You may have heard of Dunbar's number

the number of people you can maintain relationships with at one time

That number is capped at 150. Our brains can hold on to this minuscule amount of information at once.

What if I told you that a no-code tool can break that limitation?

Levels founder Sam Corcos has a goal to stay in touch with 1000 people per quarter. He manages this via airtable. It's as simple as a check-in, but with this system he can

• work where he wants
• work on his schedule
• and maintain deep ties

with little stress.

I figured, why not try to build a no cost, low friction system?

So I made an airtable base that anyone can use to stay accountable with their network

the best part?

it takes only 15 minutes to maintain

How it works

We all have contacts

but we need to prioritize based on a category

A - contact every two weeks

B - every two months

C - every six months

D - each year

most CRM apps are overkill, it should be an email

• free
• fun
• simple

Setup

The base has two tabs

• - established contacts
• - potential new contacts

For established contacts keep things as simple as possible with these 7 columns

• Name
• Contact
• Notes
• Category
• Last Contact
• Next Contact
• Trigger Reminder

The first five are populated by you, the last two are formulas based on the category

Here's what they look like (from Jakob's article)

Potential new contacts are even simpler

• Name
• Notes
• Reach out (Y/N)
• When to Reach Out

again, mostly populated with one formula column

Automation

Start at the end:

I want an email that looks like

Hey, you should reach out to these people today

*insert table with names and notes here*

Checking a database is too much friction

but you check your email every day

so pair the new habit w/ an existing one

Here's what the automation looks like:

In words:

1st action - collect all records that have the "trigger reminder" in their entry

2nd action - collect all records that have "yes" in the Reach Out column

3rd action - send an email with the records listed

Now that’s it!

Every morning you're getting an email that tells you who you should reach out to today.

After you send the messages, open Airtable and update the Last Contact column to today’s date.

In total, this process takes maybe 15 minutes per day (per Jakob)

Now that you have the follow ups, what do you write?

Here's what I would do:

- watch or read some interesting content they've made

- share a related article or video that they would get value

- offer specific advice for a problem they mentioned

Technical Details

here's what the first action looks like

and the second action

and the third

And That's it (for real this time!)

If you want to get more in depth (and learn how to use scripts with this base) I suggest you read Jakob Greenfeld's article

and while you're there check out his other awesome posts!

And for more of the concept behind the CRM, check out Derek Sivers post

on the same subject

If you want the base to edit here's the link

Or you can make your own by following this post!