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- [00:00]
A
One of the things that I decided early on when I wanted to build back was to make sure that our day started in HubSpot and that it ended in HubSpot. We totally doubled down on HubSpot being our single source of truth. It's hard to run AI efficiently if you're using a lot of software. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to build back in such a way that we minimize task switching.
- [00:23]
B
Stay small, grow big is a phrase many of us have heard just about everywhere with AI. Upending the old headcount equals revenue approach to growth. That's why I've been so curious to talk with the solutions partner who is owning that approach, looking at how AI can scale everything about the business while maintaining excellence in customer delivery. Today's guest, Leka Vouters, founder of Mind and Metrics, is doing exactly that. But her story doesn't just start with AI for AI's sake. Instead, Leica was faced with a painful choice. And what followed is an inspiring comeback story that I think all of our partners can learn from. Let's get into it. Lika, you're very welcome to owning the outcome.
- [01:12]
A
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
- [01:15]
B
Let's start with the reason why we brought you onto the show, which is a really impressive comeback story. Why did you build back after losing clients, letting go team members and and running the risk of being down tiered out of the partner program?
- [01:31]
A
Yeah, so it was kind of harrowing. I've been a HubSpot Solutions partner for close to a decade now. I think I'm on my ninth year. So personally it just was a really, you know, sucker punch to the gut. I didn't want to down tier. I teach the HubSpot ABM boot camp, but I just found myself in a situation where due to the economy at the time that I wasn't selling faster than what I was churning. And yeah, it was, you know, I stood to lose a lot. I stood to lose teaching through the academy because you need to be certified in that and tiered. And I didn't want to tear, I didn't want to give up. And I feel like it was very much like when you have like a flood in your house or apartment. I live in New York, I have an apartment. And I did have a flood just before all of this happened. And the initial reaction at first is like, oh my God, why is this happening? How is this happening? And it's absolute shock. And the reality kind of sets in that you're about to down tier and then you start to calculate the financials of it. In the case of the flood, I was worried like, does my insurance cover this? Am I, you know, is this gonna make me bankrupt me? And the same with when I was looking at down tiering, like, what's going to happen financially if I downed here? And that was very disconcerting. I think there's a lot of your personal identity that gets wrapped into your business as well. So there was just a lot of emotion going on. And just like when I had my flood, there was people that are like, take it easy, relax. We're gonna get a plan, start with something and just keep building. And for me, that was my pdm, Justin Kohlberg, who is like, relax, you know, before it's completely over, let's, let's just put this one last plan into action and let's see what happens. And then I actually started to see some traction with that, which was wholly exciting. And when I got to that point, you know, just like when I was dealing with the flood in my apartment, you know, you start to question like, you know, now that I've put the Sheetrock back up, what color do I put on the walls? Now that I have floors in place, you know, what do I build back to? And just like I picked my smart enabled washer dryer, you don't want to plan for the way things are. You want to kind of plan for the latest and greatest. And for me that was, you know, a pure commitment to let's build better with AI.
- [04:15]
B
What does minded metrics look like now? How are you structured? Who's your ideal customer? And you know, really what do you focus on in terms of services?
- [04:23]
A
Yeah. So we're really small. I have three contractors and I recently hired a little bit of a, or a little bit of a white labeler out of India that has a little bit more HubSpot experience. My three contractors, I have a paid media specialist, I have another account manager, and we're set up in such a way that AI is, is doing a lot of work for us, but currently there's not a lot of room for error because we have quite, you know, a large count of work or a lot of work to, to go over and, and it's, it's a plus and a minus. Right. A pro and a con, because there is not a lot of room for error. I know when we are doing repetitive work which can be outsourced to AI, but if the AI goes wrong, then I don't have A lot of bandwidth, which is definitely a downsize. One of the things that I decided early on when I wanted to build back was to make sure that our day started in HubSpot and that it ended in HubSpot. We totally doubled down on HubSpot being our single source of truth. It's hard to run AI efficiently if you're using a lot of software. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to build back in such a way that we minimize task switching. So even jumping into ChatGPT just to quickly do something is not really what I'm trying to build back for. And then in terms of our clients, I like to work with small scrappy teams that are looking to do the same for me. So I'm trying to structure my business in a way that would suit our clients as well. Like I'm the guinea pig of it all. Minametrix is the guinea pig just in.
- [06:09]
B
Terms of, you know, you're saying structuring it for the clients that you work with. And then your business. Is there a trans. Do you have like transparency with your, those types of customers about how you run your business in that you are a business that scales through the use of things like AI and how are they receiving that information about, you know, that it is a kind of AI powered smaller business?
- [06:31]
A
Yeah. So we're, you know, we tell them and most of the time like because we're dealing with smaller smaller businesses, they, they're just, it's just interest. How are you doing this? How does this work? It helps because we are slowly but surely starting to sell AI services off of that as well. And you know, I have nothing to hide in that sense. So we, we tell them not everybody that we work with can have AI. We've bumped up across a couple of times where the clients we're working with are either locked into some industry software that doesn't have an open API or that cannot use HubSpot as their single source of truth. And that definitely puts a limit onto how much AI you can run.
- [07:19]
B
How important though are you in this equation when it comes to the relationship with those customers? Because, you know, you talk about AI, you're a small business, you've got 20 customers or clients. How important are you in this and what's your role versus the AI?
- [07:34]
A
So I think I am maybe a little bit too important at this point because I'd like to scale as well. And I do believe that the relationship building happens for us or for me by talking to the clients. So what I'm trying to do right now is build systems where I am also replaceable. And I feel that the next evolution of my business would be to bring on somebody else. That is that client facing piece. I'm really with Yamini on this where AI creates, humans curate. And I don't believe that AI will replace everybody. I think that trust building that one to one with clients is extremely important right now. I carry that, that load, I carry that hat. But I'm slowly but surely going to start bringing other people and then they have to also understand everything that I've built. So I'm spending a lot of time documenting what I'm building.
- [08:42]
B
If you were to think about it right now, more broadly, besides you, what do you think that AI will replace and where do you think that you or another human will still be doing those things? With customers?
- [08:54]
A
The relationship building will always be human. And I do believe the future looks very conversational. So we partnered with Ask Elephant. They're a meeting note taker that integrates with HubSpot. Previously, what we did was, for example, if we were creating a company mission statement, vision statement and value statement, which is something we did quite a lot back in the day for startups, the way that we did it in the past, we'd have a copywriter and a strategist. We would send out, we would prep the questionnaire and we would send that out to stakeholders. Then we would chase down half of the stakeholders that didn't finish it. Then after that, we would sit down with all the stakeholders, have a meeting. After that, the copywriter and strategist would collate that information, draft up the statement and present it back to the stakeholders. There'd be a couple of rounds of revisions. But what we're doing now is we have a HubSpot playbook. We will have a conversation with all the stakeholders because we have note takers. We're not writing things down. We have the ability to go off on tangents and to really ask questions and figure out what matters to the stakeholders. And then on the back end, the AI will take everything from that meeting. Maybe if there's two meetings, it will take everything from two meetings and then it will do the work for us. I don't need to use a copywriter, I don't need to use a strategist. So that's two salaries that I'm not really, that's not included. And we're, you know, it's, we're building trust in these conversations. We're listening intently and then the AI spits out the company mission statement, the vision statement, and the statement. Granted, there's a small sampling size because we're rolling these things out, but we haven't had to do a revision since. So it's been very on point and it's just made me think that the future is going to be a lot more conversational. We're doubling down on unstructured data. We just, with Ask Elephant, we built a customer sentiment agent. So historically, after an engagement we would send out a feedback survey. But a lot of times, because we were small in the past as well, a lot of times people wouldn't fill that out or they would fill it out politely, so we'd get good remarks. But that's kind of because they knew we're a small team and they kind of knew who was going to read it. And so it was just, you could tell it was just polite, you know, where they live.
- [11:36]
B
Is that it? Leake? You were like, oh, she knows where we live.
- [11:40]
A
Yeah, well, you know, we don't, we don't want to rock the boat. We want, we don't want to make them think any certain way. But now that with Ask Elephant what we've done or what I've done is the notetaker and the AI will take our transcripts. I've created a prompt where I'm looking for upsell cross sell opportunities. I'm looking for friction. I'm looking for adoption. Will someone adopt the process or not? Are they dropping a lot of passive aggressive comments? You know, what are some of the things that will highlight that there might be something brewing? And it actually then scores the meeting, puts the meeting score back into HubSpot and gives us a couple of tags to summarize what the AI found in the meeting. And so we actually now in real time have the ability to catch customer friction before it escalates to a larger issue. And I get really excited about that. I think it's really fun to see that in real time. Plus it also gives me the ability to course correct early on. Recently I had an onboarding and the customer was frustrated because the tool didn't do what it needed to do at his subscription level. So it immediately flagged that told me to escalate it. I reached back out to the growth specialist, I said, hey, we have an issue brewing here. They might not be on the correct subscription. And you know, most, most of the time growth specialists are very eager to jump in and chat. So I think that is just an example of how fast the AI can kind of address things and and then ultimately solve for the customer, which what.
- [13:33]
B
I heard there was an example of how you used AI to get predictive analytics to help you get ahead of a problem before it hit, which I think is like the absolute. I want to high five you and give you a standing ovation at the same time. You said a statement there a few moments ago and then you course corrected. And I have to ask, you said we did and you corrected yourself and you said I did. And I'm fascinated to know how much of your comeback for you personally, you're a female leader of a partner business. We often find ourselves as women falling into the we versus the I. Tell me about that experience as a female leader finding your comeback and your confidence to kind of rebuild the business.
- [14:18]
A
Yeah. So it's really weird to say I because I'm used to saying we because there, there were people before and now it's just, it's such a scaled down version of what we were.
- [14:29]
B
So it's also a very female thing to do, though. It's also a very female thing to do. So I'm just. It's almost preset into us.
- [14:35]
A
Yeah. I don't really like to talk so much about women in business, but I do know that there is a difference. There's actually Tracy Graziani from Graziani Media. She runs a lioness cohort or group, and it's where HubSpot female agency owners that are in the HubSpot ecosystem meet once a week for accountability and to talk about what you just said, the I versus the we, and like, you know, rally each other up. And I have to say that's been like a really fun thing about the HubSpot ecosystem is that there's so many people out there that are. That are kind of going through the same thing as you and that if you take a moment to just quickly look and find your tribe within the tribe of HubSpot, there's a lot there. And I feel like that has also really helped me just grow as a business and grow as a person. And I think that support is unparalleled. I don't know any other software that has that kind of ecosystem. And I do think that I had a bit of a mindset shift where early when I first joined the ecosystem, it was like everybody's a competitor. And as I've been doing this for a while, I'm like, no, everybody's really a collaborator. Like, you know, there's. It's a partnership. So I've really leaned into that as well.
- [16:01]
B
Awesome. Something you mentioned earlier was the role that your PDM played in your comeback. But you've also worked very closely with the growth specialists at HubSpot and I think a lot of our partners out there are curious to know what was your approach in terms of the growth specialists. If you give me a little step by step, that'd be great.
- [16:21]
A
Yeah. So my PDM was like, look, you teach the HubSpot ABM Bootcamp. It's not like you're coming to this without any credentials. You obviously know HubSpot. You need to be in front of growth specialists and you need to advertise yourself. Nobody knows who you are. So he's like, what we're going to do is we are going to put you in front of growth specialists. I need you to create a flyer, we're going to send it to everyone. So that's what I did. I created an onboarding special and I basically approached all the growth specialists. I linked in any emails that I may have had and just told them, you know, who I was, the certifications that I had, what I did, who I worked with, but most importantly who I do not work with because I know where we don't do well with big loaded teams. I'm for that small scrappy business and also like any, any interests or any special expertise that I had. So we're not shy for integrations or custom objects. I love kind of architecting that out. So we sent that their way and I started getting feedback, I started to build relationships. The new HubSpot seat structure helped me in a sense that the growth specialists that were selling sales enterprise or sales pro seat for smaller teams then also had to sell HubSpot onboarding and those people were a little bit more sensitive to that price point. And so, you know, I could come in as a more approachable, hands on option. I struggled initially because I did not want to be low cost onboarding outfit. I really wanted my quality to, I wanted my quality to speak for me. Not just the price but my PDM was like, look, don't think of this as you getting a ton of customers. Think of this as you getting a ton of leads. The cost that you would have used for Google Ads, you know, that's the, that's the price that you're taking off the onboarding and you know, use the opportunity, build the relationships and then upsell and get them onto retainers. And so that's, that's what we did. Yeah, it's, it's, I think it's been a really interesting process as well because the relationship was twofold. On the one hand, I, I was introduced to a lot of end users, people, companies that are using HubSpot, but I was also introduced to a bunch of growth specialists. And a year later, I am still reaping the benefits of those relationships that were built. So, you know, there are people that will still bring me in and just be like, hey, you know, I have this situation. What's your opinion? And is this, you know, is this worth for you to pursue? And it's that, that relationship, the relationship with the growth specialist, I think, has been instrumental as well.
- [19:26]
B
Well, they're, they're, they're obviously not just bringing you in because they like you or have a relationship with you. What, what is it about your business, you think, or your, your specialty that aligns with some of those customers that they're bringing you into?
- [19:37]
A
I do think my, my ability to see the whole platform. You know, I like working with custom objects. I like working with the object library. I love working with the customer success space. That's, I love the success spaces that HubSpot has built in anyway because it focuses the users. So whenever, and, and also the AI tools. I can't forget the AI tools. So, you know, when, when I'm speaking to my, the customer growth specialist, they're looking for people that understand the platform. Not just the platform from a year ago, but the platform where it's headed towards. And I think that helps.
- [20:18]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So you said we can't forget about the AI tools. And earlier you talked about you're just starting to sell AI services. What kind of areas are you selling those services in? What's the cost of demand for them?
- [20:32]
A
So it's usually small teams that are just trying to offset some of the grunt work we do. Hook up into N8N and then ask Elefant who I've partnered with. And so some of the stuff that we're helping clients with is an example is that I had a small customer, they had a lot of messages in their inbox. Again, we like unstructured data. So they're like, hey, common scenario is that people are asking requests and I sometimes miss it because my inbox is just so overloaded with junk. And I can't miss that because these are the critical moments of my business. So we hooked him up to N8N. We run AI to figure out what emails are coming in. Is it critical? Is it not critical? And if it is critical, it actually creates a ticket for him in his ticket pipeline. So those are some of the scenarios and it's varied. It's really more problem based than here's a cookie cutter AI solution, you know, just load it up. It's my AI experience has been very interesting as well because in the past we've worked with workflows in HubSpot and it was very like if then, if this is true, then go down this branch, if that, go down this branch. But with AI, what's really been difficult to, or not difficult, but a game changer for me is that we don't have to use if then statements in AI workflows. We can ask the AI to choose the best option, which I'm still struggling with because for all those years that I've been doing this, this if, then branching logic has been like the go to and the standard for everything. But now it's just like, hey AI, here are the inputs, find me the best solution and then output this. And that's changing the way that we have to think about things and how we have to build up these workflows.
- [22:36]
B
So it sounds to me from listening to you that you're not just thinking about AI output today. It definitely sounds like you're iterating and improving over time and defining how you want to use it. Why is that level of intentionality so important to you personally?
- [22:54]
A
I learned that through mistakes there, you know, there have been times that I've been working out the AI and then it's done horrible things and it's just not up to par and the quality is in there. And I go, you know that that version that I had two weeks ago was better, but I haven't written that down. I haven't, you know, I've built in no versioning control of any of the prompting that I've done. And that kind of held me back because try and put the prompt back that you had two weeks ago. It's kind of hard. And so part of as we're building out and also kind of tying this back to removing me from the business, I need to have a framework and structure in place that lets somebody else take over and also improve and iterate on what they're doing. And that needs some framework that needs structure. So that's what we're focusing on now. What does that structure look like? How do we version control? How do we document what we do and how do we make it scalable so that, you know, I don't intend to stay a small business forever. I want to also grow, but I, if I'm going to grow, then I, it's going to Be that person that comes in that's going to be very client facing, that has to do what I'm doing. And that means they need to document everything as well, any changes that are made, because otherwise I don't see it being scalable.
- [24:28]
B
Yeah, yeah, you said it there. Your ideal client really, in your own words, is someone like me, a small team looking to be more efficient with AI. Why does that feel like your sweet spot? Why do you think that's your sweet spot?
- [24:44]
A
Well, I mean, I think last year I did some research, like what is the common size for businesses in the US and I think 50% of businesses are one to five team members. So it's 50% of the market. That alone, I think makes it a good choice. It's just an area I do well. I also think that AI has leveled the playing field so that five team business can really act like a large enterprise and get a lot of stuff done with the AI. So I think that's an interest as well. I also think that the larger the company, the harder it is to innovate. I know that's where the money's at. I know that upmarket is where the money's at, but I don't think they have the agility to quickly pivot and adapt to all the things that are happening with AI. So I think if I like some of the mistakes that I've made, going back to some of the mistakes that I made, if I would have made them with a large team, I think they would have hated me. They would have been like, what are you doing? What is this? So I think, you know, to implement change in a large company is tough. It's just a lot harder to do and to implement change in smaller companies. It's just a little bit faster, a little bit easier. If things go wrong, it's not easy. Complete chaos. I feel like that's where my interest lies. I think that's where the innovation is going to be. Sure, larger, larger companies will have more budget, but I don't. It's just more complexity and I think that the space is just changing so rapidly.
- [26:31]
B
I mean, on the note of the smaller businesses and what they can do with AI, I did see your LinkedIn post where you kind of disagreed with Dharmesh on what agents will do.
- [26:41]
A
Yeah.
- [26:41]
B
Can you tell me a little bit about why your view differs from Dharmesh's?
- [26:46]
A
Well, in the end, I'm going to cut to the end of the story. Dharmesh actually ended up agreeing with me, so I saw that.
- [26:55]
B
But the way you structured it and the way that your viewpoint.
- [26:59]
A
So just to kind of give context, Dharmesh and I love what he's doing with agent AI and his, his vision of how the world is going to be AI enabled, I think we share, but he drew this diagram of AI in a business which was all chaos. And I was like, no way that's going to happen. And one of the other posts that he had subsequently after that was, I think that we're going to put AI agents on PIPs and there's going to be AI reviews for agents. And I get it. So based on those things, I was like, you know, I don't think it's chaos. I actually think it's going to flatten the organization, it's going to flatten the org structure and underneath that are going to be the AI agents that we work with. And then instead of building out this hierarchical tree, I think you just add on users or account managers to that flatter organizational structure. And Dharmesh ended up agreeing with me on that, which was nice. And you know, shout out to Dharmesh for actually responding to my LinkedIn. And I do think we're going to have performance reviews for our agents. When Dharmesh posted that, a lot of people were like, I think you're taking a little too far. And I. And I don't think so. I think that we are going to sit down as companies and we're going to be like, what AI agent is working for us and which one is not? And I think this is kind of where the documentation comes in as well. Why I think it's so important to document what we're doing with AI so you can actually come to the table and do a performance review and be like, hey, the AI agent worked, you know, five times out of 10. That is not okay. We need to improve the quality. And then, you know, how do you roll that out? How do you roll out that change? I think this is all going to be framework decided how you do that in your business and how do you do that without instigating a ton of chaos?
- [29:09]
B
Awesome. One last thing. Where are you looking for inspiration from these days?
- [29:15]
A
So part of my inspiration I love. I'm a big fan of the Met, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They. Yeah, part of my inspiration is actually not digital. I try to make a conscious effort to be analog and to live experiences that recharge and inspire me. And I do think that is mostly human. So yeah, so I try to live a little bit analog as much as I think AI will change the way that we work and our business structures. I do believe the future is human. I do believe believe that human interactions matter. I think how we treat each other matters and those human experiences is what I'm looking for and that kind of recharge me and lift me up and allow me to do what I do well.
- [30:15]
B
Leake, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you continue to be recharged and continue to grow with us at HubSpot. Thank you so much.
- [30:23]
A
Thank you.