Career Relaunch®
Joseph Liu
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Dealing With Insecurities with Rina Takikawa
Making any major career pivot involves a lot of bravery, risk, and complication. You’re dealing with not only the practicalities of switching career paths but also the insecurities associated with starting over. On Career Relaunch® podcast episode 96, professional ballerina turned Mooch product designer Rina Takikawa describes what triggered her to walk away from a career that was years in the making and the surprising links you can find between two seemingly unrelated careers. This sort of decision to let go of a dream you once held onto so tightly turns out to be quite a common one amongst the clients, listeners, and audiences I cross paths with in my line of work. Rina and I talk about why people make these brave leaps, what you can do to manage the pivot, and how much you end up learning about yourself when you’re forced to reconsider what truly makes you happy. During today’s Mental Fuel segment, I’ll also share a few of the insecurities I wrestled with when I started over in my own career. Key Career Takeaways Your goals can change over time. When you lose the passion you once had for your career, you owe it to yourself to try and move on. Making the decision to walk away from a lifelong dream is never easy, but if you can manage the complexities of letting go of the investment, you may just end up finding much more career fulfillment. If you look hard enough, you can find the surprising, common threads across your seemingly disparate professional endeavors. Listener Challenge During this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I challenged you to identify, name, and share one of the insecurities you’ve felt recently in your own career so you can identify it when it shows up, accept it, and not allow it to paralyze you. Remember, having doubts doesn’t mean you’ve made the wrong choice for your career. It just means you’re dealing with a common dynamic that emerges when you make any unconventional move. About Rina Takikawa, Ballerina Turned Product Designer Today, I’m speaking with Rina Takikawa, a product designer based in Los Angeles. She’s one of the founding members at Mooch, a fintech startup building a Gen Z budgeting app, where she leads design and product experience. Rina has been featured in press outlets such as Business Insider and Built In and has spoken at the University of Arizona, UX Copenhagen, Ideate Labs, and CareerFoundry among others. Before transitioning into the tech sector, Rina was a professional ballerina for the Ballet de Catalunya in Spain. Follow Rina on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and her newsletter. Did You Enjoy This Episode? Please Let Us Know! Tweet: If you enjoyed this episode and have a few seconds to spare, Tweet to let me and Rina know! Tweet a thank you! Review: I’d also love for you to leave a positive review and rating for the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, which helps my show reach more people who want to relaunch their careers. Follow: Be sure to follow the Career Relaunch® podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Android to automatically get each new episode on your device. Full instructions. Stay in touch: Follow the Career Relaunch® podcast on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow host Joseph Liu on most major social media platforms. Connect with Joseph Comments, Suggestions, or Questions? If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners! Leave Joseph a Voicemail You can also leave a comment below. Thanks! Thanks to BrandYourself for Supporting the Career Relaunch® podcast A2 Hosting offers simple tools and services to help control what people find when they Google you. To clean up, protect, and improve how you look online, visit BrandYourself.com and use promo code ‘RELAUNCH’ to get 50% off a Premium membership. Interview Segment Music Credits Podington Bear- Pives And Flarinet Podington Bear – Puppy Podington Bear – Trillium Leimoti – Leave a Mark Podington Bear – Jetsam Bio Unit – Across the Valley Scott Holmes Music – Ambient Meditation Scott Holmes Music – Life In A Moment Episode Interview Transcript Joseph: Hello, Rina. Welcome to the Career Relaunch Podcast. It is great to have you on the show. Rina: [03:18] Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here today. Joseph: Me, too. Alright. Let’s get started here by, first of all, talking about what you’re up to right now. And then, we’re going to go back in time and talk about your former career. I would love to start off by just finding out what you’ve been focused on recently in both your professional and also your personal life. Rina: [03:39] I am currently a product designer at a financial technology start-up called “Mooch.” We are a budgeting app powered by Blockchain, and we focus on budgeting for Gen Zs. So, we have a big Gen Z community of over 50,000 people. In my personal life, I enjoy participating in speaking events. I’m also focused on writing a newsletter every week. I do content creation here and there as well. I’m just very passionate about overall personal branding and sharing my story. So, that’s a little bit about me. Joseph: Now, as I understand it, Rina, you are a product designer at Mooch. In layman’s terms, explain exactly what does a product designer do? Rina: [04:25] A product designer is focused on the product development of an app. On top of actually designing the actual app, I’m also focused on the partner’s experience using the app. So, I mostly focused on how can we design a seamless experience for these people. So, it’s a little bit in factoring everything about a business and a product and experience, in general. Joseph: Do you also get into user experience? So that UX versus product design, do they overlap? Are they related? Rina: [05:04] That’s basically, the partner experience that I was talking about. It’s essentially user experience. What is the experience like during onboarding, during their sign-up process? What is their experience like using an edit functionality? What does your experience look like creating something on an interface? How does the feature function? Whereas, user interface is more so visual designs. How does the layout work? What do they see on the actual app? Product design is basically a coupling UX and UI together, but also focusing on the actual product division and business goals. Joseph: I know that this is a big part of your life right now and definitely what you’re focused on at this moment. You haven’t always been a product designer in the FinTech space, and this show is all about changing careers. I understand you used to be a professional ballerina. Let’s go back in time and talk about your former life as a ballerina. And then, we can talk about how you transitioned into FinTech. I’d love to go all the way back to the beginning. How did you get interested in ballet? Rina: [06:11] I started ballet when I was 5 years old. I believe the reason why was my aunt was a former ballerina as well. And so, she persuaded my mom to put me in ballet classes. Joseph: This was in New York. Is that right? Is that where you grew up? Rina: [06:30] I grew up in New York, but I was born in Singapore. I actually started my baby ballet classes in Singapore. Joseph: Do you remember those classes? Like, do you have memories of being in? Rina: [06:41] I do! Joseph: What was that like? Did you like them? Did you think it’s different from the other activities you were involved with? Rina: [06:47] Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Lots of great memories there. Very happy memories. I know my parents were quite busy when I was young, so I couldn’t go to ballet classes every week. It was more so like once in three weeks. But, I was always very, very excited for my next ballet class. I remember all the ballet kids would exchange candies after class, and I would bring a whole bag of chocolates, and I would just give them to the other kids. It was very wholesome. Joseph: I can’t remember if I talked with you about this last time, Rina. I’ve got a daughter who’s 5 and 1/2 years old. We took her to baby ballet right down the street. I would take her once a week. It was pre-pandemic. She was going at like the age of 3. We’re not doing it anymore. I guess the question that’s running in my head is, at what point does this go from being kind of like a fun thing to do as a kid to something that became more serious for you. When did that happen? Rina: [07:47 8 to 10, when I first started going to point classes, when I first got my point shoes. It was difficult, but it was a challenge that I was excited about. From there, I was kind of imagining my future already as a ballerina. And then, I moved to New York. The teachers there were also very inspiring. That is the real moment where I was like, “I want to be like my teacher.” My teacher was my biggest role model when I was like 12 years old, all the way up to 20. I remember always looking up to her, always fascinated whenever I see her dance. I’m like, “I want to be like her when I grow up.” That was when I was, “I really want to make it to this ballet world.” Joseph: What does it take to make it in the ballet world? Did that become clearer to you from the start? How do you assess whether you are one of the, I guess, few ballet students that can make it professionally in the world of ballet? Rina: [08:48] Ballet is a very, very competitive industry. There’s a lot of females, so it’s very competitive. All I knew at that age of like when I was trying to plan out my future and kind of break down the steps in order to go professional, is I have to keep being persistent, keep training, go to competitions, get awarded, get scholarships, get exposure to international schools and companies, go to summer intensives, a
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