When I first came to North America, I was just trying to find my footing – like most international students do.
New country, new culture, new everything. But somewhere between working, studying, and figuring out what “normal” meant in this new life, I stumbled upon something that didn’t look like a plan but turned into one.
Web development
It started with a small spark of curiosity. Simple HTML pages. Hand-coded lines that somehow made things appear on a browser. Then WordPress arrived, and something about its simplicity and creative freedom spoke to me. I remember the first time I came across Brian Gardner’s work. His themes were clean, minimal, and elegant. I couldn’t afford much at the time, but something in me said, this is worth it. So I did what made no financial sense and bought a lifetime membership to his Revolution Themes. Years later, when it evolved into StudioPress, I was grandfathered in. I didn’t know it then, but that small decision would quietly shape how I thought about design, storytelling, and systems for the rest of my life.
And I kept buying stuff, and kept tinkering with tools. People often told me I was wasting money. That I should save up for something practical, with most people mentioning a car. But I stayed stubborn. I wanted to learn. I wanted to build. So I kept my expenses simple and poured whatever I could into tools, plugins, and domain names. Twenty domain names, maybe more. Some were just words that sounded interesting, others random ideas I thought I’d someday turn into something. None of it looked rational from the outside, but it all made sense to me – atleast in that moment.
Back then, my weekends were sacred. A close friend had access to a computer lab at a local university. He invited me in. And for two full years, every Saturday and Sunday, we’d head there together. He’d work on his projects, and I’d work on mine. My sister would pack lunch and dinner, and the only money I’d spend was on Tim Hortons coffee every few hours. That was my version of a perfect weekend – quiet, focused, and full of possibilities. And to spend that time next to another builder was an added bonus.
I built anything that came to my mind or to my attention – anything that caught my fancy, anything that anyone asked me to build for them. Personal pages. Collaborative forums. Early websites. Tiny experiments that no one would ever see. Looking back, they probably seemed pointless. But those weekends taught me how to think like a builder, how to troubleshoot, and how to create something from nothing. They taught me discipline, patience, and humility – lessons that definitely were not coming from my course books.
It would be safe to say that OAK, the startup my sister and I later built together, was born out of those amazing weekends. Back then, it had a different name, S.S. Enterprises, and the work we did was a mix of strategic problem solving and basic web development. Both came straight out of the backgrounds that we brought to the table, and from the skills and curiosity I had been nurturing in that lab. What began as side projects soon started taking shape as something bigger – something that demanded structure, thought, and purpose. My sister decided to transition to a life of a technocrat and over multiple evolutions and iterations, Obaid and I, with help from Dave and Sonia, built OAK out. Further along, my business mentor, Michael Lachapelle walked into my life, and I was introduced to Business Model Generation, a framework that was introduced to me to help me address challenges in my own venture. But in typical fashion, curiosity got the better of me. Instead of just applying the framework, I decided to understand it deeply. I studied it, dissected it, and experimented with it. And from there, a new chapter began.
My strategic consulting and coaching work, now more than a decade strong, was built on that same foundation of exploration. What started as curiosity became competence. What started as solving my own problems became helping others solve theirs. Over the years, that evolved into coaching and consulting with clients across the world. All of it, in one way or another, can be traced back to those early nights and weekends spent learning things that, at the time, seemed to have limited use.
As my entrepreneurial chapter matured, so did the kind of problems I wanted to solve. I found myself drawn less to what I could build and more to how people and systems work together – how ideas scale, how culture forms, and how leadership decisions ripple through organizations. That shift – from building ventures to building capacity – happened gradually, but it was inevitable. It was the same curiosity, just pointed in a different direction.
Fast forward twenty years, and today, I lead operations at one of the largest charities in Ottawa. I oversee systems and people initiatives, and the foundation of what I do still rests on what I learned during those early years and those long weekends of exploration. Not the technical parts necessarily, but the mindset – that instinct to tinker, to learn, to build without needing permission or a clear end goal.
That curiosity didn’t just give me skills. It opened doors I could never have imagined walking through.
It shaped my entrepreneurial and professional journey. Early in my career, I started meeting successful entrepreneurs and professionals who needed help with their online presence. And suddenly, that random skill I’d learned as a student became my way in. I was no longer just an observer – I was at the table, contributing, learning, connecting. Those relationships, built one website at a time, became the foundation of a network that shaped my entire career.
It’s funny how things that once seemed random or even unnecessary become the most valuable assets later. You can’t predict which skill will change your trajectory. A cricket player learns video editing and becomes a content creator and is then celebrated for his ability to coach thousands. A marketing student learns strategy and becomes a thought leader. An engineer develops people skills and ends up shaping strategy at the highest level. The world doesn’t reward straight lines anymore. It rewards combinations.
As the years went on, that curiosity evolved again.
The same spirit that once pushed me to build websites now pushed me to build frameworks, tools, and ways of thinking that could help others. One day, almost on impulse, I decided to post one of those decision-making frameworks, something I’d developed from my own entrepreneurial experiments, on my website. I didn’t expect much from it. I just thought it might help a few people think differently. But that small act of sharing eventually opened a new chapter. It led me into coaching, mentoring, and teaching, and over time, into more than 2000 conversations and 6000 hours dedicated to helping others grow.
The truth is, we don’t always know what will matter. We can plan all we want, but the things that truly shape us often begin as curiosities we chase when no one is watching. Those stubborn itches, the things we explore just because they feel right, are often what give our lives the shape and texture that plans alone never can.
So when something calls to you, even if it makes no sense right now, follow it. Learn it. Play with it. Stay with it long enough to see where it takes you. Because the things that don’t make sense today are often the ones that make all the difference tomorrow.