Across The Table with Dionysius
Welcome to 'Across the Table with Dionysius,' where your host Dion Williams, a Mortgage Agent from Ottawa, Ontario, takes you on an exciting journey. Our podcast brings you the voices of leaders and professionals from across Canada, providing exclusive insights into trending topics and critical issues. Our mission is clear: to keep Canadian residents informed through the experiences and knowledge of our remarkable guests."
Across The Table with Dionysius
Sarwar Qureshi: Beyond Networking and Building Community
In the "Across the Table" podcast, host Dionysius welcomes Sarwar Qureshi, a prominent Ottawa business figure and CPA with Patterson and Company. Qureshi, who also teaches at Algonquin College and has a background in basketball officiating, discusses his diverse roles, including being the Ottawa chapter president of the MNA club and the founder of Beyond Networking. A significant aspect of his life is being a father to three girls. The conversation delves into how his father's accounting career influenced his own, his varied professional experiences, and his approach to business and community involvement.
SARWAR QURESHI
CPA, CA
https://patersonandcompany.ca/about-us/sarwar-qureshi/
Beyond Networking - https://beyondnetworking-prod.web.app/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/beyondnetworking/
Find Dion at the following:
DION WILLIAMS
Mortgage Agent
Website - williamsmortgage.ca
Email - dion@williamsmortgage.ca
Phone - 613-902-2313
Welcome to Across the Table with Dionysius, the show that brings you closer to the movers and shakers, while mortgages are his bread and butter. This show isn't just about interest rates and loans. It's all about the conversation. Grab a drink and let's pull up to the table together. Whether you're into finance, tech, art or just fascinated by incredible stories, this is where you'll find a bit of everything, and now here's your host.
Dionysius ( Dion):Welcome to Across the Table podcast with Dionysius. I'm your host, dionysius, and today we have a special guest, sarwar Koreshi. He's an Ottawa business leader and, to be honest, he's a busy guy. He's a CPA, a partner with Patterson Company, he's a professor at Algonquin College. Correct me if I'm wrong, in a second You're a former basketball official, you're the Ottawa chapter president of the MNA club, the founder of Beyond Networking and, I think, most importantly to him he's a dad to three beautiful girls.
Dionysius ( Dion):Man, you do a lot, man, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, so we'll jump right into it. In terms of doing some research, I see that accounting runs in your family. Your dad was an accountant or associated with the accounting industry. Is that how you got into accounting?
Sarwar Qureshi:I'd say so. You know, when you're young and you're exposed to things through the household, through the grapevine, the chatter, it kind of makes it something that you become maybe interested in or you just don't want to do it at all, right, separate yourself.
Sarwar Qureshi:You kind of have two complete opposite options. So for me I always found it interesting. My dad presented it in a way that he enjoyed it. He had a lot of passion in his work, had a lot of satisfaction, had to work with great clients worked with. His accounting was a bit different because he was an accountant in a big company. So as an accountant you can do different things. So he worked in a construction company and he was the accountant in that company. So that was his thing, whereas I'm kind of an accountant for many small businesses instead of just being in one. But generally the principles of accounting and a lot of the things are similar otherwise.
Dionysius ( Dion):In terms of you touched on a little bit of your childhood. As I mentioned, you do a lot of that. What defines you, or what would you say is your earliest childhood memory? That defines who you are today, because you do a lot for, obviously, your family, but the Ottawa business community.
Sarwar Qureshi:I'd say early memories on the business community side of it have been either attending events and seeing kind of the energy and the excitement. There's different events through the City of Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, bia, ottawa Board of Trade, things like that and in some ways the events are celebratory. It's an awards dinner, it's an awards gala. So I'd say that that kind of got me excited for a certain type of involvement where it's nice when people come together, have something to celebrate, and in many ways these business owners have different things to celebrate depending upon what they're doing.
Sarwar Qureshi:In fact, in COVID it might have been the success that your business just survived. It might have been a success that you opened a new location, that you hired some more staff, whatever the thing is, it could be specific to that business. So that's kind of where I got some energy and kind of fed off of, and some of the things you mentioned that I do now are kind of tied in with like, okay, let's keep that going, that energy, that excitement, that opportunity to showcase and celebrate people bringing them together and things like that.
Dionysius ( Dion):So, as you mentioned, you work with business owners regularly. As you know, small business owners enjoy being or working in the business, not necessarily on the business, and from that perspective, they don't necessarily enjoy the paperwork, the accounting, the management aside associated with it, with everything in terms of technology. So Google, youtube, ai, fingertips. Why should a small business owner work with someone like yourself?
Sarwar Qureshi:Yeah, that's a good question. So I kind of compare it to like if you're really good at what you do, then if you put a dollar amount on it, so if you do what you sell, or business development or production, if you kind of spend your time doing that, if that number is kind of here, the cost of outsourcing and working with a professional I feel like would be less than that amount. So what you do as the business owner, the most profitable activities that if you had more time you could devote to, they might be worth $200 an hour, $300 an hour, $400 an hour, whatever it is, and the accountant should be less than that. So in my mind you're kind of net ahead when you bring in the professionals, because business to me is an infinite number of things to do. You could be sending more emails, updating your website, creating social media content. There's just a laundry list that never ends.
Sarwar Qureshi:So to me you're kind of getting back that time to deploy for more productive tasks that are higher on your profitability and productivity list. And then there's also in my mind a piece of mind component where when you get that expert to look after something, it's like boom, it's done the person that was supposed to do it, or the person that did it is very good at that, so they've covered it off. They're not having second thoughts like, let's say, I decided to build my own deck and I'm not very good at building decks and then anytime it creaks I'm like hold on a second. Did I install it properly?
Dionysius ( Dion):Did I miss a screw or did I align it properly?
Sarwar Qureshi:Is it leveled Exactly? So all these things maybe run through my mind. That may or may not be valid concerns. But if I got a top contractor that is registered and has a lot of experience, maybe I don't have that same kind of concern.
Dionysius ( Dion):Right, we touched on it before we jumped on here. Covid was crazy. It was different. The government did what they did. One of those things they did at the time was providing small businesses an opportunity to obtain interest free loans. Should they be able to quote, unquote, jump through the hoops. What are your thoughts on the C-Belones?
Sarwar Qureshi:So it worked well for those that qualified. So it was a lifeline. It was, for some businesses, much needed. It was very, very helpful for some businesses. They might not have survived or be here today without it. So it's not to knock that, that when you do something and there's good that comes out of it, there's that. But then on the flip side, if your question goes into like how could it have been done better or is there challenges with it? Yes, there was a number of challenges with it. There continued to be a number of challenges with it because we're now in the potentially repayment deadline for the loan forgiveness coming up on January 18th and today's I think January 9th, so we're nine days away potentially. So there's a number of challenges that that program also created, which maybe was unintentional, because when you're in a storm and you make a decision, some stuff might not have been carefully thought out or expected.
Dionysius ( Dion):Right. Yeah, it's definitely easy to be Monday morning quarterback after the fact, but having said that, in your opinion, did most business owners utilize it properly?
Sarwar Qureshi:I'd say yes and no, so I'd say 50-50. Or some did, because some got it and then immediately had things that they needed it for and then they deployed it and they kinda it was like a life raft or a patch or whatever and got them there. But for some people, if you don't have good fiscal policies to begin with and someone just gives you money and you continue, like, let's say, you're running a business that isn't profitable before COVID and your business is struggling and now you qualify for Siba, in theory you've now just put some money in to help continue this problem and that business now loses or has losses, and that money is now gone and now they're in a bigger hole where maybe, like not taking that loan or getting some financial management or some other like Maybe some checks and balances before they get that massive payout.
Sarwar Qureshi:Yeah like having conversations with people about how is the money gonna be spent. Like you know, when you go to apply for a loan, a lot of times the bank's like what are you gonna do with it? How are you gonna use the money? How do you plan to repay us?
Sarwar Qureshi:You know there's a whole laundry list of things and I'm not saying it's perfect, because that might have held up the process a bit at a time when money needed to be rolled out quickly. But maybe there could have been something you know, maybe like checklists or questionnaires that people fill out, for how do you expect to repay this? How do you plan to use the funds? Maybe not immediately, if the time doesn't allow, but within the next six months. We'd like you to have a call with the business advisor or the bank advisor.
Dionysius ( Dion):Just to update where things are headed and how the repayment process will be in the future.
Sarwar Qureshi:Exactly so, in some ways, like the problem got worse for some businesses, I found, because if the business wasn't a strong To begin with Business to begin with and they were losing money, you get more money, you lose that money. Now, like it looks worse in terms of a hole that you gotta dig out of.
Dionysius ( Dion):Yeah, so similar to you hear those stories of people who have won the lottery and then you know, a couple of years down the line they've lost all the money. If their money management skills weren't proper or effective to begin with, you know the end result. Pro athletes yeah, too many of those Speaking you touched on the deadline of January 18th. With the deadline coming up I don't know if you have. If you can touch on it how has the deadline impacted, or how will it impact, some of these small businesses?
Sarwar Qureshi:So for some small businesses it is a really tough decision that they have coming up on them. Just because the way that this program works is there's a forgivable component to the loan if you do the repayment before the deadline. So January 18th being the deadline, if you borrowed 40,000, 10,000 is forgivable, you repay 30. If you borrowed 60,000, 40 is the repayment, you get 20 forgiven. So that's not a small number, like that's a decent amount of money. So some people are like we need to take advantage of this forgiveness because 10,000 or $20,000 of loans being forgiven is not a small amount.
Sarwar Qureshi:However, once again fiscal responsibility kicks in. If you kind of, let's say, drain all the money in your bank account or put it on the line of credit now, you might be creating a situation where your cash flow's hampered and then you're gonna be having trouble in two, three, four months maybe meeting your payroll and other obligations that come up. So there definitely is some planning that needs to be done and for some people there is a scenario where if you don't take advantage of any of the repayments before January 10th, it turns into a loan that's interest bearing and doesn't have the forgiveness on it, but the interest is kind of. I believe it's 5%. So maybe it's more manageable to have a loan that has a 5% interest rate on it. Then put it on your line of credit and your line of credit comes with interest at 10 plus and now you're kind of hampered in a way that the line of credit was there if you deeded it.
Sarwar Qureshi:Cause a lot of businesses they have these cash crunches where it's like we're making a big order, so by the time we sell the order and get paid, we'll be a little tight from today till that point. So that might take a week, a month. So we're ordering the material, paying the staff, from day one to day 30, it's kind of make the order, sell the order and then we get paid on day 31,. Everything is great. But that line of credit might be critical for those types of businesses that need it?
Dionysius ( Dion):Yeah, totally understand that. One of the questions I know as a mortgage professional myself, as well as people in the industry ask is when should we incorporate? I know for myself I'm incorporated, but not necessarily the mortgage industry. But generally speaking, in your opinion, when should someone incorporate, or maybe not incorporate at all?
Sarwar Qureshi:Yeah, that's a great question. So the simple answer to that there's obviously like a whole questionnaire and things we can go through with people. But if I was giving someone like a quick answer I'd say does the business that you have maybe it's already running or maybe it's a business you're planning to start and you have some projections and ideas on how it's gonna run is that business gonna make more from it than you personally need from it? So if the answer is no, you're not gonna make more from it. Maybe at first, because some businesses take time to grow. Then it's not worth incorporating. So let's say your business makes $60,000, I'm talking net after expenses and your personal needs are 60,000 or maybe more than 60, so you're kind of spending it all. Not incorporating is beneficial because you're pulling all the money out anyways. Incorporating becomes really beneficial maybe for that same example, two years down the road. Now your net is 110. And your personal needs have capped or are stable at around 80. So now you have this amount that the business makes above and beyond what you need.
Sarwar Qureshi:Corporate tax rates are lower than personal tax rates if you don't take the money out. So in my example, that person has $30,000 that they don't need to take out, they leave it in the company. The company pays a much lower rate of tax than they would have personally. And that's the starting point of like this flywheel that can grow over time, because that's going to happen again the following year, right? So this thing's going to compound because, and then maybe the difference in the two numbers is going to grow further. So your one 10 becomes one 25, and so on and so on. So that's really where someone's going to benefit from incorporating If they're in that category. If they're not there yet, then I just say it's not a use it or lose it type of thing. Just revisit it in a year, two years from now, and you can incorporate and be self-employed up until that point in time.
Dionysius ( Dion):Okay, um changing gears a little bit. Um we uh. From the onset I listed the long things that you do. One of them is the uh president of sorry, the Ottawa chapter. President of the MNA club, what is that?
Sarwar Qureshi:So it's been going on in other cities for a while. Ottawa didn't have a chapter or didn't have a consistent chapter. Okay, and I got connected with them a little while back, but a couple of months ago they have a website MNA Canada and I went on there and I reached out and I said are there any plan to have events in Ottawa? And they kind of reached back out to me and replied and said we would love to. But any organization or any chapter, any local needs to have like a core group to kind of run it like many charities, many initiatives, without people on the ground. You kind of stumble and struggle.
Sarwar Qureshi:So they asked me these questions and you're going to laugh. They said do you know lots of people and are you good at putting on events? So I, so I said interesting. You know, I'm not a big fan of the interesting. You asked me that because they don't know me and what I do for Ottawa would be on networking and like interesting. You say that I actually have some experience with both of those things. I think I think I can do it. So I had a little laugh maybe. Uh, you know, and they kind of like they kind of didn't realize that first. But yeah, that's kind of how it started. And if I were to summarize, the MNA club is an acronym for mergers and acquisition. In that space, when there's deals being done for businesses, you have a variety of professionals that are involved, just like buying and selling a house, right, like like you have a variety of people on both sides. Usually the buyer and seller can't have the same representation.
Dionysius ( Dion):Anyways, lawyers, inspectors, real estate agents, et cetera, et cetera.
Sarwar Qureshi:Right, like like. In some cases you might, but in some cases you need separate independent um professionals. So same idea with business. We thought MNA is not done in a silo or on an island, it's done with a variety of professionals. Even the accountant can't do every part of the deal, because you need the lawyer, you need the banker, the financier, you need all these people kind of involved and then if you're representing the buyer, the seller, the other side needs their own set of people. So these are things that require multiple people and multiple moving parts. So, as a result, if we create a forum this has already been going on in other cities, so it's already successful but if we create an area where people can kind of come together to discuss press practices, discuss, you know, trends, share ideas, maybe share referrals because if I'm an accountant, I'm representing an MNA deal and that client doesn't have legal representation or the right lawyer, then I might be able to make a referral to say this lawyer can help with that. So that's the goal We've.
Sarwar Qureshi:We've had a meeting in October or November. It was very well attended. We have another meeting coming up in one or two weeks I think it's next week actually. So the goal is to kind of just get this group going and then you know they can exchange ideas. They usually share like best practices, like when a deal happens from a legal perspective this is what is important to know and then the following meeting the accountant from their perspective. The following meeting the bank from their perspective, and then when you have five, six parties involved, that's five, six topics kind of laid out. And then when you get to the end of that you can just cycle it back and the industry is always changing, so you have new things to stay on top of and updates.
Dionysius ( Dion):You touched on beyond networking. Um. At the onset I talked about you as a business leader, um you're the founder of of beyond networking. Um. I've had the opportunity to to attend a beyond networking event Really good In a snowstorm yes, in a snowstorm, highly recommended. Um, it's. It's very informal. It's not um. There's no anxiety or focus of, hey, you know, we're all here to try and sell ourselves. It's more we're here and having a discussion and if there's a connection, there's a connection um, which I really really like um speak on. I guess what sparked Starting that.
Sarwar Qureshi:So I'd say the origin story kind of relates to when I worked in a big organization. I found the big organization did internal team building events and I was on the social committee so I'm kind of helping organize mini putting night picnic in Britannia um bowling. You know these little things that you do as a team when you have a big office once in a while archery yeah.
Sarwar Qureshi:Go out for lunch go out for dinner, you know stuff like that. So I was organizing these things and I saw a gap in the market that I think may still exist, um, where we're trying to fill it. But obviously there's more opportunities. And that was basically the team building. Events that were internal to big organizations, weren't external, so that people could work together with other colleagues and professionals. So, like me, as an accountant, I collaborate with bankers, I collaborate with lawyers, but we don't do team building in that way that we do internally in a big company. So if I create this opportunity to do that and we get to know each other, I think it makes the transactions and deals that we do together, the interactions we have, a bit smoother because we get to know each other. You know, the whole idea of team building is you get past the point of just the business you know and build rapport. You get to know someone and yeah, and that's where the name came from.
Sarwar Qureshi:The name came from like networking is kind of seen as like in some circles positive, in some circles it's like sleazy or, like you know, it's kind of like people are in it for something that they need or people are kind of running with an agenda.
Sarwar Qureshi:So the name kind of came out as like we're trying to take business contacts and push it past regular networking beyond and maybe turn it into friends, because some of the people, if you really get to know them they can become friends that maybe you know, you hang out within a social way or you you know, I don't know, I'm a bit older now so I'm like getting married anytime soon. I'm already married but like maybe if my kids are getting married, there's like some people in my circle that I'd invite. Right you know, because like when I got married eight years ago now, I invited some people from my office because I knew them and like them. That was the bigger company and they were people I really got along well with, to the point that like they became friends and just not work, colleagues, yeah yeah, exactly.
Sarwar Qureshi:And then you know you meet their spouse as well. So my work colleague has a spouse and they sometimes come to the team building or the wedding or whatever and you get to know that person. So that, like I'm just thinking this lady, her name's Diane. I used to work with her and then I met her husband, bill, a couple times so that at the water cooler I could be like, hey, diane, how's Bill doing? And then I got to know her kids and then you know, it just becomes a little bit more, I think, aligned yeah, less transactional and and more collaborative yeah in nature, yeah yeah.
Dionysius ( Dion):I understand that. Um, yeah, I personally, like I said, I attended one, the one in the snowstorm. I'll be attending more in the future, but it was really. It was really refreshing, um, and you do a really, really, really good job of putting them on and hosting them in unique locations, in unique settings, um, that aren't just you know, the signature golf tournaments or things of that sort you do a really good job of that and that's part of the goal.
Sarwar Qureshi:Like, like, if you want to use golf as an example I've actually said this in interviews before where I'm like, if we're as if we as an organization only put on golf tournaments, there's a whole group of people that did not grow up playing golf, don't know how to play golf, you in a way exclude them, right, like we live in a society of inclusivity and talking about things like that.
Sarwar Qureshi:So if you don't give people different activities that have different low barriers to entry, you know, like some people have accessibility issues, maybe they can't go to a golf tournament, maybe some people never, never played golf growing up. So some activities, not to say everything we do, is inclusive for everyone. But over time, you know, we might have like an art viewing event which is very low impact, easy, you know, not hard on the body at all, and then we might have like trampoline dodgeball, which is like an injury waiting to happen, you know. But but you kind of get team building experiences in unique ways out of both and by having a wide, a wide variety of things, you hopefully attract people that are like it's not just golf or right, or x, y, z. Nothing wrong with that we've done golf before. But I think for organizations that just do one thing, there's an audience that they're missing correct?
Dionysius ( Dion):yeah, I agree with you 100 percent on that. I'm gonna have some rapid fire questions here. What is one thing people can't find out about you from google?
Sarwar Qureshi:probably the three kids. You know that's not, that's not all that public knowledge you mentioned at the beginning, and that's a big part of my life now where I'm kind of you know you have kids of your own, so you kind of know there's activities, there's big emotions there's there's, there's there's cuddling, but there's fighting there's. I don't want to get on the bus today.
Dionysius ( Dion):You know that I love you that I don't want to be near you 100% 100%, but, but it's so enjoyable. Yeah, it is three tips for someone entering a networking event for the first time okay.
Sarwar Qureshi:So first tip is even before you enter the networking event, if you know you're going to be going to something, see if you can go with someone you know, or find out if there's going to be someone there that you know that you can meet up with. I find it's like a birthday party or a social thing. When you have one person to act as a life raft, you feel a lot more comfortable and look a lot more approachable because you're talking to someone right, as opposed to you go somewhere and there's one person not talking to anyone, just kind of looking around and you're kind of like it just makes it tough to talk that person, as sad as that sounds, so it further isolates them, whereas if you find one person or have that that buddy, what's interesting is you or that person might see someone you recognize and that immediately becomes a starting point. Okay, let's go say hi to x person that one of the two of you know and then you enter their conversation. So I find that's like a super useful tip is if you can connect with someone.
Sarwar Qureshi:The other one is add a networking event. Be mindful of how long you talk to someone, because sometimes when you're talking to someone it might be going great and you're like we could talk for hours or 30 minutes, 40 minutes, but generally at a networking event most people have a goal of like you know, we got to meet a few people and kind of move on and sometimes it becomes awkward to like disengage, because it's not like you can say that person I'm leaving because you're not leaving, you're literally going from this circle to that circle. So just make it easy. You know, I find after a couple minutes of high level talk, you know, exchange that contact information, exchange the business card, what have you, and then kind of maybe say, hey, let's keep working the room and maybe I'll bump into you in a couple minutes. I'm going to go, you know, check out the appetizers or get a drink or whatever. I find if you take that initiative it makes the other person kind of ease that you haven't like locked them in.
Sarwar Qureshi:And then the last tip is following up. So to me the networking event is great to get to meet people, but that person could be a great contact and client and center of influence for you. But you have to take that next step. Usually it's not going to be like after the event. They're going to be like hey, I'd like to, you know, do business with you, right? So there's usually a process. So have a system, you know. Add them to LinkedIn, send them a nice message, send them a thank you email. You know something?
Sarwar Qureshi:everyone's got a different process or have maybe leave them a voicemail that might be a little more personal. Or on LinkedIn you can do voice messages, so you have the voice kind of built in as a personal touch, have a system. And then there's maybe like an immediate follow-up and then, if time goes on, maybe it's like hey, we connected at this event a month ago. Would you like to get coffee? Would you like to chat further? And then not every contact in my case I do that with, but the ones that I see potential with. Then you know we kind of do that and continue down a path to get more value out of the relationship. Those are really good tips.
Dionysius ( Dion):So you're stuck on an island and you have three items with you. You can't bring a person. What do you bring?
Sarwar Qureshi:so something to make fire. You know, I feel like that's a key survival skill and that would kind of help with the food and cooking situation. If phones are allowed, that's kind of, you know, not to say I need to call for help to get off the island, but like I'm a very social guy, so I'm like texting people what's going on and checking the news, checking social media and all that stuff. So if that's allowed I'd have my phone and then you know, just my setup for the sleep. You know, like I got like the sleeping bag, like what tent?
Dionysius ( Dion):like what are we talking here?
Sarwar Qureshi:yeah, yeah, maybe a sleeping bag. I realize it's an island situation. It's probably not super fancy, but like, because to me, as with kids, you can probably appreciate like, if you sleep well, like you're like a different person, right, like you know, like like some nights you sleep four or five hours because the kids were like tossing and turning. One of them woke up and had a you know, called you to their room or came to your room and then you're just like a zombie, but like you sleep, that solid sleep, and it's like I could take the world on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have a great day or a great game today.
Dionysius ( Dion):Yeah, I hear you um three pieces of advice so you'd give a small business owner. I know it's kind of hard because we're not industry specific but just generally overarching yeah.
Sarwar Qureshi:So I'd say the numbers tell a story. Okay, you know when you're, when you're working in a business. Have, have a pulse on your numbers. How's your business doing? Revenue, expenses, things like that and then make adjustments accordingly. Be mindful of the customers you take on, and what I mean by that is some revenue can actually be a loss when you work out the expenses and the time it takes.
Sarwar Qureshi:So some businesses that sell for products, sometimes, if they don't realize it and look at their numbers, so it really it's number one as well, a little bit. But one of those products might actually be like breaking even or losing money Because it's just not that profitable, like it has a lot of labor costs, material costs, it has a lot of defects, so you have to do it again or people complain and you have to have to fix it for them. So if you have to keep it, you have to keep it and maybe you manage it. But if you don't have to keep that product, just Offload it or whatever you know and get focused on the more profitable things. So that's two.
Sarwar Qureshi:The third one would be Good people. You know, if you, whether it's people that you hire, whether it's people that are your professional advisors. To me, if you work with good people, the people that you feel comfortable with, people that are Quote-unquote people you could be friends with, I think you'll just do a lot better Because you'll have a lot more comfort and trust when you know, like there's a saying like life is too short to work with bad people. Yeah, you know, because you know, you hear stories and then they had a falling out, they had a disagreement or whatever. So like let's just get good people on the bus.
Dionysius ( Dion):I know I'm the same way in that. There are. I have a no-do list, so there are certain clients I will just not take on, or there's certain types of mortgages that I just won't take on because they're just not good for me. Yeah yeah, changing years a little bit, do you still ref occasionally? Or?
Sarwar Qureshi:are you? So I'm on hiatus? Okay, like there's a status within our refereeing association where you're inactive, okay. So you know, some people get injured, some people get they move away from Ottawa, right, like various reasons.
Sarwar Qureshi:In my case, I'm just so busy because what happened for me was I refereed until COVID, all right, and then, if you recall, like in March 2020, things started shutting down. So when things shut down, it Created this opportunity where time that I spent refereeing now became free and I filled it with other activities. Okay, so those other activities, because they're family oriented, kids oriented. Now that the games have started again and the COVID restrictions eased, these activities didn't actually go away. So then I was kind of in this like, where do I find the time? Because the four, five, six, seven hours a week I was using for refereeing has now been sucked up by swimming for my kids, french class Dance, which they're not doing anymore. But you know, yeah, these different things.
Sarwar Qureshi:So, based on my priorities, I thought, you know, refereeing is one of those things that you can kind of shelf it and then go back to it. Go back. So, if you ever like, look at the demographic of refs. There's usually like a lot of young refs that are like like when I started I was young, you know, university, early 20s, kind of like not in a real career yet or not there yet. And then there's a lot of refs that are like retired, yes, you know, or or kind of older. So I kind of got to that middle stage and I was like I'm gonna shelf it. I've talked to a lot of other refs and, if you know, the stars align and my kids are older. I could come back, because at this time there's just between the teaching and the other stuff, something's got to give and I'm gonna. I'm gonna like make this decision for the understandable.
Dionysius ( Dion):How long do you ref in the city of Ottawa? So?
Sarwar Qureshi:I refereed from Roughly 2004 to 2020.
Dionysius ( Dion):Okay, so, based on that, top five.
Sarwar Qureshi:Yeah, so no, no particular order, but Sean Peter, if you know who he is. Yes, sp.
Dionysius ( Dion):Yeah, yeah.
Sarwar Qureshi:So so I like him in particular. Maybe I have a fondness for him because we were classmates at Ottawa U Okay, so he went to school of business. I'm in school of business, I have a huge I'm a huge fan of basketball. The guy that plays on the Ottawa U basketball team is in your class and you and we're friends, nice. So it's not like he's like a guy I don't know. He's very accessible, very nice guy. We sometimes sat beside each other and I asked him about different like things and he was very approachable and his game and his style was very smooth. You know, he kind of like a Tracy McGready, you know like he's a very smooth basketball player. So he's one In Ottawa and I think in Ontario they have this offset tournament.
Sarwar Qureshi:Yeah, so the very first offset tournament I went to, there's a team from Ottawa that just doesn't lose, okay, st Matt's okay. And I was kind of like I'm from Ottawa, so I'm happy to hear that. But I was kind of like, oh, I thought these Toronto teams are coming, like these teams are gonna like knock them out, so they just don't lose, and I I'm like let's just win, let's, let's just go watch a game, and then you watch the game and the best player is Tyson Hins. Okay, on the St Matt's team and you probably know who he is and he went on to have a career at Carlton, I think played overseas, overseas, so he was just so like I Don't know what the right word is, but he was just so hard to guard in the post, right like he had these like endless number of moves, like her key jerky or or kind of a little unorthodox, but skilled.
Sarwar Qureshi:Yeah, in some ways you don't know what to expect and that kind of made it more difficult. So he's he's in that list. My two like big names that most people know are Osvaldo and Gary Gallimore. Osvaldo's like the ultimate winner, yeah you know most people most people that know Osvaldo they know both former teammates.
Sarwar Qureshi:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like he, like he as far as I know, he always wins. Like you know, he won all those championships and he's not necessarily the biggest or most athletic guy, but he was just very imposing, got it done. Cerebral, got it done. I know you've played with him. I think Gary was like this, like if I was watching basketball from a fans perspective, I was like this is entertaining basketball. This guy is like gazelle, you know, like gazelle, gary. I don't know if that's his nickname, but no, you could, we could, we could, we could see if he likes it. But the guy was like yeah, you know, everywhere at the same time, yeah, you know that's a good.
Dionysius ( Dion):I like that list. I like that list. It's a good, good list. Yeah, yeah, good list. Wrapping it up here what do you enjoy or really love about being a father? I'd say it's-.
Sarwar Qureshi:A father of three actually, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I'd say it's kind of, to me life is about optimism. Like when you have something to look forward to, you work harder, you have hope, you kind of work hard to make tomorrow better than today. You strive, you strive, you push yourself, yeah, yeah. And I feel like if you don't have optimism, you don't have hope, then you kind of maybe spiral or you kind of like you kind of don't have something to look forward to. So to me, kids is the ultimate version of hope and optimism, because they are like these blank slates and the ages of my kids, like the four month old. Five month old who's literally figuring out how to like push yourself up with her head, kind of an up dog roll over. And the six year old who's playing soccer and running around and telling me about different leaves and things that she's learned in her class. Like this caterpillar is such and such characteristics. So I'm like learning from that. I can just see there's this like limitless potential. You see through different eyes right.
Sarwar Qureshi:Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot to look forward to and in a way like I heard this analogy once we're almost like shepherds, like we're guiding them. We didn't necessarily like we might not be able to control them, but we're guiding them and we play a role, and I'm kind of like let's do the best I can in that role.
Dionysius ( Dion):My mother-in-law has a quote she says she doesn't say it often, but every now and then she looks up and she'll say you only get one opportunity right and it's one of those. It brings it home Like I only have a short period of time to make an impact in my kids' lives right and you kind of speak to that there. Where can people find you and get in contact?
Sarwar Qureshi:with you. So social media, so LinkedIn, Sarwar Koreshi, Instagram, Beyond Networking, Facebook. Sarwar Koreshi and Beyond Networking has a Facebook page. That's probably the easiest if they want to get in touch with me directly. Our accounting business has a website Patterson and Companyca. They want to look up anything about us there. I'm listed there, my team is listed there, Our contact information is there as well, but that would probably be the best way to find us, Okay perfect.
Dionysius ( Dion):Well, once again, thank you, sanwar, for coming on the show today, and we'll see you in the next one. Thank you, dion.
Annoucement:You've been listening to Across the Table with Dionysius. Dion is a mortgage agent, but he has so much more on his mind, and on this show we picked the brains of some of the most successful people from all walks of life. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to like, rate and review. We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find us on Instagram at Williams Mortgage, and on LinkedIn and Facebook at Dion Williams, and hit the website at wwwwilliamsmortgageca. See you next time on Across the Table.