Marcos Digliodo and the value of a second pair of eyes

There is a useful detail in Marcos Digliodo’s college tennis record: his doubles results. In the 2006-07 season at the College of Charleston, he and Or Dekel went 13-3 together. Digliodo also finished 12-5 at number two singles. He could win on his own. He had experience winning with somebody beside him, too.

Years later, the co-founder and CEO of Paramount Pursuits would be working in another setting where a partner can change the outcome. Small-business owners come with products, customers, ideas and questions. The company puts mentors and digital coaches alongside them. Its work involves the decisions that arrive after the excitement of starting something: selling it, organizing it and keeping the operation going.

Digliodo’s route to that work crossed Argentina, Colorado and South Carolina before reaching western Pennsylvania. Along the way came a tennis scholarship, a wine distributorship with his wife, Trish, and a growing interest in the obstacles that keep people from putting their abilities to work. A business can look quite different depending on which side of the counter you stand.

The match that finished last

On April 21, 2007, Charleston faced Furman in a Southern Conference semifinal. Digliodo played Bo Ladyman at number two singles. He took the first set 6-4, lost the second 2-6, then won the third 6-3. Charleston’s final margin was 4-3. His singles match was the last to finish, sending the Cougars into the championship match.

Earlier, he and Dekel had won their doubles match 8-3. The afternoon required both kinds of contribution: the coordinated work of a pair and the responsibility of finishing a match alone. That is a satisfying sporting detail without requiring tennis to explain every subsequent choice in his life. Business careers are rarely concealed inside a forehand.

His Charleston roster entry lists Córdoba, Argentina, as his hometown and his height as six feet four inches. He earned first-team All-Southern Conference recognition with Dekel. Before Charleston, he had come to the United States in 2003 to attend the University of Colorado Boulder on a Division I tennis scholarship. The move also meant learning how to function in a new country, beyond the familiar measurements of a court.

When the wine customers had other questions

In 2010, Marcos and Trish began a wine distributorship, working with wines from family-owned vineyards. It was a business with a product people understood how to enjoy. Selling it still required the less ceremonial parts of entrepreneurship: finding buyers, maintaining relationships and making the numbers work.

Their Charleston customers included restaurants, country clubs and retailers. Some began asking the couple for help with their own businesses. At first, the Digliodos hesitated. Then they recognized that experience running an operation had given them useful knowledge to share. The advice could be as practical as understanding a profit-and-loss statement.

The move to Ambridge brought that work into a former Catholic school and church complex, which they renovated for incubation and coworking. A place built for gathering people acquired another use. Here, a prospective business owner could find workspace and somebody willing to work through the business with them. The bottles had introduced the couple to other proprietors; their questions helped point toward a new occupation.

A town has more than one proprietor

Digliodo’s responsibilities widened beyond individual businesses. From 2017 to 2022, he served as municipality liaison on the Beaver County Main Street Revitalization contract. He worked with representatives of seven communities, bringing municipal officials together with local revitalization groups made up of residents, business owners and community leaders.

The work involved community meetings, collaboration around strategic plans and efforts to reduce commercial vacancies. A shop owner has a business to run. A municipality has a district to consider. Getting the two into a useful conversation requires attention to both scales, and to people who may arrive with different priorities.

At Paramount Pursuits, Digliodo’s remit has also included operations, finances, contract compliance and employees. He mentors Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs. That combination places him on both sides of the company’s promise: helping someone else understand the work of running a business while remaining responsible for much of that work inside his own organization. The mentor has paperwork waiting, too.

Five hundred hours, one conversation at a time

In Pittsburgh, the Digliodos were involved with Catapult from its beginning. They had been consulting with entrepreneurs in the Hill District when they were invited to help develop the program. Catapult paired a year of business support with opportunities to sell, including retail incubation at the Gallery on Penn.

By October 2020, the program had supported 30 minority and women entrepreneurs. Paramount Pursuits had provided more than 500 hours of mentoring, seminars and technical assistance. The program received a 2019 International Economic Development Council Silver Award for Economic Equity and Inclusion. That was recognition for a partnership, with the Urban Redevelopment Authority and Circles Greater Pittsburgh, rather than an individual trophy for Digliodo.

The hours are an instructive measure. Advice sounds inexpensive when it is compressed into a sentence. Helping an owner apply it takes time. Monthly meetings, individual mentoring and access to business resources made the assistance something participants could return to. A year allows another conversation after the first plan meets the first complication.

The space between a cable and a confident user

Another part of Digliodo’s work begins before a person has a business to discuss. He is founder and president of Tech2Elevate, the nonprofit providing digital coaching. Learning to use a computer, setting up an email account or finding an affordable internet option can determine whether somebody can use the opportunities already around them.

In October 2022, Beaver County announced that Tech2Elevate would carry out its Digital Navigator program. The county’s 2021 survey had identified 1,930 households without broadband access. The announcement addressed a second problem as well: access to a connection does not automatically teach somebody how to use it.

Digliodo described the questions residents faced: printers, scanners, online forms, scams and keeping information safe. He described patient assistance that would help people gain confidence as they learned to complete those tasks. Walking somebody through a process allows a pace set by the person learning.

Tech2Elevate now advertises free individual digital coaching in Beaver and Erie counties. Its coaches help people use computers, handle everyday tasks online and understand options for connectivity and devices. Pre-recorded lessons and instructor-led classes sit alongside personal assistance. For Digliodo, who experienced technology difficulties after arriving in the United States, the subject has a connection to his own beginnings.

“Walk residents through processes they need to learn to become confident.”

Marcos Digliodo · Digital Navigator announcement, October 2022

A mentor and a digital coach

The same pairing appears in Paramount Pursuits’ Thrive program. It runs for 12 months and brings together individual mentoring, a digital coach and a group of other business owners. Seminars cover finance, marketing, sales, legal matters and strategy. The company lists programs in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Highlands, Florida, alongside Shell LiveWire Pennsylvania.

That structure gives a fairly clear picture of the work Digliodo is building with Trish. A person may know a trade and still want help organizing a company around it. A group offers other owners to talk to; a mentor can focus on the particular business; a digital coach can help with the tools. Those are different needs that can turn up on the same afternoon.

In one public update, Digliodo highlighted a Canva workshop for Erie entrepreneurs led by Tech2Elevate digital coach Benjamin Gallegos. The session dealt with branding, promotional materials and social graphics. In another, he described work with Heather Wells of The Growing Garden Child Care Center on hiring, onboarding and marketing. The examples are specific enough to show what the programs actually spend time doing.

The company beside the company

Paramount Pursuits reports having served more than 800 businesses. Its current programs span an initial assessment, a short introductory workshop, extended mentoring and coaching for owners who want to expand. Eligible businesses and nonprofits in parts of Allegheny County can also receive consulting through Open for Business.

The company describes collaboration and inclusion among its guiding values. In practice, its programs depend on cooperation with communities, advisors and other entrepreneurs. For an owner, the useful question is what that cooperation makes available: a conversation about accounts, access to a workshop or help putting a plan into action. Digliodo’s work with local government and business owners places him in the middle of those arrangements. The setting may change from a municipal meeting to a mentoring session, but somebody still has to connect the people who need assistance with the people equipped to provide it.

For a CEO, that range presents an organizational task of its own. Supporting an aspiring founder requires different conversations from supporting an established employer. Paramount’s programs make room for those differences. Digliodo’s title sits above a business whose daily work depends on listening closely enough to decide where help should begin.

Away from that work, his interests include travel, wine, cigars and time on the water. He describes family as his greatest motivation. The wine has survived the change of occupation; it simply no longer has to carry the entire business plan.

The thread through these chapters is the usefulness of having somebody alongside you while you learn what comes next. Digliodo has been a newcomer, a college teammate, a proprietor and a municipal liaison. He now runs organizations that arrange that company for other people. A second pair of eyes can notice a problem, explain a tool or help an owner see a decision more clearly. There is plenty of work in doing that well.