I started out in marketing automation, and HubSpot was what did it. Not the software for its own sake. What pulled me in was watching a process someone had been running by hand become something a machine could carry instead. A workflow, an algorithm, lately a model. That part has never worn off.
Custom coded actions came first, then CRM extensions, programmable emails, and the things a portal isn't meant to do until someone makes it. Each one asked for a little more code than the last, until the code stopped being the means to finish the automation and became the work itself. These days I sit closer to solution architecture: how the pieces fit together, and which decisions a company will still be able to live with in three years.
What I kept from marketing is the habit of asking what a process is for before asking how to build it. What I get called in for is rarely a feature. It's a process that needs thinking through, and a problem underneath it that nobody has named properly yet. That thinking, from the business side as much as the technical one, is most of the job; what gets built follows from it. Coming at it from marketing rather than straight out of engineering is the whole difference: I know what the business is actually trying to do, and I can go and build it.
Expertise
The whole portal, not only the parts you can click together. Data model and custom objects, workflows and lifecycle reporting, CMS themes and templates, and the coded layer underneath it: custom modules, coded actions, CRM extensions, programmable emails and serverless functions.
Workflows, lifecycle stages, lead scoring and the reporting on top, removing the manual steps between marketing, sales and delivery. Built to be readable by the people who own them.
Systems that have to agree with each other, and the layer underneath that decides whether they can. HubSpot to your ERP, shop or product database, ingestion and ETL pipelines, Databricks, and the CI/CD to ship a change without breaking what already runs.
Positioning first, then the identity that follows from it: logo, type system, palette and tone of voice, written down in a brandbook so it survives being handed to someone else. Then sitemap, wireframes and interface design, with the structure settled before a single visual decision.
Astro, React, TypeScript and Supabase, for the cases where an off-the-shelf tool would cost more to bend than to replace.
HubSpotCRM, CMS, Ops and the code underneath.
n8nSelf-hosted workflows.
BrevoEmail and campaigns.
ReactApp front-ends.
LaravelPHP back-ends.
FigmaDesign and handoff.
DatabricksData and pipelines.
A short call first, to work out what the project actually has to do and whether I am the right person to do it.
Then scoping. Requirements get weighed and ranked rather than guessed at, so what gets built, what gets left out and which decisions still hold in three years are all deliberate.
2Then I build, working to proper standards: version control, a staging site you can open at any time, and nothing changed straight on the live one. You follow it as it goes rather than seeing it at the end.
Launch, and then we evaluate it together.
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