How to set up Podio

A simple Podio CRM that's ready for your daily marketing tasks

In my opinion, Podio is the best and most flexible CRM for real estate investors. You can get started for free, and when you're ready to automate everything, premium is relatively cheap compared to other, less functional real estate investing CRMs. You just have to set it up yourself, which isn't too hard.

Goals for this article

We'll be building a Podio app that can

Organize our leads

Show us the owner's names and mailing info

Show the property on a Google Map

Set up appropriate categories for extra notes and details

Add phone numbers for easy cold calling

Sign up and create your first app

Create an account here. Confirm your email account, and sign in for the first time. Click through any introduction dialogs.

You should see a page that looks like this:

Click 'Add App', then 'Create your own app'. Add an App Name, like 'Real Estate Investing Leads', and make the Item Name 'Homeowner'. Click 'Create App'.

Setting up your item template

You'll see this page, which is where you'll set up the fields for your new lead items.

Drag and drop the fields from the left over to the right. Set up your fields to look like the image below, and take note of the field categories. For example, the "Property Address" field is a Location field, and the Homeowner Name is a Text field.

Click 'Done' Your Podio is set up with everything you need to keep track of leads, go to appointments, and collaborate with others. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and from this simple template we can add a tremendous amount of functionality. Let's wrap it up by adding an example lead.

Click 'Add Homeowner'

Fill out the fields as you see fit, and click 'Save Homeowner'

That's it! You can add marketing tasks to this item, open it from the Podio app on your phone, make calls directly from the app, and upload appointment photos. In more advanced tutorials, we'll make this template even more functional.