I wanted this week’s blog post to be a deep dive on n8n and the workflows I’ve built. Surprisingly, I’ve had more luck with these than Make.com, and a lot of people say n8n is much more technical.
I’m sure once I get into the real deep nitty gritty of n8n automations, things will get harder. However, I’ve really enjoyed working with it, getting it running on my own hosted URL, and starting to build something I’ve wanted for ages.
The Credit Card Spend Tracker
I’ve been building a little tool that saves me serious time with our family credit card spending. Here’s what it does:
I upload CSV files from two credit cards (our joint cards). The tool translates those into a JSON file, extracts different columns, does some reformatting, and works with Google Sheets.
It looks at a table of regular transactions. When it sees a supermarket name, it marks it as “food spend.” If there’s nothing in that table, it just says “review.” Then I get a Google Sheets that lets me review only certain transactions rather than all of them.
My wife and I are really into budgeting. We have a food allowance, spending categories for our boys, etc and before this, the process was really manual, boring, and mind-numbing. I found it was actually costing me a lot of time, but I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to do proper budgeting.
This automation changes that completely.
Bottle Bond Progress
This has been a big week for Bottle Bond because I’m loving the momentum. I had my first… I guess I hate using the term “sales call,” but essentially it is. Someone I’d never met before enquired about the service.
The feedback was really good. I’ve identified some common themes from speaking to not only contacts and friends, but this particular individual and a couple of other conversations I’ve had since Wednesday.
The main blocker is the packing and photographing of bottles and all the cataloguing work. So I need to streamline that, and I’ve got some ideas I’ve been working on.
I also got the website GDPR policy and privacy policy sorted. Plus the mailing list setup with Mailerlite, which drove me nuts but I got it working. Really good progress on that side of things.
The Big Transition
Wednesday was my last day of full-time employment. I’m now officially a founder, entrepreneur, solopreneur, freelancer… whatever you want to call it.
I’m really happy and excited about this. This is what I’ve been trying to do and wanted to do for years. I’m excited to have this opportunity.
I’ve been working with a client putting together a proposal, so hopefully we’ll win some work and that will solve my immediate need for cash flow. I’m not going to hide from that reality… bills need paying.
The Money Strategy
I don’t want to take any money from Bottle Bond. I’m putting money into it because I want to make it a great product and service for the long-term future. Bottle Bond is not for immediate income, so I need to get income from somewhere else.
I’m continuing to work with my original employer but in more of a sales agreement. I also want to build out a bit of consultancy to keep me ticking over.
Looking Forward
All in all, it’s been a really good week and quite a contrast from last week. Things have been going well. Whenever there’s a hurdle, it’s just another thing to overcome.
I hope I’m going to find a bit more of a format with these posts where it’s not just me giving a summary of what I’ve been up to, but also something that’s actually useful. A breakdown of the n8n setup, more detail on the struggles with Mailerlite, or what I’ve learnt from the calls on Bottle Bond.
Looking forward to those deeper dives in the future.
This post started as a voice note and was converted to text using AI to maintain consistency and save time. The thoughts, experiences, and business journey are entirely my own.