Speaker 0 00:00:08 Welcome to the breakout growth podcast, where Sean Ellis interviews, leaders from the world's fastest growing companies to get to the heart of what's really driving their growth. And now here's your host Sean Ellis,
Speaker 1 00:00:24 Right in this week's episode of the breakout growth podcast, Ethan Gar and I chat with Jamie Elden, chief global revenue officer at Shutterstock. A company we learned is much more than just a marketplace for stock photos. So Jamie started with Shutterstock at pretty much the worst time you could start at a company. So February, 2020, right at the beginning of COVID, but during the past year, Shutterstock stock has nearly tripled. So clearly things have gone well. So Ethan, what jumped out at you about this interview?
Speaker 2 00:00:53 Uh, such a great conversation, Sean, there was a lot to unpack, but I think there's some really good lessons about just the importance of mission.
Speaker 1 00:01:00 Yeah. That's, it's interesting that, you know, w we've we've had a lot of conversations over the last year and some companies have really struggled with COVID and others actually did pretty well, but I think a common thread that we've seen is that companies that did well during the pandemic have a strong sense of mission. And so I think that's just, that's something that's good to keep in mind in general, that in good times and bad times a strong sense of mission can, can really help you navigate, uh, wherever the opportunities might be to, to move your business forward.
Speaker 2 00:01:30 For sure. I think in this case, it really led them to lean into the flexible solutions that they could provide to really help keep their customers' businesses moving forward during the pandemic. And I think that's been really important.
Speaker 1 00:01:41 Yep. And it seems like their business is actually in a really good place beyond the pandemic. And so, um, you know, we've, we've also heard that theme come up a lot. That digital transformation is something that's kind of been happening over the last few decades, but what we saw is that in the pandemic, a lot of digital transformation was accelerated. And, um, and you can definitely see that in the case of Shutterstock, that things that might've been nice to have before the pandemic became must haves and, and really propelled their own business forward, but they helped a lot of other businesses, uh, keep moving forward.
Speaker 2 00:02:15 Yeah. Nobody seems to think that the world is going to go backwards back to where we were before this. I think those, those new transformations are gonna are going to stick. So Hey, but before we get started, I think you have a new cohort coming up with go practice. Is that right?
Speaker 1 00:02:27 Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. We have a new cohort starting July 7th. So this will be our third cohort and, uh, just really a perfect time for someone who wants to take their growth skills to the next level to join this. So I actually recommend, rather than signing up directly for the cohort that you go and check out our free grow skills assessment test. So you can get
[email protected] slash S a T. And it's going to help you understand where you have gaps in your growth skills and go practice, or really whatever your approach to learning is can help fill those gaps. Um, but hopefully that will be a good place for you to, to see if go practice, be a good fit for you, but let's get started with this conversation because I think it's a really good one. Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 00:03:22 I'm excited to be joined by Ethan, Gar as well. Welcome Ethan. Hey, nice to be here with both of you. Yep. Um, now this is going to be fun to dig into Shutterstock, um, which I'm sure most of the listeners are familiar with Shutterstock. You guys have been around for, for a long time. And, uh, anyone of our listeners probably has seen it out there, but, um, for, for those who may not kind of understand the full company and what you guys are doing, can you give us maybe a bit of an overview on what Shutterstock is and even really the vision for the business?
Speaker 2 00:03:55 Yeah, sure. So, uh, Shutterstock is about 17 years old this year and it started out basically as a marketplace for photographers to share and earn money from their photos and from their hobby. It took off, it was founded by John Joe who was an avid photographer and he wanted to create a marketplace where, you know, you could buy, people, could buy, sell license images for commercial use, set it up and the business took off. And, um, it quickly became probably number two in the marketplace behind Getty, after about five or six years. And then, um, John floated the company, um, it went public in 2013 and, um, it's been a successful growing company. Um, ever since it's evolved a long way from being just a place to come and buy a photo and license an image. Um, the company now, um, still has, uh, probably the largest stock, um, image bank, as well as footage, motion, music, special effects via 3d AI. We've moved into every form of creative product. And in addition to that, we've also now built on services. We now have a global newsroom, which is delivering news, whether it's politics, celebrity, entertainment, sports, all over the world to news desks of ESPN, BBC, ITV, and publishers all over the world. And then we also have a studio division called Shutterstock studios, which is now producing everything from five second tick-tock commercials for brands, right through to making TV spots for Amazon all over the world.
Speaker 1 00:05:34 Wow. There's a, there's a lot more to it than I realized. I'm glad that glad we asked that question.
Speaker 2 00:05:40 Yep. Yeah, it's a, that's so much more than I, uh, I, I think most people would, would assume. Um, so it sounds like you've been there, I guess, about a year and a half. Can you tell us about the role you're in the global chief revenue officer role and what attracted to the opportunity in the first place? Um, it's kind of interesting actually, because I've been in the sort of, uh, chief revenue officer role for about 12, 13 years of my career, two public companies, uh, last one being media general Nexstar and, um, I hopped out of it to go into startup mode, um, with two colleagues from media general. And we started a company called tonic and, um, an AI video driven software company that we launched and, um, started that. And then about a year and a half into that, um, shutter stock, um, approached me saying that they were looking for a global chief revenue officer who had vast knowledge of production capabilities, new agency, business, corporate business, media, and entertainment, and understood more than anything else.
Speaker 2 00:06:45 The creative process, um, that's used by those three different channels. So I met with the team and the founder I met with John, I met with Stan, um, our CEO, and we had a good conversation about where the company was, where he wanted to go to. And at first I was a little hesitant because they were describing the company is kind of a technology company and I'm a creative and a producer by trade. And so that kind of scared me a little bit. I didn't want to enter into the SAS or tech world because I don't have a background in that. And the more that we talked, it was more evident to me that, Hey, we're not really a technology company. We're a creative company. We provide creative solutions to brands, agencies, and the entertainment industry globally that I do know inside and out. And I know how to build sales.
Speaker 2 00:07:32 I know how to grow a company of this size and take it to the next level. And so we kind of set out a vision, uh, before I accepted the job. And I was kind of like, look, I think I could take the business from here to here. Um, not just from a revenue perspective, but also I think we should start to add other products and services that the market is looking for. And we're well positioned to do it, uh, laid out a plan. We all agreed on it. I started. And, um, it was, um, an amazing transition because it didn't feel like going from a little company to a big company, which was very cool. It actually felt I'm going from one creative company to another creative company, but I have more creative to work with. And so therefore that was exciting. And, um, I took the job and I've been there about a year and a half right now. And I can actually say, I love every single day and every minute of it. And it's probably to date the best position I've held in my career. Awesome.
Speaker 1 00:08:31 Yeah. I can see how, how the technology side of things could, could be intimidating, but it's really cool to realize that, like, I think almost every company is a technology company now to some degree, but it's just sort of like, what is that technology enabling and for you to be able to kind of parse out that it's, it's enabling all of the areas that you're really familiar with. That's, uh, that that's, that's powerful. Exactly, exactly. But I have to imagine that you did not anticipate a worldwide pandemic as you, when you joined a year and a half ago. And so that's, that's going to be like the majority of your experience there will have been crossing over with like major changes in the world. Did that throw a, uh, a wrench in the plans much or did it, did it impact
Speaker 2 00:09:14 The business at all? It was, it was so interesting. I started work on, I think it was February the 23rd or something. And at the empire state building where our offices are, we have two floors there. I started there, did one week of meet and greeting everybody. Second week of orientation, third week sent home global pandemic, and I just delivered my plan and vision of how I was going to grow the company and take it to the next level over the next 12 months. And I was just like, like most people at the time, it's like, okay, this is really strange. We're just going to go home. And the message was, oh, it's just be a couple of weeks. We're just, so everybody's just got to go home, stay inside and we'll be back in the office in a couple of weeks. So we'll just work from home two weeks then into four into six.
Speaker 2 00:10:05 And here we are today and we're all, most of us are still working from home. Um, it was, it was interesting because it was due at that particular point. Do I ultimate vision? Do I pivot, do I backtrack from some of the promises that, um, I laid out that I would deliver and some of the key metrics that I would deliver, um, do I backpedal, do I backtrack? What do we do? And I just decided I held a meeting on zoom with about, uh, I think about 350 people from the, from the division divisions. And I just said, well, this is, this is unusual. Um, we're going to make a bit what we can, but the vision stays and we're going to go for it. And I can honestly say from that day, it was the first week of March. I think that second week of March, we never looked back. We just kept moving forward and we maintained the vision and we delivered upon it, um, at the end of the year. So, um, it was remarkable, unexpected. I've never worked from home or remote in my life before. And so it was a lot of adapting in my personal life to, uh, to do what I had to do, but also then seeing into the windows of like employees all over the world, their lives, their children, their partners, it was a whole new experience in
Speaker 1 00:11:32 New York city was a scary place. And the beginning of the pandemic in particular. And so, you know, working from home, seeing all of that, you're dealing with all the personal challenges that come with that, um, while at the same time transitioning into a new business. And, uh, I know you just reminded me, I forgot that it was like, yeah, this is only going to be two weeks. And I remember that conversation with my kids of just like, you're either in the bubble or you're out of the bubble. You're if you want to go live with friends and cruise around us, good, but we're gonna, we're, we're gonna lock down and you decide, and they, they, they locked in with us. But, um, but it's, it's, uh, I'm, I'm curious, that's awesome that you were able to just kind of go forward with the plan as is, but I'm curious if there was any, uh, any impact on demand, either positive or negative. We've seen both. And a lot of the companies that we've spoken with was there, was there any impact on demand?
Speaker 2 00:12:28 It, it, it was kind of, you know, I would say the first four weeks from when we were started working remotely, the first four weeks, it was silent. So it was agency's silent. You know, it was just very quiet and we were reaching out and the feedback was, everybody's getting set up at home now. So infrastructures were getting put in place, CRM systems, content management systems, we're all being connected with our clients so that they could get set up and communicate with us and work with us. And we're all learning about Google hangout and zoom. You know, it, it was like a big learning curve, I think for everybody in our industry, um, during that four week period, and then it was the following four weeks, it just dramatically changed all of a sudden, a lot of the things that we, as a company, try and sell to our agency partners or our core clients, you know, who, and, and then we got that. We can do that. We'll but we like this from you. We like this from you all of a sudden, it was like, Hey, you said you could do that. Can you still do that under these circumstances? Because we can't, can you do production in Turkey next week? Can you help do post-production do you guys do editing for Facebook? Can you guys repurpose a TV commercial? Can you make as a TV? So some of,
Speaker 1 00:13:50 All of it, some of the stuff that was scaring you up front, the technology enabled end of things turned out to be really important.
Speaker 2 00:13:57 So it was kind of like all of a sudden we became, we became relevant in areas of our business that were low prior to the pandemic suddenly came to the top. And I think the first thing that we realized was production service was the key thing that people were coming to Shutterstock for. It's like, Hey, we've created, we've created these ads for TV or these ads for radio on they're just mute. We can't run it. Nobody's going to be getting on a plane and running away to The Bahamas for four weeks vacation right now. So we're not going to run that out. We can't run this new car commercial because it's talking about getting away and nobody's wearing a mask. So we would come up very quickly with ways that we could leverage our creative stock and footage. And also some of our creators around the world who hates like, no, we can do production right now, so, oh, you can actually do a shoot. You can cast great. Then, um, we'll see if we can put something together. And it just started from there. We started to become a global production company around the world, delivering production services to agencies, clients, and brands, helping them create messaging to stay in the conversation with their clients, bearing in mind that they were not able to use their existing creative that they built to run during this period because it was falling. You know, it was kind of Newt content. Yeah. He's either cone
Speaker 1 00:15:27 Deaf or just no longer applicable
Speaker 2 00:15:30 Completely. So suddenly we are providing banks and banks and retail companies with, you know, um, staging photography of lining up six feet apart with a mask on and, you know, washing hands and all these types of imagery. So all of a sudden brands will becoming kind of, um, advisers in their local communities. You know, they were using COVID messaging and, um, COVID imagery to really be part of the community. And that's where we really dug in and became valuable in helping brands start to change the way that they were facing their customers. Do you think it's going to be the new normal for you, or do you think we're going to see now that we're coming out of the pandemic, things are going to slide back in different directions or what are you expecting now? Um, funny, because as production started to open in kind of October of last year, um, November in sort of buck key markets, we noticed that, uh, we were thinking, Hmm, maybe everybody wants to get set up.
Speaker 2 00:16:33 We're going to go low again, in those areas. Exactly the opposite has happened. I think what we were able to do during this period of time was actually show our agencies and clients that, Hey, we are a great partner. We can do relatively low cost, high quality content at scale globally for you. And it's actually of a certain quality that is in line with what an agency would be putting out there. So we've now actually, um, staffed up in a huge way globally with our production services, our studio, and our creative talent to meet the demands from October last year. And it's not stopped. It's continued to grow all the way from January to now. And we, I found a real nice position in the marketplace where we're now I've extended services to agencies and to clients. And, um, we've kind of found a sweet spot for shutter.
Speaker 2 00:17:31 That's great. I think we see, we've seen with a lot of companies that the pandemic really accelerated what was already going to happen. It sounds like that's the experience for Shutterstock, where you had a lot of things that you were trying to build. They were happening at a, at one pace and this accelerated them, but it makes sense that that will stick. And that will, I mean, I'm sure there will be some changes, but it seems like that makes a lot of sense. What do you see as the key drivers of Shutterstock's growth? Um, I think when I look at it now, when I look back, when I, when I started at the company, I'd done some due diligence and spoken to a lot of people that I've spoken to a lot of clients of mine to what's their experience of shutter stock. And then I spoke to a lot of the VPs, the leaders of the company.
Speaker 2 00:18:15 And I quickly realized as I do in probably the last two or three companies, I've run culture is the most important thing. And I have learnt that if you can define and create a culture, that's based around a vision and meets the needs of the employees internally, then success will come either in revenue or in growth or an adoption. And I realized very quickly that Shutterstock was a very large company doing extremely well, highly profitable and doing everything that, you know, wall street wants a company to do. But it kind of is plateauing in its excitement level, internally with its staff. It was like the same kind of same, same, but growing and to our clients, we were only known for one or two things. And so therefore I saw this like, like plateau happening of like, Hey, if we don't innovate, if we don't get excited about some stuff and start to really look and innovate, then we could start to either decline or become non-relevant as technology starts to develop around creative down the line.
Speaker 2 00:19:24 So I started to work on creating, um, a messaging internally, like, who are we? What's our vision? Why do we matter as a company to an agency? Why do we matter to Pepsi? You know, let, let's ask ourselves that question. And if we can't answer it, then we really need to start to think about who we are, where we going and what we want to be when we grow up. And so I started looking at how we were presenting ourselves to, um, our clients. And I quickly realized there was a disconnect and it was, we were marrying technology and creative upside down. We were leading with technology and creative was the last thing we would talk about. And yet our buyers only want to buy creative from us. They don't care about what technology we have, that's housing it or delivering it or storing it.
Speaker 2 00:20:14 They just want a cool image or a cool piece of footage or some music. And we were suppressing that down. And I think that the sell of what we were providing to our clients therefore was hard to understand. And it was hard for sellers to get really excited. So I quickly stripped down what was a 35 page capabilities deck to a five page deck and built a very sexy sizzle reel showing all of the cool stuff that shutter stock does for its clients. And I dropped a call, Billy Ellie soundtrack on it, and we ran it internally to be like, this is what we do, guys. This is why our clients love us. Look at this. Look, we, I mean, you know, we launched white claw, we launched this, we're doing stuff for Porsche. We're doing stuff for all these cool companies. And here it is, this is what's exciting.
Speaker 2 00:21:06 And then we, the pitch became more about our creative solution plus service like production service. Let's go out with that. Let's get excited. And within four or five weeks, not only did we see, uh, an activity increase, we also saw a revenue increase. All of a sudden people were seeing assets that they didn't know we had services. They didn't know we had, and we were suddenly becoming a little bit more sexy and culturally relevant to a younger media buyer. So a younger publishing house that have stopped really wasn't in the conversation with, so it kind of changed dramatically very quickly. That's cool. Um, so would you say it was more about unlocking the culture? It sounds like the culture was already there and it was about unlocking or is it, you have to build a culture? We, it was the needed unlocking. We have very talented work workforce, extremely talented in many different ways, whether it's my editorial department, production studio, agency teams extremely talented, hugely successful, but if everything had become rather transactional instead of creative.
Speaker 2 00:22:19 And so I wanted to build a culture of creativity, we should be talk like a creative to a creative, rather than a SAS seller to a creative director at an agency that's not working. Okay. And the moment we flip that switch and we started to train about, Hey, let's look at what the creative roadmap looks like for all of our clients. Let's see how we can mirror a match, what they're trying to achieve in their day with how we can partner with them in these elements. And it just changed the way that we talked internally about our business very quickly. It changed the way we talked to our clients and we started to sell different assets to clients that we never had done before. Some clients were only image buyers. Now those clients are buying image, 3d modeling, VR, they're buying productions services. And that was because we li we started to lead with our end product rather than the technology that provides it. So the flip worked and it excited everybody internally. And from that, we, now everybody feels that they're a producer or that they're a creative director in the company rather than a mid-market account director. And I think culturally, what, that really did work for a lot of people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:23:35 It's so interesting. Like, as, as you were talking through there, I just, I think there's such a great lesson for so many other tech companies in that where yeah. I think trying to, everyone's trying to appeal to investors and, oh, we're so much more than this simple creative thing or that we're, we're AI powered and we're, you know, and they, and they just, they, they, they try to kind of lead with the tech to the point where I actually think that's been one of the huge things as to help me be successful in tech over the last 20 or 30 years is that I, I actually don't really like tech personally sort of the same way that you were a little, maybe intimidated coming into it. I'm not an early adopter. I'm, I'm much more of a, if I don't find a real practical use for something quickly, I'm not interested in it. And so it helps me say, why would anyone care about X, Y, Z technology? Let me, let me show what it's gonna do for them. And, and, uh, and so I, I just, I think so many, um, tech marketers, or just tech companies in general way overemphasize the tech versus why, why is this important to what your actual needs are and how can we meet those needs?
Speaker 2 00:24:49 And I think they also over-complicate. Yeah, I think when technology comes into play, it gets over complicated very quickly. And we, we expect our clients or whoever we're in a room pitching to understand what we're talking about and to really get excited by it when it's not the case. You know, like I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm just going to sit here and smile because I've got 25 minutes left and then you're gone. And it's kind of that. So we brought in one of the key things around the culture of who we were with was three words, which, um, Stan, um, publicity that, um, my CEO said, we need to simplify, simplify, simplify, and I never forgot those three words when I came into the door and I use it still to this day, if we can't explain it simply to somebody who we are and what we do, then we've failed and it should be easy to buy, easy to sell and easy to understand. And I think, you know, that works culturally as well because people then are getting up, not thinking, oh my God, I forgot my script. I don't know how to describe our technology again.
Speaker 1 00:25:57 I often say that complexity is the biggest barrier to adoption for anything. And, and it's, it's the same thing, as you're saying, simplicity, simplicity, simplicity, avoid complexity. So kind of coming back to the story of, of, you know, your time there. I mean, it sounds like pretty massive changes from adding new services to, you know, just because the market was more receptive to things you've had already in the, in the offerings in the past, doesn't mean that they know you have those offerings at that time when they need them. Um, so that has to be a challenge to everything from sort of the operational readjustment challenges to the, how do we make people aware that we can help them with these new emerging problems that are happening? W w when you kind of look at all of the challenges while you've been there, are there, are there any that stand out as, as bigger challenges than others that are worth
Speaker 2 00:26:50 Mentioning? Yeah. I think one of the key things was that the demand of what people were wanting from us from either an agency or a fortune 500 client during last specifically last year, they were not getting yeses from their, either their traditional big agency or are there other partners and they come to us and they'd be like, you know, we need this and we need it today. And it's like, oh, what do you need? Well, we need, we need a picture of six people queuing up and a bank, okay. Outside socially distance, and we need it tomorrow. We need, uh, can you shoot a FedEx guy in a van delivering with a mask on, can you shoot an Amazon delivery person with a mask all of a sudden. And it was because there was a shortage of content and brands were demanding it. And so turnaround became the big issue.
Speaker 2 00:27:44 Normally our production times would be, you know, a nice three to five weeks on producing something. All of a sudden that went to three to five days max around. So that was the biggest adjustment that we had to do. So internally that meant realigning more people into our production department and hiring people and production to meet the demand. But I think that that was the biggest challenge that we saw was, um, how can we take our delivery time from three to five weeks to three to five days and scale it. And what we were able to do was to leverage our contributors that are part of Shutterstock. So we have about 2 million contributors around the world, photographers, cinematographers, producers, directors, animators, and we would lean into those guys, Hey, we have this brief, what do you think? Can you participate suddenly that cut down times, today's from weeks.
Speaker 2 00:28:46 And we were able to before, um, I think anybody else start to look at localization of content, more diverse content was coming in. So, um, suddenly we realized that, Hey, we've overcome this now by leveraging local people in local markets around the world to be creators with us and help. And our clients were loving it no longer did we have to put five people on a plane from New York to shoot something in Turkey, we would leverage a cinematographer photographer and a director in Turkey that was part of Shutterstock's contribute to network. And, you know, all of a sudden that shut down delay times from shooting from three to five weeks to three to five days. And it just became infectious from that. It just built any bill to the belt. And I guess the by-product of it was, we also were getting a lot of kudos from brands saying you're really helping our carbon footprint here. And you just know now, and it was like, you know, we're suddenly making something for them in a country that they will be flying people out and that kind of stuff. But now we're using local talent, diverse, culturally relevant. And that's been, I think, the savior to how we met that, you know, demand delivery
Speaker 1 00:30:06 Issue. It's amazing just the efficiencies that have, have taken place when people are navigating around the, uh, less travel and, you know, work from home and all of those pieces. But that's a, that's a great, like, like global, global ways of being able to take advantage of the, uh, of the digital transformation.
Speaker 2 00:30:26 That's amazing. And I think, I think the only other challenge that we had, we saw our entire live events department shut down, you know, um, and you know, so no more red carpets, no more premiers where we have all of our photographers, the met gala, all of these amazing things, fashion week that Shutterstock's been a part of. And it's a major part of our business that shut down. And it's like, what happens? How do you cover fashion week now? How do you cover these events? There's no premiers anymore. There's no movies that movie theaters. So a big chunk of our business was kind of like put on hold. Um, but what we were able to do with that live events business was morph it into our production business and it helped, you know, support that side of the business.
Speaker 1 00:31:14 You're steering a small ship there. I mean, at least according to LinkedIn, it looks like 4,500 employees. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but that's, that's a lot of people to, to have to kind of shift in new directions. Um, did you, did you have kind of any, any way that, um, you know, like a lot of people kind of use like OKR hours and other sorts of things to sort of manage goals and transitions, and it sounds like you went so quickly through these, did you have, you know, and, and as a chief revenue officer being very metrics oriented, it's usually pretty, pretty important. You've talked about being, uh, know kind of creative first and a lot of the ways you approach things, how, how do metrics play into this and, and how did you, how did you gauge success? And when someone may be in one of these other businesses had had a set of success metrics that they were no longer able to deliver on. How, how could you, how could you shift them maybe in these new?
Speaker 2 00:32:12 It was interesting because I took the stance when I came into the company that in order to grow in order to continue to grow, but really show ma major growth and the enterprise side of the business, it's we have to throw away the spreadsheets and we have to actually start to create new KPIs and new goals, because it was a different world. We were operating in at the time and we to be able to pivot without process. That was the first thing I said to everybody, you know, we're a large public company, lots of processes. We've got to be able to pivot, forgetting the processes, we'll build them after. And that's what we did. So when we were shut down in the emerging markets in Europe, we would support resources in markets where we had more traction and were more open. Like, you know, London was still a strong market.
Speaker 2 00:33:06 North America was still a strong market. Asia Pacific was way down, um, as was Latin America. And so what we did, we nimbly moved resources and teams and peoples to support where we were growing and where there was activity and where there wasn't and where we would decline. And it's, let's look at what we can do in terms of support in those markets. So for example, in Latin America, we started to offer free creative, free service to small businesses in those markets and in the emerging markets of Europe to say, Hey, take these images. You can use them for free, take them. It will just keep you alive in terms of messaging in the conversation. And we started to do that. And as the more we started to do that, and those markets opened, we started to attract more customers and they started to adapt to our way of building messaging.
Speaker 2 00:34:03 So even though we were down in areas, we supported them with our own resources and stepped in to help. And where we were actually ticking up was unbelievable. North America was growing and so was London. So we were busier than ever in those marketplaces. And so it kind of balanced out, but you know, it w in terms of like metrics and KPIs and things like that, I quickly realized that during this time of last year, you can't hold yourself to anything specifically because you don't know what tomorrow is going to be. Okay. We would be wake up one day and 30 markets were locked down the next week. It will be 50 next week, it'd be 12. So it was a, it was a constant moving ball. And so therefore it's a hold yourself against anything, or any type of specific metric would be invaluable.
Speaker 2 00:34:56 It wouldn't sorry, it wouldn't be valuable. So what we did was it's like, okay, let's see if we can, you know, in LATAM really start to see what our agencies are looking for in the Latin American markets let's have some conversations. So it was literally, you know, it was just about conversation, keeping in contact with the clients and making sure that we were providing a service to them, which we knew they were looking for. So it was mirroring and matching their needs at that time with what we could provide. So we just went with that. We just kept part of the conversation. We made sure that we had zoom calls, we would do lunch and learns. We would send food to people's homes. You know, it was kind of, let's be part of this with you. And, um, you know, if we do that once this is we come out of it, that should then, you know, become good business for us as we move forward.
Speaker 2 00:35:49 And do you have any sort of metric as a company that you use to try to align? Everyone will often refer to it as like a north star metric? Yeah, so obviously drivers is one of our biggest is our key metric, um, for growth and measurements specifically with wall street. So whether, you know, an agency or a fortune 500 client, you know, whether we sell you images, footage, music, production services, that can all be packaged up into a subscription model of X value. And we, we, um, look at our KPIs in growth of subscribers okay. And retention and attrition. And so we measure ourselves, um, on that basis, but also we measure ourselves on, on new business or net new logo as well. We do that. You know, we have, um, quotas where we are always trying to open up new relationships with new clients all over the world.
Speaker 2 00:36:45 We also hold ourselves to growth percentages, which obviously is a public company. Everybody wants to see year over year growth and quarter over quarter growth. So we benchmark ourselves accordingly with, you know, traditional businesses in our marketplace. So we're held ourselves to those as well. But I think as we came through last year into this year, we're kind of, I kind of decided that, you know what? We have an opportunity now in our space to be number one quickly, let's go for it. Let's increase the velocity. Let's increase what we do. Well, let's reduce what we don't do well, and let's keep this culture going. And I have to say it. And, um, it's the bane of my CFO, but I keep saying, uh, culture growth. Let's make sure what we're doing is simple. It's easy to buy, easy to sell let's innovate, where there are gaps in the landscape and let's find our place in there and let's push it.
Speaker 2 00:37:45 And the revenue will come and new benchmarks can be written because if I write the benchmarks or I write the KPIs ahead of time, we'll either hit them or just come under them or maybe just go over them a little. But to me, I find that that was withholding what our potential was. Let's take some risks, let's launch some things let's think differently. And I have, again, I have tremendous support from Stan, my CEO. Who's like, he's basically like, go, go do it. You know what this industry is about. And I think removing heavy KPIs and heavy micromanagement across this global Salesforce during 2020, there's went to 21, worked, it took the pressure off and it allowed them to continue to do their job, but in a more creative, without being held to kind of a spreadsheet or held to certain percentages, it was like, you know, no, we're one team let's go for this.
Speaker 2 00:38:44 And I S I swear, I think if we'd have done it the opposite way out of seeing a lot of staff leave, we wouldn't have hit the numbers because it was all about culture building and a belief in winning. One of the things I kept saying was, you know, look with one another one with one another one, look at this, we're really doing well. And we created a winning culture and a time where that was, you know, not really a winning Jonah pandemic, but again, at the same time, we actually built a culture where people were turning up for work each day, actually getting up, getting on screen and enjoying it. And, uh, we actually had an amazing, amazing turn of just what a day in the life of an employee at Shutterstock was, was dramatic. Amazing. Um, we went a lot of, if I had missed the first 10 minutes of this conversation, and, you know, didn't know that we were talking about Shutterstock.
Speaker 2 00:39:44 I would've thought we were talking about a startup the way you describe it. And, you know, you mentioned that this is the most fun you've ever had in, in your, in your career. And like, I think the, the, your ability to keep things light and fast and agile and moving, I think, you know, especially during this pandemic, it's, it's definitely inspiring. I hope our audience, uh, you know, appreciates how, how valuable that is and, you know, the, the culture being such an important part of growth. But I am interested as a large organization. How, what do you see as the most effective way to organize for, for sustainable growth are, you know, do you have a separate product marketing and growth team, or do you combine some of these, have you, how do you approach? We, we have, we have a product team. We have a tech team.
Speaker 2 00:40:27 So we have a product team who services, um, both sides of our business. We have the e-commerce business, which is self serve. So people go to shutterstock.com, um, mum, you know, at small business mom and pop prosumer, who'll go there, click, sign up, download an image, okay. Go away and do what they're going to do with it. Okay. Then on the other side of the business, we have our enterprise business, which services agencies, fortune five hundreds, entertainment, gaming, sports franchises. We have that side of the business. Now, the chat, some of the challenges that, um, we have in our business is defining what product to build and what the expectations will be in the marketplace for the product that we build. So one of the things that I did when I came into the company was we had a product team that was like, okay, we're going to build this product.
Speaker 2 00:41:24 And then you guys go out and sell it. And I was kind of like, well, hang on a minute. Do they want to buy it? You know, Africa actually spoken to Ogilvy or BVDO, or have we spoken to Netflix? And, you know, and it was kind of, we had that conversation very early on, because again, it's not that product and technology scared me. It was kind of like, I've seen so many companies fail in that space by building something and believe in that everybody wants it and they want it, how you've made it. And I'm a believer in like, no, you just need to do so. You need to do your due diligence. You need to ask one of your great, you know, your best clients. Tell me if I was to create something like this that did this, would you be, would you buy it?
Speaker 2 00:42:08 Would, you know, would you want to use it? So we stopped and we did that. And instead of having the product team go out and do it, I had my head of agency, head of corporate, and some of the sales folks go out and bring Intel back. We dumped it all in a big spreadsheet. We found out what's working, what isn't working, what they're looking for in the marketplace. We brought that back. And then we kind of started to build a product roadmap out of that. And we quickly saw there was two products that the market needed and we were not delivering correctly. So we pivoted quickly in four weeks, we built a commercial assurance product called asset assurance, which gives people broad cost is a newsrooms, extra peace of mind. When they take one of our pieces of footage, say from the election, they can put it on TV and it's fully cleared.
Speaker 2 00:42:56 It's like cleared in every single aspect of it. So we created this product, which was first of its kind, and we pushed it out. And that was like, literally getting feedback from agencies saying that, Hey, we're having real copyright issues and clearance issues with a lot of political and pandemic stuff. Um, can you build a clearance around it? And we did, we'd go to a department. We built a product and we went out to market and four weeks for that. And it's, it's hugely successful ever since. And it was from there. We started looking at our small business sector and our subscription products that we had out there were working, but that's not been evolved in a couple of years. So we did a test, you know, what are you looking for? You buy this from us. But we found out they're going over here to buy that from another company.
Speaker 2 00:43:45 And over here to buy this from another company. So it's like, okay, well, if we put it all together in one flexible subscription, would you buy it? Yes. So we built it and we rolled it out. And so the marriage of product and tech sales in our company has now come together in that way. And it's enabling us to go to market 10 times quicker because we're building something that we know how it should be, how it should face. And, um, because of that, we're actually not going through rounds and rounds and rounds of modifications and roadmap checks. And check-ins with define the product very quickly. And then we build it, we test it and then it goes out into market. So right now, with four to six weeks, we're launching products and services. And literally that's by listening to your customer, which we all talk about and we all read about on LinkedIn, but that to actually do it, it's really beneficial Italia. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:44:43 I mean, it's interesting because I, the approach that you talk about is, is an approach that seems to break when companies are not very big, like when they, when they may be cross a hundred employees, the ability to innovate seems to go out the window for a lot of companies. And so prior to this, you said you were, you were on a working on tonic. I think you've mentioned. And it was a team kind of small team. Uh, and I, I, it's shocking that, that you and the team there have been able to just build this, this really agile, um, feedback engine where you can make these adjustments. Like, I, I, and I totally agree with you that that comes down to culture, but the other thing that's even harder to change in terms of approach is culture. Culture is a culture, is something that you almost say, once you get over a thousand employees, the culture of the company is just, just fixed.
Speaker 1 00:45:39 And so I know you and Ethan were talking about maybe unlocking the culture that was already there, but, um, I, I'm just really impressed that the, the kind of ability to act like a tiny startup and, and really embrace the opportunities that emerged through the pandemic. And probably a lot of those opportunities would have been there if you had taken this type of approach before, but nothing like a global pandemic to shake things up and cause people to rethink things a bit. But I'm curious, like, sort of, what else have you, did you take from that really sort of small business startup E uh, environment into a larger business, and are there some things that larger businesses do that, that smaller businesses should be trying to replicate as well?
Speaker 2 00:46:25 I think if anything, from, from like the small business of tonic, um, what I brought in was, again, being agile, being able to pivot quickly because in the creative space, if you can't be agile, agnostic and pivot quickly, then you fail. You just don't work. And today you also need to know why do you matter? Okay, when you're at, when you got a company that you built and there's 15 people in it, and you walk into paramount, or you walk into wellness, you've got to walk in and basically, you know, this is why we matter to you. This is what we do. And it's really that personalization that I think I took from tonic into shutter stock. And it was a value proposition that I really valued. And it's like, look, when you're a small company, you really have to show why does this matter to you paramount, but let us show you why this is a benefit for you and what it can do for you rather than, Hey, this what we built, this is what it's about.
Speaker 2 00:47:30 Do you want to buy it? Okay, it's more that personalized approach. It's like, we're come. We want to be a partner with you paramount. And this is why we believe we can be a great partner to you. These are the areas which we are experts in. And here's some examples, here's some cases that personalization I took to Shutterstock. And one of the things that the first exercise I did was account strategy, account segmentation. Okay. If you're, if you're selling, you've got 300 accounts, how are you going to be able to manage that effectively and deliver that personalized approach to each of those clients? You're not okay, you're going to dilute it. And you're going to do the mass email and you're going to send out, although the, you know, the typical things and keep sending it out, Hey, you know, you didn't respond to my previous email.
Speaker 2 00:48:24 Here's another one. And here's another one. And here's another one. And, you know, you suddenly find what, even that big company that becomes the process, you know, it's it's scale. And my philosophy was no. And so I trained each team globally for the first six months of coming in. So I stopped the corporate training that was happening, and I just went in and it's just like, okay, I'm a buyer, I'm a seller. This is how I would walk into paramount. And this is what I would say, how I would say it and why we would matter. This is what I would say to IBM. If we went into a room why we're valuable, why we make a great partner and we do it, did this for six months, every single day with teams all over the world. And we narrowed it down to, I think we got the accounts down to more of a manageable level to 40, and we kind of put a bunch of accounts over to one side and we thought these 40 accounts, it should definitely be working with shutter stock.
Speaker 2 00:49:24 And this is why. And each one of these has a different story. We have to approach them with because this company is not like this company and the creative that these guys are going to want is very different than this company. So personalization, and it worked, it literally worked. We could do a rep instead of having to do, you know, a hundred calls in a month, a hundred things in a month activities in a month, um, to sell X would do 20 and would actually make five times more revenue. So we changed the model and we, the average attainment went up per sales rep. And the average order value increased significantly and less is more model became effective with that training. I mean, was it about breaking down silos or, I mean, how, how do you get that cross-functional collaboration of work across the whole org?
Speaker 2 00:50:19 It was literally by carrying a vision that we are a creative solutions company. Okay. Delivering solutions to agencies, brands, and clients flipping it from we're a global technology company, delivering technology solutions. And when you got on a phone with a creative director that I work, what is that? I don't know. I have a tech guy, let me connect you with them. Or has somebody in compliance you can talk to, okay. Suddenly that's the pass-off. Whereas this was like, hi, my name's Jamie. I'm on the creative team at shadow stark. And, um, I really like to show you some of the wonderful creators we've been doing, um, around, um, alcoholic beverages. I know you look out to ABC brand and in alcohol really want to show you what we've done with white claw. What we've done with Corona, you know, have a look at that, you know, have a look at it suddenly that changed and that training of bringing everybody together to buy into that really helped really helped to drive.
Speaker 2 00:51:16 I think the culture as well, it really drove the culture. Cause all of a sudden the cell became much more creative, much easy, and everybody bought into it. It was like product bought into it. You know, our tech, our infrastructure bought into it. Our marketing department bought into it. Everything became interesting. And you know, the unique aspects that, you know, again, it's not a wow, that's all great. And it changed everything. It wouldn't have been possible me coming in and doing what I did, if we will not sat on all of this amazing creative that we didn't have these 2 million plus contributors from all over the world, providing this amazing content and a production team that you know, is capable of doing everything from a Superbowl commercial to a five second tick talk ad. I had all that here in place. What I needed to do was make it think and work differently. And still today, you know, nobody can match is out there from a competitive landscape. And what Shutterstock has in terms of its resources for a client, it's just how you position and how you package it, package it to that personalized approach works. So again, personalization really helped us, you know, start to win big, think big and change perception in the marketplace,
Speaker 1 00:52:38 You know? Yeah. I can see on the enterprise side in particular how each enterprise is, has the potential for a lot of business. So you really want to, you really want to understand what their needs are and map your solutions to their needs. Uh, but on the self-service side, which you mentioned, this is a big part of the business as well. Are you able to, are you able to personalize and segment on that same level and give a lot of different experiences? I mean kind of backing up a little bit on both of those, assuming you're taking a kind of cold non-customer and bringing them down a path of becoming a passionate advocate of at least some solution within the shutter stock suite, it sounds like with all that personalization, that there's so many potential paths that they could go on. How, how, how do you keep track of all of it? How do you manage all of it and, um, or is it, is it literally one client at a time?
Speaker 2 00:53:38 I think it, you know, again, we're fortunate that our, the enterprise side of the business, you know, we figured that out really well last year and pivoted to personalization, you know, selling product and service that was meaningful to an agency versus a client versus an entertainment company on our self-serve side of the business. What we were realizing was that if somebody goes in and downloads an image of a dog running around in a garden, okay. The next time they come, when they go log in, let show them three more dogs. Okay. But maybe like show them a cat as well. And let's start to personalize their experience when they come in. So we started to do that and that started to work. Then it was just like, Hey, have you thought of putting music around this? Here's a little sample of music, the fray, try it out.
Speaker 2 00:54:30 Okay. Suddenly we were starting to look at our self serve, transactional customers as a human being. And so it's kind of like, how can we talk to them? Because they don't want to talk to anybody. They just want to come and get what they want and go away. But if when they come, if we recognize them in a personalized way, like, Hey, you downloaded two dog pictures last week. Here's two more, do you like cats? You know, and some cats and Hey, here's some cute music that you can put around that or be like, Hey, you taken these six images. What's next and pop up. Are you looking to turn this into a social ad? We can help. Okay. Suddenly we were able to create a voice there and an experience that was personalized and start to when they come, we'd recognize them behaviorally. And that, um, has been very helpful because we get feedback. Then it's like, no, I don't want this. I don't want that. So the next time we won't show that. But, um, so again, there are certain customers who don't want any interaction. They just want to come and get it. And then there are customers who come want to get it. But if we can provide them with some education or some recommendations, then that is a personalized service that they were not getting two years ago. So yes. Is there
Speaker 1 00:55:49 Any overlap in the, in the like acquisition engine of those two types of customers, like does, does Shutterstock's brand on the kind of high velocity? Uh, no touch side of the business help on the, on the, on the enterprise outreach side or D D do sometimes those enterprises even come through that channel and then there's upsell, or is it really independent? It's really, they're really
Speaker 2 00:56:15 Kind of independent from each other. The type of customer is very different. So in enterprise, you know, our clients are Ogilvy BB WPP, Omnicom, you know, fortune 500 footsie, 100 and SMB. But when our SMB clients are kind of, you know, businesses, five, $10 million revenue on e-com. Um, we are, I would say our average customer, you know, on there is kind of more than mom and pop and so what their needs and wants are different than on the enterprise side. Okay. Um, but we actually, what we build in enterprise, we make a version of it for e-commerce and what we do in e-commerce we look to see, can we productize that into an enterprise model so we can take what's successful in e-com and build an enterprise version and what's successful in enterprise. How do we build an e-commerce version of that? That could work.
Speaker 2 00:57:14 So cross channel, um, innovation is something we do all of the time. So we don't build just for one platform. We always look to see if this can be cross-functional across self-serve and enterprise. So with that focus that you have on personalization for both sides, I realized that that's different, but is activation really like, right in focus for you in terms of like, what are the aha moments? What are these, these moments where people are delighted by the, by the services? And like, do you really put a lot of emphasis on that? We do. And I think, you know, one of the things, when, you know, you look at the three players in the market space, um, one of the questions I asked prior to joining shadow stock was, you know, I, I, one of my biggest clients, I was like, Hey, so Getty, Adobe Shutterstock, all right.
Speaker 2 00:58:02 Who do you like, who do you like, what'd you like about them? What don't you like about them? And I, I, it was nine clients in all and what came back and honestly, this was it. And the truth was that, um, we're a little bit more on the premium cost side. Okay. Then the other two. Um, so we were not necessarily as competitive on price per asset and stuff, but where we won 90% was service was actually the human touch. It was, it was already there. So customers valued that aspect of our business far more than they were getting from, I guess, from the other two companies at the time. So it was like let's double down on that. As more people are moving away from that, let us put more steam behind that service element and communication with our customers. So we have client success managers, we have account managers, we have customer service around whether you're a $300 a year client or a million dollar a year client, you have a connection with Shutterstock and that's unique for us.
Speaker 2 00:59:09 That's unique in our space. I imagine that that, that separation based on service and really the personalization treating the client as a human being, I imagine that really drives the loops in terms of keeping people retained, engaging them on an ongoing basis and getting them to, uh, getting them to refer their, you know, refer others. And I imagine it's a space where referrals are pretty important, but, uh, yeah, it is, it is, it is because you, you can't, you can't look and say, okay, we want to compete with Adobe. Adobe is a predominantly, a full cell service. Cloud-based, it's, it's very much tech, tech driven, but has stock, you know, and they have that Getty is known on the other side. It's very much live events as you've seen new spots and things like that. And it was kind of where does Shutterstock fit in?
Speaker 2 01:00:01 We're somewhere in the middle. We're somewhere in the middle of that, but let's make sure that we have a relationship with our clients, whoever they are, whatever size they are, because that's something that the other two are not as forward thinking on. And we are, and I wanted to make sure on specifically during the pandemic that one has hands down was that, you know, human touch, I have about a thousand followup questions. I want to ask by them knowing that we're running short on time. I have one question that we always like to end on is what do you feel like you understand about growth now that perhaps you didn't understand a couple of years ago?
Speaker 2 01:00:43 Okay. This is a great question. And the answer for me a couple of years ago, I always felt growth was about how much money can you throw at it to make it work? Okay. So in a big public company, it's like, you know, do I have a $50 million marketing budget? Do I have a talent acquisition budget of X? Do I have this? Do I have that? It's all about looking at things from an economic growth standpoint, if I've learnt anything in the last sorts of, and certainly my tenure here, it's definitely, you can do less with more talent is key the right talent and the right candidate, but giving them the tools to succeed without limitations. I think today, allowing somebody to be creative and think is far more advantageous to you than giving them a script and a set of goals and saying go, um, I do believe that less is more higher.
Speaker 2 01:01:45 Performance is more performance driven. Culture is far more a growth tactic for me now than it was a two years ago. I've learned to do more with less. And that's actually been a major culture changer at Shutterstock is, you know, putting more responsibility on people, giving them more freedom to grow. As actually, as I said to my CFO, the revenue will come and it did. And, you know, I'm, that's something that I've learnt is investing in people, investing in training, but giving them the freedom to actually develop and be more of an entrepreneur. Because if you give them that the conversation I'll have with a client will be less tactical and less transactional, and it'll be more human because, you know, they feel free. And, um, we're in the creative space. We are not, you know, selling pharmaceuticals. So we're selling images and pictures and animation. So, you know, aye,
Speaker 1 01:02:51 Aye. So I personally like to end every conversation with my key takeaways and words of wisdom, but I can't beat what you just said. So I'm just going
Speaker 3 01:02:59 To leave it at that because every everything I had written
Speaker 1 01:03:02 Down, um, are, are essentially, you said it much better than I could repeat it. So, um, that was awesome. I really appreciate you sharing the story. Um, Shutterstock is a, uh, is a much more interesting company than I realized. Um, and I, I'm confident that you guys are going to continue to perform really well and, and, um, and, and just make a bigger and bigger impact on, on everyone. So congrats on in a relatively short period of time, you personally, I think have, have, uh, probably helped quite a bit on, on shaping that culture and, and, um, bringing the company to a point where it could really, uh, leverage and, and help a lot of the new emerging needs that came out of the pandemic. But, um, that, that started with having a really clear vision of what you want it to do and, and an understanding of the assets in the business. And those assets have been built over a lot of years, but being able to, to really focus them on where those opportunities were and you can't do that very well. If you don't have a culture that allows everyone to seek those opportunities and adjust to them. And so super impressive that, uh, everything that you've said sounds like something, I would praise a hundred person company that wow, at a hundred people, you're still that flexible, but at over 4,000 people, it's a, it's, it's super impressive. So yeah, but you know,
Speaker 2 01:04:25 They they've roasted the equation again. Finn had done it without the team and it's a team effort. We have a saying one team at shadow stock and it's one team that's delivered it. And, you know, if you get the culture right, and you can become one team, you can achieve anything. And I do believe that that's something I have learned in my time here at Shutterstock, I'm surrounded by great people. That's allowed me to do that. That's great. And
Speaker 1 01:04:47 It sounds like Jesse had been that, that direct partnership with the CEO as well. It's, um, you know, those types of changes are actually pretty hard to, to kind of give, give more freedom and flexibility and trust to the team. It's got to come from the very top.
Speaker 2 01:05:01 Absolutely. For him to give me that freedom and trust has allowed me to promote freedom and trust down the line. And I think, you know, I've, I've had the CEO who does not allow freedom and trust it's do do, as I say, and it's kind of that, and that brings limitations all the way down. So waterfall, and it is actually a culture killer because at the end of the day, you're running scared every single day.
Speaker 3 01:05:26 And that is not a dynamic company either.
Speaker 2 01:05:29 It's not dynamic and I've been there. And, you know, I'm very blessed that I have this amazing CEO. Who's just literally, he's a visionary, but he's also allows people to think and make decisions and make mistakes. You know, there's one thing he said, we'll all make mistakes, but you know, that was good as the wins you learn from them. And if, when you've got somebody like that, you wake up without fear and you'll go for it. So, yeah, no, I was just going to add to that, just to say, you know, throughout this conversation, I just felt like you just ooze, enthusiasm and passion. And when you said, you know, it's about making the team think and act differently. I think it starts with, with that when you can, when you walk into a room and you, and people believe that you are as inspired to, to about the next chapter as you want them to be. I think that that sets the tone and it's just really awesome. So I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. So
Speaker 1 01:06:25 Thank you, Jamie, and for everyone tuning in. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you guys.
Speaker 0 01:06:37 Thanks for listening to the breakout growth podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform and while you're at it subscribe. So you never miss a show until next week.
