Ignition Lessons
...from Pasquale Trozzolo
I know I can be annoying…making it sound like starting is easy. “Just haul off and start!” “Just take the first step!”
The truth is, some starts ARE just that easy. Others are like starting a Formula 2000 turbocharged direct-injection engine. Before starting, you must heat the oil, warm the motor, lubricate, and check everything. Then you add power before checking and measuring again.
I know all this from hanging around Pasquale Trozzolo, the courageous entrepreneur who bought my first company. He’s a skilled, focused stARTist, who doesn’t mind going slow to start fast.
Pasquale started Trozzolo Communications Group, one of the Midwest’s leading advertising and public relations firms. He has also started careers as an insurance executive, a strategic consultant, a grad school instructor, and most recently, a critically acclaimed poet. Somewhere in there, he has also started lots of 15000 rpm engines as a Formula 2000 race car driver.
My only regret is that I met Pasquale about a year too late – after he had retired from his car racing career. I just KNOW if I’d met him sooner he’d have let me drive a few fast laps.
Pasquale is a fearless risk taker, so when I wrote about him In Start More Than You Can Finish: A Creative Permission Slip to Unleash Your Best Ideas, I wrote about his aversion to risk-aversion. But I left a lot of questions unasked.
If you want to know how to grab life by the steering wheel, meet this guy at the starting flag.
Becky: Hello, my friend! It’s no secret that you’re a serial stARTist. How does this show up in your life?
Pasquale: Running scared is my comfort zone, so I seem to complicate my life constantly. Starting new things – especially things I know little about – gives me purpose and healthy amount of adrenaline. I’m most comfortable with some discomfort.
You’ve made some big starts in your life. What do they have in common?
My best starts have been late starts. I started my business at age 36. I became a race car driver at 43 and a poet at 67. I’m still looking for purpose, and the search is my best start.
Starting is a family value for the Trozzolos. Where does that come from?
My parents were born in Italy and immigrated to the US to begin a better life - a BIG fresh start. Everything else was a piece of cake, they would tell you. My parents always had a side gig – from publishing a magazine to running a candy store, to selling handmade yard art. My earliest memories are of family members starting, experimenting, trying new things and working hard.
My uncle Marion Trozzolo, an entrepreneur and real estate developer, was an inspiration. I worked in his plastics factory while attending Rockhurst University. He was the first to apply Teflon to a frying pan. He called it Happy Ware. The rest is history – as in the Smithsonian, which displays one of his original Happy Pans!
You always finish strong, but like me, you’re a big fan of the start. What’s the attraction?
I find the start of the race the most exciting, even as I age. New beginnings offer us wonderment, excitement, adrenaline, fear, accomplishment and more. Potential is all around us, and it is ours to decide whether to act on or waste. It seems an easy choice.
What is something that used to be difficult, that you now start easily?
Writing. I write poetry, almost every day. It used to be difficult to write a poem and, while it is far from easy, practice and study have given me more confidence and less fear.
Sharing a poem still feels like that dream of walking down the halls of my high school dressed only in underwear, but I feel less like an imposter with each published piece.
There is no magic here. Find something you like. Start to do it. And get better at it. Wait…maybe there actually IS magic here.
(Pasquale’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies and in two acclaimed chapbooks, Before the Distance, and Un/Reconciled.)
The teacher has called you to the blackboard. What is the last thing you want to be told to do?
To sit down.
What’s your favorite power tool?
Google running at 5G. It’s all anyone needs.
Still or sparkling?
Expensive.
Dressing tossed in or on the side?
More bread, please.
PDA: Yes or no?
Even after 50 years of marriage, I can’t keep my hands off of her.
(Yes, I think we’ve been getting that from your poetry.)
Now, use that honesty to finish these statements:
The best way to kill an idea is to …overthink it. Dream first, then think.
The best time to start something is …right now.
The best thing I ever started that I didn’t finish is …my next book. It’s a really great idea. I even have a title and a few pages written.
My stARTist crush is …well, I know this woman. She has great hair, is funny, she can write, paint, garden, tell jokes, drink wine, listen well, and she loves to start new things. She even wrote a book about it.
(Stop, you’re making me blush!)
What would you say to someone having trouble pulling the trigger on their idea? “Orville Wright did not have a pilot’s license.”
“Dream a little before you decide.”
“Jump and a net will appear.”
“There comes a time when you have to stop revving the engine and shove it into gear.”
And my favorite, “It’s never too late to become what you might have been.”
No wait, here’s my favorite, “The only difference between a spin and a crash is the noise at the end.”
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Learn more about Pasquale Trozzolo at:
Fun fact: the cover art of UN/Reconciled was created by William Rose, another stARTist featured in Start More Than You Can Finish. Surround yourself with stARTists!