Your Experience Is the Strategy: Building a Brand That Attracts Dream Clients

Jeffro (00:02.784)
If you’re a service business owner, your reputation is your runway. And in today’s crowded digital space, building a personal brand isn’t just for influencers. It’s how you stand out, build trust fast and attract clients who believe in what you do and why you do it. My guest today is Christian Ray Flores, high performance coach, entrepreneur, international recording artist, and founder of Exponential Life. He’s helped purpose-driven entrepreneurs, founders, and creators build brands that are deeply aligned with their values and wildly effective in growing revenue and reach. So in this episode, we’re going to dive into how your personal story can become your greatest business asset, how to align faith and identity with marketing and leadership and kind of what it looks like to build a brand that’s both profitable and purposeful. So welcome to the show, Christian.

Christian Ray Flores (00:47.586)
Thank you. Thank you, Jim.

Jeffro (00:49.867)
Yeah, I’m excited for this conversation because a lot of my guests are experts in one particular field of marketing, but you’ve got a story that ranges all over the place. You’ve done all sorts of things internationally. And so I’m really curious to hear from you kind of how that ties into what you’ve done and how you’ve used that in building your personal brand.

Christian Ray Flores (01:01.196)
Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (01:13.77)
I think it’s one of those things that on paper it looked for a long time, even for me, as a huge disadvantage, right? So I grew up, was a child refugee when I was five. I grew up in third world countries, oppressive regimes, that kind of thing. And so that’s a massive disadvantage on paper. But when you are an outsider everywhere you go, that sort of very human desire to fit in that all of us have, right? Becomes less of a thing you can lean on and maybe sometimes hide behind. so it ended up being a blessing, a massive blessing because at some point, I very slowly, I don’t think it was like this massive aha moment, but very slowly I realized, look, even if I try to fit in, I can’t fit in, I might want to…

I just, I’m gonna stand out then. And so slowly it became sort of this, know, when you’re a teenager, you start dressing a little bit more flashy. mean, you know, like you could see me a mile away the way I dress, that sort of thing. But then eventually gets deeper into expertise when you hit the sort of, you in college, in, the professional life. And I realized there was this turning point in my life where I could have gotten the way of everybody else that got a master’s in green economics, which was my major. Or I could do music and I never went to school for that, but I was pretty good at it. And of course, on paper again, the probability of success is like pretty close to zero, right? And that’s where I discovered personal branding is how you go, I just knew how to stand out, how to package something, how to create something that’s cool, interesting, funky, like makes people smile and dance and clap and still relate. So it’s this combination of uniqueness and relatability where you write a song that sort of catches the moment, right, of a generation.

Jeffro (03:24.128)
Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (03:36.138)
And that was sort of where the magic happens, experientially, because I think everybody knows what a personal brand and everybody wishes they had one. But what I think most people don’t understand is how experiencing the step-by-step of that can change your life.

Jeffro (03:49.802)
Yeah, well, and it’s interesting you said that, you know, everybody thinks they need a personal brand. I would disagree and say that’s more true today than it has been in the past. But I think there’s still been a bit of misconception out there that personal brand means becoming some kind of social media guru or making dancing videos. But the way you’ve described it, obviously, it’s not that it’s more about taking what makes you unique and kind of

standing behind that and letting that be the thing that draws people to you.

Christian Ray Flores (04:24.825)
You know, I think my audio changed. Give me one second. Can you hear me?

Jeffro (04:34.915)
i think you’re microphone switched or something you got really quiet

Christian Ray Flores (04:38.489)
Yeah, yeah, it switched. think, hold on. I had this quick reset and I think because of the cable that was sort of pinched a little bit, I pulled and it disconnected. So do you want to just sort of repeat the question? I’ll just pick it up.

Jeffro (04:55.158)
Yeah, let me just make you know about 440. We’ll take a look at the cut this out for the editor so we remember later. Okay, so the question was, you you mentioned how everybody wants to have a personal brand. And I would say, I don’t know that everybody does. I think more people are realizing the importance of it these days. But I think there’s still kind of a misconception among a lot of people that personal brand means becoming a social media guru, making dancing videos or

Christian Ray Flores (05:14.593)
Right.

Jeffro (05:22.975)
doing the quick cut reels to go viral. But obviously the way you’ve described it, it’s not that. It’s being more relatable and standing behind that.

Christian Ray Flores (05:29.557)
No, not at all. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. think there’s a stigma attached to it, right? Because it seems, it feels self-promoting. It’s sort of associated with that influencer thing where you sort of dance to a trending audio in your kitchen kind of thing, right? But what I actually do mean by personal brand is this is how the broader audience in concentric circles and sort of a ripple effect knows you what knows you for, likes you, and trusts you for. That’s a personal impression. And obviously, I think most people would love to have that. And I guess what I was addressing is that you think it’s sort of imitating something that is succeeding already. actually, it’s not that. It’s authenticity attached to expertise. So that’s where it’s such a nuance and such a, like you’re on the edge of a blade kind of thing, right? So for me, for example, with the example of music, I was doing something that no one else was doing because that’s what I liked. So it’s deeply authentic, but it was so risky because the market that I was serving, this was in Eastern Europe, like 15 different countries, that sort of music was not common.

I just had this feeling that what I like will resonate and because I like it, I’ll do it well. And if I do it really, really well, it will resonate. Right? So there’s always this risk. And I think people, even that people that try to create something of a personal brand, they start copying and that’s not the way to go. You know, you need to find that, okay, how can I serve with ideas that are actually in demand, but also do it in a way that is extraordinarily unique.

Jeffro (07:22.248)
Right, you can’t copy someone else’s personal brand because it’s personal to them, not to you, right? So you can learn from them, but obviously yours should look different if you’re doing it right.

Christian Ray Flores (07:25.037)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (07:33.379)
That’s right.

Jeffro (07:35.016)
Yeah, and it’s interesting. think there’s a transition period, right? Because we see the people that are already established with a personal brand. We do look up to them and think they’re great and want to be like them. But if we look at our friend who’s starting to build his now and you’re like, well, you got an ego. Why are you on camera all the time talking about yourself? Right. And you got to get past a certain point before people, I don’t know, accept it or embrace it or before you get comfortable with it enough to where it just clicks or kind of all of the above.

Christian Ray Flores (07:51.801)
Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (07:56.761)
It’s all of it. it’s all of it. It’s all of it. You have to do it for a long time. And there’s all these adjustments. The first, think, the adjustment of what are they going to think of me? You know, I’m a serious person. I’m a professional. Here I am recording videos or posting something online. And you have to just get over that bottom line.

If you don’t publish, you’re gonna be invisible. That’s just the bottom line. But then beyond that, okay, what’s my focal point? Is it ultra niche, broader niche? And it’s really, honestly, think when that gets a little bit repetitive and almost cliche, the niche discussion. I do think it’s really more about your opinions about a specific thing.

I think that’s a better focal point than a niche because you are already niched. know what saying? By being yourself, you’re niche. So if you just speak authentically, strongly, powerfully, boldly about the things you have expertise about and really strong feelings about, it translates. But there’s also degrees of that, right? How comfortable can you be?

Jeffro (09:04.413)
being yourself.

Christian Ray Flores (09:24.173)
We all feel very insecure about the things that we have to offer, all of us.

Jeffro (09:29.489)
I would say it’s probably dependent too on how you’re raised and if you’ve been told like this is the path you’re supposed to take and at certain point you’ve got to decide, okay, is that me? Am I going to stand behind that or am going to take a different approach and kind of like if you want to create a personal brand you have to know who you are, what you stand for to a certain extent. And because otherwise you’re again, it’s back to building someone else’s idea of what your brand should be.

Christian Ray Flores (09:36.887)
Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (09:56.183)
Well, we’re all handed a blueprint. When we’re children, we’re handed a blueprint by our parents, our environment, our culture, our ideologies that have influence on where we are. We’re all handed a blueprint. When we enter college, we’re handed a blueprint. When we enter sort of a professional life, where we’re practitioners of the thing that we learn to do, we’re handed a blueprint. So we have this collection of blueprints.

Jeffro (09:58.29)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Ray Flores (10:24.193)
And that’s actually a good thing because these are the guardrails for a person to reach some sort of mastery. And I think the trick there is there’s a certain point where you have to sort of, you have to just burn the blueprint and then create your own game. And that’s when a personal plan actually flourishes. And I think just you can even start with a blueprint and that’s totally fine. I think actually most people that are extraordinarily successful, they will tell you that they started just by, you know, sort of being a copy, a bad copy of somebody else and they’re not ashamed. So you learn publicly. And at some point there’s some sort of shift that happens where the blueprint doesn’t.

doesn’t fit anymore.

Jeffro (11:13.298)
That makes sense. So here’s another question. You’ve said, you know, build from your edge. What does that mean?

Christian Ray Flores (11:21.869)
Well, it means that you are a collection of experiences, preferences, insights that can be, if you know what these things are and you can sort of integrate them into your expertise, it gives you a superpower. So I’ll give you an example. I grew up all over the world. I speak four languages. have sort of a cultural awareness that is unique to me. have a sort of even language expertise and insights and nuance that is unique to me. I’m an immigrant. English is actually my fourth language. And it doesn’t mean it’s a disadvantage. It’s just a different way of processing language. My expertise with performing on stage gives me a layer. My expertise with speaking public in the business world gives me a layer. My expertise working with tech startup founders gives me a layer of insight. My expertise working with artists and Olympic athletes gives me a layer. So all these things are usually sort of put away almost like as bullet points in a CV, right? And that’s the biggest mistake. What we need to do is we need to grab all this stuff and process it well and integrate it into the very fabric of what we do. And that’s where the magic happens. And that’s exactly what we do when we coach people. It’s it’s extraordinary how much treasure there is that is completely not mobilized to serve you and create who you are in the public sphere. So it’s just too familiar. Yeah. totally. It’s just too familiar. It doesn’t feel valuable to people. So what we do as part of what we do in the first three months of taking a person from no personal brand to a personal brand concept and a business model attached to it in nine weeks, the second step is that is defining the edge and integrating it into the.

Jeffro (12:55.151)
don’t keep it siloed, but overlay it, right?

Christian Ray Flores (13:20.909)
to like the business offering.

Jeffro (13:23.313)
Okay. So then I know you do a lot of coaching for founders and high achievers from all kinds of backgrounds. Obviously, you’ve got your processor doing this like you talked about. personal story obviously plays a critical role in the business success when you approach it this way. How do you convince someone that that’s true? Because I think a lot of people feel like, my story is not that interesting, right? Why would people care about who I am?

Christian Ray Flores (13:27.235)
Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (13:37.369)
Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (13:50.209)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We do a lot of digging. We just do, we do a lot of digging, a lot of storytelling. And in that sort of interactive person to person, heart to heart, life on life, both me with somebody and then in a cohort of people who are doing it, it’s just this magic happens, right? People start telling stories and what they do, what their passions are, the stories that sort of define them, redirected their lives. And we do a lot of this sort of digging that is

Jeffro (13:52.388)
rather than what I know.

Christian Ray Flores (14:19.563)
It seems a bit almost like ethereal, but it’s actually super concrete when it crystallizes into something new. And then we go, okay, here’s how I think it goes together. What do you think? And it goes back and forth and back and forth until it almost like this mosaic comes together. And people go, my gosh, this is crazy. can be completely, you know, without competition. This is just how I do this thing that I’m really good at.

Jeffro (14:48.152)
And how do you help people, so once you’ve kind of drawn that out, right, how do you help people communicate their value without turning into a caricature of themselves?

Christian Ray Flores (14:52.686)
Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (15:00.269)
Well, we teach them how to make offers, essentially. And an offer, it’s not a business. An offer is just one solution to one problem. And I think it’s almost like the best building block. Because when you start seeing, OK, here’s my expertise, my personality, my insights, based on that, if I can fill in four P’s, what’s the problem you solved, the persona you solved before, What promise can you make to them? What process do you take them to? If you answer those questions, we sort of basically massage it into those questions. And that’s all this foundational exercise of not being a person who is good at this, but making an offer that is very, very specific as a solution. And that offer then, you can create pricing around it. You can create all kinds of dimensions around it, business models. It could be directly monetizable, not directly monetizable.

It could be entrepreneurs who start a new thing. could be entrepreneurs who start something within the company they’re in, within their career path. It could be socialpreneurs, people who are leading a nonprofit. But once you start seeing the ability to solve problems as offers, and there’s all kinds of ways to do it, it really changes the game. I have this physics professor who wants to do this new thing in this sort of next season of life, right? That YouTube channel with a specific focus. But once he learned about what offers are, how to think of it, he realized that he can actually make an offer even within he’s a tenured professor, very respected, within his current gig, right? And then he actually broke it down into a lecture series and he goes, yeah, the lecture series can be an offer. And it can be probably five times more engaging to the students that come into the lecture.

So once you learn some of these blueprints, it’s hard to unlearn and you start seeing everything through those angles. And it’s pretty, pretty exciting.

Jeffro (17:07.437)
Yeah, that makes sense. And so what about AI though? Like do you have, do you encourage people to use AI when they’re pitching these offers and writing up copy and stuff? Or does that kind of bring us back to that mean of sounding like everybody else?

Christian Ray Flores (17:14.285)
Christian Ray Flores (17:23.132)
Absolutely. Oh my gosh. You don’t use the AI, you’re just dumb. I’m sorry. You don’t understand that everything has changed forever. It’s not even a question. We shouldn’t even be asking. We should be saying, okay, what AI do I focus on? How do I use it? How do I amplify what I do? But I think sometimes professionals… extraordinarily gifted. They’re maybe not even one step behind with AI because AI is sort of pulling us forward, right? No one is actually even fully current with AI because AI is like accelerating. But I would say there are two steps behind even AI, right? Because what happened is with the internet, we can learn anything. That’s what the internet gave us. And people have, they learned up to a certain point and then they stopped learning. They just, keep doing the thing that they do and they stop. They don’t have the lifestyle to support rapid immersive learning. And that’s what the internet gave me. Social media and other platforms, there are all kinds of different platforms that are video, audio, they’re sort of social, they’re newsletter social media platforms. It gave us the ability to actually reach anyone, anywhere. That’s the second thing we’re behind. we’re not, if we don’t have some sort of platform or two that we focus on, hyper-focus on, like we’re a step behind. That’s just not, that’s not optional, basically, if you want to be known. And then the third step is AI, which basically gives the ability, like you needed a team of five or six people just two, three years ago to do the thing that you can do through AI with one or two people. So like you can have million dollar companies with a team of two, easily through AI. it’s not even, you know, we shouldn’t be asking those questions. We should just, the questions we should be asking is which one do I learn? How fast do I integrate it into the things that I’m doing?

Jeffro (19:24.654)
Yeah. Well, I guess the bigger question there is how do we use AI and still be human and relatable? Because I think a lot of the content that it spits out, you know, we can tell it’s from an AI bot.

Christian Ray Flores (19:33.625)
absolutely. Yeah. And that’s a good question. That’s actually the solution to not be irrelevant because of AI is to be the most you you can possibly be. That’s just it. Everything that is AI by definition, it can mimic creativity, but it cannot be

Jeffro (19:51.629)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Ray Flores (20:00.345)
Creative in the pure sense of the word right because it’s a composite It’s a composite right it drives from it basically draws from human experience, so it can actually write a great book That has been Has been written quote-unquote Can write a book that has been written maybe just slightly off to a degree or two But it cannot write a book that’s never been written just can’t because because it’s not in its nature. It’s not how it works. Yeah. So I think so many jobs are going to be eliminated at a very fast rate. I mean it’s happening already. White collar entry level jobs gone like 80 % gone.

Jeffro (20:34.935)
That’s not how works.

Christian Ray Flores (20:57.593)
which has put some people at a huge disadvantage. And then it goes after sort of everything that is sort of in the quickly programmable, scalable way, reproducible way. So everything that’s mediocre will be replaced. And I mean, accountants, lawyers. Like just five years ago, I think that it would be unthinkable to even think that way, right?

But anything that’s in the middle can be replaced actually quite quickly. So it’s extraordinary because that personal brand piece is you showing up as extraordinary and unique. And that’s basically the best way to future proof yourself.

Jeffro (21:45.815)
And I think there’s one more piece to the whole personal brand equation we haven’t talked about yet, which is purpose, right? That’s something that’s unique to you. It’s something that AI can’t replicate. So how does that, your own spiritual alignment and clarity of values help someone grow as a business owner who’s got a service business or something?

Christian Ray Flores (22:06.041)
think there’s been a study, I’m not, I think it was Rory Vaden’s organization that specializes in personal branding. They actually did a fairly significant study on the American public and what they said is that, what came back is that Americans on average are willing to pay 70 something, 72, 73 % of Americans are willing to pay more money for a product or service of someone whose values they align with and they feel like they know them. And I think that’s the answer. People really don’t follow organizations, they follow people. And we follow people, that’s primal. We align with values. So when people are sort of afraid to express their values, they’re minimizing their impact. So you asked about spirituality. I’m a Christian, I’ve been a Christian for a long time, I grew up atheist and that’s part of my story. So I can tell that story completely, honestly, vulnerably, transparently. And I know that I’m going to attract certain people with that story, and I’m going to detract other people with that same story. And I love that because people that are attracted, there’s sort of other layers of trust and alignment that are there when we work together.

Jeffro (23:30.443)
It makes sense when you talk about that. If my neighbor just moved in down the street, they come knock on my door like, hey, do want to help me save the trees? I’d be like, that’s great. Trees are great and all, but I’ll pass today. Good luck. But if I follow MrBeast and he’s like, all right, we’re going to save the trees. We’re doing this campaign. His videos are entertaining. I’ve watched hours of his stuff. I’m going to be like, all right, yes, I’m in. Here’s my.

Christian Ray Flores (23:42.795)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Christian Ray Flores (23:52.552)
totally.

Jeffro (23:58.091)
however much, 10 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever I’ve got, because it’s him. It’s not that the cause was any different. It’s just, it’s the person.

Christian Ray Flores (24:04.855)
Yeah, it’s the person. You want to align yourself with people and their values and that’s just deeply human. I think it’s wonderful.

Jeffro (24:14.201)
And you have a phrase, impact and income, right? Because I think a lot of people try to choose one or the other. But what does it look like when you build both simultaneously?

Christian Ray Flores (24:18.541)
Yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (24:22.743)
Well, think if you you Eileen impact, I have three things that are sort of playing against me when it comes to income in that I grew up poor. I was raised by a couple of Marxists who hammered in me that owning a lot of money is evil and now I’m an exploiter, right? I’m a bourgeois and also I’m a Christian. And the Christian church actually has an interesting sort of gap like between the prosperity gospel and the poverty gospel in between there’s like silence there’s just not a lot of teaching around prosperity actual healthy prosperity so i have like three things going against me and my whole life has been sort of crooked like i go towards cause not towards commerce too much and i really truly believe that that’s a terrible thing and i fight against it like i have to fight against it because it’s in my bones but i think if you have the right combination of Hey, I want to serve people. I want to matter. I want somebody else’s life to be better because of me, because of the expertise that I bring to care, that I bring it with, my angle, my approach to it. But that’s not gonna really scale or actually matter or have actual impact in the long run. There’s no ripple effect if it’s not funded by income and some sort of commercial engine that amplifies it. So, you It’s just over and over again, I see people like myself. So I’ve been working on this for ages where I go, no, no, no, no, no, it’s not just impact, it’s also income. And that’s super important. I am a father, a husband. It’s my responsibility to provide for my family. It’s also my responsibility to pay people well, who I hired to work for me. It’s my responsibility to provide essentially livelihoods for people who might be joining the cause and having that kind of impact and if I don’t figure that part out, the impact thing is going to suffer for sure, 100%.

Jeffro (26:27.997)
Yeah, if anything is going to last long term, you need to help support it and plan for that income side of things. All right, well, we’re coming up on the end of our time, but I’ve got one last question for you, Christian. For someone listening who might be afraid to put themselves out there as the face of their business, what’s one, I don’t know, small mindset shift or action they can take today to start moving in the right direction?

Christian Ray Flores (26:30.816)
Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

Christian Ray Flores (26:53.913)
Talk to people who you know admire you and respect you. And then ask them, ask them, hey, can you give me two or three things that are mine specific that for you it adds something to what I offer to them. Ask them that. And you’ll be surprised and shocked at how much value that adds to you to understanding that the things that seem so familiar maybe insignificant to you are actually incredible assets and they will enrich your brand you’re offering the way you should.

Jeffro (27:33.181)
because if it’s our everyday, we think it’s normal and default, but other people, yeah, it’s totally different for them. Cool. Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today, Christian. I really enjoyed this conversation. And I think you’re a great example of how personal branding isn’t just about marketing, it is about meaning, you know, what you’ve done in your life and in making a difference, kind of all those things wrapped up together. So for those of you listening, if you want to learn more about Christian’s work or his life, he’s got a…

Christian Ray Flores (27:37.079)
That’s exactly it.

Christian Ray Flores (27:54.061)
Yeah, very true.

Jeffro (27:59.003)
a free brand clarity scorecard on his website. He’s got a podcast, he’s got a book. We’ll put all the links in the show notes. But if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who would resonate with Christian’s story and this whole idea of what it takes to build a personal brand. So thanks again, Christian. Take care and we’ll see you next time.

Christian Ray Flores (28:16.151)
Thank you.