Make Time to Dream: Interview with Jeffrey L. Bowman, Co-Founder and CEO of Reframe
I recently went one on one with Jeffrey L. Bowman, co-founder and CEO of Reframe.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here?
Jeffrey: Thank you, Adam, for sharing your platform. Our co-founder and CTO, Safraz Sears and I started Reframe in 2015 after leaving Ogilvy as Sr. Partner and Managing Director. At Ogilvy I started the marketing and communications industry's first cross-cultural practice.
Reframe originally provided advisory and consulting services helping People Leaders design more inclusive employee and customer experiences. After several engagements with big brands helping them design inclusive customer and employee experiences, most brands could not execute our inclusive designs at scale. So, we made our own platform to help People Leaders not only design inclusive employee and customer experiences but execute the design at scale with our software platform.
Adam: What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Jeffrey: Great question. In 2017, we were asked to build a minimum valuable product (MVP) version of the product we have today. It was our first product and asked to co-develop the product while being funded by a brand. Right after starting the project, our customer went on medical leave and his CMO (project sponsor) had a heart attack. When they both returned, the project was put on the shelf, we’d already invested $200k in the product build with no home or co-developer funding our build. We had to eat the development costs.
After taking some time to recover, we continued to validate the product need, the opportunity, features and decided to build our own custom product. When COVID-19 hit, we knew this was our moment because most F1K were not digital from on-boarding to exit and lacked inclusive employee and customer experiences. We were set-up for growth and scale. If we’d packed our bags in 2018, then we would not have been set-up for the growth we are experiencing.
Adam: How can leaders build the most inclusive customer experiences possible?
Jeffrey: Customer experience and engagement as a practice was introduced in the early 2000s. The intent of the practice was to help organizations digitally transform and personalize the customer experience with more addressable data.
When Reframe was developing our thesis and validating the change operating system, very few software and service companies were making products to address the demographic shift happening in America.
After thousands of hours on R&D, we developed an operating system that helps People Leaders build more inclusive customer experiences by understanding cross-cultural or poly-cultural customer insights versus traditional multicultural and monocultural insights. This is what makes the Reframe approach innovative and different from competitors because we are building inclusive customer experiences for the total addressable audience.
Adam: How can leaders build the most inclusive employee experiences possible?
Jeffrey: Similar to the way customer experience and engagement practice formed to help brands become more digital, employee experience and engagement as a practice formed within the last 10 years and it too was developed to digitalize the workplace.
What was missing in the formation of the practice of employee experience design was the intent of designing inclusive employee experiences. Based on a study Reframe conducted, sponsored by Molson Coors, we found the workplace is two to three generations culturally removed from the marketplace ©.
To solve this problem, Reframe developed one of the industry’s first cultural maturity models. Think six sigma but for culture(™).
A maturity model is used in change management for the purpose of understanding how effective an organization is doing to drive change. In this case, to deliver inclusive employee experiences, workplace culture has to be assessed and become a culturally mature organization before they can truly design and execute an inclusive employee experience.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Jeffrey: To me an effective leader has three attributes: (1) the ability to communicate (2) the ability to motivate and (3) the ability to serve. Great leaders usually have all three and most leaders know leadership is continuous and never-ending when you have others depending on you and investing in your vision.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Jeffrey: Leaders can take their leadership skills to the next level by (1) constantly listening to your team (2) act on the learnings and insights from listening to your team and (3) make time for formal and informal continuous leadership development (i.e., coffees, coach, or sponsor).
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?
Jeffrey: Three best tips I have for entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders: (1) make time to dream and/or vision board weekly, monthly or quarterly, (2) rarely believe others when they say the possible is impossible and (3) stay grounded and centered spiritually because there will be times when you know your success was not based solely on your efforts.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing and branding?
Jeffrey: With sales, marketing and branding the big tip I got was not to strive for perfection, strive to be productive and consistent. Within the tech and branding space, users want to know your business solves a problem, it has a purpose and there is a community for them to connect with.
When building a team, make sure you articulate and build your organization’s culture around the three areas above and you will build the right company culture.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Jeffrey: Before leaving Ogilvy, I had an advisor say to me, before you jump out of the plane with no parachute, make sure you pad your landing as much as possible. What he meant was starting a business and running a business is really hard and before you make the leap, make sure you have something customers want and secure as many resources as possible and when ready, build a team to execute and scale your business.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Jeffrey: Absolutely. I’d like to share that at the end of the day, my two daughters are my greatest inspiration and my best teachers in life – they are my “why.” It’s so important for leaders to lead with balance and to keep their “why” present because your “why” will keep you going when nothing else will.
Thank you again for the opportunity and for sharing your platform.
Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.
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