How You Slice It: A Scrappy Small Business Novel

One failing pizzeria. A $1 buyout. A crash course in buying and fixing businesses. Ty Spengler has eleven dollars in his checking account, a job at a pizzeria that's closing in two weeks, and no idea what business to build for his college seminar. Then his professor asks the question that changes everything: why start a business from scratch when an existing one - with ovens, a lease, and a corner location - is sitting right in front of you? It's cheaper for his boss to sell him the pizzeria for $1 than to close it down. Her advice: buy, don't build. With no money, no experience, and no safety net, Ty sets out to turn around the Leaning Tower of Pizza. Every step - the deal, the customers, the margins, the leap from running a business to owning one - teaches something you can use Monday morning. And here's the part you won't believe: the $1 deal is real. More businesses change hands for one dollar than for any other price. Every negotiation, structure, and number in this story is drawn from real experience - how small businesses actually get bought, fixed, and sold. Ty is fiction. The playbook isn't. Inside the story: - Why buying an existing business beats building one from scratch - How to structure a deal when you have no money to put down - How to find the profit hiding inside a business that's losing money - The shift from operator to owner - building something that runs without you In the tradition of Goldratt's The Goal: a genuine business education you absorb by living it, in a story you'll finish in a weekend. Because in business, as in pizza, everything depends on how you slice it. Dave Mason has built, bought, and run businesses for over two decades. His books - combining fiction, personal growth, and business - have been downloaded more than 100,000 times. This novel distills what he's learned buying and optimizing businesses.