#6: "No Purpose Left Behind" - Paul Prior

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Online isn't really about technology, it's about the people that are sitting behind technology, and we are complex mofos.

Welcome to Statements of Intent. In this 20 minute episode, we're addressing how eCommerce has lost sight of the people at its very heart. You, the customer. It's a chat that's optimistic, it's casual, it's probably slightly ranty in places, but that's okay. But it's a place where I talk to senior eCommerce marketers.

And share their statement of how they're looking to change the status quo of eCommerce, adding more care, being more considerate to those very people that they're selling to - the customer. I'm your host, David Mannheim, the founder of Made With Intent. And we're going to jump right into it. Have fun

Hello and welcome to Statements in 10. I'm your host David Mannheim, and today

we have with us Head of Digital over at 3 over in Ireland, Mr. Paul Pryor. Sound like a, um, like a Stan Lee character, like a Peter Parker, or a Green Goblin, or

Lovely alliteration. It certainly helps with my imposter syndrome.

You know, if people are concentrating on my name, they don't realise I'm completely incompetent. Well,

there's nothing to set off a scene with a bit of self deprecation, is there?

Set the bar at the right level.

I love it, Paul. How are you doing today?

You alright? Yeah, I'm good, yeah, just trying to exit strong, coming up to Christmas, really busy year when you're in e commerce, as you know, so, um, just trying to stay strong till the end, and then take a couple of weeks off and come back at it again, do it all over again next year.

Ah, you make it sound so fun. Uh, where's the, uh, where's the Christmas jumper? Are you being a bit of a Grinch today,

or? I had it on yesterday, and I was really hot, so I was like, no, I'm gonna put my comfort over me trying to please you.

I'm clearly much nicer than you are. All right. Well, Paul, look on this show, you kind of talk about going against the grain, going against the status quo of e commerce, the homogenization, the lack of care. And, uh, for each guest, we asked them to create a statement of intent, like a, like a guiding principle and yours.

Is somewhat of a, uh, like a, uh, a line out of Taken or an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, which is no purpose left behind. It's caught to me. What do you mean by no purpose left behind?

Well, I guess what I mean is, we don't really sell products and services to people. We sell whatever purpose they intend to use them for.

So I'm a big, um, a big mentor of mine who sadly passed away recently enough was Clay Christensen, who you probably know quite well, but it's the father of disruptive innovation. So he talked, he talks a lot about jobs to be done theory, which I imagine most of your listeners are familiar with that people hire companies to do a particular job for them.

But we used to speak a lot about this context of. Well, why would they even do that in the first place? You know, what's their sense of purpose in trying to achieve that? So I kind of stole it, made sure he didn't publish it. And then I've kind of owned it, you know,

You do you, that's okay. No

pleasures in here.

So it kind of, it kind of snitched, did the statement by itself kind of stitches together lots of different areas that I find really interesting, you know? So, um, and I guess it's the premise behind this podcast as well, which is. Online isn't really about technology, it's about the people that are sitting behind technology, and we are complex mofos.

You know, um, everything from having an understanding of neuroscience, social psychology, economic theory. And all these kind of elements come together in the context of in that moment, when this person is having an online conversation with you, as I like to call it, um, they have some purpose that they want to achieve in doing so.

And I find when I talk about purpose. Instead of talking about personalization or, um, moments of delight is a particular favorite of mine. Um, I find that by using that term, at least the people I seem to work with have a good concept of, okay, he's talking about the ecosystem of things that we need to be considering now to make sure this person has a nice experience with us, you know?

I love that. Even, even

by saying The purpose of the person, or, or no purpose left behind, or just reframing the conversation towards purpose. Feels, feels like you even get a different perspective on it, it's just a semantic change, right? Instead of saying users, you know, we say people, for example. It's semantic change that makes, hopefully makes people go, Oh yeah, there are people at the other end of this, this screen that we're on.

Do you, do you find that has the effect over at 3? Is that how you speak?

Um, yeah, I usually, I usually have to hand out dictionaries and thesauruses every time I speak. Um, luckily today I'm, I'm, I'm kind of speaking to somebody who seems to be in a similar level of vocabulary to myself. So that's, that's quite helpful.

Um, no, it does. No, it does. Like I'm fascinated by it. Like fascinated by the same thing that you're observing, which is, you know. A lot of problems or challenges can be solved through a change of behavior, you know, and like I'm always worried and I'm actually writing my second book at the moment around this kind of concept of, um, undefended leadership, which is my experience of digital transformation and that still 20, 30 years into.

e commerce as a platform, we still think in terms of technology and what's the latest trend and it's, it's not even what the latest trend is. It's what's the 156 person interpretation of what the original intention of that trend actually was, you know? So if you look at human beings over time, we're really quite primitive, like.

As anyone who knows me would attest, I haven't really grown much since the ages of seven. So, certainly in the context of how I engage in the world, like I've all this stuff that I've built that allows me to portray myself as being more mature and a certain element of professionalism. And then my experience is always built into that.

But once you strip away all that stuff The basic principles of why we do what we do and go about it the way we do hasn't really changed since we were in the Neanderthals. So when you bring it back to that, which this phrase purpose seems to help me do, and certainly helps my team do, then you're able to deal with people on a very human level.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Just that change of language can really change the viewpoint.

Going back to that point that you said that e commerce is focused predominantly in technology, Like why, why is that the case? Is it just that it's easy, accessible, it seems a quick win? What, what's your take on that?

Um, uh, there's a level of comfort in it.

Well, there's two things that come to mind immediately, right? Firstly, there's an E before it. So, by context, people naturally assume it must have some kind of technology beside it. So we've removed that in our business. Like, so it's just commerce. Um, and then separately to that, it's just a comfort zone, you know, like as in the literature, you know, we, we, we spend, if you engage in the social community online, we probably spend 10 to 12 seconds interpreting every piece of information that we're giving, looking for patterns, fortunately, or unfortunately, where most of us spend our time, the type of patterns that we're seeing as technology is the answer to these types of questions and not implicitly.

Okay. That goes in whether you, whether you want it to go in or not. So, so there's a level of comfort in, in your brain recognizing that, Oh, this is a term that I've heard millions of times before that's associated with the decision I need to make. So at least if this decision goes tits up, I can say, Well, everyone's been talking about it for 20 years and everyone seems to be doing it.

So they must be on to something, you know.

I wonder if there's an association of not blame, but risk. Yeah. With all of that. I, if other people are doing it, I'm going to do the same. And you know, we've all read like Dale Carnegie and, and, and, you know, thinking fast and slow and what have you. And there's like a need for tribalism and security in the decisions that we make.

But I wonder if, I mean, maybe this is a far reaching statement, Paul, but would you say people are scared in e commerce of making a different decision? Or are they, are they challenging decisions? What, what, what's your experience with that?

Uh, people are scared in general. Like, so you only really have two basic emotions.

You have fear and joy, and most of your states are somewhere between those two things. Um, so absolutely like, you know, um, whether they recognize it or not is a tough question. The more time I spend with people, the more I realize that there's a level of blissful ignorance with, you know, we just don't normal people.

And I'm certainly not normal. Don't spend an enormous amount of time, really. Challenging what they're feeling or where what they're doing is coming from. Like it's actually only the last couple of years as I've been reading on the subject that I realized that a lot of people don't have self talk like I've been walking around for two decades thinking everyone has these little voices in their heads that's constantly challenging themselves and constantly asking themselves, you know.

Re baseline their thinking, learning, re baseline their thinking. It's like having fucking an AI engine in my head the whole time, I suppose, is probably the best analogy to it. So, of

course Maybe you're the first consumer of Neuralink,

who knows? Yeah, that would be amazing, wouldn't it? Yeah. I'd certainly feel more satisfied with my life if that was the case.

But, like, back to your question, um, there's an intrinsic fear in everything we do. Just how And there's a risk in every decision that we make, you know, so I think it's perfectly plausible that someone would try to find data points to validate that the decision they're making is correct. Yeah, 100%.

I'm curious as to like, I mean, would you say it's a technology versus people conversation or is it a balance of the

conversation?

Yeah. It's a balance. It's just, for me, I'm fairly passionate about starting with the human bit and then backing in the technology as opposed to the other way around.

So forgive me though, do you, do you feel as though, I feel as though we've been talking about customer centricity for, for years and years and years, but nothing's ever come to fruition.

What, why do you think that's the case? Is, is it because people find comfort in the technology? Do you think people say it because they want others to hear it? What, what's your interpretation of that balance? Why it's so imbalanced currently?

Um, I don't know what I, what I use the term unbalanced. I, I feel we're really busy.

And when you're really busy, you naturally default to your safe space. And taking a customer first mindset comes with an element of risk associated with it. Because it's something that isn't within your control necessarily. Um, although is in your span of influence and that can be really difficult. Um, and like, you know, I'm a former consultant, I built my own advisory firms, like I've been making shit up like customer centricity for years, you know, so I just think, I think there's an element of it becomes diluted beyond its original intention, you know, so, you know, um, if you're not talking to the origin of something.

Often you're talking to a very diluted version of what it is. Yeah, that like

156 interpretation. Yeah, and it's

just, then you're like, I'm quite sceptical of that. Not that the people I meet aren't incredibly intelligent people and are experts in their field, but I've always had a fascination with, like I mentioned in relation to Clay, which is if I want to learn about something, find the person who invented it.

And then spend time with them because at least then then the basic knowledge you're getting is coming from the origin of what started it all, you know,

that's really fascinating. So again, so for you, it comes back down to, to purpose, like the why behind the what? Yeah,

yeah, I think, I think when you live that way and when you think that way, um, it gives you a lot of freedom, you know, because if your purpose is really to.

To significantly make a difference, and in the context of this conversation, that's to help whoever's engaging with us that I can't see, that I don't know, that's over there behind the screen, um, fulfill their purpose. For me, that gives me a lot of satisfaction, like it's, I think that's a nice way to live your life.

I think there's a, there's a huge, one thing that I found over the past, you know, since writing my book or since running the, starting my new business is, there's a big community of people. Okay. I don't want to, you know, toot the horn of customer centricity and, and indeed person impersonalization or whatever it might be.

But there's definitely a huge community of people who want to be more empathetic with those behind the screen. People who want to connect, desire connection, desire a conversation, a relationship. And one of the reasons for starting this podcast is just that it just seems as though everything is so genericized and we're so far removed from that.

And COVID probably exacerbated all of this loneliness that I feel, I know that community has resurfaced recently.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you're attracted to who you are as well, right? So, you know, if I walk around saying all this stuff, eventually I'm going to find people that it resonates with, that are attracted to it.

So, um, and God knows there's plenty of people who don't talk like this and they're all attracted to each other, too. It's just, they're probably historically in the majority while we're probably historically in the minority, you know, because, um, a constructs are designed to Control what your purpose might be.

So it takes a lot of courage and bravery to define what that purpose might be for yourself, you know.

Do you think that's it? Do you think it's

about courage and bravery?

Um, yeah. I do.

Yeah, no, I'm curious as to that. Like, double down on it. Let's double click on that. Yeah. Weird term. Someone said that the other day and it picked up on it.

Let's double click on courage and bravery. Like, why did you choose those words?

Because it is, there's, there's an element of, um,

I, I, I feel it takes a lot of courage to ask the big questions, um, when it's much easier to just ignore them and carry forward. So like, if you think about the normal, and this is this the same for customers as anyone else, like if you think about the normal definitions of successes in society, so, you know, Elon Musk's where you have fuck you money, you know, where, you know, you need to build your own company.

That's kind of big at the moment. Um, you have to have a family, you must live in it. You must have a mortgage. All of these things are still there in the context of milestones you need to achieve to be seen as successful. If you're willing to parallel with that to say, well, you know, I want some of those things too.

But the way, the way I'm going to go about that is more authentic to how I want to live my life or how I believe everyone probably wants to live their life. If they actually have to concentrate the conversation with themselves to do so. Um, that comes with repercussions and that repercussion might be that, you know, you might find yourself lonely quite a lot because you know, your thought processes isn't in the majority.

Um, of people's minds and it also means that you're, you're pass, you might pass up opportunities for you to achieve some of those traditional things a lot quicker. Um, now I still think you can achieve them and I'm and will and hopefully continue to do that as you are yourself. But I certainly feel that when I do achieve that, I have an extra sense of achievement because I've done it in a way that's incredibly authentic to how I want to maneuver and how I hope.

People that come and buy stuff from me or engage in companies that I'm involved in would like that experience to be. Your purpose. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. That's lovely. That's really nice. It sounds like you've done a lot of reading or had a lot of therapy, one of

the two. Oh, nonstop since I was 17. Yeah.

That's what I do. I connect knowledge. Connect people and knowledge.

I love it. And you said, you said before, Paul, uh, that you weren't normal. I think we'll clip it up if you'd like, but I'm not normal. What do you mean by you're not normal? Do you mean that this, this way of thinking, or is it just something that you haven't told us?

Like you are really good at.

I think it's just an atypical way of thinking like, you know, so like I've done Kauffman scholarship and stuff in the valley and like, you know, you get hooked up to machines and you do shit loads of tests like so, like I'm aware of things like my abstract thinking, which you can't, which comes from your DNA and your neural pathways is incredibly high.

In a while, like, you know, my reading comprehension and my mathematical ability will be fairly average, like, so, you know, so I work on them. So, like, it's by proxy of the fact that you're in a certain percentile of humanity in a certain way of thinking, that is atypical at least, you know? So I guess that's what I mean, it's atypical as opposed to not normal.

Yeah, yeah, I really like that way of thinking. I, this, this conversation has gone a lot deeper than what I, than what I

thought. Yeah, I know. We're so close to Christmas and it's like 4 p. m. I know.

When you said something like no purpose left behind, I literally thought I was going to have some Liam Neeson esque adventure with you.

You know, not like an adventure into the mind. I feel like I should be lying down on this couch. I

know, I've really thought about this, David. That's funny.

All right. So I guess one last question for me then. So this concept of no purpose left behind, I think we've established it. It is a rebalance away from technology or at least more towards people.

Uh, and that comes from, uh, the individual purpose. In this case, you come to the company's purpose and it comes from as a society. I think from what I'm saying. A collective purpose. Yeah. Um, yeah. Is that like a good summary? Would you add any more colour to that? I guess is my question.

Um, no. Like, so, like, if you think of purposes that are well known out there at the moment, so, you know, I want to be somebody who doesn't add to the climate change challenge.

That's a perfectly acceptable purpose that's quite common these days, particularly in certain generations, you know. So, I do feel that Everyone at their core has some sense of purpose, like what I'd like for them and the same with people who work with us. Um, I'd like them to feel the same, um, level of comfort from understanding what their purpose might be.

So like a purpose in my world, right, let's bring it back down to something that the non atypicals can understand. So like a purpose in my world is understanding that someone isn't just buying a mobile phone, like maybe they have family that's involved in the war in Ukraine and Russia, and this mobile phone might be their only lifeline to staying in touch with them.

And then even going further than that, which is okay, what does that do emotionally for them? Well, it gives them comfort, but it also gives them information in a very transactional way. Um, and it also allows them to make an intervention and feel like they're doing something good, you know, so if you're able to get like hyper personalization, I think it's something I've, I've, I've heard quite a lot, right?

If you're getting, if you're able to get down to the minutia of right, that's that person's purpose in coming to us. Think about how everything, the whole ecosystem of the conversation, they're going to have, but you can change, um, around that. And also like as an employee myself. Isn't that a much better way to think about creating a sale or having like, you know, you're actually making a sale that can make an impact on someone's life as opposed to just being a trans financial transaction.

Um, yeah, I feel, I feel as though our jobs are in some case, are more towards almost manipulative measures of near on forcing people down a funnel, you know, shoving pop ups in people's faces, like, and not really reducing friction. Almost adding to it, at least cognitively anyways, by trying to shove people down this, uh, stereotypical route.

But when you frame it in the way that you've just framed it around the purpose of the individual, I, clearly I really resonate with it.

But a question for me is how, I, I, I love the conversation of it. I love the reframing of it. Is there any practical elements of that? I think people, why are you here today?

Or something as simple as that? Is there something well, I'll give you a perfect

example, right? So we know data is my best friend as it is. Everyone's right. So I know that we sell broadband products. Like a router that goes in your house that allows us to have this type of conversation through connectivity, right?

I know from data and from speaking to customers and from doing jobs to be doing interviews and elements of that, that. People are nervous around the technology of broadband in their home. Where do I place it to get the best signal? Oh my god, it's this big box, you know. Where do I plug it in even? Is it going to give me cancer?

You know, all these anxieties that surround it. Now, their purpose is to buy a product that enables them to do, to fulfill a number of other purposes, right? No one buys broadband. Like, otherwise, like, I'd be sitting in a corner looking at my broadband flicker going on and off all day, really excited about it.

No, it's what's purpose does it allow me to fulfill? So, for me, if their purpose is I want the most reliable connection to fulfill my other purposes, surely there's a way for us to fulfill that part of the purpose for them. So, like, simple things like, you know, Non sales related, how to place your router appropriately in your room to give you the best signal.

Now, you can think of that through the lens of, I want to sell more broadband product. It doesn't really help you do that. Genuinely, there's better ways to do that. Like you said, you wanted to use Robert Cialdini manipulation techniques to make it happen. But if you go through the lens of, well actually I just want to reduce the anxiety associated with the purpose that they're trying to achieve.

And if I achieve that, Then, you know, I'm one step closer to creating the utopia of what we're trying to achieve. Yeah. Those kind of conversations are resulting in those kind of outputs, you know, where it becomes less about it needs to be a brand video that is highly polished and very clearly. Stage to convert the customer to a wait there.

There's other people out there talking about routers that aren't making any money. They're just passionate about it. Let's go talk to those dudes and ask them to do a video because they're aligned to my purpose. You know, because why would they be doing it for free? It's like this podcast. Like I'd imagine part of your purpose of doing this podcast is to share some of this knowledge, thinking and create a space for people to think about these things.

Absolutely. Yeah. So like you go find people who share. The passion of that purpose and you work on it together like so that like they're very small practical things that just by like you introduced the conversation where you pivot your thinking. It produces a totally different kind of outcome. And it also helps with a lot of the ego associated that, you know, like, as in, Oh, well, it has to be like, you know, we have to spend 1.

5 million euro on this. And we have to get boat Williams in to do the video. And it's like, yes, we do like, uh, like in some cases when there's different purposes ongoing, but in the context of reducing the emotional anxiety associated with this purchase in a very personalized way, maybe we don't like maybe, maybe.

We trust the person who does this in their free time for absolutely free just because they care enough about people they want to do it.

I love it. What a very simplistic message about care and empathy. Yeah. Paul, thanks very much for sharing some of your experiences and your experience on the Jobs to be Done framework as well.

I think that's a really nice way to reframe. How we look at things,

um. Good stuff. Are you sweating now in your, are you sweating in your Christmas jumper now?

Uh, just a little bit. I put it on specifically for this podcast, so you're very welcome. Thanks for calling out the sweat patches though, Paul, I appreciate it.

There we have it. Thank you so much for listening. Please do like, subscribe and share on whatever platform it is that you're listening to on today. This show comes from the team behind Made With Intent, the customer intent platform for retailers. If you are of course, interested in being more profitable, whilst being more personal.

And please feel free to check us out at madewithintent. ai. Thanks again for listening and joining us on our mission to change how eCommerce sees, measures, and treats their customers. I've been your host, David Mannheim. Have a great day.

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