The SMART Spark
One Year at Gold — And Platinum Is Getting Closer
A year ago, I hit Gold Solutions Partner status with HubSpot. Here's what the last twelve months actually looked like. There's a funny thing that happens when you hit a milestone, you spend about five minutes celebrating and then immediately start looking at what's...
Website Lead Generation Then and Now
I Called It Bottom-Up. HubSpot Built a Feature Around It. I pulled this post from the archives. April 2007. It was titled something like "Reverse Engineering Your Website." The core idea: stop building your website from the top down. Design isn't the first step. Your...
4 Rules I Follow for Every HubSpot CRM Architecture Decision
I completed another HubSpot audit over the weekend . . . And once again, there it was. Triplicate properties. Workflows contradicting each other. A calculated property set up on a contact record trying to deduce a deal amount — which doesn't work, and wouldn't work...
SEO Then and Now: What Actually Moves the Needle in 2026
Why is our website traffic down? I've been getting the same question from clients a lot lately. "Why is our traffic down?" Sometimes it's framed differently. "We haven't changed anything — why are our rankings dropping?" Or: "We've been doing SEO for years and...
I Ran HubSpot’s AEO Grader on My Own Site. Here’s the Honest Result.
HubSpot's new AEO Grader checks how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini currently represent your brand across five scored dimensions: Sentiment, Presence Quality, Brand Recognition, Share of Voice, and Market Position. I ran it on my site and scored zero out of seven...
HubSpot Agency or Freelance Consultant. Which One Do You Actually Need?
If your process is solid and you need someone to run it, hire for execution. When you want help with your architecture, automation or strategy, should you contact an agency or find a solutions partner? A prospect asked me this question last week. My honest answer: it...
We Used to Measure Marketing Like This; HubSpot Changed Everything
According to HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report, 86.4% of marketers now use AI tools. I've been writing about web analytics since before 2007. Back then, I published a post about how to measure the effectiveness of your online and offline marketing campaigns....
Why Companies Leave HubSpot (And Why Most of Them Didn’t Have To)
These frustrations aren't a HubSpot problem. They're a setup and management problem. A post is making the rounds on LinkedIn. A business owner explaining why they fired their HubSpot consultant — or never had one — and left the platform after years of overpaying. Too...
What Is Fractional HubSpot Admin Support — And Do You Actually Need It?
Whether it's 5 hours a month or 20. The point is consistent, knowledgeable attention.Fractional HubSpot admin support means hiring a certified HubSpot expert on a part-time or retainer basis to manage, optimize, and maintain your portal — without the cost or...
