Education series · Week

Week 8 — Automation flows (n8n + your own site)

TODO: write the hook line here

📹 Video shipping soon

Drafted + scripted. Recording in queue. Subscribe to the Founder Plan to be notified the moment it lands.

What you'll walk away with

A scene-by-scene walkthrough of every beat in the video. Plain English. Real numbers. Real workflow.

The walkthrough

  1. Week 8 — Automation. n8n on your own server.
  2. Zapier charges per task. n8n charges nothing.
  3. Three platforms. Same job. 10x cost spread.
  4. It is the same visual editor everyone learned on Zapier. Yours.
  5. $5 server. Five minutes. Done.
  6. SSH in. Update packages. Install Docker.
  7. One command. Volume mount for data. HTTPS goes in front via Caddy.
  8. Caddy auto-renews TLS. No certbot. No cron jobs.
  9. Live in 10 minutes from a fresh server.
  10. This is the canvas. Trigger on the left, action on the right.
  11. Webhook trigger. n8n gives you a URL. Your form POSTs to it.
  12. Point your form at the n8n URL. Done.
  13. It catches the POST. You see the data.
  14. First node: classify intent locally. Free.
  15. 91% confidence. Local model nailed it. No API call needed.
  16. Confidence threshold. Cloud is the fallback, not the default.
  17. When the local model is unsure, Claude Haiku settles it. 25 cents per million tokens.
  18. Write to your own database. Same SQLite from week 6.
  19. Lead row exists. Yours forever.
  20. Email one. Instant. 'I got your message, I will reply within 24 hours.'
  21. Wait node. n8n holds the workflow for a day. No cron. No queue.
  22. Email two. Day one. A useful link, no pitch.
  23. Three more days. Then the soft pitch.
  24. Email three. Day four. A booking link. One ask.
  25. Error trigger. If anything breaks, you hear about it in Slack within 30 seconds.
  26. Slack alert with the exact node and the input data. Triage in 60 seconds.
  27. Activate. Production URL is live. Form is now wired end to end.
  28. Real form submit. Full chain runs in 4 seconds.
  29. Email one delivered.
  30. Email two delivered. Workflow held the wait for 24 hours, no babysitting.
  31. Export everything to JSON. Commit to git. You own the backup.
  32. Total monthly: $5. Replaces $79+ in Zapier + Calendly Pro + ConvertKit.
  33. Four failures that hit n8n setups in the first month. Save this.
  34. Week 9: smart local-vs-cloud routing. Week 11: alerts before customers notice.
  35. Cut your AI bill 90%. Founder pricing $24/mo locked for life. Code LAUNCH30.

Cut your AI bill 90%+

I built Local Model Dojo so the same kind of bot work that costs $100/mo on the Claude or OpenAI API runs on hardware you already own. Founder pricing locks in for the life of your account.

See Founder pricing → Code LAUNCH30 · 30-day window

← Week 7 — Stripe payments (accepting money online) Week 9 — Using local LLMs to replace API spend →

— Jake Morris · Oklahoma veteran · localmodeldojo.com