Mike Kim

I do not remember a single bowl of the rice my mom made for me while growing up.

Yes, rice matters in sushi. But for the most part, rice is filler that balances flavors and moderates the plate. 

For those less familiar with Asian cuisine, rice is like chips. Some places have great chips, but come on: chips exist to transport guacamole or salsa into your piehole.

Rice and chips: great for balance and filler. Terrible for messaging. 

Because I’m Korean and can get away with this, I’m calling this White Rice Messaging. 

Clarity Used to Be the Edge. In a Post-AI World, It’s the Floor. 

In Issue #34, I introduced my “POP Filter” which stands for:

1. Personal Experience
2. Opinions
3. Predictions

All messaging for personal brands should include a mix of those elements. 

For years, clarity was enough. Being clear worked because almost no one else was creating content. Just showing up and making sense was genuinely helpful.

But personal brands are playing a different game. Personal brands must be… personal.

As part of shifts I’m making in business, I’ve spent the last three months doing private 1-on-1 work. 

My clients and I have been working hard on moving them away from White Rice Messaging and towards the POP Filter. Before we start, most clients fall into one of two camps:

1. You have to work 10x harder just to tread water and keep the ground you had. 
2. There are huge opportunities to get ahead because of AI slop.

I don’t mean this to criticize, but those in the first camp are often there because they’ve relied on safe, bland messaging. They’ve hid behind clarity, making sense, and appealing to logic. 

But we must remember the First Principle of sales:

People buy with emotion, then justify with logic.

Emotion is, as I say, “energy in motion.” You’ve got to stir the pot and douse that dish with some hot sauce!

The second group understands this. While they may have played things more moderately the past few years, I remind them about the Mad Hatter, who tells Alice, “You used to be much more… muchier. You lost your muchness.”

Start Being Real, Stop Being “Official”

One final way I’ll phrase this is to differentiate between being real vs. official. I picked up this concept from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

We all understand the difference between the two. I’m not saying you should go on LinkedIn and air out your private journal. But it might be good for you to have a place where you’re actually really honest and pull from there.

Before going through The Artist’s Way, I was stunned at how apologetic I was in my own private logs, as if I was scared someone would read it one day after I died. I was the official version of Mike, all the time, everywhere, even there.

Lately, I’ve been studying YouTube streamers. I’m an 80s kid, so I grew up watching “official” television. Network TV was always heavily moderated, and cable had its limits.

YouTube is a carnival. There is all sorts of weird on there. I cannot believe what some of these streamers say, and the size of their audiences. Even if you assume half of their subs are bots, the numbers are impressive.

One guy I’ve been watching is The Critical Drinker. This guy dishes out highly opinionated takes on movies, videogames, and more. 

That led me to Zack Hoyt, aka Asmongold, who often records himself watching and reacting to The Critical Drinker’s videos. This is like me reading The Artist’s Way on camera, then commenting on it as I’m reading it. Not very original… but very effective.

Asmongold does not strike me as anyone I would ever want to have lunch with. I’ve gotten in near-death car accidents and never made a face like that, and he’s reacting to a movie in that vid.

But I can’t help but wonder, “Why is his content so engaging? He’s not even saying anything that special. Sure he backs up his opinions, but they’re still just his opinions. He just wraps them in a lot of emotion.”

…and there it is. 

The people who hold a room aren’t necessarily experts. They’re fountains of energy that everyone else gathers around. Their cardinal rule: Never be neutral. Never be bland. 

For the sake of those of you who are not emotional: I am more like you than you think. Which also means, you have more emotion than you probably think – it’s just buried.

So a few steps, which is what I do with less emo clients:

1. Review your last month’s worth of content with honest eyes. Anything that’s just clear information, with no personal experience, no opinion, no prediction, is white rice. There’s no POP. 
2. Are there even any exclamation points or emojis? You don’t have to use emojis, but an exclamation point, italics, or ALL CAPS PHRASE is not going to kill you. Figure out how to put more emotion in your writing. These all read differently: 
   • You went with him?
   • You went with him?
   • You went with him?
   • You went with him? 
3. Talk to a competent expert. AI sucks for this. Someone wrote me an email two weeks ago saying she asked her AI, “What would Mike Kim say about my website?” She said it was really cool to get that feedback. The AI take was awful and not anywhere near what I’d say. (She wrote a few days later saying she really regretted sending the email.)

I’ve referred to Charlie Munger’s Principle of Inversion several times over the past issues, so let’s apply it here again:

Instead of asking how to succeed, ask what guarantees failure, then avoid those things. 

What will 100% guarantee your content is bland, filler, and forgettable? I can think of a ton right off the bat:

1. Have AI tell you what real humans find fun, intriguing, and memorable. (Good Lord, people.)
2. Write your marketing copy as if you’re drafting a research paper.
3. Try to sell using your research paper.
4. Hedge every opinion until you can’t attract or offend anyone.
5. Wait to share an opinion until it’s completely safe (translation: until everyone already agrees with it).
6. Predict nothing. You’ll never be wrong, but you’ll also never be right.
7. Never publish anything.

Do those 7 things and you will 100% guarantee failure. ☹️

I am no LinkedIn guru, but just following these simple guidelines has helped me even on the most official of platforms. This is a lot of impressions for me:

The more POP, the more spice. Stop trying to serve white rice on fine china. 

It’s “You Are the Brand,” not “You Are the Bland.”

Mike Kim
Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Written with a Blackwing pencil, edited on a MacBook pro, published on my WordPress site, and emailed via Brand You Funnels (my whitelabeled Go High Level service). Graphics by Jason Clement.

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