Has Anyone Else Read This Book?

5 replies
Hi Warriors!

I LOVE to read and am a certified bookworm. I was in Barnes & Noble on Friday night and stumbled upon "The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions" by Gurbaksh Chahal. It was an easy read and I sat there and read the whole thing in one sitting.

I thought it was excellent. Basically, the guy started a business (at 16) by starting an online ad network to drive traffic to his advertisers' sites. While not necessarily a blueprint for showing you how you could do it too, with the knowledg in this forum, others could use the info in this book to do the same thing.

Has anyone else read this? What did you think?

Michelle
#book #read
  • Profile picture of the author kobe24
    I have not read this book, but I did see this businessman on the Oprah show one time. He truly does have an amazing story. At the age of 18 he sold his company for some $44 million and has never looked back since then.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[798421].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Peggy Baron
    So I'm not the only one who will spend a Friday night in the bookstore.

    I have read/skimmed this book too. I love stories like this about overcoming adversity - his parents, his age, an unscrupulous ex-partner, etc.

    Peggy
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[798438].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author MelissaChurch
    I haven't read it...but it sounds like a really good book! Thanks for the suggestion.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[798675].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author PaulDomains
      I haven't read it just yet, but I will. So far I read the "Look Inside" digital version found at Amazon dot com. Looks interesting.

      In fact, I have recently learned about this guy Chahal thanks to a research I was doing on a similar self made young millionaire called Ben Way.

      Ben Way started at the early age of 14 years old and got about 25 million pounds from private investors. You can find that story at Youtube also. Right now he runs a company which url is makingrain dot com. They call themselves the rain makers.

      Now, back to Chahal. I have watched every video there are online trying to figure out what his model is. Just to correct a figure from a post above, it wasn't $44 million but $40 million the first company he sold when he was 18 years old. The name of the company was ClickAgents dot com and the second company, called blueLithium dot com which he sold for.....and here a pause for a bit of suspense .....for USD$300 million.

      I can't even imagine what it would be to have that money available.

      The first company was sold to ValueClicks dot com and the second one, to Yahoo!

      The model of both companies was similar. Now "G", as he likes to be called, speaks openly about how he achieved that incredible fortune, simply, because the times changed and the current technologies have exploded into thousands of copycats. He has no competition because, he started very early thanks to his vision. He was a couple of decades ahead in the future. Now, you can find the big whales like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft with many options for advertising that makes his first efforts rather dull.

      Actually, he could have made a lot more if it weren´t a clause on his contracts that didn't allow him to create a similar businesses for a certain period of time. It is called "Non Compete". With ClickAgents, he had to wait for three whole years to start his next company Bluelithium.

      His story is an inspiration. It is not the common rag to riches because in a sense, he has always been rich. He had what he value the most: his family. This is the secret of his success. His perseverance came from the powerful passion his family inspired him.

      Also, his childhood wasn't easy with all his classmates teasing him about his turban, which he had to use all of the time due to his religious practices. He is a Sikh. His family came from India and as the story goes, his father had only $25 when they arrived to the USA.


      There are many examples of young people that have created millionaire businesses out of his action. Here is another pearl of wisdom in being a successful entrepreneur. If you are one of those who say, I will quit my job one day and start my own business online, offline or whatever, you will never make it. Just Do It!

      Another great lesson about Gurbaksh is, the measured risk an entrepreneur takes based on research. Remember that he wasn't a "genius" as we classify them with College degrees and so on. He was a Drop out from high school.

      There is a funny story he tales on almost every interview I watched, about his start up experience. When he was 15 years old, he bought some refurbished printers at a free market for $50 and sold them on eBay for $200 making some thousands of dollars to help his family and to found his first efforts on making money online.

      His family, was shocked but happy with what he did with that business. If your 14 years old comes one day with some thousands of dollars in his hands, you would worry right? Well, now hear this. "G", came one day to his father with a different bank statement. He was making $100 thousand monthly with ClickAgents. He was doing this while attending to his high school. His father thought something like: "%$#"! , .... My son is going to jail!" But after the "G"'s explanation on how his business worked, he negotiated with his parents to try that business for a year. If the business didn't work, he would just go back to school and be a professional or something. The thing is, the business did great and you know how it continues.

      If this story isn't pure inspiration, I don't know what would be. You can go to Chahal dot com for videos, articles and so on if you want to learn more about him.

      Some people call him materialist but the envy flows out of those negative comments. As I say when I started this post, I learned about him because of Ben Way, and about Ben, because of a brittish tv show called the secret millionaire. On the video suggestions at youtube, I saw one of those Gurbaksh videos and here I am. With a lot of information I didn't have last week.

      It is amazing how one thing takes you to another. The Internet made possible to a humble kid to create an empire with no studies and no money for starting up. He actually started at his bed room. Almost every billionaire company started this way.

      What is stopping you from doing it? What is stopping Me from doing it?

      Right now, I am starting several projects that I hope would be successful on a not so far future. If you want to share my experience and tools, just click on my signature. I am starting an Article directory that I am modeling right now. I am open to JV offers.
      If you have any idea, suggestion, offer and so on, I would love to hear about it.

      I need people to complement my weaknesses and could benefit themselves from my skills.

      In the meantime, I offer ad space and article promotion for those who would like to write for the site. Right now I am alone but this sort of business can't be a solo project. I started inspired by one of the famous Steven Wagenheim's product about hottrends.

      In fact, the idea is to write articles based on the Google hottrends tool and earn commissions for advertising, and many other revenue streams.

      Have a great online session and remember, take action now. Tomorrow could be late.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[918807].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author learnmore
    You can read more about his journey at:
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...LV8P13K9P3.DTL

    On the show Secret Millionaire on Fox:
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[918855].message }}

Trending Topics