That weekend happened to be Homecoming, and the pizzeria was slammed straight through. Saturday night, two guys in tuxes came in for a couple of quick slices. “Fueling up before the dance,” one said, “since tickets cost enough without springing for dinner too.” It wasn’t until they were out the door that it hit me. Somewhere across campus, Brittney was decked out in a dress I’d never see, and here I was, ringing up slices left-handed.
On Sunday afternoon, we sold the last of the deals, and I handed Dedrick a crisp $5 bill. Then, early Tuesday, the bandages came off, and I again had use of both hands.
“The place is definitely busier than before the crowdfunding campaign,” Joanna said, glancing around the dining area late that afternoon.
“Yes, but mainly because we’re making so many free pizzas,” I replied.
“They’re not free,” Carrie said. “They’re just half price.”
“True. But no money is coming in for them anymore, so they feel free.”
“You collected the money for them like three days ago.” Carrie wagged her finger at me. “How quickly you forget. If you’re like this now, what will you be like in two months?”
“Probably be bitching about all the people still collecting their free pizzas while planning to rerun the campaign next semester to cover the security deposit.”
Carrie shot me a look over her shoulder. “So you’d do it again?”
I shrugged. “Look, we’re still open. Yes, I might have just kicked the can further down the road, but if three months from now I see it needs another kick, then what choice will I have?”
“How about the choice of running a more profitable pizzeria?” Carrie asked.
“That’s why I asked Joanna to join us today. Let’s open up her suggestion box and see what we’ve got.” I picked up the narwhal-shaped box and gave it a shake. “And our first winner is: sell gluten-free pizza.” I tore up the slip and threw it on the floor, which needed to be swept anyway after a full day.
“Don’t be so fast,” Joanna said. “Lots of people are going gluten-free these days.”
“Have you seen this place?” I said, gesturing to the prep area. “There’s flour everywhere. Offering gluten-free would be a nightmare.”
“You’re the boss,” Joanna said as she worked through her slice of bacon pizza, now our third most popular topping behind pepperoni and mushrooms. “What’s next?”
Carrie dipped a hand into the box. “Waitresses in mini-skirts and tank tops.” She tore it up and threw the scraps over her shoulder.
“Hey, not so fast,” I said. “Sex sells.”
“And sex pays a hell of a lot more than you do.” Carrie turned, eyes blazing. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll draw the next recommendation and never mention that again.”
“Fair enough.” I shrank back.
Joanna pulled out another slip. “Bottomless sodas. Ooh, I like that.”
I trusted Joanna’s taste more than her math. She knew what she liked and couldn’t give two hoots about what it cost me. “What do you think, Carrie?”
Carrie tapped her chin. “It’s not a bad idea, actually. We could put a soda machine in the seating area. Whoever wants a soda gets an empty cup and helps themselves. Bartley considered it before he closed. He said margins on soda fountains are super high. I assume we could easily afford the refills.”
“And I’d pay more for soda if refills were included,” Joanna said, “even though I might not drink more than a cup anyhow.”
With Carrie and Joanna both on board, I had to at least look into it. “OK, put it in the keeper jar. I’ll call around this week and see how much a soda machine would set me back. And more importantly, if they’d let me finance it. Anything else?”
“That’s all for today,” Carrie said.
Joanna polished off the last of her slice. “I’m in the mood for dessert. What have you got?”
“We don’t sell dessert,” Carrie said.
“No dessert?” Joanna smacked her hands against her chest. “Hello? Hungry avatar here!”
“Who can tell me the difference between a business owner and a business operator?” Professor Hunt asked as she wrote these terms on the whiteboard. “Owen, how about you?”
“It’s simple.” Owen straightened in his seat. “One guy owns the business, the other one runs it.”
“Can one person be both?” our professor asked.
“Sure.”
“So let’s sharpen our question.” She paced slowly to the other side of the room. “What is the difference between an owner who is an operator and an owner who is not?”
Owen licked his lips. “The owner who doesn’t operate has an employee running things.”
“And if that employee should quit?” Hunt asked.
Owen had that trapped look on his face students got when Artemis asked seemingly easy questions. “Then another one needs to be hired.”
Hunt stepped closer to Owen. “And who will do the training?”
“Uh, the owner, I guess.”
“Really?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Owen, let’s take your scenario a little further. Over the past month, your business has started to take shape. You have how many clients now?”
“Just signed my third last night,” Owen said, his face beaming. “She tried to hire me to build her entire website, but I told her I only do sales funnels.”
“Wonderful. Now fast-forward. Your business keeps growing right through school, and after graduation, your best friend proposes the two of you take a trip. The business is too valuable to dump, so you train an operator to run it while you’re gone.”
Hunt smiled, but her tone remained clinical. “Two weeks later, you’re trekking through the mountains of Tibet when your operator messages you: she’s landed a job offer too good to pass up, she’s so sorry, and she starts Monday. What do you do?”
Owen gave a crooked smile. “I guess I grab a yak to the airport and haul ass home.”
Laughter broke out. Hunt nodded approvingly. “Well said. I’m sure you all see the problem.”
She circled business operator on the board. “Right now, every one of you is a business operator. If the business you’ve started is your dream job, and you’d happily operate it every day for the rest of your life, then it’s not such a bad thing.
“But to me, business ownership is synonymous with freedom.” Her voice rose in power. “I teach because I want to. Many of my colleagues teach because they have to. I’m not saying they don’t like their jobs, but they’re dependent on them. If we were all fired tomorrow, most of the professors at this fine institution would be struggling financially within months.”
She shook her head. “Not me. My salary here accounts for less than 10% of my total income.”
Professor Hunt’s heels gave a steady click on the linoleum as she paced. “How do I have so much more income than my peers? Easy, I’m a business owner. I currently own seven businesses. Yet, whenever one of you has needed me, I’ve always been available. How’s that possible when most of you are working your tails off just trying to keep up with one business?”
Andrew piped in. “’Cause you’re an owner, but not an operator?”
“Exactly.”
I raised my hand. “But what if one of your operators leaves?”
“Oh, they leave all the time,” she said without hesitation. “With seven businesses, I can’t remember the last time I went a full year without losing at least one key staff member. But I have systems, Ty. Not merely a blue line painted across a wall telling me when to order more napkins.”
The class cracked up.
“It’s aquamarine,” I muttered.
“Mostly, I promote from within,” she continued. “In five of my seven companies, I can tell you right now who I’d promote if my top person left.”
“And for the other two?” I asked.
“For those two, I’d have to hire. But even those hires would cause me little stress. I know exactly where to post the listings, exactly the skillset I’m looking for, and I have clear instructions for every task the new operator would do.”
She took a few measured steps, then turned. “Will some mistakes still be made? Of course. There’s always a learning curve. But my systems are robust enough to handle it, and I’d be surprised if any of my clients noticed a drop in service.”
“I bet a system like that was hard to build,” Owen added, less smug now.
“Hard? No, Owen.” Hunt fixed him with a stare. “Hard is running a business without infrastructure.”
She paused, then drilled the point in. “Hard would be riding a yak to the airport to race home and fix the latest crisis. Building great systems makes your life so much easier.”
“Then why doesn’t every business do it?” Andrew asked.
“Lots of reasons. Some owners are too busy putting out fires to invest the energy. Others are too caught up in their self-image to believe their business could function without them. Many claim the work is too tedious, but I think that’s just an excuse to cover up a bigger problem.”
“Which is what?” I asked.
Hunt’s tone dropped. “That a huge portion of business owners don’t know what they’re doing. They’re running their operations by the seat of their pants. For most, if you try to nail down why they do things one way rather than another, they can’t tell you.”
She moved to the whiteboard again, underlining the word system. “Creating a solid infrastructure involves looking at each area of your business, optimizing it, and documenting it. If your business is inconsistent, haphazard, and run without a plan, you’ll find any excuse to avoid building a system—because it requires taking a hard look at yourself and your choices.”
“Any progress on the bottomless soda idea?” Carrie asked.
“Not happening, I’m afraid,” I said, blowing out a breath. “One of those machines will set me back thousands of dollars.”
“How about used?”
“Those are a lot cheaper, but I can’t finance them.” There were so many things I could do if I just had the cash.
Carrie frowned. “If you can finance a new one, can’t it just pay for itself?”
“The machine, yes,” I said, gesturing vaguely toward the back wall, “but I can’t finance the installation. We can’t just drop the machine on a counter. We’d need a water line put in.”
I glanced around the pizzeria, eyeing corners and dead spaces. “And I have no clue where we’d even put a soda fountain that wouldn’t require a ton of renovation.”
Carrie followed my gaze, then shrugged. “The margins are great, though. Over 90%, right?”
“Right,” I said. “But for now, we just need to stick with cans and keep our investment low.”
“We still make over 75% on the cans,” she said. “Not too bad.”
“But I made some progress on one of Joanna’s other ideas,” I added.
“Oh?” Carrie leaned in.
“I called our dough supplier. They have cookie dough as well.”
“What are you going to do?” Carrie asked. “Just bake them in the pizza ovens?”
“You bet.” My eyebrows did the Groucho Marx dance. “Maybe down the line, I can afford a special oven for them, but not now.”
She blinked. “You’re not afraid they’ll come out tasting like pizza?”
“I’m hoping the pizza taste will be so fresh in everyone’s mouths,” I said, “they won’t notice.”
Carrie tossed a hand in the air, surrendering. “Hey, it’s your place.”
