The Key to a Solid Company Culture with Red Giant’s Andrew Little

What’s the best way to ensure your company is successful? Your answer might be that you need to sell more products than your competitors. Well, this is definitely true, but is only a by-product of something much bigger than sales. A true indicator of a successful company is having a solid company culture.

The culture of a company can often get overlooked, or at times can be hard to understand. Most managers or owners of companies choose to ignore it, but the ones that focus on it are industry leaders and innovators. To get more insight into what makes a successful company culture, I decided to sit down with Andrew Little, the Founder and Chairman of Red Giant, an industry leader in software for filmmakers and motion graphics who happens to believe company culture is the lifeblood of his multiple eight-figure business empire.

“The way to get people to care: open communication, ask how they are, rev share, full disclosure in the company, encourage side projects.” —Andrew Little 

These points highlighted by Little during our discussion are huge topics in the business world today. Being transparent, caring, and encouraging employees to think outside the box are all forefronts of the top companies in the world today.

Employees, and especially the next generation of Millennials, don’t just want to work at a job for the sake of working and making a living. They want and need to feel a connection to that business in order to really care about their job and put in the best effort. People don’t care directly about the company, but rather about the people in that company and its mission.

There are more companies out there, whether public or private, that are implementing profit share programs and disclosing their profit/loss statements to employees and the public. This has created an open and honest company culture that some of the brightest minds on the planet flock to.

Another important aspect of company culture—that I’ve come to realize from my own personal experience—is that work isn’t everything. It’s not all about work. These companies knew that us employees had a life outside of work and they tried to peek into it and show that they cared. This small gesture can go a long way. In today’s business world, it still troubles me why more managers don’t do this.

Getting to know your employees on a personal level and showing them you care could be the difference between them staying or leaving your company.

To get a better feel for how Red Giant has blossomed into a top company in their industry I decided to chat with Little some more.

Here are two tips from Andrew Little on how to build your business and do it efficiently.

Tips for Company Success

Think of a company as a group of human beings working together instead of as one large entity. 

This was such a good insight into how Red Giant has achieved the success they have. Right from the beginning, Little instilled the feeling of a team atmosphere was instilled into each and every employee. This is a missing piece of so many companies and  is a responsibility of managers.

They forget that the environment that people work in is the most important and when you all work together, you can accomplish a lot more than just one person can. Stop doing things just by yourself. Find ways to incorporate others in your company— and their skill set—to make everything that much bigger and better.

Customer Service

You know when you hear your boss tell you that it’s good when your customers call you every day or to have someone taking care of all phone calls? Well, Little thinks this is actually not the result Red Giant wants.

They feel that if a customer doesn’t call you for anything, that this is the best way to deal with customer service. Definitely, this is a different approach than most of us are used to, but something that I can admire and appreciate.

If you are doing your job and providing the best products or services, then your customers shouldn’t have questions. It’s honestly as simple as that. It’s a great way to think about customer service and a real way to use unconventional wisdom. Something we are all about here at Influencive.