This episode starts with the story of two friends, Ron John Roy and his buddy Adam.

Ron John's in his 30s now. He's a content strategist, used to be a Wall Street trader, and he writes a newsletter about tech and business.

He and Adam met in college, doing a semester abroad in Rome. And after

graduation, they shared an apartment in New York. And Adam actually worked in fashion. He was at

Barney's as a buyer of women's denim. That's Ron John. I asked him to tell me about Adam,

because recently, the pair of them ran a little experiment that got a lot of

attention. It was an experiment with pizza, which is what Adam does now. He owns a pizza place,

well, two of them actually, in Kansas. They're called AJ's New York Pizzeria. Do you know why he wanted

to open a pizzeria?

He actually doesn't even like food, which is always a running joke among our friends.

And that was actually why it did make sense to me when he said that he wanted to open a pizzeria because he was like, this is just pure business, just something I'm not even

passionate about. I think this'm not even passionate about.

I think this is the opportunity to bring New York style pizza to Kansas.

Adam noticed that in Kansas, you couldn't get a good New York style slice for a reasonable amount of money.

That style of pizza actually wasn't really in Kansas at the time.

It's mainly Domino's, Papa John's, or kind of much higher end, but that middle ground was the

opportunity. To avoid competing with chains like Domino's and Papa John's, Adam decided not to

deliver his food. Instead, he'd serve pizzas in the restaurant, do some takeout,

and really focus on building the restaurant's brand. And that decision paid off. His restaurant

expanded to two locations. The strategy was working. Then in March, the phone started ringing.

Customers were calling AJ's to complain.

They were complaining about cold pizza being delivered, the wrong pizza being delivered.

...