When you’re actually working — calling leads, checking in with referral partners, following up with clients — your CRM can feel like it’s moving through molasses.

Don’t get me wrong.

CRMs are amazing for communication.

Email blasts. Text campaigns. Tags. Tracking who opened what.

But when it comes to speed, they just don’t cut it.

If you’ve ever tried to update a note, move a task, or set a new follow-up date, you know what I mean.

You load the contact, wait for it to open, scroll, click, save, set another reminder.

Then that same client calls you two days early… and now you’ve got to go back in and redo it all.

Five minutes gone.

That’s when my friend April reminded me of something I used to do years ago.

She said, “Hey, I was at a conference, and a top producer said their whole team still runs everything on a spreadsheet.”

And it hit me — I used to do that too.

And when I did, I was a machine.

So I went back.

Now all of Scott’s and my transactions live inside one simple Google Sheet.

(If you don’t know Scott Bentley — he’s my partner up in Maryland. He’s the guy out front doing content. I’m behind the scenes making sure everything closes. Together, we’re covering the whole country.)

When you’re getting 10–12 applications a day, you can’t afford to click through five screens just to find a phone number.

So we built one spreadsheet that tracks it all:

• Client name

• Referral source

• Status (prequal, preapproved, cleaning up credit, etc.)

• Next action

• Notes

• Date last updated


I use Whisper Flow to drop notes directly into it. Two clicks, talk, done.

Now, when I sit down to work, I open that one sheet.

I can see everything — who’s ready, who needs a call, who’s waiting on docs.

If I block two hours to originate, I move down the list like an assembly line, pushing every file forward.

Because that’s what this job really is — pushing things forward.

The spreadsheet has become my live workspace, while the CRM has become my communication center.

They work beautifully together.

When I need to text or email all my past clients — like about that flood of fake mortgage mail going around — I jump into my CRM.

Filter by tags. Send the message.

Then I tag everyone who opened it, follow up with the non-openers, and log the results back in the sheet.

The CRM is my megaphone.

The spreadsheet is my workbench.

And since I started doing this again, my productivity has gone through the roof.

I’m not bouncing between tabs or waiting for things to load — I’m actually working my clients