Five steps to get every lead, client, and contact into one place — so AI tools can actually work inside your business. Covers both Gmail and Outlook.
Whether you use Gmail or Outlook, your email has been silently saving every address you've ever emailed to a hidden list. Gmail calls it "Other Contacts." Outlook stores them in Suggested Contacts and the Auto-Complete cache. Either way, it's probably stuffed with hundreds of junk addresses, old vendor emails, and people you emailed once three years ago.
This is the #1 reason your auto-complete is a mess and why your contact list feels impossible to manage. Let's clean it out.
- Go to contacts.google.com. In the left sidebar, click "Other contacts."
- Delete the contacts you don't need. You have two options:
Option A — Delete one at a time: Click the three dots on the right side of any name and select "Delete."
Option B — Bulk delete: Check the box next to any one contact. At the top of the list, you'll see "1 selected" with an arrow — click the arrow down and click "All" to select every contact. Then click the three-dot menu at the top right and hit "Delete."
- Repeat until you've removed all the contacts you don't want.
- Now save the remaining contacts in bulk. Click any one contact — you'll see "1 selected" and an arrow. Click the arrow down and click "All contacts" so all remaining contacts are selected. On the right-hand side at the top, look for the person with the plus sign — click it to move them all into your real contacts.
- Open Outlook on your desktop → go to File → Options → Mail
- Scroll to "Send messages" and click "Empty Auto-Complete List" — confirm when prompted
- If you have a "Suggested Contacts" folder, open your People/Contacts view, find that folder, and delete the junk entries
- For Outlook on the web: go to Settings → Mail → Compose and reply → turn off "Add contacts for people I email"
Gmail: Open Gmail → gear icon → "See all settings" → scroll to "Create contacts for auto-complete" → change to "I'll add contacts myself."
Outlook: Go to File → Options → Contacts → uncheck "Automatically create Outlook contacts for recipients that do not belong to an Outlook Address Book."
Over the years, you've probably accumulated duplicate entries for the same people — one with their phone number, another with just an email, maybe a third from when they changed jobs.
- Go to contacts.google.com
- In the left sidebar, click "Merge & fix"
- Review each suggestion — click "Merge" for matches, "Dismiss" for false positives
- If you're confident, click "Merge all" to accept everything at once
- Open your People / Contacts view in Outlook
- Outlook doesn't have a one-click merge tool like Google, but you can sort by name or company to spot duplicates visually
- For each duplicate: open one contact, copy the missing info, paste it into the other, then delete the incomplete one
- If you have a large list, third-party tools like Outlook Duplicate Remover or exporting to a CSV and cleaning in Excel can save time
While you're in your contacts, take 5 minutes to add labels (Gmail) or categories (Outlook) to your most important contacts — like "Sphere," "Past Clients," "Active Buyers," and "Vendors." This makes it dramatically easier to pull targeted lists later, especially when you start building AI-powered automations.
This is the step most agents skip — and it's the one that breaks everything.
If you're checking email through Apple Mail (the default mail app on iPhone) or Samsung Mail, here's the problem: when you add a new contact, it saves to Apple Contacts or Samsung Contacts — not your Google or Microsoft account. That means it lives on your phone but never shows up on your desktop, your laptop, or in any tool connected to your account.
- Download the Gmail app from the App Store or Play Store (it's free)
- Sign in with the Google account you use for your business
- Start using it as your primary email app
- Optional but recommended: remove your Gmail account from Apple Mail to avoid confusion (Settings → Mail → Accounts → toggle off Mail for your Gmail)
- Download the Outlook app from the App Store or Play Store
- Sign in with your Microsoft / Outlook account
- In the app: go to Settings → your account → Save Contacts and toggle it on — this syncs your Outlook contacts to your phone
- Remove your Outlook account from Apple Mail or Samsung Mail to prevent duplicate sync issues
When you use your email provider's own app, contacts are managed through that ecosystem and sync automatically across all your devices. When you later connect tools like Claude, Zapier, or your CRM — they can actually find your people. Apple Contacts is a silo. Your Google or Microsoft account is a hub.
Now let's make sure that every new contact you save — on any device — goes to the right place automatically.
First, make sure your Gmail account is syncing contacts:
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone
- Tap Apps, then tap Contacts
- Tap Contacts Accounts — you'll see a number next to it (1, 2, 3, etc.) showing how many accounts are connected
- Tap the Gmail/Google account you want to use for your business contacts
- Make sure the Contacts toggle is turned on (green) for that account
- If you have multiple Gmail accounts, repeat this and turn off the Contacts toggle for any Gmail accounts you don't want syncing contacts to your phone
- While you're here, tap on your iCloud account and turn off the Contacts toggle — this stops iCloud from maintaining a separate contact list that conflicts with Google
Then, set your default account for new contacts:
- Go back to Settings → Apps → Contacts
- Tap "Default Account" (this only appears if you have more than one account with Contacts turned on)
- Select the Gmail/Google account you want all new contacts saved to
- Now any contact you create from your phone — whether from a call, a text, or manually — goes directly to that Google account and syncs everywhere
If you have contacts scattered across two or more Gmail accounts and want them all in one place, here's the quick fix:
- Sign into the Gmail account you want to move contacts from at contacts.google.com
- In the left sidebar, click "Export"
- Select "Contacts" (for all contacts) and choose "Google CSV" format, then click "Export" — a file will download to your computer
- Now sign out and sign into the Gmail account you want to move contacts to
- In the left sidebar, click "Import", select the file you just downloaded, and click "Import"
- Run "Merge & fix" afterward to clean up any duplicates
Once everything is in one account, set that as your default on your phone and turn off contact sync for the other accounts. One source of truth.
- Open the Google Contacts app
- Tap your profile icon → "Contacts settings"
- Make sure contact sync is turned on for your primary Google account
- Go to phone Settings → Accounts → Google → confirm "Contacts" sync is toggled on
- In the Outlook mobile app: Settings → your account → make sure "Save Contacts" is toggled on
- On your desktop, confirm your contacts are syncing through your Microsoft account (not just saved locally)
- If you use Outlook with Exchange at a brokerage, your IT admin may control sync — check with them
- Create a test contact on your phone with a fake name like "Test Sync 123"
- Wait 30 seconds, then check your contacts on your desktop (contacts.google.com for Gmail or outlook.live.com/people for Outlook)
- If "Test Sync 123" appears, your sync is working perfectly
- Delete the test contact from either device — it should disappear from both
Once you confirm sync is working, turn off contact sync for iCloud (iPhone) or Samsung Account (Android). This prevents your phone from maintaining two separate contact lists that constantly get out of sync. One source of truth. That's the goal.
Now that all your contacts are flowing into one place, the last step is to automatically push them into your CRM so you never have to manually enter a lead again. We're going to use Zapier for this — a free tool that connects apps together without any coding.
If the word "automation" makes you nervous — take a breath. Zapier has a built-in AI assistant called Copilot that builds the entire automation for you. You literally describe what you want in plain English, and it sets everything up. No tech skills required.
- Zapier connects two apps so that when something happens in one, something happens automatically in the other — each automation is called a "Zap"
- Every Zap has a trigger (the event that starts it) and an action (what happens next)
- For us: the trigger is "new contact added" and the action is "create that contact in my CRM"
- Zapier integrates with thousands of apps — so no matter which CRM you use, there's almost certainly a connection available
- The free plan is enough for this — you don't need to pay for anything to get started
- Go to zapier.com and create a free account
- Once you're logged in, you'll see a prompt box at the top that says "Describe what you want to automate"
- Gmail users, type: "When a new contact is added to Google Contacts, create or update that contact in [your CRM name]"
- Outlook users, type: "When a new contact is added in Microsoft Outlook, create or update that contact in [your CRM name]"
- Zapier's AI (called Copilot) will automatically build the entire Zap for you — it picks the right apps, selects the correct trigger and action, and even maps your fields
- Copilot will walk you through connecting your accounts — just follow the prompts to sign in
- Review what Copilot built — if anything needs adjusting, type your request in the chat sidebar, like "use Find or Create Contact instead of Create Contact"
- Click "Publish" in the top right corner — that's it, it runs in the background from now on
When Copilot sets up your action step, make sure it's using "Find or Create Contact" rather than just "Create Contact." This tells Zapier to first check if the person already exists in your CRM. If they're there, it updates their info. If not, it creates a new entry. This one detail prevents your CRM from filling up with duplicates.
Tell Copilot: "When a new contact is added to Google Contacts, add a row to a Google Sheet." It'll build that in seconds. It's not a CRM replacement, but it gives you a running log of every new contact with zero effort. Inside the Academy, we help you choose and set up the right CRM for your business.
You can also reverse this — tell Copilot: "When a new contact is created in [my CRM], add them to Google Contacts." Now whether you add someone in your CRM or on your phone, both systems stay perfectly in sync. Automatically.
What you just did in 30 minutes is one system. Inside the CEO Agent Academy, every part of your business — follow-up, content, scheduling, transactions, marketing — runs on systems like this. With AI tools that are already built and waiting for you.
Other programs charge $200–$500/month. This is $97 for the whole year.