Building a $100K Online Business with Low-Code
How n8n Powers a $100K Online Business
Bordr used n8n to integrate all their apps and services, helping them scale their business quickly.
Richard Lo is a "maker, indie entrepreneur" who has been running a web design business with his wife, Kathleen, for the past few years, along with several other indie projects.
In 2020, the couple moved to Portugal, where they founded Bordr, an online business that helps foreigners relocate to Portugal. Initially just a side project, it became a six-figure business in just a few months.
At an n8n community meetup in June, Richard gave a talk titled Delighting customers at scale: Using n8n to power an operations-heavy business, where he shared how he automated processes for Bordr using n8n.
Use Case
While moving to sunny Portugal seemed exciting, Richard and Kathleen also faced an administrative challenge: for a new citizen to obtain a tax number (called NIF - Número de Identificação Fiscal), a Portuguese tax resident needs to apply on their behalf, acting as their tax representative.
However, there wasn't sufficient information available about the process of obtaining a NIF. Moreover, the tax representative bears a certain level of responsibility, so you can't just ask a stranger. As a result, most people turned to Facebook groups for unofficial help and advice.
Richard and Kathleen came up with a solution to this problem: find a local law firm partner who could obtain NIFs for people and manage this process for them. This solution evolved into a profitable online business – named Bordr.
Challenges
To manage customer NIF orders, Bordr uses various services and applications such as Postmark, Paperform, Stripe, and Airtable. As the number of orders grew, they needed a way to automate their work to keep up and even increase productivity.
In short, they needed a workflow automation tool that could integrate all their apps and services and allow them to scale their business.
I use Zapier a bit when I need to... but for everything else, I prefer to use n8n, because it's much more powerful.
Solution
To solve this problem, Bordr considered two workflow automation tools: Zapier and n8n.
"Zapier tries to hide code more than n8n. Zapier is really good if you're doing a few simple steps," Richard explains. However, Bordr's workflows were much more complex and had more steps than what Zapier could handle.
So Bordr chose n8n as the "big piece that connects everything" because it is "much more flexible in terms of maintenance over time. n8n is like a UI on top of APIs."
The n8n workflows that Bordr implemented automate many tasks, such as:
- Adding orders to Airtable
- Sending transactional emails to customers
- Creating tasks for the law firm partner
- Creating Power of Attorney PDFs
- Recording requests sent
- Sending NIF PDFs to customers
The Power of Attorney PDF creation process includes 18 nodes, with two trigger nodes and five core nodes.
The send NIF to customer process includes nine nodes, with one trigger node and four core nodes.
Besides automation, Bordr also provides a self-service feature that allows customers to upload PDF files.
These two elements combined have allowed us to scale our operations without sacrificing the quality of customer service that we want to provide.
Results
After implementing workflow automation with n8n, Bordr witnessed a significant increase in productivity, allowing them to process NIF orders quickly and consistently.
More importantly, workflow automation also helped improve the customer experience. Customers greatly appreciate being notified about the status of their order, especially when it concerns an important immigration requirement like a NIF. Manually sending emails to each customer about their order would be impossible, but integrating Postmark into their workflow helped automate sending transactional emails about each step in the process.
Explore the Power of Low-Code Automation for Your Business
n8n is an open-source automation tool, free to use, and can be self-hosted or run in the cloud. You can check it out now to explore how n8n can help you automate work without any risk.
Here's a simple guide to get started with N8nHosting:
- Visit n8nhosting.app – Open the website to explore hosting options.
- Choose a hosting plan that fits your needs – Select from available hosting plans based on your requirements.
- Complete registration and payment process – Follow simple steps to sign up and pay to get started.
Once done, you'll be ready to host your n8n workflows and start automating!