About me an Excel consultant & freelancer

Hello, this page is about me an Excel consultant & freelancer.  The Excel Factor is my business name for a small advanced Excel spreadsheet solutions and financial modelling business.  Very small, in fact, its mainly just me, John Hackwood, a friendly & passionate Excel consultant & freelancer living just south of border near the fabulous Gold Coast QLD Australia with my wife and Aussie Terrier dog Bluey.  I truly enjoy helping clients and adding value to their jobs and businesses with great professional quality spreadsheets.  My wife Nupur, a dentist and PhD sometimes works with me especially if the task is medical related, but she also is a dead set ‘out of the box’ thinker and many times comes up with an annoyingly, unique and brilliant solution :).

I have a strong finance & international resource marketing background after working many years in 3 of the world’s top 5 mining houses namely BHP, Anglo American and Rio Tinto (Comalco) as well as in the manufacturing sector much earlier in my career (Rheem Australia). 

I have a Bachelor of Business (Accountancy) degree from  QUT and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Financial Services Institute of Australia (formerly the Securities Institute of Australia).  So I started my career as an accountant in manufacturing with Rheem in Brisbane and Sydney, then moved into the resource commodity industry back in Brisbane doing marketing reporting, export contract administration, trade finance and credit management roles.  

In 2001, I moved to Singapore with the then BHPBilliton to take on a Senior Credit Controller role for Carbon Steel Materials (coking coal, iron ore and manganese).   I used spreadsheets and Excel throughout this career, in fact that’s an understatement, using Excel was like breathing, just ‘part and parcel’ of my job day in day out.

We returned to the Redlands in 2004 and then my wife Nupur, a Dentist, by this time wanted to own her own dental practice which we did in 2005 starting small with a one chair in Redland Bay and growing this to a very busy and successful 4 chair practice.   It went well and before long was busy enough to demand me full time so I moved into this our own business in 2008.  Due to a lack of systems in the Dental Industry, I naturally turned to using advanced Excel for many purposes and especially VBA programing and pivot tables to gain efficiencies and functionality expensive dental software just did not have.  I started theExcelFactor.com website and service in 2010 working for companies as a contractor and also at first from HR hire firms to gain experience doing the work I loved.

We sold our practice in 2016 and I have continued on with The Excel Factor business and my wife helps me on certain jobs especially if dental or medical related and she also designed and built this website.

I am a Queenslander, although these days live just over the border in the fantastic Tweed Shire NSW.  I work with clients from all over Australia with many typically being located on the Gold Coast, Yatala, Logan and Brisbane, QLD Australia as well as Far North Coast NSW clients on the Tweed Coast, Murwillumbah, Casino, Kyogle, Byron Bay and Lismore NSW and even some companies overseas.

My linked-in profile is below.

There is also some more detail about my earlier resources marketing career related to my credit management and trade finance skills at my Credit Management & Trade Finance page.