The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions by Gurbaksh Chahal Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t want to sound desperate—then follow it up with an e-mail. If I didn’t have an e-mail address, I’d guess, which really isn’t that complicated. First initial, last name, @whatevercompany.com. And whenever someone actually responded, I was ready. “I have a company called Click Agents,” I would say. “We have a consortium of Web sites. I can get your ads on those sites, and I will price them on a per-click basis.”
    I didn’t have a
consortium
of Web sites—I had no real connection to any legitimate Web sites—but they didn’t need to know that, and that wasn’t the point, anyway. I was a simple salesman. I just had to convince the guy on the other end of the line that I was an effective one. It was the basic theory of supply and demand.
    Two days into it, I struck gold. I found myself on the phone with a gentleman at the LeftField Advertising Agency, in San Francisco. LeftField had a client, Infoseek, a search engine, like Google, that was looking to increase traffic to its Web site. “If you put up a $30,000 order, I can deliver traffic at a dollar a click,” I told the agency. In plain English, I was telling him that I could deliver at least 30,000 clicks.
    “We’ll get back to you,” I was told.
    The following morning, they contacted me with an “insertion order.” Suddenly I was in business. That’s how fast things moved. In a matter of days, I had a contract for $30,000, which called for me to deliver 30,000 clicks within six weeks. I immediately began to contact every Web site that carried advertising, and I gave them the other part of my pitch: “If you make room for my ads for Infoseek, I will share my revenues with you, fifty-fifty.” Most of them accepted—it was a good deal—but there were some that remained unconvinced, and I had to offer them a larger piece of the pie to make it happen. Still, in a matter of days the ads went up, people started clicking, and InfoSeek was getting exactly what it wanted: more traffic. A
lot
more traffic.
    Later, as things rolled along, I was able to scale things back to a fifty-fifty split. The Web site owners were making money. I had done my job. Everyone was happy.
    “Great delivery, Gary,” the guy at LeftField told me. “What do you think you might be able to do for us next month?”
    “I can double it.”
    “Okay. Good. I’ll talk to Infoseek and get back to you in a couple of days.”
    The door was open, and it was up to me to keep it open. I had made a good first impression—which was critical—but I had to keep them impressed.
    Did I have a certain skill that made this happen? No, I don’t think so. At the end of the day, I was polite, professional, and confident, and that certainly helped. But LeftField had orders to fill—it was in the business of spending money—and I was in the right place at the right time. With the right pitch.
    A few days later, that first check arrived. Thirty thousand dollars. I couldn’t believe it. I ran to get my brother. “I need you to help me open a bank account,” I said.
    “Why do you need a bank account?”
    “This,” I said, showing him the check.
    “Wow,” he said.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Wow.”
    We went to the nearest Bank of America branch and Taj signed for the account, my very first bank account. It was my company, yes, but I was too young to write checks, so I would be relying on Taj to handle the unimaginable sums that were about to begin pouring in.
    “Don’t tell Dad,” I said.
    “This isn’t illegal, is it?”
    “No, of course not. But that’s exactly what he’d think.”
    My brother had total control of the bank account. But who could I trust if not my own brother?
    The next day, I hired someone to overhaul my company Web site. I wanted it to look like the portal to a very serious corporation. I needed to impress people. Perception was key.And the guy did a great job. Anyone looking at the flashy graphics and the 3-D logos must have thought they were dealing with a