Deen & Deals

Assalamu Alaykum! We are back on the mic together for the first time in a while, and we are kicking things off with one of the most important topics for any Muslim in sales: tawakkul. Sales might be the ultimate tawakkul job. You start every month at zero on your quota, and whether the right buyer picks up the phone is never fully in your hands. We open with a du'a attributed to Umar ibn Abdul...

Assalamu Alaykum! This one's personal. Futhallah sits down for the third time with his own mentor, Amen Elbaba, and traces the FaceTime call that changed his career, the one that came right after a Salesforce rejection left him questioning everything. From there, the two dig into what mentorship actually means, starting with its roots in Islam: the Prophet Muhammad's relationship with Jibr...

Assalamu Alaykum! Amen Elbaba is back for round two, and this time he's bringing a hot take that reframes the entire sales career: it's not really a profession, it's a lifestyle. He and Mohammed dig into the soft skills that actually separate top sellers, persistence, curiosity, and above all, active listening, and why those same skills end up showing up in your friendships, your marri...

Assalamu Alaykum! This week we're joined by Yusuf Cattaneo, a solutions architect who grew up in Northern Virginia, was homeschooled, and studied at Ta'limul Quran at ADAMS before eventually landing in Raleigh, North Carolina (yes, we get into the NoVA vs Raleigh debate early on). Yusuf's path wasn't a straight line into tech. He started in finance as a business analyst at The Carl...

Assalamu Alaykum! This episode is one for anyone who's ever felt stuck between the life they're expected to live and the one they actually want. Nashmia Burney is Director of Forward Deployed Engineering and Pre-Sales Operations at Quickbase, but her path there started nowhere near tech. She grew up moving between the US and Karachi, and at 17, with no lawyer able to help her family, she researche...

Assalamu Alaykum! This week we sit down with Saad Ghafoor, a man who was voted the #1 SDR in Europe out of a thousand competitors, and who's now closing deals as an Account Executive at Clearpay (Afterpay's UK arm, part of Block, an S&P 500 company). Saad walks us through the two-year climb that got him there, but the real story isn't the award. It's what happened right after h...

Assalamu Alaykum! Yusuf Imran joins the Deen and Deals podcast for Muslims in tech sales to share his journey from immigrating to Queens as a child to a 20-year sales career that produced two seven-figure W-2 years. He opens up about early struggles, dark periods in his life, and the cold-calling mortgage job that accidentally led him into sales. Yusuf breaks down his path through Mimeo (including...

Assalamu Alaykum—Futhallah interviews Ibraheem Alani on the Deen and Deals podcast for Muslims in tech sales about his shift from a cybersecurity degree into entrepreneurship. Ibraheem shares early job-hopping, multiple failed business attempts, and how he learned sales with no background, emphasizing confident pricing and focusing on process over outcomes. He explains building a LinkedIn outreach...

Assalamu alaykum! In this episode, we talk about why knowing our numbers is essential as Muslims in tech sales—whether we’re reps or leaders. We break down the outbound pipeline funnel (dials → conversations → meetings booked/held → opps created → closed-won) and how we can work backward from a revenue goal to figure out how many calls we actually need, especially when outbound is new and we don’t...

Assalamu alaykum! This week it's just me and Futhallah getting real about accountability, in the gym, in sales, and in life. We're talking step goals, personal trainers, and why "potential" means nothing without action behind it. Futhallah gets vulnerable about his fitness journey and I break down the exact system that got me real results with my trainer. This one hits different...

Assalamu alaykum! Yo, I just got back from 4 days at a sales inner game retreat with my former manager Alex Kremer, and I did not walk out the same seller I walked in as. I'm telling you, game changer. We get into speed to truth over speed to outcome, why being Mr. Nice Guy is quietly killing your deals, and how I disqualified a prospect in under a minute and handed her 29 minutes back. Plus the c...

Assalamu alaykum! This one is a gem. My guy Shafan Khan went from selling DVDs door to door before Netflix even existed to running two AI companies. We get into skipping the whole SDR grind, the sales game he learned watching his mom run a salon out the basement, and the realest take on why AI is quietly making people dumber. He even drops how he war games entire deals with AI before he ever picks...

Assalamu alaykum! Episode 30 is a real one. We went deep on something every sales rep needs to hear: if you think prospecting is beneath you, sales might not be for you. We pulled from Fanatical Prospecting, Can't Hurt Me, and honestly just real talk from the trenches. We broke down why the basics still win, how to actually know your numbers, and why AI is a tool not a replacement for the huma...

Assalamu alaykum! This episode is a real one. Ghazi Masood went from a Pakistani immigrant kid in Bellevue selling warranties at 16 to becoming CRO at Replit — one of the fastest-growing AI platforms in tech. He breaks down what it actually took to climb from rep to regional manager at 23, how he navigated 30 years of sales leadership as a visibly Muslim man in rooms where he was the only one of c...

Assalamu alaykum fam! This episode is a special one. Brother Othman Altalib went from the classic DMV immigrant path to leading 3,000+ Muslims at Google to walking away from corporate with no backup plan in Ramadan 2024. He gets real about what it looks like to climb the ladder while losing your purpose, why being at the C-suite table during the Masjid Al-Aqsa crisis still wasn't enough, and t...

Assalamu alaykum ya'll — this one's special. Mohammed finally flips the script and puts his co-host Futhallah Hamed in the hot seat. Futhallah breaks down his full origin story: selling Power Balance wristbands at 12, dreading his Deloitte job on day one, and how a WhatsApp message from a friend changed the whole trajectory. The real gem here is how Futhallah connects his deen to his drive...

Assalamu alaykum fam — yo, this episode is a different one. We sat down with Zak, Harvard econ grad, former college football player, 12 years in SaaS, and one of the most grounded Muslim sales leaders we've ever had on the show. He went from a lime green Aston Martin and a penthouse to looking in the mirror and not recognizing himself and that moment changed everything. We talked rizq, Ramadan...

Assalamu alaykum! This one is special. Episode 25 is Mohammed's origin story, and Futhallah is pulling it ALL out. We're talking about a Palestinian immigrant dad who slept on the NYC subway to save money, built a 35-year barbershop empire in Seattle, and raised Mohammed in that shop shaking hands with CEOs before he could even cut hair. Mohammed took over the business at 19 after his dad...

Assalamu alaykum fam! Futhallah just became a dad — MashAllah — and we're kicking off this episode celebrating that before diving straight into the real talk. This week we're breaking down why Futhallah is literally the hardest person to sell to, and what that means for YOU as a seller. We get into how buyers actually make decisions, why ROI clarity is everything, and what separates a sell...

Assalamu alaykum fam! This episode is PACKED. We sat down with Troy Munson, CEO of Demo, LinkedIn content creator, and food TikToker, and this man got REAL with us. We're talking about leaving a job where the stock went from $80 to $500 (yeah, do that math), the LinkedIn poll hack that books meetings on autopilot, and why he's considering leaving entrepreneurship to go back to selling. Troy also d...

As Ramadan comes to a close, we get real about brotherhood, friendship, and family ties. Why does brotherhood peak in Ramadan and fade after? What separates a true brother from an acquaintance? We break down the levels of friendship, how to stop making excuses for lost connections, and why a 90-second voice note can mean more than a generic broadcast message. Mohammed also shares a powerful story...

Ramadan Blues are hitting hard — but the last 10 nights are almost here. In this episode, we check in on our Ramadan fatigue, talk about the power of community (and how it doesn't build itself), and get real about phone addiction, social media scrolling, and how AI is making everything faster — but maybe not better. Plus: Masjid Hopping Thursdays, the string test for attention, and our challen...

We hit our goal of getting to 20 podcast episodes! Tune in to listen to our updates about the podcast, as well as our Ramadan check-in and more about OpenAI mass surveillance. Time Stamps:00:00 Day 11 Check In00:29 Where Have We Been01:21 Podcast Milestone Reflections03:23 Ramadan Midpoint Fatigue05:37 Coffee Hacks And Dean Fuels07:03 Caffeine Pills And Ecom Tricks10:11 Coffee History And AI Paral...

In this episode we talk about Tanveer’s journey from shoveling snow door-to-door at 11 years old to becoming CRO at Untap Your Sales Potential. He shares what it really felt like to hit 415% of quota at Salesforce… and why that success still left him empty. We unpack burnout, panic attacks, pressure, and the hidden vices many sellers never talk about. Tanveer opens up about rediscovering his faith...

At 39 years old, Mike Sullivan was unemployed, $80K in debt, and hiding personal loans from his wife. That desperation forced his transformation. In this episode, we unpack how Mike went from used car sales and call reluctance… to becoming a top enterprise seller at TriNetX. We talk about: Why you don’t need rock bottom — but adversity can be fuel How to control the controllables in sales Identity...