Initially published by Authority Magazine here.

Anchor to outcomes not emotions.
When emotions are high, clarity is low. Whether you’re on a peak or in a valley, anchoring back to outcomes helps keep your decisions grounded. Early in my business, I learned how quickly excitement could lead to poor planning or how fear could stall critical decisions. The steadiness came when I started asking: What result are we actually trying to produce? That focus brought clarity during chaos and kept the business moving forward no matter how I felt.

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Being a founder, entrepreneur, or a business owner can have many exciting and thrilling moments. But it is also punctuated with periods of doubt, slump, and anxiety. So how does one successfully and healthily ride the highs and lows of Entrepreneurship? In this series, called “How To Successfully Ride The Emotional Highs & Lows Of Being An Entrepreneur” we are talking to successful entrepreneurs who can share stories from their experiences. I had the pleasure of interviewing Pat Alacqua.

Pat Alacqua is a seasoned business growth strategist who has built his own successful businesses and helped others achieve exponential growth. He founded the Entrepreneur to Enterprise Program to share his wealth of experience and guide leaders on their journey. His new book is Obstacles to Opportunity: Transforming Business Challenges into Triumphs (Entrepreneur to Enterprise, May 6, 2025). Learn more at www.PatAlacqua.com/book. Looking for a daily leadership boost? Check out 60 Seconds to Success, a daily leadership tool to help you think differently, lead more effectively, and tackle challenges one decisive shift at a time.

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Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you got started?

Even back then I wasn’t just working, I was watching. I was curious about how businesses actually worked. Without consciously knowing it, I was already thinking about business models, scale, and what it would take to grow something, not just survive. I’d walk into a t-shirt shop on the boardwalk and instead of just seeing shirts, I’d think, how does this business work? How do you grow it?

I skipped college and jumped further into business. My cousin and I started a concrete company with zero clue what we were doing, but we had an uncle who mentored us. That was my first experience really learning from someone who had already been where I wanted to go. Little did I know at the time, that kind of guidance would become instrumental to my lifelong learning journey. We poured driveways and sidewalks, just figuring it out job by job.

Then I stumbled into the trade show and event industry. I started by setting up exhibits. Eventually I moved into sales, operations, and billing. I wore all the hats. I learned fast, and before long, two colleagues and I went out on our own and launched a company. That business grew fast. We built it from a startup (initially named I&D Inc.) into a national and then international operation that we repositioned with a new name, Nth Degree, before we eventually sold it.

But growth with that trade show business forced us to evolve. We couldn’t keep building on hustle alone. I stepped back from day-to-day operations and started building infrastructure, systems, process, leadership. We hit tough spots, including a cash crunch that nearly took us down, but we turned it around. And through that process, I learned that scaling isn’t just about the business. It’s about the leader, too. You can’t grow the company without growing yourself. I learned so much growing that company in that industry. It was knowledge and experience that transferred to other businesses in other industries.

After we sold the tradeshow industry company, I bought a youth sports academy with a small group of investors. It was a turnaround project, and I thought I could guide it without being the day-to-day operator. That didn’t go exactly to plan. The model wasn’t working. The business was hemorrhaging cash, and I had to go back into the business to create and implement a sustainable business model. But we figured it out. We created a model that worked and began to get national recognition, and others around the country started to emulate it. We grew the brand, built a strong leadership team, helped the investors exit and eventually I sold my interest after turning operations over to the team we had put in place.

That’s when I realized my real passion going forward was less about building businesses for myself and more about helping others build theirs. I had already been developing what would become my Entrepreneur to Enterprise framework. And today, that’s what I do. I help business owners and other leaders who are in that difficult stage of trying to grow, scale, or get unstuck through my online content as well as my personalized services.

Simply put, you can’t scale the business without scaling the leader. One without the other won’t grow a business with a solid foundation. You’ve got to think differently, plan differently, and execute differently at each stage of scaling a business. That’s how you move from hustle to real value and build something that can run and grow with or without you.

What was the “aha moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

Honestly, the “aha moment” came gradually through experience, conversations, and a shift in perspective.

While I was building my trade show and events company, I lived every phase of the business: startup, growth, scaling, turnaround, reposition, and eventually selling. It was intense. There were moments where it felt like everything was on the line. Cash crunches, tough calls, and nonstop stress. But as I came through it, I started having conversations with other leaders. And I realized they were facing the exact same things I had gone through.

That’s when it hit me. The only reason I got through some of those phases was because people who had been where I was trying to go shared what they learned. Mentors, peers, and even competitors gave me the real advice. They told me what to watch for, what to avoid, what mattered most.

And I realized I would enjoy paying that forward also.

One of the turning points came when I was helping a CEO through a tough leadership transition. She was overwhelmed, trying to evolve from founder to enterprise leader. I related and could still feel the stress and emotional pain of the challenge when I faced it. I shared some of the hard lessons I had learned at that same stage, and I could literally see the relief in her face. That was the moment I knew this is the work I want to do — help others grow something they’re proud of.

That’s what led to the Entrepreneur to Enterprise framework, and it’s also exactly why I wrote the book Obstacles To Opportunity: Transforming Business Challenges Into Triumphs.

I wanted the book to mirror my own journey. Not just the wins, but the mistakes, the lessons, the turning points, and the growth that happens along the way. And I didn’t want it to just be my voice. I wanted to give readers easy access to insights from people who have already been where they’re trying to go. That’s why I included stories and strategies from so many other leaders. The book became a way to extend the impact. So even if I never meet the reader, I’m still helping them move forward, just like others once did for me.

In your opinion, were you a natural-born entrepreneur or did you develop that aptitude later on? Can you explain what you mean?

It’s a great question, but for me, it’s hard to separate the two. I don’t know that I was born to be an entrepreneur. I was immersed in business from a really young age. I was curious about how things ran, how businesses made money, how they grew.

So was I born with it? I don’t know. But it’s all I can remember.

If anything, I think the aptitude came from doing. I learned by watching, working, and figuring things out firsthand. I never had formal business training. But I had a front-row seat to how small businesses survive. I lived through what it takes to make one scale.

That early exposure shaped the way I think, and it’s been driving me ever since.

Was there somebody in your life who inspired or helped you to start your journey with your business? Can you share a story with us?

There have been so many people who helped me along the way. I don’t take that for granted. Early on, it was my family.

Later, it was when my partners and I were already on our way building our trade show business and we were growing fast. We had the hustle, we had momentum, but we hit a point where it wasn’t enough. The business was outgrowing the way we were running it, and we needed to evolve — not just the company, but ourselves.

That’s when we brought in Maurice Mascarenas.

Maurice was a consultant and mentor, originally from Bombay, India. He had a background in big corporate environments and had spent his later years focused on helping leaders make the personal transition required to grow professionally run organizations. I came to think of it as a necessary blend of entrepreneurial energy and professional management, because one without the other becomes a real bottleneck for growth. He didn’t just give advice. He challenged how we thought.

What Maurice really taught me was the power of disciplined thinking. That kind of thinking isn’t surface level. It’s not just brainstorming or making lists. It’s like digging a hole. Most people stop after one or two shovels. But to get to real outcomes, you have to keep digging. You have to whittle away everything that doesn’t matter to get clear on what does. That’s where outcome thinking begins. And once you get there, everything else — the planning, the execution — starts to align.

Maurice helped me see that if we wanted the company to scale, we had to change. We had to shift from doers to builders. From reacting to shaping. From instinct to infrastructure. And that insight stuck with me.

In fact, it became the foundation for how I work with companies and leaders today regardless of what stage of growth they’re experiencing. It’s about thinking differently, planning differently, and executing differently.

So yes, I’ve had many people influence me. But Maurice helped me make one of the most important shifts of all. He taught me how to think. And once that changed, everything else followed.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

What makes my work stand out is that I’m not just a leadership guy. And I’m not just a business strategist. I’ve actually built companies, grown them, turned them around, led them through every phase from startup to scale to exit. So when I come into a business, I’m not handing out theories. I’m helping you solve real problems from the inside out.

A lot of times people ask me, “Do you do leadership development?” And I always say: no and yes.

What I do is help companies move through obstacles that are blocking their growth. That could be strategy, structure, pricing, people, it depends. But as we dig into the real issues, we start uncovering gaps — gaps in knowledge or skills; gaps in experience; gaps in leadership capacity or bandwidth. And that’s where the growth happens.

I’m not teaching leadership in a vacuum. I’m helping leaders grow while actually leading in real time, inside real challenges that matter to the business. It’s leadership development that happens on the job, through execution, in the middle of complexity. I like to call it leadership transformation, not leadership development. And that’s how companies get unstuck and move forward faster.

One leader said it best while we were working to overcome a big challenge: “This isn’t theory. This is traction.”

I want people to walk away with real movement, real transformation. Not just learning something but taking action — doing something with it.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

There are a lot of traits that matter, but if I had to boil it down to three that have been instrumental in my success, I’d say disciplined thinking, forward urgency, and relationship integrity.

1. Disciplined thinking
This is the one that changed everything for me. My mentor, Maurice Mascarenhas, helped me see the difference between reacting and truly understanding the outcome we were trying to produce.

That mindset became the foundation for how I think, how I lead, and how I help other leaders today. It’s not about brainstorming or guesswork. It’s about staying with the thinking long enough to uncover what really matters and then aligning everything around it.

2. Forward urgency
I’ve always had a bias toward action. That doesn’t mean rushing. It means always moving forward. If we try something and it doesn’t work, fine. Let the pivot reveal itself and keep going. But inertia? Waiting too long? Over-planning without execution? That’s where businesses get stuck.

When I was running my trade show company, there were a lot of moments where the road wasn’t clear. But we learned that you often find the path by taking the first step. Progress creates clarity. That forward urgency helped us through pivots, market shifts, and complex transitions. And it’s the same energy I try to bring to tackling challenges today. Get moving, get traction, and adjust as you go.

3. Relationship integrity
For me, business has always been personal. Not emotional but personal. It’s about trust, consistency, and alignment. And I’ve always believed in one simple rule:
“Do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it.
And if something changes? Communicate early. Reset expectations.” That one principle drives everything. Trust, speed, momentum.

Because here’s the truth: When there’s trust, no explanation is necessary. Without it, none will suffice.

That’s the foundation of leadership. It’s also how you manage through constant change, which is the reality of growing any business. People can handle a pivot. What they can’t handle is confusion or silence. The leaders who win are the ones who keep others aligned and confident even when things are shifting.

That mindset of communicating early, showing up consistently, and leading with clarity is what keeps relationships strong and execution moving.

Can you share a story about advice you received that you now wish you never followed?

I’ve been given a lot of good advice over the years. But if I had to pick one idea I followed for too long and now wish I hadn’t it would be this: “Success comes from having the right answers.”

It was never said that directly, but it was reinforced in a thousand ways. Early in your career, you’re rewarded for having answers. You get recognized, promoted, and seen as a high performer because you solve problems. You come through. You know your stuff.

And I bought into that. I thought leadership was knowing more, solving faster, and being the one with the answer.

But as I grew both in business and in life, I realized that mindset only takes you so far. Eventually, it becomes a trap. Because the higher the stakes, the less your success depends on having the right answer, and the more it depends on asking the right questions.

I think back on my time building and running my tradeshow business. There were moments when trying to control everything or waiting until I had the “perfect plan” actually slowed us down. I was operating from that old belief that if I can just get it right — have the right answer, the perfect solution — we’d win. But growth doesn’t work that way. Neither does leadership.

One of the most impactful shifts in my life came when I started learning to think differently. I needed to stop obsessing over the answer and start focusing on the questions that matter. That mindset changed everything.

There’s a line from an old TV show I used to love watching, “The West Wing.” In one episode, the sitting president is flying on Air Force One with two former presidents. He’s juggling a major issue and bouncing between calls and briefings. During a quiet moment, the three of them talk about what leadership really is. And the current president says something that stuck with me: “Isn’t it interesting… it takes eight years in office to realize that asking the right questions is more important than having all the answers?”

That landed with me. Hard. Because it’s true.

The work I do now with companies and leaders is rooted in that truth. I’m not there to hand them a pre-packaged answer. I’m there to help them ask better questions. To surface what really matters. To gain clarity they can act on.

The moment I let go of the old idea that leadership is about having the answer was the moment I became a better leader.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them create a work culture in which employees thrive and do not burn out or get overwhelmed?

One of the most powerful things I tell people is: Always do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it. And if something changes, proactively reset expectations.

Everything flows from that. Trust. Alignment. Clarity. That’s what keeps people from getting overwhelmed. That’s what allows them to thrive.

Because let’s face it, burnout isn’t just about workload. It’s about uncertainty. Constant pivots. Shifting priorities. When people don’t know what’s happening or where things stand, they fill in the blanks with their own stories — and that’s where stress lives.

I also believe that culture breaks down when there’s no clarity around accountability. You can’t ask people to own something they don’t fully understand. Clear roles, clear outcomes, clear expectations — those are what create alignment and eliminate a lot of unnecessary tension.

Another thing I always say is: Leadership by example, not by exception. You can’t talk about healthy culture while constantly overriding process, overloading people, or avoiding tough conversations. You have to model the behavior you expect from others.

The truth is, thriving cultures don’t come from feel-good workshops or burnout seminars. They come from trust, clarity, and consistency. And that starts with us as the leaders.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs and founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?

There are several mistakes I’ve seen over and over again with founders and CEOs who are launching or scaling a business. And I’ve made some of these mistakes myself, so I speak from experience. Here are six that resonate at the moment.

1. Failing to develop their own leadership.
One of the earliest and most costly mistakes is not recognizing that you have to change as the business grows. Every growth phase of the company requires a different version of you as a leader. But too many people keep operating the same way they did when they started, and that eventually holds the business back.

2. Believing what worked early will always work.
Founders often confuse early traction with a long-term formula. But the truth is, you have to keep evolving. Some of the approaches that helped you get early wins will become liabilities later on. If you’re not willing to adjust, you’ll miss the shifts that allow the company to grow from scrappy startup to something more sustainable.

3. Trying to do it all themselves.
This one’s big. Founders tend to wear every hat in the beginning and that’s often necessary. But too many get stuck in that mode. They think speed comes from staying in control. But over time, that control becomes a bottleneck. You can’t scale if you’re at the center of every decision.

4. Not knowing when to stop working in the business and start working on it.
Even when leaders understand the need to make this shift, many don’t recognize the right timing. They wait too long or just don’t know how to do it effectively. You have to get above the day-to-day at the right time and begin structuring your team, systems, and roles to support real growth.

5. Not clearly articulating their value in the market.
This one often gets overlooked in the early grind. But too many founders launch a product or service without being able to clearly explain how it meets the customer’s needs and why it’s different. That slows down sales, partnerships, and growth. And as customer needs evolve, so should your message. You’ve got to keep refining how you communicate your value because that’s how you get market traction and stay relevant.

6. Spending too much, too early just because the capital is there.
There’s a fine line between having enough capital to grow and having so much that you lose discipline. I’ve seen early-stage companies raise money and then start spending as if the runway is endless. But smart leaders keep a lean mindset. They act as if the capital isn’t there because that constraint forces better thinking. It leads to sharper decisions. You can do a lot more with a lot less if you stay intentional. Stay scrappy. Spend when it drives results — not just because you can.

Okay, fantastic. Thank you for those excellent insights. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about how to successfully ride the emotional highs and lows of being an entrepreneur. The journey of an entrepreneur is never easy and is filled with challenges, failures, setbacks, as well as joys, thrills, and celebrations. This might be intuitive, but I think it will be very useful to specifically articulate it. Can you describe to our readers why, no matter how successful you are as an entrepreneur, you will always have fairly dramatic highs and lows? Particularly, can you help explain why this is different from someone with a regular job?

One of the biggest differences between being an entrepreneur and having a traditional job is that the emotional highs and lows don’t stay at work. They follow you home. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen in traditional jobs. But for an entrepreneur, there’s often no line between where work ends and life begins. It all gets wrapped together. Entrepreneurism includes all parts of your life in so many ways.

When I was running my tradeshow and events business, I remember how directly the state of the company impacted my outlook on everything — business, personal life, family, even how I saw the future. If we had a rough month or a deal fell through, it didn’t just affect the business. It affected how I slept, how I made decisions, how I showed up everywhere else. And when things were going well, it was the opposite. Everything felt lighter, more possible.

That’s because as an entrepreneur, the stakes are different. Your name is on the line. Your life’s finances are often on the line. You’ve got personal guarantees with banks, possibly partners with roles in the business that create alignment challenges, investors depending on you, employees relying on you. You’re not just working in a business. You are the business. And that weight doesn’t clock out at 5pm.

Now, I want to be clear. This isn’t to say that people with traditional jobs don’t experience real stress or pressure. They absolutely do. High performers in regular roles carry big responsibilities, and those roles can have major emotional and financial weight. But there’s a difference in how portable that stress is. In a regular job, if it’s not working, you usually have the option to move. You can find a new company, a new environment, a new fit.

For entrepreneurs, it’s rarely that simple. Even if you want to walk away, you often can’t. You may not have built the business to run without you. You may not have created the kind of value that would attract a buyer or a partner to help you step out. Your whole financial life might be tied up in the business. So instead of stepping away, you stay, and that feeling of being trapped creates a whole different level of emotional pressure.

It’s like that old line that nobody washes and waxes a rental car. When it’s yours, when your name is on the door, you feel every high and every low in a way that’s hard to describe until you’ve lived it.

And that’s really what makes entrepreneurship different. Not better. Not worse. Just different. The wins feel bigger. The losses feel heavier. And through it all, the responsibility is always yours.

Do you feel comfortable sharing a story from your own experience about how you felt unusually high and excited as a result of your business? We would love to hear it.

I’ve had a lot of highs throughout my career. Moments of growth, breakthrough, winning business, and building a great team. But if I had to choose the highest of highs, it was the day we sold Nth Degree, my tradeshow business.

It wasn’t the financial reward that made it such a high. Of course, that part mattered. But for me, what made it meaningful was what the sale represented.

That moment validated something I’ve believed for a long time. Real success comes from building something that can run without you. It comes from building a business that operates on systems, process, people, culture and structure — not just your energy and involvement. The sale confirmed that we had done that.

Someone was willing to come in and pay for the business. Not because of me, but because of what we had built. That was the high.

It’s a lot like raising kids. You love your time with them. You pour everything you have into them. But ultimately, your job is to help them thrive without you. And as hard as it is to let go, that’s how you know you did your job well.

Do you feel comfortable sharing a story from your own experience about how you felt unusually low and vulnerable as a result of your business? We would love to hear it.

There are many. One moment currently resonates for me.

We were about five years into our trade show and event business. Things were going great. We had grown fast, gained momentum, and felt like we were really on our way. Then suddenly, the market shifted. It dipped hard. And almost overnight the cash flow stopped cooperating.

Up until that point, we had only known growth. We weren’t prepared emotionally or structurally for what came next.

We had a line of credit with the bank, and to our surprise, they called the note. In other words, they wanted it paid back quickly. And we were in no position to do that.

It was an incredibly vulnerable time. We felt like the ground was giving out beneath us.

Looking back, the bank wasn’t necessarily trying to shut us down but they were using the situation to force our hand. They wanted us to make some hard decisions we’d been avoiding. Cost reductions; staff cuts; infrastructure changes. These things were painful to even consider because we had built our culture around our people. Up to that point, our story had been all about growth and opportunity.

It felt like failure to let people go and to scale back and lose momentum. Watching something you built go through that kind of shake-up is gut-wrenching. You start questioning everything — your decisions, your leadership, your judgment.

But we got through it. We made the tough calls. We learned the lessons. And we came out stronger on the other side. In fact, we went on to grow the business for another 15+ years before ultimately selling it.

That period shaped me in ways that success never could. It taught me how to lead when it’s hard, how to protect what matters while still making necessary moves, and how important it is to prepare for the moments you don’t see coming, because they will come.

Based on your experience, can you tell us what you did to bounce back?

After the bank called our note and forced us into a set of tough decisions, my partners and I didn’t have the luxury of easing into a new strategy. We had to act. Fast. We took a step back, recalibrated, and began by making the hard financial decisions that would preserve the company’s future. We reduced headcount, scaled back infrastructure, and focused only on what would keep the business alive and give us room to stabilize.

That period taught us a lot. It gave us clarity on what mattered most. And through it, we became better leaders. We learned to separate emotion from fact and pressure from panic. We became more disciplined, more focused, and much more thoughtful about how to build something sustainable, not just exciting.

Looking back, I wouldn’t want to relive that period, but I wouldn’t trade it either. It taught us how to lead in difficulty, not just in growth. And that made all the difference in what came next.

What are your five things you need to successfully ride the emotional highs and lows of being an entrepreneur? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Anchor to outcomes not emotions.
When emotions are high, clarity is low. Whether you’re on a peak or in a valley, anchoring back to outcomes helps keep your decisions grounded. Early in my business, I learned how quickly excitement could lead to poor planning or how fear could stall critical decisions. The steadiness came when I started asking: What result are we actually trying to produce? That focus brought clarity during chaos and kept the business moving forward no matter how I felt.

2. Build a business that can live without you.
One of the greatest highs of my career came when we sold our tradeshow industry business because what we sold was something that could operate without us. We had put systems in place, built a team that could lead, and created a structure that others could build on. Years later, the CEO of Nth Degree told me that most entrepreneurs don’t hand off a business that well-positioned, but we had. That’s the goal. Not just growth, but sustainable, transferable value.

3. Invest in the partnership.
When you have operating partners, you don’t just have a business; you have a relationship that shapes everything about how that business runs. As I described, one of our lowest points came when we had to make major cuts during a downturn. It was hard on the business, but it was also hard on us as partners. We had to learn to better align not just as owners, but as operators with different roles and perspectives. And we learned that when we were aligned, the business soared. That insight made us better leaders and helped me give better guidance to other partnerships down the road.

4. Lead yourself first and evolve how you lead.
You can’t lead others well if you’re a mess inside. That doesn’t mean you won’t feel stress or fear. It means learning how to steady yourself before you steady the team. For me, that meant separating identity from outcome. Not every decision I made worked. Not everything went as planned. But I had to keep showing up with clarity and composure. If I let my emotions run the business, everyone else would feel it.

5. Prepare for the pivot before you need it.
When the bank called our line of credit during a market dip we weren’t ready. That forced us into painful decisions that changed our culture and cost us good people. We got through it but it taught us a lasting lesson. Don’t wait for a crisis to think through your options.

We are living during challenging times, and resilience is critical during times like these. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?

For me, resilience isn’t just about bouncing back. It’s about moving forward through the challenge. It’s not about returning to where you were. It’s about adapting to what is and growing into what’s next.

When thinking about resilient people, it usually comes down to a few key traits that resonate with me.

1. They stay grounded in what matters most.
When things get hard, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or distracted by everything coming at you. Resilient people know how to zoom out. They keep coming back to the question, what outcome are we really trying to produce here? That question creates clarity. And clarity creates direction.

2. They’re willing to change.
One of the biggest mistakes I see is clinging to what used to work. Resilient people are willing to evolve. They understand that what got them here might not get them there. So they’re open to shifting how they think, how they lead, even how they operate if the moment calls for it.

3. They don’t stay stuck.
Everyone hits a wall at some point. But resilient people don’t stay there. They feel it, learn from it, and keep moving. They don’t turn one tough moment into the whole story. They keep writing the next chapter.

4. They keep leading, even when it’s hard.
When our business hit a major cash crunch and the bank called our line, it shook everything. But I still had to lead. That didn’t mean pretending everything was fine. It meant staying steady and communicating clearly. It meant making decisions based on what the business needed, not what I felt in the moment.

5. They build the muscle before they need it.
Resilience isn’t something you turn on when a crisis hits. It’s something you build through the smaller challenges. It’s the reflection after a mistake. The willingness to ask hard questions. The choice to stay grounded when things are uncertain.

Resilience isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about having the right questions and moving forward while you figure things out. And in leadership, that might be the most important thing of all.

Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Would you mind sharing a story?

If I go back to where I first saw resilience, I believe it was in my father.

His parents pulled him out of high school somewhere around his first year because he had to go to work and help support the family. That was one of his first big setbacks, though I’m not sure he’d have called it that. It was just life.

He started out working on an assembly line in a factory. At some point, he began working in construction — long hours of manual labor. I remember when he later joined my grandfather in the family grocery store, which also meant 10- to 12-hour workdays. Eventually, he went to work in a meat packing plant on the 3-to-11pm shift cleaning up at night. All his jobs were physically taxing and long hours, but I never once heard him complain.

Looking back, it’s where I first saw what resilience really looks like. I just didn’t have a word for it at the time.

He got up every day and did the hard thing. Life wasn’t easy, but he kept showing up, putting one foot in front of the other. That kind of quiet resilience, especially when no one’s watching, stayed with me. And it shaped me because in business, it’s about consistency. It’s about showing up for your people, your clients, and your vision even when things are uncertain, exhausting, or thankless.

Later in my father’s life, after I’d built my trade show company, I was fortunate enough to help him retire at 62 by providing income through a part-time job in my company. As he got older, my father eventually moved to doing light warehouse work. He worked into his 80s. But that work ethic, that resilience that he modeled for me early in life never left him. And it’s something I believe I carry with me every day.

In your opinion, do you tend to keep a positive attitude during difficult situations? What helps you do so?

I wouldn’t say I’ve always had a naturally positive attitude. At least not in the way some people do. I’ve always been a deep thinker, someone who processes things logically and thoroughly. I’ve also been a worrier. And that combination, especially in difficult situations, can make it easy to get stuck.

What I’ve come to believe is that real resilience isn’t about blind optimism or constant negativity. Some people stay so focused on being positive that they miss real problems unfolding right in front of them. Others focus so heavily on what’s wrong that they can’t see the opportunity in front of them. I’ve learned that you need both. Stay positive but stay grounded. You have to be able to acknowledge the challenge, see it clearly, and still believe there’s a way through it.

Now, when I’m in a tough spot, I don’t let it freeze me. I work to define the challenge, consider my best next move, and take action — even if it’s small. Because once I’m in motion, things shift. Possibilities open up. Small wins build on each other. And with that momentum, positivity becomes a lot easier to access.

Can you help articulate why a leader’s positive attitude can have a positive impact both on their clients and their team? Please share a story or example if you can.

When pressure is high, people look to leadership for direction. Even more importantly, they look for belief.

Years ago, during the early growth of my trade show company, we were carving out a new niche driven by changing customer needs that focused us on high-touch service for our tradeshow exhibitor customers. That meant we had to evolve how labor was deployed on trade show floors across the country. Much of our labor came from local unions, and the work required by our new customer model was different from what they were used to.

We weren’t trying to replace the unions. We needed them. But we did need to work differently. That led to changes in how contracts were negotiated. It created real challenges in how we accessed buildings, staffed shows, and met customer expectations. We were under scrutiny. It was tense.

But the most important thing we could do was stay steady and stay positive.

That didn’t mean ignoring the challenge or pretending it wasn’t hard. But it meant leading with the belief that we were doing the right thing — not just for our company, but for the long-term health of the industry and the customers we all served.

In the end, we got through it. Our customers never felt the pain. Our team stayed together. And the unions? Many of them came to embrace the shift once they saw how it helped drive more business. But if we hadn’t led with belief and kept a positive view of what was possible, that outcome could’ve looked very different.

What is your favorite inspirational quote that motivates you to pursue greatness? Can you share a story and how it was relevant to you in your own life?

I actually have two quotes that have stuck with me over the years, and they’ve shaped how I lead and how I live.

The first is from George Bernard Shaw, later made famous by Robert F. Kennedy:
“You see things and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and I say, ‘Why not?’”

The second is often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Your actions speak so loudly, I can’t hear what you say.”

The first one speaks to vision. The second speaks to credibility. And together, they’ve served as a kind of internal compass for how I’ve tried to lead.

During one of the most defining chapters of my career, when we were growing our trade show company,

we didn’t start with a roadmap. We were building a new model of personalized exhibitor services that didn’t really exist in our industry at the time. We saw how things were being done and started asking, “Why not something better? Why not more proactive service? Why not tailor the experience to the customer instead of forcing the customer to fit the system?”

That mindset led us to create something that challenged the norms. But that wasn’t enough. To really make it work, we had to show up every day and prove it.

That’s where the second quote came in. “Your actions speak so loudly, I can’t hear what you say.” It’s easy to talk about culture and service and change. It’s harder to live it — especially when things get tough because cash flow is tight, labor negotiations are tense, and larger competitors are trying to put this new upstart company out of business. That’s when people are really watching. We knew that if our team was going to believe in what we were building, we had to lead. We had to keep promises, do the hard things, and back the vision with real follow-through.

Both quotes still push me today. One reminds me to think bigger. The other reminds me to stay grounded and lead in a way people can trust. You need both. Without vision, you won’t grow. Without integrity, you won’t last.

How can our readers further follow you online?

The best way to stay connected is through my website at PatAlacqua.com. You’ll find free business building and leadership resources, short videos, and tools to help you think differently, plan strategically, and lead more effectively.

You can also follow me on LinkedIn, where I regularly share ideas, stories, and behind-the-scenes lessons from the leaders and companies I work with. Just search for “Pat Alacqua.”

And if you’re navigating challenges or growth in your own business, check out my book, Obstacles to Opportunity: Transforming Business Challenges into Triumphs. It’s filled with real-world stories, practical tips, and lessons for turning roadblocks into momentum. You can access insights to help whether you’re leading a team, scaling a company, or trying to get unstuck.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!