0:01

What's up, everybody. Welcome to another episode

0:03

of The Big Money Energy Podcast, Season two

0:05

with I Heart Radio, the greatest podcast ever.

0:08

Obviously, today we have a really really,

0:10

really cool entrepreneur, Elier Sela.

0:13

And now you might be saying what I don't

0:15

know? That is I don't but you know what you do

0:17

have you know what you do know? You know you have tasted

0:20

pizza. Elier Sela is the

0:22

new pizza king because

0:24

he founded a company called Slice,

0:27

which has completely changed the way

0:30

people order pizza all

0:32

over the world. He's created

0:34

it not too long ago and he's now built it to one

0:36

thousand, seventy five employees

0:38

and they're going to do a billion dollars

0:41

in pizza sales this year.

0:43

The story is totally incredible.

0:45

He's a first generation immigrant

0:48

from Macedonia, grew up

0:50

in Staten Island, went to local

0:52

college and just figured out what his passion

0:55

was and so many other things. Also, he turned

0:57

down an offer to sell the company once for

0:59

eighteen million dollars or he said no. That was a really

1:01

really tough decision for him, and then again for

1:04

three hundred and fifty million dollars he said

1:06

no. We go through the whole thing. I'll be

1:08

like it typically

1:21

there's so much information that I'm like trying

1:23

to pare it down. I'm like, all right, how do I be as

1:25

efficient with questions as possible?

1:27

Right with you? Like, I

1:30

know just enough, but you're also kind

1:32

of like the secret Ninja entrepreneur,

1:35

Like there's not a lot out

1:37

there, and so, um, I

1:39

kind of want to like dig into it. People

1:42

know your background and they're listening to this, so they've

1:44

obviously read the caption and the description of what the

1:46

podcast episode is. But your

1:48

first generation, Yeah, I moved

1:50

here when I was ten years old. Came here from Europe.

1:53

Um. I remember literally vividly

1:56

remember flying into JFK. I

1:58

come from a town in Europe, in southeastern

2:01

Europe that has zero traffic lights.

2:03

I mean there's no there's barely ading lights.

2:06

And coming into New York City

2:08

from from JFK. You look around,

2:10

you look out the window, you're ten years old. I

2:13

mean it looks like magic, It looks like anything,

2:15

anything could be possible, which is kind

2:18

of the it's stuck with me from

2:20

from that moment forward. And what brought

2:23

your family to the US into

2:25

New York. Yeah, My my family actually

2:27

has been um, going back and forth. My

2:29

um, my grandfather, my parents

2:32

lived in the city in the seventies

2:34

and they owned a pizza shop called Charlie's

2:36

Pizza on sevent and

2:38

the Wild Story. As a real estate U person,

2:41

you'll appreciate this. Yeah,

2:44

they earned a lot with their pizza shop. It

2:46

was seven operation, saved

2:49

a lot of cash there at least

2:51

ran up and the building owner offered

2:54

them to buy the building for dollars

2:59

h five man and

3:01

they turned it down so they could all move

3:03

back home. Got it to take the money

3:05

exactly. But yeah, they moved back, moved

3:08

back home, and then um decided

3:10

to come back again. And I think part of it has

3:12

to do have to do with the fact that

3:15

my brothers and I we were, you know, getting older

3:18

in a in a sort of sense, and

3:21

they wanted to provide opportunity for us, specifically

3:24

on the education front, so better schools,

3:26

better opportunities, and they made a lot of

3:28

sacrifices to come back. I'm sure. And

3:30

you spoke English at the time, No, not

3:32

really barely. Yeah,

3:34

it's like just so classic, right, like

3:37

your parents put you on an airplane and take you

3:39

to the US and don't really know English,

3:41

and they're like, go figure it out, go to school, go on

3:43

and be somebody. But fortunately

3:46

I have a twin brother and identical

3:49

identical and are you the

3:52

twin are you really? You

3:54

never know? We are in a lot of places. I

3:57

am in a lot of places at the same time. Let me put

3:59

it that way. I'm kidding, but we

4:02

um it was. It made things a lot easier.

4:04

Obviously, I have a twin brother, You're kind of going through

4:07

this journey together. You don't

4:09

feel so alone, and you don't have to sort of have this

4:11

pressure of making friends. So it kind of softened

4:14

the experience a little bit. What did you want to be when

4:16

you were a little kid. I'm trying to imagine

4:18

you is like nine years old in Macedonia

4:20

and then eleven in New York. Yeah,

4:23

I I'll be at my My dad really

4:25

instilled this sort of entrepreneurial passion

4:28

from from the early days. My dad worked

4:31

incredibly hard. He was, you

4:33

know, part of the family's pizzeria business when he

4:35

was younger, and then he became a master tailor and

4:38

opened up a shop in Manhattan when we

4:40

moved back, um

4:42

and really made a name

4:44

for himself because the suits he made

4:46

were just are are incredible? I

4:48

Mean, we've got to we've got to talk after this. But

4:51

he's retired now and world

4:54

words sort of spread out, and um,

4:57

you know, John F. Kennedy Jr. Was getting married

5:00

and needed a suit for his wedding and my dad

5:03

handmade his suit for his wedding. Um,

5:06

and that was sort of his own small business, right, he was

5:08

just a master tailor. What he sort of taught

5:10

us was kind of going back

5:12

to the same point I made earlier, which is, when

5:15

you come to to America, every

5:18

opportunity is available to you. Literally everything,

5:21

it all is um up to

5:23

you. It's all up to you if you want to, um

5:25

really take advantage and seize the moment

5:27

and sees the opportunities. And basically

5:29

what he said, what are was that the rules

5:32

of this country favor

5:34

entrepreneurs. Um.

5:37

Nothing wrong with having a job and working for others,

5:39

of course, but but that is

5:41

what the system is designed to do, is

5:44

is nurture and enable entrepreneurs

5:46

to launch businesses. And so

5:49

yeah, from right out

5:51

of school, I mean, my my first job

5:53

was a my own business

5:55

where we built websites in the early two thousands.

5:58

Um, is that nerd Force nerd Force A

6:01

great. I got great, simple to

6:04

name. Yeah, I got really lucky. UM

6:08

Geek Squad launched with Best Buy nationally

6:10

and um it was not a franchise,

6:13

but people wanted to get into that business. So

6:15

we started painting calls NonStop

6:17

for people who wanted a franchise. I

6:19

had no idea what that meant, but if

6:21

they wanted one, I needed to sell them that. So

6:24

I franchised the model and we launched the hundred and

6:26

twenty four locations. That's insane. How

6:29

old were you? I was twenty

6:31

well when I launched those twenty one, so twenty

6:34

one to twenty seven

6:37

you we Did you go to college? Did you get out of college?

6:39

I went to CUNEI. I went to the College of Staten

6:41

Island. So I always did really well

6:43

in school, but albeying culture is

6:45

one that we're at the time. It

6:47

was like you have to be home, you can't really go away to school,

6:50

and so I went to the College of Staten

6:52

Island. Yeah, I

6:54

graduated in three years. I had

6:56

a bunch of college credits from high

6:58

school. I don't know why, I think just

7:01

I've got this way of memorizing

7:03

things. I guess um, But yeah, I finished

7:05

school pretty quickly and then launched the tech support

7:08

company, got it. And did you always

7:10

love technology?

7:13

Yeah? I think I can when you're a little kid, even in

7:15

Macedonia or is this like no, definitely

7:17

not in Macedonia. Now

7:19

there is. But I

7:22

think what really led me to

7:25

embrace and kind of have passion for technology

7:28

is sometime maybe

7:30

I was thirteen or fourteen years

7:32

old and my older brother got a computer. My

7:34

older brother who's five years older, he

7:36

was just starting three of you, three

7:38

boys, three of us. Yeah. So my older brother,

7:41

um started school, he's

7:43

an architect, um, and his freshman

7:45

year of college, he got a computer and

7:48

we were not allowed to touch it, my brother and I. And

7:50

so the moment you're told you can't touch so

7:54

the moment that that became the rule

7:57

meant that we you know, you obviously

7:59

want to go and play with So whenever

8:01

he would be in school, because it was like a desktop, we

8:05

were just yeah, we were just like mess around with it,

8:07

and um, it became a

8:09

real passionate for me. So when I went to college,

8:12

it was a computer science truck, so

8:14

a computer science to me. So

8:23

you sold NERD Force correct right,

8:26

And you did not go back

8:28

to Macedonian retiring the beat. I

8:31

did not. I boots strapped

8:33

nerd Force. In fact, I didn't really know

8:36

what it meant to raise venture capital

8:38

and investments and things like that. Did you raise money

8:40

with nord Force? I did not know. Is just

8:42

started from day one, just franchise it because

8:45

people are calling and wanted to franchise. Yeah. Yeah,

8:47

we started getting so many calls. Um,

8:49

well, we were named one

8:51

of the most thriving companies post

8:54

nine eleven at the five year Anniversity. So

8:57

in two thousand and six, five years after

8:59

nine eleven, we were on the centerfold.

9:02

Back then it was a big deal of the New York Daily News.

9:05

Um, and it was sort of this company's thriving

9:07

in New York Post and

9:10

so that gave us a lot of brand awareness

9:13

at the local level. And so again as

9:15

a geek squads started launching on a national

9:17

scale, we just we got bombarded

9:19

with calls for franchising. Yeah,

9:22

how did you figure out how to franchise? Oh

9:24

my god. I went to an attorney

9:26

in State Island and I said, Hey, I want to franchise

9:29

my business. And I said, well, it's gonna

9:31

be two and fifty tho. I

9:33

was like, I don't I don't have two. Um.

9:37

I locked myself in my office for

9:39

three days. Literally, it was like a Friday

9:42

on Monday, learned everything that there

9:44

is to know about how to franchise your business, including

9:46

trademarking your logo and brand,

9:49

and I did it myself and within ninety

9:51

days we had our first franchise.

9:54

E wow. Wow.

9:56

So the answer to everyone who's listening to

9:59

this is just be smart, be

10:01

super smart, get through college in three years

10:03

and learned that. What you just said

10:06

reminded me of like, uh, Leonardo DiCaprio,

10:08

catch me if you can. Have you seen that with Tom

10:10

Hanks at the end of the movie Tom? I said,

10:12

don't you know, how did you? Like? What? What

10:14

was it? Like? How did how did you get into law school? Or

10:17

how what was it to become a lawyer or something. He's like, no,

10:19

I just studied and took the test and I passed.

10:21

It's like what, No, but you're a con artist. You

10:23

had a separate way to get about it. He's like, now, I just I

10:25

just studied and took the test, and I would

10:27

say that's Um, it's actually

10:30

less complicated than smart. I think it's just put

10:32

an effort. I don't know that I'm

10:34

smarter than anyone, that we all

10:37

have the same abilities. But it really

10:39

is about the input, the effort

10:41

you put in against that you

10:43

know ability, and that gives

10:46

you an advantage or not. So it's

10:48

really more effort than it is smart. And

10:50

do you remember where your first franchise wash.

10:52

Yeah, I was in Fort Lane, New Jersey. Nice.

10:55

And so that person then paid you a fee and

10:57

opened up their own nerd force. Look,

11:00

yeah, I got it where people doing these like out of their

11:02

own homes and garages type thing or opening

11:04

up retail stores. No, it was a mobile.

11:07

It was like a you know, man in a van mobile

11:09

on side tech support in home

11:12

business. And you know,

11:14

we grew to about nine hundred technicians. So these

11:17

franchise e s started hiring their own technicians

11:19

and we went from about thirty technicians to nine

11:22

hundred. And you were getting a small percentage

11:24

of all other sales. We were getting

11:27

four hundred and fifty dollars a month as a flat

11:29

feed royalty. There was a marketing fee

11:31

and that was it. And were you taking

11:34

a percentage? So the royalty fee was on

11:36

top of that right. So then you sold

11:38

the franchise and the rights to nerd

11:41

Force right correct to a public

11:43

company called Nexus Management out of the

11:45

United Kingdom, public company where

11:47

they just knock on your door. Yeah. Well,

11:49

they provided enterprise level

11:52

support to larger companies, and they wanted to

11:54

get into the SMB space too, small business space,

11:56

and they viewed nerd Force as their wedge into a small

11:59

business and then they were going to provide

12:01

their enterprise level products to small

12:03

businesses. Did you have to stay on board once you

12:05

sold? I did. I had to stay on board for

12:07

a couple of years. Um,

12:09

I got really lucky. So I sold in June

12:12

of two November

12:14

of two thousand eight. The world changed economically

12:18

and access to capital just completely

12:20

went away. And the franchise system

12:22

is highly dependent on small

12:24

business loans, which became impossible.

12:27

And so I would say the next year

12:30

year and a half became pretty challenging. Um,

12:34

and eventually I ended up leaving got

12:36

it to do what you're

12:38

doing now, or something totally different, to do what I'm doing

12:40

now? So where is

12:42

that mindset switch for you?

12:45

You're sitting there, you just sold a company to a

12:47

public company. You're in the middle of a recession,

12:49

things are really really tough, and you're

12:52

like, you know what pizza?

12:54

Yeah, yeah, so your family

12:56

has been in pizza for a long time, so I get correct, correct.

12:59

So I've got a lot of family members that own pizzerias,

13:01

being albeying this is what albeings do. That

13:04

or construction, which is what my twin brother does.

13:07

Um. Yeah. And I

13:10

started getting a lot of family members asking me for

13:12

help to build in websites because we were because

13:15

of the Nerd Force experience and just

13:17

my background and the

13:19

consistency with which these asks

13:21

came across was kind of jarring.

13:24

And you know, I knew everything

13:26

about the franchise model. So I'm looking at Dominoes

13:29

and I'm watching commercials and they're like order

13:31

online. Every commercial they stopped

13:33

advertising phone numbers. Everything

13:36

was e commerce. So I wanted to learn more

13:38

about what was going on there, and I

13:40

also wanted to learn more about the pizza industry

13:42

more holistically. Um, but

13:44

I didn't really I'll be honest, I don't really think about

13:47

challenges Like I didn't really think, well, it's a

13:49

recession, like maybe

13:51

I shouldn't start a business. I don't my brain isn't

13:53

wired that way. My brain is more just

13:56

like what is what is the opportunity and what's the

13:58

current sort of data set? And

14:00

so um. Anyway, learned a

14:02

couple of things. One, you

14:05

may be surprised, but the pizza industry

14:07

in the US is forty seven

14:09

billion dollars. That is revenue

14:12

that passes through seventies seven thousand

14:14

locations in the US. That's

14:16

a massive, massive industry, forty

14:19

seven billion. Two,

14:21

only twenty of all locations

14:24

are the big chains combined Domino's,

14:26

Papa John's, Little Caesars, Pizza Hut.

14:29

Everyone else is independent for the most

14:31

part. And three,

14:34

Domino's locations were starting to really outperform

14:37

independence because of the e commerce

14:39

play exactly.

14:42

And so I UM, I

14:44

was like, wait, going

14:46

back to my experience with nerd Force, these independent

14:48

operators, these mom and pop locations have

14:51

the same problem that the

14:53

independents who were competing with us did as

14:55

well. But let me go

14:57

and talk to them. Let me see why did why did my

15:00

uncle not open up a Papa John's, Why

15:02

did he open up John Anthony's Pizza.

15:05

So what you learn is that most

15:07

small business owners are really

15:09

passionate about a craft, and so

15:11

they go into the business because of that, and they

15:13

inherit all these business problems, but

15:16

they are not really business people. They

15:18

don't know marketing, they don't know technology, they

15:20

don't know you know, finances and

15:22

all those things. They just kind of have to figure that stuff

15:24

out. So the artists

15:26

first. Yeah, and so I

15:29

realized that there's an opportunity to create a

15:31

new model called a reverse franchise, where

15:33

instead of doing sort of recreating

15:36

the franchise, I wanted to unite

15:38

all the independence and

15:40

in essence create the world's largest pizza chain,

15:43

but this time instead of all of them being the same

15:46

brand, for them to be independent

15:48

brands but have the same benefits. So

15:50

that was the moment I

15:52

realized that those three things and and sort of

15:55

that lesson for why independence

15:57

go into business or mom and pop sort of owners

15:59

go into business. Um, I

16:01

went and bought a domain name called my pizza

16:04

dot com, which was

16:06

the brand of my company for the first five years.

16:08

Did you to buy it for somebody else? I did. It

16:11

was for sale for one and fifty thousand

16:13

dollars. Yeah, my pizza

16:15

dot com. Yeah it was. It was. I

16:17

mean, this is two thousand nine billion names

16:19

were pretty popular. Pizza dot Com, which I

16:21

tried to buy, was on sale for four million

16:24

dollars. So it's like, I'll take

16:26

the mine, and

16:28

uh, but I negotiated that down to you

16:32

are a good salesman. I mean that you can't see

16:34

the storyteller, you not get down. Yeah,

16:37

and so UM got that on board

16:39

and we started, um yeah, we started scaling

16:41

quickly, bootstrapped again, no investments,

16:43

but it started as my Pizza. Yeah.

16:48

And then obviously, so this is two ten, so

16:51

creating an app wasn't even an idea yet. No,

16:53

it was still super early. I mean, in hindsight,

16:56

I probably should have invested there early enough,

16:58

but I did not. Instead, we for the most

17:00

part built websites for the pizzeria powered

17:03

by my Pizza, and then we have the

17:05

platform and and

17:08

so you would just cold call independent

17:10

pizzerias and say, hey, we're gonna help you sell more pizza

17:12

online. Yeah. Well, well we tried

17:15

doing that and they were like, what are you talking about?

17:17

Who needs to sell pizza online? It's again, it's

17:19

two thousand nine. No one really wants technology.

17:22

And so UM I

17:24

went and got three cars,

17:27

these like little Nissan cubes. They

17:29

look like pizza boxes. UM

17:32

branded them with my Pizza and I would park them

17:34

in front of pizzeria's literally just moving

17:36

around with my twin brother and we would

17:38

leave him around town and it would give us credibility

17:41

because we were a brand new like who knew my Pizza

17:44

dot Com and UM. And

17:46

then after leaving them, you know, in front of a pizzeria

17:49

for a day or two, I would go inside the pizza and say,

17:51

hey, I'm with my Pizza dot Com. If

17:53

you guys want to want to work with us, here's what we do. And

17:55

that's how we got probably the first locations.

17:59

But you build them all their own individual websites,

18:02

correct, because that's what your friends

18:04

and family were having you do, because

18:06

that's what you asked somebody who starts a company called nerd

18:08

force, did you exactly? But what we did

18:10

was and the unlock here is

18:12

that all these PiZZ threas are almost identical.

18:15

They just don't know it. They all operate the same

18:17

way. And so what we did was

18:19

we built a system where as

18:21

long as I can enter a PiZZ reas, information on the

18:23

back end, on the front end of

18:25

website would be created automatically. But

18:28

it was just like a cookie cutter website, same

18:30

one, just different photos and different stuff.

18:33

What how do you make money? So

18:35

we basically charged two dollars per order. For

18:38

every order we generated online,

18:41

we will charge two dollars and can building

18:43

the website. You're knowing what orders you're

18:45

coming through. So we built

18:47

a website, We had my pizza dot com. We

18:49

created some advertising channels, the marketing channels

18:52

online through Google, and so for

18:54

every order that would pass through, the

18:56

restaurant would pay us two dollars. It

18:59

would cost us on so literally

19:01

like it was like create something for for a dollar,

19:03

sell it for two, and do that as many

19:06

times as possible. Got it good?

19:08

Think people buy a lot of pizza though, And

19:10

you started just east coast to start, Yeah, just

19:12

mostly in New York. And I'll tell you a story. By the way,

19:14

my mom was like, what is this new thing you're doing. Why

19:17

don't you go get a job, And and

19:19

I was like, okay, I'll explain to you what we do. We we

19:21

partner with pizzerias, We build this website,

19:24

we enter all their menu items, we go

19:26

and advertise, and then somebody orders. And

19:28

then when somebody orders, we make money, and she's like, okay,

19:31

not bad. So the orders like thirty dollars, so

19:33

you make thirty dollars. I was like, no, no, no, we make

19:35

two and in fact it costs

19:37

us one. So we make a dollar. And she's like, all that work

19:39

for a dollar

19:41

a lot of exactly you

19:44

read scale of lots of dollars. So

19:54

then where do you go from there?

19:56

Like you just okay, now you're just gonna tackle

19:59

all the independent PiZZ to reas in the United States.

20:01

Yeah. So then you know, once we started

20:04

UM sort of creating some

20:06

critical mass on the on the restaurant side, words

20:08

started to spread. UM.

20:11

Really the unlock for us was when we figured out

20:13

how to turn online orders into

20:15

faxes to the pizzrea automatically.

20:18

So there's technology that converts

20:21

um something in in you know, something

20:23

digital to a facts within like

20:25

thirty seconds, so that they could get like the paper

20:28

order and they would print it out and deliver it. Yeah,

20:30

because a lot of pizzrea's were like, hey, I don't want all

20:32

this technology, you know, they're

20:34

sort of there's a lot of anxiety around that,

20:37

but they all have a fax number on their menu. And

20:39

so we started asking, Hey, how many times this

20:41

is fax machine print in order for you?

20:44

And they would say once every two weeks, and

20:46

so we were like, what if that printed out like

20:48

thirty times a day. They were

20:50

like, you know, it's great, and it it meant

20:53

that they didn't have to change their workflow. And so

20:56

we started selling my Pizza as a

20:58

facts ordering service to

21:00

the restaurant, but an online

21:02

ordering product to the

21:04

consumer. Crazy and the moment that happened,

21:07

it just kind of took off. And pizzeria

21:10

is just kind of because they all talk to each other, right, they

21:12

all talk to you, and they're all very connected. If if

21:14

you own a pizza shop, so does your brother in law and maybe

21:16

your sister, and so there's this sort of

21:18

community effect and then they just all want to be a part

21:20

of the same system because you're also you're

21:22

making ordering easier, but we're also making

21:25

them more money where they sell more pizza, No, definitely.

21:27

So the big unlock here is that online

21:29

volume, e commerce volume is

21:32

more valuable than offline

21:34

volume. So if you compare

21:36

to Pizza Rea's, one

21:38

of them is on phone based where

21:41

you're calling in the orders. The other one is e

21:44

commerce. The difference is going to be

21:46

three x yeah. One because

21:49

the phone channel is the same

21:51

person who's making the pizza has to answer the phone.

21:53

It's busy, it's all these things, taking down

21:55

the credit card numbers, all that stuff

21:57

too. Once you call a pizzree, they

22:00

never call you back. There's no CRM,

22:02

there's no like retention marketing. They

22:05

don't remind you to reorder, they don't

22:07

upsell you. There's none of that. And then

22:09

um three, it costs a lot

22:11

more to serve that customer because you need

22:13

people to answer the phone and so, and

22:16

you make a lot of mistakes and all that good stuff. So

22:18

really the primise here is that if

22:20

we can flip all of these independent

22:23

pizzreas, these family owned businesses, to e commerce

22:25

businesses, they'll make a lot

22:27

more money and they'll save a lot a lot of money. Nice

22:31

and so then take me up to switched.

22:36

So a couple of things happened between

22:38

then and one is

22:40

first, did you raise any money? We

22:43

didn't raise money, just operating purely

22:45

off cash flow, purely off like yeah

22:47

cash flow bootstrapped started

22:49

to build out a team in Macedonia, so you're profitable.

22:51

Yeah, we were hiring some family

22:53

members in Macedonia to do some

22:55

of the menu work that we spoke about. Because

22:57

you wanted to do this for p thres No,

23:02

it's all us. But I wanted them to help

23:04

me do the work, and

23:07

so I went, yeah off shore.

23:09

I went to visit family in

23:11

Macedonia and they were

23:13

asking me about this new company. And

23:15

one of my relatives said, hey, why don't you give us that

23:17

work and we can do it for five dollars. It

23:21

was costing us a hundred here and

23:24

so. And by the way, five dollars over there

23:26

five dollars per hour is

23:28

maybe five times the national average.

23:31

So you get this amazing job in

23:33

an office, you get paid really

23:35

well. Um. And so

23:38

we started hiring people there, and by

23:40

we had a team there of about twenty

23:42

or thirty people doing a lot of the admin work, yeah,

23:45

the back office operations. And then I

23:48

picked my head up February. I'm

23:51

in Starbucks in stud Island

23:54

and I'm looking at these um

23:56

at my books, at my financial books. And

23:59

in January of twenty fifteen, we had profited

24:01

two and fifty thou dollars just for

24:04

the month, straight to the bottom

24:06

line. UM.

24:08

I started doing some silly things so I went

24:10

to Manhattan Motor Cars in Bora Bentley

24:14

just cash, and I was like, I'll make it up next month.

24:17

So so some silly things like that, where

24:20

where's that Bentley? Now I sold

24:22

it in three years later. But

24:25

you know things you do that you're like, you know what

24:27

am I going to do with this money? Um?

24:30

Then I realized, wait, I'm being kind of silly. I need

24:32

to reinvest this thing, and could

24:35

you to reinvest in the company. Six

24:37

months later, I got an offer to sell the company

24:39

for eighteen million dollars and it

24:41

would have been you know, life changing. Yeah,

24:44

and I almost did it. Who

24:46

makes it kind of over private equity fund

24:49

interest. Couple of brothers had sold their own

24:51

tech company and they were starting to create

24:53

a portfolio of companies and they saw what you guys

24:55

were doing and just came to you. Yeah, yeah,

24:57

came to us, and UM

25:00

got really close. They took me out to dinner and the whole

25:02

thing got really close to selling. And

25:05

my twin brother was like, well, what are you gonna do

25:07

next? That I

25:09

was thirty five, and

25:13

and you know I thought to myself, I was like, you know

25:15

what, I'll probably do the same thing again.

25:17

The third time around, and

25:20

for me, it was like, you know what, Um, this

25:22

is still the beginning are We were growing

25:24

so fast that I

25:27

kind of asked myself, Hey, what if I treated this company

25:30

as the new thing and I don't sell, But

25:33

what if I really come in with that level

25:35

of energy of like launching something brand

25:37

new? What would happen? And so

25:39

I turned down the deal and I

25:42

reached out to one of the founders of Seamless who

25:44

had sold the company on Twitter

25:47

and um they responded and

25:50

they're like, yeah, let's jump on a call. Get

25:52

on a call. He's like, hey,

25:55

like, what is this business? My pizza dot com? I've

25:57

never heard of it. I don't even know what this is. But

26:01

hey, when you have like five restaurants

26:03

on your platform, just call me back

26:05

and we'll we'll work together. I was like, well, I've

26:08

got three thousand. I had three thousand

26:10

restaurants by then, and he's like, come

26:12

to my office tomorrow. UM. I go

26:14

to the I go to the office. Um.

26:17

They got really excited and invested

26:19

a million dollars. For me, it

26:21

was access to their network to help the scale

26:23

the business, and that was kind of the

26:25

beginning of the second phase of the company,

26:28

but it was still my Pizza. It was still my Pizza.

26:30

This was late October

26:35

November. So when did you make the switch

26:37

from all the different websites into the

26:39

one app platform. Yeah,

26:41

so that must have been a huge that's

26:43

a huge planned shift.

26:46

Yeah, well everything changed. Yeah,

26:48

and we we still actually power all the websites.

26:51

So we we decided to go from just being websites

26:53

only to being omni channel. So

26:56

one is we made a deal with Google,

26:58

so we are a direct partner of Google, where

27:01

if you are a pizza shop and your partner with Slice,

27:03

the consumer can order through Google, Google

27:06

Assistant, Google Food, Ordering, your name it all these channels

27:09

freely without you having to

27:11

do anything extra. And then

27:13

we started to invest in a director

27:16

consumer app um and we launched

27:18

that in October of and

27:20

that was that coincided in parallel

27:22

with us going from the My Pizza brand to the Slice

27:25

brand, and it was kind

27:27

of crazy business business inside. I wrote this

27:29

article that said, this one

27:31

man company is

27:33

so profitable that they've

27:36

hired one hundred people

27:38

in like ninety days and now it's

27:40

called Slice kind of things. I think it's still

27:42

still out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

27:44

it is still out there. It's such a cool,

27:47

such a crazy cool story.

27:49

Um, why

27:51

did you do all this? Like? What's your

27:54

mission? Is it to takedown dominoes? Is it to

27:56

empower? I listen? You know, I could

27:58

have nine hours of question for you. Um,

28:01

but your story is just so unique and inspiring

28:03

to a lot of people are listening, Like I have a lot of ideas

28:05

right now, um, and so I know a

28:07

lot of other people are probably thinking, you know, for

28:09

themselves too. But like you,

28:13

you now are at a point where is

28:16

the goal just to completely shift the way

28:18

people order food? Is it to change

28:20

the paradigm? Is it just to build something as

28:22

big as possibly can be? Because have you had other

28:25

offers come to you to try to buy you out? Left? And we

28:27

have? Um, we we did. We had another

28:29

offer in twenty nineteen. Haven't made this

28:31

public, but I'll share it here. I won't

28:33

say who, but we didn't have an off trailer

28:35

and the trailer I haven't that's

28:38

great, But we did have an offer to sell

28:40

for fifty million dollars in

28:44

nineteen that I turned down. You turned it down? Did

28:47

you tell your mom? I

28:49

did? Okay? So to make sure because maybe

28:51

she'll listen to this. We are and at the time I

28:53

own more than fifty percent of the company still, so

28:56

it would have been that would have been life changing as

28:58

well. But uh, in hindsight, it

29:00

was absolutely the right idea and

29:03

it was the right decision um

29:06

because again we're incredibly early

29:09

in this digital transformation e commerce

29:11

transformation phase. And to

29:13

your question, like what what motivates me, it's

29:16

you know, money is a is a lagging

29:19

indicator of wealth

29:21

that you can create for the world, and I

29:23

don't. Wealth isn't defined as money.

29:26

Wealth is making

29:29

people, making things people want, and

29:31

so that's one too. I also

29:33

don't like, I don't operate with

29:36

the mindset of in order for me to win, I

29:38

gotta make sure somebody else loses, because

29:41

that assumes that wealth is a finite

29:43

pie. That's not true either. Wealth

29:46

in fact, is an infinite um game.

29:49

If you create wealth, it's incremental

29:51

to everything that already exists um.

29:54

And so I admire dominoes,

29:56

I admire some of these chains. I think they're doing incredibly

29:58

well, and I take some inspiration from what they're doing.

30:01

But I want to make that accessible and democratize

30:03

that. As much as I don't like that word UM

30:05

to everybody else. So for me, what

30:08

I'm really passionate about is how

30:11

do we keep the debate

30:13

of what is your favorite pizza? Going? Because

30:16

that debate will be gone if

30:19

local family owned businesses

30:21

go out of business, of course, and the only

30:23

way for these family owned businesses

30:26

to have a shot is for there

30:28

to be an operating system,

30:30

ultimately a platform

30:33

that will allow them to focus on what they do really

30:35

well but solve all the other problems.

30:38

So having said all of that,

30:40

the way I think about the opportunity

30:42

looking forward is instead

30:44

of somebody going and wanting to open up

30:46

a franchise, I want someone to open

30:48

up their own local brand,

30:50

their own authentic brand,

30:53

with their own recipe, their own story, their own

30:55

history, UM and focus

30:57

on what they do best. But everything else is sort

30:59

of saw for by slice, which

31:01

is the real estate side we should

31:03

talk after um.

31:06

The financial side, so access to capital,

31:08

the entire technology platform,

31:11

brand, creative marketing, all those things.

31:13

Do you give small business loans? Now, company,

31:16

Yeah, we're we're actually launching

31:18

two locations this month with

31:21

great operators who have had one location

31:23

for a long time, have always

31:25

had a dream to open up their second location, but

31:27

they don't have access to capital or

31:30

had a lot of anxiety about where and how to do

31:32

it. One of them will be in Greenwich,

31:34

Connecticut, and another one is in

31:36

a small town in Massachusetts. And

31:38

are you taking ownership stakes? And those we are

31:40

not now they're just exclusive

31:43

customers to Slice. Interesting. So what's

31:45

your what's your daylight now? I

31:47

mean, are you hiring and managing

31:49

this entire time? Is that like your Monday through Friday?

31:52

Yeah? You know, for a while

31:54

it became really

31:56

reactive, and I'm not really it's

31:59

not really a great feeling to to react to

32:01

things at this scale. So

32:04

I've actually put some structure

32:06

to my week, and so I've created themes for every

32:08

day. Um, and so

32:11

you know, Mondays are my days with my

32:14

direct management team, so with our

32:16

chief business officer, chief technology officer,

32:18

you know, and so on and so forth. And and also we have our

32:21

exact team meeting. So I know what Monday

32:23

is about. Um,

32:25

Tuesday's sort of a focus on products.

32:27

Wednesday we've got no meeting days like we

32:29

don't we just don't meet. It's

32:32

it's a data to do. Get it done.

32:34

Can I say that? I don't know if I can um,

32:37

and then you know, so every day has the theme.

32:40

But um, you know what's been pretty

32:42

awesome is meeting a lot of different people

32:44

and learning about different stories being

32:47

here today and you know, learning hopefully

32:49

learn more about you know, your journey as well. But

32:51

um, and I think that's most

32:53

of most of how I spend my time. And

32:56

then on the weekends, I literally live

32:58

inside pizzerias. I just go drive around

33:00

and I'll sit at a pizzreia. They don't

33:02

really know who I am, but I'll order a pie.

33:05

And when you order a pie from a from an owner

33:07

and you tell them it's good, they start they

33:10

start talking, so you can ask him questions.

33:12

They're like, well, what are your baby challenges?

33:14

Yeah, and so I

33:16

try to stay really close to the customer because

33:19

the last thing I would want to do is loose touch

33:21

with what exactly is happening

33:23

in the market. Big

33:26

Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan

33:29

Sirhant. It's produced by Mike Coscarelli

33:32

and Joe Loresca, an executive produced

33:34

by Lindsay Hoffman. Find more podcasts

33:37

like Big Money Energy on the I Heart Radio

33:39

app or wherever you get your podcasts.