Paul Tripp | MCC: 0:06

Welcome to Courageous Conversations where we explore leadership journeys and dive into the experiences of those shaping the future. Let me ask you, have you ever struggled with balancing high expectations with self-compassion, or wondered how to lead with strength and empathy in a male dominated industry? If so, this episode is for you. Today we're joined by Adrian Piro, a dynamic CEO of Creative Market, whose story will resonate with anyone navigating the complexities of leadership. Adrian opens up about her multicultural background, her evolution as a leader, and the challenges she's faced breaking through in industries not always designed with women in mind. She shares valuable insights on balancing grace with high standards, embracing creativity and leading with empathy. As you listen to this conversation, I invite you to reflect on your own journey. What challenges are you facing? How can Adrian's experience inspire your growth? Whether you're just beginning your leadership path or looking for new ways to lead authentically, this episode offers rich perspectives to take with you. According to my watch, it's time for a courageous conversation. Adrian, welcome to Courageous Conversations.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 1:26

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 1:28

It's great to see you.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 1:30

Good to see you too.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 1:32

As we think about leadership and specifically women in leadership, I'm curious about the roots of what makes you who you are both personally and professionally. And so I'd like to start off with a question around what are you the product of?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 1:49

I think that's a. A little bit about me. I am mixed race. My dad is Japanese. Um, my mom is Caucasian. I grew up with them both as working parents and this is really a time when at least, you know, where I grew up. There weren't that many working moms, so having a working mom was always something that we negotiated and saw her, how she balanced work and home life and, and all that kind of stuff. My dad owns his own company. It's a third generation landscaping business. And so seeing him, teams, and employees and all the finances and all that was it. It's an interesting upbringing to be part of. The other thing I would say about myself is I like to be qualified in the generation of Xen, which is a sub of Gen X, gen Y, and I grew up climbing trees and. A time when you watched on tv, whatever was playing.'cause you didn't, there were like five stations and no way of recording anything. But I also had computers when I got to later elementary, and then by the time I was in college there were cell phones. And so I feel in between, I feel like I have the advantages of both of those, things, which defines a lot of how I think about work and life and all of that.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 3:10

How do you think your father's Japanese, upbringing influenced you?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 3:14

Also a good question. He is very focused, right? He believes in quality in the work that he did. They've always felt like that was their differentiator as a company was the quality and attention that they provided. I think that always was an expectation in schoolwork and certainly in the way I thought about my own job. So that mattered a lot. Also aesthetic, which probably is why I studied graphic design and am in the creative field is because the beauty of something like the way a waterfall falls or the blooming of flowers in the spring or the placement of how even food is displayed for holidays, all really matters. And I think that comes from my Japanese side of my family.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 4:03

You're new to the CEO role and you just described quality and aesthetics and appreciating detail, and I wonder perfectionism, it can tilt right over into perfectionism. I wonder how do you appreciate quality and aesthetics and design and hold space to not be perfectionistic?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 4:26

I think you're describing. The whole journey I've had for my life until this point, in high school, when you, I think about how, expectations are so clear, right? You do an assignment, you can get an a, perfectionism was like at its peak for me, and realizing, especially through college, that when you're on this learning or creation journey, you have to have your own expectations. They can't be external. They have to be internal, and that your perfect, is different than somebody else's, and that there's a lot of latitude for creativity to play a role there, that even imperfection can be an expression of creativity. And so there are all these things that have slowly chipped away at my definition of perfection. I would say I still expect a lot, and that is maybe the truest expression of perfectionism in my life today is that my expectations for my work performance, but also like my house tidiness and my kids in school and their politeness and all these things are, my expectations are high. So I think I try not to expect perfection for everything to be perfect. But I try to say like the bar can be very high still.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 5:48

Where new life do you hold space for ambiguity? I know you paint. I was thinking about your painting when you paint.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 5:57

It's funny. That's the first thing I, but I am actually not that ambiguous about my painting because I like do still life setup and it's a very. Time that I allow myself to paint. I don't think I have a good answer. I don't think I have one that I believe in. I could say what you want me to say about painting and I feel like it would not actually be true. Okay.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 6:18

Great. Great. I love. We're talking about women in leadership and I wonder with your Japanese upbringing and then always having the bar of we can do better, and then being a woman leader in a space of tech, but you had chief product officer, you had that role and you've had other leadership journeys where you had to be a leader who performed, how does being a female in the workplace contribute to, I've gotta get it right.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 6:51

I do think that's where the majority of the grace and openness to see all sides has to come in that I can have high standards. And I think that's also a reflection of a male dominated industry where like you see people performing on a particular level and you think that regardless of what you have going on in the rest of your life, that's the expectation for you too. So you could still have high standards, but I think what I've refined in my leadership over the last several years is leaving room for people to approach that expectation from a lot of different angles that. Tuesday is just a better day for them to show up for you because they don't have any, anything else distracting them in their life. And that if you can have a conversation about that, like how do you want these people to meet expectations? What are the non-negotiables? But then also where is their room for them to be themselves in how they show up to that. I actually have found giving space, setting clear expectations, but giving space for people to. Find their own journey to meet those expectations allows for way better outcomes. Because they believe in what they're trying to accomplish. They can apply their own experience and their own perspective to the solution. I've seen people blow my expectations away by actually giving them more grace, like a little bit more distance, gives them more chances to exceed.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 8:25

It was the ambiguity. That's fascinating. I'm curious about, as a leader, when you give people space, there can be a narrative of, oh shit, if I give'em too much space, they're gonna run wild, they're gonna take advantage of it. They're not gonna get the work done, they're blah, blah, blah. How have you learned to balance the, okay, I need this done. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna give you space.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 8:53

I think over time patterns, right? So you try to anticipate and preempt some of those by being more clear, clarifying your expectations even more. But I really believe in feedback that is in the moment, as timely as it can be, because that's when you can give small bits of feedback so they don't have to feel like these like big dramatic pivots. In your expectations for people. So when I have somebody who, here's my expectation, I need this presentation by X date, and I've heard nothing from them, and the date is approaching, and I have no insight into what's going on, that's the moment that I try to reach out and just say, Hey, I know that this is fully due by this date. Progress along the way is really important and I'd love to be a support for you. How are we gonna get that progress? Or if they've overstepped a line, I immediately am like, Hey, that didn't work out. We can't do that again. Because that's, then I'm addressing the one thing. If you let things build up and you wait for feedback, pivoting is really hard. So I've actually found that I haven't had to pivot people or deal with them, uh, taking advantage of the space and the grace because I've never. Letting them fall. I'm never giving them so much space that they're gonna completely fail. It's a buildup over time.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 10:15

So you talked about feedback, that honest dialogue in the moment, how do you understand that difficult conversations take place? How do you frame that up in your mind? Because some people think, oh my gosh, if I have feedback live in the moment of what's happening, that's a difficult conversation. It terrifies me. Therefore, there's messy buildup like you just referenced. Mm-hmm.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 10:39

I get nervous too. I wanna say the thing that is gonna resonate with them. I don't want the feedback to make them feel like a failure either. I'm nervous because I care. But what I've learned is that oftentimes it's not as big of a deal. And when you are doing it often enough and you're giving also positive feedback, by the way, it's not always just critical feedback. Then the conversation is much more natural and they're expecting it, and they want it because you've aligned this whole time on the growth and the expectation of them getting better. So in a way, you are a partner in that.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 11:17

Interesting. I appreciate that. Thank you for sharing that. I wanna pivot really quick about your working. You've been in creative in tech.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 11:26

Mm-hmm.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 11:27

And I'm sure those are vastly different. Maybe not. You tell me. Environments. How have those two shaped your leadership style? What do you see as common themes? How is that perspective gonna help you scale this business at Creative Market?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 11:42

I think working across industries actually is an advantage.'cause the more that you work, the more you start to see the patterns and you can bring different experiences to your problem solving in these industries that maybe haven't had that infusion in the past. I, I think for me, bringing those two tech and creative industries together. It's really, been about becoming less rigid, right? Again, because solutions can come from all types of backgrounds and experiences and perspectives, you start to realize that if you are too formal with process, you hear a lot about tech processes, scrum and all that, which I appreciate and have, you know, used to our advantage at different companies. But if you're too and try to infuse, create more friction. Accommodating to, again, setting high expectations, but saying like open to the formalities of how that gets achieved can be really great. I think it's like that encouragement of creative problem solving and then adding in the collaboration and all that, that then but certainly allows you to also scale. Because now you're not the one at the top making all the decisions or enforcing this process, but the team has been a part of those decisions. They're forming the processes that make them most efficient, and then they can have those processes be what drives them forward. They're committed. They're invested in that. So I, I've seen the ability to take what is oftentimes more formal. Tech and maybe sometimes too informal in creative spaces and find a happy medium.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 13:32

Sounds like you have a really solid leadership vision for how you like to understand problems and problem solve. So, how do you think the landscape for women in leadership has evolved and are there any specific turning points in your career that reflect this change?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 13:49

Yeah, I think the environment for women is still evolving. It helps to see more women in leadership. You know, it shines a light on. Maybe where we've failed in the past and what makes it possible to imagine yourself now as a leader. But honestly, there's still some kind of devastating stories about women in leadership, right? So I think we have a long way to go. I, I think seeing more women in leadership, being a woman in leadership, helps to normalize what it looks like to have female leaders tried for, be successful in. What was maybe historically not accommodating or maybe more toxic environments to women. And I just, I realized that sacrificing my emotional and my physical health just really wasn't worth it. And I wanted to set the new bar, not just for myself, but for what it could look like to care and give that back to the company that you could be an empathetic leader at the same time as having high expectations.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 14:48

When did you realize that shift? What was happening? You don't have to name the company, but what was happening?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 14:54

Yeah. I went through an experience where senior leadership was replaced. By a new leader who happened to be a man. And in this process he brought his own style of leadership, which very much took all the things that I had thought I had learned about leadership, about how to prioritize, how to present, how to represent my team, what executives needed from me as a team leader, really threw it out the window, the bars and the measures and the KPIs that I thought I was tracking towards. We're just like no longer relevant in the blink of an eye. And I, so I did my thing where I was like trying to make a relationship with this new leader, and I realized that he had already decided who I was or wasn't as a leader, that he had decided to prioritize relationships with others, particularly other male leaders in the company. He went so far as to. External, social events and only invite the male leaders at the company. And it was a deterioration of the trust that I had in that company's ability to support all of the perspectives and leaders that were in the company previously. And it took me some time I'm, there were other women who on day two stood up and were like, this is unacceptable. They took their, their complaints to the street. I was much more, no, this, there's gotta be something I'm missing. Uh, I know I can make this work, but that's really where my personal health started to deteriorate. I found myself changing who I was and sacrificing my personal expectations at work and. In my personal health in a way that like it, it felt so disingenuine I couldn't do it anymore, and I had to leave that company to become healthier. But it made me realize what I needed to prioritize in finding another company that I could be more clear about what my expectations were, and I could find a company that was willing to be equally as clear back and find a good match. It really was the first time that I felt like I had experienced a stark. Cultural mismatch and that part of that definition was as a woman, I had also just recently had my first child. My life priorities were very different, and I thought I was coming back to a company that was going to support that life balance, but I realized that I needed to find people who are willing to do that flexibility, understanding of. How life can shift. Shift doesn't mean you're not gonna meet those expectations that you have for your job, but being able to be a human in all of it.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 17:37

I can imagine that was a awakening and maybe scary moment of, oh, oh, this isn't a fit for me anymore.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 17:44

Yeah. Especially when you've been at a company for a number of years and you think you're progressing towards something specific. You're building your career, you're, yeah, you're contributing to something. You wanna see that value increase both for the company, but also how they see you like that you're bringing more and more value. So to see that kind of wiped away felt disempowering, for sure.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 18:07

So how did you know to let go? How did you know to say this is it? I

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 18:13

think when I stopped feeling like I was myself. There was something in how I had to show up every day or in how I had to speak about the work we were doing or the team that just didn't feel like I was being honest or genuine. I had to really contrive a message. I had to craft everything under the lens of what this one person wanted to hear and it started to change the way that I was managing the team. My values. It, it changed what I presented as my values. It didn't change my internal values, but that's where the rub was. I started to feel like I, I wasn't being honest as a leader. For lack of a better word, I broke, I just was like, there's too much distance between what I am having to do at work and who I think I should be or who I want to be as a leader. Got big enough that I couldn't stretch the distance anymore.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 19:16

Wow. Wow, you're describing this shift in which you needed to be who you were, right, or who you are. And now as the CEO, sometimes when leaders recognize that shift, it can be, now we're gonna do it my way because this is what I know to be my truth. And I heard you say earlier in the podcast. You understand that creating space for others is where the value is. How did you discover I don't need to go put myself in my way forward? And how did you know how to hold space? Like where did that learning come from?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 19:52

It's a good question, but I, I think the more that you move up in leadership, the more that you start to manage domains that are not your area of expertise. Right. And at least for me, I had to quickly learn that my contribution to leading that part of the organization was not going to be the best artist or to be the best coder or to be the best financial advisor. Like those are just not areas that I was trained in. And when I was doing my individual contributor work, not where I practiced my right, but they're all part of managing a business. And as my leadership increased and I took under my umbrella more and more of these disciplines that were not my area of expertise, I had to learn that my expectation setting was not about those specific disciplines, but it was about the achievement we were gonna have overall. So that meant that I had to trust those leaders to tell me after setting expectations, the best way to achieve those expectations. My leadership style is to ask a lot of questions, which, you know, may be annoying to my teams at the beginning. I'm trying to problem solve. My whole career has been about increasing the complexity of problem solving. That's really what kind of gets me up in the morning. Even when I was a graphic designer, it was about that next design problem. Now as a CEO, it's about orchestrating this very complex company and brand and all that, but it's still a problem to solve. And so I. Getting enough of the detail to try to figure out, okay, what are the aspects that we're not drawing together yet that we could in order to come up with a new, more interesting box to solve this problem within. Right. So oftentimes I will push my teams to ask those types of questions, and I do it through modeling first, where I'm genuinely interested in asking the questions, but I'm also teaching them how to ask questions of their current processes or of their current perspective, or of the boundaries imposed by external forces like tools or the market or whatever. And so I've started to say my expectation setting is what I can bring, but the way that problem gets solved or the expectation gets met. I have to trust those discipline experts. I can't do it myself because I, if I tried to tell the developer or or the sales team how to do their job, there's no way that I could do it better than them. But I can set the bar pretty high and I can make them meet it.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 22:35

Yeah. Oh wow. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. I'm curious, there's a problem out there that I hear a lot of clients that I've coached have, and that is, as a working mom, I can't be there for my kids all the time. I can't be at work all the time. I can't lean in like Cheryl Sandberg said. I'm curious, what knowledge do you have related to this problem, quote unquote, that you wanna share?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 23:04

I think find companies that are willing to be flexible. I know there's a huge debate going on right now about in-person work and remote work, and frankly, I see the benefits of in-person work. Even though I work at a fully remote company, I can understand both sides, but regardless of where your company is headed, or which company you choose to work for. The reality is that no two days are gonna be the same. Sometimes your kid's gonna get sick and that becomes the top priority. Sometimes you got a board meeting that's happening the next day, and that has to be the top priority. I think if you can, you know whether you call it grace or flexibility or whatever, but if you give yourself the space to address and acknowledge what is the most important now, we as an organization, as a company, as a culture, as a country, will be able to better serve women in leadership roles because they're always going to have more than one job. You know, it's, there's never gonna be just one thing on their mind. And so if we are not able to acknowledge that. We are multidimensional people, then we're not gonna be able to ever support women in those roles.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 24:26

You remind me of Sandra Quince, who she was the CEO of Paradigm for Parity, and she's a senior leader at Bank of America, and she echoes exactly what you state and that there's something that's important and top of mind for today and tomorrow it could be something else. And how do we allow people to lean in and be fully present in whatever's needed in their life in the moment for both the company and the person? And that's how you get the best results.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 24:53

It's interesting that you bring up presence, like being present. That's been my New Year's resolution for the last three, four years. And I think, not because I keep failing every year, but because it's just, it's difficult, right? It's a journey. Yeah. It's heavy. It's hard.'cause when you're responsible for so many things, you hold all those things in your brain and it can be very easy. To let your brain wander into those different pockets of your life and being present is hard. I think it's one of the things that having kids has taught me is that they don't know what else is going on in my brain. They don't, they're not thinking even about dinner later, right? Because it's not now. They're thinking about right now. And when you don't give them genuine attention, when you're not giving them your full presence, they feel that, and that barometer is. So invaluable, and I try even to apply that at work, right? If I'm meeting with an up and coming leader and I really value this person and I really wanna meet with them and learn about them and support them, if I'm distracted, even in that 30 minute call that I have with them, they will feel it. And that's not fair.'cause that doesn't represent how I feel and it's I'm not present, right? So I really try to make myself present. Even though there's a thousand things to think about, and that's why I use a lot of Post-it notes.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 26:15

Yeah. Have you contracted actively with your kids?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 26:20

You mean about like when I can be present and when I can't be? Yeah. I've tried. I think they're young enough and old enough to understand the concept, but to not have the. Emotional fortitude to be able to consistently follow through on that contract. Sometimes when they're really hungry or really tired, it doesn't really matter. And that could be at 8:00 PM and that could also be at two o'clock in the afternoon. Depends on the day.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 26:56

Yeah. Okay. So as a first time CEO, what's been the biggest surprise or learning curve you've encountered?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 27:05

I think it's about that widening umbrella that we were talking about. Like now that I am overseeing departments I didn't oversee before and trying to weave them into the overall success of the company, my first step, as I explained, is to learn, right? So I'm really trying to dive in and learn. And it, I think that's the hardest thing is not. Ignoring and not letting languish these other departments that I've built up over the last year and a half and tried to get into this really efficient, productive mindset. But to also turn some of my attention to these new competencies that I just don't have, learning about them, trying to figure out. Are they already optimized? How could they be more optimized? What should my expectations be? How far ahead of where they are? Are those, or are they just the right amount to get them motivated and moving forward? Particularly in our company, the enterprise sales team is a super well-oiled machine. Really amazing, but it's an area that I just have so little in depth knowledge of, I've worked alongside them for so long, built tools for them, created marketing materials, but never been part of that pipeline development process. And that learning curve is you're, you gotta change your mindset, like your priority shift when you're in sales versus when you're in product and how you think about your solutions that you're trying to come up with every day. So that has been a huge learning curve. Yeah. I just, I try to be inquisitive. Not presumptive.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 28:36

Yeah,

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 28:37

like before setting an expectation. I like to know whether I, that is going to be a high bar or just a high bar.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 28:45

Yeah. Yeah. I think your inquisitiveness is showing through in this conversation, which absolutely just tickles me to no end. What advice do you have for women who aspire to executive roles, particularly those from minority backgrounds or non-traditional career paths? And I'm wondering. What do you think they can use from their backgrounds as strengths in their leadership journeys?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 29:10

I would say trust your instincts. That's for all the backgrounds that you are not just as a woman or not just as a minority or as somebody who maybe has a non-traditional path to leadership. I think whatever is your path, you have experience to lend. might need to figure out where that experience can be best applied, but it will be your differentiator, right? Like you are in this role, or you aspire to be in this role to make change, to make it better, right? That's our goal. Productive business people in this world as we think we can provide a better service or a better product or more growth or serve a need that hasn't been served. And as you join the leadership. Of the companies who aspire to do that, your perspective will be material. There's something that will ratify the market, and it could be your perspective. That's the differentiator. So I would say trust your instincts. If you think something could be done better, trust that thought, don't second guess it just because you haven't seen it done before that would be doing the same thing and a different result, right? So I would say. Find what matters to you, and don't be afraid that it's not the same as what has mattered to people in the past.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 30:33

You were talking about how you show up differently to the table. Is the strength that you actually bring to the conversation and do you see that happening more and more in the workspace?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 30:47

I do. Yeah, I see that there's both an invitation, which creates an opportunity, right? But also a willingness to participate in the conversation whether you've been invited or not as your genuine self. And I think both of those things in tandem help build more and more normalcy around the diversity that we. Not every decision has to be about your minorityness, but you will never leave that, that that is who you are at your core. You know, when you're in a work environment, your goal as an employee, regardless of your background, is to solve the work problem. But imagine that because of your experiences, you have experienced the past in a different way than everybody else sitting at the table.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 31:42

Mm-hmm.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 31:45

I think we all have this fear of not being accepted or not being like being seen as weird or. Whatever it may be. Whether it be because I've got kids and nobody else at the table does, and now I'm the one who has like the weird pickup and drop off schedule. It could be that, or it could be that you have neurodivergent behaviors or you've got, you're L-G-B-T-Q or you are a minority cultural group or whatever, but, you're like, I don't wanna bring that to the table because that's. The way that I'm weird and different. The reality is that the more that you do, the more it's accepted, the more that we can start to actually take advantage of the differences that we have. And that we're building products, we're trying to change a world that is that diverse.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 32:31

Yeah.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 32:33

So if we don't bring those things to the table, we can't affect that world.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 32:37

Yeah. Yeah. You can't actually have a creative market. What's something that, that you wanna say about creative market that you don't think people know or understand?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 32:48

A lot of what people see about creative market is if you're a graph designer, you might be looking for design assets. You do a, search online and you find creative market and there's an asset there that you wanna buy. That's great. We do that every day. This connecting. Somebody who's looking for something with something that's available to buy, that's a mechanical thing. What I think is way more powerful about creative market is that all of that content comes from genuine creators all over the world. So you're not just buying an asset, you're buying something from somebody who created a thing. It's graph designers connecting with other graph designers. It's illustrators and professional artists who've decided maybe as a side hobby or as a full-time gig to put their creative content out there and available for people to use on their own. And then you've got these other creative people, whether you be a marketing org or a graph designer or a freelancer, and you're like, okay, I gotta do this thing, but I'm not an illustrator. But I know I can put it all together in this beautiful design, or I'm not a typographer a type design, right? But you can come and find people who are. So there's actually this really interesting community relationship between those that are creating and putting the content on the site, and then those who are coming to buy and leverage and license that content and where it gets put out into the world.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 34:18

You sound like a proud CEO of your offering.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 34:24

Very proud. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 34:26

Yeah.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 34:27

And excited for the opportunities because there's still more to do.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 34:31

Of course. There's the high bar.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 34:33

Mm-hmm.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 34:33

Yeah. So what didn't I ask you about Women in leadership that you think it's important to share?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 34:40

Even though there are more women in leadership today than we've seen in the past. Women are still performing a disproportionate amount of unpaid labor compared to men, and that is oftentimes an added burden to what they're doing in the workplace. This can be caregiving for children or elderly, could be housework, it could be volunteering, but it's likely that if you're a woman in the workplace. You're also performing all of these additional unpaid tasks, and if we really wanna support women in the workplace, we have to shine a light on this kind of imbalance because it's not just about women doing less of this, right? The work still needs to get done. We still have family members that need to be cared for. We still have great volunteer efforts that need to be addressed. We just need to make it more equitable and. We need to make work flexibility more of a priority. I think that's the most important thing.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 35:47

Do you think work flexibility is the equity that you're referring to?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 35:52

I think that if we normalize a culture of flexibility, that women will be. Assumed to take advantage of that flexibility first, because they'll likely still have the mental load of all of the other home tasks and care caregiving tasks. But I think over time, flexibility can be extended generally, and as we accept that can be extended to, you know, fathers and spouses and men. That can be a sea of change. I don't think these things are like one solution. It's not a silver bullet. But I think these are barriers to change and we have to take down some of these barriers.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 36:40

How would you like to close this out?

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 36:42

Is that the question? Thank you for giving me a chance to think about my own leadership. I think oftentimes I'm so in the rat race of just doing the next thing and I spoke about how much there is going on. It's hard to take a moment and to really reflect, so I love the opportunity to reflect. So thank you for that opportunity and I'm just, I'm honored to be able to keep. My career moving forward with leadership in mind because I love leading. I feel like there's an opportunity to do more and better, and I envision that we do that in a way that is caring and also really high achieving. And how those two things mix, I feel is. Maybe the ultimate goal of my career. So to be able to look back and see how I got to where I am, but also where I still wanna go. It's a gift. It's really nice. So thank you.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 37:43

Creative Market is so fortunate to have you at the helm and I can't thank you enough for your time. What an engaging conversation.

Adrien Piro (she/her) -- Creative Market CEO: 37:51

Thank you.

Paul Tripp | MCC: 37:53

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Courageous Conversations. I hope you found today's discussion as inspiring and thought provoking as I did a special thank you to our guest, Adrian Piro, for sharing your journey and insights. If you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who could benefit from this conversation. We've got some exciting guests lined up for our next episode, so make sure to tune in. You won't wanna miss it. Until then, stay curious, stay courageous, and keep the conversations in your life flowing.