Five people sitting on a beige couch on a stage with a large purple and blue digital screen behind them displaying the words "The Own Show" with yellow and purple circles replacing the "O"s. The stage is lit with purple lights.

The Own Show

A talk show for employees, by employees— bringing culture to life across a fast-moving tech company

At a fast-growing tech company with a global workforce and a new generation of employees, change was constant and attention spans were short.

Traditional channels like newsletters weren’t cutting through. We needed a fresh way to bring our culture to life, model the values and behaviors we wanted to see, and show employees what success looked like here.

The Insight

Employees don’t adopt company values just by reading about them. They adopt them by seeing those values in action. To shape culture during a time of rapid growth, we needed more than well-crafted messages.

We needed to show real people, doing real work, in a way others could relate to and emulate.

How we made it work

  • We started by partnering with leaders across the business, including Sales, Customer Success, Product, and People to understand what “great” looked like in our fast-changing environment. What behaviors were we trying to drive? What did success really mean here?

    Then, instead of pushing those messages top-down, we flipped the script. We found employees who were already doing it right: collaborating across teams, driving results, and living our values, and gave them the spotlight.

    Each episode of The OWN Show featured authentic peer-to-peer interviews, team wins, and leadership moments that felt honest, unscripted, and human. We created the format, coached our employee hosts, sourced the stories, and made sure each episode aligned with both cultural priorities and business needs.

  • The OWN Show became one of the most-watched internal channels at the company. Employees tuned in across time zones and departments, not just because it was fun, but because it felt real.

    It was also one of our most powerful recognition tools. Teams featured on the show saw spikes in internal engagement, and in one case, a highlighted sales team helped drive a measurable lift in meetings booked at a key industry event.

    The show also made cross-functional collaboration visible. Instead of telling people to work better together, we showed them what that looked like. And it STUCK.

  • In high-growth environments, culture can get lost in the noise. The OWN Show created a space where employees could see the company they were building together and understand how to thrive in it.

    It wasn’t just about communication. It was about connection, modeling, and momentum.

  • No great project is ever the product of a single person. The OWN Show was the result of strong collaboration across multiple roles and teams:

    • Christie Clements — our host and producer who brought warmth, structure, and consistency to every episode

    • John Stessel — co-host, story producer, and editor (with Kyle Spiegel) who shaped the final cut into something everyone wanted to watch

    • Dan Bria & Curtis Shields — our internal master producers who ensured production quality was top-notch

    • Brooke Glynn and Andreas Lee — our incredible animators

    I deeply value working with creative professionals who know how to elevate culture through thoughtful storytelling. That collaborative spirit is what made The OWN Show not just a video series, but a visual recognition platform, a culture-builder, and a model for internal communications done well.

Want to watch an episode?

Curious how The OWN Show helped build culture, connection, and clarity during rapid growth? I’d love to share a full episode with you.

Let’s talk about how this kind of internal storytelling could work for your team.