How To Build A Media Juggernaut w/ Piera Gelardi

Piera is the co-founder of Refinery29, one of the most important and influential lifestyle editorial companies on the internet with millions of visitors a day from just about every corner of the planet. It’s one of those classic entrepreneur stories, starting with a few friends in a cramped makeshift office who had a ton of passion but not a lot of experience – they’ve had some ups and downs, made some pivots, but here they are – they’re still standing, stronger than ever, and they’ve unquestionably made their mark on our culture with a voice that’s distinctly different from that of mainstream fashion – one built on diversity, inclusion and community that’s struck a chord with millennials.

Her story is super inspiring, and she’s particularly gifted at deconstructing it for the benefit of those who want to follow in her footsteps – whether that’s in terms of building an editorial website like Refinery29, another kind of business or even just a side hustle or hobby like a blog or YouTube channel – the stuff she shares here is gold for anyone who wants to build a thing from the very ground up.

Today on the podcast,

She talks about how the vision and voice for R29 is literally in her DNA, and how that’s made its way into every part of the company from content to the color of the paint on the walls of her office
Piera gets into a ton of detail about the specific blueprint she used to transition from a full time day job to R29 – specifically, why she was careful to compartmentalize the “pay the bills” part of her brain to save the rest for building R29
For those of you going from 1 to 10, who have an idea that you’re trying to grow to the next level, there’s some gold here for you as well – the actionable tactics and ideas she’s taken away from scaling the company from 4 to now over 500 people

Enjoy!

You’re never done growing. Creativity is boundless.

FOLLOW PIERA:
twitter | instagram | refinery29

Listen to the Podcast

Watch the Episode

Some Questions I Ask:

Has your career been intentional? [1:20]
How have you imported your upbringing into Refinery29? [3:00]
What’s the backstory on the foundation of Refinery29? [9:13]
Can you talk about the mindset and tactics when starting out? [12:12]
Talk to me about why you chose to constrain your odd jobs when building Refinery29. [17:40]
How important was it to do all the jobs yourself to get the business off the ground? [22:50]
How did your upbringing with an entrepreneurial family shape your success? [27:00]
What role has diversity and inclusion played in building the culture around your business? [35:00]
How do your values touch on more levels of your company, beyond just fashion and photography? [39:15]
How did you try making an impact where you saw the problem? [44:30]
What have been the effects of narrowing your focus in your business? [49:00]
Do you have any other tactical pieces of advice for beginning creatives? [53:30]
Are there specifically intentional things that you do to do maintain a growth mindset? [57:15]
Tell me about The Peach Pit. [59:43]
What was the genesis of the brainstorm sessions? [1:03:40]
Would you say that creativity is one of your core values? [1:05:15]
Talk about 29Rooms and what role does it play? [1:08:23]
How important is it to be able to package your creative ideas? [1:19:00]

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

How Piera’s feminist upbringing has shaped her career and success. [2:00]
Piera’s take on how fashion encouraged girls to aspire to be tall, thin, white, and rich and pushed you to need things to feel beautiful. ..and how boring that was. [4:42]
Building a 500 person company seems daunting, but it’s easier when you just take the next step necessary. [10:00]
How Refinery29 was built with side hustle, friends, and freelance side jobs. [12:30]
The very things that people said would be Refinery29’s downfall, ended up being their bread and butter. [16:30]
Why Piera quit her job but used her connections and skills that she got there to freelance. [20:00]
The idea of “the creative” who doesn’t have to get in the weeds is bullshit. [23:35]
For Piera, being creatively successful is about being the best listener in the room and connecting the dots between what others are saying. [24:25]
How to find success. [27:30]
The rise and fall of Piera’s childhood family business and how it’s affected Piera. [29:00]
Why it’s important to know what success looks like to you rather than defining success based off someone else’s definition. [33:00]
Why it’s important to constantly take stock in what you’re trying to accomplish and checking in on your goals. [40:54]
How Piera is trying to unwind beauty biases with 67 Percent Project by making and showing and giving images of plus size models. [41:00]
How Piera has tied her skills to something she’s passionate about in the world. [47:15]
The importance of small tests before launching full force. [52:10]
Why being confidently humble and vulnerable is the advice Piera offers to budding entrepreneurs and creatives. [54:05]
There is no road map. [55:55]
How Piera deals with self doubt. [58:00]
Why Piera decompresses each night by writing down notes from her day and why you might want to pick up the habit. [58:56]
How taking an improv class helped spawn the idea for a free flowing creative brainstorm session that Refinery29 uses for to spawn new ideas. [1:00:00]
How Refinery29 brought their editorials to life with 29Rooms. [1:10:36]
When you take risks and create things that are inclusive and exuberant, it’s contagious. [1:14:00]
What the creative process looks like to Piera. Can you relate? [1:16:35]
Why you need to master the art of packaging and communicating your ideas and how to practice doing just that. [1:17:20]

This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.