AI Can Handle the Tasks. Careers Are Still Built Through Trust.
A marketing agency co-founder who rose from nightclub floor staff to sales VP says AI can draft and automate, but trust, follow-up and ownership still decide who advances.
Karim El-Sayed Karim El-Sayed covers company news, policy and regulation across the UAE and wider MENA for Anecdoted, with a focus on how new rules and licences reshape how startups operate. karim@anecdoted.com
The co-founder of a digital marketing agency, who has audited hundreds of marketing campaigns across industries, started working at 12. He arrived in Dubai around 2004, as the city was expanding fast, and took a job at a nightclub. He was not hired as a manager. He learned the business from the floor and worked his way into the manager's chair. Later he joined another company as a salesperson and moved through sales manager, sales director and vice president of sales. He ended up with equity in the business.
No promotion came from finishing a task faster, he says. One early step came from speaking up: he caught a cashier stealing at the nightclub and reported it, which earned him the general manager's trust. He gave free drinks to regulars and to new guests he judged could become regulars. In sales he took new leads first and called them immediately, booking meetings for the same day or the next.
That record is the basis for his argument about artificial intelligence. AI can draft a campaign brief, build a landing page, and answer a customer at 3 a.m. It can perform much of the work. What it cannot do, he argues, is replicate the career climb.
The four things AI does not cover
He names four: trust, follow-up, reading people and ownership. Most opportunities are lost to silence rather than to competitors, he says. Businesses that waste marketing money usually have a human problem, not a technology problem. Poorly performing businesses generate leads and then take hours or days to respond. Others automate messages without anyone owning the relationship.
Where AI helps and where people decide
The best-performing businesses use AI for repetitive work and reinvest the saved time in people, he says. Technology raises the floor while humans set the ceiling. When everyone can produce the same polished output, relationship-building becomes the differentiator.
What to do with the hours
His recommendations are specific. Hand one repetitive task to an AI tool to reclaim hours each week. Spend the saved time on one real conversation a day with a customer, colleague or prospect. Close all unanswered messages and open loops by Friday. Solve a problem nobody assigned, so the ownership gets noticed. Attend one event, send one introduction, or reconnect with one lost contact to grow a network.
The distinction matters for hiring and promotion. If polished output is easy to get, the scarce skill is getting a reply, keeping a commitment and owning the result when a handoff fails. A tool can shorten the path from brief to page. It cannot shorten the path from stranger to trusted colleague.
He arrived in Dubai with no title, no network and no guarantees. The climb started on the floor. It still depends on the same moves: speak up, follow up, and take responsibility. The next step is to send the message, take the meeting or close the loop before Friday.
