In this episode of the Grow Fast podcast, host Mark Shriner sits down with Christian Ray Flores, a remarkable entrepreneur, performance coach, and philanthropist who has lived in six countries across four continents. From his early days navigating political upheaval in Chile and the Soviet Union to becoming a top pop star in Russia, Christian shares an extraordinary journey of resilience, adaptability, and personal transformation that has shaped his unique worldview and approach to life and business.
Christian delves into his current work as a performance coach, revealing the critical importance of inner development and emotional self-regulation for high achievers. He discusses his innovative approach to personal branding in the age of AI, and shares insights from his philanthropic efforts with the Ascend Academy in Mozambique, where he helps children from extreme poverty develop skills, confidence, and hope for a better future. His mission is rooted in the belief that with the right mentorship and opportunities, individuals can transcend their circumstances and create meaningful change.
Throughout the conversation, Christian offers practical wisdom on building a fulfilling life, including his morning routine for peak performance, the importance of community, and strategies for continuous personal growth. He candidly discusses his own challenges, including overcoming depression and rebuilding his life after achieving international music success, providing listeners with inspiring and actionable insights into personal development, resilience, and finding one's unique path in an ever-changing world.
You can find the whole episode of the Grow Fast Podcast with Christian Ray Flores here:
Xponential Life
Ascend Academy
https://www.ascendmission.fund/
The Grow Fast Podcast is brought to you by Breeze, the fastest, easiest, and lowest-cost way to process RFPs, RFIs, security questionnaires, and other important documents.
Breeze
This is the transcript for this episode:
Mark Shriner [00:00]
Welcome to The Grow Fast Podcast where we talk with leading sales, marketing and personal growth experts about how companies can accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow their businesses fast. Let's go.
Mark Shriner [00:14]
Hey, Christian, how are you?
Christian Ray Flores [00:16]
I'm good, man, thanks for having me.
Mark Shriner [00:18]
Hey, my pleasure. And just before you told me that you're in Austin, how long have you been in Austin?
Christian Ray Flores [00:24]
I've been here for 13 years. It's crazy.
Mark Shriner [00:28]
Yeah. I mean, you've lived all over the world
Christian Ray Flores [00:30]
All over the world, yeah
Mark Shriner [00:31]
On your journey to the US. Let's stick with the US for a second.
Christian Ray Flores [00:37]
Sure.
Mark Shriner [00:37]
Have you lived in other places in the US?
Christian Ray Flores [00:39]
Yes, I've lived in Philly for a little bit just outside of Philly, South Florida, Los Angeles, and then Austin.
Mark Shriner [00:46]
Okay, what's the number one thing about Austin that is different from any other place in the US?
Christian Ray Flores [00:53]
It's sort of it's a very interesting blend of good food, live music, tech,
Mark Shriner [01:04]
Wow!
Christian Ray Flores [01:05]
So, it's an unusual combo, and it's also, it feels like a small town. You can have coffee with almost anyone, but it's sort of significant. It's a little bit over a million so it doesn't feel like a massively large city.
Mark Shriner [01:20]
Okay, that's interesting, because Seattle is roughly the same size, if you take in the Seattle East Side, yeah, area as well. Also, good food, good music and tech, I would say, though the prices here are pretty high, whether that's housing or going out to eat, I love to go out and eat. I lived in Asia for 2025, years, off and on. I just love to go out to, you know, local restaurants, and it's very convenient to do that there, it's very affordable. I don't even care what country, even Japan these days, is affordable. Here it's, it'll set you back a bit. So what's it like in Austin?
Christian Ray Flores [01:53]
It's okay. I think it's probably less than Seattle, that. That'll be my guest. But it's expensive for Texas. Austin is the most expensive place in Texas when it comes to cost.
Mark Shriner [02:06]
I didn't realize it, yeah, it's such a cool place, right?
Christian Ray Flores [02:10]
And you got there, and everybody else is, Joe Rogan's there. Elon Musk is here, you know, the cyber trucks are here, the whole thing, right? So, yeah, they've driven a lot of these people that moved here with, you know, hope, I think even, I think you just mentioned also offline, some of these big ones, they have corporate offices here as well. So, you know, there's a lot of tech, so that drove up the crisis. But it's also the most desirable place in Texas, because it's hilly. There's Hill Country, there's wine, there's rivers, there's forests. So, it doesn't feel like a desert, you know, yeah. And like, you would imagine Texas being, you know, our vision, it doesn't feel that way.
Mark Shriner [02:48]
Yeah, you know. And then if you're not in the city, it's all like farmland and sage Bucha, you know, the typical
Christian Ray Flores [02:53]
That's what I thought when I came, yeah, when I first visited, I was like, Oh, this is gonna be like, you know, cowboys, horses in the flat, they might desert a sort of place, but it was not.
Mark Shriner [03:04]
That's awesome. And hey, I want to talk to you about the work you do as a performance coach, performance coach. And you know how you motivate people and how you help them. But before we get into that, maybe we can talk a little bit about your background, because you have a very unique background. I think if you immigrated to at least a couple different countries as you were growing up, you might have had a bit of a refugee status. I'm not sure I did. Yeah, I did. So maybe can, you know, just tell us a condensed version of, you know, your childhood, and then how did you end up? What was the route you took to get here to the US?
Christian Ray Flores [03:40]
It was, yeah, it was, this is literally my sixth country in my fourth continent, okay? And basically, yeah, it started pretty dramatically.
Mark Shriner [03:48]
We've been to Antarctica, but every, every place else you've been, pretty much
Christian Ray Flores [03:51]
Exactly, yeah. So I was, like, I was, we lived in Chile, my dad's Chile and my mom's Russia. We lived in Chile for a while. There was a massive military coup when, when the refugees, a bunch of people died. Got you know, my dad was in a concentration camp, so we were out of there. We received asylum in Germany. I started over there for then my mom wanted to go back to Russia. I went there. We were poor, lived in, like, this communal apartment situation, like, sort of the worst you can imagine about the Soviet Union. That's what it was. And then my dad got this offer to go to Africa. So, by age seven, I moved to Africa. This was literally my third continent in my fourth country by age seven, and I grew up there about a year in, there was a civil war that started up north. So, we got bombings in the city, that kind of thing. So, it was very chaotic, very unstable, but also fun, especially in Africa. There was just, I was sort of this free-range child, and we're in the tropics, so we did all kinds of fun stuff there. And then eventually there was another crisis. My parents got divorced, and we relocated back to the Soviet Union. The worst years before the whole thing was already sort of rotting from the inside, right? It was the mid 80s, and, yeah, we ended up in a wide bedroom apartment, again, the same thing, right? I slept in the kitchen for a few years, and when the whole thing fell apart right after I was graduating, I was graduating from college with a degree in economics. And I was musical my whole time. So I decided to do music out, you know, like 21-year-olds want to do music right, more than going to banking sure which, which is what I did. And, and I just happened to be, you know, lucky and hardworking and talented, and, you know, became one of the top pop stars in Russia for about a decade. Oh, that's amazing. That is all that territory of the ex Soviet Union, so 15 different countries.
Mark Shriner [05:49]
That's amazing. And I'm sure we could spend hours just talking about those places. Yeah, and I did notice in your profile that you went to or it looks like a Russian University. So, did you learn Russian?
Christian Ray Flores [06:02]
Yeah, I mean, I spoke it from birth. My mom's Russian, so behind me, you can't see it. You probably see this little frame thing, yeah, the bottom. So, it's basically two columns. It's an old page, like it's yellow now, and it's Spanish and Russian words that I learned first when I was a baby. So, they wrote it down.
Mark Shriner [06:19]
Well, your mom was very enlightened to, you know, to speak Russian to you so that you have that foundation. Yeah, you weren't originally in Russia. You ended up there a couple times.
Christian Ray Flores [06:29
But then I learned two more by age nine, when I was in Africa, which was Portuguese and English.
Mark Shriner [06:35]
Yeah, great, man, yes. I was like, I'm gonna call when I go on my next, you know, trans global trip.
Christian Ray Flores [06:43
Yes, exactly the International Man of Mystery, yeah,
Mark Shriner [06:47]
If you can look back at that, you know those experiences, especially, let's just say, up until your teenage years. I'm sure there was a lot of hardship, but what? What were some, maybe one of the one or two most important things that you learned, or what were some of the, you know, positives that you were able to take away from that experience?
Christian Ray Flores [07:09]
Oh, there was so much, actually, you know, it's a long list. I would say that probably number one would be, I would say number one, number two, number one is that the advantage over somebody who grew up in the first world is that people in the first world have it so good that their fear of hardship prevents them from doing bold things. So, when you go through a lot of hardships early on, and you go, it's actually not a big deal, then you're much more able to take risks because you're not. You're less afraid to fail to hit, sort of a rock bottom, the imaginary rock bottom everybody imagines. So, I think that's one. It's that it gives you much more, you know, I'm just, I can take suffering more easily, right? Yep, and I'm okay with it. And it's actually not that, not that hard to take mild suffering, actually, so it's mostly imaginary, and blocks us the whole thing. So, the second one, I think, is that if any, if nothing is certain, then everything is possible. And it's sort of, in my life, very experientially; uncertainty was that that was there, like the underpinning of life. So again, in the West, we are so, we were addicted to certainty. We want to guarantee X, Y and Z.
Mark Shriner [08:25]
I think we're addicted to the illusion of it, because there is
Christian Ray Flores [08:29]
Yeah, there is no certainty. But that illusion, that desire to feel that way, it's something I think that is, I would say limiting, to people who grew up, you know, in relative comfort and safety.
Mark Shriner [08:44]
It's funny, a couple things come to mind. I think it was Seneca, who was one of the, you know, Roman Stoist Philosophers, yeah, and he made a practice of it was like four or five times a year where he would just take nothing from his house, just his robe, just, you know, and go out and, yeah, sleep outside in a park for two weeks and have to beg for food and just get by. Because he thought, you know, that would teach him a couple of things. One, it made him so much more appreciative of all the comforts that he had when he got back home. Yeah. Two, he realized that if I lose everything, I can still survive, because people want that certainty and they're afraid of that risk and losing things, right? Yeah, exactly it, yeah. So, you know, you learn the same thing as some of the great philosophers. Let's jump forward a bit here. You know, how did you end up here in the US?
Christian Ray Flores [09:50]
Well, I married an American and she actually moved from the US to be with me in Russia. So, our children were born in Russia and Ukraine. We lived in Ukraine for a little bit. And we had no intention to move into the US. She's sort of this kid, you know, this American kid from Wisconsin who had an early international experience. She went in as an exchange student to Brazil. And she just loved living abroad. And she always wanted to live abroad, not in the US. So, she moved to be with me. And of course, I was a fan of America my whole life, you know, American culture, entrepreneurship, freedom, the whole thing, right? I'm definitely a Western thinking kind of guy, but I had this, I had a brand over there, right? So, I mean, sold millions of albums. And, you know, I could, you can do a lot of things when you have an established brand. So, I wasn't going to give that up. And then what happened is, as she was having babies. Deb's autoimmune issues became an issue because of the climate. The climate had an unexpectedly negative effect on her, so she was getting worse and worse. And basically I just said, Look, we can't, we can't stay. You're not going to be healthy here. We have to move. So, we sort of made that jump, that leap, and started over because, of course, here, no one knows or cares who I am. And, right, that's okay.
Mark Shriner [11:05]
So, you know, you had this image of America before you got here, yeah, and yeah, a lot of people have the image like, again, I spent a lot of time in Asia. And people have the image of, you know, Hollywood, you know, everything they told the movies, all the good, bad and the ugly of Hollywood depiction of life in America. And they get here and they're like, Wow, it's a little bit different. You know, what was, what was what you expected, and what was unexpected?
Christian Ray Flores [11:33]
Well, actually, Hollywood itself was unexpectedly basic, right? Remember the first time I came to the states, and of course, I go to Hollywood. I want to go and see the stars on the pavement, and it's like a dump, right?
Mark Shriner [11:49]
Yeah, really, it definitely is. A few years back with my kids, and I was like, God, I don't think I should have my kids around here.
Christian Ray Flores [11:55]
I know it's just so basic and not glamorous at all and everything. So, it's really more a facade, more of a symbol, right? So that obviously was there. But I would say most things, I was very, I was just extraordinarily impressed with, right? You know, everything from sort of the high-level stuff of freedom of speech, you're not going to be arrested for saying something you're not afraid of the police, for example, right? The police are the police. They're doing their work. The infrastructure you can travel all over the US and the roads are basically equally awesome everywhere. You know, the stores are equally awesome everywhere. Grocery stores are equally awesome everywhere. And you know, you Americans don't realize that that's not normal, right? If you go to the third world, you have one or two major cities. You go 150 miles out, and it's like a precipitous drop in everything so, so and having that such a massive country, have all of this to me that was mind blowing. I mean, everything from, again, the sort of, the lack of bureaucratic heaviness, lower taxes, how easy it is to start a business like the list goes on and on and on. I'm a big fan, basically.
Mark Shriner [13:16]
Yeah. In fact, I think I heard that you're writing a book, or maybe you've already finished it. I did, yeah, yes, the little book of big reasons to love
Christian Ray Flores [13:24]
America here. So, it was born from those observations, I would say to Deb, you don't understand, this is a big deal, right? And I should go, I don't know, you know, seems like a normal thing for me. So, I would. So eventually, when things got really ugly, I feel like there was a season after COVID, approximately where the levels of self, self loathing and culture in American culture were peaking. And I was looking at her going, What is wrong with these people? Right? It's like they should be more grateful and she was like, just write a book. You tell me all these observational times. So basically, I did. I wrote 10 chapters, 10 Reasons to love America. And then it is, it's a very optimistic book. There's all kinds of illustrations, archival pictures, so it's very multimedia, lots of crazy stories from the third world, because I try to contrast, you know, but also, there's, in every chapter, there's a little bit of a warning of, hey, you know, please don't import this ideology or this way of thinking, because that's not going to help you. So, yeah, no, it's true.
Mark Shriner [14:26]
One of the things that I really appreciate about America is the social mobility. And, yeah, you know, you listen to some of the rhetoric out there, and it's like, oh, America's got, you know, all these structural barriers and everything. I was like people, you have no idea. Think about the caste system. Think about a class system. Think about, think about, you know, if living in a country, and there are many countries around the world where maybe in 2030, families control everything and everything in one of those families, you don't have any, right? And there's no it does. It matters if you, if nobody in your family, went to university, guess what? You're not going to university. I mean, here, I've seen it time and time again, where people have just remade themselves several times over, absolutely, you know. And you know, it's a country where immigrants for hundreds of years. I've come here and done amazing things. So, yeah, you know, I'll step down from my soapbox. There are, obviously, we do have some issues and stuff like that, but you can, you can do a couple things. You can focus only on the issues, or you can look at the positives, or maybe you can kind of look at both in a balanced manner. You know, I think that's probably healthier, which kind of leads you to come to America, and at some point you decide, I think you're doing a couple different businesses right now. One, you're doing performance coaching, personal performance coaching. You're also doing some work in Africa to help children. There is that, right?
Christian Ray Flores [16:02]
Yeah. So I actually do three things. So the Africa thing is basically three, only three. I'm trying to, yeah. I'm actually paring it down to three, you know. But basically Africa is just an after school academy. I just had this idea. I did a lot of work in philanthropy for a few years, especially first, when I first landed so I learned at the highest level, I was overseeing projects of multi million dollar projects in charity, and I realized there's certain ways of doing charity that that actually propagate poverty and others that don't right. So explain, well, for example, a lot of these sort of big agencies that essentially are almost like have a monopoly to access massive funds from the government. A lot of them really are not incentivized to do transformational work. They're incentivized to just show Excel sheets with numbers, right? So the people on the ground there, so there's a chain reaction, right? And obviously they're all designed to do, to do good, but a lot of them just don't solve the problem. They're almost like a welfare state version of an international charity, for example, right?
Mark Shriner [17:14]
Yeah, if you were to solve the problem, then their reason for being would be, yeah, exactly.
Christian Ray Flores [17:18]
So they're not incentivized to solve the problem, per se, so they don't do it now, there are exceptions, war emergency situations, absolutely. There are exceptions where you have just kept people alive. I get it, sure, but generally speaking, there's tons of money that goes into charities that don't solve a problem. And I'm sort of entrepreneurial, and I'm like, You know what I can if I can get a kid to have some self esteem, like, believe that they can do something, some character training, some mentorship, if they can speak English, and they can learn how to use a computer and an internet connection, and we can give them some skills from like, basically, to receive to A basic internet you can be a freelancer on Fiverr, right, right by age 15, you can probably, you can get out of poverty. So that was sort of the idea. And so we've been doing this for a few years now. If you want to check it out, it's ascend.academy. That's the after school academy.
Mark Shriner [18:16]
And I mean, just give me an idea of like, how do you pick a location, hire people, and then how do you pick which students are going to come through the program, and even the creation of the program? Question, yeah, so.
Christian Ray Flores [18:29]
So we came up with a curriculum base. Actually, I don't even remember how we source it, but we have one, and it works. I basically went to Mozambique. Well, how did I pick the location? Well, A, one of the poorest countries in the world. B, I have the advantage of having grown up there, speak the language, know the history, so I can connect with the locals. So we went there, we did sort of a scouting trip and everything, and I presented the idea to a few people that might be interested. So one like, obviously, we needed a leader. So I had to convince this one guy who was just extraordinary, international, guy who worked for the World division, to have his own business. I'm like, look, I need someone who is local but has some Western thinking, so you can sort of make things happen. So I convinced him over breakfast. He said no. Then he said, Yes. So okay, I have that piece. Then I went to a local church, and I said, You, I would love for you to give me some volunteers. What we'll do, we'll rent that you see that building over there, that you it's not bringing you money. We'll rent that, you know, several times a week. Give you some money, and you give an opportunity to your church members to go mentor these kids about character stuff like that. Do you have people who speak English? Yes, you have people who do it? Yes, perfect. This is it. This is so, anyway, so. And then to pick the kids, we went to a local middle school in an area that was super poor and right, right outside of Maputo Mozambican. We're talking about. But most, most of those kids, the families, make under $2 a day. That's how they live, you know. So it's extreme poverty, like, officially extreme extreme poverty, worst of the worst. And they live in these sort of shanty towns right around the city, just like you see it in favelas in Brazil or Mexico City, all of those places where, you know, there's just no infrastructure there, but it's better than living out there somewhere for them. Yeah. So those are the kids, and they go to this middle school, thankfully provided by the government, but it's like a disaster for middle school in the sense that there's not a lot of resources. So I remember we had to, like, come up with the money to fix their bathroom for 1800 kids. It was just that the bathroom wasn't working. It was that basic, you know, and they had like, three computers for the whole 1800 kids, and none of them, of course, the kids didn't have any access. It was one for the government liaison and two for teachers to submit some report feedback to whoever, you know, the Ministry of Education or something like that. So, and then two of them got stolen, and we had to give them two more. So the teacher can use that kind of thing, right? So, yeah, so we, we, I became friends with, I think it was the, he was not the, was he the director, baby, like vice president, or whatever, whatever the role is, young, young guy. And I said, you know, would you find me the kids that have the highest chance of success? And we had some criteria, and we put them through some processes, but yeah, that's how we came up with it. They helped us.
Mark Shriner [21:33]
That's awesome, yeah? And then, did you solicit donations here in the US then? Or what did you do?
Christian Ray Flores [21:41]
Yeah. So it's basically tapping shoulders, friends and family kind of stuff, right? It's like a mom and pop situation. And because I was doing it honestly, out of, really just a creative I was like, Okay, I think, I know, I think this is going to work. I think it's, it's unique. You know, we're not reinventing the wheel, but it is sort of, you know what? It's simple. It's an elegant solution to a problem. I think it's gonna work. So people, when you tell the story that this is the right model, people will say, Yeah, sure, here's 5k or something like that.
Mark Shriner [22:13]
And how do you measure success? We
Christian Ray Flores [22:16]
measure success by first of all, self confidence, behavior, you know, self esteem. You can when you talk to the parents, they'll all say, he used to be this way. Now he's that way. She used to be this way. Now she's super shy, and now she wants to volunteer and raise her hand, you know, at home, or she speaks English to me at home. That's amazing, you know, like, what I mean, there's no chance these kids would have access otherwise. So that's one English language. Obviously, that's two. So we have these videos of them saying naming things or singing a song in English, that kind of thing. And then, yeah, just demonstrating some basic computer literacy. We have a bunch of computers in the classroom, so everyone has a computer there, which is nothing. It has nothing to do with what their situation would be if they weren't part of the academy.
Mark Shriner [23:11]
And how many kids have gone through the program?
Christian Ray Flores [23:16]
Oh, it's just tiny things. 26 kids. So it's a very it's a boutique,
Mark Shriner [23:20]
but they're going through it now. Or when did it start?
Christian Ray Flores [23:24]
It started four years ago, so all of them are early days, yeah, yes, early days. We are proof of concept, right? Basically, I like the temptation. So even though agencies that we wanted to partner with were, like, the type that I was referring to, they were like, Yeah, okay, we're gonna do five kids at a time. They'll take three months. I'm like, no, no. I want one kid to enter the program for one end as this normal kid from the ghetto, and I want him to exit around 1516, making money, not poor anymore. That's the program, right? Hyper focused, so, and honestly, my book, if I can demonstrate that with 26 kids, then I can scale it, I can show it to other people and that kind of thing. Yeah.
Mark Shriner [24:12]
I mean, there have been some programs in the US with high school kids that had no chance or even aspirations to go to college because they thought they would never, one, academically, academically get there. But two, they know that they would never have the money, right? Yeah, and you know, you've had some, some different organizations have gone in to select high schools and said, anybody who gets, like, a three-point grade average or higher, or whatever this the requirement is, you'll get four years of college paid for. And I love programs like that, because it's just like it. It doesn't completely strip away this lack of hope. I mean, there, because if you're, if you're growing up surrounded, you know, in a community where nobody's aspiring, I don't know anyone. Yeah, it. It's hard for you to believe that you can actually get there, even if somebody says, hey, I'll write the check for you. But if you can create a kind of critical mass of people who start to share that aspiration and are going through together, like what you've done 26 kids go in there, four or five hours a day, or however many years, that's exactly it. Yeah, you create change there, and that group can become a bigger group, you know? So I've seen that in companies. I've seen that in communities. So it's really, yeah,
Christian Ray Flores [25:26
Yeah, it's not complicated at all, you know? I mean, it's also a mindset, because these kids grow up in a place where most of their families don't have two parents. For example, zero of the people that live in those slums, zero are professionals, not one so that they literally don't know anyone who's a professional. And then all of a sudden, they are in an air conditioned room with a meal a day, a uniform, the self esteem, their confidence, goes up, and these professionals are volunteering their time to be with them and tell them, you matter. That's also how they see them in real life. They would develop friendships with these mentors. Yeah. So we have these interviews with them going, they're like, standing in front of their house, their little cinder block kind of play situation, right? Or corrugated steel kind of place. And they say, so who do you want to be? I want to be a doctor. I want to be a singer. I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a policeman. I mean, they wouldn't have even imagined that if they didn't have access to that reality. Basically.
Mark Shriner [26:33]
That's awesome. Well, well done on that. What? What led to you becoming a performance coach in the US?
Christian Ray Flores [26:42]
I was, you are best equipped to help the person you once were, right? Okay, so when I was literally playing sports arenas and selling millions of albums, you achieve that when you have a certain fire in your belly and you have a vision and a work ethic, all of these things together, and I just had it, and it's a mystery, like I can probably trace how that comes together in the character. But ultimately, you either have a union and you don't, and when you're at the top of that, also something happens to you and with you. You usually see so much reward for you, for your giftedness and your talent. And the world in the marketplace rewards the outer game, the performance, what the world does not reward is character and inner game, right? Emotional self regulation, relationships, all kinds of sort of, quote, unquote, soft skills. It doesn't reward it. There's no signal to that. There's no feedback for that. And these things also take a lot of time, right? So they're not instantly demonstrable. So what happens with a lot of people who succeed, they burn out very quickly. They go through a couple of divorces, they become just weird people, right? And to cope without that sort of misalignment, and that almost like this paradoxical outer success, inner failure, they go into all kinds of other things. So I was at a number one hit in Russia that literally ended up that hit became the anthem for Boris Yeltsin's presidential campaign. And I was clinically depressed, and there was this one guy who was a Canadian missionary who had the inner game stuff that I didn't have, and he took me under his wing, and He nursed me back into health and made me whole, and that allowed me to fly higher and do all kinds of things downstream. And basically that was sort of the seed that was planted. And I started imitating what he does, even informally. So, I ended up coaching informally Olympic athletes and artists and entrepreneurs and people like that. And over time, it sort of grew into something a little bit more structured, a little bit more intentional, and then it became exponential life, which is the coaching program that I have now,
Mark Shriner [29:09]
Awesome. So, if I, if I'm understanding correctly, what you're saying is, you know whether you're a professional athlete, entertainer, etc. the world compensates you, pays you for those skills. Yeah, but you could be a terrible human being or just an immature human being, and nobody's going to pay you to work on yourself. They just want to see the show. They want to see, and you're rewarded for the show, and they don't necessarily want to see all the messy stuff behind the scenes and see you doing the work on that. So that it gets neglected. And at some point people, you know, I mean, you have to take care of yourself at some point, right?
Christian Ray Flores [29:45]
Yeah, it's also and also, if you're sort of on the top of your profession, whatever your industry, people don't speak the truth to you. You're intimidating. So your signals become weaker and weaker. Mm. So there's just no, not enough you. Most of the people they hang out with work for you in one way or another. Also, they don't even have the capacity to lead you, right, right and to mentor you. So that's why masterminds, because people need someone to tell somebody. Tell me the truth here. Yeah, they need a peer, right? And in, I think, and the other thing is, in the coaching is sort of the other layer that I have is personal brand development, and that's there because of that same thing, right? The person who you once were, is that I realized early on that, oh my gosh, the thing that I can do, and this is literally it can happen in every industry, big corporate, corporations, entrepreneurs, music, nonprofit, everything. If you have and you have a specific you're successful because of a specific approach that is unique to you, beyond what makes you beyond the basic everybody's good at some level, right? So if you take that and you own it, and you publish it and you speak up about it, it's intellectual property, you sort of formalize it in one way or another, and create a personal brand, your ability to influence more people do more good in more places becomes exponentially higher. If you don't do it right, you can have a great run this place, and then it ends for no reason, connected to you, and you're starting over or almost over, but it's now better than, more than in any time in history, developing a personal brand is the thing to do, right? You mentioned earlier, you know, the member you said that there was a caste system, right? For most of humanity, yeah. You, you were born into a cast, and you died in the cast, yeah. Then the Industrial Revolution came. You can actually improve your life. Within one generation, you move from your farmer, you go become a worker in a factory. Your kid can go to school, yeah. And then in one generation, happens with the information revolution. That accelerates even more. You can do something in one year in a few years. With the AI revolution, you can do it in months and also be replaced in months. So this whole uniqueness, this whole being able to have your personal brand that is known by a certain number of people, actually AI proofs you, because you are a category of one in one way or another.
Mark Shriner [32:24]
So, I agree with everything you're saying there, but I want to back up a little bit when you met this, this missionary, yeah, who helped you kind of start to work on yourself and develop your inner, your inner self there. Did you already recognize that you need to do some work? How did you, how did because, yeah, how does somebody get through to you? You were you looking or
Christian Ray Flores [32:47]
I was just desperate, yeah. And basically, the way it showed it, because it usually ripples, ripple, ripple effects through all kinds of things, right? So later you can go, there's some mild signals and there's some strong signals. So mild signals is like, you know, I could have done so much better on the business side of show business, if I had more of those skills, for example, right? Even as a creative having the skills to enter from anxiety and stress into a creative flow, joy and peace would skyrocket my ability to create new material. So absolutely, you know, if you can't handle, if you don't emotionally self-regulate, now, you become more limited as any professional, in any field. But the thing that was the most painful for me was my romantic life, because I had zero sort of spiritual background, zero moral framework, because my parents were atheists. I come from two generations of broken homes, so I didn't know anyone who's married well, and then when my parents divorced, it really crushed me and traumatized me. So basically, what I would do, I would, I would sabotage every relationship that got serious, right? And I was, of course, a pop star, so I had access to women basically unlimited, which is also not normal. That enhances the problem. And so what happened was this one girl that I was dating got pregnant. We had a baby. I don't know what to do with that. Basically, I'm super I'm so in love with my daughter, but I don't know what to do with a girl. I treat her like trash, and she leaves and cuts me off for my daughter. So this existential crisis, I'm clinically depressed, and I basically realized I don't know how to build a family. I really want a family. I have a baby. I don't know how to build a family, and I lost my baby. So that was sort of the pain point. So when you ask the question, "How did somebody come get through to me, dinner at this guy's house, and he has a functional family, a loving family, and I look at him, and I'm not exaggerating. It was that simple. I go, how do I get what you have? I. I didn't even say what it was, because he had it. You could see it in my face, you know. And he goes, I'll teach you if you want to learn. And I said, Teach me. That's it. It was almost like a supernatural experience where I realized I have zero game in this, and I will, I'm willing to do anything to get that game, to get the ability, and that's what I did. I basically became like a Daniel San to Mr. Miyagi to this guy, you know,
Mark Shriner [35:29]
You got to be coachable, and it sounded like you were ready to be coached.
Christian Ray Flores [35:32]
I was very, very coachable. I was literally at the peak of my career. Millions of people knew who I was, and I was like an actual, actual apprentice to this guy. I treat him like a master, like a kung fu master, you know, like, just tell me what to do. I'll do everything.
Mark Shriner [35:48]
Did he have a process, or did he just kind of look at you?
Christian Ray Flores [35:52]
It's just organic. Yeah, he was just, he would teach me some principles from the Bible. He taught about his, he talked a lot about his family, about the principles he lives by, you know, life, life lessons, that kind of thing. And he would give me stuff, like some basic stuff, okay, how do you find the wife? Well, what are you looking for in a woman? And I would rattle off things, and the whole thing would be off completely, you know. And he'd go, Yeah, can I help you correct that list? And so he would give me a list, and I would be like, in all going, how did you get this? You know, like, for me, so ignorant from the whole so I would adopt a lot of the stuff, and I would practice it. And I would be very, very self disciplined, essentially. And I rewired my brain and my worldview. It took me about four years before I met my wife. By the time I met my wife, I knew exactly how to do all of that stuff, so I met her, I saw her, I courted her, I married her. I've been married for 25 years. We have a beautiful family. The whole thing was completely healed, fixed forever, so.
Mark Shriner [36:55]
That's awesome. Congratulations. Yeah, that's amazing. You work with a lot of people. What are some common challenges that you're seeing for Americans that are blocking them to perform at the level that they would aspire to perform at?
Christian Ray Flores [37:12]
Well, I think one of them is that there's such stress as a baseline in society. I mean, we know statistically that over half of Americans are literally permanently stressed, anxious. What's causing that? I think keeping up with the Joneses, money, sort of the complexity of life, the bombardment of simple or just endless information, the screens not knowing when to stop. For example, how big is big enough when it comes when you're running a company, for example, how many employees do you need? When do you stop? Because you're losing your mind and losing quality of actually, the team that you're leading, all of those things. So I think stress management, emotional self regulation, is a huge deal. So I teach them how to go from stress to to clear, focused on command, on demand in an hour every single day. So that's a major superpower, right? Yeah? Like, if you have that ability that is predictable, then all of your talent, all of your giftedness, can be now channeled towards building something new. So that's, that's, that's a big deal.
Mark Shriner [38:26]
It's funny, I'm halfway through a book called The Anxious Generation, and it's talking about the kids that grew up with phones and then social media, yeah, and particularly, how hard that generation has been hit with all kinds of mental illnesses. Yeah, it's just but. But I don't think that just because we're older, we're immune to it. I think so many of those things that you mentioned keep up with everybody, and you know, try. I had somebody ask me recently thinking about getting married, and they were very stressed out, because, you know, all their friends were spending $100,000 on their wedding ceremonies. And I was like, you know, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Yeah, that's a decision that you could make. And it's, you know, you want it to be special, but spending more money is not going to make it more special. You know, that's, it's just.
Christian Ray Flores [39:14]
Exactly, yeah. And the thing is, what we do is, we, I teach him how to, first of all, how to manage, how to not manage, but to fix that actually, like, on like, you need a ritual in the morning. This is how you do it, etc. But then, on a micro level, it's fixing some things that are like, there are studies that show exactly what the things are that are responsible for you to live a peaceful, fulfilled, creative life, right? So what are your spiritual practices? How are you with your family, your nuclear family? What kind of friendships do you have? Exactly? What are your relationships like? The meaning of meaningful work. What kind of meaning do you attach to work? Your physical state, fun, just having fun. Do you laugh? Ever you. Know that kind of thing. Do you ever rest? You know, no one, no high performer, ever competes if you go to the Olympics, no one competes as a depleted state. You know, a depleted state. No one does. It would be it was stupid if you say, Are you ever like it if you go to the Olympics? Are you ever tired when you're in the beginning of a race? They're like, What is wrong with you? Of course, I would lose immediately, but that's normative in the business world,
Mark Shriner [40:24]
Right? Like your chronic stress, the grind. Yeah, you know, they're proud that they're putting in 14 hour days and like, you could do that from time to time, but yeah, it's, while it's gonna, you're performing at a high level, but you're not.
Christian Ray Flores [40:38]
You're glorifying something workaholism, right? You're glorifying that. It's a badge of honor that is so unhealthy. So, we talk about the macro things all the time as well. So there's a tool we use called the radar, and it's like seven things we measure. We actually measure it before, during and after, and people keep track of it. And they go, Okay, here's, I've gone down here. Here's my total score. So it's, it's qualitative measuring, but it's actually incredibly powerful when you start thinking about that in those categories, from that point of view. And what are some of the things you measure? Faith. I mean, I have F's for people to remember, right? So it's faith which is a transcendent practice. How do you stop being at the center of your universe like you are not the center of the universe, factually, right? So stop thinking that way, right? Think bigger. Faith, family, friendships, force. I call that meaningful work with the force you are in the world. Fun, fitness, finances, those are the seven things. Money is a massive, very distorted culture when it comes to money. So people treat it. What you mentioned is a distorted view of money, for example. So if you have a healthy relationship, it's crazy because it's such a simple thing, but I can tell you, literally, I don't have to know anything about you. If you fill out that scorecard for me, I can tell you that you either, even if you have some problems coming your way, like you go, you're a little worried, and you fill it out, and you're scoring high on even six or the seven, between an eight and a 10 across the board, you will, you will weather that storm just fine. I'm not worried about you. If you're sailing smoothly, and you have this sort of, you know, caved in a radar, where you have twos and threes on two or three categories. You're either suffering right now, you're 100% suffering right now, but also more trouble is coming your way. I can guarantee you that I don't even have to know anything more about you, because these are such highly predictive things.
Mark Shriner [42:45]
I know everything you're saying makes a lot of sense. What do you do? I mean, because, okay, you mentioned a morning kind of routine, yeah. How do you start in the morning? What do you do?
Christian Ray Flores [43:00]
So, I basically do, like the three big elements. I have a fourth one that's sort of adjacent, but the things that I teach like beginner's level, let's say you have contemplative practice. You pray or meditate, journal, right? Start thinking about just taking a step back from your feelings, from the to do list.
Mark Shriner [43:22]
You don't pick up your phone and look at Facebook.
Christian Ray Flores [43:26]
You cannot do that, yeah, like that's immediate. That immediately sends you into survival mode, FOMO Doom, scrolling, right? So, you, you contemplate, meditate, pray, you can go for a walk. There's all kinds of ways to do it. If you do that for 20 minutes, then you do 20 minutes of physical activity, you lift, you walk, preferably you walk outside, because you get sunshine. I forget what the term is. The Japanese have a term that basically means forest bathing. And I don't know what I remember what the word is, but I do that every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes three times a day, because I take a lot of my calls walking, right? Yeah. So it's going to change your life forever. And the third thing is you learn you master a skill that's the third 20 minutes, and it's basically whatever the low hanging fruit is that you feel insecure about. It could be literally anything. Could be parenting, marriage, sales, you know, marketing, the thing that you feel most, you know, you get nervous and tense because it's you just don't know what to do with that. You learn that, and you watch, you know, a video, listen to a podcast and you feel a little bit less inadequate, right? So, imagine that every single day your life will change. In a week, I can highly predict your mood, your sharpness, in a week, you'll be a different person. Now you can expand on that and master that over time, and that's going to make you a top performer wherever you are. My problem. The process is three hours, because I attach creativity to it. So, I write for an hour and a half, two hours a day, every single day,
Mark Shriner [45:08]
and you're doing most of this, or a lot of it, at the beginning of the day. So you start off with investing in yourself, which is awesome. I do something similar, and I've coached people in the past that you have to invest in yourself, and then no matter what else happens in the world, that day, that week, you could pat yourself on the back and say, but I made myself better. You know? I got stronger, fitter, smarter, I've developed some better relationships and if you focus on that, those are positives, and all the other stuff out there you can't really control, right? So, you can't be blamed. Let me ask you another question. I find it's really important to surround myself with people who are doing things that I respect or aspire to do. Yeah, but that's not always easy, at least for me, I typically fall into Okay. When my kids were younger, I ended up hanging out with that my children's friends' parents are the other soccer parents, etc. That's right, so, you know, and maybe my next door neighbors once in a while, because it's just the convenient and then old buddies who, you know it could be high school, middle school, college friends, and we're friends because we have that shared past or history, but they're not necessarily going down the same path that I aspire to go down. There's nothing wrong with their path. You know, I'm just saying that maybe that's not where I want to be. Yeah, yeah. And I've always found that if I'm around smarter people or fitter people or more skilled people, my eyes up my game. But how do you find, how do you, how do you build that circle?
Christian Ray Flores [46:47]
I mean, it's very hard. I think it's very, very hard. I think you either pay for it and you get a coach. And I think that's actually a really good thing, because you can accelerate things quite a bit, or you convene people. So, for example, I have a group that I convened. We meet every Monday, and it's like it took me a decade to build it, to invite people into it, and develop sort of the rhythm, the relationships here in Austin and I mean, and these guys are just all just extraordinary, like I can so a tech founder, a finance guy who manages billions of dollars, a person who is like this creative voice actor who does, like some of the biggest audio books And big sort of projects like that, a taekwondo Grand Master, ninth Dan like I have this insane group that I've bit by bit, I've invited people into it, you know, and they we love each other. We invest in each other. We have a rhythm. Every Monday we get together, we take a break for the summer, when everybody starts traveling, when everybody starts traveling and we take a break, if you're in town, you still get together. So, for example, most of my group was out yesterday, and then me and another couple went to watch a movie together, or we go into a restaurant. So, it's that kind of thing, but it's and these guys have all kinds of things that I don't have, for example, right? So they've raised their kids in particular so I asked them about everything. About everything. How does it feel like not being a mutt and growing up internationally, right? How does it feel to be a third generation or fourth generation Texan, right? How does it feel to go to an Ivy League school and then, how do you, how do you build a career when you manage all this money for all these people, how are, how are those people? What are their weaknesses and strengths? And so I try to absorb like a sponge, right? I really ask a lot of questions, and I'm very curious around them.
Mark Shriner [48:53]
When you meet every week, or when you convene with them, I like that word, is there some kind of structure to the activity, or is it just like, hey, we're gonna go out for dinner? Or what? Dinner? Or what is it?
Christian Ray Flores [49:03]
No, we usually have some sort of short Bible study right in and I'm not even the main guy. I've sort of convened it, and I basically said, Look, I don't want to be the main guy, so we take turns. Basically, okay, so we're all like, there's an interdependence there. So the healthiest way to live, I think it's interdependence. So on the one side, you have independence, where you're sort of this atomistic sort of person in America is very independent in general. Like, totally Yeah. And I think it's, it's super unhealthy, if it is extreme, or you can be co-dependent, where you know unhealthy things are there. You can't get out of that kind of thing. Everybody knows what that means. Interdependence is sort of in the middle where you do submit yourself, some of your schedule, some of your will, some of your preferences, to the group, right for the common good. So the common good is sort of this main. Thing, and everybody understands, everybody in that group knows or feels that they need that group, right? So there's this interdependence, and even when we have some sort of disagreement, we can talk it through, for example, right? Have a painful discussion, and we're so we're devoted to each other's company and well being.
Mark Shriner [50:21]
That's great. Now, I totally agree with you. I think the sense of community has, in many places, vanished from the US. I mean, you know, people move, move, move all the time. Some of the strongest communities I've seen, or, you know, I have some friends who are very involved with their churches, and that is a sense of community, especially the churches that require you to strongly encourage you to participate in some of their organizational activities and things like that. And but, having lived in Asia, oh my gosh, that's just because, you know, families and communities are so important, still very Yeah, yeah. And so it's interesting, kind of the contrast between there and here. Well, hey, you know, I just asked you a couple more questions. You, you know, you're given a lot, you've got your, you know, the work that you're doing in Africa. And then you're, you're helping individuals, coaching them, and then you have the, you know, this group that you participate in. How else do you go out and continue to learn? You know, who do you look to, who inspires you, who motivates you, or what do you do?
Christian Ray Flores [51:30]
Well, every once in a while, I'm coached by someone in an area where I feel like, if I need something accelerated, I go get the coach and I pay for the coach. That group is a major source of wisdom, like ongoing and I mean, all areas of life, marriage, parenting, business, the whole thing. And then I do that, my routine, right? So I have, I have all these quote, unquote, proxy mentors, I call them, who have no idea they exist, that I exist, you know, but I would, I would basically, if I choose a, for example, if I choose somebody who coaches you in sales, let's say, on marketing or, Oh, how to develop a newsletter that goes to 10s of 1000s of people. For example, I would like, I would get on a binge, and I would follow this one person, and I follow every single day until I feel like I can finish their sentences. Wow. So it's that level of hyper focus, and then when I go, I can, I can feel that I've been satiated with that kind of wisdom, and I can move on to something adjacent, and almost always, that this other person will lead you to the next person, right? And, my point is, you become incredibly good at a variety of things. If you stop dabbling and people dabble like crazy, and they give up, they start and they stop. They start and stop. But you don't dabble. You just pick a thing and you stay with it for, let's say, four months, right? Like honestly, 18 hours. I think there's somebody. I don't know if that statistic is even true, but it sounds, it feels true that if you spent 2030, minutes a day doing something, within a year, you will probably be in the top 12, 25% of people doing that thing. And I really believe that to be true, not about everything, but about most things, especially with when it comes to things of the mind, right?
Mark Shriner [53:20]
Yeah, it's that consistency. And if you are really driven about it's funny, because I've done, I've dabbled in a lot of things, but, but I but, but when I dabble, I also get very, very intense and get into it. So, you know, I've done a variety of martial arts and when I started, and I just, I would, I would read everything, watch everything exactly, practice at home in our backyard, our neighbors thought we were nuts, you know, but I was and then, but I'd go to the dojo, and it studied in many different places. But I would always show up early, and it's funny, because people, a lot of people, would show up early and then just sit there and talk, and I'd be practicing, and I'm like, What are you doing? Man, you know, like, you show up and do class for an hour. Yeah, you know, it's like, you're here. Man, let's, let's, let's, let's get going, you know, but, but I, I've seen, I've seen it for people who are really into things, yeah, you can make a lot of progress in a year. See it with my kids, like doing music. Man, why wasn't I do in that
Christian Ray Flores [54:20]
Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's another thing. Is I, when I coach people, I coach accomplished people mostly, right? These are, these are not mostly, but all of them are accomplished otherwise, like I wouldn't offer them. Hey, let me teach you how to create a personal brand, if you, if I don't see anything you're good at, right? So that would be stupid. So obviously, I would offer it only to a person who can create a personal brand in the first place. But it's remarkable how very accomplished people haven't learned the skill of focusing and taking creating their own value, putting it out in the world, and because of that, their accomplishments are so diluted. Mm. Uh, you know, and they get frustrated.
Mark Shriner [55:02]
I 100% agree with you. And I'm just looking at my own track record itself. It's like, Yeah, you can't, you can't do everything, all that's at the same time, you know, you gotta focus. Let's have this kind of wind, this wind, this down in terms of building a personal brand. Can you summarize why it's important, and what are some of the key things in terms of how you do it?
Christian Ray Flores [55:24]
Well, you know, let me start with sort of the scary part. The scary part now is that the AI revolution, which were in the very first, like the year of honesty, right? Yeah, the actual revolution, it's going to change. It's going to change everything. It's going to wipe, wipe out millions and millions of white collar jobs. Knowledge is no longer of high value. Is commodified, right? That's it. So there's millions of jobs that are going to be completely replaced. And anyone who doesn't, who can't really create a category that is unique, it's at risk. It to one point to another, you know? So, I think that's sort of the big thing. The best way to AI proof yourself is to create a personal brand that appeals to specific people, with a specific offer, with a specific edge and solution. Then that's it, like you AI can't replace that, because you're not a commodifiable thing, right, right? And so that's sort of the, I think, that accelerates, intensifies the motivation people should have, in my opinion. But besides that, it's been, it's, it's easier than it's ever been in the history of humanity to create something and that serves people specifically with the very unique solutions that you offer, the qualities that who you are, you are a miracle. You're one of a kind, objectively. So whatever it is that you do, you can do it in a unique way. And sort of the way to get there from the beginning first is so I have these three pillar things. One, the result is the brand. And I want to get you to an actual sort of business model and brand in 9 to 12 weeks. That's basically the promise that I make. But to get there, what you start is with fuel, what motivates you, and the thing that we started off, right? It's like, if you're in survival mode, if you're in survival mode, you won't be able to build anything, because you can't even see an alternative future, right? So we need to teach you how to get creative, clear, peaceful, joyful, so you can build something. Second piece, okay? You start building it. It's, I call it the edge, right? What is your specific edge? You know, get as granular, specific as possible. And you it's amazing what, what comes together when you start thinking, what do I really love, besides sort of the normal, generic skills that you have? What makes me, right? What makes me a category of one? And it's so, it's so hard for people to even think that way, because what is there? What it's easy for them is so familiar that it doesn't feel valuable. So it's a little bit of a painful process. Because people go, I'm not special. And I'm like, Yes, you are. You know, we'll dig it up, right? So there's a treasure there that you have to dig up and recognize as a treasure, and then productize it, monetize it, and deploy some brand that you want, a solution you want to offer to the world? So that's essentially the process, and it's so cool, because these are extraordinarily talented, gifted people, and all of them have some sort of inner doubt about the value that they bring. And so we go through the process of filing that, finding that value, and bringing it to the world.
Mark Shriner [58:49]
Yeah, I think figuring out your purpose, or what you're really good at is and then, you know, and how are you going to stand out amongst others? It is really challenging. Earlier you were talking about how you search out experts and, you know, kind of do a deep dive, and that will lead you into, yeah? And I say there's, there's one book that I like to continually go back to. It's a Tim Ferriss tool of the Titans, yeah. And, you know, I've gone through it maybe two or three times the audio version while not walking me too. And then I'll listen to be like, Okay, now I gotta study up on this person, and like, that person will recommend a book. And I'm like, I gotta go on that book. And it's just, every time I listen to it, it takes me down other rabbit holes. But in that book, I can't remember who he's talking to, but I think it might have been the creator of Dilbert cartoons, where he said, you figuring out. You have to figure out, not the one thing that you're better than everybody, because that's pretty tough. If you were going to be the best singer, the fastest runner, the best actor, actress, whatever, you got to figure out, what are the two things that you can combine? Yeah, you're the best at better yeah, maybe you're the top 90% Were here or in this other, you know, yeah, was he could write cartoons. He could actually write the, you know, the text. But he was also good at drawing, right? And he was able to combine the two. Oh, and he had a business background too. So he had this business sense in terms of his cartoons, yeah, exactly, combined those. So if you can take, like, three things that you really, really enjoy, and can combine those into one, yeah, that's where that uniqueness comes in. You have something to but what's your exercise, or your process for helping people kind of discover, uncover what areas they want to focus on?
Christian Ray Flores [1:00:34]
Well, it's so it's sort of this. It's, it is. There is a process. There's a structure to it, right? But, but I think it's really more the environment. It's a, you know, you say this is a dedicated space for you to hunt for treasure that alone is, I think, 50% of the success, because we just don't allow ourselves an environment for that. We don't have it. We sort of react to life. We don't Proact right? So that's the one, one thing, and we have cohorts for that reason. So people give each other feedback, and it's just every single call that I have with a cohort, and it's cohort one on one and asynchronous. So there's, like, three layers of support. It's like, there's magic, there's magic. I can't even, I can't even use another word, it's magic. It's like, I don't know how this just happened, but it happened, you know, that kind of thing, right? So I look forward to those, and that happens. But the process, I would say, we, we just do very, very on the surface, basic things, but they're the force you to think about your life, right? What did you love growing up? Right? What this like when you were, I was, you know, I was growing up in Africa, and my dad is a mechanical engineer, so he would pull me under the car and show me the stuff and help me get the tools. I love being with him, but that didn't resonate with me, like I was like, whatever. And then I would join. I joined like a folk like a folk group, a singing group with a bunch of Chilean kids, and we're seeing Latin American classics, whatever, right? And I remember when I would sing, time will stop. I could do it forever. That's the feeling I had, right? Yeah. So creativity became, became a very clear fit, and I lost it from, I don't know, nine to 25 because I didn't pull on that thread in maybe 23 when I started actually doing music again, right? I'm like, I remember this was important. So things like that. So you layer those things, right? And there's all kinds of it's such a beautiful thing to uncover, uncover the treasure that are just under the surface. And every human being has it, and we are the worst at recognizing that ourselves, right? We have some. We need somebody to help us with that, because it's so familiar, it doesn't feel valuable.
Mark Shriner [1:02:56]
Amazing point. Well, hey, Christian, I really enjoyed this conversation. You know, I want to say congratulations on your success. And also, you know, hats off to you for the all the positive work that you're doing Africa here, you know. And I'm sure every person that you touch, you bring a lot of a big positive influence to them. And thank you so much for being on The Grow Fast Podcast.
Christian Ray Flores [1:03:18]
Thank you for inviting me. May I offer something to your audience? Clears. If you go to xponential.life without the E, exponential starts with an X, there's a really cool, basically scorecard. There. You click, you just answer a few questions, and it basically answers the questions. How ready are you to start a personal brand and ask you, like, 30 questions under five minutes and get a report in your inbox. It's a great exercise.
Mark Shriner [1:03:44]
Awesome. What I'll do is, I'll put links to that and, well, I think the name of the other organization.
Christian Ray Flores [1:03:52]
The Ascend Academy. Ascend Academy. Thank you.
Mark Shriner [1:03:56]
Yeah, put the links to both those in the show notes, right? Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Christian, you take care of it. It's been great talking to you.
Christian Ray Flores [1:04:03]
Cheers. You too. Thanks.
