I see it all the time: a business with HubSpot, a team using it, and almost nothing to show for it. Not because HubSpot is the problem, but because the foundation was never built properly. Teams are often trained on where to click and never on why the system is structured the way it is.
I built BLOOM Transitions to fix that problem. And the reason I see it so clearly is because I've lived a version of it myself, in real life.
I spent nearly a decade as an elite lightweight rower. Medals, NZ National Team, World Championships - you name it. Rio 2016 was mine to own.
Then one day, on Lake Karapiro in Cambridge, New Zealand, my body stopped doing what my brain was telling it to do.
My stroke disconnected. My timing fell apart. I jumped off my seat mid-race. The team doctors tested me for neurological conditions and found nothing physically wrong. What followed was eight months of turning up every day, trying everything, and nothing changing.
I'm telling you this because what I learned from that experience is the reason BLOOM Transitions works the way it does.
When I was finally honest about why my stroke fell apart, it came down to this: I had been performing at threshold, mentally and physically, for years. The system that was supposed to sustain me was empty. I hadn't noticed because I was so focused on pushing harder that I never stopped to ask whether the foundation was sound.
My coach had a philosophy that I didn't fully appreciate until long after I stopped competing. He didn't tell you how to row; he taught you how to move a boat. There's a difference. Athletes who are told what to do can perform when someone is watching. Athletes who understand why the system works can adapt when things go wrong.
I was one of the former. And when something went wrong, I had no framework to fix it.
The lesson I took into business is the one I missed in sport: a system that runs on effort alone is not a system. It's a countdown.
The pattern I saw in businesses mirrored what happened to me on the water. Everything can look fine on the outside, but sometimes the foundations are wrong and nobody steps in to help build it properly.
This is where HubSpot comes in. It really is an extraordinary tool. It can genuinely transform how a business manages customers, automate its marketing, and align its teams. But here's what I see all the time: businesses have HubSpot but they aren't getting any value from it. Not because the tool is bad, but because it was implemented without a foundation.
It's the equivalent of being told how to hold the oar without understanding how the blade moves the boat.
One of my favourite memories is what we called the "square blade summer". The entire national women's squad spent two months rowing with their blades square to the water (rather than feathering them flat on the recovery). It makes the boat impossibly tippy. If anyone goes out of sequence, everyone suffers.
Square Blade Summer was skill-based, technique-intensive, and some people broke under it. But the athletes who came through emerged with something the others didn't: they understood, at a physical level, how the system worked. Not because they'd been told, but because they'd felt what happened when it didn't.
The outcome of that summer is why I insist BLOOM don't implement and leave.
Anyone can set up a HubSpot portal. Anyone can import contacts or build a couple of workflows and call it done. What BLOOM does is make sure your team understands why the system is built the way it is, so that when something doesn't fire the way you expected, you know how to fix it. You're not dependent on us to row the boat for you.
For eight months I turned up every day to coaches, biomechanics, and sports psychologists trying to fix something without knowing what was broken. None of it worked, because nobody could tell me what the problem was.
I think about that often when I see businesses running HubSpot without tracking what's actually happening inside it. They have the tool and use it to an extent, but they can't tell you anything about their key metrics.
You can't fix what you can't see.
This is why BLOOM is obsessive about measurement. It's why we track our own AI visibility numbers weekly and share them publicly (even if they're not moving in the right direction). It's why every client engagement starts with understanding what good looks like before we change anything.
I learned from eight months of rowing in circles that effort without measurement is just noise.
The last thing I said after finally walking away from elite rowing was this:
"It all kind of toppled because I didn't have any balance."
The same thing happens to business systems.
When everything is urgent, nothing gets built properly. When you're always in execution mode, you never stop to check whether the foundation is still serving you. The CRM that was set up in year one might not reflect how you sell in year three.
The businesses that get the most from HubSpot are the ones that treat it like a training programme, not a race day. They build the base, measure the results, adjust the system, and then push harder, knowing the foundation can hold the load.
That's what ten years of elite sport taught me. And it's what I've spent the years since BLOOM Transitions was founded, trying to give to every business we work with.
HubSpot is not just a tool. It's a system built to last - run by people who understand why it works, and measured honestly.
Who is Lucy Strack?
Lucy Strack is the founder and director of BLOOM Transitions, a New Zealand-founded HubSpot Gold Partner agency. She was a five-time New Zealand national rowing team member, an under-23 medallist, and a top-six finisher at World Rowing Championships. She competed at the Ironman World Championship in Kona in 2018 and founded BLOOM Transitions in 2020.
What is BLOOM Transitions?
BLOOM Transitions is a New Zealand-founded HubSpot Gold Partner and Shopify Partner agency helping small and mid-sized businesses across New Zealand and Australia implement HubSpot, build Shopify websites, and grow their visibility through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).
What does elite sport have to do with HubSpot implementation?
The principles are the same: systems that run on effort alone are not sustainable, measurement is non-negotiable, and the teams that perform best long-term are the ones who understand why their system works, not just how to use it. BLOOM founder Lucy Strack draws directly on her experience as a New Zealand elite rower in how she approaches every HubSpot implementation.
Why does BLOOM Transitions train clients to own HubSpot rather than managing it for them?
Because a system your team understands is a system your team can fix when something goes wrong. BLOOM's approach is built on the same philosophy Lucy's rowing coach Dick Tonks used: don't tell people what to do, teach them how to move the boat. Teams that understand why their HubSpot portal is built the way it is get far more from it than teams who depend on their agency to run it for them.
Does BLOOM Transitions work with businesses outside New Zealand?
Yes. BLOOM Transitions works with clients across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. The team is distributed across all three countries.
Lucy Strack is the founder and director of BLOOM Transitions, a New Zealand HubSpot Gold Partner and Shopify Partner agency. She was a five-time New Zealand national rowing team member and competed at the Ironman World Championship in Kona. She started BLOOM in 2020 and has been building systems that actually work ever since.
Read more about Lucy's rowing story at Stuff.co.nz and World Rowing.
Image credit: Steve McArthur / Photosport