[#41] Greetings from SE Asia!

Greetings from Southeast Asia!

I’m on an ‘extended’ vacation, my first in several years 🙂

Typically it takes me a few days to unplug and get over jetlag, no matter the tips and hacks I’ve tried. I’m happy to report, 5 days in, I have fully entered the DGAF zone.

These are real and unstaged lol.

Day 1: First grub after an eternal 20+ hr flight.

Day 3: Writing emails at a cafe, totally jetlegged. Shot some pretentious B-roll about how cool it is to live this life. Dumb, since I was still actually working.

Day 5: Family and friends asked how I’m doing. Instead of a text, I sent that pic from me getting coffee at 6am. I am taking after the dude the yellow arrow is pointing to (go ahead, scroll back up).

I’ve spent much of my career helping people “build a brand” …and I’m also really big on doing that in a healthy way.

I’m in a city of 14 million people right now and it’s always so astounding to me how many people there actually are in the world…

And how gloriously unimportant I am to all of them. I think this is healthy.

I’ve hung out with some of my ‘citizen of the world’ friends here and met some interesting people at dinner parties.

One guy is a marketing genius for a very well-known speaker here in Asia. When he asked what I do and / or who I’ve worked with, he had no idea who any of my clients were.

We laughed in agreement at how absurdly people can get caught up in internet fame, toasted a beer, and proceeded to talk about anything but work.

There’s merit in getting your work out into the world. There’s an equal merit to making sure who you are underneath all that is sane, happy, and non-performative.

No doubt, the world of personal branding has evolved. I’ve walked past at least ten people filming themselves at the resort I’m at now.

The couple next to me at the restaurant last night were filming themselves the entire time. I was in their shot so I naturally made weird gestures, like taking out my Invisalign trays very noticeably and belching after housing a lager.

Spoiling an influencer’s shot is a special, sadistic kind of joy for me.

I’m not above filming myself either, of course. Just have fun and don’t take things too seriously. Two things:

1. You are almost certainly not as important as you think you are to the people you’re trying to reach.
2. You are probably more important than you realize to the people right in front of you.

Both things are true at once and we, meaning all of us who “market ourselves” – will be better off the more we’re able to navigate this well.

I know it’s a few days past the holiday weekend for those of you in the U.S., and I hope you had a good long weekend.

Next week I’ll be back to some of my normie content and also let you know about a short ‘summer school’ for messaging that I’m hosting.

It’s based on helping people sharpen the one message only they could share in this post-AI world (based on the messaging matrix newsletter a few weeks back).

If you’d like details now, just reply to this email and say “details” and I’ll pass it along.

We’ll start at the end of July so there’s no rush, but if you’re interested now, my team and I are happy to send over the details in a simple Google Doc. The entire program is different from the way I’ve done things in the past: very high touch, and I’ll do quite a bit of copywriting for you.

Anyways, I hope you had a wonderful weekend and really hope you have a great day.

Mike Kim

Written on a MacBook Pro from my room in SE Asia and emailed via Brand You Funnels (my whitelabeled Go High Level service). Know how I know I’ve really unplugged? When I open my MacBook, the lid is stuck and I’ve got to pry it open.