---
title: "AI vs. Human Connection: The Future of Sales & Marketing"
episode: 53
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Khurram Kalimi"
guest_title: "Co-Founder & COO, VinnCorp"
date_published: 2025-10-29
date_modified: 2026-07-22
duration: 00:43:58
word_count: 7088
topics: ["ai-in-gtm", "gtm-strategy", "outbound-sales", "demand-generation", "sales-leadership"]
canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/khurram-kalimi-ai-human-connection/
source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# AI vs. Human Connection: The Future of Sales & Marketing — Full Transcript

> Episode 53 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Khurram Kalimi.
> Published October 29, 2025 · 00:43:58 · 7,088 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/khurram-kalimi-ai-human-connection/

## 00:00 — Intro: Khurram Kalimi and how AI may hinder go-to-market

**[0:00]** Today we have Karan Kalimi, who is an electric sales and marketing leader that has been at tech powerhouses such as Oracle and Microsoft, and is now the co-founder of Vincorp, which helps companies hire remote-first tech teams fast. He's an author, podcaster, life coach, tech guru, and founder. He has basically done as much as you can in the world of tech, and today he's going to share a very unique perspective on how AI may actually be hindering the sales and marketing process. Karan, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. To kick it off, I would just like to dive in on your perspective of how AI is impacting go-to-market today.

## 00:46 — Where AI misses the human angle in sales & marketing

**[0:46]** Yes, so AI is very helpful and efficient in some ways, but it's very counterproductive in a lot of ways. I am doing all my responses based on my own data. I'm not reading out of any report or chat GPT or Google. This is my own personal data. The thing is, with the help of AI, people can make technologies quickly and efficiently, but once they try to do sales and marketing through AI, they miss the human angle. Sales and marketing and spreading the message around is all about understanding them. It's not important what you have built, what you have made, how much you know.

**[1:26]** It's important what they want because they are the one who will be paying for it. Then AI is struggling and understanding the human at mass level, and people are relying too much in sales and marketing on AI, which is getting very tough and difficult to crack through people. Plus, on the other hand, people are sick and tired of auto-generated emails and LinkedIn messages and approaches. It's a spam. What is going on? Now, I think we are going back in some ways. In-person relationship building, networking event are getting hot now. I meet so many founders every day. They have built the coolest technology, but they are struggling in sales and marketing.

**[2:10]** Yeah. I am seeing the exact same thing. My inbox on LinkedIn and my email is completely inundated with, "Hey, I saw this podcast. Just buy my product." That's not an authentic message. You don't know who I am, and it's just a lazy way of doing things. I do think you're right. I think the market is just so starved for authenticity that it's really, really tough to stand out, but I think for some people, there's a big opportunity too. Yes, and I think I know why it is happening. If you allow me, I would love to share. Basically, one thing I've learned, my career is now 21 years, that demand supply is still the main driving force.

## 02:59 — Demand vs. supply: why outreach stopped working

**[2:59]** Before 2019, there were, for example, 100 customers sitting in US and Europe, and 50 companies from the world were trying to sell to them. It made sense, but then after the technology boom, everyone saw technology people making a lot of money, so now 500 companies from all across the globe are trying to sell to customers in US and UK. When the demand supply equilibrium is disturbed like this, this is bound to happen. There are so many supply of developers from all across the globe, and there are limited or maybe shrinking customers. That is why this is becoming difficult, and that's why founders are trying desperately

**[3:44]** from all across the world to sell to US market, and then they are doing this spamming of LinkedIn messages and emails, and it's not working. Yeah, I don't think there's any way of getting away from those fundamentals of economics. There are people who have problems, and there are people who create solutions to those problems. I think the marketing is just finding a way to really understand those problems, build the things that can actually solve them, and then finding a way to communicate to them and get in front of them, but I do think AI has, in a lot of ways, made people lazy on the

## 04:22 — Creative atrophy: use your brain or lose it

**[4:22]** authentic side of marketing, and people are relying so much on the automation, but kind of missing the point in the process. In a lot of ways, I think there's some mental or creative atrophy that's going on because they're not using those capabilities that they're used to. Let me tell you a very interesting, fun fact about human body. A lot of people know this, but they don't remember this actively in their mind that everything in your body, like your fingers, muscles, brain, eyes, whatever, whatever you stop using will die soon. For example, if you put your finger in some straight thing for six months, and after six

**[5:08]** months, you remove that thing and you try to move your finger, it will not move. Even if you cover your eyes for one year and don't open them, and if after one year you try to open and use them, you will be blind. That's a medical fact. Exactly same with brain. Whenever we are trying to build our muscles, we are lifting weights, we do strength training. Exactly. It's the same. If we stop using brain muscles or brain, it will be unusable. That is what is happening. I'm not against AI or growth or progress or technology, but it has to have a balance. I think this is the number one debate happening in the world right now in all the corporate circles.

**[5:53]** Guys, use AI, use whatever, but please keep using your brain too. Yeah. I think that's such a visceral example. I know there are a lot of studies coming out too where students who are using AI-assisted programs for their homework or for tests, it's showing that their critical thinking skills are declining, their ability to solve novel problems is declining. I think figuring out the right way to use AI to enhance quality, but maybe not completely offload the creative process or the human process, you have to strike that balance. Basically, you cannot completely kill it. It's the same debate humanity has been doing for centuries.

## 06:41 — Balance, screen time, and AI dependency

**[6:41]** When the knife was invented, you can use it to cut fruits, but you can use it to kill someone. Exactly with technology, exactly with TV, television, exactly with mobile phone. Again, you will not be able to kill this, but obviously, we should be doing awareness sessions. We should be talking about it so that people use, again, AI as well in the benefit of all the humans, not like declining their intelligence and all that stuff. Yeah. Makes sense. Personally, I have three kids, and I think something that's been a lot of research on is how much screen time do you let your kid have? We know it's dangerous.

**[7:21]** We know it's not something that is just something you can give your kid and let them watch an iPad all day and think that they're going to be completely okay. It's not good for their brain. It's not good for their mental health. I do think there are some components where the ways in which people are interacting with AI, we don't know exactly what the impacts are going to be yet, but I do think we're starting to see those early signs. In the next few years, we'll definitely know. Usually I'm already seeing signs. I know people who are sharing maybe their secrets with chat GPT.

**[7:58]** One month back, there was this glitch that accidentally chat GPT started indexing those things in Google searches. That's scary. That's scary because I remember when in 2000s, the phone and internet and smartphone came. The story was that you can be connected to the whole world, but what happened eventually is we got disconnected between families and we are glued to our phone and this no new thing I'm talking about. Everyone knows this, seeing this and experiencing this. Again, we are again at the cornerstone of history that we should use AI just in the benefit or efficiency of our work, doing our work quickly and easier in a better way, not

**[8:48]** at the cost of our personal time and dependency and loneliness because at the end of the day, it's blood in our veins. We are not any robots. We need human connection. We need community. We need people around us and we should be mindful about it. Absolutely. One more metaphor I have that I think is similar to how you were mentioning earlier, people are just, I think, starved for some of those in-person experiences and finding actual true connections with people in a sales and marketing context too, building those real connections. I feel like food in the United States especially, there is so much push towards processed food,

## 09:34 — The processed-food problem with AI communication

**[9:34]** convenience, affordability, and 80s, 90s, this is all seen as a really good thing. Like, "Wow, I can get affordable food. I can get it fast. I can stay on the go, get moving," and then it just turned into this absolute disease and epidemic. Then people were saying, "I cannot have another bit of processed food. I need organic. I need real vegetables. I need real food. I need something that's really healthy for my body." That's where I feel like all of these AI communications is just like, people are just sick of it. I can't see another AI written email in my inbox.

**[10:09]** I need to connect with real people who actually know the problems that I have and have a genuine empathetic way of solving for them. Completely on board and I'm even like pivoting my business around this. I meet a lot of founders who have built their very good looking, good deep technology with the help of AI efficiently and quickly, but almost everyone is struggling towards sales and marketing side. This is one thing, the fresh idea creation, creativity, and marketing, AI will find it very difficult to take that role. I'm pivoting my business as well, adding marketing, content, video, all those kinds of services, but content also is a grand word.

**[10:58]** Just putting your mobile out on a frame and just talking is not content now because it's clutter. Everyone is doing it in the whole world. You have to be really creative about messaging the content and to be creative, you have to understand humans. You have to do a lot of empathy. Right. Right. Well, I think that's a really good frame of the problem and I think it's very real. We're seeing signs of it now. We're seeing a lot of companies get impacted by not being able to break through the market with the right messaging and go to market strategy. Anything that we're sitting in this world of abundance of AI, abundance of communication,

## 11:41 — Cutting through the noise: nature and the three boxes

**[11:41]** abundance of the clutter, as you put it, what do you recommend? How do people cut through the noise and what do people do in an environment like that today? I will share my personal experience. I think there's a big impact of all of this on the overall culture in the society, especially in office environment, corporate culture, like I'm hearing so many tough and heartbreaking stories of people behaving, not behaving in the right way. They're not social. They're not understanding each other. How I fixed it, I think my life changed a lot when I started doing photography and wildlife and nature photography maybe nine, 10 years back.

**[12:29]** What changed was I started going out in the wild. That gave me inspiration on how to eat, how to live healthy and it gave me a lot of energy back. I literally feel whenever I am walking barefoot on the beach, I'm walking barefoot in a garden or maybe out of the city seeing some amazing stargazing, sunset and sunrises. That gives us a lot of perspective, a lot of energy, a lot of motivation. We are basically not charging ourselves. We were not designed to live in these boxes where we live in. We were designed to live outdoors. In big cities, you cannot do it, but once in a while, maybe twice a month, one should be doing it.

**[13:14]** That thing will give you perspective also. Once you are here in boxes, your thought is limited. I have got the craziest of the ideas after I have done some excursions, some wildlife photography, some tour, some going to a big riverside far away from the city. This connection to nature and also it will give you perspective bigger than yourself. You will question your existence. You will question what is happening. You will question other stuff, but when you are living in boxes, from one box of office to one box of home to one box of clubs, so we are moving between three boxes.

**[13:54]** I love that recommendation and I think a lot of people are, especially in the worlds that we are in, if you are in the tech industry, if you are on the sales and marketing side, a lot of people are optimizers and are saying, "How do I get hyper productive? How do I get the most out of my day? How do I cram in as many meetings?" There is this idea of what productivity feels like, but when some of those things, it does not feel like you are being productive when you are going on a walk on a beach, but some of those things are necessary in order to get the ideas and breakthroughs that you need to move your company forward.

## 14:31 — No shortcuts: trust the process

**[14:31]** Basically, let me be very honest and clear in my life experiences with others and myself. There are no shortcuts. There is no hacking, growth, those fancy words, that is nonsense. It is not happening. There are only two ways. It's the consistent, hard work, long-term game, or if some people are trying to get successful overnight, they are compromising. They are doing something wrong, something unethical, something which we should not be doing. Rest, if you want to be successful, and also the definition of successful is different in different cultures, different ages, different countries and different cities.

**[15:18]** It's very, very basically subjective, but there are no shortcuts. You have to trust the process and you have to move through the natural process. I have done so many things in my life, but all the things day one my expectation was, "I should be very successful at photography. I should become the best author day one." But my learning is, when I started the company, when I was talking to my friends that, "Hey, this is my target for the first year of the company," and now I laugh at it and think, "Oh, my God, what I was thinking." Basically, my main learning, either it's photography, book writing, content, my business, technology,

**[16:00]** sales, you have to trust the process and everything will take time. It will all come to you, but you have to be patient and you have to give time to the process. Yeah, and I fully agree. I think I've been in plenty of companies. I agree. There's no hacks, growth hacking, whatever it is, it's not real. I fully agree with that. What is real is waking up every day and then being dedicated to the process and being disciplined. Then being okay doing the boring things, but doing them every day. Some things like to use a fitness metaphor, it's no secret, it's diet and exercise. There's no hacking to getting more muscle and losing weight.

**[16:44]** It's waking up every day, going to the gym, and then eating right every day, but there's no huge hack to do it. I think the same applies. We are here. We have to pass this. We have to cross this together and with patience. Right. In your opinion, I think just to give people a litmus test, because you mentioned, "Hey, going out in nature, make sure you carve out time to do that. Make sure you carve out time to have experiences that give you a different perspective." This might sound a little optimizer-y for people listening, but how would you recommend baking that into a typical busy schedule?

## 17:22 — Planning your breaks: failing to plan is planning to fail

**[17:22]** Do you have a weekly or quarterly or annual kind of rhythm where you say, "Hey, I want to make sure I'm carving out at least as much time"? With busy schedules and with my kind of life, I'm an entrepreneur managing team of 55 people globally and 150 customers. I know it's tough. There is this very important and very popular saying that if you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail. These things are my planning time. That's my break. Basically, it's an investment. Once you get the rhythm of it, you will find time yourself. When I go back 10 years back in my life, I was not doing it. I was not happy. I was making a lot of money.

**[18:08]** I was gaining a lot of customers and whatever, but I was not happy. Once I tasted this, I cannot go back. Now I know. I felt it. We have to be conscious about things. Consciously, I felt the difference. Once you have felt the difference and you appreciate this lifestyle, you cannot go back. It will come from within, but my point is for people to try. Try that and once they get the feeling, then they will get time out. Also I think recommendation wise, if you prioritize it, if you have the intention, maybe once in a month or once in two months is a must for me and for everyone to take that break.

**[18:56]** Trust me, you will get amazing ideas and you will live life in a less fearful way and more like creative way. Yeah I love that. I think it's just about people giving themselves permission to do that and then like you said, being intentional and carving it out as if you don't plan for it, then your schedule will always fill up with something. Exactly. It's on you what you prioritize because another thing, the best thing which changed my life and perspective is once you go out in the wild because you are also nature and you are very tiny, like the thing which completely changed my perspective.

**[19:36]** There was a night when my friend bought a telescope and we set it up on a rooftop of a hotel and we set it up and we watched moon for like two to three hours. That night after watching that, all friends were sitting in silence for almost an hour. We were sitting in one room and not talking to each other. That thing changed the perspective and that told me the reality of how tiny we are. So once we go to nature, we see stars, sunrise, sunset and we naturally question us, question existence, question what is happening, what is happening with other people, like our horizon, like broadens. Yeah. No, I think it's really profound.

**[20:22]** I think carving out that time because then you also, it also reduces the stress because you're saying, okay, I'm only one person. There's only so much I can do. So if I sprint myself into overdrive, it's not even going to make that much of an impact. So I might as well live balanced where I can stay happy and healthy and the end results will probably be pretty similar as long as I'm doing a good job every day and being a good human to other people. But kicking in an extra couple hours of work a day is probably not really going to move the needle of the universe that much. Yes.

**[21:01]** And that gives you an opportunity to get out of yourself and see what is happening around. Right. To set things in perspective. Right. Well, and I think tying it back to AI, tying it back to go to market, I think that's a lot of people are missing that. They're missing the authentic in-person, like you said, we're not robots, so we need that in-person time. We need that human connection time. It inspires us. It makes us more human. It makes us understand other people's problems. So I think from a business perspective, how do you recommend people approach their go-to-market strategy? Are you layering in a lot of in-person events?

## 21:46 — Your brain is an LLM: data is people

**[21:46]** Are you doing in-person meetings? Are you doing things that kind of come out of the mold of just email and LinkedIn messages? Let me explain it in a funny way. This idea just came to my mind in the morning when I was thinking about what we'd be talking about today. Perfect. Consider your brain to be a database. And consider your brain has an LLM, it's a learning model. And the data to be fed to that brain is people. So if you have interacted with 10 people, your large language model is not giving good results. If you have met with 10,000 people, or if you have met maybe 100,000 people to see your

**[22:35]** database is filled with so much data, so the predictions, analysis, results, progress will be according to that. So our brain is literally a LLM AI machine learning model. And to make it sharp, to make it effective, you have to load this database with data. And data is people. So how much you interact with people, how much you enrich your database, your machine learning model will give very good results. So that is the philosophy I apply on sales and marketing and networking and business development. Because we miss one fact that we can be very cool with blockchain and AI and databases and systems and data centers, whatever, but who we actually are.

**[23:26]** We are people. We are selling to people through people. And the whole world is also people. We are not understanding the product, rather we are trying to understand a subproduct which people have made. We are selling some cool technology, but who we are selling to, we are selling to people. So if we have to sell good, you have to understand people. And to understand people, you have to meet them. The engineers will get this one very quickly because I've explained to them that your brain is an LLM model. I think that's a great way of thinking about it. It's almost like we've put technology on a pedestal above people when it really should

**[24:12]** be the other way around. I guess it's a tool that we use that can help us get connected. But we kind of flip the level of importance. And when you're talking about your brain being an LLM, it also makes me think, be very careful about what you need that LLM. So you could put bad data into that model, and you don't have a safety team to help sift through good ideas, bad ideas, and help take things out. Anything that you expose yourself to, any information. It's like negative news or whatever it is. People filling your head with bad ideas. It's really, really tough for your model to sift that stuff out.

## 24:52 — Feed your model 'yes' and get in front of people

**[24:52]** 100%, 100%, and stay away from the noises of no's, and stay close to the noises of yes. So you should fill your database with all the people of yes. Because we are seeing a lot of people of no's everywhere. No, you cannot do it. No, you should not do it. No, it could not work out. No, it is bad. So we have to say less of no and more of yes. So for someone listening tactically, how do they get in front of people more? Some tangible advice, like if they're like, hey, got a great product, but we got to get in front of people. What are some things you recommend that they do that will help them help them do that?

**[25:37]** When you go to the gym day one, you try to put like, like, you know, you lift weights, and then you have pain the next day, you have resistance. It's exactly the same when I remember the moment in 2008 when I was doing my first sales event when I was in Oracle, and I went to this event with a whole full of 300 people, and my boss's seniors were with me. And they really pushed me. You know, go meet them. And I said, what will I talk about? And they were laughing that you are in sales and you're asking what I'll talk about. Go. I don't know. Just figure it out. Just talk to them. So that was the pain. The muscle, brain muscle flexing pain.

**[26:20]** So I went through that journey. So this you have to basically, you have no other option. How I see it is whenever you're trying to find a job, whenever you are a founder, you are trying to basically you are selling. You are always selling. You just don't know. So if you are always selling, you have to be good at it to interact. And also practice makes men perfect. So we have to practice and the confidence will only come when you start doing it. You will not be confident day one. I still remember 2002 when I was giving a presentation at my in my college in front of 100 people, first time ever, I remember my like my legs literally shivering.

**[27:06]** So but if you have to grow, you have to be successful, you have to do something, make your name. You have to go through this. There is no like there is no shortcut. It will like. And also, as I said, when you sit with people of yes, you will get the confidence that yes, you can do it. Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And it is scary. I mean, there's one thing, you know, because I've been in sales for other companies. So you're selling a product which may already have some traction. For anybody who's going out on an entrepreneurial journey, you know, you're not going to have that track record with the company.

## 27:42 — The cure-to-cancer test: find the real problem

**[27:42]** So you're going to get a lot of no's the first time. And just for anybody listening, I think it's okay, go ahead and sift through the nose. And one metaphor I've used is, I think the coolest job in the world if it existed would be to be the salesperson for the cure to cancer. If you were selling the cure to cancer, that'd be the best job ever. And what would you do, like, okay, if you were managing a territory, the first thing you do is say, hey, who's everybody who has this problem? Who's everybody who has cancer? Let me go talk to them. And if you go talk to somebody who doesn't have cancer and you're trying to sell them

**[28:14]** the cure, like, I don't need this, it sounds expensive. Why do I need the cure to cancer? Like I don't even have cancer. But you shouldn't be discouraged if you're running into that situation. It's when you meet the people have the real problem that your product or service is there to solve for. And you hear those yeses. That's the fuel that keeps you going. And anybody who's created a product or service, like first thing, go find the people who have a real problem. And you built it for a reason. You didn't build it just because you thought it would be fun or interesting. You built it probably because you had a serious problem that you wish was solved.

## 28:48 — Motivation and purpose over tools

**[28:48]** And you know there's other people who share it. And you're going to have to sift through a lot of people to figure out who has and who doesn't. I'll step back to I'll step back two steps. And main thing which I've seen is behind people doing something or not doing something, there has to be a motivation or no motivation. So someone's motivation might be money, success, fame, traveling, someone's motivation might be fate, might be faith, they might believe in something, purpose of life. So first thing everyone should be doing is find purpose, try to understand what is happening, why we are here, where we are coming from and where we are going.

**[29:33]** And that will give you motivations, purpose. And once anyone has motivation on purpose, they will figure it out. And the people who I know have no purpose or no motivation, you can give them the best tools, best advice, best knowledge, it can be useless. And the person who have nothing but that person has motivation, they will figure it out. So you know the human brain and like with AI and chat GPT, human brain is still very effective. So if you have the motivation, your brain will literally give you ideas and next steps, whatever. When I was starting my journey eight years back, I didn't know I will be here in eight years.

## 30:16 — The surfer, the surfboard, and the wave

**[30:16]** But you know, traveling the whole world, exploring, understanding, you know, trying to understand universe, world, what's happening with humans and whatever in the whole universe. This was my motivation to start the company and I just like stepped out of the job and started working. So if anyone has the motivation and they have found purpose, they have found clarity, they will figure it out. Yeah, I think that's really sage advice. And we had a VC on the podcast a few weeks ago. And I was asking her, what guides your investment decision making process? And she's typically looking for seed stage, series A stage so pretty early on.

**[31:00]** And she says we're looking for three things of a combination. We're looking for the metaphor she used as a surfing metaphor. We're looking at the surfer, the surfboard and the wave. The wave is the market. Is there some market opportunity? The surfboard is the product. And then the surfer is the founder. And she said the most important thing of all of those is the surfer. Because if you have a really good professional surfer, they're going to know how to swim out and find the right wave. They could be on a not so good surfboard and still catch that wave. They don't need the best equipment. And they don't need to just sit around hoping a wave comes.

**[31:40]** And I think to your point, people who are motivated and have purpose, that purpose will drive the ability to go build the skills they need to achieve their goals. And they'll pivot or figure out a way to win regardless. So I think, yeah, if anybody's looking for a company to join, if you're an investor looking to invest in a company, it's always coming back to that. Is that person motivated and purpose driven? Yeah, I've never seen in my life that I find someone motivated, ethical, hardworking, and they haven't made it. I haven't seen this so far. That's a good point. And he says, oh, I've just been dealt so many bad hands.

**[32:20]** I'm like, I don't know if it's the hands you've been dealt, or there's one common thing in the equation of every single situation. So yeah, so I was just, you know, these reasons and stuff, the algorithm is very smart. So I was getting, I saw this reel and it was like showing rich mindset and poor mindset. Poor mindset, or maybe I can like rephrase it, but there are two mindset. One is, hey, I don't have money. I cannot do anything. And the second one is, hey, I don't have money. I should do something. The same situation, the mindset, the motivation, the motivated people will think that, you know, I don't have money. Let's let me do something.

## 33:00 — Advice: invest in long-term relationships

**[33:00]** And the other one is, I don't have money. I cannot do anything. It's just that different. Right. Right. I love that. I love that. Well, I think you've had such a great career experience building your company. I'm hoping just for anybody listening as well as our LeanScale team or customers, what's some of the best advice you give to somebody who's out there rolling up their sleeves, building up a startup, building up a company. What are some words of wisdom that you can share that'll help them on their journey? I'm seeing people struggling with job hunt, finding jobs, like this is the biggest problem. Not in US, it's the whole world.

**[33:52]** So I think there's a big problem. We as a society have stopped investing in long term relations and connections. We are getting very transactional. This is hurting. This is hurting everyone in the long run. So we should be investing in long term connections. What do I mean by long term connections? In my business, I'm a living example that when I left the job and started the company, my first 10 to 20 customers were referrals and introductions from my previous jobs because in those 15 years, I was keeping connections with those colleagues and people and bosses and juniors and everyone.

**[34:36]** So this is no rocket science and I see people like they're senior people and they're struggling finding jobs. You know what I've been doing for 25 years that you cannot call back anyone who was your colleague maybe 10 years back. What are you talking about? It just don't get to my mind. So this is one thing. Invest in long term connections and relationships. Please for God's sake, stop being transactional or keep looking for a job after every two, three years and you will be struggling. That's a very strong point I would like to make. That is one. Second is I see another thing, the code which I just said the motivation and not motivated people.

## 35:17 — 'This is not my job' and doing the boring work

**[35:17]** So the people who are motivated, they will be doing consistent hard work and they will figure it out. And people who are less motivated, they are like, you know, not working that hard. And another thing, which I posted on LinkedIn one year back and people love that one. Please get rid of the mindset that this is not my job. In my 15 years of my career, I get a lot of things which were not my job, but I did it. Give me so much of learning and trust me that all helped me in my startup, all of it. A lot of times my colleagues were telling me that, you know, why are you doing this? This is zero result.

**[35:56]** And now I know why I was, you know, why God or the universe was pushing me to do this because that was all to be used later on. So people are, I think they're working less. They are not that, you know, they want, like they're getting lazy, they're not eating healthy. That's why they have less energy and they want to work less and make more money. That's not possible. We are still on the earth. We are not in heaven. And then you just say something and it happens. Yeah. No, I totally agree. And I think people are getting inundated with, you know, a lot of people posting on social

**[36:33]** media where it looks like they're not working as hard, but being really successful. You know, people seeing maybe business owners, like raising money, whatever it is. And it looks like that happened in a year when it's actually, like you said, you had relationships that were built over 10, 15 years that enabled you to get the first group of customers. Same with LeanScale, the first full batch of customers, almost every single customer at LeanScale is a referral. So we're not getting some net new hack to like just bring in pipeline. We did a really good job and cared for them. And then we got to introduce to the next one. It's so simple.

**[37:14]** Like in my book, chapter two is about relationship building. And there is a complete topic about building your history and integrity. So you have to build history with people and do it with integrity. Yes. Yeah. That will always help you, but generally we are getting less patient, including me, myself. But you know, so we have to be conscious about give it time because in social media, we see all those AI generated videos where there's this guy who was very poor 10 years back. And now they are flying their own planes. Like how often did this just happen? When did you last time see someone of your friend doing that?

**[37:57]** So it's a lot of fake like concepts we consume through those reels. And then we fall for it. Yep. Yep. And that goes back to be careful what you're feeding your LLM. Um, yeah, I'm really enjoying this conversation. And I think you just have so many insights to share. And clearly, just like you said, it's not an overnight success thing. You've really had an extraordinary career. I've, I've had a chance to dive in a little bit deep on myself and as you and I were prepping for this podcast, but I would love if you could just share your story with our audience, because I think you've just had a phenomenal story and career.

## 38:40 — Khurram's story: Karachi to Oracle, Microsoft, VinnCorp

**[38:40]** And I would just love if you could share that with the audience as well. So my story is a little longer, but I will try to summarize it quickly. So my journey, my professional corporate, like job and job and business journey is like 21 years now, grab by graduation. I'm a computer science graduate. I'm originally from Pakistan, born and is Karachi. And I was lucky enough to get admission in the best Institute of Pakistan for computer science after that I did my MBA because sitting at one seat for a longer time is very difficult for me. Like I love to be outdoors all the time. So I did computer science.

**[39:20]** I was coding, but I was fine doing fine, but I was not loving it. And since after my MBA, I just shifted my career and I move towards technology sales. I worked at Oracle three and a half years, very good experience of water training. What a sales organization I owe a lot of my sales principles and enterprise selling skills relationship building to Oracle and my bosses and seniors there. And then I was offered at Microsoft what what a company, what horizon, what learning and exposure I got there. And but it was 2013, 2014 Microsoft like last year's at Microsoft, I started thinking about my own company.

**[40:04]** And then I joined VMWare and but my dream of my company was not letting me sleep. So after like 15 years of in, but in 15 years I switched seven companies who does that. And you know, everyone was my father was saying, Hey, how you are searching and all that. And but that those seven companies gave me a very big network. So I advise all the junior people who are like doing jobs that three to four years maximum and you should save jobs, because that will allow you to learn different environments and different bosses, different cultures and different team members. And at the end it will increase your network as well.

**[40:42]** So that at the age of 40, you have more referral options. So after like 15 years of this, yeah, 15 years of this journey of learning, crashing, crying, laughing, partying, all that stuff. I started Vincop, which is now almost eight years old, 55 employees and 150 customers, including two fortune, 507 unicorns. And what we are solving here is basically we are helping founders, business owners and mid-size and bigger companies in their technology and marketing journey. First five years, they were focusing cold on technology only, but the market and the world is changing with AI, building technology is getting easier.

## 41:27 — VinnCorp today and how to reach Khurram

**[41:27]** So we have added marketing, video editing and like creative marketing and creative content services as well to the company. So yeah, this is my background and current situation and looking to grow. Amazing. Amazing. Well, your experience is definitely shown in what you're able to share and I appreciate you passing down everything that you shared today. What's the best way for people listening to get in touch with you personally, or if they're a good fit for Vincorp, what's the best way to get a hold of your team? I think LinkedIn is the best platform to reach out to me. Hurram Kalimi is my name and the company is Vincorp and they can email me.

**[42:15]** My nickname is KK and that is my email ID as well, KK@Vincorp.com. So they can reach me out there and they can also go to my LinkedIn. I'm also doing coaching based on my book. So I'm doing coaching one-on-one, group-based coaching as well. So people need any advice, any help, they can always reach out to me on LinkedIn and email. Amazing. Well, KK, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for sharing all of the insights. I have definitely a brand new perspective on AI and making sure it's not developing a level of atrophy for go-to-market teams and finding ways to fire up that creative

**[43:01]** process and then always remembering we're people, we're selling to people, we're selling to people through people and making that human experience core at what your go-to-market strategy is and also just all the life lessons and showing that through your career as well is really, really inspiring. So KK, thank you again. Appreciate it. And I know a lot of our listeners are going to enjoy it. And as you continue to accomplish even more amazing things, as I'm sure you will, we'd love to have you back at some time. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Anthony, for having me and giving me the opportunity to share what I think. Amazing. Thank you.

**[43:45]** And whenever you are visiting New York City, feel free to visit our office and meet. Absolutely. Can't wait for it. Thank you.