Bill Jelen Microsoft Excel book author and Mr. Excel blog joins Excel TV host Rick Grantham and cohosts Microsoft Excel MVPs Jordan Goldmeier Oz du Soleil on Excel TV.
Unfulfilled Promises?
And the Sad Reality of Forgotten Bloggers
There was blog post by Chandoo in 2013 where hundreds of questions were asked of Mr Excel. In Bill Jelen’s defense, Bill states the questions were answered… but in the interest of completeness, Bill played along.
Click Here For The Link to Chandoo’s Post
If There Was Only Time Enough Left On This Earth For One More Spreadsheet, What Would It Be Of?
It would be a spreadsheet learned from a 4 year old. Specifically Mike Girvin’s son (ExcelIsFun Youtube Channel).
- Get 3 columns filled with =RAND()
- Select entire range
- Create 3D Bubble Chart with multiple colors
- Refresh, refresh, refresh
- End The World
If the Number 42 Is The Answer To The Universe, Life and Everything. Then How Can We Make Use Of That In Our Pursuit Of Excel Bliss?
That would have been a great name for book #42. Unfortunately the book has already been written and is being published by a serious publisher that expects serious names to books.
Just In Case You Don’t Get The “42” Reference
What Is The One Function You Would Love To See In Excel That Does Not Currently Exist?
I want VLOOKUP to go left. There are workarounds for this that are included in the book. But a simpler capability to be built within the function is high on Bill’s list.
How Many Marriage Proposals Have You Received?
No Mrs Excel has come out of the works due to his Excel fame. No marriage proposals.
How Many Mr Excel Thongs Have You Sold Through Your Cafe-Press Store?
The story. A woman was complaining that her man was spending way too much time on the Mr Excel Message Board. And she lure him away from the message board using the Mr Excel Thong.
Do You Think Microsoft Will Continue To Support VBA In The Future?
We have another 20 years of VBA Support. Which will get us to the end of Mr Excel’s working life.
Scatterplot, Boxers, or Pie Chart Briefs?
No Comment.
How does one become Mr. Excel? I mean I will avoid Kryptonite and I will eat my Wheaties, but short of all that, what was your path like? How did you grow to this juggernaut in 2000?
You have to be incredibly foolish. You have to live in a really small cave and be cocky. Of the seven people surrounding me at work, I though, I know Excel better than all those people so I’m going to call myself Mr. Excel. I was Mr. Excel at work and somehow the web was early enough that I was able to get that URL. Initially, I asked everyone to send me Excel questions because I’m going to write an Excel book. At that point it was actually a lie. I really I had been working for a company for 10 years and our competitor had just made a hostile takeover bid and they were going to wipe us off the map. I was about to be unemployed so I thought, ‘I have to start this website and if I can get 50 people to send me Excel questions. Then when I get whacked in a couple months, I have 50 places to send my resume to where people are using Excel.’
But then the funniest thing happened, the hostile takeover company was doing their due diligence and they discovered some problems and backed out. So now I have this website and I’m supposed to be answering Excel questions and my job continued for another two years. Those two years were good because it allowed me to get traffic. When that company did come back and buy us two years later, I was able to just hang a shingle and say I’m going to do VBA consulting and VBA Macros. And I did that day after day. But then a marketing lady looked at my numbers and said you have all these people coming to your website and very few of them hire you. If you had an intermediate $20 product, you would be amazed at what would happen. So I wrote the first book, Guerilla Data Analysis Using Microsoft Excel 1st Edition in 2002, offered for $20. And she was right. Within the first 18 months, I was selling more books than consulting. I realized this is not a consulting deal. This is selling books. So what I do is sell Excel books.
I did not want to go to publishers and didn’t want to hear them say they’re not going take a chance on me. I figured out how to publish the book myself. That is Holy Macro! And again it’s all insecurity. I’m selling this book but I wanted to feel like it was a real book. I wanted to be in the trade book called Publishers Weekly. They review books, but I’m a small guy in Akron, Ohio and I don’t think they’re going to review my book. But you can buy an ad next to the reviews and get a picture of your book there. So you feel like you’re a real publisher. I bought that ad. The guy that sold me the ad said you should talk to a distributor. I did and then I got into Borders and Barnes & Noble. So it started to take off. And then once that book did well, Que Publishing came to me and asked me if I would write for them. So I never got the rejection. I just put the books out there. Kind of backwards, but it worked.
Here’s the numbers. If you walk into Barnes and Noble or Books A Million there are 400 different Excel books today. There are 750 million people using Excel. So even if you get one four hundredth of that market it’s still insane. I want 0.0001 of the people using Excel to buy my books and I’ll never have to work again. It’s such a large pool of people. I always talk about Coke and Pepsi and their market share. I don’t care about 53% vs. 47%. It’s a no-brainer.
How do you get to the point where you put yourself out there? Amazon reviews can be vicious.
Here’s the thing about Amazon reviews. Never look at them and then you won’t feel bad. There are people that are going to love your books and people who are going to hate your books. I even beg people not to buy this book on the cover, only one of every 10,000 people will find this book useful.
I guess it is reverse psychology. They want to be the one out of 10,000. That’s the thing about Holy Macro. If you went to a real publisher and said I want to write a book but I’m going to beg people on the back cover not to buy the book, the publisher would never do that. A large publisher spends $56,000 to get a book to market. They’re never going to let you write a book where you plead readers not to buy the book. With Holy Macro, we are small and simple and use moonlighters. We can get a book to market for 1/7 of that.
Looking back at your older books, since you have so many, is there anything in them that you would read now and say that’s not how you should do it?
Absolutely. It always happens. It gets better as the additions go down from the first second to third etc.. And, Oz, let’s compare notes. You do live seminars in Chicago. When I do a seminar, I don’t charge people for the seminar provided they buy books. All I am trying to do is sell books. I tell them upfront, I guarantee today that someone in this room will see me do something in Excel and say there’s a better way to do it. I don’t want you to be shy. I want you to raise your hand and show me up. This is interactive. So when I do those seminars. I’m guaranteed to get two to three new tips. And sometimes you break the record. Like in Oklahoma City I got eight new tips in one day seminar. This is a racket! They fly me there and then I get free Excel tips! And I can put them in the next book. People discover all kinds of weird stuff.
What’s Next?
Do you have a question for Bill? What question have you always wanted to ask? Leave a note in the comments section below.
