Publisher's Synopsis
"At the age 28 I made my first 1 million Dollars but lost all at age 32." Anybody who might have read something about this great man may be familiar with this statement. Sometimes, it is reassuring to read about a millionaire who grew up in abject poverty. Daniel had a very difficult life growing up as a child. It is true that many great entrepreneurs never started with huge capital. Neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffett inherited wealth, but they were raised in affluent homes so they did not have to worry about where the next breakfast would come from. There have been many successful entrepreneurs through the years who bootstrapped their start-ups from nothing. The likes of Daniel McKorley, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of McDan Group of Companies have demonstrated that you do not always have to come from an affluent home to make it big. That is the beauty of hard work and determination. Daniel, right from the very beginning had vision, passion and a determination to be successful. He overcame a number of challenges until he found the road to success. Daniel was born on June 14, 1978. He attended his elementary school at La in Accra. Growing up, he did all kinds of jobs, from selling on the streets to becoming a driver's mate. He was a trotro driver's mate plying the Accra Madina road. He also moved from office to office selling books. Before these, he used to sell kerosene on the streets of La. This was how he was able to fend for himself at home and at school. According to him these situations toughened him "for what life had for me". Through these experiences, he developed the ability to spot opportunities when they came. One opportunity he spotted was to organise extra classes for 120 the school children in his neighbourhood. He used part of the money he got from the extra classes to pay for his fees whilst studying at the Workers' College of the University of Ghana. Unfortunately he had to drop out of school because he could not meet his financial obligations. The turnaround started when he got a job at the port with a shipping company as a concierge. He did almost all the menial jobs that were available at the company. He did every bit of all the cleaning jobs. He would clean the toilet, mop the floor and wash the plates. He was a hands-on person when it came to running errands for the company. His hard work and commitment to work earned him admiration from his superiors. He rose through the ranks to become a clerk. He had a stint with most of the departments in the company.Making his first one million dollars didn't come on a silver platter. He had to combine his port work with commodity trading. He was buying grains and cereals from the regions for sale. On Fridays after work at the port he would dash to the Brong Ahafo Region to purchase maize and bring the commodity to Accra. In order to maximize his profit he would store the maize till the lean season when the price of maize had begun appreciating. Soon, he added coffee to his stock of trade when he realised the business was good. It was through this simple business strategy that he made his wealth at that tender age of 28. In four years of making that much money he lost virtually everything. Many young people have lost such amounts of wealth due to reckless lifestyle. But Daniel had gone through a lot in life just to lose that money through any reckless lifestyle. He was in Pennsylvania one day on leadership training at the Lehigh University when he got a distress call from home. He was informed that his warehouse, which by then was storing huge quantities of coffee, had flooded. The roof had been ripped off by a storm. The whole warehouse of coffee was soaked in rain water. This disaster could have destabilised any businessman, especially when the warehouse was not insured against any of such occurrences. Mr. McKorley sees this disaster as a big lesson to him. He didn't allow the disaster to affect his balance in life.
