Welcome to Mob76 Outlook, Therese, please tell our readers about Reimaginez
Thank you so much! It’s an honor to spend this time with you.I would love to invite you to take a moment and imagine your company filled with thriving High Achievers, all striving towards greatness, lifting each other towards new heights, and scaling a culture of high performance and excellence. This is the reality of the work we do.
Reimaginez is an award-winning company specialising in successfully designing, redesigning and scaling culture. We help founders, CEOs, and leaders keep, attract, and lead High Achievers while living as High Achievers themselves. Areas we cover include One-on-One High-Performance Programs with Founder and Executive Coaching, Cultural Design and Cultural Transformation, and Cultural M&A Integrations.
Over the last 20 years, the Reimaginez team has served 1,000+ Founders and C-Suite clients and impacted 30,000+ company cultures globally.
I believe you are Swedish. Are you based in Europe or the US, and why?
I grew up in Sweden, and today my primary base is in the city that never sleeps – New York City. The city is a great hub to serve our US clients and close enough to work with our European clients. It’s an incredible place where I feel most inspired and grateful to be surrounded by so many people working hard to realize their visions.
For years, I lived out of my suitcase, and today I still spend a significant amount of time on the road since we work with clients all over the world.. A fun fact is that one of my longest trips included stops in Rome, Stockholm, London, New York, Toronto, San Francisco, Lisbon and back to New York.
You work with startup and high-growth companies’ CEOs. What value do you offer them and how long do you work with them for?
Working with amazing people on a mission to bring something empowering and innovative to the world is incredibly fulfilling. We specialize in aligning, designing, and scaling a high-performance culture. The essence of the delivery is centered around aligning your people around your vision, effectively championing your best people, removing toxicity, and amplifying your impact by designing and building a high-performing culture.
Reimaginez believes in championing High Achievers. Therefore, we have specific programs designed to develop and lead High Achievers, boost their performance, champion their future talents, and allow them to thrive through the leadership philosophies of tomorrow while attracting, recruiting, and onboarding High Achievers.
When you invest in yourself, your people, and your culture, magic happens. I’d love to share some examples of what we have achieved alongside our clients:
• 3x Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
• 45% revenue increase during the height of the pandemic for an 18-year-old company
• 10x average deal sizes
• Saving a 9.7 million USD ARR subsidiary from collapsing
• Designing his best life after a successful company exit
For our cultural transformation programs, we typically become a long-term partner for the company, whether they are early-stage or approaching an exit, and follow them through the different stages of their development. We have seen many of our clients through many stages of their evolution.
Another sought-after initiative is our High-Performance executive coaching program for impact-driven and High Achieving Founders and CEOs. Over 20 years, I’ve personally had the pleasure of working directly with over 1,000 founders, CEOs, and C-level clients. And since Founders and CEOs are innovative, I’ve been given many creative titles over the years, including “Yoda,” “Master Teacher,” “Founder Therapist,” and “Stand-in Cofounder” by founders and CEOs.
Mental health is a huge issue since the start of the pandemic. How did your clients react?
One way of describing how it feels to be a founder is living on a rollercoaster in the mountains. I recently delivered a speech for a conference in Boston capturing it more in detail. The thing is, when we empower founders with a vision, on a mission, we empower change.
Let’s acknowledge their reality.vWe know how hard it is to stand alone. To sit there by yourself at 2 AM making a decision that can make or break your company. We know walking the path of the Founder often feels like driving a Formula One car while playing chess with ten different opponents whose only job is to focus on this game. On a road that is winding and full of unknowns,
We know the power of having someone to call, someone to text, someone to reach out to who knows your story and understands why you do what you do. Because just like there will be moments of darkness and doubt, there will also be moments of celebration and joy.
Moments where you will feel a deep sense of achievement of building something just from an idea, driven by the ambition of creating positive change, and you will stand strong in the clarity that you can be a force for good in the world. Having a Founder’s Tribe has never been more important. We believe that together, we can make a difference.
I have found that most founders are very resilient, but having a founder’s tribe can make all the difference, including for their mental health. I’m, therefore, grateful to be part of many tribes as a trusted advisor and champion.
Did you see any trends for the growth of companies in 2022?
Yes, Reimaginez has seen a greater level of awareness and investments in building and growing a thriving culture. We work with many companies in health (BioTech, HealthTech, Medtech, and Digital Health), impact (including ClimateTech), and tech more generally.
Prioritising initiatives for personal and professional development is in increasing demand, especially in areas connected to well-being (including meditation, workout routines, and mindfulness practices) as well as leadership and performance programs.
Some investors are also more focused on culture, even if they typically use language like ”we invest in the team/the founders” over the actual word ‘culture.’
Another trend is the rediscovery of face-to-face interactions that enable deeper opportunities for relationship building and serendipity, especially over dinners, walks, and more intimate events.
What are the biggest opportunities for Reimaginez in an uncertain world?
There is a shift in awareness and focus on the impact of a brilliant, mediocre, or even toxic company culture. This means that culture is now at the forefront of many high-performance individuals when they are looking for their next adventure. It also means that companies, especially in the US, are prioritising the investment in a brilliant culture where their High Achievers thrive.
Another opportunity for the next few years is in connection to M&As, which typically increase during uncertainty. However, there are certain things that are often forgotten in the M&A process. When two companies merge, attention and focus typically centre around the merger’s financial, legal, and IP aspects.
However, aligning culture and leadership is essential for the new environment’s successful future. Reimaginez’ proprietary methods and processes for facilitating the integration of different cultures work in parallel with our proven programs for establishing trust, focus, and a shared vision across all teams in order to achieve short- and long-term success and growth targets.
Outsized opportunities for consistent and dependable M&A performance reside within tightly focused and broadly-shared alignments of value, impact, and purpose throughout the organization. This dependable, and repeatable, journey begins with an impact and value-focused Cultural Due Diligence followed by the implementation of bespoke achievement-focused Cultural Integrations and ongoing support.
What are you looking forward to in 2023?
I am excited to continue my work empowering high achieving founders, CEOs, and leaders (we call them High Achieving Empathic Givers) who are making the world better by building, growing, and investing in great companies.
Any insights that you can share with our readers when it comes to growth and
building a successful company?
Invest in a well-designed culture. As the saying goes, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Culture is a way to drive behavior. Culture impacts everything from productivity, engagement, and customer loyalty to talent retention, speed of innovation, growth, and, of course, profitability.
Invest in your High Achievers. Remember that High Achievers thrive alongside fellow High Achievers, and they attract one another. It has been said that High Achievers outperform the average worker with 10% in productivity, 20% in sales, and 30% in profitability. By investing in your High Achievers you are more likely to keep a thriving culture that creates, and achieves, outstanding results.
Invest in alignment. The impact of bringing teams, whether the whole company or the management team, together for company retreats and offsites to align on vision, goals, and strategy on an ongoing basis can’t be overlooked.
When you bring people together and provide peak experiences where members of the team espouse deep alignment on the direction and key initiatives for the company, remarkable results will follow. The power of alignment strengthens creativity, connection, and growth and the importance of this cannot be overstated.
How can people contact you?
Visit the Reimanginez website to learn more about our work. Alternatively, feel free to reach out with a message on LinkedIn letting me know you found me here on LinkedIn.
Thank you for the interview. I am very excited to share the Reimaginez story with your readers.
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
