Youthful success

I was invited recently to a celebration for Darpan, a South Asian magazine published in Canada. The event in Surrey, B.C., was memorable for a keynote speech by Gurbaksh Singh Chahal.

An immigrant to the United States from the Punjab region of India, Chahal is an extraordinary 21st century entrepreneur. He left high school at the age of 16 to launch an internet advertising company. A mere two years later, he sold the company for $40 million. He then formed another company and a few years later sold this second venture to Yahoo! for over $300 million.

Still under 30 years of age and living in California, he is one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the world and is now working on his third company, which aims to connect brands with social media.

Chahal, who's known in the States by the initial of his first name,"G," offered a few examples of the things he's learned from personal experience during his meteoric career. Some of these tips I'm summarizing here:

• "Life is actionable." Ideas are just ideas, but success is all about execution. Always focus on performance.

• "Stand up for what you believe." Be confident and focus on the image you wish to project. Approach issues from a position of strength. Sell a dream and then build it.

• "Accept rejection." Don't be afraid to ask for help and learn from your mistakes. "Put yourself out there." You've got to develop a thick skin.
  

• Relationships are everything in business and in life. Chahal says, "I never, ever burn a bridge."

Chahal has written a book (The Dream) and appeared in the Fox TV series, "Secret Millionaire." He's also been a guest on "Oprah."

It was an interesting talk and an interesting evening with the Punjabi-speaking community in British Columbia.


Links:

Gurbaksh Singh Chahal's website is located here.

A review of The Dream is at this site.

The South Asian magazine Darpan can be found here.

Detroit rises again

My grandmother lived to over one hundred years of age. One of the things I will always remember about her was her abiding faith in young people. All her life, she enjoyed spending time with children and teenagers. She found they buoyed her sense of optimism and kept her young at heart.

Whenever I see youth taking the initiative to build something, I think about my grandmother.

Recently, my son forwarded a link about a video project that explores how young people in Detroit see new possibilities in the resurgence of their city. While many media reports have focused on Detroit's blight, this perspective is refreshingly different. We've all heard how the city has staggered under the crippling blows of the collapsed housing market, the world banking crisis and the subsequent near-death experience of the auto sector. Many sections of Detroit do indeed look like parts of New Orleans after Katrina. The city faces monumental challenges.

But the essence of Detroit runs deeper than the highs and lows of the auto industry. Thanks to the "can do" attitude of growing numbers of young people, Detroit survives and is very much alive, reinventing itself in new and unpredictable ways.

In the mini-documentary, posted on the Palladium Boots website and presented by actor Johnny Knoxville, one gets a sense of a city within a city. In one sequence, for example, the producers talk to long-time resident and club owner Larry D'Mongo about a desolate part of town. D'Mongo explains, in his own characteristic way, how he came to open his Cafe' D'Mongo in that location:

"When I first left, I always tell people, the pigeons had left. I mean there wuz no homeless, no nothin'. About five years ago, I saw white girls running down the street. Now, in the past, everybody would call 911, like, 'who's chasin' em?' ... (but)I realized that they were joggin'. And I said, 'Am I in Detroit?' "

"And these kids who live down here; they kept aggravatin' me, knockin' on the windows: 'Sir, please open, please open.' "

"I said, 'Okay, I'll open.' "

The pictures tell an interesting story. It's a story about new uses for abandoned urban spaces, of creativity, modern soul and entrepreneurship from the young and proud.

Check out the video. It's in three parts, shot in 2010. The first part on its own is enough to give you a sense of this alternative, up-beat perspective of a city coming to life again. The project is called Detroit Lives.


Photo credit:
Detroit picture courtesy of Anttank (Maha Rashi), Michigan.