It’s one thing to have a big dream for our lives.  It’s quite another to make it happen.  In today’s program I’m joined once more by a special guest – Peter Irvine the former Managing Director of Gloria Jeans Coffees.

For the best part of the last three weeks, we've been looking at the subject of living out the dream that God puts on our hearts. It's so important. Life is not a dress rehearsal. I think it would be so sad to look back and think, “Oh, I missed my chance.” You know, over 80 percent of people, the surveys say, are dissatisfied in their jobs. That's an awful statistic. We're joined this week by Peter Irvine, the Managing Director of Gloria Jeans Coffees; a man who, I guess, took the risks and stepped out of his comfort zone to live his dream. Peter, welcome.

Peter Irvine: Thank you.

Berni Dymet: Are you glad that you did?

Peter Irvine: I'm always glad. I never live in regret. I never look back and say, "I only wish I'd done something else. Yet, there might be decisions I made; and I've thought, Oh, I could have made that decision better. But I believe I'm always moving in God's direction because I'm listening, spending time with Him; and I hear Him speaking to me through speakers, through His Word, through many other ways that He speaks to me. That helps me in my journey.

Berni Dymet: Do you find these days that people look at Gloria Jeans and go, "Well, these guys are really successful now. Peter's made it. Peter is there. Peter must be on 'easy street.'"

Peter Irvine: Yes, I get that quite frequently. And we always wish it was true. But it depends on what people mean by "easy street."

Berni Dymet: Well, what does Peter's easy street look like?

Peter Irvine: I'm not sure our lives were ever planned for us to look back with our feet up and do nothing because I find that actually unfulfilling. So there is always a plan. God has a plan, a destiny, a future. And it's always out there creating and making things happen.

Berni Dymet: So, with 260-some stores now and with the global brand now of Gloria Jeans, I guess there are issues; I guess there are times now you find yourself working really, really hard.

Peter Irvine: That's right. I think I work just as many long hours as I did when I was in advertising. But we have a plan that we are working. We are putting on new people, senior people. And that will continue to grow and slowly take the load from us, it's finding the right people, that is crucial to that. And we are looking for people who have been where we are going, who have the experience, who have the family values of the company. And they are crucial for us to be able to hand things across. It's easy to become about burden and keep doing everything and want to be a control freak. But there's a point where you cannot do that. So, you've got to develop that balance in your life.

And often people think, you know, it's God first, family second and the job third. I'm not sure that's right. I think it's all equal, and God plays the key role in all of that as a balance. And my family, I'm involved with the work, you know, they understand it. Some of them work with us. You know, they need to be part of that as does our faith it's seven days, 24 hours a day. It's not just two hours on Sunday and say, "The rest of it's mine." That faith plays a role in decision making, in time I spend with family, at work, church; it's just all one bag, if you like, to me.

Berni Dymet: Do you run into people who think, well, this is a faith-based business. God's in it, therefore; I can come along and it's a going to be a fairly easy ride for me. I don't have to work hard. God's going to do the hard work?

Peter Irvine: Well, we've certainly had some of that; fortunately only to a limited extent. If you get people who have been successful in their jobs, they certainly don't come with that attitude. But we have had a few, particularly Bible college students, who have worked for us in parts of our business in the stores whose minds are elsewhere so they don't actually give a good representation of Christians in the workplace, their commitment, their loyalty is somewhere else; and therefore, they are very difficult to manage.

Berni Dymet: How do you deal with stress and tension? You are big business. You must have stresses and strains and tensions in your life. How do you deal with that?

Peter Irvine: I think there are a number of ways. One is constantly handing over situations back to the Lord and say, "Look, here it is. I have taken it over again and I'm trying to run it myself. But here it is. I'm listening. Let's move forward."

The second thing is it's important to have time away from work, that is having holidays. We insist people take holidays because they need that break. When my wife and I go and visit…and this has been one of the good things with this business is that she travels with me most times. So, we go and visit stores. We'll take extra days or the weekend, and we're able to catch up with other franchises. But we're also able to get some time away as part of that, away from home where you could get caught up in various things. So, that's important. Stress can build up. And I can sense when it is because advertising is stressful so in this business you can sense the stress is coming.

I remember I was taught a story about one of the wealthiest guys in the U.S., John Paul Getty. And he said, "I have enough money to own every heifer in the United States; but my stomach’s so full of ulcers I can't even enjoy one steak.” Now, I don't want to ever get into that situation. And it can in our lives. And we've got to learn to let go. As I've said to other people, we've got to learn to let go to God. And I’ve been encouraging some business people who are at that point in their businesses. I've said, "Have you surrendered." They said, "Oh, yes. I have." I said, "I don't believe you have because when you have, He brings a peace into your situation."

Berni Dymet: I just want to unpack a little bit more this whole thing of giving it over to God. I mean, God has given you gifts and skills. You know how to do certain things. Day by day you are making decisions; probably, in the thick of things, you don't always pray over each decision. You just make decisions, and you do it. How do you bring your faith together with that decision-making process? And when the rubber hits the road at work, what part does Jesus play in the work and in the business and what part do you play? How do you bring that partnership together?

Peter Irvine: Well, we see it as a lifestyle as I mentioned in one of the previous segments. And I think life is just an attitude of prayer. I'm not closing my eyes driving down the road or sitting at the desk. But "Lord, this particular situation is not going the right direction. You've got to give me some wisdom in how I deal with this." Now, it sometimes comes in and sometimes it doesn't. I might be in the shower when it comes, I can be in church and someone is speaking. I could be watching television or listening to radio, which may not even be Christian and out of that God triggers something, a thought or word that seems to witness to my spirit and I follow that.

You see, I'm moving forward in business, making decisions. I believe God is leading. And as long I'm spending the time, I'm hearing His Word and I'm spending time with Him, He has an opportunity to speak to me. And I take that prompting. And I look for confirmations if it's really a big decision. I don't just go off one idea, it's that prompting. And I believe you can see His leading and wisdom coming together as attitudes change. Now, I may not always handle it because I take it over myself again, or I'm influenced by something that's not right. But if you're in that attitude or lifestyle, there will be something that will trigger you to come back on course.

Berni Dymet: I guess, when you talk about big decisions, the decisions to buy the global brand would have been, like, that's a huge decision. How was God involved in that with your business partner, Nabi, and your wife and family? What was God's role? How did He speak through that?

Peter Irvine: Well, I guess, when we first discussed…and what prompted the idea was more of a monetary thing; and then we thought, why do we want to do this. We are successful, growing fast, we've got a lot to do in Australia. And then we started to realize that, maybe, He is birthing the idea because we needed some miracles to pull this off in terms of funding, having a bank that will fund this out of their normal guidelines on transactions; and we needed some attitude changes from the owners in the U.S.

We saw it as a big job. We saw it as a lot to be done. And we saw difficulties. And we several times asked ourselves, "Why do we want to do this, and do we want to do it?" But each time we talked, we sensed that God was saying, "You know, I'm in this" because we thought that the thing died several times, and through just some miraculous turnaround the whole thing bobbed back up to where it was. So, we had probably given up on it, and He said, "No, no, no, we're not giving it up, I’m teaching, I'm showing you, I'm opening things to you that you are going to need to know later on.”

Berni Dymet: That's really great. I love stories like that. Look, thanks for that Peter, tomorrow is Friday and I'd like to finish this whole series on dreaming our dreams, with looking at what it feels like to travel through the disappointments. Every dream comes with some di