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- Week 55 - Why you must track your connections 🗃
Week 55 - Why you must track your connections 🗃
Yurii Lazaruk
March 29, 2026
Hey my friend, out of the recent conversation with one of the readers of this newsletter (yes-yes, thank you for that conversation 😉), I understood that actions and mindset go together. So from now on, this newsletter will consist of 2 parts: “Try This Yourself” and “Expand Your Mindset.”
In “Try This Yourself,” I’ll share some practical steps to take to build better human connections. And in “Expand Your Mindset,” something that helps me personally take those steps. So hopefully, it’ll also help you make them 😉
So let’s go!
Try This Yourself
Over a year ago, I set out to build my Personal Database of Amazing Humans. And during this time, it evolved into a Personal CRM of People I Know! So today I’ll share with you the “Why”, “What”, and “How” behind it.
The Why:
I have over 11K followers on LinkedIn, and out of those, almost 10K are my connections (yes-yes, following someone on LI doesn’t mean you’re connected 😏).
Out of 10K connections, I personally know at least 3K people. And I thought: what does this number mean if we connect and forget about each other? So I decided to change it and put those connections to work.
But how do I put them to work if I don’t know what these people do and what they are interested in? So I’ve started my personal CRM for my connections.
And yes, nothing fancy, just simple Google Sheets 😉
The What:
This CRM is a very simple database where I keep the following data for every connection:
Name and Surname
LinkedIn profile URL
Date we’ve been connected on
Email (if I have it)
Birthday date (if I have it) (here I shared how to find birthday date on LinkedIn)
Tag (how do I know them)
Questions tracker (ask whom I asked about what, and what their feedback was)
Pages invite (whom I invited to what LI page to follow)
Additional info (some personal notes).
Points 1-5 are pretty clear, aren’t they? 😉
The Tag is mostly about why we connected, and the main ones I have now are: freelance, recruiter, partner, community, founder, Cultivators, friend, GW, podcast, UA, work, and random. Pretty straightforward, huh 😁
The Question Tracker is for me to understand what I asked this person about and what their response was. For example, recently I started asking people about what they would like to learn about connecting the community with business, so that I can improve the Community ROI podcast. Or before that, I asked freelancers about their challenges to understand how exactly to help them. Also, I asked folks to support the post with my professional services to get more attention from potential clients.
And it’s actually hard to remember whom I asked and whom not; that’s why I use the Question Tracker. Also, I have a kind of “answer probability scoring,” which works pretty simply. If a person answers me or does what I ask them to do, I add “1” to a relevant column. And in a separate column, I sum all those 1s. And if someone has a score higher than 3, it means they’re more open to dealing with me in the future :)
Pages Invite - super simple! I manage Community ROI, Humans of Business, freelancermap international, freelancermap hiring academy, and Freelance Unlocked LinkedIn pages. And every connection I invite to follow one of those pages (or several) to have an extra touch point with them on social media.
Additional info - any specific things we talked about: potential business opportunities, personal info (like age and number of their children, hobbies, etc.), who introduced us and why, and all the things like that that help me to quickly recall something important about a specific person.
So here is how it looks in Google Sheets:
The How:
At the beginning of every month, I go and export my LinkedIn connections.
Next, I copy-paste the new connections I’ve made during the previous month to the Google Sheets, and always download this document as an .xls file to my computer.
Every day I do this:
tag 10 people in the database
invite 10 people to the LinkedIn pages
ask 10 people a specific question
Every Friday, I go to LinkedIn and update birthday dates for folks I know well in my database.
Whenever I get some extra info, I add it to my notes, and once a week (usually on Friday), I put it into the database.
I’ve been doing this thing for over a year already, and, first of all, I've gotten to know much more about the people I know than I’ve ever done before.
Secondly, learned so many things by asking people about their challenges, and also validated some ideas and got huge support by asking people for help (and those conversations also strengthened our connections).
Thirdly, I connected many amazing humans with each other based on that info.
Okay, let me stop counting the benefits, because there are many more 😝
tl;dr Tracking connections is helping you to get to know people so much better, and actually put them to work in a mutually beneficial way. So if you’re not tracking them yet, create a simple Google Sheet and start doing it right away!
Expand Your Mindset
When asking people questions, sometimes it’s easy to make assumptions about what their answer might be.
For example, when I ask an experienced community professional about what they would like to learn about connecting community with business, I might assume that they don’t need to listen to the Community ROI podcast.
Or, when I see the “Open to work” badge on LinkedIn, I might assume that this person is tight with budget, and they won’t choose a paid tier on my Community ROI Substack.
But, in reality, those community professionals would love to learn more examples from other professionals, and when I ask, they share with me amazing insights on where to focus those conversations, and what questions to ask my guests.
And folks with the “Open to work” badge are successful consultants or freelancers, and that’s their way to get on the radar of more potential clients on LinkedIn, and they’re more than happy to invest $9 into the work that I’m doing.
So the mindset shift I had to make was: Stop thinking for others!
tl;dr People are different people, and what is good for someone might be bad for someone else. So, do not think of what they might think, but ask a clear question and get a clear answer.
So yeah, that’s it for this week, and if you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, or personal examples of how to build better human connections, please answer this email, or connect with me on LinkedIn, and let’s talk 🤗🤓
💡 What influenced me this week 💡
Thoughts of the week:
“There is inspiration all around you all of the time if your eyes are open wide enough to see it and if you're organized enough to hold on to it once you do.” - Will Guidara, Nudge podcast
“Envision yourself on your deathbed. Make a list of the things you know you'd regret in that moment. Reverse engineer the actions and changes you need to make today to avoid experiencing those regrets.” - Sahil Bloom’s newsletter
“Talent and intelligence are overrated. The truth is that talent and intelligence are abundant. Courage is not. The people you admire are the ones who had the courage to act.” - Sahil Bloom’s newsletter
“We give so much shit to what we are building (and caring for) that we build our own worlds, boundaries, and confidence to stand up to the things that don't align with where we need to be.” - Rosieland newsletter
“You can call me whatever you want, but don’t call me mediocrity.” - Jamie James, The Independent Workforce podcast
“If you’re serious about changing your life, you’ll find a way. If you’re not, you’ll find an excuse.” - Jen Sincero
Song of the week:
Book and quotes of the week:
“When we’re forced to do something, suddenly the time is there. Which means it’s there all the time, but we’ve just chosen to limit ourselves by believing that it isn’t.”
“No matter how intimidating your next great leap forward seems at the moment, it will be a pipsqueak when you look back on it someday.”
“The only failure is quitting. Everything else is just gathering information.”
Tools that I use with referrals:
Descript - for anything around podcasting and video editing
Beehiiv - for a newsletter (that’s what you receive 😅)
Text Blaze - to access message templates with shortcuts (like “/ty”)
Exali - promo “FROMYURII” - indemnity insurance for independent experts in Europe
Manus - for building complex systems and projects
Daily actions:
tell 1 person what I’m thankful to them for
read a self-development book/listen to a professional podcast for 15 minutes
make a valuable post/comment on LinkedIn
tag 15 people in my connections database
connect with 30 interesting people on LinkedIn
invite 5 people to join the 👋Friendworking newsletter
Weekly actions:
transcribe one new episode of the Creator Spotlight and Personal IPO (bi-weekly) podcasts, learn something from them, and connect with guests on LinkedIn
connect 2 people who I believe need to be connected
invite 30 people to follow the Community ROI podcast (and ask for some feedback).
If you have any thoughts, ideas, or questions, please 👇
And if you’d like to have more 👋 Friendworking in your life 👇
See you next week! 👋
