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

to make sure nothing like that disaster ever happened again. I spoke to Frontier Global, who recommended a technological whiz kid,and I had him make sure our program was secure. Often a programmer leaves a “back door” open that allows him to sneak inside and fiddle with the software; this new whiz kid found three such portals and quickly shut them down. I was back in control, and I intended to be in
total
control. To that end, I hired a chief technology officer (CTO) and several engineers and put them on the Click Agents’ payroll—at generous salaries. I was trying to
unlearn
some of the lessons I’d picked up from the many years of shopping at McFrugal’s. Everyone likes a good deal, but you can’t cut corners where it counts.
    That experience taught me three valuable lessons. The first was to expect the unexpected. Life is full of surprises, not all of them pleasant, so it’s wise to be prepared. Think about your choices, about the people you’re dealing with, and about the consequences of even the smallest decisions.
    The second lesson was equally valuable: Own your mistakes. I’d been in business with a rogue who almost destroyed me, but I’d made the decision to work with him, so the mistake was mine. Click Agents was my company. I was responsible for it. When I was scrambling to control the damage, I never once suggested I was blameless. I took responsibility for the mistake, and it worked.
    And the final lesson is the one I just mentioned: Be frugal, but don’t be cheap. Some corners aren’t meant to be cut, especially when it comes to hiring the right personnel.
    The rogue disappeared, defeated, and immediately thereafter I started making big changes. For starters, I hired a law firm to draw up the contracts with my CTO and the two engineers. I didn’t intend to repeat the mistake I’d made with the original programmer, when I thought I understood contracts. In addition, I talked to those same lawyers about some kind of stock option plan for my employees. This wasn’t simple generosity; it was good business sense: I wanted a piece of something really big rather than 100 percent of something really small. Click Agents was growing, and it was going to keep growing—it wasn’t your basic corner liquor store, where sales don’t really change much from one year to the next—and I wanted to make sure that everybody’s interests were aligned. To that end, I was willing to give away some of the company. The goal was to make sure everyone was invested—to create an environment where people cared.
    From that point on, whenever I hired someone, stock options were part of the package, which made the job that much more attractive. As to those employees who were already there, the best of them were grandfathered into the deal.
    The lesson here is simple. Be generous; it works.
    I got back to business and worked hard to make up for lost time. Within a year, I had twenty employees—salesmen, programmers, marketing people—and was generating north of $1 million a month. It was a real company, and I had become a real CEO, making a very modest $60,000 a year. I never gave myself a raise, though. I didn’t need it. I couldn’t have spent that $60,000 anyway, and by not giving myself a raise I was fattening the company’s coffers—and a large part of those coffers belonged to me.
    There were times when I didn’t really believe all these good things were really happening. I kept taking the company to the next level, and to the next level after that, but sometimes I’d look at my reflection in the mirror—at that turbaned seventeen-year-old, staring back at me—and I’d be filled with doubt. Up until that point, I’d been operating almost exclusively on the phone, doing business with people who had no idea I was just a kid. But the company was evolving at a spectacular rate, and I knew that someday soon I would have to come out of hiding. I began to give serious thought to getting rid of the