The Final Slice: Good Pie, Great Purpose with Vincent Rotolo

To close out the Pursue Vegas podcast, we couldn’t think of a better final guest than Vincent Rotolo—because his story isn’t just about building a pizza empire. It’s about heart, humility, and building something that lasts far beyond the spotlight.

“The walls of fear are paper-thin. It’s only good things on the other side.”

In this episode, we sat down with the founder of Good Pie to talk about pizza, purpose, and what it really takes to lead with values in a city that never slows down.

“I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of success... And I realized fear was holding me back,” he shares.

Vincent’s journey started in Brooklyn at the legendary John’s on Bleecker Street. From slinging slices to running some of Vegas’s top pizza kitchens, he’s seen the industry from every angle. But what sets him apart isn’t just his dough—it’s the culture he’s built. We’re talking about team members so loyal they’ve tattooed the Good Pie logo on themselves.

“When you have a set of values that match your own, it’s easier to get curious and learn more.”

We dive into the evolution of Good Pie, what it means to run a people-first business, and Vincent’s own transformation—from operator to community leader to spiritual seeker. This isn’t just about pizza. It’s about what happens when you lead from the inside out.

“Every day is a gift; it’s about how we can best share it with others.”

Whether it’s mentoring youth through Core, co-founding the Las Vegas Pizza Festival, or showing up for his team with integrity and humility, Vincent is redefining leadership in food and hospitality.

A full-circle conversation to close out the show—with gratitude, clarity, and a reminder that good business starts with good people.

Key Takeaways:

• Culture isn’t a buzzword. It’s something you earn daily through actions.
• Great pizza starts with great people—and great ingredients.
• Values-led leadership fosters brand loyalty (sometimes in tattoo form).
• Community and collaboration are the secret sauce.
• Spirituality and business can—and should—coexist.

Resources:

• Goodpie Instagram
• Goodpie Website
• Books: Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
• Community orgs: Core, Canyon Ridge Christian Church

"You fall in love with something and you don't really know you're in love with it, you move away from it, and then life brings you back."

Tune in for a slice of passion, purpose, and pure Las Vegas grit. This episode is for anyone who believes that food is love, business is personal, and culture is built—not bought.

Thanks for tuning in to The Pursue Vegas Podcast!

Transcript

0:00:00 - (Vincent Rotolo): My name is Vincent Rotolo from Good Pie, and you're listening to the Pursue Vegas podcast.

0:00:06 - (Dave Burlin): The idea of Pursue Vegas was to really highlight the local people that really make Vegas Vegas.

0:00:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): I love that aspect of how these visionaries are actually bringing people together.

0:00:17 - (Dave Burlin): When we hit record, our responsibility is to connect the people of our city so we can show the world who we really are. All right, welcome back to the Pursue Vegas podcast. I'm your host, Dave Berlin.

0:00:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I'm your co host, Tawni Nguyen.

0:00:30 - (Dave Burlin): And should we tell them I am.

0:00:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): Choose a word. Any word.

0:00:35 - (Dave Burlin): I am pizza. Le excited.

0:00:39 - (Vincent Rotolo): Tell them, don't tell. Don't tell. Don't tell them no. Don't.

0:00:42 - (Dave Burlin): Don't tell them. No. Every time I say I'm so excited or we're ridiculously excited. Today, I am pizzally excited about today's guest, Mr. Vincent Rtolo. I've been to your store.

0:00:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah.

0:00:56 - (Dave Burlin): And I went way before I ever met you. And. And then as my world has changed around the world of pizza and restaurants and some of the stuff that I'm into, we've crossed paths a lot more in the last year or so.

0:01:07 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah.

0:01:08 - (Dave Burlin): I'm so excited to have you on, not just because you have some of the best pizza in the city of Las Vegas.

0:01:14 - (Vincent Rotolo): Oh, wow. Thank you.

0:01:15 - (Dave Burlin): And I mean that. And I will fight you in front of your children in the parking lot if you disagree. No, not really. Not really. Have you seen this? I have not had any Red Bull.

0:01:24 - (Vincent Rotolo): No.

0:01:24 - (Dave Burlin): But I mean this. There's something that grabbed me when we had a conversation, and we're gonna talk about a lot of stuff today, but when you told me that there are people that work for your team that have the tattoo of goodpie on their body, there's a company culture thing, whether, like, it's intentional, no matter what. That's a bold thing that. I've worked with multiple organizations across multiple industries. I moved here because of the work that Tony Shea was doing to change the world in downtown Las Vegas.

0:01:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah. Rest in peace, Tony Show.

0:01:57 - (Dave Burlin): And I have not seen anything like that. So that was one of the things that I was very excited about. It just happens to be that you have incredible pizza too. But we're gonna talk about so many things. Can you please tell us about you? Who are you, what are you excited about, and what's going on in your world?

0:02:15 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. I'm flattered by your kind words. It really. It's nice when someone gets what you're doing, not just in the food, but, like, in the culture we're trying to build, and also the contributions we're trying to make to the community that we're in. Tony, as you mentioned, was a big part of what initially drew me downtown. I came to Las Vegas in December 2011, and at that time, things were just getting started downtown, where the downtown project was really becoming just more recognized for the changes they were seeking to make. And I was intrigued by that. Cause I'm a city guy.

0:02:56 - (Vincent Rotolo): At the end of the day, I'm an urban guy. I grew up at parallel parking and homeless people. Then I'm comfortable. So right away, downtown, I was good down there, you know. And so I grew up in Brooklyn, but I also lived in lower Manhattan. My first job in pizza was in 1986. I started working at the original brick oven Johns of Bleecker Street. I was in middle school. My brother was working there. My father was friends with the owner. And like, my family was connected to that iconic pizzeria because we had an apartment in the building upstairs that was like this rent control apartment that was in the family for years, where you just don't let those things go in New York. So at one point or another, everybody lived in an apartment.

0:03:44 - (Vincent Rotolo): And going to see my dad on the weekends and growing up eating John's pizza on Friday nights was a ritual and a fond memory of my youth. And so then working there at a really young age, it kind of introduced me to the world of artists and pizza. And that just like a lifelong passion kind of just ignited in those moments of adolescence. And then you move away from me. Because I think when you fall in love with something and you don't really know you're in love with it, you move away from it and you go into other areas of life. And life journey takes you into whatever direction you're going into.

0:04:26 - (Vincent Rotolo): And then I moved to Las Vegas in 2011 and December 2011, and my father was sick and so I moved here. I'll never forget the date. Cause it was December 1st. And I remember I just got my first iPad at that time. And I'm on the plane and like, there's the first plane I ever was on with WI Fi. Like, remember the days of planes with no Wiis? Like, what are you doing on the plane? You had to deal with other things. And I remember was looking like, where am I gonna eat? Like, what am I?

0:04:58 - (Vincent Rotolo): That was the first thing I thought of, like, leaving New York. There's so many eating and going out to eat with me, my friends, was always a big deal. Being the Foodie culture. And so I remembered popping up the iPad. I just at that time, looking@eater.com was your source of. Of food news. And I remember reading that Dom DeMarcus of Dara was opening that day. And I'm like, wait, they have a Darah in Vegas? Like, that's crazy. And it's opening the day I'm moving there. So I felt like, signe. Yes.

0:05:32 - (Vincent Rotolo): I like, they know I'm coming. Yeah. They're like'for me, they know here. Somebody recognize that I'm coming to Vegas. And they brought food here for me. So I literally, like, my dad was looking. I got off the plane, dad picked me up, went to his house, dropped my bags, and spen, like, maybe five minutes with my family, and went right toar. Went right to Dom Darco. And I literally walked in there and met Albert Scaliot, who's a proprietor.

0:05:57 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I literally was like, hey, I just moved here from New York today. I know everything about pizza, and I'm gonna tell you everything that is not authentic of your piza. Like, literally, I'm gonna tell you everything you're doing wrong. And so Albert was the best. He was so gracious. And I remember we sat at the bar and we talked the whole night, and I was the last guy to leave that place. So I closed it down on the first night of business, and we talked for what seemed like 20 minutes. And I looked at my. I was there for seven hours.

0:06:25 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah. Wow.

0:06:26 - (Vincent Rotolo): Just talking to Albert. And Albert's that kind of guy that has those stories. He just lived, like, so many lives of just like, he's an amazing person. And so he was my first Vegas friend. Also my first pizza contact. And that's kind of where things started for me in Vegas. Just that first day.

0:06:43 - (Dave Burlin): I love it, man. And for people that are listening, there's two types of people in this world, I believe. There's people and then there's pizza people. Right?

0:06:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): We're our own breed, but with our own race.

0:06:58 - (Dave Burlin): But with that, there is. There's like. There's this mechanism in us that. And sometimes it's good pie, no pun intended. Sometimes it's good pizza that attracts us. But it's those memories that you talk about. I remember I also moved here, right? I moved here from Oklahoma. I moved here much later. It was the fall of 2018. And a good friend of mine, mutual friend of ours, Mike Bausc, I had done a lot of stuff with Mike back in Oklahoma, Biggest fan of what he's created in the world of Andalini and fine dining.

0:07:29 - (Dave Burlin): And I remember I was kicking rocks. I was literally downtown. I was going through a divorce. I was kicking rocks downtown, and I was not in a good place. And Mike randomly called, and he was just checking in. Cause that's good people, right?

0:07:43 - (Vincent Rotolo): Wow.

0:07:43 - (Dave Burlin): And he was like, how are you doing? I was like, yeah, I don't even know where to find good pizza. And he tells me. He goes, there's a spot. You'll have to look for it. And he mentioned Pizza Rock. And I was literally standing across the street from Pizza Rock.

0:07:58 - (Vincent Rotolo): Wow.

0:07:59 - (Dave Burlin): And I didn't go in with the ego of, like, oh. Cause he just told me. He's like, oh, Tony'somebody. Who taught me almost everything I know about the world of pizza. He's like, just go. And I went. And I sat at the bar, just very unassuming. I just. Food service, ambiance. And I was able. I sat there just talking to the bartender. Not about pizza, not about. I just talked about life. And I felt like I belonged.

0:08:22 - (Dave Burlin): And that was, like, one of the biggest steps forward for me in this community as well. And I know a lot of people come here with ambition. A lot of people come here, like, because they're running away from something, or they come here because they're running towards who they really are. And I only say this to say thanks for sharing your story because of what got you here. Like, you don't just leave a place like New York for no reason, like, whatever it is, but, like, immediately when you got here, like, there's pizza waiting for you somewhere in this city. And it's not just pizza. It's a place where you belong.

0:08:58 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah. When I walked in and met Albert that first day, I felt like we were catching up. And old friends who hadn't seen each other in a really long time. And he told me the whole story of how he met Dom. Rest in peace, the great Dom Darco. And how he courted Dom over years to finally get the rights to get the deal done and bring that iconic pizza to Las Vegas. And he's a remarkable storyteller. He broke out pictures of Sinatra.

0:09:27 - (Vincent Rotolo): He was like, hey, look at this, bro. He showed me pictures from, like, the Sugar Ray Leonard Hagler fight. He's like, look at this. And these are not, like, on your phone. This is like, let me go to.

0:09:37 - (Tawni Nguyen): My officeience pieces of paper.

0:09:39 - (Vincent Rotolo): He came out with the real P of him with, like, Sugar Ray Leonard. And, like, tell me about these legendary fights and just some amazing Vegas history that he's experienced and, like, I fell in love with the guy, but I never really explained the tattoo thing. And so let me tell you about that, because it's so goodpie. Just celebrated 7 years of being open and every year. Thank you. Yeah. Fe February 9th, National Pizza Day 2018, is when we opened the doors.

0:10:09 - (Dave Burlin): Oh, man. We just missed a birthday, right?

0:10:10 - (Vincent Rotolo): Seven years. We just hit. And that's over two different locations. The first at Palm Plaza for a couple years, and then we graduated into a bigger space on Main street. And. And we're blessed to have that. And so one of the things I do every year is I close the restaurant on 4th of July, and we have a big staff party. So. And I cooked for the staff, and when we had 10 or 12 staff, it was fine. But now we have over 80 staff, so we go the Soulbelly Barbecue every year, and soulbelly has an amazing burger.

0:10:42 - (Vincent Rotolo): Bruce Kalman, incredible chef, by the way. He was just on Tournamentute Champions. I saw Bruce last night on Food Network. So if you're a fan of Bruce Kalman's, which you should be, or soulbe Belly Barbecue, check him out on Tournament Champions on Food Network. He's insane. He's doing a great, great job. And he's one of the guys who represents Main street, the Arch District, and all of Las Vegas and shines that national light on us. So shout out to Bruce.

0:11:04 - (Dave Burlin): Sounds like we might need to have him on the show.

0:11:06 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah. Yeah. He's incredible. What a great guy. And so Bruce cooks for us now every Fourth of July. So this past Fourth of July, we were there, and then the tequila gets going, and I don't really drink a lot, and recently, I've actually just kind of stopped drinking just as just a decision to just want to take care of myself and more of a wellness choice. But on July 4th every year, I do drink with the team because it's just our way of bonding with them.

0:11:33 - (Vincent Rotolo): And so a couple of tequila shots in. One of the employees approached me and said, hey, we're all gonna go get tattooed together to form this bond. And I was like, where this is going? I'm like, oh, well, I hope. Like, I hope I'm insured for. That was the first thing I thought. I hope. I hope.

0:11:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): You okay?

0:11:56 - (Vincent Rotolo): Business owner wants to protect themselves from any liabilities. I'm like, hey, are we. We're technically not at work. This part'voluntary right? Like, did we sign, Like, I thought, do we have to sign waivers or. Yeah, if something bad happens. And then. Yeah, then I checked with our team. And I'm like, all right, we're good. I literally called hr. I was like, hey, they're getting tattoos. Am I okay?

0:12:13 - (Vincent Rotolo): No.

0:12:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): It is a very.

0:12:17 - (Vincent Rotolo): Lally.

0:12:18 - (Tawni Nguyen): We don't have SOPs for this. What's going on?

0:12:20 - (Dave Burlin): Yo?

0:12:20 - (Vincent Rotolo): The HR literally picked up the phone July 4th. I have a great HR company shout out to. I don't want to mention. They are.

0:12:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): They're great.

0:12:27 - (Vincent Rotolo): Want be plugged or not, But HR company is awesome and took my call and was like, yes, you're good. Don't worry, that's voluntary. And so then after that, I was like, guys, this is awesome. Like, they were like, actually, we want you to do it with us. And I'm like, well, I'm not a tattoo guy. I have no tattoos. I have zero tattoos. Like, I'm not gonna get, like, a drunken, tequila driven tattoo with a bunch of things and put a logo on my whatever. Like, I'm not doing that.

0:12:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): And so the GM came over to me and said, listen, we have a whole group of people that wants to get tattooed, but they're only gonna do it if you do it. And I'm like, well, how many people? And they're like, we got 12. I'm like, you have 12 people now? At that time, we had 30 employees. So I'm like, this is almost half the entire team. Wow. So. And I would be 13 if I did it. So I thought, you know what?

0:13:18 - (Vincent Rotolo): At first, I had a lot of different feelings and a lot of different. I was scared because I don't like needles. And then I was, like, also proud of, like, the fact that they would actually want to do that. And then I thought, am I starting a cult? Like, is this weird? I started telling myself all these different stories about, like, what this means. And then we had a couple more shots, and those stories started to, like. I said, hey, guys, let me think about this. And then finally I was like, all right, if all you guysnna do, let's get a couple more. So we ended up recruiting two or three more people.

0:13:49 - (Vincent Rotolo): And then Ivana, who, like, was the catalyst of all this, who's, like one of our just social butterfly staff members, who'like, rounds everybody up, and it's just wonderful, wonderful human. And so she said, okay, you know, we have 15 people. That's half the staff. And there was almost everybody who was there. And so we went around the corner, we found a spot, and we all got the good pie tattoo, and I got mine over here. They picked the spot because I give everyone high fives.

0:14:21 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

0:14:22 - (Vincent Rotolo): Like, I'm a high five guy. When I come in the restaurant, I'm high five in the team giving everybody. So we got this. So when I high five them, they can see the halo with the wings and the slice. And so that happened then and now I think this year we talked about it, we're gonna go get it colored inol and have this thing. But it's a special moment for me and a great memory. And also I think like, that team is their special people on our team.

0:14:52 - (Vincent Rotolo): Like, I love that team and there's nothing I would change about it. And I think as a business owner, you're always evaluating your team, seeing how you could make things better. Or you tend to put employees in categories like who is potential leader, who's a leader, or who is an influential person that's gonna make people around them better and who's that person that could potentially be bringing people down. And I learned from a few different people. But Michael Chernow, who is just an amazing guy like I've known my whole life, he's one of the only mentors in my life. He's like 10 years younger than me.

0:15:29 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I've always had older, wiser mentors. But Michael was a mentor as a younger guy a lot. Yeah. He opened the meatball shop and in 2009 with Daniel Holtzman and then opened Seymours, which was an amazing seafood concept, sold that and now has a wellness company called creatures of habit and has this protein based oatmeal that is called meal one. It's just this meal to start your day. And he basically reinvented himself as like this wellness, fitness like guru.

0:15:58 - (Vincent Rotolo): And he just taught me like very early on in my career, like, treat your team like gold. Just be good to your team. And when working for him in the culture, like at the meatball shop, I was a manager on his team and seeing how much the staff truly cared for him and loved him, like most owners in the restaurant business are like, feared and not loved. And Michael was loved and he treated people like gold. And he was like, hey man, have a story.

0:16:32 - (Vincent Rotolo): Hire great publicist to tell that story and treat your team like gold. Those were the things that I learned from him. And he kept preaching those things over and over. And so I just have this very, like, deep, deep need to want toa make the team happy. And like, I treat them as good as I can, better they better than I was ever treated as an employee. Coming up, I worked every job in this industry. I was abused a lot.

0:17:04 - (Vincent Rotolo): I was yelled at, I was stuff throwing in the kitchen. I grew up in a kitchen culture where chefs were throwing stuff at you and beraadting you. And I remember I worked at this fine dining restaurant, and one day I went into work and my hair on my side of my thing was like, touching my ear. And my GM grabbed that piece of hair and pulled it and yanked it out, and it hurt so much. And I'm like, I was caught up in that.

0:17:29 - (Vincent Rotolo): He's like, he cursed me out, like, in front of the other team members and like, the emotional distress I was in, let alone the physical pain of, like, someone pulling your hair out, it hurt. I'm like, that's the kind of environment I grew up in. And I always thought, not only do I never want to be a part of something like that culturally as an employee, but if I was ever in a position to lead a team or own my own company, I would do things to try to heal that and make that right.

0:17:57 - (Vincent Rotolo): So that's part of it.

0:17:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. That tattoo alone says a lot about the quality of life that you allow yourself to have and the team. It's a funny story. I mean, any tequila driven tattoo story could have gone really bad. But I think the idea behind it and like, in toa, lean into, like, the story behind the name. Because for me, like, words matter and for you to choose such simple words that it's just two words that actually has a lot of meaning behind it. Like, can we touch a little bit more on that?

0:18:26 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah. I mean, it goes back to. I ran the gamut of working my way up through the industry. I started at Bellagio. I worked at Curco. I worked there for several years. Turkco closed. I went to 800 degrees pizza at Monte Carlo with Anthony Cararen. I was the GM there, and then I was brought on to help open Flour and Barley at the Link as the manager. And then I left Flour and Barley for a GM position.

0:18:52 - (Vincent Rotolo): And then they contacted me, Hugo Moreno, who's an amazing operator, and I learned a lot from him. At the time, it was Block 16 Hospitality who was owned and operate Flower and Barley. He brought me back to Flour and Barley as the general manager, and then I ran that, and then I left there and was the director, director of operations for Dom DeMarcus. I reunited with my first friend, Albert Scalioot, and they opened a location at Caesar's Dara at Caesar's palace, and then they had the Summerlin location. So I was kind of overseeing both of those locations as a director of operations, and then it just got to the point where I couldn't go any further as an employee.

0:19:29 - (Vincent Rotolo): And even though I loved working for Albert, the things I wanted to do, like, I had an ownership mentality at that point. And I was still. Even though I was an operations director and still like kind of an executive and had a six figure salary and all those things that you dream about wanting in a career, I was unfulfilled. I was still happy, but I was unfulfilled. I remember my mom passed and we went to bury my mom.

0:19:50 - (Vincent Rotolo): And then when I came back, sat down with Albert and had a heart to heart. Because I'm like, life's too fucking short, man. You know what I mean? When you bury your parents, you're like, okay, we're all gonna be in a box. Like, that's the end. And spiritually, we may move on somewhere else, but, like, physically we're in a box somewhere. Like, we're allnna. Things are gonna end. Like, you gotta stop you. And I realized fear was holding me back. I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of success.

0:20:16 - (Vincent Rotolo): I was afraid of just like going out on my own and taking that big risk. Like, fear was like paralyzing me. And I spoke to a couple friends of mine, but I spoke to. I remember I talked to Paulie G. Who I met in New York when he opened Pauly G. S. I was there on the first night I was living in Brooklyn. I went. Paulie G. Shared his story with me, and he told me, the walls of fear are paper thin. And it's only good things on the other side you gotta poke your finger through, then stick your head in and just go.

0:20:45 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I'm like, if Paulie can do this with no restaurant experience. I have 20 years of restaurant experience. I worked every job. You can work in a restaurant. Like, you know, my first job in the restaurant business was called 650. In fact, the name was 650 Slime. Shout out to everybody at 12 East 22nd Street, Rascals'in 1989. 650 Slime. But that place paid you $6.50 an hour. This was after John's Pizza, which I was kind of a buser there, or like an assistant buster.

0:21:19 - (Vincent Rotolo): But John's Pizza was like, my dad's friends with the owner give my son a job thing. And I was around. But I only worked there two days a week. Like when I worked at Rascals's. 650 slime was like, they pay you 6,50 cents an hour. You work a 10 hour shift and you do the Dirtiest jobs of, like, cleaning vomit and doing the horrible things no one wants to do or collecting empty beer bottles from the dance floor or whatever it was. It was kind of like a restaurant that turned into a nightclub.

0:21:44 - (Vincent Rotolo): And so I worked my way up, literally, like trouble and shit.

0:21:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): Literally.

0:21:50 - (Vincent Rotolo): And so becoming like, that level and still not feeling fulfilled. It's like, at what point are you going to be happy? You keep telling yourself, like, if I do this, I'll be happy. If I do this, I'll do that. If I make this much money, I'll be able to do that. Or you keep delaying your happiness for different accomplishments that you're supposed to go after are different goals to achieve. And the fact is that I learned that I'm born to serve others.

0:22:18 - (Vincent Rotolo): And when I'm in the service of others, taking care of other people, that's really what makes me happy. And it doesn't mean I have to make a lot of money or have a title or have a successful business. I just have to be taking care of people in a way that they're feeling and receiving that. And it took me a while to figure that out. So I'm like, now I know this. How can I take care of the most people?

0:22:42 - (Vincent Rotolo): I can really build an amazing team, take care of them, and then empower them to take care of so many others. Like this past weekend on Saturday, between both restaurants, we had 18, 800 covers.

0:22:52 - (Dave Burlin): Wow.

0:22:52 - (Vincent Rotolo): I'm never gonna be able to touch 1,800 people. And maybe not all of them had a great experience, but 99.9% of those 1,800 people had an amazing experience through the 80 employees that we have now. And I'm touching those employees, and they're touching all those guests. And I'm taking care of people through others. And that's what really fulfills me with a sense of satisfaction and gratitude. And now I want to grow that to 20,000 people.

0:23:18 - (Vincent Rotolo): You know what I mean? In a weekend, in a day. Like, you need a lot more restaurants to do that. But I figured that out. So it wasn't like world all pizza domination. It wasn't like, b, follow Tony's path or follow this path or that path. It was like, my path is just taking care of people through, feeding them, through giving them an amazing pizza experience. And you can only do that through other people because you're limited in what you could do just on your own.

0:23:44 - (Vincent Rotolo): And that's the real valuable lesson that I've learned. When my mom passed and I made the decision to leave Dom DeMarco. I learned that and then left and started driving. This was like 2016 and I was driving Uber. That's what I did. I wrote business plans all day, drove Uber all night, and I was literally pitching passengers to. I would be in the car driving, hey, blah bl blah, what's your favorite pizza in town?

0:24:13 - (Vincent Rotolo): And just get into a pitch right there. Yeah, get into, hey, I'm working on a pizzeria, blah blah blah. And I was dreaming about getting funded. But the truth of the matter was is that I got really good at pitching. I never got funding from an Uber passenger. I just got like o wait, is this guy about to ask me for money? Like cuz if I. Especially if I picked up a guy at a nice house. Yeah, like if I roll up to a nice house in Summerland to take you to the airport. Yeah, I'm hit you up.

0:24:39 - (Tawni Nguyen): Shark tank on whees.

0:24:42 - (Vincent Rotolo): Shark tank on wheels for sure.

0:24:43 - (Dave Burlin): Well, it's funny cuz, you know, right now, I mean that's. That there's a place where, I mean that's happened. Like there's so many people that that's a path that they can take in this town and not only can they make decent money like just staying moving, staying mobile and on the grind, but also just have those connections and those conversations. And while you didn't get money from any of those, like you probably built a following where people are like, man, when I come back, I'm gonna try that. Or some people I wish I wouldn't know.

0:25:10 - (Vincent Rotolo): There were people that were like, yes, I'm gonna try this place. But at that time I was just searching. I don't know if there's any u. If there's any Uber passengers that are out there that were in my Uber that are now my customer. Please email pizza at goodpie do. Com and I will buy you a free piz. I love that Y. I want to know that because that would make me so like full circle moment for me. But I did learn a lot by doing that because I learned about like the freedom of my time and just I needed to make a certain amount of money just to pay my bills.

0:25:40 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I had a little bit of savings, but I was afraid of that dwindling down. And so Uber just paid my bills while I didn't deplete my savings so I could figure out the next step, which was I remember Evil Pie was getting started and they were looking for some help and my brother was working with that company in a different role and I was able to Get a meeting with them. I'll never forget I was working on a business plan called new brooklyn pizza for an American artistan style pizza.

0:26:10 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I thought, I'll meet with these guys. It was the last meeting of the week on Friday at like 5:10. We squeez in like literally, right? They I guess we'll talk to this guy. And then it was crazy because John. I became friends with John arena through reaching out to him. When I was a gamm of flour and barley, we were struggling and fumbling over how to do a sicilian and I said, I heard John had the best sil I just called him up and said, hey, can you come help us? And he literally the next day came down and helped us out.

0:26:41 - (Vincent Rotolo): And then we were friends ever since. Hal Ginsbberg, guy I met from Paul e G gave me John arena's phone number. Biggest mistake of John's life ever. Kidding. John, you can blame Hal Ginsburg for our decade long friendship and me calling you and bugging you all the time and just kind of learning all this stuff from you and hopefully I embarrassing you. But John's one of those guys who just goes out of his way to help people. And he was really a mentor to me, kind of.

0:27:08 - (Vincent Rotolo): He would come to my house, we were doing these pizza things at my house where I would cook for random people and let them bring an ingredient and then try to do like a chop style competition against myself at it was called the Las Vegas pizza club. And people would come over and John came over one night and he was like, what you're doing is offensive. And I was, wow. I was like, John. Only the third time I met the guy at it was actually not even my house, my brother's backyard.

0:27:41 - (Vincent Rotolo): I lived in apartment, so I didn't have a yard. But my brother let me host pizza gatherings at his place and I had the oven there. And he said to guys like me and a bunch of other guys in this town, what you're doing is really rude. And actually it is offensive. And I, I'm like, what I do, man? Like, oh my God, I offended him. And I was like, was kind of, I was really embarrassed. And I said, hey, what did I do?

0:28:10 - (Vincent Rotolo): He said, you know, you're in a town full of house painters and here you are, Picasso, and you're not sharing it with anybody. I was like, I died. I literally died when he said that. But it was a moment for me where I like some great pizza guy said I was picaza, you know.

0:28:32 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, yeah.

0:28:34 - (Vincent Rotolo): And that was it. And from that moment on, I like, it's hard to explain, but whatever those things are that are holding you back, that was the moment we all just let go.

0:28:53 - (Dave Burlin): Thank you for sharing that, man. This isn't just in the world of pizza, in the world of restaurants. There's a certain amount of ego that we all carry. And sometimes we don't understand what that means until somebody puts that on useah. And there's different waysuse some people could just be like, you're an egomaniac. Not you, but anyone that does have one. But when somebody presents it in a way like that, it's that you aren't just good, you're great.

0:29:22 - (Dave Burlin): But that greatness needs to be shared. It puts it into a totally different perspective. I think so than how we develop whatever that ego was that we were carrying before. Right. Whether it was beat into us or be out of us, physically or emotionally, whatever makes us who we are. And especially for the greatest people that do create things, whether it be food or art or music, it comes from a place of pain.

0:29:49 - (Dave Burlin): It comes from a place of power. It comes from a place of beautiful memories too. But sometimes that can shape us in a way that we hurt a lot of people around us and we might not even know it. And when I say hurt, we don't have to. It's not about, I hurt this person. I held something from something that can truly make an entire community. And in this case specifically, the food community in Las Vegas universe. Not Las Vegas, Nevada, not Las Vegas, America, Las Vegas, planet Earth, which is one of the most food driven culture cities on this planet.

0:30:29 - (Vincent Rotolo): Right.

0:30:32 - (Dave Burlin): That's the responsibility to say, hey, let people in. And like, here's what I'm really grateful for and its's a testament that you're here today, is that you heard that and you didn't resist.

0:30:46 - (Vincent Rotolo): It's his way though. And if it wasn't for that moment, I don't think good pie would exist. You know, And John will probably argue, ah, you were gonna do that anyway. I just. You were gonna be that anyway. I just was along. I just.

0:30:59 - (Tawni Nguyen): You needed the catalyst. Because I think from what I heard is, you know, you had the cushy six figure job and that was your ceiling. And then for you to even admit that you were unfululfilled because there's like a deeper sense of purpose within you that's like trying to come out and you're like kind of imprisoned by this like comfort that you had around you.

0:31:16 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah.

0:31:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I think that's where people negotiate with themselves. It's like, well, I'm kind of happy here and I can allocate my extra time to building my dream. But when realize you should be switching it the other way around, it's like, go in on it at least 80% of the times and then keeping the 20% of safety.

0:31:32 - (Vincent Rotolo): Right. I was 40 years old when that conversation happened. So that's kind of late in life to just start something new. But you. I had a son at a young age, and I needed to work to kind of provide for him. My son at that point was already an adult, you know, and so I thought, hey, I could really do this and I could make those sacrifices. And I did. So I ended up going to the meeting at Evil Pie, and I went there convinced that I would pitch them on my idea because I thought, evil pie, evil. Who the fuck wants evil Knievel pizza? That's a gimmick.

0:32:09 - (Tawni Nguyen): I thought it was love backwards when I first it. So when I first moved here, I was like, is it love backwards? My.

0:32:15 - (Vincent Rotolo): It's just weird. It's like, we don't need another gimmicky pizzeria. Right? That's what I thought. Like, fuck that. I know Vegas needs a theme and a gimmick and all that, but I'm not doing gimmicks. My pizza'gonna be great, and I don't want them to downgrade or diminish what I'm trying to do. So I met with them and they ended up convincing me because they told me that they were trying to do a pizza from a time and a place, which was a New York street slice in the 1970s.

0:32:45 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I thought, wow, no one ever asked me to create a pizza from a time and a place before and tell a story. And that weekend. So that was Friday. So I went home that weekend. I did research, of course. I called John and said, hey, John, what are the 1970s New York blah pizzas? And he was like, oh, they were using this, this, and this back then. And he literally gave me the Stanislav and whatever the tomato was and the cheese and the flour that was the predominant.

0:33:13 - (Vincent Rotolo): They called it the trifecta. Or I forget the triple something. I don't know what it is. It was the trinity. The holy trinity of pizza was this flour, this cheese, and this tomato. And if those companies are out there listening, you can sponsor the show and then we'll name you on the next episode. But anyway, it was that flour, that tomato, that cheese, right? And so that was the holy trinity of pizza in the 70s at the time. So I started messing with that, and I was just dug deep into it, and I got just pulled in, and then I got hired as a consultant to create the pizza at Evil Pie.

0:33:47 - (Vincent Rotolo): And that turned into me being the general manager, and I created the pizza, and I hired everybody and trained everybody. And I was there for, like, almost a year and kind of launched it. And then I got an opportunity. A guy in Brooklyn called me and had a failing pizzeria and wanted to basically give me a space and a bunch of money. And backers from a deal that was in years earlier were like, hey, come back to Brooklyn, and you belong here. And we want to give you this place, and we're gonna give you 35% ownership of it. And I thought, 35% ownership, amazing. And I'm putting in no money. I'm going back to New York, you know?

0:34:19 - (Vincent Rotolo): And so I thought everything that brought me to Vegas was like, I served my time in Vegas.

0:34:22 - (Dave Burlin): Literally, it was your boot camp.

0:34:24 - (Vincent Rotolo): I was done, and I'm going back to Brooklyn, and I met with these guys. I said, hey, I'm going back, and I got this deal, and here's what it is. And they were like, no, stay here. We're gonna make you a partner. And so they dragged that out. And ultimately, the deal they offered to me months later, by the time they got contracts out, was not. Was just really. Just. They never had intentions of really making things.

0:34:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): I love those guys for giving me the opportunity I got, but also the fact is that that wasn't a fair deal. And so I had to say no. And then that just led to me feeling a sense of betrayal and me feeling a sense that I missed a real opportunity. And I was really motivated. Then I was like, oh, yeah, I missed this great opportunity, and you dangled this carrot, and you made me this promise. And that happens in business. I know a lot of guys, especially in the pizza world, you. The money guys, take advantage of the talent in every industry.

0:35:28 - (Vincent Rotolo): And so you got to figure out where you are in that equation and how you're. I had built myself up into more. People knew who I was at that point because of Evil Pie, because get. I was the face of that place, and I did get a tremendous amount of recognition, and I'm grateful for that, because I knew once I was like, I got invited to that party based on that experience there, and I knew I was gonna stay.

0:35:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): I knew there was no going back. And so I then was in Brooklyn. I went back to Brooklyn. I left Evil Pie and was Soul searching. And I went back to Brooklyn. I was with Scott Weinener, and we went to the Brooklyn Museum and there was this panel on pizzeria history. And they had like, the Dafara family was there and Laal from Lucali was there and different people were there. And I remember Mark, they were talking about branding and pizza.

0:36:24 - (Vincent Rotolo): And Mark Icono from Lucale was there and I was in the audience watching and I was checking everything out and I was absorbing everything. I was like dreaming the pizza dream. And people said, hey, Mark, what's your brand standard? Or whatever? And he was like, brand standard. My brand standard that I shut the fuck up and I make a good pie. And five minutes later, from my phone, I bought the urlgo goodpy.com

0:36:52 - (Vincent Rotolo): love it. And it was available for $250. I was like, that's it?

0:36:57 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's $250 you ever spent.

0:37:00 - (Vincent Rotolo): Because I talk so much, people always tell me to shut up. So I'm like, where? Mark was like, I shut the fuck up and I make a good pie. I let the pizza speak for itself. And I'm like, that's what I want to do.

0:37:10 - (Dave Burlin): Wow.

0:37:10 - (Vincent Rotolo): And it made sense because I was leaving Evil Pie. I was like, now I'll be good pie.

0:37:14 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

0:37:15 - (Vincent Rotolo): And that was it. And I found a space and signed a lease and raised money. And that's a whole nother story of how I raised the money and how I sign the lease. That's a whole crazy no con.

0:37:25 - (Dave Burlin): It's not. Not a double zero like you put. You didn't put like double zero, like money down on double zero at the win and spin roulette, did you?

0:37:32 - (Vincent Rotolo): It's even more of a than.

0:37:35 - (Dave Burlin): That's a whole different segment. Yeah, we're definitely inv.

0:37:39 - (Vincent Rotolo): Why?

0:37:39 - (Dave Burlin): We're gonna do just a buffet with people.

0:37:41 - (Vincent Rotolo): You've got the money for the first Good Pie location is an insane story.

0:37:45 - (Dave Burlin): File that away, Greg. File that away.

0:37:49 - (Vincent Rotolo): I'll tell you the short version of it. I got cast on Chopped while I was at Evil Pie. And they came to my house and they shot the intro of me representing Evil Pie. And I contacted Evil Pie and after I left and I was like, hey'm, this is already shot. I want toa do this. They were like, no, we don't want you representing us. I'm like, wait, you don't want me to go do this? This. I signed a contract.

0:38:13 - (Vincent Rotolo): They were like, nope, you're not with us anymore. And whatever. So I called the producer and I was like, hey, I'M not with Evil Pie anymore, but I have Good Pie. They were like, yeah, is it open? I'm like, no. And they're like, well, we don't shoot contestants representing restaurants that don't have restaurants that are not open yet. Like, it's gonna cost us, like, 20 grand to reshoot your thing anyway. Like, we don't even.

0:38:36 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I found out through some friends that she was gonna be at a party in New York. I flew to New York, ambushed her at the party, after I begged my friend Roberto Caparruo to allow me to use his restaurant to shoot the segment on a day where they were already gonna be going around shooting. So I approached her. Thank you for saving my life. And so Beth Schiff was able to reshoot my intro. So when you look at Chopped and you see the intros, I'm at Roberto Capparuco's restaurant. Cause Good Pie wasn't even. Good Pie didn't exist.

0:39:14 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I'm representing Good Pie. So that's the ultimate. Speak it into existence, man. Good Pie wasn't even funded. And I was representing it on the Food Network. Just because I met Bet at this party, I said, listen, I'm in New York. You got a crew going around. We could do it here. The party was at that restaurant. And the Caputo guys and Orlando Foods guys, they were so supportive. And they kind of gave me information about that she would be there. And there was an event going on that was unrelated. So I showed up at the event, basically crashed the party, talked to her.

0:39:46 - (Vincent Rotolo): Roberto allowed me to use his restaurant to shoot the intro. And it didn't cost that much money because they were out shooting anyway. And I told him I would do everything in one take. It would just be 10 minutes. Come in quick. We shot it. They changed. So instead of them recasting an alternate, which they had a fourth person, they ready to go, they allowed me to move forward with that. And so when we were doing it, it was John arena was on that show, Giulie Reggani, Nino Canglio, and me.

0:40:14 - (Vincent Rotolo): And so John called us up on a cell phone, party line, and a group call and said, look, we got toa tell the story of brotherhood and pizza. We love each other. We're helping each other. Whatever happens in this episode, we all need to agree now that we're gonna split that 10 grand, 2500A apiece. And I was like, okay, we agreed to that. And so Nino ended up winning. And then that night, we had a little press event with all the contestants and so they announced at that event that although we agreed to do that, everyone donated their share back to me to help me go open. Goodbyie.

0:40:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): Damn.

0:40:51 - (Vincent Rotolo): So the generosity of Nino, Giulio, and John gave me the money. And then I got some money from here and some money from there, but that was. That $7,500 was the money that I used to put the down payment on, sign the lease, and then I got the rest of the money. Wow.

0:41:05 - (Dave Burlin): I don't know why I'm crying, but that hit me.

0:41:08 - (Vincent Rotolo): That's how good pie got started. Wow.

0:41:11 - (Dave Burlin): Wow.

0:41:12 - (Vincent Rotolo): And very few people really know that.

0:41:14 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

0:41:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): Talk about scrappy.

0:41:16 - (Vincent Rotolo): If I didn't get on the plane to go to New York and basically ambush Beth at that party and beg her to, like, reshoot that intro and basically not use the one that they shot already because. And I showed her the emails from the evil pie guys. I'm like, look. Look what they're doing. And she's like, that's not fair. I got your back. And so she made it happen. And then the guy stepped up and got me the money, even though I thought, okay, if I win this, I'm gonna go sign this lease, because I needed the down payment. That's all I needed. And so I didn't win it. But ``ime'the power of community.

0:41:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): Right?

0:41:51 - (Vincent Rotolo): The brotherhood just backed me up on that.

0:41:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): Because if you gave up, there would be no good pie if you never got your ass on that plane and just kind of took your faith.

0:41:59 - (Vincent Rotolo): It all goes back to the moment where John told me, hey, man. And little things like people telling me things like Michael Ayu would tell me all the time, and Paulie G. Would tell me that Michael gave me my first GM job back in 2007 in Brooklyn at pizzeria. And Michael Agu has Fornino. And I mean, he's incredibly talented. He's one of the unsung heroes of the New York pizza scene. He's like a guy who is one of the geniuses of pizza that don't really get as much accolades as he probably should because he's just an unassuming, gentle giant of a man.

0:42:33 - (Vincent Rotolo): But he's incredible. But all those guys were cheering for me and rooting for me and telling me, hey, man, you could do this. Because it's easy to believe you're gonna fail. It's harder to believe you're gonna be successful. But when you have these huge, larger than life figures in this industry saying, you got this kid, you believe them. Know, Nino was there too. And everybody helped me.

0:42:54 - (Dave Burlin): Thank you for sharing that. I did not know that.

0:42:56 - (Vincent Rotolo): No one knows that.

0:42:57 - (Dave Burlin): And now everyone should know that. But this, this is the thing, man. Thanks for sharing it because that is the reason or a reason that you've done what you've done with Good Pie. And I have to say this because the tattoo is a visible representation of what I knew. There's a deeper story to it and there's layers like there is to everything else. But I can tell you, man, I've worked with restaurants all around the world.

0:43:27 - (Dave Burlin): I've been a part of some of the most elite organizations on the planet. And only few places are willing to get a tattoo of the organization that they work for. Like, like on their bodies s and again, so United States Marine. Right. One of the most tribal organizations on the planet. And as many other military people get theirs too. But that's a very unique one. Then you look at Harley Davidson, stuff like that. People that are clients and people that work there too, becausee they believe in that culture.

0:44:00 - (Dave Burlin): It's what grabbed me. But now I wa wantna talk about because that's just a physical result of what people can see and that says a lot. What else are you doing in the community? Cause I know it's a lot and like, didn'I don't know that you would be doing that. It's not that you wouldn't be, but, like, if your story wasn't your story. Now you have this unanny responsibility to this community to build your team and you're doing it in a lot of ways. So can you talk about some of the philanthropy, some of the work that you're doing with like things like Pizza Fest and stuff like that?

0:44:34 - (Vincent Rotolo): Well, Pizza Fest is great, but we'll get into that in a second. Before we get to Pizza Fest, I'll just talk about core. Core is a group I work with. They have after school programs for just challenged youth that come from challenging backgrounds, whether it's a single parent home or a financial situation. And they create programs for like middle school age kids that that's the age where kids can kind of go either way.

0:45:02 - (Vincent Rotolo): I've done some work with them where we go to the school'two year after school programs and we give just leadership talks. I share my story with them. We try to inspire them, follow to figure out what they're passionate about and try to go after that. Also, there's a real big moment of like this summer we had our first core intern. So we had an internship that was paid by us and Funded by us and one of the core students. So we had a group of core kids come in and we taught them how to make pizza.

0:45:35 - (Vincent Rotolo): And it was a great pizza making kind of tutorial with them. And we go through this pizza team building program where they only get a piece of dough and they get put on random teams. And then there's a topic that we highlight with questions. And so we had 10 multiple choice questions that they're not aware of beforehand. And this was based on the curriculum that they had at core. And then they go through and work together with their groups of kids that they don't know and never met.

0:46:05 - (Vincent Rotolo): And then they answer these questions to get points and then they use those points to go shopping for toppings.

0:46:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): Oh, wow.

0:46:14 - (Vincent Rotolo): So mushrooms are three points or pepperoni is too. And then the kids can really have an opportunity to team build, to work together, to problem solve, to answer questions and then utilize that to get the necessary. Because they don't even have sauce, they just have dough. So they need to earn the right to get sauce or cheese or any other toppings through answering these questions and working together as a group. And then once they do that and we do that format for corporate, any company, we've done hair salons or we did one for Zapposol, we did, you know, I mean, we've done for groups up to 100 people where you're like highlighting the company culture or whatever topic you want to highlight in a fun interactive way. And then they get to make pizza and eat it at the end. So I love core.

0:47:01 - (Vincent Rotolo): The pizza fest started in 2019. John arena and I were driving back from the California Pizza Festival. And I was driving and John and another gentleman were there. We were, we went stopped at Baker, at the Greek place there with the aliens, whatever in Baker, the mand Greek. We stoped that.

0:47:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): And we're the aliensy.

0:47:27 - (Vincent Rotolo): You know, Baker, they got all the alien jerky, right, you guys know. And so we stopped there and I'm driving and we're halfway back home from California, we're reminiscing. I'm there eating like a gyro and John's having his spanopita and he's like, we could do this in Las Vegas. And there's this thing that John does where when he says something, I feel obligated to go make it happen. So I went and made it happen.

0:47:57 - (Vincent Rotolo): I got Tony involved and I got Mike backing involved at the beginning and we formed a little alliance in a group and we started doing these little events and we did A pop up. We were doing some first Fridays in the beginning with the Las Vegas Pizza alliance. And then, you know, I got the funding. I helped get oven sponsor and Greco is now the presenting sponsor. They write a huge check every year to make it possible and shout out to Greco and Sons and they're amazing and they just.

0:48:25 - (Vincent Rotolo): We were able to like get a producer, get a venue, get the participants, you know, get sponsors, get an event planning team, get marketing. And then I don't do anything but call people on the phone and say commit to this. And then once they're committed, I send him over to Josh and he organizes it. And technically he owns the festival. I don't, but I'm like his right hand and trying to put things together and I'm just like a.

0:48:51 - (Vincent Rotolo): I guess the. I've been called a lot of things on the festival. But the real thing is I'm probably the curator of the festival because I want to be a participant above all else and cook alongside what I consider to be the best pizzerias in Las Vegas. And we just wanna showcase our unity, our brotherhood, our together. We're like rooting for each other. Like UConn Pizza just won the world title. They're defending it this year. Pizza Expo.

0:49:16 - (Vincent Rotolo): I've known Alex White for years. I met him out in the desert when he was doing pizza pop ups. And he's another guy who left a real job. But it was during the pandemic when there was a shutdown. So he was already doing pop ups and weddings and things out of like a little mini pizza party oven. And then the pandemic happened and started cooking out of his house and then got into. I actually introduced Alex to Jolene Manina when they were doing the Vegas Test kitchen and she was looking for a pizza operator and I just connected those dots and then that led to him getting his brick and mortar. And I'm so proud of those guys.

0:49:46 - (Vincent Rotolo): And look at them now, World champions. They're doing great. You gott go support Ukcononn. They've garnered so much support and a lot of my customers that go there feel like they need to hide it. Like I was in Uconn the other day and I saw a bunch of my customers in there and. And they're like hiding like, oh shit, Vince from. Vince from Goodpie. You'gonna see us at Yukon. Like it's like you catch somebody cheating on their like, oh my God, we're cheating on you.

0:50:08 - (Tawni Nguyen): Having an affair with this slice right now.

0:50:10 - (Vincent Rotolo): I'm like, by the way, I'm here too, eating pizza. Like, support you'like.

0:50:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's okay.

0:50:15 - (Vincent Rotolo): Like, we love that. So the community really came together and now, you know, this year we had Mike Fakken and Gina Marinelli and VIP and James Trees does a great job. And, you know, I mean, Mike Vy just got nominated for James Beard Award and all these amazing things in the pizza community as we continue to grow. And there's a lot of new places coming up all the time. And so we're just really proud of the fact that the Vegas Pizza Festival is not a for charity organization.

0:50:43 - (Vincent Rotolo): It's a for profit festival. Right. It's got to make some money for it to have longevity. But the sponsorship really makes that possible, that it could just sustain itself. Because these festivals cost six figures to produce and you're not, you can't charge that and you can't make it back on ticket sales alone. So between the sponsors and the ticket sales and Josh stepping up from the industrial event space, cool space, Josh Ableelson, he stepped up and really took the financial risk to make this happen.

0:51:11 - (Vincent Rotolo): And now it's six years later. We missed a year or two in the middle of the pandemic and then came back bigger and better than ever. And so it'll be this November again. And so I can't wait. Because it showcases the love that the pizza community has for one another. The support, the camaraderie, and really the, I mean, just how close we are. It really is a brotherhood and a sisterhood with women in pizza.

0:51:36 - (Vincent Rotolo): With all of the growing components of this, Mike's Hot Honey is getting involved in a bigger role this year. Nice. It goes on and on and on. So that's really exciting and I just can't wait. That's one of my favorite days of the whole year.

0:51:51 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah, I'm excited. I would love to figure out ways that we can collab on that because we've got stuff going on that week as well.

0:51:57 - (Vincent Rotolo): Do a podcast live from the festival.

0:51:59 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah, we can, we can. Yeah, we're set up, we eating, we got a room.

0:52:02 - (Vincent Rotolo): We'll just put you one of the rooms on the side and just send.

0:52:06 - (Dave Burlin): But also, I mean, that's another way do tasting. We can go with the sponsors and everybody. I mean, anything that we can do to help. That's the goal of what we've tried to create here, is we wanna be able to connect more people. And the only way that we can really show the world who Vegas really is is by working together. There's a time to compete. There's a time to collaborate. But for us, part of the reason why the show originally began and what we evolved from is like, not everybody. You. I don't know if you use. Maybe this is a bad example. I don't know if you use billboards, but the Everyday man doesn'in Las Vegas doesn't always have $20,000 a month for a billboard.

0:52:43 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah, no billboard. I don't have it in my mind.

0:52:46 - (Tawni Nguyen): Border moouth is so much better than that.

0:52:48 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah. But even something like this, this conversation is going to be captured and it can be available over and over and over again. And then people that are having their friends come in from out of town. Cause we're not just talking to the people here in Las Vegas. There's 5,000 people that are listening to this in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And when they come out here, they're probably going to end up a good pie. Right.

0:53:11 - (Vincent Rotolo): I hope it's good.

0:53:12 - (Dave Burlin): It's just one of those things where that's what we want to do, is we want to collaborate as much as possible. There's things that we're going to be doing leading up to it. You said something that I have to say this because it keeps coming up more and more since we've started this season of the show. You mentioned working with youth. A lot of people don't know this. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I was a drill instructor for at risk youth for seven years. Sure, seven years. 3,300 people came through my program and were touched by my sarcasm and ability to snap my fingers and yell into their eff and soul.

0:53:47 - (Dave Burlin): And many of those people have changed their lives in a positive direction.

0:53:51 - (Vincent Rotolo): A little discipline goes a long way.

0:53:52 - (Dave Burlin): And that was like one of the places that I felt the most alive. And there's been something that you said that I'm like, ooh, you guys working with? How can I help? I've got people that are speaking at schools, I've got people that are sponsoring other events and stuff like that. Yeah, I would love to connect because we've even had guests on the show like Marissa Hawkins. She's the. She owns Massage Envy and she owns 10 of those. And she does a lot of philanthropic work around that same space too. But it just keeps coming up and I'm like, there's ways that all this stuff is funling to really make an impact.

0:54:21 - (Vincent Rotolo): I've been blessed my business. His partners introduced me to one of their dear friends, Barbara Mallaski, who's amazing, amazing woman, just so kind. Barbara connected me with Core Cool. And she just reached out to me and said, hey, they're looking for people to come speak. And when I go to core and I share just my journey, I wasn't at risk youth, right? I was an at risk adult. Like, I was'at risk 35 year old, I'm still at risk.

0:54:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): Like, literally, like these kids are saving me. Talk about at risk. I'm an at risk single dad right now. I'm an at risk business. I'm completely at risk. Right. So those guys are saving me.

0:55:06 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

0:55:07 - (Vincent Rotolo): No, I. And I'm not kidding. Like, we're all like, one way or another, we're all at risk. Right? Of like, you know, we just. It's crazy, man. Know on Valentine's Day night, one of our former employees was murdered. Her name's Hope and she was a beautiful, beautiful girl. We still don't even know the full story. All we know is she got off work. She's working at Atomic Liquors, bartending. She bartend to serve for us.

0:55:30 - (Vincent Rotolo): Although she's not working with us, she's a member of our family. And like any day, man, every day's a gift. You're not guaranteed anything. And right now we're trying to figure out what happened or how we can help her family and how we can. Like she has a daughter. Like there's a little girl out there who does not have a mom today because somebody pulled out a gun and shot her while she was sitting in a car.

0:55:53 - (Vincent Rotolo): And she's not the type of girl to get into any mistaken identity or'an accident or don't. What? I don't know anything other than she's a wonderful person and didn't deserve that. Right. And so that's affecting my whole team right now's. Like, we're grieving right now. It's hard, but at the same time, you have to find ways to use that to harness that energy into doing good things. When a tragedy happens and we're surrounded by sad stories every day and we want to turn those sad stories into positive results.

0:56:26 - (Vincent Rotolo): And that's my life. I could have gone anyway. But fortunately I had the right people around me that helped me to connect with the God given talents that I have and give me the confidence to want to have enough courage to share that with the world. And that's what we're doing. And I'm so blessed that I have that opportunity because every day's a gift. And I know it's a cliche, but it truly is.

0:56:52 - (Dave Burlin): No, it is. And I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about this. Cause I've been to the downtown location multiple times. I have not made it to the new store yet. I'm anxious to do that. What's different about what?

0:57:08 - (Tawni Nguyen): I've been to the front of your store.

0:57:09 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah, Y. That's cool. That was like, the first location was basically the captured in the first.

0:57:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, right next to remedies. Right.

0:57:15 - (Vincent Rotolo): 10Ft.

0:57:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): I think I went there too late. O. I went there too late.

0:57:19 - (Vincent Rotolo): You should have texted me. All right, we'll get you hooked up.

0:57:21 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's closer to me.

0:57:22 - (Vincent Rotolo): We feed Remedies a lot. The staff over there is eating good pizza.

0:57:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): Oh, awesome.

0:57:25 - (Vincent Rotolo): I think the main difference is, look, when you look at the arts district, we helped to build that community. And when we. You look at Henderson, that community was already built and it was already people in their world and in their habits and in their routines and in their pizza eating paralysis. Yes. Literally, they're habitual pizza eating. I eat here. I eat there. Right there. But we have a database of over 30,000 email addresses and addresses or people that have ordered from us over the last seven years.

0:57:57 - (Vincent Rotolo): And over a third of those people are in Henderson zip codesol. And so people were driving from Henderson to the art district to eat our pizza. And now the main thing we get is you came to us. Like, we don't have to drive 30 minutes and fight through traffic and then fight to park just to eat good pie anymore because. And then we'll eat. I have customers that are driving from Henderson or from Summerlin, and they'll come in and they'll eat and then they'll order pizza to go and, like, take it home so they don't have to make another trip back and, like, freeze it or whatever, keep it.

0:58:28 - (Vincent Rotolo): And so it's like we brought it to them. And I knew that's what we were doing. And we're doing so good. We're really blessed. We're still new. It's three and a half months old. And I think new restaurants are like, when you have another child. Like, I have two kids and two grandkids. And they're all different. They all respond to different things. All of their cries mean something different. All of their needs and wants, their different sensitivities and different peculiarities that you gotta just get to know them. And I think your restaurant the first year is just listening to those babies cries of a restaurant and understanding what they mean.

0:59:06 - (Vincent Rotolo): And those cries come from your customers, your staff, your neighbors, your community. Know it can come from anywhere. And if you're not listening, then you're not. That's my job is to go in and listen to the baby cry and have to decipher what those needs are so I can meet them and exceed those expectations. And then that's how we'll build something special that will be there for the next 30 plus years. Because I have a long term lease, I put everything into the build out.

0:59:36 - (Vincent Rotolo): Now that's the metaphorical difference or the difference that is my own personal difference. But the other difference is that besides it being a community, we don't have a bar you sit down at, right? We have a full bar, but you don't sit at a bar. It's a service bar. You kind of look at it and then it's a counter where you pick up your pizzas or you get your slices. And then if you're sitting for full service, the menu the same, the cocktail menus is the same.

1:00:00 - (Vincent Rotolo): We have a great mixologist that we work with who's incredible, who's so talented that she's contractually obligated and other things that I can't even mention her name. But fortunately she continues to work with us on developing an incredible cocktail program that tells our story. That's connected to New York, that's connected to Italy, that's connected to pizza. That makes sense in a harmonious cause. A lot of places you go to, you're gonna see the psalms or the beverage directors ego all over the thing and it just doesn't connect with the food or the chef. They're just on different pages here.

1:00:36 - (Vincent Rotolo): We have a harmonious connection between the food and beverage. They're meant to be enjoyed together as one. And it's a beautiful beverage program. It's so underrated. It could be nationally ranked if we pushed it out. Like, it's really, really great. You, we have, I mean, we use the best cocktails. We have draft cocktails at our high end. Like we just did a deal with Tito's. We have a whole line of Tito's Bloody Marys. Tito's is the exclusive supplier of our vodka sauce.

1:01:01 - (Vincent Rotolo): And we also did a deal with Casamigos Tequila, which it's like unbelievable. Like we have Cadillac margaritas, Casa Migos Blanco and Grandogier on draft in a margarita. It's great. And we do it for happy hour for half price.

1:01:15 - (Dave Burlin): Nice.

1:01:16 - (Vincent Rotolo): So it's wonderful. And that being said, I stopped drinking.

1:01:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): You're like, here I am talking about tequila on draft.

1:01:24 - (Dave Burlin): But you got mocktails.

1:01:26 - (Vincent Rotolo): We have incredible mocktails. RGM is also sober. Shout out to Leah Andrews. She's the best GM in the world.

1:01:32 - (Dave Burlin): Cool.

1:01:32 - (Vincent Rotolo): She's our true dead motother and our fairy godmother, and that's cool. She's a queen and a princess at the same time. She's the best, and she takes care of us, and she's sober and has inspired us to create this wonderful. I don't know if we use the term mocktail. I think it's. I was told it's frowned upon, but it's a NA beverage list, and it's a wonderful thing, and it's a big deal in our community. Like, there's a lot of sober people that are still going out to bars and drinking.

1:02:01 - (Vincent Rotolo): Number one, the margins are amazing, and as a business owner, you want that. But number two, like, you're meeting the needs. Like, people that are sober or just choose not to drink. Like, I'll have a drink for a birthday or a celebration or a glass of wine here and there, but I don't keep liquor in the house anymore. Like, I used to have a whole bar in my house. Like, I got rid of all that stuff. I, like, gave it away.

1:02:24 - (Vincent Rotolo): I don't drink. I don't go home and need to have a wine or a whiskey. I'll go home and have a. I've been juicing a lot. Like, get a bunch of greens. I kale, parsley, and all the greens, and I'juice some pineapples and all that. And I'm trying to get healthy, and I've been working out almost every day and just really want to have a sound mind, sound body, and take just on a wellness path at this point in my life.

1:02:47 - (Vincent Rotolo): But it's great that we could have the option to do that without feeling like. Like, I didn't have to get in a really bad car accident for that to happen. I didn't have to end someone's life accidentally behind the wheel of a car for that to happen. I didn't have to have a tragedy or me make a huge mistake while I was drunk or do something really bad for me to say o. I just said, hey, I want to put things in my body that make me proud and are gonna give me longevity and make me think more clearly and be a better dad and be a better, you know, partner and be a better leader in my business and build a better culture. And I just chose that.

1:03:33 - (Vincent Rotolo): But, yeah, every July 4th, I'm getting drunk with the teah.

1:03:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): I can't wait to see your next tattoo.

1:03:38 - (Vincent Rotolo): My God.

1:03:39 - (Dave Burlin): If you ever need dj. If you ever need a DJ for that man, let me know. I got you.

1:03:43 - (Vincent Rotolo): Okay?

1:03:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): There's already somebody I want.

1:03:46 - (Vincent Rotolo): Are you coming this year?

1:03:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, I'm coming. I'll be there. I'll eat all your pizza.

1:03:49 - (Vincent Rotolo): You promiseise?

1:03:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): This is a pinky promise.

1:03:52 - (Vincent Rotolo): Because remedies this pinky'messed up but a whole that's a piece of injury. My daughter's pinky promise. She's like two turning three and she's like pinky promise, pinky promise.

1:04:01 - (Dave Burlin): It's interesting because as I spent a lot more time in the last year and a half really shifting a lot of my work and energy over into the restaurant world ca because you know, I'm doing the system and all that stuff with Mike back in Oklahoma. But I really had to find my voice in that because I was crossing over from weddings and there's a lot of identity that comes with me being in the military space for entrepreneurship and being in weddings.

1:04:26 - (Dave Burlin): And then it's like wait, you're doing restaurant stuff too? And I had to come up with my own pitch, if you will. But really what are my belief systems under what really helps a good restaurant that's trying to make an impact or even trying to make money. Right. And I came up with these three lines. There's three lines that really matter and you fill all of them. Number one, you have to have good food.

1:04:49 - (Dave Burlin): Good food, good experience is one line. It's a line of people that are lined up outside of your restaurant that can't wait to eat your food. That's common sense. But most people think that's the only line that matters. You have a line of people whether you realize it or not, especially after this, if you don't already. You have a line of people that cannot wait to work for you because're luck of what you're creating. And that's very important because and I wantna give you credit to this, and I Sincerely mean this/ncent is that you are.

1:05:22 - (Dave Burlin): You're a little bit older than me. I'm 44. But we come from the generation where we can just as easily carry on that same thing that was beat into us is that it's do what I say, not what I do and treat people like that.

1:05:37 - (Vincent Rotolo): It doesn't work.

1:05:38 - (Dave Burlin): It doesn't. But some people still believe that it does. But because we've chosen to now pass down to embrace our team, like I haven't even told you this. One of my biggest mentors of what the person I go to when it comes to talking about leadership and team is a guy, Lee Cockrel. He's a good friend of mine. He was the VP of Operations for Disney for 15 years. He wrote the Principles of Leadership at Disney.

1:06:01 - (Vincent Rotolo): Oh, wow.

1:06:02 - (Dave Burlin): He's a phenomenal guy. I'd love to intro you to him. He's gonna be hosting some workshops out here. But he's the guy that I go to. He's a veteran, but he also knows how to treat people and he believes that you can treat people the, the best in the world. They're still onlynna be able to do about 80% of what you're capable of. But it's better to have more of those people than it is people that they are re looking to stabby you in the back.

1:06:23 - (Dave Burlin): So that line of people that can't wait to work for you, you have that, the fun one. And this isn't for all restaurants. Not all restaurants are built for this. But this is one of the things that you talk about, you and I talked about is a secret line out the back door that does massive catering that can pay your bills. And I know that that's a little bit of a like challenge with the downtown because you're so busy and you only have so much oven space, but that's something that you have a lot more capability for out south.

1:06:51 - (Vincent Rotolo): Is that right? Yeah. And Henderson is a much bigger kitchen. So we do have the ability to get out catering. Just the layout is much more user friendly, like a van can pull up right to the kitchen door. What I've learned is that being a great restauranteur and being a great caterer are two different things. In fact, if you looked at the best catering out there, they're catering companies that are not in the restaurant business. Yeah, restaurants that cater do a shitty job.

1:07:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, it's shitty food. Good logistics. That's why they're a catering company, not a business.

1:07:24 - (Dave Burlin): Exact.

1:07:24 - (Vincent Rotolo): But logistics is so important of catering. It's a different animal, the pricing'different and you just how you treat a lead. Literally. Lead generation and lead conversion is huge in catering. Catering sales is like, that's the rainmaker in that business. Right. You need someone generating leads all the time. You got toa be out there going after pitching business. And unless you're doing it as an owner, like that's my job as the owner to go do that. And I'm not great at that.

1:07:50 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I can learn it.

1:07:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): You can pitch in an Uber, no problem.

1:07:54 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah, Right. If I can raise money to like, hey, give me a half a million to go Build a restaurant. Then shouldn't I be able to get a catering deal done? But I haven't put enough time and energy into it because number one, before three and a half months ago, we didn't have the ability to execute. But now that we do, that's one of my goals for this year is to go after all the medical offices, all the hospitals, all the businesses that are surrounding in the Henderson area. There's enough business just within a 22 mile radius of 835 Seven Hills Drive, let alone the homes that are there. But there's a lot of great businesses out there there and it's a booming area. I just went over to chicken and Pickle. Yah, the pickleball place over there. Unbelievable place.

1:08:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): I have a gift. Cards are there. Maybe I'll go there. I be. I'll be at your pace on Sunday.

1:08:39 - (Vincent Rotolo): I don't. I've never played pickleball. You want to play?

1:08:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): I have never played either. I have gift cards.

1:08:44 - (Dave Burlin): We'll go.

1:08:45 - (Vincent Rotolo): I'll go eat some chicken.

1:08:47 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah, I don't know if I'm gonn.

1:08:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): Picklele to make a bowl of ourself.

1:08:52 - (Vincent Rotolo): I just. Sorry. Pickleballers out there gonna have fun, play tennis. Come on.

1:08:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): I got a tennis coach two years ago is Marty. He was like, why are you doing tennis? I was like, I someonen kick ass when I get to pickleball my friends.

1:09:07 - (Vincent Rotolo): And there was these pickleballers out on the tennis court and real tennis players showed up and I thought they were gonna get their asses. Ye thought the pickle ballers was gonna get bum rushed. He was like, it turned ghetto real quick.

1:09:17 - (Tawni Nguyen): You that's the street in us'see the.

1:09:20 - (Vincent Rotolo): Will Smith movie where he played like Venus Will fathereah. Like it was a tennis court in the hood. That's what this turned into. They rolled up like, yo, why you on our court? You're not even real tennis. It was like they're about to rumble. The pickle bowlers were about to get jumped and it was like y when I saw that, I was like, all right, I'm not playing pickleball. I'm just playing real tennis. Cuz think about sorry to all the pickleballers. I know you think you're cool and I know you got your little thing and it's cute. It's the outfit. It's kind of cute, but play tennis. Yeah, Pickleball.

1:09:51 - (Vincent Rotolo): All right. Pickleball is a new sushi burrito. It's gonna be done in like a year.

1:09:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): O My God.

1:09:56 - (Vincent Rotolo): Thank you. Remember see shots fire it Shots fired.

1:10:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): No one finally said it.

1:10:01 - (Vincent Rotolo): Everybody was like, yo, I'm open a sushi burrito place. Now they're closed and lost all their money.

1:10:05 - (Dave Burlin): We have shots fired.

1:10:06 - (Vincent Rotolo): Who'what? Sushi buro place is still open.

1:10:09 - (Dave Burlin): None of them true.

1:10:10 - (Vincent Rotolo): There was one on every corner.

1:10:11 - (Dave Burlin): So I did not tell you this before. I actually have.

1:10:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): There's a lot of things you haven't told us, Dave.

1:10:16 - (Dave Burlin): What's I I haven't told you? This is a manifesting podcast. When I say that, like you talked about who spoke it into existence.

1:10:25 - (Vincent Rotolo): I learned a lot about that. Been doing a lot of it.

1:10:27 - (Dave Burlin): Scratching the surface because you mentioned these different places. Who's that miracle client or team or business that you would love to cater, have the opportunity to cater for at some point? Because I say that like we're friends with Christina, right? And the women in pizza. She's right across the street from ufc and like she's been in that world, she's always serving that world and she's getting closer and closer and she's done it in some capacity. But is there anybody in Las Vegas that you would love the ability to get some pizza in front of? And that could be from a catering perspective or even just like, is it Mike Tyson? You trying to get throw up P at Mike Tysonh?

1:11:04 - (Vincent Rotolo): You know, we've served several celebritiesol. None that I can mention by name, but Minem Clooney, Mark Wahlberg. Not by name. Just saying some other celebrities have come in. It rhymes with Mark Wahlberg. N We've got some people that come in. I know Joe Rogan. He's a podcast guy. You might have heard of him. He's been through good podcast men.

1:11:23 - (Dave Burlin): People say that I look like Joe Rogan, but I actually say he looks like me.

1:11:27 - (Vincent Rotolo): I meanidding real ro.

1:11:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): We got knock. We got a knock.

1:11:33 - (Dave Burlin): No, but Joe'greg can you bring thehrooms out?

1:11:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): We got knock the mushrooms.

1:11:39 - (Dave Burlin): Wow.

1:11:40 - (Vincent Rotolo): We gonna microdose. Cuz I don't do that. Yeah, I don't do that on camera. No, I don't do that.

1:11:45 - (Dave Burlin): I kidding.

1:11:46 - (Vincent Rotolo): No. But the fact is, is that I went through a time where I was searching for different manifestation methods. I started reading books. I read an amazing book by Ryan Holliday called Ego is the Enemy. Love you.

1:12:07 - (Dave Burlin): I slepp to it at night.

1:12:08 - (Vincent Rotolo): Did read it. Yeah, it's a great book. I read that about a couple months ago and I've been getting involved in different but for me, like manifesting like the new and improved manifesting for me is praying and I'm getting closer and closer to Jesus and becoming a Christian. I've never been really super religious person. My son Justin and his partner Stephanie have gotten me involved in going with them on Sundays to Canyon Ridge Christian Church up on Lone Mountain and Jones and I go every week and I'm getting more and more involved. I really feel like there's a lot of different areas in my life where God's pulling me closer and I've prayed and I think that's a great question for everybody to ask themself. Like whatever God you believe in or whoever you look up to or whatever you believe is real.

1:13:05 - (Vincent Rotolo): You know, what is the difference between praying and manifesting and what's the difference between O God? And I'm putting it out on the universe, Is it the universe? Is it God? It what's going on out there? And there's a series going through the church right now. It's a friendship series and it's really about the friendships that you have or don't have or the way that you've allowed yourself to be a friend to God first and him a friend to you through Jesus. And I don't want to get too deep into it because I'm not like some people are like anti religion and I used to feel the same way. But what I found is that when you go to a place that has a set of values that match your values, all of a sudden it's easy for you to kind of start getting more curious and getting closer to understanding what it is.

1:13:57 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I think that the catering opportunities that I'm really looking for are gonna be through the church because you're feeding people in a different way that are gonna consume the food differently. And I think that there's a lot of catering through the church, not just as a business. Cause I'm probably not even gonna make money. I maybe donating some of the proceeds back to the church or doing. I'd love to build the catering business up to the point where I can donate a percentage of all the catering proceeds back to the church as a company.

1:14:28 - (Vincent Rotolo): But I really wanna like. I've never believed in quantity over quality and I found a way to scale the business and grow it to the quality is actually getting better as we grow, which is usually the opposite in most businesses like ours. And so I'm always going toa be quality driven. And when you do large scale catering, yes, you can make money, but at what cost? And so I need to figure out what People are out there trying to go after every piece of catering business they can or getting this big piece of catering business.

1:15:02 - (Vincent Rotolo): What I want to do is find the right catering partners that are going to be hit us at the sweet spot of volume where it's manageable, we can maintain quality standards and we can do it on a regular basis. And with the church gatherings, that checks those boxes for us. I love that. And so I'm looking to, you know, and it's also healing for me spiritually because I have two grandkids now. Like, I'm a granddad. And like, when you become a grandparent, you feel this need. I don't know about other grandparents, but I have felt this need to now become the spiritual leader of my family.

1:15:39 - (Vincent Rotolo): And in order to do that, like, I have to surround myself with people who are the spiritual leaders of their families. And so that's what I've been doing. And it's changing me. And it's just a beautiful transformation. And I'm really just. I'm proud of myself. And it's coming from a good place of accomplishment. Not just a false sense of. I've been proud of myself before, but in a different way.

1:16:04 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah, Egoide ego. Yeah, Pride and ego. Ye.

1:16:07 - (Tawni Nguyen): Pride and proud is different. Y.

1:16:09 - (Vincent Rotolo): You know. And so I'm meeting with them on Thursday.

1:16:13 - (Dave Burlin): Cool.

1:16:13 - (Vincent Rotolo): We're gonna open this dialogue and see how we could just work better together and become partners. And I'm gonna use that as a model to approach some other churches. I've already met with the lead pastor of church in Henderson, and we wanna be people through the church.

1:16:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's awesome. I'm gonna be there on Sunday after church.

1:16:32 - (Vincent Rotolo): Oh, good. Do you go to church?

1:16:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): City lights, though.

1:16:35 - (Vincent Rotolo): Oh, good.

1:16:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): Even though it's really far from.

1:16:37 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah, it's really far from.

1:16:39 - (Vincent Rotolo): I wantn.

1:16:40 - (Dave Burlin): I'd go to the crossing. I go to the crossing. I go crossing midtown.

1:16:43 - (Vincent Rotolo): Different church. There's some amazing churches.

1:16:45 - (Tawni Nguyen): If you're willing to cheat on your.

1:16:47 - (Vincent Rotolo): Church, know, it's not even donourgin.

1:16:49 - (Dave Burlin): It's not even cheating.

1:16:50 - (Vincent Rotolo): There's this whole.

1:16:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): I've been sampling, you know, I go to different places. How does it make me feel? Am I spiritually connected?

1:16:56 - (Vincent Rotolo): Can I ask a question thenah? How does your church or how do you feel about women teaching in the church? Like spiritual teaching, women pastors, women leading sermons, women leading service. Is that a thingus? It became a topic recently that some people were. And we touched upon it. I'm just curious about.

1:17:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): I think it's taboo because it's not something that's been done a lot before. Cause I am also not a Christian. I'm just spiritually open. I was raised as a Buddhist. So for me, spirituality is about connecting to oneself through other means, through other vessels. Because we are just expanding our vessel to receive, to be bigger, to be more abundant, to flow into other people. So the church I go to doesn't really matter.

1:17:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's the words that are fed to me that day and how it makes me resonate and how it sits with me. How it. I call it cutting, right? Like cows cud I chew on it for a while, spit it back up, chew it again. Like, how does it really make an impact on me? I love that it could be four words. It could be a sentence, it could be seven words. It's whatever. That's actually gonna reflect on how I choose to show up for other people. Cause there's a lot of people you talk to that reads books after books after books, after audiobooks, but none of those words really changed them because they haven't applied a single thing in there.

1:18:08 - (Tawni Nguyen): So that, for me, it's how I choose to lead my life. In terms of. Choose something, let it change you. Let it kind of like you, right? Like hearing your story on transformation and you leaving good to become great. And sometimes you have to make that sacrifice. But only you will know that that's the kind of person it takes. Because the person that got you to level one isn't the same person right now. That's going to get you to level 10.

1:18:31 - (Tawni Nguyen): And people can't let that go so much.

1:18:33 - (Vincent Rotolo): That's beautiful.

1:18:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): Y.

1:18:35 - (Vincent Rotolo): Thank you for sharing that.

1:18:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, yeah.

1:18:36 - (Dave Burlin): We actually talked about this. Not. This came up the other night. Like, one of my mentors, Dave Meltzer, he talks about base camps. There's like, level one all the way to level 10. And he goes, the thing is, is every next level wants you to be at the table. It's just sometimes you can come to our table, but you can't wear that jacket. And it's not your jacket. It's the metaphor of sometimes the jacket is the thing that we stay comfortable in.

1:19:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's an identity that people can't shed because they don't allow themselves to lean into resistant to become a different person. New level, new devil. That's what I say it. But usually the devil's the person that's unwilling to look in the mirror and see what kind of fight that they have to go through to become that next level.

1:19:19 - (Vincent Rotolo): It's so important that you invest in development and growth as it just. And there's so many different. Just books or podcast or audio books or different things that you can do to just get better. But you do need to take a look at what your behavior, where it's coming from and how to. Like. I was talking to someone recently about therapy and I think that when you go to the gym, you work out. Like some people. Like, I'm always gonna work out. Right. I'm always gonna wanna be fit. I'm always gonna wanna get my body.

1:19:58 - (Vincent Rotolo): Like take care of my body. Right. And stretch and yoga and Pilates and all the wellness things for your body. That's great.

1:20:05 - (Dave Burlin): Maybe not Pilates. Well, I'm just kidding.

1:20:07 - (Vincent Rotolo): Not. But in general it's popular.

1:20:09 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

1:20:10 - (Vincent Rotolo): Go to a Pilates thing, you can't get in.

1:20:11 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah, like.

1:20:12 - (Vincent Rotolo): Well, especially you. But I can't get any. But just saying, like, you can't meaning no one. They're all books. Yeah. So anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that I look at therapy as that mental workout, that workout for your mind. And there's people that are connected to wellness. And yes, by exercising it does give you some great mental health benefits. But you need to exercise your mind and your thoughts. I started journaling.

1:20:44 - (Vincent Rotolo): A girlfriend that I've been kind of dating for Christmas gave me a journal.

1:20:49 - (Dave Burlin): Cool.

1:20:50 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I just, I never really write like I've journaled.

1:20:54 - (Dave Burlin): Is it a prompt journal?

1:20:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): No, it's a handwritten, a leather bound.

1:20:58 - (Dave Burlin): Cool.

1:20:58 - (Vincent Rotolo): You got it. Write with your hand.

1:21:00 - (Dave Burlin): Nice.

1:21:00 - (Vincent Rotolo): And you know, when I write with my hand, which I rarely do, it slows me down and it brings me back to a time of my life when I was writing with my hands. And journaling by hand is amazing. And I wrote down a bunch of things in early January. Not like New Year's resolutions, but just things. Just things that were on my mind. And you get them off your mind by putting them down on paper. And now you can revisit and look at them.

1:21:29 - (Vincent Rotolo): And I went back just a month later and I looked at the things I wrote down. It was like January 7th or 8th, and there were seven things I wrote down and four of them already came true. And I didn't even try. It wasn't a goal I was working on. It was just something that I was thinking about that I wrote down. So you want to talk about manifesting? Like, I didn't prey on it. I didn't manifest it. All I did was write it down and it just happened.

1:21:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): Did it though?

1:21:56 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

1:21:57 - (Tawni Nguyen): You Recalibrated your actions to become the person.

1:21:59 - (Vincent Rotolo): Maybe, maybe subconsciously I was chasing after that eff effortlessly without really being aware.

1:22:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): Most orate 95% subconscious, so.

1:22:07 - (Vincent Rotolo): Right. So crazy thing about journaling 4 out of 7 without. All I did was write it down.

1:22:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): I became aware of it very much.

1:22:17 - (Vincent Rotolo): Aware that I put it on paper. And I've never really been like. I've been a person who, like, oh, let's write this down, or write a business plan or that type of thing. But when it comes to personal.

1:22:27 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

1:22:28 - (Vincent Rotolo): I haven't. I'm not that guy that writes stuff down. I'm gonna become that person.

1:22:33 - (Dave Burlin): A funny thing happened this weekend. I was over at Prince Street Pizza.

1:22:36 - (Vincent Rotolo): Oh, you were?

1:22:37 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah, I was.

1:22:38 - (Vincent Rotolo): Sorry, I was.

1:22:39 - (Dave Burlin): It was proximity.

1:22:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): Can you hear the eye proximity?

1:22:44 - (Dave Burlin): But here's a beautiful thing now. The pizza boxes were stacked up.

1:22:49 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah.

1:22:50 - (Dave Burlin): And it says on one side, delivering the other side happiness. Yeah. That's Tony Sha's book.

1:22:55 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah, Tony's book.

1:22:56 - (Dave Burlin): And when they were stacked a certain way, I saw it, I took a picture, I sent it to this girl who's an angel in my life, Ariel. She's been on the show. We talk about so many things. Religion, business, all of it. And I sent her a picture of that. And I said. Cause I told her the story about me coming here because of that. I.

1:23:14 - (Vincent Rotolo): That.

1:23:14 - (Dave Burlin): She goes, I'm listening to that book right now.

1:23:17 - (Vincent Rotolo): Oh, good.

1:23:18 - (Dave Burlin): And I go, what's your great book? I go, what's your biggest takeaway? And she goes, when the woman comes to him at the party and she said to him, envision, believe and create your own universe, and the universe will form around you. She goes, do you remember that? And I go, yeah. I cried a little bit because I was like, wow. I wrote that down on a desktop. A picture of Zappos on my desktop in 2013.

1:23:42 - (Dave Burlin): And that's why I'm here.

1:23:44 - (Vincent Rotolo): Amazing.

1:23:44 - (Dave Burlin): So it's like the power of that, of writing it down and then words matter. So. Welcome to level one. Welcome to the show.

1:23:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Level two.

1:23:53 - (Dave Burlin): We'll have you back 400 times.

1:23:54 - (Vincent Rotolo): I love everything you just said. Except it was at Prince.

1:23:57 - (Dave Burlin): I know.

1:23:59 - (Vincent Rotolo): I love every pizzer Vegas, but Prince street is not a ve.

1:24:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): We can roast Dave on Sunday when I.

1:24:04 - (Vincent Rotolo): They're not a Vegas pizzeria. I'm sorry.

1:24:06 - (Tawni Nguyen): I know.

1:24:09 - (Vincent Rotolo): For not putting a fantastic local pizzeria in there and selling out. Shout out to those guys. You're doing a great job. Station prediction. PR street won't be in business.

1:24:21 - (Dave Burlin): True.

1:24:21 - (Vincent Rotolo): It Just won.

1:24:22 - (Dave Burlin): It's also the, the feng shui where you like order at the.

1:24:26 - (Vincent Rotolo): And like. No, the layout'fine it's just.

1:24:28 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

1:24:29 - (Vincent Rotolo): Once. Listen, the Vegas pizza consumer is changing. Okay. It used to be fast and cheap was good. Now it's the opposite. It's got to be fast and good and not cheap. And I'm just telling you Prince street, whatever they think they are, they don't have a dough process that's manageable. Their dough is like not really digestible. I don't wanna criticize anybody, but I know what I'm talking about when it comes to dough.

1:24:56 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

1:24:56 - (Vincent Rotolo): The dough's not fermented properly. I know people that work there. They're selling dough that's like maybe four or five hours old.

1:25:01 - (Dave Burlin): Wow.

1:25:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): Because they'just pumping outing in your stomach and it's.

1:25:05 - (Vincent Rotolo): Try eating a bag of flour.

1:25:06 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

1:25:07 - (Vincent Rotolo): See how your body reacts. It's horrible what they're doing. Sorry. But I got. I got to keep it real. Shots fired PA will not be at the Vegas Pizza Festival. They're not a Vegas pizzeria. They're just a franchise. And it's okay. But it's disappointing because a great pizzeria is opening up nearby in that area. And it's at the Bend, which is a great project that's being done by Jay Dapper and his crew.

1:25:36 - (Vincent Rotolo): Slice Aeria by Metro Pizza dop. Metro's new slice shop. It'gonna be opening there.

1:25:41 - (Dave Burlin): Very cool.

1:25:42 - (Vincent Rotolo): And Mothership Coffee Roasts is their dinette diner that won a competitionh that's on Durango.

1:25:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): I went to that Mothership Fun.

1:25:50 - (Vincent Rotolo): It's on Sunday Sunset.

1:25:51 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah, right.

1:25:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): They're trying to just have just local shops right there.

1:25:54 - (Vincent Rotolo): It's amazing.

1:25:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): I went there for that reason.

1:25:56 - (Vincent Rotolo): They've done a great job of curating. Wonderful. They've got a ramen bar that just opened that's gonna be fantastic.

1:26:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): Awome.

1:26:02 - (Vincent Rotolo): And my friend makes chef union. My friend Larry, they opened up on California. They're gonna be on the second level.

1:26:08 - (Dave Burlin): Field trip.

1:26:09 - (Vincent Rotolo): Let me just tell you when Metro opens Prince Reach in trouble.

1:26:13 - (Dave Burlin): Okay.

1:26:14 - (Vincent Rotolo): Sorry.

1:26:14 - (Dave Burlin): Cool.

1:26:15 - (Vincent Rotolo): Because that is the properly fermented dough. That's like good for your body.

1:26:18 - (Dave Burlin): Yah. I love it.

1:26:19 - (Vincent Rotolo): That's why everybody's getting celiac and gluten free. If you want to have celiac and have your body reject gluten, keep eating Prince Street Pizza. I love it.

1:26:26 - (Tawni Nguyen): Well, thank you for that. That's the best way we could end it. Cause that speaks close to my heart. And that's how we Go to part two.

1:26:31 - (Dave Burlin): And yeah, and station is never doing.

1:26:33 - (Vincent Rotolo): A deal with me now. Sorry.

1:26:35 - (Dave Burlin): So where can people find you? Where do people connect and have.

1:26:41 - (Vincent Rotolo): After I said that, I don't want.

1:26:41 - (Dave Burlin): Anyone to everify me bloody his home.

1:26:45 - (Vincent Rotolo): Address in the show. Not coming for me now. No, listen, I gotta keep it real as a pizza guy, you know what I mean? I got toa keep it real. And if they were doing things right, I would give them all praise, you know what I mean? But they're not.

1:26:56 - (Tawni Nguyen): And so we're after the truth.

1:26:58 - (Dave Burlin): They're gonna go, well, if we create a east coast, west coast war, we just sell more records. Right.

1:27:03 - (Vincent Rotolo): As Drew from Unlockood say, I'm gonna clown it. If they're clowns, they're getting clown.

1:27:08 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

1:27:08 - (Vincent Rotolo): So where can they find me? Yeah, my email is pizza at goodpie do. Com at Instagram goodpile o@goodpy LV www.goodpie.com There it is. The website that we bought. So easy. Just Google good pie, you'll see it. We're at 835 Seven Hills Dr. In Henderson, right off Horizon Ridge and just off St. Rose Parkway there. That. That's the most fun place.

1:27:37 - (Dave Burlin): Yeah.

1:27:37 - (Vincent Rotolo): And then the arts district. There's usually a long wait on the weekends. Arts district. If you want to get a seat, try to go early on maybe Wednesday, maybe Tuesday.

1:27:48 - (Dave Burlin): I get so much work done there. I'll just go. I send you a picture every time I come. I just sit right there.

1:27:52 - (Vincent Rotolo): You can get a happy hour. Great. You know, four to six, they got a great happy hour. And. And not everybody knows this, but I'll give you guys a scoop. Every Tuesday, rightuse? Today's Tuesday, isn't it? It's Tuesday.

1:28:05 - (Dave Burlin): Today is.

1:28:05 - (Vincent Rotolo): Today's Tuesday.

1:28:06 - (Tawni Nguyen): I was like, is it? I questioned my own week.

1:28:09 - (Vincent Rotolo): It's Tuesday. We started a thing called Teini Tuesday.

1:28:12 - (Dave Burlin): Okay.

1:28:13 - (Vincent Rotolo): And every Tuesday, martinis are $9. At both locations. We have an entire martini menu. It's $9. They're great.

1:28:21 - (Tawni Nguyen): Teeny Tuesdaysen Tuesday.

1:28:23 - (Vincent Rotolo): So, you know, like it all day every Tuesday. And we got a great. For $9, we feed the whole family. Every Wednesday in Henderson, it's the family feast. You get pizza, you get a pasta, you get a salad and something for the kids and a dessert and all the things.

1:28:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): Or just me on a regular Tuesday.

1:28:40 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah, you a regular night, by the way. You could. You could do that. You could do that. It's dine in only stretch pants day. Good pie is for the children.

1:28:48 - (Dave Burlin): Cool.

1:28:49 - (Vincent Rotolo): You know, we got. We have a wall there in Henderson where the kids can color their pizza things and they get. We put them on the wall and we hang them up. And of course, the grandma wall is still growing in Henderson, which we love. So it's been a wonderful experience being the community of Henderson. We've been welcomed and we love Henderson so much. So thank you.

1:29:08 - (Dave Burlin): I love it. Well, I'm coming by, my friend. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

1:29:11 - (Vincent Rotolo): My pleasure. I appreciate you.

1:29:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): Appreciate you love this conversation. I didn't know where what kind of ra wenna go.

1:29:17 - (Dave Burlin): Gotta hit the. We gotta hit the air 5.

1:29:19 - (Vincent Rotolo): Oh, I got like that freeze frame. Oh, nice. All right, good hu.

1:29:23 - (Dave Burlin): Cause we can freeze fr. I give you one of these.

1:29:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): One of these, One of these.

1:29:27 - (Vincent Rotolo): Hey, don't be eating fugazi pizza. Get the me fermented dough in the right light.

1:29:33 - (Dave Burlin): You look like Tony Damansel.

1:29:35 - (Vincent Rotolo): Tony Dansel.

1:29:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): Love it. That's it for us. You know how to get in touch with me and Dave slide into our DMs. Please go get some good pizza with us. Holler at us. Please find him. We can roast each other, right?

1:29:47 - (Vincent Rotolo): Yeah, roast me. Tony dance is like 97.

1:29:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): We're gonna have a Vincent roast day.

1:29:56 - (Dave Burlin): The idea of pursue Vegas was to really highlight the local people that really make Vegas Vegas.

1:30:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): I love that aspect of how these visionaries are actually bringing people together.

1:30:06 - (Dave Burlin): When we hit record, our responsibility is to connect the people of our city so we can show the world who we really are.