Excel enthusiast want to turn it into a career

What's your definition of "VERY good at it"? What sort of things can you/ do you do?

Short answer: yes, it's possible to make a career out of it.

Regards, TMS

I guess you have to ask yourself if "I'm a lot better than the average Joe" is good enough?

What are your weak spots? You don't mention Tables, Charts, Pivot Tables, VBA. Can you, and do you, answer questions on any forum?

And then ask yourself how confident you are about talking to a client, discussing and understanding their requirement, and then converting that requirement into a stable, robust and aesthetically pleasing spreadsheet solution? Documenting it and handing it over for them to take as their own, love it, cherish it, care for it and improve it?

And the other things to think about from a business perspective are: where you will get your customers, promoting (advertising) yourself, tax, public liability insurance, business banking charges, etc.

Got to say, moving from enthusiastic amateur to professional can knock a lot of enthusiasm out of you

For what it's worth, I took voluntary redundancy from a Bank, a couple of years before I was due to retire and then decided to set up as a consultant. Spent a lot of time answering questions on the forum and, so far, got three customers through the forum. Others have come from a business networking club and one from the wife of a long term friend. My first customer, who contacted me through the forum, effectively funded the business set up costs ... and I'm still working with him 18 months later

Regards, and good luck if you decide to go with it.


Regards, TMS

I guess it also depends on what you mean by "professional"....My current "Title" is Inventory Analyst, but I'm really a data miner....I say it like that because I use different "mines" for my data. We use JDE for out Business controls, so I'm mining in Oracle/SQL. We have local or corporate Access DB's and a multitude of other mines. And I consider the internet(Dogpile) and this forum mines, because sometimes I need to mine data out of here ( I don't know everything)....I use excel for just about everything I send out to customers (internal/external). I'm considered the subject matter expert for Microsoft Office on my site. This is my profession, previously I was an IT Manager,Network Engineer, DB Admin, SysAdmin...I think people can make a great living at using excel without being a consultant....that would not be my cup to tea...but TMShucks did a great job of reminding us what is involved in starting/creating/running a business...HTH

I was interpreting this, maybe wrongly:

success turning this skill into a career as opposed to the office excel guru

I guess I thought there was a desire to move out ... but maybe move out to another employer with a career/role change.


Regards, TMS

I see that also...just giving a different perspective....from my perspective I don't see that they need to different....as I re-read the OP I definitely see your point...I can also see that being an office guru in a small company vs a large company is a difference also....thanks for the thoughts....

I'd love to be a self employed Excel consultant. There are several issues for me to overcome though:

- Most companies don't realise the need. Excel is a ubiquitous office tool, most people don't really understand the power / opportunity it has, or appreciate the value of enhancing Excel solutions and / or training.
- As good as I like to think I am with Excel, there are LOADS who are far better. It only takes 15 minutes on this forum to see guys who make it look REALLY easy. It's a humbling experience, at times. The flip side of this one, though, is when some of these guys recognize my solutions as being valuable, then that's a real measure of competence, to me.
- Excel skills alone are not enough. There are many other essential business skills involved in being an independent consultant (in any arena), particularly communication and marketing. I rather suspect the pipe dream of sitting doing cool Excel stuff all day every day never quite pans out that way, and much time is consumed in marketing, negotiating, politicking... etc.

I have been fortunate enough to have a few small commissioned Excel jobs recently. Not enough to consider reliable income, but certainly enough to cover some beers, and keep me persuaded that doing Excel stuff at 9pm on a Friday evening is cooler than watching telly

I guess my game plan is to stick on this forum as much as I can, and when I can reliably and accurately answer the majority of queries posted, then I'll consider myself pretty competent. I learn from here daily.

Beer and Cigarettes? That's substantial

Originally Posted by xladept

Beer and Cigarettes? That's substantial

I quit the smokes 7 months ago! =proud()

@OllyXLS: agree with everything you said. I might have said this before, but I have no expectations of becoming a millionaire any time soon ... but the income is very much worth having.

@Olly - quitting is easy - I've quit a million times

Seriously, I've just dealt with the Open as Read Only nuisance and hope to get a gig from it

Originally Posted by OllyXLS

I quit the smokes 7 months ago! =proud()

Congrats, keep it up!!! I quit a little over a year ago =alsoproud(). Just remember its easier to stay quitted than to re-quit

To add my 2 cents worth to this discussion though. I thought I was good at excel, and was also considered the falcility guru where I worked before (and still am where I work now) Then I joined this forum and saw what a real expert/guru looked like (and I dont just mean member titles)

Formula-wise I have grown in leaps and bounds, but still have miles to go
VBA-wise, I have maybe just let my pinky-toe look at the water, but have not yet let it get wet

It has been said many times, by many of the real experts here, that you cannot know it all when it comes to excel, there is always something to learn - thats what keeps it so fresh and adictive

Sure, you can make a career out of excel.

If you decide to try it out these are some of the folks you'll be competing with for the business:

Bob Phillips
Chip Pearson
Bill Jelen
Ron De Bruin
Jon Peltier
Jan Karel Pieterse
Andy Pope
Charley Kyd

I myself have even considered this but in reality I'm not good enough. I'm good in some aspects of Excel but lacking in others. What I'm good at (formulas) may not be enough to sustain a "consultant" career.

I've considered writing a book or putting together a database of example formulas. I have literally 1000's of examples. I have no idea how one goes about getting a book published!

My background in Excel started in the early 80's working as a chemistry lab technician. We used spreadsheets extensively and this is where I learned most of what I know about Excel through trial and (lots) of error!

@Tony - Check out CreateSpace - it's easy to publish a book there (but I've only sold seven since April 2012) - but the whole thing cost me less than $300.

@xladept...

Thanks, I'll check that out.

Originally Posted by Tony Valko

If you decide to try it out these are some of the folks you'll be competing with for the business:

Bob Phillips
Chip Pearson
Bill Jelen
Ron De Bruin
Jon Peltier
Jan Karel Pieterse
Andy Pope
Charley Kyd

I think unless you decide to start out by targeting Fortune 500 type companies, you're unlikely to be competing with most of those guys!

There are an awful lot of Excel consultant/specialists out there who are, in my opinion, distinctly average at best so if you're aiming at SME clients, I'm pretty sure there's a market - the only issue is getting yourself known to them.

For enterprises (largely excluding banking), I'm always amazed that none of them seem to really make the connection between that fact that almost all their numbers come through Excel at some point, and the need for good Excel developers, or even users. The level of Excel knowledge and lack of real training at pretty much every company I've ever been in is quite startling. So I think that, in addition to offering consulting, offering training services might be a good idea.

Just my tuppence worth.