The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

Mike Kim: Kevin, it's an honor. Thank you for having me. And for all those who are tuning in, I just hope that add a value to everybody today.

Kevin: Mike and I were talking before we went live that we've been trying to do this for a while. We started last September and had a hiccup. And then originally we were scheduled for yesterday and then we had to change it as well. But I'm so glad that you here you are. Here you. I'm guessing you didn't you didn't wake up from your dreams as an eight year old saying I'm going to be a brand strategist.

In fact, I'm pretty confident, Mike, that that wasn't your original goal. Tell us a little bit about the journey that gets you to this point. Just to give people context.

Mike: Yeah, when I was a kid, I think I wanted to be I wanted to draw comic books. That's what I want to do with my life. So now here we are. Right? I wasn't that good at it. I guess maybe I should just read comic books for a living. But one thing I've always loved is storytelling. I've always loved good stories.

I'm still a story junkie. I love I love reading a good story. Love watching a good story. I love playing a good story. You know, in the past, when I was younger and had time to play video games and stuff like that. And really, life is all about stories in and but somehow, someway, you know, I've ended up here in this position but I started out in the creative arts.

I started out in music. I started out as the music director for a church that I, you know, a couple of hours away here from New York City in in Connecticut. And what I fell in love with was putting the things into music, words, stories that could really impact people's lives. I think that human beings, we resonate with stories because we want to know we're not alone.

And we know we want to know that this journey is not singularly ours. And the more and more that we can tap into each other's narratives and stories the more hope we have, the more encouragement we have, the more learning we have. And we become better as a human being and as a society, hopefully. And so I went through several career pivots on the on the very like, you know, you know, boots on the ground kind of changes that I made, I left that career in music, and I taught SATs for a little while with high school students.

I did that through college and then that same company hired me to do their marketing. And I realized I knew a lot about marketing because of my music career. And I knew a lot about teaching in general because of how I taught SATs. And when I found marketing, it was a perfect confluence of messaging, organizational growth and leadership and creativity.

And it was just it was just this perfect kind of storm for me. But really, a lot of my journey just started with being unhappy with where I was and trying to figure out where I was going. And so that's that's how I've ended up here.

Kevin: Mike, I appreciate that. I want to share. So so first of all, everybody, if you've been listening or watching for a while, you know that I almost always ask that question when we start when I'm talking with folks. And there's a couple of reasons. And and there are leadership lessons in both. One of them is it gives us an initial story to put context on my guest or on the guest with for all of you.

And so you have a little more of a sense of who Mike is because of that story. And so it's purposeful in that regard. And it's interesting because you talk about stories. And so you told us in short a story about your life in doing that and the second another not the only other reason, but other reason that I that I'll relate back to that right now is that for us as leaders will be far more effective when we understand more about the stories of the folks that we lead.

And obviously, Mike, does it work for me? But in the context of today, there's a little bit of that sort of positional difference. And so there's maybe some value there. Mike, you you ended up where you belong. Right. And I think that's one of the things that we have in common. We're both doing what I believe we were put on Earth to do.

And so you wrote this book called You Are the Brand. So let's just start here. Let's just start with what is sort of a simple question, certainly a simple question for you. What is a personal brand because some people that are listening or watching may have never thought about it. Really? What is a personal brand?

Mike: Yeah, well, it really starts with branding and branding has always been about identity, you know, whether it was. Most people know this, that the concept of branding started with livestock. These farmers would brand, you know, an identifying mark onto the hide of their cow and say, "That's my cow. If he runs off, it's mine." You know, the name tagged it.

Okay. And so we branded something in there. Now, hundreds of years later, you know, hundreds of years ago, we started to see this concept of branding as identity move into the business space. There was a guy named Josiah Wedgwood was born in the 1700s. He was an English potter and he entered a pottery competition hosted by Queen Charlotte. Won.

And in a stroke of genius, started calling all of his pottery queensware because you imagine at the time pottery just in a random shop that he was selling, you know, you'd walk down to Josiah's shop and buy his nameless, faceless pottery. Well, after he won.

Kevin: He wasn't actually a Pottery Barn. It might have been a Pottery Barn, but it was pottery.

Mike: Yeah. It didn't have any logos on it, that's for sure. And so he started calling all his pottery queensware, opened up showrooms for an affluent market in London. And he pioneered these practices of free delivery and money back guarantees. It wasn't Jeff Bezos, you know. And when we think about branding, whether it's livestock or whether it's pottery or whether it's us as human beings or as leaders.

Branding has always been about identity. A sneaker's, a sneaker until you put a swoosh on it. Now it's a Nike sneaker. It's just about identity. So when we talk about a personal brand. What does that mean? It is a public facing identity that is comprised of four things. I would say this is what I say. Your ideas, your expertise, your reputation and your personality.

And I can't think of a better audience to have this conversation with than with leaders. Because if the first three things all being the same, all things being equal from one leader to another, there are folks who will just like you because of your personality or won't. Has nothing to do with your expertise. Has nothing to do with your ideas.

You may have just a stellar reputation as the leader next to you. And oftentimes we don't understand that human beings make these decisions on whether we like somebody or not. You know, based on, you know, all of these things that are out there right. So when I think through what makes a personal brand, it's really confluence of those four things.

Kevin: Perfect.

Ideas, Expertise, reputation and personality. So so now I think everyone who is watching or listening, whatever that might be, would say, okay, that makes sense. If if I'm one of Mike's clients, if I'm an author or if I'm a speaker or if I'm a coach, if I'm a Kevin, even then the question would be, why does that matter to me as a leader?

Why should- now I have an answer for this. And I think it's obvious to me, but I would really love to hear your thoughts about this. Why should every leader in an organization think about this idea of them as a brand? What's the connection there when we're not talking about the marketplace in the traditional way?

Mike: Yeah, I love this this kind of angle, because when you think about a brand and we're all familiar with thousands of brands. It's the shoes we wear, it's the clothes we wear, it's the cars we drive, it's companies we trust or don't trust. Right. A brand a brand is simply what people say about you when you're not in the room.

And if you're a leader, you need to be paying attention to that. You know, they might sit up straight and feign paying attention when you walk into the room, but when you're out of that boardroom or that company meeting or whatever it is and people are talking smack about you behind your back, you don't really have as much influence

as you think you do. And I would dare say I would take this a step further. It's not just about what people say about you when you're not in the room. It's it's what people say about before you even get in the room. And if they don't know what to say.

Kevin: About you while you're in the room.

Mike: Yeah. And if you're not shaping that narrative in some way, shape or form or being intentional about it, my friend, you're you're you're behind the eight-ball already. We see this at play all the time in business, in leadership, in sports and celebrity culture, whatever it is, politics. You can say Elon Musk is more famous than Tesla. He's more famous than his own company.

And there are people who will follow him and respect him simply because now of who he is, his brand. Mark Cuban, the same thing, who is more famous.

Kevin: Even more so with Mark.

Mike: Than being the owner of a of the Dallas Mavericks, that they have immediate buy in with a large part of their followers, a large part of the marketplace. And so Elon Musk tweeting about cryptocurrency. There's this thing called the halo effect in leadership, where if you're an expert in one niche or industry, people will all automatically assume you know what you're doing in another one, which is why politicians will recruit celebrities who know nothing about politics.

Let's be honest, to endorse them. There's all this psychological stuff going on. And if you're a leader and you think, I just all I need to do is be the best it doesn't. I just need to get the best results. That's all that really matters. Then how come Michael Jordan isn't everyone's favorite basketball player? He's the best who's ever lived.

But there are a lot of people who don't like him. It has nothing to do with his expertize. It's his personality. Some people don't like his personality. And if you are in a certain type of organization or role and you're treating everything that you see like a nail because you're a hammer that's not going to work in certain organizations, you got to understand where you are.

I work with a lot of people who are nonprofit organizations. They can't. The top down leadership, doesn't work there. You know, so there's a lot of a lot of questions as we go into this. So, you know, back to what you were asking. I think branding is the reason leaders need to pay attention to this is that your people are having conversations about you, whether you realize it or not.

It's just a conversation they're having.

Kevin: And to drive at home. It's impacting how successful you are with them for them and and because of them. And so that so one of the reasons I was so excited to have you on, obviously, Mike knows who recommended him to me to have it to to see the book and because of my world, you know, I'm interested in this book for the ideas that are in it, that are in it because of the work that we do.

But I knew that it had impact for all of us here. And so if you take out for those of you that are still you're hanging with us but yourself for some reason struggling. The reality is take out the idea take out the word branding and everything that we've said. You can frame it around role model and behavior around your ability to influence how you want to put it, because everything about branding it ultimately is about influence, which means that all of this applies to how we can be helping our team members with their brands, if you will.

You want to comment on that? Like what's our role as a leader? How can we as a leader? I'm a middle manager anywhere in the world, right? And I've got a team of folks. How can I? Or what advice would you have for helping them with these ideas besides buying a copy of the book?

Mike: Yeah, the book and probably help a little bit here and there. You know, you take what lessons you can glean from it. You know, one of the things I say there, you know, this is a hill I'll die on. You know, we live in a culture today of image, you know, social media. You can you can carefully craft a certain image you know, whichever way you want on Instagram, on LinkedIn, even.

And I don't want people to be mistaken. I'm not talking about building a brand. I'm talking about you becoming who you say you claim to be. You don't build a brand, become the brand, become who you're trying to sell to people. And we've seen this all throughout human history. Kevin, this is nothing new. This is a human problem, right?

Where we meet leaders who say certain things and then do the complete opposite they make certain promises, promises and break them. They tell people how to live and they do the exact opposite. They feel they are exempt from these things and leadership is influence. Leadership is trust. Leadership is what you decide you're going to make it. But in this increasingly, openly transparent culture where you can find out anything about anyone based on what they've posted online, the world is starving for integrity.

And by integrity, I don't mean morals. I mean, you know, that word integrity comes from integer. It's a mathematical term, it's indivisible, it's a number that is not divisible by a whole number, which means that you are who you say you are, you know, all the time. This is just you. And so you're doing the hard work of becoming the person you claim to be or want to be.

We're saying that you are. That's really what I'm talking about. When we talk about middle management. You see people do this all the time. They pass the buck, they talk down to people, they use positional authority to give marching orders. But back to are some of these examples of folks that we've talked about. Regardless of what you feel about Elon Musk or Mark Cuban or any of these folks with a large part of their follower, they have an incredible amount of trust.

People just trust them. People just willing to say, I'm going to give this person way more than the benefit of doubt. They've got my by and no matter what they do. And so if you're in middle management, whatever rung you are on the ladder of leadership, if you if you're intentional about how you want your leadership to start to be right and you allow that to permeate culture, okay, now we have something that is brand double.

This is how we do things here. This is where a company culture is born. This is how we do things here. It's not over there. This is how we do things here. You know, you think about Ritz-Carlton, they travel a lot in their training, their hospitality, training, is world class. They talk to they refer to everybody in their training permits, ladies and gentlemen, they know you don't walk in and say, All right, guys.

Hey, fellas. Hey, guys. We're going to it's it's intentional. And it can be what you want. It can be what you want. Just be intentional about it, right?

Kevin: I love that idea of of becoming you, right? Because there's there are principles of leadership that apply regardless, principles of influence in other things. And yet no one can lead like you. And that isn't that isn't a a carte blanche to say, well, I'm not good at this or that but rather it's to bring ideas, expertize reputation and personality, and there's no one else that's quite like you.

So one of the things that you talk about in the book and so I'm going to sort of balance the ideas from the book directly from some of the stuff we're talking about is the idea of platform. And I'd like you to talk about platform really sort of sort of in the from the book's perspective of if I'm if I'm trying to market myself in the world, if I'm trying to become my brand, be my brand, what is it?

What does platform mean? So again, some people here may not know that terminology. So talk about platform.

Mike: Yeah. By platform I just mean a stage and we have many stages. We have LinkedIn, have Instagram, we've YouTube, we have our emails. We have. And what I mean by that is that in this world, right, of online communication, I tell my students this. You are what you share. You are what you should. If you think through everything that you're sharing online, that is what people associate you with.

Now, I know we're not talking specifically about marketing, but one of the things I always say in marketing is that marketing isn't about closing a sale. It's about opening a relationship. Yeah. Well, how do you do that?

Kevin: The lines in the book, as.

Mike: It turns out, and and how do you do that? How do you open relationships with people? You talk, share what you know, you share a little bit about yourself and this is something that all of us leaders, employees, team members, wherever you sit on that spectrum, have to understand, learn their entire companies right now. Kevin, that don't care about you sending in a CV, they will they will base their decision on whether to hire you or not, simply by looking at your Facebook or LinkedIn feeds because they feel like that's the real you.

Anyone can doctor up the resume. But if I'm going back three years into your Twitter feed, I'm going to get the real you. And we've seen that happen in cancel culture for better or worse. Right. You know, people being canceled from things they posted when they were a kid ten, 15 years ago. Okay. And that's a whole other rabbit hole.

But the point is, you are what you post, you are what you share. And we all have these platforms, whether we realize it or not, it just depends how you use them. Now, I think that as leaders, there is a golden opportunity to be intentional about how we use these platforms to share great ideas, to showcase our our unique expertize, to establish our reputation and to showcase a little bit of our personality.

All those four things, if we're intentional about them as leaders. You know, I've got my phone here and honestly, I'd rather lose my wallet than my phone.

Kevin: I mean, the intervention here, Mike, on that. But go ahead.

Mike: Let me explain. You can cancel credit cards, but if someone has the passcode to my phone, they're in everything, all of my photos, all of my social media accounts, all of my email account, it's scary. Our entire lives on this phone. Now, let me flip the side of the coin.

If I have access to somebody on this device, they're willingly raising their digital hand and saying, Mike, Kim, I want you to talk to me on the most private device that I own. I want to watch your videos or read your emails or read your tweets or look at your Instagram pictures. On this thing while I'm huddled under the covers in bed because I can't go to bed without looking at my phone.

That is an incredible level of access, and I see a lot of leaders squandering it. They're not leveraging it. So leaders who are. Yeah, are meeting those people and let me let me let me close with this phrase here. They're meeting people in their own space and at their own pace. Think about how powerful that is. I don't have to log in to a webinar at one Eastern to talk or hear from me or learn from you.

I don't even need to like buy a book. I can just sample you by looking at one minute videos on your Instagram or LinkedIn feed and whether you're a leader or in a business or an organization, whether you're a counselor, whether you're a motivational speaker, whether you're a life coach, whether you're helping women through pregnancy, or helping people through divorce in the toughest times of their life, job loss, you name it.

And I can talk to that person in their weakest moments because they say yes to me on their phone. That's influence. That's where trust is built. Holy cow. Right. So yeah, at their own space and in their in their own place.

Kevin: So we bumped up against a question that I really was hoping that we would get to. And the question is, so I again, I am not planning to talk about me, but if I'm a listener and I'm not planning to write a book, I know we can get to the career aspect of this in the second, but I'm just talking about like I just want to be a better leader for my team.

How should or how could or how might I use social media differently? What advice would you give to me as a sort of, you know, wanting to be a successful leader in an organization? How how might I be using social media differently? You bumped up against it. I'd like you to take us over the bridge.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. I'll I'll relate a story because one of my best friends, Henry, he's a recruiter for the nationally known, you know, food company. And we're about the same age. We grew up together since we were like about 11 or 12 years old. He lives 5 minutes away from me. And he says, Oh, man, I have a training today with my team, and he's a leader.

He leads hundreds of people. He has staffed entire supermarkets you know, if I needed the name, everyone would know it. I'm in New York City. And he said, I don't know what to say in the training. And I'm like, Well, what do you believe And he's having trouble creating content, right? But he's a strong leader. And so I help him come up with some, some talking points for a presentation.

And he goes, Oh, everybody loves it. After I was like, Yeah, you should share that on your LinkedIn feed is like, What? Who am I to tell people? I'm like, What do you mean? Who are you to tell people your company just had you tell everybody what you learned. And I just helped him with this concept. So right there on a base level, if you are sharing things on your platform, whatever channel you use, things that you're learning that help you become a better leader, share with your team.

Because what that does is it.

Kevin: Invites.

Mike: In their mind, right? Yeah.

Kevin: In Henry's brains and their mind around.

Mike: It brands in their mind, Henry's a learner. He's he's he wants to excel. He's hungry to succeed. He's hungry to do better. That's a leader worth falling. I don't care what they say to you at happy hour at the bar. You're so relatable. I love hanging out with you. You're such a chill person. It's because when push comes to shove when things need to get done.

People want leaders who they respect. People want leaders who they know are making themselves better. And your platform is a way to showcase that a lot. As I work with a lot of people who are coming out of corporate and they want to start their own business as as an expert in some way, shape or form. And I just say, they say to me oftentimes, Kevin, I don't know what to share.

I said, Well, do you read any books? They're like, Yeah. I was like, well, then share that you read these books, share five quotes from the book that resonated with you. Yeah, but it's not my book. It doesn't matter. It brands in people's minds that you're a learner that you're growing. I'm in a little different space. I haven't been in corporate for a little while, but I certainly am still a leader.

I have to lead my team. I have to lead my contractors, I have to lead my employees and have to lead my tribe. And it's so funny, Kevin, because I post things in. I'm a little bit more I showcase a little bit more of my personality in my in my feeds, right? Because people get plenty of my know-how through podcasts and other things in the book and whatever.

And I post, you know, about two months to three months ago, I started kickboxing lessons. Okay. What in the world does that have to do with leadership? What is it I puzzle about that all the time. And you know what? I know it's happening. People are saying that Mike Kim guy, he never settles. He's always trying to push himself in new ways.

He's pushing himself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And I, I don't just post a picture of me throwing a kick or getting hit in the face. I will put in the caption. Here's what I've learned about myself from kickboxing. I'm a lot weaker than I thought in certain areas. You know, I've learned that, you know, here's something my trainer taught me when we're sparring, he pushes me into the other fighter from the back.

When we're sparring, he has his hand on the small of my back is consistently pushing me into the other fighter. And I said, Why are you doing that? He's like, Because you think that it's going to hurt more. If you're closer to that guy, it's actually going to hurt more if he has full extension on a punch break to your face.

And I was like, That's a life lesson. You got to learn to lean into your pain, lean into the enemy, lean into your adversary. I turn that into a life lesson, and people like, Wow, I never would have imagined that from kickboxing.

Kevin: The other thing is, and neither would you have had you typically. So there's a there's a whole other conversation that I'm confident you and I can add, we don't have time for it, which is just that point of, you know, one of the things I love about social media and in the way that I use it, in the way that you use it, although we don't use exactly the same, is that it forces us or encourages us to reflect what you just told us.

A story of reflection of, Aha, I did something, I learned something. And then I here's the lesson that I take from that.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And it's any leader who does something like that. Sure. In the beginning or you have people say things like, you know, you're being ridiculous. That that's so stupid. Look at look at Mike. He's trying to be all philosophical or Zen or something. Like, I had the same thing happen to me, Kevin. We all start from zero.

I didn't go on eBay and buy my personal brand I didn't go on eBay and buy my followers or my influence. I earned it, you know, but I earned it by becoming a better version of myself, becoming a better communicator. One of the big questions I ask in the book, and I lay this out for all leaders, who do you have to become in order to serve the people you want to serve?

Do you have to become a better content creator? Do you have to become a more intelligent distiller of thoughts and life lessons? Do you have to become more inspiring? Do you have to become more vulnerable and open in whatever that journey looks like is different for each and every one of us? But the one thing I do know it will require all of us, of all of us, is courage.

You know what it is to step out there, you know, put ourselves out there in and ask ourselves, like, really honest questions, Am I going to use my Instagram feed to post pictures of my food, or am I going to use it to really help the people that I have influence with? Because if you have even 50 followers, that's a room full.

That's a that's to classrooms in high school for people who are watching it. You decide as a leader, you decide you know, you decide.

Kevin: I love that. I'm going to ask a a different kind of question here, and then I'm going to start round it round our way into finishing here. Might be because you spend so much time and you've mentioned several platforms and you're available on all of them. You can look at Mike Kim TV and pick your platform. You got to find Mike where do you now just sort of a curious question maybe for all of us a year from now, where what are we going to be seeing in social media for business like?

How is it going to change? What's going to change? And any any thoughts about that at all?

Mike: Yeah, it's you know, there's there's I think that with social media and some of these channels for business, they're going to become more and more controlled here's where I'm getting this from. You're already seeing this happen with YouTube. You know, there's this thing called the algorithm, right? People are always fighting against the algorithm. Facebook the algorithm, right? Instagram the algorithm, YouTube, the algorithm.

But beyond that, one of the one of the things that happened this past year, you know, this year, last year, and we're right into the new year right now, is that YouTube started to hide the number of dislikes on a video you can see how many likes they're on the video. But now you can no longer see how many dislikes there on a video unless you're the content creator of that video.

And you log in to the back end and you see it and they came up with this reasoning that, you know, seeing the downvotes on a video isn't good for new creators. And it's going to be discouraging that for them to see negativity on the content decree. And when I read that, I was like, that is such a large that's that that's such a lie.

They're doing it now. I don't care. I'm not going to get super political here. But they're doing it because all videos that include Joe Biden are getting downvoted like crazy. They are. It doesn't matter if you're on CNN and Fox, the liberal news like Work, Conservative Network, anything that's featuring a Biden story started to get like 10,000, 20,000 downvotes.

And it was a way for his political detractors or opponents to say, we don't agree with this. Person, we don't like this person. And so they're starting to use these social proof in a way to express their discontent. Right. And they wouldn't have done it with Trump because they loved Trump getting negative press because he got a lot of, you know, eyeballs and clicks.

Let's be honest, he was brilliant for all of these marketing and media platforms. Right. And so as you're seeing this start to slowly creep in. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a marketer.

They know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. And so when you have too many people having their own voice to the point that it can overpower what the people who created the platform want to do with it, you start to get deplatformed. And I'm seeing I'm seeing a lot of YouTube creators who are related to one another in industry or niche.

I find a lot of educational content on YouTube, like stuff about, you know, the fun facts about this country or what really happens in outer space. I love those videos and I've found that, you know, three to five of the biggest channels on YouTube has now started to band together and create exclusive content on their own platform off of YouTube that you can subscribe to for free.

They're not even charging money. They just don't want to deal with the algorithm and the risk of getting deplatformed. So it might not happen in a year, Kevin, but I do see us moving towards that. I see us moving towards that. Even with Facebook changing their whole company name to Meta, you know, they're trying to point the attention towards this whole new thing.

Called the metaverse. And NFT is in cryptocurrency within that world. And there's just going to be all this confusing talk. And I think you're going to see this, you know, a number of people just dove completely into that and forward thinking companies are going to be there. You know, I'm already seeing companies like Coca-Cola, these huge global brands buying virtual real estate inside the metaverse so that their ads are already there.

And then they're going to be a contingent of consumers who say, no, thanks, I don't want I don't want to live in a virtual world. I'm going to go buy a house out in the country and get off range. Right. And so whatever it takes to get to that point is what's going to happen next year. There is going to be the next three years and the next five years.

But I will say this as leaders, right? And this all circles back to this right now. We have these social media platforms where we can talk about this kind of stuff, you know, and by and large, we're still free and clear just by YouTube making some changes and Facebook needs some changes. I tell people all the time, the most valuable platform I own is my email list, by and large, because I get right back on people's phones no algorithm to deal with.

They've said, yes, I know that. 35% of people who get the email will read it or they'll at least open it. And they're saying my name over and over again on the most intimate device that they own. And I can't be deplatformed. No one can take that email this from me. I own it. And so that's my personal.

Kevin: No, they don't even have to open all of them. When they keep seeing them, they keep being reminded from the time that they did open them. We are talking with Mike Kim, the author of You Are the Brand, this great book. And you can learn more by going to Mike Kim Dotcom. I'm going to put that up there.

I have a couple other questions other than kickboxing. Mike what do you do for fun?

Maybe there's not even fun. That might have been a bad guess. I don't know.

Mike: No, it's a lot of fun. It's anything combat training. But that's before that I like I like to play golf, like to get out into nature. Anything that makes me feel grounded. I spend too much of my work life in front of a computer screen. So anything that gets me into my body. All right, reminds me that I'm a human being, right?

Bare feet in sand or bare feet on grass. Anything that helps me feel grounded in that regard is good for me. And that even cooking is really good for me, Kevin, because I you know, when I'm working, I don't use one of my five senses smell. I don't smell anything. Right? I smell my computer, right? So just having anything tactile, having anything that I can touch and feel and and that engages my senses is really good for me.

And typical of all those other things, like a lot of people like to travel, eat good food. Try- All of that's good but all of that comes back to the same thing I just share. Like, it's just being in your body, feeling sensory, you know, anything along those lines. It's just really good for me.

Kevin: Perfect. One last question for you. Well, one of the two last questions for you. What are you reading these days?

Mike: The most recent book I read is a business book, which is, you know, interesting because I haven't read one in a little while, but it's called The Gap in the Game by Dan Sullivan.

I had some friends recommended, and my biggest takeaway from the book were just these questions that they ask you. The concept is always measure your life backwards, like see how far you've come. And it sounds very elementary and simple. Until I did the exercise and they were really eye opening to me. So I asked myself some questions, you know, ten years ago, where was I?

What was I focused on? How did I measure success back then? And then I answer those question. I was like, Wow, a lot's happened in ten years. And then we're going back to three years ago and ask myself the same questions where was I? How did I measure success? What was I focused on? Right, and what did I learn since that?

And then even just 12 months ago, where was I? How did I measure success? What was I focused on? And it really showed me, Kevin, how far I've grown, not just as a business person or an entrepreneur or in my career, but as a human being. And I just continually remind myself to stay in the games to remember how far I've come.

One other book I wouldn't say it's a book I read, but it's a book I use is something called a five minute journal and you journal and it 5 minutes a day has some gratitude prompts. It helps you focus on what went right today, what you're grateful for. And I'll be honest, I thought that's the dumbest thing I've ever done.

Right? I was like, how's is supposed to be helpful? I journal already, you know, how can this be helpful? And I just found myself hungry to find a new way to record my life, document my life. And I've been using this now for seven months and I now the gratitude practice has become so ingrained in me it's changed the way I think I automatically default to what went right.

Even if something goes wrong. I'm like, what can I learn from this? You know, it's taught me to reframe so much to the point that I now require everyone who's in a mastermind group with me to use it for 30 days and try it out because I don't want to be around a bunch of ungrateful leaders and ungrateful entrepreneurs.

And we're we it's not that we aren't. We're just so focused on the next thing. We think that we don't have any wins or successes. We do. We're just do a lousy job of tracking them.

Kevin: So because we're so focused on next, we're not looking at where we are, where we've been. I love that. So so am I. Other than going to MikeKim.com. Anything else that you want to point people to where they can learn more about the book? Anything else you want to say here?

Mike: Yeah. So You Are the Brand is available. Amazon's probably the easiest place to get it. You can get the e-book, you can get a hard copy, or you can get the audiobook on Audible as it's available now. I read it and so just tune in. It's it's really affordable right now for whatever reason. I think the publisher knocked it down with the new year, so you can get it for a couple of bucks and just type you are the brand or Mike Kim into Amazon and you can grab a copy there.

And if you like podcasts, I have a podcast called You Are the Brand by the same name. It's not really leadership focused. It's more for Solopreneurs who are starting their own personal brand business as a coach, speaker, expert. But you can find me there as well.

Kevin: Before we go. Thank you for that, Mike. Before we go, everybody, the question I ask you every week is now what? Okay, what are you going to do with this? And you may be saying Kevin, this one was a little different. I knew that going in and I was excited to push you a little bit to help you think in a new way to maybe reframe some things that you've thought about before.

But the question now is what are you going to do differently as a result of being here? And maybe it's as simple as rethinking what you choose to do with your social media. Maybe rethinking how valuable that might be. Maybe it's rethinking how your team sees you and how you show up and how you role model things. Because there's 100 things that we talked about today.

Maybe it's simply thinking about ideas, expertise reputation, reputation and personality as a way to think about how people see you. That's a real challenge, though, is to take action as a result of being here. If you don't do that, sort of. What was the point? I mean, Mike and I are fine, but all that matters is that you take some action as a result.

Mike, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you. Thanks so much. It's was worth the wait. I'm glad I'm glad to have had you. And thanks so much for being with me today.

Mike: It was an honor to be here, and I hope that I was able to add some value to everybody and just call lead to make a difference. We need you people. We need you leaders. We need you. So can make some positive change in the world.

Kevin: If you found I agree with Mike 100%. Perfect way to end. I simply say if you found this useful, invite someone to join you, invite someone else to the podcast. And if for a future episode, come back to another live one another day. I hope that you'll do that and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.

Thanks, everybody.