On a beautiful Austin morning, and yet consistently thinking about tropical places. More about that in 2-3 months.

Today, this:

Self-improvement is a $54B a year industry.

A tiny fraction of the people who come across as “self-improvement types” actually experience actual improvement.

In this post:

How it back-fires and keeps people stuck

How I use it to massively improve my life

The most valuable people I follow and why

my latest video

You’ll want to watch this if you good at what you do, and your friends tell you that you should be doing more with what you have.

self-improvement keeps people stuck

Why is self-improvement such a massive phenomenon?

Self-improvement has always been the path of our heroes in history. The world changed at a glacial pace, education was not democratized, communication was not instant, and information was not freely available. The microscopic minority of self-starters who could overcome the limitations of their environment became the luminaries we still admire.

I hail from the 1900s and grew up in pretty isolated third world places, so I experienced a lot of what I speak of first-hand. I actually wrote letters in cursive, on paper, and waited for weeks for a response.

Self-improvement was the only way for me.

Things have changed dramatically.

Formal education is no longer the ticket to a good life.

We can reach, help and sell to anyone, anywhere, instantly.

Educational institutions can’t keep up with the pace of change through a 4 year program.

By the time you hand out a degree, it can become irrelevant. And you’re stuck with the bill.

You can learn from the best in the world at your own pace for free.

Fast moving, individualized, specialized self-improvement is naturally a massive opportunity for anyone willing to do the work.

Where does it backfire?

a. hype culture

When something becomes a cultural norm, the hype it introduces hurts people. Now they have to read the books, binge on the podcasts, and attend the live events of the right people to fit in.

Quoting influencers becomes virtue signaling, just like quoting rap or rock artists was a couple of decades ago, writers and poets before that, theologians before that, and playwrights all the way back in Ancient Greece.

The object of hype changes, human nature does not.

b. shallow consumption

Inch thick and mile wide. The hype, the massive supply of information (good and bad amplified), and the dopamine feast of doom scrolling paralyze people. We just don’t know how to pick a lane and actually self-improve with the discipline and focus required for deep change.

c. cheap motivation

Motivation provided on an industrial scale, mass produced and designed to facilitate easy consumption, will naturally produce motivation without any real path to transformation. It’s tragic because it plays with people’s dreams and hopes. It preys on their heartbreak and despair.

Motivation without implementation does not lead to transformation.

So…

How do I use self-improvement to massively improve my life?

a. know your frequency

Ignore what’s hot right now. Who are the people who speak to your soul, your very essence? As a kid wanting to fit in, I’d talk with my friends about the hot bands when secretly I loved the music my dad listened to.

Have a birthday, celebrate being your own person. Which voices resonate as a signal in the noise of what is thrown at you? Trust that and go deep with these people. Adopt them as mentors and guides.

b. learn through doing

It’s the only way to actually learn. Pick a lane, a philosophy, a practice and do it daily for a year.

Resist the shiny new thing.

In the words of Dr. Joe Dispenza, “The only way to change your personal reality is to change your personality.”

I read a book called The 5AM Club a few years ago. It’s a fictional story used as a vehicle for self-improvement. The gist is that your most creative time, literally the time that creates a different reality, is before the sun comes up. I did it for 9 months, wrote my first book and never stopped.

I still get up before the sun and create for 1-2 hours a day, every single day. It’s called the Creator’s Hour, Brahma Muhurta, a Sanskrit term in the Hindu tradition.

c. create systems

You will never improve or level up without creating systems and habits that actually help change your personality at the deepest level.

Staying with the Creator’s Hour example, it meant tiny changes from when I go to bed to what I do exactly when I get up (I have a precise system).

Today, whether I like it or not, my brain will turn on around the same time and start serving up creative, generative ideas.

In fact, this post came as what felt like a download in its entirety, which I refined as I wrote it out.

The most valuable people I follow and why

My two main angles for following someone are:

a. They are my “spirit person.” They are the signal in the noise that most resonates with my own frequency. They give me permission to be fully me.

b. They are my “stretch person.” They complement my natural inclinations with skills and insights that are not as natural for me.

Seth Godin - spirit person. He’s a giant in marketing, a bestselling author and speaker, but most importantly, he helps me treat marketing as a deeply generous and authentic discipline instead of a shallow, transactional thing.

Rick Rubin - spirit person. He’s one of the most successful music producers in history, having worked with everyone from Jay-Z to Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He’s the ultimate creative guide when it comes to creating as an offering to God.

Taki Moore - stretch person. He’s the coach for coaches and is unapologetically tactical in all he does, breaking things down through diagrams and systems. If you’re to build any brand, you need systems, and he stretches me to think that way in my own business.

Alex Hormozi - stretch person. The clearest person out there on cold business facts. Alex cuts through the noise and is pure signal in business strategy. There’s a lot of noise out there, and every time I hear something of his that catches my attention, it’s valuable to me.

Thanks for reading this.

Send this to someone who needs to read it too.

Can you really make your luck?

The short answer is - yes. But it’s not a law of attraction kind of thing.

I’ve been spent a ton of time around people that seem to just win more.

I’ve myself been told by some the most self defeating five words in the English language “Easy for you to say…”

So…

What’s the easy first step to join the lucky people club?
What’s the rule behind what feels like pure luck?
What’s the common trap that ruins the win?
What’s the one mindset that puts you over the top?

After you read the post and make sure watch my latest video, I share some fun stories on how imposter syndrome could lose you life-changing opportunities and how to beat it.

making your luck

Is there an easy first step to join the visionaries club?

Yes, you can. You need to develop your ability to imagine, to visualize that dream scenario in such detail that you can taste it and feel it as real.

A while ago, I interviewed George Duke, one of my favorite musicians and producers. The man was a legend, working with people like Miles Davis, Michael Jackson, and Daft Punk. Kanye West sampled his work.

I asked George what the common trait was of the most successful artists he worked with, and he answered simply, “They could see themselves succeeding.”

I have mentored and coached several Olympians, and pretty much all of them say the same thing. You must envision the outcome you want in so much detail that you can taste it. It’s a practice.

What is your dream? Something your rational mind is afraid to accept as a realistic scenario for fear of failing.

Can you see it in detail? Play it in your mind until it’s real. Develop a visualization practice.

Is there any rule behind what feels like pure luck?

This one is rich, so here are three angles.

Angle 1: It’s not about law-of-attraction-style fluff. What it is about is pattern recognition. You can take an event, behavior, or scenario from the past that led to an outcome and transpose it into a new setting in the future.

In other words, what feels like a crazy, almost supernatural ability to be a visionary is based on this principle: experience informs expectations.

Angle 2: When building your next thing, always aim higher than you can clearly see with your logical mind.

Those who aim for “the middle,” the “rational,” the “conservative,” are in the vast majority. So this is the place that’s the most crowded.

Most of us have proof this works in one way or another.

Where have you jumped off a cliff, not fallen, and found new ground?

You do this over and over again, and before long people start thinking of you as just lucky.

What’s really happening is you tell yourself, “I’ve seen too much to expect too little.”

Angle 3: What people call manifestation or the law of attraction has a more down-to-earth explanation.

Priming yourself and your actions toward higher thinking, expectations, and outcomes tunes you to a higher frequency.

When opportunity comes your way, you simply see it where others don’t.

After moving to the US I had an idea to start a music video production company in Hollywood working with high level pros ( my wive’s background) to create videos for Eastern European artists ( my background).

With a high level idea, and zero ways to prove I could do it. Just a few phone numbers to call if there’s an opportunity. I started and LLC, created a simple free website. I get a phone call from an artist’s manager, who happened to look to produced a music video in LA.

Was that luck? A little - but had I not had the idea and created a sketch of how that would have worked I’d just not see the opportunity. Instead of that I confidently said: “You’re in luck. I have a company that does that.”

The very first video had a huge budget and having imagined in broad strokes I had enough confidence to pitch it and got hired.

All three angles are describing the same thing. You’re basically creating your own luck.

It just works. I’ve heard a version of this story from countless entrepreneurs, business owners, and artists.

Is there a common trap that ruins the win?

Yes: reading all the books, listening to all the podcasts, binging on all the hacks, and doing nothing.

Information without implementation does not lead to transformation.

Without picking a lane and doing the mundane, invisible-to-others hard work with no visible results to show for a while, all that is, is life-hacking porn.

I’ve been told for years I should write a book until I decided to do it. I’d never done it before, I was busy, tons of conflicting priorities in life.

My wife Deb leaned in because the topic was particularly burning in my mind. I said yes but had to carve out time where there was none.

So for 9 months I woke up at 5 am every morning with no exceptions and wrote for 2 hours.

You can get the book here, it’s a fun and easy read. The skills I developed for the book are opened up a new universe for me the YT channel and this newsletter are the fruit. With 10k subscribers in each platform.

But for the longest time, it was just doing the invisible, mundane work.

Is there one mindset that puts you over the top?

A clear sense of mission and higher purpose.

It’s the highest form of fuel. It keeps you going when you’re down. Keeps you humble when you’re up.

It gives you a drive, intensity, and hyper-focus that makes the top 1%. These are the people we all admire and are inspired by. They all have a missional mindset. They feel sharing what they have with the world is a moral responsibility.

This highest form of intense devotion to your purpose in life becomes a supernatural ability to get a download or vision. While it tends to come in a flash of genius, it’s usually the result of years of being tuned to a higher purpose that compounds slowly at first.

I recently watched a couple of hours of interviews with Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork. It’s not surprising he built a multibillion-dollar business. It was a classic download after three failed businesses, a spiritual practice, and integrating his natural passions, which were rooted in his origin story and love for community.

I am a Christian and believe all of us have a divine assignment, and our goal in life is to find what it is for this season of life and pursue it with abandon.

Going deep on purpose and mission is the only way to truly align your life with that in a way that will absolutely feel like luck, like you’re riding an invisible wave.

Every new thing I’ve started has felt like a mission for this season. In fact - the work we do in Xponential with people starts with looking for that deeper missional fuel.

If the connection between origin story and your purpose got your attention, watch this video where I unpack it in more detail.

Send this to someone who needs to read it.

Austin is buzzing with Austin City Limits weekend. Great music everywhere.

If you’ve missed this video: Check it out - Midlife Crisis vs Midlife Breakthrough

why do capable people stay unknown?

This story inspired the post…

This week, my daughter Violetta had a second surgery this year. She’s lived with a lot of pain for years.

We knew the probable cause, but it took a while to remove the source, primarily because it was a complex source.

A high-level problem.

The first surgery didn’t help because the surgeon just was not right to solve the problem.

The second one, Dr. Garza, took care of it all.

For him, it was just one of the things he did that Wednesday.

For us, it was life-changing. I gave him a big hug and teared up as I did it.

So why are good pros not better known, as Dr. Garza is?

1. they are perfectly capable but don’t have a signature offer.

They think of themselves as being in a category: doctor, lawyer, professor, CEO, etc.

Dr. Garza is known because he’s not a category; he is THE category in this particular procedure.

It doesn’t mean you don’t do a range of things. It does mean you create a signature solution to a high-level problem that serves a particular group of people who are your ideal customers.

I’ve yet to find someone who is good at what they do where there’s not a core offer that would turn that person into a category of one.

The obstacle is not that it’s not there, it’s that we’re too used to offering a wider range of things and underestimate recognizing a framework, process, or solution that we’re best at.

2. they are incredible but won’t broadcast it.

Because you don’t have a signature offer, and because of that, the off-the-charts reputation - you feel like a statistic, nothing special, not worth broadcasting.

What you do is so easy and familiar to you that sharing it with the world seems like you’re an attention-seeking imposter, so imposter syndrome kicks in (watch this vid to learn how to deal with imposter syndrome).

Of course Dr. Garza is perfectly capable of a whole range of surgeries, but if I’m looking to solve a high-level problem and Dr. Garza is someone with IP, content and a brand around that with high-level solutions, he’ll dominate a niche way beyond the local market.

He’s doing just fine without creating content, but I can only imagine the impact if he starts doing it. He’d have to make room from being a practitioner to also being a thought leader.

And it won’t be hard, because he can talk for days about this procedure he is the best at. He has opinions, decades of case studies, and what people get wrong (which he privately shared with me).

So… you don’t have an offer, you don’t create content about it, and because of that…

3. they charge less than what they’re worth.

If you’re in a category, you’re commodified.

Now you’re just a line in a menu within that category that defines the price range.

If you want to break that mold, create a compelling offer that solves a higher-level problem, factoring in the type of people you’d prefer to work with. Know exactly what the cost of them not solving the problem is.

Then set a price point that makes working with you a no-brainer.

I’m in front of a camera every week. My wife Deb didn’t like my hair and asked for months that I find a real hair stylist. I wasn’t being cheap; I went to a solid barbershop that business people use.

Deb insisted. I found Tim Patrick. He was the most expensive item on the menu of a downtown salon, and that is exactly why I picked him.

I ended up spending almost exactly 10x what I spend at my old barbershop. I did it gladly because it solved my problem. I didn’t question the pricing; I wanted a higher price point.

Get this: I paid both Tim and Dr. Garza top dollar. But I feel like the lucky one, grateful for their mastery because they solved a unique problem.

When I think of them, I don’t think of price; I think of the value they provided for me by solving my problem.

So what is the cost of being good at what you do and not becoming known for it?

You’re not clear or confident of your edge and don’t have a signature offer, so you don’t create content to share your unique edge.

Because you are not more widely known, and all of business is about supply and demand, demand is lower than it should be, which results in you commanding lower prices for what you do.

People unwilling to live with this cost are the ones who do what’s necessary to become known and trusted by many.

Send this to someone who needs to read it.

2 of 3 Spots Have been Filled.

This is for you if you’re a founder, business owner or CEO without a big internal marketing team or an agency on retainer and want help reaching more people with your product or service.

If the fit is right, you can have a strategist and a full team doing moving your marketing fractionally, on a premium level, for less than the cost of one full-time hire. I was looking to get started with 2-3 people to work with this fall. 2 of 3 have joined. If you’re thinking you may be the 3rd, click here and let’s talk.

you may have missed this video episode

Why High Can’t Stop Working? ( And How It Hurts Them).

why competent people feel like frauds?

Why do perfectly competent people battle this feeling of being a fraud?

They feel like their recognition, position, and achievements aren’t earned. They don’t deserve to be where they want to go.

Any minute their tower of lies will crumble and everyone will see the truth.

It’s called imposter syndrome, and most high achievers have it. Ironically, the only people who don’t are the imposters themselves.

So if you’re feeling this, you’re in good company. It means you’re good at something and you care.

I have a front row seat to Imposter Syndrome as I deal with this tension daily with my clients, helping very competent people overcome imposter syndrome flair ups and show up in the full glory of their gifts and mission in life.

Let’s unpack:

1. How this pesky imposter syndrome works.

2. Why it shows up in the most capable people.

3. What it costs you to give in to it.

4. How to lean into it and see life-changing things happen.

But first a personal story:

I believe regrets can be a good thing.

They are the scars from a self-inflicted wound that make you wiser and more tuned to not repeating the mistake.

I had a wealthy patron in my first career. One day, we were hanging out and he said, “Christian, I think you’re amazing, and if you want, I can become an investor in your brand. I am prepared to put in this much.”

He didn’t say the number. He wrote it on a piece of paper and slid it my way. It was a lot of money. I mean career- and life-changing. It would take me to the stratosphere.

I shrank. I felt unworthy of such an investment. I said no.

I still did very well, but that opportunity to level up on an entirely new level, I did not take it. The person making the offer made it because I he knew I was up to the task. I just didn’t believe him.

So….

1. How does imposter syndrome work? Why is it so powerful?

Because it’s partially true.

If you’re leveling up, you’ve never been where you are.

The people you’re with know why they want you there. They don’t know the gap where your capabilities don’t match exactly. If they knew - I don’t think they would even mind.

But you are very aware of this gap. It makes you feel like a fraud. But you’re not a liar.

You’re just overthinking it.

It happened to me transitioning from music performance in front of a large audience to speaking in front of an audience.

Producing low budget music videos to a hundred-thousand-dollar budget and 50 people on set.

Creating branding for a mom and pop shop and eventually developing a logo for NASA Earth Sciences for three separate projects.

Coaching small businesses, pastors, and nonprofit leaders to coaching CEOs, Tech founders and Executives.

The list never ends. You get it, and you’re probably making a list of your own in your mind.

2. Why does it show up in the most capable people?

Because they’re strivers. They’re constantly stretching for “more.”

In the same way muscle grows to compensate for the gap between what you are comfortable with and a new level of resistance.

When I work with clients, they’re all good at what they do. And they’re all stretching. They’re looking for me to talk them off the ledge and help them lean into this primal imposter syndrome that invariably shows up.

A common question I hear: “Be honest, do you think I can do this?”

And of course, the answer is “yes!” or I wouldn’t be working with them.

Another way Imposter Syndrome shows up is in the temptation to second-guess in the middle of the journey. You’re building a new chapter, a new offer, and you’re constantly and quietly freaking out - what if people don’t accept this new version of you.

Because it is a shift in identity more often than not. An evolution. A transition from being a builder and manager to a thought leader and creator.

They’re perfectly equipped for it, but there’s also a skill gap that needs to be filled: an ability to distill your best practices and communicate them in a compelling way, to write, and to speak to an audience and on camera.

To package expertise into a business model and monetize the value you bring, which translates to a lifestyle you want.

3. What does it cost to not master this very common feeling?

You don’t stretch, you don’t learn, and your next season of impact, income, fulfillment, and fun stays a potential.

One day you look back and…

The book didn’t get written. The business didn’t get built. People who need you most didn’t get your help. The legacy did not get built.

As I said, I believe regrets can be a good thing. One trick I’ve used for decades is imagining my lingering regret if I don’t try the thing.

I realize that the worst that could happen is a non-life changing temporary failure and a learning experience.

But giving in to imposter syndrome kills potential.

Most businesses fail, most channels don’t become well known, and most good ideas die because:

a) They don’t start in the first place because of fear.

b) They give up too early because of imposter syndrome.

I imagine a world where many more people don’t give into imposter syndrome and lean into it instead.

I we would be lightyears ahead as a civilization.

So….

4. How to lean into imposter syndrome

A) Change your circle. Get a mentor or coach who has been where you want to go. Find a tribe of people who are on the same journey. People who will hold you accountable and are as crazy as you are, refusing to cave into fear.

B) Close the gaps by doubling down on new skills. Hardwire the “stretch” into daily and weekly habits. And be annoyingly persistent in those. Whatever the greatest gap is, there’s a system to close it, a skill to learn, a new normal that is no longer a problem.

C) Get comfortable with living with imposter syndrome. Don’t give up until the stretch is no longer a stretch. Then stretch some more.

Someday you’ll look back and be in awe. Your life journey will be a long list of things that happened that end with “Wow!”

My list is long and fraught with moments of intense imposter syndrome that I acknowledged and kept moving anyway.

Have you let imposter syndrome keep you from doing the work you are called to do?

And are you thinking of someone who needs to read this? Forward this to a friend.

Have you ever had a week where your heart sank, you feel the rug has been pulled from under you? Then you decide to go deep and trust your roots, your foundation? And just like that everything changes and the situation is more than fixed, with the added bonus of you being changed through it. That was my week.

This to say: build your inner game and miracles happen with predictable consistency.

Talking of things being too good to be true but the are, an opportunity:

This is for you if you’re a founder, business owner or CEO without a big internal marketing team or an agency on retainer.

Which usually means your marketing underwhelms you. No strategy or system behind the social. A website that undersells you. Little or no video. No clear direction holding it together.

If the fit is right, you can have a strategist and a full team working fractionally, at premium level, for less than the cost of one full-time hire.

I’m looking to get started with 2-3 people this fall. If that’s you, click here and let’s talk.

why do people get boring after 40?

You know what I mean. Midlife crisis written all over them. Uninspired and uninspiring. A little lost.

And often these are people who are established and respected in their field.

I’m in my fifties. Most of the people I work with are past forty. So I have some insights on this.

This might be you, and I know it’s hard to admit you’ve gotten a bit boring.

So let’s find out if it’s even a real pattern. The three core reasons why this happens. And why acknowledging this humbly is where the biggest breakthrough of a person’s life can come from.

You may already know this is real.

You’ve watched it happen — in life generally and in your own life in particular. And it helps to know you’re not alone and you’re not crazy.

Two economists, David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, went looking for this in the data. They took half a million Americans and Western Europeans and what they found was a U. A smile shaped happiness curve. Well-being slides through your thirties, bottoms out somewhere in your mid to late forties, and then climbs back up for the rest of your life. This pattern persisted across seventy-two other countries, developed and developing, and the same smile curve showed up.

I can confirm it from the inside. Most of my forties followed that curve and it wasn’t fun. It was also, I’d say, necessary — a recalibration. This is where the greatest opportunity is - you see the smile that bottoms up in your forties is a natural process but it’s up to you the shape it takes, how low it goes when it goes back up.

More on that in a minute.

But first, why does it happen at all? It’s not about getting older, slower or the world changing way too fast. If age were the reason the curve would keep sliding down and stay there, and it doesn’t — it climbs for decades after the bottom.

There’s something else going on.

I’ve dug into this for myself and for the people I work with, usually founders, business owners building a personal brand, often precicely because they handled this smile curve well. The “boring” phase is gone and they have something of substance to say.

In my view there are three things going on, and they show up in pretty much everyone. How you handle them will be the difference between you spinning your wheels and you taking flight. Almost literally.

the expectation-reality gap.

Youth is optimistic by default — about what you’ll achieve, about what life is going to hand you, about how the whole thing will look when you get there. It never, and I mean never ever plays out like you imagined it.

So there comes a point where the gap stops being theoretical and gets painfully real.

My forties arrived right after I left a well-established chapter of my life overseas and moved to the US. It meant starting from scratch, with no clarity at all about how I fit in. The classic set of insecurities of an immigrant set in. The move was not originally in my plans so the expectation reality gap was massive.

the fuel you run on changes.

Arthur Brooks writes about this in From Strength to Strength. The first half of life runs on fluid intelligence — you’re flexible, fast, innovative, adaptable, which is exactly why the hustle of building a new thing works so well in your twenties and thirties.

Then something shifts.

Fluid intelligence starts to decline while crystallized intelligence goes up, and you get much better at seeing across disciplines and spaces, recognizing patterns, and wisdom becomes the dominant superpower.

It’s very gradual.

You just notice the old engine doesn’t pull the way it used to, and you assume something’s wrong with you. You now have a choice.

you either reject what’s natural or you accept it.

I interviewed Chip Conley on the pod. He wrote Learning to Love Midlife, and he’s also the modern elder Airbnb’s founders brought in to mentor them.

He says what happens at this stage isn’t a crisis at all, it’s a chrysalis — the same thing that happens to a caterpillar inside a cocoon on its way to becoming a butterfly.

You feel constricted, it’s weird and confusing. And how you respond to this in-between season determines your future.

The caterpillar doesn’t want to give up what’s familiar. You can feel the fluid intelligence declining and your taste for the hustle going with it, and you haven’t found your wings yet, even though your values and deepest desires have already become fundamentally different.

You want meaning now. Depth. To make a mark, to hand your wisdom to somebody, to actually fly instead of crawl. But what if you fall instead of soar? And what does growing those wings even involve?

The cocoon looks boring from the outside, but there’s a lot going on under the surface. A new version of you is being shaped. Boring is good as long as it’s a true chrysalis. It’s temporary. You’re getting ready to fly.

Rejecting the rebirth comes at a cost.

You can’t go back to the old you, it feels forced, tired and often times plain weird. You’ll just work way harder than you want to as a caterpillar instead of experiencing the wonder of flight and the world won’t see you in the full glory of the butterfly.

You’re not alone in that. I’ve been there. Everybody feels constricted in the cocoon phase - but I know this about you - there’s massive change happening just under the surface. What looks boring from the outside is you becoming capable of building something better than anything you’ve built so far.

The happiness curve does go back up, way up — if you embrace the chrysalis and lean into that second curve, your crystallized intelligence, wisdom, mastery, it will mean becoming less of an operator and a maintainer of what you’ve already built, and more of a creator and a thought leader.

Most of my work is with founders, business owners and leaders sitting right at the peak of that second curve — high expertise, high skill, high wisdom — helping them find their wings and building a personal brand that fully represents the best they have to offer.

If that’s you, and ready to grow your wings. Reach out, let’s talk about finding your wings.

And if this was useful, do me a favor and send this to someone you know who needs to read it.

First, an opportunity.

This is for you if you’re a founder, business owner or CEO without a big internal marketing team or an agency on retainer.

Which usually means your marketing underwhelms you. No strategy or system behind the social. A website that undersells you. Little or no video. No clear direction holding it together.

If the fit is right, you can have a strategist and a full team working fractionally, at premium level, for less than the cost of one full-time hire.

I’m looking to get started with 2-3 people this fall. If that’s you, click here and let’s talk.

stop giving back

I first heard this on Rabbi Daniel Lapin’s podcast and it reframed the concept for me.

If we call charity “giving back,” it implies we were taking everywhere else. That life is zero sum. That scarcity is the normal condition and generosity is how you make up for it.

Daniel Lapin’s argument is that generosity is a way of being, available at any level of income. It comes from a mind that sees enough and wants to share it.

Three places I watch this play out.

1. the poor
   Last week I heard that a family at our Ascend Academy was going hungry. A single mom raising three daughters on $50 a month. Talk about impossible.
   

   We mobilized our local crew and food was delivered the next day. The kids already get a meal at the academy. We’re working on an ongoing plan to cover nutrition for the rest of the families. If you want to help, reach out.

This is Cristina, responding to a table covered with food for her family.

2. in business
   Most business in human history was small business. Not multinational, not globalized.

   You exchanged something valuable for pay, but the relationship was as valuable as the service or product. How you treated others mattered just as much.

   
   I treasure my clients as friends. There are agreements to honor, but obligations are only the minimum framework for a relationship.

   Our motto is to overdeliver against what we promised. I’ve handed a client two months of work at no charge, just to support our alignement for the long term.

3. with friends
   

   Friendship is the least transactional relationship we have. Even here, the more generous you are with your time, your attention, your curiosity, the better the friendship gets.

   True friendship will cost you or it’s not true or it doesn’t last.

   You’re overflowing onto other people instead of sitting at the center of your own world.

   That draws in people who live the same way.
   

   Celebrating small victories. Showing up when they’re in trouble. Mourning with them when they lose someone or something.

   Nobody is giving anything back. We’re acting the way we actually are, which is whole.

   
   Giving back is a flawed concept. Giving for the sake of giving is a better one.

   
   “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” - Acts 20:35

These thoughts came during a very long walk with my dog Luna, where I wondered: Why are successful people obsessed with work?

It’s almost like there’s a different chip installed in people that, for better or for worse, most other people simply don’t have. If that’s you or someone you know, read this post to the end. I think you’ll get something valuable out of it.

I want to brag a little about work we’ve been doing that I haven’t been able to share with you until today. A member of Xponential, Ryan Black, is the CEO of Sambazon. They sell products made of Açai berries to 50 countries around the world. If you live in the US and enjoyed an Açai bowl on a hot day, purchased Açai from Costco, or shopped at Whole Foods, it’s probably Sambazon.

We’ve been working on Ryan’s personal brand, Underdog Economics—his mission to help entrepreneurs who feel like underdogs. We’ve just launched his YouTube channel and posted the first of a bunch of stories we’ve produced. Watch this one as an example of how powerful a personal brand can be in telling your story and helping others.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

why are successful people obsessed with work?

I spend a lot of time around people who’ve done well. They’ve built something special, have a lot to be proud of, and most of them are still answering email at eleven at night, work weekends and tend to have trouble turn it off.

I may be describing you or your spouse. I’m definitely describing myself for many years of my life.

So today we’ll unpack:

Where does this pattern come from in the first place.

How this quality helps you do better than most, and when it then starts hurting you.

And how the people who redirect this same drive to a different pattern , use it to go to the next level.

It looks like this: You’re fueled by a passion to either achieve something by a certain time or never experience something ever again, to prove something to yourself or someone in you life.

That drive comes naturally to you but it doesn’t to most people and you wonder why. Your mind, focus and dedication is like driving a Ferrari when most people drive a Toyota.

You’ll also take your work home, check your messages during a date with your spouse, if there is a date in your schedule in the first place. You work on stuff while on vacation, that’s if you take vacations. You get on planes, overcome obstacles, move mountains and generally do whatever it takes to succeed. And you invariably do.

Now multiply this by a decade and you have lots to be proud of, people respect you,

So where does this come from?

For a large portion of us this is born in trauma. I’ve traced it back in myself to being an immigrant and an outsider for most of my life. Succeeding was my way of making sure I get acceptance. Yours is probably different. If you look at most of the high achievers you know - most have trauma as some sort of catalyst.

But the reason this obsession with work persists is different than the source.

Arthur C. Brooks is a Harvard professor who spent a good part of his career as a workaholic—ran think tanks, expected everyone to work the way he did. At 48, he realized something: he wasn’t addicted to work. He was addicted to success. He writes that Success addiction works like substance addiction. Your brain gets the hit, needs the next one. You outworked everyone to get where you are, so you believe you have to keep that pace to stay there. The fear of falling behind becomes the thing that drives you forward.

You can’t stop, because stopping means you lose your identity. That same obsession that made you unstoppable — starts hurting you AND your business.

I remember getting my first real success professionally and attaching my identity to that work and success itself taking over from the sense of creative passion as the driver. The minute outward success slowed down or took a dip - my ability to build and create did to.

Daniel Pink’s book Drive was instrumental in my journey to a happy life. The gist of it for the sake of the topic of why successful people are so obsessed about work is this:

Pink defines the 3 core elements of a healthy drive. Mastery - Autonomy - Purpose

This is how it looks in my life. It will look slightly different in yours - but at its core - this is the pattern I see in the people I am around who are both successful, happy and set up for long term growth.

1. Mastery - I’ve shifted from comparing myself to others and treating my work as a competition to striving to greater and greater mastery in what I do and only comparing myself to myself in the past. The drive does not go away - it is purified and directed and what matters.

2. Autonomy - it’s a natural extension of mastery. After we’ve matured into someone with mastery, autonomy is simply necessary because it’s the only way for that mastery to shine. This is precisely why I have a personal brand and help people build theirs. It’s creative freedom, the ability to use your mastery at the highest level to serve others.

3. Purpose - it helps us raise our eyes from what is right in front of us and marvel at the horizon. Asking and answering the question: Why am I here? For me it’s providing love and support to my wife and three daughters, serving the underprivileged in the poorest places on earth, creating valuable content, helping others have exponential impact.

I struggled with the classic obsession with work for years and finally felt the shift on a beach in Santa Barbara. I was watching my kids play and turned to Deb and said “I’m here.” She was puzzled - what do you mean? I know you’re here.

I said - “I mean I’m fully here. With you, heart and soul.” - everything changed after that.

I also realized that I didn’t have real friends, I had what Arthur C Brooks calls “deal friends.”

I now have a fantastic group of real friends.

If this is you. Here’s what it’s costing you right now.

You’re not actually present with your family. You’re there physically, but your attention is split. Your real friendships have withered — you’ve got colleagues and deal friends, but people you can be honest with? Those are gone.

You’ve outsourced your self-worth to external wins, so when something fails, you fall apart.

You’ve lost the joy of creating because you’re too busy managing what you’ve built.

And you can’t stop. You literally can’t stop, because in your mind, stopping equals falling.

That’s what you’re paying for the privilege of staying ahead.

Here’s what I want you to know:

You already have mastery. You’ve already won. So the move is simple — get off the treadmill and audit the three drivers.

Mastery: are you comparing yourself to the market or to your past?

Autonomy: do you actually get to decide how you invest the best of you?

Purpose: is your life rooted in the deepest why of why you’re walking this earth?

When you upgrade those three things, you don’t lose the drive. You redirect it.

Presence comes back. Real friendships come back.

The joy of creating comes back. You get to actually breathe and ironically - truly succeed at the highest level.

If you want to do this systematically with a tribe of people who’ve already won and are tired of the grind — entrepreneurs, business owners, experts building a personal brand — I’d love for you to join my next Personal Brand Accelerator.

We spend 4 days, 1hr/day designing your edge, your offer, your business model, and your brand strategy.

If you read this far, this must have resonated.

It may be describing you or someone you love. Forward this to that person. And if it’s you - make the moves to get off the treadmill and redirect your drive to where it give you a life you actually want.

It’s a beautiful day here in Austin, TX, and Deb and I are celebrating 27 years of marriage. The actual festivities are next week and include fantastic food, staying in a beautiful high rise in downtown San Antonio, and going to see Guns N’ Roses.

This week’s burning question: in spite of Nike’s insistent advice in all their ads — why can’t I just do it?

I know what I should do. I want what’s on the other side of doing it. And yet…

The question has already been answered. We just don’t like the answer.

Poet and warrior Archilochus lived around 700 BC in Greece, and one line attributed to him has been repurposed countless times — most recently by James Clear in Atomic Habits:

Just doing it can only happen through training.

You can swap the word for systems or habits.

The life on the other side of that — the aspirations, the desired future — hinges on training.

1. Train yourself.

If someone who doesn’t know you looked at your character, your daily habits, your investments of time, talent, and treasure, would they say about your aspirations: oh, that’s a no-brainer, you’ll get there, it’s just a matter of time?

If not, there’s your answer. Train yourself. Get a coach, a mentor, a guide to train you.

2. Train your team.

You need people. It may be just you right now, but you’ll need supporters, first clients, volunteers, patrons. You need the right friends. Then you’ll need a team.

If someone who doesn’t know you looked at who you surround yourself with, would they say: this is the community that will take you where you want to go?

If not, there’s your answer. Change your people ecosystem.

3. Train your technology.

I grew up in the third world in the last century. People washed clothes by hand, wrote letters to communicate, and had no computers.

Today, technology can be trained to be ultra-personalized to your vision and deployed to do the things you don’t want to do — faster and better than you would have.

If someone who doesn’t know you looked at how you use technology today, would they say: this is someone who uses technology to build a better life?

If not, there’s your answer.

Archilochus was right, and people don’t change all that much in their core nature.

“Just do it” — only happened if you have the training to the degree that the “it” happens on auto pilot

Your character, your habits, the people around you, the tech you use.

Great news, because it means you don’t have to rely on just aspirations, hopes, and daydreaming.

If you’ve missed it:

A great video to watch that is exactly about the systems that keep you in your familiar present instead of your desired future.

5 Mistakes and 5 Systems of Personal Branding

An oldie but goodie, on the week of our wedding anniversary.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

How To Find Love & Keep Love: My 17 Secrets for a Happy Marriage

I remember hearing my song on the radio and seeing my music video on MTV for the first time. It’s impossible to describe how surreal that is. That moment would not have happened without the first song scribbled in a notebook as I was riding the subway. I still have that notebook - it contains tons of ideas that never became anything. It also contains the first drafts of songs that sold millions of albums.

I remember booking my first video production client in LA. I had started over from zero in the US with no brand or name recognition, and they gave me a massive (for me at the time) $150k budget. I now have a bookshelf full of awards from the many clients we created premium media for. That moment would not have happened had I not acted on a hunch for a new company and created a rudimentary website that looked like I knew what I was doing.

I remember traveling with Deb to Ukraine a year into the war to visit the work we had started there after raising $250k in just a few months. We cried every day talking to dozens of refugees and hearing their stories. Our tears were also of gratitude for having the ability to help so many people. Those moments would not have happened had I not decided to drop everything I was doing at the time to fundraise for Ukraine - hoping to raise a few thousand at most. I used my personal brand to campaign on social media, launched a new website on day 6 of the war, offered to speak at events, even emceed a Ukrainian band’s show at SXSW in Austin.

When you start - it looks rough, unpolished, not promising anything of substance.

Then you take the next step, and then the next. Then you want to give up, and if you don’t there’s a breakthrough and an MTV moment, a Hollywood set with 50 people moment, a hugging refugees in Ukraine moment.

But most never start.

I’m hosting a Personal Brand Accelerator starting tomorrow. An hour a day - 4 days - Monday to Thursday.

A small group of people ready to start.

We’ll help you find your distinct edge and positioning, a business model that fits your goals and a brand strategy that will help you become known and trusted in your field.

Here’s the link to claim a spot.

If you’re ready to start - I’ll see you on the other side.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Deb and I went to see 77-year-old Lionel Richie this week.

Expectations were low, quite frankly. Good friends were going and we thought we’d just hum familiar tunes while we hang out in a bougie sponsor box enjoying some good food. We expected to go home halfway through.

We stayed to the last song.

It was a barrage of timeless songs that thousands of people of all ages knew every word of. It was truly one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Song after song — pure timeless brilliance, and many of them I didn’t remember were Lionel’s.

I sat there thinking — almost nobody gets to do that. Not for lack of the goods. I’ve spent twenty years around people loaded with the goods. So why don’t they?

I found the answer in chess, in the form of a fascinating study.

Researchers handed chess masters a puzzle with two ways out: a familiar solution that works fine, and a better one hiding a few squares away.

The masters opted for the familiar move, ignoring the better one. Masters — and their play dropped to the level of players three standard deviations below them. Amateurs, essentially.

This is where it gets really good. The researchers tracked their eyes. The masters insisted they were still hunting for something better, but their eyes never left the move they already knew.

They weren’t scared. They were so good that exploring new creative options was no longer natural for them. Their mastery was their trap.

You’re carrying more range, more judgment, more wisdom than you’ve ever had — and the best move you already know how to make is parked right on top of the better one you haven’t.

And it’s the exact move of your next breakthrough. You don’t have a wisdom problem. You have an at-bats problem. You stopped swinging because you got good.

The tragedy of it all is that you’re at your peak, and if you just took more swings the odds are ever in your favor.

Lionel took so many swings through the decades, including judging American Idol, which gave him a new chapter and generations of new fans. The man has become undeniable to millions where he could have comfortably coasted on the work he did in just one decade of his illustrious career.

Ready to take more swings? Join my next masterclass.

For my paid subscribers, early access to my podcast interview with Shae Bynes — author and entrepreneur who did the exact opposite: more swings after reaching mastery than before.

Early access goes to paid supporters first. If you haven’t subscribed, now’s the time.

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If you’ve missed it - You’ll enjoy my latest pod on how simple habits that form massive wins.

When it comes to building a better future, there are only two groups of people.

Victims and Victors. We all have been in both groups plenty of times but most of us live in one of these states: perpetual Victims. This is not a judgement on being a real Victim — it’s a choice of whether you stay in that place or decide to move out of it.

The good news is that you can leave one group and join the other, but you have to start looking for something different in life.

Victims look for Rescue

Victors look for Systems

If you think deeply enough about your level of frustration with where you are — you’ll instantly know where you are right now by what you’re looking for.

You’re in the Victims camp when:

∙ You’ve already cast the person who’s going to swoop in and fix it all — you’re just waiting on their entrance.

∙ Your five-year plan is mostly other people finally noticing how great you are.

∙ You keep a mental folder labeled “someday,” and a group chat full of fellow victims who all agree the problem is everyone else.

I visit the Victims camp weekly if not daily, I just don’t like the path forward and promptly return to the one I live in.

You don’t graduate to Victor. You just keep choosing the harder question — starting with the next one you ask yourself.

You’re in the Victor’s camp when:

∙ You catch yourself asking “what would make this repeatable?” instead of “why does this keep happening to me?”

∙ You’ve built the thing that runs whether or not you feel like showing up that day.

∙ Your wins are boring — same inputs, same outputs — and boring is exactly the point.

This masterclass I’m running is called “Five Mistakes That Keep Founders and Experts From Building a Brand in Their Own Name” — it’s fundamentally about 5 Core Systems you currently don’t have and can install to build something truly life changing.

For those who wanted to make it but the day/time didn’t work - a Pop Up Masterclass happening today, August 9th 6PM CST.

For my paid subscribers — I’ll unpack them below. If you haven’t yet - now is the time to join.

Beyond our deepest gratitude for supporting the team that creates content, you’ll get deeper dives, early access to all things that drop and VIP treatment in every live event.

Read more

This Sunday at 6pm CST, I’m hosting a pop-up masterclass — and I couldn’t wait until Sunday to tell you.

A couple of days ago over a hundred people grabbed a seat in my masterclass. Quite a few of them wanted in but the timing killed them.

So I’m running it again — Sunday evening (6PM CST), one more shot to hop on.

The Masterclass: Five Mistakes That Keep Founders and Experts From Building a Brand in Their Own Name

Claim A Spot

This is for you if you’re

Really good at what you do

Feel the pull toward more freedom or more scale

Watched other people build a brand in their own name

Somewhere between starting and giving up.

And there’s something else I wanted in your hands before Sunday.
A new video just dropped, and it’s the same story from the other side.

The masterclass shows you what to build. This video shows you why you haven’t yet — why so many brilliant people stall right at the edge of their next chapter.

Your brain was built to keep you alive, not to help you thrive. Ancient wiring. And the moment you decide to build something, rewire something, risk something — it lights up every alarm it’s got. It reads your ambition as a threat and moves to shut it down.

The danger almost never real anymore. But the wiring doesn’t know that. It fires just as hard as it did ten thousand years ago.

So you need a second system — one that overrides the first. That’s Win The Day.

It’s the first thing I put in front of the people I coach, and they feel the shift in days, not weeks.

It’s where every better future starts.

Watch it, if it resonates with you - definitely join the Sunday pop up.

Pop-Up Masterclass — Sunday, 6pm CST
Claim your seat

Beautiful summer Sunday in Austin. Let me stay on the thing I’m most excited about — the Masterclass is in three days, and we’re past 100 people signed up.

Why am I excited? Because the life you’re meant to live is usually closer than it looks. The obstacles are mostly in your head. I keep seeing it, over and over, with wildly gifted people — what’s in the way isn’t talent or timing.

It’s a handful of things that trip up almost everyone, and they’re more fixable than they feel.

That’s what we’re getting into on the Masterclass: Five Mistakes That Keep Founders and Experts From Building a Brand in Their Own Name

Watch the video below and decide for yourself if it’s for you. I think you’ll want in.

If you do anything today and this resonates with you, I’ll definitely sign up to the Masterclass. Don’t forget to tell me you are a subscriber. I treat my subscribers like VIPs.

Claim Your Spot

And if you missed the last two episodes — I’m proud of both — here they are:

1. The storytelling lessons I pulled out of The Odyssey.

2. What Michael Jackson taught me about building a brand — a lesson that sticks with you.

I saw the new Odyssey film last week. Nolan, the best actors alive, the full spectacle. Despite the many critiques, inevitable for such an epic story that has shaped our civilization - it’s stunning. Go see it.

I left the theater thinking - why does this story stick?

The biggest movie of the year is built on a poem written 2,700 years ago.

Sit with that.

Nobody can tell you what the next five years hold — and the story the whole world lines up to see is older than Rome.

It’s the most durable story brand in human history outside of the Bible.

So I went and pulled out three key lessons you can deploy in your storytelling — articles, speeches, video content — that will make you instantly more masterful as a communicator. So if you’re going to steal from anyone - steal from Homer.

That’s this week’s episode. Three storytelling laws. The third is the most valuable.

As always - paid subscribers get first views, first access to any events, and priority VIP treatment in everything I do.

Our small way to thank you for supporting the content we create every week.

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The backstory: I’ve always gone to a decent barber. But for months, my wife has been telling me I need a better haircut—arguing that since I host a podcast and speak on stage, I need to look the part. The final straw came when my mom, who rarely says anything negative, asked, “What’s up with the messy look?”

So, I turned to AI to find a top-notch stylist—someone with a track record of working with public figures. AI gave me three options in Austin. I picked the one with the better Instagram portfolio and the higher price tag. I actually wanted to pay 4 times the normal price because I was paying not for his time, but an outcome that was valuable to me.

The moral of the story: I had a high-value problem that could only be solved by someone of a certain caliber. I pre-judged and pre-trusted them based on strong content and a premium price point.

It was worth every penny, and I’m never going back to my old barber.

I’m hosting a Masterclass: Five Mistakes That Keep Founders and Experts From Building a Brand in Their Own Name

We’ll cover the mental traps that keep perfectly capable leaders from being sought out the same way I searched for my new stylist.

If you could use a little deprogramming - Claim your spot here.

If you haven’t seen my latest pod - check out my talk with David Simons. He is the founder of Kingdom Social Media, where he helps experts sell their knowledge through webinars and challenges.

In this episode, he walks through the exact method: how to position authority before you teach, why storytelling converts where lectures confuse, the Parable Presentation Method, and how to fill a webinar starting with nothing but your phone contacts and Gmail list.

Think about that. Nobody knows what the next five years look like. AI, careers, the very pillars of human activity — all in motion. And the biggest cinematic event of the year is a story older than Rome.

When everything is changing, the things that never change become the most valuable.

The Odyssey is a cornerstone of Western civilization, alongside the Bible. Every hero’s journey you’ve ever loved runs on its template. Christopher Nolan and some of the finest actors alive make it spectacular. But spectacle is the smallest thing it offers.

Meet yourself in this story and you get a shot at becoming someone better.

I watched the film. Before I did, I spent hours in the history behind it. And one insight explains why the poem has lasted: we want a hero and a villain — one way right, the other wrong.

Homer tells us we are both hero and antihero, and the best we can do is be more of one than the other. There are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Choosing your tradeoffs well is the whole game.

Here are three timeless lessons I took away.

1. the call will cost you. the refusal will cost you more.

Odysseus tried to dodge the war. He feigned madness, sowed his fields with salt, anything to stay home. The greatest adventure in Western literature almost didn’t happen because its hero wanted to stay comfortable.

If you’re like me, you’ve felt your calling for years. Success, stability, comfort make refusing it easy. Every year of waiting feels like the responsible thing to do.

But dreams don’t die dramatically. They die in the waiting for the right time, which never comes.

Answer the call and storms are guaranteed. Cyclops, sirens, shipwreck. But the storms also produce the you who returns to Ithaca — the one who can do things the you who never left could never do. The battles and the scars are part of the gift.

Even if the call is unclear, confusing, persistent — answer it.

I often second-guess my proclivity to rush into adventures that cost me. I almost always land in the same place: answering the call, and paying for the adventure, made me who I am.

2. glory devastates. service builds. hiding does neither.

In the underworld, Odysseus meets Achilles — the most glorious warrior who ever lived, the man who chose a short, glorious life over a long one. Achilles tells him he’d rather be a poor farmhand alive than king of all the dead. He got everything glory promised, and it was worth nothing.

Then Odysseus makes the same mistake in miniature. He defeats the Cyclops with pure cunning, sails away — and can’t resist shouting his name from the ship. That one flex summons a god’s curse. He left home with twelve ships full of men. He returns as the only survivor.

Me-centric actions will devastate your life every time. At the peak of my ego years, entertaining millions as an artist, I learned the cost and rebuilt toward a service-driven life.

But there’s a second ditch on this road, and I see accomplished people in it constantly. They’re so afraid of looking self-seeking that they never build at all. They call it humility. It’s fear wearing better clothes. I did that for years too, and had to shed the fear to lean into calling.

The second ditch is more dangerous, because it’s masked as a virtue.

3. love makes every decision directionally correct.

Odysseus had no map. Twenty years of wrong turns, dead ends, and detours through hell itself.

Then the ultimate test. Calypso, a goddess, offers him immortality. Eternal youth, eternal pleasure, zero storms. He sits on her beach and weeps for Penelope. He chooses a mortal woman, an aging body, and a brutal road home over living forever.

That choice is the entire epic in one scene.

I come from three generations of broken homes. At 26 I made one central decision: I will probably fail at many things, but I will not fail at marriage. Deb and I are approaching 28 years. She takes my breath away every day. She is the home in every way — the north star behind every move I make. This one thing has never failed me.

You want certainty before you move — a guaranteed roadmap, the next five years de-risked.

That’s never coming.

What’s available is better: a why anchored in love. For the people you serve, the family you adore, the work itself. Love makes decisions directionally correct when nothing else is clear.

This is not in the movie, but here’s one image Homer saves for the end of his epic poem.

Odysseus finally stands in his own house after twenty years — and Penelope doesn’t run to him. Twenty years of suitors and impostors have taught her caution. So she tests him. She orders a servant to move their marriage bed out of the bedroom.

Odysseus erupts. Because he knows that he built that bed with his own hands, carved from a living olive tree still rooted in the ground beneath the house. It cannot be moved. And only the two of them know it.

That secret is how she knows it’s really him.The thing they built together that cannot be moved.

The bed is the marriage. Made by hand. Alive at the root. Anchored too deep for any storm to drag out of place.

If there’s one overarching lesson in the Odyssey, it’s this: Adventure gets you out the door. Only love gets you home.

Build your bed from a living tree.

Forward it to someone who needs to answer the call to adventure. And if someone forwarded it to you, subscribe so you never miss one.

I just dropped my episode with JJ Virgin. Four NYT bestsellers. Forty years in a very crowded market. Built a company, sold it, got kicked out of it, bought it back.

None of that is the reason to watch. The reason is a tension she named better than anyone I’ve talked to.

You want to be known. You want to be trusted. You’ve wanted it for years. And you can’t say it out loud — because you fear people will it’s arrogant and vain. So instead of putting yourself out there, you get another certification. Another degree. More letters after your name.

You convince yourself this next certification will make you credible and worthy of trust - and deep down you know you’re just hiding. Delaying the moment you put yourself out there.

And JJ unpack why trust doesn’t come from any of it, but from the very thing you were trained never to show. Your humanity. Your story. Your scars.

The thing you hide is the thing that people want to see and resonate with.

Here’s the proof, and it may sting a little. Forbes found that 82% of people go to social media to check if you’re real before they buy. Not your credentials. Not your resume. You. If they look and find nothing human, they move on. Someone less qualified, more visible, gets the person you were meant to help.

Your desire to be known is actually a sense of responsibility, not a vanity. Hiding isn’t humility, it’s fear.

If you’ve ever felt that tension, watch this one.

If you’re done hiding - join the Passion to Profit Lab wait list and you’ll be the first to know when it opens.

If you want a perfect gift to yourself, to friends and family that will put a smile on your face about living in the US - my Little Book of Big Reasons to Love America is it.

Get it here.

Eric Metaxas, bestselling author of Revolution: The Birth of The Greatest Nation in the History of the World said this about my book:

“Christian Ray Flores reminds us that what we have in America is a rare and extraordinary gift, not the norm across the world. His remarkable stories are a wake-up call we desperately need.”

Freedom - roughly 72% of the world lives under some form of authoritarian rule. That’s why it falls to immigrants like me, who’ve lived the alternative, to remind everyone else how precious freedom is. It’s not normal. It’s a privilege.

Entrepreneurship - prosperity is a precondition to happiness, and prosperity is generated by one thing: business. America has an entrepreneurial culture unlike anywhere else on earth. The idea generates the culture, the culture generates the prosperity. It’s impossible to overstate how not normal that is. And for a case study in how fast that culture can create scarcity - just watch the states and cities electing socialist policymakers.

Faith - a prosperous society’s relationship to spirituality moves in cycles. We’re quick to shake off religious tradition, then just as quick to rediscover it and see how central a transcendent practice really is. America holds every kind of faith, and roughly 50% claim no religious affiliation.

What the stats don’t capture is how deep the Judeo-Christian baseline runs through the culture itself - a shared moral and ethical framework everyone inherits, believer or not. In America, even atheists think Christian thoughts and see the world through a Christian lens.

Because of it, we build families, defend freedom, believe in entrepreneurship, and strive. Dysfunction, darkness, and mess included - America is an extraordinary place to live. And I’m proud to be a citizen.

Speaking of daring greatly - the Passion to Profit Lab, my 4-day challenge, is going live soon. If you’re an expert, business owner, consultant, or CEO - this is for you.

Four days. One hour a day. We’ll find your unique competitive edge, build a business model that gives you more impact and income, and develop a brand strategy that makes your brilliance known to the world.

Join the waitlist here and we’ll let you know the moment it’s live.

Happy 4th of July everyone! God bless America.

I just shot a video for a client — I know you’ll love it when it comes out. It’s built around the ultimate underdog story: a shepherd boy named David versus a giant named Goliath. We all know it, even if we’ve never opened a Bible.

I pulled five insights from David’s story that I think will hit close to home — especially if you’re in that place where what got you here won’t get you there.

Your sense of destiny arrives before your first win — learn to trust it. David was told by the prophet Samuel that he would be king long before he became one. He walked back to his sheep carrying a secret destiny with zero proof. Every person I know who built something real lived in that gap — knowing before proving.

Your past experiences equip you for future victories — learn to make the connection. When Saul said David had no business fighting Goliath, David didn’t argue qualifications. He pointed to a lion he killed with his bare hands and a bear he fought off to protect his flock. Experiences that looked like shepherd problems but were actually warrior training. Most people are sitting on more than they realize. They just haven’t read their own story the way David read his.

Your range of life experiences is as important as your specialized skill. David was a fighter — but what got him into the king’s inner circle was music. He had been playing the harp for King Saul, literally performing in the palace, long before anyone knew him as a warrior. The breadth of who you are opens doors your expertise alone never will.

The weapon you’ve mastered is always better than the weapon the world hands you. Saul dressed David in his best armor. David took a few steps and took it all off — impressive as it was, it didn’t fit his way of doing things. He picked up his sling instead. A shepherd’s weapon. His mastery of it gave him an unfair advantage in a fight he couldn’t win up close.

Attach motivation to the reward — it will carry you through the rough seas on the way there. David asked specifically what the reward was for the risk nobody else in Saul’s army was willing to take. The king’s daughter. Freedom from taxes. Every successful person I know accepts high risk when the reward is high enough. Clarity on the reward isn’t greed. It’s fuel.

“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.” - Proverbs

King Solomon wrote that. I think he was writing about his father — a shepherd boy who got skilled in private, in a field nobody was watching, and eventually became a king.

You don’t need to be a giant to win. You just need to keep getting skilled in the work — especially when no one is watching.

If you’re ready to take on your next giant, the Passion to Profit Lab will equip you for the fight. Click here.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you’ve missed my epic story of having Michael Jackson at my event and what he taught me about personal branding. You should definitely check it out.

Happy belated Father’s Day! I’m writing this as the house is still asleep. Two of my three daughter and my niece came over last night to have a Father’s Day breakfast with me today.

I’ve done and still do a few cool things I’m proud of, but a house full of love is by far the greatest accomplishment of my life. My girls love spending time with Deb and I and we love having them around.

When people ask what the secret is, we know exactly what it is: weaving our lives together like a tapestry. When they were little - we somehow landed on this concept of their formation as human beings to be our primary responsibility. We rebelled against a conveyer belt way of seeing them in short bursts of “quality time” and opted on integrating our lives with theirs to the maximum degree possible. We just built a life around being around each other all the time. That’s it.

It’s a lost way and it wins every time. It feels impossible to most simply because of our short memory. Until just 200 years ago in all of human existence - this was the way and it wins because human nature does not change quickly.

The same is true of professional development. Education as primarily a system of transfer of information has become irrelevant. Information is free and everywhere. What has always been and always will be the winning formula is following someone with real mastery - doing what they do, saying what they say, learning to think like they think.

This weeks Xponential Podcast drop is about this lost way making a comeback as illustrated by a crazy story of my first career success in entertainment being possible by my virtual apprenticeship from Michael Jackson and him amazing attending one of our events in person.

Beyond some sick dance moves by yours truly, you’ll see some cool footage of MJ and I - along with the framework of how the lost way of apprenticeship works - and wins.

P.S. If you’ve been following me for awhile and are, in fact, convinced that your expertise deserves to be known and trusted beyond your network - join the waitlist of the Passion to Profit Lab. It’s a online challenge - 4 days, 1 hour a day coached by me to find your edge, build your brand and monetize your brilliance.