From a wall of spreadsheets.
You started simple. Then “simple” turned into a dozen tabs nobody could keep straight, and the follow-ups lived in your head.
Excel & Sheets a dozen tabs
Outlook & Gmail inbox as the to-do list
Notes scattered everywhere From a CRM that was too much.
You did the responsible thing and bought a “real” CRM. It was so bloated the team quietly drifted back to the spreadsheet.
A spreadsheet couldn’t keep up
HubSpot / Salesforce too much, too pricey
Back to the sheet the team gave up From tool to tool to tool.
You tried the shiny new ones. Each looked great in the demo and fell short in real life.
Notion a part-time job to maintain
Attio slow, always loading
Folk still missing the bits From WhatsApp and a notebook.
You ran the whole business from your phone and a notebook. It worked, right up until it didn’t.
WhatsApp chats buried in threads A notebook pages you can’t search
Phone contacts names, no context
From a stack of duct-taped tools.
You wired a few apps together to fake a CRM. Then one of them broke, and the whole thing fell over.
A spreadsheet the source of truth
Zapier held together with tape Manual reminders nudges you set yourself