July 3, 2025 • 43 mins
This week, my guest is the super-talented Christian Ray Flores. He is a highly talented musician, evangelist, and entrepreneur who discusses work-life balance, success, and his faith.
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/christianrayflores/?hl=en
Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQWVZN1H
Website: https://www.christianrayflores.com/
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@thechristianrayflores/videos
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This podcast is sponsored by patreon.com/devil Cock
Experience. If you want more content,
including exclusive shows, make sure you go to patreon.com/devil
Cock Experience. Also, special shout out to
Patreon producer Douglas Mcgirt Johnson.
(00:20):
Thank you. Welcome to the Delvin Cox
(01:14):
experience, the podcast which each week I'm on a one man
mission to United Coast to the versity.
I'm your host, Delvin Cox and with me on this podcast as a
special guest, another podcast. But that's just one of the many
things he does. He's kind of a Jack of all
trades. He does a lot of different
things that are really unique and cool.
And we're going to talk about ittoday.
Christian Ray Flores, how you doing, brother?
(01:36):
I'm doing well, thank you for having me.
My pleasure. Welcome to the experience, and
as always, we like to start the podcast off at the Five for
five, Five questions 5 asks to get the ball rolling.
OK, let's do it. Yeah, I'm ready, man.
Let's go question number one. And since we talked about a
little briefly a second ago, I'mgoing to ask you, I'm going to
(01:57):
ask you the famous question thateverybody likes to ask.
Yeah. Michael Jackson or Prince?
Oh, that's rough. See, I got you.
I did. I would say Prince as a
musician, as a showman, Michael Jackson.
I cheated a little bit. I like that answer though.
I like Prince is a musician. Prince is.
Great. I think he's a better musician
(02:18):
than Michael. Michael is a better entertainer.
Yeah, Prince. I actually met Michael.
Oh, you got to tell this story. How did you meet Michael
Jackson? This was maybe 20 something
years ago. I was in Russia at the time and
we did big events for orphans and I'm, I mean, Michael Jackson
was a massive influence on me musically as an artist.
(02:39):
I had a pop career at the time, was famous in Eastern Europe and
want to. Get to that.
Yeah, we can get to that and I did.
I'm like a Hail Mary idea I had with a friend of mine who was
sort of running the charity and and I'm like, Michael is coming,
he's doing the stadium show. Why don't we time this event to
his coming and see if we can gethis, his team's attention?
(03:02):
Because we're like coasting 3000plus orphans in this massive
event with music and sports and stuff like that.
And then until last minute, we didn't know if he's going to
show up. And then he showed up and he was
surreal. Yeah.
That is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah.
That meeting Michael Jackson is like it.
It's, it's almost like a mythical event.
(03:24):
Like you hear stories of MichaelJackson being played, like
that's not a thing that happens.And then I know people who
actually met him. It's pretty cool to hear.
And he liked my our volunteers because we're this a nonprofit
thing and they needed extras forthe show to they needed like
middle-aged women. And my mom ended up being an
extra literally on stage with Michael Jackson.
(03:46):
Well, that's. Really cool.
Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, there's there's a story.
It's a great story, yeah. That's happened, that happened
here in the 90s, Yeah, because Ilive in Miami, FL, right.
Well, Michael Jackson just randomly popped up at Aventura
Mall because he randomly popped up.
It caused a huge traffic jam at Aventura of.
(04:08):
Course and it. Just, like, destroyed that whole
area because people were just trying to rush to get to the
mall to meet Michael Jackson. Yeah.
And just like 98. Yeah, they don't make stars like
that anymore. I don't.
I don't think it's it's mega star.
It's just there's maybe four or five of those and that's it,
yeah. And I don't think you think
they're still even the mega stars we have, I don't think are
(04:28):
still on a level of a Michael Jackson no or expects for that
matter. I don't think so either.
Yeah, I agree. All right, question #2.
Yeah. If all the serial mascots have
one big brawl, who do you have winning?
I I don't know about those. Huh.
(04:50):
I really don't like I I grew up in the third world.
I don't know, cereal. Y'all don't have cereal mascots
you didn't eat like Captain Crunchy?
No, we didn't have those. We had like very generic crappy
things. And then if it when I when I
first started seeing them, I wasalready a grown up, so I I
didn't have interest. So.
So what kind of cereal did you eat as a kid then?
(05:10):
Or did you eat cereal? No, we didn't have any cereal at
all. Yeah.
That's interesting. What?
So what was? Your I like, I like Cheerios,
but they're not good for you. So.
But those are the ones that well.
No cereal is actually good for. You.
I know. Yeah, I know.
So I. Like I like Cheerios, honey,
honey, not Cheerios. Those are the ones that I like,
but I don't eat them because I'ma grown up.
(05:31):
OK, watch the ceramic Toast Crunch.
Yeah, 'cause I'm an old grown up.
Let me ask you this then what did you eat when you were a kid?
Then what was the thing that didyour mom for?
Breakfast. It was like a sandwich, you
know, It was just very boring. A sandwich.
Yeah. And tea.
Wow, that was it. Yeah.
It's a different world. Like, I can't even I'm, I'm very
(05:52):
Americanized now, right? I can't even imagine it anymore,
right? I need to.
That is fascinating. I need to have eggs every
morning. Because you because I didn't
grow up like rich at all, like in the least bit.
But I remember like, cereal was the thing that you ate because
you were broke, like. I know we didn't even have that.
Like, you know, and, and some people ate cereal with like
(06:14):
water because they didn't have money for milk.
So like cereal just ate it straight up.
Nope. We didn't have even.
We didn't even have that. No.
Like, no, we just had bread. That's whole different level of
broke. Question #3 What is the thing
you're most proudest of in your life thus far?
(06:38):
Oh my gosh, I think. You've done a lot.
Yeah, Yeah, I would say marryingmy wife, that's probably the the
the peak of my wise decisions. And then downstream from that is
how I built my life around my kids, the lifestyle I built
because I wanted to be present. So I built my businesses and
(07:00):
sort of all of my activity was Ineed to be home, I need to be
around them. And that turned out really well
for them. So.
Those are those are the top things, I think.
That's really cool and really important because that work life
balance, Yeah, it's a hard thingto do.
If it's very, very hard, yeah. But once you get the balance and
the rewards of it, like, you know, with the kids and the
(07:21):
family, yeah, it's almost priceless.
Part of the and it's actually part of the reason why I love
helping people build their businesses and building a
personal brand is because it's very hard to do.
But then you have your, you havefreedom to to choose those
things so you need, you can build your work life around your
values and that's a luxury that most people don't have.
(07:44):
So building a personal brand is one of the things that can get
you there. I.
Like it question #4 you've traveled the world, you've done
a lot of things. We're going to get into that, by
the way. Yeah.
What is the most unique thing you think you've ever seen?
(08:07):
Most unique things. Yeah, like, like, all right.
Like you see the like. I've seen some crazy stuff, OK,
like, I mean, I'll, I'll, I havesuch a long list.
I can imagine. I have such a long list.
OK, I'll pick, I'll pick one crazy, crazy thing.
So we, I grew up in, I spend my childhood from 7 to 14 in
(08:29):
Africa, in Mozambique. And at the time, South Africa
still had racism on apartheid, right?
So the whites and the blacks, the whole thing, Nelson Mandela
still in jail at the time, his party, ANC African National
Congress is outlawed everywhere.And Mozambique is one of the
places that gave them, you know,safe passage essentially.
(08:53):
So right around the right in front of my house, across the
street from my house was off theoffices of the ANC.
And in the middle of the night, the South African, the South
African regime at the time sent special forces in the middle of
night through like like rubber boats, like Green Beret level
stuff made their way from the coast to that place and blew it
(09:15):
up. And I woke up because there was
a, there was an explosion right across my street.
And it was so bad that my, my mom, my mom wakes me up and
she's like, there's a bomb, there's a war, we need to go to
the embassy. And I literally slept through
the bombing. I didn't even wake up, you know,
kids. But it was so strong that we
couldn't even open our front door because the explosion wave
(09:36):
had flattened it against the frame.
So that's a crazy story. I have so many of them.
Yeah, that is beyond crazy. Yeah, you look the fascinating
like to say the least. Yeah, it's insane.
Yeah. We're, we're going to get to
that. We're going to get there in a
second. We got a lot to talk about with
you. Yeah.
Question #5 if you could pick one place in the world to live
(09:59):
the rest of your life, anywhere you want to, Christian, Yeah.
What would that place be? I will be.
It will probably be somewhere inthe Caribbean, yeah.
It's. Nice.
Yeah, I, I just, I'm a water guy.
I'm a tropics guy, but I also like being close to the US, you
know, like I'm leaving in about a week to go.
(10:20):
I'm going to go to the Riviera, Maya, Mexico.
Oh, OK, that's nice. I'll be there for two months.
And I don't, I don't necessarilyhave to leave, but it's kind of
cool to be a hop away from the US and do stuff, right.
So yeah, that'll be my answer. That makes sense.
I like like it a lot. So, Christian, tell these people
about yourself for those who don't know you.
(10:41):
Yeah, tell them a little bit about yourself so they can get
to know you a little better. OK, so I'm a very confusing
character, but I'll I'll give you a very, very, very short
sort of version and you can go into any rabbit hole you want.
OK so I am basically this international guy.
This is the US and I live in Austin, TX.
(11:01):
Now this is my 6th country in my4th continent and I basically,
you know, I was born in Russia, my death Chilean.
So I'm like biracial and we wereliving in Chile.
There was a massive military coup there with refugees, barely
my, my, my dad barely made it out alive.
(11:24):
We ended up in Germany, then Russia, then Africa.
There was a civil war in Africa,you know, that I mentioned a
little bit before. So we solved some of that stuff,
bombings and stuff like that. Then after my parents divorced,
went back to Russia during the worst time, the Soviet Union.
So I don't experience a lot of poverty, like slept in the
kitchen for a while. Also, the whole, the Soviet
(11:46):
Union collapses right as I'm graduating from college, right?
And sees tanks in the street, Another attempted coup.
You know, they try to overthrow the government and then
everything changes because everything collapses.
And I'm like, all of my friends are going to business.
I'm going. I, I decided to go into music
(12:06):
because I was musical and had a good voice.
I was a dancer and within a yearI was on national television,
basically ended up entertaining millions of people across all of
that former Soviet Union space, which is 15 different countries
now, right? Everything from the Baltics in
the West to all the the the stans or Ukraine as well, all of
(12:27):
those places. Let me ask you this.
Yeah, because I think it's fascinating that you as a young
person was around all of these historic events.
Yeah. And I, I, I imagine as a young
person, it didn't register with you like, oh, this is something
that's crazy. And the fact that I'm here you
(12:48):
like you weren't you what you just think was 1 historic event
after. Another.
After another, yeah, Like Forrest Gump, Like, I was here
for this. I was here for the fall of the
Soviet Union. I was here for apartheid.
Like that's wild. It is really strange.
Yeah, I know. So how do you, how, how did the
(13:08):
young person just managed to kind of get this on it?
Because to me, it sounds fascinating.
It sounds exciting, it sounds scary, but you, this was part of
your life. Yeah, it, it becomes normal,
right. So and it it's really a choice
whether you you decide to becomea victim or you be decide to
(13:30):
sort of gain some something fromit basically.
And I think I just happened to fall into the hey, I'm going to,
I'm going to, I'm going to use this to build stuff.
So that's why that's what I did.And what I find so fascinating
about your story is as you follow your story, which we'll
probably get into a little bit today, as you follow your story,
(13:50):
there's different areas of your life that almost can sound like
another person's life because it's so different from the last
area of your life. Like like you get into right
now. We'll get into it in a second
because we're just talking aboutit.
Yeah. You had a music career that was
Uber popular, so let's get into that.
Yeah, so basically I ended up, you know, being like this big
(14:12):
star and Russia pop star. And it was, it was great.
It was it was like a tour all over.
I sold millions of albums. I was on TV, radio, magazines,
newspaper, like all of that, thewhole thing, basically the whole
package. And then I I sort of got bored
with it in in in a sense, in a very strange, like I know that
(14:32):
it sounds strange. How do you can be?
How do you, how are you bored with something that most
musicians will never experience?I just had this sort of, I had
this very deep instinct into I want, I never want to just do
something just because it's easy, right?
I want to do something that fills me up.
And it sort of stopped filling me up.
(14:53):
And I, I, and also I became a Christian.
So I was like, I'm going to go preach.
Also, I wanted to help the poor and I wanted to do philanthropy.
Also want to build a family, andI couldn't be touring all the
time if I'm going to take care of a family because I grew up in
a broken home. I didn't want to repeat that
pattern, right? Also, I wanted to go into sort
of other places geographically because I grew up all over the
(15:14):
world and I'm touring in this sort of in my mind at the time.
I know it's crazy, like 15 countries, it's not enough.
It's sort of boring. It's like this little corner and
I wanted to do other things. I speak 4 languages and I was
just doing things in one thing. I have an economics degree.
I'm not applying that there so. How did you have time to do all
these things? You're like, I'm a singer, I'm
(15:35):
an entertainer, I have an economics degree.
When did you make the time to dothis stuff?
Yeah, I just graduated early. I graduated with a master's at
21 and and and I learned my languages when I was a kid, so I
really didn't work for it. I just absorbed them naturally.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because, you know, I just moved around a lot, so.
That is fascinating. Yeah.
(15:56):
And then you said at a young ageyou found God, found Christ.
I found God when I was 20, yeah,in my mid 20s.
And I changed my life because I was, I was really, I was really
depressed at the peak of my career.
I was very depressed, which which is actually very normal.
Fame really wrecks you that I wouldn't say wreck you.
I don't think it exposes all of your.
(16:18):
Let's ask you about that becausea lot of entertainers have the
same situation. You had a lot about it with
totally, particularly comedians.Yes, yes.
It's like you like you just said.
You said earlier, Yeah, reached the highs of fame, success, You
know, you known and loved by millions.
You were making pretty good money.
So people on the top of that, they go, he's going pretty well.
(16:38):
He should be on top of the world.
But what? Well, what happens is people
like that, people that go into that are highly successful.
A lot of the times they're, they're fuelled by a lot of
trauma. So that's why they would become
this super driven, ambitious andstuff like that, right?
And, and they want to, so that, that like one of the things that
(17:00):
I deal with with in my coaching is, is fuel.
I call it fuel. I'm like, what's motivating you?
What's driving you? All of those things.
And I, I was, I, I was motivatedby being, I wanted to be
accepted because I didn't fit inanywhere, you know, and I, I was
like, I want to be accepted. Well, how do I guarantee that
everybody accepts? I'm going to become famous,
(17:21):
right? And there's all these other
underlying sort of so the traumadoesn't heal.
It just gets hidden. And then if you are very
successful at something, everybody around you is going to
sort of say yes to you all the time, but no one knows the
truth. So you become becomes a very
lonely place. So that's true with comedians.
Comedians are usually it's funnybecause they're trying to escape
(17:42):
and build a different reality for themselves.
That's where they become funny. A lot of them, right?
They're super depressed and anxious at the same time.
That's why they're. Comedians.
Yeah, are absolutely, it's like super, super.
They they struggle with depression, right, Robin
Williams, you know, one of the most famous cases, but it's
many, many artists, many successful business people.
(18:04):
And what happens is that the success hides the cracks and the
things that are on on underdeveloped in you, right?
So it brings, it shuts it down, but those things don't go away,
right? So eventually it catches up with
you. So that's what happened to me.
That's what happens with everybody.
And when I became a Christian, Ijust met this guy who the reason
(18:27):
I coach now is because that guy,he was a missional.
He was a missionary, Canadian missionary.
His name's Andy and he, he just told me the truth like nobody
would tell me the truth. And he was like, you are
wrecked. This is what's wrong with you.
You know, this what needs to fix.
And here's the Bible. Let me let me show you.
And I'm like, Oh my gosh, this guy like is a genius.
(18:48):
And I, I became his disciple. I became his apprentice and he
literally fixed me. And that's why I coach now
because of that guy, because I know that somebody needs to
like, I am really good with highachievers.
I'm really good with successful people.
I know them from the inside because I am them, you know,
and, and I can, I have a passionto help people like that because
(19:10):
they have the potential to give jobs, create jobs, change
history, invent things, right tochange culture.
And then they're very vulnerableat the same time.
So I love helping people like that.
So let's let's get right to it then.
You said you're coach. Yeah, a life coach.
I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm a business coach primarily, OK, but it's
(19:32):
sort of it overlaps, yeah. So how did you get?
You said that you were inspired by this person, so how did you
kind of start doing it? Yeah, start doing it and get the
whole processing. So basically I was, I was
mentored by this pastor, right, this missionary guy.
But I, you know, I treat, you know, how you like, if you, if
you're a church person, if you're listening you, you go to
your pastor for advice every once in awhile, right?
(19:53):
That's that's sort of the normalthing.
I didn't, you know, have you, you're probably of the right age
where you know, where you have seen Karate Kid, right?
Of course, I treated him like I like Mr. Miyagi.
I'm like, tell me what to do. I'll do anything.
If you tell me to wax on and waxoff, I won't question you.
I will just wax on and wax off. So that kind of attitude, I was
(20:15):
very teachable, right? Gave me the opportunity for him
to pour into me and really change the way I think about all
kinds of things like marriage. Marriage primarily, that was
like my biggest pain point 'cause I got from three
generations of broken homes, butabout money, about power, about
fame, about God, about your place in the world.
So he like rewired me and I was able to go and just do amazing
(20:40):
stuff after that, right? I was rewired.
I was, I was fixed. I was reoriented and what
happened? I started, I people, other
people like that started coming to me.
So I I started coaching like Olympic athletes, artists,
business people. And of course at the time this
was the 90s. OK, another crazy thing that
(21:01):
will blow your mind is that a lot of people came to church who
were in the mafia, right? Like Russian mafia criminals,
because it was sort of a thing then.
A lot of people were in that field.
It was like just another profession.
Like I think it was probably similar to Chicago, right.
In the Capone years, like peopleknew who the Mafia was, right?
(21:21):
They're like, yeah, he's a he's a mobster.
Yeah. Like it's just normal.
Like now we don't see that. But at the time, in the 90s, you
could see that. So people literally would come,
people who were like in the Mafia would come to me for
spiritual advice and guidance and I would give it to them.
And some of them were had anger issues, like most of them have
(21:42):
anger issues, obviously, right? They're violent people.
So I learned how to work with all kinds of high achievers.
And those guys are high achievers.
They were taking a lot of risk. They can go to jail, they can
get killed. And they were doing stuff
obviously illegal and bad stuff that I discouraged him from
doing, you know, But I would coach them.
I would coach them basically right.
(22:02):
I'm going to ask you a really good question about this, Yeah.
How does one talk to someone in the mafia and coach them that
feels like. You you.
You have. To be very careful.
No, it's the opposite actually, because everybody's scared of
them, everybody's scared of them.
So I had this I I'll give you 2 examples.
One was this big guy and he was a rest, he was a Greco Roman
(22:25):
heavyweight champion. Like think Shrek very similar.
Like the guy can just literally kill you with your bare hands,
right? He's in the mafia.
So he's going off on me at some event.
We were there cheering at a friend of mine who was a
Christian and he like corners meand I was he knew who I was like
he just going off on me, right? And I I'm like he you're not
(22:47):
even a real man. You had a long hair and so he
had all kinds of and I'm like, look, if you're if you're a real
man, are you a real man? That's when he stops and I'm
like, this guy's going to kill me, right?
And he goes, what are you talking about?
He, I go, if you're a real man, you follow Jesus, like do you
know the Bible? He goes and he stops and he
starts studying the Bible, became a Christian.
He's a pastor now, right? This guy.
(23:09):
So that's one example. You talk to them with authority.
You talk to them with knowledge of the truth and they will
listen because no one talks to them like that, you know, You
know, so I had another guy who was, his name was Wolf.
He didn't, he didn't change, right?
But he came to my house and he, I would talk to him about his
(23:30):
life. And I'm like, dude, you need to
stop. You need to stop, you know,
criminal activity. Like he was into extortion,
racketeering, all of that classic stuff.
And, and he would get real. So he, he's torn because he
wants to, he has a girlfriend, he wants to lead a good life,
but he's, he likes the money, helikes the power, right?
(23:50):
That's the dilemma. And he's sincere with me.
So I'm like, dude, no, we can't do that.
This is how you do it, blah, blah, blah.
And he start, he starts pacing the room.
They have all kinds of anger issues, obviously.
And I'm like, this guy's going to hurt me right now.
And I just open the Bible, read a scripture and he comes down,
(24:11):
right? He just comes down because of
scripture, the power of scripture.
And, and then eventually he, he became very humble with me and
very grateful. So one time he comes back and he
didn't make it long term, but I'll tell you a funny story.
He's that Christian. He'll be so proud of me.
I'm like, oh, what, what's up? His name is Andrew and Wolf.
He's last name. He has an AK.
(24:32):
He was carrying an AK in his truck right in his Mercedes.
And he was like, dude, I was in this.
I was at this business guy's office, and he owed me money.
Extortion, right? Classic, classic extortion.
And I grabbed him by the by the throat and he fell to his knees,
begging me to not hurt him. And I remembered about what you
(24:55):
told me. And I told him, I forgive you,
but you still owe me. And I'm like, all right, all
right, dude, baby steps. I'm proud of you.
You know, at least he didn't hurt the guy.
But it was like, this is the kind of conversations I would
have, like if I have, if you have this kind of conversations
with this kind of people, right?And not only in that space, but
(25:17):
in these are entrepreneurs or artists, famous artists or
Olympic athletes, people that are at the top.
It's very, if you're not afraid of anybody and you can, you can
help anybody basically. So that's how it all started.
I think that story's amazing on several fronts.
One of the fronts I think is amazing is the fact that it
(25:37):
shows the duality of man. Yes, yeah.
As you, as you deal with these mobsters and these gangsters who
are, frankly speaking, killers. They really are, yeah.
But on the other hand, the the there are also people who are in
pain or hurting who who are looking for some kind of.
They're not at peace. Yep.
(25:57):
They're not at peace. Yeah, they're not at peace.
That what you did and what you do do help them find that side
of it. And yes, not everybody's going
to find that right path and go down that path, but that's how
life works. Sometimes people, yeah, on the
path and sometimes people choosenot to.
We're all people. We're all children of God.
We all also have our minds. We can make choices on of our
(26:20):
own. Yeah.
But the fact that you push and try to guide people down that
right path is a commendable thing.
I think it's dope that you do that.
Yeah, yeah. And it's that sort of, and
honestly, this is obviously the the mafia example is an extreme,
but it's actually it illustratesall successful people.
(26:42):
Successful people become sort ofpart of this eco chamber.
You know, everybody around them,they can't really a they
probably don't even know how to help them.
But because of the, because they're the boss, they're not
going to, they're not going to tell them anything, right?
So they become very lonely and the mistakes they make, they
accumulate over time the compound.
(27:03):
And that leads to a crises, right?
You, you can be, you can have all the money, some power, some
influence, but your, you know, marriage is a mess.
Your mental health is a mess. You lose your sense of purpose.
And then you start hitting plateaus professionally as well,
because if you are anxious all the time, you can't really
perform at a high level, right? So then you start paying with
(27:26):
your professional career going down, either plateauing or
actually going down. So yeah, it's, it's a need.
It's a huge need. I'm going to ask you a question
and it sounds silly but I know you'll get it.
Yeah. Based on what I say, do you
consider yourself successful? Oh yeah, I think so.
(27:47):
I'm very successful. I mean in, in and I have
actually, I've given up a lot ofoutward success for inner
success. That's what I'm talking.
About So I think I am much more successful now than I than when
millions of people sort of knew my name.
And that was actually intentional because I'm I, I
(28:07):
want holistic success, not just one dimension of success.
Yeah, that's what I want. That's very difficult to
achieve, too, and I think sometimes people see that
outward success and, you know, millions of people know my name,
they know my songs, and they feel like that's success.
Yeah. But you can have that outward
success and not feel successful.That's why you hear a lot of
(28:31):
artists like I'm still trying tothrive for that next hit or
still trying to go for that. Yeah, drilling the rush of that
high. But you have you yourself, as I
noticed. You have a Zen like yourself,
like a Tom. Yeah.
You you feel content with who you are.
I am, yeah. And that's the thing, and yeah,
it is. And, and that's why like it's
(28:52):
part of the thing that I do for coaching is that I have this
actually very simple graph. It's called the exponential
radar. And it basically lists 7 things,
7 dimensions of life that studies show.
These are the most, these are the most important things for
you to be flourishing as a humanbeing, right?
And I, we measure them, measure the, all those things all the
(29:14):
time. And we start with measuring and
then we measure as we go. And literally I can, I can look
at that graph like, yeah, I giveyou the graph and you fill it
out. And I can tell you I, I'm, I
don't have to know anything about you.
But if I know you're scoring high across 7, all 7 dimensions,
you're, you're either doing great and will do greater
(29:35):
regardless of obstacles, or if you're scoring high in some
dimensions and you're flat in others that you're already
really majorly struggling or areabout to have a big sort of
downfall. You know, I can tell you that
little without knowing anything else about you, so it's kind of
interesting how universal those things are.
That is really interesting. Let me ask you this because you
(29:59):
coach, you kind of mentor people.
If somebody needs mentoring, what, how would they know?
Because, you know, that's the kind of thing we all need help
at some point in time. Yeah, yeah.
But we don't know. We don't we don't realize it or
we don't know how to ask for help.
I think I, I mean, honestly, theonly way you know is pain.
(30:19):
It's, you know, in the same way that your body gives you pain
signals if something is off withyour body, like your soul gives
you an emotional pain to basically say, dude, you have to
pay attention to something. You have to pay attention to
something and we just ignore it.That's sort of the thing with
the, with the physical body. We don't ignore it.
Most of the times we just go andhave it fixed with emotional
(30:40):
pain. Oh, we can, we can spend decades
in emotional pain and not do anything about it.
And then it's too late and there's too much damage and
there's, you know, divorce or two or your kids resent you or
you, you lost all their money, whatever, whatever the damage is
probably like a list of things. But I would say that if I would
say maybe listen to the whispersof your soul in the quiet.
(31:04):
You, you know, in the quiet whenthings come down and you're
alone with yourself, you know that you need help and but you
just don't act on it, you know? So start listening and and act
on it. Like it Let let me also ask you
this because you're a coach and I'm quite sure you talked to
(31:24):
many people, countless people daily about certain things they
have to do. One of the things that you have
balanced out very well, work life balance.
How do you help mentor and help people with such situations like
that? Well, honestly, I think the we
(31:45):
were taught and I think we are aproduct of our environment and
our culture, right? That look, you, you go to
school, you pick a career, you work for a company, you retire,
right or a series of companies in that in that field you
retire. That's basically it worked
really well. It helped people build a future
etcetera, etcetera. The the downside of that is that
(32:06):
you are your work. The reason even we've used the
words work life balance is because work, work works against
life and life works against work.
And that's honestly, I think a construct that is older and it's
actually coming to an end if youchoose to embrace a different
(32:27):
view of things, right? Because now being in the sort of
being a cog and a big machine like a corporation is super
risky. It used to be the safe thing to
do. Right now it's actually fairly
risky because of AI white collar.
(32:48):
Like basically anything that is lower at entry level or even
above white color is going to bewiped out by AI because
knowledge can be commodified andautomated now, right?
That's true. So the way I do it, the way I
teach others, the way I did it for me, I said, look, I don't, I
(33:08):
don't want to, I don't want worklife balance.
I want work life integration, you know, and the only way to do
that is to start your own thing or your version of a new thing
or two or three things that haveseveral streams of income.
And then you choose how to invest your time and with whom
to be and where to be when. And that was sort of my, my
(33:31):
solution at the time. And I think it's easier to do
now than when I was doing it. I just did it because not
because it was easy. I did it because I had a
conviction that I, I come from three generations of broken
homes and I, I wanted to build above being a business guy.
I'm not a business guy that has a family.
I'm a Family Guy who has a business.
(33:52):
That's what who I wanted to be. And so I'd made all those
choices, even though it cost me a lot of money and a lot of
prestige and probably a lot of impact even.
But I said I'm going to not missanything in my kids lives and
I'm going to be around my wife all the time and whatever I do,
I'll do around that, right? So that gave me joy, a great
(34:16):
marriage of 25 years. My kids don't resent me and they
love me. And because of that, because I
have peace and love at home, a home full of love, I can boldly
go and do new things because doing new things is hard.
It's painful, right? But if I have, if my home front
is covered, I can come and be restored and be loved up on and
(34:40):
be, you know, replenished when when I'm discouraged.
But if you are succeeding out there on the front line and your
home is empty and loveless, you have nothing to come back to.
You have nothing to restore you.And then when all everything is
said and done when you're in thedeathbed, none of those career
things matter at all. What matters is the people in
(35:01):
the room, you know. So my point is, there's a way to
build and that's again now that ever easier than ever before and
more important than ever before,build a personal brand that you
own, a service and a business model that is attached to the
thing that you're passionate about, you can serve people
with. And then you, it's harder to do
(35:23):
because you you're not at the cog, you're creating something
new. You're an artist, you're an
architect, but then you get to decide how to invest, choose how
to invest your time and you get to benefit from people thanking
you and compensating you for theservice that you provide.
And you get to decide where to live, how to live with whom to
(35:44):
live, you know, all of that. But so it's that's sort of the
thing that I feel like it's the ultimate solution.
If you're in a big whatever, I don't care what organization
that is, It could be the government, a big corporation,
even a big charity. You are still to some degree,
even if you're a very, very, very able guy or girl, you're
(36:06):
still a cog in the machine. The cog will still, the machine
will still tell you, this is when you start, this is when you
end. This is what you need to do on
which day. And I, I just feel like that
clashes with the family thing, right?
What what I love about this conversation right now, is it
your success, your happiness, everything that makes you you
(36:31):
come from the nucleus that hey, I grew up in a broken home and I
have 3 generations of broken homes.
Yeah, in my life. And I want to make sure that
it's it ends here. That's.
Exactly. My generation, yeah.
And that's beautiful. I think a lot of people can
relate to that situation. Hey, I grew up without my
parents. I grew up on my mom and my dad.
(36:53):
I want to make sure my kids don't grow up without their
parents. And yeah, I think that you're
successful and your success comes from that, from that Ave.
that you say I'm going to do better not only for myself so I
could be successful, but so my kids can feel my success but and
my wife can feel my success by putting them first and
(37:17):
integrating them into my business as well.
Yeah, that's exactly it, yeah. I think it's beautiful, I think
it's great and I think we've done a great job at it.
Thank you. Yeah, I'm, I'm very proud of it.
And I, I think that's really my mate, my biggest achievement.
And I could, I, I've already done the millions of people kind
of thing, right. OK, then what like do I keep
doing that? Do I have to, do I have to top
(37:38):
that now? I mean, it, it doesn't matter.
It really doesn't. The only thing that matters is
the people you love doing work that matters with people you
love. That's it, you know, So that's
what I built in. Now I'm teaching others to to
sort of be able to do that better.
And I, I imagine there's a lot of people who would appreciate
(37:58):
those type of services and just learning, sitting in the
learning tree and learning how to balance their life and kind
of put things together the way you did 'cause like I said, you
are composed, you're intelligent, you've learned a
lot. You're a world traveling person,
handsome man like you know you, you Chileans is is you a Pedro
(38:18):
Pascals that's. The Pedro Pascals of this world.
Yeah, good. Looking people, but I really
appreciate that you are kind of opening it up and kind of
teaching people how to find their path and grow their own
way and kind of figure out that work life balance.
(38:39):
And I think that's that's dope. That's incredible.
Thank you. Thank you that appreciate it.
Let me ask you this you do a podcast.
What is the podcast about for those who don't know?
The podcast is about essentiallyit's, it's really about building
a personal brand, but it's on, on the deepest level, it's about
(38:59):
inner mastery. What kind of mindset can you,
how can you develop this kind ofmindset and outer impact and how
that overflows into outer impact?
And it's sort of, I think it's unique in the sense that most of
us intuitively want outer impact, but we don't do the
inner mastery thing. So then the outer impact sort of
(39:20):
runs out because the inner master is just not there, you
know, So I, and so even when I coach, I start from the inside
to the outside, you know, and people go, just give me the
result. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to
teach you how you can get that result.
I'm not going to just wave a magic wand.
I'm going to, I'm going to help you become that person who has
(39:40):
this kind of result in life. So, so it's, it's a bit of a,
it's counterintuitive sometimes.It's safe to say the podcast a
good place to start. Yeah, I think so, yeah.
And and the newsletter, I have anewsletter that's so it's
basically XE podcast, Exponential Edge, XE newsletter
and the Ghost goes out twice a week.
(40:01):
And you get into those things, yeah, I do learn.
And then once they they learn from those things, which I'm
quite sure they will, they can go to you for coaching.
Yeah. And sometimes look, it's
sometimes you could just follow somebody and, and just learn
that way. But I think coaching, what it
does it, it accelerates obviously like you it, it makes
(40:23):
things faster, more specific, more personalized.
Yeah, I agree. And I think there's a lot of
people out there, especially nowwe're in the age of with, with
social media, Yeah. And just in general, people just
trying to build their brands andbe independent entrepreneurs.
I think it's really cool that wehave outlets like this where we
can conversate about the oh. Yeah, it's amazing, right?
(40:44):
And on top of that, we have people that we can go to like,
hey, how did you get here? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. And you say, yeah, this is what
I did. This may not work for you, but
this might work for you. And here's this and, you know,
kind of just trade, trade sequence.
Or if you're a beginner trying to get into the game and learn
things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just sit on a person's learning tree.
That's exactly it. I mean, you could just get the
(41:06):
newsletter. That's it.
Or if you want to get serious, you can get coached.
Yeah, that's, those are two different speeds.
I say, I think, you know, so I do have, I do have, I do have a
really cool scorecard that maybesomebody in your audience would
enjoy. I have.
So if you, if you're going, oh, I don't know if I, if I have
what it takes, there's a, it asks you like 30 plus questions.
(41:28):
It's me. It's like under 5 minutes and it
literally gives you a scorecard in your inbox.
This is what where you're good. This is where you need to grow.
So if you go to exponential dot life, it's there.
It's free exponential without the E spelled without the E.
So what I'll do is I will put that in the show notes.
Yeah, do that. Want to do that?
They can go click on it. They can learn about themselves
(41:52):
and they can reach out to you, which I which I hope they do.
Yeah, absolutely. Because I know there's a lot of
creators who listen to this show, a lot of entrepreneurs, I
think, who are doing a lot of different things, you know, and
they can learn something. Yeah, on any level.
Because we all can learn, honestly speaking, you know.
Yeah, it's a beautiful time. I mean it.
We have. We live in a world where
(42:12):
information is free everywhere. All you have to do is be
curious. Yes, Be curious and just go look
for it. Yeah.
And I appreciate that we have people out there who are willing
to teach and willing to help. We need a lot more of that in
the world. Yeah.
So let them know how to find youbrother.
(42:33):
Go to if you want the newsletter, Christian
raeflores.com, justmyname.com and that's the XE newsletter.
And then if you're looking for coaching is exponential dot
life. It's spelled without the E
starting with an X. The cool way to spell it?
Definitely. You have been an amazing guest
brother. I appreciate you.
(42:53):
Delvin Cox, your amazing host, Iappreciate you too.
Likewise, you're always welcome back on bro.
Thanks man and as always Delvin Cox experience we are out peace.
This podcast is sponsored by patreon.com/devil Cock
Experience. If you want more content,
including exclusive shows, make sure you go to patreon.com/devil
Cock Experience. Also, special shout out to
Patreon producer Douglas Mcgirt Johnson.
(00:20):
Thank you. Welcome to the Delvin Cox
(01:14):
experience, the podcast which each week I'm on a one man
mission to United Coast to the versity.
I'm your host, Delvin Cox and with me on this podcast as a
special guest, another podcast. But that's just one of the many
things he does. He's kind of a Jack of all
trades. He does a lot of different
things that are really unique and cool.
And we're going to talk about ittoday.
Christian Ray Flores, how you doing, brother?
(01:36):
I'm doing well, thank you for having me.
My pleasure. Welcome to the experience, and
as always, we like to start the podcast off at the Five for
five, Five questions 5 asks to get the ball rolling.
OK, let's do it. Yeah, I'm ready, man.
Let's go question number one. And since we talked about a
little briefly a second ago, I'mgoing to ask you, I'm going to
(01:57):
ask you the famous question thateverybody likes to ask.
Yeah. Michael Jackson or Prince?
Oh, that's rough. See, I got you.
I did. I would say Prince as a
musician, as a showman, Michael Jackson.
I cheated a little bit. I like that answer though.
I like Prince is a musician. Prince is.
Great. I think he's a better musician
(02:18):
than Michael. Michael is a better entertainer.
Yeah, Prince. I actually met Michael.
Oh, you got to tell this story. How did you meet Michael
Jackson? This was maybe 20 something
years ago. I was in Russia at the time and
we did big events for orphans and I'm, I mean, Michael Jackson
was a massive influence on me musically as an artist.
(02:39):
I had a pop career at the time, was famous in Eastern Europe and
want to. Get to that.
Yeah, we can get to that and I did.
I'm like a Hail Mary idea I had with a friend of mine who was
sort of running the charity and and I'm like, Michael is coming,
he's doing the stadium show. Why don't we time this event to
his coming and see if we can gethis, his team's attention?
(03:02):
Because we're like coasting 3000plus orphans in this massive
event with music and sports and stuff like that.
And then until last minute, we didn't know if he's going to
show up. And then he showed up and he was
surreal. Yeah.
That is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah.
That meeting Michael Jackson is like it.
It's, it's almost like a mythical event.
(03:24):
Like you hear stories of MichaelJackson being played, like
that's not a thing that happens.And then I know people who
actually met him. It's pretty cool to hear.
And he liked my our volunteers because we're this a nonprofit
thing and they needed extras forthe show to they needed like
middle-aged women. And my mom ended up being an
extra literally on stage with Michael Jackson.
(03:46):
Well, that's. Really cool.
Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, there's there's a story.
It's a great story, yeah. That's happened, that happened
here in the 90s, Yeah, because Ilive in Miami, FL, right.
Well, Michael Jackson just randomly popped up at Aventura
Mall because he randomly popped up.
It caused a huge traffic jam at Aventura of.
(04:08):
Course and it. Just, like, destroyed that whole
area because people were just trying to rush to get to the
mall to meet Michael Jackson. Yeah.
And just like 98. Yeah, they don't make stars like
that anymore. I don't.
I don't think it's it's mega star.
It's just there's maybe four or five of those and that's it,
yeah. And I don't think you think
they're still even the mega stars we have, I don't think are
(04:28):
still on a level of a Michael Jackson no or expects for that
matter. I don't think so either.
Yeah, I agree. All right, question #2.
Yeah. If all the serial mascots have
one big brawl, who do you have winning?
I I don't know about those. Huh.
(04:50):
I really don't like I I grew up in the third world.
I don't know, cereal. Y'all don't have cereal mascots
you didn't eat like Captain Crunchy?
No, we didn't have those. We had like very generic crappy
things. And then if it when I when I
first started seeing them, I wasalready a grown up, so I I
didn't have interest. So.
So what kind of cereal did you eat as a kid then?
(05:10):
Or did you eat cereal? No, we didn't have any cereal at
all. Yeah.
That's interesting. What?
So what was? Your I like, I like Cheerios,
but they're not good for you. So.
But those are the ones that well.
No cereal is actually good for. You.
I know. Yeah, I know.
So I. Like I like Cheerios, honey,
honey, not Cheerios. Those are the ones that I like,
but I don't eat them because I'ma grown up.
(05:31):
OK, watch the ceramic Toast Crunch.
Yeah, 'cause I'm an old grown up.
Let me ask you this then what did you eat when you were a kid?
Then what was the thing that didyour mom for?
Breakfast. It was like a sandwich, you
know, It was just very boring. A sandwich.
Yeah. And tea.
Wow, that was it. Yeah.
It's a different world. Like, I can't even I'm, I'm very
(05:52):
Americanized now, right? I can't even imagine it anymore,
right? I need to.
That is fascinating. I need to have eggs every
morning. Because you because I didn't
grow up like rich at all, like in the least bit.
But I remember like, cereal was the thing that you ate because
you were broke, like. I know we didn't even have that.
Like, you know, and, and some people ate cereal with like
(06:14):
water because they didn't have money for milk.
So like cereal just ate it straight up.
Nope. We didn't have even.
We didn't even have that. No.
Like, no, we just had bread. That's whole different level of
broke. Question #3 What is the thing
you're most proudest of in your life thus far?
(06:38):
Oh my gosh, I think. You've done a lot.
Yeah, Yeah, I would say marryingmy wife, that's probably the the
the peak of my wise decisions. And then downstream from that is
how I built my life around my kids, the lifestyle I built
because I wanted to be present. So I built my businesses and
(07:00):
sort of all of my activity was Ineed to be home, I need to be
around them. And that turned out really well
for them. So.
Those are those are the top things, I think.
That's really cool and really important because that work life
balance, Yeah, it's a hard thingto do.
If it's very, very hard, yeah. But once you get the balance and
the rewards of it, like, you know, with the kids and the
(07:21):
family, yeah, it's almost priceless.
Part of the and it's actually part of the reason why I love
helping people build their businesses and building a
personal brand is because it's very hard to do.
But then you have your, you havefreedom to to choose those
things so you need, you can build your work life around your
values and that's a luxury that most people don't have.
(07:44):
So building a personal brand is one of the things that can get
you there. I.
Like it question #4 you've traveled the world, you've done
a lot of things. We're going to get into that, by
the way. Yeah.
What is the most unique thing you think you've ever seen?
(08:07):
Most unique things. Yeah, like, like, all right.
Like you see the like. I've seen some crazy stuff, OK,
like, I mean, I'll, I'll, I havesuch a long list.
I can imagine. I have such a long list.
OK, I'll pick, I'll pick one crazy, crazy thing.
So we, I grew up in, I spend my childhood from 7 to 14 in
(08:29):
Africa, in Mozambique. And at the time, South Africa
still had racism on apartheid, right?
So the whites and the blacks, the whole thing, Nelson Mandela
still in jail at the time, his party, ANC African National
Congress is outlawed everywhere.And Mozambique is one of the
places that gave them, you know,safe passage essentially.
(08:53):
So right around the right in front of my house, across the
street from my house was off theoffices of the ANC.
And in the middle of the night, the South African, the South
African regime at the time sent special forces in the middle of
night through like like rubber boats, like Green Beret level
stuff made their way from the coast to that place and blew it
(09:15):
up. And I woke up because there was
a, there was an explosion right across my street.
And it was so bad that my, my mom, my mom wakes me up and
she's like, there's a bomb, there's a war, we need to go to
the embassy. And I literally slept through
the bombing. I didn't even wake up, you know,
kids. But it was so strong that we
couldn't even open our front door because the explosion wave
(09:36):
had flattened it against the frame.
So that's a crazy story. I have so many of them.
Yeah, that is beyond crazy. Yeah, you look the fascinating
like to say the least. Yeah, it's insane.
Yeah. We're, we're going to get to
that. We're going to get there in a
second. We got a lot to talk about with
you. Yeah.
Question #5 if you could pick one place in the world to live
(09:59):
the rest of your life, anywhere you want to, Christian, Yeah.
What would that place be? I will be.
It will probably be somewhere inthe Caribbean, yeah.
It's. Nice.
Yeah, I, I just, I'm a water guy.
I'm a tropics guy, but I also like being close to the US, you
know, like I'm leaving in about a week to go.
(10:20):
I'm going to go to the Riviera, Maya, Mexico.
Oh, OK, that's nice. I'll be there for two months.
And I don't, I don't necessarilyhave to leave, but it's kind of
cool to be a hop away from the US and do stuff, right.
So yeah, that'll be my answer. That makes sense.
I like like it a lot. So, Christian, tell these people
about yourself for those who don't know you.
(10:41):
Yeah, tell them a little bit about yourself so they can get
to know you a little better. OK, so I'm a very confusing
character, but I'll I'll give you a very, very, very short
sort of version and you can go into any rabbit hole you want.
OK so I am basically this international guy.
This is the US and I live in Austin, TX.
(11:01):
Now this is my 6th country in my4th continent and I basically,
you know, I was born in Russia, my death Chilean.
So I'm like biracial and we wereliving in Chile.
There was a massive military coup there with refugees, barely
my, my, my dad barely made it out alive.
(11:24):
We ended up in Germany, then Russia, then Africa.
There was a civil war in Africa,you know, that I mentioned a
little bit before. So we solved some of that stuff,
bombings and stuff like that. Then after my parents divorced,
went back to Russia during the worst time, the Soviet Union.
So I don't experience a lot of poverty, like slept in the
kitchen for a while. Also, the whole, the Soviet
(11:46):
Union collapses right as I'm graduating from college, right?
And sees tanks in the street, Another attempted coup.
You know, they try to overthrow the government and then
everything changes because everything collapses.
And I'm like, all of my friends are going to business.
I'm going. I, I decided to go into music
(12:06):
because I was musical and had a good voice.
I was a dancer and within a yearI was on national television,
basically ended up entertaining millions of people across all of
that former Soviet Union space, which is 15 different countries
now, right? Everything from the Baltics in
the West to all the the the stans or Ukraine as well, all of
(12:27):
those places. Let me ask you this.
Yeah, because I think it's fascinating that you as a young
person was around all of these historic events.
Yeah. And I, I, I imagine as a young
person, it didn't register with you like, oh, this is something
that's crazy. And the fact that I'm here you
(12:48):
like you weren't you what you just think was 1 historic event
after. Another.
After another, yeah, Like Forrest Gump, Like, I was here
for this. I was here for the fall of the
Soviet Union. I was here for apartheid.
Like that's wild. It is really strange.
Yeah, I know. So how do you, how, how did the
(13:08):
young person just managed to kind of get this on it?
Because to me, it sounds fascinating.
It sounds exciting, it sounds scary, but you, this was part of
your life. Yeah, it, it becomes normal,
right. So and it it's really a choice
whether you you decide to becomea victim or you be decide to
(13:30):
sort of gain some something fromit basically.
And I think I just happened to fall into the hey, I'm going to,
I'm going to, I'm going to use this to build stuff.
So that's why that's what I did.And what I find so fascinating
about your story is as you follow your story, which we'll
probably get into a little bit today, as you follow your story,
(13:50):
there's different areas of your life that almost can sound like
another person's life because it's so different from the last
area of your life. Like like you get into right
now. We'll get into it in a second
because we're just talking aboutit.
Yeah. You had a music career that was
Uber popular, so let's get into that.
Yeah, so basically I ended up, you know, being like this big
(14:12):
star and Russia pop star. And it was, it was great.
It was it was like a tour all over.
I sold millions of albums. I was on TV, radio, magazines,
newspaper, like all of that, thewhole thing, basically the whole
package. And then I I sort of got bored
with it in in in a sense, in a very strange, like I know that
(14:32):
it sounds strange. How do you can be?
How do you, how are you bored with something that most
musicians will never experience?I just had this sort of, I had
this very deep instinct into I want, I never want to just do
something just because it's easy, right?
I want to do something that fills me up.
And it sort of stopped filling me up.
(14:53):
And I, I, and also I became a Christian.
So I was like, I'm going to go preach.
Also, I wanted to help the poor and I wanted to do philanthropy.
Also want to build a family, andI couldn't be touring all the
time if I'm going to take care of a family because I grew up in
a broken home. I didn't want to repeat that
pattern, right? Also, I wanted to go into sort
of other places geographically because I grew up all over the
(15:14):
world and I'm touring in this sort of in my mind at the time.
I know it's crazy, like 15 countries, it's not enough.
It's sort of boring. It's like this little corner and
I wanted to do other things. I speak 4 languages and I was
just doing things in one thing. I have an economics degree.
I'm not applying that there so. How did you have time to do all
these things? You're like, I'm a singer, I'm
(15:35):
an entertainer, I have an economics degree.
When did you make the time to dothis stuff?
Yeah, I just graduated early. I graduated with a master's at
21 and and and I learned my languages when I was a kid, so I
really didn't work for it. I just absorbed them naturally.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because, you know, I just moved around a lot, so.
That is fascinating. Yeah.
(15:56):
And then you said at a young ageyou found God, found Christ.
I found God when I was 20, yeah,in my mid 20s.
And I changed my life because I was, I was really, I was really
depressed at the peak of my career.
I was very depressed, which which is actually very normal.
Fame really wrecks you that I wouldn't say wreck you.
I don't think it exposes all of your.
(16:18):
Let's ask you about that becausea lot of entertainers have the
same situation. You had a lot about it with
totally, particularly comedians.Yes, yes.
It's like you like you just said.
You said earlier, Yeah, reached the highs of fame, success, You
know, you known and loved by millions.
You were making pretty good money.
So people on the top of that, they go, he's going pretty well.
(16:38):
He should be on top of the world.
But what? Well, what happens is people
like that, people that go into that are highly successful.
A lot of the times they're, they're fuelled by a lot of
trauma. So that's why they would become
this super driven, ambitious andstuff like that, right?
And, and they want to, so that, that like one of the things that
(17:00):
I deal with with in my coaching is, is fuel.
I call it fuel. I'm like, what's motivating you?
What's driving you? All of those things.
And I, I was, I, I was motivatedby being, I wanted to be
accepted because I didn't fit inanywhere, you know, and I, I was
like, I want to be accepted. Well, how do I guarantee that
everybody accepts? I'm going to become famous,
(17:21):
right? And there's all these other
underlying sort of so the traumadoesn't heal.
It just gets hidden. And then if you are very
successful at something, everybody around you is going to
sort of say yes to you all the time, but no one knows the
truth. So you become becomes a very
lonely place. So that's true with comedians.
Comedians are usually it's funnybecause they're trying to escape
(17:42):
and build a different reality for themselves.
That's where they become funny. A lot of them, right?
They're super depressed and anxious at the same time.
That's why they're. Comedians.
Yeah, are absolutely, it's like super, super.
They they struggle with depression, right, Robin
Williams, you know, one of the most famous cases, but it's
many, many artists, many successful business people.
(18:04):
And what happens is that the success hides the cracks and the
things that are on on underdeveloped in you, right?
So it brings, it shuts it down, but those things don't go away,
right? So eventually it catches up with
you. So that's what happened to me.
That's what happens with everybody.
And when I became a Christian, Ijust met this guy who the reason
(18:27):
I coach now is because that guy,he was a missional.
He was a missionary, Canadian missionary.
His name's Andy and he, he just told me the truth like nobody
would tell me the truth. And he was like, you are
wrecked. This is what's wrong with you.
You know, this what needs to fix.
And here's the Bible. Let me let me show you.
And I'm like, Oh my gosh, this guy like is a genius.
(18:48):
And I, I became his disciple. I became his apprentice and he
literally fixed me. And that's why I coach now
because of that guy, because I know that somebody needs to
like, I am really good with highachievers.
I'm really good with successful people.
I know them from the inside because I am them, you know,
and, and I can, I have a passionto help people like that because
(19:10):
they have the potential to give jobs, create jobs, change
history, invent things, right tochange culture.
And then they're very vulnerableat the same time.
So I love helping people like that.
So let's let's get right to it then.
You said you're coach. Yeah, a life coach.
I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm a business coach primarily, OK, but it's
(19:32):
sort of it overlaps, yeah. So how did you get?
You said that you were inspired by this person, so how did you
kind of start doing it? Yeah, start doing it and get the
whole processing. So basically I was, I was
mentored by this pastor, right, this missionary guy.
But I, you know, I treat, you know, how you like, if you, if
you're a church person, if you're listening you, you go to
your pastor for advice every once in awhile, right?
(19:53):
That's that's sort of the normalthing.
I didn't, you know, have you, you're probably of the right age
where you know, where you have seen Karate Kid, right?
Of course, I treated him like I like Mr. Miyagi.
I'm like, tell me what to do. I'll do anything.
If you tell me to wax on and waxoff, I won't question you.
I will just wax on and wax off. So that kind of attitude, I was
(20:15):
very teachable, right? Gave me the opportunity for him
to pour into me and really change the way I think about all
kinds of things like marriage. Marriage primarily, that was
like my biggest pain point 'cause I got from three
generations of broken homes, butabout money, about power, about
fame, about God, about your place in the world.
So he like rewired me and I was able to go and just do amazing
(20:40):
stuff after that, right? I was rewired.
I was, I was fixed. I was reoriented and what
happened? I started, I people, other
people like that started coming to me.
So I I started coaching like Olympic athletes, artists,
business people. And of course at the time this
was the 90s. OK, another crazy thing that
(21:01):
will blow your mind is that a lot of people came to church who
were in the mafia, right? Like Russian mafia criminals,
because it was sort of a thing then.
A lot of people were in that field.
It was like just another profession.
Like I think it was probably similar to Chicago, right.
In the Capone years, like peopleknew who the Mafia was, right?
(21:21):
They're like, yeah, he's a he's a mobster.
Yeah. Like it's just normal.
Like now we don't see that. But at the time, in the 90s, you
could see that. So people literally would come,
people who were like in the Mafia would come to me for
spiritual advice and guidance and I would give it to them.
And some of them were had anger issues, like most of them have
(21:42):
anger issues, obviously, right? They're violent people.
So I learned how to work with all kinds of high achievers.
And those guys are high achievers.
They were taking a lot of risk. They can go to jail, they can
get killed. And they were doing stuff
obviously illegal and bad stuff that I discouraged him from
doing, you know, But I would coach them.
I would coach them basically right.
(22:02):
I'm going to ask you a really good question about this, Yeah.
How does one talk to someone in the mafia and coach them that
feels like. You you.
You have. To be very careful.
No, it's the opposite actually, because everybody's scared of
them, everybody's scared of them.
So I had this I I'll give you 2 examples.
One was this big guy and he was a rest, he was a Greco Roman
(22:25):
heavyweight champion. Like think Shrek very similar.
Like the guy can just literally kill you with your bare hands,
right? He's in the mafia.
So he's going off on me at some event.
We were there cheering at a friend of mine who was a
Christian and he like corners meand I was he knew who I was like
he just going off on me, right? And I I'm like he you're not
(22:47):
even a real man. You had a long hair and so he
had all kinds of and I'm like, look, if you're if you're a real
man, are you a real man? That's when he stops and I'm
like, this guy's going to kill me, right?
And he goes, what are you talking about?
He, I go, if you're a real man, you follow Jesus, like do you
know the Bible? He goes and he stops and he
starts studying the Bible, became a Christian.
He's a pastor now, right? This guy.
(23:09):
So that's one example. You talk to them with authority.
You talk to them with knowledge of the truth and they will
listen because no one talks to them like that, you know, You
know, so I had another guy who was, his name was Wolf.
He didn't, he didn't change, right?
But he came to my house and he, I would talk to him about his
(23:30):
life. And I'm like, dude, you need to
stop. You need to stop, you know,
criminal activity. Like he was into extortion,
racketeering, all of that classic stuff.
And, and he would get real. So he, he's torn because he
wants to, he has a girlfriend, he wants to lead a good life,
but he's, he likes the money, helikes the power, right?
(23:50):
That's the dilemma. And he's sincere with me.
So I'm like, dude, no, we can't do that.
This is how you do it, blah, blah, blah.
And he start, he starts pacing the room.
They have all kinds of anger issues, obviously.
And I'm like, this guy's going to hurt me right now.
And I just open the Bible, read a scripture and he comes down,
(24:11):
right? He just comes down because of
scripture, the power of scripture.
And, and then eventually he, he became very humble with me and
very grateful. So one time he comes back and he
didn't make it long term, but I'll tell you a funny story.
He's that Christian. He'll be so proud of me.
I'm like, oh, what, what's up? His name is Andrew and Wolf.
He's last name. He has an AK.
(24:32):
He was carrying an AK in his truck right in his Mercedes.
And he was like, dude, I was in this.
I was at this business guy's office, and he owed me money.
Extortion, right? Classic, classic extortion.
And I grabbed him by the by the throat and he fell to his knees,
begging me to not hurt him. And I remembered about what you
(24:55):
told me. And I told him, I forgive you,
but you still owe me. And I'm like, all right, all
right, dude, baby steps. I'm proud of you.
You know, at least he didn't hurt the guy.
But it was like, this is the kind of conversations I would
have, like if I have, if you have this kind of conversations
with this kind of people, right?And not only in that space, but
(25:17):
in these are entrepreneurs or artists, famous artists or
Olympic athletes, people that are at the top.
It's very, if you're not afraid of anybody and you can, you can
help anybody basically. So that's how it all started.
I think that story's amazing on several fronts.
One of the fronts I think is amazing is the fact that it
(25:37):
shows the duality of man. Yes, yeah.
As you, as you deal with these mobsters and these gangsters who
are, frankly speaking, killers. They really are, yeah.
But on the other hand, the the there are also people who are in
pain or hurting who who are looking for some kind of.
They're not at peace. Yep.
(25:57):
They're not at peace. Yeah, they're not at peace.
That what you did and what you do do help them find that side
of it. And yes, not everybody's going
to find that right path and go down that path, but that's how
life works. Sometimes people, yeah, on the
path and sometimes people choosenot to.
We're all people. We're all children of God.
We all also have our minds. We can make choices on of our
(26:20):
own. Yeah.
But the fact that you push and try to guide people down that
right path is a commendable thing.
I think it's dope that you do that.
Yeah, yeah. And it's that sort of, and
honestly, this is obviously the the mafia example is an extreme,
but it's actually it illustratesall successful people.
(26:42):
Successful people become sort ofpart of this eco chamber.
You know, everybody around them,they can't really a they
probably don't even know how to help them.
But because of the, because they're the boss, they're not
going to, they're not going to tell them anything, right?
So they become very lonely and the mistakes they make, they
accumulate over time the compound.
(27:03):
And that leads to a crises, right?
You, you can be, you can have all the money, some power, some
influence, but your, you know, marriage is a mess.
Your mental health is a mess. You lose your sense of purpose.
And then you start hitting plateaus professionally as well,
because if you are anxious all the time, you can't really
perform at a high level, right? So then you start paying with
(27:26):
your professional career going down, either plateauing or
actually going down. So yeah, it's, it's a need.
It's a huge need. I'm going to ask you a question
and it sounds silly but I know you'll get it.
Yeah. Based on what I say, do you
consider yourself successful? Oh yeah, I think so.
(27:47):
I'm very successful. I mean in, in and I have
actually, I've given up a lot ofoutward success for inner
success. That's what I'm talking.
About So I think I am much more successful now than I than when
millions of people sort of knew my name.
And that was actually intentional because I'm I, I
(28:07):
want holistic success, not just one dimension of success.
Yeah, that's what I want. That's very difficult to
achieve, too, and I think sometimes people see that
outward success and, you know, millions of people know my name,
they know my songs, and they feel like that's success.
Yeah. But you can have that outward
success and not feel successful.That's why you hear a lot of
(28:31):
artists like I'm still trying tothrive for that next hit or
still trying to go for that. Yeah, drilling the rush of that
high. But you have you yourself, as I
noticed. You have a Zen like yourself,
like a Tom. Yeah.
You you feel content with who you are.
I am, yeah. And that's the thing, and yeah,
it is. And, and that's why like it's
(28:52):
part of the thing that I do for coaching is that I have this
actually very simple graph. It's called the exponential
radar. And it basically lists 7 things,
7 dimensions of life that studies show.
These are the most, these are the most important things for
you to be flourishing as a humanbeing, right?
And I, we measure them, measure the, all those things all the
(29:14):
time. And we start with measuring and
then we measure as we go. And literally I can, I can look
at that graph like, yeah, I giveyou the graph and you fill it
out. And I can tell you I, I'm, I
don't have to know anything about you.
But if I know you're scoring high across 7, all 7 dimensions,
you're, you're either doing great and will do greater
(29:35):
regardless of obstacles, or if you're scoring high in some
dimensions and you're flat in others that you're already
really majorly struggling or areabout to have a big sort of
downfall. You know, I can tell you that
little without knowing anything else about you, so it's kind of
interesting how universal those things are.
That is really interesting. Let me ask you this because you
(29:59):
coach, you kind of mentor people.
If somebody needs mentoring, what, how would they know?
Because, you know, that's the kind of thing we all need help
at some point in time. Yeah, yeah.
But we don't know. We don't we don't realize it or
we don't know how to ask for help.
I think I, I mean, honestly, theonly way you know is pain.
(30:19):
It's, you know, in the same way that your body gives you pain
signals if something is off withyour body, like your soul gives
you an emotional pain to basically say, dude, you have to
pay attention to something. You have to pay attention to
something and we just ignore it.That's sort of the thing with
the, with the physical body. We don't ignore it.
Most of the times we just go andhave it fixed with emotional
(30:40):
pain. Oh, we can, we can spend decades
in emotional pain and not do anything about it.
And then it's too late and there's too much damage and
there's, you know, divorce or two or your kids resent you or
you, you lost all their money, whatever, whatever the damage is
probably like a list of things. But I would say that if I would
say maybe listen to the whispersof your soul in the quiet.
(31:04):
You, you know, in the quiet whenthings come down and you're
alone with yourself, you know that you need help and but you
just don't act on it, you know? So start listening and and act
on it. Like it Let let me also ask you
this because you're a coach and I'm quite sure you talked to
(31:24):
many people, countless people daily about certain things they
have to do. One of the things that you have
balanced out very well, work life balance.
How do you help mentor and help people with such situations like
that? Well, honestly, I think the we
(31:45):
were taught and I think we are aproduct of our environment and
our culture, right? That look, you, you go to
school, you pick a career, you work for a company, you retire,
right or a series of companies in that in that field you
retire. That's basically it worked
really well. It helped people build a future
etcetera, etcetera. The the downside of that is that
(32:06):
you are your work. The reason even we've used the
words work life balance is because work, work works against
life and life works against work.
And that's honestly, I think a construct that is older and it's
actually coming to an end if youchoose to embrace a different
(32:27):
view of things, right? Because now being in the sort of
being a cog and a big machine like a corporation is super
risky. It used to be the safe thing to
do. Right now it's actually fairly
risky because of AI white collar.
(32:48):
Like basically anything that is lower at entry level or even
above white color is going to bewiped out by AI because
knowledge can be commodified andautomated now, right?
That's true. So the way I do it, the way I
teach others, the way I did it for me, I said, look, I don't, I
(33:08):
don't want to, I don't want worklife balance.
I want work life integration, you know, and the only way to do
that is to start your own thing or your version of a new thing
or two or three things that haveseveral streams of income.
And then you choose how to invest your time and with whom
to be and where to be when. And that was sort of my, my
(33:31):
solution at the time. And I think it's easier to do
now than when I was doing it. I just did it because not
because it was easy. I did it because I had a
conviction that I, I come from three generations of broken
homes and I, I wanted to build above being a business guy.
I'm not a business guy that has a family.
I'm a Family Guy who has a business.
(33:52):
That's what who I wanted to be. And so I'd made all those
choices, even though it cost me a lot of money and a lot of
prestige and probably a lot of impact even.
But I said I'm going to not missanything in my kids lives and
I'm going to be around my wife all the time and whatever I do,
I'll do around that, right? So that gave me joy, a great
(34:16):
marriage of 25 years. My kids don't resent me and they
love me. And because of that, because I
have peace and love at home, a home full of love, I can boldly
go and do new things because doing new things is hard.
It's painful, right? But if I have, if my home front
is covered, I can come and be restored and be loved up on and
(34:40):
be, you know, replenished when when I'm discouraged.
But if you are succeeding out there on the front line and your
home is empty and loveless, you have nothing to come back to.
You have nothing to restore you.And then when all everything is
said and done when you're in thedeathbed, none of those career
things matter at all. What matters is the people in
(35:01):
the room, you know. So my point is, there's a way to
build and that's again now that ever easier than ever before and
more important than ever before,build a personal brand that you
own, a service and a business model that is attached to the
thing that you're passionate about, you can serve people
with. And then you, it's harder to do
(35:23):
because you you're not at the cog, you're creating something
new. You're an artist, you're an
architect, but then you get to decide how to invest, choose how
to invest your time and you get to benefit from people thanking
you and compensating you for theservice that you provide.
And you get to decide where to live, how to live with whom to
(35:44):
live, you know, all of that. But so it's that's sort of the
thing that I feel like it's the ultimate solution.
If you're in a big whatever, I don't care what organization
that is, It could be the government, a big corporation,
even a big charity. You are still to some degree,
even if you're a very, very, very able guy or girl, you're
(36:06):
still a cog in the machine. The cog will still, the machine
will still tell you, this is when you start, this is when you
end. This is what you need to do on
which day. And I, I just feel like that
clashes with the family thing, right?
What what I love about this conversation right now, is it
your success, your happiness, everything that makes you you
(36:31):
come from the nucleus that hey, I grew up in a broken home and I
have 3 generations of broken homes.
Yeah, in my life. And I want to make sure that
it's it ends here. That's.
Exactly. My generation, yeah.
And that's beautiful. I think a lot of people can
relate to that situation. Hey, I grew up without my
parents. I grew up on my mom and my dad.
(36:53):
I want to make sure my kids don't grow up without their
parents. And yeah, I think that you're
successful and your success comes from that, from that Ave.
that you say I'm going to do better not only for myself so I
could be successful, but so my kids can feel my success but and
my wife can feel my success by putting them first and
(37:17):
integrating them into my business as well.
Yeah, that's exactly it, yeah. I think it's beautiful, I think
it's great and I think we've done a great job at it.
Thank you. Yeah, I'm, I'm very proud of it.
And I, I think that's really my mate, my biggest achievement.
And I could, I, I've already done the millions of people kind
of thing, right. OK, then what like do I keep
doing that? Do I have to, do I have to top
(37:38):
that now? I mean, it, it doesn't matter.
It really doesn't. The only thing that matters is
the people you love doing work that matters with people you
love. That's it, you know, So that's
what I built in. Now I'm teaching others to to
sort of be able to do that better.
And I, I imagine there's a lot of people who would appreciate
(37:58):
those type of services and just learning, sitting in the
learning tree and learning how to balance their life and kind
of put things together the way you did 'cause like I said, you
are composed, you're intelligent, you've learned a
lot. You're a world traveling person,
handsome man like you know you, you Chileans is is you a Pedro
(38:18):
Pascals that's. The Pedro Pascals of this world.
Yeah, good. Looking people, but I really
appreciate that you are kind of opening it up and kind of
teaching people how to find their path and grow their own
way and kind of figure out that work life balance.
(38:39):
And I think that's that's dope. That's incredible.
Thank you. Thank you that appreciate it.
Let me ask you this you do a podcast.
What is the podcast about for those who don't know?
The podcast is about essentiallyit's, it's really about building
a personal brand, but it's on, on the deepest level, it's about
(38:59):
inner mastery. What kind of mindset can you,
how can you develop this kind ofmindset and outer impact and how
that overflows into outer impact?
And it's sort of, I think it's unique in the sense that most of
us intuitively want outer impact, but we don't do the
inner mastery thing. So then the outer impact sort of
(39:20):
runs out because the inner master is just not there, you
know, So I, and so even when I coach, I start from the inside
to the outside, you know, and people go, just give me the
result. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to
teach you how you can get that result.
I'm not going to just wave a magic wand.
I'm going to, I'm going to help you become that person who has
(39:40):
this kind of result in life. So, so it's, it's a bit of a,
it's counterintuitive sometimes.It's safe to say the podcast a
good place to start. Yeah, I think so, yeah.
And and the newsletter, I have anewsletter that's so it's
basically XE podcast, Exponential Edge, XE newsletter
and the Ghost goes out twice a week.
(40:01):
And you get into those things, yeah, I do learn.
And then once they they learn from those things, which I'm
quite sure they will, they can go to you for coaching.
Yeah. And sometimes look, it's
sometimes you could just follow somebody and, and just learn
that way. But I think coaching, what it
does it, it accelerates obviously like you it, it makes
(40:23):
things faster, more specific, more personalized.
Yeah, I agree. And I think there's a lot of
people out there, especially nowwe're in the age of with, with
social media, Yeah. And just in general, people just
trying to build their brands andbe independent entrepreneurs.
I think it's really cool that wehave outlets like this where we
can conversate about the oh. Yeah, it's amazing, right?
(40:44):
And on top of that, we have people that we can go to like,
hey, how did you get here? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. And you say, yeah, this is what
I did. This may not work for you, but
this might work for you. And here's this and, you know,
kind of just trade, trade sequence.
Or if you're a beginner trying to get into the game and learn
things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just sit on a person's learning tree.
That's exactly it. I mean, you could just get the
(41:06):
newsletter. That's it.
Or if you want to get serious, you can get coached.
Yeah, that's, those are two different speeds.
I say, I think, you know, so I do have, I do have, I do have a
really cool scorecard that maybesomebody in your audience would
enjoy. I have.
So if you, if you're going, oh, I don't know if I, if I have
what it takes, there's a, it asks you like 30 plus questions.
(41:28):
It's me. It's like under 5 minutes and it
literally gives you a scorecard in your inbox.
This is what where you're good. This is where you need to grow.
So if you go to exponential dot life, it's there.
It's free exponential without the E spelled without the E.
So what I'll do is I will put that in the show notes.
Yeah, do that. Want to do that?
They can go click on it. They can learn about themselves
(41:52):
and they can reach out to you, which I which I hope they do.
Yeah, absolutely. Because I know there's a lot of
creators who listen to this show, a lot of entrepreneurs, I
think, who are doing a lot of different things, you know, and
they can learn something. Yeah, on any level.
Because we all can learn, honestly speaking, you know.
Yeah, it's a beautiful time. I mean it.
We have. We live in a world where
(42:12):
information is free everywhere. All you have to do is be
curious. Yes, Be curious and just go look
for it. Yeah.
And I appreciate that we have people out there who are willing
to teach and willing to help. We need a lot more of that in
the world. Yeah.
So let them know how to find youbrother.
(42:33):
Go to if you want the newsletter, Christian
raeflores.com, justmyname.com and that's the XE newsletter.
And then if you're looking for coaching is exponential dot
life. It's spelled without the E
starting with an X. The cool way to spell it?
Definitely. You have been an amazing guest
brother. I appreciate you.
(42:53):
Delvin Cox, your amazing host, Iappreciate you too.
Likewise, you're always welcome back on bro.
Thanks man and as always Delvin Cox experience we are out peace.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.