image: eventbrite

One of the advantages of being a bookworm is that I get to learn from other people's experiences and knowledge. And not just regular people or the ones I am constrained to meet in my day-to-day activities. I get to learn from the world's best. People who have both the technical/academic knowledge and the experiential knowledge. They have opened my eyes to things I never would have figured out on my own. They have taught me great business lessons that run against what I commonly see in my Naija environment.

And today, I am sharing with you the books I have most benefited from in my pursuit of entrepreneurial happyness. 

1. Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You

This is perhaps the book that has had the most effect on me. It is packed full of precious rare gems that every entrepreneur would want to have. 


2. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

This book is a must read for every entrepreneur who wants to shorten his learning curve greatly. I wish I had read this book the very year I started my business. 

3. How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling

People say I become completely different when I am delivering a training -- that I kinda just flip from the quiet introvertive person to a very lively engaging person. I always get star ratings for my excellent and very lively training classes. What most people don't know is that this book is what motivated me to always act like someone plugged to an 11,000 Volts electricity when it's training or demo time. 

4. How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It

Mark Cuban's business autobiography is a very inspiring book. It will motivate you on any down-day you have. He wrote it in such a way that whatever troubles you are facing in building your business will look like a no-big-deal and you would actually feel like you can succeed since Mark Cuban did it.

5. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

This is the book that shows you the 10 years that led to the overnight success you see in popular companies.


And those are the books I absolutely will recommend every entrepreneur to read. 

As an extra, I am currently reading The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue and Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine. If they end up being as great as the reviews say they are, then, I'll be sure to give you some helpful gist about the value in them.

When you hear the word "Entrepreneurship", I bet what first comes to your mind is the concept of "starting and growing a business". I don't think anyone expects it to be the story of personal growth. 

image: changeyourgamebealeader.com

For me, my four years entrepreneurial journey has been more of an incredible personal growth than growing a business.

At the start, disregarding the many smaller reasons, the main reason I resigned my telecoms job and started UrBizEdge was that I wanted to be my own boss and being an entrepreneur was one of my life goals. It is not two reasons but two sides of the same coin/reason.

So in April 2014, my entrepreneurial journey started. Though, I had been preparing intensely for it for over a year, even almost resigned in 2013 to start until a mentor advised me to first register the company, buy most of what I needed to run the business and save enough to get through the first year if no profit in the first year. God bless him! It was what I saved that got me through my first year.

I became the one man army: I did all the marketing, all the admin work, all the actual (operational/project) work promised the client, all the customer support, all the accounting/tax work and all the product development. I built up content for my online training classes. Wrote books to sell on Amazon and give as training reference materials. Built VBA programs for clients. Did the organizing and teaching for every training contract we won. I was basically working like a mad man or someone on drugs.

After a while, life became very stressful and the whole running my own business looked like I was just burying myself under heaps of non-ending work. I would work and not have time to go chasing for the payment. Then when I tried chasing for payment, I would end up with extra work and time wasting meetings. I knew I had to do something about the new life I have worked myself into -- one that is fast becoming a miserable life.

I was earning more money than I ever did working as an employee but I was not having a life at all. Just work, work, work. 

That was how my first two years were like.

In my third year, I started to put more structure into how I did things. I started learning more about the business side of running a business instead of reading just technical books and becoming technically better. I began finding out that if I left myself at the mercy/control of the clients, I would be back to what it was like in paid employment -- being overused by others without adequate compensation. So I started saying NO more often. Would turn down projects to go practice French in Porto Novo. Started doing daily french classes in Alliance Française. Snatched my life from others' grip. 

Then I started building a team. First tried using the remote approach. A flexible team that doesn't have to be holed together in an office. It didn't work. I just ended up with more work -- doing the actual work and teaching the team how to do them and having to communicate (the tedious part of it all) with the team. 

So I gave up on the remote team option.

Now I have a physical team. Full-time staff. And it's working fine. Way better than the remote team option. I still do a lot of work but gradually I am shifting more work to them. We are now having proper division of labour. And I am now able to do proper business structuring.

I have been reading up on operations management, building a business that can work without me and books that coach one on how to have a properly structured business. Also, I am now better at client engagement. No more letting the client dictate all the terms and starting work without clear direction and cost agreement. 

Why then did I say it's been more of a personal growth than business growth?

It is because in the sea of businesses that exist, mine is not any spectacular. I know people who earn more than our entire revenues as their salaries. And I don't mean expats or MDs of big companies, I mean regular guys with same years of work experience as me working in non management roles in big organizations. So nothing incredible yet about my company. Rather, most of the growth has been personal. 

These past four years have made me a radically changed man. More a man. I say and do whatever I want to do without worrying about pissing off anyone. No office politicking. I see a great idea, I implement it. Nobody to seek approval from. I work hard for everything I earn, so I am less inclined to live up to anyone's standard. 

I have seen videos I created for fun generate me over $5,000 passive income. I have seen a book I hurriedly put together last year Christmas break period generate me over $1,000 free real money. I have seen a trial project to vet developers for my stocks analysis app generate sales of up to N900,000/month and a 10% profit. In short, I have seen that results don't come from show-off or hype or sweet talk or big talk or the scintillating idea. Results come from doing and tweaking. Again and again.

My entrepreneurial journey has forced me to grow in ways nothing else would have triggered. I have found what I am obviously good at (technical stuff, teaching and reading), what I am surprisingly good at (wining projects, business communication and strategy), what I am horrible at (price negotiation, strongman tactics that deliver big bucks in business and human resource management), and what I completely avoid (partnerships, investor funding and having a board). 

It's been no easy journey but I am glad I embarked on it.

And the latest significant expense in my quest for fluency in French is Amazon Echo.

It is an amazing device. A smart speaker. Yes, speaker (that is smart). It connects to my Audible audiobook account, Spotify, Pandora, Kindle, TuneIn radio and many other services to deliver anything I want on my voice command. 

I bought it majorly for my French learning. I am always telling it, "Alexa, play RFI monde from TuneIn radio". That way I am always having a french immersion in my home office. Alexa is the voice activated AI in the device and many other Amazon smart devices.

Also, we have this self-development sessions in my company where we pick a very inspiring and productivity enhancing book for Alexa to read for us. All I just say is, "Alexa, read The Success Principles by Jack Canfield from Audible". And that's it. 

The only catch is that you must have it always connected to both power and internet. Luckily, I have an inverter/solar power system and Tizeti 24/7 unlimited internet. 

I have seen my french greatly improve. I now hear what the fast native speakers are saying on radio, like 1/3rd of the time. And last month, I went touring Republique du Bénin, Togo and Ghana (wanted to get to Cote d'Ivoire but no more free time). I found it a lot easier conversing with the french speaking Béninoise and Togolaise. I could converse well with everyone though occasionally I had trouble understanding some of what they said until they repeated slowly or used simpler french. 

I got the Amazon Echo for $84.99 (there was a sales that period on Amazon from the usual $99.99) but had to pay over $30 more to have it shipped via MallForAfrica.

.Interestingly, there is another similar sale going on now.

Setting up Echo is very easy and you can manage it via an online portal: https://alexa.amazon.com Which I use from anywhere (home or away) to control the device remotely.

I sometimes hook it to my FM Radio transmitter so people in my neighbourhood can join in the French love. Well, it's actually so I can listen overnight on the radio by my bedside. 

All these work to be fluent in French 🤔. 

We recently came up with this innovative solution for busy professionals. It is an industry first: DaaS. Data Analysis As A Service. A subscription based service. In fact, I'll share with you the very announcement letter/email I sent out to our customers/leads.

Make us your secret weapon!

Have you ever experienced the analyst's block (kinda like writer's block, when you just don't know how to make the report you want)? Have you ever felt your report could be better? Have you ever felt like you were not making the most of the data at your disposal? Like there is more you could be uncovering and tracking and reporting? Have you ever felt you need experts you can call on any day and at any time but won't cost you an arm and leg? Okay, maybe I lied about the not costing you an arm and leg. The good thing is that we have structured it flexibly so you can always get more value than the cost. We have created an industry first: DaaS (Data Analysis as a Service). Maybe you have tried training. Perhaps you have attended our in-depth high value training class. You have our video learning materials, our book and our practice files. We hope you remember everything we taught you. However, things are changing. You are changing. Your work is changing. The industry is changing. Excel is changing. Power BI is changing. Everything is changing. You already have a demanding job and can't be spending all day keeping abreast of what's new and applicable to you as regards making the most of your data and reports. We are offering to be your secret weapon. So what's the DaaS structured as? It is simple and straightforward as ABC. A. You can reach us remotely (calls, Skype, emails, SMS etc) and at our office (70b Olorunlogbon street, after Banex hotel, Anthony Village, Lagos) for targeted help with your office work. Note: we won't come to your office or house. B. There is fair usage policy (FUP). So you have to book not less than 24hrs prior and you are entitled to 24hrs/month (which is equivalent to 3 full days) consulting time (both remote and physical). Any length of time above that will attract some extra small charge/fee. C. You have a dedicated resource (more like technical account manager). It is not Michael. He/she is your primary contact, handles all your work requests, communication, meetings and projects. There is a pool of internal resources (Michael inclusive) he/she will draw on, as appropriate, to satisfy all your relevant needs. We have full-time data analysts that are already handling consulting projects and training, so just as skilled as Michael and they are the ones designated as technical account managers. So how much does this cost? That's the best part: there are four flexi plans. N45,000/month. You can cancel anytime and restart anytime (no refunds, when you cancel it means you just don't pay when your subscription elapses). N90,000/quarter N150,000/half-year N200,000/year And it's not negotiable. Why that funny pricing structure? That is the result of our own in-house data analytics on the pricing. We already bill N100,000/day for one-on-one consulting (corporate clients rate is N250,000/day) and even when we are overpowered by the superior negotiating tactics of some of you, we only go as low as N70,000/day for individuals. And that is 8 hrs at a go which is never as effective as two separate 4 hrs, and way less than the 24 hrs spreadable over an entire month that we are offering you at N45,000/month and even less than N19,000/month when you take the year option. We can only service 10 people at the same time. So if you need our service but delay too much, you will have to wait for an open slot if all 10 slots are taken. And just as we can't review the price downwards, so also will we not accept you doubling the fee so we can take you up. What do you think? If interested, get in touch as soon as you can and we will get in touch with you. Reach Michael on 0700ANALYTICS, 0808-938-2423, 0806-312-5227 and mike@urbizedge.com or Hannah on 0802-118-0874 and hannah@urbizedge.com or Emmanuel on 0908-482-5064 and emmanuel@urbizedge.com Again, welcome to the world of DaaS! To your Excel-ling! Michael Olafusi 0700ANALYTICS www.urbizedge.com P.S. We have now fully launched our open class Financial Modelling and Financial Planning course, you can read up on the details and registration steps at https://www.urbizedge.com/FinancialModelling We've spent three years perfecting the curriculum via doing on-request financial modelling training for companies, and building models for both foreign and local clients.

Happy new week!

Surprised to hear from me again? Think I have abandoned blogging? Ah, gotcha!

A lot has been happening really fast in my life lately. Having to not write any blog post daily has freed up significant time for me to spend on reading hard-to-read books and rebuilding my business, UrBizEdge Limited. 

Have you seen that joke online about the guy who had to look for another job because the company he worked for relocated and didn't inform him? 

image: pinterest.com

Well, as absurd has that sounds, it happened to me/us. The office I use in Ikeja, it was via a special arrangement with a friend. He rented an entire floor with many office rooms than he often use. So one day, while we were discussing, he offered to lease me one of the office rooms. At first, (in 2014) when it was only me running everything I didn't need an office space. But then for tax issues, meetings and other occasional needs it made sense to have a paid office space. So after a week or so of thinking about it, I accepted and he was kind to let me pay a fair rental fee. There were months I didn't step into the office; but then I had it, just was too busy at client side and working from home (my preferred work space) that I seldom go there. Then when I had team members, they would use the place too occasionally. 

Last year, I moved to Gbagada and found it much closer to most places we go than from the Ikeja office. So I turned my living-room to office space. And we used it more than we used the Ikeja office. 

Well, early this month I decided to show our newest staff the office so at least he knows where it is and can use it when he needs to or have a client meeting. Like in the joke I mentioned, my friend had relocated and didn't inform me. When I called him, he said it was in July he got another place and just started the relocation. Well, he could have told me when he was even deciding it not until I found out myself and had to call him. He still wanted us to continue our office sharing arrangement but I don't want another unpleasant surprise. So I decided to get our own dedicated office space and asked him for the refund of the about one year paid for I have left (which I don't think he's wanting to refund).

Emotions aside, it is a positive thing. Though the new office space is very costly but the increased resources we have access to and the better location (in Anthony) makes it a very good one. We are now planning on adding one or two new staff. And you can visit us without me trying to discourage you because I hate the traffic I face in getting to the Ikeja office. This one is just 10 mins drive from my house (sometimes, less). The address is 70b Olorunlogbon street, after Banex hotel and Edichart Supermarket, Anthony Village, Lagos. You can also call me before coming, 0700ANALYTICS (na we get that special number😁)

Also, I have been reading a lot about proper business management. And my MBA courses are really worth it; they've been very eye-opening, helping me see things I never would have figured out myself. So now we are redesigning the company structure. Built an organogram from the company as it would be if we were not funding and resource constrained. 

The idea is to work with the right structure in mind and well explained to every team member. So even though just a couple of us are doing all the 17 roles we should have, gradually as we hire more staff we become more like we should be on the organogram. I got this great learning from Michael Gerber's E-myth Revisited. It is a great book every first time entrepreneur should read.

Also, I am making breakthrough with structuring our consulting business arm. After many hard-lessons from unpaid consulting or undercharging we have now come up with a strict process for onboarding new consulting projects. We would rather be chilling/sleeping than take up a consulting project without agreeing on the payment and scope terms.

Lastly, the enterprise solutions arm is taking off gradually. After launching a trial solution which was successful, grossing between N500,000 & N900,000 monthly at 8% operating profit margin (which isn't bad for the minimal work involved and the nature of the e-product), we are now almost done with the main one. The very one I have always had in mind and have been working on since 2012. Now the developers who built the trial one have been working on this big one since February 2018 and we are almost ready. The final launch link is http://nigeriamarketdata.com/ but you can help test it and give us feedback by accessing the pre-launch one at https://stoka-ui.azurewebsites.net/ 

Just to sneak this in: I should be getting married soon (like in under a year's time). I don't have much control over how private/lowkey or highkey it would be but now you know. So don't feel offended if I suddenly say it has happened and you didn't see any IV. Again, it's outside my control -- deliberately (as I have no experience with non-training event management) and non-deliberately (as I am not the only one involved in the planning).

Last year, we had a great time rubbing minds on the amazing things one could do with Microsoft Excel and had a presentation on other data analytics platforms. There were participants from all over Nigeria and the community has kept growing strong and sharing career growing knowledge.

This year, there will be a similar meetup/conference and you can RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Nigerian-Excel-Users-Meetup/events/253308965/

Below is the agenda:

Nigerian Excel Users 2018 Meetup
The Zone Tech Park, Plot 9 Gbagada Industrial Scheme, UPS b/stop, Gbagada - Oshodi Expressway, Lagos.
1st September, 2018 (10:00am to 3:30pm)

Start Time: 10:00am

1) Introduction and networking (25 mins)

2) General Discussions pt 1(Your Excel Journey, career advantage, Excel pet peeves, ideas, the esoteric, 40 mins)

3) Presentation 1 (25 mins) + Q & A (10 mins)

4) Presentation 2 (25 mins) + Q & A (10 mins)

5) Break (10 mins)

6) Presentation 3 (25 mins) + Q & A (10 mins)

7) Presentation 4 (25 mins) Q & A (10 mins)

8) Break (10 mins)

9) Presentation 5 (25 mins) Q & A (10 mins)

10) Presentation 6 (25 mins) Q & A (10 mins)

11) General Discussions pt 2 (Your Excel Journey, career advantage, Excel pet peeves, ideas, the esoteric, 30 mins)

12) Close (5 mins)

End Time: 3:30pm (Networking continues)

There will be drinks and snacks.

Also, if you are interested in making a presentation, then you can fill the following Google form (link here)

The new Pension Fund Plans (courtesy, trustfundpensions.com)

Last week, a big brother asked me what I think about switching from Fund 2 to Fund 1. Fund 2 is the default plan for everyone below age 50 years. 

Below is my reply, as usual, sprinkled with my deep bias. Enjoy. 😁

courtesy aiicopension.com

Variable investment instruments mean stocks, real estate, corporate bonds etc.

You can download and read the official doc from PenCom  https://www.pencom.gov.ng/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/1492535703_Amended_Investment_Regulation_April-2017.pdf

Fund 1 is mandated to invest between 20% to 75% in stocks, real estate and other volatile assets while Fund 2 can only invest between 10% to 55% in such assets. Fund 2 is the default for people below 50 years old.

Switching from Fund 2 to Fund 1 means you are okay with greater exposure to the stocks market and other volatile assets class. Mathematically, you are expected to gain more potential returns (in fact, a sure higher return over the long term) but there are two reality issues that can negate that:

1. Our Nigerian stocks, real estate and corporate bond market is not well developed and not efficient, resulting in all manners of non-theoretically expected results. For instance, our stocks market is more influenced by foreign investors inflow/outflow than the actual by-the-book dynamics that should reflect a stock’s price. Our real estate market is not organized and all the REITS (real estate investment trusts, funds) are very poorly performing. These fundamental distortions amplify the risks one face, and greatly lengthens the time it will take to assuredly get the higher returns expected.
2. If you are about 10 years or less to reaching 50, when the PFA will have to mandatorily move you to another plan (with reduced exposure to volatile assets) you might not have enough time to gain that promised higher return rate, and might experience less return on your pension fund compared to someone who stayed in Fund 2.

 From my experience with mutual funds, they are not good at stock picking, they often buy/sell too often raking transaction charges that come straight out of your money and still charge their management fees. I have stopped using stocks mutual funds* because over the last 7 years of using them, they’ve not done well at all compared to leaving one's money in the money market fund (where most of PFAs have been stacking pension). My Stanbic Pension has performed way better than my Stanbic Mutual Fund since 2011. So I might be even going for Fund 3 (if allowed) rather than let them actively trade my money in Fund 1.

Again, just my biased opinion based on explanations above.

* I do my stocks buying by myself, and have been performing better than ARM Discovery Fund and Stanbic IBTC NEF. So I pulled out my money from those mutual funds.

In case you are not too familiar with SUMIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIF and COUNTIFS, they are a group of formula used to sum or count records that meet a specified criterion. 

Below are some easy to follow examples to help you fully grasp them. You can download the practice file here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15W7zluKlqD3naEyIskvF4xT9wZ22qvYZ/view?usp=sharing 

SUMIF
I have a transaction database for a pizza restaurant and I am interested in total sales for Hot Veggie. With SUMIF I can get that done easily.

=SUMIF(B:B,"Hot Veggie",E:E)

SUMIFS

What if we also want to consider other conditions beyond just the name of the pizza sold, say we want to find the sales amount for all the Hot Veggie sold after 8:30 am? 

That is what SUMIFS is for; it is the plural form of SUMIF, allowing you to chain as many conditions as you want.

=SUMIFS(E:E,B:B,"Hot Veggie",F:F,">8:30")

COUNTIF

Maybe I am just interested in the number of transactions that are for Hot Veggie. Again, very easy. We just use COUNTIF.

=COUNTIF(B:B,"Hot Veggie")

COUNTIFS

How about count of transactions for Hot Veggie that happened after 8:30?

=COUNTIFS(B:B,"Hot Veggie",F:F,">8:30")

Now to the very interesting parts. What if I am interested in not just Hot Veggie, but also Meatzaa, Italiano and BBQ Chicken?

Q: Sum all the sales for Meatzaa, Hot Veggie, Italiano and BBQ Chicken

A: =SUM(SUMIF(B:B,{"Meatzaa","Hot Veggie","Italiano","BBQ Chicken"},E:E))

You might wonder why the {..} wrapping the list of pizzas. It is how Excel allows you to specify an array (a list, like we've done). Also, you might wonder why the SUM(...) around the SUMIF formula. It is what allows Excel to sum up all the different answers for each pizza type. See what I mean from the partially calculated formula screenshot below.

And you can use this same pattern for SUMIFS, COUNTIF and COUNTIFS.

Q: Sum all the sales for Meatzaa, Hot Veggie, Italiano and BBQ Chicken after 8:30 am

A: =SUM(SUMIFS(E:E,B:B,{"Meatzaa","Hot Veggie","Italiano","BBQ Chicken"},F:F,">8:30"))

Q: Count of all the transactions for Meatzaa, Hot Veggie, Italiano and BBQ Chicken

A: =SUM(COUNTIF(B:B,{"Meatzaa","Hot Veggie","Italiano","BBQ Chicken"}))

Q: Count of all the transactions for Meatzaa, Hot Veggie, Italiano and BBQ Chicken after 8:30 am

A: =SUM(COUNTIFS(B:B,{"Meatzaa","Hot Veggie","Italiano","BBQ Chicken"},F:F,">8:30"))

For more of these types of very useful tutorials you can check out https://www.urbizedge.com/Tutorials and subscribe to my YouTube channel

image: saleshacker.com

During our monthly training classes, I notice a strong interest in being able to make sales and transactions forecast by participants from retail industry and financial institutions. Their face lit up when I tell them that there are a couple of forecast tools in Microsoft Excel they can make good use of.

In today's post, I will be walking you through those forecast tools with a focus on using them to make sales forecast.

1. Forecast Sheet 

People are usually surprised when I show them this tool. It is one of the tools added to Excel 2016 and Office 365, and you will find it under Data menu. With it you can make very useful time series forecasts that takes into consideration trend and seasonality in your data.

Let's say you work for Cadbury and would like to forecast sales for the ever yummy Bournvita beverage; it is common sense to factor in the reality that sales always spike in some specific months of the year (Christmas hampers period etc.). That is what is beautifully handled by the seasonality component of the forecast sheet tool. And there is also trend (are sales generally trending upwards or downwards). What I most like about it is the flexibility Microsoft put into it: you can handle missing records, set confidence interval, and even let it automatically detect the seasonality.

2. Moving Average

This is the most common forecasting method I see business people use. Any time you are projecting the average growth for the last couple of months or years forward, you are doing plain vanilla Moving Average. Then whenever you take that average and add a magic number to it (like we do in coming up with optimistic case and pessimistic case in most financial modelling), you are still doing Moving Average -- the strawberry and lemon flavoured version of it. And whenever management says they want to double growth rate year on year for the next three years; that, again, is Moving Average.

So how do you do it in Microsoft Excel? If you are okay with typing a simple formula in Excel, then just doing =AVERAGE(last x periods) gets you there.

However, if you are not on friendly terms with Excel formulas, you can take advantage of Moving Average in Excel Data Analysis Toolpak.

Just remember to first activate Data Analysis Toolpak from File >> Options >> Add-ins >> Manage Excel Add-ins 

3. Regression

Let's say you work for Julius Berger Construction company. The company revenue depends on Federal Government budget, GDP growth rate, number of meetings with potential clients, which party is in power, PMI and FDI. Perhaps way more than which month of the year we are in or the previous years revenue. Then it would make better sense to do a forecast model that combines all those factors and give you some sense of what type of revenue figure to expect this year. And more importantly, show you which factors strongly influence your revenue and which are not very important, plus how much you need to do as regards the factors under your control in order to achieve a specific desired revenue goal. 

That forecast model is regression.

It requires a fairly good deal of statistics knowledge but is well worth the work. And Excel has a tool that takes away most of the computational headache. You just do a couple of clicks and read a blog post on how to interpret + use the regression tool results.

You'll find it under the Data Analysis Toolpak I earlier showed you how to activate.

And these are the common sales forecasting tools you should be conversant with in Microsoft Excel. If you look through the Data Analysis Toolpak, you'll find a couple more.


If you enjoyed this and would like to learn more useful analysis tools, you absolutely should subscribe to my YouTube channel and go through my humour filled tutorial video collections. :)

People are surprised when I tell them that my first (and only) degree is in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. And unlike many people, I had the chance to go back to the core Engineering role I studied for but I didn't, only asked my boss to keep the offer open in case I get bored with Microsoft Excel. Now I make my full-time living from Microsoft Excel.

So what are the practical value you get from being good at using Microsoft Excel?

Let's start with in general life, outside of work. Especially for people whose work won't need them using Microsoft Excel.

1. Non-work Use
What do you think I and many other people use for their personal finance planning and investment analysis? Well, it is Microsoft Excel. Even when you buy a personal finance book and additional resources are given you for practical application of what the book is teaching you, those resources often include Microsoft Excel templates.

What do you think people use to track the performance of their side business? Actually, people use all kinds of things to track their side hustle -- from paper + biro, word of mouth, intuition, Microsoft Excel, to sophisticated apps/software. Hope you noticed Microsoft Excel in the list. If you don't have money for sophisticated apps/software and don't want to use paper + pen, Microsoft Excel is more than enough.

What do people use to plan major events and major projects expenses? Microsoft Excel.

Having a good grasp of Microsoft Excel can make many tedious non-work (or even non-data related work) activities a breeze. Imagine an IT guy needing to create email accounts for 120 newly employed staff. With Excel, all he needs to do to reduce the number of keystrokes significantly is to copy their first name and last name into Excel in separate columns, then CONCATENATE (and LEFT if the company uses initials in the email format). 

There are many non-Excel and non-work related stuff I have used Excel for and see others use Excel for. One example I even created a template around for people not Excel savvy is the need to send bulk SMS to dozens or hundreds of people and not wanting to spend an hour on arranging the numbers in the format most bulk SMS platforms require. Another is sending personalized email to your group or community members without doing it one by one or using an email marketing app.

The knowledge of Excel is as good and versatile as the knowledge of basic mathematics. You will always find situations where it will save you time and even prevent you from making wrong decisions.

2. Work Use
The moment you aspire to be part of management, to rise to the level of a CEO or CMO or CFO or COO or CIO or CTO, that moment is your clue to knowing that you can't escape the use of Microsoft Excel in your career. At that top, everything falls on data-driven strategy. You can't sweet talk your fellow CxO and board into doing something you haven't done the Excel analysis around.

I constantly come across people who have risen in their career, following a very technical path, and then suddenly they are part of management or need to work very closely with management, and find that their low competence in using Excel and carrying out data-driven analysis is an embarrassing weakness.

Then there are programmers who just love to hate Excel. They represent a category of people who would like to use something complicated for everything. Then they start having issues with managers who want some type of reports that are best made in Excel. Occasionally, I see them spend time coding a program to do something one off, something very easy and fast to do in Excel. They still don't see the value of Excel until I do it for them in Excel and they go WOW! 

Lastly, if you are a sales analyst or finance manager or accountant or project manager or marketing manager or operations manager or human resource manger and you are not very proficient in the use of Microsoft Excel you might be jeopardizing your productivity. You are supposed to focus more on high level strategy and guiding the management than fighting with data. Being very good with Excel will mean more insightful reports, fast comprehensive analysis, better chart-backed presentations and better decision making based on data. 


If you feel convinced enough to want to up your Excel competence, you can take advantage of my company's free training resources or even take my Udemy course with a certificate for free using this coupon link https://www.udemy.com/business-data-analysis-with-microsoft-excel/?couponCode=KYYMCA (just 96 coupons available via that link).

All the best!