*This article by Isabelle Bell, CA Today
contains potentially useful information – for ALL business users of MS Excel*
PREVIEW: Love it or hate it, Microsoft Excel is one of the most essential tools to any CA. We’ve asked some of our resident Excel wizards for their top tips to make your working life a bit easier.
This week, I’ve chosen not to write much. Especially because what I want to share is better appreciated audio-visually. That’s why I’ve added 2 of the user demonstration videos for my Excel-VB driven apps to illustrate my point.
And what is the point? It is that when you’re a business user of Microsoft Excel, especially as an accountant, you will find it periodically necessary to build and interact with large spreadsheet tables with lots of columns and rows.
SCROLL DOWN TO READ FULL ISSUE
Monday 25th July 2016
NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016. I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.
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This week, I’ve chosen not to write much. Especially because what I want to share is better appreciated audio-visually. That’s why I’ve added 2 of the user demonstration videos for my Excel-VB driven apps to illustrate my point.
And what is the point? It is that when you’re a business user of Microsoft Excel, especially as an accountant, you will find it periodically necessary to build and interact with large spreadsheet tables with lots of columns and rows.
Doing so will necessarily involve scrolling in different directions for long periods and that can sometimes get both confusing and tiring. It can also be quite hard to find specific data you’ve entered after some time.
In thc course of building bullet proof custom automated Excel-VB driven apps for clients, I discovered that some of them did not want to learn to do what I did. They just wanted me to do it all for them. And they were often prepared to pay to get an app that was novice-proof.
In order to deliver that kind of benefit to them, I had to come up with creative ways to enable them do their work using my apps. The result was that I began using modeless data entry forms, customized to do what the client wanted.
That included auto-scrolling to select specific cells in huge spreadsheets containing over 50,000 records, with over 100 columns of data.
They loved me for it. and told others about me as a result. In this edition I invite you to watch the videos below, and listen as I explain how my custom floating data entry and report generation forms work in the apps featured below.
If you’d like to know how I can help you incorporate such smart form automation into your existing workbooks, click here to send me a message.
1. Excel-VB Poultry Generating The Dynamic Farm Operations Reports & Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Charts for Layers and Broilers – Daily/Weekly/Monthly
2. Advanced Payslip Generator DEMO 1 : Modeless Data Entry Form MS Excel-VB Driven Version (2012)
New posts from last week*
Monday:
[Tuesday]:
[Wednesday]:
[Thursday]:
[Friday]:
[Saturday]:
[Sunday]:
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Tayo K. Solagbade* Self-Development/Performance Improvement Specialist *Best Practice Farm Business Support Specialist & Founder of the MS Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club and Competition Mobile: +234-803-302-1263 (in Nigeria) or +229-66-122-136 (in Benin Republic) Tayo K. Solagbade is a Location Independent Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur (i.e. a highly versatile/multi-skilled entrepreneur), with a bias for delivering Best Practice solutions to Farm Businesses and others. Since 2002, he has earned multiple streams of income providing individuals and organizations with personal development training and coaching, custom MS Excel-VB solutions, web marketing systems/web hosting, freelance writing services, and best practice extension support services (for farm business owners). Tayo is the author of the Self-Development (SD) Bible™ and the popular Livestock Feed Formulation Handbook. He is also the developer of its accompanying Excel-VB driven Ration Formulator™ and the Poultry Farm Manager™ software. He has delivered talks/papers to audiences in various groups and organizations, including the Centre for Management Development, University of Lagos, Christ Baptist Church, Volunteer Corps, Tantalisers Fast Foods and others. In May 2012 he was the Guest Speaker at the Centre for Entrepreneurship Development’s Annual Semester Entrepreneurial Lecture at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos. On 1st April 2013, Tayo (who reads, write and speaks the French language) relocated to Cotonou, Benin Republic to begin slowly traveling across the West African region. His key purpose is to deliver talks, seminars and workshops on his key areas of focus and interest to interested audiences (Email tayo at tksola dot com for details). In a previous life, before leaving to become self-employed, Tayo served for seven years (October 1994 to December 2001) as a high performing manager in Guinness Nigeria. He rose from Shift Brewer to Training & Technical Development Manager, and later acted in senior roles as Production Manager and Technical Manager. In addition to constantly challenging the status quo and influencing positive work changes, he built a reputation for using self-taught spreadsheet programming skills (starting with Lotus 1-2-3, and later moving to Excel Visual Basic) – in his spare time – to develop Automated Spreadsheet Applications to computerize manual report generation processes in the departments he worked. Over four(4) of his applications were adopted for brewery level reporting. Tayo holds a B.Sc degree in Agricultural Extension Services from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, having graduated top of his class – with Second Class Upper Division honors – in 1992. He is an Associate Member of the UK Institute & Guild of Brewing, a 1997 National Finalist of the Nigerian Institute of Management’s(NIM) Young Managers’ competition, a Certified Psychometric Test Administrator for Psytech UK, innovator of Spontaneous Coaching for Self-Development™ (SCfS-D™), and Founder of the Self-Development Academy (SDAc). When he’s not amazing clients with his superhuman skills (wink), Tayo works as the creative force behind his Daily Self-Development Nuggets blog – on which he also publishes The Farm CEO Weekly Newspaper (sent via email to paid subscribers) and his Weekly Performance Improvement IDEAS newsletter. You can connect with him on Twitter @tksola.com and Facebook. Visit Tayo Solagbade Dot Com, to download over over 10 performance improvement resources to boost your personal and work related productivity. ====
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[*Hint: See PDF tutorial attached to email sent to you announcing this blog post]
To get started using Excel Visual Basic you have to access the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) interface in your copy of Microsoft Excel.
The VBE and related tools are not visible by default – you need to know how to get them to display.
The steps described in the attached “ExcelVB Tutorial 01 for Accountants” PDF will guide you to do it for any version of MS Excel you have to work with, from 2003 up till the latest version.
Note that the steps for enabling macros in Excel 2003 apply to earlier versions.
Next week, in Tutorial 02, I will describe the steps involved in Creating a Macro to do a simple task like formating a cell or current selection using the Currency style and Accounting Format to improve the appearance of Excel reports you prepare.
For those still not sure how useful Excel-VB coding skills can be to them on the jiob, and in boosting their careers to the next level, below are links to 2 different websites that offer concrete evidence of the value placed on possession of Excel-VB coding competence by an accountant.
1. First is this introductory course priced at approximately £1,000.0 GBP.
Title: AUTOMATING YOUR REPORTING WITH EXCEL VBA MACROS (AN INTRODUCTION) OVERVIEW
Preview: You could make Excel work harder, particularly repetitive reporting tasks. This course introduces Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) – the language used to write macros.
Through the use of hands-on examples the course will illustrate the process of creating bespoke reports from large quantities of data (no previous programming experience required).
http://www.accaglobal.com/uk/en/discover/events/england/professional-courses/vba-reporting-macros-jul.html
2. Secondly, this article offers information about learning institutions that teach coding to accountants, as well as high profile international organizations like KPMG, that regularly scout for competent accountants with real world relevant coding skills.
Title: Sure, Accounting Students Should Learn How to Code (And a Lot of Other Things, Too)
Preview: While very few accounting programs require students to learn to code, some strongly encourage students to consider it. Brigham Young University’s School of Accountancy is creating several master’s-level classes on dealing with data in accounting.
These classes will focus not only on manipulating, analyzing, and reporting data, but on coding as well.
David Wood, Ph.D., an assistant professor who is one of the faculty members designing this coursework, said the classes will include learning some SQL and Visual Basic for Excel, and other programming concepts.
“Writing code is a tool, and if you have that tool, it provides you an opportunity to do things that others can’t,” he said. “Would coding benefit an accountant? There’s no question it can help.
http://goingconcern.com/post/sure-accounting-students-should-learn-how-code-and-lot-other-things-too
As I said in my newsletter this past Monday, I’ve been promoting new offers of my Excel-VB solutions to a potentially lucrative niche market I’ve identified.
In other words, apart from Farm CEOs, I now have another primary target audience: namely Professional Accountanting Firms/Individuals.
Tomorrow I will publish excerpts from an elaborate 2-in-1 offer I’ve been making to a carefully profiled group of accounting firms.
Suffice to say, for now, that the responses from the Managing Partners has been phenomenal. Details tomorrow.
In the rest of this article, I announce the public version of an offer I’ve already made to members of my Inner Circle:
I’m preparing to give out 1 Year FREE membership of my Excel VB Club to randomly selected accountants preparing for professional (e.g ICAN/ATS) exams in tuition centres.
To this end, I’ve been meeting tuition centre CEOs to formally make this offer, in order to encourage the centres to purchase membership as club branches.
This will afford learners at their centres FREE access to my tutorials while there.
How it works:
I’m offering clients/others the option of sponsoring 1 or more slots in exchange for a product or service GIFT from me.
If you purchase membership for 1 or more persons, for instance, I would GIFT you a custom version of any app you choose that is of equivalent value.
Take for instance my Hotel, Restaurant & Bar Manager Software.
This app is already fully functional. The Restaurant & Bar module allows the user to add/select product names, prices using drop menus and various automated charts and report summaries can be generated with few clicks.
It’s an improvement over the first one I built for a small restaurant in Gbagada-Lagos upon my return from my 2005 trip to Ghana
I mentioned it in this old article: Click here to read.
Standard Selling Price = N50k
Members of my Inner Circle, get 65% discount, which means they can have it for N17.5k.
Now 1 year membership of my ExcelVB club is $65 USD.
But the current exchange rate makes a mockery of the conversion value.
So for this promo I offer the N200 to $1 USD rate I launched my club with – meaning it comes to N13k Naira equivalent.
So a member of my Inner Circle would only pay N13k, instead of N17.5k to get the app. The idea is to reward you for agreeing to sponsor a new club member slot.
That means money paid will be for membership (naira value for 1 to 2 or more slots) of the club, while I will give you the app of equivalent naira value, less discount – FREE.
I’ll personalise and send you the app, with details about your restaurant business that you supply. There will also be a PDF step-by-step guide as well as downloadable video tutorials for users.
Most importantly, I will announce to the beneficiary of the FREE club membership that YOU are his/her kind sponsor. And I will send you a photo showing us meeting for the first time at which time I will present him/her a letter reflecting your “donation” – copy via email to you.
Click here to let me know if you have questions or require clarification..
service provider, my experiences – and studies of the writings of reputable others – have taught me that in order to excel in serving clients, one must continually strive to be a Consummate Professional (CP).
I describe a CP as an expert who passionately – but intelligently – channels his/her quality time, effort, and resources towards supporting (and empowering) clients to do what they do better.
This is something I’ve done for years – and I happen to do it quite well too. So well in fact, that I’ve built long term friendships with many clients, most of who have never even met me in the flesh – yet they tell others good things about me!
Let me explain what being a Consummate Professional entails – based on what I do:
You will actively devote quality time and intellectual effort to thinking up new and creative ideas to help him/her get optimal value from his/her investment in your services.
This can be hard for many experts, because most of us tend to settle into a formal routine for doing what we do.
So once we get hired, we just pull up our template and fit the client in, then do it.
The truth is however that every client, being a unique human being, will often be better served, with a unique and original solution tailored to meet his/her stated needs.
I’ve found that doing that never faills to wow the serious minded results focused clients I work with.
That’s why I recommend that you do it as well.
In this regard, you will seek every opportunity that presents itself, to communicate insights your “thinking” generates, to the client, subtly coaching and nudging him/her to use them to advance in the direction of the goal(s) s/he has told you s/he wants.
You will also relentlessly prepare and deliver to the client, every single benefit you promised him/her at sign up.
You will do all of that – without fail – regardless of whether or not s/he remembers the exact details of what you promised to deliver, or what was agreed.
But that’s not all…
In other words, you would do this regardless of any ups and downs that may happen in your relations with the client, or indeed with other clients/persons – including family.
That sounds easier than it really is to do. I say this from years of doing it!
Imagine for instance, having to finish a book writing project before the deadline in a 2 week period, when you’ve run badly short of cash needed to keep things going smoothly on the home front.
This can be quite hard to deal with, especially if you have dependants e.g a spouse/kids leaning on you for financial support.
That, as you can undoubtedly imagine, – can make CONTINUING to be a CP in the mould I recommend here, much harder!
Trust me when I say this…
I’ve been there countless times, and I can tell you it takes major mental stamina to keep doing a good job under such stressful psychological circumstances!
Then if – on top of that – you find yourself having domestic problems or worse – unexpected setbacks with regard to work related resources (e.g your computer develops a fault or crashes!) – it can feel like the whole world is against you.
When it gets that bad, if you’re superstitious (like some people are), you might even begin to imagine “evil” forces controlled by persons who dislike you are responsible 
What’s more, you are unlikely to end up okay if you choose to tell your client you’re having such problems.
Why?
Because your private affairs have little to do with him/her. S/he is not paying you to come tell him/her stories about what’s not working for you. Instead s/he is expecting you to SOLVE his/her problem as agreed – and for which s/he is paying.
That’s not to say s/he won’t sympathize with you, if you told him/her. It’s just that THAT will not address the need s/he felt strongly enough to hire you to meet in the first place.
What I do, and recommend to others is: go ahead, no matter how hard it gets, and finish the job to the client’s satisfaction, BEFORE (if at all ever) mentioning such problems to him/her.
You see, your competence as a professional will reflect in the way you manage yourself in tough times, while delivering your service to the client.
a truly CP would do it so well that the would never be the wiser!
Guess what?
The best part is you’ll also end up with a string of satisfied clients, raving about your ability to deliver what you promise unfailingly. That kind of reputation has a way of attracting new and repeat business – which in turn has a way of helping to resolve problems one has in other areas of life e.g low/no cash etc!
Preview: It was certainly a wake-up call for corporate India. However, it was even more disastrous for runners amongst us. Since Ranjan was an avid marathoner (in Feb 09, he ran Chennai Marathon at the same time some of us were running Pondicherry Marathon 180 km away ), the question came as to why an exceptionally active, athletic person succumb to heart attack at 42 years of age. “
The above is an excerpt from a 2009 article – linked below – about the unexpected death – due to massive heart attack – of Rajan Das, then SAP India CEO, after a Gym Workout.
The article titled “What killed SAP CEO Ranjan Das and lessons for corporate India” analyzes the late CEO’s lifestyle and warns of the need to give our bodies enough rest, as we push ourselves to do more, to achieve our goals.
I’ve shared the link to it below, to alert those who may not know, to the dangers of not sleeping long enough.
Let me note, however, that contrary to what this article reports as research based medical recommendations, I’ve personally thrived quite well with 4 to 5 hours of sleep since my teens.
I’ve tried sleeping longer, but often with little success. My body clock just won’t let me sleep up to 7 hours (at least not at a stretch) even if I’d worked 24 hours.
It would appear that we all have different biological systems. So I may struggle to do that 7 hour sleep that seems to be the standard medical recommendation.
Having said that, the tips in this article reinforce what I’ve known about how to let my body recover when I push it hard like I do.
I hope you find it useful reading.
Read full article:
What killed SAP CEO Ranjan Das and lessons for corporate India.
This article was inspired by a few comments I read (some reproduced below) on a Sahara Reporters news story discussion thread in which contributors warned a certain individual about the dangers of resisting attempts (as he’d proposed) by crooked Nigerian Policemen to illegally get money off you.
One wrote:
“never joke with nigeria police oooo they can. even sell you out to the ritualist its better to settle. them with immediate effect!”
Another shared:
“Most of them are hungry men. They can frame you up if you don’t cooperate with them.”
I just could not leave without posting my thoughts/sharing my experiences of how to do it right.
It’s a personal vision I have, to influence the thinking habits of others in dealing with real life challenges they come up against.
Too many people readily let their circumstances defeat them – especially in Nigeria.
The irony is these same people equally readily assert that the have “faith” in the almighty Creator – through whom they often loudly assert that they “can do all things”.
However, most of them fail to see this massive contradiction between the claim they make and the attitude they adopt to achieving their goals in life!
Someone has to tell – and help (not judge) them.
And that’s why I write stuff like this, and also walk my talk everywhere I go – to offer a real world relevant example they can relate to.
So I began writing with the intention of posting a comment. But I soon found myself being led, not for the first time, to elaborate in my submission so as to help those who read my words really understand how to do what I propose, and why doing so is ultimately in their best interest.
Before I knew it, I had a full bodied article written up, and I realized it would no longer fit in as a comment.
So, as has happened in the past, I decided to publish it on this blog and then post a preview/excerpt with the URL into the comments field in that discussion thread.
No it’s not better to settle Police in Nigeria. Giving in to injustice of that kind is a sign that YOU do no know the power you have as a child of the Creator.
I’m 46 today, and I was raised in Lagos, where I now also have my own family even as I travel to/fro Cotonou.
I have had sooooooo many encounters with police and other men in uniform – within Nigeria and outside. While driving and on foot. At midnight and during the day.
Guess what? Not once have I ever given 1 kobo bribe – no matter their antics.
Most of them found me to be their worst nightmare.
At checkpoints, the border etc: My refusal to be cowed, and to boldly ask questions/assert myself without being combative, often made them let me be.
I once had angry armed uniformed policemen seize my laptop from me and placing it in the trunk of their unmarked rickety car drive off with it for over an hour, to God-knows-where, after trying without success to shake me down for money.
I refused to panic and just sat down on a bench where they’d left me. Eventually their superior officer, an inspector strolled into the area and asked what I was waiting for. I told him what had transpired. He replied that my “argumentative” attitude must have offended them, adding:
“you know they have been in the sun all day, so they may get easily irritated.”
When his men returned he called out and asked that they return my laptop to me. Then he gave me his mobile phone number, which I deliberately requested while the officers were still there – looking vexed!
Another time at the same Seme border, some immigration officers who I’d refused to give money to have my passport stamped said they suspected I was a State Security Service (SSS) agent or journalist under cover.
Instead. I am just an ordinary citizen like any others.
But my faith in the Creator, makes me sure that He will always protect me against evil doers who try to hurt me.
That’s why I never hesitate to say NO to disagreeable demands from any quarters.
This includes potentially abusive clients/others who have tried in the past (unsuccessfully) to intimidate me into doing their will at my expense.
I’ve shared in a past article, for instance, the true story of a wealthy client who used his connections with corrupt police officers to cook up phony accusations against me in a bid to get me to do more work on a project without paying the fees I’d told him were due.
People told me not to, but I stubbornly refused to give in, and kept reaching out for help, until I was led via a Google search to discover a government funded agency who provided me zero cost support till the issue was resolved. And YES, I did get my payment, after which I formally notified the client via email that I no longer wished to serve his company anymore. The rest is history as they say.
Today, some of those uniformed agents who tried to extort money from me have become “friendly” with me, after they ended up losing out or looking stupid.
Some exchanged phone numbers with me while asking if I was a lawyer or activist!
The Creator has never let me down. And He never will. if you are true to Him, you’ll enjoy the same rewards.
Like I’ve said in a past article, you simply cannot claim to believe in an all powerful omnipresent creator and at the same time claim it’s impossible or risky to challenge/resist corrupt demands made of you.
if you are afraid to say NO, then where is your faith?
Those who TRULY know the Creator will have no problems doing what I advocate here.
It’s just a matter of walking your talk!
This is why they remain unwilling to stand up and fight against societal ills like corruption, injustice etc visited on them or others around them.
I have spent my entire life living successfully and achieving my life goals without ever giving to any of that nonesense. It goes without saying, that the periods of prolonged pain, deprivation, suffering, and humiliation that most people told me I would pass through for being this way, have NOT killed me till now.
Since I have also repeatedly succeeded in intervening to stop others from having their rights trampled upon using the ideas I offer here, then you can understand why I can confidently assert that what I propose is doable!
I’ve done it for decades without ever having cause to regret doing so. If I can do it, without putting my faith in any man, then anyone can do it – IF s/he is willing to think/act with faith in the Creator!
Note that I do not do religion I.e I attend neither church or mosque or indeed any other.
What I’ve said here has to do with your spirituality and NOT your religious preference.
1. To Demonstrate Real Faith in the Creator, You Simply Cannot Use “Safety Nets”!
Just like I did for years in narrowing down to Farm CEOs as a primary target audience for my custom Excel-VB software, I’ve spent the last 2 years carefully studying various business users of MS Excel in my primary target market (Nigeria/Africa) via their inquiries to me regarding its automation.
I can now confirm that I’ve settled on Accountants and Finance experts in general as the primary target audience for custom experiential Excel-VB coaching solutions I offer.
In other words, I’m NOW formally launching a mission to empower accountants to make more productive use of MS Excel, by automating it with Visual Basic code, like their counterparts in developed societies have been doing for decades – and I am so excited.
SCROLL DOWN TO READ FULL ISSUE
Monday 18th July 2016
NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016. I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.
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Just like I did for years in narrowing down to Farm CEOs as a primary target audience for my custom Excel-VB software, I’ve spent the last 2 years carefully studying various business users of MS Excel in my primary target market (Nigeria/Africa) via their inquiries to me regarding its automation.
I can now confirm that I’ve settled on Accountants and Finance experts in general as the primary target audience for custom experiential Excel-VB coaching solutions I offer.
In other words, I’m NOW formally launching a mission to empower accountants to make more productive use of MS Excel, by automating it with Visual Basic code, like their counterparts in developed societies have been doing for decades – and I am so excited.
Today, I begin by publishing this PDF Introduction to my new e-mail course titled “MS Excel-Visual Basic Automation Techniques, Tips, & Tricks for Accountants & Financial Experts”.
Click the cover above (or here) to download and read the full PDF. It’s FREE – no form to fill.
Remember to share with others who may need this solution even if you don’t
New posts from last week*
Monday:
[Tuesday]:
[Wednesday]:
[Thursday]:
[Friday]:
[Saturday]:
[Sunday]:
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Tayo K. Solagbade* Self-Development/Performance Improvement Specialist *Best Practice Farm Business Support Specialist & Founder of the MS Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club and Competition Mobile: +234-803-302-1263 (in Nigeria) or +229-66-122-136 (in Benin Republic) Tayo K. Solagbade is a Location Independent Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur (i.e. a highly versatile/multi-skilled entrepreneur), with a bias for delivering Best Practice solutions to Farm Businesses and others. Since 2002, he has earned multiple streams of income providing individuals and organizations with personal development training and coaching, custom MS Excel-VB solutions, web marketing systems/web hosting, freelance writing services, and best practice extension support services (for farm business owners). Tayo is the author of the Self-Development (SD) Bible™ and the popular Livestock Feed Formulation Handbook. He is also the developer of its accompanying Excel-VB driven Ration Formulator™ and the Poultry Farm Manager™ software. He has delivered talks/papers to audiences in various groups and organizations, including the Centre for Management Development, University of Lagos, Christ Baptist Church, Volunteer Corps, Tantalisers Fast Foods and others. In May 2012 he was the Guest Speaker at the Centre for Entrepreneurship Development’s Annual Semester Entrepreneurial Lecture at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos. On 1st April 2013, Tayo (who reads, write and speaks the French language) relocated to Cotonou, Benin Republic to begin slowly traveling across the West African region. His key purpose is to deliver talks, seminars and workshops on his key areas of focus and interest to interested audiences (Email tayo at tksola dot com for details). In a previous life, before leaving to become self-employed, Tayo served for seven years (October 1994 to December 2001) as a high performing manager in Guinness Nigeria. He rose from Shift Brewer to Training & Technical Development Manager, and later acted in senior roles as Production Manager and Technical Manager. In addition to constantly challenging the status quo and influencing positive work changes, he built a reputation for using self-taught spreadsheet programming skills (starting with Lotus 1-2-3, and later moving to Excel Visual Basic) – in his spare time – to develop Automated Spreadsheet Applications to computerize manual report generation processes in the departments he worked. Over four(4) of his applications were adopted for brewery level reporting. Tayo holds a B.Sc degree in Agricultural Extension Services from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, having graduated top of his class – with Second Class Upper Division honors – in 1992. He is an Associate Member of the UK Institute & Guild of Brewing, a 1997 National Finalist of the Nigerian Institute of Management’s(NIM) Young Managers’ competition, a Certified Psychometric Test Administrator for Psytech UK, innovator of Spontaneous Coaching for Self-Development™ (SCfS-D™), and Founder of the Self-Development Academy (SDAc). When he’s not amazing clients with his superhuman skills (wink), Tayo works as the creative force behind his Daily Self-Development Nuggets blog – on which he also publishes The Farm CEO Weekly Newspaper (sent via email to paid subscribers) and his Weekly Performance Improvement IDEAS newsletter. You can connect with him on Twitter @tksola.com and Facebook. Visit Tayo Solagbade Dot Com, to download over over 10 performance improvement resources to boost your personal and work related productivity. ====
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NEW! Weekly E-mail Based Coaching Program specially developed for Accounting/Finance professionals in paid or self-employment.
Below: Cover for PDF Introduction going LIVE tomorrow Monday 18th July 2016
*From Tayo Solagbade’s Two-in-One Income-Generating MS Excel Heaven™ Visual Basic Automation Solution Offer for Accounting/Financial Consulting Firms (Get Your Own Custom Excel -VB Software & Training Programs You Can Sell to Clients!)
![MS Excel-Visual Basic Automation Techniques, Tips, & Tricks for Accountants & Financial Experts [Weekly E-Mail Course PDF Intro - Coming Monday 18/07/16]](http://tayosolagbade.com/sdnuggets/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/xlvb-ecourse.png "MS Excel-Visual Basic Automation Techniques, Tips, & Tricks for Accountants & Financial Experts [Weekly E-Mail Course PDF Intro - Coming Monday 18/07/16]")
*Tayo Solagbade – Location Independent Multipreneur, Owner of www.excelheaven.biz, Founder of the MS Excel Heaven™ Visual Basic Automation Club, developer of the popular Excel-VB driven Ration Formulator™, the Poultry Farm Manager™ as well as the Automated Payslip Generator™ app.
Once again, I share insights from my Best Practice Parenting activities with my kids, in the hope that other parents will realize that they CAN make out time to coach their kids to acquire real world relevant knowledge, attitudes and skills.
Like I’ve said in past parenting articles, I consider vocational skills development of the utmost importance for kids. Evidence of the accuracy of this line of thinking is today apparent from the widespread practice in which many tertiary institutions today have Centres for Entrepreneurship Development on site – which some now even make compulsory for students to attend.
Why?
Because those in charge KNOW that most of them are not going to find good jobs to support themselves easily. So regardless of their individual courses of study, products from today’s schools are being – rightly – encouraged to think of starting their own businesses well ahead of doing any job searches.
I discovered the above truths long ago, and the struggle I had to endure to establish myself as an entrepreneur, after leapving the relative security of paid employment convinced me of the need to give my kids BETTER preparation for what awaits them in the real world – post formal schooling.
It is for this reason that my home is today a school of sorts – but with major emphasis on vocational/entrepreneurship skills development.
You can read through the archives in the Parenting Articles category to for stories I’ve told of past projects.
It is instructive to note that I’ve chosen to coach them to be multipreneurial like I am, but with a major focus on achieving the vision I have of establishing a home based family restaurant business with them.
We will be creating our own unique range of products (food and drinks) based on original recipes we conceive. Already, we have our own Pineapple Peel based Drinks and Cakes, Cookies and Chin-Chin, African Style Pizza and most recently – our Specialty Soft and Fluffy Bread Loaves – all baked using our trademark No-Oven Charcoal Stove!
It is this last product – the specialty Soft and Fluffy Bread Loaves – which we finally got right today, with regard to the recipe we’ve been looking for.
My soon-to-be 15 year old son had used flour that was left over from preparation of Pizza for my 46th birthday (on 6th July 2016) to make dough for some loaves of bread. But he had NOT followed the recipe we’d borrowed from a YouTube video we originally watched about how to bake bread at home.
Instead he just fooled around a bit and followed his instinct, rather than stick with what we considered the rules. By the time the bread loaves emerged, they were perfect i.e. soft, fluffy and quite tasty.
When the kids came excitedly to show me the loaves, I promptly asked him what he’d done to get that result – which we’d tried unsuccessfully to do before, in that shape and form.
He replied that he could not recall the exact steps he followed. I refused to let him off that easily and instead drilled him with questions until I narrowed down to what he’d done differently, and made a mental note of it.
Tomorrow being his younger brother’s 13th birthday, it was a perfect time to try our hands at the new method for baking the cake. So, this morning they bought all the needed materials from the market, and this time around I led the baking process, stopping at every stage to discuss with them about what to do and how, based on what we’d learnt from last week’s experience.
We’ve since sent tasting samples out to their grandparents, and friends in the estate. Tomorrow they’ll bake more and send to their cousins. However we have a bigger plan, which is to package, promote and sell them in ready-to-eat format. We’re still thinking of what exactly the package will look like, but as you can see we’ve already begun sealing them in nylon packs using our impulse sealer.
The young man in some of the photos is the baby of the family(Tayo Solagbade Junior, who I call “T-Boy”) . He is our “Chief Taster” – none of the baked products escape him
I hope our story will inspire you to spend more time together as a family to create your own products that you can serve to the world as a team.
But if that’s too much, I’m hoping at least, that you’ll try to push your kids to acquire such useful skills, so they can create the future they want!
