This became a habit – when things got difficult or I felt uncertain, I’d just turn up the charm, and when I needed to, I’d lie. My desire to be accepted and be seen as strong was so powerful that lying felt like my only option. But no matter how well I carried that off, I always felt weak inside and separate from everyone else.

As a teenager it got worse. I played in many bands, and since I was always younger than my band mates, I got picked on all the time. It really got to me that I couldn’t defend myself verbally. I wanted to have the skills to go toe to toe with anyone. Actually, I just wanted to be accepted. So, I started to pretend to like people that I really didn’t like, do things that I didn’t want to do and be someone that I wasn’t. The more inauthentic I got, the weaker I felt.

My big chance came when I started as a salesman in my father’s company. Not only did he mentor me but he also introduced me to his mentors and hundreds of other inspiring teachers. Their ideas were empowering; I started to feel less helpless. Then my buddy introduced me to a powerful form of quick fix hypnosis called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP was my ticket to real power. I trained constantly. I listened night and day, driven by the allure of being able to influence my own behavior but more importantly other people's behavior. It gave me super selling power and I was making big money as a young 20 something.

Soon I was out on the road at seminars, working the back of the room for my dad and getting to know many of the professional speakers out there on the circuit. I was appalled to realize how many of them were utterly inauthentic. What they said onstage was mesmerizing and inspiring … yet what they said and did offstage was something else entirely. They didn’t walk their talk. I hated that about them. Yet, with all of my training in psychology I started to realize that what I hated in them was what I hated about myself. Yikes!!! I came face to face with what a liar I was. That was the tipping point. Spurred on by a failing marriage with a child on the way, I began my inner journey to discover who I was and why I behaved the way I did. I was making a killing in sales and it seemed the next level could only be reached through inner work.

In the mean time my skills as a sales person who used hypnosis as a sales tool inspired others. I became a teacher myself. As I developed my platform, I wanted to be someone who meant what he said. I dedicated myself to living out my message. I consciously decided that I’d never ask anyone to do things that I wouldn’t do myself. This was not easy. I was constantly faced with a choice; either walk my talk or present myself as something more than what I really was. This eventually developed into a teaching strategy. I taught my students by admitting my own faults and demonstrating the process I used to overcome them. I used my own breakdowns and breakthroughs as a tool to inspire people to make their own positive changes.

I soon expanded my services inside my fathers company from sales trainer to business coach. Working intimately with my clients opened my eyes to new possibilities. I began to envision a world where everyone spoke and expressed themselves authentically. I imagined what it would be like if we all accepted our circumstances exactly as they were and then moved forward powerfully from the truth. I began to notice how effective it was to live life with integrity, harmony, balance and joy.

Coaching others to have breakthroughs and quantum leaps in performance was very illuminating and created many breakthroughs for me. My philosophy of not asking others to do what I hadn’t done myself proved to be a powerful personal transformation process. The more I coached, the more I evolved myself. One of the most profound realizations was regarding my life story. I began to realize that the story of my life so far was just that, a story I had told myself. Not the truth about who I was or the reality of my life. It was just one perspective. I realized I was free to invent a new story that empowered me. In fact, the words you are reading are nothing more than the empowering perspective I have chosen to describe my past with. The same circumstances described in an empowering context.

After delivering tens of thousands of coaching sessions with a wide variety of people in every kind of circumstance you can imagine, I began to see people in a new way. I learned to ignore the stories they told themselves about their past, to see instead the people they have the potential to be. Through unconditional acceptance I developed the ability to see their future and speak it more powerfully than they speak their past; creating an empowering context that makes achieving dreams natural and effortless. This has become the foundation of my body of work.

I soon realized the source of this empowerment process was a perspective I was practicing; total and complete acceptance of all people, in all situations, at all times, including myself. It was like magic. From this perspective people began to transform rapidly during my coaching process and in my life seminars. This shift in my consciousness began to attract people into my life who were self-actualized. I noticed that they, too, listened to me as if I were more than I saw myself to be. Associating with these types of people became the structure for rapid advancement and momentum.

From this empowered state, I wrote a book called Creating Sales Velocity; Awaken Your Power to Attract Sales Effortlessly. I wrote it as a pocket guide to becoming a conscious sales person. I wasn’t sure if I should publish it; I wasn’t sure what to do with it once I’d written it. My father had always downplayed the value of books as a business, so I just moved onto other projects and forgot about the book.

A few years later, a student of mine read it and was amazed at the immediate transformative power of the process. He was adamant that I publish it, insisting, “Either put this book out or I’ll do it myself!” That was the beginning of my first company unrelated to my fathers called Spirit Publishing.

At this point I got honest about how different my message was from my fathers. I realized I could no longer get away with speaking about ideas that weren’t in harmony with contribution, selflessness and acceptance. The message in my book contradicted the message The Mike Ferry Organization was promoting and forced my departure. With great sadness combined with wide-eyed enthusiasm for the future, I stepped way from my 16-year business relationship with my father. It was with great respect and appreciation that I handed back the keys to the $40 million dollar a year kingdom. Suddenly the man who had mentored me, stood by me, taught me everything I knew about business and empowered me to be a force for change in the world was now indirectly my competitor.

It sounds crazy now but I left with no plan, no strategy and just a commitment to speak my truth; that a conscious approach to life will create power, profit and peace of mind. That seeing the mind for what it really is, just an organism will relieve the suffering of mankind.

Speaking my truth proved to be an extraordinary challenge. The pressure to earn income lured me into changing my topics for profit verses speaking my truth. Rather then speaking my truth and letting my market find me, I was scrambling to find markets and fitting my message to them. My integrity was consistently confronted by my desire to sustain my lifestyle. It took me 2 years and many failed business ideas to finally realize that I must mean what I say and say what I mean. I learned to hold back nothing. Tell the world what I really think. I realized that my thoughts about living a successful life will attract the audience that sees their value and there is no need to hype it or package it in a sexy container to make it look more valuable. My truth is valuable in its own right and if people don’t like it, they can train with someone else. I have released my attachment to looking good and being recognized as someone significant.

Today Matthew Ferry International is dedicated to creating seminars, events, retreats, training and coaching that inspire and empower people everywhere to live their dreams now. We help people discover who they are and why they were born. From that deeply authentic place their goals and dreams materialize naturally. Everything we do creates a framework for people to step out of their self-imposed limitations, and into their personal power. We assist people in experiencing joy, happiness, balance and peace of mind. We help people all over the world to become free from fear forever. From this empowered place, life itself becomes enough, nothing else is needed. This is the ultimate place of creation, possibility and manifestation.