By Pat Alacqua, initially published by Grit Daily News Here.

Every business-building journey is fraught with obstacles. The key to conquering them comes from approaching challenges with creativity, innovation, and effectiveness while maintaining focus on your desired outcome. Leaders at every stage, from those at the helm of startups to those managing profitable enterprises, must hone their ability to not only identify problems, but take bold, decisive steps to create solutions.

In his book, Obstacles to Opportunity: Transforming Business Challenges into Triumphs – Stories and Strategies from Leaders Who’ve Mastered It, seasoned entrepreneur and business growth specialist Pat Alacqua offers proven strategies to navigate the complexities of business growth.

Grit Daily: What five distinct phases do businesses encounter along their growth journey?

Pat Alacqua: Every business moves through what I call the Entrepreneur to Enterprise Pathway. It starts with a business idea, then becomes an entrepreneurial venture. As things take shape, it moves into a startup operation. With more experience and traction, it becomes a proven business as you move into the growth stage. And if you build the proper structure and systems as you scale effectively through the growth phase, you grow into a sustainable enterprise.

Each phase brings new challenges. And unless you adjust how you think, plan, and execute, you stall.

The five recurring challenges I see most often as companies navigate the Entrepreneur to Enterprise Pathway involve:

• Losing sight of changing customer needs.
• Feeling the strain as people, time, and systems get stretched.
• Needing to shift from informal hustle to real management and utilization of systems.
• Watching culture drift as new people and pressures show up.
• Getting blindsided by the next round of challenges you didn’t see coming.

When leaders start recognizing those patterns early and respond with clarity and structure, they move forward faster with less chaos. They’re able to build the proper foundation for the levels of growth to come.

Grit Daily: Why do most leaders get stuck in playing the wrong role?

Pat Alacqua: The role that got them here isn’t the one that will take them where they want to go.

Most leaders start as doers — hands-on, in the details, solving problems on the fly. That works early on. But as the company grows, that same approach becomes a limitation. The business evolves, complexity increases, but the leader still shows up the same way.

You can’t scale the hustle. Eventually, the need for structure and systems becomes essential. However, the real barrier isn’t building those systems. It’s how leaders think and feel about their role. They need to ask:

• Are they measuring their worth by how involved they are?
• Do they feel the need to control everything to protect the outcome?
• Are they more focused on being liked or being effective?

These are the traps that keep leaders stuck. They don’t need more tactics. They need a new mental operating system and a shift in mindset. They have to go from doer to builder; from being the engine to designing the machine. That means thinking differently, planning differently, and leading in a way that gives others the space and the structure to perform at a higher level.

When leaders stop tying their identity to control, the need to be liked, or personal output, something shifts. They start valuing the capability they create around them. That’s when they stop being the bottleneck.

The reality is that this isn’t a shift you make once and forget. As the business grows, your role evolves again. Each stage tests whether you’re clinging to an old identity or building the leadership your company needs next.

Grit Daily: Will you describe your concept of the five personas that define how leaders lead?

Pat Alacqua: The Leader Persona Pathway is a tool I developed to help leaders understand the role they’re currently playing and how that role might be holding them back. I’ve used this Pathway across industries with leaders who are ready to grow to become the leader their company and team requires.

These personas aren’t job titles or personality types. They’re patterns — ways leaders show up when pressure is high, resources are stretched, and results start to stall. Each one shapes how you think, how you lead, and how fast you make progress. When you know who you are today, you can start becoming the leader your business needs tomorrow.

Here’s a quick description of the five personas:

• The Spectator – You’ve got a vision or goal in mind, but you’re not taking real action. You’re watching from the sidelines, waiting for clarity or certainty.
• The Wanderer – You’re busy but not effective. You’re in motion, but without a clear plan. You keep moving but can’t gain real traction.
• The Pursuer – You’re putting in the effort and working toward a goal, but it all still depends on you. You’re over-relying on effort instead of creating leverage.
• The Propeller – You’ve built some structure and gained momentum, but you’re still the engine. Everything runs through you, which limits scale.
• The Accelerator – You’ve made the shift. You’ve built systems that extend beyond you, aligned your team, and created the space to grow the company and the people in it.

The power of this framework is that it gives leaders a mirror. Once you recognize where you are on the leadership pathway, you can stop spinning your wheels and start leading with intention.

Grit Daily: What’s important about knowing which leadership persona identifies you? Can you give an example?

Pat Alacqua: Most leaders don’t get stuck because they’re unmotivated or untalented. They get stuck because they’re unknowingly playing a role that no longer fits, and they can’t see it.

That’s why knowing your leadership persona matters. It gives you a mirror. It turns vague frustration into something you can name, understand, and evolve beyond.

I worked with a founder who, on paper, was doing everything right. Revenue was growing, the brand had momentum, and the team was expanding. But inside the business, everything still ran through him. He was stretched thin, overwhelmed, and starting to burn out. He felt more like the safety net than the CEO.

We stepped back and used the Leader Persona Pathway to understand what was going on. It was clear he was stuck in the Pursuer role — hardworking and mission-driven but over-relying on personal effort to make the business work.

The first breakthrough came when he saw that he wasn’t failing. He just needed to lead differently.

We helped him shift into the Propeller role by redesigning his team’s roles around outcomes, putting real structure in place, and clarifying what decisions still needed his involvement and what didn’t.

That created enough space and alignment to finally move into the Accelerator role. This is when the business had the structure, systems, and people in place to grow and no longer depended on him to keep going. And his role shifted from doing everything to shaping what’s next.

That’s the kind of shift the framework unlocks. It doesn’t just diagnose where you are. It helps you move forward with clarity and confidence.

Grit Daily: Your book, Obstacles to Opportunity, spotlights a number of leaders and their stories of overcoming hurdles to move their businesses forward. Can you share one of their stories with our readers?

Pat Alacqua: Absolutely. One that stands out is CJ Stewart, the co-founder of L.E.A.D. Center for Youth. CJ’s story starts with a moment many leaders can relate to. He walked into a high-level networking event, looked around, and suddenly felt like he didn’t belong.

On the surface, he’d already accomplished a lot as a former pro baseball player, a successful hitting coach, and a respected community leader. However, from early on, he battled self-doubt — not about his purpose, but about whether he truly belonged in rooms with high-powered business leaders and decision-makers.

What I love about CJ’s story is that he didn’t run from that discomfort. He used it. That moment became a turning point when he stopped playing small and started leaning into the leader he was becoming.

Over time, CJ began applying the same performance discipline he used in baseball to his leadership approach. He committed to clarifying what mattered most, charting a plan forward, and aligning his team around the mission. He didn’t just evolve his leadership. He built a scalable model.

Today, L.E.A.D. is a nationally recognized non-profit organization transforming lives through sports-based youth development. He’s influencing policy, mentoring young people, and building a leadership legacy that extends far beyond the baseball field.

CJ’s story is the kind of transformation that proves what’s possible when you stop reacting to your doubts and start responding with discipline, clarity, and courage.

Grit Daily: Will you describe your “3Cs” framework and how it works to make decision-making more effective?

Pat Alacqua: The 3Cs are Clarify, Chart, and Co-align. They’re a simple but powerful thinking tool I use to help leaders make better decisions faster.

Think of the 3Cs like a mental whittling knife. It helps you cut away the clutter so you can shape progress from what first feels like a messy block of uncertainty.

Here’s what each step does:

Clarify what matters most. This means stripping away noise, distractions, and competing agendas so you can define the real issue and what success looks like. Most challenges get worse when leaders try to solve symptoms instead of root causes. This step focuses your lens.

Chart a focused path forward. This identifies what must happen and, just as importantly, what must not happen as you move into planning and execution. Instead of reacting or trying to do everything at once, you define the key moves that will unlock progress and sequence them in the correct order.

Co-align people and actions. This step ensures the right people are clear on their roles, responsibilities, and decisions so execution doesn’t stall or fall back on the leader’s shoulders. When everyone knows what to do and why it matters, momentum builds.

Most decision-making and execution fail because of confusion, distraction, and misalignment. The 3Cs fix that. They give leaders a disciplined way of thinking — a way to slow down just enough to then speed up and ensure their next moves will move them forward faster.

Grit Daily: How can leaders unleash the power of collaboration so that they create synergy with their teams?

Pat Alacqua: Many leaders say they want collaboration, but they unknowingly design against it. They hold on to too many decisions, protect their own ideas, or create environments where disagreement feels risky. True collaboration doesn’t happen just because people are in meetings together. It happens when leaders create the conditions for it.

That starts with clarity. People can’t contribute meaningfully if the goal is fuzzy or constantly shifting. When direction is clear and the “why” is understood, energy gets focused and aligned.

Next comes ownership. Don’t just hand out tasks, hand out responsibility. Make it clear what success looks like and then let people own the path to getting there. When people see how their work fits into something bigger, they show up differently.

Then, invite a challenge. You get better ideas by creating a culture where the best idea wins, even when it challenges the leader’s. That means rewarding candor and making it safe to disagree.

And here’s what so many leaders overlook: Collaboration isn’t about harmony. It’s about how you solve for fundamental gaps. Every business hits moments where it’s short on time, knowledge, or skills. When you bring the right people into the conversation and give them what they need to contribute, you stop scrambling and start multiplying what’s possible.

Collaboration isn’t a leadership style. It’s a strategy for growing capacity without burning people out. When done right, it builds trust, unlocks talent, and turns effort into momentum.

Learn more here.