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

Apple FineWoven Cases

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Haven’t had a chance to see the new FineWoven cases in person yet, but what a terrible launch they’ve had – with a continuous stream of very bad reviews. Third party leather case vendors must be ecstatic. What a bumper year they’re about to have. UPDATE: Got a chance to see them in the Apple Store yesterday. My impressions: didn’t give me joy, but wasn’t as bad...

People I read and follow

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So much content to choose from… here’s a few I read everything from:

Newsletters I read (and pay for):

Stratechery (paying customer since July 2014)

Benedict Evans (paying customer for years)

Blogs I read:

Daring Fireball (John Gruber)

David C Baker

No Mercy No Malice (Scott Galloway)

People I follow:

Dare Obasanjo

Benedict Evans

Alex Hormozi

Global Smartphone Brands

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Have a guess how many smartphone brands there are globally (ie that have enough sales volume to be noticed). If you guessed 50, you’re only out by a factor of 5. There’s currently 250 or so global smartphone brands (as per this report from Counterpoint). I didn’t realise there were this many – I was surprised the number was so high. But even more surprising, turns out just...

Tim McDonald | The Cheap Seats

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Whether you’re an Anthony Albanese fan or not, this interview by Tim McDonald is a masterclass in how to prepare, engage and cover (for a distracting co-host) when talking with a world leader (like it or not Albo is our country’s leader on the world stage). The interview coverage has been hijacked by the cohost’s antics (including dropping the F-bomb), which is a shame. Because...

AI and Legal

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A few related AI articles. First up, Reuters reporting that a trade group for US authors is suing OpenAI, accusing the company of unlawfully training ChatGPT on authors’ books. The report is catching attention because the authors represented include John Grisham, Michael Connolly and George R. R. Martin: “The complaint said ChatGPT generated accurate summaries of the authors’...

CRMs and Connection

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Most CRMs will highlight how they enable you to connect with your prospects and customers better. They help you ‘engage’. This can be good and bad. On the good side, it can keep you organised, so you’re freed up to care about people and provide value. On the bad side, it promotes an attitude of insincere activity – in the name of ‘staying connected’. Example:...

AI Funding

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Just noting this here as a timestamp more than anything – AI writing startup Writer raises $100M at a $500M valuation. So many stories like this.

We’re heading into crazy times again. Buckle up.

Assume Everything will be Exposed at some point

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You may have seen the TechCrunch article about Microsoft researchers accidentally exposing terabytes of sensitive internal data when providing access to some AI training data. In summary: This data included 38 terabytes of sensitive information, including the personal backups of two Microsoft employees’ personal computers. The data also contained other sensitive personal data, including passwords...

HubSpot’s CRM Puzzle

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Imagine this (Scenario 1) You’re a sales rep. You log into HubSpot and go to the Contacts view: You click a button in the top right labelled ‘Import New Leads’ You are taken to a screen where you set a number of criteria, including job titles, seniority, location, company size, annual revenue, industry, etc You are shown a list of contacts to select from. Additional criteria is...

HubSpot Guide Creator

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Handy little tool that HubSpot is providing (or at least testing): Guide Creator

Limited to 10 guides per portal at the moment, which seems crazy, but probably indicative that they’re just testing the idea initially.

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