A town can acquire a handsome new storefront and still have nobody equipped to run the business inside it. The paint dries. The ribbon is cut. Then someone has to price the stock, understand the accounts and persuade a customer to return. Paramount Pursuits has built its work around that less photogenic part of economic development: helping the person behind the counter know what to do next.
- Individual coaching, practical workshops and specialist advice for small-business owners.
- Paid programs alongside community-funded help for eligible entrepreneurs.
- A reported 800-plus businesses assisted, with a record of neighborhood partnerships.
The wine was only the beginning
Before Trish and Marcos Digliodo became business mentors, they distributed wine in Charleston, South Carolina. Their customers started asking questions about growing their own businesses. At first, the couple hesitated. Selling wine was their trade. Yet experience had given them something useful to pass on: an understanding of the ordinary decisions that determine whether a business can keep trading.
They returned to Pennsylvania and opened an incubator in a former Catholic school and church complex in Ambridge. The setting makes a pleasingly literal point. Buildings can change occupations, too. The company now identifies Trish as co-founder and president, Marcos as co-founder and CEO. Their work combines business education with the particular concerns of communities trying to rebuild commercial life.
Paramount’s ambition is broad, but its method is personal. Its mission links entrepreneurship to Main Street renewal. Its stated values include kindness, honesty and collaboration. In practice, it says coaching adapts to an owner’s education, learning style and work schedule. Spanish-language programming and mentoring are part of that approach. Accessibility here includes whether someone can actually use the advice.
Begin with the business in front of you
The current program menu resembles a sequence of decisions. Pathways starts with a one-on-one assessment: strengths, gaps, goals. The owner leaves with a roadmap toward appropriate programs. That is a useful place to begin, because an untested idea and an established company with a staffing problem require rather different conversations.
Launch covers the fundamentals. Its dedicated page describes a one-day workshop, including a business canvas and the resources needed to take the next step. Thrive stretches the work across twelve months, pairing a mentor with a digital coach and a community of owners. Finance, marketing, sales, legal questions and strategy sit beside recurring individual support.
Ascend serves owners past the earliest stage. It offers twice-monthly virtual coaching, an assessment and an annual strategic plan. The published price range is $750 to $4,500 a month. Those are consequential sums for a small firm. The sensible question is which operational problem the engagement will address, and how the owner will judge progress.
The program names are tidy; local delivery can be less uniform. Thrive in Erie advertises twelve months. Thrive in Steubenville advertises eighteen. The distinction matters to anyone fitting participation around customers, employees and family. Community programs should be checked on their own terms rather than treated as identical branches of a national course.
The owner is not always the buyer
There are two sides to this business. Entrepreneurs need advice. Municipalities, foundations, corporations and economic-development organizations want healthier local businesses. Paramount offers those institutions programs tailored to a community’s goals and budget. Shell names the company as its delivery partner for Shell LiveWire Pennsylvania, designed around Beaver County.
Open for Business shows how that arrangement can remove the bill from the owner’s desk. In February 2021, Bridgeway Capital announced a $1 million Allegheny County grant supporting the program it launched with Paramount. That money backed a joint assistance program. It was not a venture-capital investment in the consulting company.
The current Open for Business offer connects eligible small businesses and nonprofits in specified Allegheny County communities with no-cost consulting. The menu reaches from bookkeeping and credit counseling to commercial leases, marketing and digital skills. Named specialists include Trellis Legal, Revox Media and Tech2Elevate. A general business mentor need not pretend to be every profession at once.
Participant cost for eligible Open for Business consulting.
Eligibility depends on location and program requirements.
When the shop window disappeared
Paramount’s Catapult work offers a concrete test of the approach. The Pittsburgh partnership connected minority entrepreneurs with coaching and access to retail space. Then pandemic restrictions closed Gallery on Penn. The immediate failure was painfully physical: customers could no longer enter the shared shop.
In April 2020, the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Circles Greater Pittsburgh and Paramount created an online retail destination. Technical assistance continued virtually. The response changed the channel through which owners reached customers while preserving contact with advisers. For a retailer, a reassuring conversation and a working route to sales belong in the same recovery plan.
“My revenue has grown 12-fold”Aquene Watkins-Wise, Royally Fit, in the URA’s October 2020 Catapult update
That testimonial describes one owner’s experience, not a forecast for everyone. The same URA update reported more than 500 mentoring hours and an estimated thirty jobs retained or created across Catapult. These are partnership results. They give the work substance without proving that coaching alone caused every improvement.
A desk is useful. So is someone beside it.
Paramount also offers coworking, meeting rooms and furnished offices of 250 to 700 square feet. Monthly members get round-the-clock access. A mailing address, equipment and a place to work solve practical problems; access to mentors and other entrepreneurs adds a reason to choose the space beyond the furniture.
Its market overlaps with Small Business Development Centers, volunteer mentoring, independent coaches and regional incubators. The distinctive combination is sustained individual attention, specialist referrals, workspace and community-sponsored delivery. An owner can use different pieces as circumstances change. A public partner can buy a program rather than assemble every teaching and advisory role itself.
What can another community copy? Start with an assessment. Match the advice to the business. Fund access where price excludes people. Keep support available long enough for owners to try things and return with better questions. Those are design choices, not promises of automatic prosperity. They require willing participants, capable advisers and partners able to keep paying for the work.
Mentorship cannot manufacture customers or make an unaffordable lease sensible. A founder seeking an investment cheque may need a different institution. Paramount’s proposition is more everyday: help people make better business decisions, repeatedly. Main Street renewal eventually comes down to somebody opening the door tomorrow. Knowing why, and with what plan, is a respectable business to be in.