Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Kim.
Hi Mike, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Lighting up a dark world with kindness, as told by Cam during our interview with CONVICTS (Five Minute Read – Trigger Warning). The first phrase that comes to mind when describing Mike Kim is ‘hero of the human spirit.’ That phrase sounds lofty because it is. But it’s also true. Mike is the Korean-American activist, storyteller, and entrepreneur who founded the anti-racism, pro-kindness organization Some Neat Place. To say that his life has been riddled with hardship would be the understatement of this young decade. From gang beatings to a lifetime of racist harassment to an unbelievable string of cancer diagnoses amongst his loved ones, Mike’s story appears to be a laundry list of sufferings. And yet, Mike is one of those rare humans who exude the kind of good vibes that can’t be taught, only learned. He’s a dude who sees the beauty and positivity in the world despite having every reason not to. The way he’s turned all that negativity into unbridled positive energy is a kind of lead-to-gold personal alchemy that awes us. Mike was gracious enough to share his story with CONVICTS last week. Read Mike’s story, in his own words, below. Inspiration guaranteed.
His story’s been edited for clarity and flow. “As an immigrant family coming to the States, we had all these American dreams: to eat McDonald’s when we first landed, start a business, and have a big house and a nice life. We had McDonald’s when we landed, but the rest of our life wasn’t near what we envisioned. If we’re talking about how I grew up, racism was a big part of my identity. Almost daily, I’d be racially profiled, tacked, or bullied. Those were my formative years, and that bullying made me angry. I developed a temper. I was getting in trouble at school and graffiti on the back of the bus. My first year of college was the first time I made a best friend who was an Asian American. We bonded because we grew up similarly–he grew up in Houston, I grew up in Austin–and neither of us had many Asian friends. I mean, I was so ashamed of my identity. I didn’t want to look Korean, be Korean, or talk Korean. But in college, I was floored by how many other Koreans and Asian people I met and became friends with. That’s when I began to embrace my Korean identity. But at this time, I still had a lot of anger and resentment. I wanted to stand out. I wasn’t going to let anyone say anything to me. And you know, we’d do those dumb college things: we’d go to raves and parties. Sometimes we’d drink too much. We hung out with some of the wrong people in Houston, some of the Asian gangs.
It was in my later college years when I got jumped by one of those gangs. I had a long-term Chinese girlfriend, and I always lied to her about going out with my friends. This was one of those nights. We were at karaoke. When I went outside the bar, some guys sat in my car. My friend and I yelled at them to get out of my car. The next thing I knew, these guys started barking back at us. Then, about twenty of their friends came out of the karaoke bar. I recognized some of them and knew they were in a gang. I thought, ‘Ah shit,’ and backed up against the driver’s door. My friend was to my left against the passenger side door. It felt like slow motion when the first beer bottle popped on my friend’s head. The next thing I remembered was a foot coming towards my face. One of my friends was on top of me, shielding me. He pulled me up and hustled me across the street. But I looked back, and my friends were still getting jumped, so I ran back to the fight. Just then, someone yelled out ‘COPS!’ and everyone dispersed.
Back at our apartment, we realized how badly we were bleeding out. My friend’s head was cut wide open from the impact of the beer bottle. When we got to the hospital, I learned that I’d fractured my orbital bone in my eye, been concussed, and nearly fractured my ribs. Plus, the skin was ripped off of my knees and elbows. It was such a bad but defining moment for me. Going into that night, I was an egotistical, temperamental person who was hurt and damaged by all the racism and family issues I’d faced. But that night, as soon as my ex-girlfriend–I’m still great friends with her to this day–came into the hospital and saw my eye swollen shut, she just cried and asked me if I was ok. I thought she would lie to me for lying, but she didn’t. That moment never left me. I’m still thankful to her for basically saving my life because, at that moment, I was like, ‘What the f*ck am I doing?’
A switch flipped for me then. I needed to be better. That’s when I started doing a lot of the inner work that completely changed my life. In my early thirties, I married my ex-wife. I felt like things were getting in order. We were saving for a house and doing nine yards of married life. I was so proud to identify myself with that marriage. At that phase of life, I was grinding at the startups where I worked. I was all about success, job titles, and achieving the dream things my dad could never do. But the marriage took over, and I lost myself in that relationship. I forgot who I was, and ultimately, we got divorced. My wife ended up cheating on me with someone I knew. I caught it in a text message. That was the most challenging moment. That’s when the trauma started. I began having suicidal thoughts. I was lost in the grief and trauma of what felt like the ultimate betrayal. I was going down a dark spiral and not liking who I was, not going to work, and drinking daily. It was a bad look. But I saved myself that time. I went to therapy. I started digging in and figuring out who I was. Fast forward a few years, and I was back on the grind in LA and finding my stride again. I lost a ton of weight, and my business was on another level. I was making a lot of money and had that downtown LA lifestyle. That’s when I thought, ‘Ok, my life is starting to come together; it’s going to be pretty damn good.’
Then, the cancer started hitting. Three weeks into my new COO job, at the end of 2018, we found out my dad had cancer. That was terminal. Two weeks into that December, my sister-in-law’s breast cancer returned. In January, my ex-wife called. One of our mutual friend’s ovarian cancer had returned. In the third week of January, we went to UCLA Hospital and ended up seeing our friend take her last breath. And I stood there thinking, ‘Three people with cancer, what the hell?’ Three and a half months later, in March, my grandma’s lung collapsed. Lung cancer attacked her other lung, which collapsed, too. We laid her to rest a week later. I got a phone call from my brother in the second week of April. After emergency surgery, they discovered that my mom had stage four colon cancer. It was surreal to have my brother’s wife and my mom and dad on different floors of the oncology center. The doctors could not believe it. Then, in late 2019, another friend of mine lost their battle with brain cancer. So that was number six. But through all of this, I found a relationship. It lasted for about a year, but in June 2020, she broke off the relationship. I wondered, ‘Can anything else go wrong during COVID or my life?’
And this is where the story culminates. In late July, my dad’s life began slipping away. His cancer quadrupled. We knew his time was nearing. So I called all my relatives and told them to come over. That night, I was in front of our house with my aunt and cousin. I thought I heard something from my dad’s room. My mom told me to check on him. I went to the door of his room, and it was locked. But I hadn’t locked it. My mom started freaking out. I banged on the door, but nothing happened, so I got a piece of metal and opened the lock. I immediately saw that my father wasn’t in his bed. I look into the bathroom, and there he is, with his head slumped over the bathtub. Earlier in the day, he wore a white t-shirt, now red with blood. I didn’t know what had happened. Maybe his chemo port had burst, and he’d fallen. I called 911, and a few minutes after the emergency guys came, I heard one of them on the radio talking to the hospital. ‘We have a 72-year-old male, Korean-American, with a slit left wrist first, slit right wrist, and slit neck,’ he said. I told them that they were wrong; my dad had fallen. That’s when my brother said, ‘No, bro, you saved his life; he tried to commit suicide.’
They bandaged both wrists and his neck to stop the bleeding, then did the surgery. That bought us two more weeks with him. We were able to say our goodbyes and talk with him about the most profound things from our childhood: the mental and physical abuse he inflicted upon us, the drinking, and the living in a trailer house with no hot water. He apologized with his dying words. That healed so much because he’d never said sorry in his life. That’s when I felt a new level of compassion. I had already started Some Neat Place, but from that night on, SNP has been driven by my understanding that life is so short. If you’re not in it, life passes by you. Suddenly, you’re old and angry and holding so much in. You realize you’ve forgotten to enjoy the one life given to you. 10 people I have known got cancer in the past couple of years, with four passing away. On top of life, how do we start healing, caring for each other, and creating a better world?
Some Neat Place is not something I want to go viral. It’s something that I believe in. We need deeper connections because there are so many people hurting. With SNP, I want to create a place where everyone can feel safe and heard. It’s for all colors, all races, all creeds. It’s for my younger self, the fourth-grader who purposefully threw up on his clothes to escape the bullying. My role model (love you, mom) continues to show me kindness even though she’s 40+ chemo rounds in (S4 colon cancer), 9 compound fractures on her back, and, as of January 2023, open heart/triple bypass on a last minute doctor’s visit, radiation, and nearly losing her life, she smiles as if nothing was wrong.
SNP is a safe place that allows all of us to be who we want to be without judgment or fear. Imagine meeting someone during chapter seven of their life; it’s a time when things are chaotic, and then we judge that person at that moment. Instead, what if we knew about chapters one through six? Would that help us lean in, understand perspective, and show greater empathy? That’s why we want to tell different stories. Through the creative lens, from fashion, food, and music to art, we’re showing how one kind of act a day can impact the world. We’ve been doing events, collaborations, and original content programming, and ultimately, we’re building an app to help the world become kinder and make being kind cool again. Eight billion people, eight billion stories. Some Neat Place is predicated on the idea that performing a single act of kindness daily can change someone’s life and impact this world. We’re going to change the way kindness is created + make being nice cool all over again. My ex-girlfriend changed my life by showing up at the hospital, overlooking my lies, and just hugging me. I wouldn’t be here without that.
As you know, we’re big fans of Some Neat Place. For our readers who might need to be more familiar with the brand, what can you tell them?
What We Do
Our focus is impact first at Some Neat Place (SNP): storytelling, collaborations, original content/programming, experiential events (the last one we did was called Some Neat Birthday – a throwback to the 80s with sheet cake, ice cream, and polaroids to tap into our inner child where we befriended anyone, no matter the background), and a mobile app (coming soon). We don’t try to compete with other kindness companies because we need to flood the world with more kindness. This perfectly imperfect kindness company started from trauma (someneatplace.com/our-story), and we intend on denting this universe before it’s our time to go.
How We Started
SNP started by telling stories of kindness about random strangers (now friends – @someneatplace on IG is the main storytelling platform we leverage). It was a selfish way for me to heal my heart after the trauma that hit home for me. After sharing stories of how kindness showed up for people worldwide, my business mind turned on. I then started collaborating with creators of small and large businesses, leveraging kindness as the catalyst. We focus on the things we love, from fashion, food, music, and art. We lace kindness into every bespoke project/program. From our “Be Kind” candle and friendship bracelets to a kindness cocktail we made with our friends at Ellenos Yogurt, Yobo Soju, Oseyo, and Fat Ice for a special event we threw in Austin.
Our Special Sauce
Every project we touch on is done with intention. For example, we’re working on leveraging kindness to show up for a mass gun shooting incident in Austin and finding creative solutions by working with the city council and the boba shop where the incident happened. We have high aspirations to create a world where kindness will be normalized, as we’re making being kind cool again (we have kindness show ideas that will hit differently, so stay tuned!). There are three parts to every collaboration we do:
- Social Impact
- Give back to a charity we love (we don’t just write a check; we want to roll up our sleeves and get dirty)
- Bespoke programming (think of it as a kindness ad/mktg agency)
We are paving the way for the next generation and must listen to how they see the world. We honor the people we work with and humbly co-create ideas with some of the most extraordinary people in the world.
The Game-Changing App
The game-changer is the SNP Kindness app, where we will teach the world how to be kind. Think Pokemon Go meets the Girl/Boy Scouts. We’ve spent the last two years building relationships, refining the idea, and doing the work because kindness is not transactional, so building a business model around it needed a lot of TLC. Imagine 8B people doing one kind act a day; the impact will ripple even when we are gone (what a world that will be!).
Proudest Moment
Every person I’ve met along the way has been a proud moment, so it’s hard to choose one. However, one of the best moments was when I was with another social impact creative in Austin during SXSW. We were waiting to get into a venue where several of our friends were headlining (damn talented DJs and producers). My friend was dead tired from being out all day, and I asked what artist she was most excited to see. She then told me she could go home to sleep because she already saw the artist she wanted to see the most. I asked, “Who?” She looked at me, smiled, put her arm around me, and said, “You.” That made me feel that I belonged and that what we did with kindness would work in ways I couldn’t imagine.
What I Want Readers To Know
Everyone can make a difference right now; if they feel compelled to share, please reach out and DM us @someneatplace with how kindness showed up in their lives so that we can highlight the “everyday hero.” Stay tuned on our IG as we share original content, provide updates for special events, and launch the beta version of the kindness app!
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I straddle two cities: Austin, Texas, and LA, CA (more in Austin lately).
Austin, Texas
What I love the most about this city is the southern hospitality. It’s the charm of the South, and I grew up here, so it’ll always feel like home. What I least like about the city is the brutal summers, haha. It has been sweltering this summer, and I miss the LA weather!
LA, CA
What I love the most about LA is the diversity and how each area, from DTLA to Santa Monica, feels like its own world. From the eateries and fast-paced big-city vibes to slowing down and going to the beach, it’s one of those cities that has my heart. What I least like about it is seeing more homeless around LA. It’s disheartening that so many don’t have homes for basic needs, such as clean water and food. The traffic is horrendous, too, haha, but at least we know we’re alive.
Contact Info:
- Website: someneatplace.com
- Instagram: @someneatplace
- Facebook: @someneatplace
- Linkedin: @someneatplace
- Twitter: @someneatplace
- Youtube: @someneatplace
Image Credits
Please mention @someneatplace friends + family
