The Delegation Trap: Atiba de Souza talks about the Hero, Villain, Guide Framework for Scaling

TL;DR:
Atiba de Souza — author of The Delegation Trap and founder of an AI-powered video marketing agency serving cash-based medical practices — joins Phil Rose on Sparks for Growth to unpack why so many founders can't let go, and what it actually takes to stop being the bottleneck. Atiba built and sold his first company's search engine in 1996, ran a boutique SEO agency for fifteen years, and has since rebuilt his teams (and his AI) around one idea: delegation isn't telling people what to do, it's teaching them how to think. Along the way, he and Phil get into the Hero, Villain, Guide framework, why the popular "80% is good enough" delegation rule is a trap, and why the exact same principles now apply to working with AI.

Full Show Notes:
Phil Rose sits down with Atiba de Souza — entrepreneur, football coach, and author of The Delegation Trap — for a conversation that starts with a search engine sold for $2,500 in 1996 and ends with the same first-principles thinking now shaping how Atiba delegates. In between, you'll hear why the "hero" instinct that builds a business is often the very thing that later strangles it, and what it really takes to become the guide instead.

In this episode, discover:
• Why “what got you here won’t get you there” is only half the story — and what actually carries forward
• The Hero, Villain, Guide framework, and why your team can only become the villain if you insist on staying the hero
• The three “lies” that keep founders doing everything themselves — including the popular delegation myth that “80% is good enough”
• Why Atiba gave an employee a raise after she got two ten-year-old client accounts banned
• How a rigid SOP once cost a cashier a sale over 75 cents in loose change, and what it reveals about over-engineered processes
• The “Learner vs Judger” question framework that decides whether your questions build people up or shut them down
• Why the same delegation principles that apply to people apply to AI — and how Atiba built his own AI thinking partner, Athena, to stop him “breaking things” out of boredom
• What Atiba's advice would be to his 12-year-old self, already sitting in on his mother's quarterly planning meetings
The heart of this one is the Hero, Villain, Guide framework: in any working relationship, someone plays the hero, someone plays the villain, and someone plays the guide. Atiba's realisation — that he had to stop being the hero of his own business and become its guide instead — reshapes everything from hiring, to SOPs, to how he now works with AI.
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More about Atiba

Atiba de Souza is an entrepreneur, coach, and the author of The Delegation Trap: It's Not Them, It's You. He wrote his first code in seventh grade, co-founded and sold his first company's search engine in 1996 — a few zeros too early, by his own admission — and spent the next fifteen years running a boutique SEO agency, work he calls practical rather than theoretical because he has lived every stage of it himself. Since 2020, Atiba has built and rebuilt teams around a single principle: delegation is not telling people what to do, it's teaching them how to think. He now runs an AI-powered video marketing agency serving cash-based medical practices, teaches entrepreneurs how to build “AI employees” through his Impossible Means Go programme, and hosts monthly web classes and workshops on bringing AI into the heart of a business. Atiba lives in the Philippines and coached competitive American football for fifteen years, winning 23 championships along the way.

Find Atiba, his book The Delegation Trap, and his AI training programmes at atibadesouza.com.

Key nuggets to listen out for:
“Delegation is not telling people what to do, it’s teaching people how to think. That is the Yoda moment.”
“I am not the hero of the story. I am the guide in the story, and my staff is the hero.”
“Let me put this bluntly. Smart people are going to get smarter and dumb people are going to get dumber. We’re going to have a true digital divide.”
“It’s not about answering questions. It’s about asking questions.”
“Shut the hell up. I was talking too much. I used to love to hear myself talk.”
Coaching Questions for Listeners:
1. Where in your business are you still playing the hero — and what would change if you let your team be the hero instead?
2. Which of your standard operating procedures needs a person to think, not just follow the steps?
3. Are you hiring for skill, or are you hiring for fit with the values you actually live — not the ones on the wall?
4. When did you last ask your team a genuinely open, “learner” question instead of a “judger” one?
5. If your business ran perfectly without you tomorrow, what would you do with your time — and does that excite you or unsettle you?
6. Where are you asking AI to do your thinking for you, instead of asking it better questions?

Resources:
• Atiba de Souza – The Delegation Trap: It's Not Them, It's You
• Marshall Goldsmith – What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Website: atibadesouza.com

Learn More:
• Visit the Ignium website: https://www.igniumconsult.com
• Subscribe for more exclusive content in the Ignium Spark Tank: https://www.igniumconsult.com/the-spark-tank
• Listen to the show on Transistor: https://sparksbyignium.transistor.fm/episodes
• Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/sparks-by-ignium/id1525777023
• Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7KDlz9FFdVJuJTJWAZmrvG?si=9d3c43e07d9b4478

Things to look out for:
Atiba de Souza, The Delegation Trap, Hero Villain Guide framework, delegation for entrepreneurs, AI delegation, superhero complex business owners, how to delegate effectively, Sparks for Growth podcast, Phil Rose podcast, scaling a business with AI, founder burnout, AI employees, business coaching frameworks, asking better questions leadership, core values hiring


• delegation is teaching people how to think
• hero villain guide business framework
• superhero complex in entrepreneurs
• why founders can't delegate
• learner versus judger questions
• hiring for fit not skill
• core values driven hiring
• AI as a thinking partner not an answer machine
• building AI employees for your business
• founder identity after scaling
• situational coaching for business teams
• first principles delegation and AI


• what is the hero villain guide framework in business
• how do I stop being the bottleneck in my own business
• why is delegation so hard for entrepreneurs
• what is The Delegation Trap book about
• how to ask better questions as a leader
• is 80% delegation good enough or a myth
• how to use AI to scale a business without losing control
• what to do when your business doesn't need you anymore


• Atiba de Souza
• The Delegation Trap
• Hero Villain Guide
• Delegation
• AI in Business
• Founder Burnout
• Business Coaching
• Scaling Up
• Leadership Development
• Entrepreneurship
• AI Employees
• Sparks for Growth
• Business Podcast
• SEO to AI Marketing
• Core Values Hiring

Creators and Guests

Host

Phil Rose

What is Sparks for Growth?

Conversations with some fo the worlds most amazing business founders, leaders and experts, examining the changing landscape of leadership, purpose, business growth, Scaling Up and change with business leaders and owners in mind. We cover a mix of topics designed to ignite (or re-ignite) your SPARK help you SCALE and then SUSTAIN your growth one conversation at a time.

Learn More: visit the Ignium https://www.igniumconsult.com/
Subscribe for more exclusive content in the Ignium Spark Tank: https://www.igniumconsult.com/the-spark-tank/
Connect with your host Phil Rose on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachphilrose/

SPARKS FOR GROWTH — EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Guest: Atiba de Souza | Author, The Delegation Trap; Founder, Impossible Means Go
Topic: The Delegation Trap — The Hero, Villain, Guide Framework for Scaling with AI
Host: Phil Rose
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CHAPTER MARKERS
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Use these timestamps to navigate the episode in Transistor, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

00:00 Welcome & Introduction — Atiba de Souza, Author of The Delegation Trap
00:51 “What Got You Here Won't Get You There” — Atiba's Backstory Begins
01:16 Writing His First Code in Seventh Grade
02:33 Growing Up in a Family of Entrepreneurs
03:02 Quarterly Planning With His Mother at Age 12
04:05 Building and Selling a Search Engine in 1996 for $2,500
04:59 Building Search Systems for the US Government
05:59 Spotting the Parallel Between Computer and Human Communication
07:32 Google's 2005 Spam Problem and the Birth of His SEO Agency
09:13 Fifteen Years Running the SEO Business, Until the Pandemic
10:11 Burnout, the Pandemic, and Shutting the Company Down
11:00 Joining His Wife's Business and Discovering Video
12:20 Relaunching 100% Offshore
13:24 Realising He Needed to Get Back on Stage — and Train Someone Else
14:53 Hiring 200 People to Fill Six Roles
16:03 “You Are the Problem” — The Mirror Moment
17:28 The Superhero Complex, Unpacked
19:14 Why Delegating Properly Makes You Feel Depressed
20:44 The Hero, Villain, Guide Framework
24:29 How The Delegation Trap Became a Book
25:39 Asking Better Questions, Not Answering Them
26:50 The 75-Cent SOP Story
29:16 The Six-Item Grocery SOP Story
32:22 Delegation Is Teaching People How to Think
36:20 Hire for Fit, Not Skill
38:35 Co-Creation Creates Ownership
39:48 Lessons From 15 Years of Football Coaching
43:13 The Expectation of Failure
44:10 The Instagram-Ban Story — and the Raise
48:02 AI, Delegation, and the Coming Digital Divide
52:23 The Problem With “Vibe Coding”
54:05 Building an AI-Powered Training Dojo in Slack
59:03 The Hardest Problem: When the Business Doesn't Need You Anymore
1:00:27 Meet Athena, Atiba's AI Thinking Partner
1:04:20 The One Thing to Do Right Now: Ask Better Questions
1:06:16 Advice to His Younger Self
1:11:55 Atiba's Upcoming Events and Where to Find Him
1:15:55 Wrap-Up and What's Next

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KEY MOMENTS — EPISODE SUMMARY
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A curated summary of the most important insights from this conversation.

The Mirror Moment (14:53)
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Atiba describes hiring two hundred people over two years trying to fill just six shift positions in a food brand he owned. Fed up with staff calling out and problems repeating, he realised the common denominator across every failed hire was himself. This is the turning point that sets up everything else in the episode: you can't out-hire a leadership problem.

The Hero, Villain, Guide Framework (20:44)
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Atiba explains that every story — including the one playing out between a leader and their team — has a hero, a villain, and a guide. If a leader insists on being the hero, their staff is left with only one role available: the villain. He realised his own job was to be the guide, and to let his staff be the hero. This reframes delegation as a question of which role you're occupying, not just which tasks you're handing off.

How The Delegation Trap Became a Book (24:29)
---------------------------------------------

Atiba explains that his book grew out of a mastermind session where he admitted he doesn't answer his staff's questions — he asks questions back. More than half the room, all people he looked up to, asked him to teach them how to do the same. The book's subtitle, It's Not Them, It's You, captures the same insight from the mirror moment earlier in the episode.

The 75-Cent SOP Story (26:50)
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During a rare day off at a church conference, Atiba's phone starts ringing: a cashier can't make 75 cents change because the SOP calls for quarters and she only has dimes and nickels. The story lands as a concrete, funny illustration of how over-prescriptive processes stop staff thinking for themselves, even when the fix is obvious.

Delegation Is Teaching People How to Think (32:22)
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Atiba distils the whole episode into one line: delegation is not telling people what to do, it's teaching people how to think. He calls this “the Yoda moment” — the leader's job is to ask questions that cause someone else to think, not to hand them the answer.

The Instagram-Ban Story — and the Raise (44:10)
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A team member tried a new tool on two long-standing client Instagram accounts without asking permission, and got both banned. Rather than firing her, Atiba gave her a raise, because she was acting in line with the company's stated core value of curiosity. He argues that expecting and rewarding well-intentioned failure is what makes real delegation possible.

AI, Delegation, and the Coming Digital Divide (48:02)
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Atiba predicts that “smart people are going to get smarter and dumb people are going to get dumber,” creating a genuine digital divide depending on how people use AI. He distinguishes shallow uses (cleaning an inbox, “vibe coding” an app in two sentences) from using AI to solve problems that were previously out of reach entirely.

Meet Athena, Atiba's AI Thinking Partner (1:00:27)
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Once his business ran smoothly without him, Atiba noticed the temptation to “break stuff” just to feel useful again. His solution was building Athena, a custom AI orchestrator that evaluates new ideas he has, decides if and when they're worth pursuing, and keeps him from chasing every distraction — applying the same delegation principles to AI that he applies to people.

Advice to His Younger Self (1:06:16)
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Asked what he'd tell his younger self, Atiba doesn't hesitate: “Shut the hell up. I was talking too much.” He traces the lesson back to a mentor at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he worked as a teenage tour guide, who told him to let the history tell the story instead of performing — a lesson he says took him another twenty years to fully absorb.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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Lightly edited for readability. Filler words, false starts, and backchannel interjections removed.

Phil Rose:
Welcome back to the Sparks for Growth podcast. And today I'm hosting Atiba D'Souza. He's in the Philippines, it's 10 past 10 at night for him. And we're going to be talking about some of the things that have really driven him to help him build his business. Atiba came across what we do very recently, talking about some of the things that have driven AI and some things about talking about delegation. But when I talked to him to get his real bio on what really drives him, he says it's not about theory. It's the things he lives day to day, the things that bring it to life. It's practical now. And actually what we're talking about here is that actually things that are relevant current times, it's the real human beings behind the world. We talk a lot about AI, but actually it's the human beings that make this work. And therefore we need to be better at doing what we do, not based on yesterday's theories, but based on today's theory and practical to make it really work. So Tiba, welcome to the Sparks for Growth podcast.

Atiba:
Phil, thanks so much for having me. I've we've been planning this for a couple of months, so I'm looking forward for to us diving in today.

Phil Rose:
We have indeed, thank you. And you know, when we talking just now, we were talking about some of the things we were going to kick off with. And I'd love to know that quote I said before about Marshall Goldsmith saying about, got you here won't get you there. But what got you here has actually given you a start to where you're going. So just give us a bit of a backstory on who's a Teeber and why where you are today is so relevant.

Atiba:
Yeah, I appreciate that. And and you know, I for everyone listening, that's something I fully believe as well. Is like in order to take the next step in life, you have to bring everything forward in everything that you've gone through. Everything that you've gone through has gotten you to this place and will get you to the next. Right? It it builds. and so so for me it started super, super young, actually, in seventh grade. I started writing code in seventh grade. And it was me and two friends and we just had the brain for it. We we had the mind for it and and we just built and we did all sorts of stuff. And and by the time we were graduating high school, we were like saying, you know, let's start a company. And so we did.

Phil Rose:
That's impressive. Wow, that's impressive. So as a young kid, you were doing that. Now you start off that, there's not many people that started doing that as coders. when you think about the guys that have coded, you often think about the Bill Gates type of world. But actually what you did, you created something for real. So what does it think about starting up a business? Because as young guys, we know it's difficult to get out of the traditional education and going into that traditional career. But you took a bit of a path less traveled, so to speak.

Atiba:
Yeah, and and Phil, to be honest with you, it wasn't a path less traveled for me because I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. it it's actually rarer to have a job than it is to own a business in in a family. So, you know, it was it was almost like the expectation, if you will. for my other two friends, it wasn't that's that wasn't their life at all. And so I was the one leading that train in that way. because it is what I knew. I started doing quarterly planning with my mother in her business at age twelve and sitting in and and being being you know, being involved and around. So it it it was what I knew.

Phil Rose:
Wow. That's impressive. There's not many people do that, you we have to force some businesses to even think about quarterly planning and they're in their 50s and 60s. But actually you started doing that as a 12 year old. So actually you had a really good ground again, finding out the things that we drive at, which is, know, put the plan in place. Because if you haven't got a plan, you're not going to get where you want to be going.

Atiba:
Yes. Not at all. You sure won't. Right. and so I started there. And so so we started running that company and and quite honestly, the company was making money. But the other two guys went off to school and they went off to school and they decided to go and do the traditional thing and they kinda left me with the company, which was fine. and really ended up growing that I I never finished school because school was not for me at all. At all.

Phil Rose:
Wow, that's amazing.

Atiba:
by 1996, we had written a search engine and we had a search engine online by 1996. that was before Google. We had a search engine online, Phil. We we were real smart. We sold that search engine in late 1996, early 1997, I don't remember the exact date for a whopping $2,500.

Phil Rose:
Hahaha.

Atiba:
So we missed the boat by a few zeros.

Phil Rose:
At least you got it away, which many people don't do.

Atiba:
Yes. and and so but that that propelled me into search. and especially after the the other guys left, it I was left there running this business and really looking at search and understanding the concept of search and the technology of search and getting information to people that that they wanted. you know and That's where, and I know we mentioned this in the pre-interview too, but that's where it it all started to click for me, this idea of communication and technology. Okay. Because back then, and this is this is it's I I know this is gonna sound really nerdy and geeky, y'all. So bear with me here. Right. and so by 99 to 2001, I was doing building search systems for the government. And For the US government, that is. And they had all this legacy data and all these legacy systems. And we're building new systems, and we still had to interface with the legacy systems. And we were having all of these problems with the new systems interfacing with the legacy systems, with the legacy systems interfacing with other legacy systems, and there were all of these issues going on. And I started recognizing that. The communication issues that computers and computer systems were having were very, very similar and parallel to the communication issues that humans have with each other.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, okay. Love that. Love that. Interesting.

Atiba:
Right. And that was a crosswalk from straight software architecture into marketing and communication.

Phil Rose:
Okay, interesting. So this word communication pops up there at that point, you know, that communication technology and just think about, know, 99 2001. I can relate to that directly. That was, you know, year 2000 crisis across the globe. It was communication issues. So you're saying you're getting in that and in that early, early days of the internet as well, you know, when we talk back to 1996, that was a, you know, you're a bit of an internet pioneer then because not many people were online at all in 1996. So you're doing something different. And then you've got this view that you're looking at that interface issues between software talking to each other, but actually it's the communication behind the scenes that's causing some of the problems.

Atiba:
Correct. Correct. And so I started studying and started recognizing these parallels. I'm like, holy crap. Right. and so that that was a couple of years of study. And then by ninety-five sorry, two thousand five, I was officially done with the government, two thousand four, two thousand five, officially done with the government. And if you remember, Phil, back then Google was having a major problem. And the major problem that Google was having was there was this whole new slew of internet marketers who had figured out how to get their landing pages to rank at the top of Google so that they can sell their product. Right? And a lot of those pages were what? Crappy pages. A lot of those products weren't very good. And they were gaming the system. I don't know if you remember back then, you used to put White text at the bottom of of your your page. And then you'd put keywords in the white text in white letters.

Phil Rose:
Okay. Yeah. So no one could see them. Yeah, I remember that. No one could see them. It was all hidden there. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that.

Atiba:
Right? All of those games. Well, I am now leaving the public sector and coming back into the private sector. And I'm looking at Google and I'm like, I know this problem. We've solved this problem. Right? You've got bad data. And how are you going to solve it? And so that gave me and our company a massive leg up because in 2005, because I understood technically what they needed to do in order to solve the problem. And so because I understood technically what they needed to do, it allowed us to have an advantage to understand the content that needed to be created to meet the technical requirement.

Phil Rose:
In 2005. Okay, so we're now getting a different view. We're getting actually technology coming across. You're actually understanding what the business need you do to make sure the technology fits for them before they're thinking about the content of their pages as well.

Atiba:
Yes, yes. And so that's how we got into SEO. And so I ran an SEO, a a written SEO company till honestly the pandemic.

Phil Rose:
Wow, okay, so 20 years almost.

Atiba:
Almost. Well, fift fifteen, twenty twenty.

Phil Rose:
15 years, okay, okay. Well, so this is this experience coming out. This is when you talked about, you know, that practical experience you said just now, you know, you've lived it, it's not theory, this is stuff you've done. This is one of the key things.

Atiba:
yeah. And still doing. Right? and so twenty twenty hit, and in seventeen I had written a a paper, if you will, and sent it to a client saying that video was going to be the next wave and we needed to get into video. the client said, I agree with you. And I said, Well, would you fund fund this this experiment and this research? And the client said, No. Happens. but by 2020, I was tired and I was burnt out because the SEO industry had been commoditized and there were a bunch of people offering SEO services for $295 a month, and people wanted to go buy that. And it was like, well, that's not what we do. We're a boutique, we guarantee, blah, blah, blah. And we were very, very expensive. And I was tired. I was tired, Phil. I I was. And the pandemic hit. And so literally January of 2020, I made the decision to shut down the company.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, always. Mm-hmm. Time to move on. Wow, okay, so that's when you say it's the 15 years, because 2005 you're about the landing pages, 2020 you made that decision just before pandemic started.

Atiba:
And the pandemic hit, and I'm thinking to myself, Man, I'm a genius.

Phil Rose:
We always have the timing. So get out of the top, get out of the bottom, yeah.

Atiba:
Right, because clients started to scatter, staff started to scatter, and it was like and I'm out. See ya. and my wife was starting up a company at the time, and I and I said, Well, you know what? I'm just gonna go work for you, and I'll just sit in the background and be your tech and marketing guy in the background. And and so she started this business and and

Phil Rose:
Yeah, yeah. Perfect time.

Atiba:
And now again back to to v to video, I'm saying to her, video is gonna be the future. And so I started doing more research. I had time on my hands now. I started doing more research on YouTube. And I came across a book by Sean Connell, who at the time was one of the top YouTubers, one of the biggest channels. And he wrote he wrote the book on YouTubing. And so I'm reading his book, and I remember vividly, re during the pandemic, I'm reading it, listening to his book on audio, and and as he's laying out his strategy, I'm saying to myself, holy crap, that's the exact same strategy we use for written. And they're using it.

Phil Rose:
Okay, so there's a combination of the two coming together.

Atiba:
And so then I started asking myself, Well, could we get videos to rank on page one of Google?

Phil Rose:
Okay, okay. 2020 mine, six years back.

Atiba:
Yes. And so then after I shut down the company, I started back a couple months later. And it's like, okay, we're back. We're gonna do this different. Right? But here's what was different. We were always virtual, but in that moment we went virtual and we went completely offshore. So we had a couple people in Canada and a couple other places, but now it and we had lots of lots of people in the US. We went a hundred percent offshore, which

Phil Rose:
Yeah, okay. Another way to go. Keep it going.

Atiba:
Culturally changed how I had to lead this organization.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah, and you're based in the US at this time, of course. Yeah, okay.

Atiba:
Okay. Right. I'm based in the US, Washington, DC, at that time. Okay. and so we we started this video marketing agency. We niched down into serving cash-based medical practices. and we grew a team, which was, you know, what, like the tenth team I've grown in my career. But we grew a team and it was within That growing of the team and now coming out of the pandemic, okay, and dealing with this virtual team, completely virtual team, completely all sorts of cultural issues, if you will, okay, between you know, to to deal with and to learn through, that I I realized that, you know, in order for this company to grow, it's time for me to get back on stage.

Phil Rose:
Okay, right, I'm sorry, the two jigs will come together. Okay, okay.

Atiba:
and travel more, which means I don't have the time to do all of the work.

Phil Rose:
Brilliant. So you actually somebody else has to it. now this is so, so when I said, what got you here, won't get you there. Actually what you're saying here is what got you here is the key to what you're doing now effectively. Because I know you're doing the medical marketing, but you know, when we're going to come onto this in a minute and you've got your Superman hat on, the dominoes are starting to fall now. I'm starting to understand the story between this, this young kid starting up his own business, dropping into 1996 selling a search engine, moving into the government issues. And then 2005 building landing page, but 2020 dropping out because actually. There's too many other people doing it, but you've now got this story you're building up again. You're offshoring, you've got a virtual team. There's something else has to be done to make it work. And you'll get up on stage again.

Atiba:
Yeah. I'm I'm on stage, I'm traveling more. And you know, to that point, all of the heavy lifting SEO work in the company, I was doing. All of the heavy thinking I was doing. And so it was a matter of, okay, if I'm going to be on stage more, I can't keep doing this because I'm the bottleneck in the company.

Phil Rose:
Got it. Got it.

Atiba:
And so I needed to train someone else. I needed to teach someone else. Okay. Now, and I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but I've made every mistake and delegation that you could possibly make in your life. Right? I owned, I also have owned food brands in my in my career as well. I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur. and I remember there was one food brand that we owned. We needed to fill six positions, fill six positions to run all of the shifts. And in a two-year span, I hired 200. People to fill six positions. Right? And I remember sitting, having to go in and fill in a shift because someone called out again. And I remember sitting there pissed off and saying to myself, what is the problem? Because I've tried everything. And then starting to realize the problem was staring me in the mirror.

Phil Rose:
Filled six positions. Wow. Okay. There's an issue. You don't have to deal with the work. Yeah, you are the problem. You are the problem. And it's interesting because one of the questions you talked about is that you said you could yourself a fundamentalist and you talk about going back to first principles. So I'm now seeing why these bits come together. It's fascinating having this conversation, having talked to you over the last couple of months. This is the bit that you've been there. You've been there and got the war wounds from doing it. Hiring that number of people to fill those six positions because actually you were blaming them at the time is the guess the story you're telling yourself. But actually when you looked in the mirror, the fingers only pointing one way.

Atiba:
Yeah, yeah. Because I was the only common denominator between all two hundred of them.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, okay. And they were all pretty smart people probably. To a degree. Yeah, okay. Yeah, okay. We won't get down that road, the key here is that... Yeah.

Atiba:
Well some of them. But but but that was the key though. That was a key. It was like we hired all different levels of people in those 200. Okay. To the point where we started paying double what the position even required, hoping that that would get us but like I said, I've made every mistake.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, okay. So tell me that case, when did you recognise it? Because you know, you've got your Superman hat on now, because actually that's what you were trying to be. You were trying to be the man who did everything. You were up on stage, you were answering the emails, you were on your Slack channel doing all these other things that we've all done. So when did you realise that the bottleneck was blocked because of you and you were the top of the business?

Atiba:
Yeah. and so it was at that moment when I started recognizing that I I needed someone else who can do SEO and I was going to train someone else to do SEO. Right. And you know, we talk about the superhero complex. And the superhero complex for us as business owners, it shows up in a bunch of different ways, Phil. and one of the the fun things is I have the pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs all around the world. And if you're listening to me right now with Phil, thanks for being here first and foremost.

Phil Rose:
Mmm.

Atiba:
Secondly, I probably just said the superhero complex, and you probably shuddered. You said, I don't have a superhero. I am not a superhero. I don't have that superhero complex. And let me just tell you, that's what all business owners tell me. But let me let's be honest for a moment. Okay. When your business started, it was just you. Everything fell on you. Every win, every loss fell on you. You had to get it done. Then you started bringing in people.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, I'm the hero.

Atiba:
And building a team and passing things off to the team, right? And you started to fall into a couple of traps. And I'm telling you this because I've fallen into these traps as well. Right? The trap of you told them everything that they needed to do, bit by bit, detail by detail, because at the end of the day, you knew the process best. It was your process, right? You made the statements that nobody's going to love my business and care about my business as much as I do because

Phil Rose:
Yeah, you've been there. Yeah, yeah. It's my baby.

Atiba:
Only I Okay. Right? You you said those words. here here's the one that that so many of us when we start to get things right, we don't even realize we fall into. All right, and this is a really, really big one, Phil. When we start to delegate properly, we actually start to get a little bit depressed. Because the thing that happens when they call you and they tell you, I have a problem and I need you to come in and solve it. Yeah, you feel that twinge of annoyance. Why can't you figure this out? But you also feel a sense of pride in that you're needed, you're wanted, and you get a massive dopamine hit from that, whether you admit it or not.

Phil Rose:
So being needed gives you that hit, therefore you feel like you are Superman, you're proud of what you're able to do.

Atiba:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and

Phil Rose:
There's a lot of people nodding as you're saying this now, there's people nodding in their car thinking he's right.

Atiba:
And and the here's the here's the the the thing, Phil, and and the challenge. And this is the thing that I had to learn and what I love to share now with everyone is understand that we're all living in story. This is all story. Everything we do is story in some way, shape, or form. Okay? Our life is story. And in story, when you read any story, when you watch any story, I just saw the new soup Spider Man. Fantastic, by the way. If you can see the new Spider Man in four D, which is what I did, my gosh, it's mind blowing. Anyway, I digress.

Phil Rose:
I saw it's been the biggest grossing movie that was already in this first weekend. Amazing.

Atiba:
It it it's it's an amazing movie. And even better in four D. but

Phil Rose:
Yeah, well, trailer here, unpaid trailer guys, unpaid trailer.

Atiba:
Right? Marvel, if you want to pay us, reach out. We gotcha. no, but seriously, so so so yes, so story. That's what we were talking about. In story, in every single story, there are three characters. There may be more, but there are always these three characters. There's the hero. There's the villain and there's the guide. And so I want you to think about your staff, your team member right now. Okay? So between you and your team member, between you and your staff, all three roles have to be played. And so if you show up as the hero, then your staff is the villain.

Phil Rose:
Hmm?

Atiba:
Or are they your guide? Hmm.

Phil Rose:
That's interesting. Okay, okay. Yeah, because they're gonna be all there. Okay.

Atiba:
Hmm. Okay. And so they can't be your guide now, can they? And if they're the villain, you're not paying your villain now, are you?

Phil Rose:
I think.

Atiba:
And so, huh. And so this is the this was the moment that I had several years ago. Okay, back in in 21. This was the moment that I had. I had to realize I am not the hero of the story. I am the guide in the story, and my staff is the hero.

Phil Rose:
Yeah. with, we're stuck. Mmm. that's interesting. So I was going down the hero's journey when you talk about that, but you're saying now the staff of the hero, you're the guide, guiding them on what needs to be done, but allowing them to be the heroes.

Atiba:
Allow them to be the heroes. Okay. You allow them to they are the hero. And if you think about it, logically, Phil, that's why we hire people. We hire people, we put in a role because we want them to own the role and be the hero of the role, but we don't treat them that way. And then we complain that they don't act that way.

Phil Rose:
So all those 200 people you employed, they wanted to be their own heroes. And as in your mind at that time, you weren't enabling that to happen, therefore the problem is they weren't becoming the hero, therefore they had to become the villain in your mind. Okay, I'm seeing the journey picture again.

Atiba:
And then once I made him the villain in my mind, what did they do? They acted out the part.

Phil Rose:
You enable them, that's the only role they could play. And I'm guessing in their minds you were the villain as well because you weren't giving them all the tools they needed in their minds as well. Okay.

Atiba:
And now we see the dichotomous problem that plays out and just perpetuates. And perpetuates, right?

Phil Rose:
Yeah. Okay. So we've got a problem here in case. So the problem is you're caught in a trap. I seem to remember the song about that. You're caught in the trap. You're stuck in the middle. You think you've got to play the hero, but that's you're being the guide. Now you're blaming other people for the problems that they're having. They're not showing up in the way you wanted. You've got your baby as a business and you're the only who can run it properly. So there's a bit of a flip here in that case, because if we go to the typical hero's journey side, we're talking about, become the hero because I've got my guide, it's my Yoda who's going to take me on the journey here. But you're saying in this case here, I've become the guide. I'm the one who has to do it in that case. So what's the learning that has to go for in that case? To become a guide, that takes a bit of a different skill set from what we've had before. So what do we have to do differently?

Atiba:
It does. It does. Becoming Yoda is not. I'm not I'm gonna tell you it's easy. I I'm not. Okay. Because we again fall into traps. We fall into the trap of let me just tell you what to do. You came to me, let me just I'm gonna answer your question and tell you what to do. I'll be honest with you and tell you, the book, The Delegation Trap, came about because I was at a mastermind and we had to share one of the things that we do that other people can. Can copy and and I said, I don't answer questions that my staff asks. And I'm in this mastermind with people who are all doing way better than me in in business. And they all looked at me and they were just like, What do mean you don't answer questions? And over half of the room of people that I looked up to for years came up to me that weekend is like, Teach us how we don't answer questions because that's all we do.

Phil Rose:
Well. okay. So there's a real coaching there. So for listeners there, just if you're listening to this, the TV just had a book, The Delegation Trap, and the subtitle is, It's Not Them, It's You. And I love that. Okay. So you've now got these people coming up to you, ask you how to teach them how to ask better questions.

Atiba:
It's you. Yes. Yes. And so Right. And so that's what it it ends up. That's what the book is all about. The book is about the process that I learned in becoming the guide. And you just hit the nail on the head. It is about asking better questions. It's not about answering questions. It's about asking questions. Asking questions. Right. And and understanding the psychology behind the questions that you're asking. So much so we spend two chapters on asking questions in the book. Okay. Because we as leaders don't ask enough questions. We tell people what to do. We dictate what to do. We tell people what to do. We expect them to do it the way we want it done. We don't ask.

Phil Rose:
and that you just hit something that you just mentioned there. We tell people how we expect it to be done, but we're also telling them how to do it often as well. So we're never gonna help them learn, because they're just gonna do it the way we've always done it, and they're gonna turn around and say, it's either I could have done it better, but just you're painting the wrong picture.

Atiba:
Let me give you a a a graphic story of that. Okay. this happened it's 2026. So this this had to have happened thirteen, maybe fourteen years ago. Okay, I told you I own owned food brands. been working, working, working, and finally got to the place where like, all right, I'm gonna my wife and we wanna take a day off. We're going to this church conference. Okay, great, fantastic. And we had the staff all lined up. and have not taken a a day off in Couple of years at this point. Okay. And so we're not taking this time off. And we go to this church conference that I'm not lying to you was 25 minutes from home. So it wasn't even like we went far. Okay. We get there, and about 10 minutes into the conference, my phone is blowing up. Blowing up. And so I had to step away and call back and answer the phone and figure out what's going on. And it's a young lady who's working in our shop, who's working at the register, and somebody came up to pay, and she said, when I called, she said, We're out of change. Okay. And somebody came up to pay. And she said, I have to give them 75 cents, and we're out of change. Okay. I don't have any quarters to give them. Right. And so in the process of telling her what to do, of going to go to this store next door, ask take take a $10 bill, ask them for a roll of quarters, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Right, I find out that sh she has dimes and nickels.

Phil Rose:
but not quarters.

Atiba:
But not quarters. And she calls because she can't make change because the SOP said to give quarters. But and she

Phil Rose:
No way. Because I thought you were right.

Atiba:
I used to be so big into SOPs. I I still I still love SOPs, but I used to I remember being yeah with a coach and he said your business should have max twelve to thirteen SOPs and I'm thinking you are out of your mind because we have two hundred.

Phil Rose:
Wow, wow, make it run.

Atiba:
Okay. Right. And I'm like, how do you get to twelve or thirty? You're you're insane. We got two hundred. I know better. But that's the problem. I was so much into dictating what to do that this young lady couldn't figure out to use dimes when she ran out of quarters with a customer standing in front of her.

Phil Rose:
because you'd written in the SOP with... Yeah. So you've got a problem here. There's two things come up in my mind in that case. One is the SOPs are too prescriptive, which you know, but the point is now you've gone out for a bit of leisure time to do something else in the community and your phone is ringing from someone who can't find 75 cents and you're having to deal with it. You're the boss. And obviously they don't feel empowered to make that decision because you're the boss and you've written an SOP so you've got to do it in quarters. Bit of a revelation because I mean, Now it's interesting, businesses now don't use cash anyways, we know that wouldn't happen, but there'll be something else that came up that will cause a problem. So how did that make you feel in that moment?

Atiba:
listen, it it happens. I was so I do live in the Philippines and and I was here when we first got here and I was checking out in a grocery store and we bought six cans of one thing, right? It was a drink that my wife wanted. We bought six cans. Now we put on on on the belt, but she put five out and then put another one later. Okay. So put the five and then other groceries and then another one. No big deal, right? And so the young lady rang up the five and then got continued and then got to the sixth one and looked at it and was like What to do? Hold on, it gets better, Phil. It gets better. And so we're standing and we're watching this thing, right? And we're just like, what in the world's going on here, guys? And so now she calls over a manager. The manager comes over and she says to the manager, she's saying, They had six, but they put five and then one. And I need to rank it up as six quantity. And the manager says, Yes, you do. So here's what they did they voided the entire transaction. Took everything out of the bags, put it back on the belt.

Phil Rose:
I've started again.

Atiba:
Because that's what the SOP said to do.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, yeah. Now, I think it's really interesting because we're not here to talk about SOPs, but it's really interesting, isn't it? You've really got to be careful what you wish for because SOPs are written in the best style, but they don't enable staff to work around, to come up with ideas of their own. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Atiba:
To think, to think. And that's the key. And so when we talk about first principles and getting back to that, understanding that delegation, right? Delegation is not telling people what to do, it's teaching people how to think. And that is the Yoda moment. It's understanding that your job is to put them in a place, ask them the questions that cause them to think. That is your job.

Phil Rose:
I love that. So here you are as the guide now. You've got your guide hat on, you've taken off your Superman hat, you've put your guide hat on, you've now got the revelation. And you realise that actually it's about teaching people how to think. That's your role. I'm a coach, I'm a qualified coach, I've done it for a long time, I've been coaching for many years. And that's what I always talk about is asking the questions. But the key here is you're asking questions to enable people to think. So as an owner, as an entrepreneur, you're building that from your own perspective. But lot of people don't want to do it. So from your side, if you're giving them a toolkit.

Atiba:
Yes. Yes. And and let me touch that for a moment. If you don't want to do it, get out of business.

Phil Rose:
Fair enough, yeah, yeah, that's your job. Yeah. But the problem is, you know, just think about, you know, one of the things you've talked about before when I talked to you is this thing called the superhero complex. Because as an entrepreneur, you know, as that that 12 year old, you talk about, doing the quarterly planning age 12 with your mother. And savvy people get this, but a lot of people go into business because they're good at doing something, which is either making something or servicing something. They're, know, they're a good engineer. They're a good artist. Technician, technician. Tony Robbins says about the technician, you're the technician.

Atiba:
Mm-hmm. The technician, yes.

Phil Rose:
And therefore you think that's what you should be doing. And then you start bringing in other people who are, they're going to fill in the gaps in your business to help you do what you can do better. But as you're building your business here, and this is a story I hear so many times, you're building your business, it's me on my own, I'm the entrepreneur, I bring in other people, but they're never as good as me in my mind. So I bring in a PA, but I tell them how to think. I then bring in a marketing person, I probably tell them how to do what they could be doing, rather than enabling them to think for themselves. So what's the thing that has to go off in your mind? When you've now made that decision, you're now the guide, you're not the hero, you've got to teach people to think. You mentioned in your book, you talked about two chapters dedicated to the world of coaching effectively, asking questions. What are the key things that people have to do? What do you have to let go of to enable you to step into that space?

Atiba:
Questions. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. so number one is understand that there are a few lies that we've all been told.

Phil Rose:
Okay, interesting.

Atiba:
Line number one is they're not going to care as much as we do, which we touched on a little bit earlier. that's line number one. Line number two is I'm just so good because I am talented. No, you're not. I'm just gonna tell you, you're not. Okay. we'll we'll talk about it in second, but that's line number two. Okay. Line number three is one that's made popular by another delegation book. By a guy who has a very big name and a very big following, and I'm telling you right now, it's a lie. 80% is not good enough. Okay? So the whole concept of if someone can do the job 80% as well as you delegate, hell no. Because think about it for a moment. Did you hire them so that they can do an 80% job? Are you gonna sleep well at night? Because 80% of your work is getting done correctly? Does that make you feel good?

Phil Rose:
interesting. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, 20 % missing. Yeah, yeah.

Atiba:
Okay? And and that leads you right into the trap of making them the villain.

Phil Rose:
because you're enabling them to do 80 % of the job, but you're allowing that to be their success, right? And when they're doing it properly, you're the one else to pick up the pieces, pick up the phone call when you're at a church conference and deal with that little bit, which is the 20 % of them not doing their job properly.

Atiba:
And you're pissed off about it and they're they're the problem. They're the villain of the story.

Phil Rose:
Yeah. So, so interesting, two lies. They won't care. So tell me about that in that case, because, you know, we often see entrepreneurs and founders who build their business and we've, you and I have both seen over the years, there are some business owners who get it right. They build the business at scales, but there's others who stay stuck as that one person business. They're the one man band doing what they do because they don't believe their team cares as much as they do. Therefore they have to be putting in the hours. They're the one putting in the time. So, What's the mindset shift you have to do to enable you to realise that they do care as much as you do?

Atiba:
Yeah. Yeah. So that gets into number one, Phil, who you hired. Okay. You have to hire for fit, not for skill. Okay? So be hire for fit first, not for skill. And and how do you hire for fit? You gotta know what your actual core values that you live are. Not the ones you aspire to, not the ones that are cute to put on the wall and say kumbaya around. But the ones you actually Live. You gotta live your core values and then find people who are willing to live those core values as well.

Phil Rose:
So true. So true. Yeah.

Atiba:
Okay. Right? Malcolm Gladwell talks about this, getting the right people on the bus. Right? And who are the right people? Those who align with who you are.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, yeah. It's the values that bring you together. And it's really interesting, you you said about the, you know, it's not just having the words on the wall that, you know, we can sing kumbayata, it's actually the ones that actually mean something, the ones that really are deep ingrained in us. And then you've got people who actually buy into what you do and how you do it, not just turn up for your work, for your money.

Atiba:
Exactly. So that's the first step. So you gotta hire right. Okay. And you gotta install and instill those core values. Right? So that's that's where we start. Then from there, Phil, in terms of getting and understanding people, loving what they do and and loving the business, right? Will someone love your entire business as much as you? Probably not. But here's the key they will love their part. Of the of your business as much as you love the whole business. That's what you want. You don't need them to love the accounting if they're not an accountant. You need them to love their role and their part and what they bring. And we talk about this in the book as well, okay? Because what ends up happening here is when you go through the process that I lay out in the book, right? There's a very fundamental shift that happens in the minds of. Of your people. And here's a shift. Here's a shift that happens, Phil. People who co-create a thing take ownership of that thing. And so while you're just sitting and dictating, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, they have zero ownership.

Phil Rose:
because they're not part of it. It's not mine. You told me what to do. Yeah? Okay.

Atiba:
The moment you make that switch, and I give you the questions to help you make that switch in their mind into them co-owning the process that they're working in, all of a sudden everything changes for them.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, I love that. Love that. Really interesting. I love that process when the co-creation. Interesting. One of the tenets of coaching is actually about the co-creation of solutions rather than the consultant coming in and telling you how to do it. The coach is there to work with you to help you build your solution on it, which means you take that ownership and you walk away saying, I've got it. So I love that. And there's the other bit you mentioned there is they don't have to love the whole business. They just need to love their bit of the business because that's the key to making this work as well.

Atiba:
And that's and that's the key. And and so this concept I learned in as a football coach. and so I coached football for 15 years, high level football. Yeah, when I say high level, we won 23 championships in 15 years. yeah, we we we were pretty good. and

Phil Rose:
Okay, pretty good game.

Atiba:
The thing that I learned as a coach that changed me as a coach, that causes that even years after I've retired from coaching, that people still call and ask, hey, you ever think about coming back and coaching again? They don't anymore now that I live out of the country. is what I understood was my job was in practice. And in practice to get you to understand all of the situations, because once The game started and you stepped inside of those white lines, I had no influence. And so my job was to help you understand how to think through the situations that are happening on the field. You you hear coaches like Bill Belichick talk about this situational coaching. We spend more time in situations in practice. Yes, we manufacture situations.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, I that.

Atiba:
And then allow you to think through how you will deal with those situations in practice so that when you get in the game, you can. Because I remember as a player, I never heard the coaches yelling at me on the sideline. And I remember coming off the field and coaches saying, I was yelling at you to do this. I'm like, you think I heard you?

Phil Rose:
With everything else going on around you. Yeah.

Atiba:
Didn't hear you. Right? And so I knew my players didn't hear me either. And so on game day.

Phil Rose:
They're out there on their own. So I love what you just said there. There's a few little light bulbs going off for me, I'm you said that, know, in that coaching. And we often talk about sports coaching and that transition to business coaching. But the point you just made there, you know, when you're in the arena playing the game, the coach is on the side. You can see stuff the players can't see, but what you've just said there is your job as the coach is to give them the tools and the mindset to enable them to make the best of the situation they're in at the time. So that situational coaching is key to it because...

Atiba:
It's on you.

Phil Rose:
You can run through as many different scenarios beforehand, but when they're in the game playing, things will be different. And your job is to help them as a team come together, individually and together, to make sure they can make the best decisions as that team. Love it. Yeah, yeah.

Atiba:
Exactly. Ex exactly. Right? But it's the same thing in business. And so when you're the guide, you're the coach. Right? And so

Phil Rose:
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we've got a guide now and then we're doing the coaching role as the manager, as the entrepreneur, as the founder, whatever you want to call yourself.

Atiba:
Yeah. And it's our job to create those situations. It's our job to put put our people in in places and allow them to get this. Allow them to fail. So see, other big thing we talk about in the book as well is the expectation of failure.

Phil Rose:
Okay, tell me more about that. What do you mean?

Atiba:
Well, when was the last time someone failed? All the time. Like is it it have you ever hired anyone and they were a hundred percent perfect all the time? So why do we expect it? That's what we we expect that. And we don't exist in a world where we think failure is okay.

Phil Rose:
No, never happened. Yeah, okay. So that's an interesting point, isn't it? Love that, because actually we're now trying to build perfect people. And it doesn't happen. Yeah.

Atiba:
But what it Yeah. It doesn't happen. And so how do we deal with the failure? And how do we expect the failure? And how do we set them up so that when they do fail, it's okay. Here's a story that happened about four and a half years ago. we were managing some online presences, some some Instagram accounts to be exact, for some clients that I'd actually had for a long time. Okay. there were Two of the clients that stayed, even when I decided to shut down that they were like, Well, we'll stay with you anyway. so they yeah, they they they stuck around for a long time. And I had a a young lady who was very bright, and she was the one in charge of these two accounts. And, you know, we we had initiatives in our quarterly planning and so on and so forth. And she went out and tried to execute those initiatives. And so she found a tool to help.

Phil Rose:
Nice, I like what you did.

Atiba:
with the whatever she was doing on Instagram with those two accounts. Well, she went out and she she didn't ask. She found the tool and she went and tried it. And she tried it and she did it and she got both of the accounts banned.

Phil Rose:
Not what you're trying to do, but.

Atiba:
On accounts that were both almost ten years old.

Phil Rose:
Wow, okay, good history and good credibility before that.

Atiba:
And so, yeah, that's like almost the back to the start of Instagram. They've been around that long, right? And so now I've got to go to the clients and put my tail between my legs and say, hey, sorry, we got your accounts banned. Oops. Right. She f she fully expected Phil to get fired. Most of us listening would expect you go fire that person. I gave her a raise.

Phil Rose:
there. Not good, not good. Could you have a good communication? Tell me why.

Atiba:
Because when I sat and talked with her and she explained what she did and why she did what she did, she was executing our core values. One of our core values is curiosity as king. The other one is perfect the system. And so, based on what her big one item was for the quarter, she saw she was very curious, which is how she went and found this tool. And by all accounts, if the tool didn't get accounts banned, it would have been fantastic. And she saw a way to make the system better. And she didn't ask for permission. She wanted to ask for forgiveness. So she went out she did it. And so I'm never, you made a mistake. You cost us two big client accounts, but you did it with the right intention and the right core values behind it. Here's more money.

Phil Rose:
Did it? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So it's interesting, comes back, you know, the difference here between your person in the previous business wanting to call you up because they couldn't find three quarters to give 75 cents change. And what you're saying here is you've got people now who are empowered to make decisions. You've got some SOPs to run your business, but they're not restrictive. What you're actually doing is putting in place a set of values, core values, curiosity is king, perfect the system that enable people to work within a framework. And you're happy because, I always think values are one of the guiding drivers because you look at the behaviors that sit underneath it. But now you've got a set of behaviors which are being governed by this word curiosity. This word about perfect the system. So enabling her to come and do what she did and then come back and say, hey, it didn't work out, but look what I learned from it. And that she knows a really big man that sends a big message to the rest of the team. Actually, you can go do this because she was trying to make it better, as you say.

Atiba:
Exactly. Exactly.

Phil Rose:
There's a whole load of stories that, know, thinking about, you know, our children again, you know, I've got 20 year old and a 23 year old. They've grown up. They've grown up as the, maybe they weren't even the Facebook generation, but they're definitely the Snapchat and Insta and TikTok generation. They've probably moved through it a bit now from what I see. But yeah, we've got young people moving into the AI generation now. You know, in the last three years, you you probably started using it a long time ago, but I only started using AI 2022. We're all learning from it. How do we now impart some of that knowledge for young people? And when you use that word, helping people think, some people are outsourcing their thinking to AI. Chachi PT will tell me the answer, Claude will tell me the answer. Where's your thinking on that?

Atiba:
Ha ha ha. Yeah. let me put this bluntly. Smart people are going to get smarter and dumb people are going to get dumber. And we're going to have a true digital divide. and yes, there are people who want to outsource their thinking to AI, but understand the the the purpose here isn't to outsource the thinking to AI. That's not the purpose at all. The purpose is actually for us to realize that we have always expended X amount of energy and X amount of dollars to get to 100% or as close to 100% as we could. That was always the goal. We now have something that can come in and help us in literally anything that we're doing get to 70, 80 percent confidently, which means if we took the same energy. That we had that we were giving 100% to, and now we are at 80%, we started 80%. Now we can go from 80 to 140 to 150 to 160. Innovation starts to happen because of our ingenuity now, because we're not bogged down by all this other stuff that we've had to think about and do for so long. Now we can actually see the world more beautifully. We can see more possibilities. And that's the thing that we have to learn, young and old. Young and old. Right?

Phil Rose:
Yeah, I love that. And I think it's really interesting because young and old, we're all using this AI as a tool here. But what you said here, and I love your phrase there, making smart people smarter, but dumber people are going to get dumber. So from our perspective, we need to educate our teams, we need to educate ourselves. And I mentioned before this for people who are listening, we interviewed Jeff Woods, author of the AI Driven Leader recently. And as Jeff said, he's not an AI expert. but he's a person who's using enabling AI to help people make better decisions. And it's that leadership piece. And I think what you're saying is the same thing. It's for young and old, we can all do better at this. So let's come back around that case. So hero, villain, guide. You're now the guide in your business. You're helping other people do it. There's a couple of things going on in my head here, and I'm just going to throw these out to you. We want to build a high impact machine. We want to drive this. So we've now got this delegation machine. We've now got AI combination.

Atiba:
Sure. Yeah.

Phil Rose:
Tell me a bit about what does it take to build this high impact machine? Because that's what you do really well.

Atiba:
Yeah. And and this is the the the principles that the book are are founded on, okay? whether you're leading people or you're leading AI, guess what? It's the exact same. And so when we walk talk about building this high-impact machine, it doesn't matter what's powering, whether it's a hybrid human AI, if it's all AI, if it's all human, it's the exact same first principles. That we go through in the book. It's the exact same process. Okay? And and and this this is so key and and and crucial, Phil, because I'm gonna just pick on this because it bothers me. there are so many people running around right now talking about vibe coding. I vibe coded an app, I vibe coded a bit, right? And my gosh, the reality of what they're doing and and what is being taught of and like I I saw this the other day. come to my class and learn to create an application in two sentences. All you need is two sentences. No, you don't. What can you communicate in two sentences? Okay. What type of intent can you communicate in only two sentences? And so we're literally teaching people to get dumber.

Phil Rose:
for And it's really interesting isn't it that word communication comes back in because if we go back full circle 45 minutes ago you talked about how this communicate you talked about communication and technology is what you found out in 1996 and in 2001 we talked about legacy systems interface and it's the same issue coming back again isn't it we're trying to dumb people down the thing that if you just have to put a few sentences of declared code you'll produce a great great app

Atiba:
Exactly the same. No, you won't. You absolutely won't. You absolutely won't. Yeah.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, so we've got a difference in that case. So talk about this in that case. So this high impact machine, you're now the guide, you're teaching people how to communicate better with AI and with their humans as well. We're not outsourcing our thinking, but we're enabling us to use AI to help us build a better team, to build something better in that case. So from your perspective, we talked about children here and you told me the story about your five-year-old son in the football season. What's the relationship with young people again in terms of that? Because you said young and old need to learn from this, but there's a whole story here that, you know, the young guys in the world are picking up on this quicker than ever, but they might go down the dumbing it down route quicker than ever if we're not careful.

Atiba:
So that's true and it's not at the same time. Okay. I run into a lot of business owners who say, I don't understand why the young people in my organization can't bring AI in. Or here was a here's another one that I I heard. let me see if I can get this quote right. You know, she's in that that AI age.

Phil Rose:
Okay. Tell me.

Atiba:
You know, I hired a this girl and she's in the AI age. She's twenty-two. So she should be able to do it all. Right? And the reality is no. And here's why. Because this is the freaking matrix. Understand when you really get into harnessing and and and and and and when I say really get into harnessing, I'm not talking about, hey, here's my spreadsheet, analyze these numbers for me, or hey, write me a blog post. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about, hey, can you clean up and triage my email inbox? Like seriously? No, that's not what I'm talking about. Here's what I'm talking about. This is something we just released in in our company right now. I think in frameworks. I have tons of frameworks that I that I have that and it's the way that I think and it's the way that I teach a lot of different things. Okay. And it's the way we run things. I have lots of frameworks. And my frameworks stack on each other, right? And there's depth to it. and so we just created an entire dojo using clawed code and Slack that takes my frameworks. For example, here's one GitHub. Right. And how we use GitHub and is now teaching people who have never even heard GitHub of what GitHub is on our team how to use GitHub. But here you say, okay, so it's doing the it's it's creating lessons. What it's doing is it went out and and this is what we built. Okay. it created a curriculum. I approved the curriculum. Then it went out and created all the lessons, it sourced. It went out and found videos. It went out and found articles. And when it couldn't find anything that that met the standard of the sourcing that we set, it created its own sources. Okay, hold on. That's not the good part. That's not the good part. Okay. Now it's running this training in Slack and it's asking questions, obviously. Okay, because it's a guide. It's asking questions in Slack of the team. And as the team is answering the questions, it's learning how the team communicates. Okay. Now the team is doing homework and it's submitting and it's learning what they learned and what they didn't understand. And now next week for every single team member, the lesson changes based on who you are and how you learn and what you learned last week.

Phil Rose:
as a real learning machine. Literally.

Atiba:
This is this is what I'm saying about going. It can get you to eighty percent and now we go to a hundred and sixty percent.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, that elbow journey. Okay, love that.

Atiba:
Okay. And so when I say w it's the matrix, I'm not talking about triaging your email. I'm talking about solving problems that we couldn't even dream of solving before. And that's why my when I teach AI, my courses are all called impossible means go.

Phil Rose:
Ooh, okay. I love that.

Atiba:
Okay? Because there's some things right now that we think are absolutely impossible. But AI, once you enter into the matrix, once you take that red pill.

Phil Rose:
I love that. And you know, as soon you said Matrix, I knew you can have either a red, blue or a blue pill at some stage. But the key is you're in it now and that impossible means go that we can find a way. So therefore we can improve our ability to do stuff. We've not just improved our productivity, but it's our thinking power has come up again. So we've now got this thought body alongside us. As Jeff talked about in his book, you're talking about the same thing here. So we're now enabling us to do more. So come full circle, you've got this delegation. So a lot of owners, business entrepreneurs, business founders, whatever you want to call them. fall into this delegation trap. Your book is all about helping you step away from this. When you wrote the book, AI was, yeah, it was there, but it was a of an infant still. It's growing up quite quickly. So there's a whole load of things here around how do we build this? And actually you've now got an ability to teach your team to think, but you also got an AI thinking as well to help you escalate or elevate your knowledge quicker and quicker. Love that. So we're gonna get back around again and I'm just aware of time here. I can see it. second episode here because there's so many other questions I've got here. But let's think about that case from your perspective. You've now got your teams of people. You've set up a new business in 2020 because you've seen there is a way. They've seen something else because you you can take the entrepreneur away from the business but you can't take the entrepreneur out of the man. You're going to keep doing it time and time again. So you're going up again. What's the biggest problems that people are now facing? Because of course if they now find themselves as the guide They've got their SOPs in place because they've listened to what you're saying here. What's the next biggest problem they're going to face once they've got this in place that you need to deal with?

Atiba:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This and and I probably should write a book about this too. but here here it is in in all honesty. And this is this is the tough one, okay? This is the tough one. Is getting to that place where things are actually working and you don't have anything to do.

Phil Rose:
You can use that word earlier. You talked about that. They're lost.

Atiba:
And and I and I got there. I got to that place where the business was humming and people are doing their jobs and they're loving what they're doing and they're producing well and things are going well. And I would come and and we're virtual, right? Everybody's and so I'm at home virtually and I'm just thinking, what am I supposed to be doing today? 'Cause I don't actu

Phil Rose:
Because you've now got nothing to do, the business doesn't need you.

Atiba:
And in that moment, we're often tempted to break stuff.

Phil Rose:
Okay, tell me more.

Atiba:
Sometimes we call it innovation. Right. We fix problems that aren't even there. Right? Sometimes we we just go and invent something brand new to do.

Phil Rose:
Love it. Love it.

Atiba:
Right. And we have to resist that temptation. And I'm telling you that and I'm pointing my finger at myself. Like you see them? They're all pointing at me because I do it all the time. Right. And it's just and it's because of the way our brains are wired. Right. and so I'll tell you, I have built which I just talked about in in my weekly newsletter, Athena. And Athena is my AI partner that that that I built from scratch. And Athena knows everything going on in my brain. And so now when I have that new idea, because I got a little bit bored, which happens, it it happens at least three times a week. Y'all come on. I'm like, let's let's be real here, right? I go to Athena and I give the idea to Athena, and and Athena is an orchestrator. My thinking partner, which is a visionary thinking partner and a project manager who is grounded in right now.

Phil Rose:
and they'll tell you the things you need to be considering rather than trying to break the system. Love that.

Atiba:
And prioritize and push things out and project plan and so on and so forth. Okay.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, I love that. So Athena's actually keeping you on the straight and narrow and some of those innovative ideas will come back later because you need to work on them. But because Athena's working on the things that need to be prioritised right now, they'll also hold you back to say, Atiba, not now.

Atiba:
Yeah. And and it's great because like I give you an example, which just happened today. So about a month ago, I found this article that I was reading, because I do a lot of reading and it was talking about ways to structure your vector databases, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not gonna go into all the technical, right? and I was like, that's really interesting. I wonder if we should be using that and if if this would actually help us, right?

Phil Rose:
Mmm.

Atiba:
Well, in the old days, what would have happened? One, you would have forgotten about the article, blah, blah, blah. Or two, you would have stopped everything and said, let's go look at this right now. And you would have gone down a rabbit hole and you right and chased that rabbit. Here's what I did instead. I went to Slack and I said, Hey, Athena, I w I found this article. I don't know if this is any relevance to us. Take a read on it, look at you know what we do, see if it's going to be relevant for us. If it is, find a time in the future.

Phil Rose:
of into it, yeah.

Atiba:
For us to work on it. And and when that time comes back up, I want you to go do all the research and then present me how we can actually adopt that. And she, that day was today. For that particular, it pop back in today, and she said, okay, I went on and I did the research on this, and here's how it fits, there's and whether we should do it now or not, which way would you like to go?

Phil Rose:
So pop back into your diary. Yeah. Love it. Love it. I think that's really interesting, isn't it? Because actually that's really interesting that you're using that. It's prioritizing. It's keeping you grounded. It's a bit like that. you, is becoming your gatekeeper to make sure you're doing the right things. They're not meddling, not breaking things too soon. And there's a real problem, I think a lot of founders do have where they do feel lost. They feel proud of what they created, but they feel lost because they haven't yet worked out what they're going to do next. And it's a bit like you in 2020, you were going to do things in your wife's business and you've suddenly come up with an idea and you've suddenly built a new team. And by the sound of it, you moved to the Philippines as well. So it's bit of a few life changing things all in one go. And I think a lot of business owners do face that same thing. They don't know what to do with themselves. So they go and build the next business. Which I think is a problem for lot of people. So I'm going to put the thought in your head that we do need another podcast to talk about some other things, but...

Atiba:
Let's do it.

Phil Rose:
I think there's some other things and we might need to go in bit more depth. But if I was to ask you that question now for people listening this, what's the thing they need to be doing right now? If they were, in their car, they're out in the gym, they're out for the walk, whatever it listening to us. If they get back into the office later, what's the one thing they need to do straight away to take advantage of either stop themselves falling into the delegation trap, learning to be a guide or using AI? What's the key thing you would say?

Atiba:
The key thing, and this is central to actually all the things, the three that you just listed, is the willingness to ask better questions. Challenge yourself with the questions that you ask and asking better questions. Okay. questions and we we talk about, I give two different question frameworks in the book. One of them is the learner versus the judger question framework. And a lot of us ask judger type questions. Our questions that we ask are judgmental. Okay. And they put the other person on defensive versus asking learner type questions that put the other person at ease and say, Hey, I want to learn. This is what you just did to me. You just asked me a a learner question. You said, Hey, what should we do next? Right? There was no judgment. There was no and you use the same words and they come off either learner or judger.

Phil Rose:
Mmm.

Atiba:
Right. And so learn to ask better learner questions of yourself, of your team, and of AI. All three.

Phil Rose:
Mmm. Yeah, yeah. And I love that. There's three things there, AI, team and self. Because actually, if we're not asking ourselves those questions, we are probably judging ourselves as well. And that's pointing the finger and saying, hey, you fool. And that's part of the problem.

Atiba:
And there's no good that does that does no good for for anyone.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, yeah, okay, I love that. So actually they're willing to ask better questions. Tiba, thank you. You've got me thinking lots of things and I think there's lots of people need to go and look at the book, but also listen to some things we talked about here, learning how they can step into that guide role. One question I want to ask you, Akes, if you could go back and give the younger Tiba, you talked about being a 12 year old sitting with your mother doing the quarterly planning. You've been an entrepreneur and as you said, It's the weird one in the family to go and get a corporate job. It's the norm for your family to go and do the entrepreneurial. What's the bit of advice you're going to give the young at EBA? You've got your time machine, you've taken the right pill, you've gone back. What's the bit of advice you're going to give them?

Atiba:
Shut the hell up. I was talking too much.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, yeah, because you thought that's the world needed.

Atiba:
I used to I used to love to hear myself talk.

Phil Rose:
I love that. You're the first person to ever come back and say that is answer to that question. And it's really good. It fits in with that Superman as well, doesn't it? We like to be Superman because it serves our ego. We like to tell everyone what we're doing because it serves our ego. And it takes a big ego shift for people to say, the hell up. Let the other person do the thinking. I'm going to ask you a follow up question. Okay, go on, you go.

Atiba:
Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Now, well, but let me give you a follow-up answer, which will lead to to our our next episode as well. and and that's what I'll tell a young A teep, and I'll tell you listening that too. You probably need to shut the hell up. And I hope you don't have to go through what I went through. And so I spent almost a decade not being able to actually talk much. Because not that I couldn't physically talk, 'cause I I was able to, but recogn I I I had to shut up because my communication was so poor that it was so ineffective that for most of my thirties I did no talking.

Phil Rose:
Wow. Wow. That takes some shift. That takes some shift.

Atiba:
Right. Yeah, you had a question.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, well, I'm going to ask you a different question actually. What coaching did you have to do that? Because you know, you've got your, you're an educated guy, you're savvy to the world, you've been a coach. What coaching did you have to help you do that? Because that's not an easy thing to do.

Atiba:
Yeah, so I've had really great mentors in my life. and what was interesting is that lesson was taught to me in my teens, but I didn't get it till my late thirties. Okay. in my teens, Mrs. Williams was the one of the first people to teach me this. I was a tour guide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. And I was one of the more decorated tour guides, like foreign dignitaries. I've toured through the the museum. And I remember on one tour, I was going through the tour and Mrs. Williams came up and she was she was there and she was listening. And I knew she was listening. I didn't have any problem with that whatsoever. And I was doing my tour. And there was a moment in time when you let the the crowd go off and observe the The exhibit on their own for a few minutes because it's really emotional. And so you have a moment by yourself as the guide, which also serves as our break, if you will. And Mrs. Williams pulled me aside and and she said, Let the history tell the story, stop performing.

Phil Rose:
Woo.

Atiba:
Right. And it was because it was people loved it because I was a great storyteller. But I made it more about my the art of me being able to tell the story.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, yeah, it was you. yeah. I'm just sitting there, you when you said that, it's interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, you're a teenager hearing that at this time, but it wasn't until you're 30s you heard it. And I'll always have a phrase that, the teacher will appear when the student is ready. So she appeared then to you, but it wasn't for another 10, 15 years. Yeah. And then you realize you're ready. And I love that in terms of let the history do the talking, because you were there trying to be the performer. You thought that's what you needed to do.

Atiba:
Twenty hours. Twenty years.

Phil Rose:
And so many people in business think they're the same thing because they put that hero hat on. They've got their own Superman hats on where they're doing the tour guide thing, they're doing their talk show, they're doing their podcast, they're doing their own business. But even I've got this guide hat on, which takes a bit of a, take a back seat so to speak and just ask some great questions and shut the hell up.

Atiba:
Yes. And so I've had many coaches who have shared that with me over the years. I now have built that into a lot of AI systems that I use to evaluate myself. and and, you know, talks that I give and so on and so forth, like you know, I'll teach our our AI web class and then I'll feed the AI web class back into to the system and the system will come back and say, that was brilliant, but only you could ever deliver that. And Here's how you need to change. And and even though you're great, it's not scalable, it's not duplicatable. Cause you you were performing.

Phil Rose:
Yeah. It's all about you. Yeah. Yeah. Love that. And it's interesting how we can use AI to really help us do those things, but you've got to that ability to sit back and listen and take the feedback and do something with it, which takes a different man from the ateeba of the 15 year old, 20 year old, whatever it might have been. As you say, it's a different world. Now you're doing a few innovative things in the next few months. And we talked about some of these beforehand in terms of your courses.

Atiba:
Absolutely.

Phil Rose:
Tell me about some of these things, could you run your monthly web class? You've got some weekends coming up, you've got some virtual things. As a bit of a plug in that case, talk to me about some things you're doing and where people can find you.

Atiba:
Yeah, absolutely. So we we do run the the monthly web class. the w monthly web class is is free. Okay. and it's about an hour long and it it really just starts to introduce the concepts of of AI and the theories and the first principles. then I also run a monthly workshop. That monthly workshop dives deep into a topic and we solve a real problem. And they're usually about three hours long. Okay. the workshops.

Phil Rose:
Okay. Deep. Yeah.

Atiba:
Okay. then I have in-person events that that we do as well. so we do two in-person events. one and we've got two of them coming up in October. one is a two-day on Claude co-work and how to bring Cloud Cowork into your your business and set it up and structure Cloud Cowork really, really well inside of your business. Okay. And then the other in-person is really about building AI employees. Now these are called impossible means go because that's really we we are finding the impossible and we're making it go. Right. so those are the ones that I've been running now for in some way, shape, or form, over a year, year and a half almost. next weekend, which will be after this airs, we're doing the first. In a series, or the first of this type, I shouldn't say call it a series, the first of this type. So we've had a lot of entrepreneurs who come to our two-day or a four-day workshops, and then they're like, hey, you know, I would really love for my staff to experience this as well, especially my virtual staff to experience this and learn this stuff. but those two in person are tailored to entrepreneurs. Like we, you know, we're it's a room of entrepreneurs, so it's not a Place for employees or and definitely not a place for virtual staff that may be offshore. And so we're creating a virtual event, virtual two-day event for your offshore staff to learn how to effectively bring AI employees into your company.

Phil Rose:
Love that, love that. Okay, so that's an in-person event. Now obviously it's happening next weekend, but you'll be doing future events in that case. Now you're based in the Philippines. The question I'm gonna ask is, are you doing these in the Philippines? You live back in the States, where are you hosting these?

Atiba:
Yeah, so my in persons are in the States. in the States, Dallas, Vegas, are my two favorite cities to do them in.

Phil Rose:
Okay. Okay. That sounds good. I like that. So,

Atiba:
But here's a here's a plug though. I may be doing one in Mexico, Punta Mita, in February. We just started talking about that today.

Phil Rose:
Okay, 2027, okay, like that. So question in that case, how do people go and find the great Atiba D'Souza to find out about what you're talking about?

Atiba:
Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to AtibaDesouza.com

Phil Rose:
Okay, Atiba de Souza, D-E-S-O-U-Z-A for those listening.

Atiba:
dot com. Yep. And you can find the book there. You can find Impossible Means Go there. And if you're a medical practice and you're looking for marketing help, you can also find our medical marketing agency there as well.

Phil Rose:
That's great. And that's what pops up on LinkedIn a lot when you go looking for you as well. So that's big thing. I think there's definitely a second podcast here. I'm thinking about when you talk about the AI employees, because I use a lot of the Tome. And I think we can at the moment today, I think we can talk about how this delegation really works to enable people to move forward. And then there's a whole load of things. I think I love that phrase, impossible means go, that really connects with people. So there's a whole load of things that we could talk about here, which I think we need to get your team to schedule in. at some stage of the next couple of months. Rollin' 27. So, Atiba, it's been great talking to you. If there was one question I haven't asked, which you would say, Phil, next time when we talk, you need to bring up this up, what's that question? Not to answer now, but to answer later and to get people thinking about it now and then.

Atiba:
Let's do it. Yeah, there actually is one. Why the heck are you doing all this?

Phil Rose:
Ooh, me or others? Could be both.

Atiba:
Me. Why why are you, Atiba, doing all of this? Why are you teaching impossible means good? Why are you talking about delegation and why are you doing all of this? That that's the I say that's the one we we covered the history, but we didn't cover the why that drives today.

Phil Rose:
Ooh, okay, okay. Well, I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole now, because I want to, but we've been talking for an hour and a quarter and it's late for you, but I think let's get a date in the diary to do that as a follow up to this, because I think that would be a great reason to start up, because to me, the Y drives everything. That's the purpose. So thank you. I'm gonna say, let's get that in the diary soon for listeners to pick up and follow up that second piece.

Atiba:
Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Yes, please. I love it. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Phil Rose:
Atif, thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you. It's been great, great talking to you. I've enjoyed it. And we've got a good message to talk about for next time.

Atiba:
Yeah, Phil, this was wonderful. I I appreciate your time and I'm glad that we got this done.

Phil Rose:
Yeah, thank you for making the time late in the evening for you in the Philippines.

Phil's Reflection
-------------------------

Phil Rose:
Impossible means go. Atiba touched on that word a few times. But I wonder how often you as an entrepreneur, you as a leader, you as an employee have thought about the impossible and maybe you've put it to a side. So maybe now's the time to think about how you can bring that to life. In this conversation we've just had, you'll have heard me talking with Atiba about the things that have driven him. We talked about what got you here won't get you there, a phrase I often use from Marshall Goldsmith. But what he said is actually the key is it has helped him. And now we're at this combination of delegation, AI and people stepping into that guide world. Now as a coach, I always ask this question. My belief is everybody should be a coach. And the team has really enforced that because actually that's the key. As a leader, you need to be the best coach you can be because that's how you get the best out of other people and yourself. And he talks about asking better questions of me, my team and AI. So what is it you can go and do? What questions do you need to ask? I always say, I cannot hold you to account. But what I can do is ask you those questions. Working with me is really simple. It's about coaching. It's about scaling up. We want to help businesses do what they do better. I talk about spark, scale and sustain. I help you re-spark or spark your imagination, spark your passion. I help you scale your business, help you ask the questions you need to ask. And then I help keep the momentum going, to hit the wheel spinning through sustainability. And that's actually the key to this. So as you listen to this podcast, think about what thoughts did it spark for you? Think about how you can scale your thinking and your business from now. And then ask that final question, how can I sustain momentum? Because it's very easy to fall off the wagon and stop. So how do you do those three things? Let me know, drop me a note. And as always, please feel good about passing this podcast onto other people who you believe will benefit from it. We're a niche podcast, but actually the niche is the key. And I believe that actually we can help more people develop their businesses as a result of this. So feel free, feel good, and let me know your thoughts. Thank you again. Remember, keep going and you will remember to scale your business because actually that's what Sparks for Growth is all about.

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- what to do when your business doesn't need you anymore

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END OF TRANSCRIPT DOCUMENT
Sparks for Growth Podcast | sparksbyignium.transistor.fm
Host: Phil Rose | igniumconsult.com
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