By Brett Kaufman. 8 years using relationships to build sales pipelines, from political fundraising to a 7 figure business to running matchmaking for two communities. Over 1,000 introductions facilitated.

You can build your own AI personal CRM in an afternoon: one contact sheet, one set of project instructions in Claude or ChatGPT, and a weekly routine that asks it who has gone quiet and drafts the texts. It works well for about 50 people. Past that, keeping the sheet current becomes the real job.

Here is the scene. Sunday night. A broker you have not texted since spring, three intros you promised at a dinner, 900 names in your phone. You already pay for an AI assistant. Why not make it your relationship assistant?

You can. Here is how I would build it, fairly, with both tools. I already covered the narrower question of whether ChatGPT can be a personal CRM at all. This page is the build.

What do you need to build your own AI personal CRM?

You need three pieces: a contact sheet, a project that holds it, and instructions that tell the assistant what to do with it. Everything else is routine.

Both tools now have the container:

• Claude Projects. Anthropic describes each one as a self contained workspace with its own chat history and knowledge base. You upload files to the knowledge base and write project instructions. Projects are available on free accounts, capped at five, per the Claude help center. Each project also keeps its own memory, separate from your other projects (Claude memory help page).
• ChatGPT Projects. OpenAI says projects “keep related chats, files, and instructions together,” and that project instructions apply only inside that project and override your global custom instructions. You can also add Google Drive files or folders as project sources (OpenAI help center).

The contact sheet template

This is the piece most DIY builds get wrong. They paste in a contact export with names and emails. The assistant cannot reason about a relationship from a phone number. It needs the context you carry in your head.

Use one row per person and these columns:

Column	What goes in it	Example
Name	First and last	Dana Ruiz
Role	What they do, in their words	Business broker, HVAC and plumbing
Where we met	Event or intro, with the date	IBBA dinner, Sept 2026
Last real touch	Date of the last two way conversation	2026-06-14
What they care about	The thing they told you	Wants buyers who close in 90 days
Open loop	Anything you owe them	Promised intro to an SBA lender
Tier	A, B or C	A

The “last real touch” column is the whole engine. Without it, the assistant cannot tell you who is going cold. It also only works if you update it.

The project instructions to paste in

Copy this into Claude’s project instructions or ChatGPT’s project settings, then edit it to sound like you.

You are my relationship assistant. The file contacts.csv is my network. When I ask for my list, return the 5 people who most need a message today. Rank by: open loops first, then A tier people whose last real touch is over 45 days old, then anyone I met at an event in the last 14 days who has no touch since. For each person give one line on why today and a draft text of 40 words or fewer that references what they care about. Never write “just checking in.” Never invent facts about anyone. If you do not know why someone matters, say so.

The 40 word cap keeps drafts sounding like a text. “Never invent facts” prevents the costliest mistake: congratulating someone on a deal they never closed.

How do you run it each week?

Run it once a week, in one sitting, the same day each time.

1. Update the sheet first. Change the last touch date for everyone you spoke to this week. Add every new person you met, with where and when.
2. Upload the fresh file to the project, replacing the old one.
3. Ask for the list. “Give me my 5 for this week.”
4. Check every fact before you send. If a draft mentions a post or news, open it and confirm it is that person.
5. Send from your phone, edit freely, then log the date back in the sheet.

If you use Claude, its Gmail and Google Calendar connectors can search your email and draft replies, and Claude asks for your approval before it sends, replies or forwards by default. That helps with the people who live in your inbox. It does not see your iMessage threads, which is where a lot of brokers and operators actually talk.

Claude or ChatGPT: which is better for this?

Both do the core job. The differences are in the edges.

Need	Claude	ChatGPT
Project with files and instructions	Yes, free plan capped at 5 projects	Yes, subject to plan
Separate memory per project	Yes	Projects use their chats and files as context
Reads and drafts in Gmail	Yes, asks approval before sending by default	Connected apps available in project chats
Morning reminder that runs on its own	Scheduled tasks on paid plans, per Claude pricing	Scheduled tasks, but a task made in a project cannot read that project’s files

That last row is the one to know before you build. OpenAI’s scheduled tasks page says plainly: “If you create a task in a project, it cannot access uploaded files or files stored in that project.” It also caps active tasks by plan: 3 for Free and Go, 5 for Plus, 15 for Pro. So the daily nudge cannot open your contact sheet by itself. You still open the project and ask.

Where does the DIY build break?

It breaks on upkeep, not on intelligence. The sheet goes stale. Here is what you do by hand:

• Log every touch. Every text, call and coffee, with a date. Miss two weeks and the ranking is wrong.
• Capture at events. Thirty people at a conference means thirty rows typed that night, or they are gone.
• Check every post. An assistant asked about “Mike Chen, broker” will find some Mike Chen. Confirming it is yours takes a minute per person.
• Teach it your voice. Your edits do not flow back into the instructions unless you rewrite them.

At 50 people, that is maybe an hour on Sunday. At 800, it is a part time job. That is the math of network decay, and it is why most DIY builds die around week three.

When should you build it, and when should you not?

Build it if the network that matters is under 100 people and you enjoy the Sunday routine. You will learn what a relationship system needs.

Skip the build if you meet 20 new people a month, live in iMessage, and already know you will not log touches by hand. Then the upkeep is the product, and you want something that does it for you. If you are weighing other homemade setups, where a Notion personal CRM breaks covers the same wall from another side, and every personal CRM comparison is in one place.

The version that keeps the sheet for you

FRONT OF MIND is what I built so nobody has to run the Sunday routine. It opens on your 10 minutes for today. Each person has a one line reason why today: they posted, a birthday, you met at an event days ago and never followed up, a follow up is due, a pipeline deal has been quiet 7+ days, their company was in the news, or they are going cold. Posts only show up if they are confirmed to belong to that person.

Every draft is a text style message, 40 words max. Nothing sends without your tap, and it learns from your edits. At an event, say a name and a sentence out loud, snap a card or badge, or take a selfie together, and it is filed under the event. Ask Liala “who do I know that is an M&A advisor” and get the right people with why.

It runs in your phone’s browser and saves to your home screen; there is no native iPhone app yet. Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them. Export and delete anytime.

Keep your AI assistant for thinking. Start free with your first 25 contacts and see who comes up first.

See how it works