063: "Is Your Company Ready for AI, or Just Excited by the Hype?" (lessons from Tulio Siragusa)

🧠 Erik’s Take

This conversation with Tulio Siragusa left a deep imprint. Here’s a guy who’s both deeply competent in business and deeply rooted in service, and that rare blend made this conversation one of the most fulfilling I’ve had on the show. This reaction dives into three standout themes:

1. The tension between who we are and who we think we are
2. How service creates self-awareness
3. Why AI isn’t a savior—it’s a spotlight

Tulio’s story is a masterclass in what it means to lead from experience, not ego. His honesty about failure, transformation, and emotional intelligence revealed the kind of wisdom that only emerges from walking through fire—and choosing to learn from it.

🎯 Top Insights from the Interview

• You can’t grow from a lie. The gap between your aspirational identity and your real starting point keeps you stuck—until you’re honest about where you actually are.
• Self-awareness is teachable—but only through humility. Service, not self-help, is the path to honest self-discovery.
• True maturity means knowing your limits. Admitting what you’re not good at builds more trust than pretending you’ve got it all handled.
• AI will break your org before it saves it. If your company is siloed, bloated, or fragile, AI will just expose the fault lines faster.
• Business that ignores humanity won’t last. Empathy isn’t a buzzword—it’s a performance lever.

🧩 The Personal Layer

Erik reflects on the way Tulio described the painful collapse of his first startup—and how that moment became the catalyst for real change. That resonated deeply. Most high performers don’t transform when things are fine. It’s collapse, failure, or identity loss that cracks us open—and that crack is where wisdom starts to seep in. That’s also where Erik connects Tulio’s story with his own observations about leadership maturity, coaching, and the inner work leaders often avoid.

🧰 From Insight to Action

• Practice radical self-honesty. Ask: What am I pretending to be good at?
• Volunteer in an uncomfortable space. Go serve in a context where you’re not the expert. Watch what it reveals.
• Revisit your org structure through the lens of AI. Where does AI highlight your friction points? That’s where to evolve.
• Coach for awareness, not performance. The best leaders draw out truth before pushing for results.
• Turn collapse into curriculum. Like Tulio, document what broke and why. There’s gold in there.

🗣️ Notable Quotes

“You can’t grow if you’re lying to yourself about where you’re starting from.” – Erik

“Service is the soil that self-awareness grows in.” – Erik

“AI won’t fix your org—it’ll reveal what’s broken.” – Erik

“Vulnerability is power. It’s how you earn trust, and how you earn your own growth.” – Tulio (paraphrased)

“Maturity is owning your parameters.” – Erik