When I left Aptitude 8 to start Hubsessed and Attribution Academy, it felt like a big risk. I had spent years building a dedicated following on LinkedIn, but had no idea if people would actually pay money for access to my perspective and expertise on HubSpot and go-to-market strategy.
The HubSpot ecosystem showed up for me in a big way: partners sharing the courses inside their own teams, admins emailing me screenshots of attribution reports they'd rebuilt, people I'd only ever known as a LinkedIn avatar became actual friends.
Since launch, I've instructed over 350 students across two course offerings.
Hubsessed is, without a doubt, the thing I'm most proud of in my career. So the decision I'm about to explain wasn't an easy one, but I believe it’s the right one.
If you've been reading for a while, you've noticed that since I jumped back into a full-time role, the newsletter cadence dropped off and the course pipeline has slowed. I love the job. The math on my week simply stopped working, because Hubsessed needs a person (or better yet, multiple people) with time and I stopped having that.
About a month ago I started thinking about how Hubsessed could continue to provide value to subscribers without being reliant on the biggest bottleneck, which is me. That’s when I started talking to Chris Carolan and Casey Hawkins.
If you spend any time in the HubSpot corner of LinkedIn or YouTube, you already know them. They publish at a volume that makes me look like a hobbyist. They host Another Orange Morning every weekday morning, breaking down HubSpot updates while I’m still catching up on Slack from the day before.
When they laid out the vision they and the rest of the Value-First Team saw for Hubsessed, I decided it made sense to pass the baton.
I trust them to hold the quality bar. I also expect them to publish more in a quarter than I managed in a year, which is precisely the point.
What This Means for You
If you're a paid subscriber: your membership has already been migrated to Value-First. You keep access to everything I produced for Hubsessed, including all Attribution Academy material. Nothing you paid for goes away.
On top of that, you get whatever Value-First Team builds next - more on-demand courses, more live bootcamps, and more premium newsletter content.
If you're a free subscriber: nothing changes except you get access to even more expertise and a much more consistent stream of content. You don't need to do anything. No re-subscribing, no new account, no migration form.
Looking to upgrade?: All of the academy content I built at Hubsessed will continue to be available for new paid subscribers. You can access Attribution Unlocked and the Attribution Mastery Certification for as little as $24/mo, plus you’ll be getting more courses and bootcamps coming soon from Value-First.
Who is the Value-First Team?
Value-First is a collective of independent HubSpot and go-to-market consultants. Each of them runs their own practice, and they collaborate around shared work and resources.
Here's who you're getting:
Chris Carolan, Value First Team
Founder and head coach at Value-First, and co-host of Another Orange Morning. He builds AI-native operations, and the through-line of his work is making value creation visible and teachable. He's seeing the Hubsessed transition through personally, and the measure he cares about is whether it keeps being worth your attention. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.
Casey Hawkins, CaseyCo Marketing
Casey runs CaseyCo Marketing and hosts Another Orange Morning daily, often turning show content around the same day it airs, which tells you most of what you need to know about how she works. Her practice sits closest to the existing Hubsessed material, so she'll be maintaining it, updating it, and growing it. Connect with Casey on LinkedIn.
Ryan Ginsberg, Unified Support Solutions
Ryan builds and runs RevOps and support operations at Unified Support Solutions, working from the premise that HubSpot should be the layer a business runs on rather than a database somebody keeps tidy. He teaches the way he works: systems he's built, numbers he can point to. Catch him Tuesdays on Another Orange Morning. Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn.
Madelyn Donovan, Basis Inbound
Madelyn Donovan founded Basis Inbound, a consultancy that specializes in marketing operations in HubSpot. She prioritizes realistic, sustainable reporting setups above all else, because attribution means nothing if it isn’t transparent and actionable. After a decade of defending marketing decisions that are often out of a team’s control, she coaches teams on reverse-engineering their setup so that everyone wins. Connect with Madelyn on LinkedIn.
Joshua Oakes, Who-First
Joshua brings a product management background to HubSpot consulting at Who-First. His method is locate-before-you-touch: define the problem properly before anything gets built. Message discipline is the craft he keeps coming back to. He co-hosts The Value Path with Chris and holds the Monday slot on Another Orange Morning. Connect with Joshua on LinkedIn.
Zach Hussion, HUSH RevOps
Zach founded HUSH RevOps, a Platinum HubSpot Solutions Partner, after 20+ years in B2B sales and marketing, and now helps manufacturers and industrial companies get HubSpot right: data model and governance first, process over platform. His craft shows up best in a room, running workshops and hands-on practitioner sessions where people leave able to do the thing themselves. He leads the Rochester, NY HubSpot User Group (HUG) and turns up regularly as a guest on Value-First and Another Orange Morning. Connect with Zach on LinkedIn.
One Last Thing From Me
The best part of Hubsessed was always the people who subscribed. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading, watching, and supporting me. You are now in the hands of six practitioners who publish more in a month than I could in a quarter, and I'm going to be reading and watching right alongside you.
Say hello to Chris and the team when they show up in your inbox!
Best,
Ryan
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Questions? Reach out to [email protected]
Disclaimer: The sale of Hubsessed is a personal matter, unrelated to my HubSpot employment. Hubsessed is not affiliated with or endorsed by HubSpot.
