What's it take for a company to win a Best Place to Work award? Get advice and inspiration from a 2020 Best Places to Work recipient.
As a winner of The Washington Post's 2020 Best Place to Work award, Storyblocks has done a lot to make its culture what it is today.
In this bonus Founders Focus episode, Scott Case interviews TJ Leonard, CEO of Storyblocks, on the who, what, and why of winning the award. Tune in to hear what advice TJ has for other leaders who want their business to be recognized as a best place to work in the future.
Connect with TJ Leonard on LinkedIn.
Learn more about Storyblocks: https://www.storyblocks.com/
Have feedback? Connect with Scott Case on LinkedIn.
Visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions, watch past sessions, and see what topics are up next.
Scott Case 0:00
Welcome to Founders Focus, a podcast made for founders by founders. I'm Scott Case, CEO and co founder of Upside, and I created Founders Focus to help share free resources and actionable advice. Together, we're building a community for business leaders, entrepreneurs and founders to come together to tackle today's challenges. This podcast is powered by my awesome team at Upside. Please visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions or to catch up on past topics.
Scott Case 0:28
So again, TJ, thank you for being here to talk about the Washington Post Best Places to Work award that Storyblocks received. And I'm here with TJ Leonard, who is the CEO of Storyblocks. So TJ, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and about the company?
TJ Leonard 0:46
Yes, thank you, Scott, good to be here. Always appreciate it when folks in and around the DC area think about the Storyblocks team. So thank you for having me on. You know, for people who don't know, Storyblocks is the first and largest subscription based provider of stock media and simple tools to help creators of all backgrounds create enough digital video to keep up with the demands of their audience. So you know, everyone from hobbyists to a small business or freelancer all the way up to big production companies, big broadcast companies are Storyblocks customers. And you know, we believe that the biggest challenge facing creatives today, again, is this idea of keep creating enough content to keep up with the demands of their audience. It's all about more and more and more, while at the same time, you're getting less less less budget, and you know, have fewer hours to go complete these projects. So that us. I'm a DC resident, I live up here by American University, I've got a couple kids, elementary age kids. So like many of us have been moonlighting during the day as an IT specialist and co teacher and all that sort of fun stuff.
Scott Case 1:59
You're running a school campus at your home.
Scott Case 2:04
How big is the team? And what was the situation kind of pre pandemic for you and your team working together? And then how has that changed in the pandemic times here?
TJ Leonard 2:15
Yeah, so we've experienced, it's been a time of change for everybody, we certainly have experienced our fair share. Our team is about 125 people today, we've hired close to 40 people, we've hired 40 people this year, I think about 30 of which occurred after we had shut the office down. We like most closed on, I think it was the 12th of March. So it's changed quite a bit. We've also changed ownership so we have a new set of investors a new board. And then lucky for us, the business has done very well through the pandemic. And so hiring, growth plans, all of that have remained largely unchanged. But yeah, I think we're seeing a big challenge. You know, early on, we had a lot of work that was relatively well understood, that was well scoped, and you can sort of hunker down and stay in execution mode, and as the pandemic stretches on now, all those cans that I think we all kicked in the second quarter, hoping we'd be able to get back to work, we're now trying to figure out a way how to get those things done efficiently. Despite facing virtual work, I think for another six, nine months, at least.
Scott Case 3:29
Were most of your employees and your teammates in a centralized office before all this happened, and and now you're all decentralized and remote? And what was that transition like?
TJ Leonard 3:42
Yeah, that's exactly right. We were you know, we all fit on one floor in one office, you know, in one location. So we had everyone at Arlington headquarters, we fit everyone on a single floor, we had a big open floor plan and places where we could do sort of ideation and creative work, we had places where we could get work done and crank. So we really had this, our physical office was very much our hub. We do have some remote workers, we certainly allowed for flexible virtual work, but we really were an office oriented culture. So it has been a pretty big change for us. And you know, some things, again I'm sure you've experienced this at Upside, some things translate nicely to the virtual world, you can repurpose it with a Zoom. Other things we had to throw away completely. We're not doing our innovation day this year, which was always one of the annual highlights, it's just too hard to do it well, when we're all in different locations. And then we've created some new programs as well specific for the virtual world. So it's certainly very different again, especially being I think, more of an office oriented culture than some, and it's been a bit of a mixed bag between things we've been able to just kind of neatly repurpose and carry forward, toss versus coming up with net-new ideas to replace some of those things we had to toss.
Scott Case 5:05
What have you been doing to kind of maintain that culture? Because like you Upside was very much we're all on one floor. In fact, a lot of the things that define the culture were enhanced by the physical infrastructure. What are the things that you found that are working? And what are some of the things that you've tried that didn't quite work the way you expected them to?
TJ Leonard 5:27
Yeah, so one of the things, I think we've tried to, you know, we created what we call our quaranteam very early on. The mission of the quaranteam was just help us keep a closer pulse on the team, given that we don't bump into people in the kitchen anymore, right? Like all those little moments of serendipity throughout the work week had been lost. So I think that was one thing we did that that's worked well is like, just acknowledge that, be a little more intentional with you know, when you're reaching out just to check in, hey, how things going? Understanding that everyone's working situation is entirely different. So that was one thing, just being a little more intentional around those kind of replacing those informal check ins. We leaned a lot on our business resource groups. So we have three at Storyblocks, we have Black Storyblocks, we have Women Storyblocksblocks, we have Out Storyblocks, the last of which was sort of formally recognized here only during the pandemic. So I think that's another way we want to connect with the team make sure that as we introducing policies make sure is we're doing things like work from home stipends or other benefits that we're thinking about those in an inclusive way and we're not unintentionally marginalizing certain groups. And then, you know, I mentioned this a second ago, we've tried to be creative about new programming. So we've got we call it Live Laugh Lunch, which started off as like an MTV Cribs style exploration of everyone's home office, and is now morphed into like a weekly variety show we've done like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire trivia, we've had lip sync battles, we've done all sorts of kind of goofy things. But that's, I think, been a big hit, where we sort of all come together midweek and reconnect and have some fun. And then we've got these Friday experiences where we've tried like, watching a movie together, we've had like, we've got ice cream, it's an important part of our office culture. And so we had this big like, Hey, here's how you make ice cream from home since you know, these little Sunday socials we would have in the kitchen are no longer around. So we've tried to be a big creative about that stuff. We've tried a bunch of things that haven't worked and I think we've acknowledged like, you know, going to be really hard to have a holiday party, going to be really hard to have an all company off site, going to be really hard to have innovation day so let's not wait to call the ball there, let's acknowledge it, and then again, try and fill the gaps that those create with some other initiatives.
Scott Case 8:08
The experiments are kind of fun. And as you said the team, I think ,having them be involved in it also improves the likelihood of both the things that work working and the things that don't everybody and look at it and say that wasn't good let's not do that again. Which is good, too. And so I'm curious, on the recruiting front, you've added a significant number of people. Have you opened up your geographic lens? Like how have you thought about the recruiting process? When you've obviously added 30 people during this time, both on the recruiting side, and then also in the onboarding experience as you bring people up the curve?
TJ Leonard 8:46
Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, I think on the first half, how we've thought about bringing people in, you know, what we did was we got together as a leadership team, and we said, okay, obviously, we're all virtual now, looking at a lot of our peers, look at a lot of these big tech companies, many have gone out and said, Okay, we're gonna really change the way we think about, you know, virtual work in our culture in the future. And we got together and said, Hey, do we want to do that too? We want to be more virtual and where we landed was actually no, like a lot of what makes us, Scott, same thing, like when we designed our office, you know, we actually made a physical path where you walk around our floor and through that path, like you tell the story of who we are, and our values are there and our customers are there. And so the physical office, I think, will be a big part of our future. Will we have more flexible work from home? Yeah, I'm sure that we will. But we acknowledge that like, we still want to be an office oriented culture. And so for us, that's meant let's still continue to hire around Arlington headquarters. So where we've been a bit more flexible has been hiring people who are willing to relocate but are in other places today, so instead of saying, cool, you got to be here within a month to starting, you know, everyone now has a little bit more time to get their bearings before they, you know, relocate. But, it's a good question and one again, I think it all goes back to what do you want the office, what do we want the culture to be when we return to the new normal, how much will it look like the old normal? How much are we gonna redesign?
TJ Leonard 10:25
On onboarding, you know, I would say this was one of the big my hands up here. This is probably one of the big areas where I think we misstepped is, again our mentality was, okay, let's hunker down and get through the second quarter, hopefully, by the summer, certainly by the fall, things will be closer to back to normal. And, you know, we do quarterly pulse surveys and traditionally your newest cohort is your happiest cohort, you're still in the honeymoon phase, sort of first 90 days tend to be really positive ones. And we saw for the first time in July, that our newest cohort was actually less happy, less engaged than older cohorts. And, what that told us was, you know, it makes sense when you say it out loud but all those older cohorts had, you know, relationships in the physical world that they could fall back on, they had been to the office, they had a desk, great, like they understood our story, they understood the space. And, you know, I've always said that culture is like a savings account, they've been making deposits for, you know, many years, time to make a withdrawal, and you're able to sustain that for longer. So I think that was one of our big learnings was, gosh, we've got a sort of redesign onboarding, we introduced a virtual mentorship program, all sort of built around this idea of how can we ensure that or virtual hires or new people have a successful first year can sort of successfully get to the point where we can all go back to that physical space and start building more traditional relationships?
Scott Case 12:06
That's awesome. I love your culture and the savings account construct. It's a really important point. And building on that, what advice would you have for leaders who in this moment forward would like to win a Best Places to Work? Or what do you think the core one or two elements are of having an excellent workplace culture?
TJ Leonard 12:33
And, you know, I think it's sort of like building great products, listen to your customers. In a lot of ways, I think we have always been very open to feedback, we, I think we're very transparent about the way we communicate, we have AMA's every week at our sort of company all hands, virtual all hands. So I think that's a big part of it, it's like if you trust that you're getting good data from the team, then you have good data to act on and like you can resolve sort of budding issues before they become too problematic. So I think that's one big one is think about building your team in the same way you think about building great products. And then the other, which is probably a little newer is more specific, I think, to the world we're living in is, you know, I think this is a time we see it in our business around the type of content that our customers are asking for. This is a time when humanity is being pressed. It's a time when I think everyone appreciates authenticity, and frankly, like seeing you struggle more than in the past. And so I think for me, personally, that's been a change I've made is trying to be, I think, a little more open leading in areas, whether it's social justice, or others where you would have typically kept it back in your personal life. I guess, to put it in a sentence, it's, you know, taking those personal parts of you and not being afraid to bring them to the office as you would have perhaps in the past. So I think that one's a little more specific to 2020.
Scott Case 14:09
That's great, TJ. Well, thank you for doing this. And congratulations for Storyblocks getting a Washington Post Best Places to Work award. You've obviously done a lot of great things with your team and will continue to do so. So I appreciate you taking the time for us today.
TJ Leonard 14:28
Awesome. Truly my pleasure.
Scott Case 14:30
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Founders Focus. What did you think you got any feedback for us got a topic that you'd like us to discuss, or maybe a future co host? We'd love to hear from you. Just hit me up on LinkedIn at T Scott Case. And join us at foundersfocus.com to stay up to date with the latest episodes and join us live every week at our Founders Focus sessions. Hope to see you there.