Money and marketing… two of the most important staples in your business. Every entrepreneur must understand both to be successful. 

The Profit Path™ Podcast is honored to interview Mike Kim of mikekim.com.

Mike Kim is a business coach and marketing strategist who specializes in personal branding, product launch strategies and copywriting – serving some of today’s most influential thought leaders like John Maxwell, Donald Miller, Suzanne Evans, and Catalyst Leadership.

Mike is also one of our PEAK Partners, so we partner up every week, month, and all year long to help Mike build his online financial powerhouse! We love Mike’s complete transparency–sharing some of his fears and personal lows around the financial side of his business.

Mike will touch on several topics in this interview to include personal branding, marketing, his personal financial growth, and how to run a successful business with passion. 

THE MESSENGER IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE MESSAGE.

What’s so important about the messenger?

“The messenger is just as important as the message, if not more important because from leadership author to leadership author, their content is the same.

What makes them different is who they are, their personalities, their charisma, their backstory; all of these things really matter when you think about the businesses that I work with.”

What are the three identities to a brand?

“The three identities are like legs on a tripod. If one of them is not aligned, you have a misaligned message. These go in no particular order, but I am a very alliterative guy, so they're all going to start with the letter “V”, and I made this up.

  1. The VISUAL identity of the brand, AKA the way that it looks.
  2. The VERBAL identity of the brand.
  3. The VALUE identity of the brand.”

“Often times, we'll hear folks say, “Content is king.” I've heard that a million times. What they don't understand is that context is the kingdom. Content is king, but context is the kingdom. “

“Share stories. Tell stories. That's when it gets really real. Whenever I have an opportunity to tell a story, I will. That makes the lessons in it come to life.”

MIKE ON BUSINESS BUILDING AND FINANCES.

Did you have financial systems in place during phase one of your business?

“For my systems, it was just … There was too much personal and business overlap financially on my accounts, on my spending, my cards. I just figured as long as there's money in this account, I'm good. 

That's how I viewed my business. Not as a business, but as my personal checking account.”

What did you think of investing back into your business?

“When I invested to go to a conference or something like that, I didn't view it as a purely business expense, or a purely personal expense. It was a mix of both because that's how my experience is at these events. 

When you're a solo entrepreneur, a business event is not something you don't look forward to. You usually do, because all your friends are there and you're going to grow, and you're going to learn. When I worked in corporate, I hated business trips. I was like: I'm going to have to go there and work, and I'm not even having any fun.

What happened psychologically to me was that all my business trips became fun trips, and so I was like: This is personal, but it's also business.”

What’s the biggest take away?

“This business should serve me, not the other way around. I love my business. I love doing what I do, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to leave it if I want

I want to be able to say that the work I do every day has afforded me the life that I want, and we all deserve that. As entrepreneurs, we work harder than nearly everybody else, so we deserve it.”

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