Atta Emami on Executive Coaching That Actually Transforms Leaders

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues Podcast, host Pedro welcomes Atta Emami, an executive coach, leadership development expert, and organizational transformation specialist who has spent years helping executives, founders, and senior leadership teams unlock better performance by transforming how they lead.

Atta shares the pivotal breakfast conversation that changed the course of his career, how he overcame imposter syndrome, and why executive coaching is about far more than strategy—it's about helping leaders develop the mindset and self-awareness needed to execute effectively.

Together, Pedro and Atta dive into executive coaching, organizational change, leadership under pressure, psychological safety, team alignment, accountability, burnout, coaching ethics, pricing, and why so many transformation initiatives fail. They also discuss the difficult conversations every executive coach must navigate when the real obstacle isn't the team—but the leader themselves.



Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/attaemami/overlay/contact-info/
Website: https://changefacilitator.com/

Transcript

Atta Emami 0:00

About 80% of large scale transformational changes fail. And as you can, you know, look at Mackenzie and you know their stats around us. And majority of those 80% fail because of this situation you're just bringing in. The CEO, the executive sponsor of the change is not willing to look at themselves in the mirror or they blame others for what's going on. And I learned this back in 2013 from a guy who I haven't seen since. He said, you know, when you do the journey of organizational change, it's a double-edged sword.

Davis Nguyen 0:29

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues, the podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swin, and I'm a business coach and the founder of Purple Circle, where we help business owners achieve their first six-figure, seven-figure, and eight-figure year, all without sacrificing their quality of life. Before becoming a business coach and before founding Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight-figure coaching businesses and have been a consultant at several businesses doing over $100 million each, including some that are publicly listed and doing over a billion dollars each. In every episode of the podcast, you're gonna learn lessons that took our guests years to learn, and you'll be able to learn that in minutes. No matter if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is gonna give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro 1:14

Welcome to Success Leads Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Atta Emami, an executive coach trained in human and adult development, who spent seven years coaching inside Shopify, alongside his work as chief transformation officer at the Integral Business Leadership. Atta works primarily with senior leaders, founders, and executives, helping them close the gap between skill set and self-concept. Welcome to the show, Atta. Thanks for having me, Pedro. Very excited to be here. Yeah, great to have you. I'm way excited and I should, okay? Now, before when I uh well, FYI guys, if you don't know, uh we do have a vibe check, and our vibe check went just fine. We were laughing a lot. And uh now, not sure if you know that, but I am kind of a comic book nerd myself, Hata. And I love, love the first editions, you know, the origin story. So you could be doing so many things with your life, but you chose coaching, right? So can you walk us through why coaching and how that journey started?

Atta Emami 2:19

Yeah. Uh thanks, Pedro. I was doing an MBA at uh Queen's University, which is a number one business school in Canada, at least it was back in 2006 when I was part of it. Halfway through the program, we had this gentleman who I recently thanked, Dr. Peter Jensen, who was doing the unfairly called soft part of the leadership and people skills. I had a morning breakfast with him. I was struggling through the program. I was almost about to leave the program. That breakfast with him, I can't remember the exact details, but at the time, I believe he was coaching Team Canada women's hockey team, like their executive coach. Uh, he was a sports psychologist. And that breakfast with him, Pedro, changed the trajectory of my career. I made a decision to work on the people side of leadership. I have and the way he was explaining how you need to show up before you hit uh the rink, get in the ice, and how you need to manage your breath, manage your stress level. And I'm like, wow, if this works with people who work at the Olympic level, surely we can do it with executives. And that was a very inspiring conversation. I had, I'm sure I was one of the hundreds of people who've inspired, but that was a pivotal point for me that I made this decision.

Pedro 3:28

Okay. And you know, in the early days of coaching, I always say this it's like where almost every coach is testing waters, right? As if this is gonna land or not. Yes, and there is a shift that happens from I'm helping people here and there, I'm advice giving to you know what, I'm building a real business around this, you know. And I'm not sure for you how that landed. It's sometimes it's the first paying customer, sometimes it's the first invoice. Whenever you have that feeling of managing a legit business, you know, because it's almost an identity shift. So when was that when was that like for you? And and walk us through how did that look like?

Atta Emami 4:07

Yeah, I would I will say yes to everything you said in terms of getting the first paycheck and everything, 100%. And uh honestly, when I was listening to you, I felt like when I dialed down the imposter syndrome, when I realized, oh, actually I can do this. It's I felt that I got some really positive feedback from a very senior leader right at the end of my coach training. And and I'm like, oh, actually, this is something I can do for a living. And I'm gonna say this on air. I was like, Am I getting paid actually to do this? This is amazing. And uh but yeah, that was for me, dialing down the imposter syndrome with me, was a key factor.

Pedro 4:46

Interesting. It's almost like an immediate validation that you can do it for yourself because I I talk with people about imposter syndrome, and sometimes the conversation tends to be a lot about mindset, what and you and I know there is a hard component on the mindset, but it it's almost like I'm thinking about it's like, oh, I want to lose weight, and I'm like, there is a reality component to looking at myself in the mirror, which for you was someone telling you that you helped them with X, Y, and Z. So it's an immediate validation connected with reality, not just a mindset thing, if I got it right.

Atta Emami 5:23

True, it was a both hand, 100%.

Pedro 5:25

Okay, interesting. Okay. Now, after you got rolling, who are the people that kept showing up? You know what uh because in the early days, we were trying to make just to make it, and we're helping everyone. Hey, can you coach? Yeah, I can coach, right? At least on my practice, that was like that. And eventually we sharpen the blade, we attract a certain type of people, right? So walk us through the evolution of who you started serving and who you serve now.

Atta Emami 5:49

Yeah, that's uh that's an interesting question. You're right. I was like anybody who was be willing to be coached by me, I would say, yeah, uh, thank you for showing up. And uh one thing that really helped a lot in like 2013, I joined and I was very blessed, uh very fortunate to work with a senior VP in the credit union system in Canada. She sponsored me for a very expensive program uh for my level and uh with the six months of intense advanced change program. Through that program, I started working as an org change consultant, and that kind of opened the pathway for me to through doing org level change, to work with senior, far more senior level people to do one-on-one coaching with them that say if I didn't have that program, and I know Petro, you're better at this than I am. You've there are many different ways to do this, but for me, the path was got more cleared or more directly accessed to the executive level once I started to do organizational change.

Pedro 6:45

Okay. So let's do a little bit of a game of pretend here. Okay, let's pretend I'm your avatar, I'm your client profile, ideal client profile. So, first of all, how would I be able to find you, you know, marketing-wise? How would I connect with ATT?

Atta Emami 7:00

I don't do any advertising for the work I do yet. It's one of those muscles I need to flex, but through business integral or integral business leadership group, uh, through being first, these are the two primary ways that I get like executive level clients that I work with them or ward-mouth. That uh, but I don't actively like I have colleagues who actively do this on or hire somebody to do this for them. I, you know, being more on the business than in the business, that part of being on the business is not something I pay attention to too much. Okay.

Pedro 7:31

Yet. Yet I loved it yet. We have an open door there. Okay. So I'm still that guy, the executive. Mind my my executive hood and my flip-flops that you're not looking at right now, but I am executive, okay? I mean, I worked at banking consulting firms. It doesn't look like that right now, but I did, okay. My fair share of suit and tie. Yes. Um, and I'm still that guy. And uh, okay, no advertiser, but there is a way, right? So potentially network, referrals, they mention, hey, you gotta, you gotta talk to Anna, right? And I'm like, okay. And I'm giving you a call or I'm reaching out. Okay. So can you walk me through how does it look like to work with you? Okay. We can speed up the sales process a little bit, or if you want to talk about that, I we could speed up and say, hey, there's alignment. You can help me. I I I noticed you can help me. How does it look like to work with you and the potential outcomes I can expect? Can you do that for me?

Atta Emami 8:24

Yeah. I mean, we can even role-play this depending on the time, Pedro, and you mind the time. I don't want to go too deep on a particular area. But one thing that is important for me is like I won't mention it explicitly to the executive. Like, if I'm working with you in a discovery call or chemistry call, I want to see there's actually chemistry. Is there a connection? Can I be of service to Pedro or not? That's it's it's so integral for who I am and how I show up that if there is no connection there, uh, I won't be able to serve you. So it very rarely happens, but that genuinely I want to see is this something I can help Pedro with? And then, you know, like a most of the time that connection transition to the part to actually a little bit expanding and unpacking to see that if can we trust each other in that discovery call? And then, you know, like a following on depending sometimes requires like I talk to your C level like Zec or the CEO, you know, like a three-way conversation to bind us together to say what what is the intended outcome you want to make. And I will bring experiences, you know. Like I've been fortunate to work from because I'm a recovering software developer, I spend a lot of time in the tech sector. However, I have privileges to work with, you know, Houston Police Department, uh, York Regional Police. This is a gamut, and I'm not like focused, fixated on one particular sector. But still, if there's no way I can serve you, I will be very transparent and say, hey, like it's interesting what you want to work on. But you know, you should go talk to Joseph. I'm not your guy.

Pedro 9:52

Okay, so there is an integrity piece here that I really like, which is our you know, it's not grabbing my credit card, right? Pushing me to something you feel like you cannot help me, which kudos to you. That's pretty important. And what would you say is like the top three outcomes I could expect uh with working with you? Like, let's say there's an alignment, right? You you know you can help me go through the chem call or the discovery call, however you want to call it. What can I expect? You know?

Atta Emami 10:20

Yeah, that's a great question. Like I I I'm gonna say this generically and feel free to challenge me. I've seen a lot of, especially C-level and CEOs, their problem is really not the strategy, even though I do strategic planning, I work on annual strategic planning and do all those things as well. Uh, that is like beyond the normal executive coaching. However, the problem I've seen that get stuck with is the execution. Translating strategy to execution, operationalizing the execution. And I have helped pave the way for people to actually get better operationally and execute on the things that they put on the you know the two-day strap planning they work on and actually see them being executed.

Pedro 10:59

Execution. Okay. So it's almost like an accountability partner, would you say, or not necessarily lack? It's like because whenever someone tells me they lack the execution, I'm thinking two things. Okay. First, accountability. Potentially they they don't do the thing they have to do. Second, clarity. They don't know which lever to pull, right? The next step. Where would you say they they're most stuck with?

Atta Emami 11:23

Yeah, those are super valid, Pedro. Also, the cla one thing I've seen sometimes it requires more than just one person, like the senior leadership team is not cohesively work together well enough. And then in, you know, like uh there's this term that you know we've coined, and you know, like uh with my my my my buddy who runs the IBLG group is like leadership under pressure. Like we all show up, we want to like you know do our best, but when we are under stress and there's only like six weeks left to the end of the quarter that only to deliver, we become territorial as opposed to see what's best for the organization. Do I under stress put the organization under first or I put my own team or myself first? And you know, being able to discern and increase the awareness of the individual and the collective to see those and help them elevate to get to a level of, hey, let's put the company first. Okay, this project makes me look good in front of Pedro, but let's not work on this project so that if we work on this other project that my body will win, that will collectively be better for the company. Just one like nuanced example of how these things can show up and requires both, I would say, one-on-one coaching and team coaching the entire senior leadership team.

Pedro 12:35

Interesting. Drama. You mentioned uh the leadership team. I'm gonna jump on that bolt. Okay.

Atta Emami 12:42

Please.

Pedro 12:42

Let's say I'm the CEO. I hired you, I'm like, dude, help me, please. Team's underperforming, we're four weeks from the quarter, right? I need help. You go there and you get some attitude from a bad Apple. There is a guy, Bad Pedro, my long-distant cousin, and he's like, dude, what does this guy know about our company? Right? Uh, he just got here. He's telling me about a lot of stuff, but I am having sort of an attitude. Like I am a key player, but having sort of an attitude. So how do you navigate that type of environment? You know, when you're you don't have so much of a buy-in buy-in from the the the rest of the people, because the guy that actually hired you, right? The the CO, the top hat, you're he's the one, but you're gonna work with the the people under him. How how do you navigate that, Ada? I'm I'm very curious.

Atta Emami 13:33

So I literally I ran a session started by group personality assessment of the team, and the second in-command person in the room was a disruptor. It was the first time I'm meeting him. We are in the room, and I put this in places like a carpet with like different personality assessments that put in place, and everybody had to take their shoes off and stand on him. As we started, this guy showed up and said, Why are we having this guy? I just closed a nine-figure contract. Why are we doing this? Let's just bypass this and get to the late afternoon. He looked at the agenda. He was like, Oh, this guy is in the agenda until like 2:30 p.m. Then it was like the first thing in the morning. So I let him go for another 20, 25 minutes. And as he was, I was just peppering what he was saying with some of the personality traits that he has, that he did the profile. We did individual and group team profile. And he kept going, kept going. And I don't know exactly what made him turn, but the fact that I was holding space for the entire group and I was letting him practically attack my quest and questioning why I am there, and the way I hold space for everybody standing there, that kind of shifted the move because I didn't like started becoming defensive. I demonstrated what I want them to do basically under pressure. I walked that talk that I was preaching to them or I was planning to preach to them. And honestly, when I look back, what he did, which was I wasn't even aware of, landed really well for what I wanted to do for the team. And he stayed on and he sent me a very nice feedback at the end on Slack. But at the start, he was like, Why are we having this guy till like 2:30? Let's go and do the do the afternoon session. And uh just being there, being available to his concern and letting everybody else just tune in as opposed to because at first, like the guy who asked me to show up in the room, his C level guy, he was like, I'm like, no, it's okay, let him let him continue. And it kind of worked out well.

Pedro 15:24

Okay, yeah, love that. Okay, I have a second scenario for you.

Atta Emami 15:28

Yeah, let's do it.

Pedro 15:30

Let's see if I hit something. Yeah, let's see if this hits something that if it hits home, okay. Pedro, this is also a bad Pedro, by the way. Bad Pedro hired you. Okay, I'm the C level. I'm like, hey, I'm gonna hire you. These guys are underperforming, they're not working. You got in, okay, and you realize that Pedro is the problem. The problem is leadership, it's not the team. So there is a misconception from my assessment, the leader, and reality. And you realize that. How do you navigate that conversation with me? I'm the pain client, right? I'm blaming others. So walk me through that conversation. Like, how do you handle it?

Atta Emami 16:07

Before I directly answer your question, I'm gonna share a couple of things as a generic statement. I would argue, Pedro, about 80% of large skilled transformational changes fail. And as you can, you know, look at Mackenzie and you know their stats around us. And majority of those 80% fail because of this situation you're just bringing in. The CEO, the executive sponsor of the change is not willing to look at themselves in the mirror or they blame others for what's going on. And I learned this back in 2013 from a guy who I haven't seen since. He said, you know, when you do the journey of organizational change, it's a double-edged sword. Because you have to go to the person who pays your bill and saying, Pedro, you're the problem. It's not the team. I naively, I remember vividly back in like 2013, 14, once did this, and the CEO, and it was, I had the data, he kept saying, I need to know exactly what's the biggest problem. And we gathered information from all the three layers of management, and he was the problem. He kept asking me, say it, I want to know. And I remember, like I said very politely, and I'm not very like, I don't like you know, thrive to be political scientists or you know, I'm not into politics or diplomacy. I was very bluntly but politely, I expressed to him that, well, the data indicates that you basically score the highest in terms of what needs to change. And I but I would I, you know, I would not do it exactly the same now. That was like uh, you know, like 12 years ago. And he paused and he he asked me to leave the executive room. He said, you know what, there's something urgent I want to work on, and let's park this work change thing and you know come back to it. And I would not change anything other than ask him to have a private conversation as opposed to I'm a big believer of praise generously publicly and give constructive feedback privately. And I didn't follow that rule back then.

Pedro 17:57

Yeah, okay. I love drama, as you already noticed.

Atta Emami 18:00

Yeah, because you know, you they need to change if they don't realize this, because no, no, no, no. Like it's like I have this happen repeatedly, Pedro. The ex the CEO said, no, no, no, I'm paying the bill, you help my ELT. I don't want to work on coaching. I'm like, but you need it the most. And how do you language this in a way that he or she is bought into the fact that they need it the most? That's the million-dollar question. Exactly. Okay.

Pedro 18:26

You know, I'm curious about another thing, because my dad here in Brazil, he was a he owned a company, a consulting firm, a private-owned, and he told me something that I'll never forget, which is sometimes he felt like a scapegoat, right? Like, for example, they they had like bad employees that they need to get rid of, but they didn't, you know, and they want to use him as the reason to do so. Like, hey, it's not that we don't we don't love you anymore, but that consultant, that coach, that guy, he told me to fire you, right? Just to do the thing. Have you ever been in an environment or a situation like that? And how do you navigate that? How did it make you feel? You know, if you're there.

Atta Emami 19:06

I have seen that. I have spent a majority of my time, and I would distinguish between performance versus development. I have not been one who does performance coaching. There are some people who make a career doing not what your dad wanted to do, but basically they show up and basically say, hey, you know, John or Jane is not doing their work, and here's a sixth session. If not, you're gone. I work on human development because I believe if the person feels psychologically safe and they have the tools required, they will do their best work when they're working on their development. But yeah, that's a that's a challenge I haven't directly experienced. Maybe behind my back, somebody blamed me. I have I can say when I did org change, I, you know, I haven't I don't have a major org change geek right now on the go, but when I did large scale change for American National Group, for example, I was changing something for 17 countries in Asia Pacific. So all the country heads were responsible to navigate the change, translate to the orgs. I would not be surprised to say, hey, it was Ada guy who said we need to do this, it's not me. Because I was basically reporting directly to the head CEO, and this change had to be, you know, implemented.

Pedro 20:16

So Right Okay.

Atta Emami 20:18

You know in one-on-one coaching context.

Pedro 20:20

Right. You mentioned uh the behind your behind your back, and and that's something that I feel like it's so interesting. Like he was sharing with me too, and and other consultants slash coaches, it depends on the work, right? But uh he shared with me that people are like the top levels were hiding stuff from him. Like they hired him, but in a way was like, let's not tell him, and it and it's and it shows up like months later, and it's like, what's up, guys? And they're like, Yeah, that happened. You know, did that something like that happen to you? Like when they're like trying to kind of do the thing, but not really, you know what I mean?

Atta Emami 20:56

Yeah, like uh, I mean, the we'll stay anonymous, but you know, sometimes I've seen, you know, like a there's a behavior that gets portrayed due to chemistry and discovery, and the persons, for example, they say I'm very generous with giving praise publicly and I give constructive feedback privately. And then it so happened that I'm in a room during one of the executive leadership team meetings, EL team meetings, like bi-weekly meetings, and the CEO is like berating a particular person because somebody in their team or director in their team didn't do XYZ. And it just drops the energy of the entire collective. And it has a negative impact for days, if not weeks, on that particular team entirely and that particular exec who was in the receiving end. And I am the you know, the bearer of the bad news, the truth teller. So in my next one on one with the CEO, or like slack them right away. I'm like, what just happened? You said, and then because they're under pressure, they still want to justify it. And then, you know, my job is just to you know, hold the mirror and say, Hey, no, you you know, what you did was you.

Pedro 22:00

know is but but that's a moment of truth Pedro they can use it and say hey like you know mere the culpa I screwed up sorry everyone I could have done better but you know most of you know I would I would welcome and be honored to work with ones who are willing to take that extreme ownership and own it but most don't now shifting gears for a second okay talking a little bit about a bit more about the business itself you know I've seen coaches practicing not practicing but preaching a lot of stuff online like for example don't burn yourself out and all that but in reality sometimes they are burning themselves up because in the coaching space uh we're wearing all the hats right I'm a coach myself sometimes we're the marketer the the sales guy the there's the livery the coaching the craft itself so how do you think about capacity so you don't stretch yourself too thin and burn yourself out yeah I I'm glad you asked this question it's like really important especially that because to me it creates incongruity within us if I preach this thing and inside I'm deeply burned out then you know it's like the financial advisor who constantly in financial crisis it's like you know but they have to show up and you know pretend I'm sure that creates like incongruency from within and it's like to the detriment of our overall health I believe.

Atta Emami 23:17

So what I would say is like sitting with that inquiry for each individual person is different. But how do you expand your capacity? I remember I was still like over six and a half years I was still within Shopify when this COVID happened and there was no like force from anywhere outside but I wanna I was one of those who raised my hand to do more coaching to be more available for people. And I remember vividly Pedro my daily routine was not enough for doubling my being available to people to be to coach others. My daily routine of meditation and exercise routine was not enough to all that level. So in a few weeks I found that okay what I need to do is to meditate more like you know I'm a swimmer go to the ocean a little bit more every day and self-care I had like a countability partner have somebody who you can attend to and right now if you're in the middle of nowhere you have no access to other human beings I'm happy to be available to you but you know you can go to ChatGPT or Claude or somebody can be your countability partner. I think you have less and less of an excuse although I appreciate it because under stress we forget that we can be there's help is out there for us. So great question to me is like we need to expand our capacity when we do more work. And when it's not enough we need to talk to someone interesting.

Pedro 24:33

Now here comes another a hot topic in the the space too pricing right but not necessarily hard numbers and more about the mindset behind it. Because in the coaching space and also a lot of service-based industries pricing is very is a very self-worth path right eventually they're buying your time you're trading your time for dollars and all that what that entails right yeah so my question to you is what did you had to learn you know to get to the place you're at right now because I see a lot of coaches out there some coaches are doing magnificent work with pro bono and I've seen people there like almost like scammers charging 10k for a session so what's what what's the journey for yourself considering the topic pricing?

Atta Emami 25:19

Yeah I think this is one of the reasons I go through these two primary agencies. I don't get involved and mostly with the pricing part of people directly and uh there's truth in what you said 100% uh Pedro it just breaks my heart when I see especially the people who were starting in their journey of you know quitting their career jobs to be of service to other people and be leadership coaches and eventually executive coaches it breaks my heart when I see they get seduced by these you know like a pings they get that we know we will double your salary or whatever at three salary and all those things. And and you know I'm not the one who is willing to even say I'm gonna charge you $10,000 per session. It's not who I am. I would love to expand my reach and expand the my impact to more people but I'm I'm not getting seduced by hey you know you're making money when you're on vacation in Europe. I'm like that doesn't excite I I love to be in service for people. I do volunteer coaching I've started this in May of 2022 I work with people who lost their job and looking there in between in transition I dedicate time every week to work with those people as well as you know working with top level executives in all these sectors who are paying a lot of money to the agencies that I work with.

Pedro 26:32

Okay it sounds like the craft is something you're very passionate about. It's not just about a revenue thing you want to create the impact right and want to be involved in the impact.

Atta Emami 26:41

Okay. Yeah interest I love that you called it craft 100% yeah to me yeah anyways no please go ahead I want to listen it just came to me because you haven't asked but to me it's like the more we as coaches spend time working on our craft I think the rest will you know the puzzle will come back together like organically as opposed to we stress over an outcome stress over landing hey but Pedro is charging $10,000 an hour.

Pedro 27:07

Okay. Now you mentioned expand reach impact I'm gonna jump on that boat. So let's talk about future real quick right I'm curious about where you're taking all this looking ahead where do you see the business going? You know are you thinking about impacting more people scaling hiring or not even hiring is there a next step you're excited about I'm just curious about yeah one of the areas I'm excited about and it's not I'm not a career coach nobody has ever accused me of being a career coach.

Atta Emami 27:33

I have helped a lot of executives in their careers or transition from VP to SVP or C level or director to VP but I don't call myself a career coach. But you know it kind of there's this when I see in the market that hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs in the past like 18 months, two years because of the layoffs especially in tech sector I would love to create a program for people that you know they can utilize it as a kind of like a like a buddy or accountability type that is like they can organically use it on a like you know like first hundred days after layoff something that will help them you know get back on their feet and don't be stressed and with the noise of AI and otherwise I would love to create something like that in the very near future. Everything's perfect, Pedro. One thing I've uh started doing as part of the craft uh it's been almost a year I've started working uh with a dear friend of mine Kathy Robinson so working with her has been really interesting. It's like I'm going to her dojo to work on the craft of coaching. And that's something that I've been basically work it's more in the business but it's like I find those sections to be quite rewarding to be somebody who at my level still have somebody who can go to who does purely just coach supervision, supervising coaches and obviously we go in and you know like a kind of talk about without talking about a particular client we just talk about topics that are coming up and how can you finesse them, how can you work with them to be more in service and be more impactful with the clients. Okay.

Pedro 28:57

Now would love for us to step in into sci-fi territory real quick. Okay. Let's pretend we have a time machine in front of us. You can hop on on that time machine and you can we we're gonna have two stops. The first stop is you can go back in time when you opened shop when you started your coaching business okay and you can give yourself one piece of business advice that you wish you knew back then that you know now. Right? What would that be?

Atta Emami 29:24

The immediate honest answer is buy the pre-IPO shares of a certain company which I'm not gonna name that would definitely help the on the business side and uh I if I'm honest other than that I would say be less hard on myself. Like don't compare yourself to other people you see uh having these shiny portrays of themselves on LinkedIn and work on your craft get don't get distracted by the noise the signal is within us.

Pedro 29:50

Comparison is the thief of joy right and the thing is with social media is that it's misaligned because we're comparing our inner selves to their outer selves and they're just putting up a show sometimes you know the person and reality is often disappointing right 100% okay now second stop I want a moment in time from the day you started until today that you that you can pinpoint that you felt like this is why I started this journey you know a moment that you felt so fulfilled that you're like you know what I mean you you have one of those there's so many of those tell me what time behind yeah I knew but I want the top of mind here's the thing the one that pops to mind is the one is at heart okay so I want one and it's the one you're thinking right now.

Atta Emami 30:43

Yeah boom I prepared something nicer but this is the one just popped into my mind I'm being very genuine here. So I was I'll give a quick 30 second background context. There was this very high performing team that worked with a C level that I worked with. And this level this C level was very respected amongst the VPs and SVPs in their team and they decided to leave the organization and I was tasked to fly to the city that the new C level higher was coming in and everybody else who were in their team flew there as well. So we kind of all met almost for the first time in person within a few days or week of this new C level person joining the company. Set up my standard practice of you know trying to build trust without calling it that in the the first you know the half day and I could not believe Pedro that you know by mid-afternoon of the first day this team was so gelled together even though they had to go through this you know talkman model of going back to you know like a forming, storming norming performing they were back to forming but they surpassed that because they were all gelling together with another C level they were all kind of discombobulated because they lost their you know C level leader, not their choice. And I want to say most of the kudos go with how vulnerable the new C level person was how in just one interaction the night before he took completely what I wanted him to show up with and he was so vulnerable so receptive to show up and it won everybody's heart over. He gave me graciously a lot of credit but I think it's mostly because of the way he showed up and when I that all happened I I can't remember I couldn't sleep that night I was so like riled up I was like so excited I'm like man this just happened it was I I thought I have like three to six months to get here because the transformational change you never know how you can go from formation to the storming phase and all happened like so rapidly I was like I was blown away.

Pedro 32:42

It's great right when you have a great leader in front of you and uh when you have a coach even and they're so vulnerable the connection it's like almost immediate because people feel they are having a safe space to talk about stuff and sometimes in corporate I worked in corporate right and sometimes in corporate some I I feel like most people they're trying to suppress their true selves trying to fit a culture in a box but in reality that's not really doing you any favors I feel like leadership has to be very open not try to be perfect you know connecting the human level so pretty cool that that person was able to do so and you were able to you know gel the team and all that so nice nice story okay now if someone listening wants to connect with you or follow your work atta and we're gonna have all the links in the description okay but where can people find you best and connect with you changefacilitator.com or you know through IBLG website businessintegral.com maybe a link there now a few nuggets from today that I feel the need to highlight okay please bear with me let's go back to the origin story the breakfast right that changed everything I would say the Olympian and just it's so funny right sometimes you sit down with people we envision we we make up stories in our own mind and we sit down with real cool people and we're like they're just cool people they're just real and I you know and sitting down with a person like that being able to inspire you in a breakfast makes it even more powerful with the story right and what's possible imagine you being able to do that right which is totally possible I imagine you impacted hundreds of lives already in your your business right so there's that cool origin story it's organic too right it's almost like looking at something that inspired you and you're like hey I want to do something like that you know it's I mean I I love that it's almost like a superhero power of the imaginary of what's possible you know moving forward when we're talking about the sales process and you were onboarding me you mentioned the discovery slash chemistry call right and your first point was is there a connection right can I be of service to Pedro or not I love that man because I worked in sales and something that really clicked for me was the moment that I realized because sales can be very transactional but the moment I realized I need to be of service first so the agenda is backwards for most people that are in sales they're trying to close people they're trying to you know onboard a new client but in reality if I have that energy of that vibe of hey I'm here I'm gonna help this peep this person either way if they're gonna work with me great if they don't it's all great too because I'm gonna send them a resource I'm gonna refer them to someone gather them into the right path so having that energy really helps and that energy you only have if you're trying to be of service. If you're not good luck with that okay so there's the second point. The third one was when I asked about capacity right that really hits home I need to do that more I need to fill my cup you mentioned meditation you mentioned self-care you're right right and that it sounds counterproductive when you're spinning your wheels and working 10 11 hours and you're like dude I don't have more time to do X, Y, and Z to hit the gym and that blah blah blah. But the thing is if you find the time you're gonna show up with more energy your performance so you're not gonna take as much time you're gonna be more efficient. You know so I get that okay and I love the way you're very intentional about it and also how passionate you are about the craft you know you remind me of a a dentist model in a way like having the backhand being taken care of so you can just sit on the chair and do the thing and go home. That's your passion what you love doing the coaching right now this is just my long-winded way of saying that I appreciate what you do and I appreciate it being here and sharing so openly today. It was great having you on yeah life was better thank you so much for having me.

Davis Nguyen 36:46

That's it for this episode this episode as well as this podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle where we help business owners elevate their business to six, seven and eight figure years all without burning out if you're looking to grow your business as well as get the time freedom that you are looking for, visit us at join purplecircle dot com and see what we can do to help you end your business