It can start with simple things, just to get the ball rolling.

Here’s a few simple examples I’ve actioned in my personal life this year:

• cancelling a bunch of domain registrations I’ve had for years, but know I’ll never end up using

• cancelling streaming services

• reducing the number of skin care products I use (I’m down to just two)

• downsizing my personal office

• deleting dozens of apps from my phone

• simplifying my clothes, just blue pants and white shirts for pretty much everything now

Consolidating extends into business as well. At XEN, we’ve been consolidating:

• the platforms we use (our XEN tech stack)

• the tools within those platforms (just the items that matter)

• the processes we follow with those tools

• the channels we use (social, ads, messaging)

Our Tech Stack

Thought it might be interesting to detail our current tech stack, both the foundational, and the disposable.

Foundation:

• Google Workspace for Gmail, Calendar, Drive (Docs and Sheets mainly)

• Teamwork for managing all projects and delivery for clients

• Slack for all internal communication and chats

• 1Password for all our passwords and sensitive sharing

• Xero for all invoicing, accounts, tax compliance

• HubSpot for all our CRM, communications, marketing, sales, support, websites, email marketing

Disposable:

• Notion for all our processes, including onboarding

• Claude for AI (previously ChatGPT)

• Gemini for AI

• Canva for design work delivery

• Midjourney for image generation

• Envato for plugins, filters, and other design enhancements

• Loom for recording all our internal and client walkthrough videos

• Riverside for recording podcasts and YouTube videos

The disposable platforms are all easy to switch in and out (eg we replaced ChatGPT with Claude earlier this year, but could just as easily switch it out for something else in the future). Likewise we’ve been using Nano Banana image generation as much as Midjourney lately and could easily switch soon. Our video tools (including Veo, Seedance) are even more fluid.

We’re always reviewing platforms with an eye to remove them if they no longer serve our (our our clients’) needs.

Even our foundational platforms are switchable. For example we moved from LastPass to 1Password a few years ago following a breach in the former. It was a reasonably complex process in hindsight, but worth the effort. We could easily do the same with the other foundational platforms if we needed to (eg Google Workspace to Office 365) but only if it was essential.

Platform Lock-in

Many businesses worry about platform lock-in, as if that is a bad thing.

It can be if prices increase extortionately, or contracts hold a company to an agreement that no longer matches their business needs.

But if the functionality match is the basis for staying locked in then that’s a good thing in my books.

But are we ever really ‘locked in’?

Take Xero, which we use for accounts. We’ve used it since 2009, and at first glance it would be chaotic if we had to switch to MYOB or another provider at this stage. But I’d expect that if our business grew to a certain size it would absolutely make sense. Currently we’re locked in, but at a different stage of business it just becomes a growing pain to switch to another platform.

Same with HubSpot, which is a fundamental part of our business process, as well as the main offering we consult on. But if we, or a client, had to switch from HubSpot, it’s not that difficult a process. We know this because a reasonable chunk of our work is helping move businesses from other systems over to HubSpot - so it makes sense that the reverse can be just as smooth.

Overwhelm

We used to build websites using WordPress. Hundreds of sites over the years. Around 6 years ago we moved all our web design over to using HubSpot. Why? Because WordPress became a nightmare to build, manage and train clients on (and that’s before we got to the hosting and plugin updating issues). It got too complex. Consolidating websites into HubSpot was much simpler.

Most of the tools today are heading down the same path.

Take Canva for example. It used to be so easy to design in it. Now it is overwhelming. Canva is the new WordPress.

Software platforms are so focussed on more. More features, more AI, more, more, more. As if that is a good thing. It doesn’t make sense - at a time when we’re all overwhelmed, the output of platforms is making us even more overwhelmed.

Consolidation is the simplest defence.

In their personal lives. In their professional lives.

From the simple basics of everyday life (which toothpaste to buy) through to the news they consume, the advertising they are blasted with, the ‘advice’ they are subjected to on social, the streaming services they watch, the inboxes they avoid, people are struggling to… think, let alone make decisions.

And then they arrive at their work desk, where the next onslaught begins.

Into this norm of daily navigation the response from most software platforms is the exact opposite of what people need. Instead of simplifying their tools, they instead increase the velocity of shipping features. More is better apparently.

The platforms and processes followed in most white collar roles have been constantly complexifying, the accepted wisdom that more equals better when it comes to ‘value’.

The Golden Years

Think back to 2010 (if you can). It was just after the GFC, and SaaS platforms were starting to take off, bringing functionality to the masses (small businesses, solo players) not just the larger companies.

This is the era of cheap Google AdWords clicks, the early days of Facebook, Gmail and Hotmail becoming mainstream[1]. WordPress was a massive unlock for everyday people wanting to create a simple website[2]. Good times.

We’ll look back at these as the golden years of SaaS. Affordable, usable, simple.

The next few years were wonderful, increasing functionality, whilst still intuitive and user friendly.

But then the journey of overwhelm starts to creep in.

I’ll outline the journey using HubSpot as an example of the typical company SaaS platform, but you can switch most of this out with your particular SaaS tool [3], and the touchpoints also apply to small business platforms [4].

The Overwhelm journey

Here’s the overwhelm journey, simplified to a number of key stages:

(Full size image here)

The Pre-Overwhelm Era

Launch

Remember the excitement of new platforms launching that solved actual problems?

A very clearly defined solution to a real problem. Straight to the point.

That was HubSpot 15 years ago. Solving a very clear problem: providing an all-in-one marketing tool with landing pages, forms, emails, reporting and the big innovation: the timeline. The ability to easily see exactly where, when and how a person was interacting with you.

Retention (Customer Experience)

Easy to start. But also easy to cancel. Retention of customers became the next focus.

Customers could see their problem was being solved, but they weren’t sticking around - it was so easy to switch to another tool.

Often the key to stopping churn wasn’t about the product, it was about the ecosystem (a company wide focus on the customer experience, the rise of ‘customer success’ teams, and ensuring a consistent experience across the product).

This is also when Partner programs started to make an impact.

Upsell

After retaining customers, now the focus shifted to upselling the customers to higher tiers of the product. Think Pro and Enterprise product SKUs.

It was about providing advanced features.

Add-Ons

And then the add-ons started to arrive. For HubSpot this started with the ads add-on, reporting add-on, and transactional email. This wasn’t a single point in time, it extended over the full journey, for example Business Units (now called Brands) arrived later, and the recently launched AEO tool has a single domain limit that can be extended as an add-on.

At this point, users were still pretty happy. They understood the tool, they could articulate the benefits, and they could understand the pricing.

Not for long…

The Start of the Overwhelm Era

Expand

The big unlock for SaaS comes when an initial foothold in a company can expand into other departments.

Enter Sales Hub. Not only a big go-to-market change (‘we’re now a CRM company’), but the start of a new direction with Hubs, and the introduction of the Seats pricing model.

For the first time, users are both excited (a complimentary tool set has arrived) and confused (being forced to buy 10 seats in order to unlock Enterprise features). The start of pricing overwhelm has begun.

The messaging around ‘value’ is very clearly about using more.

Later, Service Hub arrives, and the value potential is increased further.

Packaging

Combining Hubs into packages (Suites) is the next obvious step. Users can buy a Pro Suite to unlock discounts.

At this point however, pricing has become overwhelming. New and existing customers are confused. Legacy subscription pricing is honoured, further adding to the confusion.

The Overwhelm Era has arrived.

The Overwhelm Era

The additional Hubs, the legacy per seat pricing, the revised per seat pricing, the add-ons… companies are overwhelmed now.

On top of this, feature mapping is fluid. Features that were launched in Enterprise (playbooks) are enabled for Pro users. Operations Hub is renamed to Data Hub. Features in Marketing Hub are pulled out and pushed into Content Hub. Sales Hub features (quotes) are ‘relaunched’ into Commerce Hub.

Consumption

AI has hit, so on top of all the usual feature releases, the holy grail of SaaS is dangling in front of everyone: usage based pricing.

Just when it seems as though it can’t be more overwhelming, Credits are launched. And with it a messaging push around AI that foists feature slop onto an already weary user base.

The sting in the tail: it’s not actually usage based, because the credit tiers can’t be reduced. If a user bumps their credit tier over the limit one month they are fixed in place. It isn’t consumption (or usage) based at all. A shareholder’s dream. A trick that had been implanted right from the start with marketing contact tiers.

Feature Velocity

The final nail in the coffin of clarity arrives: product updates that leave everyone (except breathless LinkedIn posters) completely overwhelmed. The end is near. Fueled by AI driven development efficiencies the product updates arrive thick and fast, with users for the main part hoping to completely ignore them.

But ignoring updates isn’t the long term answer, since the updates include user interface changes. Nevermind the functionality changes, the way it looks is also changing. You can’t escape it.

Choking on garnish

Product managers are in a difficult position, especially for foundational tools in a product. Let’s assume you are the product manager for the main CRM object views. You are tasked with making it ‘better’, whatever that means….

You can consult feature requests, analyse usage telemetry, interview users across various levels of experience, incorporate integration plans with the rest of the platform, etc. But whatever you develop, it will by definition require changes to how it currently operates for a user.

Which is why both of the following screenshots are the same tool. The first is the default, current experience for users, the later one is the next version (currently a beta as I write this). Same object, same basic goal for the user, wildly different experience.

Get ready for this:

The devil is in the details.

Where did Search go? Where’s the count? How do I clone? How do I save? How do I export? Where did Metrics go? How do I rename?

Now tell a user, who is already overwhelmed, that this is a good thing. Then multiply it across tools in a platform, and then across different platforms. It’s no mystery why users are burning out.

For the product managers, intimately familiar with their specific scope, and the power users in the tools every day, this is fine. We’ll manage, we’ll happily[12] spend the few minutes it takes to reacquaint. For everyone else, this is too much.

As if that isn’t enervating enough, a walkthrough set of dialogs or a feedback survey pops up right when a user is trying to do their work. Make it stop.

SaaS Platform Response

Now imagine you are in charge of overall SaaS platform direction. What’s the playbook for you now? How do you respond?

Your competitors are pushing more functionality into their platforms. Surely you need to do the same. To stay ahead. Saas and AI is a landgrab that waits for no one, or so the board tells you. More is more. Your messaging is key.

Tell the customers how much value they are getting, with more emails (as if inboxes aren’t overwhelmed enough). Tell them it is about outcomes. Tell them the future lies in the hands of the early adopters. Scare them about the ‘changing landscape’.

Tell your confused partners that you are focusing on ‘enterprise’ and ‘up market’ because hey, conventional enterprise wisdom excuses complex as ‘powerful’. If your product is easy to use, do you even lift bro?

When the in-market messaging doesn’t turn the tide, turn to your partners with egregious gamification (win a trip yo!) to coerce the tools on trusting customers.

Spam at Scale

And then the ultimate irony, provide tools to your customers so they can overwhelm theirs.

Consider the focus of a tool like Prospecting Agent, to ramp up your outreach efforts with AI assisted messaging. Personalised spam at scale. Of all the things that your customers and prospects need, getting more auto generated spam is not the flex you think it is.

How to respond when that doesn’t work? How about interrupting them with AI voice calls. Brilliant! Can’t wait for that to be included, it’s sure to be on a product manager’s Kanban board now.

Please make it stop.

What if we just stopped the updates?

Imagine if there was a switch that locked the platform as it is today. No changes, no updates (except important bug and security fixes).

Would you be tempted to turn it on?

A few years ago I’d have been worried (FOMO) about missing out on new features. Today I’d welcome the peace. Most of our clients would too.

Example: Turn off AI

Most of the AI rammed into tools is useless feature slop. There’s definitely some good parts, but for the most part it is noise.

Aside: we use Teamwork at XEN to manage all our customer delivery.

About a year or two ago they started adding AI features. The usual slop. I hated it. But what they did, that I loved, was provide an option to turn it all off. Here’s how they provided the control:

Also: One of the other things I love about Teamwork is how consistent it has remained. Although the interface does change from time to time, it is very manageable. Plus we just pay monthly (there are annual discounts, but they aren’t compelling enough for us, given how our team requirements change). More on this (contracts) later.

Summary:

• Consistent interface

• Ability to turn off feature slop

• Flexible contracts/payment

This is what we want in a platform. The platform that manages millions of dollars worth of client delivery for us.

Customer Response

So how are users coping with all this?

Here’s where it gets interesting. In the sections below I’ll comment from the perspective of the mid-large B2B space where we typically work. It will be different in the surrounding areas (ie small/startup and enterprise, and B2C, where we don’t play much).

Essentially there are two main responses: Consolidate or Cancel

The first can be good for platforms such as HubSpot, the second not so much.

Consolidate

If users are going to be overwhelmed by platforms, then perhaps there is relief in reducing the number of platforms they use. Consolidating the tech stack.

This is where HubSpot can benefit.

Their expansion focus has given them access to other departments, allowing them to roll other team processes into the foundation that is HubSpot.

The two main areas we’re seeing this with HubSpot:

• Service Hub (often with Customer Agent as a key tool to deploy)

• Content Hub (for hosting websites)

Service Hub is a good replacement for other tools (ZenDesk, JIRA, etc) and whilst it can be overwhelming, at least it is a consistent user experience across the platform. A reduction in mental switching costs. And perhaps the key AI tool in the platform (Customer Agent) that we actively promote (it’s really good)[5].

Content Hub is a good replacement for other CMS, especially WordPress. Again, consistency is the benefit. Why have a different user experience between your email editor and your web page editor? Consistency is a time saver. An overwhelm saver. At XEN we’ve built out a whole separate brand just for this use case.

(Aside: WordPress is a micro example of the whole overwhelm journey. A decade ago a non-technical person could manage their own site in WordPress. These days they give up in despair[6].)

But, just as it is easy to consolidate into HubSpot, it’s also easy to consolidate out to other platforms as well. So this can be a threat for HubSpot as well.

Which brings us to…

Cancel

This is the logical response.

What do we all naturally do when we are overwhelmed?

We do nothing. We put off making decisions, We avoid the mental cycles. We check out mentally. We cancel.

We’re seeing this playing out in portal usage with customers. They are looking for simpler options. They are starting to move back to focussed tools for singular problem solutions.

They are either:

• seriously considering throwing out the big platforms that their businesses are built on, in favour of simple, understandable tools, OR

• reducing their subscriptions

We’ll see a flood of this when it comes to implementations and subscription renewals over the coming 12-24 months[7].

The so-called SaaSpocalypse has been framed around vibe coding replacements and agentic cost saving. But I wonder how much of it will be simply due to overwhelm. Companies don’t necessarily want to replace, they just want less.

Think about your own personal experiences.

The relief of canceling a product, even if it will cause some issues. I’ll take the future inconvenience, in order to avoid the decision pain now, we say.

It starts with minor things in our personal lives like cancelling streaming subscriptions. The age of minimisation is upon us. An eagerness to live simpler lives. The willingness to cut back for the peace of mind, even if there’s some sacrifice along the way.

This extends naturally to our professional subscriptions.

And the corporate bonus: avoiding the risk of being the one who got it wrong. No one wants to be the decision maker on a contract that might not fit where the business is going to be in six months time.

Contract Remorse

Which brings us to the overwhelm of rigid contracts.

Contracts are going to have to change. Customers aren’t lured by 2 and 3 year contracts anywhere near how they were previously[8].

The disruption happening in most mid-large companies today means that the structure and focus of teams is going to be surprisingly different in the coming quarters. Fewer CFOs are going to be signing off on inflexible contracts. If a SaaS provider can’t provide a contract that accommodates, they should expect the cancellation rates to increase.

Aside: Never underestimate contract remorse. Take a look at HubSpot Google Reviews and you’ll see that the main gripe is contracts and overzealous sales reps. Expect this to get worse as SaaS providers push their reps harder with unreasonable quotas.

So how to respond?

Use HubSpot Less

I’m seriously considering making this our new go-to-market tagline.

No longer urging users to implement more, turn on more, integrate more, impose more.

But instead, a very specific focus on a minimal set of tools and features, curated for each individual person and team. And avoiding everything else. With regular reviews, pruning further as much as possible.

We’re seeing this already.

A prime example: the HubSpot area we’ve seen companies cutting back:

• Marketing Hub Enterprise

Why? Because hardly anyone in marketing needs the Enterprise tools.

Anecdata: Consider this: Five of our clients have reduced their marketing teams (usually the marketing manager, but sometimes the entire marketing team) in the last 6 months. It’s a small sample size, but it feels like there’s a growing trend here.

Attribution Loss

What about all that marketing attribution knowledge and functionality being lost?

Reality check: In the last year hardly anyone has asked us about getting better attribution in their business.

The main reason: they are moving to sales only conversions, cutting out the marketing assistance.

I’ve never seen a single portal implement advanced journey analytics in an impactful way (usually the underlying data isn’t close to consistent or reliable enough). Attribution reporting in general is almost doomed to fail unless the whole company embraces the discipline of logging and tracking everything.

When these pillars are changing, the value of Marketing Hub Enterprise drops significantly.

Last year we worked with a client to understand what they should focus on in their upcoming renewal. They had Marketing Hub Enterprise. But they’d downsized their entire marketing team earlier in the year. Here they were with a huge cost for a Hub no one was using. Removing it was an obvious step. This isn’t an isolated case.

Where to from here?

Let’s review the journey:

• People are overwhelmed in their personal lives

• This extends to their professional lives

  • Overwhelmed with the number of platforms

  • Overwhelmed with the complexity of the platforms

• They are frustrated with inflexible contracts

• Their response is to:

  • Reduce platforms

  • Reduce/cancel subscriptions

• Platforms need to help reduce the overwhelm

• Platforms need to provide flexibility with contracts

In an ideal world

Let’s take a quick trip to fantasy land and consider what an ideal approach might look like.

Yes, I know this isn’t realistic (revenue would plummet overnight), it would never be possible. But here’s what I’d like to see:

[1] Seat

A single seat. Call it a ‘HubSpot Seat’. That unlocks everything.

No Sales seats, Service seats, Marketing seats, etc. No Starter versus Pro versus Enterprise seat. And definitely no Core seat[8].

Get rid of all of those different seats, and replace them with a single seat.

Pricing overwhelm solved.

[2] Permissions

Permissions are how access is controlled.

A user has a HubSpot seat, that gives them license to absolutely everything.

But permissions control the access[9]. (Permission Sets make providing default setups easy)

[3] Hide everything I don’t have access to

Next, put a simple toggle in the menu (or profile dropdown) that is effectively ‘Hide everything I don’t have permission to use’.

It hides menu options (no more annoying upsell hints), interface options (eg hides Export buttons if the user doesn’t have permission), hides update options, hides settings, etc.

The user interface is now streamlined down to just the stuff that matters to them.

But they can, if they wish, toggle the option to see everything again, albeit greyed out (based on permissions).

Feature overwhelm soothed.

[4] Consumption model fairness

Move to an honest consumption model that charges for actual usage. Credit and Marketing Contact tiers that reset each month based on usage. No more Credit tiers and Marketing Contact tiers that can’t be reduced. Only pay for what you use.

Controversial potential: Extend consumption to other areas where it makes sense (start with anything that currently has defined limits eg number of segments, workflows, reports, API calls, pipelines, integration points, published web pages, ad accounts, social accounts, etc). This is probably a bit extreme, and needs careful thought, but you get the idea.

This is where most of the revenue would come from.

No need for add-ons, they just become consumption items now, consuming credits when they are used.

Guardrails in place of course to limit unexpected and accidental credit overuse.

[5] Flexible contracts

Make cancelling easy. No lock-ins. Simple month-to-month is the norm.

Growing Companies

As a company grows, it adds more HubSpot Seats, and consumes more Credits. That’s it.

If it restructures, it simply cancels seats and reduces consumption.

If they want to reduce their monthly cost? No need to cancel a contract, instead simply clear out or turn off all the stuff they don’t use anymore (archive reports, segments, remove ad accounts, disable integrations, stop sending marketing emails, pause sequences, etc).

This means any company, no matter how small, has access to all the features, and they simply pay more as they grow in size and consumption.

Get Real

I realise the above isn’t realistic, it’s far too late for a platform the size of HubSpot to reset like this. Or is it? Sometimes companies disrupt themselves, before someone else does.

Finally

As we finish, let’s at least agree on this: Providing ‘more’ isn’t the solution for users. (Or stock prices for that matter [10]).

The competitive advantage for platforms to embrace (and consultants, and trainers) is guiding users on what not to do.

How to be extremely focused.

How to do less.

How to escape the noise and impact of constant updates.

How to avoid the overwhelm.

How to be minimalists in their corporate roles.

That’s It

That’s the end of the article. A bit abrupt I know, but I’ve said my piece. I feel better now.

Usually this would be the part where a call to action would be slipped in, an offer to help you in your business with how to streamline and consolidate your platform usage. But as a thank you for reading this far, I’ll refrain. You are overwhelmed enough.

Footnotes

[1] Hotmail was actually launched in 1996, and Gmail in 2004, but it’s not until the 2010s that they became mainstream.

[2] WordPress had launched in 2004, but it was only taking off around 2010 when it pushed over hosting more than 10% of sites globally.

[3] Switch in your corporate tool eg Salesforce, ServiceNow, Atlassian, Workday, Zoho, Adobe etc

[4] Simple platforms such as WordPress, Notion, SEMrush, Xero, Intercom, even Canva etc. Have you tried to use Canva lately? The initial promise of simplifying design, now a cruel contradiction.

[5] Note: you don’t need Service Hub in order to use Customer Agent (any Pro seat will do). But we often see them rolled out together.

[5] If HubSpot sales are increasing, surely that contradicts the cancellation prediction? To consider: new sales in a large market, is a separate trend to cancellations in an existing customer base.

[6] My wife is a perfect example of this. She’s an artist, a writer. Not technical. Yet she managed her own website for years using WordPress. Perhaps five years ago she gave up, it was all too overwhelming. If you are interested, she uses Payhip now.

[7] Reminder: I’m talking about our focus: mid-large B2B. Enterprise will be different.

[8] Ever want to feel better about yourself? Simply ask someone at HubSpot what a Core seat is - half the time they don’t even know.

[9] Permissions (and security) is the only area that justifies complexity IMO. Granularity of control is necessary, even if it can be overwhelming at first. This is a specialised area however, it’s not something most users will ever see.

[10] I’ve resisted alluding to HubSpot’s stock price. I’m not saying there is a correlation between overwhelm and declining stock price. But I am saying that feature velocity hasn’t improved the situation. More isn’t the answer. Not for users, not for shareholders.

[11] This piece isn’t about AI (or being anti-AI). AI feature slop just happens to be a hallmark of the overwhelm era. There are some really amazing AI features in platforms, but they’ve been lost in a deluge of half-baked releases. The expectation is low, the association more often than not, one of disillusionment.

[12] On a personal note, I love the new CRM Index view they’ve rolled out. So using this as an example isn’t about whether the update is good (it is), it’s about whether the additional overwhelm is good for people. For most, it’s not.

Sometimes that’s useful, other times not.

Here’s an example (which I probably saw on social somewhere*), which you may find useful (I did), maybe not. It’s about your health.

Treat your body as a business with a health profit & loss.

Income =

• sleep

• exercise

• strength training

• good nutrition

• clean environment

• strong relationships

• rest

• kindness

• purpose.

Expenses =

• junk food

• stress

• anxiety

• overeating

• poor sleep

• illness

• meaningless work

• sedentary behaviour.

You get the idea.

Goal: control as many line items as possible, minimise costs, maximise inputs – so every month your body runs at a health profit.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Profit is what you can apply to meaningful work, maintaining relationships, helping others.

The problem with shortcuts and quick hacks and detoxes and extreme challenges is they might reduce an expense line item for a little while but they often impact a revenue line for much longer.

Aside: If you wanted to take it further you could break the lines into things like:

• Subscription revenue: sleep, quality food

• Project revenue: workouts

• Bonus revenue: clean environment, low pollution, purpose, kindness, strong relationships

• Cost of goods (COGS): your everyday work

Summary: Run your Body like a Business (P&L model)

(*as usual, if you know the original source of the idea, let me know, and I’ll link to it)

It’s a struggle to survive for both the spider and the fly: a horrible death for the fly and a constant scouring for food for the spider. The struggle is real. And it continues all the way up the animal kingdom.

Even the lions hunting gazelles on the Savannah - lions can go hungry, gazelles hate to be eaten. That’s life.

The only level of the animal kingdom where it might not be a struggle, it seems, is humans. But even then, struggle is the default.

It’s the way of the world, it’s designed into the world.

Entitlement

A big part of the problem with social media these days is people sharing their comfort. As though it is by default.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that’s the norm, as if comfort and a lack of struggle is a right, or is the expected experience of life.

It’s not - struggle is the norm, comfort is not.

When we fall into the trap of thinking that comfort is a right, but we don’t live that lifestyle, it’s easy to think there’s something wrong with our life.

It’s easy to think there’s a problem with us.

There’s not. It’s just the way of the world. It’s good and it’s right, and we should accept it.

Resistance is futile

I’m not saying we should go looking for struggle, but I am saying don’t resist it when it arrives. Embrace it as a normal condition of life. Something to be accepted, experienced, learnt from.

Also, it’s not to say we shouldn’t aim for comfort. Comfort is a good thing, and it often comes after a struggle.

(Image credit: Allen in our XEN Create team)

I’m a simple guy, so I prefer to just think of either good stress or bad stress.

Good stress is things like lifting weights, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, learning hard skills, accepting new experiences, eating healthy (but boring) food, etc.

Bad stress is the negative stuff - financial stress, lack of sleep, anxiety, sugar highs (and crashes), toxic work environment, long peak hour commutes, noisy neighbours, lack of purpose, doom scrolling, etc.

At XEN, we chat about this approach in terms of not only our personal activities, but also the work we do, the clients we work with, and the business we build.

The following table is an overview:

(Source: XEN Onboarding Notion page)

As I get older, I’ve started to focus more on stress. Being intentional. Using my time (and money) to minimise bad stress, and increase good stress.

Money, in many ways, is perhaps best employed as a tool to minimise bad stress, and increase good stress.

At the start of your career, when money is limited, you often have to ‘suffer’ bad stress (the work you do, the people you work with), but as your earning increases you can afford to focus on good stress (hiring a personal trainer, buying good food, living in better housing).

Most of the social posts I see that are of the ‘aspirational’ kind highlight material toys (cars, watches, clothes). Few seem to highlight quality food, comfortable mattresses, and positive work environments.

Level 1 stupidity is being totally uninformed. On big topics. Fuel prices, vaccines, One Nation, ICE, Iran, Trump, raw milk, etc. That’s the first level of stupid.

But the second level of stupid is when people who actually understand the issues - for example, experts in their fields, understanding the complexity of the world, informed on the issues - then berate the ignorant people, telling them they’re stupid. Thinking that’s going to achieve anything. That approach is an informed level of stupid. We could call it high-intelligence stupidity.

Instead, what we need to do is listen to people, understand their problems, and gently educate them so they aren’t as ignorant. That takes time, which is why it’s often easier to call them stupid.

But studies have shown that if you take the time to sit down with someone, understand their problem - for example, they’re having trouble continuing to farm because of fuel prices - empathise with them, and then gently introduce what the wider issues are. The problem is complex. It’s driven by numerous factors, the Middle East, the local supply, the decisions of the past, the psychology of panic buying, and so much more. ‘Educating’ people on the wider considerations, but with kindness and compassion - that seems to be the only way we change minds.

So don’t be stupid when you’re talking to people who are stupid.

And, perhaps to illustrate my own point, then there’s a third level of stupid.

This article for example. Calling people who call other people stupid, stupid, is stupid.

We’re told we need to ‘make a stand’, ‘take a side’, cause division, etc because ‘if everyone agrees with us then no one agrees with us’ (and other cliches)… so we need to make a claim that interrupts people. That, we’re told, is how we can capture attention. We call this ‘creating cut through’.

The idea itself isn’t terrible in itself (there’s truth to it for sure), but sadly it’s been so extrapolated and misinterpreted that we now find ourselves in a sea of rage bait, misinformation and contrived controversy.

Instead of sharing a thought where we might have differences of opinion politely debated, the approach these days is to alienate and then spotlight those who are alienated.

Cut through and novelty go together of course. We naturally want new things.

We want novel ideas no matter how silly they are.

For example, there will be podcasts full of health misinformation detailing the benefits of raw milk and the dangers of seed oils when we all know health is about sleeping well, not smoking, eating nutrient-rich foods, exercising regularly, lifting heavy weights, and surrounding ourselves with a quality social circle of friends.

But that’s not novel. That’s not interesting. Everyone knows that, so there’s no cut through.

Instead, we have to resort to controversial topics. And the last resort of the desperate attempt to cut through is to label posts “unpopular opinion” or “hot take” as if that will somehow make up for first order ‘thinking’.

The ideas that cut though are rarely foundational. Amidst the noise of cut through attempts there are occasional high impact items (ie signal), so we still need to be open to them. But finding the right mix is a skill in itself, and what really separates the well informed from the highly opinionated.

Partly because we need to (there’s too many decisions to make daily) and partly because we’re lazy.

Sometimes we outsource our thinking and mistakenly think we’re embracing the so-called ‘Wisdom of the Crowd‘.

A quick example.

Two Asian noodle places are located nearby. One has a big queue outside and the other has no queue at all. People will join the one with the queue because they think (I assume) they’ll get better food – believing the crowd knows best. They outsource their thinking.

I’m trying to test this ‘wisdom’ when I can.

For example, picking the option with no queue. My thinking is that if they’re terrible, they probably won’t survive anyway. More often than not, they are pretty good. Service is prompt, the food is fresh, and they haven’t run out of anything.

Sometimes, as I’m finished and leaving, I see people still waiting in the queue at the other place - they’ve been waiting this entire time.

I wonder if they ever test their assumptions. Or are there other reasons (a new dish not available anywhere else, a recent review, etc)?

To be fair, I’ve sometimes chosen the no queue option and had a bad meal. But then again, I’ve also waited in queues to end up with a bad meal.

Google reviews tell a mixed story as well. I’ve seen queues for places with low scores (often people complaining about the wait ironically), and high scoring places have no queue, and empty inside.

And what if one of the reviewers is actually a chef, compared to all the consumers. There’s no easy way to highlight the actual experts.

It seems the signals are hard to interpret most of the time.

And it’s not just food of course, my point is about life in general really.

I’m trying to challenge my own habits of outsourcing my thinking, and instead test and measure more.

Especially in important areas.

Blindly waiting for food when we don’t need to, isn’t too much of an impact.

But what about in matters of health, or career choices, or who we vote for… some areas are better served with real thinking and not outsourcing to the crowds.

It was at a Health Hub (healthcare in Australia is wonderful), very modern and new. You know the kind, where you get confused using touch panels to call the elevator.

Went up to the floor, walked the beautiful corridors, and entered the specialist’s rooms. Expensive, modern finishings, amazing view, the hand sanitiser was premium and scented.

The receptionist was professional and polite, and notified us we’d begin the new patient process shortly.

An impressive experience so far.

And then… she handed my wife a clipboard and pen, with a photocopied two sided form to fill out by hand.

Which my wife filled out over the next few minutes. Handed it back, and we watched as the receptionist pecked away at her keyboard for another few minutes entering the information into their system.

It struck me as so odd. A modern facility, impressive in many ways, and yet still stuck with outdated, inefficient (and probably error-prone) processes for the most basic of functions.

Most of us are worried about how AI is going to impact our businesses, our careers, our livelihoods. And yet here we are with premium medical facilities not even knowing how to digitally transform the simplest point.

Every business owner and team member has things in their day they don’t like doing. It’s part of work.

In this column, we’re going to discuss the kinds of work you don’t like doing - but still should do.

What Is the Grind?

The grind is all those tasks you do, projects you work on, and clients you work with that you don’t enjoy. As your business grows and matures, you’re aiming to minimise this, so you only do things you enjoy. But there will always be parts of your working day that are the grind.

What you need to work out is whether the grind is a waste of your time - or whether it’s strategic. If it’s strategic grind, you should do it. If it’s not strategic, you should try to avoid it unless you absolutely have to.

The Types of Strategic Grind Change Over Time

The types of strategic grind change based on how long you’ve been running your business. Let’s take some examples.

You decide you’re going to be a small business offering Service A. You get an opportunity to provide Service B - not part of what your business does, but the money might be good. Should you do it, or stick to your guns and only do Service A?

The first thing to think about: would you enjoy doing Service B? Because if you’d enjoy it, do it. Life is short. Do what you enjoy. Don’t fall for the rule that you should only do specifically what your business offers.

We live in a time of massive change. As a small business especially, your offering this year is likely to be wildly different to your offering next year and the year after. We’re constantly changing, responding, adapting, completely pivoting in some cases. Often, the way to work out whether we should pivot or offer something else is to take on something that’s not part of our core business.

So assuming it’s going to make you money - do it.

As your business grows, and you’ve got more cash in the bank, you can be more specific about what you say yes to. You’re in a much better place to consider opportunity cost: if I take this Service B work, even though I might enjoy it, is it a massive opportunity cost because I don’t have the time to do something more aligned with Service A?

But early on? If you enjoy it, take it. No brainer.

When You Don’t Enjoy It

Usually, though, you don’t enjoy Service B. Then the question is: is it strategic or not?

You might think - I’ve seen these people on Instagram telling me never to take on anything I don’t enjoy. Life should be great all the time.

That’s not true in my experience. I know lots of small business owners. I’ve been running my own small business for 15+ years. It’s rare that someone only does what they enjoy.

And I know this is the case because if you look at the people at the top of their game - famous celebrities, actors, athletes, musicians, CEOs - they are all doing things at times they don’t enjoy.

Do you think Chris Hemsworth enjoys doing all those promotional interviews? Answering the same questions, joining radio shows early in the morning to promote his latest film? Or the latest rock band on tour, doing all the interviews? Athletes being interviewed after every game, going on shows, building their profile, CEOs sitting through earnings calls when the economy is tough?

Most of the time, the answer is no. That is the grind for them. Why do they do it? Because it’s strategic grind. It lubricates the path to doing what they love - whether that’s starring in blockbuster movies, performing in arenas, going to the Olympics, or growing their busines.

Even the best of the best have to do it. Don’t assume it doesn’t apply to you.

Is It Strategic or Not?

So we come back to: is it strategic or not?

Let’s say you’re offered Service B work. You don’t enjoy it. Should you take it on?

If you’re early in your business, take it. You need the money. That’s end of story.

But if you’re more progressed, weigh it up. If there’s a strategic benefit - for example, doing this work opens the door to a lot more work with that company in line with Service A, or it opens you to a network of other potential clients who want Service A, or it blocks a competitor from disrupting a current client relationship - then these are all strategic reasons to do it. That becomes the strategic grind.

Structuring Your Life Around It

My final point is this: once you accept strategic grind, what do you do with the things that aren’t serving you or getting you to your core business?

Delegate them. Get rid of them altogether. You’re better off doing the strategic grind - work you don’t like but that moves you forward - while structuring your life to remove the other things you don’t like.

Not everything is strategic. The goal is to know the difference.

Across everything: life, business, health, wealth, relationships...

I’ve even streamlined my work office, moving to a smaller, simpler office, removing a ton of stuff accumulated over the years.

For XEN, we’re making streamline our guiding theme. We’re applying this principle to our internal processes, our tech stack, our product and service offerings, and the engagements we have with clients.

Why Wait for AI to Force Streamlining?

Aside: One of the hidden inefficiency areas in most businesses is all the bureaucracy and outdated processes still being followed.

Whenever I see stories about how AI is reducing costs, I wonder how much of the impact is because it removes outdated processes. Often a by-product of getting rid of whole layers of people: the outdated processes go with them.

Why wait for AI to do this? Why not focus on identifying the outdated processes as soon as possible and streamlining operations?

Source: slide from our internal All Staff meeting at the start of the year

Streamlining Internal Processes

Part of our onboarding process with new team members is asking them to identify how we can improve the onboarding process. Every new person brings a perspective we miss internally (‘can’t see the wood for the trees’).

A few years ago it took us two weeks to bring a new person up to speed. The first two days were getting logins and accounts in place. Seems crazy in hindsight. Last month our latest addition to the team was up and running in 30 minutes, and working on billable work within three days. And we’re working to further improve this. These are the small improvements driving significant change time after time.

Tech Stack: Reducing Cognitive Load

Like many companies, we’re using lots of platforms, lots of subscriptions, and lots of jumping between the tools to do things.

It requires careful thinking in order to streamline tools - not only to streamline the individual platforms we use, but also within those platforms, streamline down to the features we get the most value from.

So it’s less about saving money, although it is a key benefit, it’s more about saving mental cycles, making sure the way we use these tools is efficient, focused, clear.

The Longevity Principle

Streamlining when it relates to a platform or tool is best considered with how long you think you’re going to use the platform within your tech stack. There are some tools that are probably short term, disposable. You’ll likely stop using them in a couple of months or replace them with something else. Streamlining them isn’t a good use of time.

But for tools that are foundational in your tech stack - for example, HubSpot is for us - they’re worth the time and thinking to continually streamline, because we know we’re going to be using the platform for many years to come. Putting in regular time to keep it organised and streamlined pays dividends in the future.

With HubSpot we’re spending time configuring all the agents and assistants to be useful. Plus we’re maintaining all the naming conventions of workflows, lists, reports, etc, so there’s no confusion for users.

Compare this to a tool like ChatGPT which we consider disposable. Chances are we won’t be using it a year from now, since we’ll be using other AI tools. We don’t spend much time keeping it organised, since the long-term payoff likely isn’t there.

Streamlining Social Channels

A simple action: we’re streamlining our social channels. We used to have X(Twitter), Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. channels for all our brands. We’re streamlining this down to one or two key channels for each, and we’re converting the rest into ‘signature profiles’.

It may seem inconsequential (after all, why don’t we just forget about them), but mentally it’s helpful because it encourages us to focus.

What this means is we update them to be a signature that essentially says we’re no longer using this channel, but if you want to follow us, it points to where we’re available. We do this by creating the final post there or updating the profile banner or profile image to indicate we’re no longer using the channel and where to find us instead.

(Here’s a variation on the idea: my wife streamlined down her social channels, just to focus on writing. As part of the process she deleted almost all her Instagram posts, except for a few - essentially just leaving a signature of her work.)

Streamlined Service Offerings

We had various models such as on-demand, hourly engagements, subscriptions or retainers, project-based projects, packaged-up products. We’ve had quite a mix. What we’ve decided this year is to streamline that down.

XEN Consulting

On our XEN consulting side we are now mainly focused on an on-demand hourly rate. Clients buy a block of hours and we use them to provide strategy, planning, implementation, or training.

Previously we tried packaging these up (‘value pricing’) or putting them as part of a retainer, but we found this too hard to standardise. Every client wanted a different mix or needed a different set of focus for their outcomes. Packaging it didn’t provide a high-quality outcome for them, or if it did, it meant we were over-delivering.

By moving to on-demand only as our primary approach, we’ve ensured the client gets the best outcome and we get paid for the time we use.

The consideration: as we get faster at delivering, the clients get more for their dollar. They get higher value.

XEN Create

For our XEN Create brand, we used to offer a subscription plus a per-delivery option or an hourly option. We’ve streamlined this down to our design subscription and website projects based on a cost per page. This has provided the best flexibility for clients, allows them to understand the model well, and allows us to plan appropriately.

Streamlining Client Engagements

We’ve also extended this to our customer base. We’ve been fortunate in the last few years to work almost exclusively with good fit clients (compared to years ago when we had an unhelpful mix of bad fit ones as well). However, the work and engagement we had with some wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t streamlined. It didn’t facilitate them getting the best outcomes.

We’re in the process of streamlining those engagements now as well. In some cases it means reducing the quantity of work we’re doing with clients (removing the parts we aren’t expert at), in others it means being clearer about the outcomes we focus on.

By streamlining, we’re making sure the outcomes we provide for them are streamlined down to the ones where we’re experts, where we provide the most value, getting the best outcomes for clients. This might sound easy or obvious, but it’s a process of thinking we had to work through in order to arrive at the right mix.

I asked Claude to summarise all of the above, here’s what it gave me (pretty accurate I think):

Streamlining isn’t about doing less - it’s about doing what matters most, with clarity and focus.

(Image credit: XEN Create)

We’re scrolling through our social feed and a post catches our eye. But it requires us to click in to thread to see the rest of it – so we skip over. We’re too impatient. On to the next one.

Now imagine we take that impatience and apply it to other areas of our life. We tend to put off things that require a tiny bit of extra effort – even small things like reading an email thoroughly so we can reply helpfully. And of course, it grows from there.

Remember when we used to happily watch 5, 10 or even 30 minute videos – because we’d learn, think and improve. But now even a 5 minute video feels onerous. We don’t have the patience to watch. Instead, we ask AI for the quick summary. We want the sound bite.

Expand this to books (yes, full books), and the problem is much more obvious. We want a summary. We don’t have the patience to even read an entire book anymore.

In our daily work, this is causing problems. We put off (often using a ‘productivity tool’ to snooze till later) the items requiring careful thought, and attend to the low value busywork instead. Rushing off quick replies to emails, not paying attention in meetings, quickly summarising things, or expanding and writing with AI.

We’ve lost the patience to do the hard work. Except it’s not hard work. It’s the usual work.

Move this into consulting, design, and creative work, and the problem is evident. We don’t put the effort or time into carefully thinking through business processes, or thinking through design and creative concepts. We outsource it all to AI, take whatever AI gives us, and plunk it into a reply or a deliverable.

This might sound negative, but it’s an opportunity. An opportunity for the people who can be disciplined enough to take the time to think things through – and reply, respond, create, carefully.

The challenge is working out the high-value items where this matters.

Caught up in an overwhelm of busy daily activities, it can be hard to isolate the tasks needing the careful thinking. That need the discipline. That need the attention. That need the patience.

In this quick reminder video we walk through the 3 things people buy:

• Money

• Time

• Status

and perhaps most importantly, what we should listen out for when chatting with them, in order to identify which one is most important to them.

This comes from our Business Skills deck.

In the video, we talk about the three things people actually buy: money, time, or status.

Learn how to spot what clients really want by listening to their words. Whether it’s saving costs, speeding up processes, or refreshing their brand for status, knowing this helps you guide the conversation the right way.

Money, time, or status — what clients really buy.

Key Points:

People buy one of three things: money, time, or status.

• Money: making money (leads, sales) or saving money (cutting costs, subscriptions).

• Time: speeding up results (closing deals faster) or saving time (automation, removing busy work).

• Status: creating or broadcasting status (e.g., websites as brand refresh, positioning).

Most websites are more about status than conversions.

Listen carefully to how clients talk — their words reveal what they value.

Speak to clients at the level they’re focused on (money, time, or status).

It’s worth chatting about: to get a sense of what is useful, versus what’s noise.

I’ll cover a few cynical notes first, then highlight the good stuff.

For a more detailed discussion about the topic, see also my video here:

The Cynical View

I’ve seen a bunch of posts proclaiming that ‘Inbound is dead. Loop is the replacement.‘

And to be fair, the whole Inbound Marketing methodology has a lot of baggage.

But I think there’s a better way to position it:

• Inbound is about the external customer journey

• Loop is about the internal marketing process

Inbound marketing has always been about the customer’s journey – awareness, consideration, decision. Loop marketing, on the other hand, feels like an internal process. A playbook. A framework.

Helpful? Yes. A replacement? Not really.

When people say inbound is dead, what they really mean is that inbound has changed (or, perhaps even, is broken). And yes, it has. And is. The days of writing a top-of-funnel blog post, watching it rank, and sitting back while traffic rolls in are long gone. AI overviews and search shifts have disrupted that path.

But the customer journey hasn’t disappeared. Funnels are still helpful, even if they’re overly simplistic. People still move from problem-aware to solution-ready. So inbound isn’t dead. It’s just different. More on that in another post.

Why a loop?

This puzzles me a little.

We started with funnels. Then came the flywheel. Now we’ve got the loop.

Cynically, it feels like someone at HubSpot HQ decided they needed a shiny new model to meet go-to-market plans. A circle wasn’t fresh enough. Four simple steps weren’t enterprisey enough. So they twisted it into a loop, hoping it sounded sophisticated.

To me? It’s just confusing. It’s still four steps. Call it what it is. Why make it harder than it needs to be?

(Admittedly, I’m a simple guy, my little brain is already overwhelmed, I just need it in a simple, linear model. Unloop the loop please.)

AI everywhere (whether it belongs or not)

The other part that feels a little forced is the AI infusion.

Every step of the loop has AI sprinkled through it — sometimes meaningfully, sometimes not. It feels like someone in the room went, ‘Wait, we haven’t put AI in this step yet. Barry, can you cook up something AI-sounding for here?‘

The smart shift, I’ll admit, was moving away from AI for content creation (aka content slop via Content Remix) and into AI for personalisation. And ideally relevance at scale. That’s a far stronger use case. But right now, most of what’s on the website still has vaporware vibes – beta features, future promises, ‘sign up to be notified’, etc.

And check out these words:

“a momentum-building system and fuel for unprecedented growth.”

Please. Sounds like content slop to me.

The Constructive View

Putting the cynicism aside…

Once you get past the naming, the forced AI, and the marketing slop… there’s actually a lot to like.

Consistency beats chaos

Whether you call it a loop, a playbook, or just ‘a process’, the simple act of getting a whole team aligned on a shared framework is a huge win.

Left to their own devices, marketers drift into chaos. One person is chasing TikTok, another is obsessed with SEO (ahem, I mean AEO), someone else is pouring budget into LinkedIn ads. Each has their own ‘best practice’ and together it’s a mess.

A framework gives everyone a consistent focus. It doesn’t even matter if it’s perfect. The real benefit is that it gets everyone on the same page. That alone makes loop marketing worthwhile.

The four steps are actually solid

Forget the ‘loop’ branding. Underneath, the four steps make sense.

Here’s how HubSpot explains it:

Here’s how I explain it:

• Express → Define the problem you uniquely solve and who you solve it for.

• Tailor → Decide how you’re going to say it — through content and personalisation.

• Amplify → Share it across the right channels, supported by smart distribution.

• Evolve → Analyse what worked, what didn’t, and continuously improve.

Pretty straightforward. But sometimes, straightforward is exactly what teams need.

Express: Data discipline at the start

I particularly like how the Express stage forces you to confront your data.

It’s tempting to skip straight to tactics – social posts, videos, campaigns. But if your CRM data is unreliable, none of those tactics will be informed. Chatting with clients and prospects, we hear them admitting, ‘We don’t have data confidence.‘ That’s a great place to start, because at least it’s honest.

Loop marketing reminds us that data integrity underpins everything else.

Tailor: Relevance at Scale

Personalisation, not just ‘content slop’.

The Tailor stage is where the AI fairy dust actually makes sense.

Not personalisation in the [insert personalisation token] sense, but in the Amazon-style sense: surfacing the right thing, at the right time, in the right format.

Recommendations that feel relevant. Content that matches what the person actually cares about.

That’s the shift from AI-created sludge to AI-driven relevance. And it’s a good one.

Amplify: Channel placement with smarter tools

The Amplify stage leans into HubSpot’s improved social and ad tools. It’s not just about publishing across channels — it’s about feeding intelligence back into the platforms.

For example, pushing HubSpot audiences into Meta or Google Ads so the ad networks themselves can optimise more effectively. That’s smart.

Evolve: Continuous improvement

Finally, the Evolve stage.

This isn’t about holding a retrospective, pretending you gained ‘insights’, and then moving on unchanged. It’s about continuous iteration: taking what worked and pushing it back into the system.

Note: you don’t necessarily need to push it back to step 1 (another confusing part of the loop imagery), often you are pushing back to channels (Amplify) or updating content (Tailor).

This is where AI can help again – not to create content, but to surface patterns. Instead of manually combing through reports, you can literally ask: ‘Of the customers we closed in the last three months, what did they have in common?‘ That’s potentially a big time saver.

Loop Marketing Design Framework

So far, so good. We’ve covered the four stages in a general, high level way.

What does it look like in practice?

We’ve put together a Loop Inspired Design Framework that we’re using ourselves and with clients:

We’ve attempted to guide marketing teams on what assets and activities apply at each stage.

• The blue tickboxes are related to strategy, data and implementation

• The purple tickboxes are related to design items and asset creation

Worth noting:

• We’ve put Data cleanup in all four steps – it’s a never ending process.

• We’ve put video in most steps – it’s currently the single best way to differentiate (especially in mid-large business scenarios)

You can access the Google doc for this from our XEN Create Loop Marketing Design Framework page here.

I walk through the framework in this video:

So, where does that leave us?

Loop marketing is not the replacement for inbound. It’s not the magic bullet.

But… it’s a useful framework.

It gets teams aligned. It promotes data discipline in from the start. It pushes for personalisation over content slop. And it builds in continuous iteration.

If you strip away the jargon, it’s just good marketing practice in four steps. And if HubSpot calling it a ‘loop’ is what gets teams to actually do it, then fine. I’ll play along.

My take?

Be cynical about the branding, but embrace the structure. Because consistency beats chaos, and continual evolution beats standing still.

Use a framework to guide you.

Additional reading/viewing:

• Loop Marketing overview on the HubSpot site

• HubSpot video explaining Loop Marketing

• Kipp Bodnar chatting through how the Loop playbook fixes marketing

• Loop Marketing Design Framework download

Originally published here.