98: From Doing It All to Leading It All W/ Atiba de Souza

Most entrepreneurs don’t start out wanting to be leaders — they start because they’re great at something. Then one day, they wake up managing chaos and wondering why things keep breaking down.

In this episode, Sean sits down with Atiba De Souza, CEO Strategist, Author of The Delegation Trap, and long-time agency owner. Atiba shares his hard-earned lessons on leadership, accountability, and what it really takes to build a team that thrives without you.

They dive into:

• The leadership failure that changed Atiba’s life — and how his 5-year-old son called it out.
• Why most leaders mistake “doing more” for “leading better.”
• The CASE Method — a four-question framework that transforms delegation and team development.
• How to shift from judging questions to learner questions to unlock growth and trust.
• The illusion of the “one more thing” mindset that traps so many entrepreneurs.
• Why small business owners, not politicians, hold the real power to change the world.

This episode is packed with frameworks, humility, and wisdom for any business owner or leader ready to grow beyond the grind.

🎧 Listen now on Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2166090

📘 Connect with Atiba De Souza:

• Website: https://www.atibadesouza.com
  
  
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atibadesouza
  
  
• Book: The Delegation Trap
  
  

Key Timestamps

• 00:00 – Why entrepreneurs struggle with leadership
• 03:50 – The leadership wake-up call from Atiba’s son
• 07:30 – Would your team follow you if you didn’t pay them?
• 13:00 – A CEO only does three things: people, numbers, and culture
• 18:00 – The power of asking learner questions
• 22:00 – The CASE Method for better delegation
• 32:20 – Escaping the “one more thing” trap
• 40:25 – How small business owners truly change the world

Guest Bio

Atiba De Souza is a CEO Strategist and Author of The Delegation Trap. With over 30 years of entrepreneurial experience, he’s helped countless business owners build systems and teams that perform without constant oversight. Known for transforming chaos into clarity, Atiba teaches leaders how to delegate effectively, build culture, and empower people to perform at their best.

👉 Follow Atiba’s work at https://www.atibadesouza.com

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
Most entrepreneurs don't start a business because they want to be a leader. They start them because they're great at something. And then one day find themselves leading people, managing chaos, and wondering why things keep breaking down, even though they're working harder than ever. In today's episode, I'm joined by Atiba De Souza a marketing agency owner for over 20 years, and now a CEO, strategist, and author of The Delegation Trap. He learned leadership the hard way through failure, humility, and growth. We'll talk about how to shift from doing everything yourself to building a team that thrives without you, how to ask the kind of

questions that unlock accountability and how small business leaders can literally change the world through better leadership. Let's dive in.

Sean Patton (00:51)
Welcome to the No Limit Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Sean Patton. And my guest today is Atiba D'Souza. He's a CEO strategist, team productivity expert who helps small business leaders turn chaos into clarity. With over 30 years of experience building companies, Atiba has developed practical frameworks that eliminate delegation, bottlenecks, boost accountability, and help teams perform at their best. After learning leadership the hard way, he's now on a mission to help entrepreneurs grow into confident, capable leaders who build thriving organizations that run

even when they're not around. Atiba, thanks for being here today,

Atiba De Souza (01:22)
Sean, I can't wait. I'm looking forward to this. So many people don't know. Sometimes ⁓ we get to talk beforehand. And dude, our pre-talk was probably one of the best I've ever had with a host. So I'm so excited for this episode,

Sean Patton (01:38)
I appreciate that. agree. Yeah, we definitely had one that could have just gone and gone. And one of those where it's like, we probably should have just recorded this and called it good. Cause I feel like we both had such a fun time doing it and got into it. So I am very excited and we're very aligned on so many, ⁓ so many of our ideas and frameworks and how we like to process things, but ⁓ very different experiences. So really quick, you you've been an agency owner and an entrepreneur for a long time, but

Atiba De Souza (01:46)
Yes.

Sean Patton (02:04)
why don't you talk about ⁓ your early years as an entrepreneur and maybe what was a moment we realized that you weren't leading well?

Atiba De Souza (02:13)
Jeez, and to choose just one?

Sean Patton (02:18)
You can go early as big as it's up to you man the balls in your court, bro

Atiba De Souza (02:21)
So I'm gonna take it in a couple of different ways. So number one, I started off as an entrepreneur officially in 1996, and I've been an entrepreneur ever since. So I've had lots and lots of years of experience in leading teams and so on and so forth. And honestly, I always thought I was good. I thought I was a great leader. And that was part of what I really, was my ethos. A big part of my ethos was I'm a good leader. And for the first decade or so,

I really believed and felt that. then, and I'm gonna take you outside of entrepreneurship and then we're gonna come back inside Sean, if that's okay. ⁓ So I play football and one of the things I always wanted to do was, you my coaches were such a big part of my life growing up that I always wanted to go and give back and be a coach. And so I waited till, you know, I had a son and I can go coach football with my son. And I was so excited.

Sean Patton (02:57)
Yeah, let's do it.

Atiba De Souza (03:18)
I was so, and he wanted to play football so badly. ⁓ and I remember he's five years old I have him out on the football field and we have our first season together and I'm an assistant coach on his team. And then when the season was done, Sean, my son came to me. This is, this is how I knew I was not a great leader. ⁓ my son came to me and he said, dad, if

This is what it's going to be like every season with you as a coach. I never want to play football again.

Sean Patton (03:52)
Wow.

Atiba De Souza (03:52)
That hit me like a ton of bricks. Because back in 2001, I had read John Maxwell's book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. And John was very poignant in that book where he says that anyone can lead in a for-profit organization. A true leader can lead in a non-profit organization. And believe me, coaching football is a very non-profit organization.

Sean Patton (04:18)
Yeah, especially for five year olds, right?

Atiba De Souza (04:18)
Okay

especially

for five-year-olds. And when the one five-year-old, my son, tells me, I never want to follow your leadership again,

Yeah, it made me realize you may think you're really good, but you're really, really not, dude. And that forced me to reevaluate so much, because there were so many assumptions inside of business that I was living with because I crowned myself a good leader. Because I had read the books and I could quote the quotes, right? And I'm a

Good leader!

Right? And I can give an inspirational speech. I'm a good leader.

And so it was in that moment that I started to reevaluate. That's probably one of, in those days especially, one of my biggest leadership failure moments. I've had several, ⁓ but that was probably one of the biggest ones that made me say, hey dude, this ain't right.

Sean Patton (05:25)
So when you started to evaluate that, was it asking him questions, was it self-evaluation? Where did you start to try to close the gap between the perception you had yourself as a leader and what other people were telling you was reality?

Atiba De Souza (05:41)
Yeah. And so it was, in all honesty, in that moment with my son, it was stopping and asking, why is it that this didn't work? And why did I think it would work? Right? What was it that I was doing? And what I realized in that moment was I had done my best to be

the football coach that I had in high school. And I was taking all of those coaches and putting them together. And I thought that that was gonna make me a really great leader. I've had that in the company as well, where it's like, you feel like, okay, I've read all the books and the books that do this, do this and do that. And so I went out like SOPs was a big one. I was like, okay, we're gonna create the world's greatest SOPs and then...

Because I've created great SLPs, I'm a good leader to you. You know exactly what to do. And stuff still fell apart. Right? And so there wasn't the adaptability and understanding of who I was in it and who I needed to be and who the other people were and their experience. Right? The only thing I cared about was my perceived experience of myself versus...

the experience that was actual between two people. So number one, I was lying to myself about the experience. Okay. So I wasn't even experiencing the experience properly. If that makes sense. And then two, I didn't care about what they were experiencing because I had put up this facade in my own brain about what I thought it was and how great I was. Right? ⁓

You know, Maxwell talks a lot too, and go back to that book about, you know, if you think you're leading and no one's following, you're just taking a walk.

And so there have been those times as well where it was like, okay, ⁓ would you follow me if I wasn't paying you? And people would say no.

Sean Patton (07:33)
What a great question to call that out. And also the relationship and trust, at least you would have had with them for them to give you an honest answer. At least you had, I feel like a foundation level of relationship and trust to be able to get a straight answer on that. And what a powerful question to ask. that's great. I like to say that, if you want to become a true leader,

at the base level, because we get all these definitions of what leadership is, right? Like what is, people are like, oh, it's just influence. Yeah, that's part of it, I think that's, but I would argue you could influence a lot of people and not necessarily be a leader, you know? And ultimately, if you strip it down, you're a leader. If other people, you know, and I would say other smart, driven, intelligent, like dedicated people want to follow you, you're a leader. And to your point,

Atiba De Souza (08:01)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (08:22)
If they don't,

Atiba De Souza (08:22)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (08:23)
doesn't matter what you tell yourself or what you've done or what your productivity is, ⁓ you're not if they're not trying to follow you. So I just wanted to call it out. Like what a great question.

Atiba De Souza (08:31)
Yeah, yeah, and it's a tough question to ask, right? It's a tough place to be. It's a tough thing to consider, right? Like seriously, if you had another choice, would you not be here? Would you decide to be somewhere else?

Right?

Sean Patton (08:47)
Man, so yeah. So what was your response when you started hearing that from your employees? what's, obviously as you mentioned doing that, like now you've done, you've increased your self-awareness and situational awareness, but like, my gosh, you find yourself there in that tough spot. Okay, I'm aware now, like what's the do? Like what's the action? What's the next thing you did in that situation?

Atiba De Souza (08:57)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so in those moments you have to figure out where the failure was. And this is where most of us fail. Okay, just to be blunt. It's so very easy for us to point the finger at someone else. Right? It's not going right. It's not going, and I'm gonna point the finger at someone else. And I'm gonna look over there and see what you didn't do in this situation, right? And.

There have been so many times where I have, whether it was that question or others, and I've seen leadership failure. I've seen that I am not helping this team accomplish what they can accomplish, and that's on me. That's number one, okay? And so there's no outward pointing of finger.

Okay, it has to be here. You have to realize that the buck stops with us. When it didn't get done, when they fell off, it's our fault. When they quit, it was our fault. Now, it's not about beating ourselves up. It's not about making yourself feel bad, but it is about saying, okay, I'm gonna take that responsibility and I'm gonna look at this and say, what is my role here?

What did I not do? What could I have done better? What was not in place correctly? And I'll be honest with you, the longer and the more you do this is the harder that question becomes to answer.

Okay, because in the early days when my son comes to me and says that if this is what it's gonna be like, I don't wanna play for you anymore, it's easy to hear you yell too much. You were too demanding. It wasn't fun. Okay, those are big broad sweeping things. Okay, I can yell less. Okay, fine.

Okay, but after you keep doing it and you keep working, the changes become smaller and smaller and smaller and harder and harder and harder to one, find, and then two, implement.

Sean Patton (11:02)
Hmm, because it sounds like that as you do that, you mentioned like those first ones are very surface level, but only they get smaller, but they get deeper into identity and belief system, I would imagine.

Atiba De Souza (11:04)
Okay.

Absolutely, absolutely, Sean. so, you you get, and people hear me say this all the time and people come to me, do you really do this? I'm like, yeah, I spend 70 to 80 % of my time thinking about my team. So we're going through things and I'm thinking about, okay, how did they go through that? What did I learn? What didn't go well? What went well? Why did it go well? Why did it not go well? How does this compare to the last time? How does this compare to when this person did?

and looking at all of these different machinations as I'm trying to learn how to be a better leader. Because there are nuances that are missing that are creating some level of failure. Of course, we have tons of success. But when there's failure, and even when there is success, there was still nuances. And it's like, how do we perfect those? How do we perfect those?

Sean Patton (12:06)
I, and I want to call out something there and I want to get your experience and opinion on this is I think so many leaders in any organization, but especially entrepreneurs or founders that have grown the team. As that happens, they probably hear you say, spend 70, 80 % of my team, send a time focused on the team. And so many of them are still focused on

quote unquote productivity, right? Like doing the thing and almost having this belief around, you know, the right thing to do is like doing the work, working, I'm doing my job because that was what got them the first employee and the second employee and the 10th employee. But then as you get bigger, you know, you were obviously able to recognize the role I play in this organization requires me to step back from that and measure my time allied energy allocation into not necessarily

the doing of the business of the operations, but focusing on team. And I imagine that didn't happen overnight.

Atiba De Souza (13:05)
Yes.

It didn't, but there was a turning point. And that turning point was Trey Taylor's book, A CEO Only Does Three Things. ⁓ And Trey has become a friend over the years. I read his book years ago, and then I met him years after I read his book through another mutual friend. you know, Trey in that book talks about ⁓ people, numbers, and culture. Those are the three things that a CEO must do.

anything else that you're doing outside of people, numbers, and culture, you're out of bounds. Now, you're listening to me right now. You just heard me say that. And I'm sure you can think of all the things you're doing that are outside of people, numbers, and culture. And so as a CEO listening to Sean and I right now, you're out of bounds. Okay? You're out of bounds. Now, do we all get pulled? Yes, obviously we do.

I'm not saying that we don't. But understand that that's what we're striving towards. People, numbers, and culture. And if you think about two of those, two of those three are people related. Culture and people. Right? ⁓ And that's where we need to be focused. And so I read that book years ago and it changed and it shifted my focus. And it made me say, crap, I'm looking at this all wrong. I'm looking at this all wrong.

And so that's when the shifts that part of the shift started to happen of, of really understanding how much time I needed to put into thinking about my people. And, and here's the, here's the thing. It isn't just me thinking about my people now with my managers, we're helping them realize that you've got to allocate a good chunk of your week to not doing anything other than.

thinking about your team.

Right? And it's hard because that doesn't feel productive.

Sean Patton (15:03)
Yeah, it doesn't go on the KPI tracker.

Atiba De Souza (15:05)
It doesn't. There's no document at the end of the day that you check off and said you did, right? But the fact that you spent that time and you're considering it and now you've you realize, OK, here's a new way that I can communicate with this person that may be more effective and a new thing that I can go look at. OK, yes, that works. OK, you know. That's where we need to spend our time as as CEOs.

Sean Patton (15:29)
Yeah. And I think leaders at any level. I think to your point, as you, as we lead, as we become, cause there's one thing to lead individual contributors, which is important and great work. then as you mentioned, now you're in this position of leading other leaders, like a leader of leaders mentality. And so how do we make sure we hold space for them and, and, know, train them on how to do that and coach them on it. And, you know, I'll speak, you know, my, my wife is a ⁓ middle manager and a, in a sale tech sales organization and.

Atiba De Souza (15:42)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (15:57)
I know through her and other people in that space, every second of every day is in some sort of meeting or KPI. And then it's like, by the way, your main job is to train and think about your people. But no one is saying, here's this chunk of time where we're not gonna touch to let you do it. They're not actually holding space for them. So how important is that as senior leaders, one of those key jobs when you talk about people and culture is like,

Atiba De Souza (16:06)
Mm-hmm.

When?

Right, yes.

Sean Patton (16:25)
What I'm hearing you say and I'm reflecting back to you right now is the expectation is you have that space, but then you have to respect and hold that space for them too.

Atiba De Souza (16:34)
You do. And here's how you do it. Okay. It's not nearly as hard as you think, but it is challenging. Okay. And here's what it is. And Sean, you and I talked a bit about this before. It's about the questions that you ask.

Okay. It's about understanding the level and types of questions that you ask to your one, your frontline team that you're working with who are individual contributors, but then to your managers. What are questions that you ask that force them to think about their teams? Right. So that's interesting. So, so, so tell me,

Sean Patton (16:50)
Okay, yeah.

Atiba De Souza (17:15)
How was it that we communicated with this person about this thing?

Okay. Huh. And if you had to do it again, how would you communicate about it?

okay. Very, very simple sequence there. But what that does is it forces a manager to think about again, that experience that two people had. Not just, hey, I did this thing, you didn't do it right. But how's it received on both sides and how can we make it better? Right. And so we, we, we asked these questions and we continually ask these questions.

Sean Patton (17:44)
Mmm. ⁓

Atiba De Souza (17:51)
And we continually ask these questions, and we ask these questions so that it becomes the type of thing now where they start to automatically think it and parrot it back to you.

Sean Patton (18:01)
Mmm. Mmm.

Atiba De Souza (18:03)
Right?

So now a situation comes and they say, well, I was thinking about this and I go, ah, gotcha.

Sean Patton (18:08)
Yeah, exactly what we want you to do. and you know, when you talk about asking those great questions, ⁓ you know, one things you've talked about in some of your content is around the four question framework and leading with curiosity instead of control. Can you tell me more about that?

Atiba De Souza (18:22)
Yeah, so it's, so one, let's back up, but even before we get there, and let me interject this little piece in here about questions, okay? ⁓ There are two main categories of questions that we as humans ask. Two, okay? One is learner questions, and the other one is judge our questions.

Sean Patton (18:39)
Okay, yeah.

Atiba De Souza (18:45)
Let's be honest, there a lot of times where you're asking a question and there's a lot of judgment behind it.

Sean Patton (18:51)
Mm-hmm.

Atiba De Souza (18:51)
Especially in heated or emotional situations. Think loved ones, think spouses, think children.

Sean Patton (19:00)
No, never. Never.

Not me. ⁓

Atiba De Souza (19:04)
And there's a lot of judgment. Okay? And the same thing exists in the work setting where a lot of times there's a lot of judgment in the question that you ask. All right? Let give you an example of this. ⁓ Somebody called me recently. She's brand new entrepreneur and yay, she had her first client meeting coming up. And she did all this research on her, on this client.

And she called me for advice on how to approach the sales call with the client. Okay. No problem. Glad to help. And in this situation, this is a nonprofit organization ⁓ who hired a previous marketing agency to do marketing for them. And it was very clear that the marketing that the previous agency did was awful and really had no bearing. Like it was, it was like, what were you thinking?

type of marketing, which is a judge a question by the way. ⁓ Right. And so she was going in and ⁓

She wanted to ask the client, the potential client, so you hired this marketing agency, and why did you approve for them to do this and this and this in the previous marketing? I said, well, that's a really good thing to know. You do want to know that, but let's frame this a little bit differently. So I see that in your previous marketing, you did this, this, and this. What were you hoping the outcomes of those things were?

Essence of the question is the same. One's a judge or question that puts the client on a defensive.

Sean Patton (20:36)
Right.

Atiba De Souza (20:37)
One's a learner question that says, hey, I've studied, and I'd like to know more about how you thought about this. And there's no accusation.

Sean Patton (20:45)
Yeah.

Atiba De Souza (20:46)
Right?

And so I use that because it's a great example for people to parallel because so often we ask questions that have a lot of judgment behind them. And when you ask a question that has a lot of judgment behind it, you never get to the outcome that you want. OK? So as we talk about asking better questions, it's important that we have that lens and frame behind us.

Is this a learner or a judge or question that I'm asking? Okay. So let me tell you a story. Okay. I hope you don't mind the story.

Sean Patton (21:21)
Nah, I love a story bro,

hit me up.

Atiba De Souza (21:23)
So I hired this young lady and I hired her to learn SEO. Now I've been in SEO since 1996. She was still pretty new. And so I've at this point forgotten a ton of SEO in 30 plus years. Right. But I needed her to do SEO because in the company I was the only one doing it. And so

I was the bottleneck member. The CEO only does three things. SEO is not one of them. Right. And so I brought her in to teach her SEO. I really liked her. I thought she was a fantastic human. ⁓ and I thought she had a of potential. Okay. And so I get to train on her, Sean, we're going to have a great time. I want to train on, she's going to be a great SEO. Yeah. And so.

Sean Patton (21:54)
Yeah.

Right.

Atiba De Souza (22:14)
about four, five, six weeks into our training and we're meeting weekly. And so she has a project to do every single week and she comes back and reports on what happened. We're meeting weekly and every week she's showing up and leaving the meeting crying.

Yes, yes, that is not written in any management or leadership book.

Sean Patton (22:34)
Yeah.

Atiba De Souza (22:34)
Right? Nowhere does it say, make them cry. And so here I am.

Right, and I'm feeling horrible because I'm like...

I'm not trying to make her cry, but what she's producing is far from where it needs to be. And I'm trying every tactic that I can to teach and to delegate and she's just not getting it. And she's getting frustrated that she's not getting it.

and she's new in the company and so she feels like I'm about to lose my job. Because I'm not getting it, right?

And so...

One day when we were having this meeting, I know she's coming, it's on Zoom, and I'm waiting, and I'm like, Atiba, we can't make Christine cry today. Like, this has to stop. You know when we have those conversations with ourselves, right? I'm like, this has to stop. We can't do it, okay? And I'm like, but I don't know what to do because I've tried the 80 % method, I've tried.

Sean Patton (23:22)
Yeah.

Atiba De Souza (23:31)
⁓ I've tried every delegation tactic I can imagine. I don't know what to do. so then Christine shows up on the call and she's chipper and happy because she always was except for when she was crying. She shows up on the call and...

Sean Patton (23:45)
She always started,

it all started Chipper. The call always started Chipper is what you're saying. Okay, good, good, yeah. Ended in tears. Started Chipper ended in tears.

Atiba De Souza (23:49)
always always always and yes

and I'm like I don't know what to do and I don't know what to say and I don't know which way to go Shawn and I'm frustrated with myself she's here now and I have to say something and so I asked this question

Christine?

⁓ What was, sorry, Christine, what challenges did you have this week? That's what I asked her. What challenges did you have this week?

And I just shut my mouth and I listened and she started explaining a bunch of the different challenges she had with the project that week. And I'm just listening to her and I'm taking notes.

And as I'm taking these notes and I'm listening, I'm like, huh, that's interesting, that's interesting. And so then when she's done, I ask her another question. I said, okay, Christine, I want to go back to beginning of this project and I want you to articulate all of the steps that you took from start to finish. Right, so I have these challenges that she had and now want her to go through all the steps. Okay?

So the framework that we created that I talk about in my book is called the case method. C, right, the challenges that you had. A, articulate the steps. Okay? And so now I'm writing down all of the steps that she's taking. Now, as I'm writing this down, naturally I'm hearing, I'm hearing and thinking, why'd you do that?

Why did you zig when you should have zagged? Why did you go up when you should have went down? Right?

But again, I'm not trying to make her cry. So I'm not saying anything. I'm just taking notes. But as I'm taking these notes and I have the backdrop of the challenges that she had, and I'm going through her articulating the steps, the challenges became really clear. Now I see how you got there.

Now I get it.

And what it started to illuminate for me and what it illuminates for you as an entrepreneur and what is illuminated for the hundreds of entrepreneurs that I've taught this to that have used it with their teams is the fact that your team thinks this way about whatever it is you're doing and you think this way. And so you've delegated something and you think that they're going to think this way, but they think over here this way and

they end up in a totally different end state than where you anticipated because they don't think the way you do.

And so in that moment, it became very clear to me that my role, again, getting back to thinking about my people, my role was to figure out where it is and how do you think about this thing, whatever it is that you're doing, versus how I would have thought about it, and then how do I help you cross that gap?

Not how do I help you do what I would have done, but how do I help you think about this the way I would have thought about this.

Okay, so that's C and A. Now, in order to get to that place of really understanding how they're thinking and how to make that gap, then came the next question that I asked Christine. And I said, okay, Christine, we're going to choose four of these steps that you laid out. And I chose two that she did right and two that she did wrong. And I said, what I want to do now is I want to study these steps with you. And I want you to tell me, what were some of the assumptions that

you were thinking about when you started this step and where did you expect and what were the outcomes that you were expecting to have and did it go as planned for you and what adjustments did you make as you were taking the step? I'm digging into how she thinks.

right? And getting crystal clear on how she thinks. Not just about the things that she did wrong, because it's easy for us to only focus there, but also the ones that she did correctly.

Okay? Because now I'm making that mental picture for myself of the bridge that I need to help her cross.

Okay? So, we've done that, and that first time we did it, those three took an hour. The second time we did it, it took an hour. And so we kept repeating this every single week, because her process was about 30 steps long, and we were only going through four. So it was going to take a little while to go through all of the steps. Right? And so we kept iterating, iterating, iterating, and then some number of weeks, I don't know exactly how many it was, later...

We went through those first three questions and I had more time in the hour for our meeting time. And I was like, okay, so we ended early today, but let me ask you this before we go. And this is where the E and case comes in. Okay. I asked Christine, said, Christine, so now that we've got this going, what has been easier than expected? Easier.

than expected. And her answer surprised me. And the answer has continually surprised me as I've asked this to other people and I've seen other people ask it to their teams as well. Because what it did was it unlocked and uncovered hidden talents that I didn't even know she had.

They were parts of the process that she was really great at. That I didn't even realize she was that great at.

Okay? And so it allowed us to, one, grow closer as I understood those things, but then two, it allows, because now I see that you're really great at this area, which may not have been an area I was really great in, now you can also bring even more of that expertise into the entire process, and that's how it gets even better.

Sean, the beauty of this and the reason why I love this and I teach this and I wrote a book about this and I'm so passionate about this is because so many of us as business owners, we settle because someone told us a lie, I'm not gonna call their name, for 80%. If someone could do something as good, 80 % as well as you, let them, delegate it. And that's a lie and it's a trap. None of us started our business so that it could be 80 % good.

The case method gets us to 110 % because they get better than me.

Sean Patton (29:45)
And I love the focus here on, I mean, so much in that, but training is just such a method to train people not what to think, but how to think. And so you're training that process. ⁓ I love that. So can you go through that just like really quick, go through those, the case method, go through the four steps real quick.

Atiba De Souza (29:54)
Yes.

Yeah, the four. Yeah.

So C, what challenges did you have? A, articulate the steps. S, we're gonna choose four of the steps and we're gonna study and dig deep. And E, what was easier than expected?

Sean Patton (30:16)
And I love the fact that easier than you expected, you said, illuminating those hidden strengths and challenge. it sounds like, cause when you first talk about like, I want them to bridge the gap and think like I think, you know, even in the back of my head, was like, yes, but you know, like, but what, what are the strengths they have? Yeah, like they are, how do get more? And then you got to it there at the end. And I think that's so powerful. And then another thing when you were asked, the way you phrase those questions,

Atiba De Souza (30:32)
I wanna bring more. Yes.

Sean Patton (30:42)
even going back to what you mentioned between those learner and judgmental questions, what I noticed, and tell me if I'm off here, but what I noticed was the judge questions often started with why, and the learner questions started with show me how, what, explain, right? Like a different word than it seemed like why almost immediately put someone in a category of judgment.

Atiba De Souza (31:07)
Yeah, why does very often. ⁓ Now, when you get really good, you can use why questions that aren't judger. Okay. ⁓ But in general, ⁓ when someone is being asked why they're being challenged.

And if I'm being challenged, then I'm being judged.

Sean Patton (31:26)
Yeah, so it's like even if you don't mean to be judging, their perception of the question puts them in a place of feeling judged.

Atiba De Souza (31:32)
which goes all the way back to the beginning of there two people in this experience.

Right? And so it isn't just about what you did or said, but also what was their experience in it as well. And are we spending enough time thinking about their experience from their perspective?

Right?

Sean Patton (31:49)
I, yeah, that is, this is such a powerful ⁓ frame. I'm glad we got that out. I want to pivot a bit and talk about another concept that you mentioned a lot and I think I resonated with, which is what you call the illusion of the one thing away mentality. And this is something we talked about. like, did it hit me? I was like, ⁓ no. Like I've resonated with that, especially early in my career as an entrepreneur so much.

Atiba De Souza (32:00)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (32:17)
And it's something I have to fight proactively now. you kind of explain what you mean by the one thing away mentality?

Atiba De Souza (32:23)
Yeah, absolutely. It's like, let's be honest. Don't you think that if you had one more client, life would be better? I mean, we all do. ⁓ If, you know, when I hire this new employee, when I can afford to hire this one new employee, all of a sudden things would be great, right? And like, for example, let's say you're not doing really well on social media right now because you don't have time to create content and post content and blah, blah.

So when I have the time to hire one more employee who can manage my social media, things will be better.

We all live there, right? ⁓ Pringles is the antithesis of that. And if you all remember, and I might date myself a little bit on this as we use this example, okay? So remember the old Pringles commercial, I bet you can't pop just one. Like you can't eat one.

Sean Patton (33:12)
you

Atiba De Souza (33:12)
Right? And he just kept going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, that one more always leads to the need for one more!

Okay. And it's the same thing here. It's like, okay, when I get one more client, you know, we'll be able to do X, Y, Z, but that one more client then requires more time. Then do you have to hire a new person? Then they added a new wrinkle. Then they, and so all of a sudden that one more, poof, evaporated. And you're, you're back in that same boat of I need another one more.

Okay. And it's fallacy that keeps us all chasing a rabbit that we'll never catch.

it's not possible to catch. Instead, what we need to do, using a really crazy analogy here, is build a better rabbit trap. And so what we really need to do is stop and turn around and focus and say, okay, what's really going on and what's really the constraint that we need to fix in order for this to work? Okay, so I can give you a real poignant example.

of this here, what we're going through right now in the company. And it's really, it be really easy for us to say one more right now, okay? ⁓ The agency is in the middle of a transition. We were for many years a video marketing agency, and we have become a medical marketing agency. And so we did video marketing for medical for a lot of years. Now we're doing

marketing for medical and video is just a subset.

Okay, so it is a shift and a change and that's great and it's wonderful, okay? And in that shift and change, I mean, obviously things are interesting and a lot of people are like, well, you know, how are we gonna do this? We're super busy and it's not, and it feels like, well, you know, if we just hired one more, maybe two more people,

we'll be able to handle the additional volume. And yeah, maybe that's what we should do. We should just go hire one, maybe two more people. That's a logical thought, given where we are and what people are saying and how people are feeling, right?

Then I had a conversation with my number two today and I said, so let's look at this. So we've made this transition from a video marketing agency to ⁓ a medical marketing agency and video was now a smaller subset. And so right now we have one third the video clients that we used to.

But the people who are doing all the video work are still saying, my gosh, I got so much work to do. Well, how is that possible?

And they're saying, well, if we just had one more person, things would be easier. But how that possible?

Right? Now the logical thing would say, well, of course there's more work to do. Yeah, we need more bodies. We should do that. But we need to go back and look at and find, which we don't know yet what it is, but go back and look at and find what is actually the root cause problem and go solve that.

Sean Patton (36:14)
You're totally right. for me, what I found with this one more thing is sometimes like you mentioned, it's another person. Sometimes it's the new marketing strategy. It's the, we need another video. We need to do a new website or this one campaign, this one thing. It's always this one thing. And from my personal experience, what I found is usually when I find myself in that one more thing mentality. And so I love your phrase like turn inward is

It's almost an awareness or a noticing for me that I'm avoiding something hard. Like there's some sort of hard work that I need to be doing inside the business that is either scary or just difficult or it's an unknown. I don't know how to do it. And this one, this idea of one more thing outside silver bullet, whatever you want to use is sort of my indicator that like,

Atiba De Souza (36:53)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (37:09)
To read a stoppy, like, what hard thing, what deep thing am I really avoiding?

Atiba De Souza (37:16)
That's a great point. That's such a great point. Because it is. We're ignoring the truth.

right, for something that looks easier.

Sean Patton (37:26)
Yes, yes.

Atiba De Souza (37:27)
and

sometimes sexier and sometimes even logical. Because it would make logical sense that if we just landed one more major client or you know what, if we just created a new marketing campaign that attracted this type of new customer right now, I had a conversation.

this past weekend at an event that we threw with a doctor and ⁓ she comes to me and she says, know, our problem is we just need a couple more people coming into the clinic. We just need a couple more patients per month. Right. In truth, the answer was four. OK. She wanted four more patients per month. Right. And ⁓ they're running. She wanted to talk about Facebook ads and she wanted to talk about this and she wanted to talk about that.

And she's like, you know, so which one of these is going to get us these four more patients per month? What do need to do? And my question to her was, so how are they coming now? How do the patients find you now? Well, one of our big ways is referrals from current patients. said, OK, so tell me about that. well, know, current patients, they send us patients in because they had such great success and so on and so forth. Duh. We all know how that works. Right. I said, OK. And so here was the question.

Sean Patton (38:46)
business.

Atiba De Souza (38:48)
So what are you doing with those current patients right now in order to generate these referrals?

You wanna guess what her answer was?

Sean Patton (38:57)
Nothing? Yeah.

Atiba De Souza (38:58)
Nothing. Exactly.

They were doing anything to generate the referrals. And I said to her, it was her and her physician's assistant, and I just stopped them. said, you want to talk about Facebook ads and YouTube and all this other stuff, but you're telling me that your current patients, with no effort from you, are sending people to you.

to become your patient and you've never considered putting effort there into the thing that's currently working.

You don't need Facebook.

You don't need any of that stuff. The only thing you need is to go and create a campaign for how we help your current patients who've already shown the propensity to want to refer you.

Right? And so, if you have this many right now referring you without asking, how many more are you going to have if you just ask?

Sean Patton (39:54)
Yeah.

Instead she was looking for that one more thing. One more extra thing. ⁓

Atiba De Souza (39:59)
Okay, but the thing about it is, it's the hard thing because she followed up and she said, so how do I do it? Do we just ask them for referrals? ⁓ I mean, I don't feel comfortable asking. Which is the point that you were making. It's the hard thing. It wasn't that she hadn't even thought about it. It was that she didn't think she was capable of doing it.

Sean Patton (40:22)
Ugh, back to beliefs, huh? Back to self-belief.

Atiba De Souza (40:25)
Always.

Sean Patton (40:26)
Yeah, ⁓ man. Man, dude, that's so good. I have one more question for you and I wanna make sure we get to it. You've also made the claim that small business owners have more power to change the world than politicians. What do mean by that?

Atiba De Souza (40:26)
Always, always, always.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, and actually let me get this here for the audience too as I talk about this. ⁓ So this is my book, ⁓ The Delegation Trap.

Sean Patton (40:45)
Yeah.

Atiba De Souza (40:53)
Here's the deal, and this is why I wrote this book. Okay, and this book goes through the case method that we talked about a little bit earlier, but here's the deal. Politicians can say what they want, they can do what they want, government can be and be whatever it wants. But the reality is, the reality is, no one across this globe has more access on a daily basis to the majority of the population on this globe.

than small business owners.

we employ more people in mass than any other industry. Which also means that when you take the time, you read a book like this that's going to teach you how to ask better questions, how to be a better leader, when you show up as a better leader for your staff and you model that.

Osmosis, nature starts to take over and they start to model that themselves. And then they go home and model that. You see, we have the direct ability to affect homes, families, lives. Government can create laws, all they want, and say, this law will take effect in two years from now.

And two years from now, there'll be the trickle-down effect of how long it actually takes to become something that's worthwhile.

We as small business leaders, by becoming better leaders today, we can affect the world tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we have that much power. The thing about it is we don't recognize that we have that much power. Because we feel downtrodden. We feel like we're just a little guy. But we're the little guy who affects all the other little guys, if you will.

So, my friends, listening to us, whether it's my book or whatever it is, I need you to understand, it is imperative and it is time for you to become a better leader. The world needs you to be a better leader. I'm not saying that you need to be the leader that everybody in the world knows, but what I am saying is that if you're leading two to three, 10 to 12, 30 to 40, 50, 100,

Be the best leader for them that is humanly possible, which means that you're continually growing. You're continually thinking about them. You're continually setting vision and you're continually being open and honest and vulnerable with them.

That's what it takes.

Sean Patton (43:16)
Dude, I'm just going to cut that last like 30 seconds and I'm gonna make that the ad for the No Limit Leadership podcast. Like you just did it for me. I appreciate the work. I know it was a pro bono on your end, but ⁓ you know, that's the ethos, man. That is, you know, that's we're both on this journey and that's why I want to interview you ⁓ because we're both on the same mission to, you know, become the leader that we're truly capable of to inspire and empower others to, you know, chase their own version of greatness.

Atiba De Souza (43:18)
you

My pleasure.

Sean Patton (43:43)
⁓ This was just awesome. We will definitely put links to your sites and to the book in the show notes. So go down and get the delegation trap lookup, Ateeba and my brother. I hope this is not the last time we see each other. I'm sure we'll work together soon.

Atiba De Souza (43:57)
Absolutely my friend.

All right, bye everybody.