About

This is the blog of Matthew Peters:

Filmmaker, Recording Artist, Best-Selling Author, Radio Host & Business Coach

Married with Children: Yes

Favorite Places: San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina | Vernazza, Italy (Cinque Terre) | Lahaina, Maui

Passionate About: My family & family time, ingenuity, efficiency, mystery, helping people get un-stuck

Best-Selling Author of: Don’t Own, Don’t Rent, Live Well:
How to be Debt FREE,Build Your Nest Egg & Live Life on Your Own Terms

AKA: Peter Mathews – Far from Haggersville (music album & film)

Supports: Habitat For Humanity & Casas por Cristo (Juarez, Mexico)

Heroes: Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Paul Hewson, Gordon Sumner, many others

Fun Fact: We haven’t paid for our housing 10 of the 13 years we’ve been married. Not living with relatives, taking in roommates or government subsidized check here for our story.

My name is Matthew Peters. I am a father of two and a husband of 13 years. I have spent the last twelve years of my life as a multimedia producer – winning two national awards for video production, eight years in residential real estate. I’m a songwriter, filmmaker (yes on celluloid too),world traveler and lifetime student.

Recently after applying many things I have learned through studying Tony Robbins and reading Tim Ferriss’ book, The Four-Hour Work Week, I renewed a challenge to expand my life while streamlining it.

I love lifestyle design because I have learned over the years that life is too short to live out an unfulfilled existence. After 5 car accidents (no I do not race professionally), and my last one being what I consider a brush with death, I decided to live passionately – doing what I love, spending more time with loved ones and investing in people – telling my children, wife, family that they are loved and helping them become their best. I am in constant pursuit of excellence in all areas of my life. I understand that I do not know it all and am willing to be a student.

Growing Up:
I grew up on a dairy farm miles from a small town (pop.1,200) in southern Wisconsin. Being raised on a farm didn’t leave much time for family time – other than by the proximity of us working in the barn together. Having so little time with my father growing up was something that I didn’t want to replicate with my children.

I believe that after all is said and done, relationships are all that matter – not the huge house, expensive cars, the 70-hour work week spent away from the family all for the sake of the family’s welfare. Less can be more.

Between first and fifth grade, I attended an actual one-room schoolhouse (like Little House on the Prairie) with 42 kids from first to 12th grade all in one room. We all worked quietly on our own… well, they did.

From the very beginning, I was a dreamer. I was distracted while staring at a cinder-block basement wall for six hours a day – it wasn’t easy for me. I daydreamed and drew pictures for hours. I was actually graduated/moved from the second to third grade and from third to fourth grade by a very gracious teacher – even though I fell way behind the others, I was a good kid who behaved.

The curriculum of the church school was workbook-based. We all sat quietly at our desks working on them throughout the day. However, we were not all at an even academic level; my six classmates were months ahead of me in their school work. While my friends were working away, I would draw up cars and inventions and make things out of paper.

My parents had us pick sweet corn from a small patch designated for us kids. We placed the corn in bushel baskets, loaded them into the back of the family pickup truck and would park it by the highway.My younger brother and I (5 and 7 years old) would play for hours near the truck – waiting for a customer.Passersby would see our sign and pull over and buy a dozen or two for a couple dollars.We split the money that we collected.To say the least, we were happy campers.

I have to admit that when I was in school, I didn’t do any schoolwork.All of that “free time” soon led me to explore a “black market” of selling things to classmates. I found a need and filled it.

In second grade sold polished rocks, stickers, candy, etc. All deals had to be made in hushed tones, in back corners and empty rooms. One such venture was to have kids page through an Empire Strikes Back coloring book and choose pictures that I would then color in with iron-on crayons and have my mom iron them onto a white T-shirt.

After a few months, I was ratted out and then closely watched to make sure I didn’t sell any more stuff to classmates.I just took it to the DMZ of the public school bus after that. In my opinion, entrepreneurship should have been encouraged not squelched.

I moved to a small town school in 6th grade – 35 kids in my class. Day one, assignment one – we were asked to write down as many of the states and capitals that we could on a paper. I had no idea as to what they were talking about. The teacher gave me a hint, “um.. like Wisconsin…” I then wrote “Wisconsin… Millwakee…” 10 minutes later that is what I had. Fortunately, no one else in the class knew this at the time (this is the first “outing” of that previously-classified information).

I was also asked to read aloud. I know kids don’t like to read aloud in class, but I had severe dyslexia and I couldn’t keep my eyes on the right lines. It was total embarrassment and humiliation. I was also asked to write the answer I just gave on the chalk board. The answer was “death” – I wrote “deth”. I think you get the picture.

A lot of you are like me. Each one of those vivid memories are about being told “no”, failing, not being on the same playing field as peers or some other sort of humiliation. What did each one of those memories trigger me to do? Play it safe, don’t try that again, keep quiet, keep to myself, behave and you’ll be liked by authority, figure things out on your own because you won’t understand how everyone else learns.

There is a lot of good I learned there too – if I knew where to find it. If I would have mastered the communication with myself, I could have taken those early “losses” and made them into learning lessons that propelled me forward in stead of shutting me down.

Today: The Complete Self
I want to inspire people to get up and get real with where they are in life. Play it safe is not part of my vocabulary. You also have to play it real. Face the facts of what is working and what is not, then figure out where you want to be. I love fixing things, getting people unstuck and excited about where they are going.

The strange thing was that when I tested my limits, my past failures and fears, I found that my limits were far past what I naively thought they were or that there was no limit there at all.

My limits started when I was in first or second grade and continued to about June of 2009. I was challenged on multiple occasions to read Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week a couple years before, but after seeing his program on the History Channel (Trial by Fire) I decided to read it. I was amazed. I decided to test a limit I had placed on myself years ago:

Limiting Belief #1. I am a night owl. I realized that in just one day I changed from staying up until 1:00 or sometimes 2:00 AM and getting up at 8:00 to 8:30AM, to developing a morning routine of going for a walk at 5:30 AM. I now stay up until 11:00 PM and get up at 5:30 AM – some nights with several interruptions from my children.

The secret is that I made a DECISION & I followed through with my plan. You know day 2 it rained and I decided to get up early and exercise anyway. Now it is dark as night and about 5-35 degrees when I set out. It doesn’t matter what the temperature, because an early bird is now who I am. One such day was 7 degrees below zero.I chose to not let weather be an excuse.

Limiting Belief #2. I hate exercise. I was fortunate enough to pair this one with the first one. I now identify myself with being an athlete. I have shifted my identity from hating something to being a proponent of it.

Limiting Belief #3. I have to play it safe. It is one thing to be risky and another to take a calculated risk. It is like skydiving – the calculation should help you realize that it is quite safe; however you don’t do it because it is still not something you believe that a safe person like yourself does.

Chose a little risk and a lot of adventure and you will lead a much fuller life. My father once told me of a conversation he had with his investment manager that was retiring. My dad asked, “What would you have done differently?” The investment manager said, “I wish I would have taken more risks.” That statement from a very fiscally-conservative man really struck me and I have lived differently since then.

Limiting Belief #4. I can’t speak in front of people. As a kid I had two humiliating experiences speaking in public where I forgot every line. I was roped into both situations and was given only a few minutes to learn my lines. In 2009 and again in 2010, I spoke in front of 250-300 people. It was a huge growing experience for me. I learned that you cannot over-prepare for any performance. So I literally practiced those speeches – as if it were my job – for a week and a half.

The second talk I wanted to challenge myself and actually performed/acted it out on the stage, memorized every word and as Bo Eason told me, “Leave your blood on the stage.”

To hone my speaking skills and thinking on the fly, I also started a live radio show (The Complete Self LIVE Worldwide Radio) and occasionally a live UStream show. Anything can happen, it is raw, unedited and the true me.

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