Career strategist Amir Muradali explains how blue ocean strategy, curiosity, and a career pivot took him from fifty job rejections to executive job offers in oil and gas and beyond.

In this episode of KneeToKnee, Mark sits down with Amir, a career strategist based in Calgary who spent eight years as a research engineer before finishing an MBA and hitting a wall of fifty job rejections. Amir walks through the process he used to find his own blue ocean value, the three month stretch in 2006 when Enbridge Pipelines and an IBM managing partner both offered him a job in the same day, and the mindset shift that took his career from a stack of rejection letters to quadrupling his income in seven years.
The conversation moves into AI and the workforce. Amir shares what he is seeing happen inside executive teams right now, why he calls himself an AI optimist, and the choice he believes every listener needs to make about where they stand in the next chapter of their career.
Amir closes with one exercise he gives his own coaching clients: send an email to three people closest to you and tell them three specific things you appreciate about them. No critique. The truth, and nothing else.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:02 The Three Month Pivot That Started Everything
05:24 Blue Ocean Strategy Explained
09:55 Finding His Value: The Oil Sands Breakthrough
17:59 AI, Layoffs, and the Future of Work
24:52 One Thing to Do Today
Playlist Recommendations
📂 More Like This, Suggested Playlists:
How to Make Better Decisions Under Pressure
Why the Right People Change Everything

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