“So, what if you lost it all tomorrow,” I asked my luncheon host while dining in luxury at a private suite at the Duquesne Club. “What if you had to start all over?”

“Well, I guess I’d then just have to do it all again,” was his response, “I know this … I sure wouldn’t be afraid to try.”

The above words were spoken by my luncheon host, Mr. Lou Astorino, just a few days ago. Lou started Astorino and Associates some 40-plus years ago, and today his company stands tallest (my words, not his) among western Pennsylvania’s most prestigious architectural design firms.

Among Astorino’s local projects: PNC park, the new Children’s Hospital, The Trimont, and PNC’s “Firstside” check processing center on the old B&O site. Astorino has also done work in some of the great cities of the world, including the Chapel of the Holy Spirit at the Vatican.

Lou is a self-effacing gentleman. A product of the streets of Brookline; his mother lived in the same house he was raised in, right up until the time of her death just two years ago.

“She was a prototypical Italian mother”, Lou told me, and “She would bring my breakfast right here to my (downtown) office each and every morning. She took the bus from Brookline.”

What drives an entrepreneur such as Astorino? He could easily have ‘cashed out’ more than a decade ago. After all, his current backlog of work is over a billion dollars. He presently employs 200 people and he “over cares” about each and every one of them.

I asked him, “Lou, in all of those 40 years, has even one employee or associate ever come up to you and said, ‘Thanks for all that you do for me and my family, and there’s something that I really want you to know. You are doing one helluva job with this company!’”

 Ask any entrepreneur this question and he’ll smile a good while before responding. He’ll quietly contemplate the fact that, no… no one has ever thanked him or her. But then he’ll likely figure that no employee would ever stop to think that he should offer such praise. As Rod Stewart once said, “It just ain’t natural.”

After all, the boss/owner is just … well, he’s just there. He tells people what he wants done and how he wants it done and then he pays you for doing these things. Heck, maybe he isn’t even human?

Lou Astorino is no different from Lew Wheeler, Bob Fragasso, Dave Wilkie, Sam Lucci, Tom Grealish, Tony Renda (and these are the guys who just happened to pop into my head right now), or any other of the 50,000 entrepreneurs who operate businesses in this region each and every day. These guys and gals just want to create and leave this world a little bit better than the way they found it.

It is certainly not about money, though everyone who isn’t an entrepreneur thinks it is. The fact of the matter is that, ‘making lots of money’ is usually the last thing on the mind of an entrepreneur. Sure, entrepreneurs need to eat too. Which is precisely why there are so many “Lifestyle Entrepreneurs”.

Nor is it about ego, although there are quite a few giant egos out there amongst the few thousand entrepreneurs whom I personally know. It’s a funny thing about life: whatever you chase, you almost never get. This applies to love and this certainly applies to money. But, if you chase perfection in everything you do, well …. do this and the money will surely follow.

You’ll recall that way back at the beginning of this rambling prose, I asked Lou Astorino, “What if you lost it all?” with his reply being, roughly, “I guess I’d just do it all over again.”

Well, I DID lose it all. And I mean it all. And this was the best thing that could ever have happened to me because it gave me humility, caution, and just a mild case of cynicism that just wasn’t there before.
And then I went out and re-made both my life and my entrepreneurial career. (It really is a lot easier, once you can learn what not to do!)

So … back to the original question. “Why do we do it?”

My answer is that we do it because it simply hasn’t yet been done. Or at least not the way that we are going to do it.
And so we’re curious as hell about just what things will be like once it is done.

Love ya Lou … and thanks again for lunch!