Archives for September 28, 2017

I’m a sucker for people turning their unique interests into a profitable small business, especially a quirky one-person business (like this person who farms food from other people’s yards). My newest discovery came from watching the Scott’s Pizza Tours documentary about Scott Wiener, who turned his passion for pizza into a successful tour business and more. Below is a more bio and the trailer (direct link):

He runs a successful tour business in NYC, where he leads visitors to some of the best and most historic pizzerias in the world, teaching the history and science of pizza making. He writes a monthly column in Pizza Today magazine, is a legend in the pizza industry, judges pizza competitions, eats 15 slices per week, and–oh, yeah–he’s the Guinness World Record holder for the largest collection of pizza boxes, now numbering nearly 1,000 different boxes from 55 countries, selections of which are currently touring through gallery spaces in the U.S. and Europe, with tentative exhibitions planned for Asia and Latin America. In his spare time, he founded and organizes Slice Out Hunger, an annual event, which has raised over $70,000 for hunger relief organizations in NYC.

Are you happy with the path are you on? In one scene, Scott describes how he used to have a desk job with the government. After his first year, they had a little celebration and said “Hurray, only 24 years left until retirement!”. That statement really shook him, and he put in his resignation notice the next day.

“Follow Your Passion”: Too idealistic… or actually practical advice? You can’t make good money at something unless you’re good at it, and it’s very hard to get good at something if you don’t like it. That means passion fuels 2 out 3 parts of the pie (pun intended). If you can figure out how to make it well-compensated, you’re golden. Here’s a quote from Charlie Munger:

I have never succeeded very much in anything in which I was not very interested. If you can’t somehow find yourself very interested in something, I don’t think you’ll succeed very much, even if you’re fairly smart. I think that having this deep interest in something is part of the game. If your only interest is Chinese calligraphy I think that’s what you’re going to have to do. I don’t see how you can succeed in astrophysics if you’re only interested in calligraphy.

Dream job: Goal vs. Journey. Did Scott Wiener write down one day that his dream job would be to teach tourists about pizza history? No, it was a result of incremental daily movements. I’m reminded of the High Fidelity movie scene where John Cusack’s character makes a list of his top 5 dream jobs if “qualifications, history, time, and salary were no object.” After going through them, he realizes that he is already doing one of his dream jobs, owning his own record store.

I saw Scott’s Pizza Tours on the Viceland cable TV channel, but you might also be able to see it for free on Hoopla if supported by your local library. Otherwise, you can buy/rent on Amazon/iTunes/YouTube.

p.s. If you live in the NYC area, the 2017 edition of Slice Out Hunger’s $1 Pizza Party is on Wednesday, October 4, 2017. I’m impressed he even leverages his passion to raise money for a good cause (over $70,000 so far).