Reinvention, Personal Branding, & AI with Mike Kim | E57
Bestselling author and branding strategist Mike Kim joins Deb Meyer to share how personal branding isn’t just for entrepreneurs. Mike offers real-life tools to help you show up with more clarity & confidence, whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or building something of your own.
Mike also opens up about a recent season of reinvention, sparked by personal loss. He shares how to navigate big transitions, what it means to do work of material consequence, and why slowing down might be your next best move.
Plus, they dive into the evolving role of AI: how it’s shaping both our careers and our kids’ futures. This is a powerful conversation for any parent looking to lead with intention.
Episode Highlights
(02:20) Mike’s Three Ps Framework
(06:45) How to reinvent without blowing up your life
(07:39) What it means to do work of material consequence
(12:04)) The power of “wintering” in a go-go-go culture
(15:01) Intrapreneurship: How to lead and innovate inside a corporate job
(23:10) Personal branding for traditional employees, especially on LinkedIn
(27:30) Wisely using AI in your professional life and parenting
Resources
You Are the Brand by Mike Kim
Our Your Career, Own Your Life by Andy Storch & Mike Kim (plus free workbook downloads)
Mike’s newsletter: mikekim.com/newsletter
Connect with Host Deb Meyer, CFP®
Founder of WorthyNest®, helping faith-driven parents build financial plans that reflect their values.
Download your FREE guide | Follow us on YouTube | Take the Financial Wellness Quiz
Full transcript
Deb Meyer (00:02.269)
Are you a corporate employee who believes personal branding is really only relevant to entrepreneurs? Well, my guest today, Mike Kim, is here to bust that myth. Mike is a specialist in branding strategy and also the author of You Are the Brand. It's a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller. On this episode, we're gonna dive into the mysterious world of AI.
Also, we're going to talk about Mike's latest book that he co-authored with Andy Storch called Own Your Brand, Own Your Career. When Mike's not leading masterminds, serving clients, or recording the brand new podcast, you can find him chilling with his dog Fiji or looking for the next great place to scuba dive. Mike, thanks so much for being on Beyond Budgets!
Mike Kim (00:49.416)
I am excited to be here and you reminded me of scuba diving, now I want to go. So it's been a little bit too long since I've gone.
Deb Meyer (00:53.865)
Well, this is a good time to go in the winter. Get out and get some sun and fun. Yeah, so I first became familiar with your work many, many moons ago. I was at the tribe conference that Jeff Goins hosted. It was probably in like 2017. I think that’s when he had the last conference.
Fast forward to today. I was actually part of your mastermind group in the last year. One of the things that really resonated for me back then and even now is the three P’s framework. I was hoping you could dive into the three P’s framework for those listeners who aren't as familiar with your work because I just think it's a really good reflection … whether you're an entrepreneur or more of a traditional employee, it resonates so strongly.
Mike Kim (01:50.518)
Yeah. I mean, this really stemmed from me trying to get at the heart of the matter. so, know, whether, whether you're looking to start a business or you are looking to move to the next level of fulfillment in your corporate career, I've been there too. Right. And invariably Deb, we all get to a point in our lives where we wonder why we do what we do. Like, why am I doing this? And what I've discovered is that
Deb Meyer (02:12.615)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike Kim (02:16.974)
It's really difficult sometimes to understand what we want, but it's much easier to know what we don't want. Right. And if you've ever wrestled with what to eat for dinner or what kind of outfit you wanted to buy at the mall, you know what I'm talking about. Hey, what do you want to eat for dinner tonight? Oh, anything is fine. And then your, your, your partner, your spouse, your friend goes, well, do you want Indian? Oh no, that's too spicy. Do you want Italian? No, too heavy. Right. So you do know. Right. And so, um,
Deb Meyer (02:23.795)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (02:41.225)
Right. You know what you don't want.
Mike Kim (02:44.982)
Yeah, you know what you don't want. So to draw what's inside, I came up with this framework years and years ago and I've been surprised how well it's worked. And I'm from New Jersey. I grew up here. And so we talk like this. So excuse my somewhat salty language, but I'm using it on purpose because all too often we play it safe. So the first question is what pisses you off? Just in general, what pisses you off? The second question is what breaks your heart?
Deb Meyer (03:07.561)
Sure.
Mike Kim (03:13.324)
And the third is what's the big problem you're trying to solve. And when you really look at another layer in what pisses you off is about the injustice that you're feeling, whether it's for your situation or somewhere out in the world or for people group or for a cause. We rarely ask that question. Right. And so it kind of, it kind of elevates our perspective. What breaks your heart is about the compassion you have.
for a certain situation, cause, people, even yourself, your family, right? It could be, and the big problem you solve is really the purpose of your business or your role at your company, your job, right? So that is a deeper question of meaning. And so I tend to look at these questions as ways to draw out what's really going on inside.
Deb Meyer (03:58.685)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (04:06.368)
And you want to lean into the emotion. always say that emotion is energy in motion. Sometimes when we ask these questions, we sanitize the answers. They become really diluted and that's not very helpful. I'm a big believer that friction moves you forward. You know, know you're now in Florida and you're enjoying the sunny weather, but you, you live for a long time in a very snowy area. So, so have I. You're trying to draw, drive a car out of the snow. Like you can't just keep moving forward.
Deb Meyer (04:17.097)
Mm.
Mike Kim (04:36.322)
You have to back the car up, try to, your front, trying to get the tires to find some friction. So friction moves you forward. So, I ask myself these questions very, very regularly because you evolve and you grow and you change. And I have found that the older I get, the more time passes, I sort of lull myself to sleep. So it's really important to dig into these questions and see what it reveals. And oftentimes that can function sort of as a North star. Yeah.
Deb Meyer (04:41.971)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (04:48.553)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (05:06.038)
So that's where it comes from.
Deb Meyer (05:06.057)
So how often are you revisiting it? You said you're frequently evaluating it. it like once a quarter is a good kind of timeframe for people to be thinking about it? Once a year?
Mike Kim (05:18.09)
I more do it, yeah, by feel. Like if I'm starting to feel pretty frustrated more days than not, I've got to sit down and ask myself, like, what am I really upset about? Like just before we started the episode, you asked, you how are you doing? And like the last four months have been a huge reinvention in my own career, like business-wise where I'm channeling my energy. And I just, that was because for about...
Deb Meyer (05:32.201)
Yeah.
Mike Kim (05:45.238)
A year, was just noticing I was always stressed out. was overworked, overextended. It didn't make sense for the amount of time that I was spending for the money that I was making. was like, something's off here. And what am I really upset about? Well, it might be that I'm working on this particular project or that particular task, but it's always a deeper thing. It usually stems from misalignment and anyone who is
Deb Meyer (05:56.328)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (06:05.331)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike Kim (06:09.142)
ever had their body feel like a little miss out of alignment or had a pebble in your shoe and you can't walk straight. And then all of sudden you realize like this really hurts to be able to pause, like sit with yourself and say, okay, something is off. Everything is trying to tell me something. I just need to slow down to listen. And that's, that's where it comes from. yeah.
Deb Meyer (06:18.654)
Yeah.
Deb Meyer (06:30.087)
Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you touched on the reinvention too, because I think, you know, for a lot of us, beyond budgets, listeners are all parents. Like we think, okay, if I just stay on this path that I've set before me, like it should be the safer route, right? It should be the one that provides for my family and whatever. But if you aren't showing up to the people in your life in a positive way,
it really can be more detrimental staying on a path that's not good for you than to like take a chance and maybe pursue this other direction, right? So could you speak a little bit more to that of like doing this reinvention, doing some really hard things in your business where you, know, significantly cut some of the long standing revenue you had and just completely shifted the paradigm? Like, was it a gradual process? Was it a...
quicker process for you. What have you learned in the four months since you've done it?
Mike Kim (07:29.292)
Yeah, yeah. And as a disclaimer, I don't have kids. So I want to qualify that because, you know, it's not the same. It's not the same. I realized that. So take this all with a grain of salt. Understand that I tend to be able to move faster or more agile. I don't have as many other commitments. But I think some of the principles will apply. one of the things for me, like for me,
Deb Meyer (07:33.639)
Yeah.
Mike Kim (07:58.35)
It was gradually fast. If it makes sense, if that makes sense, it was like, um, a slow, slow burn. And then all of a sudden there were some things that happened in my personal life. And I was just like, okay, something shifted in the energy. So earlier this year, we were running this in December. So, um, back in May, my father passed away and we weren't super, super close. We always had a really hard relationship. Um, you know, he was kind of estranged from our family.
Deb Meyer (08:01.433)
Okay.
Mike Kim (08:28.088)
But the last seven years, really, I really tried to patch things up with him and he became in oddly enough, a good friend in the last seven years, but, he died relatively young. He was still in his, in his seventies. he smoked a lot. And so it caught up with him. And when I, after he passed, I had to fly over to Korea and after, after he passed, it wasn't a conscious awareness, but
Deb Meyer (08:35.932)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (08:55.918)
definitely, it wasn't an intellectual thing, but some, I just started to sense like, Oh, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do that anymore. Like, or I need to move a little bit faster. I think there was just something about being at his bedside when he was about to die that puts those things in perspective. And he's really the first real loss that I've had in my family. So, uh, and I'm 40, I was 46 at that time. And so, um,
Deb Meyer (08:59.081)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (09:10.909)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (09:24.222)
It just, it just put a lot of new things in perspective. And I found that I was hungry for what I would call things of material consequence, right? Things that really, really mattered, both in my professional life and my personal life. there was a principle I came across called the Lindy effect, and this is a filter. It's, it's a decision-making filter. And the, the, the takeaway is basically that the longer something is endured,
Deb Meyer (09:33.737)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (09:47.241)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (09:51.17)
the more likely it will keep enduring. And that's how I want to live my life. It's a quirky term. It comes from Lindy's Deli. I was here in New York City in the mid-1900s. And comedians and showbiz people would hang out there and notice something. The longer a Broadway show had already run, the more likely it was going to keep running. And they would say, that show is Lindy. And so the basic takeaway is, if it's...
Deb Meyer (10:15.113)
Hmm.
Mike Kim (10:19.694)
If it's something long lasting, it's probably going to last even longer. And so I really started to shift, uh, shift the focus of my life and to do things that material consequence. I've written some books that was really meaningful to me when I went to go see my dad and I had to go to his apartment to clean everything up. He was in the hospital. When I walked in, I didn't see his laptop screen open with him reading my blog or listening to my podcast.
Deb Meyer (10:23.241)
Mm.
Mike Kim (10:48.564)
I saw copies of my books on his couch. I had no idea that they were there. So those are material things. And, I just started to realize, gosh, I'm doing all of these things, creating all this stuff for clients, web pages, social posts that have literally no tangibility. And I've never looked at my drop box and said, wow, look at this amazing body of work. I've only looked at books and the relationships I have.
Deb Meyer (11:08.328)
Mm.
Mike Kim (11:17.932)
And the only thing I want to be like, you know, immaterial are the memories that I have because those fade, right? So that was really how it started. And I began the slow process of trying not to blow up my life, do it in a way that was still honorable to my clients and not just leave them hanging. But that cutoff was at the end of August. And so a lot of things shifted there. So, you know, doing things of material consequence, like go Lindy. That's what I've been telling a lot of people.
Deb Meyer (11:23.23)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (11:34.195)
Sure.
Deb Meyer (11:44.937)
Well, and I love that it wasn't a fast, I mean, the way you described it as being both slow and fast, like you knew there was this dissonance, there was this tension, and it took you a while to finally say, hey, let's work out a plan to shift and change. But once you had your mind made up on it and you realize that significance, it really
it was just like, no going back, right? Like there was no world in which you were just going to be like, well, I'll just grab these clients that I'm letting go of in August and try to bring them back in January. Like you, made up the mind. This is what the new direction going forward.
Mike Kim (12:32.458)
Yeah, and I think that for the first time in my life, to be real honest, maybe outside of when I was in high school and college where they do this for you, you enter into a season of wintering.
Deb Meyer (12:41.897)
Mm.
Mm.
Mike Kim (12:45.646)
Uh, for a lot of us, you know, we're, listening to podcasts and we're reading books. We're always growing, whether you're an entrepreneur, an executive, you've got to roll at a company or whatever it is that you're, you're just trying to keep your family running. You know, I, I understand that my sister's got two crazy kids, you know, I love them, but there, it's just, uh, I'm like, gosh, this is three full-time jobs. And, um, it's so, yeah, it's so easy to go from one season right into the frantic nature of another.
Deb Meyer (13:05.705)
Circus sometimes. Yeah.
Deb Meyer (13:14.569)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (13:15.386)
And what I'm learning now, and especially these last three, four months has been the importance of wintering. we, high performers and go, go, go people, generally stink at this. And when you think about winter, it's, it's. We, it looks like there's no activity on the outside. It looks like the trees are dying, but really what's happening is that underneath the soil, the roots are getting stronger.
And they're growing deeper and it can feel weird because there is that dissonance. you said, like I'm supposed to be doing something. want to be running around and going and doing these things. But wintering is really about outgrowing yourself from the inside out. And so as I walk my dog and we just had our first snowfall here, I'm walking outside. I'm just like, wow, you don't see any of these leaves. I've walked that route for four years now with my dog. And I'm like, gosh, this, know that in the spring.
Deb Meyer (13:44.937)
Hmm.
Deb Meyer (13:52.627)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (14:02.845)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (14:15.118)
that bush on my neighbor's lawn is going to sprout some beautiful foliage, right? Beautiful flowers. And I think it's very, very easy to try to live up to whoever people think we are, rather than really, really understand what is going on, what do you have to focus on, and what that real work needs to be to winter. So that's what I'm learning.
Deb Meyer (14:21.821)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (14:28.915)
Hmm.
Mike Kim (14:42.254)
I am getting stronger and deeper and more rooted and grounded. And I just think that's really hard. So for people who have been go, go, go all the time.
Deb Meyer (14:55.133)
Right. It is. It's a challenge. I'm in this similar boat. mean, my mom passed away a few years ago and I went through that same kind of wintering process. I mean, honestly, like once I emerged from it, it was the start of the podcast. Like it was something on my heart for a while. And I finally was just like, Hey,
Mike Kim (15:12.557)
Hmm.
Deb Meyer (15:15.721)
Let's try this. And here we are over two years later still doing the podcast. So really cool things can spring from it when you take some of those kind of calculated risks.
Mike Kim (15:21.613)
Yeah.
Mike Kim (15:28.78)
Yeah, absolutely.
Deb Meyer (15:31.187)
So I know a lot of us have heard about entrepreneurship, which is running and starting a small business, but can you talk about the intrapreneurship side? A lot of the listeners here are parents who are in traditional corporate roles. So how could they be maybe considering being an intrapreneur?
Mike Kim (15:51.598)
Yeah. So entrepreneurship, this is sort of the way that I grew, grew up in, like many people do. You work in an organization, a company, and really comes down to leading without a title. To be honest, I never thought I would be an entrepreneur. I, I was shocked. Like until recently, I was shocked that I went out on my own until when I did a little bit of wintering and sat with myself.
Deb Meyer (16:05.097)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (16:13.374)
Yeah.
Mike Kim (16:19.03)
I realized, gosh, I've had, always had a lot of tendencies that I now see are really important to an entrepreneur. I just didn't have a model for it. My parents were entrepreneurs. Nobody in my family that I knew ran a business like among my uncle's aunts. And if they did, I didn't really know about it. I wasn't close to them. And so, where it really started for me was just being a really good team player, you know, on the teams that I was on.
Deb Meyer (16:44.841)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (16:47.944)
I like sports and you know, there's always debates in the NBA around who's the best player, you know, of all time. And if you talk to any of those players really in depth, they'll always say, we wouldn't have won these championships without the role players on our team, the secondary tertiary players on our team. And so, when I think about if you are in a workplace situation, that's actually great because you don't carry any of the risk.
You can test out any new ideas. It's not your business that's going to burn to the ground. So when I look back on my career, I was the CMO of a company that was my last role about a little over 10 years ago. Before that, I worked on staff at a church. Before that, I was working at an afterschool academy teaching SATs and critical reading to high school and junior high students to prep for their tests. And before that, I was involved in church.
Deb Meyer (17:18.633)
True.
Deb Meyer (17:25.299)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (17:46.702)
you know, in, doing youth groups. So these are all really high collaborative environments. And I had my own arena that I was responsible for, but I still had to play on the team of the organization that I was on. And so when I, when I think through that, um, and I think about where can I, where can I add value? Where can I do things that are small risks where the reward can be pretty significant?
Deb Meyer (17:51.497)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (18:14.034)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (18:16.78)
And I can learn a lot of things and get some much needed experience. When I was the CM of the company I worked at, I asked them, Hey, can you invest in, can we invest? Can we use some of the budget to invest in some courses that I want to take in digital marketing? I think that will really help our company. And they're like, yeah. So they covered the bill and I got to learn and those skills have stayed with me all these years later. When I was working at a church, we did a bunch of music recordings and I was on stage a lot. hosted conferences.
Deb Meyer (18:36.969)
Thanks. Yeah.
Mike Kim (18:46.54)
That's why I am very, very comfortable running events. literally ran an event every weekend. Right. So, looking for those things where in your career, your day to day, there are skills and experiences that you can have and develop and grow without having your, your tail on the line. That's what I'm looking for. That's what I would encourage people to look for.
Deb Meyer (18:50.343)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Deb Meyer (19:11.943)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (19:15.717)
Awesome. Thank you for explaining that. Yeah, I think for a lot of people, they get intimidated with the idea of rocking the boat, especially if they're in a more traditional company. And I'm sure even just depending on the size of the organization, some organizations are very proactive and love feedback from employees and others are a little like, hey, no, this is how we've done it. Let's keep our protocols, right?
So I am curious as people kind of think about personal branding even in the traditional employment context, for those who are at like more rigid organizations that aren't super comfortable having them share on social media, do you have any suggestions for those employees that do want to, you maybe be more active or present on LinkedIn as an example?
Mike Kim (20:11.594)
Yeah, I think that one of the, I hear that a lot and trust me, I was there when I started out. didn't, I wasn't comfortable expressing some of the things that I wanted. I wasn't actually back that up. wasn't even comfortable expressing myself. And what I think what happens over time is that you graduate, especially for those who are, are my age and older.
Deb Meyer (20:18.289)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (20:25.885)
You
Mike Kim (20:35.49)
You're taught to sort of, you said, keep your head down, just show up at work. Social media wasn't a thing until I was literally in my thirties. Right. We, didn't grow up with this. And so I've worked primarily with people in my age group and older. And what I've seen is that we generally have an atrophied muscle of self-expression. We didn't grow up sharing our thoughts and ideas online. So one of the easiest places to start.
Deb Meyer (20:50.825)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (20:59.123)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (21:05.8)
is to just share what you're reading or what you're listening to or what you're learning. has nothing to really do with you. But if you say, Hey, I've been reading this great book, whatever it is, right. And you share one takeaway from that book that was meaningful to you, post that on LinkedIn and get provide a link to that book. What that actually does is it signals to everybody who follows you and sees that post that you are a learner that you read.
Deb Meyer (21:10.974)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (21:35.82)
That is actually still pretty rare in everyday life. You are somebody who's interested in personal growth and you can, you can apply that to professional growth. If you do that weekly and just share a book update once a week for three months, everyone will think you're a real learner and a genius. You'll be very surprised and you're not having to come up with your own stories. You're not having to share anything on a vulnerable nature. You're just sharing what I've learned or
a takeaway from a podcast that you watched. Now imagine you up the ante and then start sharing lessons from your personal life or personal growth or your professional life, as long as it doesn't intrude or step on the toes of your company or your team. You're going to start to signal to everybody that you're someone who has good ideas worth sharing, that you are somebody who's very growth minded that can not do anything but help you.
There's no way that's not going to help you. so rather than thinking about a personal brand as an influencer online, I hate that word by the way. You already have a personal brand. When I was growing up, we just called that your reputation. In this day and age, we just call it your personal brand because of social media. We think about the word branding, but bottom line, you have a reputation. You have a personal brand, whether you realize it or not, it's your reputation.
So why not take the extra effort to shape it, right? To shape it. if your boss has a problem with you reading books, there's a deeper issue. So there's always something that you can share without it being, without it rocking the boat too much, but also helping you get those reps in and expressing yourself and sharing what you're learning. So that's where I would start.
Deb Meyer (23:15.497)
You
Deb Meyer (23:28.979)
Yeah, and there's also a fine line, I'm sure, like if you see someone who hasn't ever had any reputation of posting online and suddenly they're posting every day, maybe that could be a signal to their employer they're starting to look around or something for other employment. But if it's just a regular habit you're forming of, you know, once a week, sharing an insightful comment from a book or a podcast you listen to, yeah, that's not going to raise any red flags or cause people to.
Mike Kim (23:44.118)
Right. Right.
Mike Kim (23:54.478)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (23:58.707)
you know, be nervous. again, it's not something, I mean, I'm sure listeners are at all different levels, whether they're happy in their current roles or perhaps looking for other roles, but regardless of where you sit on that, it's an important time to be considering building a personal brand online, regardless of the role and whether you're actively looking. Okay, cool. Let me move on to...
Mike Kim (24:17.9)
Yeah, absolutely.
Deb Meyer (24:27.079)
that person who maybe has a nice LinkedIn profile that they want to just leverage it a little bit more. Do you have any suggestions on improving the LinkedIn presence? Because I know you wrote a whole chapter about it in the book, and I think it's just important for people to hear what could be good.
starting point for really leveraging the power of LinkedIn.
Mike Kim (24:56.704)
I think, yeah, we have a lot of templates in the book, which you can, by the way, you can download for free without even buying the book. So just go to own your brand book.com. There's a whole workbook and we did that because it's really difficult to copy and paste stuff from within in a book. So my, my co-author Andy, he's just, she, he's just terrific on. LinkedIn and he's actually guided me a lot on that process, but
Deb Meyer (25:03.149)
wow. Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (25:12.157)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (25:19.731)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (25:23.49)
What LinkedIn really boils down to the magic of LinkedIn is connecting with others. So yes, there's stuff in the workbook about optimizing your headline and your profile and all that stuff. And that's really, really good. But doing that without doing what I'm about to share doesn't really get you anywhere. What you want to do is commit to just leaving a couple of thoughtful comments per week on people that pop up in your feed. Just leave a thoughtful comment because
Deb Meyer (25:29.065)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (25:46.407)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (25:51.554)
The way these algorithms work on social media channels or things like LinkedIn is that they track who you're connecting with, who's posts you're commenting on. And if they're showing up in your feed, it's very likely that the people who are also looking at that same post have some similarities with you, right? It's just friends of friends. So leave thoughtful comments on people who post things that pop up on your feed and don't just comment on the big name people.
Deb Meyer (26:11.177)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (26:22.316)
The way I look at it is you want to partner up, collaborate across and mentor around. So you want to have some, some differentiation between who you're engaging with on LinkedIn. Another thing I've been doing for the past, just little by little, but slowly over the last eight weeks is surprising people who I know in my network, some of whom I haven't talked to for a long time and surprising them by leaving a recommendation for them on LinkedIn.
Deb Meyer (26:49.75)
Aww, that's sweet.
Mike Kim (26:50.636)
Right. So like, yeah, but if you think about this, I I've had over the years, hundreds of people come through programs that I've had. I've been their coach, hundreds of people. I've had hundreds of people where I've spoken to their communities or at their events or their podcasts like this. Right. And then we lose touch. And I thought to myself, why don't I just pop up on their LinkedIn? Let me start with the people I work with most directly right now.
Deb Meyer (27:09.297)
Mm-hmm. Mm.
Mike Kim (27:19.788)
and then move out in concentric circles and leave them a LinkedIn review, leave them a recommendation. So I think I've, I've, I, and I try to make it very meaningful. don't put generic stuff. try to be specific and I left maybe nine of them, like in the last two weeks and without prompting, I got four back and then it
Deb Meyer (27:20.232)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (27:33.801)
Sure.
Deb Meyer (27:42.569)
Thanks.
Deb Meyer (27:46.652)
Aww.
Mike Kim (27:47.862)
circulates conversations. Hey, how are you doing? Thanks so much for that recommendation. and I didn't even ask them for one. just blind, like quietly left pops up on their free on their feed. Imagine what would happen in your life if you just did that consistently for six months, there's no way that in month seven, new opportunities wouldn't open up for you. They're probably going to happen earlier. And the thing, the beauty about it, you know,
Deb Meyer (27:55.494)
Yeah, yeah.
Deb Meyer (28:13.371)
But even if they don't, it's just nice to like appreciate people. Yeah.
Mike Kim (28:17.422)
Yeah. And you're just showing up with a different kind of energy. You're, you're, you're in, and it shows on your LinkedIn profile, how many recommendations that you've left. So people's, this is a generous person. They're very thoughtful. They're, they're a networker. And in actuality, the more that you grow your LinkedIn profile or in your career, the more meaningful that testimonial or that endorsement becomes. So.
Deb Meyer (28:26.846)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (28:42.409)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (28:43.726)
Yes, you can send an email. Hey, thank you. Yes, you can send a text. Thank you. But in the professional world, LinkedIn is, I mean, it's as close as you can get to a permanent record unless you delete your profile. So why not make a show of it and hype somebody up on their page and rebuild those connections? You just never know. You just never know. So that's been my secret tactic here.
behind the scenes and usually I just run off like two or three at a time. And it can happen in 15, 20 minutes when I'm sitting between calls where I'm clicking around on LinkedIn and instead, well, we'll get hold on. I'm consuming too much content. Let me leave a few thoughtful comments. Let me go write a review or an endorsement for one of the people in my coaching group or a contractor that I hired or a company that had me come and speak. Why not? Super easy. So
Deb Meyer (29:14.419)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (29:34.76)
Mm-hmm.
Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Let's switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about the AI Summit that you held over the summer. I loved just the variety of speakers. I remember listening, why am I forgetting his name? But he was, you're in his mastermind, right? I don't know.
Mike Kim (30:02.051)
Ryan Levesque. Yeah. Yep.
Deb Meyer (30:03.121)
Yes, Ryan, so he was talking about how he's actually done away with AI and like, we'll spend hours in a given week crafting one email to go out to his email list. And I'm like, okay, that sounds good in, in premise. And then you have people on the other extreme that are like, all they do is AI content and they just don't personalize it. You can tell it's very AI generated, right?
Mike Kim (30:11.97)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (30:15.768)
Mm.
Deb Meyer (30:32.859)
Where do you see AI going, especially for parents that are trying to, you know, kind of keep their professional posture good and utilize technology in a healthy way? Do you see anything as we look into like 2026 and beyond shaping how people are using AI on a regular basis?
Mike Kim (30:55.286)
Yeah, there's two schools of thought. Like you just mentioned, I sit somewhere in the middle, but I gravitate more towards less AI. The reason for that. And again, perspective, I'm a business owner. I've built my business over the last 10 plus years on being myself and my audience trusts that whatever I put my name on, whether I use AI or not, I touched that that passed through my desk. Right.
Deb Meyer (31:02.813)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (31:21.149)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (31:22.09)
So that's a, that is a relationship I never ever, ever want to break. I don't want to break that trust. So personally, I use AI a lot. I use it to ideate. I use it to brain dump. I like that it can keep pace with the way that I think. I have a million thoughts running through my head, as you know, all the time. And so
It's helpful there in terms of doing a lot of the grant work or being a thinking partner. And I would say less thinking and more reflecting because I understand essentially how an LLM works. It's there to make me happy. So it has certain biases. It's not really going to push back unless I instruct it to. And even if I tell it to push back on some of my ideas, it's just using what I've already given it and giving me the opposite.
So I understand that, but I am a writer. write. So a language learning model for a writer is great. This is like, I'm like a kid in a candy shop because I love language. I love words. I love how they're combined in ways I never would have thought to combine them. So it's great for me in that sense. Right now. The flip side is if I had kids, they would absolutely be learning AI every day. I would be sitting them down. like, well, where are you going to learn how to, uh,
Deb Meyer (32:18.215)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (32:29.395)
Sure.
Deb Meyer (32:44.445)
Hmm.
Mike Kim (32:47.032)
build this, build that workflow we're going to learn because those are the skills that are going to be important in the future. And they're, they're going to, they're going to think I would die a dinosaur. Like you seriously wrote a whole book and you typed every letter into a computer and did that literally fingertips on. Yeah, I did. I did it several times. Like that is so crazy. I can't believe you did that. That's how they're going to think about us. So
Deb Meyer (33:02.377)
You
Yeah. Yeah.
Deb Meyer (33:14.441)
Mmm.
Mike Kim (33:16.054)
This is just technology and every piece of technology, every new invention always scares people. And I think I'm legitimately scared of what AI can do. But the reality is it's here. It's being crammed down our throats and the people who are using it intuitively, wisely, in a way that streamlines what they're already good at, they're going to get way ahead. And I have felt that already.
Like I'm just like moving at a pace that I'm just like, I could not have done this three years ago. So, I, I, it's incredibly important and it's also incredibly important to understand what it is. It is not a substitute for human beings. There are things that AI cannot, like there are fundamental things that AI cannot relate to me on. It is not alive. It is not organic.
Deb Meyer (33:50.067)
Sure.
Deb Meyer (33:59.358)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (34:12.588)
that you and I know, you walk into a building or walk into a new city or go to church or you're with loved ones, you cannot verbalize what you're feeling. It is an exchange of energy and love and belonging. Those are just words on a screen that an AI spits back to us. So you can use AI to communicate. You can use it to contextualize your thoughts, but it cannot replace that.
Deb Meyer (34:23.314)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (34:41.814)
It cannot, at least for us, our generation, if you're somewhat self-aware, which I think all of us here are because we're listening to podcasts and trying to grow, right? This is not, I'm not going to formulate a romantic relationship with an inanimate object, right? But kids might, because they don't know any different. Yeah, that's a huge, I would absolutely agree.
Deb Meyer (34:41.896)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (34:57.767)
Hmm. Right.
Deb Meyer (35:04.059)
That's a concern, yeah. It's like teaching them the boundaries, right? Because we can have boundaries as adults. We have fully formed brains. But our kids don't have fully formed brains. So yeah, there's a fine line. What is it? Were they like...
Mike Kim (35:12.109)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (35:16.974)
It reminds me of you. Remember those Tamaguchi pets? Are you familiar with those Tamaguchis? They were like a little, it was like a little rabbit or cat or dog. It was like about this big. This is popular when I was going, when I was in high school and college. And you would, you'd have to press the button to feed the dog. It's a little dog. It's a digital dog on the little device like this. And if you forget to do it, it dies. And like,
Deb Meyer (35:28.305)
I'm thinking of something different.
Deb Meyer (35:37.737)
you
Mike Kim (35:44.472)
people I knew got really sad about that. I'm like, it's not, what are you talking about? It's a little device. Well, that was 30 years ago, but it's a little device. Kids now, if they have a smartphone, they got this thing talking to them literally all day at any hour. It's so much more, it takes up so much more space. It's such a bigger presence.
Deb Meyer (35:46.985)
It's not real.
Deb Meyer (35:52.423)
Right. Right.
Deb Meyer (36:11.453)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (36:11.51)
in their lives and if they don't know how to use it properly or understand what it is, that would absolutely concern me. What does give me hope is that there is kind of a counter movement. Every time there's a huge movement in one direction, you always have counter movements. So I know that there are entire get togethers in college where there are no phones or devices allowed. There are parties. I just thought this was funny. This is how far we've come.
Deb Meyer (36:34.238)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (36:39.586)
where college students will get together for a party and for the first hour, they can't use any devices. It's a no device time block in a night of socializing. That's how far we've gone. Yeah. Yeah. You got to your phone in the bag. You know, this envelope or something like that. can't take it out. And it is incredible to see how addicted we've become to this. And I will also admit like I have no AI days.
Deb Meyer (36:49.545)
They have to have a restriction around it though.
Mike Kim (37:08.14)
I have days where I restrict, like I don't want to use it on weekends. There's nothing I need to talk to about like, okay, I want to book a, you know, concert tickets or something like that. should have done that during the week. I try not to talk to it during the week, during the weekend. I'm like, I need to read an actual physical. Yeah. Just be away from it. I don't keep social media on my phone. I've, I've followed that practice for years, which is odd because I do, I'm quite involved in the marketing world, but I don't keep that stuff on my phone.
Deb Meyer (37:08.561)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (37:23.305)
Just be away from the technology.
Deb Meyer (37:36.2)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (37:38.476)
Yeah, I have to remind myself I'm human. All these things are trying to substitute for actual real relationships in my life.
Deb Meyer (37:38.792)
Yeah.
Deb Meyer (37:46.087)
Yeah, well, thank you. It's good to hear another perspective because I do think people get concerned of being on one end or the other. And I think you found a happy medium. I've modeled after you from a professional standpoint as well, utilizing AI in certain respects, but knowing that I'm the ultimate person filtering through those ideas and really coming up with the content directly. So it's good.
Mike Kim (38:12.814)
Mm-hmm.
Deb Meyer (38:16.137)
This has been a real pleasure and I know we're getting short on time. Could you just share with listeners where people can best find you or connect with you online?
Mike Kim (38:25.324)
Yeah, the best place would be my newsletter, which I write without AI. This is something I have taken page out of Ryan's book. You can go to mikekim.com/newsletter. It's absolutely free. It's usually a little bit longer form. And I have since syndicated that to my podcast and to my YouTube channel. So I literally read the entire newsletter on my podcast and my YouTube channel. And what I'm writing about these days is about reinvention.
Deb Meyer (38:30.781)
Thanks. Nice.
Mike Kim (38:54.286)
wisdom, you know, there are some things that I talked about, you know, in our conversation here, uh, sharing your wisdom with the world, sharing those stories. There are some applications in personal branding and business. think I'll always have a hand in those areas, but I'm really, really trying to help people find and understand and value what it means to be human in this, in this age of AI. And I'm in the middle of midlife, you know,
Deb Meyer (39:11.241)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Kim (39:22.862)
So there's a lot of changes going on there too. So I'm just kind of sharing some of the stories and lessons I've learned along the way. just mykim.com forward slash newsletter. I don't have a fancy title for it yet. I don't know if I ever will, but that's the best place to find me. Yeah.
Deb Meyer (39:34.639)
Mm-hmm. It's a gem. I'm reading it diligently and I love it. So thank you.
Mike Kim (39:42.648)
Thank you!