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I Left My Corporate Accounting Job 7 Years Ago. Here’s How I Built A Career As An Educational Entrepreneur

Ben Collins Journey to course creator

I remember handing in my notice seven years ago.

My palms were sweaty.

Several times I walked towards the corner office but turned around, on the pretense of needing to do something else first.

Finally, there was nothing left but to do it.

As I walked, robotically, towards my boss’s office, my pulse quickened and heat rose through my head.

I was so focused on knocking on the door, on willing myself past that point of no return, that when I entered the boss’s office, my carefully rehearsed words spilled out my mouth in a nervous jumble. Words I’d confidently spoken a hundred times in my head.

In my head I had pictured a triumphant scene – the “I quit!” scene – but the reality was a somewhat awkward, anticlimactic conversation.

The news came as a surprise to my boss. He wanted to understand.

“No, it’s not the work…”

“That’s a generous offer to stay, but I’ve made up my mind…”

“I want to focus on getting a job in the tech industry…”

That last statement sounded hollow and vague, even to me.

Did I believe it myself? What did it even mean? I felt the heat rising in my head again.

What will I do next?

Truthfully, I didn’t know.

News traveled fast along the corridors and soon the whole office knew.

Most were incredulous that I would leave a job without a new job to go to. I projected confidence and recited my spiel about wanting to break into the tech industry because it’s my passion.

But in reality, I felt like a vertigo sufferer on a cliff edge, my head swimming.

I was saved by my innermost kernel: my determination to succeed and make a dent in the world.

It’s my most powerful ally, always there to fight my cause. All I had to do was learn how to channel it.

Two weeks later, the change was real and permanent. I woke up and didn’t go to the office. It was a disorientating feeling that took me years to acclimate to.

I spent that summer cycling around the US with my brother, then I got married in the fall. Yet through those joyous events, I carried anxiety, not knowing exactly where my career would go next.

The Wilderness Years: 2014 – 2015

Act 1: A Forensic Accounting Newsletter

My first entrepreneurial idea was to start a paid newsletter for the Forensic Accounting industry, the industry where I’d worked for 8 years and just left.

It didn’t exist, it was specialist knowledge that people would pay for, and my experience qualified me to deliver it.

Paid newsletters are in vogue right now, but not back in 2014. But that was attractive. It added a technology angle to this project: I had to figure out how to deliver and charge for the newsletter.

I spent a month working hard on this idea.

I interviewed people in the industry. I wrote many draft editions of the email. I created a business plan and put together a list of 100 contacts in the industry who would receive the first newsletter.

Forensic Accounting Newsletter
Mockup of Issue 1 of the White Wire, a Forensic Accounting Industry Newsletter

I was just a few days shy of sending the first email when I knew something wasn’t right.

I wasn’t excited by this idea. At all.

In fact, I wanted to get away from the corporate accounting world and blaze my own trail. This wasn’t the solution I was looking for.

I clearly remember the conversation with my wife:

“I can’t do this. I’m not passionate about this industry so I won’t be successful. I’m passionate about the technology around the newsletter and the design of it, but not the contents.”

(By the way, I still think this newsletter is a good idea. Just not a good idea for me.)

It was back to the drawing board.

Act 2: Wannabe Web Developer

I didn’t have another entrepreneurial dream at this stage. But I loved the VBA and SQL coding parts of my old job, so I knew what I wanted to do next.

I wanted to become a developer.

I signed up for a part-time web development course with the education startup General Assembly.

I poured my heart and soul into coding for the next six months.

I built a social learning application called UpLearn:

UpLearn Rails App

Crucially during this time, I did what every tech job seeker is advised to do and started this blog to share my knowledge.

Version 1 of benlcollins.com
Version 1 of benlcollins.com

I started the blog as a way to showcase my skills to future employers, not expecting it to become a business in its own right.

The very first post was about building a dashboard in Google Sheets, published on 31 October 2014.

I started applying for junior web developer roles in the spring of 2015. I applied to 10 positions but didn’t hear back from a single one. Nada. Zip. Not even an acknowledgment of my application.

It was hard to take. I was frustrated. I knew I could do it. Why couldn’t they see this?

I became more and more despondent with each passing day. Act 2 of my own career had yielded nothing either.

Looking back now, this period was full of doubt, as strong as any other time in my life.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this. Maybe my destiny was to be a lifetime accountant.

Maybe I could find a way to be happy doing that.

Maybe I should call up my old work again.

But before that happened, the universe sent a lifeline my way…

I got my first inbound client request.

Gaining Traction: 2016 – 2017

Act 3: Freelance Data Analyst

My first client messaged me after reading my Google Sheets dashboard post. He asked if I could build something similar for his real estate business. “Yes, of course!” I said.

Soon a trickle of inbound client work was coming from my website. Projects were all across the board: from Google Sheets dashboards to SQL data analysis to corporate training with Tableau.

It was just enough work to postpone the job hunt and call myself a freelancer.

When General Assembly announced they were looking for instructors for their new Data Analysis course, I applied.

I taught lots of different data analysis courses for General Assembly in 2015 and 2016, from 10-week part-time courses to 2-hour intensives.

Act 4: Freelance Google Sheets Developer

In 2017 I narrowed my focus to data analysis with Google Sheets and Apps Script.

No more Excel, Ruby on Rails, SQL, or Tableau.

I doubled down on the Google Sheets niche. My website traffic increased and the client requests kept rolling in. (See How To Become A Freelance Google Sheets Developer.)

Career Venn diagram

Hardly anyone else was writing about Google Sheets at the time, so it was a huge opportunity.

I was intimately familiar with the cottage industry built on the back of Microsoft Excel – consultants, course creators, bloggers – so I reasoned there was a good chance something similar would exist for Google Sheets years from now.

And I intended to be at the forefront of that industry.

Act 5: Course Creator

For years, I’d contemplated the idea of creating an online course, inspired by the Excel gurus like Chandoo, who made their living teaching spreadsheets.

In mid-2016 I committed to creating a Google Sheets course. Just one. I would give it a try and see what happened. If it was successful, then I could do it again. If not, then no problem, I could keep going with my freelance consulting.

I chose Dashboards as the first-course topic. I’d seen good traction on those posts on my website so I knew it was something people wanted to learn.

It took me about six months – alongside my existing consulting work – to create the dashboards and record the lessons, making many mistakes along the way.

I finally launched the Google Sheets Dashboard course in February 2017:

Version 1 of the Google Sheets Dashboard course
Version 1 of the Google Sheets Dashboard course

I made $7,000 in the week I launched the course, to an email list of around 2,000.

To me, it was a huge success. Certainly enough to convince me to create a second course.

I recorded and launched a Data Cleaning course – now part of the Data Analysis course – between March and May 2017. I was incentivized to finish this one because my second son was born at the end of May.

Building a Business: 2018 – 2020

By the end of 2017, I was making a modest salary from my business. But it was still some way short of my old corporate earnings.

I still struggled with the process of working for myself. In my previous jobs, I’d always had a boss (or drill sergeant) telling me what to do next.

Now I was on my own.

And I clearly needed help building good work habits so I could scale my business. I felt like I started from scratch with each new client project. I had no systems in place. I didn’t have a consistent pricing methodology.

After much encouragement from my wife, who has her own entrepreneurial experience, I hired a business coach.

My new business coach was immediately helpful.

She brought discipline to my work.

She taught me how to evaluate opportunities. How to sell my work. How to write convincing marketing copy.

And she helped me start a weekly Google Sheets tips newsletter in April 2018, which has grown to be one of the fundamental pillars of my business.

If you’re thinking about hiring a business coach, do it. It’s one of the best investments you can make for your business and yourself.

In 2019, Google invited me to be part of the Google Developer Expert program, as recognition of my work on Google Sheets and Apps Script. This has been an amazing community to be a part of. I’ve enjoyed working closely with other members and Google team members.

Act 6: Growing The Online School

Between 2018 and 2020, I released a whole series of online courses. They sold well.

My email list had grown to around 30,000 by mid-2020, largely because of people signing up to my free Advanced Formulas course and my Introduction to Apps Script course.

Most importantly, I’ve kept up my weekly newsletter habit, started in 2017, so that my audience is engaged and familiar with me and my course offerings.

But my courses looked amateur because I’d created all the graphics myself. And I knew the recording quality could be improved.

So my big goal for 2020 was to update the entire catalog.

At the beginning of 2020 I hired a design firm to create a new brand for this site and my courses.

I then embarked on a journey to overhaul every course in my catalog. I thought it would take me six months.

But the pandemic hit…

Work hours were reduced as I shared child care with my wife, who also has a career to sustain.

In the end, it took me a year to complete the course updates (not full-time). I uploaded the last video for the Automation With Apps Script course in late February 2021, complete with professional branding.

Ben Collins Courses

The Future: 2021 onwards

Now, in March 2021, my business is at an inflection point.

These are always fascinating times for an entrepreneur.

You’re reinventing yourself again. Starting over. Shedding your skin.

My existing online courses generate a six-figure profit annually, more than I used to make at my corporate job at a law firm.

But it’s time for me to grow again. Online education is evolving and some students crave more than on-demand courses alone can provide.

With the shift to zoom-first work culture in the past year, live training courses, often called Cohort-Based-Courses (CBCs), have exploded in popularity.

It’s not hard to understand why. Traditional on-demand online courses only work for the most motivated students, ones who have the discipline (and time!) to sit down and work through the content.

What the on-demand courses lack is accountability and community, two aspects that deliver huge benefits to students.

And that’s where these next-gen cohort courses come in. They offer you that accountability and community, as well as direct access to the expert teachers behind the videos. They’re a step closer to in-person training, combined with the convenience of remote learning.

I’m working on a new cohort course, called Pro Sheets Accelerator. It’s a five-week course, meeting twice a week for a 90-minute live session, plus office hours, community and a capstone project.

I’m really excited to bring this to life and share more details over the coming weeks.

My online, on-demand course library, now fully updated, remains available for students who prefer to learn that way. But this new live format course offers more opportunities for students to learn, grow and support each other.

Shifting my energy to this live cohort course model feels like a tipping point that will propel me forward to bigger things.

It took me years to get to this point, to find that sweet spot where my skills and experience matches what the market is looking for. Along the way, I’ve built an engaged audience of folks who can benefit from my work.

The first cohort of my live training course, Pro Sheets Accelerator, is just the beginning of this next Act.

My mission is to create a world-class online school, teaching productivity, data analysis, and workflow automation, using Google tools.

Onward and upward!

Ben Collins, March 2021

Control Your Nest Thermostat And Build A Temperature Logger In Google Sheets Using Apps Script

If you have a Nest thermostat at home, you can access it from your Google Sheet by using Google Apps Script to connect to the Smart Device Management API.

It means you can do some cool stuff like build a virtual, working Nest thermostat in your Google Sheet:

Continue reading Control Your Nest Thermostat And Build A Temperature Logger In Google Sheets Using Apps Script

Formula Challenge #5: Merge Columns in Google Sheets With Single Range Reference

This Formula Challenge originally appeared as Tip #131 of my weekly Google Sheets Tips newsletter, on 21 December 2020.

Sign up here so you don’t miss out on future Formula Challenges:

 

Find all the Formula Challenges archived here.

The Challenge: Merge Columns With Single Range Reference

Question: How can you merge n number of columns and get the unique values, without typing each one out?

In other words, can you create a single formula that gives the same output as this one:

=SORT( UNIQUE( {A:A;B:B;C:C;...;XX:XX} ))

but without having to write out A:A, B:B, C:C, D:D etc. and instead just write A:XX as in the input?

Use this simple dataset example, where your formula will be in cell E1 (in green):

Formula challenge 5 Data

Your answer should:

  • be a formula in a single cell
  • work with the input range in the form A:XX (e.g. A:C in this example)
  • work with numbers and/or text values
  • return only the unique values, in an ascending order in a SINGLE COLUMN.

Solutions To Sort A Column By Last Name

I received 67 replies to this formula challenge with two different methods for solving it. Congratulations to everyone who took part!

I learnt so much from the different replies, many of which proffered a shorter and more elegant second solution than my own original formula.

Here I present the two solutions.

There’s a lot to learn by looking through them.

1. FLATTEN method

=SORT(UNIQUE(FLATTEN(A:C)))

The formula uses the FLATTEN function to collect data from the input ranges into a single column before the UNIQUE function selects the unique ones before they are finally sorted.

Note 1: you can have multiple inputs (arguments) to the FLATTEN function. Data is ordered by the order of the inputs, then row and then column.

Note 2: at the moment the FLATTEN function doesn’t show up in the auto-complete when you start typing it out. You can still use it, but you’ll have to type it out fully yourself.

Thanks to the handful of you that shared this neat solution with me. Great work!

2. TEXTJOIN method

Join all the values in A:C with TEXTJOIN, using a unique character as the delimiter (in this case, the King and Queen chess pieces!)

You want to use an identifier that is not in columns A to C.

=TEXTJOIN("♔♕",TRUE,A:C)

Split on this unique delimiter using the SPLIT function:

=SPLIT(TEXTJOIN("♔♕",TRUE,A:C),"♔♕")

Use the TRANSPOSE function to switch to a column, select the unique values only and finally wrap with a sort function to get the result:

=SORT(UNIQUE(TRANSPOSE(SPLIT(TEXTJOIN("♔♕",TRUE,A:C),"♔♕"))))

There we go!

Two brilliant solutions to an interesting formula challenge.

Please leave comments if you have anything you wish to add.

And don’t forget to sign up to my Google Sheets Tips newsletter so you don’t miss future formula challenges!

Google Sheets Sort By Color And Google Sheets Filter By Color

Google Sheets sort by color and filter by color are useful techniques to organize your data based on the color of text or cells within the data.

For example, you might highlight rows of data relating to an important customer. Google Sheets sort by color and filter by color let you bring those highlighted rows to the top of your dataset, or even only show those rows.

They’re really helpful for removing duplicates in Google Sheets too.

As a bonus, they’re really easy to use. Let’s see how:

Google Sheets Sort By Color

Suppose you have a dataset with highlighted rows, for example all the apartments in this dataset:

Google Sheets dataset

Add a filter (the funnel icon in the toolbar, shown in red in the above image).

On any of the columns, click the filter and choose the “Sort by color” option.

You can filter by the background color of the cell (like the yellow in this example) or by the color of the text.

Google Sheets Sort By Color

The result of applying this sort is all the colored rows will be brought to the top of your dataset.

Data sorted by color in Google Sheets

This is super helpful if you want to review all items at the same time. Another reason might be if they’re duplicate rows you’ve highlighted which you can now delete.

Google Sheets Filter By Color

The Google Sheets filter by color method is very similar to the sort by color method.

With the filters added to your dataset, click one to bring up the menu. Select “Filter by color” and then select to filter on the background cell color or the text color.

Google Sheets filter by color

In this example, I’ve used the Google Sheets filter by color to only display the yellow highlighted rows, which makes it really easy to review them.

Data filtered by color in Google Sheets

There’s an option to remove the filter by color by setting it to none, found under the filter by color menu. This option is not found for the sort by color method.

Apps Script Solution

When I originally published this article, sort by color and filter by color were not available natively in Google Sheets, so I created a small script to add this functionality to a Sheet.

They were added on 11th March 2020. Read more here in the Google Workspace update blog.

Here is my original Apps Script solution, left here for general interest.

With a few simple lines of Apps Script, we can implement our own version.

Filter By Color in Google Sheets

This article will show you how to implement that same feature in Google Sheets.

It’s a pretty basic idea.

We need to know the background color of the cell we want to sort or filter with (user input 1). Then we need to know which column to use to do the sorting or filtering (user input 2). Finally we need to do the sort or filter.

So step one is to to prompt the user to input the cell and columns.

I’ve implemented this Google Sheets sort by color using a modeless dialog box, which allows the user to click on cells in the Google Sheet independent of the prompt box. When the user has selected the cell or column, we store this using the Properties Service for retrieval when we come to sort or filter the data.

Apps Script Sort By Color

At a high level, our program has the following components:

  1. Custom menu to run the Google Sheets sort by color program
  2. Prompt to ask user for the color cell
  3. Save the color cell using the Properties Service
  4. Second prompt to ask the user for the sort/filter column
  5. Save the sort/filter column using the Properties Service
  6. Show the color and column choices and confirm
  7. Retrieve the background colors of the sort/filter column
  8. Add helper column to data in Sheet with these background colors
  9. Sort/Filter this helper column, based on the color cell
  10. Clear out the values in the document Properties store

Let’s look at each of these sections in turn.

Add A Custom Menu (1)

This is simply boilerplate Apps Script code to add a custom menu to your Google Sheet:

/**
 * Create custom menu
 */
function onOpen() {
  var ui = SpreadsheetApp.getUi();
  ui.createMenu('Color Tool')
        .addItem('Sort by color...', 'sortByColorSetupUi')
        .addItem('Clear Ranges','clearProperties')
        .addToUi();
}

Prompt The User For Cell And Column Choices (2, 4 and 6 above)

I use modeless dialog boxes for the prompts, which allows the user to still interact with the Sheet and click directly on the cells they want to select.

/**
 * Sort By Color Setup Program Flow
 * Check whether color cell and sort columnn have been selected
 * If both selected, move to sort the data by color
 */
function sortByColorSetupUi() {
  
  var colorProperties = PropertiesService.getDocumentProperties();
  var colorCellRange = colorProperties.getProperty('colorCellRange');
  var sortColumnLetter = colorProperties.getProperty('sortColumnLetter');
  var title='No Title';
  var msg = 'No Text';
  
  //if !colorCellRange
  if(!colorCellRange)  {
    title = 'Select Color Cell';
    msg = '<p>Please click on cell with the background color you want to sort on and then click OK</p>';
    msg += '<input type="button" value="OK" onclick="google.script.run.sortByColorHelper(1); google.script.host.close();" />';
    dispStatus(title, msg);
  }
  
  //if colorCellRange and !sortColumnLetter
  if (colorCellRange && !sortColumnLetter) {
      
      title = 'Select Sort Column';
      msg = '<p>Please highlight the column you want to sort on, or click on a cell in that column. Click OK when you are ready.</p>';
      msg += '<input type="button" value="OK" onclick="google.script.run.sortByColorHelper(2); google.script.host.close();" />';
      dispStatus(title, msg);
  }
  
  // both color cell and sort column selected
  if(colorCellRange && sortColumnLetter) {
    
    title= 'Displaying Color Cell and Sort Column Ranges';
    msg = '<p>Confirm ranges before sorting:</p>';
    msg += 'Color Cell Range: ' + colorCellRange + '<br />Sort Column: ' + sortColumnLetter + '<br />';
    msg += '<br /><input type="button" value="Sort By Color" onclick="google.script.run.sortData(); google.script.host.close();" />';
    msg += '<br /><br /><input type="button" value="Clear Choices and Exit" onclick="google.script.run.clearProperties(); google.script.host.close();" />';
    dispStatus(title,msg);
    
  }
}

/**
 * display the modeless dialog box
 */
function dispStatus(title,html) {
  
  var title = typeof(title) !== 'undefined' ? title : 'No Title Provided';
  var html = typeof(html) !== 'undefined' ? html : '<p>No html provided.</p>';
  var htmlOutput = HtmlService
     .createHtmlOutput(html)
     .setWidth(350)
     .setHeight(200);
 
  SpreadsheetApp.getUi().showModelessDialog(htmlOutput, title);

}

/**
 * helper function to switch between dialog box 1 (to select color cell) and 2 (to select sort column)
 */
function sortByColorHelper(mode) {
  
  var mode = (typeof(mode) !== 'undefined')? mode : 0;
  switch(mode)
  {
    case 1:
      setColorCell();
      sortByColorSetupUi();
      break;
    case 2:
      setSortColumn();
      sortByColorSetupUi();
      break;
    default:
      clearProperties();
  }
}

The buttons on the dialog boxes use the client-side google.script.run API to call server-side Apps Script functions.

Following this, the google.script.host.close() is also a client-side JavaScript API that closes the current dialog box.

Save The Cell And Column Choices In The Property Store (3 and 5)

These two functions save the cell and column ranges that the user highlights into the Sheet’s property store:

/** 
 * saves the color cell range to properties
 */
function setColorCell() {
  
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var colorCell = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveRange().getA1Notation();
  var colorProperties = PropertiesService.getDocumentProperties();
  colorProperties.setProperty('colorCellRange', colorCell);

}

/**
 * saves the sort column range in properties
 */
function setSortColumn() {
  
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var sortColumn = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveRange().getA1Notation();
  var sortColumnLetter = sortColumn.split(':')[0].replace(/\d/g,'').toUpperCase(); // find the column letter
  var colorProperties = PropertiesService.getDocumentProperties();
  colorProperties.setProperty('sortColumnLetter', sortColumnLetter);
  
}

As a result of running these functions, we have the color cell address (in A1 notation) and the sort/filter column letter saved in the Property store for future access.

Sorting The Data (7, 8 and 9 above)

Once we’ve selected both the color cell and sort column, the program flow directs us to actually go ahead and sort the data. This is the button in the third dialog box, which, when clicked, runs this call google.script.run.sortData();.

The sortData function is defined as follows:

/** 
 * sort the data based on color cell and chosen column
 */
function sortData() {
  
  // get the properties
  var colorProperties = PropertiesService.getDocumentProperties();
  var colorCell = colorProperties.getProperty('colorCellRange');
  var sortColumnLetter = colorProperties.getProperty('sortColumnLetter');

  // extracts column letter from whatever range has been highlighted for the sort column
  
  // get the sheet
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var lastRow = sheet.getLastRow();
  var lastCol = sheet.getLastColumn();
  
  // get an array of background colors from the sort column
  var sortColBackgrounds = sheet.getRange(sortColumnLetter + 2 + ":" + sortColumnLetter + lastRow).getBackgrounds(); // assumes header in row 1
  
  // get the background color of the sort cell
  var sortColor = sheet.getRange(colorCell).getBackground();
  
  // map background colors to 1 if they match the sort cell color, 2 otherwise
  var sortCodes = sortColBackgrounds.map(function(val) {
    return (val[0] === sortColor) ? [1] : [2];
  });
  
  // add a column heading to the array of background colors
  sortCodes.unshift(['Sort Column']);
  
  // paste the background colors array as a helper column on right side of data
  sheet.getRange(1,lastCol+1,lastRow,1).setValues(sortCodes);
  sheet.getRange(1,lastCol+1,1,1).setHorizontalAlignment('center').setFontWeight('bold').setWrap(true);
  
  // sort the data
  var dataRange = sheet.getRange(2,1,lastRow,lastCol+1);  
  dataRange.sort(lastCol+1);
  
  // add new filter across whole data table
  sheet.getDataRange().createFilter();

  // clear out the properties so it's ready to run again
  clearProperties();
}

And finally, we want a way to clear the properties store so we can start over.

Clear The Property Store (10 above)

This simple function will delete all the key/value pairs stored in the Sheet’s property store:

/**
 * clear the properties
 */
function clearProperties() {
  PropertiesService.getDocumentProperties().deleteAllProperties();
}

Run The Google Sheets Sort By Color Script

If you put all these code snippets together in your Code.gs file, you should be able to run onOpen, authorize your script and then run the sort by color tool from the new custom menu.

Here’s the sort by color tool in action in Google Sheets:

Google Sheets sort by color

You can see how all of the green shaded rows are sorted to the top of my dataset.

Note that this sort by color feature is setup to work with datasets that begin in cell A1 (because it relies on the getDataRange() method, which does the same).

Some improvements would be to make it more generalized (or prompt the user to highlight the dataset initially). I also have not included any error handling, intentionally to keep the script as simple as possible to aid understanding. However, this is something you’d want to consider if you want to make this solution more robust.

Apps Script Sort By Color Template

Here’s the Google Sheet template for you to copy.

(If you’re prompted for permission to open this, it’s because my Google Workspace domain, benlcollins.com, is not whitelisted with your organization. You can talk to your Google Workspace administrator about that. Alternatively, if you open this link in incognito mode, you’ll be able to view the Sheet and copy the script direct from the Script Editor.)

If GitHub is your thing, here’s the sort by color code in my Apps Script repo on GitHub.

Apps Script Filter By Color

The program flow is virtually identical, except that we filter the data rather than sort it. The code is almost exactly the same too, other than variable names being different and implementing a filter instead of a sort.

Rather than sorting the data, we create and add a filter to the dataset to show only the rows shaded with the matching colors:

Filter By Color in Google Sheets

The filter portion of the code looks like this: 

// remove existing filter to the data range
if (sheet.getFilter() !== null) {
  sheet.getFilter().remove();
}

// add new filter across whole data table
var newFilter = sheet.getDataRange().createFilter();

// create new filter criteria
var filterCriteria = SpreadsheetApp.newFilterCriteria();
filterCriteria.whenTextEqualTo(filterColor);

// apply the filter color as the filter value
newFilter.setColumnFilterCriteria(lastCol + 1, filterCriteria);

If you want a challenge, see if you can modify the sort code to work with the filter example.

Apps Script Filter By Color Template

Feel free to copy the Google Sheets filter by color template here.

(If you’re prompted for permission to open this, it’s because my Google Workspace domain, benlcollins.com, is not whitelisted with your organization. You can talk to your Google Workspace administrator about that. Alternatively, if you open this link in incognito mode, you’ll be able to view the Sheet and copy the script direct from the Script Editor.)

Or pull the code directly from the GitHub repo here.

2020 In Review And A Look Forward To 2021

Best wishes to all of you for 2021!

Let’s hope for a brighter, happier, safer lap around the sun this time.

Winter snow
We had a December snowstorm! Lots of fun with the young ‘uns 🙂

This is annual review number 6!

As always, I’m super grateful when I sit down to write this because it means I’m still working for myself and building this business.

2020 was a difficult year for the world.

I’m fortunate to have my health and so do those close to me. I can’t imagine how difficult 2020 has been for those who have lost someone. My heart goes out to you.

My wife and I have taken the virus seriously. Given my history of pneumonia in the last two years (see challenges of 2018 and 2019) I can’t afford to take this virus lightly.

We’re extremely fortunate that we already work from home, so that didn’t present a significant challenge when the whole world went remote. However, going from full time childcare to no childcare was certainly a challenge.

I’m looking forward to 2021 and the promise of a vaccine. I haven’t seen my UK family since January 2020 and I miss them (and the UK) terribly.

I’m cautiously optimistic that 2021 will be better, and make up for the annus horribilis that was 2020.

With that, let me present my review of the year:

Did I Meet My 2020 Goals?

Overall, given the circumstances – I probably had 50% fewer working hours this year because I spent that time with my kids – I’m really happy with what I achieved and feel positive about how the year went from a work perspective.

  • Publish more high-quality tutorials than in 2019 (target > 17) – Yes! I wrote 26 new tutorials this year.
  • Hit 50k newsletter subscribers and send out a tip every Monday – Yes and no. I sent a newsletter every Monday and hit 40k subs, which I’m super happy with. This is after removing 8k inactive subs, so I actually got pretty close to my original goal.
  • Update my existing Google Sheets courses – Yes! I re-recorded all of the Google Sheet course videos. I’m updating the Automation with Apps Script course at the moment, which will complete the update process.
  • Create one new Google Sheets course – Yes! I launched the Google Sheets Essentials course this year.
  • Run 10 in-person workshops – No. Obviously not 😉
  • Re-brand my digital assets – Yes! I was thrilled with how it turned out. Details below.
  • Find a VA to help with the business – Yes! And she’s been an enormous help. Thanks, Jo!
  • Live-blog Google Next 2020 again – No 🙁 Obviously, this didn’t happen since the conference was cancelled.
  • Work through this book: Data Science on the Google Cloud Platform – Sort of. I started the book and worked through another BigQuery book, but it’s still early in that journey.
  • My overall number 1 goal for 2020 is to be healthy – Yes! Apart from my whole family having the flu in February and a grotty headcold in August, I’ve been healthy this year.
  • Fitness goals: be active 5 times/week (a mix of spin classes, runs and at least 1 run/hike up the mountain) – Sort of… my R knee is still not healed from the running injuries last year, so I’ve been confined to hiking and occasional yoga classes.
  • Keep up the weekly brainstorming hike with my wife – The pandemic put a dampener on this. We’ve managed a few hikes together but since childcare is limited in the current circumstances, we haven’t had the opportunity to do this weekly as we’d hoped.
  • Read 30 books – No. I read ~20 books, but the last one I read was 650 pages of small print, all about life in Stalin’s Russia of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. That counts for at least 3 or 4 normal books by my reckoning 😉

2020 Highlights

2020 felt like a long year. Events from the start of this year feel like they happened years ago. I feel like I aged 10 years!

But despite the terrible toll the pandemic exacted on us all, there were plenty of highlights throughout the year.

In no particular order:

1) New Brand

I hired the super talented team at Left Hand Design to do a rebrand for my business and courses.

I wanted something simple, bold and geometric, and I think Left Hand Design did an outstanding job.

Over the course of a couple of months, they created new family of logos, new color scheme, fonts and styles for my entire online presence. They created new images for my courses and a new slide deck template for the lessons.

I also need to credit my wife, Alexis Grant, for the green dot over the “i”, a wonderful addition!

This new brand represents a huge leap forward for my business.

benlcollins logos

benlcollins logo

benlcollins social logos

benlcollins typography

benlcollins colors

Google Sheets Essentials

2) SheetsCon

SheetsCon

In March this year I ran my most ambitious project to date: SheetsCon, a 2-day online conference for all things Google Sheets.

When I planned the conference in late 2019, way before any of us had heard of Coronavirus, I envisioned an online conference so that people from all over the world could participate, free of charge.

SheetsCon ran on Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th March. My sons had their last day at preschool on the 13th March, because it shut down the following week. We all went into lockdown that weekend.

The timing of an online conference in March might have looked prescient from the outside, but I can promise you it wasn’t planned that way because of Covid.

SheetsCon stats

The event was a massive success; we had almost 7,000 registered attendees, 3,800 of whom attended live, and 89.5% of whom said they’ll return in 2021.

Watch the 2020 SheetsCon replays for free here.

Read about what happened behind-the-scenes to make SheetsCon happen.

It was a huge amount of work. I’m glad I didn’t realize that when I embarked because I might not have done it!

It’ll be easier in some ways in 2021 as I have a blueprint to follow. However, I’m looking to make it bigger and better.

See you there, on 24th and 25th March 2021!

SheetsCon Swag Bags

3) Online Courses

I only added one new course this year: Google Sheets Essentials.

Google Sheets Essentials Course

But I also updated every course in my catalog*, to reflect the changes in the Google Sheets and Apps Script environments.

This was a huge project to re-record over 300 videos and create new templates. It occupied me for most of the year!

* at the time of writing, I’m in the process of updating the Automation with Apps Script course, which is the final one to update.

4) Website

benlcollins site traffic

  • I published 26 new posts this year, which was really pleasing. I had a burst of creative energy in November and December.
  • The traffic to benlcollins.com continues to grow and now reaches around 200k+ users each month for about 350k+ pageviews. Wow!
  • Across 2020, the site saw over 2 million users and nearly 4 million page views 🤯
  • Traffic has increased steadily across the year, although it’s mostly plateaued in the second half of the year
  • I want to keep growing this traffic in 2021!

My favorite posts of the year are the ones that nourish me intellectually.

This year, my favorite ones to research and write were:

5) Google Sheets Tips Newsletter

2020 email growth

My email list has grown from around 30,000 at the beginning of the year to over 38,000 by year end, after removing over 8,000 inactive subscribers part way through the year (the steep drop).

Email continues to be my main marketing channel, and the list grew steadily throughout the year. I get about 40 – 50 daily signups for the Google Sheets Tips newsletter, which goes out at 11am every Monday.

I sent 51 Google Sheets Tips newsletters this year, only skipping the Christmas week.

2020 saw formula challenges #3 and #4, with formula challenge #5 straddling the Christmas holiday break.

As a surprise, my dad printed me a physical copy of tips 1 to 100! Thank you!

6) Community

I’m grateful to all of you who read this website, open my Google Sheets tips newsletters or learn from one of my online courses. It’s a great privilege to share my teachings with the world. I love my work and hope to serve you for years to come. Thank you! 🙏

I’m also extremely grateful to the Google Developer Expert Workspace group and the Googlers I’ve gotten to know over the past few years. It’s been a real pleasure to learn from you all and I’m humbled to be included in such a wonderful and knowledgeable group. Cheers to future collaborations!

7) Dream Office

I set up my dream office in 2020.

New Office

Office door decal

Lego Saturn V rocket

8) Non-Work Highlights

Being a dad!

Spending lots of time with my two young sons this year and watching them blossom, despite the difficult circumstances. Yes, it’s been frustrating and challenging at times, but it’s impossible to put into words how much I love these two little guys and want to do my best for them.

(We even made spreadsheets together 😉)

We had a wonderful week at Deep Creek Lake with my wife’s family in August. It was relaxing and we got to be mostly normal for a week, and socialize with more than just my immediate family four. We enjoyed time on the lake, some great hikes, fires and BBQs!

Locally, I’ve done tons of hiking on our local trails. I can walk miles in either direction along the Appalachian Trail from my doorstep, so I’m really fortunate in that regard. Most recently, I had a great hike up the mountain during the December snowstorm and rounded out the year with a 19-mile hike along the Appalachian Trail with my wife.

Challenges In 2020

Oh boy!

2020 was an incredibly challenging year for everyone. I’m grateful that I, and those close to me, have remained healthy this year.

Aside from staying healthy and isolating, the biggest challenge for my wife and me was the lack of childcare.

We had no childcare in April or May, some in June to August, and then about 28 hours/week since September-ish. Since we both have our own businesses and are ambitious, it’s been a tricky balancing act.

Looking Forward To 2021

I’m super focussed on doing just a few things as well as I can, so I condensed my entire 2021 plan onto a single whiteboard.

Obviously, this only covers the big ticket items, and not things like the blog posts. I find it incredibly helpful to have it written down though. I look at every day to keep me focussed.

New Initiatives

My big initiative for 2021 is to create a cohort-based course for Google Sheets and data analysis, tentatively called ProSheets.

It’ll consist of two live classes and office hours each week for 5 weeks, with a project to finish. You’ll be in a cohort with other students going through the same transformation, so you’ll have a peer group to be accountable with. You’ll leave the course as a pro with Google Sheets, how to solve business and data analysis problems from end-to-end, and have an amazing group of peers to continue learning with. More details to come in early 2021!

To make this new course as successful as possible for students, I’m joining two training programs myself in early 2021. They are: 1) the Keystone Accelerator course, a course/mastermind with other ambitious creators looking to start cohort courses, and 2) the Scaling Intimacy workshop, all about how to create memorable online experiences. I’m super excited about both and can’t wait to put these lessons into practice.

2021 Work Goals

  1. Run 3 cohorts of this new live cohort based course
  2. Run SheetsCon 2021 in March
  3. Improve the SEO and site speed of benlcollins
  4. Publish 30 long-form blog posts
  5. Publish a comprehensive guide to REGEX in Google Sheets
  6. Hit 60k newsletter subscribers
  7. Send a Google Sheets tip email every week for the next year
  8. Create one new on-demand video course
  9. One technical project, related to Sheets/Apps Script/Data in some way. This is partly for my own intellectual curiosity and learning but will also lay the foundations for future blog posts and courses.

Other 2021 Goals

  1. See my UK family!
  2. Have another healthy year
  3. Exercise regularly: 4 hike or bikes each week, 2 yoga/strength
  4. Go camping again! I used to do a lot of camping but it’s been a few years since I last went 🙁
  5. Take my boys out on lots of adventures and camping trips.
  6. Read 30 books (same target as 2020)

Thank You

Finally, my biggest thanks are reserved for you, dear reader.

It’s an extreme honor and privilege for me to help you through my writing and teaching.

My work to create the world’s best resources for learning Google Sheets and data analysis is just getting started.

Best wishes to all of you for 2021!

Cheers,
Ben

Happy Holidays!

christmas tree

Previous years