Mastering Excel: Skills and Strategies to Boost Efficiency

The Modern CPA Success Show: Episode 129

In this episode of the Modern CPA Success Show, Tom chats with Jeff, a Microsoft MVP Certified Trainer and Founder of Excel University. They discuss the transformative role of Excel in accounting and finance, focusing on enhancing efficiency and streamlining workflows. Jeff shares insights on mastering Excel features like Power Query and pivot tables, emphasizing continuous learning. The episode underscores the importance of Excel proficiency for accountants and promotes Excel University as a valuable resource for ongoing education.

Intro 00:00:00 Welcome to the modern CPA Success Show, the podcast dedicated to helping accounting firms stay ahead of the curve. Our mission is to provide you with the latest and greatest insights on cutting edge tools, innovative marketing strategies, virtual CFO services, and alternative billing methods. Join us as we change the way people think about accounting.

Tom 00:00:22 All right. Hello everyone. Listen to a quick intro for today's. You're going to see Excel. I hope people will stay engaged because there's topics around learning how to build a foundation, how to do things differently using Excel. I had a lot of fun recording this. I hope you enjoy listening to it, but you're going to hear some good practical tips, as well as a kind of story of a career and how Excel was using that. So, I really hope you enjoy listening to Jeff learning. All right. In this episode in the modern CPA Success Show, we're going to get into some really fun things today. I'm your host today, Tom Walton. I am with Summit Virtual CFO by Anders, and I am one of our virtual CFOs.

Tom 00:00:57 So, Jeff is our guest today. We're speaking with him. He is a Microsoft MVP Certified trainer plus the founder and president of Excel University. Jeff's career has taken him through Arthur Andersen, Gateway Computers and Click Consulting all before founding Excel. So, Jeff, welcome to our group.

Jeff 00:01:15 Hey, thanks so much. It's awesome to be here. Good.

Tom 00:01:18 So, with a career and public accounting industry and then consulting, why Excel University?

Jeff 00:01:26 I think that it fits my personality perfectly because I love Excel. It's helped me save so much time over the years. And when I began thinking about Excel, more of like as an employee that I can delegate stuff to, it was able to just help me save so much and incredible amount of time. For example, the monthly clothes used to take two weeks per month and after applying my Excel, you know, efficiencies, I was able to get that down to two days per month. So, I'm like, well, I need to be helping other people do this kind of thing.

Jeff 00:02:02 Like, in other words, I need to help people understand how to really leverage the power of Excel to streamline their monthly recurring projects. And that's really was the genesis for Excel University and the whole Excel training that I'm doing.

Tom 00:02:16 And I'm not surprised, sounds like very much a combination of Excel and skills, but then probably organizational thinking and creativity around how could I use it? Not just, okay, there are these functions that that they work.

Jeff 00:02:27 Yeah, it was really focusing on like the recurring use kinds of projects. And so yeah, it was a combination of improving my Excel skills, but also of just a continuous improvement process. So, setting up certain worksheets within every workbook to optimize them for efficiency and accuracy, documenting the manual steps, figuring out which Excel feature could automate like that step. And so it was very like this iterative process that took, I don't know, 6 to 12 months to get everything dialed in. Yeah. But, you know, after the first month you save, let's say, an hour.

Jeff 00:03:04 Well, don't just waste that hour. You reinvest that into making the workbooks more efficient, and then it becomes this big efficiency snowball.

Tom 00:03:12 Okay. Interesting. Okay, let me test a theory here and I'll relate. Just a quick story. When my son was either 16 or 17, I took him to a defensive driving class. And it was a cool program where they actually got in cars and tested out and got things spinning and stuff and learned how to control it. Right before the class, they took a survey, and it included, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a driver are you? And right as they opened the class with 20 kids, they said, okay, of all you guys, the average was like eight out of ten. He's like, so you've had your licenses for like six months to a year and you're like, here. And like Jeff Gordon, racecar drivers that are pros that are at a ten or like barely above you. And it was a good example of people over thinking how they are.

Tom 00:03:52 So, my guess is this is my theory. CPAs probably would say I'm in Excel all the time. I'm really, really good at it. What's your experience with Excel University for that potential gap between where we think we are and what we could be doing?

Jeff 00:04:06 Yeah. You know, the truth is Excel is just like this big place. And I'm learning stuff about it all the time. Some common evaluation feedback forms that I get are, oh my gosh, I've been using Excel for 20 years. Like I had no idea that I could do this stuff with Excel. And so, as accountants we end up falling into the dilly. Do it like last year. Trap.

Tom 00:04:31 Oh, interesting. You know.

Jeff 00:04:33 So, it's kind of like we're on this time pressure prompted like deadline. And so we're more focused with just I just got to get it done. Not like how do I get it done. And so we come to the end of the month. We have all this stuff to do. We just do it like last year

Jeff 00:04:50 We just do it like last month. Not really improving it or figuring out how to do it more efficiently. So, we just keep on this like cycle, and we have all this stress, you know, every month, quarter, year, whatever the cycle is. and so, I feel like that's kind of a common pitfall for people. We don't spend the time learning new things to really invest in making our workbooks more efficient.

Tom 00:05:15 I'm curious what the initial what you've got me thinking of. And maybe you're familiar with this. I think it's Jeff. McEwan has written the book essentialism and then also effortless, but this idea of one of his questions is more like, okay, if this was simple, how would I approach? This is kind of a teaser question, like, okay, is there an easier way if I'm looking at something that's hard, is there something in Excel? Because I often probably look at my own sheets and say, I can probably make it a little bit better, but I don't think I can go two weeks to two days.

Tom 00:05:45 Like you said, is there kind of a mindset that you suggest we people look at so they don't just say, I'm just going to do it like last year.

Jeff 00:05:53 Yeah for sure. The, the, the, the mindset that I adopted, which took a while, was basically instead of asking if asking how. So, here's an example. Okay, I open up this workbook and I'm like, I want to automate this one thing. Maybe it's this one input cell. I want to turn it into a formula so I don't have to, you know, enter it. So, I'm like, I wonder if Excel could do this. And then after some time and experimentation, I figured out, oh yeah, it can do this. And then next month I'm like, oh, I wonder if Excel can do this. Turns out it can. I wonder if it can do this. It can. So, then I changed this whole perception. I'm like, I'm not going to ask if Excel can do it.

Jeff 00:06:34 I'm going to assume going into it that it can. It's just up to me to figure out how to get that done. So, my mindset shifted to how do I get Excel to do this?

Tom 00:06:45 Interesting, I like that. Are you surprised when you like searching for how does Excel do this? How relevant, how easy it is to find answers. You know, how can I make Excel do X? And I've always been surprised how good some of the examples and things are. People saying here's exactly how you do that.

Jeff 00:07:00 Yeah. And you know, with the forums and things that it's been great, but with AI it's even more direct and faster. So, you know, you go to ChatGPT or copilot and you're like, how do I get Excel to whatever? And then I'm getting sample code. If I if I'm asking you about a macro, it writes VBA code, I can just copy paste that into the Visual Basic editor. It's writing formulas that I can copy, paste and modify for the references.

Jeff 00:07:29 It's providing guidance on really specific things, even if I'm just trying to learn. Like sometimes I open up a workbook that I didn't create and I am just updating it because maybe someone's on vacation or inherited it. And I come across this formula like, I've never seen this like index and match combination. Like I don't know what that's doing. Copy pasted to GPT. Hey, explain this formula. And then it breaks down every function, every function argument. And so, it's like this. Yeah. So that's really been revolutionary for really speeding your learning in Excel.

Tom 00:08:03 You're giving me some really good ideas. I think of even my own formulas I end up being proud of. But it's you know; it ends up being a complicated formula. And if something's wrong, you go back and look at it and you're like, what was I even trying to do with it? Maybe it looks beautiful because it's so darn complicated, but now I can't modify it. So that kind of thing would be a really interesting.

Jeff 00:08:22 Yeah.

Jeff 00:08:23 It's kind of like, maybe you update this annual budget and you only update it once a year, and you just got in this Excel zone and your mind was clear, and you're in this flow state, and you made this big mega formula and it works and you're like, awesome. Now a year goes by, you're like, what was I thinking? What does this even do? So, it can help with stuff like that. Okay.

Tom 00:08:46 Oh that's great. Yeah. So, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how people experience Excel University. Right. Because you've given tips and maybe people think, okay, I could probably get a little better Excel check AI and things like that, but you offer something different than that if someone's really trying to get better. So, tell us a little bit about that.

Jeff 00:09:02 Sure. So, whereas like Google search or web search or YouTube or AI is really good at answering like one specific, very narrow question. My course, my program is more broad is like teaching this body of knowledge.

Jeff 00:09:18 And so I went through, and I figured out exactly the right order to introduce which feature and function, because it's all like built on these dependencies. Like I can't really teach pivot tables until they know about tables. And so, it sets up all these dependencies. So, nothing is confusing or nothing is new in terms of, a surprise, like it's all just laid out in a sequential, sequential order. Okay, so the format for the courses is on demand lecture videos. And it took me about one year per course. So there's six courses. So, it took me about six years to put all these together. So there's lecture videos that teach all the Excel topics. Then there's hands on exercises. Those are really important to do because it's easy to watch a video and go, I got that. But then to actually like do the exercise, that's where the learning is, is most effective. Yeah. And then of course quizzes, all the required quizzes, exams, all those things and, and then certificates completion and then I marry that to, live study halls and office hours because I used to teach Excel exclusively in person.

Jeff 00:10:30 And I've done hundreds of live sessions all over the country. This is back when continuing education was earned through like live eight-hour courses. Yes. Like on site not.

Tom 00:10:41 Long ago, right? Yes.

Jeff 00:10:42 Yeah, exactly. And so, I've taught hundreds of these live all day Excel classes. And then I would get two common complaints. Hey, Jeff, you're going too fast. Hey, Jeff, you're going too slow. Let's. Because in Excel, everyone comes with a different level of experience. Right. And I already know that. So, let's speed it up. And hey, Jeff, I've never seen that. Can you. Okay, so the way that I've solved for that is through these the on-demand format, which is all prerecorded lessons with videos. and then though when you put this into on demand and you take it out of a live classroom field and students lose this interaction with the instructor. So, the way that I solve for that is through live office hours over zoom, where students are free to ask any questions about the classes or just any Excel questions, share their desktop.

Jeff 00:11:27 Hey Jeff, I'm working on this. You know, depreciation schedule. Which function should I use here. And so, I'm able to provide the support that they need. So that's the overall format of the programs okay.

Tom 00:11:37 That sounds great. And I heard you mentioned Naspa. So obviously continuing education credits is a part of what people are going through and doing.

Jeff 00:11:44 Correct. So, our big program is offers up to 124 CPE and it's about four bucks a credit.

Tom 00:11:52 Okay. That sounds great. How much of the focus is around sort of the presentation of it that someone might. I do a fair amount of sharing things with clients on a screen. I do all remote kinds of work. How much of it folks is on. Here's how to make it sort of presentable and easy to understand, as opposed to here's how to make it function if you're a building a month enclosed schedule.

Jeff 00:12:11 Yeah. So, it's a good percentage of both. And so I teach, you know, proficiency, which is going to be the functions that I'm using.

Jeff 00:12:19 So do I use some ifs. Do I use Vlookup. Do I use Xlookup. Like how do we get them to be automated. I also then heavily focus on how we improve accuracy. So, I have a dedicated er check sheet and all these other things that help us make sure that everything is, is accurate. And then on the presentation side. So, I took my cues from Steven Few, and he's written several great books on, presenting financial information in a graphical way. And so while I was always very comfortable showing like table kind of reports like PNL, balance sheet, pivot table, those I was not as comfortable of, hey, if I want to do a chart like which chart type should I use line or bar and what color should I use and what should I put on the chart like? I was not very comfortable with that, but after going through Steven's Fuse books, I, I was much more comfortable. So, I'm like, hey Stephen, I want to do a course that teaches what you teach.

Jeff 00:13:20 And so is that cool? He's like, that's totally cool. And so, like, my master's courses really use his principles. But then I actually show how to execute his concepts. But within Excel, I like that.

Tom 00:13:33 That's great.

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Tom 00:14:16 I'm not sure if you'd agree with this or not, but as far as charting an Excel, I've often said I think it takes a very short time to get the chart close to what you want, and then a huge amount of time to get it exactly what you want.

Tom 00:14:27 You get to that like 80%, like it's a pie chart. It's sort of there. But man, to get the titles and everything right to where it's presentable just feels like it would take forever. I think some of that training for me, I actually I should ask, do you agree with that? Do you think some of the formatting can be a complicated part?

Jeff 00:14:43 Oh, absolutely, 100%. But that's why what I teach in the class and what this really effective for is these recurring projects. So instead of creating a chart every month, what I show is how do you set up the workbooks so that you can just refresh the data at the front end and everything updates all the way through. So you're no longer building all these charts from scratch. You're kind of reusing this, this process that we teach and to to just refresh with new data.

Tom 00:15:13 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Are there certain kind of Excel functions that you're like, I think every accountant would benefit from a few different things.

Tom 00:15:23 What are the what are the kind of key things that you think of.

Jeff 00:15:25 Yeah. So I kind of feel like in terms of functions, I would think some ifs that's Sumifs is like definitely clutch for anyone working in finance or accounting. Sure. pivot tables of course, are going to be very important, but the one that I think people, aren't as familiar with right now is Power Query. And and it's so important to really learn that tool because it replaces the old workflow that we've, you know, that our manager did and maybe our managers manager before that, which is we export something from some system. We open up that CSV file, we select the range. Hopefully we get all of it. We do a copy, we flip to our workbook, we paste. Hopefully we don't delete anything that we pasted into. And then we delete all the columns we don't need. Then we remove the rows we don't need, and then we add the calculated columns. And then we do all these manual steps.

Jeff 00:16:23 And then we finally use the workbook to do what we want to do. Maybe we just update a pivot table. Power query automates that whole thing from going to the external data source, pulling it in, cleaning it up on its way in so that by the time it lands in Excel, it is ready for its next step. So, we can just refresh. And so, before Power Query, that used to be either manual or this complicated like VBA macro code. And so, Power Query really facilitates that whole flow. And so that would be a tool if you're listing right now that I would highly encourage you to check out.

Tom 00:16:59 Okay. And for me personally that's one that I have not used. And you're describing a huge amount of what I do. And usually with clients, a very frequent thing is it feels like as soon as you're done doing that, what you hear is, hey, we just refresh. Can you, like, update it? Yeah. And sometimes right before the meeting where you're like, no, this is not click a button to refresh.

Tom 00:17:18 It takes me I think I'm efficient, but I've got, you know, 15 minutes of pulling that in and getting everything I want. And like you said, checking in all that kind of stuff so I can see the value of that.

Jeff 00:17:28 Yes. And it's designed. The beautiful thing is it's designed for recurring processes. So once you set up, like the rules for how do you clean up this particular data set, it remembers those rules and just repeats them, like, instantly. So they give you another trial balance where they did a prior period adjustment that would normally take a lot of time to flow that through all of your reports. Now it's just a single click refresh and you're done. So that's something.

Tom 00:17:54 Of the value of some of that. Even in the meeting where they may say a lot of our clients use HubSpot for their sales data. So, it could be a case where on the fly they're saying, I just changed. And you can say, good, then let's just click refresh and have that get updated.

Jeff 00:18:07 So yes, it's so satisfying.

Tom 00:18:09 Yes, I agree and give them, you know, our we do some live dashboarding stuff and they love that. And anytime it has to step over into a different system, you've automatically kind of captured it in time and said here's where we're going. Yes. With that. Oh that's great.

Jeff 00:18:25 Very cool.

Tom 00:18:26 I wonder if you get this. So,I'm going to take you back. A long time ago, I was fortunate to be in the audience, like around 1990, when Steve Jobs was with Next Computers and giving a speech, and he asked the crowd, what do you think? I don't think you use this particular term, the tipping point for when personal computers completely took off, what was like the application, and people had a couple different things, but he came back and said in his mind, the spreadsheet was the one thing that when people saw how that worked, it was like, oh, I can envision all the different ways and now need this thing sitting on my desk where I can actually do things.

Tom 00:19:01 I think Lotus one, two, three was the big first one that came out, but he was like so many people did these kind of on paper, like this grid, like thinking, I'm not sure if you've ever heard that, but it's one that's stuck with me for a long time. Like, I can see that there was, you know, okay, can you replace a typewriter with a computer? And that's kind of cool, but probably doesn't have me spend the money they spent. But spreadsheets was the big thing.

Jeff 00:19:22 That's interesting. I remember I was working at the computer store. When that whole thing with Steve Jobs went down and we got some next computers in. And so, I was really curious about those, but I actually remember being just fascinating, fascinated with spreadsheets, even like in junior high school and just sitting down and being like, wow. Like if you change a value here, if you write the right formula over here, like it will just update. Like, this was so incredible.

Jeff 00:19:51 Yeah. And so, I've just been following this like literally since I was, you know, 15 or whatever. And, and it's been interesting to see where they are now because now Microsoft is still investing so heavily in all kinds of new features that we're getting updates like monthly with all kinds of cool new stuff. So, it's definitely still an active investment and development product from Microsoft.

Tom 00:20:17 Yeah. It is truly amazing what it can do. And I mentioned before we started the show that I read one time about the number of people who just use a very few number of functions in Microsoft, and it does seem so easy to learn new things, either through your course or like I said, it's really many people do quick YouTube videos and just say, okay, here's how this thing works. And it's pretty cool.

Jeff 00:20:38 Yeah, and those are great for finding really specific issues and problems. and so yeah, if you haven't, you know, I have a YouTube channel. And so, if any listeners are wanting to get, I usually post about a 3 to 5 minute video once a week.

Jeff 00:20:53 Oh, so they can always actually check out, Excel university.com/tips. And there's more information right there for that. Then get on to the monthly or the weekly newsletter which will send them the latest YouTube video. Okay.

Tom 00:21:06 But I think you made a good point. That is very sort of pinpoint that I already know. Like is there a function that can do this that's different than taking a course that says, let me just sort of level you up from I use Excel, but here's a totally different way to even think about that problem versus I know what I want to try to get done for sure.

Jeff 00:21:24 And I hear feedback like that a lot. Like I would have never known to search Google for Power Query because I didn't even know it was a thing. Yes. So, like they might search for Vlookup, but little do they know Xlookup is a better, but they just heard about Vlookup. So, like oh let me how do I do Vlookup here? And so Xlookup is a better option. But if you don't know what you don't know, you don't know to search for it.

Jeff 00:21:48 And so I get that kind of feedback a lot about my my programs.

Tom 00:21:52 Okay. I don't know if Xlookup what's the benefit of actual lookup. And I won't spend too much time, but I'll admit that I'm not the expert I thought I was.

Jeff 00:22:00 Yeah, Xlookup replaces Vlookup and so it's a lot more resilient, meaning it's not as error prone. Like if we insert a new column in between the that used to break Vlookup, it doesn't break xlookup. Okay. and so, it's just a more modern, updated version of that function.

Tom 00:22:17 Okay, I like that. Yes, I have that problem all the time that you move in. Okay. All these references of its column five all break on you. Yes. They're in there. Yeah.

Jeff 00:22:26 So no longer with Xlookup.

Tom 00:22:28 I'm going to be changing all of my things just so, so soon to do that. Oh so people in Excel University CPAs make up a large portion of that. Or I assume that you're getting people from all careers that are coming in there.

Tom 00:22:42 Yes.

Jeff 00:22:43 Yeah. I get people from all careers. I do have a heavy like, audience or student base of accounting, finance and CPAs because we offer CPE credit. But I have other courses that teach similar topics, but they're not available for CPA credit. So, you can save a little, you know, the registration fee is lower. but another big area that I have is professors or accounting professors from colleges around the country want or they know that excel skills are lacking, And they know that if they can get their seniors to have better Excel skills, they'll have better chances in their interviews and also better opportunities. You know, as a new hire. And so they'll basically assign my course to their students because they're not comfortable teaching the Excel part, but they know it's important. So those professors will contact me. We have special edu pricing for that. And then they can get their kids, their students enrolled in in my class. And so, the feedback I've heard from that is awesome.

Jeff 00:23:49 It's like, Jeff, there's so much more confident when they're going into their interviews and when they're asked Excel questions. And the interviewer goes, hey, do you know Vlookup? They'll say, of course I do. Do you know Xlookup? And it like blows their mind.

Tom 00:24:01 I love it

Jeff 00:24:02 So, they just have better chances of being hired. And then once they're hired, they stand so far above their peers and so they're able to be really productive from day one. So, it's been great.

Tom 00:24:13 That's great. Yeah. Do you think a lot? My impression would be many college students probably think they're not going to use Excel that much, because they're going to get promoted so quickly that they're going to move beyond that. Right? I think of all the kids in management school thinking, I'm going to come out and manage people. Do you find that that's the people sort of underestimate how much they'll use it?

Jeff 00:24:33 I think, what they underestimate is how big of a place Excel is. And, and this, you know, kids who are seniors and, you know, in college right now, they grew up with technology and phones and iPads and all these other things.

Jeff 00:24:49 So, they just assume everything I see, I can click on and then, you know, I've got it. So, they just underestimate like the depth of Excel.

Tom 00:24:59 Okay. I can see that. Yeah, I'm I continue to be surprised how much I use. And I do a lot of advising with clients, but just such an easy way to present things and even just in a meeting today, and this is a very simple example, but I was a client who said he's paying a few people over time to clean the manufacturing floor, and he wants to hire some full time people that it's not overtime, it's during their role. So, could I replace those? And I thought, we're just going to do a simple model and say, how many are you thinking and how much would you pay them? And to do that, that he and I can walk through. But it's just a really easy Excel example to then say, here's a couple variables that you can put in, and let's just figure out what the best solution is.

Tom 00:25:35 So, it's one that I'm in quite a bit. And there are days where after tons of client meetings, I like being in, is there sort of a fun puzzle with an Excel spreadsheet where you're like, okay, sometimes this is my good introvert time to sit. And yes, that kind of thing.

Jeff 00:25:48 I 100% agree. I'm also an introvert and I find that my mind works really well at like problem solving and math more so than memorizing facts. So, I did better in like math then like history where you just have to memorize all these facts. And so, it's like this puzzle. And when you get in and figure out this formula and it finally works, it's just so satisfying.

Tom 00:26:11 Yeah, I agree. What about is you think of Google Sheets, which has gotten to be popular with our clients, and there's a nice collaborative function with that. What about that versus Excel sharing documents? Any advice or tips on kind of where you land on those two?

Jeff 00:26:27 Yeah, I use both Google Sheets and Excel like every day.

Jeff 00:26:31 I think they're both amazing products. And for the collaborative type of work, I feel like Google Sheets has just a simpler licensing and like access kind of a thing. So, they're easier to share in my opinion. And so, I tend to use, Google Sheets a lot for, for collaborative and internal kinds of things. the good news is a lot of the functions that are in Excel are also in Google Sheets. So, if you learn one, a lot of the skills are transferable. But honestly Google Sheets have has some functions and things that Excel doesn't have. But Excel has a lot of things that Google Sheets doesn't have, you know, Power Query being one of those.

Tom 00:27:11 Yeah, I would agree with you. And for my experience working with clients outside of our organization, Google Sheet seems a little bit easier to have a collaborative document. Things inside the company. Excel seems to work fine to say, yep, everyone can share and see what's going on, but we've had a little bit more trouble when you try to put Excel.

Tom 00:27:29 So, there's sort of a where do you put it in some of the permissions. And so it just seems easier if you're going to be outside the company to say, this is an easier thing to share with you.

Jeff 00:27:36 That's consistent with what I've discovered as well.

Tom 00:27:39 Yeah, but that's a fairly common thing that we will do is coming into a forecast of, okay, here's the sheet for client you to get updated by today. And then I'll go in and grab the numbers and we'll go ahead and take a look at that kind of stuff. And that seems to be a really good solution to that. Yeah. Google also makes it pretty easy to find things that have been shared with you that when you get a bunch of these, sometimes it's hard to go back and say, where was that when your multiple clients and multiple locations?

Jeff 00:28:04 Yeah. And I don't know about you, but I feel like I have so many different logins to the Microsoft world. Yeah. And so just it's my own fault, but just keeping track of what document was in what account and under what login.

Jeff 00:28:18 And it just kind of gets confusing. So, anyway, I found with my one Google Sheets account, it's just kind of simplified.

Tom 00:28:25 Yeah. Yeah, that is nice. Well a little non Excel piece. So, your gateway computers was intriguing to me. And so, we overlap a little bit in this. So, around 1993 I worked for a company that had a electrical contracting firm in Sioux City Iowa. Gateway computers was maybe ten years old, probably a little bit younger than at that time. And so, it was fun to watch them and the impact on the city and things like that. I'm curious about your experience, because you were there a little bit later than that, and were you actually in Sioux City working with them?

Jeff 00:28:56 Yeah, it was in Sioux City. My wife and I moved out there from California, and so that was a whole, you know, seen moving to the Midwest. But yeah, we loved it there. we just loved the elbow room and the just the pace of life and things like that.

Jeff 00:29:09 And, and so that kind of thing was a great, a great experience. But yeah. Gateway was a city within the city.

Tom 00:29:16 Yeah.

Jeff 00:29:17 And, and they were growing. It was, it was, really something to be a part of that whole of that whole time period within, within Gateway's kind of life cycle, I bet.

Tom 00:29:28 And this you mentioned growing. I think it happened three different times where they were building a building and we were doing all the electrical work, and when the building would be about halfway done, they would say, okay, we've already outgrown what we thought. And if I remember the stories right, this was going to be the building that for the next five years was going to house the team. And like it's half done. They're like, okay, that's not big enough, let's do it. And just kept happening over and over. And we would joke like, why don't you build like five times as big as what you're thinking? Because you keep doing this.

Tom 00:29:56 It was exciting. and just a lot of things for them had to be done really quickly that, you know, we've got important. I remember one, one story where I think they had a board meeting in one of the new buildings, and my boss actually took all the nice lighting, appliances or things out of his own office. And so, he's stuck with like, these hanging wires and things. But in gateway it looked really nice, but there was like, it's an empty building, but tomorrow it's going to look like a nice conference room. And that included some cool projectors and lighting and things like that. Yeah.

Jeff 00:30:26 Oh that's funny. And I you know, I remember too, the cow spotted computer boxes. Yes. You know, it's my grandpa. He was the first one in our family to buy a gateway computer. And he was big on that. So, you know, we bought one. And so we were like I was a fan personally before I applied. And then you show up in their whole buildings at Kawasaki Spotted Vibe.

Jeff 00:30:47 And so it was it was.

Tom 00:30:48 A great brand. I mean, I think it was real. They had some really good commercials and there was a very Midwestern feel for it. And then they had the stores that were cool. Also, kind of the warning when Apple then saying these computer stores don't work and it didn't really work for gateway, but so they were still booming when you were there, right? I think you were there in 97. They were still doing really well.

Jeff 00:31:08 They were still cranking. and I remember the gateway stores that was kind of rolling out and actually that was like one of the first places where I really started doing Excel training was for a Gateway Country store. Okay. And so it was kind of just really basic Excel training. But I really loved it and it was fun helping people then. So, from there I went to, you know, state society, Cal CPA, saying, hey, I'd love to do an Excel class for you guys. And so that started in AICPA and I got in there and it just kind of grew from there.

Jeff 00:31:44 But yeah, gateway was really like one of the start. The first classes I taught was at gateway.

Tom 00:31:49 That's great. And so were you. You were in the stores, I mean, teaching to consumers how to use gateway or how to use Excel in those. Yes.

Jeff 00:31:57 And so they had, you know, at the stores, they would do, you know, of course, trying to sell Systems, but also they would have these training centers. And so, they would have, I didn't like, write the courses like I do now. I was just teaching like courses that had been pre-written, but there was courses on all different kinds of topics. But I really focused mostly on the Excel courses. And so that was fun.

Tom 00:32:20 That's great. I didn't know that they did the education. That's very similar to a lot of the Apple stores that they Apple probably wouldn't say they did, but that's a that looks a lot like what their model kind of is in the Apple Stores.

Jeff 00:32:32 Yeah. Well, just I don't know if it was just like ahead of the time before it was acceptable or what went on there.

Jeff 00:32:38 But yeah. Yeah, I think it was a really smart idea. Just get closer to the consumers. Yeah.

Tom 00:32:43 Yeah. That's true. So, in each of your jobs I assume from Anders and then also click consulting, I assume Excel was a big part of what you're doing. Is that true?

Jeff 00:32:53 It is. And so, like each step in the journey kind of taught me additional things that all really enabled Excel University to be like what it is today. But like at Anderson, it was.

Jeff 00:33:08 I don't.

Jeff 00:33:08 Know if you but we had physical columnar paper in our physical like paper work papers. And so, anything you do in Excel you do it. But then you'd have to print it out and like, tape it into the work paper and label it like C1 for inventory, you know, and that kind of thing. But that was, you know, continuing to build those skills. And then on it in report, where I was the accounting manager, that was really figuring out how to dial in like a monthly closing process, getting it from two weeks to two days.

Jeff 00:33:38 And so every kind of role helped reinforce what I was doing. And then it clicked consulting. I was doing a lot of teaching. And so that really kind of helped me build my teaching skills because it's one thing to know how to use Excel, but it's a completely different skill set to know how to teach it. And so, through those hundreds of live sessions, I really got to learn exactly how to teach it in the right order. And so, then that led to being able to do Excel University with all the on demand courses.

Tom 00:34:07 Okay, okay. Yeah, sounds like a really good progression of things that you would do.

Jeff 00:34:11 It kind of worked out. It's kind of funny because you know, you don't know what doors open or close, and at the time of doors close your kind of frustrated. But then another door opens and you go through it and you never know, like, what leads to what?

Tom 00:34:24 Sure. Yeah. I'm not surprised by that. How much of your time are you actually in Excel doing things then, versus developing course content? It sounds like you're still pretty active thinking of, okay, this is actually something I'm using that I'm going to make better.

Jeff 00:34:38 Yeah, I would say I have Excel open like 24 over seven on my system. So, I'm in it every day. most of it now though is let's figure out, how to how to communicate the new features that are coming out and how to promote the ones that I think are going to be the most useful to my audience, you know, accounting, finance people. and then and then some of like sort of the YouTube training content or the blog posts. and then working those back into the course. So, when Excel comes out with something new. Like how do I where does it feel right in my curriculum to, to insert that new topic. So. It's like kind of just keeping things updated. Okay.

Tom 00:35:23 Yeah. Do you have people when they bring, I assume people will. You said you have your office hours. People bring problems that they're working on. Are people embarrassed to show you what they have to say? I don't even want to open this because you're going to scream at me.

Jeff 00:35:34 Yeah.

Jeff 00:35:35 No, I, I put a disclaimer up front. I'm saying there's every question is a good question. You'll be respected here and honored here. And, you know, your fellow students will help out. And so, it really is this, like cool collaboration because people show up to office hours without having a question. They just come to like see what other people are doing. And they're like, oh, interesting. Yeah, I never thought about using Excel for that thing. I could use that. So, it's additional learning too. Okay.

Tom 00:36:02 Interesting. Oh, that's a really cool idea.

Jeff 00:36:05 Yeah. It's very cool. Yeah.

Tom 00:36:08 I remember a time when I was at a conference. I think someone was just talking about his own office efficiency but went through and showed a couple of things he was doing. And there was that reaction of like 50 people. And I think actually the main takeaway for many people was not the key point he was trying to make for them. It was more like, here's what I'm doing.

Tom 00:36:23 But people are like, oh, wait a minute, how did you get that thing done? That he, in his mind was the simple part, but people weren't quite there with him. Yeah.

Jeff 00:36:31 Yeah, yeah. Like, hey, wait, how did you fill that down with a keyboard? Like, what was your keyboard shortcut to do that? Yeah.

Tom 00:36:37 Like that's not what I was. Ignore that. That was the easy part. That's not what I want to teach you. Yeah, I do remember being with a data vendor one time, and this'll show how old I am. But I think it was around the late 80s. Right. But right as pivot tables were coming as part of Excel in this vendor had that version of Excel. The company I was in had not yet rolled it out, but he was wanting to demonstrate all the cool data they had and showed a pivot table was moving it, and I was with one of the marketing directors who got to the point where he's like, I want that version of Excel.

Tom 00:37:09 And then the vendor would start. He goes, oh, I don't care about your data. Tell me more about this Excel. And the poor guy was crushed. He's like, you just want to see these fancy charts. But the first time people saw it, they were just blown away. That. You mean, I can just, like, drag some of these things and the whole thing will change, and it changed the way everyone thinks about kind of those things.

Jeff 00:37:27 Yeah.

Jeff 00:37:27 It's insane. And someone told me, you know, before I was familiar with pivot tables, Jeff, you got to check out pivot tables. And so, I just felt like I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. Right. And then like a year later, they're like, hey Jeff, you really need to check out pivot tables. Like all right, fine. And so, then I checked him out and it's just like, oh wow, now I get it. And it's like really an eye opening experience, I agree.

Tom 00:37:54 Yeah, they can be really good. At least my experience in Google. Maybe I've just gotten used to how they work in Excel. The Google ones work differently enough that I find them a little bit more complicated in the format, and just need to spend more time, in how those work.

Jeff 00:38:07 Yeah. And, you know, there's so many, sort of formatting things that you can do with pivot tables too. So, it's like it's a really big feature and it takes a lot of time to kind of figure out all the little nuances. But once you kind of have those down, it can really save a lot of time.

Tom 00:38:22 Okay, okay. Is there and I've got one that I think of, but is there any particular Excel function that you think just kind of blew you away when you realized what it could do?

Jeff 00:38:32 Yeah, I think, well, just to revisit, I think really Power Query is like the single most impressive Excel feature that's come out in the last 20 years. And so that would be kind of the thing.

Jeff 00:38:44 If you're looking for something kind of quicker and easier, I would say just figure out tables. Tables will help you be more efficient and also eliminate errors because the range dynamically expands. So normally if you do a sum function on a range and then you add new data to the bottom of that range, you have to worry about updating the range in your sum function. No longer do we have to worry about that when we're storing data in tables.

Tom 00:39:07 So oh.

Jeff 00:39:08 That would be another kind of thing to check out if you haven't been using those much okay.

Tom 00:39:12 That's great. The one I think of is the indirect function and found that great. But I was I was working in a financial analyst job where I think I had maybe 20 countries giving us templates back to build the annual plan in a short turnaround. And what we realized, or what we had to predict was they were going to change the template even though we hadn't asked them to. They're going to add rows and columns. And so I was kind of searching for is there any way that you don't have to say, always go to this sheet and look for B13 and found the indirect and what I laughed about when I first found it, someone had written, if the indirect function was a woman, I would marry it and I just thought that was the funniest reference.

Tom 00:39:52 But it was. That made my life so much easier. I would get these templates and then be like, okay, it's going to be a row 13 and it's this. And I just put that in the indirect function goes and finds that and gets it. But that was one that for me would just made a dramatic difference.

Jeff 00:40:05 That's awesome.

Tom 00:40:06 We turned something around. You know four hours after we got it we had to present or something that just wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

Jeff 00:40:12 Yeah, I know because it never fails. If you send out some templates to people and say, okay, just and it's always a side calculation, new formulas here inserted rows, you're like, yes.

Tom 00:40:23 Exactly. Yes. Why are words where numbers are supposed to be? Don't give me a like a quote and then arrange. I can't add those together. So yeah, that was one that really helped me in doing that. And also, it was one that seemed more complicated than your tip around. I would probably be good with that because it it like, I had a hard time getting that function to work correctly with some of the syntax kind of things that were in there.

Jeff 00:40:44 Yeah. Very cool, very cool.

Tom 00:40:46 Well, Jeff, this has been really good. You've actually motivated me. I need to get on to Excel University because I think there are some things I could do much better, even though I would say I think I'm pretty good, but I think do it like last year is very much that sort of mantra that when I get busy, it's easy to jump in and say, I've got 15 minutes, all I can do is update it and don't really step back. But thinking of two weeks to do day two days makes you think of okay. It's worth spending a little bit of time to get this done better.

Jeff 00:41:11 Yeah it is. And for a lot of my students, they found it to be worth it. Also, the time efficiency gains have been amazing.

Tom 00:41:19 That's great. Well, thank you for spending us time, time with us today. People will be able to see how to get in touch with Excel University, through our show notes. And you also gave us the web link in there.

Jeff 00:41:29 Awesome. This is so. This is so great. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Okay.

Jeff 00:41:33 You're welcome.

Outro 00:41:34 Enjoy this podcast. Visit our website summit CPA Dot net to get more tips and strategy for achieving modern CPA firm success. We are here to be a resource in this ever changing industry.