The one skill every entrepreneur must have is the ability to wear many hats and get everything that matters in his business done even if he has to do it himself. He must be able and willing to get his hands thoroughly dirty. For an infant business, losing a key employee can spell the end of the business if the owner of the business cannot fill-in and carry on that employee's duties till he can get a suitable candidate.

There is no part of my business that I can't handle myself. I currently have four partners. They are all great people, but integrating and getting started as a strong team takes time especially when we all work together virtually (at the start). Still, as young as the whole team is the realities that affect mature businesses affect us. One of my partners got a job offer and had to reconsider her staying full-time with me. She was very truthful about it all and I put myself in her shoes, and concluded that the other job has a better pay-off. I even helped her prepare for the interview and salary negotiation. It's a loss to my business but it's a manageable one because I can fill-in for what she was doing and she promised to continue as a part-time partner.

Small businesses, like mine, go through five stages of growth according to a Harvard Business Review publication by Neil C. ChurchillVirginia L. Lewis. 

image: hbr.org

1. Existence Stage

This is first stage of every small business where the entrepreneur is trying out his business idea to see if it would work out. He is taking his business plan and heading to the tarmac to try it out. He is interested more in getting convinced that the business idea is sound enough to work in reality.

The major business problems he is seeking solution to are:

a) Can we get enough customers, deliver our products, and provide services well enough to become a viable business?

b) Can we expand from that one key customer or pilot production process to a much broader sales base?

c) Do we have enough money to cover the considerable cash demands of this start-up phase?

At this stage, the entrepreneur does everything and directly supervises subordinates, who should be of at least average competence. Systems and formal planning are minimal to nonexistent. The company’s strategy is simply to remain alive. The owner is the business, performs all the important tasks, and is the major supplier of energy, direction, and capital.

2. Survival 

Once the business has proven to be a viable one and is able to get customers, then the business moves to this stage: survival. The focus is now more on cashflow rather than is the idea going to work.

At this stage the business problems become:

a) In the short run, can we generate enough cash to break even and to cover the repair or replacement of our capital assets as they wear out?

b) Can we, at a minimum, generate enough cash flow to stay in business and to finance growth to a size that is sufficiently large, given our industry and market niche, to earn an economic return on our assets and labor?

It is at this stage that the entrepreneur begins to put some structure in place. He begins to delegate more and focus more on the strategic part of the business. 

You can read about the other stages in the original publication.

So it is very obvious that for a business to successfully pass through those first two stages the entrepreneur must be extremely hardworking and at all the tasks that concern his business. He must start by doing everything before delegating. And this has been the reason people who work for large multinational companies seldom set up their own business. They are used to having well defined tasks and passing on other tasks. 

Taking a business from stage 1 to stage 5 is only possible when you give it all your attention. You can't take a business from stage 1 to stage 5 by running it part-time and hiring a business manager. Starting and growing a business is a 100% effort game. You have to give it your all. And in the beginning it would require doing everything. It is the one skill an entrepreneur must have.

Imagine a world with no cars, computers, phones, air conditioners, television, water heater, modern toilet, electricity and internet.

image: pinterest.com

 That would be like going back thousands of years. And that is how important technology is. The main difference between 2,000 years ago and today is not the amount of money in circulation nor the level of intelligence of people (the bulk of the laws and theories we study in school were made centuries ago). The main difference is technology. What we have access to and make use of to achieve more, faster and more easily.

You probably have heard people compare Nigeria with the 1800s USA or the 1700s Great Britain. They say our democracy is in its infancy, our economy is dominated by a very few big men and our rule of law is just as weak as theirs then. The summary of what they are saying is that we are over 200 years backwards. We even still don't have a functioning rail line. We are technologically poor that we are like what some other countries were hundreds of years ago.

We still have traffic lights that are very ineffective, they apportion the same time for every direction in the junction even when all the cars are coming from just one direction. It will stop them, make way for a direction no car is heading and for a full 90 seconds. 

We still have people sweeping our roads. We still have people living on a refuse dump with pigs in the most metropolitan part of the whole country. We still can't manufacture most of the things we use. We still don't have a functional nationwide landline telephony. We still don't have a proper research institute that comes up with revolutionary ideas. We still don't have a good educational system. We still make movies where witches are plastered in white chalk and superstitions feed the theme. We now make music that is all loud screams, rubbish talk and no live instruments, and wonder why we have no Mozart or Beethoven or get nominated for Grammy.

We live at the tail end of the technological spectrum.

Our economy is aflush with labour, cheap labour. No substantial capital investment and no technological edge. We are a mix of stone age (in the remote north and some villages down in the south) and the medieval age. It's almost like we live in a federated jungle. You have to provide for yourself all you need and more emphasis is placed on manual labour.

If we don't invest heavily in our education system, make schooling compulsory and of high quality, set up functioning research institutes and move ourselves from the tail end of the technological spectrum we are not going to experience any remarkable economic growth. We can't keep having a total factor productivity that is extremely low. The rest of the world will keep speeding by and we would just be standing still or regressing.

The hardest part of living is avoiding the self-doubt that comes as a result of our comparing ourselves to other people. You will always know someone whose life seems all-round better than yours and will make you feel you can never be good enough no matter how hard your try. And there will be people who are simply better than you by chance or positioning; they were luckier in the birth/family lottery or got a dream job. Then there are those who started worse off than you but by some reason you can't explain they are able to get more results for what they do than you do.

There will be lots of times all theses will get at you, making you feel sad and filling you with self-doubt. There will be days you will lose your self-belief and feel like the obstacles are too many. And there will be days you go on autopilot, just hanging in there without any motivation. There will be moments you'll feel all your goals have turn to mission impossible.

These are the times you lose your confidence/belief in yourself. You feel despondent. You lose the drive that has set you on the path you are on. You feel inadequate. You feel life is very unfair. You are just not happy.

image: victoria-writes.com

The truth is you need to put your confidence/belief in yourself above the reach/influence of anyone or circumstance. How you see yourself matters way more than the situation life has put you in. You can't change anything by being sad and unmotivated. Your best can only come out when you have a strong confidence in yourself. And you increase your chances of success and improving your lot by constantly being motivated and giving your best.

You have to believe in yourself. No matter the situation you are in. You have to see a chance of succeeding no matter how faint it is. If the results you are getting are not good enough, being despondent will only make them worse. If life is not going your way, giving up will not improve things. You just have to be crazy enough to ignore the reality that keeps hitting you in the face. You have to see what is currently not there. You have to see the lion in you. You have to keep believing in yourself.

This month's training is starting tomorrow and we already have confirmed participants from Nestle, DDB Lagos and Airtel. Others that showed interest but couldn't make the timing were from companies like SABMiller and Huawei. 

It's a very hands-on training aimed at professionals who would need excellent Excel and Business data analysis skills to boost their productivity and strategic creativity at work. So we focused more on getting sales managers and business analysts working for multinationals. 

Next month we are planning a very special training. It will cover how to make awesome and insights rich executive dashboards, how to build a template from scratch that will capture every relevant KPI and how to represent the different forms of data the business generates. It will also be an in-depth Excel training and the participants will go home with a DVD containing the videos of the training and the practice files used. You can register for the training here: In-depth Excel Training, Executive Dashboards & Business Data Analysis 

The content outline is:

1) Data Manipulation in Excel 

a. How Excel handles different data types 

b. Data consistency, starting with the end in view 

c. Building Datasheets that can easily scale 

d. Sorting 

i. Cascaded sorting 

ii. Sorting across rows (left to right sorting, not the usual up to down sorting) 

iii. Sorting and Conditional Formatting to identify trends 

e. Filtering 

f. Data cleaning 

i. Removing duplicates 

ii. Text-to-column 

iii. Grouping 

iv. Data Validation 

v. Conditional Formatting 

g. Data formatting 

i. Using Tables (and when to convert to tables) 

ii. Formatting for printing 

iii. Formatting for email 

iv. Data Review and formatting for 3rd party use 

h. Named Ranges 

2) Charts 

a. Chart types 

i. Line chart and when to use it 

ii. Column chart and when to use it 

iii. Bar chart and when to use it 

iv. Pie chart and it’s dangers 

b. Combining charts; when and how. 

c. Dynamic Charts, using filter. 

d. Best practices when making charts 

e. Sparklines 

f. Power Map and Power View (Excel 2013) 

3) Pivot Table, Pivot Chart and PowerPivot 

a. Pivot Table 

i. Default Pivot Table 

ii. Tabular Pivot Table 

iii. Pivot Table Filtering 

iv. Making a very dynamic regular table from Pivot Table 

v. Calculations and Formula use with Pivot Table 

vi. Advanced Pivot Table tricks 

b. Pivot Chart 

i. Pivot Chart and its limitations 

ii. Dynamic Pivot Charts 

c. PowerPivot (for Excel 2010 and 2013) only 

4) Business Data Analysis 

a. Linking sheets 

b. Duplicating sheets (better than copy and paste) 

c. Inserting sheets, labeling and coloring the professional way 

d. Freezing Panes and splitting windows 

e. Conditional formatting 

i. To identify patterns 

ii. Using formulae 

iii. To make extremely intelligent reports 

f. Lookup functions 

i. Vlookup 

ii. Hlookup 

iii. Looking up the last data or pattern in a particular row or column 

iv. Overcoming the limitations of Vlookup and Hlookup using index and match functions 

g. Power Functions 

i. IF, IFERROR, AND, OR, ISBLANK, and others in the same family 

ii. TEXT manipulative functions to make a completely automated Dashboard 

iii. COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, AVERAGEIFS and others, to make dynamic summary tables 

iv. MATCH and INDEX to do the impossible 

h. Other Functions 

i. Math Functions 

ii. Text Functions 

iii. Logical 

iv. Others 

i. Formula Auditing 

j. Goal Seek, Scenario Manager and Solver 

k. Excel Web Query 

l. Most useful Excel keyboard shortcuts 

5) Executive Dashboards and Reporting 

a. Best Practices

b. Executive Dashboards

i. Executive Dasboards 

ii. Balanced Scorecards 

iii. Determining the KPIs and tracking them 

iv. Strategic Insights & Analysis 

c. Data Visualization

d. Having the audience/recipient in mind

e. E-mails and Excel reports

6) Excel to PowerPoint and Word 

a. Linking PowerPoint/Word Charts to Excel

b. Embedding Excel sheets in PowerPoint/Word

c. Making a Powerful PowerPoint Presentation

7) Excel VBA 

a. Recording Excel macros

This morning I came across a book -- Folk Stories From Southern Nigeria by Elphinstone Dayrell. I read through some of the folktales and came across a very interesting one. The author has one other very popular book -- Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky: An African Folktale.

image: general-ebooks.com

So reproduced below is that very interesting folktale I read. It is titled: The 'Nsasak Bird and the Odudu Bird. Enjoy.

A LONG time ago, in the days of King Adam of Calabar, the king wanted to know if there was any animal or bird which was capable of enduring hunger for a long period. When he found one the king said he would make him a chief of his tribe.

The 'Nsasak bird is very small, having a shining breast of green and red; he also has blue and yellow feathers and red round the neck, and his chief food consists of ripe palm nuts. The Odudu bird, on the other hand, is much larger, about the size of a magpie, with plenty of feathers, but a very thin body; he has a long tail, and his colouring is black and brown with a cream-coloured breast. He lives chiefly on grasshoppers, and is also very fond of crickets, which make noise at night.

Both the 'Nsasak bird and the Odudu were great friends, and used to live together. They both made up their minds that they would go before the king and try to be made chiefs, but the Odudu bird was quite confident that he would win, as he was so much bigger than the 'Nsasak bird. He therefore offered to starve for seven days.

The king then told them both to build houses which he would inspect, and then he would have them fastened up, and the one who could remain the longest without eating would be made the chief.

They both then built their houses, but the 'Nsasak bird, who was very cunning, thought that he could not possibly live for seven days without eating anything. He therefore made a tiny hole in the wall (being very small himself), which he covered up so that the king would not notice it on his inspection. The king then came and looked carefully over both houses, but failed to detect the little hole in the 'Nsasak bird's house, as it had been hidden so carefully. He therefore declared that both houses were safe, and then ordered the two birds to go inside their respective houses, and the doors were carefully fastened on the outside.

Every morning at dawn the 'Nsasak bird used to escape through the small opening he had left high up in the wall, and fly away a long distance and enjoy himself all day, taking care, however, that none of the people on the farms should see him. Then when the sun went down he would fly back to his little house and creep through the hole in the wall, closing it carefully after him. When he was safely inside he would call out to his friend the Odudu and ask him if he felt hungry, and told him that he must bear it well if he wanted to win, as he, the 'Nsasak bird, was very fit, and could go on for a long time.

For several days this went on, the voice of the Odudu bird growing weaker and weaker every night, until at last he could no longer reply. Then the little bird knew that his friend must be dead. He was very sorry, but could not report the matter, as he was supposed to be confined inside his house.

When the seven days had expired the king came and had both the doors of the houses opened. The 'Nsasak bird at once flew out, and, perching on a branch of a tree which grew near, sang most merrily; but the Odudu bird was found to be quite dead, and there was very little left of him, as the ants had eaten most of his body, leaving only the feathers and bones on the floor.

The king therefore at once appointed the 'Nsasak bird to be the head chief of all the small birds, and in the Ibibio country even to the present time the small boys who have bows and arrows are presented with a prize, which sometimes takes the shape of a female goat, if they manage to shoot a 'Nsasak bird, as the 'Nsasak bird is the king of the small birds, and most difficult to shoot on account of his wiliness and his small size.

There is a part of Excel most users don't know exist. It is often hidden till you enable the add-ins for it. It is Power BI. The collection of tools that help you work with large data easily, connect to multiple data sources, bring all the data into one report, do analysis on them, make a visually attractive dashboard and even create a Map (with a story-line/tour).

image: planetlotus.org

In a series of posts I will be introducing you to this powerful tool in Microsoft Excel. It used to require Microsoft Excel 2013, but now you can download the PowerBI tool separately and use it as a standalone program. Visit https://www.powerbi.com/ to download the PowerBI tool.

The PowerQuery helps you connect to almost any kind of data source, including another Excel file and a MySQL database. It let's you run queries on the data. I have used if for a report I make for a client from a huge live MySQL DB. And it works fast and fine without me needing to install any ODBC driver or 3rd party tool (MySQL for Excel).

PowerPivot is just like the regular PivotTable, just that it allows you to pivot data that has millions of rows (even hundreds of millions of rows). Something PivotTable can't do.

Then PowerView lets you create a data model. You are able link data from different sources. It's the equivalent of creating primary and foreign keys in DBA. So you can show more insights than was posssible out of the box previously in Excel.

PowerMap lets you geo-map your data. As long as there is a location field (state, long/lat) you can plot your data on a very beautiful interactive map. You can pan around, zoom and create a storyline or tour. It perfectly turns Excel into an amazing presentation tool.

And the best part of this all is that you can share your dashboard with someone else (maybe your boss). So they can view the most recent one you made at anytime without having to bug you to send a new report. They can even do some of their own analysis on the go in the dashboard without the rights to alter your underlying data.

I woke up 4:20am today and spent the next one hour 36 minutes thinking about what to write as today's blog post. Now that I am already running late for the day's regular activities I have stopped thinking about what to write and I'm simply writing something.

My writing deadline is 8:00am. If I don't complete my blog post by 7:59am you are not going to get it in your inbox that day. So I try my best to complete whatever blog post I am writing before 8:00am. But I can't count the number of times I was done at exactly 7:59am. And also the days I woke up 7:10am to begin thinking and writing are without count.

image: thinkingwriting.qmul.ac.uk

The interesting part is that I always get the post done regardless of how short the time I have left before 8:00am to think about a post and write it out. And the reason? I found out that writing in itself is thinking. When I am short of time, I simply write. And the moment I place my hands on the keyboard it's like a secondary CPU in my brain comes on and my thinking goes into turbo drive. I don't need to think out what I want to write; every sentence I write leads me to the next one. And the one after. All I just need to do is to stop thinking and start writing. Writing triggers thoughts, refines them and lay them out in written words. Writing is thinking.

I read everyday. I often read for more hours than I sleep in a day. There is always a book I am in the middle of. I am currently reading Principles of Economics, though it's for my MBA program. Increasingly, I am finding that reading is pruning me. I end up shedding more thoughts and things after reading a good book. Reading opens my eyes to the unnecessary baggage in my life and thoughts. It helps me see the unreasonable habits I need to stop and the unsound thoughts I need to let go off. The more I read the more things I get rid off. Reading is pruning.

When I write I embark on a mysterious journey. I don't know what the next paragraph is going to be. I most times don't even know what the next sentence will be. And I don't know how the article will turn out. Writing shows me a part of me that is almost independent of me. It brings out the thoughts I could not think without the soft pressure of the keyboard against my hands. It leads me into the fountain of thoughts I struggle to find on my own. Writing makes me think more than thinking does.

And when I read, it's like going on a guided tour. Relaxing and letting someone else, usually an expert, do the show and tell. I get to see things and life from another's very interesting perspective. I get to go to places and time I can never physically go. I get to satisfy every curiosity I have. It is the main reason I don't get easily upset, excited or in a hurry. It prunes off every incomplete thought, almost all spontaneity and a lot of expectations. Reading is pruning.

You might wonder -- "Why every Nigerian?" Well, the answer is in tip number 5.

Also, if you would like to join our exclusive community where we share more business and career improving tips from the perspective of business intelligence and Microsoft Excel then this is your great opportunity. All you have to do is to like our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/urbizedge, and follow our LinkedIn company page, www.linkedin.com/company/urbizedge That way you'll get some of our exclusive tips and business intelligence information.

Tip 1
Ever wanted to go from the top of a 1000 entries long list to the last entry? I keep seeing people scrolling down using the down key or the hit/miss method of using the scroll bar on the right to get to the last record.

Well there is a straightforward and easy way to go to the last record in any list from anywhere you are in the list. It is by pressing CTRL and DOWN at the same time. CTRL + DOWN. It takes you to the last record in the list. The great part is that you can do CTRL + UP to go back up. CTRL + LEFT to go to the leftmost record. And CTRL + RIGHT to go to the rightmost record.

Tip 2
This is similar to the tip 1. What if you didn't just want to jump to the last record but also wanted to select all the records from the top to the bottom (maybe for the purpose of copying them)? It's also easy.

Do CTRL + SHIFT + DOWN to select everything down to the last record in the list. And like in the tip 1, it also works for selecting to the LEFT or RIGHT or UP.

Tip 3
Ever wanted to insert a row in an already existing list? Maybe you omitted an entry while typing out the list and now that you've remembered you want to put the record in the very row position it originally should have been. This also is very easy.

You simply right click on the row where the record should have been and select insert. This will shift the record on that row down and give you a new blank row to put the record you omitted.

Tip 4
What if it was an entire field you omitted? Somehow you omitted June in typing out the months for the report. And you would like to put June in the field position it should be, right after May, the current spot July is in. How do you do that?

You simply right click on the column where you want to put the missing field (July, if the case above is the issue) and select insert.

Tip 5
It's time we should always show our patriotism in all we do. When you do a sales or expenses report, don't just leave the numbers without a currency or put $. You can and should put the naira sign. And it's amazingly easy if you have the Excel 2013 or Excel 2016. If you use the Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 you should sent me a private mail so I'll forward you the complicated way to get it done in them.

Just select the cells with the sales/expenses figures, right click and click on Format Cells. In the Numbers tab and Currency selection, pick the Naira sign. 

Tip 6
Make your report easier to read and great looking when printed out. Format as Table. And it is very easy. Just select the report table, go to the Home tab, click on Format as Table (it is in the middle of the menu under Home tab).

Tip 7
You will find it funny or maddeningly annoying (depending on how serious what you are working on is) that the delete key in Excel doesn't delete everything. It only deletes the cell content and not it's borders and cell fill color. So how do you truly delete everything in a cell, color and border inclusive?

Also very easy. Just go to the Home tab and in the menu below at the right side, click on Clear and Clear All.

And those are the 7 useful Excel tips every Nigerian should know. Don't forget to join our exclusive community: www.facebook.com/urbizedge and www.linkedin.com/company/urbizedge!

When I look at the countries of the world and their different positions economically, politically, socially, intellectually and technologically; I tell myself that I don't want to end up like Nigeria. I am not a country so my chances of changing my position in life is much greater and easier. If South Korea, Singapore and China can turn their national lives around for good in a few decades (less than 50 years), then I should be able to turn my life around in less than that. I should be able to compensate for all the disadvantages being born and bred in Nigeria puts on one.

image: zet.cz

The hardest part of being what I call a first class citizen of the world (just as we have third world and first world countries) is that one can be easily blinded to one's relative state in life. Naturally, we are configured to have a blown up self esteem. Even the man in the jail has a very good impression of himself relative to what every other person have of him. We tend to see only the good in ourselves and often in a larger than real proportion. And we are not so good at detecting all that is wrong with us.

There is almost a universe of gap between what people outside Nigeria see Nigeria as and what we inside Nigeria see Nigeria as. We feel the outside world focuses on our bad side and magnify it. But how can we see ourselves as we truly are? How can we be objective in our determination of our position in the world. I have thought a lot about this and come up with a list of what is truly wrong with us. 

1. Very Poorly Educated Populace
This is the one that saddens me the most. I am extremely active online and a member of several online communities. Read the comments on LindaIkeji's blog and the comments on DailyMail.co.uk. Then read the posts on Nairaland and the ones on 4chan.org. Read the comments on our newspapers websites and the ones on foreign newspapers website. Listen to the discussions on our radio and listen to discussions on BBC Radio 4. Watch our TV channels and watch foreign TV channels. Read what our journalists write and compare it with what foreign journalists write. Then listen in to conversations around you -- at the mall, at the office, in the bus and at home. 

The truth is the level of education in our country is very low. The educational quality of our graduates is not as good as that of other graduates in most other countries. The reasoning of our secondary school dropouts is not as sound as that of high school dropouts in a lot of countries. Even the quality of our professors is poor compared to their peers in other countries. On all levels our populace are mostly less educated. 

And we seldom realize this because we keep equating education to ability to read and write and speak English fluently. It's way beyond that. It is the ability to advance the human race and do things right.

2. No Desire To Be A First World Country
We have no genuine desire to improve our lot as a country. We avoid making the required tough changes it would take to improve the country and its standing in the world. We feel too comfortable with our current national state and would rather blame our troubles on a particular tribe or outside force than try to move into the community of the developed countries.

We hate being criticized and celebrate leaders that deflect the criticisms rather than tackle the root-cause head on. When our politician reply a question about corruption on CNN with a deflective question like "Isn't America and the UK corrupt too?" he turns an instant hero at home. We only want the outside world to see the little that is going right with us and not the whole of us. 

We have no desire to be a global leader in anything. We produce almost nothing the world will miss us for if an earthquake swallows us. 


And those two things are what I feel is wrong with us in Nigeria.

So I have decided to write my first Microsoft Excel book. I would be putting to use my experience of having trained very many people individually and in a class based training, my unique hands-on style of training that keeps getting me great feedback and my conversational style of writing. 

It won't be a book that will show how much I know about Excel. It will be a book that is focused on improving an average user; it will take any regular Excel user or enthusiast and set him adequately on the path to being an Excel expert. It will be useful for all groups of people seeking Excel beginners' training or intermediate or advanced. It will even cover Excel VBA to an extent that will make you able to continue the VBA learning journey on your own without any further class-based training need.

I will include companion video files and practice files. It will be aimed primarily at the Nigerian business professional market. I will be talking in Naira currency, states of the country, Nigerian companies and Nigerian data. All the sample scenarios and data will be Nigerian flavoured. I am a proud Nigerian and will rather generate random Nigerian data than download already available US or UK data for my data samples.

Yesterday, I got the delivery of our branded training DVDs. It matches our already existing branded training notepad and pen.

They even match our certificate design (a little).

I have written a couple of Excel training guides/books, even one used to deliver a training outside the country (and continent). Just that none is satisfactorily comprehensive or touch every aspect of Excel I talk about during a training. Then I am now much more experienced having spent the greater part of the last 12 months conducting Excel training. 

I aim to make the book as good as any internationally popular Excel book for regular users. I will work very hard on it and make it as detailed and easy to follow as I try to do my Excel blog posts. It will be useful for secondary students, university students, MBA students, PhD students, business analysts, sales managers, accountants, finance analysts, engineers, teachers, administrators, C-level execs and everyone that needs to have one or two things regularly done (well) in Excel.

So please, I need your suggestions on the following:

1. What version of Excel should I write the book on (Excel 2010 or 2013 or the new 2016)?
2. How many pages should I aim to make the book have?
3. What shape/size should the book be (A4 size, A5 size, landscape A4, ,,,)?
4. What matters most to you in such a book and you would like me to take note of?
5. What topics should I make a lot of practice scenarios for?
6. What general suggestions do you think I will find useful?

Thanks a lot!