Kristen Biggins

I honestly think a lot of it's the people that I've been around. Dave Kennedy, Alex Wilcox, Sydney Keeby, Christina Medici, and Crystal Letenio - that was my team at Box. They were the ones that really helped build me. I think when you find people that genuinely care about you, it does allow you to be successful. Here at Canva, I have a really small team, it's global, but when we're together, we all actually cheer each other's success on. I really think it's the people around you that make me want to be better and help me get to that next success. Success comes from doing an authentic, good job - I'm not just trying to punch the ticket and push orders down to customers. The people around me took a chance on me and hired me when I didn't have as much experience at Box, and I was able to translate that to Canva. I think it's just the people you're around - if you can really lean on them, learn from them, and just keep making a good impression based on the quality of your work.

The most important work advice was to ask questions and build authentic relationships. My current boss, Brent Irwin, really challenges us to truly understand how people think and how people operate, and gives us the free rein to be our authentic selves in it. He's like, I don't need to provide you a script. Being authentic in how you sell - just be Kristen, be authentic in your selling - I think that translates a lot more than always just being the person that's trying to push the contract to submission. Early in my career, I was told 'you're too loud' and that I needed to become more professional, but I didn't love those comments. Instead, I took them and pivoted and made that my actual persona. I leaned into that more. The most impactful thing was learning to speak less and listen more as a seller, but doing it in my own authentic way.

I'll say, ask for the order, and what I mean by that is you have to advocate for yourself. It's something I've done since the beginning, and even when I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to keep moving up. Helping people know where you want to go is the only way they're going to help you get there. Call them on the phone, be like, this is what I'm trying to do, these are my end goals, this is the strategy I'm trying to take - just ask for it. I think sometimes beating around the bush or not being as transparent is not going to get you anywhere, so just ask. What's the worst that could happen? They say no, and I know that's cheesy, but no one's gonna do it better than you. It just shows that you're ready for more challenges and more responsibility if you're the one asking for it. Boys aren't ever conditioned to think like that - they just are like, oh, it'll always be yes until it's no, but we always think it's no until it's yes. I love being a woman, I think there's so many great qualities that we have, and one of them is to just do things our own way and then just do it better.

The biggest challenge is always going to be people working with people. Direct sellers have one thing in mind - they are used to going alone, it's truly like a lone wolf situation. But when you add more people to the deal cycle, sometimes people think that's going to cause time delays or friction. So I think it's helping people understand what my role actually is - demystifying what I do, because it's just not always familiar to people who come from external companies. The most difficult thing is dealing with a lot of different personalities. You get a lot of personalities, and that's challenging, but it's one of the most unique challenges because I get to learn a lot just from seeing different personalities. One of the biggest opportunities is that I just came out of QBR week, and Canva's a creative tool, but we're really now focusing as an AI platform with creative tooling. It's actually being able to be a part of a company that's thinking about solving problems in a new way. I hope one day I get to look back at this and say I was in the AI age, the AI space race. Being able to learn about AI tools and being challenged to think and come up with new strategic approaches of how we can solve problems for customers that they are aware exists but don't know how to fix - that's the most new opportunity I get to embark on.

I want to say the biggest value is transparency. From a personal side, it's people just being really honest with where they're at, being a little bit direct. That flows into the sales side - you don't have to tell me everything that's on your mind or every emotion that's in your heart, but I do think in sales, when people try to pull levers and misdirect things, that comes off that way. I think when you're just transparent and be like, these are the problems, I'm trying to be really candid with you, I really value that because I try to give that to people both personally and professionally. Being able to truly express yourself, express your emotions and roadblocks, I think is really helpful to other people to get to know you and know how to work with you. Another thing is respect. I work with all segments and all verticals right now, so I get to work with probably 70 internal people and then externally probably hundreds that I come across. Everyone's on a different selling journey and personal journey, and I think just being able to respect everyone and respect their time goes a long way. I try to let people be them - I work with some older people and I respect the way they do things and acknowledge that maybe that's not the way I would do it, but I let them be them. Respect is not given, it's earned.