Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm Kula Kallihian here to bring you another edition of three more questions with David Novak. David, we've got a fun one today. I'm excited to be back on the show with you. Well, I'm excited too, Kula, because we're going to dive into my conversation with Yamani Rangan, the CEO of HubSpot, and she is absolute dynamo. And I just love this podcast. I know you've loved this podcast. And my first question today, we'll get a little bit more into why you love this podcast with Yamani. So let's just dive right in. Question number one, David, ever since you recorded this podcast, you have not stopped talking about Yamani Rangan. I mean, she light up like a Christmas tree every time someone says her name. What impressed you most about her? Well, I think what really impressed me the most is that she was a chief customer officer. And she continues to be a chief customer officer as the CEO. You know, this woman knew as much about me as I knew about her when we got on the podcast. Now I do a lot of research. I really take a lot of pride in learning about the people that I'm going to interview. And she had done her research too. She had looked at some of my books. She'd been on Wikipedia. She'd gone online. She'd done all these things. And she knew so much about me. And I have to tell you, her preparation was so amazing that it almost startled me and it really put pressure on me because now I not only wanted to do a great podcast, I wanted to do a super great podcast. I wanted to make sure that I didn't let her down, that I actually met her high expectations. And it really kind of showed me why she's such a great salesperson. Because you know, she gets prepared for her customers. She understands how her customers think. She learns about her customers. And then when she gets in that meeting with the customer, she absolutely blows them away with her knowledge of the business and the knowledge of that person. And that's her secret. And let me tell you something, that is a tremendous secret for everybody to think about in sales or whatever function you might be in. Get prepared. If you're going to have a meeting with somebody, make sure you know everything you can about what you're going to talk about, who you're going to be talking to, and really get ready to make a real positive difference in that person's life and that business's results. And you're going to have a lot of success. She has proved positive that. You can see, I got pretty excited just talking about her. You did. That preparation that she showed me also showed me a tremendous amount of respect. I mean, she respected me. She took the time to learn about me. That was recognition. You know, and I think everybody likes recognition like that. I love seeing you get so excited talking about Yomany, but also talking about how coming prepared to meetings or conversations or one on ones with the people that you manage, coming to those meetings prepared shows such an immense amount of respect that you have for that person. Because really what everybody is vying for in this world, whether it's from your consumers or your employees is your time. And if someone is willing to give up an hour of their time to get to know you and to record a podcast episode, showing them that you respect their time enough to do all this research about them really goes a long way. Absolutely. And what I really think it taught me was when someone does that kind of preparation for you, then you want to do the very best you can to make them look as good as they possibly can. Question number two. Yomany came into the CEO role in a bit of an unorthodox manner. She took over as CEO from the founder of HubSpot. And in the episode, you asked her about how she became her own CEO and the footsteps of the founder she took over from. And she said what helped her most was focusing on the future of HubSpot and then working backwards from that vision to create the reality of the company she wanted to lead. David, what other advice can you give CEOs who are taking over from founders of companies, particularly in a scenario when the company is healthy and thriving? Well, I think when you take over for a founder, you're obviously taking over for somebody who's had enormous success and gotten the company to where it is today. And I think the most important thing you can do is recognize that your job now is this new CEO, this new leader, and I think this goes for when you take over a new team. And let's say you take over a team and that team had a really highly popular leader, everybody like working for you. The last thing you want to have happen is people on that team say, well, I remember when so and so did this and I remember when so and so did this. No, that's the worst thing that can ever happen to you. You don't want to have people remembering what other people did. You want to have people remembering what you're doing with them and you need to really create new memories. And I think that's what someone should do. Anytime you take over a team is start creating new memories with that team. Now at the same time, you need to respect what's preceded you. You need to respect the founder and learn from the founder. One of the things I would say is that if you take over for a founder or you take over for a director or you take over for another vice president, you know, you really understand what made the prior person successful, what made other people want to work with them, how did they get their results, really go after that kind of knowledge. And you know, a lot of times what I see is people take over jobs and they can't wait to just eliminate the person that they took over for. They can't wait to wipe out the thought of anybody thinking about that prior person or the founder because their ego is so big that they want to be seen as the new person. And so they don't really tap into the knowledge and the know-how that the people that they're taking over for obviously have. And clearly, Yomini really understood the balance between respecting the past but knowing that her job is to create a new future that everybody can get excited about. Another thing Yomini talks about a lot in the episode is the process she went through to find her voice and to figure out the true authentic version of who she was and how she wanted to lead. So I think another great exercise for anybody taking over a team of any size is to find that balance like Yomini did between honoring the past and making new memories and then also figuring out who you are, finding your voice and then really leaning into that so you can do all of those things authentically. You know, that kind of takes me back to when I first became president of Pepsi Co Division and it was KFC. And I always wanted to be a president of a division and now I had a chance to do that job so I'm on this flight and I asked myself this really important question which is what kind of president am I going to be. And I thought about all the presidents of the PepsiCo divisions and they were very formal, they were MBAs, they were very serious, they kind of had a little bit of emotional detachment from the people that they led so that they could make the so-called tough calls . And I thought about myself and I said, "You know, I'm not really that kind of person. I like getting emotionally engaged with people. I like to have fun. I've got some blue suits but I usually take the coat off and when I'm walking around the office with my red tie that's already got a couple spots on it, my shirt tail is hanging out and that's just who I am." So I kind of said to myself, "What kind of president are you going to be?" And I said, "Well, I'm going to be the same kind of president that I have been leader that's gotten me to this place and I'm going to be true to who I am." And I think being true to who I am, being open, being vulnerable, being transparent, you know, being honest with people, not worried about getting close to people because I may have to fire them someday. Continuing to lead like I've always led was the key to my success. And I think once you do that, people really will invest in you as well. And that didn't mean that I didn't make the tough decisions I did. I probably fired more people than most people because I did have high standards but I always did it with as much respect as I could give to other people. And you know what? When those tough situations happen, you know, I could really sit down and have a learning conversation. Not only learning that would go to the person who might be getting the tough feedback but also learning that would come back to me that would help me be a good leader. Question number three. I love when Yamani talks about the culture at HubSpot. They treat their culture as one of their products and they continue to evolve that culture in the same way that they evolve their products. In fact, they have a culture code that's been updated over 100 times since it began. David, what's something leaders can learn from treating their culture as a product? I think what that basically says is that your culture is very, very important. You know, the products that you create and produce, you know, that's how you make money typically. And what she's saying there is that they know that the way they're going to produce the best products, drive the most efficiency, get the very best results is through the culture that they create. And so if that's true, then why not treat a product which is your lifeblood? Why not treat the culture like your product? It just makes so much sense. But you know, I find that the really good leaders are very good at really creating word pictures. You know, you're culture as a product. That's a great word picture for me, you know, and it says that you're going to continually improve it and you're going to do everything invested in it and do everything you can to make sure you beat your competition on that front. And if you do that with your culture, boy, the results that you're going to get are going to be phenomenal. So I just love that. I love it too. I think of products as things that create value for customers. And with culture being a product, it's something that creates value for employees, which then in turn creates value for customers. So I totally agree with you, David. I think it's such a beautiful way to look at the culture that you can create as a company because it has the ability to massively impact the quality of life, not only for the people that work for you, but for your customers as well. Yeah. And you know, I've studied a lot of great companies and a lot of great leaders. All of them will really cite the importance of culture being the most important thing that they can do to really ensure the success of their organization or their team. And I think knowing that is such a critical insight. And then thinking of your culture as a product and continuously improving it is a great way to think about it. Well, that wraps our episode of three more questions for today. Thanks again for tuning in to How Leaders Lead. We're on a mission to make the world a better place by developing better leaders. And if you carve out a little time with us each and every week, we'll help you build the confidence you need to lead well. And I want you to tune in Thursday as we dive into my conversation with Jim Levine. He's a world-renowned literary agent that's had something to do with many, many of the books that you've read, including a couple of mine. [BLANK_AUDIO]