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

Mobile phones banned in NSW public schools

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As of this week (the start of a new term) mobile phones can’t be used during the school day by students in NSW. This applies to high schools (primary schools already had this in place). This applies to public schools (ie not private schools). From the government announcement: “The ban is one of a number of measures the Government is putting in place to improve the classroom...

Using Spotify to launder money

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Wow, gotta hand it to criminals, they sure are imaginative… makes me wonder why the don’t just go legit, with innovative thinking like this they could be very successful… Essentially the process is: Gang related rappers sets up song on Spotify Gang pays 3rd party companies for fake streams of those Spotify songs (ie similar to how you can pay 3rd party companies for fake Likes...

Reduce Hard Bounce Rates by Sending More Emails

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This is one of those dumb ‘tips’ that is actually something you should consider – to get around HubSpot’s hard bounce rate rules. My thanks to Adam at FGM for highlighting this one to me. HubSpot’s marketing emails have limits around bounce rates and spam rates – and if you exceed those limits you’ll potentially see your account suspended. I know, crazy. But here’s the thing –...

Is HubSpot a CRM or a Customer Platform?

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An interesting nugget to consider from INBOUND is the messaging HubSpot is testing in market.

HubSpot is a CRM Platform… (from their home page):

HubSpot is a Customer Platform… (from their internal page):

There’s some confusion here to be sure, but it’s also fascinating to see how quickly they roll out and test new messaging.

Using INBOUND as a sign post for what HubSpot is hearing from the market

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It’s easy to think that what you do in your own business is typical for other businesses. For example, we’ve incorporated AI tools into all our company processes – planning, ideation, content creation, imagery, video, emails, summarising, etc. We consider it normal – similar to how we use spell check or grammar checker tools. But that’s not the case for most businesses. To pick a...

Meta trained AI on FB and IG posts

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Nothing to be surprised at here I don’t think: Meta Platforms used public Facebook and Instagram posts to train parts of its new Meta AI virtual assistant, but excluded private posts shared only with family and friends in an effort to respect consumers’ privacy, the company’s top policy executive told Reuters in an interview. Meta also did not use private chats on its messaging...

Blue Light glasses are probably useless

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Summary from this Guardian article: there doesn’t seem to be much benefit from wearing blue light filtering glasses. Or for that matter, reducing your screen time before bed. At least not due to blue light emissions anyway. But reading something stressful, or watching something exciting… that will likely impact your sleep no matter how much blue light is involved. I have a few friends...

Apple iPhone Micro QR Codes

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Apple prints two tiny QR codes on every iPhone screen. The news about this is focussed on it being part of a crackdown on dodgy fault complaints, but that’s not what interests me here… I just like to imagine what it was like to be on the team tasked with this piece of the iPhone manufacturing process. It’s amazingly complex, and had to overcome issues with it potentially...

BeReal and Threads

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Remember when BeReal had people excited? No, me either. But last year, there was interest in its reported 20 million daily active users were growing. (I’ll avoid discussion of how unreliable the numbers are, let’s use them as a comparison point.) A year later, it’s possibly a little higher at 25 million, or perhaps not, depending on who you read. Note: that number is global. US...

Meta AI quietly grows, while Jasper declines

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Wow. Meta just keeps rolling out the releases this year. This week Llama 2 expands with Llama 2 Long and rubs shoulders with ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo (not 4.0 to be clear) and Claude 2 in terms of context windows. Meanwhile, Jasper feels the heat and lowers its projections and internal valuation (to $1.2B). This, hot on the heels of OpenAI announcing a staggering internal valuation (of $90B) the other...

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