Owner & Chef of Una Pizza Napoletana and Founder & CEO of Genio Della Pizza

If you find yourself struggling, make sure to find your own voice and learn everything you can. Then find your own voice and don't chase fads. Just do your thing, and let everything come to you. Build a real foundation.

Stay positive when things are down.

To keep the team motivated, it's important to reiterate. I tell during pre-shift, "I'm sorry if I'm saying the same thing every day, but this is the stuff that's important to us. It's not all of a sudden. This is the foundation of how we want to treat each other and treat the guests. It's not a passing fad." It's so important that we just keep repeating the same stuff every day. Things change and evolve, but the core ideas are always the core ideas.

Basically for 30 years, I'm the only one that's made the dough, and I still make the dough every single night here. We don't open unless I'm here. I'm either opening and topping the pizzas or baking the pizzas or some nights doing all of it.

I'm an old man, but I'm still trying to stay young at heart and surrounding myself with people who inspire me and just being open to things and using things as a tool to benefit me, the brand, and my life.

If you keep evolving within your craft and keep evolving within your hospitality side of things, you can always stay relevant.

Whenever I do something, I really want to give every ounce of myself to it, emotionally, mentally, physically, just everything that I can bring to the table.

As I got older, I started to appreciate and understand that the dining experience is more than just the food, and I've spent so much time over the years learning more about that, how to treat people and how to engage with people. Now I feel at least 50% of our effort in the restaurant is inspiring the guests and the staff, getting folks to leave the restaurant and feel like they really bought into it, and making them want to be a part of it, come back, and support it.