Everyone has dreams, but how often do we preface talk of these goals with "someday…"? As a high school student, Gurbaksh Chahal chose to strive for success instead of waiting. Now, at age 26, he has already had a hugely successful business career, if money is any measure. He's already sold two start-ups -- the first for $40 million when he was 18, and the second just last year for $300 million.

Speaking from his office in San Francisco, Gurbaksh, who often goes by "G," exudes an air of confidence. Given the energy in his voice, you wouldn't guess he's just come from a business meeting lasting several hours. "It comes with the turf," he says.

Gurbaksh isn't cagey about sharing his story and the steps he took toward entrepreneurial success. In fact, he wrote about it in The Dream, his new book, and hopes it will inspire others to pursue theirs too. "Nothing is handed to you," he says. Success can happen, but you have to reach for it.

The Chahal family emigrated from the Indian city of Tarn Taran when Gurbaksh was just three and a half years old. The youngest of four, Gurbaksh and his family came to San Jose, California, with just $25.

"It took my parents about 10 years to get the middle-class American Dream," Gurbaksh says. "They basically came from a very rooted structure of discipline and education being paramount."

He attended a 4,000-student public high school. Having grown up wearing a turban and following Sikhism, the fifth-largest organized religion in the world, Gurbaksh says he never felt like he fit in with the student body.

"You could say I was kind of the odd one," he says. "[But] the fact that I was different allowed me to take the negative noise around me [and] find what I was strong in."

When classmates were maneuvering the teenage social food chain, he was already making headway toward becoming a serial entrepreneur. At age 14, Gurbaksh was selling refurbished printers on eBay. The income helped his family and eventually supplied the few thousand dollars of capital needed to start his first business, Click Agents.

At that point, the dot-com boom was in full swing and Gurbaksh saw potential. "I wanted a piece of it," he says. And he didn't let his age daunt him. He surveyed the emerging digital landscape and decided Internet advertising would be the best entry point for him. Not having programming knowledge himself, he used some of the money he'd saved to pay a programmer a flat fee to write the software that would power Click Agents. It was one of the first Internet ad companies to charge advertisers per click, as opposed to traditional advertising that paid for ad space on websites.

A self-described introvert as a teen, he says doing business forced him out of his shell. Recalling his first sales pitch over the phone, Gurbaksh says it was "horrible," but that didn't stop him from continuing to push. "[I knew] I could get the best pitch out eventually."

Two weeks in, Click Agents landed its first contract worth $30,000. Gurbaksh's older brother helped him open a business checking account, and after four months and many more new contracts the account balance had swelled to six figures. This is when Gurbaksh approached his parents about dropping out of school to pursue the business full-time.

He remembers that conversation well. "Before you freak out," he remembers saying "just take a look at my bank statement. This is not selling printers, this is something else. And I've been doing it out of my bedroom."

They were shocked at first, but once that reaction had passed, Gurbaksh says they realized he was on to something. He had their support, but it came with a condition. His father asked Gurbaksh to give the business one year -- if it failed, he would learn from the experience and re-enroll in school. However, the business never failed. It only grew bigger.

"On the Internet, I didn't have to be a 16-year-old, I just had to be a businessman," he says. In pitching to clients and investors, he says he shut out his age from his mind. If he presented himself as a strong businessman, and didn't think of himself as a teenager, he found he was taken seriously. "I forgot how old I was. I had so much responsibility… if you perceive yourself to be a 16-year-old, they're going to treat you like one."

For prospective young entrepreneurs, Gurbaksh offers some pointers.

"The first thing is research. Take baby steps and don't be afraid to change something." Start-ups are in a constant state of fluidity, he says. "If you're not prepared to change, you're so rigid and focused on that idea, you're probably going to fail."

He also says that companies don't necessarily need millions of dollars of start-up money to be successful. "The greatest ideas come with thousands of dollars and a whole lot of sweat equity," he says.

Aside from having the drive, the next step is to surround yourself with like-minded thinkers. This means that the first employees you hire are going to make it or break it for you. From there, any more hiring will likely be done by those first hires.

"From day one you understand you're not going to be able to do this all on your own," he says. "Hire the best first 20 employees that live, die and breathe the success of the company."

Gurbaksh has found that success comes from taking risks, and some of the best risk-takers are young. "The younger you are, the more guts you have," he says. With age comes mounting responsibilities and obligations. It gets harder and more costly to take big risks. "A lot of people get dismantled by realizing they want to make money, so they get stuck in a situation where they're not happy… they end up living lives that are not rewarding to them day to day."

Gurbaksh's take? Find out early on what you're good at or what your passion is, figure out a plan for how to do it and don't worry about the economics right away. "[Putting] the money -- the agenda and economics -- at the end of the rainbow instead of the beginning is probably the best strategy," he says.

"The job that people need to find is one that has them leap out of bed in the morning and say, 'I actually want to go to work,'" he says. Not every day is like that of course, but as long as it happens regularly, "it lets you know you're doing something you love."

Moving on from the sale of his second start-up, BlueLithium, (he stayed on as its CEO until February to ensure a smooth transition), Gurbaksh is currently developing his next start-up -- a comprehensive Internet shopping site called gwallet.

"You want to challenge yourself constantly," he says. Gurbaksh is driven by finding and facing challenges of all types.

In addition to writing The Dream, he also has several television projects in the works. Most are still under wraps, but the first is a FOX reality TV series called Secret Millionaire, which will premiere in December.

Because he thrives on the adrenaline rush of seeing things succeed, Gurbaksh says he doesn't see himself ever settling down and not pursuing new projects. Doing what he loves, and balancing material things with the immaterial is what it's all about. "I feel there's a lot I can do in life," he says, "and a lot I still want to do."