From Soviet Struggles to American Success: Christian Ray Flores Tells His Story #158

If you grew up surrounded in poverty in Moscow, Chile, Germany and Mozambique, if you rose to the top of the charts as a pop star in Russia, whose song Our Generation became an anthem for Boris Yeltsin's election campaign, if you left it all behind to come to America in 2004 to build a beautiful family, a ministry and multiple successful businesses, and high performance coaching, brand development and media production, your name can only possibly be Christian Ray Flores.

That's a great intro. Thanks, man.

Right on, right on. Welcome, welcome, Christian. How are you?

I'm well, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. I tell you, I've. I'm just so honored to have you on. I've really enjoyed getting to know you through the research. Tell me, who is today Christian Ray Flores?

I love helping people. That's probably the number one thing. I just love people and I obsessed with human flourishing on all levels. Micro, macro, the whole thing. That's probably the best way to say it. And because of that love for people, I do high performance coaching. We do brand strategy with. Tell stories of brands with founders and companies and things like that. And we help disadvantaged kids overseas in Africa to just get to the bottom rung of the economic ladder so they can. They can raise on their own, basically. So, yeah, that's what I do.

So your father was Chilean, I think your mother was Russian and Ukrainian.

Yes, half Ukrainian, half Russian. So I'm a quarter Ukrainian, a quarter Russian.

All right, and we'll leave that there for right now. But a lot going on over there.

Yes, yes, very much.

A lot, A lot going on over there right now. We're sitting here in, oh, March of 2025, for those listening later. So put a timestamp on where we are. But what was it like growing up in Moscow and then in Mozambique?

It was. I think we first moved. I was born there, but I left when I was a baby, so I have no memory of that. And then we came back after the. After we were refugees and were kicked out of the country in Chile and we got asylum in Germany. My mom wanted to go back to Russia. She was just shell shocked from. By the military coup, by the drama. And we went back. I was, I think I was probably six, something like that. So we didn't stay for that long. But it was a horrible year. Okay. We lived in poverty. We lived in a communal apartment. I was sick all the time. I almost died. You know, it was like just. I had horrible memories of the whole thing. So when we moved to Africa, to Mozambique, it was compared to the Soviet Union. It was a step up personally for us because we, you know, my dad had an expat job that was, it wasn't actually very well paid. It was sort of, it was. They were almost like secular missionaries. Right. They were there to actually help a country get on their feet and. But we, you know, we had a little townhome, a car. It was better than the Soviet Union. And of course the country itself was so super, super poor. Still is extreme poverty. Right. But growing up there was fantastic. It was because it was free. Right. For a child. So we were on the beach at all. We fished, we spear fished, we traveled all over. We got a, you know, I learned two additional languages. I knew two when I came in when I was seven. I knew I learned two more languages by age nine because I was thrown into this sort of Portuguese speaking African school right away. And then the next year they sent me to this international school that was Eng only. But the childhood there was just fantastic. As a child, you don't experience limitations like poverty, things like that. We didn't have toys pretty much and we didn't care. You find toys to play with, you just make toys. Right. Things like that. So you look back and you go, my gosh, that was actually some stuff. But in the moment, you don't care. As a child, all you care is about your friends, the freedom, the sun, the ocean, all of those things, they were, you know, they were great. So. And then I had to go back to the Soviet Union, unfortunately, which was again, pretty depressing.

Yeah. I remember reading a book, it was written by a Jewish woman talking about growing up, you know, in the 30s and 40s and 50s, and she said, you know, I only had one doll as a child.

Yeah.

And it was all that I needed. And when I look at the children today and they have hundreds of items, you can't love them all, so they, they become meaningless.

Yeah.

You know, there's, there's a beauty, there's a real beauty in simplicity.

There is, yeah.

And, and a beauty in just not drowning yourself in, in abundance of material things.

I, I really agree. You know, and so I think this is probably an example where scarcity was of benefit to me, you know, because it was not scarcity, oppressive. Scarcity was a pre. It was just scarcity because it was the nature of the place. But there was so much freedom, you know, I was completely unsupervised, roaming the city every day, all day with a bunch of crazy boys, you know, and so I was getting my. How I survived. I don't know, but it gives you a whole different level of autonomy. Right. I remember having a ball, like a soccer ball that my mom brought from Russia and then not having it because I think we destroyed it pretty quickly. And then we had this sort of field, like, literally it's not a soccer field. It's like a dirt field across the street from me. And we would play soccer there, and we had rags that we put a lot of string around and that we made a ball. So that was our ball. And it's like you look back and sometimes I go, oh, my gosh. We didn't have toy stores. There were no toy stores. How's that even possible? It's very hard for me to wrap my mind around it as an American living in America for 20 years. But we didn't have toy stores. It would have. Would make like, slingshots. That's. We learn how to make slingshots and just start, you know, basically making war on. On the other boys with slingshots, which is not safe, but fun. And would get like a, you know, like a rubber tire, like a car tire, and they would put some oil in it, like used oil, and put two sticks so that there's no friction, and we would race against each other with a rubber tire. So this is the kind of toys that we had growing up. And it was fantastic. It really, really was.

The best games growing up are the ones that you invent.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We don't need all that fancy stuff. We really don't.

Were you a hustler? When, when did you. When did you start hustling? You had to.

You.

Because you've hustled your whole life. You've been a performer. You. You're an incredible storyteller. I've consumed some of your podcasts and you're an adventurer, you're an artist. When did you first start hustling? Whether it be for money or not for money, because you had to develop that at some point.

I think I would probably root the entrepreneurial bug to. We went back to the Soviet union. I was 14 years old. My dad was no longer there. I was raised by my mom. Me and my sister, we lived in this one bedroom apartment. I slept in the kitchen for a few years. My sister slept in the living room, my mom slept in the bedroom. And, you know, it's the 80s, right? Really sort of the bottom of the Soviet existence. Things were already crumbling and my mom had a. Because she was overseas for a bit, she had a very small, you know, bank account in Germany with foreign Currency, which was illegal. You can't have foreign currency as a Soviet citizen. So she had one in Germany from years and years working overseas. So we would go, we'll get on a train and we would gather some dollars and whatever. And it's only limited dollars. So we had some more rubles. But you can't trans, you can't exchange rubles for dollars. Until a certain level, everything's regulated. Nothing is free. Right. So we had a bunch of rubles. We found out there's a place in West Germany that takes rubles and gives marks in exchange. So we would get on a train, go through the border, we would sew the wad of rubles into a pillow.

Those coins are paper bills.

Paper bills, yeah. And then the border guards would come to every single train car and search and open suitcases and stuff like that on the Russian side. So every time my heart would just stop for like three, four, five minutes, you know, because if they found that money, you know, it would be, you know, my mom would be taken away. And then what happened to us? Orphanage, I guess. Right. So it was, what, it was super scary. And then we would go to East Berlin. We had a cousin in East Berlin. And then none of this sort of Eastern bloc people could cross over to the West. So my mom couldn't do it, my cousin couldn't do it. But my sister in law had double citizenship, Chilean, Soviet. So we grabbed those rubles in those dollars, crossed to West Berlin, exchange the rubles for Marx and dollars for Marx and then get, you know, cassette recorders and VHS tape recorders and like the first computers and bring them back, take them back to Moscow, send them in the, send them on the black market. That's how we made our living. That was probably the beginning of the hustle.

And how old were you?

I was 15, 16 years old. Yeah.

Well, look, once you start, one of the best indicators of future entrepreneurial experience is an early entrepreneurial experience in your life. And you know, here in this. I mean, I did everything. I washed cars. I mean, I did. I mean, starting early, early making anything I could do to hustle to make a dollar.

Right.

And looking back on it, I mean, you know, I was living in a country of abundance, so it's not like I was going hungry or anything, but I guess I just wanted stuff. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, you have the, you either have it or you don't have it. Right. That hunger.

Yeah.

For more.

So now you're, you're, you're 15, 16 years old. You're back living in Moscow. How did you first discover that you were talented?

I knew I was talented. I just didn't know that it was an applicable gift set for a profession. So I would sing since I was like 5 years old. My mom and dad would have visitors at the house and literally I would stand on a chair and I would perform like a song for the visitors. You know, I remember that. So, you know, and then when I was in Africa, we'd had this little Latin American folk ensemble, basically expats, basically singing like Latin American songs. And I, I would, they would give me solos because I had a voice and. But I was also immersed in all this music. This, the. The African rhythms were amazing. And then they would have this. They have this incredible tradition of multi, sort of harmonies, multi vocal harmonies in the traditional singing, but with no schooling whatsoever, they just sing. So all these things I absorbed. And then I came to Russia and I was sort of at this very, you know, non Soviet kind of guy. Right. Dark skinned, rebelled against, sort of socialist. Yeah, it's long hair. And I would dress outrageously. Like it was like, imagine like black and white. That's what Moscow was like. Grayscale. And I would have this big red down jacket and dreads and a big hat with a colored rim. It's just like heads turned, like you're.

Act like you're who you want to be.

Exactly, yes. And I started break dancing. Right. So I started breakdance. At the time, it was like a sub, subculture, like underground culture. It was just very, very few people in the whole country did that. And I became real good at it. But it was just all of these things were separate hobbies. And then eventually, like two years into my college, I was getting a master's in economics. I was like, the country was becoming free market. It was on the brink. Right. I knew that it was coming. We didn't know, we thought it would be. It was being liberalized. We never expected for the whole thing to come crashing down. And it crashed down literally, Literally the year I graduated, the whole thing collapsed. The empire collapsed. So we see tanks in the streets again, an attempted couple. But in that atmosphere of like complete sudden freedom, anything, anybody can do anything. It was probably like the purest free market in the world at the time, you know, in the purest sense, because it was like, there's no power, there's vacuum. Right. There's no control, there's no regulations. The whole thing is being reinvented from the ground up. And of course that comes with a Lot of violence and mafia and all of that stuff. Like. So that was in the 90s. So my friends, the. The ones who emerged with a master's in economics, they went to finance and banking and trade, whatever, right? This sort of the rational people, the. The. The one creative idiot, you know, went the other way. I'm like, I'm gonna do music, you know, and. And. But I had sort of a combination of creativity and dance and song and exotic looks and sort of the work ethic of a very western work ethic. Because I had sort of absorbed them through the. Through the ether, right? And I was just. By the end of year one, I was. I had like a bidding war between three labels trying to start.

Okay, so did you get a band or do you just go start working clubs or what? Like, do you work. Starting the start in the streets?

Yeah. I mean, obviously as a breakdancer, we would have battles and little clubs and stuff like that. But that was pre. Pre.

I've seen eight years.

Exactly, that kind of thing, right? So we would. And then. No, I found. I started seeing. I had. I caught a break. Because you couldn't record. There was no home recording at the time. There's no technology available, so you can only record in a studio. Studio is like completely super, super expensive. I didn't have money, and there were very few of them in the city in the first place. It's right after the fall. So I found this one guy found me who was. It was an after party. I was basically fake it till you make it, right? I was in the entourage of the artists and didn't have anything to show for it, but I was like hanging out with them and looked like one. So this guy comes out, come to me after an after party, and goes, are you an artist? I'm like, yeah. He goes, I have owner studio. If I would give you like some night hours, what would you do with that? I said I would record some demos if you let me. That'd be amazing. And he goes, okay, so who would write the songs? I'm like, I'm going to write the song. Who wrote their lyrics? I'll write the lyrics. Okay. You know, call me Monday. So I went home and of course I said those things to him. I've never written a song or a lyric in my life. So I went home and started writing music and that was sort of my first break. Then I found a producer who that range and keyboards. Then I found some dancers, some breakthrough street dancers who had no discipline, no choreography background. I had to teach Them all of those things, like a rapper. So I created this sort of product essentially, like with an image and a sound. An image and a signature sort of distinction. Yeah. And. And I formed it over six months before I even hit the first.

So I would think. And I didn't go to YouTube to see if any of this stuff made it on there, but you had the advent. You had the advantage of perhaps having some Western influence. So you're. So you're bringing a Western influence. Rock.

Yes.

Thing that people hadn't really seen or maybe they were able to get through the black market or some grainy radio. And all of a sudden here you are and you're. You're with your travel, you're bringing that Western influence to the music. And I can imagine they probably went bananas for it.

They did. And a lot of the local sort of celebrities, they were very skeptical because it was too Western sounding. They just didn't think the culture would absorb it.

That's what they thought about.

Yeah, probably, you know, so. But I was very. I was like Michael Jackson, R B, hip hop, all mixed in one. A lot of dancing. And I, I did have the. I. I would absorb. I would just inhale biographies of famous artists or show business stories like thick books. And I could tell you at the time, even before I even started, I was like the artists that I knew, that I admired, I knew who managed them, what the label was, what the deals were, who produced the music, who played on the record, who mixed the record, you know, So I was just very much obs. Excessive. And I still am that way. And that's probably part of the reason why you become entrepreneur. You could. You can absorb at an accelerated rate and learn what you need to learn to actually build something. And so I had that mindset that was very unsolviate, completely unsolviate, both musically and on the sort of organizational business side of things. So this is just maybe three, four years ago, a guy who I. Who used to be. It's no longer there. MTV Russia was a powerful powerhouse at. When. When the whole thing started. Right. For many years. And then it got shut down for all kinds of reasons. It was too American, I think. But that one of the guys who. The head of MTV at a time posted like this is a year or two ago on Instagram, like a clip of. Of one of my music videos and said, trust me, as the head of MTV Russia, show business in Russia started with Christian Ray. That was such a compliment. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so honored Right. But I think it was because of that approach. It was a very much showbiz, sort of real showbiz approach rather than sort of this Soviet style music.

So you have contracts, you have staff, you've got team, and everything's moving along. What made you like, why did you give it all up?

There's like a few things. Basically I was already playing sports arenas and I, I had become a Christian maybe like a year before.

How did that happen?

And I, I was. Fame really crushed me. And, and I wouldn't say fame crushed me. I think fame exposes character flaws. It just makes it more obvious. I don't think it destroys people. I think you destroy yourself, but you're just unprepared to handle certain things. And I was acceptable.

You know, reading your own press clippings and believing, buying into the image of what other people are thinking of you.

Yeah, it's, it's, it becomes so weird because you start paying attention to those things and you know, a lot of it is either over the top praise or complete falsehoods that have nothing to do with you. So there's so many lies, you know, circulating. So it's just life in the public exposes sort of inner flaws. And I, I was sort of in this crisis in, in specifically in romance. I had all kinds of mess. I was messed up on all kinds of levels. But romance was sort of my weakest, my Achilles heel. And I, I was, you know, you. I'm traumatized by my parents, divorce. I don't understand marriage. But I want to love and be loved. And then all these women, right, think they like me. You know, it's like millions of teenagers have posters on their walls of me. So you have this very unnatural, weird sort of access to female attention that it's just not normal. And that's further confusing because you don't know if they like you or they like the Persona, Right? You have no idea. There's no way to find out, actually. So, you know, you, you date like you do and you're excited about. You obviously excited about female attention. After being sort of this awkward teenager for a while, you know, all of a sudden you're a big star, right? And I became very, very shallow very quickly. Very, very shallow very quickly. Like, even for me, like, I would date women because of their looks only, like, literally, I would think, yeah, we look good in a magazine together. Let's date. Like, she sounds awful, right? So I dated this girl, she got pregnant, we had a baby. I was super mean, drove, drove her away. She Cut me off. That was sort of the beginning. And then I met this guy who is a Canadian missionary who had a very, you know, he had this wisdom about him and this incredible loving family. And I, you know, second time I, I met him, like I was at his home just hanging out with him and I literally turned to him and I said, how do you, how do I get what you have? Like, it was that, that straightforward. And it was like I show you from the Bible. I said, sure. And I had disdain for the Christians, by the way, until then, until I met him, because I didn't understand what they was in the truth.

There wasn't Christianity.

No, it's all of the places I lived. And we. I was living in Marxist environments. 00 faith. Like I literally haven't met anyone, hadn't met anyone who believed in God until I was in my early 20s. So all I have is sort of the stereotype from afar. Of course I see like churches and these sort of obscure religious services that don't mean anything to me. So I made up my mind from that. And so when I met this guy and he said, I'll teach you, I basically, that was my first coaching experience. That's why I coach now, is because I realized you can be in the top 1% in something and be just extraordinarily gifted and still pretty much mess up your life and be very limited unless you have the right people around you. And he was that guy. So I basically surrendered myself to him and said, just tell me what to do. And he got baptized two and a half weeks later. Changed my life. Changed my life completely. Like gave all of it up, all of the lifestyle stuff, right, that goes with the pop star status, like on the spot called Turkey. And like a year later, you know, back to the sort of moment we were referring to, I sort of felt a pool of several things at the same time. I felt that I loved the sense of significance and eternal impact that you can have as a Christian. And I knew that, okay, so if that's what you can have as a Christian, here I am entertaining tens of thousands of people live and millions on TV or radio. But I'm not changing eternity for anybody. I'm just in it. Just make them happier for the moment, okay, that's fine. But what if I want more? That was sort of one factor. So I felt like I wanted to preach the gospel. The other one is that I wanted to build a family. And I knew that the lifestyle didn't would clash with that. And I didn't want to mess it up. I just thought, I can mess up a career. I don't. I'm not going to mess up a marriage. I have this real shot of actually creating a marriage that lasts. I was single at the time, but I was sort of looking forward going. When I find her, I want to be the best husband. Right. And the best parent. So. And then the other part was that I, you know, I was sort of claustrophobic. It's sort of strange to even say that. Right. Because I was operating in that whole post Soviet space. Fifteen countries, big territory. But I grew up all over the world. I speak four different languages. I have a master's degree in economics.

Your catch.

Yeah. But for music. Right. And all I do is this one pop thing. So for me at the time, it was like, you know, fun for it for a while, but for 20 years more, maybe not. You know, that was sort of.

That was sort of the idea you said something. And I've realized, and I've actually started incorporated into my training and my coaching is people fail to really embrace the power of subtraction. And what I mean by that is until you take away things that are getting in the way, you don't create it. You don't create enough space for the universe to organize itself, to calm the swirl, for something new to come in. And, you know, people, you get jobs, and then you get the big house and you get the car. And now you decide that you want to play golf and you want to do this and you want to do that. Now you've got your family obligations.

Yeah.

You know, and your life is just full of things that have different levels of meaning and different levels of priority, but you try to do them all. And I actually start with our training and, you know, really, I. I deal with our owners for two hours during their training, and I give them an A subtract and an ad, and I work them through two hours, and at the end of it, you know, all the things that they need to subtract out of their life that are going to get in their way from being a great business owner and launching their business appropriately. And then what are the things that they need to add? And they. They rip down the list, man. And it's incredible. And they all walk out saying, I didn't come into the room today expecting to have the perspective on myself and what I'm doing in that way. And it's just a new thing that I've just kind of discovered, but.

I'm going to steal that from the power of Subtraction.

Why don't we. Yeah. Write an article and give me a quote in it, at least in the small. Because you write fantastically, by the way. I've written. Yeah.

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, I want to steal that from you. That's really good. That's really, really good. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. So, okay, so now you know, you found your way to the word. You are you. You've realized that what's got you here isn't where it's going to take you, where you want to go. How did you come to America? And then how did you meet your wife?

So I met my wife in la. We. And, and I actually that's very interesting how. It's an illustration of how just how focused I was on, on coaching and spiritual follow, like on being an apprentice to my mentor. So he says, hey, there's a, there's a conference in LA for Christians in show business. I would like you to go there because it'll give you a big picture kind of view of the kingdom of God and you're gonna. And I was like fledged. I was a baby Christian, like six months old, barely breathing, right. Like, you know, and. And I was in the middle of a mouth. I was several legs of a presidential election campaign for Boris Yeltsin, who was trailing behind the communists, and they used my song as the anthem, et cetera, et cetera. So one of the legs was like several cities during that period of time. And I'm like, yeah, I have a, you know, I have a presidential campaign to, to play. And he goes, yeah, but you also want to build your spiritual future in that might give you vision. And I literally dropped a leg of the pre election campaign of Boris Yeltsin to go attend that Christian conference. That's how much I trusted this guy. Okay. Like my whole team was livid. Live it because it was good money too, on top of that. And anyway, so I went there and I almost met her. She was working at MTV and VH1 at the time in show business, was at the same conference and she, she saw me speak and perform on stage and then there was a mixer and she wanted to come say hi to me, but I acted so worldly and so arrogant because I was six months old as a Christian. Like it hasn't, you know, you don't change like in an instant, right? Like there's a lot of Patna you know of. And so she, she was like, she literally was walking up to me to say hi and she says, I was surrounded by Groupies, which no one knows who I am there. I don't know how that works, but whatever. There was probably some, Some women around me and she was like, whatever, I don't need this. And turned around and walked away. Two years later, same conference, same place. I'm already in ministry. I transitioned out of the career. I was slowly transitioning rather, but I was doing ministry. I was leading a large group of people, a ministry, like over a thousand people in Moscow. And. And I was just so. I mean, the change in me in two years was massive. And that's why I believe in power of coaching, is that you accelerate your progress, you know, so many times, like 2x5x10x. So I was there already. Different guy, right? So two years in and then she was already. She was doing ministry as well. So she came up to me and she said, hey, you know, she's. They're going to introduce you on the show. Can you tell me about your. Whatever, awards, music videos, albums. So I, And I looked at her. I'm like, she had this. I don't know, I just recognized her. I felt like in the moment, I said, who is this person? And I had a couple of people who set me up with blind dates. And I literally stopped her and said she was walking away. I'm like, so tell me about yourself and you know, kind of thing. And then eventually I took her out on a date, canceled everything. I Like a double dates. I had a speaking engagement that I canceled so I can hang out.

How easy was the conversation?

Then I. Oh, it's just. It was. I don't know, it's just soulmate kind of stuff, you know, with her, like, I just couldn't stop thinking about her. And I, I went to New York, spent a few days in New York, called her every day, and then went back to Russia and I emailed her every single day. I said, I'll write to you every day until you move here. That's basically what I did. And that. And so she moves, she sells everything. Moves to Russia. We had two children there together. Then I got my daughter back. That's another miracle that happened. My oldest. Yeah. And that was incredible stuff. Just the most amazing miracle. And then we spent there a few years together. We lived in Moscow, we lived in Ukraine, in Kiev to. My youngest daughter was born there. And then eventually we had to move to the States. Even though I had a brand, that name recognition, all of that. Because Deb, it was just. The weather was really killing her. She has some autoimmune issues and we just didn't know the, the effect that it would have. So we. I basically. She gave up everything, all of her life here to go be with me. So when. So I gave up everything to be with her basically, so that she's healthy and we moved to the States and.

Awesome. She's a Wisconsinite. Yeah, she is really cold in Moscow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Awesome. So. So now you're over here, you've got your family and you've got to make a go of it. So did you have a soft landing here or what was it like?

It was, it was fantastic. Man, I was so grateful to be here. I love America. I mean, that's probably the first signs of me being immersed, that I understood the depth and the layers of what makes America an amazing country. And I was telling Deb that all the time. Right. So eventually she was like, you have some really good insights. Why don't you put it in the book? And I didn't want to because people. I thought people would make it super political, you know, perceive it. I don't care. At the end of the day, I think it's almost like my duty to. Hey, here's this. Here are some stories. If it helps you, great. If it doesn't.

And is that the. The little Book of Big Reasons to Love America? A Love letter from an Immigrant.

Immigrant, Sort of the origin story. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's the. When did you publish origin story of the book? Okay, just last Christmas. Yeah. Finally. Yeah, we spoke about it. We talked about it a lot. And then I just couldn't. It is, you know, it's hard to write a book and to find time. So eventually I did. I'm like. I think I did because I was. Things were getting so heated here and I saw so much. I don't know, it's. I feel like America was following in the footsteps of other Western countries in Western Europe that really landed on this very strange culture of self loathing and guilt and all of that. And I found that to be just the decline of a civilization kind of thing. Right. And I found it here. And especially I think what accelerated my desire to write the book was the. When these sort of neo Marxist, socialist ideology, progressive ideology started, we knew they were sort of in the fringes. That's fine. You know, free country, right? You can think whatever you want. But when it became sort of part of the main discourse around 2020 is when I started going, okay, this is something really bad. This is really, really, really bad. You know, And I remember being super Upset actually for a while. Deb had to talk me off the ledge multiple times. And I think that was also a big sort of trigger towards start writing something like that. To.

Yeah, one of my perspectives and I don't even have the author of it, but it's something to the effect that you don't need, you don't need violence for a civilization to fall. The only thing that you need is for the society to develop an indifference to the values that created it. And your chapter eight of your book is. Says rooted in family values. What's that about?

Well, I think I found that America has a unique depth of cultural love for the family unit. And I have a theory. I don't know, I'm, I'm not a, I'm not a social scientist, but I have a theory, my theory, because I visited 42 countries, I've lived in six. This is my fourth continent, right. So I do have some lived experience, but I can't claim to have lived everywhere, but I visited a bunch of countries. And what I see is that, you know, in the, in the west, especially in Europe, in the sort of more secularized societies, family has, the family unit has diminished in value tremendously. And I think it's harming them in a big way. The global south family still super, super strong, but so is, so are the other structures, right? Tyranny, tradition. There's other structures that shape people. And America in a very unique way didn't have those structures when all these people came over because it was sort of a new country. And it doesn't have a sort of this top down societal thing. And it's also a melting pot. So it's not that one. Religion shapes it in a very rigid way. I think the immigrants developed this hyper focus on the nuclear family and maybe clusters of families so they can survive and thrive. That's my theory. My theory is that America has a unique level of. Family is everything. Family is important, family central. And I think that gives it a particular level of vitality, health and, and, and wealth as well.

I think what were some of the most shocking things or maybe misconceptions that when you came to America that people in other parts of the world have. About the United States.

You know, I mean, look, we, we all have complete sort of superficial knowledge or understanding of.

You know, especially us, right? Especially the United States.

We go, yeah, yeah. And everybody, it's called, it goes in every single direction, right? People go. Americans are like that. America is a, it's like a continent, okay? It's a massive country with all kinds of subcultures and stuff like that. But it's the same thing, you know, you assume certain things about, let's say Afghanistan. Like the Americas went into Afghanistan. I remember when, when the troops arrived after 9, 11 and they decided to not just sort of root out Al Qaeda but actually stay. And I was the first one to go. You guys, idiots haven't learned anything from Alexander the Great all the way to the Soviets. Like this is an impossible test. You can't win a war like that, right? Because you're not making war against one enemy, you're making war against tribals. Complete multiple sects, decentralized tribes, multiple sex. They all fight against each other. You can't really reach a settled sort of status quo with them at all. Like you shouldn't stay, you can't build a nation if there is no nation, right? So anyway, stuff like that, right? So it's, but it's people saying Americans good hearted, perhaps even people who say, don't you want freedom and democracy and freedom of speech and you know, prosperity and free markets and things like that. And the answer is no, they don't actually on average, like they should, but they don't. Okay? So you can't really impose those things. But it's the same way. You go this way. And you know, I have friends that are very, very educated media personalities, members of European Russian Parliament, people like that, right, that make these comments on, on online about America and they're so like, they have, all they have is a thin layer of what they can observe, but because they're not immersed in this, they just miss the point and on so many levels and it's actually true of all of us, right? So I love, I mean that's part of the reason why I wrote the book is that I was immersed in this. I observed it from a distance. I learned a lot of the American culture, honestly through almost like being tuned to the frequency, right? To the writings, to the cultural context of movies and music and biographies and things like that. But when you land here, you, you are, you live in here and you understand just the depth of the cultural DNA that make this country. And I feel so grateful to know all these things. So I'm not shocked in a negative way, I'm shocked in a positive way, you know, and yeah, of course there's going to be evil and evil people are everywhere. But, but this is a very special combination of things that came together in one place. So like I really truly appreciate it and I wanted to express it as an Immigrant saying, guys, this is actually not normal. This is really is sort of a miracle, you know, and it's not guaranteed and it's not like you need to protect this thing basically. So, so that was sort of my, my thing here. Yeah.

We'll have people on the podcast and they'll say, you know, I've been all over the world and with general Tata on, he said, you know, by America is by far the greatest country that I've ever lived been to. Right. And yeah, and we'll get comments. You know, it's like, oh, you know, what about Switzerland or whatever? So yeah, but of course, you know, like, so is have distribution in other countries and is it translated to other, other languages?

It's not translated yet. I self published because it's not really connect directly connected to my main commercial activity or anything. But of course it's with Amazon everywhere. Amazon is. That's where the book is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. What did, what experience? If you, if you had a group of young. Do you do worship in your, in your church still or did you.

Every once in a while they ask me to do a song or two. Yeah.

Okay, so lead some worship. If you had a auditorium full of young Americans and you had that opportunity, what experience would you share with them that you think that they need to hear?

From your perspective and what you mean is my experience of America that's beneficial for them?

Yeah, I mean your perspective. Like we've got, you know, there's a. Look the young people. Gosh, there's a, there's a great book called. Well, I don't know if it's a great book, but there is a book called America Alone and it talks about, you know, for countries, it talks about a lot of the birth rate stuff that's going on around the world and you know, generationally and you know how that's. I mean, we are an aging population and we're not. Many, many countries are not reproducing at the rate that are going to sustain themselves after three generations. I mean there's countries that have real.

Real serious, huge problem.

I mean it's a massive problem. And it's almost like you're watching a train that's going to hit you, but it's coming at one mile an hour. Yeah.

Very slow. Slow, very slow.

You know, but some 75 years from now, like some of these countries are going to be down to nothing.

Yeah.

From a population perspective, you need young people.

Yeah.

To wage war. Okay. Old people don't wage war. You need young People that are idealistic and they're 16 to 25 and they're, you know, they're change agents and they're idealistic and they have energy and they, they want to, you know, they want change for the sake of change. And we've. And to your point, in 2020, lots of, there was a, there was a clear indifference to the values upon which this country was created from the family perspective, as you brought up. So, and you know, when you hear socialist things and you hear these types of things and you hear this concern about the, the haves and the have nots and the widening wealth gap and in rights and, you know, and now, and things got, we've gotten very, very divided in certain, you know, as a country among, especially on certain issues. So, I mean, but at the end of the day, to your point, in this country, you can go walk down the street and you can be anything that you want to be. You can go anywhere that you want to go. If you can't feed yourself, the government will feed you. You can find a way to get food. I mean, you have the opportunity to just walk out the front door of wherever you are and say, I want to be an Alaskan fishing guide, I want to be a music producer, I want to go to la. And there's, you're not going through checkpoints with papers to travel around this country. And generally, as long as you don't break the law, nobody's going to bother you. So how would you express to these young people and really drive home the opportunity that they have living in this country versus some of the places that you've lived?

Well, I would say, oh, man, I can talk for a long time about those things, but I think it was Reagan who said that this freedom can be lost in one generation. I would say that and go, you know, you don't appreciate freedom until you lose it. And it's better that you appreciate it now so you can fight for it and protect it rather than you lose it and you find out how life is if you lose your freedom. And I don't want, I don't wish this on anybody to live in the places that I've lived and have that level of fear, hopelessness, mediocrity, bureaucratic tyranny of bureaucracies, corruption, corruption, just rot through and through. I mean, generations have been lost to that kind of thing. Generations. Hundreds of millions of lives limited, and about 100 million actually dead in the 20th century as a result of those things. Like, that's not how we want to learn about those things. Okay. We want to learn from the opposite. We want to learn by building, by working hard, by innovating, by building stuff, by entrepreneurial, by freedom, by, by creativity. So I would say that in the, the, the thing that I think almost brought America to a really, an abrupt decline was sort of this massively changing world that enabled, you know, the state to go, hey, you know, do you want to be safer? We need to take a little bit of your freedom for it so that you can be safe. And we want to, you know, we want to read your emails. They want to, you know, be able to hack into your phone, want to be able to survey. That was sort of the thing. And the problem with that is that you, if somebody takes a little bit of your freedom, they're not going to give it back willingly. That's just not how power works.

On how power works. That's right.

You know, and I think young people need to understand that. And I think it. Was it Benjamin Franklin who says, I'm paraphrasing that, you know, those who give up essential liberties for a little safety don't deserve liberty or safety.

Yes.

And I find that to be the most powerful quote. And life in the Soviet Union was all about safety, safety, safety, zero liberty. And they, they pride themselves in that. There were no homeless people, no hungry people, no unemployed people. And everybody's life sucks, everybody's poor. That's what you give up. Okay? And I think it's hell. And if you want to live in a country like that, go live in a country like that. Fine, go to North Korea, see if you like it, but don't try to change this place. That is the opposite of that in its very nature. That's what makes me mad.

Yes.

You know, and anybody who's immigrated from places like that makes us mad, we go, are you serious?

Right.

You know, like, anyway, so that's sort of what I would say.

I've met, I've traveled this country extensively. I've done a lot of business. I've met Russian people in pockets, Chicagoland and places like that. But like, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of Russian citizens here in the States. I don't know what the numbers exactly are, but was it your dual citizenship that enabled you to get out, or are you.

No. Being married to an American, basically, that's what.

Okay, so you're married to an American and that, that allowed you to.

Yeah. So that automatically, like. And, yeah, and we didn't, we didn't move to the US Until Way later. So we had two kids together. We had a third kid, a bonus kid from my previous relationship. And then only when Deb's health starts suffering did we apply for a green card. And it was given to me like right away.

Is there a path for your typical Russian to get to the United States?

Not really, I think. Not really. Honestly, I think, I mean this is. You didn't even ask me that question. But I think a merit based immigration policy is what's important. You know, like look, if you're extra gifted, if you make create value, if you give people jobs, welcome to America, you know.

Yeah.

But I don't know what the mechanism is now.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about your businesses. I. You've got a company called Third Drive.

Yeah.

Active company. You're also lead a company called Exponential, which is high performance coaching for individuals. And then you had Hollywood World, which was a media and production company. But I'm not sure which of those. How you spend your day or if all of those are. You're active or. But talk a little bit about that. And then I'm also interested in how you align your faith and your family and, and then your business and, and kind of how you sort that in terms of your problem.

Oh, that's a good. That's a really good question. So. So Hollywood World was the first company I started in America and it did really well and then it failed. And it failed because I was, you know how it wasn't equipped to. To grow it and scale it, you know. So I learned some lessons from that. Third Drive was the second one that basically was a reincarnation from Hollywood World. And I started doing essentially media because of my showbiz roots, my level of ability to create video and story and graphic design and you know, all of that stuff which associated with show business is on a high level. So I got a bunch of awards and everything. So. And I was doing it in music and then I just switched to business. And Third Drive Media is essentially brand strategy and production for media, production for business. So we work with founders, with solo sort of personal brand development people, non profits, churches even, that kind of thing. And we do really good work for them. We just did a logo for NASA, one of their Earth science projects. So that kind of thing. And that's sort of, that's. I do that regularly. The. My passion is a little bit more on the coaching side because I just love people and it's sort of this long. There's a long trajectory of me mentoring high performers ever When I was in Russia, I coached Olympic athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, even former Russian mafia members. So you can imagine. Very colorful.

There's no such thing as former mafia members. Not that are walking around.

Exactly. Yes. I've. I've had some experiences. Yes. And. And miraculously, they were out, actually. Yeah. And some of them. They were out. Yeah. No, they were out. I mean, I had one guy who was an enforcer and, like, the muscle. And he was at the same time a number two in the Greco Roman heavyweight in Russia. He's a bear of a guy. Right. And he. He studied Bible, became a Christian, and he said, I'm. I need to leave. And they wouldn't leave. They wouldn't let him leave for obvious reasons. He know too much. Right. His boss came to my house with a gun and said, what are you doing with my boy? You know, And I had a sit down with this boss and. And I just opened the Bible and I said, hey, you know, you respect the Bible, right? He goes, yeah. And they're very superstitious. They really do respect the Bible. I'm like, okay, well, this is what it says. And I just leave it at that. I'm like, this is what it says for him, Sergey. And he's like, all right. Shook my hand, left, you know, and he's out. The guy who they didn't kill and they let him leave. He's now a pastor. Yeah. One of my best friends. Great, great story. Anyway, so I just love stories like that. Right.

And I thought when it ends like that. Sure. You know?

Yeah. I had a few others that didn't end that way. Yeah. And including people getting Mafia. People getting really, really mad at me, and I thought, okay, this guy's gonna hurt me. But had a sit down with the mafia boss, like, Italian style restaurant owned by the Mafia, like, unbelievable. Like, they were trying to sell me protection, quote, unquote. I have such crazy stories for those days. But where was I heading towards, like, your.

Your business and then how you balance your faith and your family with that, with coaching.

You know, what I. What I found is that some of the stuff that I instinctively knew and then I started learning very intentionally in my early 20s, which is kind of early to start learning about personal development and in depth. Usually in your early 20s, you don't think about stuff like that. But I was. I think I was such a wreck that I really thought this was important for me. And eventually I learned so much. And then I have podcasts, I interview some of the top guys, you know, that understand those things. And it really became a huge passion and love of mine to focus on high achievers, specifically high performers, specifically, because it's almost like a breed. Like you're a type. You're that guy, right? And somebody like you, you struggle just like everybody else, but from the outside. So the average person looks at you and you're strong, you're accomplished, you're dynamic. And they're like, eh, whatever, I have zero compassion for this guy. But somebody needs to have compassion for you, right? Somebody needs to know that you are driven. You. You have great aspirations and you got great love for the stuff that you do in your building, but you need some help in here and here and here. Everybody has blind spot and weaknesses. And I feel like I have a unique perspective in that sense because I am that guy, right? I know it from the inside, is how it is to like drop everything, a great university degree, great education, and start something that has close to zero probability of success. You know, like anything that obsessive, that stupid, that visionary, all at the same time, right? So I just have a love for people like that. And you know, I, I really enjoy working with people like that. So that's the Exponential Life coaching program. It's, it's, it's a lot of fun.

Right? So. So as you sit there in Austin today and you've had this incredible life, what do you see in your next chapter?

I think I would love to expand focus, really. And this is subtraction, right? What you were saying. So I'm, I pastored a church. I planted a church here in Austin like 12 years ago. I'm passing it on to somebody who I now feel very confident can, can take it to the next level. The non profit that we built in Africa, where I grew up in Mozambique, that is ongoing. It's called, by the way, Ascent Academy. If you go and look it up, it's really cool. It's entrepreneurial, focused. So it's helping these kids be mentored by Christians, focus on their character and their worldview, and then giving them English and computer literacy so they can lift themselves up. So that's a project that I've been involved in, but I'm basically sort of organizing in a way that I'm not. I'm more of a spokesperson and more of a champion than a operational presence. So subtraction, right? And essentially what I want to do is I want to, I want to write. I probably have five, seven books in me and I want to speak and I want to coach as many people as I can and maybe Sort of create a little bit of a tribe around that where we can almost like an ecosystem of people that are. Have the framework figured out, sort of are connected through those ties, relational ties. Trust and just grow the tribe and, and see those people change the world. Basically.

Maybe an education platform with a community aspect to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So retreats, sort of ongoing online community that has sort of these layers of coaching and community and connection. That's basically my, my aspiration.

I've developed a real appreciation for people that do that kind of thing. Well, um, there's a incredible woman named Ilana Golan and she was a. You know her?

I do.

Oh, really?

She's fan. She's fantastic.

How do you know her?

She, she's giving me, she's given me tips on coaching. She's been super generous. I messaged her out of the blue and go, I think you're amazing. Can you look at my stuff? Really? Yeah. She's great.

So she was a commander in the idf, the Israeli Defense Force, pilot, trainer, commander. And so we got into. We, I, we did a back and forth podcast and, and she's. And then I, she, she said, hey, you know, I just have a feeling that you're right for our group. We've got an event in three weeks. If I could make space for you, would you come out and speak to our group? And it was out in San Diego and it was three weeks. I'm like, you know, but the answer is always yes, right? I mean, you just, I mean, yeah, absolutely. Why? Why? I said, as long as I got nothing else going on, I'll be there. And so went out there and I just kind of sat in the back of the room the first day. I went on the next morning and there was 220 people there or something like that. And every one of her coaches was ex Tony Robbins, ex this, ex that. They were the most professional coaches. They were bringing the heat, they were bringing the value. That audience was super engaged in their product. And then I went and sat with them for breakfast and lunch and, you know, would just ask the people, like, why did you join this? And what is it about? And man, she's making impact in people's lives. Yeah. And, you know, it's a, it's a program that you can join for either if you want to advance your career. It's basically, she built a company over 20 years. Her board of directors event ended up kicking her out and she realized that she didn't have a personal brand.

So, yes, that's what do you need.

To do for yourself to be ready to advance in your company, to move to another company in advance or to jump out on your own and build a business? But regardless of what path you're going to choose, you've got to kind of fortify who you are and start.

That's exactly it. Yeah.

And some of it's mindset, but a lot of it's tactics, social media, branding, maybe some skills development awareness that you need to have. These people, a hundred percent of those people were, were just fully Kool Aid drank. I mean they were totally. And yeah, I had the. It was the best time I've ever had delivering a talk because they were just, wow.

They were just.

They were on everywhere. They were so engaged, you know, and. Wow. So anyway, I am. I actually have a call with her I think tomorrow or something like that to catch up and you know, and I know she just had another one of her events, but.

But yeah, but like she's, she's, she's fantastic and I, that's exactly like. I'm glad you, you mentioned Ilana because I want to be like Ilana when.

I grow up, basically.

Right. And because, you know, because she's ahead and I, she was so grace. Gracious to me because I literally out of the blue pinged her and said, hey, I'm building this thing and can you take a look and give me some pointers? And she did so exchange messages. So I've never been to an event or anything like that, but. So you know her better than I do.

It's a great model though.

But that's the model. It really is a good metal. And basically my. So asking going back to the exponential versus third drive. Third drive was for a long time focused mostly on startup founders and I still do some of that work. But now it's more really integrated with the personal brand development piece because we have sort of a small team that is extraordinarily good at executing on the personal brand. And that's what Ilana basically tells you. You need one. But we do that for people. Well, and I think we'll design it, we'll do the video, we'll create the messaging, we'll do a lot of that stuff. So I think that's a natural sort of curve, I guess to the.

It's more and more important now. And yes. So there's more people. There's a, it's an, it's a developing marketplace for people that can help people do that.

That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's the third drive piece. Fits really well into the. Into those in the coaching program that want actually that done for them, and most of them can't do it themselves anyway for time or. Or energy or even well.

And then, you know, you put a education platform there with some content, and then you build a community and, you know, one of these tools and. Yeah, and there you go. I mean, it's. You're. You can, you know, the. The right people. I mean, I felt like in that room, the right people had found the right group and it was gonna work. And there's. I mean, there's 339 million people in this country, and there was 200. I think she has a thousand clients a year run through. So it is a limitless pond of people.

It really is.

That will resonate with you and your message, your story, and that you can really make an impact in people's life. Which leads me, Christian, to the last question. Unless you just want to continue on.

No, what is it?

The last question is this. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

Good question. One sentence. I would say aim high. And the reason for that is, I think we. Like, that's a. That's an extraordinarily powerful choice you can make for one simple reason. Most of us succumb to our instincts or sort of primal instincts, and our primal instincts will tell us to aim for the middle because it's safer. The middle is the most crowded place. If you aim high, you have less competition.

Wow.

And that's so counterintuitive, you know, is.

Very insightful. Perfectly said. Christian, thanks for being on the home front.

Thank you. Truly an honor.

Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. This has been a great conversation. All right, everybody out there, I am Jeff Duden. We have been with Christian Ray Flores, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.