Automate your client intake & scheduling (No-code workflow with Carrd, Airtable & Cal.com)

How do you handle a flood of inquiries coming through your website without things falling through the cracks? Whether it's potential new clients, new projects, speaking opportunities, partnerships, or just general inquiries coming through your website, having the right system in place can help streamline the process, reduce stress, and make sure things just don't slip through the cracks. In my previous video, I shared about a six‐week accelerator opportunity I'm launching for new or early‐stage solo entrepreneurs who want to get started on the right foot and build a foundation for their consulting, coaching, or creative business. In today's video, I'm going to share the exact process and system that I built out for myself to manage all of the interest for the program. I won't just walk us through step-by-step in this video; I'll actually include the templates in the description so you can implement this same system for your own business—perhaps a program, a productized service, or just the general forms coming in through your website. I'm excited about this video; let's go ahead and dive in.

All right, so I have my six‐week accelerator page pulled up, and we're going to use this as an example for our demo. For my page, I have a video on the left that I did some custom work on, which gives people an introduction to the service I'm providing, and on the right, we have the title and some information about the accelerator. If we click the button, we can fill out the interest form; and if we click “Learn More,” it has all the information about the accelerator and frequently asked questions. Ultimately, I want people to fill out this interest form. I did actually consider just having a Stripe link so that someone could make a purchase, but I really wanted to curate who was participating in this group—to make sure that the people in the group are a right fit for the program as well as a right fit to work with one another.

When someone fills out this form, it is going to do two things: it will take this information and bring it into Airtable, and it will essentially function as my CRM so that I can manage the people who are interested in the accelerator. Then, it will redirect people to a calendar link so they can schedule a 10-minute call with me to discuss the program and see if it's the right fit—all done automatically. That way, I'm not spending time managing this process; I'm spending time having conversations and nurturing relationships with those who are interested.

If we click “I'm Interested” and fill out the form, it will bring the information into an Airtable base—this is obviously the demo, and I have a test record here. The fields I have in this Airtable include first name, last name, and a formula that combines those. I like to have the first name separate so that if I write an automated email, I can say, “Hey, [first name],” and include details like the email, a question with its answer, the phone number, and the status of the application along with information about the stages of the application's life cycle. There is also a checkbox where people indicate that they're able to commit to the cost for the program. That's where the data lives. I also have an interface built out that essentially makes this an app. The first tab in this app is a Kanban board where, from left to right, I can manage people on a Trello-like board. When I click into these records, it feels very much like Notion, with first name, last name, and all the information from that intake form along with my own notes. In the second tab of this app, if there are a dozen people, I can click on the one I want to look at and pull up that specific information. I actually use this as my call notes; sometimes I'll have a template here and then type in my notes from the call. With good notes, even if I'm only doing a 10-minute call with someone, it becomes easy to keep track of everyone.

Here's an example I'm using for my own business. I literally wrote my own sales page, but I had ChatGPT come up with an example for someone who would also do this. This example is for someone who helps people with podcasting—a podcast launch accelerator. If you click “Learn More,” it turns out really great. This is something that someone could actually run with; you could offer a blueprint that guides people through their production setup, launch and distribution package, promotion and growth toolkit, scalable repeatable process, and cost. This is something that, if you were in this line of work, you could truly do. I actually started a podcast, and when I did, I hired a friend of mine and was in his podcast launch accelerator. This is very realistic; you could take this and apply it to the work that you do.

Ultimately, we want people to click this button to show that they're interested. They'll fill out their first name, last name, email, answer a question, and check a checkbox. In the back end, if you save this template in your own account, you'll open it up and be right here. One important note about Carrd—which I've covered in other videos on my channel—is that it's a wonderful one-page website builder. It's what we're using in this demo. Essentially, because it's a one-page website builder, we mimic what it feels like to click on buttons and open new pages by using a control element. We click the plus, add a control, and then choose “Section Break.” That allows us, on our page, to click “FAQs” and then be taken to the FAQ page. For example, the “Learn More” button goes to the “About” section break, which acts like an About page. When building a Carrd site, it’s important to focus on the form because forms are crucial. I heard a joke once about how life is just filling out forms, and I think it's kind of true—this is how you're likely to get information from those interested in potentially working with you.

For this program, we want people to fill out this form. We click the form and go to the second tab of fields, where we see that there are five form fields. The first one is the first name, where the ID is “first” and the Airtable field name is “first.” I encourage you to keep these consistent because you're not just filling out a form; you're taking this data and bringing it into Airtable. The same goes for the last name and email fields; the IDs and Airtable field names must match exactly. When you check Airtable, you'll see that these are the names of my fields: first, last, email, and so on. This consistency is critical because we're importing this data into Airtable.

How do we do it? The wonderful thing is that Carrd has a direct integration with Airtable, which allows us to import this data without necessarily using something like Zapier or Make—although I do use them for specific cases sometimes. When you click the form, you go to the first settings tab, where you can choose options like “Contact Form,” “Signup Form,” or “Send to Airtable,” among others. To send to Airtable, you need to provide Carrd with three pieces of information: your personal access token (essentially your password for connecting these services), the base ID (for me, this is the six-week accelerator demo base), and then the specific table within that base. If you had multiple tables, you would need the one that corresponds to your data. Carrd provides links to help you with this process, and I'll walk you through it.

To get your personal access token, go to Airtable, click your image, and go to your account. In the yellow “API” section, go to the Developer Hub. You don't need to know too much about this, but you're going to create a token. I created one called “program demo” and even made another called “program demo 2” to illustrate the process. The scopes determine what Carrd can do; we really only need the ability to create, edit, and delete records. Choose the appropriate options, create the token, copy it, and bring it over to Carrd. Next, you'll need the base ID, which you can find in the URL when using Carrd—look for the part that starts with “app.” Then, go to that same URL to get the table, which starts with “TBL.” It’s very important to use the table ID because if someone changes the table name, it could break your automation. Using the table ID ensures stability. Once you have these three things, Carrd can take the information and bring it into your table.

I’m going to copy this and show you what it looks like—it will just give us a message. Let's go ahead and publish the changes. Now, let's go to our page. I'm going to show an “I'm Interested” test: I'll enter "Mike Jones," an email address, a message like "We're building a new mental health podcast," check the box, and click submit. This should display a thank you message. Success. Now, let's check our Airtable base: boom, we have Mike Jones, the email, and the question. We didn’t have a phone number because we didn’t ask for it, but we know that they checked the box. By default, I chose “Application Received” as the default option among all the statuses. Now our interface has two options; if we set test PCOW to WR fit, we have two items that we can drag back and forth. This is how it works.

One thing we don't have yet is a scheduled call. Next, we’re going to automate scheduling a call on our calendar. We already saved the back-and-forth of "What time can you meet?" and "Oh, I can't meet then." For a program like this, it’s very reasonable to have someone book a time directly. To do that, we're going to use a tool called k.com. You could do something similar in Kly, but I've learned that k.com has much more functionality available for free. I already created a calendar link on k.com—this is pretty straightforward. I'll show you the settings. This is my demo interest call link. I opened up my availability pretty wide because I want to get my own personal accelerator started within the next couple of weeks. When someone is interested, I want to chat with them while they're excited about the program. You can place limits on when you're booked, and there are advanced settings available. I made sure that my booking questions specify that I want a phone call—not a Google Meet or Zoom call, although you could choose those options. Personally, I just want a quick 10-minute phone call, and all I need is their phone number. I do ask for their email address and name, but I prefill those fields because we already asked for them in the form, and I want to ensure that the person scheduling the call is the same as the person who filled out the form.

Here’s how I did it: I went to Carrd and clicked my form. Instead of displaying a message after submission, I redirected to a URL on k.com. For example, the URL might be “interestcalldemo.” k.com allows you to append data to the URL using UTM parameters. You can append “name=” followed by the first name and last name from the form, and “email=” followed by the email. That way, the first name, last name, and email are passed along to the calendar link. I saved this updated URL and tested it by clicking “I'm Interested.” I entered “Susie Smith,” used a test email address, noted that Susie is building a podcast for bicycle enthusiasts, checked the box, and clicked submit. Instead of a thank you message, I was redirected to the calendar scheduling page, and the URL showed that the name “Susie Smith” and the email were passed along. Then, I booked a time for tomorrow at 9:20 A.M. k.com actually prevents the user from changing the pre-filled information, which is important because it ensures that the email address for the form and the scheduling are the same—this consistency is critical for my system.

Once the phone number is entered and the user clicks “Confirm,” the meeting is scheduled. I receive an email confirmation, and the participant does too. When I check Airtable, I see that Susie Smith’s record is updated with the information from the call booking. However, initially, the phone number wasn’t captured in Airtable. To fix this, I built an automation in Airtable. I set the trigger to “When Webhook Received,” copied the webhook URL from k.com (where I created a new webhook for “Booking Created”), and enabled it. This setup allows k.com to inform Airtable when someone schedules an appointment. Since the email addresses match, I can correlate the booking to the right record. I then added a step to find the record in Airtable based on the organizer's email, update the record with the phone number from the webhook payload, and save the changes.

I tested the trigger by submitting the form again and booking a call. This time, the automation successfully updated the record with the phone number. Now my Airtable table knows the participant’s phone number. I can view this in the interface, where I can then begin facilitating these phone calls and update the status of each application as they move through the process. This system helps ensure that inquiries don’t slip through the cracks, especially if you’re running a high-service business where you want to focus more on delivering your service and less on administrative tasks.

If you like this video, I invite you to subscribe to the channel. I post regular videos like this, and if you found it particularly helpful or know someone who could benefit from it, please share it. I would love to help more people. Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you next week.