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Winning As A Team with Composable Content
11 Plays1 year ago
Barry D'Arcy, VP of Partners for Storyblok, shares insights on the company's growth and the benefits of a headless CMS.
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Transcript
Introduction to Headless CMS
00:00:01
chadsolomonson
Today, we'll talk about the tremendous momentum of headless CMSs and why leading marketers and developers are moving in this direction.
Adapting MarTech Consultancies
00:00:09
chadsolomonson
We'll also talk about the changing partner landscape and how MarTech consultancies must adapt.
Guest Introduction: Barry Darcy
00:00:14
chadsolomonson
To help me dig into these topics, I'd like to welcome Barry Darcy. Barry, very excited to have you on the pad podcast.
00:00:22
Barry D_Arcy
Thank you Chad, really delighted to be here. Obviously some topics that are very close to my heart, so looking forward to digging into a few of those questions.
00:00:30
chadsolomonson
Absolutely.
Barry's Career Journey
00:00:31
chadsolomonson
Well, um with all the excitement of Storyblocks coming really kind of hot into the States, why don't you give a little background on yourself so people get to kind of know you as as ah a human.
00:00:42
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, I guess but before we jump into Storyblock and and All Things Partner and Headless CMS, it would be great to give you a quick bit of background about myself. So I am Barry Darcy. um I'm based in Dublin, in Ireland. and Weathers not so great here. You might hear some rain in the background, unfortunately, but we're quite stuck with that over here in Dublin. and But quick background on me. So I actually studied engineering in university, but never became an engineer.
00:01:11
Barry D_Arcy
and My journey in B2B SaaS started around 12 years ago. actually I moved to Vancouver, Canada and lived there for about three years. And in my time there, I joined a startup called Tree Tier Logic, a consumer engagement platform. So that was my first venture into SaaS.
Expanding Storyblock Globally
00:01:28
Barry D_Arcy
um After about three years there, I returned back to rainy Dublin and I actually ended up working then in a boutique agency called Together Digital.
00:01:39
Barry D_Arcy
And my role there was on the operational side, so delivery of projects, so working with great teams of designers, developers to build maybe websites for our customers ah for that particular agency. So in that role, and one of my actual responsibilities alongside some of my colleagues was to to look at the technologies we were using to deliver. And that's actually how my my introduction to Storyblock came about. We were looking for a new CMS. We discovered this kind of headless movement. And that's where the relationship began.
00:02:08
Barry D_Arcy
But I'll dig more into that in a moment. But after the agency, and my previous experience in Canada was more on the product side. I always had a desire to go back to to a more pure SaaS role in the product space.
00:02:20
Barry D_Arcy
And that journey then took me to Sage, cloud-based accountancy software company. Had a really interesting time there, but but not for too long.
00:02:25
chadsolomonson
ah yeah
00:02:28
Barry D_Arcy
and Dominic, the CEO here at Storyblock, he would become a friend from my times at Together Digital. He reached out to me and he asked me to would I be interested in joining Storyblock to help them build out the department channel and build a team.
00:02:40
Barry D_Arcy
So I joined Storyblock around three and a half years ago, a little more than three and a half years ago. I think I was employee number 22.
00:02:48
chadsolomonson
Oh yeah.
00:02:49
Barry D_Arcy
Crazy to think that we're now about 250 folks.
00:02:51
chadsolomonson
Oof.
00:02:52
Barry D_Arcy
We're a fully remote company spread globally, 47 nationalities at last count, right? So quite a diverse group
00:02:58
chadsolomonson
Amazing.
Barry's Sports Background
00:02:59
Barry D_Arcy
here at Storyblock.
00:02:59
Barry D_Arcy
But yeah, that's a quick bit about me, my background and how I landed at Storyblock.
00:03:05
chadsolomonson
That's awesome. More on the on the personal side, I actually did a little bit of research in preparing for this conversation and and I heard that you may have been a ah footballer ah growing up.
00:03:16
Barry D_Arcy
Yes, yes, yes.
00:03:17
chadsolomonson
What we call soccer.
00:03:17
Barry D_Arcy
Maybe I talked about that at length in ah in a different podcast that I actually did a year or so ago. But yeah, I played different versions of football actually here in Ireland and also in Canada, actually, not football as you might know it in America.
00:03:29
Barry D_Arcy
ah Soccer, as you call it it, was my sport of choice, spent a lot of time playing that.
00:03:34
chadsolomonson
you
00:03:34
Barry D_Arcy
There's also a Gaelic football, an Irish game that I was quite involved in. ah Recently, actually, I hung up my boots, so to speak, around three or four years ago. But I'm still a keen as sports fan, soccer especially, but all things sport are super interesting to me. And with the Olympics not too far away from Dublin, I've been keeping a very close eye on that. I think the US are performing quite well, top of the leaderboard from what I ah seen last.
00:03:57
chadsolomonson
We're trying. We're trying. Well, this is really just more of a self-serving question. But as a fellow soccer player, I grew up as well playing and played in college and a little semi-pro.
00:04:09
Barry D_Arcy
Nice.
00:04:11
chadsolomonson
But I was kind of on the fence to ask you this one before we kind of go forward. But who is your favorite Irish footballer that played at Manchester United?
00:04:24
Barry D_Arcy
Roy Keane has to be, although I am a Liverpool fan, right so there's a bit of conflict there, right but I'm still, I know what good looks like, right and Roy Keane, and I think he's mellowed a bit, he does a lot of TV stuff now, right and I'm a Keane follower of him right now, but yeah, we're out
00:04:25
chadsolomonson
Wonderful.
00:04:28
chadsolomonson
Ah, it's a conflict, it's a conflict.
00:04:37
chadsolomonson
He does, he does. There's a great,
Understanding Headless CMS
00:04:40
Barry D_Arcy
there.
00:04:40
Barry D_Arcy
but Other good Irish connections there with Dennis Irwin as well at Man United back in the 90s, but Roy Keane for me is the best.
00:04:43
chadsolomonson
yes, very good.
00:04:47
chadsolomonson
Fantastic, fantastic answer. All right. Well, let's, uh, let's kind of jump right into story block. Um, yeah the the company has raised over 138 million on the value of being a true headless content management system. You know, really for our listeners and and mostly for my mom, uh, what is your simplest definition of headless?
00:05:11
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, for sure. I'm not sure my mom would be too interested in that explanation, you know thinking she she believes I work in IT. t right It's a little bit more niche than that, I would say. But yeah, for your mom, the simplest explanation I can give of a headless CMS is that it's ultimately a backend-only system it designed as a content repository.
00:05:30
Barry D_Arcy
So content in that repository is accessed by APIs and to display ultimately on any device. So you're separating your data, which is the body from the presentation layer, which is the head, hence the name headless and how that came about. So what this allows developers to do is to really have the flexibility to use any front-end framework. And it also then allows content editors to reuse that content across multiple channels without being locked into any specific presentation method. And we might come to some of those cases and examples a little bit later. But hence, Storyblock is a CMS. We we set about solving the content problem for both the editor and the developer.
00:06:09
Barry D_Arcy
are giving marketers and technical developers full flexibility to build out their digital assets, mainly websites. So head to
Storyblock's ROI and Productivity
00:06:17
Barry D_Arcy
CMS as well. it it's We're separating the front end from the back end, unlike traditional CMSs, which ultimately combine both, and they typically output their content on one specific front end, which would generally be a website.
00:06:31
chadsolomonson
All right.
00:06:32
Barry D_Arcy
Do you think your mom would understand that one, Chad, or a little bit too complicated?
00:06:34
chadsolomonson
You know, i think I think maybe she'll get there. She's she's been trying. she read She read the composable roadmap book that I put out with Greg Kilstrom.
00:06:43
Barry D_Arcy
Oh great.
00:06:44
chadsolomonson
And she had a few headaches from it. So I said, well, let me let me see if I can simplify this some more.
00:06:50
Barry D_Arcy
I hope it helps.
00:06:52
chadsolomonson
ah Thank you. Thank you. So um you know from from from content writers to to both front-end developers, you know i'm um I'm hearing a lot of feedback that you know Storyblock you know is just fast and easy to use. And its you know its simplicity is what seems to be resonating with ah with everyone. But it goes deeper than that. what what What does that really translate when you talk about being fast and and and easy you know and into real ah ROI for for companies that are that are exploring, kind of moving off maybe ah another platform?
00:07:27
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, like really good question. So like you touched on, like I touched on a little bit earlier, we really are trying to solve that content problem, both for the technical user, the developer who's creating these projects, but also maintaining that flexibility for the marketer, the content editor when the project comes to life. and or ROI is just one part of that, a very important part of course, and there's a few connected topics to or ROI in general.
00:07:51
Barry D_Arcy
We conducted a report actually last year with Forrester, and one of our analyst partners, to do some research on the or ROI of StoryBlock and and and on implementing it. The findings from that, ah they actually we we knew we were returning a good return on investment, but we were even we were surprised by the amazing results that we've seen from that study. So StoryBlock from that report was found to deliver 582% ROI over a three-year period.
00:08:16
chadsolomonson
Mm.
00:08:16
Barry D_Arcy
Generally speaking, we're we're working in initial contracts for around three years with our with our customers. But another important element of that is the traditional cycle of kind of ditching your website every three years and throwing it in the bin and starting again. You know, headless CMS or component-based CMS systems, they lend themselves to being able to progressively grow that system. Again, making life a little bit easier for those two users, the the developer and the content editor, as we mentioned earlier.
00:08:41
Barry D_Arcy
But also within that study, some of the findings were that there's ah there's less than a six-month payback period for managing and scaling your content in that way. right So your investment on Storyblock can give you a payback very quickly, right which is really important when you're evaluating, maybe moving over from a more legacy system and trying to kind of modernize your tech stack for your for your website or whatever digital assets that you're trying to deliver.
00:09:05
Barry D_Arcy
A few other key benefits and related to or ROI. um In that study, we we also learned that there's a 3x productivity boost and from efficient development setups. right So from the developer being able to work in a more efficient way, we're seeing a huge productivity gain. And that that translates also over to the the content editor. and We're seeing a real drive and improvement for customer experience through scalable content operations too.
00:09:32
Barry D_Arcy
So Storyblock has a lot of great features around collaboration, around content workflows, and that drives a really successful and efficient content operation plan for for organizations to utilize.
00:09:42
Barry D_Arcy
So ultimately, we strive to get customers to value quicker and to help them succeed from there. And yeah, that's a few thoughts around why or ROI is super important and what we're trying to deliver into that.
What Sets Storyblock Apart?
00:09:54
Barry D_Arcy
and We also actually from that study created an or ROI calculator, which we have on our Storyblock website.
00:09:58
chadsolomonson
That's what I was about to ask.
00:10:00
Barry D_Arcy
You can take a look there and try and work it out a little bit for yourself. But this study I mentioned that it was in it was done in conjunction with a number of our our key customers who have actually gone and implemented Storybox. So really interesting results there to take a look at.
00:10:14
chadsolomonson
We'll definitely put the link to the calculator into this ah into this episode as part of the follow up.
00:10:18
Barry D_Arcy
Brilliant. Thanks, Jeff.
00:10:20
chadsolomonson
So, you know, with with a lot of a lot of competition in the CMS market and and some established players, you know, to to raise the money that you're raising to taking on the type of new customers and new logos that that are emerging with Storyblock. What is really the difference? like what What is making Storyblock stand out and is really capturing a lot of the you know the hearts and minds of marketers and developers at the same time?
00:10:49
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, again, really, really good question. I guess what we focused on so far in talking about Storyblock is ah as a product is its its uniqueness from the more traditional monolithic CMS systems. But what makes us stand out as a headless CMS, I think, is also a really important question.
00:11:05
Barry D_Arcy
And the first thing that we're we're very much known for is the visual editing capabilities. We were the pioneer and of that feature. So what we mean by that is being able to update an editor content in real time, having ah a bridge to a visual editor where you can see your updates made in the content management system reflected in real time. Again, making things really seamless, really easy for the market or the content editor to to visualize quickly, right?
00:11:30
Barry D_Arcy
and Some of our competitors and and some of the other, there's some really other great products out there in the market who have some similar offerings. and But we have a um a much more flexible visual editor, I would say, is is one of our key and unique value propositions that we offer here at Storyblock. A few other elements that are And super important when we talk about why why we're important in the headless space, that component-based architecture. So being able to build websites or web assets in a more modular way, and we really feel we have a huge ah huge umm offering there in terms of what you can do with the story block capabilities and feature set. We have a super flexible API as well. So comparable in some ways to some of the other headless CMSs out there, which are all ultimately API-led content repositories.
00:12:18
Barry D_Arcy
But we have a lot of really great and easy to install integrations, which can be very helpful to get developers to value quicker when they're building up these websites. I touched on it briefly earlier too, but and collaboration tools and are also a very important part of Storyblock.
00:12:35
Barry D_Arcy
something we're trying to continue into our product roadmap. We recently just launched the ideation room, and which is a tool where you can actually keep all of your content in Storyblock.
00:12:41
chadsolomonson
Yes.
00:12:45
Barry D_Arcy
I think anybody who's familiar with running a website project or updating content on a website would be familiar with keeping documents in sync and sending Google Docs or Word files, depending on the organization, offer approval.
00:12:58
Barry D_Arcy
We've built a tool connected with AI also that's all contained within the Storyblock app. right So you can do all of that collaboration right inside the app. you can comment and collaborate with your colleagues, seek approvals, activate workflows, all from one place rather than having to live within multiple tools. So that really sets us apart, I believe, too. And I would say the last thing I'd like to call out is our pricing. right we we We really stand over being predictable when it comes to pricing. When we talk about or ROI, and The organizations who we're working with and and who we're trying to present Storyblock to, they ultimately want to know how quickly they can get the value, and what the total cost of ownership is going to be to get a project activated, be that with but some of our great partners being involved in the mix there too.
00:13:41
Barry D_Arcy
But being predictable on pricing and being very clear on the u ROI that we can deliver, I think is a key a key component of what we offer to our customers as well. So yeah, I hope that helps.
00:13:51
Barry D_Arcy
That's a a few things, many more of course, but there are a few things that stand out.
00:13:54
chadsolomonson
Yeah, yeah, well, you know, from from my personal experience, I think the the openness and and the the the ability to bring that that predictability to the conversation with clients has really kind of separated out story block and and a lot of the conversations we've had with our customers.
00:14:10
chadsolomonson
So that to me
00:14:11
Barry D_Arcy
yeah Yeah, you want to know how your project's going to scale. You don't want the success of traffic to to drive your pricing and your tooling through the roof, right? You want things to be predictable when you're maybe going off to seek approval to to invest in new technologies.
00:14:24
Barry D_Arcy
you want You want to have that predictable element to how you're going to scale.
Success Stories: Tesla and Oakley
00:14:28
Barry D_Arcy
So yeah, super important that we're able to deliver that.
00:14:28
chadsolomonson
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, well speaking of of clients, you know what are some of the maybe more recent real world examples where Storyblock has has has been implemented quickly? I know we have one that we'll be talking about shortly to the market that ah came in you know under budget and and and and within the timeline, and and it's scaling fast. um But what what are some of your favorite stories that that you like to talk about that where Storyblock's really shining?
00:14:59
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, yeah, really exciting projects coming to our partnership, and Chad, for sure. So we can tell that story again in the future, I'm sure. And there'll be lots of information and case studies on them as they develop. But a few of my favorites, and probably my favorite ah implementation case study of Storyblock is with Tesla. I think everybody at this stage knows who who Tesla are. Tesla are using Storyblock. They had a challenge where they needed a scalable solution for their in-store kiosks.
00:15:28
Barry D_Arcy
So anybody who's ever gone to maybe a car showroom or Tesla obviously have a different take on that. and you might be You might recall an experience where there's an in-store kiosk where you can ultimately look at the different models of Tesla that are available. You can kind of customize the car that you'd like to buy. And all of that is done in a kind of a large tablet format in store. and Storyblock was implemented as the solution to to manage all of the content for those kiosks. and different complications around data sources for configurations to to give pricing back to the user in real time. So that was a really yeah interesting implementation implementation of Storyblock, not just on your more traditional website. And being able to deliver good results there, are like real content updates, we obviously support multilingual there was a big big thing for Tesla.
00:16:17
Barry D_Arcy
and ultimately giving a really good user experience in store. I think that's it an interesting edge case of Storyblock outside of the traditional website with a very well-known brand.
00:16:25
chadsolomonson
Yeah, absolutely.
00:16:29
Barry D_Arcy
one One other one I might just mention um quickly.
00:16:31
chadsolomonson
Sure.
00:16:33
Barry D_Arcy
ah more More traditional news case is with Oakley, the Oak Milk brand from from the Nordics here in Europe. and The challenge they had is is they wanted to go quick right in the short summary, but ultimately they were they were managing digital experiences in many different languages.
00:16:50
Barry D_Arcy
Oakley is a global company, and websites across 25 countries. and They chose Storyblock to be able to to leverage the flexibility and deliver into multiple markets, multilingual.
00:17:01
Barry D_Arcy
and Really important component of the decision was our ability to translate content and collaborate on content through translation phases. and But back to their original challenge, right Speed, they wanted to get that out quickly.
00:17:12
Barry D_Arcy
and They built 16 global websites in just two months, which was crazy. right Giving developers really good freedom with the technology they were using to deliver that efficiently.
00:17:18
chadsolomonson
wild
00:17:22
Barry D_Arcy
and not having to kind of replicate across different locations, right? So it different than maybe more traditional use case on on scaling your content globally. So Oakley is also a really good case study there.
00:17:33
Barry D_Arcy
And you can find lots of lots of interesting case studies on our website. And maybe we could link to some of those two in the description.
00:17:40
chadsolomonson
Oh,
Role of Partners in Storyblock's Strategy
00:17:41
chadsolomonson
absolutely absolutely.
00:17:41
Barry D_Arcy
But ah that's just to call it a couple of my favorites.
00:17:42
chadsolomonson
Yeah, those are.
00:17:44
Barry D_Arcy
And I do like to enjoy an oat latte from time to time. So it's always nice to get one of our brands when you're purchasing your coffee.
00:17:52
chadsolomonson
As do I. Yeah, that's ah always tough of mind in the morning.
00:17:56
Barry D_Arcy
For sure.
00:17:56
chadsolomonson
um Well, let's let's shift a little bit. So, you know, talked a bit about the platform, that some of the clients, but, you know, a lot of these projects don't really get there without the help of partners.
00:18:08
chadsolomonson
And certainly that's That's your focus at Storyblock. um You have a ah really unique view across kind of the globe of of different types of partners, large, small, um with different emphasis on there, how they bring value back to businesses.
00:18:19
Barry D_Arcy
Mm hmm.
00:18:24
chadsolomonson
um you know Certainly the market's challenging and in different areas and and partners are are having to potentially rethink how they go to market. Are there any major shifts or changes that you're seeing and how Storyblock and its partners can are working together to really continue to to find ways to to better articulate value to customers or go to market more efficiently.
00:18:52
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, again, really good question and and one that I'm super passionate in my role leading the partner team here at Storyblock. I wouldn't say, like but leaning into the question, right I wouldn't say we're seeing any major shifts per se.
00:19:04
chadsolomonson
Okay.
00:19:04
Barry D_Arcy
I think that things are constantly evolving and how we can service our partners in a better way and always learn from them and collaborate with them, right? Keyword being partner, right? How can we get give value on both sides in all of these different sizes of relationships is key to our success.
00:19:19
Barry D_Arcy
And to tell you that story, I might just rewind a little bit further though, right? So obviously I talked a little bit about my past. I was on the agency side. I became one of the early stage story block partners. So I've kind of sat on both sides of the desk, right? And I understand the challenges in implementing a new technology into it into a partner organization, be it a anything from a boutique SI right up to a global SI like a Deloitte Digital or the Accentries of this world. Bringing about change in your organization to be able to to roll out new technologies can be challenging, right? you You might have a certain set of skills within your development team that may need to evolve slightly and we always want to make that as easy as we can. Storyblock has a global network of over 2,000 agency partners.
00:20:01
Barry D_Arcy
Partners have always been a ah really core principle of how we want to deliver into the market and succeed. What I didn't mention earlier were a company founded out of Austria. Our two co-founders, Dominic and Alex, actually came and from an agency called Netra, where they worked again on project execution up until 2017 when they spun out with Storyblock. and So relying and understanding the value of partnerships was always in our DNA.
00:20:30
Barry D_Arcy
And we've evolved that and maybe that's why we have so many global partners that are active on Storyblock. and But what we've done over the last kind of four years or so since we introduced our partner program is we've really tried to evolve how we're able to enhance our support for partners. How can we build out better tools, more resources for partners? We have a ah partner portal, which is a part of our partner program where you can get a lot of self-serving educational content around how to understand the full feature set and technical scale of Storyblock, but also understanding how to position Storyblock into the market and how to tell your customers as a partner why Storyblock is the right solution for them. So continuously evolving that content to be relevant to in today's market is is a key part of how we're delivering for our partners within our partner program.
00:21:18
Barry D_Arcy
and But again, in partnerships, increased collaboration, I would say, is the real key to success. right Looking as closely as we can about how we can make these partnerships as integrated as possible.
00:21:30
Barry D_Arcy
We we have a pretty big team of partner managers here at Storybot. The partner team that I work with is, but I think we're currently at 23 people.
00:21:37
chadsolomonson
Hm.
00:21:38
Barry D_Arcy
and it's It's about 10% of our org. and and we're working with partners of all sizes from the boutique SI or local SI to the regional SI's which are maybe in the middle and then right up to the big guys the GSIs but we want to make sure everybody has access to get value from Storyblock and that partnership and that's why we we assign partner managers to those different cohorts and we really support them in slightly different ways depending on the types of customers they're working with of course but focusing on how we can kind of scale that relationship and
00:22:10
Barry D_Arcy
and build joint go to market efforts together so we can win together. But also most important is putting the customer at the center of that and how we can deliver value for them, get into value quickly.
00:22:21
Barry D_Arcy
and We talked about that a little bit in the u ROI topic, but how can we deliver a really good product in a really efficient way for a customer to get them the value quick and to to let them scale that success ultimately.
00:22:32
Barry D_Arcy
So leaning into partnerships, like I mentioned, core part of our DNA, and it will always be a part of the story block story, and we'll continue to evolve those relationships. We've got some great partners of which you are one chat,
Partner-Driven Innovations
00:22:44
Barry D_Arcy
and we're always looking to grow those relationships.
00:22:44
chadsolomonson
Thank you. yeah with with With that many partner teammates, it definitely it shows and demonstrates your your investment and focus on partners. it's but for For a company your size to have that focus is rare and and to see you know how you invest in supporting partners, truly understanding the platform and and and how to grow their businesses.
00:23:10
chadsolomonson
and with that With that theme in mind, tr and again, you're seeing lots of you're seeing lots of innovation from ah from a really great perspective across the globe.
00:23:11
Barry D_Arcy
yeah
00:23:20
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah.
00:23:20
chadsolomonson
um Are you seeing some things that are emerging that has have you excited about how partners are are building innovation on top of Storyblock? And are there some examples that that you might want to call out here?
00:23:31
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, yeah, there's there's always so much exciting stuff happening in general with partners, right? But I would say one really kind of relevant and hot topic right now is this kind of accelerator motion.
00:23:44
chadsolomonson
Yes.
00:23:45
Barry D_Arcy
and Storyblock is a composable technology or headless technology, an API first technology. There's lots of other different categories of composable products out there, and we live within that ecosystem. And we have partners who I've talked to in my previous response that are implementing Storyblock, but we also have ah another whole channel of of ecosystem partners.
00:24:11
Barry D_Arcy
and really good technology partners who we're collaborating with to to find combined value for customers. right So to mention a few, the likes of Netlify on the hosting side, we have Algolia on the search side with lots of digital asset management ah partners that we're working with to localize for translations, for example. So bringing all of these technologies together i is an important part of how we tell the story being a composable product or technology.
00:24:41
Barry D_Arcy
But back to the to the question, right? And having the partner involved in helping us deliver those composable technologies in a stack that's meaningful to bring to market to a certain group of customers, depending on what industry that might be, is super powerful.
00:24:55
Barry D_Arcy
One of the obvious one I forgot to mention is e-commerce, right?
00:24:58
Barry D_Arcy
We're collaborating with the likes of big commerce, commerce tools, commerce layer. Spryker, many in that category. It's a very active space, right? and But working with our partners, our implementation partners, to be able to to choose those best in breed technologies, to be able to to build an accelerator where those technologies are paired together in a meaningful way to target value for a specific customer group. That's a really trendy topic right now that we're trying to deliver into the market. And again, lends itself to what I mentioned earlier,
00:24:58
chadsolomonson
Of course.
00:25:28
Barry D_Arcy
How can we get to value quicker for the customer how can we make this new system this new technology that they're investing in just work for them seamlessly. As quickly as possible right and partners are super excited about that and getting away from the the more legacy systems where the all in one system work where everything's there and you may only activate a certain percentage of us.
00:25:48
Barry D_Arcy
why not go out and just pick the best parts and put them together. Invest your time in building something that's really meaningful with the best technologies, right, rather than having to take the full box and trying to pick the pieces that you might need from that box, right.
00:25:59
Barry D_Arcy
Best in breed is really a topic that's that's very powerful with our partners at the moment.
00:26:01
chadsolomonson
Yes.
00:26:04
chadsolomonson
Absolutely. i think I think bundling coupled with industry focus is going to be a hot topic for the partner channel and us specifically and really helping customers kind of put the pieces together that that makes sense to their specific business.
Evaluating CMS Options
00:26:19
chadsolomonson
So I think there's ah there's a lot of runway there for us to have a lot of value back to our to our clients.
00:26:24
Barry D_Arcy
For sure, for sure.
00:26:26
chadsolomonson
So, just a few more questions before we wrap up. um You know, we touched on it just now but you know for businesses that, you know, are are are evaluating and and looking at various platforms, you know you have IT champions, you've got marketing champions. Everyone knows that there's you know there needs to be more efficiency and in their organization, more agility. What would you say is the most important first step for for a customer to take when when starting this journey?
00:26:58
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, we're always trying to trying to figure out the best way to kind of support you in making that decision. But like ultimately, each organization needs to start with evaluating their needs. So assessing your current CMS limitations and what is your future content strategy or goals, I think is a real key place to start. So what are the pain points and where do you need to add value into how you're operating with your CMS, I think is is is the first place to start.
00:27:26
Barry D_Arcy
you then of course you need to get into research, right you need to look into the different options out there, the different headless CMS options, of course story block being a very important component of your research there, and to find the best one to fit your needs. right And when you're evaluating as well, I think it's very important touching back to that predictable pricing topic as well, make sure that you you know what you're getting yourself in for in terms of how it's going to scale.
00:27:51
Barry D_Arcy
try and build predictability into how you're going to grow that project over time. Forget about this cycle of trying your website out every few years and figure out how you can build success and and just modify and evolve that success rather than starting from scratch with a new strategy every few years.
00:28:07
Barry D_Arcy
That's a really important part of the early stages. And one thing that we see that works quite well is is' also like maybe you can start small, maybe that suits some organizations. So beginning with a small pilot project, and
00:28:16
chadsolomonson
Absolutely.
00:28:18
Barry D_Arcy
working with Working with a partner is also a really key part of of of what you should consider. So working with a story block partner for implementation support, for example, it allows you to leverage their immediate expertise and maximise the potential of the platform quickly. right and These are the experts that can support you in getting to success quickly. So I have to say, selfishly engaging with partners would be a very important part of that evaluation too.
Maintaining Sanity in Tech
00:28:43
Barry D_Arcy
But yeah, it all comes down to the specific business needs. and And sometimes you can start with a proof of concept that a partner can help you with.
00:28:46
chadsolomonson
Sure.
00:28:50
Barry D_Arcy
and We're very lucky. We're very proud of our product. And generally speaking, we do get into these organizations and these new customer groups. People love Storyblock. You alluded to it earlier, and we're really happy about that. And and we're happy we're happy for people to grow and with the success of what they're trying to deliver in terms of their digital assets.
00:29:07
chadsolomonson
Fantastic. Thank you for that. um So i I always wrap up these podcasts with a little bit of insight on on on how to kind of stay, you know, more um your best self as ah as a professional and your You're an executive at ah at a very hot technology company. um you know how How are you staying sane throughout the fast-paced environment that we all live in? Do you have any specific tools that you love or or use on a daily basis that keep you fresh and and keep you at the top of your game?
00:29:43
Barry D_Arcy
Yeah, and interesting question. yeah like We use obviously, we're a fully remote company as I mentioned earlier, so we have a lot of tooling. and We also make a tool called Headspace available to all employees to support them with their kind of mental health needs, which is important as a fully remote company.
00:29:57
chadsolomonson
Oh fantastic, yeah.
00:30:01
Barry D_Arcy
You don't see the people sitting in front of you, right? So you've got to look after your health as your wealth is ah the great saying goes. So tools like that are super supportive for me and for everybody else in the team. and A few tips i think that that work well for me to to keep me organized in the day-to-day. Being fully remote, a lot of async work is what works well for us. We kind of have a rule to not always meet just for the sake of it. you know we We do, of course, have regular meetings and we check in with the team a lot, but and being able to work effectively in an asynchronous way ah using collaboration tools like Storyblock, Slack, and we use Notion,
00:30:35
Barry D_Arcy
and we yeah We were able to collaborate in ah in a very good way across the tooling that we have within the organization. So we we were always remote first, even pre-COVID. So we've been kind we've we've got good foundations on the tooling we use to succeed and keep ourselves on track.
00:30:50
Barry D_Arcy
and But as a leader, I would say just staying active and and keeping your hands a little bit dirty. being Being in the weeds of things from time to time is always important. right and Being able to understand what what your team members are doing on the front line is super important.
00:31:00
chadsolomonson
Yep.
00:31:05
Barry D_Arcy
like We've got that big partner team, but but what I always try and tell people, and we've we've got a new partner manager onboarding right now in America, ah to tell them to to think of yourself as an embedded teammate in in the partner organizations that you're working with. And I like to try to try to live in that space too, right? And really understand what's happening at the front lines so we can stay on top of things. And and then a really important thing and and principle that I have here is it's It's a company-wide thing at Storyblock, but I really try to double down on it. in The partner team is to be able to build a framework to to execute and and to constantly evolve that framework and to trust and listen to your team. And then you'll achieve great things. you know Put people in front of their best work and and they'll do remarkable things and success will come after that. so
00:31:54
Barry D_Arcy
Focusing on trust, allowing the people to have a good voice into how you evolve things and make changes quickly, make decisions quickly, I think is a key to to our success here at Storyblocks. So long may that continue.
00:32:05
chadsolomonson
It's fantastic. It's great. It's great advice for our listeners and and for professionals that kind of live in this space that is very, very high paced and pretty intense at times. So it's it's great to to get your perspective on it. So Barry, outside of you being a Liverpool fan, I feel like this was a really great conversation.
00:32:27
Barry D_Arcy
We'll forget about that piece.
00:32:29
chadsolomonson
ah
00:32:29
Barry D_Arcy
We'll put our rivalries aside. yeah
00:32:32
chadsolomonson
i've always I've always enjoyed talking with you and this was a great conversation. I think it'd be really helpful for our listeners. Again, Barry is the Storyblocks VPO partners.
00:32:44
chadsolomonson
um Thank you so much for joining the show and we will put plenty of links into this podcast. You can check out storyblocks but wwww dot Storyblock.com.
00:32:58
chadsolomonson
And Barry, thank you so much. haveva Have a wonderful rest of the week.
00:33:02
Barry D_Arcy
Thank you, Chad. Really glad for the invite and glad to have joined.
00:33:06
chadsolomonson
All right, take care.