It's a story we've all heard before. You're working a full-time job, and you have more fun doing your side hustle than your 9 to 5. This is what happened to John Michaloudis. He was a financial controller at General Electric but found his passion sharing Excel tips and tricks on an internal GE newsletter which his colleagues ate up. John decided to become an entrepreneur and built an Excel training company from the ground up. We chatted about how he got started, his favorite marketing tactics, and of course, why he loves Excel.

10,000 followers on an internal company blog

At General Electric, there was an internal blog called Colab where employees could could write and publish articles only for GE employees to see. As a financial controller, John became well-versed in Excel and decided to contribute to the internal blog. He started posting Excel tips, and eventually he had a weekly column just devoted to being better at Excel.

GE's Colab

John quickly amassed more than 10,000 subscribers to his column as he saw how hungry people were for Excel knowledge. But it was only his side gig at GE.

I liked doing the blog more than my actual job. I felt the subscribers valued me more than my boss valued me.

After getting this positive feedback from his colleagues around the world, he wanted to find a way to take his Excel column to the next level. For the next 12 months, he went off and created a course all about PivotTables. He asked his boss at the time if he could sell his course to the 10K subscribers to his column, but of course compliance told him no. He decided to leave GE, and as a last salvo sent out a message to his followers about a webinar he was going to host about his PivotTables course.

Creating a library of Excel content

Based on the feedback he got from his subscribers to his weekly Excel column, John was able to find a few topics to build additional Excel classes about. A perennial favorite of mine, keyboard shortcuts were high on the list. Creating charts was also a big topics since most of his now students work at companies, and presenting data in a compelling way is important.

John is constantly learning new Excel features but ultimately the content he produces is determined by what his students, the customers, want to learn. He periodically sends his students a survey and asks them what they want to learn about. These topics are what you'll see on MyExcelOnline, John's Excel training company.

Taking the leap to become an entrepreneur

While the idea of going off on your own and being your boss is a romantic one, for many the decision is a matter of dollars and cents. John was (and currently still is) working in Spain, and started earning a few grand from offering his courses on Udemy. He realized this was enough for him and his family to live on, and went full-time on his training company in January 2015.

His advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is don't just leave with nothing. Create a product and test it out. Use cheap methods like Adwords to validate your idea 4-Hour Workweek style.

On Udemy, John's PivotTable course originally would earn him about $2K/month but this went up to $7K/month. The problem was he was also selling his course on his website for $290. If his customers who bought the course fro his website found out they could get it cheaper on Udemy,