Use HubSpot Better

Hi, I’m Craig Bailey and this is my personal blog where I write about technology, business systems, HubSpot, marketing strategy and general life experiences. You can read my posts here.

(If you are looking for the Content is King post by Bill Gates it is here)

I’m involved with three agencies in Sydney:

  • The first is XEN Systems. We help government departments and mid-large B2B technology companies with their sales and marketing strategy, including implementation and training in HubSpot 
  • The second is XEN Create. We provide premium graphic design services to companies, with a focus on using the latest AI tools, including Midjourney
  • The third is XEN Solar, where we help high quality solar companies (dealers, installers) with their sales and marketing processes.

I also co-host HubShots, the podcast and YouTube show focussed on getting the most out of HubSpot. We are the creators of the HubShots Framework.

Craig Bailey presenting

Latest stories

Why I cancelled Duolingo

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I’ve been using Duolingo for a while. I pay for the Premium (Super) version. But I cancelled this week. Not because I don’t use it. Not because I’m replacing it with another tool or ChatGPT. I cancelled it because I’m sick of so much upsell. The bottom set of icons used to give me access to different features. Now two of the six are just for upsells. I’m fine with...

Reporting Slop

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Reporting slop is a subcategory of Process Slop. Reporting Slop is all the reports that get created simply because AI suggested them as a good idea for your business, your department, your clients… First, let’s take a step back though. I think we’ve all had that experience in our careers where we’re asked to create a report (or to continue preparing a report) for the...

Process Slop

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I think we all understand content slop by now – the low value content pumped out by AI (usually at scale). Annoying, yes – but mostly harmless. One of the lacklustre side effects of AI advances. However, there’s another type of AI related slop coming – what I’ll refer to as ‘process slop’. It’s the side effect of people taking the ‘advice’ of AI when it comes to setting up their...

Don’t Tell Your Story

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One of the things that’s taught in Marketing is around the power of storytelling and the exhortation that you should share stories. Often, people mistake ‘storytelling’ for telling their own story. But of course, nobody cares about the storyteller, they only care about themselves. Prospects and clients want to hear the story about the problem you solve for them. Hopefully we all know this...

HubShots episode 311

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Ian and I recorded HubShots Episode 311 a few weeks back. You can watch it here on YouTube. And full show notes are available here. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Introduction 00:20 Deep Thought of the Week? 01:10 Should you Build your Website on HubSpot? 05:48 Subscribe to our HubShots Daily Tip 06:22 Canva integration with HubSpot 08:49 HubSpot SNIPPETS Helper 09:26 View Activity Summaries...

Sucking your AirPods clean

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My right AirPod had been playing up for the last few months. It was considerably quieter than the left one. I’d done all the obvious things – cleaning away wax build up, resetting and repairing, checking balance levels in Accessibility settings etc. No change. Then I came across this post that suggested I ‘suck’ the AirPod speaker. At that point I was happy to try anything...

Rewards

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Many, many years ago I was going to a nightclub with a group of friends. We got there and one guy in our group was denied entry by the bouncer because of his shoes (he had pointy toed boots – winkel pickers were having a resurgence at the time). So we all had to leave (we weren’t going to leave him on his own outside). We walked back to his hotel, where he changed his shoes, and then...

The Expertise Blind Spot

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Or: Why We Can’t See the Gap Above Us (I saw this idea while scrolling on social, but then got distracted and when I came back my feed refreshed and I lost it… but if I find the source again I’ll link to it here.) There’s a theory that we can’t understand or differentiate the levels of expertise above us. We can only differentiate them below us. If we have reached a...

Which life will you live?

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Living all your different lives.

There’s not enough time to live all the different lives you’d love to live.

Different locations, different jobs, different circles of friends.

So because the time is limited, you’ve got to choose carefully.

Which life do you want to live?

It’s time to be ruthless. With all key ingredients. That make up your recipe for life.

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