Owner of successful lighting company DALS Lighting, Shawn Johal is a great entrepreneur who faced many challenges both in his personal growth and in his entrepreneurial journey. Dedicated to bring happiness into his life and to his employees, he is a firm believer in giving back to the community. Family holds a big place in Shawn’s life, as he joined his in-law’s family business years ago. Entrepreneurship was not his initial plan, and, not being a natural risk-taker, taking a chance on himself to save the company from the economic crash was definitely a big challenge.

Shawn’s Growth Story book title: “The Happy King”

What you’ll learn:

• In 2008, Shawn and his partner had to take second loans on their houses to be able to keep paying the staff. At the time, he had 2 young children and Joey just had his first born. 
• Because Shawn was affected by his parents working too much as a child, he is now using that experience in his management decisions, by building a life and a company that allows family time and great work-life balance.
• DALS Lighting has made a brand promise to launch 20% new products each year. They have to discontinue a lot of products, but this way ensures that they only carry the most innovative products.
• The title of his growth story comes from the fact that Shawn is very interested in the concept of happiness, but mostly, it refers to the translation of his traditional Indian name, Sukhraj, which means “Happy King” in Punjabi. He only discovered that signification later in his life, as he always used his second name – Shawn – to avoid racism.

Notable quotes:

• “My father did not know how to express himself properly with a child… so he would hit me, he would use very negative words with me… Words of, stupid, and lazy, good for nothing.” – Shawn on being raised by a hard father, who had himself been raised by a severe and alcoholic father.  
• “I definitely am who I am today, or trying to not be a certain way, because of what I learned from my youth. I guess there are some things I learned great lessons from, but THAT experience and many similar ones to that did not teach me life lessons.” – Shawn on being bullied and not supported by his father as a child.
• “Typically, successful people – not people that are just finding a good job – but people who are actually gonna try to make a change, start businesses, entrepreneurs, visionaries, a lot of them faced challenges, faced failure, faced rejection.” – Shawn on how millennials and following generations may face a problem because they were not challenged enough as kids.

Shownotes: 

…Coming soon!