personal-crm

Core Philosophy

Professional networking feels dirty and transactional when it is treated as an opportunistic harvest—reaching out only when you need a job, an introduction, or an angel investment. A personal CRM is a long-term relationship infrastructure built on genuine curiosity, mutual respect, and value-first connection. By tracking interaction context, personal details, and periodic check-in rhythms, you nurture authentic professional friendships with zero awkwardness.

4-Step Personal CRM Architecture

Step 1: Dunbar's Circles & Tiered Segmentation

1. The Concentric Circle Model:
   • Tier 1: Core Circle (5–15 People): Close mentors, inner circle confidants, primary co-founders.
     • Check-in Cadence: Every 2–4 weeks.
   • Tier 2: Key Network (50 People): Active collaborators, trusted industry peers, frequent sounding boards.
     • Check-in Cadence: Every 60–90 days.
   • Tier 3: Broad Ecosystem (100–150 People): Former colleagues, investors, domain experts, acquaintance builders.
     • Check-in Cadence: Every 6 months or situational.

Step 2: Contact Metadata & Information Architecture

1. Essential Dossier Fields:
   • Basic: Name, Current Company, Role, Location, Timezone.
   • Context: How you met (event, mutual intro, year).
   • Personal Anchors: Partner/spouse name, children, hobbies, sports teams, favorite books, non-tech passions.
   • Professional Priorities: What they are currently building, hiring for, or struggling with.
   • Interaction Log: Date, format (coffee, call, DM), and concise bullet points of what was discussed.
   • Next Touchpoint: Scheduled date and prompt topic.

Step 3: The "Give-First" Low-Friction Touchpoint Playbook

1. The 3 Legitimate Reasons to Reach Out:
   • The Relevant Artifact: Sending a high-signal article, paper, or tool directly relevant to a problem they mentioned:
     • "Saw this benchmark on ClickHouse query optimization and immediately thought of the scaling challenge you mentioned in June. Hope the sprint is going well!"
   • The Unsolicited Celebration: Congratulating them on a shipped product, funding milestone, or talk with specific commentary (not generic "Congrats!").
   • The High-Value Mutual Intro: Connecting two people in your CRM who share complementary needs, with double-opt-in consent.
2. The "No Reply Needed" Pressure Release:
   • End low-friction check-ins with: "No need to reply—just wanted to share this and hope you're crushing it!" This removes cognitive burden and builds immense goodwill.

Step 4: Maintenance Hygiene & Tooling

1. Tooling Simplicity:
   • Store in a plain Markdown folder, Notion database, or lightweight SQLite file. Avoid heavyweight corporate sales CRMs with automated marketing drip sequences.
2. Weekly 15-Minute Relationship Sweep:
   • Schedule 15 minutes during the Friday weekly review to review contacts due for check-ins and send 2–3 authentic messages.

Deliverable Format: Personal CRM Dossier Template (CONTACTS.md)

# Personal CRM & Relationship Dossier

## 1. Circle Cadence Overview
- **Tier 1 (Bi-weekly)**: [Names]
- **Tier 2 (Quarterly)**: [Names]
- **Tier 3 (Bi-annually)**: [Names]

## 2. Contact Record Template

### [Full Name] — Tier [1 / 2 / 3]
- **Role & Company**: [e.g. VP Engineering @ PlatformCorp]
- **Location**: [City, Timezone]
- **How We Met**: [e.g. Spoke at RustConf 2024; mutual friend of Dave]
- **Personal Anchors**: [Marathon runner, 2 dogs (Golden Retrievers), likes specialty coffee]
- **Current Focus**: [Migrating infra to bare metal; hiring Staff SRE]
- **Cadence**: [60 days] | **Last Contact**: [YYYY-MM-DD] | **Next Due**: [YYYY-MM-DD]

#### Interaction History
- **2026-06-12 (Coffee in SF)**:
  - Discussed their move away from AWS EKS. Recommended checking out Talos Linux.
  - Promised to send our internal benchmark on container boot times.
- **2026-01-15 (X DM)**:
  - Congratulated on their Series A announcement.

#### Action Item / Prompt for Next Touch
- Send article on bare-metal Kubernetes networking when published.

Worked Example: High-Leverage Peer Check-In

• Contact: Senior Staff Engineer at target partner company.
• Metadata Context: Mentioned in March that they were struggling to hire a senior compiler engineer.
• Action: In May, spotted an exceptional compiler dev posting on Twitter/X that their startup shut down. Sent a quick intro with double opt-in.
• Result: Contact hired the engineer; relationship deepened into a strong technical partnership without ever making an awkward "sales" pitch.

Verification Checklist

• Network is partitioned into realistic Dunbar tiers ($\le 15$ Tier 1, $\le 50$ Tier 2, $\le 150$ Tier 3).
• Every contact entry includes personal anchors and how you met.
• Outreach messages are value-first (sharing an artifact, congratulating, or intro) with zero immediate asks.
• "No reply needed" clause is used on casual check-ins to eliminate recipient guilt.
• CRM is stored in an open, portable format (Markdown / CSV / Notion) without spam automation.

Anti-Patterns

• The Desperation Ping: Disappearing for 3 years and suddenly messaging: "Hey, can you refer me for a job at your company?"
• Automated Drip Emails: Treating personal relationships like automated marketing prospects with canned birthday emails.
• Hoarding Contacts: Storing 2,000 LinkedIn connections in a CRM whom you have zero intention of ever helping.