LH #119 Learning To Love America with Christian Ray Flores

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Although it's profoundly human to want to fit in, it's very primal, I believe, because if you fit in, then you're not going to be pushed out of the tribe. You won't die. That's the primal part of it, I think. And I think the aha moment was, look, the best way to actually fit in on a higher level is to stand out in service to your tribe. Not to stand out for the sake of standing out, but stand out in service to others. Do something that is useful to them.

So there's no chance of having imposter syndrome. Because you are an imposter.

Yeah.

Welcome to the Learning Hack, a podcast about the people and technologies creating the future of learning. I'm John Helm.

Now guess what? Learning is cool. Learning is cool. I'm learnding. Learning is fun and knowledge is power. Knowledge education.

I get about four or five approaches a day from people who want to be guests on this podcast. I'm genuinely flattered, but I just don't have time to reply to them all. Sorry folks. Every now and then though, one of these approaches really stands out and I pick it up. My guest this time is someone who stands out in any context, not just in my inbox. He's a life coach with the most extraordinary life story you're ever likely to hear. Hack facts.

Christian Ray Flores is a serial entrepreneur, podcaster, investor and performance coach whose remarkable life has spanned four continents. Born in Chile, he spent his childhood as a refugee in Germany and the Soviet Union before rising to fame as a chart topping pop star in post Soviet Russia. A participant in Boris Yeltsin's presidential campaign and co founder of several startups. He later settled in the United States where he co leads the Ascend mastermind for entrepreneurs and hosts the podcast Headspace with Christian Ray Flores. Today he works with clients worldwide to help them build personal brands and lives of impact.

Now if I tell you that my guest is also an evangelical pastor from Texas who broadly agrees with his government's immigration policy. I know a portion of you might instinctively switch off, but I feel strongly that right now it's important to listen to people we don't entirely agree with, especially when you factor in that Christian himself is an immigrant to the US of Hispanic heritage, let alone the rest of his highly unorthodox background. I was curious to find out what a life coach with such a unique set of experiences brings to his practice, and more than that, whether these diverse identities can ever truly cohere. I'm not sure I ever did get to the bottom of how the different bits of Christian Ray Flores fit together, but trying to find out was certainly a fascinating ride. Christian, it's great to have you on the podcast. Welcome to the Learning Hack.

Thank you. Thank you, John.

You've had an amazing life, full of ups and downs, spanning multiple continents. We've given a bit of a summary in the introduction. And now you're a life coach, among many other things, an investor as well. This is the first time we've had a life coach on the podcast, strangely, in five years of operation. So can you talk a little about little about your life, your colorful life and how that lived experience feeds into your coaching practice?

I've had a very, very strange life origin story. Right. It's, I think it's rare when somebody is a refugee at age 5 in Latin America, ends up in poverty, exiled with my parents to Germany, then Russia, live in a communal apartment, then goes to Africa, sees civil war there break out about a year in. And then after my parents divorce, I get back to Russia. This is the Soviet times and the whole empire collapses right in front of my eyes. So it's like civil unrest seems to follow me around.

So this would have been around the time of perestroika into Yeltsin. And you had a part in Yeltsin's campaign, I gather as well.

I did, yes, that's right. So yeah. So all these. I have theories about it. I think the human journey is a mystery regardless. Right. But my theory is that if you are exposed to tons of culture and life experiences early on, you sort of accelerate when it comes to maturation just because you're forced to. Right. You also accelerate in terms of resilience because you're forced to. You also accelerate in terms of understanding that nothing is certain in life and you become a little bit more open to risk taking impossibility if you choose to not be a victim. Basically, that's the gist of the whole thing, I think. And of course, I couldn't predict how it all ended up, but it did. All the sum of those things, I think, were the rocket fuel that allowed me to my very first attempt at professional life, which was really doomed to failure when it comes to probability and statistics. I went into music. I have a master's degree in economics. I speak four languages. Most of my friends got into banking or academia or whatever. Right. And I'm going to try music like the thing that is probably going to fail. And I think the origin story and how I chose to interpret those things and internalize those things really helped me succeed on my first go. And most of it was just really subconscious. And then over time, I sort of formalized it, internalized it, sort of reverse engineered it into something that could be replicable in other efforts with other people.

I have a similarity of experience in that. When I left university, having done an English literature degree, I joined a band and we had a hit single.

Oh, you did? That's great.

Yeah. And then a bit of a performing career. Got involved with a group of people doing busking in the street, cabaret stuff. Regular listeners to the podcast would have heard me banging on about this, I'm afraid. And. And that was a group that turned. Second group was a group that turned into Stomp. And it was only then I went into business and marketing and a bit of writing and so on. So I kind of appreciate what it's like to come from that. I mean, your pop career in Russia was more stellar than that. I think it was pretty big. Yeah. And so on. But how did that feed into what you do for you? I found it. One thing that's interesting, a guy who was in the first group with me who then moved to Manhattan and fell back on his skills as a graphic designer because he was a saxophone player, and New York was just too full of good saxophone players and ended up doing kind of point of sale promotion in marketing for authors, including Elmore Leonard and so on. And his bosses said to him at one point, how do you manage to make a success of everything that you do? You know, other managers that do what you do aren't as successful as you. He says, well, I was in a punk rock group, and I treat every campaign as a punk rock gig. And that was how it fed in for him. Do you have anything parallel to that?

I do. I think I would say I would probably divide it into two buckets. One is this, one is inner game, meaning people call it mindset. Right. But it's really how you perceive the world, how you choose to perceive the world. And it's all very, very subjective and based on a myriad of things. But I would say the inner game that was developed during my formative years was just extraordinarily helpful because on a high level, it was the understanding that if I don't fit in and I can't fit in, most people want to fit in and then they do fit in, and then they sort of live their lives in sort of this state of quiet desperation because their creative self, their individuality is undervalued, underseen, all of those things. But they had the advantage and disadvantage of wanting to fit in and actually fitting in. So you stay there in this comfortable place that sort of doesn't rock. You don't rock the boat, you're stable. I didn't have that luxury because I didn't fit in even if I tried to. I was so strange, you know, I was, you know, I was non black when I was in Africa in a very, very black country. I was brown skinned with an accent in Russia. And then the accent disappeared. But it looks, the looks didn't disappear. I mean, every single place I've been in, I've been an outsider. So I think at some point, I know that at some point, I think it was around my teenage years, I said, look, if I can't fit in, I'm gonna stand out. And I started dressing in a very particular way that attracts attention. I was acting, choosing things to do, like I was breakdancing when it was completely non mainstream. It was very underground. And that has served me for the rest of my life. Basically, that's the inner game piece, is that you realize that although it's profoundly human to want to fit in, it's very primal, I believe, because if you fit in, then you're not gonna be pushed out of the tribe. You won't die. That's the primal part of it, I think. And I think the aha moment was, look, the best way to actually fit in on a higher level is to stand out in service to your Trib. Not to stand out for the sake of standing out, but stand out in service to others. Do something that is useful to them. So that's probably the inner game piece, the most valuable, I think.

So there's no chance of having imposter syndrome because you are an imposter.

Yeah. So all of these things, they're not alien to me or anybody with my background, but you can overcome them more easily because of the lived experience. So you can then teach them to other people. Right. And that can be taught as a skill, basically.

Okay, Christian, so that's the inner game. What about the outer game?

Well, the outer game that I discovered, I stumbled upon it essentially just by choosing what I chose as music. And basically what I discovered is that if you have expertise that other people want something that you can provide for them, if you can monetize, basically productize that expertise, that makes your expertise infinitely scalable. So and so in my case, it was music. And of course, I wasn't even thinking about it that way. I was just interested in music. But, you know, you write some songs, you become good enough, demand is there, people think you're good, you can record it, you can scale it through albums, through downloads, through videos, music videos, et cetera. And that realization, just the power of how infinite upside they may be if you productize an expertise, never left me. It just didn't. And it was one of those things that you can't unlearn. And that was a huge advantage and a huge gift, I think, to me. Because even if you're an expert, you usually exchange time for money. You exchange maybe perhaps for more money, less time for more money. And that's the extent that you can go. But to create a personal brand where you become known for something in a broader sort of. In broader circles. It could be very niche circles, but it's broader than your immediate, let's say, clientele, people you work with, your company or even your industry. The power of that and being able to deliver expertise at scale. It's just an inspiring truth, I think. And I think it both scratches us at the itch that all of us have for more significance, more impact, and also more income.

Is there something there about kind of getting out of a hole, getting off the hamster wheel that many people feel? Because that kind of direct exchange of time for money is hard. Like consultants can sell their time for, with any luck, increasing amounts of hourly or day rate. But that's not very scalable because you pretty soon run out of hours.

Yes, you do.

So consultancy businesses are hard to scale. What you're talking about is where you get a flywheel effect because you can make money while you're asleep. This is correct. Very well known to all entrepreneurs, not necessarily known to all wage earners, I don't think, who are wondering, how can they do this?

The beautiful thing about 2025 is that it's literally easier than ever. You can learn anything. You can reach anyone, anywhere at any time. So this is literally the Best time in the history of humanity to be able to do that, to create a personal brand also.

Yeah. Also something that's very much. Sorry to interrupt. Very much a feature of our time now is that you would have learned as a pop star is being able to get people's attention is an incredibly important skill. And nowadays that is chiefly what people monetize. It's getting people's attention online through social media, where it is incredibly scalable.

It is. And there's even a higher level of impact there because. It's harder and harder to get people's attention. The saturation level is pretty high. Right. And people are, you know, have the attention span of a goldfish. It's much better and a better aspiration to get people's attention. And then it gets people's trust. Trust sticks, attention doesn't. So that's why creating, publishing and creating something that is scalable, like a podcast, a book, a newsletter, things like that, and then promoting it through something that gets attention. And then the right people will pay attention and they will start trusting you slowly. And then the people that trust you, they'll follow you, they'll thank you, they'll have immediate impact that is completely non monetizable to you. And then some of them will actually ask you, hey, how can I work with you?

Some would argue that that equation of kind of trust and attention has changed a lot in recent times. That some people seem to make massive fortunes just out of the getting the attention.

Yes, yes. And if that's your talent, God bless you. Right? That's just your business. Yeah, that's just your business.

You are a singular person, as we've said, with a singular biography. Slightly unusual. Most people aren't that singular. How relevant is the coaching and training that you offer to people who have a different life experience and maybe more modest ambitions? I mean, most people don't move between continents, have hit singles, become stars, participate in a presidential campaign, yada, yada, yada, yada. Basically, most people will go to school, get a job, lose that job, get another job, carry on doing that until they retire and watch daytime television and go on cruises.

Well, I'll give you a couple of examples of people that would not be on the surface, people that you would expect to build a personal brand who are. And there's hundreds of them. But for those of you who are not acquainted, I'll give you a couple examples. One is a friend of mine, he went through the program, he's a mortgage broker in commercial real estate. And he's just Miserable, miserable, miserable. Because he knows the business, he knows the industry, but the environment, where is the parts of him that are so him are dormant in this industry. So he's basically thinking about quitting the industry altogether. So we do some work together and I, you know, we sort of dig out origin story stuff. And I realized that he goes, you know, I really like food, so that's why maybe I'll just start opening restaurants. I really like hospitality, and I really like people. The guy's just super. He has this gift for people connection. But the way his expertise is being utilized is cold calls, quotas, closed deals, percentages, things like that. So I talk to him, I say, okay, so what happens if you activate the things that are inherently you in this industry that feels very foreign to you? He goes, I don't understand how that is. I said, okay, let's think about this. Most people will do what you basically are doing in your current employment, in your current company. They'd make okay money, probably good money, but they all do the exact same thing to get people, they fight for the same people using the same methodologies. In your origin story, what you like, you are very, very personable, very friendly. You genuinely enjoy people. You like food and you like hospitality. Okay, do you know, let's say, 20, 30 people that are top players in your industry? He goes, yeah. Do you think you can create an experience for them where you bring an extraordinary chef, serves them a meal, and you say, hey, I want to invite the top players to this meal. I'm going to do it regularly. I don't ask for anything except being part of this experience. I don't want anything from you. And this is what it's going to be. Most people will say yes. Not everybody. Most people will say yes. You have a table of 30, 40 people, really big players, maybe a combination of investors, sellers, et cetera, et cetera, and you basically introduce the thing and you go, okay, thank you so much. I just want to enjoy. I like you guys. I think you're amazing. All I ask is that you enjoy this moment, put away your phone, enjoy each other's company, maybe share some wisdom and some things that you value about in life. And that's it. And then at the end, you sort of approach them one by one and say, hey, I would love to get some coffee with you. I have just 15 minutes, 20 minutes. I'm developing this way of doing this in a much more deep, human, relational way. Would you grant me the 15 minutes? 20 minutes, I'll take you out for coffee. Anytime most people, because they're gonna be seeing you having those conversations going around the table, they will say yes. Do you think from that experience you'll get way more trust, more attention, more connection into your business? He goes, absolutely. How does it feel to you as a possible thing? He goes, I feel like this would be like a dream job. I said, so do you want to leave your industry now? He goes, no, I don't want to leave my industry. And so that's what he's doing now. He's doing versions of that.

Very interesting.

Another scalable thing to do is to start a YouTube channel. I had a conversation. He's working on that project as well. And basically using luxury. He is going to be the convener of the experience. Right? So luxury home, think luxury home, think investors, think potential buyers, an art exhibition and an extraordinary food experience. All taped, very interesting, all kinds of angles that are hooks, very appealing and very scalable. A lot of people will watch that. They'll watch it for the food, for the people, for the beautiful home, for the experience, for the interviewers, pre and post. That's a scalable experience. You can make tens of millions of dollars as a real estate broker doing that. That's a personal brand. That's all rooted in not an extraordinary, weird life like mine, but in natural inclinations, preferences, gifts.

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Yes. And because I have a theory, I think entrepreneurship is the creative part of you and you can write people off as non creative. But I think that's a lie. You know, we're all creative. You know, go into a third grade class that are. They're drawing pictures, they're all creative. You'll basically say, who's creative? Who's an artist here? Everybody's gonna raise their hand, do the same thing, same people in about a decade, you know, and none of them will raise their hands. Why? It's been basically pummeled out of you, your creativity. So it's not that you're not a personality type of creative, that the creativity side of you has been dormant and educated out of you. So I believe that everybody's creative, everybody's an entrepreneur, just different types. So you can be an entrepreneur, somebody who actually starts a new business from scratch. That's a personality type. So there's sort of creativity, risk, aversion, all kinds of factors like that. Right. Madness Intrapreneur is somebody who can do the exact same thing within an existing organization, create programs, create unique approaches, teams, et cetera. You can be a socialpreneur, you can be a nonprofit leader, a church leader, and you will approach the existing sort of safe, corporate, institutionalized setup in a very different manner if you're just creative. So I believe everybody's creative, everybody can be entrepreneurial. It's a skill that you can learn and it's just how you apply it that is different. And a lot of it is rooted in origin story and even the decisions you make. I'm going to decide to do this.

What's your process in terms of working with people? Do you have instructional methods that you use to get results with your clients? Is there any kind of theoretical background for you that you bring in this? And do you do kind of larger scale trainings or is it all one to one coach?

I do workshops, two, three day workshops, one to many. I do obviously the normal stuff, sort of one to many. When you speak to an audience in general, when it comes to the methodologies, there's a great study that is sort of one of the anchors of my program and it's the Harvard Happiness Study. That's the informal way that's described. And it's 80 year old study, it's been going on for 80 years. It's the most extensive study on human flourishing. And basically it uses, okay, these are the parameters that are heavily weighted towards human flourishing. And these are the top parameters. We measure them before, we measure them during, we measure them after and we see the change. So that's a evidence based kind of stuff. We sort of around also a framework called the radar which is really extraordinarily simple and also predictive of where people are at. Just, it's crazy, right? So when it comes to the process, I basically offer the program to people who I think are going to do really well with it. Obviously I'm not going to offer it to everybody or anybody. We have to talk about it, you know, assess it. But then if I offer the program, basically what I'm promising is hey, we're gonna build you a personal brand concept in detail, an offer and a business model in nine weeks. From zero to that in nine weeks. That's the promise. And the process is we have one on ones, asynchronous coaching and cohort coaching all weaved in together. So there's three layers of support and nine modules that are recorded that basically take you through the inner game, outer game dimensions of it. The first step that is just non skippable, let's put it that way, is you have to learn how to basically go on rocket fuel rather than bad fuel every day of your life. And by fuel I mean these are the things that drive you forward. And most of us have this mixed fuel situation. You know, where there's dark fuel, there's, there's fear, there's anxiety, survival mode, there's resentment. Stuff that basically does not advance us in any way, shape or form. And then we have creativity, flow, joy, aspiration, love, belonging, vision. That's good fuel. So we'll teach you how to go on maximum good fuel within the, literally within the first week. People feel the difference right away. And that's essential because if you don't have the guaranteed fuel on demand, you won't be able to build anything. You won't be able to have the ability even to know what to build. So we built that as a foundation. We say, look, whatever your day brings, whatever anxiety, fear, bad news, you are going to be able to turn that around into creativity, flow and joy within an hour. And then you will win that day regardless of the beginning or the middle of the day, right? You will win that day. If you know how to win one day reliably, you'll know how to win the week and the month and the year. That's sort of foundational. The second piece is understanding what are truly your gifts, not your expertise. Everybody's good at some point. Beyond a certain level, everybody's good.

Right?

So now you're comparing apples to apples, what makes you an orange. So you define your edge, and it's everything from origin story to specifically your approach to doing the thing that you do in a way that is special. And you combine that into something that you go, oh, this is completely distinctive, that can be then packaged into a brand, into a methodology, into a program that is undeniable, that's unique. And so that's the process, basically.

I wouldn't disagree with anything you say there. It's very hard to disagree with that. But don't you also need a few of the negatives in your fuels? I mean, don't you need a slight amount of fear to hit a deadline? Don't you need the fear of missing your mortgage payments to get you out of bed in the morning?

Yeah, absolutely. I think negative motivation is a really strong motivation. The trick is, how do you create that into forward motion as fuel? Or does it paralyze you or does it propel you? That's probably a good way to putting it. Right? So when you are squeezed, if you know how to transform that into a propellant, you'll do really, really well. And any entrepreneurial journey, anything when you create something like that, that's why people are terrified of this, is that the uncertainty just drives you crazy. So that's exactly what you say is if this uncertainty will cause anxiety. If you can't transform anxiety from paralysis to actual power forward motion, you won't be able to succeed. You just won't. And most people won't succeed because they don't have that skill. We want to teach you that skill that needs to be internalized. It's not just an understanding, it's not an intellectual thing. It's a skill, it's a muscle. We want that muscle to be well developed in you. So that's basically the idea.

Yeah, yeah. My entrepreneurial instinct says to me that I have to point out the fact that we have a whole episode of my sister podcast, Great Minds on Learning, that we recorded in the spring about well being, which covers a theoretical basis for flourishing and all those things. I have to say my co host is slightly skeptical about a lot of it because he thinks it's Self reported, not necessarily empirical data, but it was good to do an episode about wellness and I enjoyed that, I think. But best of all, any of them.

There's a lot of data coming out, though. That's the beautiful thing. Yeah, the happiness studies, positive psychology is a field that is very new, but it's. It has a ton of data. And one of my sneaky ways to learn from the top experts on the planet is I have a podcast and I invite some of the top experts on my podcast and then I torture them about their field and I then incorporate some of the stuff.

Same. Me too.

Yeah, I incorporate some of the stuff into my program because of it. And I can always quote them. I can always link to my podcast and say, see, this is all hard, data driven stuff.

Absolutely. So, I mean, obviously podcasting for you as it is for me is a learning medium, but what have you learned from the actual process of working with people to multiply their income and impact? What have you all been learned, have been your learnings from that while you've been doing it?

You know, it always surprises me how what seems like a winning sort of, this guy's gonna be do great versus who actually succeeds. Sometimes it's surprising.

Oh, interesting.

And what I see is that. And that's an unknown. So I usually just really preface when people come into the program. I say, look, I'm very confident that you can do very well, all of that. The only thing I don't know is how are you going to. How much are you going to engage and how frequently how will you communicate, how vulnerable will you be with me and the group, how much you ask for help and how consistently you do the work every single day. That is an unknown to me. And what I tell you is that that is the defining factor of your success. You know, if I'm offering you the program, it means I'm confident you'll do well, but I can't do that for you. And I don't know the answer to that question. Only you do. And I've noticed that. I mean, like clockwork, some people, I go, my go, this person is amazing. I'm honored to be a coach for this person. And they're gonna fly high and everything. And some of them don't. And some of them, the ones that don't, it's not because of lack of talent or opportunity or ability. It's because of not doing daily work. It's the lack of consistency, you know, and then some people will surprise you where you go, okay, I think I wanna offer this to you? I do have my doubts, and these are my doubts. I usually am fairly open about that. And those people succeed unexpectedly. And when they succeed, they succeed because they are consistent, vulnerable. They show up, they do the work.

It's interesting that you find it difficult to. Or it is difficult to pick the winners.

Yeah. You can't tell. I mean, obviously I can say the radar tool that I sort of introduce before I even offer the offer to somebody is highly predictive of, I would say, the chances. Right. High percentage of success rates. What you can't predict is how the person will actually implement. It's showing up. It's really that simple. It's so uncomplicated and that you can't know ahead of time, unfortunately.

And does it work the other way around as well, that you kind of work with people, you think, oh, this person is a complete dead loss, and then a year later, they're heading up a fantastically successful startup company?

Yes, yes. Because there are times where the chances are on the lower end, and I wouldn't offer it to them if I don't feel like it would help because it would be a waste of my time, their time. But if the chances are on the lower end, sometimes maybe like two, three, four, five weeks a month in, something clicks and they go into overdrive. And I've seen that happen actually, quite a bit. So maybe, perhaps it's what you referred to earlier is when sort of the weight of the negative is transformed into fuel for forward motion, so it's no longer paralyzing them, but there's something that clicks where they go, I'm all in. I'm not gonna stop, I'm not gonna give up. And just everything changes from that point.

Yeah, that's interesting. And of course, one's own judgment is, you know, I think back to the very early 80s when I went to see a band in the marquee in London, which time was a famous club, and I saw this band and I thought, well, they've got a great guitarist and he's quite interesting, but the lead singer thinks he's Rod Stewart. It's all ego and chest beating. I don't see this band going anywhere. It was you, too.

Yeah, yeah, that happens too. That happens too. Yes, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Bringing up the dreadful, inevitable AI is now a huge issue in learning technology. And there's a lot of excitement about the idea of AI coaching. In fact, that's seen as a kind of. What you hear a lot about at conferences is once we get past this obsession with using AI to create content more quickly or just personalized content routes and so on. AI coaching will be where it's at and that's where it'll really start to kind of kick in and do something. But what's your view of AI and how useful and, or problematical it might be for coaching?

I am very excited about AI, but I'm also first adopter kind of guy, you know. So, ChatGPT, what year did it come out to the general public? Was it two years ago?

22. Yeah, two, three years ago.

Yeah, two, three years Ago. So it came out two, three years ago last year. By the end of last year I had already published a book that was mostly edited through ChatGPT and illustrated through AI illustrations that I created.

I've seen those AI illustrations. Yeah, I've used a lot of AI illustration myself.

Yeah, so. And I couldn't have done this book. It's called Little Book of Big Reasons to Love America. And it's, it's a mix of personal archives, pictures and then illustrations that are. I didn't have pictures for it, but AI did an amazing job and I literally started using it in early last year so fairly quickly implementing it into something that I can publish and sell. So I'm the guy that tries everything right away. But having said that, I think it's the most significant technological breakthrough since the discovery or popularization, I would say, of electricity. It's absolutely massive. No one knows exactly how it's going to land, but we all know now that this is going to change the world at a very rapid pace. So to answer your question about coaching, I think it will affect coaching just like it affects any other knowledge, sort of expertise, white collar service profession. And what it will do, it will quickly eliminate everything that is non original and mediocre. It will burn it to the ground. That's it. It's that simple. So what it can't replicate just by definition is the human connection. That's one thing. So trust is the currency and originality combined with human connection. It's irreplicable by definition, just by definition. AI is not a person. If somebody wants to be coached by a human being, they want to be coached by a human being, period. They're not going to be coached by a bot with everything that goes with it. And it's a personal choice of the person who wants to be coached by a human being. We want to be loved, understood, appreciated, we want to be nurtured, we want to be challenged. We're wired for human connection. AI cannot provide that. Not now, not ever. The best it can do is mimic that. And yes, you will have robots and you'll have all kinds of versions of that, but that's a mimicry. It's not a human connection. By definition, AI is not human. And I would say the other thing is originality and true uniqueness. So it's a great incentive for people to really trust their own personal journey, their creativity, what has been given to them, uniquely so, because that can be replicated also by definition. And people want that. The right people want that. I wouldn't offer my services, my coaching to people who don't want that. I don't want them. But what I can do is create intellectual property that is scalable through a personal brand that tells the world exactly my opinions, my nuances, my quirks, my weaknesses, even my trauma, my story and how it can help somebody else. And people attach themselves to those stories or those stories don't resonate with them, which is perfectly fine.

I completely agree with you about originality, the ability to reflect to the human experience of living in the world how important all that is. And as I say, I've used AI illustration. But you have kids. I have kids, I think older than yours. They're grown up kids, an illustrator and a musician. Apart from anything else, they tell me off for using AI because they have to live in the world that this is going to create and have careers in it. And they have kind of objections to it, on the sense of, you know, there's going to be a lot of garbage taking away jobs for illustrators and so on, because people will be kind of satisfied with something middle of the road and boring rather than looking for an actual human artist. And also they seem to have a real moral objection to it as well. I don't know if you come across any of that with the younger generation.

I think so. I think they will crave uniqueness and humanity. It's going to be at a premium. Everything else will be free, which is fine. It's a beautiful thing. They're not going to be. You can't create a U2 in AI. You can't. There's only one. You can create a great band, but you're not going to create the YouTube of 2025. You can't. You create a version of U2 in the past through AI. And there's a difference. There's a difference.

And even if you could create it, John Helmer isn't going to see it coming. Exactly. Right, yeah.

It's not going to Grab your attention?

No. So because of my bigotry, which is. It is. It's human quality as an investor. Do you look at the edtech market at all? Is there anything new in learning technologies that excites you? Whether it's kind of AI coaching or any of the other ways that AI is moving into the field?

You know, honestly, I'm not a very active investor. I have invested, I have several investments in tech companies and I love that I've since sort of stopped and I'll tell you why I would rather if your talent is betting onto 99 into 10 companies and nine of them will fail, nine of them will fail. And you have that kind of insight and you can spend all your days and nights in fine tuning that talent, that gift to find the unicorn or to find the winner or to bet better or to hedge your bets and distribute your bets. You should be a venture capitalist and you should just do one thing. I worked in that space. I have a buddy of mine who taught me everything about startups and it was fantastic. But I really did it for the wrong reasons. I did it because I love being a publisher around people who are creative, bold. They're the explorers of our age. Right. These are people that would, in the 15th century, in the 16th century, they would just board ships in Spain and go to the edge of the world and people would basically say, yeah, I'll see you never. Those are the people, those are now the founders of tech companies. Nine out of 10 will fail. And I loved being around people like that. And I made some bets and some of them paid off. Most of them didn't, statistically speaking. Right. But I found that for me, I lost my taste to that, to do that because I feel like that needs to be an occupation. That needs to be the thing that you do. And to me, I would rather the thing that makes me just feel fully alive is to. Is to sort of coach somebody, become an exponential version of themselves. You know, these are the things that make me feel like time stops and I can do this forever. So I decided I would focus on that and just not invest anymore. That's my investment, basically.

Yeah. At times with conversations I've had recently with friends who say, well, we got several kind of. So we're quite wealthy, millionaire plus friends in our friendship group. How come they make the money and we don't? And I think the answer that came back from a couple of these people was, well, we like the stuff we're interested in doing the stuff they're interested in money. Yeah. And I think you're right about VCs. You know, it's that kind of going for that ability to find the 10%.

It's a craft, it's a skill. They obsess over it, that's all they do.

And it's a great thing to do and very engaging and others with other things. It's kind of leading us towards next question which is you're a person of faith, an evangelical Christian. You talked about the America and the people who, the Protestants who founded America. How central is faith to your practice? Is it possible in your view for a person of no faith that is an atheist or you know, I'm an ex Catholic so I'd say that's slightly different to being an atheist in that all your thoughts and feelings are within the structure of having been a Catholic. But can a person of no faith achieve their full potential in worldly terms as far as you're concerned?

I think in worldly terms even that it's hard to do and I'll tell you why I don't remember. It's a British author who talks about the Western civilization being deeply, deeply rooted in the Bible, in the Christian faith culturally. And the one liner that he has that I quote all the time and I go, look, he goes, in the west, if you're in the part of the Western hemispheres, part of the civilization, even atheists have Christian dreams. And I think that's true. I think the DNA of the way, of the cultural DNA of the west is absolutely Bible based. You know, it's basically the cities that shape the civilization are Jerusalem and Athens and London and New York, Philadelphia, more originally. Right. These are the cultural sort of archetypes. And so even if you're not an active Christian believer or you believe in a God or anything like that, I think it's harder to reach your potential simply because you don't really see yourself as a miracle, as having a purpose beyond your just your sort of atomic self. If you have a practice, a belief system that gives you a higher purpose, you will succeed more. I think that's just objectively true regardless of the faith, by the way. And actually that same Harvard study that we talked about earlier shows that a transcendent practice is basically in the top three to four heaviest weighted elements of human flourishing. And that's a secular study. This is just data.

So that would apply to Buddhists and Muslims, transcendent studies.

So it's not Christians, it's a Harvard study. Right. Harvard is a very secular place by the way. And it Started as a very Christian place.

Just saying, well, yeah, particularly a Puritan. Yeah, it's a Puritan and a Protestant.

It's like the opposite right now. Right. It's like anti Christian in many ways.

You're making me think of the most recent podcast I listened to, which was a conversation between Ezra Klein and another New York Times person who has written a book about faith, who has faith himself. He's a Catholic, I think. And they had this long conversation where they were rather kind of. They know each other very well. And this guy, whose name unfortunately I forget, was ragging Ezra Klein a bit about his faith being Californian and how he had this interest in mystery. And all the Californians are into mystery and kind of secondhand Buddhism and as they call it.

It's a very New Age place.

Yeah. And so on. And it was a very interesting discussion. At one point, Ezra Klein says that he is from a Jewish background, although doesn't have a faith. They were talking about ayahuasca and experiences with psychedelics. And Ezra Klein recounted a very odd transcendent experience he had which presented itself in very Jewish terms, in terms of a part of Judaism that he's never had anything to do with, but was a startling life changing experience for him. I mean, it didn't bring him back to the faith, but it certainly gave him feelings about the importance of the mysterious and the transcendent that he hadn't completely come to terms with in terms of kind of putting it away in a box. A lot of people are like that. A lot of people now do mindfulness. They do various types of. Some people are really into exercise of routines of various sorts or yoga, tai chi and so on. They have practices which are similar to kind of religious practices in a way, and particularly with mindfulness, which has been slightingly described as secondhand Buddhism. It gives a kind of purpose if ness to their lives that kind of increases their well being and perhaps even their flourishing. Does that count?

I think somewhat, yeah, in the sense that at the very least it gives them something beyond themselves. If you are the center of the universe and there's no purpose to your life beyond sort of doing good quote unquote. I mean, you can wrap it into all kinds of candy wrappers. It just doesn't change the essence of it. It's a very insulating, I think, worldview. There's also no multi generational wisdom tradition attached to that, if you notice. That's another piece I think that's really important is that I became a Christian, I was an atheist. My parents were Marxist. I didn't know anyone who was a believer until I was probably in my late teens. Not one.

Some people say Marxism is type of a faith.

It is totally a religion. It's a false religion, it's an evil religion. It's completely a religion. It's not even. It's not a theory. It has nothing to do with science at all. And I can't believe they called Karl Marx an economist. He's not an economist. Okay. He's a philosopher.

Well, maybe an economic historian, I should say. I have a completely different experience of Marx duty because I went to a university that was kind of soaked in Marxism and Freudianism. And I suppose what you come away from, that is your experience obviously was very different to that. You grew up in a regime that was totalitarian. Yes, I was invasive. A surveillance regime. Marxism. I think for a lot of people of my kind of bent who come from where I come from, the age I am as a kind of. He was an economic historian who'd been drew a lot on Hegel. Arguably, if you want to look at what's happening in China now, Hegel is more of an influence than Marx. Marx sparked off and opened up a lot of areas for other thinkers, many of whom perhaps are more interesting. A lot of it is discredited. Some of the results have been, as you say in the 20th century, absolutely dire and disgraceful. But I don't think we attach the thought this is an evil thing that you just can't, you know, if you have a little bit of it, it's kind of an evil. Poison is just now it's a book that's put away on the shelf and we don't look at all that much.

Yeah, but culturally, one of the dangers of Marxism is that it's like a virus. It mutates. It just attaches itself to a different hosts and uses the same framework in a completely different setting. People wouldn't even know that has anything to do with Marxism, you know, so the gender debates, the race debates, it's all basically a remix of oppressed, oppressor, bourgeoisie and proletariat. The constructs of basically. Which is the opposite of actual economics. I mean, I have a master's in economics. I studied this thing. Right. And I studied it in the Soviet Union. I actually read Karl Marx. And basically the idea is that there's a piece of. And the pie does not grow. And if I have more of the pie, you will have less of the pie. Therefore there's an injustice there. And the Only person who can fix that is the government, is the state. So that's basically it, it's that simple. And real life economics, it's different. The pie will grow. If everybody grows the pie a little bit, the pie grows. No one's taking from somebody. It's not a zero sum game, basically. So the people that are free to practice their craft, their abilities to the maximum, they will grow the pie, they'll take more of the pie, but the pie will grow. And I mean that's a sort of very simplistic way of looking at it. But that zero sum game approach and the oppressed oppressor sort of binary view can be applied to anything, anything. So that's how mutates as a virus. But because it's a flawed concept, there is no such thing as a binary oppressed oppressor. There's a whole range of things, right? There's no such thing as a zero sum game. Doesn't work that way. If you approach it as a zero sum game, it's not going to grow anything. And you see evidence of that throughout history. So the danger of it is that in America there's neo Marxism literally in every college, you know, and college is sort of a great, it's a great place for ideas like that to flourish because people are just don't have the life experience to discern the difference. They say that if you are, you know, young and not a socialist, you don't have a heart. If you're old and not a free enterprise, you don't have a brain. I mean, that's sort of true.

You know, I've had variations on that.

Yeah.

Our culture on this podcast is to disagree agreeably. And I can't wholly buy into the idea of the won't mind virus, but I respect what you say and there's a lot in what you say. You're an immigrant to the us, an exemplary of the American dream. And you've written this book which I read and enjoyed, and it's a love letter to the American culture and values. A lot of that love I share as somebody who grew up in the 60s, very much in love with American culture. How much do you love the current administration's policies and actions on immigration? And how well aligned do you think these actions are with the values you first found to love in America?

I think I have mixed feelings about it. Right. So on one hand, basically the current administration is saying if you don't have borders, you're not a state. I totally agree with that 100%. And the reality is, if you know the facts and how things have been run, that essentially an open border policy has been in place in the US for some time and it was just completely devastating parts of the country, et cetera, et cetera.

Right.

So that's a big picture kind of thing. You have to have borders. Like if you don't have borders, you don't have a state. If you don't have citizenship and something that comes attached to that, you don't have a country, you don't have citizen. Citizen of what right? On the other hand, the way it's implemented, it's just horrifying for me. There's no nuance it whatsoever. It's just so stupid and borderline authoritarian as well, which is horrible. So this whole idea of this mass deportations, hunting people, taking them and just putting them, I think it's a terrible idea. I think deportations are very. Deportations in general absolutely have to be in place as a measure. But this sort of wholesale approach to it, it's very heavy handed. I think it's just un American in my opinion. And I think the nuance also in America, like when we say, well it was a nation, if immigrants, anybody can come here. Not really. Not anybody can come here. That's not true. And even the people that came here, first of all, it was a wilderness, mostly in an uninhabited or inhabited very sparsely place. And that's a different context in historical terms. Also the people that came in the original sort of waves of immigrants, these are people that had to rely on themselves. So it actually filtered out the herd quite a bit. If you go look, you go to this place, no one's going to take care of you, the state's not going to take care of you. You have to take care of you, your uncles, your extended family. That's why they formed these sort of Little Italy, Little China, Little Korea. Self reliance was the driving force. Independence and self reliance. When you have policies in place where the minute you cross over taxpayers are going to take care of you in every possible way, that's not self reliance. It just incentivizes the wrong people to come over, you know, and so that's that. I don't personally don't like that and I understand that, you know, you and I could disagree on that. But my point is if you have an open border and anybody who crosses the border is immediately. And you can, you can wrap that in all kinds of sort of rationales of humanity and this is a responsibility, well really it's not the responsibility of the United States is for the citizens of the United States. That's why we pay taxes, that's why we contribute. That's why we work, we sacrifice. But if you come from another place without going through the right steps, that is the law of the land. And you expect to have privileges that are reserved for citizens, that's not sustainable. In fact, in my opinion, that's sort of an issue that's happening in Europe too much, where you guys are taxed to death. You can't grow a business if you're taxed to death. You can't grow the pie if you're taxed to death.

That's the other issue. I think the immigration question, many, almost every nation in the developed world is wrestling with this. It's something that's proving extremely difficult to resolve.

It's very hard to do.

In fact, it will be resolved in my country, in the uk. I think the important thing is that we keep talking to each other about this, share perspectives and listen to the other side. And that's really what this podcast is about.

And I'm talking about as I'm a refugee. So I'm not talking as a theorist or as an economist. I'm a refugee. I was a refugee.

My forebears were refugees as well.

So I was there.

My family were. I was there in Canada, Scandinavians, other Hungarians and Irish.

So I was there. I was in a refugee facility as a child. We were granted asylum in Germany, in Munich. So I'm heart and soul for refugees. I've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Ukrainian refugees when the war broke out. So I don't come from a place of sort of this skeptical, cynical lack of compassion. I'm just talking about sort of high level policy, right, that will allow the country to prosper. You know, I was invited to Germany as a refugee. I filled in paperwork. My parents answered a bunch of questions.

You're a gas star biter.

Yeah, Yeah. I was welcomed in Germany and I'm eternally grateful. I remember when the first Syrian refugees were arriving. I think it was in Munich. There was a video that went viral where these Germans was, that they were at the airport and then some Syrian refugees were arriving, probably first waves, and they had these placards of welcome and toys for the kids and things like that. And this video went viral and it was also in Munich. And I remember watching it and remembering me coming off a plane and I cried and I showed it to the kids and I said, look, remember this? These are very generous people now. So I feel it from the standpoint of absolute despair of a refugee on the other side. Every household, just like every household, has a limit of what they can do for somebody in despair. Every country has a limit as well. And that's not insignificant. It's not a theory. This is real life, you know, so that's how I think of it, basically.

Thanks. We are limited for time. Lastly, I'm going to ask, what is your go to karaoke favorite? I'm sorry, that feels like a handbrake turn in terms of mood.

That's very sad. Very abrupt.

We like to end up Very abrupt. We like to end up with something on perhaps a lighter note.

Well. Well, you know, I'm afraid I will have to disappoint the audience on this because I've never done karaoke in my life.

You've never done karaoke?

No. And because I'm a performer, an artist, and I'm a snob. A complete snob.

The same reason I disliked you, too. I know. We're both ruined.

Yeah. Forever. Forever. I just can't do it. I'm like, I don't understand. You know, the equipment is crap. I haven't rehearsed this. You know, this is not my song. And no. Hard. No.

Well, thanks for that. Thanks for sharing all that. I didn't agree with you for all of that, but I really enjoyed the conversation.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Thank you very much for doing it.

Thank you.

That's all on the Learning Hack podcast for this time. Many thanks to our guests and to our sponsors. The Learning Hack is completely independent and transparently funded by sponsorship. It is produced by John Helmer and hosted by him and also me, Mariana, a Synthesia AI avatar. If you want to help others find us, please like, follow, rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. Until next time, stay curious, learning people.

Now I finally get it. The Learning Hack podcast is supported by Learning News, the learning sector's news wire. Rob and his team are good friends of the podcast and we really value the help and advice we've had from them and they do a great job. For the very latest news from around the learning sector, for interviews with learning leaders, the latest from Learning sector vendors, and features on workplace learning, go to learningnews.com.