in Chicago, which helped widen his perspective in life at a young age.
  • [11:34] Working as a carpenter, Nick says that he loved building houses.
  • [16:54] At 32 years old, Nick built his own restaurant from the ground up.
  • [20:17] His bad experiences bringing his family to different restaurants drove him to think about having his own restaurant.
  • [24:16] Nick had to take a $700K loan to build his first restaurant.
  • [26:55] During the construction of his restaurant, cops came to Nick’s place because they thought there was something illegal going on.
  • [30:24] There were numerous struggles that Nick had to endure during the construction of the restaurant.
  • [35:19] When the restaurant opened for the first time, Nick had to learn quickly because it immediately got so busy.
  • [37:21] Building a company where employees truly enjoy coming to work every day is a big part of Nick’s success.
  • [38:46] Even though money was coming in, Nick did not consider it a real success because he wanted his team to be happy surrounded by a great working environment.
  • [41:57] A year into the restaurant business, Nick created his performance-based compensation program that proved to be the backbone of the business.
  • [48:53] Nick provides an example of how his performance-based compensation system worked.
  • [55:08] In 2007, during the recession, Nick opened the Chicago restaurant, which made him realize that he can still fail in business.
  • [1:00:12] Lack of understanding of his company’s financials was a major factor in the downfall of the restaurants during the height of the recession. Nick really thought that he was about to shut down his restaurants.
  • [1:10:23] His restaurant team convinced Nick to send a very honest letter to their frequent diners telling them that they are almost on the verge of shutting down. The result of this move surprised everyone, especially Nick.
  • [1:17:13] The letter that Nick wrote became viral on social media and everyone chipped in to help, even former employees.
  • [1:22:32] The perseverance of their culture is a key to their success. Nick also says that Austin would fit perfectly with their culture.
  • [1:23:07] The Trust and Track Institute is Nick’s new business, which teaches other businesses how to build a better culture with a positive working environment.

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Fabulous 4 Questions:

  1. 📖📚 Favorite Books? Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schultz, The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
  2. 🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Books
  3. 🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? The big switch for me was going from handwritten tickets to a digital point of sale system and helping develop that software
  4. 💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Real estate investment for my restaurant business. Time to build a team for my consulting business

Key Point from the Interview:

  • “Be vulnerable. Go to your team. Sometimes as entrepreneurs, as managers, as leaders, the team looks up to us and we get this false perception that we can’t be vulnerable in front of them. Amazing when we open up and say hey guys I don’t have the answer, what do you think? I don’t know what to do anymore? To me that was huge.”

 

Resources Mentioned:

 

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