“Show Notes”
Are you a photographer feeling drained of creative energy? In this episode, we talk to creative expert and former pop star Christian Ray Flores about a simple but powerful philosophy that can help you reclaim your creative drive and boost your productivity.
• You’ll learn why creativity isn’t something you’re born with, and how to get it back, no matter what stage you’re at in your career.
• You’ll hear how to build a morning routine that allows you to get into a state of “flow” and create your best work without distraction.
• You’ll discover why aiming high, not for the middle, is the key to standing out and building a truly successful business.
“Show Transcription”
Sam: Marcus, how are you doing?
Marcus: Oh, I am very well. Thank you, Sam. And yourself?
Sam: Very good. Excellent. Yep. And looking forward to chatting with the guest for today.
Marcus: And who might that be?
Sam: We’ve got with us all the way from Austin, Texas, we’ve got Cristian Ray Flores.
And as usual, I will ask our guests to introduce themselves. So Cristian, welcome to the show.
Christian: Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.
Sam: And would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?
Christian: Well, it’s hard to introduce myself because it’s confusing, but I will attempt to do so.
Marcus: Go for it. We’ll work it out.
Christian: So yeah, my name is Cristian. I do several things in life. I have a performance coaching program for professionals. I do digital media. I have a nonprofit in Mozambique.
So there’s a few things. I’m sort of professionally ADHD. And I would say some of the stuff that I do now is explained by the backstory. And I basically had this very strange childhood. I was a refugee at age five. We moved from Chile to Germany, to Russia, to Africa, back to Russia. And I ended up having this sort of creative career after that. So I saw a lot of civil unrest that seems to follow me around. I’m very worried about Austin, Texas right now.
But yeah, I saw a military coup in Chile. I saw a civil war in Mozambique that lasted quite a while. I saw the Soviet Union fall apart with tanks in the streets and attempted coups and the whole thing. But it sort of worked out in a very interesting way because my creative side still emerged after a while, after getting a degree in economics, of all things, nothing related to creativity. But it was sort of around the fall of the Soviet Union. I started a music career in like 93. And it just happened to be a little luck, a little creative genius, a little work ethic. And I sort of became one of the top pop stars in Russia for about a decade. And that sort of launched a whole sort of effect that brought me to a tempership. And I had a music production company for a while. I produced other bands. When we moved to the States, we did all of that, doing media now. And then one of the interesting, strange ironies of life is that I sort of grew up in a household of Marxists. And I ended up as a pop star in Russia. Boris Yeltsin was actually trailing behind the Communist Party last time they were about to win an election. And I just happened to have a number one hit at the time called Our Generation. So Boris Yeltsin’s campaign used my song as the anthem for his election campaign. And we actually ended up winning. And by that time, I was intensely anti-communist, just because I’d seen the fruit of the ideology on three different continents. So that’s sort of the quick backstory for you.
Sam: Wow.
Marcus: That’s a good one. That’s a real dichotomy you’ve got there then. So perfectly anti-communist, and yet you are being touted by the Communist Party in Russia with one of your own songs.
Christian: That’s right. Yeah. So it made for very awkward conversations with my parents.
Sam: Can you imagine? And I think relevant to our photographer listeners, I think it’s obviously that music side is very creative, very like photography. And correct me if I’m wrong, Christine, but I think also like photography, there’s that balance between the creative and the commercial. And there’s always that pull, and some people go one way and some people go the other. And what’s your kind of take on that? And what was your approach to that?
Christian: You know, it’s actually quite relevant, honestly, for all professions. I don’t believe anyone is non-creative. I think we are sort of trained out of our creativity by the school system, and by the environment. But I would say in general, creativity is the ability to create something out of nothing. And tapping into the creative side of ourselves is crucial for any profession. I mean, that’s really an integrated part of how I coach people, is what was I, why am I here? What makes me come fully alive? You know, if we find that, or rediscover that, it seems to really help us shape something that now becomes a commercially viable journey. Because the thing that lights you up, you can become proficient at, you can overcome obstacles, you can get mastery, you can overcome rejection, you can overcome all the things that everybody who wants to build in your life has to overcome. And so if you’re, at the very least, this is something that you’re just so passionate about, you keep going until you get better at it, right? So I think that’s sort of the solution, in my mind, is that, and especially now, that anyone with a computer and an internet connection can really, anyone, anywhere, at any time. Tapping into your deepest creative self is, it could be actually the pathway to commercial success as well.
Sam: Wow, okay. So you think it’s that creativity leads to the commercial side?
Christian: I think so, yeah.
Marcus: You know, what I was going to say, you mentioned, you mentioned that, you said that creativity was born and then we can lose it. Are you there for, of the opinion that creativity is more nature or nurture, i.e. is it something you can learn, or is it something you’re born with?
Christian: I think it’s in the nature of every human being, to be creative. So, and I’ll demonstrate why. Like, if you go into a classroom of, you know, eight-year-olds, and you give them paper and crayons, and you would say, I want you to paint, you know, whatever. They’re all creative. None of them will pause, and they will all do this kind of work wholeheartedly, easily, and joyfully. You do the exact same thing when they’re 16, and you’ll see a big portion of the class not really want to do it, you know? So, it’s the same kids. Only a few years later, they are trained out of their creativity by the system, by life, by all kinds of things, right? So, I would say the nurture part trains it out of us, and we can, but we can tap back into our creativity quite easily if we just do, if we just do the work. And that’s, I think, the part of us that actually makes us uniquely capable of doing things that are commercially viable, right? There’s, no one can compete with you on being you.
Marcus: We just, we do have a show, don’t we, Sam? We do have, actually, have a show that we might just mention, go back on, all about creativity, one that I put together. So, yeah, this is all good ground we’re covering here, Christian. Let’s dig into it a bit more. Well, yeah, let’s talk about creativity and motivation, because I think, yeah, creativity is drilled out of us, you know, and things get in the way. How can you stay motivated to be creative, Christian?
Christian: Well, I think one way I do it is having a morning routine that allows me to sort of enter a state of flow daily. And the reason why, to me, that’s important, and I help others develop the lifestyle, even the habits of that, habits are everything, is because life will take over, life will convince you to respond to life rather than to create something new, right?
So, if you have a morning routine that allows you to sort of reset that autopilot, it’s going to help you start thinking of what is possible, what is not there yet. So, I’ll give you an example. When you wake up, most of the time, you can get overwhelmed very easily with a to-do list, with your phone, with social media, with the tasks that you’re behind on. And then once you engage with that, you are now in a reactive survival mode, you’re not in a creative mode. If you want to flip that around, you can totally do that, as a matter of fact, right? And the way to do it is to not engage in the to-do list until a little bit later, and forming a habit where you have a creative, almost like a creatively, creative boosting first hour of your day, and then have some sort of pattern, some sort of rhythm to the day that allows you to do the creative work first, and to do the almost like the task-oriented work later. So, for me, I use the first half of the day to create, the second half of the day to communicate. So, I will not have meetings before noon at all. So, the first hour, I work out, I contemplate, meditate, I journal, I read. It gets me into a place of flow, of joy, of what is possible. All of that combined, basically, starts the creative energy flowing. And you know how sometimes you’re in the shower and your ideas visit you, or on a walk? That’s the thing that you can literally learn how to do every single day. So, if you know predictably, you can get yourself into a state of flow, into a state of creativity every single day, and then you attach to it the opportunity to be creative. Let’s say, if you’re talking about photography, of whatever work you want to do, set something up, create a new idea, sketch something up, or do some post-production on photography, that’s when you do it because you’re full of that energy. And that doesn’t last more than, you may have like three hours of intense creative work in you every day. But what if you have that creativity booster every morning, and then you do creative work in a very intensely focused way without distractions for three days? That’s going to change your life. And I don’t care what you do. It could be photography, it could be music, it could be business. You can be incredibly, incredibly creative and productive.
Marcus: Okay, that’s a very interesting notion there, Christian, because really, you’re going against what is a lot of people saying. I’m thinking of that book, is it Eat the Fog, or Swallow the Fog, about doing stuff first thing of the day that you don’t want to do, and get it out of the way so you feel you’ve achieved something. You’re saying the opposite.
Christian: I am, yeah. I’m saying that because you’re like, even just first thing in the morning, you’re not depleted. You’re rested, especially if you go to bed in time, which is a good practice to do as well. If you binge on Netflix for four hours, and then you go to bed at 2 a.m., you’re not going to be able to get up early or sleep early because you’re depleted. But really, you’re the least depleted in the morning if you sleep well. And then if you add a booster hour to that, and then now you’re full of energy, full of excitement, even your physical body is helping it’s being your ally in this. And you attach to that writing, writing songs, writing books, doing anything creative. It’s going to be tremendous, especially if you don’t allow yourself to be distracted by social media, answering emails, things like that.
That’s why I don’t have any meetings before noon.
Sam: That makes sense. And I’m wondering, do you think it helps as well being organized? Because in some ways, I’m thinking if you’re organized, you know your task list is there and you can put it to the side. If you’re quite disorganized, does it mean that while you’re trying to be creative, random thoughts are popping into your head and are distracting you, and you know you haven’t gotten them written anywhere and you have to do something with them?
Christian: Yeah, I think it really helps to be organized, but it could sound a little bit paradoxical, right? But you can organize laziness. You can organize empty spaces, because creativity only flourishes when there’s a lot of empty spaces. So you can actually organize your empty spaces and saying, this is my time to literally do nothing. And now I will not allow the urgent to push that out. And in that sort of almost like lazy, empty space, ideas will pop up.
Sam: And then what’s your thoughts on the morning, evening person thing? Because I’m a morning person and what you’re saying to me goes, well, that sounds amazing. And I’m suspecting you’re a morning person. What’s your thoughts on that? Well, some people kind of don’t seem to function before.
Christian: I don’t know. I think you can train yourself to switch around. I think it really depends on once you get a taste for it, right? You know, whatever brings you joy is what’s going to stick, right? So if you develop a routine that brings you so much creative energy, that you look forward to the next day, you’ll become whatever the thing is that brings you there. So, you know, I’ve been both. I’ve been a night person, especially in my 20s when I was doing music. I mean, I would start my day at noon, right? I would come home at 5 a.m. basically, regularly. So, yeah, you can. I mean, it depends. But I would say in the long run, in the long run, if you really want to be less of a bohemian and more of a professional, you know, I think you are wired to go to sleep when the sun is down and to wake up when the sun is up. That’s the natural state of being. If you’ve been productive for decades and not just a year or two, flash in the pan, you know, both burn the candle at both ends, you need to go with how you were built to function as a human being.
Marcus: That’s fantastic. I mean, that’s a really, that’s a great start to the show, to come out with something really that goes totally against the norm and have this very refreshing philosophy. And I do agree with you. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think, yeah, there’s no denying it. And at that time in the morning, I am at my most creative. I’m most creative and I have the best ideas, really. But yeah, yeah, I like it. Give me some more nuggets. Let’s have some more questions.
Christian: Well, I can give you, I can give you, this may be helpful. I can give you my morning routine if you’d like. So, yeah, so basically I, when I go to, well, a morning routine is very dependent on the evening routine. So I don’t do any work after 6pm at all because I want my mind to calm down. So I spend time with my wife. I take my dog for a walk. We go to bed around, I go to bed around 10. So it’s, you know, for a musician, that’s pretty early. But that gives me is the ability for my, for like a wind down period, right? Where I can actually go to sleep reliably. So if I go to sleep at that time, I usually wake up around 5.30 in the morning before the sun is up. Yeah. And I wake up and just to give you an idea, you can train your, your body is looking for a, for patterns. Your body is a, is a, your mind is full of software. You’re 90% working on autopilot basically. So what you’re doing is you’re reprogramming the software to be your ally and to make you extra ultra productive and creative. So I wake up at 5.30, six, no alarm, like completely wide awake because I’ve trained my, my routines to, to do that. So basically what I do is I drink a tall glass of water because you might, your brain is dehydrated during the night. Tall glass of water, some supplements, et cetera. And I go into the living room. I light a candle and I journal and I contemplate and I meditate. Then I write and I usually write, it could be scripts. My newsletter comes out every week that I sent out to 21,000 subscribers. And I, and I really put a lot of heart into that newsletter because a lot of people seem to appreciate it. Or I’m writing a book. For example, I’m releasing a book in the fall and that’s a lot of work to write a book. It’s just, it’s just tremendous effort. So the create, I could be writing a script for a new video on my YouTube channel. I write, that’s the creative work. Then after I write for about an hour and a half, I, I get up and I go to the gym. I walk to the gym. I work out for half an hour. So my muscles, my blood is pumping. My muscles are secreting actually, which is really remarkable, antidepressants, neural plasticity is increasing, all of that stuff. I come home, I take a quick shower, I make breakfast. And by the time my wife wakes up, I have breakfast ready for her, which of course makes for a much better marriage if you make breakfast for your wife every morning. And so that’s how my day starts. And basically after a nice, pleasant breakfast, I can have another, easily another two, three hours of highly productive work. And then the meetings, the emails, even the, what I’m doing now today is all in the afternoon, right? So that’s basically my morning routine. And it gives me an extraordinarily high level creativity and a productivity in general.
Marcus: I love it. Sam, do you have a morning routine? Yes and no.
Sam: Yeah, not quite as, not quite like Christian’s, but yes, I mean, I tend to try and do, I set aside time in the morning. So yes, I do very quickly with through my emails, but not answering, just like put them here, there and everywhere. And then I do usually have a kind of hour or two block when I do something particular, work on something particular. So it might be, right, that’s the good time for marketing because you can really think about stuff and get it out. Yeah, I do tend to…
Marcus: But that’s business stuff though, Sam. What do you do for yourself?
Sam: So that’s, that’s more in the evening. So yes, I, once I’ve finished then I tend to do stuff then, rather than in the morning. It tends to be a mix of getting all the children out to school and my wife out to work.
Marcus: Well, maybe, yeah, I mean, Christian or this, because I do have a little, a little bit of a, not quite as a strict, well, at least I do it every day. I mean, I just basically, I do yoga for like 20 minutes in the morning, maybe half an hour. I have my glass of water like you do with lemon juice. Yeah. And I, I find that quite helpful really. It gives a good boost for the day. So yeah, I’m with Christian, a little bit more Christian on that one.
Sam: Um, and then I did want to speak Christian to, with you a little bit about Mozambique.
So it’s a little bit sideways in photography, but I, I live in Mozambique. You obviously did live in Mozambique. So we’ve got that in common. There’s a lot going on in Mozambique at the moment with elections and things. So can you tell us a little bit about your story in Mozambique?
Christian: Yeah, it was, you know, it was, it was an incredibly powerful experience in my life. I came in, I was seven years old. I had been a refugee, you know, I literally went four countries by age seven, right? I lived in four countries. So I arrived here and it was insane because it was just a year after they got the independence, they kicked out, you know, a lot of the Portuguese, the people that were running the economy, nothing was working at all. And, um, for me, it was an incredible shift because it was this new culture, this literally fourth culture, fourth language. And I was so, I was both fascinated and paralyzed at the same time. You know, I went to a local Mozambican school for the first year. It was called Luta Continua. And, uh, so I learned Portuguese the first year. And then the next year after that, they sent me to this international school that was all English. And, uh, it was a, you know, it was a great life. It was strange because you have had this abundance of some foods and ration cards for other foods. There were, there was a civil war started about a year in.
So we had bombings in the city. It was just tense, but for a kid, you know, we didn’t notice any of those things, right? We just roamed, we would just roam the city unsupervised. And, uh, it was a very enjoyable childhood for me. And we traveled all over Mozambique all the way to the North and just enjoyed the nature. We enjoyed the Savannah, the wildlife, all of that stuff, all of that culture. I think just the, even the rhythms and the musicality of the Mozambican people who had a big influence on me musically eventually sort of popped out as an artist, as a pop artist. So it was, it was really good. And I, and I, I really cherish that, that childhood. And that’s part of the reason why I started this afterschool academy in Maputo a few years ago, where we just help some kids with mentorship, English language and computer literacy. And we still run it. We actually go every couple of years and visit, and it’s, it’s wonderful. I’ve brought my kids, my wife, I’ve, I’ve shown them, this is where I grew up, the house I grew up in, and I really enjoy visiting.
Sam: Amazing. That’s fantastic. Yeah, it’s amazing. We’ve, we’ve got that connection. Yes. All sorts of, unfortunately, slightly unpleasant things going on with elections here. Um, but there we go. Um, cool. That’s, well, there’s a, there’s a lot to go on there, isn’t it, Marcus? There’s a, there’s a lot, uh, you’ve given our listeners there, Christian.
Christian: Thank you.
Marcus: Um, what, what I’d like to ask Christian, Sam, if you don’t mind butting in is what, what, what are you doing? What, what’s, what are you doing yourself these days? Are you still doing music? Um, I know you’re a motivational speaker, but tell me, tell me a little bit more about current day life for you.
Christian: I do, basically I have a lot, I do creative things all day, every day, right? Because between, uh, running a small digital media company, we do personal brand development, design, websites, videos, things like that. And then I, I do a lot of content creation sort of, sort of to, sort of to educate the broader public on personal development, which is sort of leads some of the people that, that are inspired by this and follow me, they end up becoming clients of my, of my coaching program. And, um, I write books. I, so I, I just do a lot of content basically, you know? Uh, so I don’t do music and it’s, uh, I haven’t done music in about four years. I’d like, that’s the last time I recorded a song.
Marcus: Well, that’s not long.
Christian: Yeah. But I do want to like, it is my life goal to sort of, uh, recalibrate my life so I can do a few, a few things less and then reintroduce music as a regular sort of creative expression.
Sam: Uh, do you do music just for fun still?
Christian: Yeah. Every once in a while. And I think it’s hard to do it just for fun when you’re used to do it professionally because you’re used to big budgets, best musicians, you know, masterful music, video directors and producers. And if you’re doing it just for fun, it just feels so amateurish. So I think that’s probably my biggest block creatively is like, why can’t I just do it how it’s supposed to be done? And I’m like, well, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna spend so much money and effort and time like I used to, but then my internal, I think standards are getting in the way.
Marcus: I mean, that’s been a fascinating conversation. You certainly lived a very rich life. There’s no denying that. And yeah, more to come. Obviously more to come, more to come. Um, any past, any sort of final thoughts you’d like to pass on to our listeners?
Christian: You know, I would just say, look, for those who are listening and especially, I’m assuming, and I think you have creative sort of audience. I would say, I would say my advice to you is aim high, don’t aim for the middle. And the reason for that is because if you aim high, you’ll get there eventually. It’s going to be very hard or otherwise everybody would do it. But if you aim high in whatever creative endeavor you have, it could be business, it could be photography, music, anything else, filmmaking. It’s better to aim high because most people aim to the middle. And because most people aim to the middle, there’s more competition in the middle. So it actually pays off to aim higher than to out of fear, limit yourself and do, oh, I’m going to be a middle of the road, whatever, the title or the role that you play. And I’ve seen that pay off time and time again in the different careers that I’ve chosen. And you can actually reinvent yourself as part of being creative as well. And I want to sort of recommend, if you want more ways on a regular basis, just look up my newsletter. It’s free for the new, sort of for the new episodes. If you want to access the whole archive, it’s like a latte a or something like that. You can go to ChristianRayFlores.com and get that. And every week I devote a lot of time and attention to bring you the best resources, ideas, videos, references and things like that, that I’m interested in. The other thing I want to maybe recommend if you’re interested in saying, okay, I want to aim high and what do I do now, right? Is determining your starting point. I have this tool that I use with my coaching clients called the Exponential Scorecard. And basically I offer it for free for everybody who wants to take it because it’s a really good exercise in self-awareness. So if you go to exponential.life slash score, exponential starting with an X, not with an E.
Sam: We’ll put the links in the show.
Christian: You’ll find the access to that. And it’s really cool because it asks you like 40 plus questions, take maybe seven, eight minutes to take. But then you have these dimensions of life graded a certain way, right? It could be green, orange, or red. And it’s a really good tool to self-assess and go, okay, where do I start and where do I want to go?
Sam: Excellent. That’s amazing. And we’ll put all of those links in the show notes and ways you can get a hold of Christian if you would like to. Yeah, that has been a fascinating conversation, Christian. There’s been all sorts for our listeners there. And of course, listeners, what you I’m sure want is to make sure you don’t miss an episode of Shoot to the Top. So do make sure you go to the website, shoottothetop.com, sign up to the newsletter. So then you get the shows delivered to you every week and you don’t miss any like this one, which you wouldn’t want to do. Christian, thank you so much for being with us. That’s been an amazing show. And Marcus, I will speak to you next week.
Marcus: Yeah, and thank you from me as well, Christian. I really, really enjoyed that. Very, very enlightening. Thank you. And yeah, see you next week, Sam.
Christian: So did I. Thank you, guys.
