Living on the Edge, The Autobiography

The book opens at forty thousand feet

A jumbo jet banks over London, and a chairman remembers a boy who could not read

The lights of London fade through the passenger window. He is seventy years old, Chairman of the Board, flying home from a world tour that took in Taiwan, Seoul, a Washington conference built around a Presidential Prayer Breakfast with President and Mrs Clinton and Dr Billy Graham, and a private estate in the Channel Islands.

And with a fever setting in and time on his hands, his mind goes back. To a childhood full of uncertainty. To the erratic school years and the undiagnosed dyslexia that left him almost illiterate at twenty six years of age. To the distance between that boy and this seat.

That is the question this autobiography answers, honestly and in order: how does a man travel that far? Not the airbrushed version. The version with the creditors' meetings in it.

“Life is not chances but choices.” Peter J. Daniels, from the introduction

The lowest day in the whole story

A meat pie, a hillside, and the rooftops that changed everything

Three businesses had failed. He had just sat through his third creditors' meeting, owing what felt like an unbelievable fortune, with repossession notices on everything he owned, a wife, and three children. To escape the telephone, Peter and Robina bought a small meat pie and drove to a hillside lookout called Windy Point.

He closed his eyes, gave thanks for their lunch, and asked God for guidance. When he opened his eyes he was looking at the rooftops of thousands of houses, and he said the sentence that turned the whole story: that is it, I will go into the real estate business.

What follows is told without varnish. The weeks selling his last possessions to put food on the table. Living on potatoes, tomatoes and bread. The morning he heard his children praying for some chicken, and had to walk out of the house quickly so they would not see him weep. And then the first sale, the empire that grew from it with offices reaching Singapore and Hong Kong, and the debts paid back to the last creditor, honestly and in full.

If you only ever read one chapter of any book in this catalogue, it is this stretch of this one. And it is the true origin of everything taught in Miss Phillips, You Were Wrong: the teacher from that book walks through these pages too, in the classroom where it all began.

One life, told in order

Fifteen chapters from the coalmines of Cornwall to a world stage

This is a 266 page life told the way it happened, and Daniels holds nothing back: the failures get as many pages as the victories.

OneMy Unstable Roots

Jewish ancestors fleeing Spain, a three mast ship to Australia in 1853, a father who was one of sixteen children, and a boyhood of depression, diphtheria and war drills.

TwoYoung Love

A sixteen year old girl named Robina at a Sunday meeting, a first kiss over a picket fence, and the face he did not wash for two weeks.

ThreeThe Process of Change

The night of 25 May 1959, in a crowd of 65,000 at the Billy Graham Crusade, when everything he was heading toward turned around.

FourGrowing Pains

The best and worst decision of his business life, and what pain teaches when you accept it as a friend.

FiveThings Started to Change

Windy Point, the rooftops, and walking into Mr Hale's office to hear the words: when are you coming here to sell real estate?

SixUnexpected Challenge

A Sunday newspaper, a wife's quiet question, what are you going to do about it, and the fight that put him on national television.

SevenThe Crusade

A phone call from Atlanta taken from horseback, and the fourteen year commitment that followed.

EightAbout My Father's Business

What it means to treat wealth as a tool in the service of God rather than a trophy.

NineA View of the World

Boardrooms and platforms across continents, and the global perspective they forced open.

TenI Begin to Write Books

A bored Sunday morning, a prayer card pulled from the pew in front, and the outline scribbled on its back that became a publishing life.

ElevenBooks, Revelation and Surgery

The writing years, and the health battle fought in the middle of them.

TwelveA Change of Direction

Knowing when a season ends, and having the nerve to end it.

ThirteenCranking Up the Economic Engine

His answer to the question he puts to every Christian in business: who is actually funding the work?

FourteenKeeping Commitments

Under commit and over perform, the discipline that built forty years of trust.

FifteenBuilding a Legacy

A commissioned painting called Inspiration, a doctorate, a book written in two weeks, and what he intends to leave behind.

This is not a life lived in small rooms

The giants who walk through these pages

Daniels calls them the giants of the 20th century, and he did not read about most of them, he sat with them, served on their boards, ate at their tables, and tells you what they were like up close.

Dr Billy Graham

Met in 1977 when Daniels spoke at his Crusade in South Bend, Indiana, eighteen years after Graham's Adelaide crusade changed his life.

W Clement Stone

The insurance magnate and long time hero who shared his success principles over meals, board meetings, and limousine rides in Chicago.

Dr Norman Vincent Peale

Daniels trained staff at the Peale Centre and worked with him on the first ethics conference for CEOs in the United States.

Dr Robert Schuller

Nearly twenty years on the Hour of Power international board, and a hand in raising funds for the Crystal Cathedral.

Dr John Haggai

A chance hotel meeting in 1973 that grew into board chairmanship and a lifelong bond with the Haggai Institute in Singapore.

Churchill and Dr King

The two he never met but studied deeply, among the six thousand biographies he read to stretch a mind once written off at school.

The book closes with a challenge

The Four Questions to Greatness

At the back of the autobiography sit four questions Daniels first set down in 1981. He has put them to audiences around the world, and almost nobody can answer all four. Read the life first, then sit down with these.

At what age have you set yourself to reach your full potential, that God might maximise your life?

Could you tell, in fifty pages or more, what your potential is in every area of your life?

If you accepted your full potential as one hundred percent, what rating would you honestly give yourself right now?

And knowing the gap between those two scores, what plans will you make to close it, and when?

His own answers are the 266 pages that come before them.

Peter J. Daniels, from the cover of the original hardcover edition — Peter J. Daniels, from the original hardcover edition

In his own words, on his own record

The most qualified man alive to write this book, because he lived it

Every other book in the Peter J. Daniels catalogue teaches a piece of the formula. This is the one that shows where the formula came from, forged in failure, tested in public, and proven over forty years.

From bricklayer to chairman of international boards spanning the globe
Built one of Australia's foremost real estate enterprises, reaching Singapore and Hong Kong
Paid back every creditor from three failed businesses, honestly and in full
Reader of over six thousand biographies, author of a string of successful books
Awarded a Doctorate of Letters at Oral Roberts University

Read it tonight

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Living on the Edge, the autobiography

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Before you ask

Questions, answered plainly

What exactly do I receive?

The complete autobiography as a professionally typeset PDF, delivered instantly to your secure member library the moment your payment goes through. You sign in and it is there, ready to read or download.

Can I read it on my phone or tablet?

Yes. The PDF reads beautifully on any phone, tablet, or computer, and you can return to your member library from any device, any time.

Is this a business book or a life story?

Both, which is what makes it the anchor of the catalogue. The business lessons arrive inside the story as they arrived inside the life: the failures, the creditors' meetings, the first sale, the boards, the empire. Nothing is taught in the abstract.

Do I need to read the other books first?

No. This is the best possible starting point, because it is the story every other book grew out of. Readers of Miss Phillips, You Were Wrong will recognise the classroom where the whole journey begins.

Is it religious?

Daniels writes openly as a Christian, and his faith runs through the story from the 1959 Billy Graham Crusade onward, because it ran through the life. The business record, the failures, and the comeback are told with the same directness.

Is there a physical copy?

Yes. The paperback edition is available now on Amazon under the World Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies imprint, part of The Peter J. Daniels Collection: order the paperback here. If you want the book tonight, the digital edition is the one that arrives in the next two minutes.