Justin J. Fowler

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My Background

I'm made a mid-career pivot to product management and discovered the role I've always wanted but never knew existed.  As the owner of an insurance brokerage, I became increasingly disappointed at the level of technology and innovation that plagued the industry.  Instead of waiting for someone to build my optimal tool, I convinced some talented engineers to join me and we created an app that would solve the problem.

While working on this product, I realized that I really enjoyed PM duties and software development life-cycle disciplines of gathering requirements, user research, wire-framing and prototyping, and leading a development team to build and deliver a usable product.  I decided to pursue my passion by selling my successful insurance business and transitioning to a full-time PM role.

I’m currently working on an enterprise SaaS product supporting the product team.  I work in a cross-functional team, which consists of Chief Product Officer, VP of Engineering, an off-shore engineering team, a distributed sales, marketing, and ops team.  

Product Management is my passion and I spend much of my free time sharpening my skills, coaching other PMs, and helping aspiring PMs transition into what I consider one of the best individual contributor roles that exist.  Feel free to reach out if I can be helpful to you.


New role for 2024

Director of revenue operations

Justin Fowler Promoted to Director of RevOps

Clearspeed, Inc is a voice analytics company that assesses human speech and can identify, isolate, and measure vocal characteristics that are associated with risk.


As part of the RevOps team, my new responsibilities include aligning marketing, sales, and operations into a focused team with a single objective: increasing revenue.  RevOps is a new(ish) concept that attempts to remove artificial functional silos that organizations inherent by default.


To unlock the most potential, functional teams inside the org that cross disciplines are generally more effective at producing predictable and repeatable patterns that organize individual efforts in the service of the larger possibilities.  Looking forward to expanding my impact in 2024 and beyond.


Award

2023 PM Award

Justin Fowler Named A Top Product Manager

Clearspeed, Inc is pleased to announce that our own Justin Fowler has been recognized as one of the top product managers in the world at the 2023 PM Awards!


Presented by Products That Count in partnership with Mighty Capital, the inaugural PM Awards celebrates the 20 product managers representing excellence in the field in 2023. With more than 1,000 nominations, this event celebrates 20 amazing product managers from diverse industries, experience levels, and regions. 


A full list of the 2023 PM Awards winners can be found here: 

https://productsthatcount.com/20-for-2023-the-inaugural-product-manager-awards

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WORK EXPERIENCE

Director of Revenue Operations

voice analytics

product manager

Enterprise saas development

results

Created significant impact throughout the organization.  Served as SME for Insurance vertical.  Created PRDs and research studies to launch new products.  Led the development of our core enterprise application, from ideation, wireframing, UI/UX design, Prototyping, leading stand-ups with off-shore dev team, managing multiple sets of stakeholders expectations and trade-offs, grooming product backlog, writing user stores, conducting field research and calculating efficiency metrics, end user training and feedback.  This company gave me the freedom to practice all areas of Product Discipline - Design - Engineering - Business Planning - Sales - Marketing - Leadership - Research - Product Demos and pitches - Roadmap creation and Product Vision refinement.

product manager

Enterprise saas development

results

Created significant impact throughout the organization.  Served as SME for Insurance vertical.  Created PRDs and research studies to launch new products.  Led the development of our core enterprise application, from ideation, wireframing, UI/UX design, Prototyping, leading stand-ups with off-shore dev team, managing multiple sets of stakeholders expectations and trade-offs, grooming product backlog, writing user stores, conducting field research and calculating efficiency metrics, end user training and feedback.  This company gave me the freedom to practice all areas of Product Discipline - Design - Engineering - Business Planning - Sales - Marketing - Leadership - Research - Product Demos and pitches - Roadmap creation and Product Vision refinement.

Product Manager

product leadership

This is my favorite project, a comparative rate for workers compensation insurance.  We really need this.  Insurance brokers need tools to dramatically increase efficiency if we are to stay a relevant part of the distribution chain.  Things like Ninja Rater are crucial to our survival in my humble opinion.  You can see it here www.ninjarater.com

Product demo

Marketing Demo

prototypes

InVision | Sketch

Project infromation

A local contract furniture distributor worked with a branding firm to completely overhaul the company's profile.  The work they produced was exceptional.  The problem remained however that after they finished, there was nobody at the company who could execute all of the high-level strategy.

I stepped in as interim director of marketing and sales to establish and train sales staff, cross-train existing service staff, and grow the company.  I started literally on day one creating sales disciplines and marketing materials for the sales force.  I had to create segmented messaging and collateral for the 4 most profitable verticals and identified all the top prospects within a 25 mile radius.  

Within 2 months, we built a $350k pipeline and increased the top of the funnel from less than 500 to 6600 prospects.  I also Introduced an efficient CRM solution that allowed all users to track progress in real-time and speed up the communication between staff, sales, and management.

Product marketing manager

Product Consultant

early career Highlights

I started my career at Liberty Mutual working through several promotions ultimately ending as a business analyst supporting the 8 western states.  Our division included approximately 240 service, 120 sales, and 25 managers.  My job was to document business requirements during what was then a waterfall development life-cycle for several core systems upgrades.  In addition to my assigned duties, I created my own applications in VBA for Excel, Access, and Hyperion to track and report KPIs to 4 different departments.  Many of the data silos required custom SQL scripts to conglomerate the information necessary to perform even simple projects.  I was also directly responsible for pitching investment projects to senior management for our department. 

Details

Anthony Miller, of GS Insurance solutions officially became owner Fowler & Associates on Jan 2018.  His team has been managing all of my prior clients insurance needs and continues to grow his own practice through Real Estate affiliations as well as Tech ventures located in Silicon Valley.

Business analyst

Education

Master of Business Administration

I earned my MBA in Finance from Saint Mary's College of California in 2003.  The program is foundational for anyone who hopes to understand how businesses function both financially as well as organizationally.  Since my time in the program, the business school has expanded into international programs and CFA prep sequences that were not available as I was going through. However, working full-time and earning my Master's degree in 2 years is infinitely more pleasant at this school than a public institution.

Bachelor of science

My undergrad was completed at Cal State Hayward - before they renamed it to "East Bay".  I majored in Industrial Psychology and graduated Cum Laude in 1999.  During my studies, I received a grant to conduct original research on test design.  Along with the statistics department chair, we tried to find a reliable predictor of success in statistics to better align students with their goals.

SKILLS AND CERTIFICATIONS

Product Manager Certificate

in 2019 I completed my PMC certification at Product School in San Francisco.  The instructors and cohort were comprised of extremely talented PMs from all backgrounds.  The breadth of the experience was unparalleled.

Certified Associate Project Manager

In 2019 I passed my CAPM certification.  This is the first step to becoming a PMP, which I will tackle when I acquire the rest of the requirements.

ECBA - Business Analyst

Agile development teams are becoming more popular in software development, manufacturing, and other team based operations that function best without a top down, command-and-control power structure.

Having passed the assessment, I can honestly say that I appreciate the Agile philosophy and what the scrum methodology is trying to accomplish.

Modern project management is more democratic and focused on delivering results, which differs greatly from prior linear methods.

In July 2018, I passed my ECBA Certification from the IIBA, which qualifies me to be an entry level business analyst.  I've done this kind of work before but there are many new exciting tools that we didn't have years ago, such as Tableau, Power BI, Python, R, and others.  I'm learning all of these new skills and will post up certifications as I acquire them.

psm i scrum master

Web Designer

Using wordpress, I've been able to build some professional looking sites for customers, friends, and business associates as well as my own projects.  Wordpress really is an impressive platform and though it is difficult to learn at first, the ability to scale your project quickly is unparallelled.

licenses & Certificates

volunteer work

Corazon 

de vida

Several young rotarians organized a weekend service trip to Mexico.  We repainted and refreshed one of the orphanages that they operate.  We worked during the day for the Patrona, Hilda Pacheco Taylor who happens to have an amazing story as well as a private winery.  As a reward for our work, we had a beautiful meal overlooking the vineyard. This organization really appreciates direct support and the investment of a small effort returns infinitely greater results.

Orphanage in thailand

While on vacation in Phuket, we stopped at local orphanage and bought some toys for the kids.  The most popular item was a soccer ball.  After 10 minutes of trying to play soccer with 4-10 year olds and I was already winded.  My friends Mark and Stacey Albert were in better shape and able to handle a bit more activity in the crushing humidity.  Hands down, this was the highlight of the trip.

rotary 

international

As one of the founding members of the Diablo View Rotary club in Walnut Creek, one of the thankless but necessary duties is serving as the group's treasurer.  You might think this is simple, but in a short period of time and with the right connections to other clubs, the relatively smaller sums we were able to generate ourselves, multiplied several times and became water well projects in Africa which one of our members actually got to experience first-hand in Burkina Faso.

If you have a passion for any form of charity, I highly recommend Rotary International.  There is no other organization that can magnify a small amount of effort and enthusiasm.  Whatever you bring with you, plan to have it grow exponentially by the full resources of 2 Million members worldwide.  There is literally no project you can't touch if you have the drive.

Justin's Interview Appearances

Profiles in Risk 

The INS Nerds - Nick Lamparelli, Tony Canas, and Carly Burnham have been instrumental in moving our industry toward the younger demographics and keeping us relevant.  My discussion with the Nerds centered around my experience in this industry and why it is still a great choice for someone looking to build a career.

The INS Nerds are involved in several projects and their own audience has now grown to over 15k+ listeners in only a few years.  Their work is commendable in any industry, especially the insurance vertical.

Agency Nation sound

There is a lot of debate about the future of our industry and which sections are most vulnerable to disruption.  Joey Giangola and I get into a discussion around our own experiences in this industry as well as the trends that are shaping the new competitive environment.

My position is that most of the advantages we have enjoyed as brokers for the past several decades is the result of the asymmetry of information.  Our industry is one of the last areas of commerce where a consumer has considerably less access to product information and research than does a salesman.

This is changing rapidly.  The people that will win are those who will embrace the change in consumer behavior, not those who deny it. 

The Insurance innovators

Abel Travis has done an amazing job at calling out those in our industry who believe it's business as usual.  In our discussion, we talk about what the competitive advantages are that we still offer in the value chain and how we can remain relevant.  Cooperation is where we have the best chance to beat the machines.

Arleen & Ted Taveras run Spot on Insurance podcast which is one of the most well produced products in the industry.  Their designers are top notch and the team is very well organized.  We had a great conversation and I admire the company they've built and their approach to business.  We probably talked a lot more about chicken farming than Insurance on this one, but it was  great discussion.

The attachment point

Video Chat with Nick Lamparelli and Brett Fulmer on a saturday.  Talking about Ninja Rater and the democratization of Data Analytics.

I believe the next 10 years will be a pivotal time in technology.  Using the latest advancements promises a future that can expand human creativity beyond anything previously imaginable.

There are some trade-offs.  The more we learn about each other, the greater our individual duty to use the information we collect responsibly and to build products that advance human-kindness.  

I want to be the kind of leader that inspires people to make tough decisions for the betterment of all stakeholders.