Say Goodbye to Slow, Bloated, Ugly Excel Dashboards that Don’t Support the Business

We’ve all been there. The boss and leadership team wants to make decisions with your data. So you dump data from several different sources into Excel and start cleaning.

Several pivot tables, macros, run buttons, hidden spreadsheets, and weeks later you unveil your masterpiece. You send it off to your boss…and, they are impressed enough with you…but, there is so much bloat in the file that they can barely open it. Excel crashes sometimes when they try to open it–and when they do get it open, it’s not nearly as intuitive as you thought it would be.

Drop down boxes do not automatically update the graphics…instead, you must hit a RUN button and hope for the best. There is no real “interactivity.” It’s all pivot tables, VBA, and macros. It’s hard to navigate and even harder to fix when something goes wrong. The logic looks like spaghetti and the charts are uninspiring.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Hi!  I’m Jordan Goldmeier

These days, I’m known around the world for the work I do in Microsoft Excel, data visualization, and data science. But it wasn’t always this way.

In fact, my journey starts about a decade ago as an auditor for the government. I was still in school, and so I was only a junior auditor. Between, you and me, I wasn’t exactly the best auditor. And, I had terrible grades. However, during my stint, I became so good with Excel and data that made my presence on large audits indispensable.

I’m Just Like You, and it Wasn’t a Cake Walk

I know what you’re thinking, that I’m some sort of whiz kid. But I’m not. In fact, I’m a bit of a nobody. I was a junior auditor with mostly mediocre grades (mostly Cs, some Ds, maybe an F or two).

However, my Excel dashboard and data visualization skills made me stand out among the crowd. 

But it wasn’t easy. In fact, my Excel journey was very much an uphill climb. And I wasn’t even sure I was up for the challenge.

You see, in those days, I spent so much time on Google looking on how to do this and that with Excel. I had been hired because of my background in both accounting and information technology. I knew how to code, but in truth, I didn’t really know a whole lot about Excel; or, at least I thought I had known enough to get by. I was way wrong.

It became clear I had a lot of catching up to do! I was eager to prove myself, so I spent countless hours researching. I bought tons and tons of Excel books. In fact, my cubicle had become a veritable Excel library. Figuring out to do things in Excel took me hours if not days.

I worked by trial and error. I would spend hours on a spreadsheet only for my manager or coworker to tell me it wasn’t what they wanted or that I hadn’t entirely understood the underlying problem. It was frustrating, disappointing, and disheartening. I knew I couldn’t live forever by trial and error.

Something Strange Happened

So I started a collection. When coworkers liked my charts and “fancy spreadsheets” (that’s what we called them before the term “dashboards”), I added them to my collection. When I saw a tool, tip, technique, or visualization I added it to the collection. Whenever I was tasked to create something new, I sought my collection first to reuse past work and for inspiration. Without realizing it, I had created a corpus of essentials Excel dashboards, tools, techniques, skills, visualizations, and theory.

At first, I was only collecting for myself, but then something strange happened. Colleagues would ask me how to do x, y, and z in Excel. I would then look it up in my Excel library and point them to the relevant sections. This didn’t work. They told me they liked it better when I explained things in a way they could understand because I was just like them.

So I started writing mini step-by-step guides for myself and coworkers, which they could keep. (This saved me time from having to go over and explain it over their shoulder.) Eventually, I was told how much faster and more productive they were because of my instructions. And that’s when it donned on me: I could save a lot of people a heck of a lot of time if shared what I knew. 

But, What Did I Know Exactly?

Yes, I had learned to Excel really well. But I what I knew was something much bigger.

First, I learned how to use Excel to its fullest in both analyzing what the data was all about and presenting results as data visualizations. In fact, this helped me save the government an enormous amount of money.

Second, I learned how to drive organizational change by tailoring my work to a specific audience.

Third, I learned how to talk about data and to teach others. I became known as the Excel guru, not just within our office of 60 people, but eventually across the entire organization.

I realized I had tapped into Excel visualization and analysis skills that my coworkers had only assumed experts could posses, and they didn’t have the time to become experts. But they were smart enough to learn, they just needed step-by-step instructions with only the most important information.

During my time as an auditor my esteem within the organization grew. My work eventually became the official “tool set” for the entire Air Force Audit Agency. Over 700 people across the globe were using what I’d built. I was invited to personally present my work to the Auditor General, who reports directly to the Secretary of the Air Force, and flown to Washington D.C. to oversee its implementation.

Junior auditors aren’t supposed to make waves within large organizations. But that’s exactly what happened. I wasn’t anybody special. I just tapped into something that was important and necessary. And I was helping others to quickly become experts, too. 

What Happened Next

What happened next was a major stepping-stone that set me on the path to where I am today.

Let me set the stage. It was 2009, and I was in Dayton, Ohio. The entire city was feeling the aftermath of the housing crises. Dayton had an unemployment rate significantly above the average employment rate in Ohio. Friends were getting laid off for jobs they had for years.

And yet, I landed an incredible job in 2009 in Dayton, Ohio creating Excel Applications for the Air Force with a large, prestigious consulting firm that hires less than 1% of its applicants. The job paid more than 3x what I’d been making previously (almost a $50k pay bump) at a time when nobody was hiring.

And from there, my career took off. And so can yours.

My secret…

My secret is that there is no secret. It doesn’t really matter if you’re at the start of your career or a veteran of several decades.

I learned how to present data to change organizations, to further my career, and to become a world-class expert. The real secret is that you can do all of these things too, if you’d like. You too can spend countless hours learning as I did. Combing through blogs, books, forums and the like hoping you’ll find relevant information to become a dashboard and visualization expert– but why would you do that?

As I used to tell my coworkers, “Let me show you how to do what you want in ten minutes while saving you hours of research and frustration. Ask me your Excel question before asking Google.” (That’s how I grew my collection.)

Is Time on Your Side?

I have no doubt that you can to become and Excel dashboard and data visualization expert like me. That you’ll know what works, what doesn’t, and more important, why. That you’ll gain the confidence to challenge colleagues. And know how to best tailor your work to the correct audience to make a huge impact in your organization. You can learn all of these things on your own, through trial and error, if you have the time and the patience.

But how many of us have this time on our side?  Right now, dashboards and data visualization are hot topics. Data is driving more and more business processes.

The fun experimental time required to learn these important topics is in decline across corporations. When I first started, I longed for a centralized resource providing step-by-step instructions on how to build everything from dashboards to learning what different audiences need.

Instead of researching, I could have spent more time applying my skills to do an awesome job.

And so can you.

Let Me Be Your Guide

I’ve built a step-by-step guide to developing dashboards and data visualizations in Excel. My work comes from over a decade of experience, trial and error (lots of error), and hard won knowledge. I’ve distilled it into the most important things you need to know with the goal of getting you up to speed as quickly as possible.

Whether you’re at the beginning of your Excel and data journey or are already on the path, let me be your guide. I can show you the best paths, shortcuts, and time savers. The best mountain climbers and hikers in the world use guides to help them, so should you.

Let’s go take that journey together.