Owner/CEO’s Name & Business’s Name: Jen Portland, Excel Rain Man
Year Established: May 2008
Why is your business unique and what’s your pitch? Excel Rain Man is a niche consulting company that helps individuals and small and large businesses with their specific Microsoft Excel problems. People submit their spreadsheet–related questions/problems to ExcelRainMan.com and we offer our skills to help with whatever the issue may be.
We also offer interactive tutorials (held in person or via web conference) that are customized to an individual or a company’s needs. Each tutorial includes a custom curriculum and spreadsheet assessment program to help students get their daily work done more efficiently
What led you to start the business? After a Systems Engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a few years of working in “Corporate America,” I became an expert in the “business art form” of Microsoft Excel. While this certainly has helped my career, it was also a difficult cross to bear, as co-workers inevitably discovered my Excel talents and as a result, I found myself doing colleague’s Excel work for them.
It was after several particularly late nights of finishing others’ work that the idea for ExcelRainMan.com was born. I knew if demand for this particular skill was so prevalent in my company, it must exist elsewhere. I decided to test this theory and offer these services to the general public and in May 2008, Excel Rain Man started cranking out Excel Spreadsheet consulting work for companies of all sizes.
Regardless of what industry you are in, most individuals at some point find themselves either dealing with the aggravation of Excel spreadsheets OR in a situation where valuable time and money could be saved by using Excel.
Excel Rain Man was launched a short time ago in a city where businesses are born daily. Excel Rain Man is designed to help these companies whose employees work tirelessly without the help of Assistants and Analysts. Whether it’s a Start-Up P&L or an affordable Contact Management Solution; Excel Rain Man has found genuine success in providing simple (and cost effective) solutions to complex problems.
Lessons Learned: I have learned so much in under 2 years in business… ranging from ways to get free PR, handling the excessive amounts of admin work involved in working for yourself, how to deploy all of our ideas in a time-appropriate manner so as to give the best product, to issues collecting money from customers, and so forth. Each of these road bumps along the way has enabled us to learn grow organically.
Mitchell York, Entrepreneurs Guide, says: Where were you when I was in business school! Excel is a great niche. How do you expand it to be a “business” (i.e. you RUN the business) vs. a “practice” (i.e. you ARE the business).
s school! Excel is a great niche. How do you expand it to be a “business” (i.e. you RUN the business) vs. a “practice” (i.e. you ARE the business).