So yesterday Ji Yun Nam messages me about her new fan club setup and honestly, it sounded messy as hell. She’s juggling spreadsheets, handwritten notes, some random app I never heard of – total chaos. Figured someone gotta help her sort this out without making it rocket science.
First Thing: Scoping the Mess
Grabbed my laptop, fired up video call with her. Made her share screen and walk me through every single fan interaction she does daily. Saw three major headaches:
- Info scattered everywhere – Google Sheets for birthdays, notebook for special requests, random PDFs
- No schedule system – missed three fan gifts last month ’cause she forgot
- Communication black holes – fans DM her on Insta, email, Twitter, carrier pigeon probably
No wonder she looked stressed. Kept muttering “I owe Maria that concert footage from April…” while digging through sticky notes.
The Game Plan
Told her straight: we’re not building NASA here. Need one free/cheap tool that handles 80% of this garbage. Went hunting:
- Tried Notion first – too complicated when setting up birthday alerts
- Looked at Airtable – decent but felt like overkill for just fan tracking
- Random Google search for “simple fan manager app” led me to this thing called Trello (free version!)
Bingo. Cards, lists, due dates – stupid simple. Made her test it live:
Setting Up Trello Boards
Opened Trello on my screen while she mirrored steps on her phone:
- Created “Ji’s Fan Hub” board
- Made columns: New Fans, Birthdays This Month, Special Requests, Sent/Completed
- Dragged first fan card into New Fans – name, social handle, birthday, last gift sent
Then the magic part: showed her Trello’s calendar view. Birthday reminders literally pop up. She gasped when her phone dinged with a test alert – “OH! THIS WORKER!”
Killing The Reply Chaos
Saw her Insta DMs blowing up during call. Couldn’t handle that manually. Found Trello’s email-to-board trick:
- Generated unique Trello email for her Special Requests column
- Set up auto-forwarding from Gmail when fans email special asks
- Made her STOP checking emails – only replies through Trello cards now
Took two tries to make the forwarding work. She almost rage-quit when Gmail settings looked like alien language. Patience is key.
Final Test Drive
Had her simulate real day:
- New fan DM → manually made card in 20 secs
- Calendar notified Maria’s birthday tomorrow → dragged card to “Gift Ready”
- Found missing concert file → attached to Maria’s card directly
She actually laughed. “Why I suffering before?!” Spent next hour batching old requests into Trello while I watched. No fancy plugins – just cards, lists, due dates.
BONUS Fail Moment
Forgot timezones! First birthday reminder blasted her at 2AM our time. Pro tip: always triple-check time settings. Changed calendar view to “Singapore time” solved it.
Took total three hours start to finish. She’s already sent 12 birthday messages this morning without breaking sweat. Moral? Support ain’t about fancy tools – it’s killing chaos with what works. Ji Yun Nam’s fan club now runs on glorified sticky notes. And she’s thrilled.
