The Pizza Trap: Why Most Good Businesses Struggle to Grow

Imagine for a second to be a responsible and passionate restaurateur; you want your customers to have the best pizza. You aim to deliver high-quality service, using top-notch ingredients, and paying attention to every detail.

This is when you optimize: you fine-tune the dough, upgrade the mozzarella, improve the baking time, tweak the service flow. You’re focused on making every existing part of your business a little better.

And that’s great... until it becomes a trap!

While you're obsessing over the perfect pizza, you're still missing something essential: the bigger picture. You also need to think about what you need as a business owner: how to turn a profit, attract new customers, keep your costs within sustainable limits and grow beyond what already works. 

Growing a business is not the same as optimizing it. 
Yet, optimization is essential and that’s where the real challenge lies. Many business owners get caught in the optimization loop, losing sight of what true growth really means.

 Let’s explore in three steps how growth and optimization are deeply intertwined and why maintaining a delicate balance between the two is essential.

What we're going cover is: 

1. The Pizza Trap 
2. The “Whole-istic” Pizzeria
3. What Else Are They Hungry For?

If you're a good terrestrial, you’ll naturally have doubts about this balance. You want to create wealth—for yourself and for your clients. You want birds and trees around you, and clean air to breathe. You want to see your clients happy. And yet, you still have to think about growing your business.

So here’s the crucial question: how can you escape the optimization trap and redirect your focus toward real growth?

1. Identify The Pizza Trap 

The approach depends on where you are in your business journey—whether you're in the idea phase (yes, you can start making money from just an idea), launching a startup, testing your offer pre-market, running an established business, or scaling beyond.

 For this discussion, let’s zoom in on a specific scenario: you already have a business (online, offline, on Mars—doesn’t matter) that’s profitable and has enough customers.

 At this point, you’re likely stuck in the daily grind. You know you should be doing “marketing” to grow—but that’s exactly where the “pizza trap” kicks in at full power. You start optimizing what you already have, instead of actually growing your business… and you don’t even notice it.

 Now, if I mention water, flour, natural yeast—what comes to mind? Pizza? Bread?

That’s the problem.
Making great pizza or bread takes more than just ingredients. You need a process, an oven, an experienced pizzaiolo—and even more. Because as we’ve said: making great pizza is not enough to grow a successful pizzeria.

So instead of obsessing over improving tiny details in a recipe your customers already love, let me tell you what you actually need to do:

2. Use a “Whole-istic” Pizzeria approach

You need to start seeing your pizzeria not just as a place that serves pizza, but as a space where people come to enjoy a beautiful evening with friends, or a romantic night with someone they love.

Can you already feel the shift?
Can you see how this changes everything?

 You’re no longer looking at your business as a sum of parts (water, flour, oven…). You’re starting to see it as a whole; a living, breathing community of people who share the same desires.

 Now think about Amazon.
 

Are you a Prime member? Do you use Prime Video? Do you own a Kindle? Maybe you’re even using AWS or Alexa?

Amazon isn’t just an e-commerce site.
Just like your business isn’t just a pizzeria. Or a gym. Or a membership site. Or a coaching service.

 It’s a hub. A community. A place that fulfills a specific set of emotional and practical needs.

And then… go even further.

3. Ask yourself: "What Else Are They Hungry For?"

Start truly understanding what else - beyond the pizza you're already serving - you could offer to enhance your customers’ experience.

What else might they be interested in?
What are they already buying elsewhere, before or after visiting you?

Begin looking at your business through a wider lens.
Keep optimizing (that’s essential), but make sure you’re also dedicating enough energy, time, and resources to actually grow it.

Because being a good terrestrial isn’t just about making the best pizza for your customers— it’s about growing something meaningful. A business that goes beyond the product, creates real connection, expands because it meets deeper and interconnected desires.

That’s how you escape the pizza trap.
And that’s how your business truly starts to grow.