192: 📲 5 Creative Ways to Better Organize Your Phone Contacts

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with fathers, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Welcome back. Free Timers Short and sweet today because I fear that I've completely overwhelmed you with my last two solo episodes giving the full 201 breakdown on licensing. So today I'm going to share one of my favorite or more like 5 time saving systems in terms of creative ways to organize your phone contacts. Now, if you're a longtime listener, you know that I want to hear from you. I would love to release your favorite time saving system to the FreeTime community. Leave me a voice memo@itsfreetime.com Ask or you can email your hot tip to HI'sfreetime.com I'm looking for something super delightful that you've solved, maybe even in an unexpected way that it would just spark joy in your heart to imagine setting that time free amongst fellow freetime listeners. Okay, so these ways of organizing phone contacts. Could this probably be a written article? Maybe, but as you know, I'm a curmudgeon about those this episode. It's not as profound or existential as some of the other ones, but I hope it's helpful and time saving toward a very important end. Feeling less overwhelmed by your relationships In a way, I feel like an episode like this could either be created by a super extrovert that has so many friends and they have like the best systems for keeping in touch with people, or it will be created by someone like me who gets so overwhelmed and sensitive and has so much micro guilt about communication and keeping in touch with people that I also need to devise or collect ingenious systems that I've heard from other people. I am recording this just on the other side of attending the TED conference. I don't know the exact Timing. But my friend Alyssa Cohen and I are gonna do an episode we're gonna record in person on like 11 networking strategies for in person events like conferences. Keep an eye out for that. Again, I'm not sure the exact timing of when these will come out, but that one's gonna be a lot of fun. So this is just on the technical side of organizing contacts in your phone, but that one should be a lot of fun for actually making those connections and keeping them in the first place. And don't forget, if you want an entire done for you dashboard, including my kit CRM template. This is just one of dozens and dozens of templates that are already made for you to run your entire business. Visit itsfreetime.comdashboard and apply promo code podcast for 10% off.

Okay, number one, this one comes from Joey Coleman, who in our earlier conversation that I'll link to in the show notes said something brilliant. He makes notes about each person after he gets off the phone with them in their contact card within his phone so he doesn't have some full blown crazy expensive or complicated CRM software. When he hangs the phone with someone, adds a little note in their contact card. And I think that is so brilliant. So for example, their spouse's name, their kids names, their pets names, important milestones. I now, being almost 40, have a hard time remembering all my friends kids names. Like, I hate to say it, but they have had multiple kids each most of them and let alone remembering their pets names. I wish I could, and for some of them I do. But there became a point where I couldn't hold it all anymore. And then that doesn't even include my extended network where maybe somebody I see or talk to once a year. I like to make a note, do they have kids? Is it one or two kids? Is it a boy and a girl? Is it three boys? Maybe they have four boys. I don't know. I like to just kind of make a note to myself so that next time I see them I could say, how are the kids? Or how's your son? Because maybe they only have one kid. And if I say how are the kids? They're like, gosh, don't you know me at all? I only have one. Or I have none. I think that making these kinds of data, I don't want to sound creepy, but CRMs in general are kind of creepy because you're like tracking all this data about people and then you're reminding yourself when to follow up. And that's why I've never really had one until I created what I call kit in Notion. I'll link to an episode in the show Notes where Alex Sherwood of Notioneer walked us through how to create your own CRM from scratch in Notion. But barring that, do the Joey Coleman strategy. Just when you hang up with someone, make a few notes in your phone so you have more rich data.

Number two. This comes from a longtime friend tour and friend of the POD mbs. He gave me great advice that was based on Robin Dunbar's book and the famous Dunbar number of setting circles. So Dunbar has done research on friends and friendships and how many each of us can reasonably hold and MBS helped point out that you can be explicit about this. So in a lot of the research around this data shows that people have five super close friends. Maybe 15 go to people maybe 50 that you talk to more than once a year. And then there's 150 or even 151 plus where as Dunbar points out, you might recognize the faces of 5,000 people, but you can't even remember all those people's names. What I love about MBS's advice to me was be intentional. Like actually write down who's your core five, who are your go to 15, who are your 50 that you want to touch base with at least twice a year? Or maybe if you're a curated like me, that's even just once a year. Somebody may have a core 50 where they want to call them once a quarter. And my core 50, my capacity might only be to talk to them once a year. But still it would be good to identify who's on that wish list of keeping in touch at that frequency, at that cadence. So I love this advice and even in your phone most phones have a favorites feature. So who have you already favorited? It's probably a combination of your closest friends and your family. And then you could even create a moniker to designate who's in that go to 15, who's in your fab 50, you know, however you want to name them.

So that brings me to number three. This one comes from Keith Farazi. This is his moniker for mips Most important people. That's even a Brene Brown abbreve. He calls them the Lifeline folks. So what he does is in his phone he saves that as their middle name. So my name might be Jenny Lifeline Blake. So that when he really wants to call one of his go to people, he just has to search Lifeline and they'll come up. Another example, I add dog after somebody's first name and then as the company name or in the notes I put their dog's name and their spouse's name so I might have like Ashley Dog Smith and so I can search everyone that we've met through Huffing Rider in the last almost four years that if we want to have a dog gathering or a doggy playday or who knows what, I just know who all the dog people are in my phone and then it's nice to remember the dog's name and again their spouse. Like cause with dogs you're always chatting with people and you're running into them, sometimes you're running into their spouse and it's like oh my gosh if I can't even remember my friends kids names it's definitely hard to keep track of not only all the dogs names but then their owner's names and I like to remember when I can I will link to Keith Farazi's book who's Got yout Back in the show notes. That's where he talks about this lifeline level of relationship, a short excerpt from a PDF he created that I'll also link to. He says Years ago, after I published my first book, Never Eat Alone, I had plenty of relationships in my life, but not plenty of lifelines. People I could really open up to share my fears and failures and goals and dreams with and ask for help. I'd started to think that because I was the boss and people looked to me as an expert, I was supposed to be the one with all the answers. But I didn't always have them. The really powerful relationships I did have, my family, some intimate friends couldn't deliver the kind of insight and feedback on my career and life that I most needed to hear. I needed people I trusted who understood my professional goals. I had those people in my life too. I just never asked for their help. I was too afraid I would come across as weak or flawed. I was frankly embarrassed by some of my behaviors. Why risk undermining other people's perceptions of me by admitting my weaknesses? But inside I knew it was fooling myself if I thought they didn't already see it for themselves. Starting with three core relationships, I built the protective tribe I needed to support me, push me farther, and hold me accountable to change. Those relationships changed my life. They improved my business. They made me feel secure and grounded despite a world of constantly shifting parts. That's who he calls lifeline relationships. Four ways they'll help you Identifying success and what it truly means for you. Helping you figure out the best way to get there. Helping you identify what you need to stop doing and having people around you who are committed to ensuring that you can sustain change.

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Strategy number four Create collection buckets for cities and upcoming travel Even if you don't know somebody's full address, you could keep this list mainly to people you'd want to see when you visit. As in, like, you don't need to mark down every person you ever know that has lived in Florida or California, but if there's someone who's in your even extended network that you think, huh, the next time in Miami, I would love to see that person. You gotta make a note of that somewhere. Almost a decade ago, I remember Ramit Sethi saying he has a label in Gmail for different cities, and I thought, that's really smart. Now in my kit database in notion, I have a view where I can see by city. And so I'll tag people, whether it's a podcast guest or a close friend, but anybody where I know where they live. That sounds creepier than it is. Like, oh, this person lives in Toronto. I make a note so that when I'm going to go to Toronto next, I can filter by city and see who all lives there. And again, it's important to me that this not get overly cluttered. So I'm not trying to record everyone in every city that I've ever met. But if I want to see someone or if they're close to me, they're already in my circle of 50 or 150. And I would count a lot of my podcast guests as part of that 150 where I would love to get to know them in person if they would even say yes to a coffee. One of my Favorite recent examples was Gina Bianchini. We met for the very first time when I had her on free time. I'll put that in the show notes. And then I saw she was going to be attending Ted. I pinged her. I said, hey, we happen to be going to lunch if you're free to join. She hadn't gotten in yet. And then on the very first morning of the conference, I see her from afar. And I had only had a 30 minute podcast conversation. That was our only connection. And I go, Gina, as she waved, came over. We ended up walking the conference floor for five days together with our friend Alyssa, all from having the podcast interview. And that wasn't in her city. She lives in Palo Alto, actually, a block from my brother. But now she's under my Palo Alto column or my Bay Area column, so that the next time I visit, I remember who to reach out to. Now I'm such a grump that mostly when I travel, I don't want to see anybody. And sometimes if I'm traveling where I have family, it's already so scarce and rare that I get to see my family being across the country from most of them that I'm not even calling people in my closest circle. It's sad but true. So it's tricky balance, but I at least want to remember who I could reach out to if I happen to have the energy and the time to make some additional plans.

Number five. This one is the quirkiest of the bunch, but I love doing it. You know all those confirmation texts that you get from, like, shipping companies, FedEx, DHL, UBS. I use a prescription company called Capsule, all kinds of stuff, whether it's the doctor's office. I like to add those. They're like six digit numbers. I add them as a contact in my phone with an emoji because oftentimes when they come in, it just looks like it's from a random number. But each of them has their own phone number. So like shipping companies, I save it with a little cardboard box emoji and then the name of the company, and they're saved as a contact in my phone called Shipping Updates. And then Capsule has a little pill icon and they're saved as Capsule. So when it says your driver's on the way, I know exactly who it's coming from. And the emojis just helped me separate it when I'm looking at my text messages, separate it from spam, and separate it from actual people that I'm corresponding with. I took a screenshot of this I'll see if I can find it and link to it in the show notes, you can either add the emoji right before their first name when you enter them as a contact or at least in the iPhone, you can actually customize the image itself for that contact card. That one's quirky but surprisingly sparks a lot of joy whenever I see my text messages because I know exactly what's functional, logistical. And at a quick glance, because of the emoji, I know if it's shipping related or capsule, prescription related or a doctor's office. Like one point I was getting reminders from the podiatrist and you know that that had a foot emoji that was like kind of weird to see a foot emoji dotted between my text messages. But I knew exactly what it was for at a glance. This isn't even on my list, but in the Notes app on my phone I have a note called Neighbors. It's not in notion. I have an iPhone, it's in the iPhone notes and there's one called Neighbors. And I just have written down all my neighbors names because every now and then and I might write one short description because in New York City I live in a great area where I get to meet a lot of neighbors and I love remembering people's names and I love calling them by their name. And so now that that list has grown to 30, 40, 50 people, sometimes I need to quickly I see them coming, I pull up my phone, I scroll down my list and by the time I've had to reference that note more than one time, I usually remember their name after that. That's the benefit of doing this.

Those are my strategies for you today. Joey Coleman. Make notes about each person. Mbs. Set your circles and a cadence for each. Keith Barazi Give your most important people a go to moniker and save it in your phone. Creating collection buckets for cities and upcoming travel. And last but not least, adding those random logistical confirmation texts as contacts in your phone with a funny emoji that makes you laugh or sparks joy. What did I miss? What time saving system do you want to share with free timers? Or is there a number six or seven of creative things that you've done for saving contacts and keeping in touch with people just using your phone contacts alone. I would love to know. And don't forget my bonus, keeping a note file of all your neighbors. You hereby have permission not to pay for expensive CRM software and deal with the headache of setting it up and even hiring a consultant. And the complication of all that. Just pick one of these strategies today and try it out. And don't forget, if you want an entire Done for you dashboard, including my kit.

That is just one of dozens and dozens of templates that are already made for you to run your entire business, visit itsfreetime.comdashboard and apply promo code podcast for 10% off. Thank you so much for listening. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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