For 7 years, my business has grown entirely by word of mouth. I don't market, or advertise, or even have a website.
That's partly because I get all the business I want without it, and partly because self-promotion still makes me really uncomfortable*. But after Satya's post yesterday, I figure I'm going to get 24 hours of uncomfortable levels of attention anyway, so I might as well embrace it...
I'm marketing for the first time now because I've realized that what people come to me for - building complex models and tools - is not where I can actually be most useful.
I started my career at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in London. It became apparent early on that I was good at Excel. Within 6 months, I was running the office-wide training. And pretty soon, I had a de facto drop-in clinic at my desk on Fridays. I'd help people get unstuck, or automate a manual process, or speed up a slow model. A few 10-minute interventions saved a massive amount of consultant hours. One strong user who can quickly help many others is a huge force multiplier.
And that's what I'm offering now: custom Excel and modeling training targeted your company's force multipliers. Instead of hiring me to build one model, let me work with your top 1-3 power-users to raise their game, and you'll get the benefit of your whole company getting a little smarter with data.
If you're interested in developing your team's internal experts, DM me. I'm looking to partner with a couple of firms to pilot this.
And if you're wondering if AI has made this kind of training irrelevant - I would say firmly the opposite. AI can give a lot of leverage, but the quality of output is exponentially higher when the user knows what a world-class model looks like. So the force multiplier effect is only bigger.
* Time spent in New York and on LinkedIn has clearly raised my tolerance, because I wouldn't have written this post a few years ago. I'm not sure that's a good thing, on balance...
That's partly because I get all the business I want without it, and partly because self-promotion still makes me really uncomfortable*. But after Satya's post yesterday, I figure I'm going to get 24 hours of uncomfortable levels of attention anyway, so I might as well embrace it...
I'm marketing for the first time now because I've realized that what people come to me for - building complex models and tools - is not where I can actually be most useful.
I started my career at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in London. It became apparent early on that I was good at Excel. Within 6 months, I was running the office-wide training. And pretty soon, I had a de facto drop-in clinic at my desk on Fridays. I'd help people get unstuck, or automate a manual process, or speed up a slow model. A few 10-minute interventions saved a massive amount of consultant hours. One strong user who can quickly help many others is a huge force multiplier.
And that's what I'm offering now: custom Excel and modeling training targeted your company's force multipliers. Instead of hiring me to build one model, let me work with your top 1-3 power-users to raise their game, and you'll get the benefit of your whole company getting a little smarter with data.
If you're interested in developing your team's internal experts, DM me. I'm looking to partner with a couple of firms to pilot this.
And if you're wondering if AI has made this kind of training irrelevant - I would say firmly the opposite. AI can give a lot of leverage, but the quality of output is exponentially higher when the user knows what a world-class model looks like. So the force multiplier effect is only bigger.
* Time spent in New York and on LinkedIn has clearly raised my tolerance, because I wouldn't have written this post a few years ago. I'm not sure that's a good thing, on balance...