In college, I played a lot of role-playing video games, the kind where you create a character and move through a story. Depending on the game world, you’d navigate through vast lands, space, or dystopian cities.
I’d always spend way too much time at the “create-a-character” section. In addition to customizing your look, you’d be given a set number of points you could allocate to skills or attributes – but I’d always get stuck.
Should I build a warrior or a mage? Focus on strength or dexterity? Brute force or stealth?
I was terrified of getting locked into something, so I’d agonize about getting everything right before even starting. (There’s a life lesson for you!)
Game developers realized this angst was common among players, so they started to program instances in the story where you could wipe the slate clean and reallocate your character’s points. You wouldn’t lose your experience or progress, and you wouldn’t have to start over.
In gaming this is known as a “respec” – short for “re-specialization.” Most of the good games made you jump through a few hoops to respec, but if you really wanted to, you could. Sometimes I’d do it just because I got bored of the character build I was playing, even if it was fun. I just wanted to try something new. Other times, I realized I’d been playing as the completely wrong character build for me.
The second is what I’d like to talk about today.
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Back in March of this year, I attended a mastermind in Boston hosted by Ryan Levesque. I love small, in-person masterminds but hadn’t been to one in years.
When it was my turn, I shared how things looked good on the outside but on the inside, I was overextended, out of alignment, and wanted to “burn everything down.”
Ryan said, “I know where you are. I’ve been there.” He recommended a book by David Brooks called The Second Mountain. I listened to nearly the entire audiobook on the drive home and bought a copy so I could also read it.
The basic premise is that we spend most of our years climbing one mountain, only to reach the top and realize there’s another one. That second mountain is the bigger purpose for why you are here.
At that point, you can decide whether you’ll settle on the first (and lose your soul, apparently), or start your descent down the first mountain, trek into the valley, and find your way to and up the second mountain.
I don’t like settling, so I decided to go for the second. Of course, I still don’t know what that means. What I do know: it gave me permission to respec my life.
Doing so requires you to slow down. Even videogames force you to take your character somewhere safe, usually a village or rest point, where some wiseman grants you the ability to respec. Even in a fictional game world, you can’t respec in the middle of a fight.
I mentioned in Issue [#09] Wintering: The Secret Seasons I’m Using to Reset and Rebuild, that I’d cut a lot of client contracts and interviews to win time back. But that was just slowing down. I still needed to know where I wanted to reallocate my points.
There’s a simple exercise I learned a few years back where you fill out things you do into these quadrants:
The rule of thumb is the lowest factor takes precedent: I think I’m pretty good at copywriting but I don’t like doing it at this stage in my career, so that’s the quadrant it gets placed in. Here is my “current build”:
Great At / Love Doing:
- Masterminds
- Workshops
- Connecting others / communities
Good At / Like Doing:
- Writing (for myself)
- Speaking
- Content Creation
Not Good At / Don’t Like Doing:
- Copywriting (for marketing)
- Social Media, of all kinds
- Podcasting
Suck At / Hate Doing:
- Client onboarding
- Running ads
- Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, and anything they’re used for
These things have changed over time as my “play style” has changed. I’ve also noticed that playing the wrong build doesn’t happen overnight, it’s usually gradual.
When I cut my agency clients a few months ago, the realization was jarring: we were doing two of the things in my “Suck At / Hate Doing” category. *slaps own face*
Nearly All Business Problems are Personal Problems in Disguise
I will forever be convinced that is true. A few confessions:
#1. I was trying to build personal camaraderie almost solely through my work life.
I like working with and building things with others. I don’t want to just be on a computer all day teaching on Zoom and writing.
I become friends with a lot of people I work with. But the opposite happens too: if we don’t work together, we can go a while without talking.
I’m pretty sure one of the reasons I was building a team was to have people around. There’s also some personal caretaking tendencies that were seeping in: I didn’t want to let people down. I knew I was providing important income to some of my contractors, but I was playing the wrong build. Eventually, it caught up with me.
#2. I let a mistake derail me for too long.
Last year, I missed some sort of DMARC update with my email list and my open rates crashed from a really strong 40-45% to 18%. I lost the ability to get in the inbox of tens of thousands of legit subscribers, nearly overnight.
To use the video game analogy, it’s as if the game glitched and erased years of progress. That technical disaster became an emotional one. I felt stupid for letting that happen. It also made me not want to write my list… so I kind of stopped.
I realized I had two options: 1. Wallow, then sheepishly try to make things right again or 2. Make a real comeback, stronger and better than before: full send.
After enough wallowing, I decided to go with option #2: I figure if I write a better newsletter to the point that people say, “Hey, I thought I was on your list. I’m not getting messages—how do I get on it?” then I’ll be fine.
#3. I couldn’t respec my business structure until I respec’d my body’s structure.
Addressing an issue is sometimes like an itch you can’t find where to scratch. In this instance, I was trying to fix things in my business. The real problem was entirely somewhere else.
I said I wanted a simpler, leaner business model: higher touch, fewer clients, deeper work. Delusional! Nothing else in my life was simpler, leaner, or had depth… I was in misalignment, dysregulation, and high stress nearly every day.
In August, I was really focused on wrapping up projects and ending business contracts. What actually happened? I wrapped up old habits: I more than doubled the days I didn’t drink. (That trend has only improved since.) I slept better. I ate better. The structural realignment had to happen in my habits, body, and mind first for the change to show in my business.
It showed: all my higher touch, fewer client, deeper work offers sold out. This week I’m delivering on those VIP engagements as well as hosting my mastermind intensive. It’s a busy week but I’m calmer, more fulfilled, more present.
If you choose to respec your life, one final encouragement. You won’t lose your experiences, wisdom, and lessons learned. (You’re more adaptable than some video game character.) You’re allowed to respec: you better understand the game, and how you want to play it.
The next time you’re ready to invest in your growth, 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