The winner of HPE’s inaugural Channel Reality Show has revealed how a killer tip from one of the judges helped him to victory.
FGS account manager Ted Stroud was on Friday unveiled as the winner of the five-episode show, which saw nine early-stage staff at HPE partners compete for a trip to Las Vegas.
Other partners featured on the show included Simoda, Centerprise, Insight, Telefonica Tech, Daisy Corporate Services and SHI.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Stroud admitted he “fumbled” his first pitch, before a word of advice from one of the three judges helped him back on track.
“Andrew McDade said ‘you’ve just got to be yourself more’,” Stroud said (read interview with McDade here).
“My first pitch was very engineered and structured.
“That was the biggest learning I had – don’t try and fake anything. Just be honest and that’s how your best work will come through.
“It was such an obvious piece of information, but it’s something you just need someone to tell you. It made me realise that our value as individuals comes from our individuality, and being ourselves.”
“It’s not like I’m a Love Island star”
Having been directed to apply for the show by his boss an hour before the deadline, Stroud admitted he was initially worried that the experience might be “too cutthroat”.
“Everyone was lovely,” he said, however.
“Watching it back it was an accurate representation – it really shows how everyone was feeling, and the nerves.
“One thing it didn’t get through as well was [just] how well we all got on together. We were coming out of those meetings and pitches, and talking to and confiding in each other. We got on well, but it was a proper friendship, in real life.”
Stroud’s prize is a ticket to HPE Discover in Las Vegas next week.
So how does he feel about being one of the industry’s first reality TV stars?
“It’s not like I’m a Love Island star,” he said.
“But going into offices and having people recognise you for something that’s a bit niche is a cool experience.
“Having people wanting to talk to you and ask you questions is opening the barrier to meeting so many new people. They all say ‘I already feel like I know you’, which is such a nice thing as it breaks the ice.”
Overcoming imposter syndrome
Stroud, who has been in the IT sector for five years but in account management for only two months, enjoyed one of the steepest learning curves of all the contestants.
As a self-confessed “tech head”, he had a decent enough grounding in the jargon being thrown around (“immutable storage”, “HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition” etc).
But Stroud was forced to restart his first pitch after losing his thread (an event he appeared to predict when, while pacing round the grounds of the venue beforehand, he remarked: “I just watched a crow die; that’s a foreshadowing of how this is going to go”).
“Going into the pitches is probably one of the most nerve-racking things I’ve ever done,” Stroud said.
“My highlight was learning that I can put myself through those stressful situations.
“I’m in an industry where I’m so inexperienced, compared with some of the people in front of me, but I can still feel like if I prepare they’re going to listen to me.
“We all get imposter syndrome, at every level of our careers. But being able to overcome that imposter syndrome, and not crack like I did in the first pitch, was the highlight for me.
“It was that personal development journey of realising that no matter how experienced you are, you can play to your strengths and perform in these situations.”
