Pop Stardom, Pope Leo, & Spiritual Journeys with Christian Ray Flores

AI is moving so fast that it’s easy to feel split in two: part of us is thrilled by the creative possibilities, and part of us is uneasy about who ends up holding the power. I sit down with Christian Ray Flores, personal brand strategist (and former pop star with a wild global backstory), to wrestle with that tension honestly. We start with the Pope’s warning about AI and the fear that a few companies could shape the future for everyone, then widen out to the real question underneath it all: what does “human-first” even look like when machines can produce content at scale?

Christian brings a grounded, creator-minded optimism. He explains how AI can shrink the distance between imagination and execution, letting writers, musicians, entrepreneurs, and teams do more with less. At the same time, we don’t gloss over the darker patterns many of us have watched play out in tech: incentives that reward winning at any cost, pressure on truth and speech, mental health fallout, and the messy reality of job displacement. We also debate regulation versus innovation and why it’s so hard to create guardrails without killing the upside.

Then we turn practical. If AI makes “average” output cheap, the only durable advantage is being more you: clearer thinking, higher self-awareness, and a personal brand built on lived experience, not generic perfection. Christian breaks down how to excavate your edge, shape it into stories and pillars people remember, and reconnect passion to profit so your work stays meaningful. If you want to future-proof your career, build trust, and stay original in an AI-saturated world, this conversation is for you.

If it helps, subscribe, share this with a friend who feels the AI pressure, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Learn more about Christian at: https://www.xponential.life/

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Origin Story

0:00

Well, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Soul Tech with Cynthia. I am excited about today's episode. We're gonna have a powerhouse conversation. I have an incredibly special guest with the most fascinating personal story and history and the work that he does is so interesting. Christian Ray Flores, thank you so much for joining us today on Soltec with Cynthia. Delighted to be here, Cynthia. Thank you. Yeah. So I know that you're a personal brand strategist, but I would love for you to just take just a second to introduce yourself to the audience. Yes, I um I run a personal branding firm. We're strategists, we do all kinds of things for people who want to develop personal brands. But the backstory is very confusing as we were talking offline before we even started, because I basically was a refugee at age five in Chile. I'm half Russian, half-Chilean, changed four countries by age seven, ended up in Africa of all places, grew up there, and then spent a long time in the Eastern Bloc, so ex-Soviet Union, all those, all those countries. And surprisingly, even though I have a degree in economics, I ended up being a big pop star in the post-Soviet space, 15 different countries. And so there's just a lot there. Oh my god, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta share a photo of that. A lot, that a lot, a lot of stuff there. And then we I'm of course, I was doing a lot of producing media, so that's sort of part of the stuff that was folded into my you know ongoing journey. And what else? I do a lot of philanthropy. We we have an academy in Africa still. We just came back maybe like three, four weeks ago. And I've done a lot of Christian ministry as well, so it's an eclectic picture, let's put it that way. Keeps things interesting, right? Keeps you on your toes. I can't imagine just doing one thing. I mean, just one thing all the time. I I think I would go crazy. I like having people like, I can't keep up with you. I'm like, I know I can't either. It's amazing. Yep. So before we started recording, we were talking in recent news. You guys know I love to like go over important recent news with guests. We were talking about Poplio putting out, I forget the official there's an official word for it that I'm gonna forget. He's putting out his first paper, if you will, and hasn't been done in a really long time. And it's his first, obviously, because he's relatively new to the job, and it it confronts artificial intelligence and really positions it is a very strong position, and frankly, I think accurate position for the Catholic Church to take about artificial intelligence. And that is that the churches, and he in particular the Pope, are very concerned that a handful of people are basically going to end up running the planet, and the vast majority of humanity will end up becoming nothing more than slaves, uh, glorified

The Pope’s Warning About AI Power

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slaves to this system of powerful tech companies that basically run the whole show and can watch everybody. And he's insisting and encouraging the world to just take a breath and hold back for a minute and have the hard conversations and to institute some regulations that will celebrate the human being and keep the human in that process. And I I have to you, I was at first I was like, oh, here we go, with the church getting involved in things they don't know about. But but um I think I think they actually did a really great job and brought up something that I've I've personally expressed a lot of concern about for years now. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I haven't read the document, but from what I understand, from what I get from you, I think the I would say this. My my take is that the Pope has a role to play, right? He is sort of a moral compass, for lack of a better word. In the world at large, not just the Catholic community. So he's a very symbolic picture, but he's also a moral compass. So I think it's good that he expresses concerns for humanity. I think that's just the job, right? And I think it's good and I think it's positive, and it's everybody knows, including the people, the overlords, the AI overlords that are sort of building this thing. They all know. I mean, they've all of them acknowledge that this is dangerous and potentially very dangerous and destructive for humanity. So that's not a secret. I think more voices adding concern is a good thing, you know. Yeah. I I would say personally, my my personal take, and this is for better or for worse, it's not necessarily even the best take, in my opinion. I am more of a techno-optimist, right? So I see it from a perspective of the upside as well, and the upside, I think it's just massive. I I don't think I don't necessarily think that it dehumanizes humanity. I think it amplifies human creativity in amazing ways. So as a writer, creator, a musician, even entrepreneur, strategist, AI has given me wings. You know, AI has been able to get me get get more done with less people and less time, you know, on my hands. So the gap between my imagination and what I can put out there has shrank dramatically. So I personally feel uh this sort of almost like euphoria

AI As A Creativity Accelerator

5:16

of creativity. That's my personal that's my personal experience because as a creative, let's let's say even take a step back from the main thing that I do, which is develop strategies and support people who want to build a personal brand. Like five steps behind my very first career, I was a musician, I was writing songs, right? I was recording songs, I was putting shows on and stuff like that. All of all of the all of the work that took maybe 10, 20 times more time, money and people, is now can can be done with maybe a small fraction of the time, the money in the people, which basically means if you have a vision for what a music can be, a song can be, a sound can be, an arrangement, that vision can be tested much, much quicker, right? So in when I was like, this is a long time ago when I was writing and recording songs, I'm still recording here and there, but sort of the traditional way is you write a song and you go, is it good, is it bad, blah, blah, blah. Then you have to either you all arrange it yourself or you work with a producer who uh arranges it, but then he can't do it on his own because he needs studio musicians to play the guitar and all the parts, the background vocals, all those things. And then all of that is done, and then you have to adjust it if it doesn't work, right? Or adjust it a lot as you're building it to make it work. So from idea to track, it's a lot of people, a lot of money, a lot of time, and then that's prohibitive to most people who are creative. They don't have the money, the time, or the people. You have to have access to the money, the time, and the people, right? So you can have all the creativity in the world, but if you don't have access to the time, the money, and the people, you don't do the output. Now all of that is erased. I can come up with an idea in the morning, experiment with literally 30 types of arrangements in that same day, come up with a general structure, a sound, the even the lyrics or the background vocals, the instruments that same day. And then have at least at the very least a demo track there where I can layer over some live musicians, you know, a little bit later and produce something, etc. Right? So all of that is done at a fraction of the time, the money, and the people. Yeah. So my imagination is not constrained by the time, the money, and the people, you know. So I keep repeating that, right? So but no, but it's true. I ran an agency for 20 years. It it it I can get more done in one day now than I than a team working for me could get done in a in a week, oftentimes. And I was always uh I was highly productive, but I love I I love AI, but I do also just to counter that, because it makes for interesting conversation. Please do be the devil's advocate. Yeah. Yeah. So the thing that the thing, my my big concern, and I did, you know, for those of you who've been following me for a long time, you know I've written them on my fourth book now. My third one was on artificial intelligence. And one of my the things that I have recognized just in my adult life is that I loved the, you know, when social media came out, I could see the potential there and and all the other, you know, cool things. I remember the internet coming along and then the social media coming along, and and there were really wonderful benefits to it. But what I saw repeatedly was that not only was the truth being obstacle, I'm gonna forget that word, obsifated. Okay, you guys tell me in the comments. That's a great word, but I can't remember it. Uh, was the truth being hidden, but I could see that they were that they were

Distrusting Tech Incentives And Motives

8:48

restricting certain freedom of speech because it was happening to me. I was telling people that their phones were listening to them and that their phones were taking pictures of them. People thought I was crazy, and I was like, no, this stuff is actually going on. And and what I have seen over my 30-year career as an agency owner is that tech, the tech world, the tech industry is filled with people who prioritize winning at any cost. And that's the cost to people's mental health, it's the cost to jobs. They do not think I mean I watched industry after industry get incinerated here in America, and many of those jobs, if they still existed, got shipped off to foreign countries to cheap labor. And I was watching the collapse of the American dream while a handful of mostly men were just rolling in the dough and being being celebrated and having their backs padded by uh the media that they were spending lots of money advertising and and so what the reason why I'm concerned is less about the technology because I love AI. I've been using it the second anything came out. I was like, I gotta go test it. But it's because I don't trust the people. Yeah. Because I I've seen them consistently show that what they are what they are willing to do and they they knowingly affected the mental young people. So that is legitimate. I think there's this kind of like it's like like any wonderful industrial revolution, the fourth one is the most extraordinary we've ever had. We're gonna see more change in the next few years than we've seen the last 50, but it does come with saying uh you know it will it will have a lot of destruction. Uh and I think any tech revolution has destruction. Yeah, yeah, is associated with destruction. I mean, the printing press basically, you know, accelerated the re the the Protestant Reformation, all kinds of societal changes, the the the French Revolution, all of those things are also downstream from a tech revolution, right? Like the printing press being one of them, for example. Is that the social media of the time was the pamphlets? They didn't have that. They didn't have that before, right? That's like people are like spreading all kinds of lies and gossip and all kinds of toxic things on pamphlets, and it caused so much trouble and it changed society. So this undoubtedly will cost us a lot, you know. You know, it really will, you know. So I think just in the and I agree with you that you know, too many people with unchecked power, it's never been good news for you know humanity at large. So there's got to be ways to sort of check that and maybe sort of apply the checks and balances thing that has worked for, especially for the West and America in particular for a couple hundred years really well to this space. It's just harder to do, but it I think it has to be applied, obviously. You know, yeah. On the other side, you over-reg you you can't really regulate uh unless you kill the thing. You throw the baby with the with bathwater. Yeah, yeah. So that's what Europe is doing, and they're like losing the AI race. Like I don't think they'll recover. That's the thing. No, they they've been a hot mess for 20 years now. Because they got rid of the money and let everybody in and lost their culture, and now they've just they're just gone. Because they are high regul highly regulated society, right? So America's always been sort of traditionally unregulated or less regulated than than and because that's why we win. On the other side is we also suffer more, right? There's more messiness, there's there's all kinds of stuff happening that is not happening in more regulated places.

Regulation Versus Innovation Tradeoffs

12:15

So you sort of need to figure out what kind of what kind of place you want to live in and culture you want to live in. And I'm definitely the the unregulated guy, you know, like I'm just because and the thing the reason that I I grew up in the Soviet Union. I grew I I grew up in the most regulated sort of scenario, and I saw what it did from the inside out, and I want nothing to do with that, basically. So I would rather have an uncertain future, a little bit of chaos, a little messiness, but not with less government sort of controlling controlling people. It's an i I'm actually really excited that I'm alive to see this because a lot of this was fantasy stuff that we saw as kids in in science fiction. And I've always said that our science fiction writers were our futurists. They were just visualizing. I think a lot of them were channelers actually, channeling what they were seeing and just calling it creativity. And I'm like, oh, you're probably just seeing the future. But I do find it really interesting that while all this is going on, well, for one, just to go back to what you were saying about like we don't actually are we are not having important conversations as a country about what we should be careful of with artificial intelligence. Like they have robots now that can actually carry a baby, and I personally find that horrific because we don't understand consciousness and how it is created or passed on or where it comes from. And I think divorcing the woman the mother from the entire situation will lead us to somewhere. I just don't know. That would be that's that would just be dumb. I I yeah, I agree, but I don't think we're gonna be able to stop it because there's a lot of people who are really worried about the birthright. And I don't think they I and they already show enough disrespect from others that I don't think they're gonna actually care. But on the other hand, we're not talking about the the serious issues very openly. We get these like you know, salvos from a big AI guy who's like, oh, I'm a little worried about, you know, we do need to keep our eye on that, but like no one will even talk openly about the things that we should be concerned about. And I think that's because, like you were saying, we are the Wild West of creating the new. And so we nobody wants to really stop that because we want to win the race. I mean, I whoever wins the AI race planet wide is going to be having a really, really, really interesting future. Yes. But what I find really interesting, and I don't think this is an accident. I the closures happened and millions of people all over the planet suddenly woke up and started working on themselves and started to understand, even you never heard the word consciousness 10 years ago. It was not something, you know, you'd hear it at like, you know, a retreat or something like that, but it wasn't just being openly spoken about across social media. And now it's one of the most popular topics. I don't think it's an accident. I think we've had the age of AI and the age of Aquarius come together and come uh rise to the top at the same time. And I think that's because for us to be able to manage or to command this in any way, we need as many people on the planet as possible to be in higher levels of consciousness. Well, it sort of forces you to actually now that you mention it, because AI can outwork, outright,

Consciousness And The New AI Era

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outpost, in some ways outthink any of us. Right? So so this is this is a surge, like this is a tsunami of artificial content thought and in more and beyond. So it's not just content in social media, it's it goes way beyond that, right? And for I think most people will continue to be slaves. But I m I would maybe emphasize continue to be slaves. I don't think AI made makes them slaves, AI reveals them as slaves. Well, because they they are sort of they they were taught how to think a certain way, to went to institutions where they taught them how to behave, what to think, what to not think, what to not say, what to not do, and they are content uh with being a cog in a machine. It could be a corporation, it could be a university school system, that kind of thing, right? Society at large. And they all they want is a little bit of comfort, a little bit of success, a little bit of status, and they really will give up their sort of their calling to as long as these things are provided, let's put it that way, right? And that's essentially like a this is your cognitive machine, you're just you're in the matrix. So AI, what it does, I think, it it makes them obsolete faster. But they were already obsolete, uh my point is. You know, so some of us uh if if we don't want to share that fate, we actually are more motivated, more incentivized to be more human, more ourselves, more creative, more original, more distinct. Because that's the one thing that can't be commodified, you know? Which sort of is part of the a big reason why I actually focus on personal branding. Is that you can commute be commodified as now right now, even right now it can do perfection really well. Yeah, oh totally. Like it you can be commodified as a medical professional in many ways, as a lawyer, as all kinds of things, writer, painter, video editor, all of these things can be commodified, which is which was unthinkable just 10 years ago, you know. So if you were unoriginal in the first place, now you're really in trouble, you know. So right, it's so true. Well, they and I think you can get you can get away with a little bit of being unoriginal with AI, but I think you're only as good at AI as you've already like I talked

Why AI Makes Unoriginality Costly

18:12

to my students about I I wrote for 25 years before I started using AI to help support writing, just so I could be more productive. But I know how to write. Yeah. And and I think what if you do not learn how to stretch yourself artistically and know how to write, the more you know how to do all of that, then you become reading like everything else. I I write every day and I use AI to write every day, but I don't have AI write for me. AI is a is a is a tool, research assistant, an editor, a critic all in one within seconds, you know, at your fingertips. But if you allow AI to write for you, you're you you're commodifying yourself immediately, you know. You know, so so and and that's just the one slice, and everything in human activity is is exactly the same. So, you know, I I I love doing what I do for people now because people don't trust institutions, they don't trust brands, they trust people. And you if you create distinct, very specifically valuable content, the trust is even if it's not, it doesn't even have to be in the top 1% of what is possible. It just has to be distinct, valuable, true enough for somebody to trust you, you personally. And that's the beauty of a personal brand, right? You can you can AI proof yourself, uh you know, essentially. So in Well, I think that's what higher consciousness, emotional intelligence and higher consciousness is one of the it's it's literally the like the touchstone of everything that I write about every all the work I do, movies, I do, all of that stuff. It all goes back to raising your human consciousness is what puts you in the the power position. And being fear-driven, which is at the bottom of the human consciousness map, which is what most people are, that's why most of us are slaves, most of us are operating within that fear-driven narrative, and it just makes it makes you weak to the systems that exist. So learning how to be authentic and to where your talents lie and stretching your talents and practicing them and growing them and then uh leveraging what art AI can do for that position. Well, AI is a great amplifier, a great accelerator, a great catalyst, even, you know. But AI, by definition, cannot be a creator. Yeah. Because AI is by definition learning from the median. You know, now it can approximate and really do a good job of approximating creative work, but you go, man, that's a nice painting, you know. Like, but it's a copy of a painting, or it's a composite of a of many, many paintings. Right. To a degree, it is, yeah. All I all art is derivative to a degree, everything is a remix, you know, all ideas are derivatives, all everything is a remix. And so it really the only, and you're absolutely right. So it can mimic even that, but it cannot mimic personal experience, personal lived experience. Yeah, the rough around the edges part, the the things that make attract us to us other human beings. It can't really copy that. It can it can try to emulate it, but it's not gonna get there, I don't think, ever. Well, it'll be interesting to see. I find it really interesting that you you specialize in helping people uh build their personal brand. Uh, I'll share an interesting story with you. So I've been a futurist for a really long time, and that's how influencer marketing came about and brand communications. Like everyone thought I was crazy for naming my agency. Dreamweaver brand communications, but I was. Like marketing and PR are dying, and they were like, No, they're not, they're so big. No, I'm like, they're gonna be dead in six years, and it was almost to the day that it started, people started going, Oh no, and I remember realizing how important uh this is gosh about 14 or 15 years ago. I remember realizing that personal branding with the technology was gonna be a big deal, so I put together the phrase because it didn't exist, and I wrote the first paper on personal branding, and I gave it to a big advertising industry guy to put out as his own concept because you know and I'm just people know this if they've read any of my stuff. And and he didn't do a very good job of putting it out there, but it did get the phrase in the lexicon. So when you mentioned that you were a brand, a personal branding strategist, I was like, oh, this is gonna be an interesting conversation. How do you see personal branding in this time right now with you know all of the technology and all the change that's happening? Well, it's a it's a good time to be alive, let's put it that way. You know, if you don't want to be, if if you don't want to be mediocre, if you don't want to be a cog in a machine, and you're willing to sort of fill that gap between sort of being an expert, an operator, or even a CEO, a leader, and being a communicator and a thought leader, it's a good time to be alive. If you're not willing to fill that gap, and there's a skill gap there, right? It's going to be very hard for you. But the the truth is, it's always been like that. It's just more enhanced now. Yeah. You can get washed away faster than you used to, than you used to. There were more guarantees and more sort of status

Personal Branding That Stays Distinct

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guarantees in the past. Now it's all it's all basically gone. You you you but it's always been that way, that distinction, personal brand, uh, an ability to communicate something unique, original, distinct, contrarian, even, with a flare, with a and doesn't have to even be like an over-the-top flare, it needs to be just your, it can be an understated flair, but it could be it needs to be yours. People are hungry for that. They always have been hungry in the history of humanity. They always will be hungry, you know? And it's just never been easier to actually become that. And that's why I say it's a good time to be alive. Because you have all these tools that make it faster, cheaper, and easier to channel your your thoughts, right? Your your your opinions, your takes. It's just we have been trained to keep that to ourselves. That's one piece. The other piece is that because it's so close to us, let's say you're have been an engineer for 25 years, or a lawyer, a doctor, or founder, the things that make you made you successful, they're so familiar, they don't feel valuable. Well, that's so good. So that's where the imposter syndrome comes from, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, imposter syndrome doesn't, you know, I don't I don't know if you've noticed that true impostors don't have imposter syndrome. It's facts. I've met a lot of those. But I'm like, what? You got a lot of ego for somebody with no talent. I'm the bomb, man. You know, but if you have imposter syndrome, congratulations. You you're the real deal. That's why you're having those feelings, right? And you know, I I it's really cool, you know, when I work with people that have built incredible stuff in their lives. And because they have done it incrementally, let's say from zero, like from an idea to the struggle, going over the sort of the initial, you know, pit of despair of the entrepreneurial journey, and then stabilizing and scaling, let's say that kind of thing, right? They've learned so much and they do it in their, they can do it in their sleep. It's so normal, it's so so obvious to them. They never thought that this is valuable to an outside world and to an audience, right? So, what we do is I excavate that stuff, right? And I go, okay, origin story, what is your passion? And by the way, passion, it's always almost always starts with passion. Like you don't go to college and like slave for four years and then build a career from nothing if you're not, at the very least, interested in something. Like there's a why there somewhere. But when you reach a certain level of growth or status or scale, that passion gets actually divorced from what you do because the increase in complexities, the things that need to be done, and then you're responsible for so many people, and you have four or five direct reports, and and it's just mechanics, right? The passion gets left behind. Yeah. And that's the first death, I would say. Because you die as a creative. And you now you're just the builder and operator. And what happens is that catches up with you eventually because you can't live without passion. You can't you can't you can't be happy without passion. It catches up with you. And you wake up one day with all the status and all the money and all the recognition and with no joy. So I think personal brand is this bridge to reconnect your passion with your profit and your status and the thing that you can do. But you have to take two, three steps back, you know, and then you have to go, okay, what brought me here? What moves me? You know, what can I dedicate to communicate to in to all kinds of stakeholders, right? Your team, inside, maybe partners, investors, the general public. Yeah. What are the things? I think one of the hardest go ahead. Yeah, what are the pearls of wisdom? So we built sort of these brand essence and a focal point, which is like the one thing people will recognize you for. And then we build these pillar concepts that are all surrounded by stories in the journey. So because stories are the way we make sense of concepts. So we sort of that's essentially how we we build a personal brand. Is we excavate all that stuff, take out like the essence of the essence, the value, give it some really good terminology, great stories, make it very, very valuable for someone who listens, and then we start publishing the content. I like that. I think that I think our listeners are gonna love that because it's so true. One of the things that I've had to really work on is I had a massive burnout five five years ago. I just woke up one day and I completely lost my executive function. And I mean, we're talking type A, like obsessed with being on time, master organizer, like craziness, massive projects. I couldn't remember a Zoom call. I just, it just left me completely. And and one of the things I've had to really work on, aside from really finding myself and finding my own joy and who who I am outside of the titles that for the longest time kept me warm and fuzzy, is finding a way to to bring passion into all the work that I do, in particular the things that I do that I don't particularly love that aren't my like forte, and that balance of like getting through the schlag work, like that eat that frog

Burnout, Art Breaks, And Passion

29:05

concept where they say get up in the morning and do that one thing that you really are gonna, it's gonna make the whole day dreadful. Because if you get that over in the beginning, then the rest of the day is amazing. And it's like finding like how do I keep the passion going when I'm when I'm working on something that I doesn't particularly like tickle me. And and I'll take art breaks in the middle of the day where I'll go paint or I'll go to the gym and sing because there's nobody there, and I can hear myself. And I found that those things are a wonderful way when I'm doing the drudgery work, the stuff that you don't love that other people may love, but it's not my thing, is to do that. And that that keeps the creator in me lit up. And then I and I find that when I am doing the work I don't like, it's uh suddenly it's more interesting because I'm more interesting, I'm more engaged in life and in joy, and uh that that's gotta be uh something that uh you see what people and and but what you for to your point, I think what you're doing with the art breaks and all these things are really important because at some point when the passion leaves at some point because of duty. You have to, you're expected to to do A, B, and C by the world at large, your family, your whatever, your employees, your partners. And then you just then you wake up one morning and you you do maybe 10% of what you do gives you true joy. Well, you can't really do like but just by definition, if you think about it. If you're that uninspired, that sort of mechanical, that mundane, even if you're operating at the highest level, you might be you might have a 300 million dollar company, you know. The best we we're not getting the best of you. Just by definition. We're just not. You are you are maybe at the lead of the machine, but you're still a cog in the machine. You know, and we're not getting the best of you. And what you were put on this earth to do, you're no longer doing. And that's a crisis that a lot of people face at some point. Yeah, right. I think I think we're gonna see a lot of crises that are actually related to what was their purpose, or at least the replacement for their purpose, because they never really got around to actually finding out their purpose. It just gave them a thrill enough to like get by. Yeah, you get validation, you get rewards, right? I think when a lot when the millions of people, which is happening already, we got hundreds of thousands of people being laid off every month in America and around the world because of AI, supposedly. That's debatable. I think it's some of it's AI, some of it's just being cheap shit, excuse my French. Is that a lot of people are gonna lose their what they thought was their purpose and they they're going to need tools to deal with with the crises that that's gonna send them into. And it we already see it, and it's already happening, but it's gonna get exponentially worse. I think so too. Yeah. I think so too. So is a is a are there I know you do you do some interesting things, you do a test for people so they can get it kind of a sense. Like, take me through like so what are some things that you can share with our audience that they'll love, you know, if they're worried about their personal brand or want to kind of have ask themselves a few questions. Like, what are some some thoughts you have there? Well, one, I do have a scorecard that's really, really simple. It's just five minutes, and it gives you sort of the it asks you just very obvious questions. And it they they're just different angles of what really is required for you to build the personal brand. And just you score yourself and you see a total score, and it gives you like, hey, you're doing really well, keep doing going, or you need you need to get some work done and change course, that sort of thing. So you can do that. It's it's called the exponential scorecard, and you can go to exponential.life, which is exponential is spelled with that the e the cool way. It starts with an X. We'll have it in the notes, you guys. Yeah, exponential.life is the website. And uh yeah, so see that you'll see that scorecard there. It's really, I think it's valuable if you want to just take a step back and and assess where you're where you're at. The other thing I do that is uh regularly,

Scorecard And Passion To Profit Lab

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that you can probably find somewhere in the website when it sort of pops up. I I call it the Passion to Profit Lab. And it's basically a four-day, like hands-on, an hour day workshop online. We're actually build stuff together. We work on your personal brand, we ask you all kinds of questions, you will give you some skills, and you actually walk away with a lot of value. So that's the passion to profit lab, and that's why I call it passion to profit, is that you have passion in the beginning, but no profit. Eventually you have profit and you and you lose the passion, right? And we want to bridge that again, basically. So, and that's really that that I think that's accurate of a lot of people. Yeah, of a lot of people. How does somebody get their passion back if they've I mean, is there like go on a vacation, go to ayahuasca in Peru? Well, you do well, that's part of it. You have to be metacognitive. You need to figure out, okay, what are your you know, again, to your point of raising your consciousness level, it's being self-aware. That's a core part. You can't really get in touch with your passion unless you're self-aware. And what happens is life will suck the self-awareness out of you, it will beat it out of you. It's just true, you know. Yeah, the olive systems are engineered to make you not think. Not think driven by fear. So you need some daily habits that get you get you into a sort of a metacognitive state. It's not that complicated. It's actually not that, I mean, that's probably the in my mind, that's the easiest thing. The people that I work with, within a week, they're back in that place, you know. But then then the real work is okay, now that you have metacognitive, you have a little bit, you're more in touch with what you want, how do you make that jump, right? That how do you fill that cap? And I think it's you need to find, okay, what's the edge that I have? Again, the edge is the thing that's super familiar to you, doesn't feel valuable, it's actually really valuable. So you just create it and you you need to tease out out of your life experience. You're a master of something. What is the stuff that is actually valuable? How do you org how do you communicate it to people and translate that into some something that people go, oh my gosh, this changed my life, right? And then you build a brand on based on that edge, and you build a business model that works with that brand. Okay, how do you monetize that? How do you keep this thing going? And even for those of us who don't need the money, I mean, I have a friend who just doesn't need the money, and I go, Yeah, but you need to you need to create enough value that can be monetized so it can fuel your passion. And other people you need to hire some people, you need to invest in subsystems, you need to if you want to have impact, you need money to fuel that thing, right? Even if you don't need the money yourself personally. So I had to have to convince people to make money sometimes, you know. I'm like, seriously, you know, and I'm most people would want we want to make some more money, which is nice. Uh but our business model is really important. That's that's sort of what I'm trying to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a god, it's such an interesting time to be alive, you know. The tools that we have, the you know, like I'm gonna be working at a cloud agent, and I just find that so fascinating that I can actually set up a an employee, basically, that's AI to take care of some of the things that that I think I feel like are really kind of waste of my time. So any do you have any any kind of events or anything coming up that you want to share with the audience? You know, I I don't well depends on when this airs. It's gonna be airing Tuesday, so Tuesday, okay. So pretty soon. Yeah, so I think I think by then we'll have the dates for the next Passion to Profit lab. That's probably your thing that you want to take a look at. Yeah. It's four days, it's online. We do it with a group of people via Zoom, it's hands-on, it's fun. I love it. So, you guys, Passion to Profit. I'll um post about it in the copy that goes with the podcast. So whether you're on YouTube, just go to the copy in the description and or whatever podcast platform, and it'll be there along with a link to Christian's website. Uh, so Christian, am I gonna be able to talk you into sharing a photo that I can post uh of you when you were singing? Oh, yeah. I mean, you can I'll give you some access. Yeah, I'll give you some access. But you know what? You can go on YouTube. Uh-huh. Well, the only Beyond Travel with Beauty, we have to scroll down quite a bit because I do, you know, maybe like one or two pop guest podcasts a week. But if you scroll down enough, you'll find some videos with long hair from the 90s, a lot of dancing. Yeah. I love it. It's pretty, it's pretty cool stuff. Oh, you need to. I think I think uh, you know what I added to my website was a it's sort of like an album that has like a like a picture from each year or something like that. We gotta get you to do that. I gotta see some of these photos of each year. I'm actually I'm actually working on an episode of my podcast about Michael Jackson because he was like a huge inspiration for me. And uh, and you know, and I was like behind the iron curtain, like never thought I would see him live even. Like, forget about anything else, right? And but he I studied him quite a bit, and a lot of the the stuff that I learned from me, I obsessed really well. That's probably my superpower. And you know, I just obsessed over people that are really awesome, and it I it really helped me become very successful. My first personal brand, which was my music career, and uh so anyway, so I went to see Michael with my daughter, uh the the the movie, and I was like, I was annoying her because I knew everything there is to know what's gonna happen next. Dad. Yeah, I'm like, I know everything, and I but I I forgot that I know everything, right? Because I haven't thought about it in a long time. My point is I'm working on an episode on that, on sort of almost like virtual apprenticeship, and Michael specifically, and I'm gonna put in like a supercut of amazing 90s dance dance dance moves from my videos there. So, you know, if you go to my YouTube channel, you might find something like that. I don't know if it's gonna be out by Tuesday, maybe not, but definitely working on that one. I love that. Maybe you can make your your agent Michael. Yeah, exactly. I 100% believe it. Yeah, we'll be well, like I I can see, and I was thinking about this a few months ago. I can see as a future thing with people who pass away, is that there'll be a version of them that will be that's right, yeah, that which is interesting. And you know, I know some people will be like, that's terrible. And I'm like, no, but for some people that's actually really cool, and it'll be like a like one of their spirit guides. Yeah, it's uh a relative that passed on. Anyway, so you guys, if you want to learn more about Christian's work, you want to participate in in any of the things that he has coming up, go check it out on his website, which is exponential.life without the e. Exponential within the extra. Exponential, yeah, yeah, yeah. So go check it out, you guys. Of course, it's in the comments. Thank you so much, Christian. I really like it. Really great conversation. Thanks for having me. Yeah, that was wonderful. All right, you guys. So if you have not already done so, first you need to go pre-order my next book, Soltec 12 Codes for Awakening Your Higher Consciousness. It is benefiting the Soltec Foundation. Um, and it launches and drops, which I'm super excited about at the Her Health Summit, which is on October 28th in Boca Baton, Florida. It's the first of uh the Her Health Summit events, which we'll be taking around the country. Incredible speakers, incredible panels, amazing vendors. So come join us as a fundraiser for six charities that actually support women and children. So come hang out with us. You can go learn more about it at soultechfoundation.org. You can also find out about my book at my website and on soultechfoundation.org. And of course, the Her Health Summit has its own website because it's a big, it's a big deal. And I am one of the keynote speakers. So hoo-hoo, come hang out with us. Anyway, you guys have an amazing

Book, Summit, And Closing Requests

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week. And you know, share some thoughts and comments in in under the video and let us know what you thought. All right. Thank you again, Christian. Thanks, Cynthia. Bye, you guys.