📍 Christian, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. 

I'm doing well, Mark. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to speak to you. 

 Yeah. You are an entrepreneur. You're a philanthropist. You are a high performance coach, but you are also an internationally recording artist and you entertain millions.

It's a pop star. I want to start with that. Tell us about that. 

Yeah, that's, that, that piece for some reason, it fascinates people, right? Which is, I would be fascinated as well. But yeah, I grew up all over the world. I'm a strange, Sort of person, honestly, because I grew up on four different, three continents, four countries, Russia, Chile, Germany, Africa, back to Russia.

My mom's Russian, my dad's Chilean, so I don't look Slavic at all. But I eventually landed in Russia, still in the times of the Soviet Union. And then when it fell apart, freedom flourished and I was at the right time at the right place. I was very musical, very artistic. And I was just lucky enough to be one of the top pop performers in Russia for about a decade.

So that's the story. 

Wow. So how did it go from being a pop star to now becoming a high performance coach? 

There's actually a few steps in between. I, there was, I have a master's degree in economics. That was even before my pop star sort of years. And I just happened to do, want to do music and I was young and I'm like, give it a try.

I'll probably fail. And then it didn't fail. I was very interested in, in, in entrepreneurship and my music career was very entrepreneurial. So I was producing other bands. I was very interested in the business of music, not just the music. And I evolved eventually into doing. Producing other bands.

I had my own production company. And when we moved to the States, eventually we started a production company in Los Angeles, we did music videos, high end music videos and music production for international artists with Hollywood producers I started another company here in, in Austin, Texas, where we do marketing and consulting for startups and that all of those things involved some consulting mentorship of, Business leaders, founders.

So all of that, and me being that guy who went through a lot of hardship and also had a, Seen a lot of success. It all eventually bubbled up into, you know what? I, people seem to gravitate towards me that are business people, fashion designers, athletes and they like what I have to say.

I've helped them over the years. So eventually it become became a structured step by step framework and program that helps people basically reach their highest potential high performance in a sustainable way, meaning. Lifelong, right? 

So how old were you when you came to the U S I was 30, 35 when I came to the U S wow. I'm sure, how you describe the business tactics.

Or the nitty gritty of being a musician and producing and meeting all these people. I am sure that helped you a lot when you were starting your own business, but what about the art of creating music and being an artist? Do you think that performance aspect of things? Helps you in running this different business now?

A

 hundred percent. I would say all entrepreneurs are artists. All of them. They just happen to be artists in this, in the realm of business, because all of them are looking at emptiness, basically there's something that is not in existence and they're going, you know what, somebody has to.

Should be doing this thing to solve this particular problem. So they're really imagining something into existence. And then between imagining it and executing, there's a few steps. And they, it's surprising how parallel those steps are with creating a film, a music video or writing a song and then producing the song, then promoting the song.

It's the same exact process, but it starts with this sense of, I will produce, I will create something out of nothing. And that's the essence of the creative process. 

I love it. How you put it, because it is a hundred percent true as entrepreneurs, we're literally creating something out of nothing.

I love the idea. High performance coaching. Let's talk about that. Who is your ideal target customer and what is the most common problem that they come to you with? 

The ideal customer is someone who wants to not just make a living, not just do well and get a reputation, let's say, as a leader. But someone who wants to be the best, someone who wants to change the world, who wants to put a dent in the universe.

There's a difference between, Hey, I'm going to be a senior executive or a CEO, or, an inventor or a writer and somebody who says, I want to create art. I want to create almost like a transcendent experience for the people that touch or interact with me. Those people inspire me and but those people also have a similar set of problems, right?

And the problems are they're putting themselves out there with such raw vulnerability, and that produces a resistance. Self doubt, rejections from the outside world. You get better and better slowly. You're never a baked, fully baked excellent performer and that comes with anxiety, comes with stress.

It just comes with the territory. So if you want to be the best at something, you will have to overcome stress on demand. So the first thing that we, that I help people with is how do you convert This sense of anxiety, stress, rejection, failure on demand into creativity, flow, optimism, vision every single day.

And the unit of that is a day. And basically I say, look, if you know how to win the day, even when your day starts. Rejection email, you lost a client, you didn't get the investor to invest in your new company. And you are in that emotional state. You have to be able to turn it around and go, this is fine.

I'll learn something from it. There's a new step that I'm going to take. I'm going to be better. And if you win the day, you can win in life. Imagine having optimism and creativity every single day for seven days straight. It's not going to make a difference in your journey. Absolutely. Most people actually live in a state of quiet desperation.

That's their baseline. What we're trying to do is elevate the baseline to something that most people don't even experience seven days in a row ever. But we want to experience that every single day. 

It's crazy talking to you, Christian, because you literally speak my language. Some of the sentences that you say are sentences that I say in a daily life.

Is that right? Yeah, the living, the life of a quiet desperation, I say it all the time because it's so much truth to it. I think some people are honest and they admit it, but most people are just lying to themselves and they don't want to admit it, but it will catch up to them at some point, and that's when things are bad.

The sooner we understand that the sooner we can get help and seek mentors like yourself. And get out of the situation, right? I agree. The 

second thing I feel like a lot of people experience is lack of direction. And adjacent to that is low speed, right? And that's a big deal because the most scarce resource you have is your time.

Everybody has the same amount. Like you sleep for eight hours, you have 16 hours every single day. What do you do with that? And I think I see founders cause I work with a lot of tech founders as well. What they do is they tweak the functionality of the software and they and the truth is they're not advancing, they don't have direction, they're just delaying the inevitable, quote, unquote, doom day of the world is going to reject my product.

And what you need to do is you need to figure out how to move. And then afterward, okay, this is where I'm going, how to get there fast, because time is of the essence. Absolutely. None, non scalable, right? So speed actually doesn't matter. Don't you think? 

Absolutely. I have something I tell my clients all the time when they're stuck in a problem like that of the day to day inertia and not looking at the big picture.

I tell them stop chopping the lettuce. And it comes from a real life story of a friend of mine who ran a pizza shop after a pizza shop business. And then they kept failing 

and he just 

didn't know what was happening because he made good pizza. And he always picked the best locations. But it just kept on failing.

And a few months went by, I was busy and he was busy. We didn't really get a chance to catch up. So at one point. We caught up at this point, he had a really successful pizza shop. And I said, what changed? And he said, I stopped chopping the lettuce before, when he was running the pizza business, he was so hands on in deep on the nitty gritty of the details that truly didn't matter.

It was 

counting the pieces of pepperoni that goes on each side of the pepperoni. He was micromanaging the daily tasks of topping the lettuce a certain size for the salad. Sure. There's all important things, but in a way he was procrastinating on what needed to be done, which was in his case, proper marketing, putting the word out there, taking the business to the next level.

Exactly. 

And he wasn't accelerating. That's the thing. And it's a form of, it is a form of procrastination, right? When you do that there's something that has to do with fear in there. Every single time there's a there's a story I tell when it comes to fear and because fear is, it's the big thing for anybody who wants to be a creative.

You're on a creative in business, right? With that's what entrepreneur is. And fear is the thing that is looming over your head. I was can I tell you the story? Yes. I use a term like that, the chopping, but it has to do with fear, but it's, the term I use is shaking the shark and I'll tell you what it comes from. When I was a kid, I grew up in, and actually in Africa for seven years, my formative years were in Africa and we would travel a lot, these beautiful places. And one of these trips. We took, I was probably, I don't know, 13, 14 years old, something like that. We take this little Like tiny plane that flies fairly low to this island that we're going to spend a few days just spearfishing and just enjoying the gorgeous nature in Mozambique.

And my dad looks down and there's this, there's dark figure in the water. And it's this beautiful turquoise water and everything. And he goes, what's that? And the pilot goes, Oh, that's Joao. Joao is a name. It's like John in Portuguese. And he goes, my dad was like. What is he doing? He goes he's the guy who spearfishes lobster for the restaurant.

It's fresh lobster every day. And he goes, where's his boat? He goes, he doesn't have a boat. He's too poor for a boat. He just swims out there. And it was like miles away from the shore. So we ended up meeting this guy, João, and he was like, Just gorgeous black athletic guy who's just, he was like, his habitat was the water.

So he took us around the island with spearfish and stuff like that. And he would tell us these stories. In one of the stories he says, he was telling us how he gets to the lobster and the lobster. He's usually under rocks, right? That's where they congregate. Guess who is also under the rocks is sharks.

They sleep under the rocks because they have to keep moving. And if they just stay under the rocks, there's a current that goes under and keeps them oxygenated. And we're like, so there's sharks on the way to the lobster, the thing that feeds your family. He goes, yeah. And we're like, what do you do?

He goes, I just shake them. And we just stare at them stare at him going, what do you mean you shake them? He goes, oh, you just grab them by the fin and just shake them and they just swim away. And basically that became forever imprinted in me as this image of the things that you fear are always exaggerated in your mind.

Always, like 99. 9 percent of the time, the fear is completely unnecessary. It's it's just your brain playing tricks with you. So if you look at something that you fear and you identify it as fear and you just shake it by the fin, most of the time, 99. 9 percent of the time, it will swim away and just remove the obstacle from your journey.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality, right? Absolutely. So how does one shake  📍 the fear? 

What are some practical tips I can utilize to shake that fear? 

I think one for me is contemplation and In processing, I have this very basic routine in the morning. I do physical work. I do mental learning and I do contemplation. So the contemplation is a very interesting piece. I journal every morning, right?

And the journaling is, it's a fascinating exercise because on paper, you go on paper, right? What does that do? What is that? How does that change reality? If you put on paper what you're feeling, a different part of your feeling is just an emotion. So it doesn't get structured. It doesn't get channeled.

It doesn't get analyzed. It just swirls around in a different part of who you are and it fills your body with Stress hormones, which makes you even more nervous. And it's this vicious cycle. When you stop, you breathe, you meditate or pray, and then you journal about what you're feeling. A different part of your brain engages that feeling and processes it.

And gives it structure and actually removes the stuff that doesn't, that are completely irrational. Then you process that in a very different way, start feeling about it differently. And there's other tricks around it. For example, you can start the journaling with a gratitude list. Gratitude displaces anxiety.

If you actually allow yourself to feel it. The physical piece infuses your body with. hormones, hope molecules. You probably know this as a bodybuilder, right? This only gets generated by contracting muscles. You move around, your cognitive abilities improve, your blood goes rushing in your body, circulating.

You actually feel hits of the stuff that are antidepressants or all kinds of internal pharmacy generated stuff. And then when you learn something, and I attached the learning piece as the third piece of my morning routine is you feel the sense of progress. So you choose the lowest hanging fruit, the things that you're not as good as you want to be.

The things that are going to help you and you make it slow, steady progress. You don't dabble. You just keep making the unknown more known every day. So between the physical, the learning and the contemplative, you basically switch this, the fear piece away. It 

just goes away. Is there a specific structure to that writing that you follow?

Yes, I always start with gratitude because it's the, it's the most powerful piece. Cognitively, it changes the way you think. For example, I'll give you an example. Sometimes I go, even I go, and I teach this to other people, right? I'm like gratitude journal. In my mind, I'm a grateful, I'm already, this is my norm, I breathe this stuff, right?

I'm grateful, I'm cognizant of the, how blessed I am, all of those things. And in my mind, sometimes I want to skip it. And I go, I'm already happy, right? Why would I do this? And every single time, it amazes me that when I put pen and paper, I, in my mind, I have maybe three or four things that are like in the last, let's say 48 hours that I'm grateful for.

When I start writing, I come up with eight things every single time. It's double or triple of what I already have in my brain. So it's just an incredible hack and it works every single time. And it's almost annoying because I go. How can I just not have that embedded in my mind, right? I've been doing this for a long time, but it's just, you have to follow, you have to trust how you're wired, right?

And and it works every time. So that's a piece that is really important. I usually put creative ideas out there in the journaling. Sometimes a process if I'm very disappointed about something a deal that didn't go through a client that didn't that I felt very excited about, but didn't come on board, for example, or a project that I really wanted to get to in my, some of the other businesses that I have and I, they didn't, that just didn't happen and that also helps you process an emotion and give it structure and put it in perspective.

Wonderful. Wonderful. Going back to the fear of content creation, right? As somebody who's working with entrepreneurs all the time you and I both see a lot of times, a lot of talented people don't make it just because of that fear of putting yourself out there. So if we were looking at that specific example, if somebody is listening to this, And they have this specific fear, and we walk through the specific example of what they could do.

Obviously, you've already mentioned gratitude journaling, we're starting it out. But then when they're actually writing, are they just writing about how they feel today? How they want to feel tomorrow? How they feel about the fear and anxiety of putting it out there? What is, some people don't even know where to start to write.

If I wanted to write that, what is the most effective way to go about conquer that specific issue? 

And what you're meaning, what you mean is writing, not journaling. You're meaning writing for content creation, correct? 

Journaling, 

that's what I mean. Like how am I journaling 

to work my way up to getting rid of that fear?

Of, of the fear of content creation. Correct. Oh, okay. I get it. I would say journaling the, I would say, for example, you can just dive, you can basically start saying, I fear creating a newsletter or creating a YouTube channel. Creating a podcast because, and you, it's the same process.

You start really get, get very specific, get very granular. I feel like I don't have the mastery to produce it. I feel like it's going to be boring. I feel like I don't have the time to do it well, or I don't have the lighting on the gear. You just put everything down. Don't leave anything out. I feel like it's going to be not worth my time because the.

Five and a half people are going to watch, see it or read it. It's going to be my mom, my cousin, and my, two friends. So we don't want to say no. That kind of thing. And then event you, once you start writing these things down, your rational brain will start engaging into those with those emotions and start giving you answers.

It's almost like you're having a dialogue, but you're, It's you're having a dialogue with your rational self. Your irrational self is having a dialogue with your rational self. And in that process, what you'll see is your rational self is going to go. Yeah, but you have to start somewhere. Yeah, but people, you're going to get better.

Yeah, but. You can also send this to 50 people that you know in this specific thing and they're not going to judge you because they really like you and they'll give you honest feedback and you'll get answers right there in that dialogue. 

Very interesting. So let me ask you this then, because this is something that I struggle with a lot, so I want to know.

A lot of times, what I understand intellectually, I can't accept it emotionally, and therefore I cannot put it to work. Simple example that I think everybody could relate to listening to this is, we all intellectually know we need to eat healthy and exercise. A secret to weight loss or fat loss or being healthy isn't mystical, 

eat less, 

eat better and move more.

Who is out there who doesn't understand that? 

But just 

because we intellectually understand it doesn't mean that we emotionally aren't drawn towards certain foods that we shouldn't be eating. Now, intellectually, I know what I need to do, but I still have that emotional block. And for some, they can't get past that.

How many people are there who know what they need to do for weeks, months, for years, but never do it? What's the secret? How do we get past that one extra hurdle? 

That remember I was telling you about the win the day technique that yes, I train people in that embedded in that technique is this sort of basically, what you're creating is this rocket fuel for progress is You process fear you process emotion into rational thought and structure that feeds actually your emotion So it actually does change the way you feel And then on top of that, and then you have the physical part that actually boosts that emotion as well.

But the learning piece is that piece that you are asking about. The learning is, for example, in your example, the learning piece, which is the third 20 minutes of the hour, so it's 20 minutes, 20 minutes, and 20 minutes, will be devoted. To the thing that you feel you're not as good as you should be.

So let's say content creation. Let's talk about writing a newsletter. I have a newsletter that's probably 18, 000 subscribers now. Every single time I'm like. Gosh, that's a lot of pressure. 18, 000 people read this, but it starts with five people, okay, so that 20 minutes is devoted to learning how to write a newsletter.

You find an authority, somebody who's done it well, find their YouTube channel or their book or their newsletter, most likely they have a newsletter, and you'll just geek out on them every single day for 20 minutes, every single day. What will happen is, You will start learning more intellectually. This is still not the answer, but the, what I teach in the style of learning that I teach is called immersive learning. I'll, you already know what this is, right? You, did you grow up in America? I was 18 when I moved to America. Okay. So any average American, so your experience might be slightly different. Most people in America will. learn a foreign language in high school or, most people in America will not speak that language even two years after high school at all.

The only, the people that do speak a language are the people who learned it by immersion. So I learned four languages by age nine. Because I moved around and the what you do is you what I did is I engineer how you do that. And then I implemented that in a daily habit. And that's what I teach. So it's very simple.

Actually, it's very uncomplicated. How do you use how do you learn a language in 6 months as a child? If you go to a country as opposed to 3 years in high school, and you don't remember anything very simple. You. You learn daily, you learn interactively, so you experiment, you suck at the language. Every day, you use some words and people go, yeah, that's not what it means actually, and you do it with other people, so it's interactive. And you experiment all the time, right? You try and you fail and you try and you take, but you have to do it daily. So every day of those 20 minutes, you read something, you listen to a YouTube channel about somebody who wants to teach you newsletter writing and how to build an audience, how to add value.

Every day you write a newsletter, you don't have to even send it. But you write that newsletter, you show it to somebody, make it interactive, you make it daily, you make it interactive, and you make it experimental, meaning you're not trying to crush it, you're trying to get better. You do that every day there's studies that show that if you learn a new skill for 18 minutes a day, every day, in one year, you're going to be in the top 5 percent of the people that do that thing.

Love it. And there's a necessity aspect of it too, right? When you're traveling and you're moving around as a young kid and you go to a different country, like you said, yeah, if you don't speak their language, you don't have any friends, you're forced. And I love this idea. And. Committing yourself to writing one newsletter a day, no matter what, is that necessity that we are simulating.

Yeah, that's exactly what you're doing. You're basically mimicking the the environment under which you can learn a new language. Learn anything, so for example, I apply it to marketing, to sales. To lead generation, to YouTube channel stuff, lighting, filming, editing. Like I've done it for so many years that I've had now five different careers that I'm pretty good at all five.

Because this thing is just breathing for me. But I think most people just stop learning and then they stop learning and they slow down. They don't have direction. They don't have speed. The thing that I refer to. And all they have to do is learn how to learn. That's a meta skill.

That's the skill that leads you to. acquire other skills. And the ability, the habit and the ability to learn quickly, consistently at an accelerated rate is a massive assets in life, massive asset in life. 

How do you think growing up, traveling to some of these amazing locations, right? Living in different countries, learning all these languages at such a young age, How do you think all of those experiences contributed into you being the version of yourself that you are?

Because it sounds wonderful to be able to go to all these amazing locations and there are a lot of benefits, right? But in some cases that may have been hard as well. Oh, very 

hard. I was Mark, you don't learn valuable stuff in, on mountaintops. You learn them in valleys. If you learn them in valleys when you're a child, that really stays with you, right?

So I was a refugee at age five. My dad was in a concentration camp in Chile in 1973. I was in refugee facility with my mom, my sister, he made it out alive. We're lucky, but we were like, we lost everything. We had to leave the country. We moved to four different countries. We landed in Africa, one of the poorest nations on earth.

A year in a civil war broke out there, so we had bombings and stuff like that. There's just, you experience all this stuff. But what happens is as a child, Like you mentioned, what do you want to do? You want to fit in. You don't speak the language. You don't, it's completely different cultures.

So what it turned me into is this learning sponge, right? You start you start learning. You start reading people, literally with your pores, right? You. Because you have to, you want to fit in. And I think that's what eventually made me into a great coach is because I know people so well, because I had to learn them as a, at such early age, but I had to learn that not because I was conscious of it, but because I wanted to fit in.

I just wanted to feel normal. I wanted to have relationships with, I would just want to have friends, so I had to learn about how to. How do I connect with you? And and also, it instilled with me this really love for people. I actually really care about people, and that's a positive feature in somebody who, who coaches others, when you go, you want to, you want.

To be coached by someone who really loves you, believes in you, sees the things in you that you don't see in yourself. And all of those qualities, I really think most of them were developed at an early age because of this sort of immigrant refugee kind of lifestyle. But it enriched me in many ways, but there was, it didn't feel good at the time.

My dad tells me that. When we moved to Africa, it was like my fourth country by age seven. He goes, I couldn't tell, I couldn't get you to speak in public, have conversations for a year. You went quiet for a year. And I, and you were just wanted to be by yourself. You felt very awkward.

And I was just very confused because of all those changes and children really need some structure. And I, for a year I was, I just went mute I spoke of course, but in public, I just couldn't, wouldn't communicate. I was paralyzed, I think. So there was something going on inside of me that sort of reorganized itself just for survival, but yeah it felt very lonely. That also brought me, made me into a great learner because I was alone with books. I escaped into books and that also probably developed a sense of heightened sense of creativity and imagination because I would escape from my reality of this confused place into fantasy books and adventure books.

And I would imagine myself in different settings. And eventually that brought, that helped me become. An award winning, marketer, songwriter, producer. I created content, film, music videos. I would, I can imagine something so quickly and I think it all started also out of pain and necessity back then when I was a kid, 

I'm in so many.

Things to talk about here. But I want to start with imagination, right? I think part of the reason you still have the drive and the motivation, because that inner child lives within you. Yeah. And I think that is rare. I think the normal adulting process is to just kill off the inner child. You're like year after year.

And at some point we grow up and we become practical for those who can see it. And with that practicality. The ability to dream goes away. 

Yeah. 

The ability to dream is a superpower as a child. And that's the reason we can do amazing things because we weren't afraid of anything because the power of the dream overpowers power of fear.

Yeah, I think so too. We're all artists when we're kids, like you go into a classroom of let's say seven year olds, everybody's an artist. You go into the same class, maybe by, ninth grade or something, and people are so self conscious already. We've educated the artistry and the imagination out of them.

It's pretty sad, but it's true. And then it actually gets worse, obviously, once you go to college. And a lot of the people that come into my coaching are people that are trying to correct that, because they're just feel incongruent, their life is incongruent to who they are.

Yeah. That's what I see quite a bit. 

There's a difference between a person who knows things because they have read a couple of books and a person who has lived life. You are someone who has lived life. So let me ask you this question. Life was tough for you. Life was tough for some others.

I immigrated when I was 18, but I didn't go through four different countries by the 10, by the time I was 10. So I cannot even fathom what it is like. Yeah, and I don't want to draw any comparisons, but when we look at the world that we're living in today, sometimes it feels like people feel way more victimized or seemingly nothing as opposed to what some people we know may have gone through the trauma of being in a refugee camp, the trauma of moving from country to country, not being able to speak the language, the desperation to fit in the desperation to survive.

You could have taken your life in a completely different direction. Sat at a bar, told a random stranger why your life is not great. And they would say, it makes sense, Christian, you went through a lot. But you didn't do that. If someone is in that spot right now where they've gone through some traumatic experiences, what can you share from your growing up?

Not as the version of the Christian that you are now, having served so much and having learned so much and having given so much. But the younger, dumber version of us who don't know the finer things in life, when we're just figuring it out, what helped you get through day to day as Christian back then?

That's a great question, Mark. I think a lot of it was actually intuitive, but if I were to but I can tell you what it was. I just don't know how I got there back then, but I think just like in, in many of the things that I now help people with, I have either observed that in my life and then reverse engineered because I can mimic the conditions of that thing that helped give me the sort of unfair advantage.

But I've also been around hyper for many high performers. And because I'm so curious, I actually asked them, right? How'd you get there? How'd you get there? How'd you get there? So I have this sort of library in my mind of not only my life experience, but others as well. And what I, and I think that's the cool thing is that you might have not had my life or your life, but you can reverse engineer and create the conditions that bring the advantage, right?

So having said that, one thing for me was that I've identified as a thing is that when you're a refugee and you have such uncertainty and such sort of limitations one, the decision was if nothing is certain, then everything is possible. That was, it was just the thing that I had. And there's so much uncertainty.

Sometimes when there's a lot of certainty, that is actually a limiting factor. And I can give you an explanation. Okay, so you grew up in middle class America. You've had a fairly, safe provided for life. You had opportunities, good education. You grew up in a good neighborhood. That actually creates limiting beliefs as well, because now you're constrained by this sort of imagined set

expectation of what your life journey should be. So it's almost like the script was written for you. So you're going to either a profession or you pick a career path or you marry a certain type of person because that's what people like you in your circles do. Guess what? That actually might not be the best use of your potential.

But you are so attached to the script that was written by you, for you, in your imagination, that's what you do. In my situation, I'm like, Soviet Union, Russia, the Soviet Union just fell apart. All hell is breaking loose, okay? It's like madness. It's like the Wild West. And I go I graduate with a master's degree in economics.

All of my friends are going into finance. You It's just chaos, but there's no script that has been written for me at all. So I go if there's no script, maybe I can write a script. I've always liked music. I'm a good dancer. I have a great voice. I've studied the business side, the music side, the production side of music.

Cause I was obsessed by music for the whole time. I was in college or even before that. What if I create something? Who cares? It's chaos anyway, right? No one's going to pay attention to me. The worst that can happen is no one notices. Maybe I should do that. So I guess that's the, I feel like there's a, there's an unfair advantage in no script, basically.

Does that make sense? 

Absolutely. Two things. Number one, you're blowing my mind right now. Especially with what you said, when something is not determined already anything is possible that you use different words. Nothing is certain, right? There's nothing. So then anything is possible. Everything anything's possible.

The second thing is. I find it really interesting that you talked about growing up in a certain way where there was extreme desire or magnetism towards wanting to fit in.

Yeah. But then at some point in life, while everybody was becoming an accountant and an engineer and all of that, you didn't want to fit in anymore. You went in a direction that is quite not normal at all. 

No, as a matter of fact, the failure rate in creative, in the creative sort of professions is like extremely high.

It's crazy. 

How did that switch happen? Did you just get so used to not fitting in that you just didn't care? Or were there something else that was all of a sudden not wanting, because you would think a person who's been desperately wanting to fit in their entire young adulthood to fit in with their, whatever friends they have now made once they've settled somewhere.

They would follow the same footsteps. They're going to this college to study this thing. I'm going with them, but you went the exact opposite direction. 

That's a great, that is an excellent, exceptionally deep question, Mark. I appreciate it that you think of it that way. I do have a theory and it might be true because a lot of what I've now.

What I'm helping people with, I just observe, reverse engineer, mimic the conditions, right? As I said, here's my theory. When I was growing up, my parents were Marxists. I ended up in the Soviet union. The whole thing about the Soviet union is about conformity. You conform, you'll survive, you'll do okay.

You don't conform, you're going to be punished. And at the same time, I was a student of the American story I was a huge fan of America, and I would just soak it in, and it was, but it was such, such a different universe for me at the time, that I imagined it, and I had this vivid imagination, but I studied it, and even in, College, when I was studying economics, I was studying free market economics, and I would be fascinated by the concept.

And then what happens is, at the same time as I graduate, from this, all of this cultural context, my lived experience in a society that was very oppressive, restrictive, it was all about conformity, it was all about fitting, and the whole thing, Is this machine, and you're just a cog in the machine, that whole thing falls apart.

1991, the Soviet Union falls apart. And I wonder if it correlated with that. Something clicked in my brain going, that thing about conforming. All of it is now falling apart. The machine is broken. The way to do it now is to not conform. The way to do it is to stand out. And I can do it because I have this set of skills that is, that are unique, and if I combine them in a certain way I think there's something there.

And I was right. I started doing music, and with, by the end of the year, because of the set of circumstances that were there, I had three contracts being offered to me by the end of the year, I was on national television. So I think it was maybe a unique set of circumstances, but it was grabbing the moment, I think that's what it was.

And I think perhaps it was that thing is that when you see the system glitching, maybe you don't want to be part of that system. 

Fascinating. I always say this thing, whether one believes in God or the universe or aliens, Whatever, whatever belief system you have, there are signs everywhere.

There are tools everywhere. We just have to notice them. And that's where being in the moment is so many people were affected by the fall of Soviet union, but how many of them actually took that, turn it around to make some something of themselves and be where you are now. Fascinating. In your journey right now, we talk about honesty in your journey right now.

What are you trying to become? Who are you trying to be? And not just I want to help everybody. Like really, what does Christian want? 

I'm in a season now where I've have five, I've had five different careers and I've accumulated so much. Stuff that I think I can help people with, and I've, what I've arrived at is this, is that on a broader level, I can be on your podcast.

People can be on my  podcast. I have a newsletter that goes out to right now at  17, 000 people. So there's this broader, almost like broadcasting of. This is what it takes to have an exponential life. That's what I call an expansive, thriving, impactful life that goes on without massive dips and falls.

So that's the broader thing.  But I am also very aware that, But just like everybody else, we absorb content information. We don't really apply it. And so my favorite thing to do is to help somebody who is ready. Somebody who is saying, I'm all in. I want to have that exponential life. I will do the work.

And I want to be generous. I want to have impact in the world. I want it. Will you walk with me? To me, that is the That is what I want to do, right? So I have these cohorts in my program where this is just a small group of people doing this one thing, very, in a very disciplined, devoted way, and they want to change the world.

I want to help world changers do what they do. And in the season, so there's seasons in life where you In your twenties, you're trying to find your way. You're, I call it the season of puzzling, right? You puzzle when you hit like your thirties, you're now probably know what you want to do and you start looking, working on mastery when in your forties.

In fifties, you are have mastered something and you're having impact. When you start going into your fifties and sixties, you are in a season where the best you can do for the world is to share wisdom. So I'm in that season, I'm 55 right now, right? And that is the highest level of service that I can provide, is to influence the influencers, lead the leaders. Impact the people that impact hundreds, thousands, and sometimes millions of lives. That's what I want to do.

What is the world that you're envisioning or which you are preparing leaders so that they can carry on the mantle? I, 

when I was my first professional success, I was this driven guy. I was that guy. I was the high performer, right? I was in my, Mid twenties, early twenties rather, and I had, I was entertaining millions of people across a cultural space, the ecosystem was about 15 different countries, so I was touring all over the place.

And there's, there are pieces that I was very good at. My outer game was fantastic. I was really good. And what I did probably in the top 1 percent in the space that I was in, but there were areas of my life that I was terrible at because I didn't have the upbringing. And for example you mentioned, do you believe in God?

Do you believe in this? I was brought up by a couple of Marxists. And they didn't have, they didn't have the context for example, relations, relationships, marriage, friendships. They didn't have the structures to, to do that. So they didn't instill it in me. And I witnessed the divorce of my parents.

It was heartbreaking. I've lived through military coup, civil war in Africa, and the fall of the Soviet Union. The thing that did me in was the divorce of my parents. And I was crushing it as an artist. I had a number one hit at the time, 1990s, 1995. And I had just broken up with a girlfriend who I had a child with and she, and I would sabotage every relationship that I had back to back to back.

When I sabotaged that one, predictably she left and cut me off from a relationship with my daughter, Deanna, which is my oldest one. So here I was at the peak of my career. I was entertaining millions of people and I was completely clinically depressed. And now that is influencing even my ability to perform, to create, to write, to influence.

And come along comes this guy who is a pastor, this Canadian guy, evangelical guy. And somebody basically introduces me to him. And I was not, never opened the Bible ever. And I came to his house and we're having dinner and I see his wife and his kid. His daughter, she was probably five at the time.

And I see this family that I didn't know existed. I had this, almost like a supernatural realization. And I turned to him and I say, how do I have what you, how do I get what you have? And exactly. I think by the look on my face, he knew exactly what I was talking about. And he goes, I'll teach you if you're, if you will listen.

And I said, Yes, please. And he started opening the Bible and teaching me this whole world of the moral sort of framework of the Christian faith, how to look at women, how to court women, how to marry, what the principles are, what the heart is behind it. And it completely revolutionized my life forever.

And I remember speaking at church one time, and I said, I have three generations of broken homes in my family. And with me, I will stop that cycle. And I did. And that, and my point to all this story, when I'm telling you the story, is that high performers have huge flaws. Huge flaws. And I love helping them fill those flaws Understand the weaknesses, the blind spots that they have, and enhance, augment their strength so that they have this very holistic, 360, robust state of being that can, now they can serve the world with their full self without harming themselves, without self sabotaging.

And they can succeed at such a different level. And the life I have now is. Very successful. It's very happy, right? Because I'm not just successful in the things that I do. I'm not just good at masterful at the things that I do as an entrepreneur or philanthropist or a coach or marketer in my marketing business, but I've been married for 25 years.

We're celebrating in September. I have three daughters who love me, adore me, and respect me. I have deep friendships. I have the quality of life that many high achievers can only dream of. And that is basically because of one person who took me under their wing and they taught me how to live. And without that person, my musical abilities, my show business abilities, even my entrepreneurial ability abilities are really compromised and incomplete.

Does that make sense? That's why I want to do what I do. 

High performers have flaws and high performers have secrets that they don't want to reveal themselves, let alone others. Yeah. Having been. In their shoes, exactly what to look for. Exactly. Therefore you know how to help them in a way that they don't even know how they can help themselves.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And these are not hard skills. These are soft skills. 

Yeah. Christian, you are so amazing. Truly. It's an honor and a privilege to be able to get into a glimpse into your mind. You see what formed and this amazing person to understand what you're looking for out of your own work and the vision that you have for the world.

The greatest coaches are the ones that are mirrors because their students don't know what is within them. But the coaches can reflect the students image back onto them and help them realize what only what their true potential is, but also the flaws that they can fix. And perhaps they're not even flaws.

They're just. Beautiful, different ways we are shaped and we're all unique and wonderful in our own ways. So I can totally see the passion in you, the skillset in you, and man, we need more people like you. Thank you so much for being on this podcast. 

Thanks Mark.

Thanks.