Umair Jaliawala is an inspirational speaker, leadership trainer, and social entrepreneur, and the Founder & CEO of Torque Corp. With nearly two decades of experience across the corporate, public, and development sectors, he has worked with hundreds of thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations in Pakistan and abroad, blending business, psychology, faith, and philosophy into his sessions. He is also the mentor and trainer of host Imran Nadir — which makes this episode a rare, personal conversation between a student and the teacher who shaped him.
What This Podcast Is About?
This is a slower, deeper episode focused on the human side of success: mindset, mentorship, growth, culture, and staying grounded in a world that changes daily. Umair answers real questions many entrepreneurs, freelancers, and professionals quietly struggle with — from imposter feelings and comparison to burnout, motivation that fades, and how to lead people in the age of AI. If these are the conversations you value, subscribe so you never miss one.
Why You Don’t Need One Mentor and You Need Many?
Many entrepreneurs pride themselves on being “self-made,” but deep down they often feel stuck or afraid. Umair’s answer is direct: seeing your entire journey only through your own eyes keeps you biased — you justify your limits and small beliefs. A mentor thinks with a second mind that isn’t trapped inside your head, so they can see and help in ways you simply can’t help yourself. But he pushes it further: don’t have a mentor — have many mentors. Life is a wheel of different areas, and each one needs its own reference points, safe spaces, and people who believe in you. Some of the best mentors aren’t even alive; they live on in books, and their stories keep guiding those willing to learn from them.
How to Stop Comparing Your Day 1 to Someone’s Day 100?
In a scroll-driven world, we constantly measure our beginning against someone else’s highlight reel. Umair’s advice starts simply: breathe, and make the unconscious conscious. Ask why you’re watching this, who is showing it to you, and why it keeps appearing — because content that appeals to your psychology will keep coming back. Then choose your content the way you choose food: just as some meals harm your body, some content harms your mind. His bigger prescription is to add mind management, mood management, and state management to your daily routine — because in a world flooded with information and AI, you’ll feel like you know nothing and are doing nothing unless you consciously manage your inner state.
Turning Jealousy Into Inspiration:
Instead of being shaken by someone’s perfect photo or highlight, Umair suggests admiring the effort behind it — the hours, the sacrifices, the discipline a creator or achiever poured in. Nature’s design, he says, asks us to be grateful, and gratitude quietly dissolves jealousy. The shift he describes moves you from jealousy (“why does he have it?”) to envy (“I’d like to grow toward that”) to inspiration (“I’ll draw from you”). His reframe is powerful: you and the people you compare yourself to aren’t really in competition. Years from now, your old classroom and workplace rivals won’t matter. What matters is that people come together to learn from one another and grow.
What Machines Can Never Do: The Human Edge in an AI World
When goalposts move daily and AI keeps advancing, motivation gets hard. Umair borrows a military lens — the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions soldiers once faced are now everyday reality for professionals. The key is separating what changes from what never changes. Much of what we built our identity on — degrees, titles, qualifications — were human-made “stamps” created because there was no alternative and the work needed doing. So ask yourself: was your real skill the qualification, or the force that created the qualification? Machines will out-perform humans at logic-driven, cost-benefit tasks. But what a machine can never do is console another person, hold them, truly understand them, and read the emotional context of a single moment — like sensing, “Imran, you don’t seem okay today.” Your genuine human skill is your heart, your emotions, and the decisions tied to them. This, Umair says, is an invitation to grow your leadership rather than shrink into tasks a machine can absorb.
Motion Is Not Progress: Why 17-Hour Days Won’t Move You Forward
Plenty of people work 14, 16, even 17 hours a day and still stay exactly where they are — because they confuse motion with progress. Umair’s point is that staying in one place isn’t the problem; not growing there is. He cites Dr. Adib Rizvi, who remained at a single government hospital but used its rooftop to perform animal transplants for two years, ultimately bringing transplant capability to Pakistan and giving rise to a landmark institution. You don’t need to keep moving to grow; you need to grow wherever you are. Today’s generation, he notes, is almost “allergic” to places — yet the right environment can anchor and support your work in ways constant movement never will.
Growth and Contribution: “Grow, Groom, Go”
If you’ve spent years somewhere without growing, Umair puts it bluntly: you may have started to stagnate — like still water that breeds mosquitoes until you forget your own fresh form. Growth is a spiritual need; when you’re genuinely growing, you feel alive. And growth isn’t only a bigger bank account — it’s deeper relationships, wider impact, and a growing legacy, the way a great teacher’s “dignity bank” compounds even when their income doesn’t. He pairs growth with contribution: offer your time, talent, and skill where they’re valued and needed. If you’re stuck, don’t wait for your organization to hand you growth — go find it, shift gears, and talk to leadership about scaling up. And if there’s truly no growth left, move on. His formula: grow, groom, and go — grow yourself, prepare someone to take your place, then move to the next project or mission.
Do Culture and Soft Skills Show Up on the Bottom Line?
Data-driven CEOs often ask how “soft” work like inspiration and culture affects revenue. Umair’s honest experience is that he rarely meets a serious leader who doesn’t already grasp the value of a strong culture and change-ready teams — the real challenge is tailoring the solution to that leader’s context and aspirations. The organizations that neglect culture, he observes, are usually the ones whose product is booming with no competition, so poor behavior costs them nothing — for now. The true test of a company’s character and values shows up in hard times, when you fall into the ditch. Backed by 18 years of his own project data, he sees remarkable differences in organizations that invest in culture. To convince a numbers-focused CEO, he shows the data, uses the company’s own internal studies to reveal existing gaps, and pilots a single KPI in a small slice of the business — for example, two stores out of fifty — to prove the impact before scaling.
The One High-Impact Way to Reset Culture on a Budget: Just Listen
For a business owner without a big training budget, Umair is clear that resetting culture is never a one-conversation job — you can’t fix character with a single dialogue any more than you can with your own children. But there is one transformational move within reach: hold a two-hour meeting where you genuinely listen. When you listen to people’s stories, you understand their culture; when you change the stories, you change the culture. A leader who doesn’t listen will keep importing new ideas that never take root. His reset for parents, leaders, and executives alike is the same — create a space where people feel free to speak without being reprimanded, and truly listen. That, he says, is what powers every strategy that follows.
Why Motivation Fades After 48 Hours and the 15-Minute Fix?
A session gives you a dopamine hit — stories, applause, commitment — but the energy rarely survives past a day or two. Umair’s diagnosis is that we’ve become experts at receiving and terrible at processing, especially now that everyone is a motivational speaker and inspiration is everywhere. His fix is a daily practice: carve out 15 quiet minutes with no internet, no Netflix, no work, and no tension, and simply talk to yourself — How am I doing? Where am I going? Start the day consciously by planning it, and close the day consciously by reviewing it. And be patient: not every seed sprouts on schedule. Sometimes what you learn today only blooms years later, when the timing is right — but good seeds always burst eventually.
The Biggest Shift in Human Behavior He’s Seen
Asked about the biggest psychological shift over his career, Umair points to the period during and after COVID, when the internet accelerated and platforms took over daily life. When he started, people wanted to build something big together and solve real problems; today he sees fewer of them, with more people chasing individual comfort and an “elite” lifestyle than the problems around them. He also names three changes bluntly: loyalty is effectively dead in a gig-economy world of short-term work, vacations, and constant change; mental health awareness has grown enormously, and people now weigh how they feel at work; and selfie culture has normalized a lot of “silly” behavior, from photographing food before eating to dressing up for an online audience. He hopes that as better content keeps emerging, people will eventually grow out of it.
His Final Advice: Be True to Your Own Journey
Umair closes with the one piece of advice he’d stand behind: be true to your own journey. You’re not here merely to become a CEO, a founder, or an influencer — take up those roles only if they genuinely serve your path. Your real task is to become more fully yourself. Everything he did — the workshops, the trainings, the countless rooms full of people — happened so he could get closer to himself and become better. That, he says, is the point of all of it.
FAQs:
Who is Umair Jaliawala? Umair Jaliawala is an inspirational speaker, leadership trainer, and social entrepreneur, and the Founder & CEO of Torque Corp. With nearly two decades of experience, he trains individuals and organizations on leadership, culture, growth, and behavior across Pakistan and internationally.
Why does Umair Jaliawala say you need many mentors instead of one? Because life is made up of different areas, and each one needs its own reference points and guides. A single mentor can’t cover every dimension of your growth. Mentors can also be authors or figures you learn from through books and content, not only people you meet.
What can AI never replace, according to Umair Jaliawala? The human ability to console, understand, and emotionally connect with another person, and to read the context of a single moment. Machines can out-perform humans at logic-driven tasks, but leadership, empathy, and mobilizing people toward a shared purpose remain uniquely human.
What does “motion is not progress” mean? Working long hours or constantly changing jobs can feel like progress while you actually stay in the same place. Real growth comes from developing yourself and your impact wherever you are — not from movement for its own sake.
How can a small business reset its culture without a big budget? Hold a two-hour meeting where you truly listen to your team’s stories in a safe, judgment-free environment. Understanding people’s stories helps you understand and eventually change the culture — no expensive program required.
How do you stay motivated when the goalposts change every day? Manage your inner state, separate what changes from what never changes, and spend 15 conscious minutes a day checking in with yourself. Start and end each day intentionally, and trust that growth compounds even when results are delayed.
Where can I watch the full Imran Nadir Podcast episode with Umair Jaliawala? You can watch the complete conversation on YouTube using the video above. Subscribe to the channel and join the newsletter to get every new episode as it’s released.
Don’t just read the ideas — watch the full conversation.
Umair Jaliawala goes deep on mentorship, growth, leadership, and staying human in the age of AI. The full episode is worth your time.
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