Creative on Purpose Live with Rick Kitagawa

The ether at the speed of bytes. It says we're live. Check your pulse, Rick. I got one. We're live, folks. Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live. To learn more about Creative on Purpose, visit creativeonpurpose.com and get going with the difference only you can make. Remember that this broadcast is also an iTunes podcast. Check it out and leave a 5-star review. 30 seconds of your generosity helps spread the goodness delivered by my guests. Speaking of guests, let's get to today's show. Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live! These conversations are about flying higher and the difference only you can make. Endeavor better. It's time to be creative on purpose. Are you ready? Let's go! I'm your host, Scott Perry, author of Onward! and Difference Maker Coach at Creative on Purpose and Akimbo Workshops. Visit creativeonpurpose.com to start doing better work by making better decisions. This season, we're drawing insight and inspiration from guests who are successfully embracing uncertainty, navigating adversity, and making things better, doing work that matters. Let's meet today's guest, Rick Kitagawa. Welcome to the broadcast. Thrilled to have you here. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can they go online to learn more about you and the fantastic work that you're doing.

Hello, Scott. Hello, viewers. Thanks so much for having me. My name is Rick Kitagawa, pronouns he/him/his. I'm based in Pasadena, California. You can find out— I think I'm going in the right order. You can find out more about me at rickkitagawa.com, also kaijucoaching.com or spotlighttrust.com. So I keep busy. If you go to my name dot com, you can actually find links to everything else though. So that's sort of the main hub. But the most of the work that I'm doing is as co-founder of Spotlight Trust, with last week's guest, Lisa Lambert, and the two of us are working to build a better world through the creation of trust. Additionally, I am a coach and I'm actually serving as interim senior head coach at the Alt MBA currently. And I also have my own private coaching practice, kaijucoaching.com, where I really specialize in diving into imposter syndrome with people and helping people wrangle their inner monsters and use that as a compass instead of a scary thing to move forward in life.

Awesome. I'd love to dive into that last part first because that's— I obviously am very familiar with your work with Lisa at Spotlight Trust, and we'll get to that, I promise. But I would love to give for our viewers that may not be familiar with even just the term imposter syndrome, just unpack that quickly for us, Rick.

Yeah, I'd love to. So imposter syndrome really refers to this feeling that everyone has about being an imposter, about feeling that you don't belong, feeling you're not good enough. Oftentimes the phrase "I don't feel blank enough" often comes up. It's a lot of fear of failure, fear of uncertainty. It's when you are trying— it usually pops up when you're either trying something new or something difficult. And oftentimes these, it's the, I like to talk about it as the negative self-talk that a lot of us have of like, oh, I wanna write a book. Oh, I could never write a book. Right? It's that secondary voice that kind of pops into the back of your mind that really holds a lot of us back from really embracing who we are and the goals that we really want. And it's a, you know, it's a evolutionary trait that we've actually you know, has been cultivated in us for, you know, thousands of years to run away from fear, right? Because back when we were, you know, living in caves, it was like, okay, yeah, the saber-toothed tiger is scary, let's run away from that so we don't die, right? But now there's not a lot of things that are going to kill us, at least not in terms of like, oh, writing a book or publishing your art online or starting a business. Like, you're probably not going to literally die from that. But the fear is the same. And the way our brains work is that fear is actually— we see the saber-toothed tiger and the fear of having everybody hate us, apparently, because we wrote a book. We process that in the same way. And so that really builds up over time, especially if you've, you know, come from a background where you are not, you know, I don't want to use the word normal, but I would say you're not in the majority. And that could be whether it's your interest, it could be demographics like race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, size. There's all these other things that really beat us down in a lot of ways. And what the work I do is really to help people look into that fear, get acclimated to that uncertainty and the uncomfortability, and to actually use that as a direction of where you actually should be going in life, because where we are most scared is usually where the greatest rewards lie.

Yeah, I love that. Really well said. So sometimes we hear it as Steve Pressfield's resistance. Seth likes to talk about the lizard brain, the inner critic, critic, our narrator, the person that's talking to us as we are going about our day-to-day, um, all manifestations of, of the imposter. And I love what you were saying about You know, it's been at least a couple of epics since I came across a saber-toothed tiger. But yet every time something unknown or something that might make us stand out a little bit happens, that, that imposter can— and what I have found is that the more successful people come, oftentimes the louder that inner critic and that imposter becomes as well. So it's tied It seems to me, to ideas also around our own sense of our personal worthiness and our own ability to trust ourselves and head into the direction that fear is indicating we desperately want to or need to go. So in your work, and I'm not going to be able to pronounce the website off the top of my head, but—

Taijiu Coaching.

Yeah, that one. What, what are some of the strategies or tactics or tools or tips that you give people that help them acknowledge the imposter, but then also use it as fuel to get through the resistance that the imposter brings to bear when it's really just standing in the way of our aspirations and our dreams?

Totally. So one thing where I usually like to start people is really digging into comparison, because I think— because comparing and creating mental frameworks in our mind about where we stand in terms of hierarchy or pecking order or just where we relate to the world around us, like, that's a very human, natural thing. But I think what happens is a lot of times we often latch on to the best in class because those are the people who are most visible to us outside of our own personal network. And what happens is you get this sort of mismatch where the people around you are probably not doing what you wanna be doing for the most part. A lot of times you're like, oh, well, I'm the only painter in my circle of friends, or I'm the only entrepreneur in my circle of friends. And so, because oftentimes we find friends very organically and it might not always be through like our burning desire. And so you often get peer groups where they are, they have different ambitions than you do. And then you're looking at, well, who can I look to who has the same ambitions? Oh, it's this person who's already successful, right? And so we often are like, oh, well, I can't, you know, my book didn't sell as well as Stephen King, or, you know, like, I'm not as famous as Jeff Koons or whoever, right? Like, fame, and one thing too I always bring up is that fame is always relative, right? Because I could drop a bunch of names of people I consider incredibly famous, incredibly successful, And depending on your interests, you have— you probably have no idea who these people are, right? And so really what I— where I usually start with clients is starting to pull back from that. And keeping that beginner's mind is something that I really encourage people to do. Because if you're comparing yourself to someone who has, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years of experience on you, like, you're doomed to fail. Because there's no way that your skill is gonna be anything comparable to that of someone who's put in 30 years ahead of you, right? So if I think about, I like writing short horror fiction and I don't compare myself to Stephen King because I was reading Stephen King when I was 7 years old, right? So the fact that he already basically has, you know, 31 years of writing before I even really like started embracing that in myself, I'm like, there's— that's not comparable at all. And so I like to— I also like video games a lot, and so I have this analogy of making sure you're, you're kind of doing level-appropriate things. And so what I mean by that is that, you know, if there's— if level 1 is like, okay, you're, you're just walking through the forest and you're playing the tutorial, you're getting to know the game, and then level 100 you're like riding on the back of dragons with like super crazy spiky armor and shooting laser beams out of your eyes and stuff like that. Like, you can't fight those monsters because you're just like poking at like boars in the forest, right? And so that's okay, but it's that you have to make sure that you're comparing yourselves to people of the same level, not people who have been at this game decades longer than you have.

Yeah, so I just want to point out that our mutual friend Taylor Harrington is in the chat saying hello. So Wave to Taylor. Hey, Taylor!

What's up, Taylor?

Taylor, we need to get you on the broadcast here before, before the quarter runs out. We'll talk. I love what you're saying, Rick, and I love your approach. For those of you that, you know, haven't collided with Rick on social media, his LinkedIn profile always has really engaging content and posts about, you know, just what he's talking about. And I love Just love that, that work that you're doing. It's so desperately important now more than ever because our inner critic, our inner monsters are getting in the way of us stepping fully into our promise and potential and delivering the goodness that we can deliver with and for the people we find ourselves with. This is how we make things better. We, you know, we just went through a political season here in the States where we all think that, um, The country is either saved or doomed, depending on your perspective, based on who's in the White House. That's probably not really true. Um, I've been around a long time. I've never felt any significant difference from administration to administration, but what does enhance my experience is being mindful and thoughtful about the stories I'm telling myself and the people that I'm surrounding myself with. So really love that work, and I appreciate the difference that you're making in the world through your own enterprises, Rick. But you're also, I mean, I'm questioning your judgment here, especially as she's in the chat as well. Hey, Lisa. So you're, you've attached yourself to this dog and pony show, Spotlight Trust, with our mutual friend Lisa Lambert. You guys are also doing really, really incredible, important work there. So although Lisa was on the show last week, would love for you to just kind of give us a thumbnail sketch of what you guys are up to with Spotlight Trust.

Sure. We are— so Lisa and I at Spotlight Trust, we are a leadership consultancy as well as training organization. And we, we actually have a lot of stuff in the works. We're actually working on a book for an April release, which we are very excited about. You can go to thefutureistrust.com, which is the name of the book, and to sign up to hear about when that's dropping and to get all of the, the promos and special offers before it launches. But the work that we're really doing is, is to help people understand and to get better at the skill of trust because trust is something that, that you can actually practice, you can build, you can extend, repair in some cases. And it's really about being intentional about seeing and really kind of just being aware that trust under— underpins basically every relationship that you have. And we don't often think about it, but it's something that is incredibly impactful. And incredibly strong, but is also incredibly fragile. So the, the more aware you are of that, the easier it is to make sure that that kind of trust plant is growing strong and healthily and not withering and dying in the back of your closet.

Love it. Well, it turns out that our friend Taylor has a question, and there it is up on the screen. Um, her question is, um, how important do you think it is to name the difference only you can make to others in conversation on platforms, websites, versus simply living the difference? So What I'm taking to that question, Rick, is what do you think the value is of living out loud and in public with the difference that only you can make, as opposed to just quietly doing your work all alone or on the side out of the public eye?

That is a great question, Taylor. And I think it's really important to— I think I like to name things because I feel like naming things really gives them power and it helps give you clarity. Around what your actual intention is. And, you know, in the words of our mentor, all of our mutual mentor Seth Godin, like, what is it for? Right? And if you are seeking to live the difference, I think you should just do that. Because being out, like, on social media, having a spotlight on you, that's not for everyone. And that's okay. And I think, like, we need people like that just trying to, you know, improve themselves, make their work better. But I think if you're looking to actually make an impact in the world around you and create change and help enroll other people in your idea of a better future, you need something for them to latch on to. And part of that is having a name for it, what you're doing. And I think that's really why I like, I mean, that's why I'm the inner monster wrangler, not just, you know, personal coach or life coach, right? Because it's, I like to name what it is I'm doing. I like frameworks. I like having different ways of talking about things because then in my experience also as a university educator, it's been the more ways you can talk about something and the more frameworks and metaphors and similes and analogies you can make to people, the more accessible that change becomes, and the more likely they are to kind of jump in the back of the car with you wherever you're going.

Yeah, love that. We have had our institutions, be it educational, um, institutional, political, the places where we work, have, have sucked out our, our inner need to stand up and be seen and speak up and be heard. We're taught to keep your head down. Don't, don't, uh, don't grow too high. Um, and, you know, just keep your head down, do, do what you're told and we'll give you, we'll give you treats. We'll give you television sets and retirement plans and so forth. And this really ties in, I think, to, um, the work that you and I both do, but to the theme of your work with Lisa at Spotlight Trusts, it's about trusting yourself. You can't trust a process, which Seth is famous for saying as well, unless you trust yourself. And it's the daily discipline of showing up and knowing what your work is for, as you indicated, but also who it's for. And the more direct and personal and close by that you can make those connections, you get to decide who you associate yourself with and what you do on a day-to-day basis. And small steps into possibility with an intentionally chosen group of people ensure that you can practice this discipline of standing up to be seen and speaking up to be heard with the difference that only you can make in the world without having mud slung at you or having the pressure of institutions that want to keep you humble and hiding. So I think there's that trust theme is really important to that. To trust the process, you must first trust yourself. So Rick, in addition to all this, you also have Rick Kitagawa. Is that a different enterprise altogether, or is that just an umbrella that all your other work is being done at? Sure.

Yeah. The rickkettigala.com website is my own, just kind of personal site, and that is sort of the hub because if you search my name, that's probably— that and my LinkedIn will probably come up first or Facebook, realistically. But yeah, that, that's sort of where I also do my daily blog writing. So I publish there and on LinkedIn you can find find it either way. But, uh, that's really sort of also the hub of where I have links to Spotlight Trust. I have links to, uh, you know, what, Kaiju Coaching. And, uh, I also, you know, there's— oh, I also run a podcast called The Inner Monster Podcast where, uh, I have decided to blend short horror fiction with, uh, creature mythology as well as personal development. So it's my own very, very tiny niche of some— as someone who loves monsters and mythology and someone who also loves helping people grow and leap and improve their lives. So if that's something of interest to you, innermonsterpodcast.com.

Awesome. Well, I know I spoke to you and Lisa both privately, uh, a while back about the book that you mentioned that you're writing together for Spotlight Trust. Can you give us some hints about what the book is going to be about? I know I got really excited the way you described it to me in our session earlier.

Yeah, it is— we initially titled it our manifesto, but we've since kind of pulled that back and really focused on it being a practical primer to our framework around building trust. And so we have this idea of the 5 facets of trust: clarity, credibility, consistency, caring, and connection. And really we take you through a journey of what trust is, how it manifests, why it matters, and also how you can start building, earning, extending, and repairing trust and the best ways and some of the best case practices in doing that. And we are really excited about this because we're trying to make it not like any other kind of leadership development book out there in terms of really melding a lot of imagery and pictures. We've taken a lot of inspiration from some of Seth's books, including the— I'm sure you're familiar with the gigantic one that he published. I don't even know the name because we just call it the behemoth, but the giant, I think, 8 to 10-pound book that he published, as well as Steel Like an Artist format by Austin Kleon. And so we're really trying to make it fun, accessible, because we think that trust really, and leadership, is really something that everyone should be embracing. The way we like to define leadership is not about hierarchy or titles or where you sit at the table. It's really about the posture of empowering others to do great work. And, and so we, you know, I think a lot of where we're looking at taking Spotlight Trust in terms of the products we're developing, the Trusted Leader Lab, as well as the book, The Future is Trust, is making it accessible to people. Because so often you look at, you know, we talk about bringing diversity into leadership, we talk about, you know, giving voices to more people, but at the same time, we then make leadership programs, you know, $10,000. And if you are not of a certain pedigree and haven't been groomed for that, you're not gonna have those resources. And so we're really looking at how can we make leadership more accessible to everyone because I think we need more leaders out there. We need more people who are willing to empower other people to take responsibility and to really own the difference that they are seeking to make in the world.

Yeah, love that. What do you think the biggest challenges, or what do you find to be the biggest challenge with the people that you're working with in terms of connecting with themselves and trusting themselves and getting in touch with their inner sense of worthiness and trusting themselves to lean into whatever process or work is right in front them? What's the obstacle that you find most frequently gets in their way?

I think a lot of it is that we— there's been such a focus on hard skills, or I should say technical skills, in the past, you know, 10, 20 years. I mean, I remember going to school and, uh, for my first university degree, um, before I went back to art school, uh, there was such a high emphasis on like, oh, like, learn engineering or learn, you know, physics or very like kind of the, the, the sci— the STEM type majors and skill sets. And we don't as a society really look at people-centered skills, or we like to call them trust-centered skills. A lot of people call them soft skills when They aren't actually soft. And I think that's a big misconception that a lot of people come into and they're like, oh, I, you know, well, I'm a subject matter expert, so I should lead a team. And they're actually— and actually, maybe you shouldn't be leading a team because you haven't developed the interpersonal skills around leadership, around communication, around giving and receiving feedback, around being empathetic to your team, around negotiation. There's all these other skills that come into play that make people successful managers and leaders, and we often don't focus on those. And I think that's one of the big mismatches is a lot of people come in and they've never actually thought about any of this. So I think the first part is that knowledge.

Yeah. We go through 80% of our day-to-day lives just on autopilot. It's our unconscious is just kind of leading the way. And it takes a lot to bring our conscious selves into things and do things on purpose deliberately with intention and integrity and make sure. And I love what you were saying about soft skills and hard skills. At Creative on Purpose, we just call them human skills, the skills you've been practicing ever since you exited the womb, the skills, well, all the things that you talked about in your, your 5 C's for the book, you know, communication and connection and collaboration and creativity. These are just human skills that you can bring to bear every single day. And it doesn't matter whether you have a title or feel entitled to be a leader. You can practice these skills wherever you are in any given moment with whomever you find yourself with at any given time. Really, really love that. We're getting close to the end of our time together. But I, I'd love to hear your answer to the question about learning from a big mistake. Now, I know that you make mistakes very, very infrequently in your life and in your day-to-day, but I'm sure that at some point there has been a moment when you suffered a misfortune, you made a, made a big mistake. And I know that you are a perseverant person. So I know that you dusted yourself off and moved on. What's the, what's a mistake, any mistake that you want to bring up? That you made that was a big one, but one that you were able to draw a lesson from or one that you were to flip into an opportunity or otherwise use to leverage your potential?

Sure. I make mistakes all the time and I actually try to make them— well, I try not to make them as public as possible, but I also try to make them as public as possible so other people can learn and not do what I do. I mean, I think Oh, there's so many. It's like, which can I pull from? But one I'd like to grab is early on in my, like, something. So I used to teach career skills for creatives at a private art university in San Francisco. And something I would always try to instill on them is the need to negotiate around salary and/or compensation, I should say. 'Cause, you know, salary is flexible, but really just how are we being compensated for the work we're doing? And I remember back when I was starting off, I, I was working at a retail store, uh, selling wedding invitations. I actually got approached by a wedding invitation startup. Uh, their merchandise manager happened to be shopping and she actually poached me into working at a startup. And I remember it was, it ended up being a hybrid customer service, also design position. So I was literally doing graphic design work. I was studying illustration at the time and I remember going in and I was, uh, and, and you know, this is all in San Francisco back many years ago, so no stories around the actual numbers I'm giving, but I was being paid, I think $11.50 or no, I was being paid $13 an hour, uh, at my kind of management, middle management position at this store. And so then I went in and she straight up, the, at the new job, she straight up asked me like, oh, what's your salary expectation? And this is only really like the second or third job I had ever taken. So I had no idea about, you know, not saying a number first, all these other strategic things that I try to teach my students. And so I was like, but I was like, I should say a higher number because I'm doing some graphic design work. So I was like, uh, I don't know, like $15. And then she, then she's like, okay. So then she went into the CEO's office, talked to her, came back, and I could see this through the window, comes back and she's like, we're gonna offer you $17. And I was just like, sold. And then, you know, like, I'll sign right now. When in reality I'm like, you know, graphic design usually starts around, even in mid-level markets, at like $35, $40 an hour. In San Francisco, it was closer to $50 or $60. And so, you know, like if you, if you take the amount of money I was leaving on the table because I didn't negotiate, and I was super stoked that, you know, they're like, oh my gosh, that's even $2 higher than what I had said. This is amazing. Because I wasn't doing the research, I didn't do the prep work. I was just kind of like, I'll just go talk to this lady who knows, and I'll wear a nice shirt and a tie. Because of that, there was so much money left on the table. I really try to help other people understand that, you know, doing the, the pre-work is usually most of the work. And that makes doing all of the things that we see as scary in terms of like, and you know this, it's a book launch, it's all of the prep work that is the labor. And then you just like hit publish and then the book's there. Right? And so in most cases, doing your homework is actually, if you do your homework and you do that well, the actual game day becomes super easy.

Yeah, yeah, definitely do the hard part first, for sure. I love that. Well, Rick, our time is just about up. I would love for you to conclude with just a thought for the folks that are listening. They're all people like you and I who are seeking to make a bigger impact on the world, make the difference that only they can make. What would be a tip or a piece of advice that you would have for them or anyone that seeks to fly higher in the difference that only they can make?

I would say take the first small step. I know it's tempting to like jump ahead, but I realize that every meaningful change that I've had in my life has been through taking one small step towards the direction I would like to go. And you might— and it allows for course correction, right? So if you're like, oh, I wanted to go here, but actually I want to go slightly over here, taking those small steps and doing your homework, which is those small steps. It could be research, it could be having an informational interview with someone. That's really the stuff that gets things moving in, in, I should say, the momentum going for you to actually reach the end goal that might be pretty far down the line. So small steps first.

Well, those that are longtime subscribers to the Creative on Purpose newsletter, watchers of this broadcast, know that we're big fans of small steps into possibility here. So that's fantastic. Thank you, Rick, and thank you. Everyone for tuning in. Rick and I really appreciate you lending us some of your valuable time and attention. We hope today's broadcast motivates you to lean into an endeavor that matters with a greater sense of curiosity and courage. You can learn more about Rick at spotlighttrust.com, but give them the other two sites as well, Rick.

You can check out rickkitagawa.com or kaiju— that's K-A-I-J-U— coaching.com.

Fantastic. And of course, it's always great to see you at creativeonpurpose.com as well. Now, take the insights and inspiration from this conversation so that you can fly higher in the difference that only you can make. Rikita Gawa, thank you so much for your time and for sharing all this wisdom with us today.

Thank you so much, Scott Perry, for building this and for having me.