Status Go: Ep. 238 – Digital Transformation – The Wider You Think | Paul Pritchard

Summary

In this riveting episode of Status Go, titled “Digital Transformation – The Wider You Think,” host Jeff Ton sits down with the mastermind behind Overdose Digital, Paul Pritchard. With the backdrop of a rapidly changing digital commerce landscape, they delve into how Overdose Digital managed to thrive through the pandemic, build remote teams, and navigate the complexities of the changing environment with braveness, resilience, and an appetite for risk. Interlacing the importance of human connection, trust, and long-term relationships in decision-making and risk-taking, the discussion expands on their experience with mobilizing the company’s workforce during the Ukraine conflict, their focus on ambition and curiosity, and the role of their Overdose Academy. With juicy anecdotes, practical advice, and insightful musings on the digital transformation journey, this episode is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the world of technology, innovation, and leadership.

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About Paul Pritchard

Paul Pritchard is a digital visionary and CEO of Overdose Digital, a company challenging the traditional agency model to deliver exceptional business outcomes. Under Paul’s leadership, Overdose achieved widespread recognition in the Digital Transformation industry.

Since its inception in 2016, Overdose has grown exponentially, expanding their team to include over 450 commerce professionals across the globe. Their industry-defining capabilities encompass strategy, design, technology, marketing, search, and insights. Driven by a deep understanding of consumers and a commitment to innovative solutions, Overdose distinguishes itself from traditional agencies by forging relationships with their clients. Their approach combines consumer empathy with a technology-agnostic mindset, resulting in a collaborative partnership that produces tangible business outcomes.

Paul continues his passion for inspiring others as the host of the “Overdose & Chill Podcast”. He engages with industry experts, thought leaders, and innovative minds to explore the ever-evolving landscape of digital commerce and business innovation. The exceptional work done by Overdose has not gone unnoticed, as evidenced by their recognition as the Best US Agency of the year at the prestigious NES: eCommerce Summit.

Paul Pritchard’s visionary leadership, combined with the signature Overdose approach, positions the company at the forefront of the digital commerce industry. With a relentless focus on creativity, customer experiences, and the transformative power of technology, Paul continues to inspire and shape the future of digital business transformation.

Episode Highlights

[00:00:00]: The Wider You Think

[00:00:15]: Introduction – Digital Transformation and Value Streams

[00:02:49]: Paul Pritchard and Overdose Digital

[00:08:52]: Seven Years of Overdose

[00:09:45]: Finding Value in Unexpected Places

[00:14:56]: VUCA – Ukraine Team

[00:21:22]: Decision-making in VUCA

[00:25:00]: Maintaining Trust

[00:28:09]: Values: Brave, Courageous, Ambitions, Curiosity, and…together

[00:30:07]: Connecting Across the Globe

[00:32:41]: Paul’s Calls To Action

[00:34:44]: Closing and Thank You

Episode Transcript

Paul Pritchard [00:00:00]:

The wider that you think, the more opportunities come to you, and then the more reasonable you are when you say yes, the more likely you are to find yourself in interesting and new spaces.

Voice Over – Ben Miller [00:00:15]:

Technology is transforming how we think, how we lead, and how we win. From InterVision, this is Status Go, the show helping IT leaders move beyond the status quo, master their craft, and propel their IT vision.

Jeff Ton [00:00:35]:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Status Go, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of digital transformation, innovation, and, of course, leadership. I’m your host, Jeff Ton, and today we’ve got a real treat for you. Today, I’m thrilled to be joined by a guest who’s truly a force to be reckoned with in the digital commerce industry. We’re talking with Paul Pritchard, the brains behind the powerhouse that is Overdose Digital, a leading high-growth digital commerce agency out of New Zealand. These folks are known for shaking things up and driving business change through innovative digital strategies that not only transform the customer experience but also supercharge sales on a global scale.

But that’s not all. Paul is also the host of a popular podcast, Overdose and Chill. Frankly, I love that name. That just is so cool. Overdose and chill. I’m ready for the chill.

Today, we’re going to sit down with Paul, and we’re going to delve into the journey that has been Overdose Digital the last seven years. Paul would describe it as VUCA, vitality, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Something I’m sure many of you, our listeners, have faced over the last seven years as well, especially in that three-year period of the real heavy part of the pandemic. We’re going to talk to him about lessons learned, some strategies, what worked, and maybe what didn’t work. And I’m also going to ask Paul to put on his magic hat and his crystal ball and maybe predict the future a little bit and see what’s in sight for that.

So, sit back, relax, and listen to this conversation. I know you’re going to enjoy it.

Without further ado, Paul, welcome to Status Go!

Paul Pritchard [00:02:37]:

Wow! Thank you, Jeff! I couldn’t have said it better myself. In fact, I think I need to get you on board as my hype machine. Brilliant to be here. Thank you.

Jeff Ton [00:02:49]:

I’m really excited about this conversation. I’m glad we were introduced because I think the story behind Overdose Digital, first of all, I think there’s a lot there, but I think you have been able to take digital transformation and really focus in on finding revenue streams, creating new revenue streams, creating new business ventures for your clients. And I think that’s the unusual part that you all bring to the table.

Before we dive into that, I’d love for you to share a little bit about your career journey. What led you to Overdose Digital, and then, if you don’t mind, just kind of a 50,000-foot overview of Overdose Digital itself.

Paul Pritchard [00:03:37]:

Sure. Yeah. Look, I think if I look back at my career, it was a career of accidental opportunity, mainly saying yes to things before I knew what I was really saying yes to. For my sins, I spent close to 18 years working in advertising for some of the big global networks and some independent shops, building, creating, and executing some pretty phenomenal campaigns. And when you’re from New Zealand, we tend to believe that we punch above our weight. And so, some of the work that we were doing was kind of way out on a limb. Some of the stuff I’d say you wouldn’t really get away with in some slightly more regulated, risk-averse environments. So, we got to have a lot of fun.

We got to do some amazing things, got to spend some pretty big budgets. But one of the frustrating things was that outcome focus, right? What did you get from that creative execution, that campaign, that big-budget TV ad that had to be converted to digital and all of that environment? And so, I guess as I went through that journey and as I started to progress and take on more leadership roles, I kept asking the question, what was the result? How can we be sure that we are creating efficacy for this business, for this brand, and ensuring that we get the best out of the budget so that it actually delivers a return?

And I guess that’s where Overdose came in. So, I had gone back to one of the network agencies as a last chance to see if I could be impactful. It had been fun, but hadn’t really made that transformation, right? Like most agencies these days are talking about digital transformation, being digital centric, really looking at how they can reinvent themselves from an advertising standpoint. And it’s really hard, right, because it takes a lot of old school thinking to get off their asses and really start to think about what the future is and really open their minds up to what are new frontiers, new possibilities, right? And the world is changing so rapidly, if you’re not running towards it, you’re standing still, and you’re getting left behind.

So, Overdose was an accidental opportunity. I actually met my business partners as they came into my last agency that I was working at, and they came in as kind of a hire to really supercharge the commerce space that we were playing in. And they lasted for about two weeks before they realized that the energy and the effort and the way that they operated just didn’t fit right.

We were slow and cumbersome, and everything was about the bottom line. And in reality, as soon as you focus on the bottom line first, everything else starts to fall apart, I believe. And so, I met these two gentlemen, and we kind of clicked, right? We had an HR meeting and that kind of meet and greet that HR loves to set up for half an hour and have a quick chat, and then you move on. We were talking for maybe 3 hours, and there was a massive connection in that 3 hours that really aligned my ambitions for what I wanted to achieve within a business and in a leadership role and the energies of these people who are now my business partners.

And so, overdose was born out of that. I joined slightly after it had started as I exited the agency that I was in at the time. We came together with a common goal that we’d stumbled on this opportunity in commerce right at that tipping point where the accessibility of technology and the concept that you could hire anywhere and get great talent was starting to converge in a much more, I guess manageable, and I guess accepted way. And so we’d won a lot of clients in New Zealand, and we were frantically figuring out how to deliver on all the promises that we made.

And at the same time, we had this ambition to take what we were doing and literally test it on a global stage. We wanted to be the ones that just broke down or broke through all of those glass ceilings, broke down the doors, and did something from New Zealand that no one had ever done before. And that was really take on the global commerce landscape and become the world’s largest independent global commerce consultancy. And that’s still our ambition today.

And how we’ve got there over the last seven years is definitely a journey and an adventure as well. And some of the lessons that you learn, I guess, from a leadership perspective, but also from being a people-centric business, right? Literally, what we’re doing is bringing talent together and then putting it in front of the merchants that we work with wherever they are in the world and helping them solve problems and grow their businesses in a sustainable and manageable way. And that was the promise from day one and it’s still the promise today.

But how we’ve got there and kind of some of the challenges that we’ve navigated, some of the exciting things that we’ve blindly run towards and then got a bit beaten up but learned some pretty cool lessons along the way. That’s the stuff that keeps me turning up every morning and being excited for what we do.

Jeff Ton [00:08:52]:

So when you speak of the seven years that’s the lifespan of Overdose Digital, you all have been a business for seven years?

Paul Pritchard [00:09:01]:

Yes. The genesis of Overdose was in 2016, and I think from 2016 to now, we’ve gone from a couple of guys with a concept and working in the back office of a merchant trying to figure it out from a strategic point of view to 400 plus people globally. We are servicing over 300 merchants. We are working across an agnostic stack of technology; we’ve got DevOps, we’ve got UX, we’ve got CRO, we’ve got a commerce-focused strategy, we’ve got data, marketing, SEO, anything that you can bring as a service layer to wrap around a merchant to help them find those new opportunities of growth.

Jeff Ton [00:09:45]:

Yeah, and I love some of the stories you shared when we met a couple of weeks ago that at least several times you’ve been brought in to do…I’ll call it Project A, and you’re able to see and connect some dots that maybe your clients weren’t seeing, and you end up doing Project C, which is totally different, but it is dramatically changing that organization. Can you share a couple of those stories with us? I think one of them had to do with mining equipment, or at least that was the genesis for it.

Paul Pritchard [00:10:26]:

Yeah, look, I think if you think about digital commerce, particularly around agencies, they’re typically the ones that kind of build a Shopify site or Salesforce or a technology implementation that is then traded in some way, shape, or form. Most of the time, you’re building it, and then you’re handing it over, and then you’re moving on to your next project.

We built a business that was founded on the concept of long-term relationships. So, when you build a piece of technology, it’s not the technology that you’re selling; it’s the creation of an asset, much like a store or a new location or whatever, and then you have to trade that asset. And so that mentality of trading has got us into a lot of conversations that you wouldn’t typically start having with merchants until you’ve got that trust built up over time.

And so, the example that you mentioned, we’re finding ourselves being spread into more and more different, interesting, kind of crazy verticals that you just wouldn’t have even thought of if you stayed in your lane, and you stayed kind of focused on the tech that you were playing with in the kind of project lifecycle. And so, as we continue to open up our field of view and explore new spaces for helping businesses adopt a commerce mindset, right?

So, imagine if you’re selling courses in tertiary education, there’s still a commerce mindset, right? You’ve got to find your students. You’ve got to engage with them. You’ve got to bring them into a lead generation and a lifecycle of onboarding, and then you’ve got to convert them, right? They’ve got to sign up for a course. They’ve got to participate in that course. They’ve got to come out of it. That’s one example where commerce really can have a very strong influence over an adjacent industry.

We were invited into a business that basically was built to answer government tenders, to provide products, right? So, they’d source products, and then they would pitch for the tender for government, and then they’d basically supply these over time. And in order to do that, they needed to basically have an environment where if they were doing and one of these things was like feminine hygiene products for secondary schools. And so, what they needed was they needed an environment where those secondary schools could come in an MVP environment, where they could come in kind of select what they need, make their order. It would be then sent out to them, and it would be pretty seamless.

It’s a digital solution to a long-term problem that they were having. This company also then tended to pitch for other procurement opportunities where they were trying to source different things. And the interesting thing for us was once you get in there and you’re starting to be that trusted advisor for one product that may or may not actually get into the real world. Right? It’s a demonstration. It’s an MVP. We were asked to build to help build a marketplace for excess minerals that weren’t being traded on international government-to-government or large corporate-to-government environments. These are excess minerals, where people are picking them up in smaller tranches.

So you’re thinking about, let’s talk about software engineering or chip engineering. Right. And you need core minerals to be able to produce that. When you have startups that are trying to reinvent and rethink the way that chips are constructed, they go into these open markets. They find this raw material in small tranches, and then they buy it, and then they import it, and then they bring it along.

We built a marketplace to access that in real-time with real-time bidding so that the prices would fluctuate. Kind of. You’re getting people from China to the Philippines to South America to Europe all coming into this.

And think about the arbitrage of it, how you’re making real-time bids accurate and non-competitive. Right. So, what you’re not trying to do is ratchet up the price with false bidding. So, I guess the story really is the wider that you think, the more opportunities come to you, and then the more reasonable you are when you say yes, the more likely you are to find yourself in interesting and new spaces.

Jeff Ton [00:14:56]:

I love that “the wider you think, the more opportunities come your way.” You’ve already given me two or three quotes that I’m going to have a hard time picking what the title of our episode is, because the other one that really jumped out at me was “Exit into Opportunity” as you all launched seven years ago.

Talk about these seven years…that VUCA, as I described in the opening, and some of the challenges that you all have weathered and how you’ve been able to get through them.

Paul Pritchard [00:15:34]:

Wow. I don’t have enough fingers to talk about a number of challenges, and I think anyone who’s listening and anyone who looks at their business will have gone through similar…the similar global challenges that we’ve seen.

We had a large team, or we still have a large team based in Ukraine. And when Russia crossed the [border]…now, what is it, two years ago now? I think we were in our ELT strategy off-site. And this was an afternoon, I think we were on a golf course. That’s what you do on these strategy offsites. And we got a phone call from our [team]. We were watching the news. We knew this was possibly imminent, and as soon as we saw the alerts come through, we were on the phone to our MD, who was in Kiev at the time.

We already had a register for where all of our people were. And they were spread from east to west, north to south, across Ukraine. And watching our business mobilize around this team, this team that is the backbone that has been there since day one, has grown out with us, are considered our left and our right hands within the business. Watching people in New Zealand and Australia and Singapore and North America and other parts of Europe really just mobilize like. We had a team on the ground in Berlin at the time who were literally looking for holiday homes that were available, reaching out to people that they knew, and finding places for people to stay as they needed them. We were getting trains of people coming into Europe and meeting them at the station and [you] know…setting them up and helping them find safe places. We’re also communicating daily with these people to really just understand the situations they were in, whether they were safe first and foremost. Were they in bunkers? Were they moving with their families to try and get out of conflict areas? And I guess the most interesting thing as we went through that was the deep, deep just compassion and empathy from every person in this business.

And then everyone connected to us. So, our clients, our tech partners, anyone who knew us and knew of our people and had worked with them or had any interaction with us, just were leaning forward, right? They were donating money, they were offering assistance, they were doing lots of stuff.

The most stark thing that happened during that and the thing that really stood out for me is our MD there he was literally with our company from day one, and it was running a team of 200. He was amazing. He literally led from the front, and it was about six months into it where I finally had a moment to just talk to him directly and said, Are you okay? You’ve been dealing with this. I know you’ve got family here, you’ve got a young child, you’ve got a wife, you’ve got your extended family. I know you’ve been moving across the country away from Kiev. I said, how are?

[He] said, I’m feeling really well. We take this every one day at a time. I’ve got a plan to get where I’m going, and I know that. I said, well, how’s your home? He said, oh, my village has been flattened. I’ve lost everything. And that was the first moment where you just go, this man who has been a rock and a backbone for so many people. He’s dealing with his own personal stuff. He’s lost his home, he’s lost everything, and he’s trying to move his family and continuing to move to safety as well. And that human resilience, that ability to kind of put things in boxes and project out confidence and capability, that was a stark reminder that every person in our business and every person that we deal with, regardless of the highs and the lows, is going through their own stuff.

And so, we have to have that empathy for their situations. And then, if you look at subsequently, we had the Pandemic, right, and the world shut down. That was a boom time for us because if you’re in digital commerce and you’ve got merchants whose stores were shut, the only thing they could do was sell online, right? So, our business continued its rapid growth, but through that we also discovered a lot more about ourselves as well, right? How to build teams remotely, how to encourage people’s collaboration through digital channels, not through physical channels. How to adapt to an environment that had to move at lightning speed, where you had click and collect happening overnight, or pickup from curb. You had to kind of figure out your shipping. We had logistics issues from day one, right. Ships stuck in ports and all that sort of stuff. And we had to lean into this with the merchants that we were with.

And you mentioned VUCA. As we were coming out of the pandemic, we sat down as an ELT and we started to kind of really try and figure out how to adapt to this new environment without overinvesting. Right? So, we didn’t want to just assume that the whole world would be digital-first all the time, and as we’ve seen, it hasn’t. So, we were grateful. But we came across this term VUCA, which is volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. It’s actually a military term coined by the U.S. Military to deal with uncertain situations and to embrace that kind of environment. And so we took it on as…you know, it’s not going to change.

It’s always going to be volatile. It’s always going to have a degree of uncertainty. We know it’s complex, and we know that ambiguity is going to consistently be there as well. So how do we behave as a business? To embrace it, not to kind of fear it and shy away from it. And so, it’s something that really kind of underpins the way that we operate both as a people business and the way that we look at the world through the lens of our merchants as well.

Jeff Ton [00:21:22]:

So as you’re looking at, you guys formed in 2016, four years later you got the pandemic. We’re just starting to come out of the pandemic when Russia crosses into Ukraine. How has your leadership team been able to make…I’ll call it the right decisions. It seems like you’ve navigated fairly well. I’m sure there’s some pretty big bumps in the road but you’ve made some pretty good decisions over that time period. How have you as a team been able to do that?

Paul Pritchard [00:22:04]:

I’d say we made some brave decisions, right? I don’t know if they were all good, but I think being brave, we continually look at ourselves and go, what matters to us? And we’ve just reviewed our values and some of the core behaviors that we believe in. And one of those is courage, right? The courage to move forward, the courage to make a choice. And I think if we look at it, our mentality is momentum. And if you get stuck on problems, you just spin your wheels. And so, whether you make a good decision or a bad decision, making decisions is key. And so, we’ve learned some lessons, right? We opened an office in Europe and just got beaten up. It was hard, it was different. We couldn’t travel.

We couldn’t be there to really support in person, make those human connections, and it just didn’t work out. And so, we had to leave with our tail between our legs. We’ve been in the US now for close to four years in various shapes and forms and we are still just finding our feet because it’s a unique and interesting and massively exciting opportunity.

But how you navigate those, right? Sometimes, just saying yes and starting is the best thing. I think, as a leadership team particularly, it’s about belief, right? And confidence. So, we’ve got to believe in ourselves, and we’ve got to back ourselves into these things and having each other’s backs. And we see this constantly, right?

You look at the news around open AI at the moment, this concept of co-governance and whose decisions are right there’s always that tension. And I think that tension is healthy as long as it doesn’t become a conflict.

And so, in our business, we look at it from: someone has an idea, we pitch it to each other. Usually we’re just going, yes, let’s do it. What is there to lose? That’s the first and foremost question what’s the risk in it? And we have a pretty big appetite for risk when it comes to making kind of new leaps forward and particularly in the space that we play in, right? Technology is changing all the time. There’s new things coming. Some of the big players make bad decisions, right? Lots of hiring. We’ve seen the likes of Shopify and Adobe and Salesforce and BigCommerce and all those guys have to pull back quite a lot, make a lot of retrenchments and stuff.

For us, it’s what is the worst that could happen? And the worst that could happen for us is that affects our people, right? That we have to let people go. And so, if we have that filter everything we do is based on whether or not we’re creating a safe and supportive environment for our people.

And if it goes against that, then we won’t do it. Yeah.

Jeff Ton [00:25:00]:

I think it’s incredible that the three founders, three of you, all right, met at a different organization and got to know each other so well, that you have that trust in each other right? To make these decisions and make that call.

The other thing that you talked about when we spoke a few weeks ago was there are times when you’re looking at a client, and you may need to ramp up ahead of the revenue. So, you’re making a decision to invest dollars, hoping that…really making a bet, right? That the revenue will come.

How have you been able to maintain that trust relationship between the three of you when you’re talking, risking some pretty big dollars?

Paul Pritchard [00:26:01]:

I think there are two parts to it. One is we’ve had the benefit of rapid top-line growth, right? So, our revenue growth has been significant over a long period of time. And when you have lots of money coming in, it builds, arguably, a false confidence of being able to continually kind of fight forward. Now, the world has hit some interesting economic turbulence, right? Interest rates, FX challenges. When you come from New Zealand, and you’re trading predominantly on the USD, when it drops from seventy-two cents to fifty-two cents, you start to really feel it, right? And so, over the last probably 18 months, where we’ve seen some wobbles out there and our willingness to invest, particularly in human capital, right?

We are hiring people invested in new technology particularly, but also in other adjacent areas like data and marketing and that sort of stuff. We have to now be a lot more, I guess, responsible with those decisions where I think previously, because of the rapid acceleration, we could afford really quickly to make a move and then suffer the kind of two and a half million-dollar cost because the revenue was always coming.

When it starts to slow down and we’re still doing pretty well, not complaining there, we do have to sort of take a step back and go, all right, what do we look like? And if I look forward to ‘24, one of our core focuses is going back to our principles of looking after our people. And what is that going to take? Ensuring that we build value-based relationships with our clients and maintain those human interventions, those people-to-people, trusted advisors, and business relationships are really core to us.

We can’t propose new things to our merchants if they don’t believe in us. So, we’re going to go back to those and reinvigorate those over time, over 2024, because that’s where the gold is, right? That’s where the nuance of change and the opportunity of growth will happen.

Jeff Ton [00:28:09]:

I think the other word that you used as you were describing that a few weeks ago was ambition. That’s part of what differentiates you from others, is that ambition. So, I’m hearing words like brave, courageous, and ambitious. What other values help drive you personally and drive Overdose Digital.

Paul Pritchard [00:28:37]:

I think the number one value that we really thrive on is curiosity. The ability to constantly believe that we’re never done and therefore to be constantly curious about what is next and what’s out there and where we could kind of navigate off to the side. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re always going to do that, but the willingness to continually investigate new things is still a core part of who we are.

The other value that we have is together. So, understanding that we’re stronger together than we are alone, and that’s really an encouragement that the Overdose business is actually a network of exceptionally talented human beings in different parts of the world. Fundamentally, if you’re a person who works in our business, there will be someone who does what you do somewhere else in the world. And so, we encourage that concept of together, that building of your own Overdose Network, to ensure that you’ve got that kind of intelligent support and that I’ve been through this. So, have I.

Or I’ve got this question. Oh, that’s a question I’ve been asking that kind of you’re never alone mentality. If we get these things right, we’re encouraging people to be open minded, asking questions, looking forward, and then we’re encouraging them to do it together. And so, as long as we can stitch people together like that, I think we can’t help but succeed. But you’ve got to work at it all the time.

Jeff Ton [00:30:07]:

And being spread out across the globe, trying to build that togetherness has got to be, first of all, incredibly challenging. What’s one of your, I guess, best practices, lessons learned? How do you do that? How do you connect people across the globe?

Paul Pritchard [00:30:30]:

Yeah, I guess once the world opened back up after the Pandemic, we can get back on planes, and so we could spend more time in person in the know. I think I’ve been up to the U.S. now quite a few times just to really connect with our team on the ground into Southeast Asia, across the ditch, into Australia. Haven’t really got up to Ukraine yet. Still probably a little bit risky for us.

But I think spending more time in person with our people just reinforces my personal belief that if you focus on the differences, you’ll always find that you’re different. I believe fundamentally that we are more alike than we are different. And so, finding what we’re similar, what’s similar about us is the core to connection, right? Yes. We may operate in different financial jurisdictions or legal jurisdictions or different countries with different nuances, but we’re all attracted to doing the work that we do for the same reasons. Right?

We want to have personal success. We want to see and be recognized for the success that we bring to our clients, to the partners that we work with. And if we can find those commonalities, it’s what is going to bind us together. We’ve just launched an internal training program for our next generation of leadership. It’s an Overdose Academy, and we’re using an external provider to provide parts of it to ensure that we’re getting kind of new perspectives in there. And one of the things that we’ve done with this team is we’ve focused on their strengths, right? We’ve used a tool called the Clifton Strengths. And what it says in there before you even get into the assessment is it says we’re not looking to fix weaknesses.

In fact, there’s no such thing as a weakness. What we’re looking to do is focus on what you are strong at and accelerating your expansion of that, stretching you into spaces that are adjacent to that. So, I think that mentality of focus on the good, right, focus on what you are strong at and focus on what is common is a really key piece. Right? We’re more alike than we are different.

Jeff Ton [00:32:41]:

This time has flown by, Paul, and we are out of time. But I want to extend an invitation to have you back on the show sometime in ‘24 because I think we’ve just barely scratched the surface on these lessons and I think our listeners really can find value in some of these things. And your approach to those.

What I’d love to do to wrap up, if you’ll indulge me just a little bit, is we always like to end with a really strong call to action. We want to be very specific to our listeners. Now, our listeners, our audience are technology professionals across the globe, but predominantly here in the U.S., mostly in leadership or emerging leadership type roles. So, what’s one or two things that you would suggest to them that they go do tomorrow because they listen to our conversation about Overdose today?

Paul Pritchard [00:33:48]:

Yes. I guess if we look at where we’ve come and where we’re going, some of the things that hold us back is just that overwhelming feeling of so much change or so much opportunity. One thing that we encourage our people and our clients to do is pick one thing and do it right. Let’s not try and boil the ocean. Let’s choose one thing as our first step forward, and that’s a step, and then you take the next step. So ,choose one thing and do it. So, maintain that momentum.

And I guess the second thing is just that courage to accept that we are not finished, that the answer isn’t that we were going to get to a point where it’s all going to be perfect. So, embrace that journey, right? Realize that every step you take is an opportunity to learn something new, to move forward, to embrace a brave new world. So, just love the journey, right, not the destination.

Jeff Ton [00:34:44]:

Proceed on with courage. I love that. There’s a book that I think you would enjoy reading, Paul. It’s called Fearless. It’s by a friend of mine, Steven Johns. Stephen has been on the show a couple of times, and Fearless really is a chronicle of…it’s a weekly email series that he was sending to his company during the pandemic. It was heartfelt. Here’s where we are today. And once a week he’d send those out and he stitched those together in a story about his company overcoming VUCA during the pandemic. I think you would really enjoy that.

So, Paul, I do want to thank you so much. I appreciate you being on the show. I appreciate the grace in having to reschedule our interview from a couple of weeks ago. I really did appreciate that and I’m glad we were able to get back together again. So, thank you very much.

Paul Pritchard [00:35:49]:

You’re welcome. And look, I’ve loved this conversation, and I’d be more than happy to come back and continue the chat. Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Ton [00:35:57]:

Fantastic, fantastic. We’d love to have you back in ’24.

To our listeners, if you have a question or want to learn more, visit intervision.com. The show Notes will provide links, and we’ll have Paul’s contact information there as well. This is Jeff Ton for Paul Pritchard. Thank you very much for listening.

Voice Over – Ben Miller [00:36:18]:

You’ve been listening to the Status Go podcast. You can subscribe on iTunes or get more information at intervision.com. If you’d like to contribute to the conversation, find InterVision on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Thank you for listening. Until next time.