Paul: 0:29

Good afternoon and welcome to this week's episode of MarketPulse podcast. This incidentally is the very last episode that I'll be recording in 2024. Be interested to see what's actually happening when this gets released towards the end of April 2025. We're going to be four months away from when it actually gets released, probably more like five. But I'd like to welcome our guest for today's show is Christian Ray Flores. Christian, thank you very much for coming along to the show.

Christian: 0:54

You're very welcome and thank you for inviting me.

Paul: 0:57

I just wish I could get you out sooner. I've decided I'm not doing two episodes per week. I think it cheapens the podcast. I want to keep it one episode, but I'm desperate to get this episode out already. I know this is going to be a fantastic conversation. So a little bit of background on Christian is an entrepreneur, an international recording artist, philanthropist, and performance coach. That is an eclectic mix of skills and I can't wait to dive into your story. So sometimes when I have guests on the show, I can hardly believe the biography as I'm reading it out. It's amazing. So after rising to fame as a pop star in Eastern Europe, Christian then co founded Third Drive Media, where he's raised millions for startups and led award winning media projects. He's also founded Xponential Life, helping businesses and non profit leaders excel. He's a fluent speaker of not one, not two, not three, but four languages. And his journey includes philanthropic work in Mozambique and Ukraine, and he hosts the Headspace by Christian Flores podcast. Wow, like how do you have time to sit down and take the world in Christian? Cause it sounds like an incredibly busy life.

Christian: 2:09

Ah, it's easier than you think, actually. I think you, if you are set up for an eclectic childhood, I think you are much more comfortable with an eclectic professional life. probably how it happens, I think.

Paul: 2:24

So with that in mind, tell me about the childhood because you've got a phenomenal, like an inspiring story. I think a lot of the listeners will resonate with

Christian: 2:34

I'm actually not sure if they can relate to it cause it's just that insane, right? But they'll hopefully be inspired by it and take something out of it. So I'm very eclectic, right? So my mother is Russian, my dad's Chilean, which is an unusual mix. I was born in Moscow, but we moved to Chile when I was six months old. And that was it. That was the, it was supposed to be the, a long, a normal middle class professional life for my parents in the homeland of my dad until there was a military coup in 98, 73. And my dad ended up in a concentration camp, made it out of there. We were in a Refugees for a while. I was five years old when I was a refugee in a refugee facility. And then that basically sent us into the world. We were exiled like a whole bunch of people got exiled from Chile. And we ended up in Munich, Germany, then in Russia, in Africa, Mozambique. And so I observed a military coup in Chile by age five. I ended up in Mozambique by age 7. By age 8, there was already a civil war going on there. Those thankfully outside of the capital, not in the capital, but we saw a lot of bombings and things like that. And it was in the back as a backdrop. then by age 14, we, after the divorce of my parents, we went back to Russia. And then, Russia, which is, at the time, it was like the superpower that would never change, right before our eyes in 91, as I'm graduating from college, the whole thing falls apart. There was an attempted military coup, tanks in the streets of Moscow, kind of thing, so I was a witness to that as well, and then everything just turned. dramatically from all of those hardships and changes into me pursuing music. I became one of the top pop stars in that whole post Soviet space in about a year and a half, it was very quick. And, we went from being nobodies to playing sports arenas and, A year or two. And then campaigning for Boris Yeltsin against the communists in 96. used my song as the anthem for his campaign. And, so that's that's the backdrop of an eclectic life that I was referring to, you can't be a normal person after that. I don't think.

Paul: 4:43

what's normal anyway, right? What is normal?

Christian: 4:47

overrated.

Paul: 4:48

That's amazing. I can't imagine that too much phases you on the back of being through all that.

Christian: 4:53

Yeah. That's one of the superpowers you get. And that's what actually helps you become a good entrepreneur because you're okay with discomfort, failure, rejection, the normal stuff that comes with starting new things.

Paul: 5:03

So then. How did you get from being a pop star to a performance coach? That's what I'm trying to say.

Christian: 5:08

Oh, that's actually, that's an easy trajectory. Once I explain it to you, so I'm. I'm a high performance guy, right? So I'm at the peak of my career. I speak four different languages. I can learn new things fairly quickly because of some of the, some of the gifts that come from being moving all the time. You have this almost like about culture, about human nature, about languages, what the power of words, you're able to do, create music that moves millions of people. Clearly you have gears, right? I have gears. I have gears. what? Most gifted, high performance people have very flat sides, low performance sides to their lives, right? It just seems to be a rule. really good at something and you're terrible at other things. And for me, I realized that, as I'm literally have a number one hit and I'm clinically depressed because of romance and I'm such a inadequate person when it comes to family and romance, cause all of my three generations of my family have broken homes. I just have, I don't have no, no intuition in that. I have intuition in how to move a crowd. I don't have intuition how to build a family. I come across this Canadian missionary in Moscow, who is a very special guy, right? And he just has this incredible family. And I said, can you, I get what you got? That was like my direct, I quote exactly how I said it and he says, Hey, I'll teach you. And that was my first coach. And it just changed my life. And it woke me up to the reality of a, every high performer needs a coach because we all have massive flat sides that eventually they catch up with us and prevent us from doing the very high performance that we like doing, right? That's one thing. Second is if you get guidance, you accelerate your growth. What takes you 10 years will take you one year, basically, that sort of stuff. and that just woke me up to that reality because it just transformed my life and it went beyond that. So in romance and family, I literally couldn't hold a relationship. I just sabotaged every single one of them. I was You know, was like really terrible. And then after the coaching from this guy, I was able to, understand, Oh, this is how you choose a mate in the first place so that you don't regret it later, this is how you court somebody. This is how you marry somebody. This is how you stay married. And so I now I've been married for 25 years. I have three beautiful children. We're a super happy family. So the thing that was literally my weakest. Part of my life is now my strongest,

Paul: 7:35

Amazing.

Christian: 7:36

about marriage and parenting, right? So it's just so extraordinary that you can do that as in, in the span of just a few years. So I never stopped that really. Really opened my eyes I started coaching other people. First it was just Hey, somebody did this for me. I can do this for you. That kind of thing. And I ended up coaching Olympic athletes and fashion designers and artists and people like that, right? And and for a while it, it was in Russia. So for a while I was like I'm a celebrity here, so that's probably why people come to me. then moved to the states. turns out actually in the States, same thing happens. Eventually I put two and two together and I never stopped learning and I created my own frameworks, my own methodologies and sort of ways to teach and coach somebody. And that's how, that's the trajectory for performance coaching.

Paul: 8:26

I think that's a beautiful gift to be able to take a gift like that's been passed on to you and then to have the confidence to then relay that information and tell that to someone else and have that same profound effect on their life. I can imagine that's extremely rewarding for you.

Christian: 8:46

It's extraordinarily rewarding. It really is. Yeah. It took me a while to. Understand what you said, that is a gift, that it's a gift that should be systematized, implemented. Because at first I was just so grateful, I was just doing it really more organically over the overflow of my heart. But it took me a while to say, Oh, I actually have, that's, there's a reason why people keep coming to me. So I think I have. It's almost like this, it is a gift. It's not just talent or skill. It's a gift. It's a, there's a secret sauce of some sort and I need to own it and I need to now steward it to, for the benefit of others. So that took longer, basically, that, that confidence in, okay, I think this is a thing.

Paul: 9:33

That's amazing. We touched on before the show started, before we hit the record button, the value of being able to tell stories and even just the simple version of the story that you've given us there. And I'm sure there are some, individual stories and learnings amongst that, that, that would blow people away even more than just the original story. How important is storytelling to you as an individual?

Christian: 9:56

I realized early on, I think. First. Through, being part of community, a community of exiles, we had this very strange okay, you're in West, you're in Mozambique and you have a community of 150 families are Chileans that were exiled. Most of them were imprisoned or tortured. That's why they're exiled. And most of them were, So they were brought into this new country that just got its independence from Portugal to help build an economy. So it's a very niche group of people, right? And because it's very niche and it's immigrants, they all band together a lot. we had these sort of. Every Sunday would meet at the beach with food and music and playing soccer and that kind of thing, right? they would meet at homes and just hang out and then they would do parties and the kids were friends I think that was honestly the genesis of it because you almost imagine a biblical narrative Of Israel and Babylon, right? Jerusalem is destroyed. They're enslaved. They're in this foreign land. It was like that, like I, when I read that account, I'm like, I know exactly how it feels

Paul: 11:06

Yeah,

Christian: 11:07

So when you're thrown out of your natural environment, it's almost like you consolidate the exiles together and all they do, all they have is stories. And the stories about their lives, stories about the country of origin, the country they're in, stories about injustice or justice or stories about, tyranny. So these high concepts all of a sudden get concentrated in storytelling in, in a very tight community. I think that's where it comes from personally. Then eventually, obviously I studied storytelling I, you, you study the myth, the mythology of different nations. The classic book, The Hero of a Thousand in a Thousand Faces or a Hundred Faces, I don't remember. But it's basically this idea of the hero's journey, right? Which is now taught in universities, film. You make every marketing person knows the hero's journey. What are the main elements of the hero's journey? And the reason for that is because it's, it's a universal language. Of how we make meaning of our, of the world around us. We don't make meaning in just separate, isolated concepts. So we make meaning in, in, in storytelling narratives. It sticks that way. So I think it's very primal in us all. And that's why we love films and theater plays and operas and ballets and books, things like that.

Paul: 12:29

and yet it's interesting that so many business owners struggle to come up with a convincing storyline and to be able to tell their own story for their business in order to find the right customers or investment or, and that's something that you've played heavily into, right?

Christian: 12:46

I, yeah, absolutely. It's an art, but you can, everybody, anybody can learn it. That's the beautiful thing about it. So we've helped a bunch of startups, tech startup founders. Position their brand, only for the customer, but also no less importantly for the investor. just a different story. You have to understand what the, what is the story you're telling to the investor, right? And once you put that hat on of the hero's journey, once you understand sort of these pillar concepts it becomes incredibly powerful. But if you don't know, All you're doing is throwing facts or stats at the person and, things that you think will convince them and they don't, and a lot of, especially tech founders, they're, really not storytellers by, by, neither by talent or by training. They're coders, they're engineers. So they know how to build things, but they don't know how to tell the story of the things they built. So that's one of the things that I do. I have a marketing company that does some of that stuff and now does it increasingly actually for people who are speakers, writers, influencers, coaches, because they need a personal brand it's the best time in the history of humanity to develop your personal brand so helping somebody really tell their story well. And how do you position it, package it, how do you tell it organically and tap into the deepest passions of the person, which makes them much more credible, much more authoritative. It's a beautiful thing as well, right? And it's hard to do it yourself, even for I'm, this is what I do for others. It's hard work to do because you are objectively subjective about your thing. So you have to really focus about your own brand. and I do it continuously. Like it does not stop. The rebranding of me never stops because it's a little slower and harder to tell the story objectively, right? From the outside in.

Paul: 14:37

It's an evolving story, right?

Christian: 14:39

It really is. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: 14:41

It's interesting,

Christian: 14:42

not.

Paul: 14:43

the last episode that we recorded was a second visit to the show by Adrian Fulle, who started his career in Hollywood, learning from some of the greatest producers the world's ever seen. And, he tells the very first episode he did, he dived into the hero's journey. And it's the first time I'm not marketing classically trained, right? Like I've not been to university and studied marketing or sales. Part of the reason why I wanted to build the podcast I like to absorb from other people and understand things. And he talked me through the concept of hero's journey. And I just thought, you know what, that none of that's complicated. That's simple. It's so simple. It's not.

Christian: 15:20

the blueprint, yeah, get the blueprint, you know what to do. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing.

Paul: 15:25

It is. And it's, like you said, I think it's in it. So we're consciously seeking it out. We just don't know that we're doing it. It's you hear a story and if you haven't got the bad guy there, the evil in the world, or the injustice that's been done to the hero, you don't, you can't say that's why the story isn't resonating, but you just don't feel the highs and the lows that you should do if the story's being told properly. And that's it. And then I get another, a group of people who were like I don't want to tell a story for my business because my business is, conversation analytics or it's AI and it's this, that, and the other. I'm like, yeah, but people don't care about your product, especially investors. don't care about your product so much. They want to know about you and the journey you've been on and the founding team, and how did you get where you are and why should they believe in what you can do? And I think that's the real power behind a story is being able to convey your values through your journey.

Christian: 16:56

Yeah, absolutely. And I think even a higher level of storytelling when you're marketing a business is, you make the client, customer, your hero. And then through your marketing efforts, you tell their story to them. And that is the higher level of the art form. I think in marketing and strategy,

Paul: 17:16

So then you've got a really global perspective on so many things, and I could sit here quite happily and pick your brains for hours on some of the things that you've been through. How do you feel that storytelling changes across the world or does it? Is it, is a story in a matter of where you go culturally?

Christian: 17:32

I think a story is a story everywhere you go. And that's the concept of the hero's journey was actually developed by this guy, Joseph Campbell. he wrote, that's the whole idea is that he wrote the hero with a thousand faces. as basically a treatise on comparative mythology. Like all of these global sort of cultures and how, what they have in common, basically. So there's always a protagonist and antagonist and, the, of the journey, the hero needs to. Change, doesn't want to change. There's an inciting incident, then there's the messy middle. Then there's sort of an evolution of how, of that person changing. And then he comes back and gifts what he has learned to his community or her community. That's there's, and there's much more complex breakdowns of the hero's journey, but that's basically the gist of it. but if you think about it Everything is story, right? You can actually I was a guest on an episode yesterday, where the gentleman was focused on affairs and he said, can you spend a lot of time with Russia. And he's an American guy, a Marine, and he, just very curious. And he said, tell me about, is that? Why is the Cold War this whole Russia thing, the evolution of Cold War now? What is, why is it happening? And I was telling him, I said, look, it's a story. It's all about the story. story of the Russian people is different from the story of the liberal democracies, of classic liberalism of the West. Period. That is the core of all of it. else is just commentary, nuance, and situational context, right? But really, it's a foundational clash of stories. what it is.

Paul: 19:12

That's a fascinating way of, and again, as you say it, I'm sat here thinking, yeah, I can see that it is it's not a thing complicated, you just need somebody to point that out to you.

Christian: 19:22

Yeah.

Paul: 19:23

From your perspective then, working with so many startups, What's the biggest game changer for them in terms of getting started telling their story? What's the, where do you take them when you want to take them on that journey where they start to share their journey in a way that makes sense for whichever party?

Christian: 19:41

It's this, it's almost there's a duality to it, which actually you and I touched upon earlier, and that's, I think, a good hint. Is that, You said, what is your story as the founder, as the business owner? I think that is where you start, right? basically the idea is what is it that motivates you? What's the why behind it? Makes your what is your vision, your mission, and your solution? That's one of the frameworks that I use when I help people. And the idea is that is. If you have a mission and it takes time to tap into a mission, most people are afraid to even think that they have a mission basically, right? I'm like, I'm not special enough to have a mission. Yes, you are. I think you are. And that's sort of part of the coaching work that goes into that, right? When I, that's usually on the performance coaching part, right? It's, who are you? What makes you unique? Every, and everybody's unique. So there's no such thing. And people are afraid to go there because they go what if I'm not unique? If I'm just middle of the road kind of guy, no, you're not. were convinced by your society, your parents, your friends, whatever. It was beat out of you, but you are unique and let's figure that out. So that's the mission piece. And it's also fluid and it changes with time, right? It evolves. It has these learned, these curves and a wiggly line, not a straight line. The second is, then once you get a really clear understanding of the mission, that the thing that drives you beyond, financial limitations, I don't have no, I don't have staff, I don't have, I don't have these skills, I don't have marketing budget, I don't have investors, all of the things, all of the illusion of limited resources. That's the thing that Takes you through those things is your mission. You just won't stop until you find the resources, basically. then you need to develop a vision also, and the vision is, okay, based on the mission, I can imagine myself in a relatively short time, two or three years. Not 10 years, because then you won't follow through and it's too vague, right? But 2 3 years. What do you see yourself? What does your ideal day look like, week like, year look like? What is your schedule is? What is your financial situation? So you start developing that vision. And then, you can actually come up with something very crisp and super exciting. Because now you have a vision, you have a, the next thing you develop is a solution. Okay, how do you get there? What skills do you need to acquire? What partnerships, strategic partnerships, what strategies, what, what fine tuning of your marketing do you need? All of those things that very, that seem very mundane and sometimes overwhelming. you, if you have a mission, a vision, the solution will come. And so the duality of it is that you do it for yourself. And then you do it for your clients and your customers, right? Then you can think in the same way, in the same structured way, you can say, Oh, here's the guy, here's the girl I want to help with this particular product or service. What is her, does she want? And then what kind of. What can, how can I solve it? And then the solution is how can I solve it uniquely based on my unique giftedness, my mission, my vision. So that's how you develop an offering that is very specific and therefore irresistible to the right person. So that's the key there. So it's your story. And then it evolves into, Oh, I can now imagine I can embody, I can feel what my client feels. Like literally I can be in their mind. And once you get to that place of clarity, you can be, you're completely unstoppable as a professional.

Paul: 23:15

And yet I still speak to businesses who aren't even clear on who their target persona is, let alone what's inside their head, because they don't want to do those hard yards. It's hard, right? You make it sound very simple there, but I know that's a lot of digging, a lot of soul searching, a lot of,

Christian: 23:29

It's very hard. Yeah.

Paul: 23:30

Yeah, it's not a, I,

Christian: 23:32

need a mission because the mission that firing you. will drive you through the heart. Like I still almost weekly have a revelation what is the pain point of my client, of my ideal client, in more nuance and more context. But I obsess over it because I have a mission. And even my solution evolves because now I have a slight, just a teeny, maybe 1 percent better understanding of the pain points of the needs of my clients,

Paul: 23:59

I often talk to people about, it's what you should be selling to people, your service, your product, whatever it is, it's less about how you do it, it's more about solving the problems that other person complains to their wife or their husband about over dinner on a night. That's the thing that you really need to help them fix. And to your point, you need to do it in a unique way, because that's where the value really comes from. That's how you can make it yours. I love that way of describing what you've just said. And it resonates a lot with some of the things that I've heard and seen and especially on the podcast. That's, it's really powerful advice. And I hope that the people at home who's watching or listening along on You take that advice and do something with it, granted, it's not going to fix your problems tomorrow. It's not going to fix, this time next week. But if you start to work on those things and you spend the time and the energy on those instead of the day to day things that will solve themselves naturally. Then that's how you'll start to be able to live the life you want to live. I think that's the important thing is you're not just talking about helping people build a business, you're helping them create the life that they want to live themselves, right? Cause that's the other side of what you do.

Christian: 25:13

I will now, if you have a mission and you have a vision and you have a solution that starts working for people Now you're providing them with a vision and mission solution. Your life becomes such a passionate place and it's inseparable. Work is inseparable from your personal life anymore. It's integrated. And I think that's what everybody wants in their soul, right? don't want to just be a cog, a machine somewhere, or especially in somebody else's machine, So, but we become, we I think we settled to be a cog because it offers some security, some. Predictability, some safety but and it's fine to actually do it, be a cog and then become artist on the side until the artists on the side can displace the cog part, right? And you can dedicate more time to it.

Paul: 25:57

It resonates because, I'll often talk with my wife and my wife comes from a, regular B2C environment. She's a nursery nurse, right? Like by trade. And we talk and she's like, how can you be so confident that you're going to do this thing? Because I believe in it. I know, I'll find a way. I have to find a way. There will be a way to do it. I will find a way and I will solve that problem. And she really can't get her head around why I think so differently to her. And I can't live like she does either. And we're good together, right? We make a good, we make a good couple together. that difference in vision is hard, super hard for some people to get their head around because they've never experienced it. And I resonate completely with what you've said, because I know there are things I just can't explain. I just make them happen. I'm not going to say I, I'm not somebody who's into affirmations or anything like that. I'm not going to say I make things materialize, but because I believe so passionately in what I'm doing, I will find the doors that open to make things work. And I think anybody who's super passionate about what they do will say the same thing, right?

Christian: 26:55

they will, they will. And I think, honestly, I think, I used to think, okay, some people were created that way, like what you're saying, I just, this is how I'm wired. I now believe that everybody's created to be that, and we can rediscover that. So let's say your wife she's a nurse, And perhaps she does value stability, of predictability, routine. and that's not a bad thing, but she can certainly discover a deeper level of mastery, even in the profession, in the vocation that she has, now makes her extraordinary leader, a thought leader in that field. If that vocation is driven by a deep sense of purpose and passion, you can actually truly develop that into kinds of things in that exact field. You don't even have to basically. People, we are trained by kinds of things, right? Our environment. Our society, our family, et cetera, to be a certain way. But I really think deeply, deep down inside, all of us are creators of things. And to the extent that we're have the courage to, Explore it, be coached in it, develop it, nurture it. Every single person I think can do that.

Paul: 28:13

Amazing words to leave us on. I thank you very much for being the final recording episode of 2024, Christian. If anybody is inspired by the words that you've said today with your story, and they want to reach out and find out a little bit more, what's the best way for people to contact you?

Christian: 28:27

Okay. So if you are inspired to the degree that you just want to hear more from me every once in a while, newsletter is probably the best thing to to subscribe to. drops every Sunday. You go to ChristianRayFlores. com and you just leave your email address and that's it. You're, you'll get a lot of this, a lot of goodness every Sunday. If you are like sitting there going, Oh, this guy just changed my life. I need to be coached by him. You can go to my coaching page and it's exponential. life. And exponential is spelled without an E, starts with an X, exponential. life. And you can just see the offerings we have, the opportunities we have. There's a great resource there called the Exponential Scorecard that is free. And you can just answer a bunch of questions and, really, it's a great way to find out where are you now along the most important dimensions of life. So you will enjoy that if you take that.

Paul: 29:21

I love that. I might just take you up on that myself. Thank you very much, Christian. Have a fantastic holiday. I hope you get to spend some time with your family and get some downtime. That's much needed. No doubt. And thank you very much if you're watching along in the show. Thank you very much for subscribing, for following along and let me know how you found this week's episode. Drop me an email, drop me a message on LinkedIn. I'll always love to hear from the the followers of the show. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.