How Joel Holland Built a $20 Million Business From His Parent's Basement

Today’s interview is with Joel Holland, Founder of VideoBlocks. It is a company that has achieved 7,000% revenue growth over the past 5 years.

While still in high school, Joel started a small TV show that focused on helping kids figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. They interviewed over 150 awesome career professionals for the show, and while the interviews contained extremely powerful advice, the production value of the show was lacking, because they had no budget. In one specific instance, Joel had just interviewed superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger. They had this awesome footage of his advice for teens and they weren’t able to make the video look professional since it was cost prohibitive to purchase b-roll, music, professional graphics or other stock media. So Joel decided to start a company that would make stock video affordable to everyone, regardless of budget. After high school, Joel pooled his savings and purchased some professional video equipment. He then hit the road for one year, traveling to over 30 U.S. cities shooting video, editing in the hotel room, and selling the clips so that he could afford to purchase the next plane ticket and hotel room.

Fast forward eight years and VideoBlocks now is clearing over $25 million in revenue and has 45 employees. Some of their clients include professional production studios like NBC, Discovery and MTV to pro-sumers and enthusiasts like colleges, churches and video editing hobbyists. They have since become the largest distributor of stock video with over 32 million downloads. Also, on a personal note, Joel has been named one of the “Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25” by BusinessWeek Magazine, “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” by the United States Small Business Administration, “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst and Young for the Greater Washington DC Region, and made Inc. Magazine’s “30 Under 30” list in 2013.

Resources Mentioned In This Interview

Videoblocks: www.videoblocks.com
Personal Website/LinkedIn profile: www.joelkentholland.com
To upload video content: https://contribute.videoblocks.com/
To apply for jobs: http://www.wearevideoblocks.com/

Catch our interview here or below:

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About

Tayo Rockson

Tayo Rockson is the CEO and President of UYD Media, a media company that encourages people all over the world to use their difference to make a difference while celebrating diversity and educating others. He is an avid writer whose work can be seen on the Huffington Post, Among Worlds Magazine as well as Global Living Magazine. He is an authority on Third Culture Kids and assimilation into new cultures. He is the author of The Ultimate Guide To TCK Living and through his podcast and blog, he is heard and read by thousands of people in over 100 countries. He grew up in four different continents so he considers himself a citizen of the world. He has lived in Sweden, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Vietnam and the United States and his goal is to ultimately leave the world a better place than it was before he came into it. Once he discovered that he was a Third Culture Kid (TCK) or someone who spent the formative part of his childhood years (0-18) outside of his parents' culture, he vowed to use his global identity to make an impact in the world. Feel free to connect with him on Twitter @TayoRockson where he is actively making new friends every day.

How Joel Holland Built a $20 Million Business From His Parent’s Basement

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