By Tyrell Reed
You run a pizzeria. That means you lead people. And if your shop looks anything like mine, a big chunk of your team is young. High schoolers. College kids. First-job energy. Fast pace. Short attention span. Big potential.
That is why I recently brought Coach Tony Le on The Pizza King Podcast. On paper, he lives in the college admissions world. He’s a former UC Berkeley admissions reader. Thousands of applications reviewed. He sees what separates the people who get results from the people who stay stuck.
But his advice is not only for parents. He offers a leadership lesson for pizzeria owners and operators. Because the same patterns show up in your shop every week: People chase the wrong signals. People stay “busy” all day. People react to the shift instead of running the shift. People want a better outcome without changing the reps.
Related: Month 1 in a New Pizza Shop: Did He Make a Profit? Tyrell Reed Breaks Down the Numbers
Tony said something simple that hit hard: GPA is just a number. People obsess over it and still get rejected. He said rigor is what determines whether a student can handle the workload.
It’s the same in business too. Sales is just a number. You can chase top line and still lose money. You can post wins and still have chaos behind the counter.
Rigor in a pizza shop looks like this: Standards. Training. Accountability. Clean handoffs. Calm under pressure.
Can your team handle the workload on a Friday night without you jumping in to save it? If the answer is no, you do not need more hype. You need more structure.
Here is what I took from the conversation and how you can use it this week:
Start by calling out “fake busy.” Tony told students to run a time audit. Set an alarm every 30 minutes for a week and write down what they did. When they do this, they find time they did not know they had. He said most people uncover two to three hours a day.
Most operators need that same reality check. Because “busy” can hide a lot: Answering texts that should go to a manager instead of you. Fixing tickets that should not reach you. Redoing work because nobody owns the process. Jumping on the line because you did not train your team well for the rush.
Do not overthink this. Do the audit for three days. Every 30 minutes, write down what you actually did. Then circle two things on your list: one thing you can delegate and one thing you can delete. That is your first step toward getting your time back.
Protect your energy first. Tony said you should map out sleeping time first. Now I know how operators think. You sleep after the work. But the work never ends. When you lead tired, you lead sloppy. You get short with people. You avoid hard conversations. You make quick fixes that create bigger problems later.
So take his advice and apply it to your calendar. Lock your sleep. Lock your gym or recovery time. Then schedule your store time, your admin time and your coaching time.
You will still work hard. You will just stop bleeding energy every week.
Tyrell Reed: Fixing Your Pizzeria’s Margins and Knowing Your Actual Numbers
Coach the person, not the position. Tony talked about what makes a student stand out. He said they need two buckets. One bucket shows interest in a major. The other shows personal interests—because “that makes you human.”
That is a leadership lesson. Some managers only see the job. The station. The uniform. The mistakes. Strong leaders see the person. The teen who is late because they have no ride. The college kid who can close but needs structure. The team member who wants more hours but lacks speed.
Here is a simple move that changes how your people show up. In your next check-in, ask one question: What do you do outside of work? Then connect it to the job. If they play sports, talk about practice habits and discipline. If they want to save money, talk about picking up shifts and earning raises. If they want a career, talk about what skills they can build right now.
That is how you turn a job into development. That is how you keep people longer.
Plan the week, stop reacting to the day. Tony said most students react to their day. Then he gave the fix: “Plan your work, work your plan.” That is also the difference between a pizza shop that runs smoothly and a shop that drags you down.
If you let the day run you, you will: Schedule late. Order late. Coach late. Clean late. Go home late. So pick one weekly habit that forces you to lead on purpose.
Here is one that works. Once a week, write:
Three problems that will hit this week.
Three plays to prevent them.
Three people you need to coach.
Then put your coaching on the calendar first. Even if it’s just 10 minutes. Because your shift does not improve by chance.
Here is the truth a lot of pizzeria owners do not want to hear: Tony said families talk about top schools, but they don’t do the work for top schools. The same thing happens in business. Owners talk about building a strong team, then avoid training. They talk about standards, then ignore the checklist. They talk about accountability, then let things slide.
You cannot want the result and refuse the reps.
Do this today: Run a 30-minute time audit. Pick one task to delegate this week. Pick one person to coach this week. Put both on your calendar right now.
Then do what Tony said. Plan your work. Work your plan.
Check out the full episode:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2306999/episodes/18731481
Tyrell Reed has spent over twenty years building restaurant teams and opening pizzerias. He helps owners and managers improve leadership, tighten operations, and grow with simple systems that work. Tyrell hosts the Pizza King Podcast, trains the next generation of restaurant leaders, and recently assumed ownership of an existing franchised pizzeria, Westshore Pizza in Valrico, Florida.
