A few years ago, I realized that Christmas was exactly six months from my actual birthday, June 25th. I’m not sure why it took so long for me to realize this, but I now treat Christmas as my half-birthday and review each six-month period as if it were a year.
The past six months have felt like living multiple years. The most natural place to start tends to be around work, so here’s what I’ve been doing since June:
- Hosted two live 2-day mastermind intensives
- Did three full VIP days for clients
- Launched AI Summit for solopreneurs and 4-week accelerator
- Launched first full-length assessment with help from Maeve Ferguson
- Released new book with Andy Storch: Own Your Brand, Own Your Career
- Recorded audiobook
- Started weekly newsletter (this is my 15th straight issue, goal to make each worth $500)
- Committed to YouTube video and podcast for each newsletter
- Migrated two membership communities to a new platform
- Did webinar on writing books
- Ended agency work
- Filmed entire 7-module course in studio for side business
- Ran two webinars for side business (August and December)
- Launched a 4-week accelerator class for that business
- Committed to weekly YouTube video and podcast for that business, too
Psychotic, I know.
Please don’t take this as something admirable or even normal. I’m shocked I pulled all this off. What I really want to share is how all this set the table for what was actually important to learn.
#1. Death Has Been a Real Teacher
The biggest catalyst for all the above was my dad’s passing in June. I knew it would happen at some point because he had cancer, but it was still tough to navigate.
Since his passing, two former clients also passed –– both way too young. This hit me hard.
I often end up spending a lot of time with clients when the projects are higher touch.
A lot of my career has been built around helping people tell their stories. If you’re gonna do that well, you’re gonna have to get to know people. They tell me things that I don’t often think they tell their closest friends.
In one instance, I was working on a book with a client about some really personal things. That book never got released.
The other did incredible work for impoverished people. I found out he passed when his organization posted on Facebook. We’d just DM’d each other a couple weeks prior. That client was my age.
A couple of more public people died that I obviously wasn’t close to, but their passing made me think a lot:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney… I have thoughts about him (most aren’t good). Movie director Rob Reiner. Former NFL star and future Hall of Famer Nick Mangold, who played here in New York for the Jets. Mangold was just a few years younger than me.
You can reach the pinnacle of your profession or society, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter.
Death gave me the gift of urgency.
I’ve become more aware of it, more cognizant of it. It puts a lot of things into perspective: what I spend my time doing, who I spend it with, where my energy, focus, and money go.
#2. What I Had to Subtract is More Important than What I Built
Death is the ultimate subtraction and it doesn’t happen at convenient times. But in life, most endings (even those that aren’t fatal) don’t happen at convenient times.
That laundry list of things I built or launched earlier… high performers and entrepreneurs get dopamine from that. But none of that could get done without subtraction.
What’s often missing from these kinds of year-end lists is what needs to be given up in order to make things happen. Subconsciously I think I loaded myself with so much to launch that I’d have no choice but to subtract things I’d let settle in for too long.
First and foremost was drinking. In August I started to track the days I didn’t drink because I needed the focus to get all that stuff done.
Most people may not know this, but I never drank when I was in my 20s and 30s. I only started while I was going through a divorce.
So… alcohol and I are seeing other people now.
Second thing I cut was all retainer clients in my marketing agency model. That left a ton of revenue on the table, more than was comfortable to part with. But I tightened the belt and felt this was really necessary for now.
One of my favorite books of all time is Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud. I’ve recommended this book more times than I can count.
The best illustration from the book is that of a rosebush: for it to thrive, the good buds have to be cut in order for the great ones to get the limited resources that are available.
I had to make decisions on ending good buds… some that were really good, like communities and masterminds that bore real fruit in my life. I may revisit them later, but I needed more space to head into next year, not less.
Third, I put web blockers on these sites: CNN, Fox News, ESPN, and Gamespot. Essentially, these are all news sites which might as well just be gossip sites.
I do not need daily gossip about what His Majesty King Orange is doing in the White House on any single day (he is not going to jail, people), how the Yankees are going to make stupid off-season moves, or how many more delays ’til Grand Theft Auto VI comes out.
It was pathetic to see how habitually I’d go on my phone and type those URLs in only to see they were blocked. Freakin’ addict!
I also do not keep social media apps on my phone, something I’ve done for years. One of the best decisions ever. I’m just trying to use this as a filter:
“What no longer deserves my nervous system?”
#3. No More Anesthesia: What You Can Feel, You Can Heal
I came across the saying “what you can feel, you can heal” from Louise Hay who was quoting a book by John Gray of the same title. I haven’t read it, but I love that line.
Work, news, alcohol, hustle –– all this was just anesthesia to keep from feeling real things. When I cut down, I was surprised how melancholy I became. I have been addicted to chaos my entire life.
Now I’m training my own nervous system to live inside my life.
Despite all the activity that happened in my business these last several months, they’ve been the calmest of my career.
They’ve also helped me realize that I don’t always have to be useful to be valuable.
I’ve always felt my value in the world was through how useful or helpful I was. In business, yes: you need to be useful.
But in life, you don’t really need to be useful to be loved. My dog is pretty useless, but I pick up her crap every single day and treasure that furry meatbag. My nephews are human meatbags, and I love them, too.
This brings up a split I never saw before in my life til recently:
In business life, I always look forward – never backwards. In personal life, I always look backwards – never forwards.
With work, I never rest on my laurels or tally up my accomplishments (this post being an exception). With personal, I have a hard time moving forward or envisioning the future I want.
Stopping the performing has helped me bridge that split. For a long time I lived as the character, and then I learned to zoom out as a narrator. Now I guess I’m just trying to be here.
What you can feel, you can heal.
#4. Trusting Yourself Leads to Loving Yourself
There’s a lot of cotton candy advice on social media about loving yourself. I find most of it to be a shallow justification for being more self-absorbed.
In real life, you can’t truly love someone until you get to know them. You can’t truly love someone until you can trust them.
Over the years people have told me I’m a leader, but I’ve never seen myself that way. I held leadership positions, but I didn’t think of myself as a leader because I actually didn’t trust myself.
Shame has a very loud voice in my life (I’m working on that) and, as Gay Hendricks talks about in his book The Big Leap, my biggest barrier has been feeling fundamentally flawed.
The Japanese have this art form called kintsugi—when pottery breaks, they repair it with gold. The cracks become part of the beauty, part of the story. I have long feared my fractures.
Working on them has helped build trust in myself. That trust has allowed me to like myself and love myself, because I know myself better.
If you’ve wrestled with this idea of loving yourself at all, a season of getting to know yourself might really help you.
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Thanks for having me on your reading list this past year. I have a little game I play: try to make each issue worth $500 of insights. (Since this is a business thing, I’ll stick to my “be helpful” credo here).
I hope I’ve done that the past 15 weeks.
If we worked together in any way this past year, I’m grateful for our time together. I really do consider it a privilege.
Wishing you the best in 2026!
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When you’re ready to invest in your growth in 2026, I hope you’ll consider working with me. There are two ways right now that I can help:
- Private 1:1 Advisory: Join the waitlist for 2026. This is a 1:1 arrangement for 6-7 figure business owners with a few in-person meetups: mikekim.com/advisory
- You Are the Brand Academy: My membership for solopreneurs looking to break through the first and second six-figure barrier. Get on the waitlist: youarethebrandacademy.com