Daniel left school at the start of year 12 to begin an apprenticeship in metal fabrication. His dad was in the business and he explains that when you are eighteen and told you can earn $1,000 a week it sounds quite lucrative. Eighteen months into his apprenticeship he started to question whether or not that was it what he wanted to do. “I got halfway through and didn’t really see myself doing manual labour for the rest of my life,” he says. After doing some research he decided to go back to the books, studying structural engineering at night and still continuing his apprenticeship during the day.

After 3 years he had finished his apprenticeship but still had quite a way to go with his degree. That’s when Daniel decided to pack his bags and explore the world. His travels took him through Asia and Europe before ending up in Hospital on the island of Mykonos, Greece.

Four weeks later he was released from hospital with a badly injured foot. He explains after coming home from the beach one day a car tried to overtake him on his motorbike. The car failed to see the oncoming car which resulted in Tonkin being wedged up against a wall. “I broke all my toes snapped all the tendons, had a few stiches up my leg and the back of my head but it was mainly the foot.”

After making the journey home to Perth another six weeks was spent in hospital due to an infection. Talks of amputation arouse but he was determined to fight and get better, which he did. When told he would have an ugly foot Tonkin responds, “It’s a good scar, its good character building.”

That seems to be how Daniel looks at everything. He turns bad experiences into something that he can learn and grow from. “I guess that was the lowest point of my life, I didn’t know what was going to happen and I was thinking about what I was going to do,” he says.

Eighteen months later he was running his own Marketing Company. Daniel was introduced to the world of sales and marketing by a close friend. They decided that they would work really hard and as Tonkin explains “had big plans.” Funnily enough as soon as he started the friend quit and it was up to Daniel to put in the hard yards.

“I realised that I was really good at sales and promotions, I picked it up really easily, I loved the industry because I’m just a people’s person,” He said.

After starting with Unite Marketing in Perth it took Daniel 2 weeks to be promoted to a leader, 6 months to be promoted to crew manager, another 10 months to Assistant Owner, and another 2 months to ownership. “I worked unbelievably hard and I had huge ups and huge downs but I’ve always had the drive to be successful,” Tonkin Explains.

In August of 2008 STM International started the FW1 campaign. FW1; a Waterless Wash, Wax and Polish was new to the Australian market and therefore had huge potential.

Throughout 2009 it seemed the hard work had paid off as STM International continued to reach heights that no other marketing company in the division had yet to conquer. This lead to Tonkin and his team beating the FW1 World record in sales reaching a total of $71,000 production for just one week!

Cobra Group Vice President Steve Sapsford attributes much of Daniel’s success to the fact that he has an excellent work ethic. “He asks for advice from all the right people then actually acts on it straight away rather than just taking information… he generates good leaders in his business consistently, good standards, good training, good image. By putting all those 3 things into place he creates good leaders which give him success stories.”

Daniel has now opened a second office in Sydney and while he is proud of what he has achieved in such a short space of time it doesn’t take much to bring him back to the ground. He has big plans over the next 5 years; (STM International domination to be exact) but realises he will have to work even harder to expand his business.

“There have been times when my job has been unbelievably easy, there have been weeks where I have made $20,000 and I haven’t done a huge amount of work but there have also been weeks where I have lost money and I’ve  put blood, sweat, tears and hard work into it,” he says.

“What I have done and learnt over the past 3 years is more than I’ve learnt I anything I’ve done and I think it’s what I’m going to achieve over the next 2-5 years that will make me in a position where my family won’t have to worry about money and I won’t have to worry about money and what that will do for me is create choices in my life. Choose to do what I want, when I want.”