Hi, I’m Craig Bailey and this is my personal blog where I write about technology, business systems, HubSpot 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

Layoffs in 2024?

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Always fun to read the headlines and analysis of where the job market is headed:

Mass layoffs are coming in 2024 (Newsweek)

92% of employers expect more layoffs in 2024 (ebn)

More than half of US companies plan to increase hiring in the first half of 2024 (Robert Half)

70.5% expect an increase in hiring needs (Randstad)

Pick your preferred outlook.

NY Times sues OpenAI

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The NY Times has the scoop (ahem), that they are suing OpenAI.

What a joke.

Good overview of how silly the case is here (thanks TechDirt).

That said, I am a proponent of AI companies paying to access training data (whatever that is). But this case isn’t that.

TikTok privacy lol

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The only surprising thing about the news of TikTok harvesting data without consent is that anyone is surprised by it. The Privacy Watchdog is investigating. lol. Essentially, it seems that the TikTok pixel fires, even if visitors on a site haven’t opted in to accept cookies. Since most people mindlessly click Accept All on sites these days, I can’t see why there’s such a fuss...

Strategy versus Tactics

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A handy analogy to use next time you’re trying to remind someone about tactics versus strategy.

Strategy is the recipe

Tactics are the ingredients/utensils

When you’re asked what your strategy is for the year ahead, tell them about the cake you’re baking, not the spoon and flour you’re using.

Hat tip to Chris Voss and Never Split the Difference for this reminder.

Side effects

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I suspect most people focus too much on the side effects of doing something, versus the side effects of not doing anything. For example:  The side effects of vaccines (eg 2 out 100,000 get heart side effects from COVID vaccines, versus the side effects of not getting vaccinated – you can ‘do your own research‘ on this one) The side effects of exercising (injuries, muscle tears...

Company Meetings or Corporate Sabotage?

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Thanks to Dare on Threads for this gem. Via the comments, a link through to the CIA’s blog post on simple sabotage, which in turn links to the PDF of the OSS 1944 Field Manual. And this screenshot from page 28: As Dare and others quip – this could be the agenda for most corporate meetings these days. There’s specific advice for managers and supervisors as well: The whole PDF is...

Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaii Compound

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Perhaps the most ‘interesting’ part in this Wired article about Mark Zuckerberg’s $270M compound, is how uninteresting it is… Not a single interesting photo, no drone shots, no actual blueprints or plans. Definitely not any internal shots. Nothing except anecdotal stories from locals about the secrecy, some workplace related injuries, and correlations between philanthropy...

How to build a HubSpot List of Contacts with Free Email Addresses

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How to build a list of contacts using a free email address in HubSpot A quick reminder on how to do this – since it has come up in a few client calls recently. Here’s the video walkthrough, and here’s the HubSpot KB article I reference. And here’s the online replace tool I used. Of course, in an ideal world HubSpot would have a default property on contacts that had this...

Using Formula Fields in HubSpot Custom Reports

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Using Formula Fields in HubSpot Custom Reports to group contacts into buckets based on how many Marketing emails they’ve opened. This is an example of using Formula Fields (currently a Public Beta) in Custom Reports Here’s the video walkthrough: There’s other ways to do this (eg using calculated properties, or Operations Hub Enterprise functions) – this example...

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