Shahriyar Rahman
Mr. Corrigale
ENG3U0-I
March 12, 2015
Gurbaksh Chahal and His Dream
Imagine an individual who moves to a foreign country at a very young age, struggles through most of his or her childhood because of racism and discrimination, and drops out of high school because; but through endless passion, motivation, and hard work they accomplish becoming one of the most successful people on this planet. This individual is Gurbaksh Chahal. Chahal quickly rose to the top of successful entrepreneurs during the dot-com boom while he was still a very young adult. By his thirties he dropped out of high school to pursue his dreams of becoming an entrepreneur, opened up his first company at the age of 17 and sold it for $40 million within 1 year, created a second company and sold it for $300 million. He then went on to receiving many awards, including an honorary university degree and even wrote his own autobiography, The Dream. In the autobiography The Dream, the purpose Chahal was trying to express was to becoming obsessed with your passions and never giving up on your dreams will lead to success. “If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it – teach yourself to be impatient” (Chahal 71), is an example of how Chahal was obsessed with his passion for becoming an entrepreneur. He just wanted to drop out of high school because he knew it was holding him back. Chahal “wanted to be the best, and he wanted to do it fast”, and his need for wanting to follow his passion so vigorously was followed by achieving revenues at $300,000; within 3 months of dropping out. Another example of Chahal never giving up and succeeding is, “Within a year, I had twenty employees—salesmen, programmers, marketing people—and was generating north of $1 million a month” (Chahal, 85). Over 80 percent of businesses fail within the first year of opening up. Chahal’s first company was not part of that 80 percent and he was only 16. He ran into many troubles including losing business opportunities because he wore a turban. However that never made him stop doing what he loved. And his hard work paid off because within a year he had successfully grown his company exponentially. In the autobiography, The Dream, by Gurbaksh Chahal; Chahal’s success was portrayed through conflict, character, and the form of the autobiography.
The road to success is a very hard one, with many problems that act as barriers. Gurbaksh Chahal encountered many problems throughout his road to success. The main conflict that Chahal conveyed in this autobiography was with the way society treated him differently, because of his culture. Throughout most of his life, Chahal wore a turban, which made people less inclined to work with him or even give him a chance. An example of this in The Dream is, “I remember seeing a NOW HIRING sign at a local McDonalds… One day after school I went inside to fill out an application. The manager was there, so I asked if he could review it then. He emerged from the back office and took one look at me, and I knew immediately that a job wasn’t in the cards. He couldn’t stop staring at my turban” (Chahal 39). Chahal’s family was going through financial hardship at the time, and he wanted to do anything to help them out. So he went to apply for a job at a local McDonalds, however it didn’t turn out well for him because the manager didn’t approve of his turban. This was one of many person vs. society conflicts he experienced. “‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just hired a bunch of people’… For the rest of the year, I passed that McDonald’s every day after school, and the NOW HIRING sign never came down” (Chahal 40). Not only did the manager not give Chahal the job, he lied straight to his face. However this incident never stopped him from later on creating a company; and even though he encountered many people who didn’t agree with his culture, he still got to where he is today. A particular person vs. person conflict which Chahal experienced was one where a former
