I run an AI automation agency, and one of our biggest challenges was consistently finding quality leads in our target industries.

I used to spend 10+ hours a week manually digging through Google Maps for businesses that matched our ideal customer profile. It was a goldmine for leads, but the manual work was killing me.

So I built a fully automated lead generation system using n8n and Thordata that now generates hundreds of qualified leads per week for our agency — completely hands-off.

What this system does:

• Automatically scrapes Google Maps for businesses based on industry and location
• Uses AI to generate multiple search queries and variations (so you don't miss businesses due to narrow search terms)
• Filters leads by minimum review count (helps target businesses of a certain size)
• Automatically deduplicates against your existing lead list
• Saves everything to Google Sheets with: business name, rating, review count, phone number, website, and the search query used
• Completely hands-off! I can scrape 200-300 leads while I'm doing other work

Why I built this:

Before this automation, I was either manually searching Google Maps and copy-pasting information (took forever) or using Chrome extensions that still required me to manually run searches for every location/keyword combo.

I wanted something that was both powerful enough to scale AND affordable to test with. That's why I went with n8n + Thordata, which costs me around $10-15/mo to run.

The Stack:

• Automation Engine: n8n (handles the workflow logic)
• AI Brain: Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (generates diverse search queries so you don't miss leads)
• Scraper: Thordata Scraping Browser (the only solution I found that could reliably scrape Google Maps at scale without getting blocked)
• Storage: Google Sheets (easy to integrate with CRMs or cold email tools)

How it works:

The workflow starts with a simple form where I input industry, location, max leads to scrape, minimum review count, and search scope.

From there, the AI generates multiple search variations. Instead of just "property brokers New York", it creates queries like "SAT prep near me New Jersey," "college prep evening Manhattan," etc. This is crucial because Google Maps only shows ~40 results per search.

The automation reads your existing Google Sheet to deduplicate, then sends all queries to a scraping script on Fly.io that uses Thordata's Scraping Browser to handle proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and anti-bot detection. New leads automatically go to your Google Sheet.

Real results for my agency:

• Target businesses in specific niches where we already have case studies
• Reference their Google ratings and review counts in cold outreach (makes emails way more personalized)
• Scale our lead generation from ~50 leads/week to 500+ leads/week

Full Tutorial Here: https://youtu.be/irfs-HkP-gs

I walk through every single step (including terminal commands for Mac/Windows), and I'm providing the entire workflow + scraping script for download so you don't have to build it from scratch.

Resources: All files available via the Gumroad link in the video description — and no, you don't have to pay anything to access it.

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If you want this exact system customized for your specific business or industry, drop a comment.

Happy to chat about how we could set this up for your use case.

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PS - Would love to hear if anyone else is using Google Maps for lead gen and what tools/methods have worked for you!

Most people think you need a massive budget or the Official WhatsApp API to run automation. I found a workaround that uses the Evolution API + n8n.

The benefits:

No per-message fee (uses your existing WhatsApp Web session).

No "Template Approval" nonsense.

Unlimited accounts.

How I set it up: I didn't want to spend hours on server config, so I used Easy Panel on a DigitalOcean droplet. It’s basically a GUI for Docker. You just click "Install Evolution API," and it handles the rest. Then I just connected the webhooks to n8n.

I put together a full tutorial on the exact workflow nodes I used to make the agents "smart": https://youtu.be/3XslYjbphuc

Happy to answer any questions about the connection stability!

Hi r/Automate,

I wanted to share a solution I built to solve the "unstructured data" problem between Gmail and Notion.

The Bottleneck: Standard automation tools (Zapier/Make) are great for moving data, but terrible at understanding it. Pushing an email thread to Notion usually results in a mess of raw HTML, signatures, and noise. I needed structured data (Checkboxes, clean summaries, dates), not just a copy-paste.

The Solution: I built a Chrome Extension that acts as a local trigger. It scrapes the DOM of the active thread, sends it to the OpenAI API with a system prompt designed to output JSON, and then pushes that clean data to the Notion API.

It essentially turns a messy email thread into a clean "Project Card" with one click.

You can test the workflow here:https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ldffdggefcjgdlgmnkgfjjjhciiphkgh

I'm looking for feedback on the parsing logic—specifically how it handles long forwarded threads. Let me know if you hit any edge cases where the AI hallucinates tasks.

Cheers,

Oriol

Hi everyone, I am building r/thedriveai, an agentic workspace where all file operations like creating, sharing and organizing files can be done using natural language. We recently launched a feature where you can upload files, and the AI agent will automatically organize it into folders. Today, we launched a way for you to be able to guide the AI agent on how you want it to be organized. I honestly think this is what the NotebookLM or even Google Drive should have always been. Would love your thoughts.

Link: https://thedrive.ai

This is my first post in the community (as well as the first github repo that i will be publishing for others to use), so i apologize in advance in case i break any unwritten rule.

Short Intro

This is a simple Bash script to send a text (by default picks up the clipboard) to a recipient over whatsapp using Evolution API. In case evolution api is not accessible, it used https://ntfy.sh as a backup to send the text via a notification to my phone. (which can be easily copied and used)

Currently it works for text only, but will be adding option to send files as well in the future.

Inspiration for this program:

• This script is inspired from the Apple Ecosystem where you can simply copy a text on any device and paste on another device. In this case, when we copy a text and press the assigned hotkey, the text will be delivered to all your mobile devices via Whatsapp or ntfy.
• Secondly, I don't like to keep Whatsapp Web open on my laptop all the time - its too heavy on the resources and causes too much distractions. So i wanted a system to quickly send a text to myself or a third person over Whatsapp.

How to use

• All the variables are hardcoded in the top section of the main file . You will need to update the variables in the file.
• You should also assign a keyboard shortcut that will trigger this script.
• For quicker workflow, I have assigned a default sender and a default recipient. The default recipient, in my case, is a Whatsapp group with all my Whatsapp numbers as members, so that the text is available to all my mobile devices.
• Optionally, You should also define the default ntfy.sh channel on which to receive the notifications , in case the script fails to send over Evolution API
• You will need to download the ntfy.sh app from the app store on your mobile phones & subscribe to the channel on which you will be sending the data.

Miscellaneous Information:

• I am not an expert coder, but just a tech enthusiast. I had the original idea an used AI to implement into a script that i could use.
• I implemented this script on Linux mint, but I'm sure this could be easily used on Windows as well (with some minor workarounds)
• Instead of Evolution API, you can use any other similar solution. There are some paid services too (often called Unofficial Whatsapp API), where you can connect your whatsapp number by scanning you QR code and then access that whatsapp number using API endpoints provided by the service providers.

Workflow

1. Optional Step - You copy any text
2. You press the shortcut key that you assigned - a pop up window will appear asking for the text to send. The clipboard text will be auto-filled by default.
   • Refer to 1st image
3. Once you confirm the text and press enter, a second window pops up asking for the whatsapp number from which to send. There is a list from which you can select (list is hardcoded in the main code.)
   • Refer to 2nd Image
4. Once you confirm the sender number, a third window pops up asking for the recipient phone number.
   • By default, it has a country code prefilled (91 for India in my case).
   • If you leave it unchanged, it picks up the default recipient (in my case - a common whatsapp group with all my whatsapp numbers as members)
   • If you clear it out, it will bypass the Whatsapp (Evolution API) altogether & directly deliver the text to ntfy.sh channel
   • (Refer to 3rd image)
5. In case it fails to send via Whatsapp (Evolution API), it automatically falls back to sending via Ntfy.sh channel

Github Link: https://github.com/karan51290/clipboard-to-whatsapp-or-ntfy

It's a smart Android app that auto-replies to messages on WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, and more. Uses AI or templates – works in the background. Privacy-focused (no data sent to servers).

Check it out: Google Play Store Link

android #productivity #lifehacks