I Quit the Best Job I Ever Had to Sell Pizza

In this series, professionals share all the right — and wrong — ways to leave a job. Follow the stories here, and write your own (please include #IQuit somewhere in the body of your post).

I quit the best job I ever had. My exact job on Wall Street – supporting sell-side equity analysts as they produced research reports on stocks – was exactly what I wanted to do. The work was engaging and challenging, and my coworkers were generous, kind, and brilliant.

Still, I had to quit. Specifically, I saw the people above me struggling to be truly successful because our industry was changing. If these people with more experience and knowledge were having difficulty, my chances at long-term success seemed bleak.

To arrive at my decision, I answered two questions: “Why should I leave?” and – when I had developed the reasoning – “When should I leave?”

To answer the first question, I looked at my coworkers: both peers and superiors. Though the world might be in a constant state of flux, the best proxy for the future remains the past. And since I was still young and had little of a past from which to draw conclusions, I looked to the coworkers I so greatly admired. In speaking with them, I learned about the lives they had lived and I realized that if I followed the same path, I would be comfortable but not happy. Applying the examples and stories of my superiors to my own life and finding myself unsatisfied explains why I had to leave.

I also had been working on the idea of Rosa’s Fresh Pizza for 6-8 months while I was still employed. To leave my comfortable existence, I had to outline basic goals for myself. I had always wanted to own my own business and I thought I had developed the foundation for a successful concept in Rosa’s.

The question of when to leave was much easier to answer. My time in New York had forced me to grow slightly impatient and the question became: “Why waste time?” While discussing my thoughts with a coworker, he summed it up perfectly for me. He said there are basically two times in your life when you can take risk: when you are very young and have no encumbrances; and when you are very old and have fulfilled all your commitments and responsibilities.

At the time, I was 25 years old, single and without kids or even a mortgage. In my mind, taking on those responsibilities was just as far off as fulfilling them. So I resolved to quit my job at 25 and start Rosa’s Fresh Pizza.

My last day on Wall Street was March 31, 2013. Through savvy investing, I had built a portfolio of stocks that collateralized a loan for the cost of Rosa’s construction. I moved home to Philadelphia, lived with my parents for 8 months while Rosa’s was built, and finally opened the doors to the shop on December 20th, 2013.

The first six months of operation were an incredible experience where I learned a ton about pizza production (at inception, a completely foreign process to me) and employee management (again, a completely foreign concept to me at the time).

From working on Wall Street, I grew accustomed to long hours. At Rosa’s, I spend at least 12 hours in the shop Monday through Saturday. At 8:30 a.m. I open the shop up, prep the food, and heat the ovens. I remain until we close at 8 p.m. My work at Rosa’s is far more rewarding and liberating, but only after I grew comfortable with the inherent uncertainty in entrepreneurship.

On January 13th of this year, an episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show aired featuring Rosa’s and our pay-it-forward business model through which our paying customers can pre-purchase slices of pizza that become available to any homeless person who walks through our doors. In under 1 year of managing this program, we have given away over 11,000 slices of pizza and we feed about 50 homeless people every day. Many regular customers just buy pizza for themselves (we make great pizza!), but just as many customers also pre-purchase multiple slices for the area’s homeless people every time they visit.

Since the Ellen show, life has been a blur. The work done at Rosa's Fresh Pizza has since been featured on almost every major media outlet, and – from my perspective – somewhat romanticized.

Recently, when people ask me about Rosa’s and my efforts there, I’ve noticed many are a bit startled when they see me behind the cash register ringing them up or by the oven, tending pizzas. Every day, I see the good that Rosa’s does and the positive impact it has in the community. However, I do worry that people see our efforts through the media and think this type of work – this type of impact – is unattainable.

It’s not. Quite to the contrary, it is easily replicable.

Rosa’s finds itself with the opportunity to help people because it does very few things, but it does them very well and very efficiently. We can make a large amount of a great product and keep the price low because of an intense focus on just a few things.

For sure, Rosa’s is a special place, but it should not be unique. Our ideas should be applied to a myriad of other areas of modern life – areas in which many of you are experts. There are many of you out there with incredible talents in a multitude of fields. I encourage you to continue to focus on improving yourselves in the areas in which you excel most and opportunities to improve your community will follow.

If you find yourself in a similar position as I did; if you find you have reached a plateau; if you see your peers struggling in their jobs, foreshadowing difficulties you will likely face; I encourage you to quit.

Start something new for yourself. Focus and persist. You’ll be glad you did.