Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

🌟 Editor's Note:

Welcome to Behind the Books! A 3-minute read with stories, tools, and lessons from real companies—what worked, what didn’t, and what founders can learn.

🍕 The Story:

Back in 2009, Domino’s was struggling.

They had prioritized speed over quality.

The result? Customers hated their pizza. Sales were tanking. Debt was climbing.

They didn’t pivot. They didn’t blame the market.

They took full responsibility and went public with it.

Billboards showed real customer complaints.

Executives went on TV and said: We messed up.

They even admitted they weren’t using real cheese.

Then they rebuilt everything: the recipe, the supply chain, the delivery system, and their tech stack.

And it worked.

In Q1 of 2010, U.S. same-store sales jumped 14.3% — the biggest quarterly increase in company history.

Revenue rose 18.4% year-over-year. But that was just the beginning.

By the end of 2019, Domino’s stock exploded from $8.38 to $293.83 — a 3,400%+ increase over the decade.

A pizza company had quietly become a tech company in disguise.

The Lesson:

Most founders think growth comes from new ideas.

But the real unlock? Facing what’s broken and fixing it.

Domino’s didn’t win by pivoting.

They won by owning the truth and doing the hard work no one wants to do.

From Behind the Books:

Most businesses don’t collapse from one big mistake.

They crumble slowly from ignored issues and well-meaning denial.

The fix is usually simple. Just not easy.

Your weekly prompt:

What’s the “cardboard pizza” in your business?

Find it. Own it. Fix it.

That’s where the growth lives.

See you next Friday,

– Yan

P.S. Got a business challenge or a win you want to share? Hit reply and let me know.