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- [00:00]
A
Try to create AI champions within your teams. So split the overviews. Okay. You are going to be our head of Breeze updates. You're going to be the one on Cursor, you're going to be the one on OpenAI. And weekly we have meetings together with an AI task force. Just 20 minutes updating each other. Hey, what happened in AI landscape? What happened at HubSpot, what happened here, what happened there? And update each other.
- [00:24]
B
Welcome back to Owning the Outcome. Today I'm joined by Amen Ben emhand, head of AI and innovation at Bright Digital, one of HubSpot's elite partners. With more than 150 people across six locations, Bride has built its reputation by thriving in complexity. From CRM transformations to advanced integrations to AI enabled revenue operations. Amen leads Bright's AI first roadmap, helping customers move from pilots to results. He brings his expertise to our ecosystem as a member of our AI Partner Advisory Council. Amen. You're very welcome to the show. We're delighted to have you.
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A
Thank you so much, Sarah.
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B
So first of all, let's start with tell me a little bit more about Bright Digital. I'd love to understand the customers that you serve, the niches, the verticals that you're specializing in and the spaces where you're really winning.
- [01:22]
A
Yeah. So Bright Digital is one of the HubSpot Global Elite partners. We're very proud of it. We are also growing, just merged with Six and Flow, our partner in the UK. We specialize mostly in complex HubSpot implementations. So really guiding the data infrastructure that a client already has with the backbone of HubSpot of course we mostly target on mid market sector or up mid market mostly because these companies are scale ups are really growing, looking further how to upscale their marketing and upscale their sales. So and if the niches we're looking to, we really deliver to a variety of types of clients. So within the financial industries, within manufacturing, it's really quite a big range that we, that we serve, but mostly complex HubSpot implementations.
- [02:14]
B
Awesome. Now you have an interesting title on LinkedIn which is head of AI and innovation. Tell me, what does your day to day look like? And what I really want to understand is you know, what's your focus and how do you find success yourself and your team in this role?
- [02:31]
A
Yeah, so I love innovation, I love AI. I was one of the early adopters of generative AI. But the main two tasks that I have within our company is really the first one to guide the AI implementation within our own workflows, within our own teams to really get to that AI first mindset. So how can we help our clients get the best quality but also, of course, a little faster? And the second thing next to our internal company is also guiding and helping our clients, especially on C level, management level, and how they could operate with the help of generative AI, of course. Still with the human touch.
- [03:09]
B
Yeah. Because when we, we met a couple of weeks ago and I was just fascinated by the work that you're doing. Tell me about that internal adoption. So you talked about, obviously the obvious around AI, right. Is like driving efficiencies for customers so you can get, you know, faster time to value. So first of all, let's talk a little bit more about what that looks like internally at the company. When you say that you're kind of like leading that, what does that look like?
- [03:33]
A
Yeah. So the most important part of course is start enabling our teams, giving them the right tooling. Of course. Also privacy awareness is very important. What are we doing with data within generative AI tooling? But also of course, quite some hard rules that we have internally set up around AI. So there were generative AI, of course, everybody would recognize this was an assistant at second part. So, okay, I cannot do it or I don't have the ability to do this. Maybe ChatGPT could do it for me or Gemini or another AI tool to really turn that around. So I'm going to start a task, I'm going to do something. How could I do it with AI? So really the AI first mindset and the second thing, the most important thing, of course we're all busy, we're all helping our clients, we're doing our jobs. But still it's very important to keep that AI first mindset and also guide that with rules. So let's say, for instance, also the thing that we implemented, the 48 hour rule, if you have a great idea around AI or another idea within our company, write it down, get the right people together and start initiating within 48 hours. Otherwise the day will go on and we will forget about it. While it could be a very great idea.
- [04:41]
B
So tell me though about this, I suppose the psychology of it within the business, do you find like there's different levels of willingness to adopt AI within the business or what's the most common resistance that you get internally? And then on the flip side, what's the thing everyone's like, yes, this is amazing. Like more of this.
- [05:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. So one of the resistance that we, that we found of course is like, we want to do the Best within our jobs. So everybody of course is aiming for a 10 all the time. But now also very nice thing that we adapted within Bright Digital. Let's start with an 8. If it's an 8, it's good enough to start with and from there on we can start building to a 10. And that got the biggest part of the resistance away because people were, okay, I'm working on a 10 right now, but okay, it's also cool to go down to an 8 and we will go up to a 10. So that was one of the things. And of course, like I just mentioned, people are already doing their jobs helping our clients. So also time is quite a difficult thing if you're not planning it, if you're not arranging it for your teams. So that was also one of the things and a very fun thing is we did some masterclasses within our Bright group starting from basics. So how to do a basic prompt, how to use a basic prompt with ChatGPT or Gemini or with, with Breeze. And from that part, after the first masterclass, we got so much positive feedback, people thinking, okay, so this is why I got a wrong answer. Or it was even a 5 on scale of 10. So the masterclass also did a very great thing and also a lot of people joined. So we have 50 colleagues within Bright Digital and nearly each masterclass had 80 participants while on summer break. So that's quite cool.
- [06:32]
B
That's very cool. And then I suppose you know, some of what you see in your business, I'm sure you can see in your clients, you can see much of yourselves in them. What do you find with them in terms of you're coming to them and you're saying, you know, you're the head of AI and you're like coming with all this innovation. And I'm sure some of those companies are, you know, maybe have more like legacy systems and things like that. Tell me about, you know, what that, what has that journey been like in terms of driving AI adoption on your client side?
- [07:01]
A
Yeah, on the client side it's quite, quite hard to touch the pain point directly because funny story, I just gave a quite nice presentation to the customer, customer success team at HubSpot for the European team. And one of the biggest things we see is like 62% of mid market already tried to do something with AI and it failed. So after it fails, you get a feeling of, okay, this is not working for my company or this is not working for my operation. Also our clients are busy, they need to scale up, they need to keep their Business running. So you really need to convince them at one part. Okay, maybe you did it with the wrong partner, maybe you did it with the wrong idea, maybe you didn't even have a goal. So give us a chance to show you and to get you along on where your operation you can start doing this. Of course you also have a part of your clients that's already accelerating with AI. Very cool to see. We learn every day from these clients as well. But yeah, let's be honest, that's just a small chunk. It's around 1112 percent of mid market clients.
- [08:06]
B
Yeah, we'll come back to that in a minute. But speaking of some of the humans in HubSpot that I obviously am biased towards it's partners and I know that you are on the AI Partner Advisory Council which is a really really important part of HubSpot in terms of hearing the partner's voice. Tell us why did you decide to join and what do you think are the most valuable or interesting convers conversations happening in that group right now?
- [08:29]
A
Yeah, so why I joined of course like I already mentioned, I'm an AI geek, really love what HubSpot is doing with AI. Maybe nice thing to mention is I'm not very long aboard at Bright Digital but before I started at Bright Digital I was a HubSpot client for nearly five years and one of the things that I've mentioned was if I was giving feedback as a client to HubSpot it was really taken care of. Before I started at Bright Digital they gave me the opportunity to join the AI package with the same mindset. So I'm talking with clients, our teams are talking with clients. So what if we can join on this boat and help HubSpot to get the best AI feedback there is. And of course also the nice alpha and beta testing that we can join but next to that also learn from other partners. A lot of partners are doing great things with AI as well. Why not share our knowledge and look and help each other where AI can enable our clients but also of course boost our business. It will change of course, absolutely.
- [09:30]
B
And that's why I think the Partner Advisory Council is so important to help us really hear the partner's voice in that can you share with our listeners how do you think about humans leading and AI accelerating and just give me some really practical ways that you've seen.
- [09:45]
A
That work for you guys within Unbroke Digital. If I see within my client base where I can assist with AI it's really getting into the relation one of our clients within the Manufacturing industry with a lot of knowledge about technology, it, et cetera. I started just having conversations with him. What did you do in the past? What's your way of thinking about it and the changes that are going through with AI? And we really started building a relation not talking about HubSpot, not talking about consultancy or what we could mean as a partner, but really being a partner, nearly getting a personal level of friendship or anything with, with our client. And from there on you will start understanding each other, you will gain thrust and then you can also start talking more to our client and of course possibly also sell something. But it's really based again on relation and it's quite fun to see that it's something from the older generations. But also now Gen Z of course is expecting again the personal touch, really gaining trust and otherwise you will pass, they will go to somebody else.
- [10:52]
B
Why do you think? I think we both know why. But why do you think customers are now seeking out that human connection and relationships maybe more than in the past because obviously we were optimizing for efficiency and now we're in this different phase where we were trying to figure out where humans fit when it comes to AI. Why do you think there is this sea change?
- [11:16]
A
Yeah, I really think, but quite cheesy again like been there, done that, never again. So of course they tried in the upcoming, very fast, upcoming AI market with AI tooling, AI consultancy also from the big four consultancy to the smaller ones to really do things fast and really be efficient and just give it to somebody else and let them fix it. And it's not getting fixed. And of course it costs a lot of money, costs a lot of headache, a lot of resources. And I see, I'm not only thinking, but I really also see with clients that that has affected their operations and they're gaining back to finding a one stop shop that's going to help them. And if they don't have it within a partner, maybe the partner knows another relation that can help them out with another issue. But again the basics are trust. And of course I also think about everything happening with AI. But of course, yeah again everything happening in the world that people need trust again to, to help them out within their operations as a partner.
- [12:18]
B
It's interesting to have a conversation about humans with someone who has a title Head of AI and Innovation. So it's an interesting thing to see where you think the humans fit in the loop, so to speak. AI services are still early in our ecosystem. Less than a quarter of partners are driving about 20% or more in terms of revenue, what AI services are you delivering today? And kind of what roughly what percentage of revenue do they represent?
- [12:48]
A
Yeah, so the services we deliver is really the AI strategy consulting because again getting a step back of course what's the end goal of a C level or a manager within the operation. So what do you want to do with AI where within your operations you have issues and maybe resolved with AI? So really the strategic consultancy around that and I even don't like the consultancy because it's, it sounds like okay, here is a plan, go ahead. But also operationally we assist and help with rolling these plans out. The second thing of course, Breeze. So what are we doing with Breeze for clients? How can we start adapting BREEZE within client teams? So also very hands on training implementation but also with our HubSpot specialists and consultants also on that part seeing where Breeze could have direct impact within the portal of our clients. Of course. And the third part, and that's quite an important one as well, very the governance side. So a lot of companies especially up mid market are struggling with their data governance. So what can we use, what can we not use? Not only within HubSpot but also other AI tooling. So that's what we really provide. And within part also an AI desk on site to start activating teams but around that also within our other teams like Six and Flow building very cool Agentic AI that could directly be used within HubSpot. So we also really built Agentic AI workflows. We really build hands on AI solutions for our clients. So that's quite the range that we are operating in now.
- [14:28]
B
I know it's crazy to ask anyone to have a crystal ball in the times that we live in but I would ask, how do you see that changing in the next year or two?
- [14:37]
A
Yeah, yeah, we and I think, and I of course also spoke about with our, with our C level and partners within Bright Digital. Like there is a reason I've been hired within Bright Digital as a head of AI and innovation. We're all seeing that the world's changing with AI where everybody thought in 2023 it's a bubble, it will burst and we get back to old school doing our work. Yeah, here we are 2025 and it's still exploding. And yeah, we cannot think about a day without AI. So we also see as a partner that our way of selling, consulting and having our proposition will change. And the hardest thing, and I think that's a part where all partners are getting a lot of headaches. Something you thought about today already changes next week and there's nothing else in the world that's changing so fast. So our biggest goal at this point is really adapting. Keep smart, keep it not only safe all the time, but start exploring, use your teams. But we really think within now and a few months, years maybe we will really turn into an AI agency. Of course still with the backbone of HubSpot, but that will change.
- [15:51]
B
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean I think what you said earlier is kind of critical here, which get a plug in for the podcast. Owning the outcome and being focused and anchored on the outcome. The outcome doesn't really change if like you're clear on your strategy. You're like this is the outcome you want but the tools that you choose to get there can change and you have to be so fast in adapting to those. So absolutely agree on that. If we could go back again to talk about the customers, I'd love to hear and potentially help other partners listening. What are some of the common objections that you're hearing for customers when it comes to not just AI adoption? Because I think we know like there's it can do some cool stuff, but the AI, the investment in that AI tooling and which ones do you think right now are fair?
- [16:42]
A
Yeah. So it's quite a funny subject because we just look in what's an AI tool cost but a lot of companies and a lot of clients don't look at okay, what could it solve for us or what could it, what's the roi? What's the return on investment on this part? So I think it's quite important for companies to get the right guidance. There are over, I think at this point, 35,000 AI tools on the market. So it's also very important to not get fomo. The fear of missing out. So stick to your plan. What are your goals? What do you try to resolve? What tools are you going to use? What are these tools costing us? Will it deliver back? Yes or no? And that's the whole part. Like for instance, I got a ChatGPT Pro account, it's over €250amonth but it's really paying back. So on that part, yeah, it's an investment. It's the same investment that we were doing in SaaS solutions for years and years. But yeah, keep an eye on your goal, check on which AI tools could help you there. And of course next to the money part where clients are looking at also the governance is quite a big important part for our clients. So we also advise to look in within our own tech stack, within Our own ecosystem system. So for instance, within HubSpot, they already have the right governance there. Use Breeze. If you're within the Google environment, start using Gemini. If you're within Microsoft, you start using Copilot. So yeah, make it small, make good starts where you don't need to cover for two years and then after two years it's already old and you need to start again. But start looking at what you already have and where you can start with the tools you're already having.
- [18:21]
B
I'm interested. Do you have a return investment kind of framework that you use with customers when it comes to AI or is that, you know, early stages? I mean, I know, I think we all kind of like, we know that, you know, there's efficiency and there's savings, but you talked about like what it's going to achieve in terms of the outcome. How do you walk customers through that? So you get the buy in. Is there, is there a framework you use internally?
- [18:42]
A
Yeah, for us, internally. For Bright Digital, yes. Not yet. To clients. Most we're doing now with clients is really old school parts of process mapping. So, okay, you want to achieve this goal. So you want less people on ticketing, for instance, because you also need people on marketing or anything else, or sales. So, okay, you try to resolve the total amount of tickets that are being handled by human at this point. Okay, what are you already using? It's hotspot. Okay, let's use Breeze. And from that perspective, bringing it down to, okay, how much hours did we normally spend on this task and how much time did we save right now? And you have very old school. What's the hourly rate of this person versus what's the AI tooling costing us? But of course also our brilliant devs and designers are looking into that to really get a nice framework for clients to get a faster view of the roi. But at this point, yeah, still old school.
- [19:37]
B
Well, I mean that's money in, money out. I totally get it. So, you know, in my Ben season is, you know, upon us and you know, we have so many product updates happening all the time. You know, how do you decide what is worth exploring right away versus you're kind of bookmarking it for later. How do you prioritize it for yourself?
- [20:00]
A
Yeah, so for myself I would really prioritize it on, okay, what could create direct impact for us as an organization or could create direct impact for our clients. So that's the first thing I'm looking at. I have the luxury of being an AI and innovation lead, so I could spend the whole day on finding the nicest tools. I can imagine not all partners have these roles within our team. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is try to create AI champions within your teams. So split the overviews. Okay. You are going to be our head of Breeze updates. You are going to be the one on cursor, you're going to be the one on OpenAI. And weekly we have meetings together with an AI task force. Just 20 minutes updating each other, what happened in AI landscape, what happened at HubSpot, what happened here, what happened there and update each other. So it's also quite important to, yeah, to, to balance the load of all those AI tools. But you don't need to do it alone. You don't need to have one single person doing this because that also means that one person has all the fun of exploring these AI tools.
- [21:04]
B
Yeah. And I think, you know, there was, you know, we think about things like, you know, ChatGPT5, there was so much excitement about it coming out and you know, I'm playing around with it as I think many people are in testing it and still finding many flaws with us. You know, it still has like, it still has so much work to do. Do you ever bookmark something to come back to it and then realize what you bookmarked is already obsolete, like of no use in a very short space of time?
- [21:31]
A
Yeah, so that's also one of the golden rules within Bright. If we cannot do something with an AI tool right now, we write it down, we have an overview for that and after new releases we try it again and we try it again and see if new updates are helping. But it's also looking to your tech stack like you earlier mentioned. Of course, as Bright, we also budget based so we also need to look on how much AI tools can we spend on what's out our roi. But every time new updates are coming, I'm also reviewing our tech stack. So for instance, yeah, it's quite hard with ChatGPT5 coming. There still of course it has flaws, but it can also help you vibe code in the basics. So I really started thinking directly. Okay, do I still need cursor? Did I still need kilo code? Do I still need lovable? Can I replace something which IGT 5 and that way of thinking needs to be there a new tool, is it replacing something? Is it helping or is it even better? So it's quite important again to keep your head up, write down and if you cannot do it now, maybe you can do it tomorrow with A new tool.
- [22:34]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I'm interested. Last year partnered it. We talked a lot about the IDC report and emphasized the AI first partner opportunity and I guess importantly also about data readiness. In your view, what will the next 12 months look like for customers in terms of adopting AI and for partners helping them grow?
- [22:56]
A
Yeah. So of course one of the important things when you start adopting AI is data. I think a lot of people would be quite critical about what I'm going to say right now. Of course data is very important, but please show me a company that has all this data. 100% nobody. So also with this AI part, you really need to look again to the goal. What do we want to achieve? What are we going to do with AI tool and which data is needed there? So what I think the coming months will happen, especially with our clients and where partners can help them is getting back to building the relation to see where the problems are for your clients and really start the point there and see if you can resolve it. With HubSpot, of course with the BRI solutions that are already there with the ChatGPT integration, Gemini integration. But listen, be the partner, be the one stop shop for your client. If they think AI, they need to think about you. Okay, they can help me out. Those guys are smart, smart on the part of AI. So for partners it's quite important to start building the relation and think about an AI proposition and to already start outreaching to their clients before they run away to somebody else. That's maybe even without your scope. So for the coming months, very show your tough leadership as a partner.
- [24:10]
B
Any final thoughts that you want to leave with our partners and any leaders who are trying to own their AI outcomes?
- [24:18]
A
Yeah, I think the biggest tip that I would give and of course it sounds quite hard at this part, but I even tell it to our clients. If you didn't start, you're already too late. But not too late. It's not the end of the world. But start adapting. Start appointing the right people within your team. You don't need to do this challenge alone. Grasp around for other HubSpot partners. Your partner manager will also know other HubSpot partners that could help you out. Because I think we're all in the same way changing and adapting our services to keep our companies there. But don't start panicking. Don't do panicking things to your clients and just give them again a roadshow and start spamming them with AI is here and we can do everything with AI. Start listening to your clients. Enable your teams use the right tools, but start, don't delay anymore.
- [25:06]
B
Done is better than perfect, as I say.
- [25:08]
A
Exactly.
- [25:10]
B
Well, thank you so much for joining us. Amen. We've really appreciated it and it's been fantastic to hear your thoughts, thoughts on what the future might look like. If you're enjoying the content in our episodes, don't forget to subscribe.
- [25:21]
A
Thank you so much for inviting.