PTM 027 – How to Start an Excel Consulting Business with Jen Portland of ExcelRainMan.com

Philip Taylor: We’re live. Hi everyone, I’m here with Jen Portland. And Jen started Excel Rainman, that’s at excelrainman.com, back in May 2008 while working full time. Excel Rainman is a spreadsheet consulting company. So they reach out to people and provide spreadsheet solutions either original or help customize spreadsheets that the businesses are already using. Since launching Excel Rainman, Jen has worked early mornings, lunch hours, evenings and weekends to keep this business moving forward—sounds familiar. She’s proud to say that starting in July 2012 she was able to go part-time at her day job due to business really picking up with Excel Rainman. Now she has plans to take Excel Rainman full time at some point as well, so welcome Jen.

Jen Portland: Thank you.

Philip Taylor: So, let’s get into the first question. I always ask folks— what made you want to start bringing in some part time money?

Jen Portland: Well, I think it was less about wanting to bring in some part-time money than having an idea. I was basically the ‘go-to’ spreadsheet person at all of my jobs. And friends who I didn’t even work with would come to me or family for help with their spreadsheets and I realized, while some people want to learn it, other people really just want you to do their work for them and move on. So I kind of just bought a domain name and went from there—sort of started this is all moonlight. It would be just me, and that would be my little side business. So it was a little less about just bringing in money and more of curiosity and having the idea.

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: Not knowing it would go anywhere.

Philip Taylor: I got you. So was the business—or the job that you had full time at that point, did it involve spreadsheets?

Jen Portland: Yes, it was full time, and I was knee deep in spreadsheets. And basically, even though I had a function at the company, a specific function, I was known as the spreadsheet person so I was all of the sudden helping people in Human Resources, helping people in IT, helping people in Finance in addition to my own job. That’s what made me realize, maybe this is an asset. If I’m willing to— it had me helping so many departments.

Philip Taylor: Right. And what’s the specific role was it, if you don’t mind me asking.

Jen Portland: It was lot of, kind of managing… You know, companies these days have so much data and they know everything they can do with the data, different ways they can be summarized, but it doesn’t mean the person working on it can summarize it quickly. So a lot of the work was just creating reports— reports that could summarize things right away and automate things and alternatively, cleansing the data initially. Sometimes you just get this thing of data or data dump and it’s not ready to be summarized, but we have ways of cleansing data quickly as well, depending on its form.

Philip Taylor: Right. So did you have hopes that maybe— you said you thought you had an asset in your hands here, so what kind of hopes did you have in terms of initially bringing in some revenues for yourself or creating something of value?
Jen Portland: Well, so initially, if you don’t mind me kind of bringing up one thing, I wrote a PR outlet, or this, it’s something called Daily Candy which is a daily newsletter. So I wrote Daily Candy an email pitching my business for them to write about. And I worked very hard on this pitch, and I worked with my husband on it just kind of thinking, it’s a cute, fun business idea. Then I sent it off to them, I just found their email addresses… Sorry my light went off here. So, I found their email addresses and I sent it off and had a really good response and within two weeks they went through— they featured my business in their daily email. Once they did that, I went from two people clicking on my website to 7,000 in one day.

Philip Taylor: Wow!

Jen Portland: So I think was really fortunate that I had this initial push, like, “Alright! This could happen.” Sometimes it just takes a little luck to make you realize this could work. Then I think once I got that, since then, it’s been at the back of my mind, this is going to happen somehow. I’m going to make this happen.

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: Prior to that it was more of like a little like a side project.

Philip Taylor: I got you. What was it inside you or about you that made you switch from “I’m going to work for this company and advance in this company,” versus, “I want to start something on the side that I own that I want to create?”

Jen Portland: I think that was always in my DNA. Technically, I’m the only person in my family that works for the man at all. So I always knew I wanted to go do something on my own. And it was just about doing it responsibly. It’s really hard to leave healthcare when you’re paying student loans, when you’re paying rent. It’s just about doing it the right way, but I always knew I wanted out and to work for myself.

Philip Taylor: Okay. So talk about that timeline from 2008 to 2012. I mentioned in the intro, that at one point you were full time then you switched to part-time. So maybe you can just walk us through the different phases.

Jen Portland: I guess, the initial phase, when I started the business and was full time it was sort of a trying time for me in terms of, I didn’t like my full time job, but it was security for obvious reasons—financial security. And so I had this whole—my whole goal was always to quit my job and to do this full time, but that was not necessarily feasible. The first two years Excel Rainman didn’t do well enough for me to merit that, for starters. And I just wasn’t in the position to go part-time for the company I worked for. That just would never have flown.

Philip Taylor: I got you.

Jen Portland: So the interesting thing that happened was, amidst this—I think it was two years after I started Excel Rainman, I got a job offer elsewhere which— it made me feel very weird accepting it because I though it meant giving up on my business, “I’m taking another full time job, what am I doing?” And, it was very interesting because me taking that job, A, I was much happier. And I found when I was happier because work is 40 plus hours a week. I was less— and I hate to use this word on a podcast, but I was less desperate because I was just happier. It felt like that just allowed the business to move forward a little more comfortably as opposed to me kind of hinging upon every little thing, if that makes any sense.

Philip Taylor: Yeah, yeah.

Jen Portland: Because I woke up in the morning and I felt pretty good about it, going to work, even though Excel Rainman was my dream.

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: In addition to that, me taking on this other job, I was taking a position that I am the only person, other than my boss at the company, that does what I do.

Philip Taylor: Okay.

Jen Portland: Where I was before, 20 other people did what I do. So, me asking to go part-time would not have flown there. They had 19 or 20 other people who could step in and do it, whereas I got myself at my current job in a unique position where they kind of needed me. Going part-time was better than them having nobody. It was kind of an interesting place where I was fortunate to do that.

Philip Taylor: Sound like it was. When did you tell your previous job about your business? And when you interviewed for the second job, did you tell them about the business?

Jen Portland: I did. I told both companies about the business. But first of all, I think having a business on your resume is a good thing. It shows “Wow! This person is a worker.”

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: Though some people could say, “Are they are going to be doing that on their own time?” I was very cautious to never do anything like that on my own time— or on their time, excuse me.

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: So, I did disclose it in a very kind of, “Just in the interest of full disclosure, I want you to know that I am doing this…” And they were kind of like “Okay, whatever. This is probably some little thing you are doing at home. It’s like a blog.” I don’t even know if they took me seriously. But the fact is, at least I went through the motion of doing it the right way and they were totally were fine with it— both companies.

Philip Taylor: I got you.

Jen Portland: So, I would definitely encourage people to do that. I think people don’t think that far past a comment like that.

Philip Taylor: Right. And then this past summer you went part-time. Maybe you can talk to us about the conversation you had with your boss?
Jen Portland: Yes. Actually, it was a very well planned out conversation. Because I wanted to say— I work three days a week for them and I wanted to get across that I could do a great job three days a week without sounding as though they were paying me unnecessarily for two days a week before. So it was basically me saying, “My business is going well and this is my dream. However, I love working here, I love working with you.” So saying, “This is my heart on one side but also I’m very happy on this other side,” I said, “I would really love to go part-time because I want to stay here. And I realize all the hesitations you would have, but let me prove it to you.” It was more of, “What if we just do a trial period whether a month or two or three months. Let me just try and show you that I’ll make this work, and if it doesn’t, obviously you can tell me at anytime and I’m going to do what you say.” You know what I mean? Because they’d either let me go or maybe ask me to come back full time. Then I’d have a decision to make. But she was— my boss was pretty shocked when I told her and the conversation didn’t seem to go well, but I think she went back and thought about it and discussed it with the CEO. In their eyes, it’s better to have me there because— I mean, if they want me to train 20 people, I can train 20 people. But me gone after two weeks, I’m just gone. And they knew I was willing to walk away.

Philip Taylor: So yeah, talk about that. Financially, how were you able to walk away or be comfortable walking away at that point?

Jen Portland: It was— well, Excel Rainman got— I had put sort of a monetary figure on what I think Excel Rainman needed to make for me to feel… If you wait to get to the one figure that’s really amazing, then you kind of waited too long, you know what I mean?

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: That probably would be years away. And having a Monday or Tuesday to do real work would be, that’s going to help your business grow. So, I kind of have this tweener number that I thought, “That will pay the bills at least.”

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: I don’t know if I’ll have any spending money basically, but at least I’ll have all my bills paid.

Philip Taylor: I got you.

Jen Portland: Then I thought if I had a little bit more time during the week, I had a little faith in what I could do pounding the pavement.

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: So it’s not like it was in such a great place where I was going to be raking it in.

Philip Taylor: Yeah, but you wanted it. You wanted it at that point and you knew you wouldn’t fall on your face if the job went away instantly. Like you said, you could cover the basics.

Jen Portland: Yes.

Philip Taylor: With then with the extra time, who knows what you could pour into the business. Being a consultant business means it’s very hourly heavy, so the more time you have, the more billing time you can apply to your clients.

Jen Portland: Exactly.

Philip Taylor: Maybe talk to us about, more about the business itself. What do you actually do for people?

Jen Portland: Okay. So, the bread and butter of what we do is— people have something they are working on in a spreadsheet and they don’t know what they want or they don’t know how to do it themselves. Or, they know how to do it, but the way they are going to do it is maybe going to take some time. So they’ll basically send us their spreadsheet and any comments they have. They can do that via email or they can submit a request on our website. Then we’ll look at it. Often there are a couple of phone calls or some emailing involved that we kind of just iron out, “This is exactly what you want…” And once we do, we send them a quote and the scope of what we plan on doing for their review. If they are okay with the scope and the quote, we just move forward. It’s a pretty simple business model.

Philip Taylor: Very cool. And if you don’t mind sharing, what was your revenue for 2012?

Jen Portland: It was just under a $100,000.

Philip Taylor: Okay, awesome. And you expect big things for this year as well?

Jen Portland: Yeah. It’s funny because I’m actually in a small business kind of training class, or a class that moves your business forward. And it’s easy to double or triple your revenue when you’re making $5,000 in the beginning. And now it looks like, “Oh! I have a little more work to do this year.”

(Both Philip Taylor and Jen Portland laugh)

Philip Taylor: How many spreadsheets has that produced over a year?

Jen Portland: I should be able to answer that. I would say the meat of our business is like 10 clients, but we probably have 30 or 40 smaller clients.

Philip Taylor: I got you.

Jen Portland: So maybe that would answer it, 40 or 50 spreadsheets. But a lot of them are multiple workbooks so it’s probably a lot more than that.

Philip Taylor: I got you. So do you have a suite of spreadsheets people could come purchase from you, or is everything just really customized?

Jen Portland: It’s interesting you mentioned that, because there have been a lot of people asking for stuff like that. At this point we do seasonal templates, which are more— it’s free, most of them are free and it’s to generate buzz, so we’ll do a Superbowl Box Full Template…

Philip Taylor: I saw that, yeah.

Jen Portland: A March Madness Bracket Manager. So if someone can’t do CBS Sports line at work, but they can use Excel—everyone can use Excel at work, so they can use our spreadsheets for that. It’s more been stuff to get people’s attention as opposed to having something to sell on our website. We do have a couple of templates that we sell. Because some of them are less seasonal we’ll feature them free for a few months then sell it for a couple of bucks later. Like, we have a Budget Planning Template and we have a Big Wedding Template, that’s pretty good.

Philip Taylor: I got you.

Jen Portland: We haven’t necessarily done that, but it’s always on the back of our minds to do something like that.

Philip Taylor: I got you. So you mentioned creating a buzz. I like that— throwing out free spreadsheets to create a buzz. So maybe talk about some other marketing that you did to get your product or your services into the hands of customers.

Jen Portland: Actually, talking about the free aspect of it might shed some light as well. The first year we did this football survivor pool, that’s basically— some people call it a suicide pool, but we think survivor sounds a little more sweet, and it’s a pretty cool spreadsheet manager. There aren’t really things out there that help these managers organize the pool. First year we did it, we thought, “No one in the market has this, that we could find online. Let’s sell it for $5 or $10.” I forget what we decided to sell it for. I think it was $5. And a couple of people bought it, right?

Philip Taylor: Okay.

Jen Portland: So the next year I— one of my sub-contractors, Alyssa, created it. She’s kind of our template guru and she’s makes awesome templates. So, the next year I said to her, “Let’s just give it away for free and see how that goes.” And a couple hundred people downloaded it so it kind of made me think people really don’t like giving away a dollar, but if it gets them to download something from our website and we can get a couple hundred people to download it, it just makes a really big difference for us.

Philip Taylor: It’s probably a really impressive spreadsheet. Someone would say, “Wow!” and I’m sure your logo is right there on top or somewhere.

Jen Portland: But people don’t want to pay a buck for it. That’s just the way that it goes.

Philip Taylor: Right. But the impressiveness of it I’m saying, would lead to future business of some sort maybe.

Jen Portland: And it’s also a good kind of, for people who go to our website and wonder, “How do I know that you can actually do this?” It’s a good way for people to actually see, “Okay, they do these crazy things.” So it’s a good way to show our portfolio a little. That makes us credible.

Philip Taylor: Right, I got you. Let’s back up a little. When you said you first started the website, you bought a domain. So why Excel Rainman?

Jen Portland: Well, when people would ask me for help at work, you know, someone would call me the Excel princess, the Excel queen and it had no ring to it, for obvious reasons. Then this guy that I really didn’t like, this old, old man, called me the Excel Rainman.

Philip Taylor: (Laughs).

Jen Portland: And I came home and said, “He called me Rainman.” I feel like that’s kind of a big deal, and now I’m going to do this spreadsheet work for him and not complain about it. So when I bought the domain name that was always on the back of my mind.

Philip Taylor: That’s funny. I like it. So you set up the website. And so how did you generate traffic or get people to the website to be interested in your business?

Jen Portland: Well, our website went through two phases. And, I don’t know if this is a fair stat, but, I guess a lot of times after 3 years it’s good to buy a new computer because after 3 years it’s good to give your website a redo. And the next phase of the website was including a blog. So even though I was sending out a newsletter before, it wasn’t getting anywhere on the website. So I think having the blog for Search Engine Optimization reasons, has made the big difference. Someone could’ve Googled, Football Survivor Pool two years ago, and I don’t know how many times you would have seen Excel Rainman has come up, but now it comes up pretty well because it is literally all over the website. So I think having the blog made a huge difference. Other than that, the content of the website has really stayed the same. You’ve always been able to download the template, always been able to watch video tutorials and stuff like that, or submit a request. But I think that the change of website really helped. And we do Twitter. Truthfully, I don’t do much anything of that as I should.

Philip Taylor: I got you. You said “we” a couple of times now, so obviously you have some staff involved. Maybe you can talk about the progression of hiring people and whether you went contract or employee?

Jen Portland: Yeah, actually the beauty of my business— I’m very fortunate that I only need to pay somebody at this point if money is coming in.

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: That’s how I structured it. So I have four teams of subcontractors who do the work, most of the Excel work. I do some too. But basically, if the work comes in, it’s theirs. It’s a really nice thing because all these people have other jobs or they’re in Graduate School, or they’re these brilliant women who have children and have their PhD’s and just want something for a year or two. So it works really well. I started out with— it was just me and then I got two subcontractors. After that, when the Daily Candy newsletter came out, about 30 people wrote me, interested. A subcontractor didn’t even occur to me. I thought if you had to hire someone you’d have to have salary and benefits and all those things. And then I realized, with the nature of my business, people don’t want to do this full time. They do this for extra money and because they like to brag about how good they are in Excel. They get kicks out of it. So I’m very fortunate that the people that applied, that’s what they want.

Philip Taylor: Right.

Jen Portland: And so I’ve never owed money that I didn’t have, which is very nice.

Philip Taylor: Have they all come to you and applied?

Jen Portland: I just lost you there, sorry.

Philip Taylor: I was saying have they all come to you and applied directly or did you go out and use a service to find anybody?

Jen Portland: It’s a great question. Often people would just write especially now that Google clicks are up more. Initially, there was the Daily Candy, then I started posting on college career sites. Just the ones that are free. And I had decent luck there. I would get a lot of people inquiring, but the thing about it was, they were, when you’re doing it for a college website, most people really want to have a full time job which I’m not able to give them. And even if I could, I don’t think that would be their end-all, full time job that they’d want, so it was hard to keep people around for long. Like, if they got a big investment banking position it’s hard to say, “Hey! Stay with me,” So I did that for a while. I mean, I got a couple of subcontractors that way. My recent luck, fabulous luck, has been through LinkedIn. There’s joining groups that per take your community. If you sell biscuits and you want to find people who cook biscuits, there’s going to be in “Cooking Biscuits Groups” all over LinkedIn. All you have to do is write, “Anyone interested in picking up extra work? Working remotely?” or doing whatever. I mean, hundreds of people will respond.

Philip Taylor: Yeah. And you have a standard contractor contract or agreement that you can just give to them to sign before they get going. Is that how it works?

Jen Portland: Yeah. We have Non-Disclosure, Confidentiality subcontractor agreements and everything.

Philip Taylor: Okay. And talk about the formality of your business from a tax and legal perspective. Did you set up an LLC? Or, what have you done there?

Jen Portland: I’ll do my best to tell you. So we’re in LLC, but for some reason my accountant asked— we’ve become an S-corp this year and I have no clue why. My accountant made me do it. But he said to still tell people I’m on LLC, and I have no clue what’s going on.

Philip Taylor: Yeah. That’s a smart move. Your accountant is a smart guy. I did the same thing.

Jen Portland: Well, that’s good to know.

Philip Taylor: That will save you some payroll taxes, self-employment tax. So, good stuff so far, which is awesome. Just wrapping it up, I have a few more questions. Let’s talk about the balance you’d had to maintain with doing this and still having the part-time, full time job. Maybe talk about how you personally managed your time, I guess.

Jen Portland: Okay. Well, I think learning how, like, what parts of your day you can do what, and how much you can do away from your desk is important. Anything I need to do “desk-worthy” or “laptop-worthy,” I would kind of try to do between 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM which is my “computer crunch time.” And that didn’t mean just answering emails I could on a Blackberry or Smart phone, because I can do Smart phone stuff on my way to work. I can do that at lunch. It was really about organizing my day for when I’m going to be at a computer and when I’m not, or when can I make phone calls and when I can’t. The fact is, I can’t call these people at 5:00 AM so a lot of it had to do with just mapping out my day and how I could use it. If I had to make phone calls, it was always during my lunch hour. But, I don’t have to take my lunch at 12:00. I could take lunch at 2:00. So it’s more about planning the time that I could make these calls and when possible, asking people to plan the call. I do everything I can to plan a call time as opposed to just calling somebody, and I appreciate it when people are willing to do that with me too. Then I can organize around it.

Philip Taylor: Yeah.

Jen Portland: So there’s a lot of that but also really taking advantage of my lunch hour. Many people sit at their lunch or sit at their desk for work. And technically, I can’t speak for everybody because everyone’s job is different, but I could leave my job. And sometimes I would sit there and do my work given it really it is my time. And there’s so much you can get done in an hour. Making emails, making meetings, making calls. Or for me, I would always draft newsletters and do stuff like that at lunch. I’d say the big thing I would recommend when you’re pinching pennies but you still have a full time job, is reward yourself and buy yourself all the technology you need like an iPad or a laptop, a Smart phone. You need that and it lets you run your business no matter where you are. Like, I’ve always paid for the hotspots where I always have internet. I mean, it’s a luxury I have. I don’t have a retail location, so all I have to do is pay for this, like, text stuff. But, having the ability to do anything anywhere makes a big difference.

Philip Taylor: That’s great, that’s good advice. I’m a little bit cheaper than that. I probably pinched too many pennies along the way but that’s good advice. You mentioned that newsletter?

Jen Portland: Yes.

Philip Taylor: Is that part of your marketing strategy?

Jen Portland: Did you say, was that a marketing strategy?

Philip Taylor: Yeah, was that part of your kind of how you market your services.

Jen Portland: Yeah. I would say that was practically the extent of it other than attempting to get PR. Basically, we would send out a newsletter once or twice a month. I didn’t want to send it out so much that that I drove people crazy and that they’d just unsubscribe, so I really try to— whenever I’m sending out newsletter, it has some sort of relevant to the content. I’m not just writing how— “Here I am again.” Every newsletter features some sort of spreadsheet, seasonal spreadsheets, keyboard shortcuts or something relevant. That I would say, is sort of the extent of our marketing strategy. Then in terms of PR, that was sort of a separate thing as well.

Philip Taylor: I got you. So the last two questions I have is, what are some of the keys to your success and what are some of the mistakes you made along the way? Before you talk about the keys to your success, it sounds like the Daily Candy email deal was a big deal. So, for someone out there looking to maybe replicate that, it that something that’s still possible? And how did you get into Daily Candy again?

Jen Portland: Yeah. I’m always saying I’m going to be 70-years-old and still talking about the day I was in Daily Candy. It was a big day for me.

Philip Taylor: Yeah.

Jen Portland: The thing about the Daily Candy is when you write for a PR, when you want to get your business mentioned, put a lot of thought into it. I mean, we took this email that I drafted for them— and my husband who is an excellent writer, I mean, we combed through it, probably for about four days. Wrote it and re-wrote it, because it’s really the power of the pitch. You have to make your pitch relevant to the people you’re writing to. Daily Candy is aimed towards women in their 20s to 40s who are really into fashion and retail. And I don’t want to say it’s crass, but they say funny things and so my pitch to them was kind of talking about how life was so unfair at work. I even put on the page, “OMG! People walk all over me,” and I made it funny to appeal to them. If I was writing Cranes to get a pitch, they don’t want me to say “OMG!” in my pitch. So I think it’s a lot of really putting the thought into it to get the press.

Philip Taylor: I got you.

Jen Portland: I’m all about the template email, speaking of lack of success, when you send that kind of blanket email that 30 other people have seen, people see right through that.

Philip Taylor: Right. I got you. Other successes— or other keys to your success?

Jen Portland: I would say my work ethic has been a big part of it, and sticking with it. Like I said, the first two years we weren’t making very much money, so just sticking with it because I really believed in it. I used to always say, “Celebrating the small victories,” so even if someone said to me on the street or at a cocktail party, “I really love the business name,” that’s like a little victory. Or getting a request or getting mentioned somewhere— just kind of celebrating the small things. And just finding a way to be patient because a lot, especially with my business, I can educate people about what I do, but that doesn’t mean they have work for me for 6 months or a year. It takes time, just getting comfortable with understanding it. It’s going to take time to convert someone into a client.

Philip Taylor: Right. I got you. Good advice. And then finally, any mistakes you made along the way that you can maybe pinpoint for people to watch out as they start their part-time business?

Jen Portland: Yeah. As you can tell, I’m very lucky to be able to work at home. But I’d say if you get— I feel so fortunate that I get to work for part-time, but make those days count. I could busy my day doing other things like picking up the dry cleaning or go to the grocery store or going to a spin class, but the fact is, I worked hard to get to part-time and I want to make Excel Rainman full time. So make that day. Plan it out— every very hour of it. And even if you can’t make meetings all day long plan out what you’re going to do. Get up as early as you normally would and don’t go out the night before. You don’t want to be hung over on your days at home. Save it for the days you’re going to work.

Philip Taylor: (Laughs). I like the strategy.

Jen Portland: Yeah.

Philip Taylor: Right. All right Jen. Thank you so much so being on with me. That was an excellent interview. Your business, your story was perfect for the podcast, so I appreciate you being on with me today and being so generous of your time.

Jen Portland: Thank you Phil! I appreciate it.

Philip Taylor: Alright. Bye-bye.

Jen Portland: Bye.