Terms

"I worked as an accountant for 8 years and employed Microsoft Excel every day for many hours," begins Google Sheets and Apps Script an expert teacher Ben L Collins. "Almost all my work was completed in Excel but I had no knowledge of. I had done some programming, but I'd not done any spreadsheet-related work.

"Pretty very early on in my career I was being asked by my boss me to perform a lot of stuff using Excel"Combine these tables' and I was doing it all by hand!" His boss showed him some formulas that could help save some time and Ben recognized right then that a core skill in any kind of finance-related profession is having the ability to manipulate information.

"The individuals who achieve this feat have a head start over the rest of us, who are just bumbling through," Ben continues. I was thinking, "Right, I need to really gen up with these abilities' so I found a bunch of websites online like mrexcel.com as well as chandoo.org They were doing what I'm doing currently, however in Excel about 15 years ago."

The more Ben was able to look at spreadsheets and formulae, the more enthralled he got: "It was this rabbit hole that was just getting deeper into the depths of darkness." He recognized that a portion of the coding education that he had received in college could be merged with other programming languages for databases including VBA.

In during the duration of his career as a professional accountant, he was actually more enamored in technology and less interested in finance or accounting. "After 8 years of working, I was like, 'I've had enough!'. I wasn't quite sure what my next step was However, one of my initial ideas was to change careers and become an engineer," Ben tells me.

It's yWYQFjXiawUjOZ9y Ben L Collins speaking at an evening event

He attended a few classes, and started applying for positions. "It did not really take off, however, I started my own website and writing posts. Some of the early articles I wrote about Google Sheets and they're those that ended up being noticed by Google Search." This resulted in a variety of requests from clients and paid freelance work.

"In 2014 and 2015 there was just a trickle of inbound traffic asking, "Hey, could you assist me in creating this dashboard using Sheets?' Or "Can you take a look at the spreadsheets of my business and assist me in figuring out ways to improve these formulas? ?'."

The work encompassed Excel, Google Sheets, SQL as well as Tableau. "It was any work really but it was enough of a sign to say"Maybe there's something to be found here. Maybe I can be a freelancer rather than going back to the old job' . I did not intend to go back to accounting!" Ben smiles. "I would like to stay up to develop my skills and technology."

Goodbye accounting, hello education

The education site General Assembly was just a startup and was launching training courses specifically for developers and data analysts. "They were introducing an online data analysis program that was part-time. Because I'd done a course in their class as a participant for one of their developer classes I had a good relationship with the group there. When they introduced the data course and were looking for instructors and it included Excel, SQL and Tableau," Ben continues. "I thought, 'Hey this is exactly my job over the past eight years. !'." Ben went through the process of interviewing and got the job. He taught the course for several iterations during 2015.

"That got me interested in teaching again," Ben recalls. "I'd had a few teaching experiences in the college level as a tutor for youngsters when I was in the final year." He began by adding corporate training to the online offerings, such as selling courses and tutorials. "As I was beginning to gain an audience, in 2017 I figured I'd try my own course and test the waters."

) A course on the Query function in Google Sheets

The class was appreciated very well, enough to convince Ben to offer a third course. "I made use of a website named Teachable as I wanted to have an immediate connection with my students and manage that relationship instead of handing it over to a marketplace like Udemy."

I would do some research and one names that kept popping up was the guy who is the editor of the tech news magazine Stratechery, Ben Thompson. He's known as the OG!" Ben laughs. "I joined a few subscriptions to check out the way other companies like Flowing Data and Craig Mod did this." Ben had been reading their newsletters for years and I was curious about the way they implemented their membership businesses. I thought, "I want mine to look like them.'. I was awed by it was easy to sign up and effortless - I thought"I would like that membership feeling..'

Moving forward sustainably

For context, Ben's membership offering currently consists of premium (or 'gated') content hosted on WordPress and an email newsletter that is sent via email through Kit (formerly ConvertKit). In terms of the content itself, it is centered around Google Sheets and includes information about product features and updates - as well as tips for getting maximum value from the software.

"The following newsletter takes deep dive into the latest features that Google came out with last the year." Ben adds. These are extremely useful features that allow you to alter data. There'll be a demonstration on the subject and a link to the Google Sheet template that people could download for themselves. In addition, there will be a live discussion on the topic. "I use the newsletters to communicate information about the date and time, as well as to share the Google Meet link for the live sessions."

When asked about the future, Ben believes that membership will be the mainstay of his business. "I definitely want to bring more people in because I would like the membership to be the sole product," he says. "I have that model of a library of free content but you also have the option to be a member of the pro version and be a part of my team and access more content."

Playing a game like Chess using Google Sheets

He says that he was able to give consultations and even put ads on his newsletter. However, he is now trying to get away from that: "if I can build an audience large enough, it will be wonderful to let go of the other things. There's some small things to be worked on, but increasing the number of members is crucial. "

He points out that he's got diverse ideas of expanding his offerings. "I've got some ideas at the moment that I could do a better job of sharing these live sessions and we've also got plans to attract members coming in the next calendar year. The service itself will develop. I'm not sure it'll differ from the norm, however, we'll continue to do live things."

The member also states that he would like to find a better way to allow members to discuss information about the kinds of issues they're working on and what they'd like to resolve - "That could be via 'office hours' or a better means for them to send questions" insofar the method is sustainable and valuable way for everyone concerned.

Ben confirms that, at the moment, all the interactions with his audience are done through emails. "I recommend that people reply saying, 'Hey, please let me know the things you're working on' - I like the idea because it's manageable.

He would offer forums conversations and 'cohort courses', working though Google Sheets issues online together as a team. "We did two of them in 2021 while they were all the rage. It worked really well However, it felt extremely intense for the five weeks of the course - it was a 'firehose' of questions. I haven't done this community in the past because I'm wary of once I've switched on the system, it will be impossible to really turn off. I'd like to think it through: how would I do it with a long-term perspective?

"I wasn't even promising live sessions when I first started, as I was thinking, 'Just launch and see how the reaction is. See if I enjoy performing it, before I commit to everything. It's working very well! He seems keen to add live events "They're fun and people really enjoy a lot from them. It will be interesting to see what happens!"

Ben hosting an online session with his participants

"Right now I'm teaching topics that I've chosen and cover it during the live class," he continues. In the course with cohorts, it was more of an open forum: "People would come in to say, 'Hey this is the problem I'm struggling with I'm stuck on this formula', and we'd discuss the problem live. Other people could observe. We'll be looking into this year. It's a great way for people to be involved."

In closing, he thinks there's a possibility that a Q&A forum is definitely a possibility, too but clarifies: "I just want to make sure I can do this in a manner that doesn't overload me." The conversation suggests Ben has already started on the road to building a long and stable friendship with his group. The ability to sustain the relationship is essential to the success of a community membership "Little actions - we'll gradually build up!" he smiles.

Additional information

Ben Collins is an educator, writer, developer and the founder of The Collins School of Data. He creates online courses and blogs about the Google Workspace tools. I focus on data analysis as well as automation, making use of Google Sheets and Apps Script.

Ben L Collins' website

He loves building lightweight and data-driven apps to the Google stack. Some of them include Google Sheets, Looker Studio, Google Apps Script, Forms, Docs, Gmail as well as other. For more information go to benlcollins.com.