16 Rick Kitagawa » Just Keep Learning

Rick Kitagawa Just Keep Learning Summary

Rick talks about the winding path in life that led him to teach business courses to college creatives and become a coach for Seth Godin’s workshops. He is an artist and an entrepreneur. We discuss a lot about building confidence and how to succeed in the noisy world of both art and online business.

Episode Notes

Rick Kitagawa is considered an Inner Monster Wrangler. According to his experiences, his greatest strength is helping people wrangle that monster that holds us all back. He is great at helping people with imposter syndrome and achieving their big dreams. He coaches leaders, entrepreneurs and creatives to build confidence and strategies for success.

Rick shares a bit about his upbringing and how it might not exactly be what people would think. We also touch on the debate about whether people should go to college, or not. Over the years, whether in business, social, or art, he has gone from scared of being judged, to being completely open about his own successes and failures.

In this episode, we talked about content creation, especially when it comes to building courses and educational material. We discuss confidence, creativity, building business and how to stop stealing dreams from people. With so much experience and an appreciation for all forms of creativity and lifelong learning, Rick Kitigawa is the perfect JKL guest.

Rick is a founder, speaker, NFT creator, business consultant, storyteller and artist. He is the type of person that will help make anyone’s life better just by working with him in any capacity. Just an all-around really good person.

Keep These Things In Mind When Creating Content And Courses

There are a ton of snake oil salesmen in the online business world. But this is no reason to give up on your dream of being an educational leader in online business. It is important that we have more good people creating courses and content now more than ever before. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating your own business courses and content:

Give it away. Give away ninety plus percent of your effort. The more we serve, the more we will get in return, but only if we truly serve first. Don’t stress about what to monetize, or not. Give it away and then when the time comes to build a strategy to monetize, you will know.
Define what you’ll teach. We don’t have to focus on a niche in our lives overall, but being able to define a focus for what you want to teach people is really important. Each course, or mini business will have a specific focus. You can decide what your focus will be either by expertise, interests, or a combination of both.
Ask your community. One of the most important ways that we can decide our vision for content we create, or products and services we sell is by asking our audience what they have questions about.
People who pay are more likely to pay attention. It is really helpful to give away a lot of free content because let’s face it, the ability to learn in today’s day and age should be free. But, don’t underestimate the fact that some people need to put skin in the game in order to actually take the material, or course seriously.
Have a price that suits your plan. You do not have to give into the idea that everything should be super expensive that you sell in order for it to be valued. But, it is also reasonable to have premium prices. It all comes down to knowing who you want to serve, what is the best price for them to pay and appreciating that when you take in revenue you can return it right back into surviving your community even better. So you may have a specific price plan for your customers, or you may have a value ladder that is accessible to anyone.
Cater courses and content to different learning styles. Similar to the changing in price, if you want to help more people then make sure you teach with different methods. You may need to create audio, video, visual, and written content to help people learn in the way they learn best, at that moment.
Engage people where they are at. Craft ways to ensure that there are equal entry points to the curriculum and content you are creating. Either split up your offers so that it is geared towards specific expertise and abilities. Or create the ability for the content to be flexible within it. Either way the progress should be individualized.
Create unscalable learning moments. Synchronous learning opportunities, like real time projects, face to face meetings and live discussions may not be overly efficient when it comes to speed and convenience. But, in many cases these challenges, and peer to peer interactions are extremely valuable to the best learning. So make sure you have at least some live time opportunities and a community element. The community could exist in a group, or a channel, where people are able to work together whenever they need some peer interaction.
Post clear instructions. When it comes to making sure people understand things like what your content can teach them, how to buy, how to succeed and how to follow the programs, don’t assume it is easy to figure out. Test this with your community, take constructive criticism, but more importantly, over communicate and constantly make it easier and easier for learners to succeed.
Define due dates. It’s really common in such a fast pace world that we also fail to get things done on time. If you have your content and courses beautifully laid out, with clear teaching, but no due dates then it will be too easy for people to set it aside and forget about it. Even if your content is really engaging, be sure to embed deadlines that help people stay on track to the next micro goal, one at a time.

Memorable Quotes

“Do the hard work of building an audience.”

“We see generosity as giving something away, which is good too. But, it can also be generous to charge people. For one, you honor the work by allowing yourself to continue doing this work. And two, when there’s no skin in the game, no investment from the participant, they have a much higher chance of giving up, yet you know success is helpful to them.”

“Coaching is so valuable because it’s personalized and in real time, as opposed to having a more prescriptive tone. Podcasts, YouTube, books, they’re great. But, they’re structured for many people. When I’m coming up against something personal, I’d rather have someone tailor their expertise and knowledge to me.”

Guest Bio

Rick is the founder of Kaiju Coaching. He considers himself an inner monster wrangler because he coaches leaders and creatives (which he believes includes everyone) to wrangle their Inner Monsters and transform them from fierce enemies to trusted confidants.

As a visual artist, coach, entrepreneur, and professor, he has dealt a lot with Impostor Syndrome. Pretty much everything he does requires dealing with fear, uncertainty, and the judgment of others.

He built Kaiju Coaching to help others struggling with the same fears, doubts, and Inner Monsters that he’s wrestled with all his life. Rick is also a professor for traditional college focusing on similar topics with an emphasis on business for creatives.

He is also Co-Founder of Spotlight Trust, a leadership development partner that helps organizations harness the power of trust to become more human, creative, adaptive, and effective. They do this through content creation, learning materials, coaching and consulting workshops to help your team develop more trust and empathy.