15 Jun 2020

What’s Your Recipe for Business Success?

Almost everyone has had a pizza. Most pizzas have the basics – crust, sauce, cheese and toppings – but it’s how you make those basics, the ingredients you put into them and the way you serve it to your customers that makes the difference. Some pizza is great and some pizza is terrible, but most pizza is just OK. It’s enjoyable and filling, but it’s usually not memorable.

In many ways, a business is like a pizza – you have a product or service, your business systems, your employees and your business leadership. But if all businesses start with the same nuts and bolts, what makes a business great?

First of all, you have to start with great ingredients. If you’re putting all your energy and investment into the crust, but your toppings are gross, your customers may never take a bite. Likewise, you can’t present your customers with a beautiful slice of pizza that tastes terrible. You have to have great ingredients in every element of your pizza or you’ll end up with a mediocre experience. Think about that in a business sense – if you have a great product, but your business isn’t operating smoothly, you won’t be successful.

Secondly, you have to pair the right ingredients together. You can have an amazing thin crust, but if you try to top it Chicago style, it’s going to fall apart. When you think about your business systems and you’re building your employee team and your leadership team, you have to find people who can work well together and then provide the team building and leadership training to help them be their very best. The right ingredients with the right pairing can make even a simple cheese pizza an amazing experience.

Once you have the right ingredients and the right pairings, you still have to actually cook the pizza efficiently and consistently for every customer. What systems do you have in place to help your business get those five-star reviews? Does every employee know how the pizza gets made and are enough people cross-trained to help if you get really busy? Have you documented how much of each ingredient to put on the pizza, how high to heat the oven and how long to bake each size pizza? Systems help your business operate smoothly and, in the end, can help you grow.

Finally, you have to right delivery drivers or servers for your pizzas. The best pizza chef in the world might not be the person you want handing pizzas to your new customers. It’s important to give the customers not only the best pizzas of their lives – but also the best dining experience of their lives – if you want to build a truly great pizza company.

Yes, you might have to charge more for your pizza in order to make all these things come together and, no, it won’t happen overnight, but when you think about your business as a pizza, would you eat it? Or would you send it back? Would you post a photo of your best slice on Instagram? Or let it linger in the box?

If you need help solidifying your business systems, building your team, training your leadership or setting a higher standard for your products, services or customer service, The Growth Coach can help. Find your local coach at https://www.thegrowthcoach.com/find-a-coach.

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