On a mission to make the long suffering creative leader a thing of the past. One pressure proofed brain at a time.
The Respectable, PR release Friendly Bio.
(Scroll down for the dirt)
After spending 20 years as a multi award-wining writer and creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, M&C Saatchi, Naked, and Clemenger BBDO, Matt traded a steady income and a fully-stocked beer fridge for life as a commercial and documentary director at 2am TV in Camden, and Another Film Company in Soho.
During this time he directed ads, virals, and branded content for MG sports cars, Nike, Gymbox, The Wales Tourist Board, Relentless Energy Drink, and Runners Need, as well as writing 3 feature-length screenplays, a couple of sitcoms, and an extreme sports documentary starring British and Canadian Paralympic Gold Medalists, Ade Adepitan and Stacy Kohut.
It was during this growth spurt that he realised that stupidly early call times, threadbare production budgets, and ridiculously cold film studios weren't his idea of paradise. So he decided to find out what was, and retrained as an NLP Master Practitioner and Master Coach through the International NLP Trainers Association, before signing up to several back-to-back professional and advanced diplomas in Clinical Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy at King’s College London.
After graduating with first class honours and a mountain of credit card debt, Matt ventured even further into the red by training to advanced levels in Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Cognitive Behavioural
Therapy (CBT), Matrix Reimprinting, Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing (EMDR), and numerous other high performance psychologies and transformational therapies in London and Sydney.
After an intensive 4 year stint as a Complex Trauma Specialist in Harley Street, Matt began coaching some of the best-known and highly-respected creative leaders and C-level board members in the world.
Today, as well as being an in-demand coach, he's an international trainer, workshop facilitator, and keynote speaker for top-flight creative businesses and global super-brands like FOX, Bentley, Toyota, Lexus, and Westfield, where he specialises in injecting breakthrough thinking, and sustainable high performance, into their heads, hearts, and hands.
When Matt's not pressure proofing brains, face-planting the myths surrounding creative genius, and talking in the third person, he can be found squirrelled away in one of his favourite Mallorcan hotels where he's either completing the manuscript for his first book (due out in the summer of 2020), or swotting up on the latest and greatest research in neuroscience and neuropsychology.
Much to the disappointment of his former band mates, who preferred him when he was a Les Paul swinging, punk rock lead guitarist. š¤
Professional Qualifications
As unbelievable as it sounds, the coaching industry is completely and utterly unregulated. Which means any old chancer can say they're one these days. Even if they've only read a book on the subject, or watched a 3 hour video course on Udemy. And while some coaches do have recognised psychological qualifications under their belt, most don't. So beware, because I sure as hell wouldn't let someone lose on my mind, brain, and career if they didn't know what the fuck they were playing with. So if you want to see what I'm currently trained and certified in, click the boxes below to expand.
– BA (Hons) Graphic Design & Advertising
(Buckinghamshire University)
– Diploma in Fine Art
(Burton College)
– STORY
(Robert McKee)
– 2-Day Film School
(Dov S-S Simens)
– The Directors Journey
(Mark Travis @ Raindance)
– Directing the 35mm Shoot
(Raindance)
– Editing Masterclass
(Raindance)
– Writing the Movie Business Plan
(Raindance)
– FIRST CLASS Diploma in Clinical Hypnotherapy (DCH)
(Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy at King’s College, London)
– ADVANCED Diploma in Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy (DHP)
(Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy at King’s College, London)
– Foundation in Clinical Hypnotherapy
(International NLP Trainers Association, London)
– Ultra Depth Hypnosis
(Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy at King’s College, London)
– Pain Management
(Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy at King’s College, London)
– Hypnosis and Entertainment
(Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy at King’s College, London)
– Sports Hypnosis
(Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy at King’s College, London)
– Level 1 EFT Practitioner
(Association for the Advancement of Meridian Energy Techniques, Sydney)
– Level 2 EFT Practitioner
(Association for the Advancement of Meridian Energy Techniques, Sydney)
– Level 3 EFT Practitioner (Advanced)
(Association for the Advancement of Meridian Energy Techniques, Sydney)
– Matrix Reimprinting Practitioner
(Association for the Advancement of Meridian Energy Techniques, Sydney)
– Eye Movement Therapies, inc. EMDR and EMI
(Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy at King’s College, London)
– Advanced Practitioner of NLP (inc. New Code NLP)
(International NLP Trainers Association, London)
– Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
(International NLP Trainers Association, London)
– Practitioner of Neuro–Linguistic Programming (NLP)
(International NLP Trainers Association, London)
– NLP Performance Enhancement Coach
(International NLP Trainers Association, London)
– Meditation & Mindfulness Training
(Mahasiddha Kadampa Meditation Centre @ Surry Hills Temple, Sydney)
The Proof Is In The Paperwork
I've won Gold Lions at Cannes and Yellow Pencils at D&AD, but NOTHING makes me prouder than the paper certificates which transformed me from a strung-out adman with an appetite for destruction, to a sustainable high performance coach with letters after my name: BA (Hons), DCH, DHP (1st), MNLP, ADv.EFT, MRP. GHR registered.
A Safe Space For Dangerous Ideas
As your coach I'll learn more about your life than most people who know you. So I figured that if I'm going to expect radical transparency from you, it's only fair I do the same in return. So, as promised, here's some dirt on yours truly. (Sorry if you're reading this mum!)
Hell no!
When I was in my mid twenties my mates called me UG (The Caveman). And I earned that name because I'd brought into the bullshit that creatives were meant to be totally and utterly nuts. So I fully exploited the fact.
For a while it was fun being UG. But eventually my twisted sense of normality sent me flying off the rails and into a dark and deep, burnout from hell.
Combine this frazzled state of mental and physical exhaustion with cornflakes and Heineken for breakfast, a relentless need to prove myself, and chronic OCD, and I can assure you that I was not the poster boy for mental and emotional stability.
6 years of conventional counselling made no absolutely difference to my level of emotional maturity. And for one reason or another, it was totally unable to leverage me off the mental bed of nails I'd chained myself to.
So, in a fit of desperation, I did what any Type-A adman would do. I decided to take matters into my own hands and fix my fear-soaked brain myself.
I'd been feverishly devouring Sigmund Freud, Carl Yung, and Gray's Anatomy books since I was a child (I know, fucking odd kid) so I already knew a shedload about the mind from a theoretical perspective.
This knowledge, combined with my crazy desire to do some DIY mind surgery, was enough to get me an interview with the founder of the Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy at King's College London, Nicola Martin. And I won't lie to you, I was shitting myself speaking psychology to this industry legend.
After and hour or so sweating bullets and praying to God that what I was saying was making sense, Nicola put me out of my misery and offered me a place on the 12 month professional diploma.
What I went on to learn on that course totally and utterly changed my life. And when I graduated I knew that I HAD to use these skills to help people break free from the needless suffering, self-destructive behaviours, and half-lived-lives that I'd spent so long subjecting myself to.
When the global financial crisis hit in 2008 friends started to confide in me about the fear and anxiety they felt as leaders with big jobs, big financial commitments, and a big chance of being laid-off.
Being part of a macho industry which prided itself on masochistic work practices, they knew that couldn't talk openly about their feelings, for fear of being bum-rushed out the building and blacklisted for life.
It seemed so unjust.
Because unlike the bankers who'd caused this mess, creative leaders didn't have executive coaches they could turn to for the psychological safety, sound advice, and sense of perspective they desperately needed and damn-well-deserved.
All that existed back then were councillors, therapists, and corporate consultants. None of which understood the complex creative psyche, and the mental, emotional, and physical pressure of churning out genius-on-demand.
So I doubled-down on my psychological studies and in 2012, after I'd spent 4 years sharpening my tools as a complex trauma specialist, I opened the doors to Leading Left with two missions.
1.Give creative leaders a world class alternative to the hundreds of thousands of corporate coaches and clunky councillors who have absolutely no clue what it's like to live with a creative brain.
2. End the needless suffering that psychological ignorance was causing my friends to go through.
The power of my own mind, but in two very different ways.
As a childhood student of Freud I grew up thinking my subconscious was an uncontrollable beast powered by deeply entrenched repression, aggression, and sexual frustration.
And because I had no reason not to buy into this bullshit, I wholeheartedly believed that if I spent too much time inside my own head, the darkness from within would rise up to the surface and completely fucking annihilate me.
After all, who the hell was I to know what was sitting inside my brain. It's not like I owned the thing, right?
But now that I know Freud was talking out of his bespeckled arse, getting too close to my subconscious mind is not the thing that scares me most, NOT being so close to my subconscious mind is where the real danger lies.
Because contrary to what Sickman Fraud preached, the truth is this: the subconscious mind is NOT your greatest enemy and biggest threat, it's your greatest ally and biggest protector.
And that's why I've dedicated the past decade of my career specialising in it, and why I adore this quote from Yung:
"Until you make the unconscious conscious it will dictate the course of your life and you shall call it fate.".
I grew up on a council estate on the outskirts of Birmingham.
The Sun newspaper cited my comprehensive school as the second worse in Britain.
Gang violence was rife on both sides of its gates, and two of my teachers were bullied to suicide.
If you tried to escape it by doing well in class you got your head kicked in. But if you joined a gang you got your head kicked in. Talk about a double bind.
"People like me are destined for the dole, prison, or the army," was what I believed.
And it was the career advice my headmaster encouraged.
That self-pitying, life-limiting piece of bullshit resulted in a LOT of negative thinking and toxic behaviour. But after I spent a night in the cells for hurling a dustbin through McDonald's' window (it was the Pernod & Black guv'), I knew something had to change, otherwise he would've been right.
I knew I'd fucked up big time that night, and I was deeply embarrassed by what I'd done because:
(a) I waited for the meat wagon to arrest me rather than leg it - like my bandmates did
(b) It was a fucking dumb thing to do in the first place
(c) The cops knew my dad
But, as they say in sports psychology, 'you win or you learn', and that lesson was enough to shake me awake from my council estate coma.
Through a sheer chance of luck I stubbled across a book in my brother's porno collection.
It was called 'Think And Grow Rich' by Norman Vincent Peale, and in its untouched pages I picked up many nuggets of wisdom.
But the thing that changed me most, was learning that when you take extreme ownership of your own life, and the state that it's in, the only walls that stand between you and a better one are the ones you build yourself. And I'd built some bloody big walls out of some bloody big chips...
However, when I listened to Norman's wise words, the walls in my head collapsed like they did in Berlin, and I was out of a victims mindset faster than you could say, "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet."
Often.
There's so much to learn and I'm just getting started.
