By Charlie Pogacar
At 15 years old, Patt Miller got his first job in a pizzeria. By age 20, he owned The Flying Pizza in Columbus, Ohio. By age 26, Miller owned and operated three different pizzerias—and he was totally burnt out. He sold them all in 2013 and transitioned to a career in real estate.
Working as an agent for Keller Williams, Miller began to learn things he wished he’d known during his time as a pizzeria owner. He was coached closely on the art of owning a business, and before long, he was coaching others in the Keller Williams MAPS organization’s program called BOLD (Business Objective Life by Design).
As Miller transitioned to buying and investing in real estate, fate intervened. He ended up owning a building in New Vienna, Ohio, that housed restaurant space, a place that would be a perfect fit for a pizzeria. Armed with fresh perspective on running a business, Miller decided to launch a new pizzeria. It will be called Pizza Patt’s Slice House, Cafe and Creamery and it is slated to open in early 2025.
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Like a fish to water, Miller has dived headfirst back into the world of pizza. Once one of the top pizza acrobats in the world—skills that landed him on America’s Got Talent and took him to Italy five different times—Miller started competing again at the 2024 Pizza Tomorrow Summit in Orlando in early November, where he took home a first place trophy in the Non-Traditional Category of the Galbani Professionale Pizza Cup, earning him another trip to Italy.
But this story is about Miller’s foray back into pizzeria ownership. The following is a lightly-edited interview with Miller that touches on his fresh perspective and the way he aspires to operate his new pizzeria. This time around, there will be more delegating, less stress and a new level of execution, Miller hopes.
PMQ: What was so stressful about running pizzerias the first time around?
Patt Miller: I was very young, and I just didn’t have a lot of management experience that allowed me to build it like a business versus running it like an owner/operator, where I had family and friends helping. But I was really just running around and doing all the work, and I wasn’t a great leader necessarily because I was taught by an old-school Sicilian who just stood behind the counter and would yell at you like you’re an idiot. Which worked well for me. However, in today’s world, that is not considered great leadership.
PMQ: What were some of the biggest things you learned when you took a step away from those first pizzerias and began looking back on your time owning them?
Miller: Basically, back then, I wasn’t operating my pizzerias like a business. I was operating them as an owner/operator, and I think, probably, the people who go to these pizza shows—that’s 95% of the attendees at these pizza shows—they stand behind their counter, and their dream was to own a pizzeria, and they own it. And I’m not saying that’s not right, wrong, good or bad. It’s just that there are other ways of doing things, and I wish I had known that the first time around.
Here are the things I wasn’t doing back then: I wasn’t reading books to learn more about what great leadership looks like. I wasn’t reading books and studying how successful businesses are built. I wasn’t really working on my mindset, trying to be better in that area. I wasn’t writing down goals. I wasn’t mapping out what it would look like to have a business. I didn’t understand what an org chart was, how to organize a business or how to create a “missing persons report”—which is basically taking the time to ask the question: Who are the people that are going to help me take my business to the next level? I wasn’t looking at any of that.
PMQ: You’ve mentioned the “owner/operator” model a couple of times. What does that term mean to you, and what are some of the problems that arise when you run a pizzeria with that mindset?
Miller: By “owner/operator” model, I basically mean the business can’t run without you being there. I think that makes most people feel valuable, and it’s fun until it’s not. So when is it not fun? It’s not fun when, on a Friday night, your kid has a birthday but you have to stand behind the counter. You want to go on vacation, but you don’t know how to leave your pizza shop because you can’t afford to leave because you’ve got rent to pay on a building that doesn’t care if you’re on vacation.
That’s when you get so burnt out. It’s for all of these reasons. I was running three locations like an owner/operator where I was dealing with all of the problems personally. If something was going wrong, I would stand behind the counter and just go, go, go, go.
PMQ: Okay, so what are some specific things you’re going to put into place this time around? What are you determined to do differently?
Miller: I’m just going to not open the pizzeria. I just talked myself out of it [laughter]. That’s it, guys, I’m going back into real estate. [More laughter].
No, what would I do differently? So, I left the pizza industry for all of those reasons, and I went into real estate with Keller Williams, where they had great business training. What do I mean by that? There was hiring training, employee training, business and sales-skills training. I became a top real estate agent in our office. Just like in the pizza industry, I was really competitive and wanted to succeed.
I had great mentorship and coaching that taught me to think like a business person at a different level. My focus in real estate became buying and investing in real estate, and that’s my primary income currently. And one of the ways that I’m doing [a venture into pizza] differently this time is, first, I own the building. And by owning the building, I’m able to build it to suit my needs and feel confident and comfortable that all the money I’m investing is going to be a return on my investment for several reasons.
One, because I’m increasing the building’s value, and two, because I’m increasing the business’s value. So if you have a beautiful location, people are going to be more likely to come and visit and have a positive experience. So I built a beautiful location inside of a building that I own, whereas when I leased the buildings previously, you would do the bare minimum renovations when it came to the building because it’s not yours. And you’d say, “Oh, it’s good enough. It’s not mine.” So that’s why I say owning the building makes a huge difference.
But then [it’s about] applying those business skills in order to operate the business as a business owner, not a pizzeria operator. And again, just to be clear, there is no right or wrong way to own a pizzeria. It’s what’s best for you at whatever stage you’re at in your career and in your life. And for me, I don’t want to have to stand behind the counter of a brick-and-mortar. Like, that’s my biggest fear of getting back into the business.
PMQ: So how do you make sure you don’t fall back into that old mindset?
Miller: So I’ve had to ask myself: What does it look like to replace myself and the things that I did as a business owner? All the top pizzeria owners are already doing this, so it’s not new. It’s just something I hadn’t studied or pursued previously—you have to implement systems that have the pizzeria run when you’re not there, right?
So what do these systems look like in a pizzeria? It’s as simple as having checklists that say: Here’s your daily checklist, here’s your weekly checklist. You gotta go through these checklists. Okay, now, what does a training program look like for new hires? Whether it’s video or in-person training, or a combination, it’s really just having a way to communicate the mission, vision, value and beliefs of the business. Like, what are the rules that your business is going to play by?
Previously, in my pizzeria, the only rules were “make good pizza and sell a lot of it.” That was the owner/operator model. But again, there are other ways of doing it. A business operator is going to say, “What are the rules and values of our business? What’s our mission? What’s our belief system?” And then you hold your employees accountable to that and measure them and say, “Okay, is this employee in line with this mission, vision, and set of values and beliefs?”
So we’re going to implement that. We’re going to have a training program for employees. I’m also going to really focus on one thing that we would teach in the business training and sales training, which is how to find your missing people. What does that require? You have to identify what your management system should look like. Who is my store manager? Who are my shift managers, and what do those job roles look like? What traits do those people have? And you’re not hiring them because you know them—[because] they’re your family or friends—but hiring them because they actually fit into that position and can succeed doing it. Because not everybody is built to succeed in a leadership role, and they may ask you for a job and you say, “Well, I know that person, I trust that person, so sure.” Or you feel bad for your family so you hire them. But now you’re stuck with them.
[It’s about] defining those roles and finding the right fit for those roles—and, by the way, being willing to pay whatever amount of money it takes to get that person is super important if you don’t intend to stand behind the counter. You know, a lot of people worry about, “Well, if I don’t stand behind the counter, I’m going to have to hire two or three people to do my job.” That may be true! But it also may be a limiting belief, right? A limiting belief is a self-imposed mindset that may or may not be true. It takes effort to find talent, but you have to do it. There’s nothing more important than finding the right talent for your business to succeed and grow.
PMQ: When you talk about this aspect of the business, what would you say to somebody who is having trouble finding talent at all?
Miller: There are two types of talent in the world: There’s either proven talent or emerging talent. Proven talent is going to cost more. That means somebody’s done the job before; they know what they’re doing. You’re going to pay more for that person, but you’re also going to invest less in training that person. Then you have emerging talent, and that’s where you’re growing employees from inside your company to leadership roles. And if you don’t define those roles and put it in front of those employees, well, they’re not ever going to strive for those roles.
Your pizza guy is never going to think he can be the store manager if he doesn’t know what the path to store manager looks like, right? But when you have emerging talent, there’s a couple of benefits you get. You’re going to get longevity of employment because this person has a goal that they want to become a store manager, and most likely you’re going to get loyalty over time because you’re going to improve this person’s life. And, hopefully, you’re a good boss and they’re a good employee, and you’re going to improve this person’s life to a point where they feel loyal to your business and the opportunity you created for them.
By creating that missing persons report and/or defining your roles inside your company, you’re able to say, “Look, you can just be the cash register person, you can be the dishes person, you can be the pizza man, you can be the barista, you can be the soft-serve person, you can be the shift leader, you can be the assistant store manager, or you can be the manager. And here’s what all those [positions] look like, and here’s what all those financial opportunities look like as you grow through each of those [roles].” And just putting that opportunity in front of employees to incentivize people for emerging talent. So that’s another strategy I intend to implement.
The last thing I’ll say about this is that if you’re just a business owner who says, “You know, I make $100,000 a year in net profit and that’s good enough to fulfill my life—I just need to keep doing that,” you have to understand that if you don’t have bigger goals and aspirations, then you are not going to attract people with big goals and aspirations. Your world needs to be big enough that other people’s goals fit inside of it or you’re going to attract people who are willing to work for minimum wage, and that’s going to make your life difficult.
That doesn’t mean you need to have multiple locations or anything like that. You just have to be able to find people and show them a path to opportunities that will fulfill their goals.
When I was 26 years old, it was all about me. I made the pizzas, and everybody worked there because they needed to make me money. Coming back to the pizza business, I want to create opportunities for my employees to make money. I don’t care about me in this situation, and that’s going to make a huge difference.
A lot of owner/operators are relying on the business to fund their life at home, their personal life, their sole income. That can be a very stressful situation that turns into bad decisions based on money, not based on what’s best for the business.
PMQ: This has been great stuff. Any final thoughts you want to add to the conversation?
Miller: I just want to reemphasize that there’s no one way to operate your business. There are many different paths. If you’re an owner/operator and you’re happy and you’re succeeding on your own terms, then keep doing that. If you’re an owner/operator dreaming of operating the business and not getting stuck standing behind the counter, then pursue that. And if you’re a business owner and you’re operating like a business and expanding into multiple locations and that’s what meets your goals, then keep doing that.
Just never stop learning, right? Never stop growing. There’s the old saying: You’re either green and growing or you’re ripe and dying. If you think you’ve reached the pinnacle, then there’s only going down from there. So you have to keep pursuing knowledge and information, even outside of the pizza industry. Pick up great books and read them to find out more about business models and structures. Pick up Rich Dad, Poor Dad, read the book and understand cash flow quadrants and the structure of different businesses. Seek mentorship, seek coaching, seek guidance.
The last thing I would say is most people will overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in five years. Anybody’s life could look completely different in five years. Anybody’s business could look completely different. So just stay on that path of growth and opportunity and leadership and keep going forward.
