Read Online The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions by Gurbaksh Chahal - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gurbaksh Chahal
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went to Office Depot for cheap filing cabinets and equally cheap modular units. My office wasn’t being designed to impress anyone. No one would ever come to the office. My business took place on the phone and on the Internet. The office was strictly for me and for the staff I would try to put together in the months ahead. I had 1,200 square feet of space, enough room for half a dozen people, and I was looking for salespeople. At that point, more than anything else, I needed more commitments from the ad agencies and from the Web site owners. It was all about volume.
Gurbaksh with siblings (from left) Taj, Nirmal, and Kamal at Click Agents’ first office (1999)
.
When we settled into the new office, I realized that in my correspondence with my clients I could create the illusion of power. My return address didn’t mention Suite 312; instead, it directed all correspondence to the
Third Floor
. I wanted them to think I had 50,000 square feet of space, with commanding city views in every direction. That is the stereotype of a successful business, and the lesson here is basically this: Stereotypes make people comfortable. I decided to try to comeacross as the stereotypical businessman, no matter what it took. And stereotypes can be defined both by the way you look and by the way you present yourself and your company. It’s all about making the other guy comfortable. Once you get to that stage, you’re in a position to actually do business.
I don’t know if my brother was impressed by what I was doing, but he was sufficiently impressed to leave college without his bachelor’s degree. He came to work for me as head of Human Resources.
Since we couldn’t afford to hire experienced personnel, we put ads on monster.com and in the
San Jose Mercury-News
, and before long Taj was lining up interviews with prospective employees. We were looking for anyone who was hungry and motivated, and we were willing to take risks on promising, untested candidates. The most important thing for me was to decide if a person was the right fit, and both Taj and I turned out to be pretty good judges of character. Before long, we had a dozen employees squeezed into that tiny space, and all of them worked out. Their lack of experience also helped, since we were able to train them to do things exactly the way we wanted them done.
I also hired my sister Kamal. She was working as a nurse, and though she found the work rewarding, she was interested in exploring new things.
“What would I do?” she asked.
“Your job will be to manage relationships with the publishers—the Web site owners. They need to know that the ads are up. If we have a contract for a given number of ads, it’ll be your job to see that we deliver on those numbers.”
“How much are you paying?” she asked, smiling.
“Not much,” I said. “But there will be dividends down the road.”
As we got down to the business of business, it became immediately clear that I was the boss. I was strict, and I expected results, and I believe the employees respected that. I was approachable as a boss, certainly, but not terribly approachable as a person, because I focused solely on the business. If some guy thought he could come into my office to tell me he’d just been dumped by his girlfriend, he thought wrong. I wasn’t heartless, but I didn’t care about the girlfriend. Everyone was there to work. They were getting paid for it, and I expected them to leave their personal lives at home. I didn’t whine to them about not having a girlfriend, or about never having had a girlfriend, or about the fact that I didn’t even know how to go about
getting
a girlfriend, and I was pretty sure they weren’t interested. The lack of interest didn’t make them bad people; it made them good workers. And that’s what I wanted to focus on: work. This was my first venture as a businessman, and I was determined to succeed. My goal was to turn us into an army, and an army won’t functionwell
Gurbaksh with siblings (from left) Taj, Nirmal, and Kamal at Click Agents’ first office (1999)
.
When we settled into the new office, I realized that in my correspondence with my clients I could create the illusion of power. My return address didn’t mention Suite 312; instead, it directed all correspondence to the
Third Floor
. I wanted them to think I had 50,000 square feet of space, with commanding city views in every direction. That is the stereotype of a successful business, and the lesson here is basically this: Stereotypes make people comfortable. I decided to try to comeacross as the stereotypical businessman, no matter what it took. And stereotypes can be defined both by the way you look and by the way you present yourself and your company. It’s all about making the other guy comfortable. Once you get to that stage, you’re in a position to actually do business.
I don’t know if my brother was impressed by what I was doing, but he was sufficiently impressed to leave college without his bachelor’s degree. He came to work for me as head of Human Resources.
Since we couldn’t afford to hire experienced personnel, we put ads on monster.com and in the
San Jose Mercury-News
, and before long Taj was lining up interviews with prospective employees. We were looking for anyone who was hungry and motivated, and we were willing to take risks on promising, untested candidates. The most important thing for me was to decide if a person was the right fit, and both Taj and I turned out to be pretty good judges of character. Before long, we had a dozen employees squeezed into that tiny space, and all of them worked out. Their lack of experience also helped, since we were able to train them to do things exactly the way we wanted them done.
I also hired my sister Kamal. She was working as a nurse, and though she found the work rewarding, she was interested in exploring new things.
“What would I do?” she asked.
“Your job will be to manage relationships with the publishers—the Web site owners. They need to know that the ads are up. If we have a contract for a given number of ads, it’ll be your job to see that we deliver on those numbers.”
“How much are you paying?” she asked, smiling.
“Not much,” I said. “But there will be dividends down the road.”
As we got down to the business of business, it became immediately clear that I was the boss. I was strict, and I expected results, and I believe the employees respected that. I was approachable as a boss, certainly, but not terribly approachable as a person, because I focused solely on the business. If some guy thought he could come into my office to tell me he’d just been dumped by his girlfriend, he thought wrong. I wasn’t heartless, but I didn’t care about the girlfriend. Everyone was there to work. They were getting paid for it, and I expected them to leave their personal lives at home. I didn’t whine to them about not having a girlfriend, or about never having had a girlfriend, or about the fact that I didn’t even know how to go about
getting
a girlfriend, and I was pretty sure they weren’t interested. The lack of interest didn’t make them bad people; it made them good workers. And that’s what I wanted to focus on: work. This was my first venture as a businessman, and I was determined to succeed. My goal was to turn us into an army, and an army won’t functionwell
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