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Peter J. Daniels |
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Peter Daniels - AUSTRALIA'S BIG SUCCESS STORY, on making big bucks and giving it away!
Peter Daniels: Well, I come from a third generation welfare recipient family. I have 2 brothers who are alcoholics, 4 fathers and 2 mothers and many of my relatives have been in jail. As a young man, my ambition was to become the boxing champion of the world. I used to fight and I still hit a speed ball, even at 72 years of age. I failed in every single grade in school and became a bricklayer. By the lime I was 26 I was hopelessly in debt. Then I went to a Billy Graham crusade on May 25th 1959, in Adelaide, South Australia. When I heard the gospel in clear terms, I suddenly realised that I was equal to all men before God. I realised I was the son of a King. Nevertheless, the transition was very, very difficult. I bought 3 dictionaries and put them in various places and read through them. Then I read 2,000 biographies. I studied accountancy, philosophy, nature, history, and politics. I went into business 3 times and went bankrupt 3 times. Finally, through perseverance I built one of the largest real estate corporations of its kind in our nation, with offices in Singapore and Hong Kong. We sold that around 25 or 16 years ago. We are involved in businesses around the world today and our companies are very unusual because we have no overdraft. That all happened because God gave me 2 dreams. The first is to see how much money one human being can give away in their lifetime and the other was to change the world for 300 years. So I had to earn an awful lot of money. I had to prove that Luke 6:38 works - "Give and It shall be given unto good measure, pressed down". It wasn’t easy; we faced many famines. We tithed and gave offerings for 12 years. We were poorer at the end than we were at the beginning but we just accepted it and pressed on and eventually God rewards our faithfulness. Even when I went broke throe times, we didn’t tell anyone in the church and we didn't mention It at the prayer meetings. We felt that God was in charge and we were going to trust or we were going to perish. One of them was going to happen but we were not going to go around with a begging bowl. Anyway as far as business was concerned, I learned nothing about it from my local church or any of the people that there because they had a poverty mentality. God met our every need and of course today our business is around the world. We are the only company in the world its own currency. We made 2 films 8 years ago on biblical economics and we won gold for directorship and silver for content at the video and film festival in Chicago. We are the family in the world that own a private bullion bank; it is called Anglo-Far East Bullion Company. I’ve written about 70 books and they sell like crazy. I go to churches around the world and teach them free of charge how to go into business and win to bring money into the kingdom. L&L: What is your mission in life? PD: My mission in life is three-fold. Our family is very important to us. We are building a family of wealth, integrity and biblical mandates 7 generations deep. mandates 7 generations deep. Robina and I have been married for 50 years. All of our children have long-term marriages and all of them are committed to Christ. We don't believe that you can be a success if you lose your family in the process and you've have got to keep your vows to your spouse. If you can't do that, how can you keep the commitment on a contract? If you can't keep that one, how can you be trusted in business? The other is the mandate that God has given me to see how much money a human being can give away in a lifetime. One time when I was very successful in real estate, I tested it. I literally tested it. I gave away everything I had and then I borrowed on all my real estate and gave that away too. I borrowed on my reputation and gave that. I didn't tell my wife until about 20 years later but God replaced it all. It was fine. I don't recommend other people do that but I had to know where I stood. The other one is to change the world for 300 hundred years. We aim to do that through the Gabriel Call, which I have been working on funding for the past 45 years because we don't accept any gifts or offerings. I mean people do give us gifts and we try to be gracious about that but we don't accept any monetary gifts or anything like that. We pay our own way. Over the next 20 years, starting on the 25th of May 2005, we will start a programme that we believe is better than Harvard or Oxford for teaching Christians to go into business and win every time. The programme is called the Gabriel Call and is an 8-week course run through the local church and anyone that wants to join it has to go through the local church and has to sign a document that they are going to tithe in the local church and accept the authority of the local church. They must be people who are in business or are going to go into business within the next 12 months. We will train over 11/2 million Christians in the English-speaking world and over the next 20 years through the local church we aim to bring in over 200 billion American dollars for evangelism. L&L: How much would you say you have given away so far in the 45 years that you have been a Christian? PD: I couldn't put a figure on it because I have never kept tabs. People ask me about tithing; well we always aim for about 40% and sometimes we better that and sometimes we are a little under that. I have never kept a tab. I have just been giving and giving and giving. I mean it's almost a daily occurrence. I believe I have given more than anyone else in our country. L&L: We hear 2 American companies paid you $1,000.000 each lor about 50 minutes of counsel. Can you tell us a bit more about that? PD: Well, it was actually one in America and one in Australia. The American one was a Texan company and they badly needed advice. I think it probably took about 8 minutes and I just wrote it all out. They did pay $1,000,000 and they made $120,000,000. In Australia, another company paid me over a million for advice and they did very, very well. And of course from time to time we also do consultancy work for other corporations. We even have governments that ask us to come in and set up trade for them. L&L: What kind of work do you do with heads of nations and world leaders? PD: We have met with the World Bank and leaders of countries. I was special economic minister and ambassador on economics affairs for an African country. I helped them over several years and I would attend parliament and also meet with the President. I'd drift in with armed guards with sub-machine guns. I have also been an ambassador for my own country on a particular occasion and I was world ambassador for Youth for Christ t think there have only been 4 or 5 people in history that have been nominated for that lype of thing. I have had many other honours. God has been good to me. L&L: What do you think the social, political and economic trend of the world will be for the next 20 years? PD: I think we are going to see some incredible changes. More than we have ever seen before. Because, you see, the greatest contest in the history of the world has already commenced - al least for the world markets and everyone's fighting to export and trying to minimize imports and putting tariffs up to stop people from stealing their wealth. I think this war is going to last for at least 20 years. Strategic economic relationships and plans will be put in place by most countries in a bid to secure their future prosperity. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Australia ends up tying up with India. The African countries are the ones that cause me the greatest concern because most of Asia have got their act together. Korea and Taiwan and so on, are getting their act together. The European Union is getting its act together. The United States of course has to go down to Brazil; start at Alaska and go down to Chile because that is the only way they are going to have a big market because there are 300,000,000 people down there whose standard of living needs to be lifted. That's the obvious place for them to go. I think India is going to come up very well. They are going to pass China within the next 20 years in population and China is trying to get its act together. We only have North Korea and Cuba on the outer ring trying to tell us that communism still works. However Africa has more gold, more diamonds, coal, more arable land, oil, more gas, more iron ore than anywhere else on the face of the earth and it should be the wealthiest continent in the entire world. L&L: What kind of changes do you think Africa needs to make? What advice would you give to African leaders on how to take advantage of the new economic trends in the world today? PD: Well, Dr. Livingstone said just before he died that his greatest regret was that when he went to Africa, he wasn't able to guide them into economic security. And I think that's a major thing with Africa. We have been sending missionaries into Africa now for 200 years. It is important to address issues of politics, economics and ethics. There needs to be a different kind of spiritual awakening and it needs to deal with economics. There we have millions and millions of people that are sitting on a fortune, an absolute fortune in the ground and we have to train them in economics. We must show them that economics and ethics are an important part of growth. Good morals are good economics. If you have good morals in a country, you have fewer policemen; therefore it is cheaper to run. If you have good morals in a country your insurance premiums drop. If you have good morals in a country then the legal systems isn't tied up all the time. You can shake hands on a deal and know that it is going to happen. So good morals are good economics. I think that is where Africa is falling down. Even with all the big churches and all the wonderful things that are happening there, they are not able to handle economics. I think the Gabriel call that we are going to bring into Africa and other parts of the world is going to help solve that. L&L: How could the Gabriel Call transform Africa economically and possibly politically? PD: Gabriel Call is an 8-week programme, but it doesn't finish at the end of the 8 weeks. We will have a facilitator at every church, nominated by the pastor. The facilitator will be available to help and guide people through any business problems they might encounter long after the course is over. We are also producing a magazine called the Christian Entrepreneur which will have critical business information such as population trends, new products, things to watch for, trade trends, business laws and places where you can secure your assets and so on. We intend to liaise with governments, telling them that we intend to introduce 2000 to 20000 new business over a number of years through the Gabriel Call. There is no government that will not value that level of business activity. We will also let them know that the businesses will be owned by Christians who will only bring their business into that country if their faith is respected. In this way we can link economic growth and the gospel, and introduce the gospel into countries that have previously been closed to it. We also have a resource that is titled' the Destiny of the Third Millennium' which is probably the most comprehensive success program in the world. We are looking to engage with a business group in Africa that can take that over for the whole of Africa. That resource if distributed and applied widely would transform the whole of Africa. from LifeStyle Magazine
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Leadership
& Lifestyle: You are very well known in Australia as a successful businessman,
author and philanthropist; tell us how you went from being a bricklayer to what
you are today?