How The Well replaced a spreadsheet CRM with one live view of every client

25,000+ data points brought into one place every day

A daily sync pulls several data sources into one central database, built to keep scaling as the client base grows

The Well is a South African team culture business. It runs monthly facilitated conversations for corporate teams, a five-chapter programme called the Culture Well Journey, delivered in small pods through WhatsApp. It also runs Enneagram workshops and licenses its tools to enterprise clients in South Africa, the UK and Europe. Dina leads the business and Aret runs operations.

What was going wrong

The CRM was an Excel spreadsheet: pipeline, lead status and implementation partners, all updated by hand. Client delivery data lived in Airtable, which runs the WhatsApp programme. To report on a client, the team had to download the data, run it through ChatGPT and assemble the report bit by bit, every month. Renewal dates were tracked from memory, and Dina's ideas, proposals and client stories sat in voice notes and her own head.

As Dina put it: "Data lives in Airtable, but it doesn't surface insights."

The trigger was a move to a wholesale model, selling through implementation partners. Each partner would bring its own clients and teams, and a spreadsheet CRM couldn't show which partner managed which client, where each deal stood or how each client was doing.

How we built it

Matt led the build, then stayed on for further rounds of iteration, training and handover. Airtable had to stay, because it runs the live WhatsApp programme for paying clients, so the question was how to bring its data into a system the team could work from.

Centralisation. Projects, next actions, notes, SOPs, companies, contacts and invoices now live in one set of Notion databases. An n8n sync runs every morning and consolidates more than 25,000 data points from Airtable and the team's other sources into one central database, matched on each record's ID so records update rather than duplicate, with personal data left out. The volume will keep growing with the client base, and the process is built to handle it without more manual work. Airtable stays the source of truth, and the sync can be run by hand when something urgent changes.

Collaboration. A shared overview gives Dina and Aret the pipeline grouped by stage, client and internal projects, and each person's next actions for a quick daily check-in. Every client page has its own dashboard of sessions, feedback, engagement and psych safety results, built once as a template and applied to each new client in one click.

Personalisation. Dina and Aret each have a private dashboard built around their role. Dina's shows client health at a glance: status, subscription end date, days remaining and engagement scores. Aret's covers the operational detail. Both have buttons to capture a note or a next action in seconds.

AI, once the structure was in. A central AI instructions page and a set of protocols tell Notion AI how The Well works. Meetings are transcribed, and the AI proposes next actions that a person reviews before they're saved.

What changed

• Dina can check the health of every client without opening a spreadsheet.
• More than 25,000 data points from several sources arrive in one place every day, summarised into views the team can read at a glance.
• Renewals, engagement and session progress are visible on each client page.
• Notes, proposals and ideas are captured in one place, linked to the right client or project.

Who owns it now

Dina and Aret run it day to day. Each had one-on-one sessions to set up their dashboards, with clear first goals, followed by weekly sessions while the team got used to it, and a later round of changes based on how they were actually using it. We then handed the daily sync over to Aret, who now runs and adjusts it without us.

"Matt was exceptional from start to finish. He took the time to understand how our organisation works and consistently found thoughtful, practical solutions tailored to our needs. He was responsive, patient and highly knowledgeable, making the entire Notion setup feel seamless and manageable. His collaborative approach and genuine commitment to getting things right made him an absolute pleasure to work with. I couldn't recommend him more highly."

Aret Lambrechts, Operations Manager, The Well

Running a growing services business on spreadsheets and disconnected tools? Talk to us about building one system your team can work from.