This article has been re-located/republished in a new issue of my Performance Improvement Ideas Newsletter as a special feature on Potential Applications of Custom Excel-VB Programming.
Click here to view it
Category Archives: Entrepreneurship
1 HR TALK (No. 2): Practical Ideas & Strategies You Need to Make Your Entrepreneurship Education Complete [Primary Target Audience: Trainees/learners in ANY Centre for Entrepreneurship Development]
It’s NOT enough to be competent in your profession/vocation. You must be able to make money PROFITABLY, to really succeed. Primary Target Audience: Trainees/learners in ANY Centre for Entrepreneurship Development [2 to 4 Hour Breakout Sessions also available]
Attendees of this event will learn…
1. Tried & tested best practice ideas for producing/marketing your offers at less cost, in less time, with less effort.
2. Proven strategies to earn EXTRA income “selling” your knowledge and expertise to others at zero cost.
3. How doing the above can help you overcome lack of/inadequate capital.
4. Ten (10) Avoidable Mistakes No One Will Warn You About In Starting/Running Your Business.
5. Real-life case studies/true stories based on the facilitator’s experiences applying these strategies, over the past 12 years, as a multipreneur in Nigeria’s challenging market, as well as in Benin, Ghana, and Cameroon.
Visit the link below to send Tayo a message about this event: www.tayosolagbade.com/contact.htm
About the Facilitator
Tayo K. Solagbade is a bilingual Location Independent Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur with a bias for delivering Best Practice solutions to Farm Businesses and others. He reads, writes and speaks English/French languages, and is based in Cotonou – Bènin Republic’s commercial capital.
Since 2002, Tayo has earned multiple streams of income providing personal development coaching, custom MS Excel-VB solutions, Web Marketing Systems, Freelance Writing Services, and Best Practice Extension Support services (for farm business owners).
He is the author of the Self-Development (SD) Bible™ (see www.lulu.com/sdaproducts), the Livestock Feed Formulation Handbook, and developer of its accompanying Excel-VB driven Ration Formulator™, as well as the increasingly popular Monthly Poultry Farm Manager™ (see http://tinyurl.com/15pfmVideos).
He has delivered talks/papers to audiences at the Centre for Management Development, University of Lagos, Corona Schools Trust Council (and all 6 Lagos branches), Adrao International Schools, Christ Baptist Church, Volunteer Corps, Tantalizers Fast Foods and others. In 2012 he was invited Guest Speaker at the Centre for Entrepreneurship Development’s Annual Semester Entrepreneurial Lecture at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos (click here to watch short video clip).
In a previous life in Guinness Nigeria (Oct.1994 to Dec. 2001), before quitting to be self-employed, Tayo 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 computerise report generation processes where he worked.
Over four (4) of his applications were adopted for brewery level reporting.This was in addition to constantly challenging the status quo and influencing positive work changes. As a result, he rose from Shift Brewer to Training & Technical Development Manager, and later acted in senior roles as Production Manager and Technical Manager. Today, he develops Excel-VB apps for clients.
Tayo is an Associate Member of the UK based 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 Limited.
Tayo’s talks provide practical education about using creative thinking & technology to excel, regardless of society’s limitations.
Click here to download the PDF version of this Speaker One Sheet
ONE HOUR TALK (Speaker One Sheet): Earn Extra Income from Your Farm at ZERO COST (5 Little Known Strategies You Can Use)
This PDF speaker one sheet announces a new talk I now offer farmer business owner groups and organizations.
What if you could double your farm’s income without raising prices – or producing MORE?
1. Learn five (5) proven ideas that can start earning your farm a lot MORE money at same cost from TODAY!
2. You already have most – if not ALL – of what you need on your farm, to get started making this EXTRA money..
3. Most of it will be passive income i.e. you’ll work LESS while earning more!
4. These 5 ideas can create awareness about your farm business better than paid marketing & are near zero cost
******Click here – or the image below – to download the PDF******
Attendees get – at 40% off – Tayo’s Feed Formulation Handbook, its Excel-VB Driven Ration Formulator™ software, & the new/increasingly popular Poultry Farm Manager™ app – on a branded autoDVD.
A 4-part video on the DVD (see http://tinyurl.com/RealRationDemo) shows how to derive a real life ration formula based on data supplied by an Algerian Ph.D student. Also, fifteen (15) step-by-step videos demonstrate how to use the various interfaces in the Poultry Farm manager™ app. (see http://tinyurl.com/15pfmVideos).
View normal product prices at www.tayosolagbade.com/sdn-sell.htm
******
Visit the link below to send Tayo a message about this event:
www.tayosolagbade.com/contact.htm
NB: THIS IS THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF EVENTS/OFFERS I’M LAUNCHING INTO THE NEW YEAR – 2015. MOST WILL BE TARGETED AT FARM BUSINESS OWNER GROUPS & ORGANISATIONS – NOT INDIVIDUALS.
No. 168: Talent May NOT be Enough – You Need Practice to Excel! (FREE PDF: “There are Different Types of Public Speakers”)
Malcolm Gladwell conceived the 10,000-Hour Rule, based on which he said:
“Studies suggest the key to success in any field has nothing to do with talent….It’s simply practice. 10,000 hours of it. 20 hours a week for 10 years.” – (Source: click here)
I agree with him!
I became self-employed in Jan 2002 i.e. almost 12 years ago. Today (compared to when I began), I actually work VERY MANY HOURS LESS, for MUCH GREATER compensation, from relatively few, carefully selected clients, who GREATLY VALUE the solutions I provide.
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Writing Can be Great Therapy to Deal With Adversity [Hint: FREE Workshop – “25 Avoidable Mistakes No One Will Warn You About In Starting Your OWN Business”]
When facing hard times, READING to educate, inform and inspire yourself to weather the storms of your life WILL help you. However, WRITING about your experiences CAN help you even more – as I explain below.
I say this from over 10 years of personal experience…
For over a decade as an entrepreneur, I have repeatedly overcome prolonged periods of heart breaking struggles in my pursuit of personal achievement and success.
When delays, disappointments, setbacks and failure relentlessly come at you as sometimes happens in life, there is a serious tendency to get overwhelmed.
Even the strongest of us can get demoralized and disillusioned when hard times hit!
Indeed, persons who others normally look upon for inspiration and encouragement, being human themselves, sometimes in their life also end up needing others to do just that for them too.
And if they do not get it, that could mark the onset of a downturn in their fortunes. NOT because they lack the physical ability or strength to recover, but because they are mentally and/or emotionally spent, or defeated.
You may have heard about the principle used by martial arts practitioners about winning a fight without even fighting.
In other words, you can defeat an opponent mentally before you have to engage him/her physically.
How?
Simply by doing things that either make him/her lose self-confidence or interest. Once you can successfully create such an internal state of affairs in the mind of your opponent, his/her ability to focus on the task of winning against you becomes much more difficult.
Generally in warfare or confrontation, the above principle is used successfully by smart warriors or fighters.
Muhammad Ali is one famous example of a fighter who use psychological warfare as a weapon to weaken his opponent before the actual fight took place in the right.
I doubt that I need to give you examples of what that great man did, and how. Most of us readily recall them. He’s a legend today because of how he did it.
We can all learn by reading about people like Muhammad, and how they came back from defeat, and exposure to prolonged periods of adversity. Just like Ali did through those years of being stripped of his title and banned from boxing, to come back and WIN again.
I have done that, and as one writer noted, I discovered that reading does indeed help to “strengthen the mind”.
However, I also discovered that writing about my experiences, especially based on what I read, and the lessons I learnt, had a powerful healing effort on me.
That brings me to the message of this article.
You see, I got to a point in reading a wide range of books that there were gems of insight and experience based wisdom, anecdotes etc, that I wanted to be able to read and re-read those “special sections” without having to flip through each book all over again to find them.
Some of the books included the following…
1. Napoleon Hills’ Think and Grow Rich, and Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude
2. How to Win Friends and Influence People – by Dale Carnegie
3. The Startup Entrepreneur – by James R. Cook
4. How to Succeed in Business by Breaking All The Rules – by Dan Kennedy.
…and several others
Each book at different stage of my life as an entrepreneur, offered me useful inspiration and education that helped me keep going in spite of hardships I encountered.
I found myself using highlight pens – very often – to mark specific sections I wanted to remember…
One day it occurred to me that I could extract those special “blocks of text” from each book and condense them into a separate document for my personal consumption. That way I would be able to come back and reread them as often as I needed to, whenever I felt down.
The idea to do this came to me one day as I reread the final chapter in James Cook’s book in which he admonished to reader, to pick up and read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich ANYTIME s/he felt like giving up. He assured that doing so would help him/her rediscover the sense of purpose, inspiration and passion to keep going – adding that THAT was what he did, that led him to eventual success.
I realized that I had several books in which certain sections really helped me, each time I read them.
So I began typing them into an MS Word document that I names Starting a Business – the theme reflecting the phase I was passing through.
As the weeks progressed, I soon discovered that I was inadvertently adding my personal experiences in my writing, to support the excerpts I was taking from the book.
At a point, it occurred to me that beyond helping myself, I could deliberately continue writing in a way that would enable me help others.
This was because most of the experiences I was having were what I knew others had had in the past, and which many more would still have.
Yet, nothing in the Nigerian marketplace – books especially – really offered any formal guiding philosophy for them to follow.
I felt I could use myself as a guinea pig to fill that gap.
Over a 2 and half month period I continued writing based on the experiences that had made me extract those book excerpts.
Then I would append the excerpts at relevant points in my writing, sharing relevant explanations and insights.
By the time I was done, I have typed almost 80 pages!
I then read through and edited it, till I was satisfied – splitting the contents into chapters, and naming them according to the key lessons I felt each one taught me.
Later on, I rephrased the titles as “mistakes” to be avoided. More and more, I began to see the 80 page document as a book.
One day, after reading through it again and getting the much needed relief, the thought occurred to me that the book was helping me SURVIVE the hardships of my new life as an entrepreneur.
That was when I knew I could help others. If the book did that for me, then it could do the same for others. So, I called it the Entrepreneurs Survival Reference Manual. That basically described how I had been using it.
However, I soon made that the subtitle and instead adopted what I considered a more catchy title: 25 Avoidable Mistakes No One Will Warn You About In Starting Your OWN Business – in Nigeria.
However, my desire to help others made me include an offer on the cover I designed, of a FREE 4 hour workshop, for all buyers of the app.
That FREE Workshop offer remains open to this day – especially with the growing wave of interest in entrepreneurship now happening (click here to request details)
More schools and universities are including some form of entrepreneurship education/training in their formal curricula.
We are seeing more and more Centers of Entrepreneurship Development springing up.
I however believe most of them need to get REAL life authentic entrepreneurs to come in as external facilitators (at the least).
This will give their students an accurate impression of what awaits them in the real world, when they “graduate” – and HOW to survive, until they can flourish and excel.
Right now, it appears not much of that is happening.
Maybe they are having a hard time finding authentically successful entrepreneurs who are willing, or available.
By way of this article I announce that I am willing and available to play such a role with interested organizations (terms apply).
As for other entrepreneurs who may struggle to do same, I recommend you consider using the approach of writing as a form of self-therapy, that I’ve described here.
It will help you “create” a formal body of original material you can use to offer YOUR own experience based information, education and inspiration to aspiring others!
Achieve Business Success Using Spreadsheet Data Analysis & Reporting Automation
Data recording without analysis and interpretation is ultimately useless. Such data makes little or no meaning. Don’t keep records for the sake of it. Records only add value when they tell us one or more of the following 5 things:
1). If we are doing well or not;
2). How well – or badly we are doing;
3). When we are doing well – or badly;
4). WHERE we are doing well or badly;
5). And if possible “point to” WHAT – is probably responsible for our performance at any point in time.
All of the above of course happening in a timely manner that enables us take appropriate actions.
The key imperative for most people who handle data is to use it to monitor – and where feasible – control performance i.e. they study/anticipate trends in a way that helps decision making towards ensuring REPRODUCTION of desired results, while minimizing – or eliminating – undesirable ones.
The Excel workbook applications I develop for my clients help them do the foregoing and a lot more.
I am always careful to take into consideration the peculiarities unique to each client’s situation, which many traditional software programmers would be unlikely to cater for – at the same rates that I am able to offer my clients.
But not everyone knows that MS Excel can be used to develop high profile industry level applications that can hold their own against (or even outperform) conventional off-the-shelf software.
In this article, I offer detailed insights to help interested business user better appreciate how and why Microsoft Excel’s Visual Basic development interface offers them a unique opportunity to achieve superior custom, data analysis and interpretation, at a fraction of the cost, using less effort, and time.
First of All, What Is Excel-VB?
Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool for recording, reorganizing, analyzing and presenting information.
By Excel VB, I refer to Excel VBA – where VBA means Visual Basic for Applications(VBA). VBA refers to the highly extensive and flexible macro programming language developed by Microsoft for use in their MS office applications – Word, Power Point, etc.
VBA is therefore different from the Standalone Visual Basic program used (by conventional programmers) for developing “standalone” or “executable” (.exe) software applications – though it borrows many of the latter’s features.
Think of Excel VBA as being the standalone Visual Basic software built into Excel for the benefit of Excel users/developers who are not traditional-minded programmers, but who are keen to exert more control over the application to enhance user productivity.
So, Excel VB offers any interested persons the necessary tools to make the application deliver more functionality. The final product is still an Excel document, but with extra functionalities added using VBA..
Read this article: Use Custom Automation Of Your Spreadsheet Reports To Drive Down Costs And Increase Your Profits.
Why Excel-VB?
1. I always answer this question by asking the following question: What would be the point of “Killing A Fly With A Hammer”?
Let me elaborate. If a method is available that allows us to achieve the same desired result(s) at LOWER cost, with LESS effort and in LESS time, why should we fail to adopt it?
Certain IT persons insist that developing executable applications using the standalone Visual Basic programming language is “better” as it does not limit the user to a particular user application software environment. I concede that this might be a valid point under certain conditions. However, I point out that there are many users who have very specialized, peculiar needs that do not necessarily require complex solutions.
A lot of people today simply want to get their data recording, (re)organization, and analysis for decision making done quicker and with less effort. They also want to spend as little money as possible to do this. In other words, they want a cost-effective solution that gives them independence from the solution provider in the long term – without requiring them to undertake laborious skills acquisition immediately.
This category of everyday users of technology described above are the ones I believe need Excel VB solutions of the type I describe/provide. I anticipate that some of these users will over time develop an interest in acquiring advanced skills needed to develop their own solutions – which is why I also offer coaching services.
2. Another question I ask, in answering the “Why Excel VB?” question is : “Why re-invent the wheel?”
My experiences(and those of others who favour the use of Excel VB like I do), confirm that to organize, and analyze data for (financial/management) report generation and decision making, you will save hundreds of hours using already in-built, pre-programmed Excel functions compared to a situation where you used Visual Basic proper.
All the functions needed to achieve the above purposes already exist in Excel, so that you don’t have to write them all from scratch as would be the case if you were to use Visual Basic.
Even though I had always felt this way, my encounter with a similar justification stated by a Microsoft Certified Professional, Pierre Leclerc on his website(http://www.excel-vba.com), gave me greater insight and clarity, that made me decide to stick with Excel VB even though I had attended a full training course in Visual Basic in 2002.
Important Note: The fact that one uses Excel VB or VBA does not mean one will not have need to use VB or other languages.
Over the years, the need for faster, more sophisticated, robust, and secure Excel-based software has led Professional Excel Developers to – whenever they consider it necessary – actively utilize ANY other applications and programming languages (such as C/C++, VB6 or VB.Net) to deliver better performing applications (learn more below).
Excel-VB Is Used To Develop Commercial Quality Excel Software
Today, there is a huge army of Professional Excel Developers who develop Excel-based software solutions for a living – worldwide. Their software can be found in use alongside those developed using more traditional programming languages like C++, and VB6, in some of the largest corporations in the world – including Microsoft itself.
Professional Excel developers typically would use Excel VB in conjunction with other programming languages(e.g. C/C++, VB6 or VB.Net etc) and applications(e.g. databases like MS Access, Oracle, SAP etc) to develop flexible, fast/easy to use, high performing, robust and maintenable Excel Solutions.
The implication of the foregoing is that ExcelVB occupies it’s rightful place as the true development platform that it is. Many times, it is even able to deliver a significant performance edge over other applications due to its powerful calculation engine that the developer is able to leverage – thereby saving time while delivering more functionality to users.
Read this article: Use Custom Automation Of Your Spreadsheet Reports To Drive Down Costs And Increase Your Profits.
Final Words: Excel Is The Best Reporting Application In The Market
For the purposes of creating custom financial and management solutions that solve your identified problems, and give you control/ownership, without burning a hole in your pocket, Excel VB offers an amazing variety of possibilities, in the hands of an adequately skilled user.
In addition, an Excel VB – better still, a Professional Excel – Developer ( who in many cases will tend to be a user turned developer, and is therefore likely to easily see things from your perspective) – unlike a programmer – is more likely to be positively disposed to working with you to ensure the application meets your practical needs.
S/he will readily understand that the final application is meant to help solve a real problem(s), and will therefore build it to match those expectations.
It’s not enough to have a professional with the technical skills to solve your problem, s/he also needs to have the right attitude and background/experience – else the relationship will not work. This is where an Excel VB resource is more likely to add value to you.
I believe the foregoing are compelling justifications for choosing Excel Visual Basic over Visual Basic.
If the above ideas appeal to you, I recommend you consider taking one of the 3 options below, in going forward…
a. Learn Excel-VB programming by yourself – Google will throw up lots of useful FREE resources you can begin with.
b. Engage me to coach you (even remotely) on Excel-VB programming – using customized PDF tutorials and video demonstrations I will create based on the unique needs I determine you have. Click here to request a PDF coaching course outline with full details of what I offer.
c. Hire me to develop a custom Excel-VB driven app for you/your business. Click here to send me a message,
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NEW: EXCEL-VB DRIVEN POULTRY LAYER FARM MANAGER SOFTWARE
*******
NEW: Your Practical Feed Formulation (& Compounding) Home Study Video Series Is Now Available
Click here to learn more
NEW: Speaking Ideas: 25 Articles and True Stories for Experts Who Speak and Those Aspiring (Volume 1)
Download above PDF
******
NEW: Get 2 Real Life Poultry Layer Farm Start-up Business Plans (PLUS Customization)!
Download above PDF
*******
New Ebook (55 pages): Best Practice Farm Management (& Performance Measurement) for Profits – No. 1 of 4
Download above PDF
*******
New Ebook (57 pages): Farm Business Start-up (Information, Education & Inspiration) – No. 2 of 4
Download above PDF
*******
New Ebook (55 pages): Best Practice Livestock Farm Business Feed Formulation – No. 3 of 4
Download above PDF
*******
New Ebook (58 pages): Best Practice Farm Business Marketing – No. 4 of 4
Download above PDF
*******
NEW: KUKURU DANGER™: 5 True Stories About the Adventures – & Misadventures! – of a School Age Child Trying to Find Purpose in Life
Download above PDF
Download above PDF
Download above PDF
*******
FREE TALK: How a Best Operating Process Management Sysem (BOPMS)™Will Earn Your Farm MORE Profits!
Download above PDF
FREE TALK: 3 Zero Cost Strategies to Attract Profitable Buyers for Your Farm Products!
Download above PDF
NEW: Coaching Program for Farm Products Marketing Success
Click here to view a page I’m adding ALL my products previews/prices/offers to…
Proven Blogging Strategy That Works for Anyone Who Works it Correctly (Hint: How I’m Succeeding With My Blog Using Lessons I Learnt About Blogging from Patrick Meninga’s Interview With Yaro Starak)
Last year, I published a post titled “10 Valuable Lessons I Learnt About Blogging for Passive Income, from Yaro Starak’s 60 Minute Podcast Interview with Patrick Meninga (click to read).
By diligently applying those lessons on this blog, I’ve been recording a lot of success which I’ve described in several past articles.
Not only has my name recognition/authority status continue to grow, I have also been earning higher quality sales leads/paying clients for my range of products and services.
Without the insights I gained from studying Patrick’s methods (which includes reading MANY of his blog posts), I would not have progressed as rapidly as I have.
Like I wrote in a recent article, I was able to quickly recover from the loss of my 9 year old spontaneousdevelopment.com domain loss, by continuing with his recommended strategies of daily passion based purpose driven blogging.
However, what really has made me feel most fulfilled is that I now have a rapidly growing body of work that enables me quickly create new products I now sell.
For instance, in the last 3 months or so, I have launched several new books (in both digital and print format) based on 3 of my blog categories: Parenting, Public Speaking, Farm Business (this one being a 4 part series).
To keep easy track of them, I’ve setup a page (see here) on which I list my available products and to which I add any new ones as they become ready.
You see as I kept writing my daily posts on each blog category, over the months, it occurred to me that I could compile the top performing posts per category into an Information Product or book for sale.
I’d actually done that with 25 of my articles back in 2006. My first 25 Articles PDF e-book (titled 25 Articles/True Stories On Self-Development, Entrepreneuring & Web Marketing To Help You Succeed More Often) that resulted has been on sale in my online store at www.lulu.com/sdaproducts since then.
So, I already knew the idea worked. All I needed to do was review and choose from hundreds of articles in my archives!
Patrick’s recommendation to write as many articles as possible every day, was what inspired me to go all out and write so many MORE articles (especially since I knew it was possible from his achievements).
Today, I’ve gotten so used to it that my work rate has shot even further up. I am able to turn out my write-ups at more than twice the rate I used to.
This has made me more effective in delivering to meet the stated needs of my clients, and I’m getting repeat jobs from them as a result.
You see, doing what Patrick recommended made me DIG deep into myself to unearth/recall long forgotten yet highly valuable experiences and insights I’d gained over the years.
I went about my blogging with the deliberate intention of delivering real value to my readers, as he’d advised. I continue to do that even now.
As a result, I’ve ended up, for instance, writing the full story of my troubled teenage years in form of several LONG articles, which now make up my new book on Best Practice Parenting: Kukuru Danger: 5 True Stories About the Adventures – and Misadventures! – of a School Age Child, Trying to Find Purpose in Life.
It’s a book I’d always wanted to write, but never knew how to start.
When I began writing daily however, I was able to deliberately write one article on various aspects of my life back then, till I had most of the stories written. Then I simply added an introduction, a conclusion, and designed the covers etc!
Now, I am ready to place orders for copies of the paperback version to be delivered to me, so I can present a copy to EACH of my kids as part of the coaching I’m giving them, to prepare them for life.
My new book on Public Speaking, came into being in similar fashion – as did the 4 part e-book series I just launched on Farm Business Best Practice.
If I’d tried to sit down and just write each book from scratch, I would NEVER have gotten it all done this quickly!
Simply put, Patrick’s blogging model/formula works – unlike SO MANY other experts’ whose methods I had adopted without reaping the promsied rewards.
If it can work for me, I am convinced it will work for YOU as well.
The only requirement is that you apply yourself to following the tips provided by Patrick, with diligence, persistence and passion. You simply cannot go wrong with that. Take it from me. I know from first hand experience.
To get started, I recommend you proceed as follows:
1. Listen to Patrick’s Interview with Yaro Starak, on Yaro’s website – here.
2. Read my bloy post titled “10 Valuable Lessons I Learnt About Blogging for Passive Income, from Yaro Starak’s 60 Minute Podcast Interview with Patrick Meninga.Then follow the instructions provided at the end to request a FREE download copy of the verbatim transcript version of the interview, that I produced as a PDF document.
3. Waste no time in getting started with your writing. The only way to do it is to BEGIN. As you progress, you’ll learn anything else you need to know, and improve yourself. That’s what I did. So, don’t make the mistake of learning perpetually, and becoming a professional student in the process.
If you need any help getting started with your blogging, click here to send me a message.
*********
NEW: EXCEL-VB DRIVEN POULTRY LAYER FARM MANAGER SOFTWARE
*******
NEW: Your Practical Feed Formulation (& Compounding) Home Study Video Series Is Now Available
Click here to learn more
NEW: Speaking Ideas: 25 Articles and True Stories for Experts Who Speak and Those Aspiring (Volume 1)
Download above PDF
******
NEW: Get 2 Real Life Poultry Layer Farm Start-up Business Plans (PLUS Customization)!
Download above PDF
*******
New Ebook (55 pages): Best Practice Farm Management (& Performance Measurement) for Profits – No. 1 of 4
Download above PDF
*******
New Ebook (57 pages): Farm Business Start-up (Information, Education & Inspiration) – No. 2 of 4
Download above PDF
*******
New Ebook (55 pages): Best Practice Livestock Farm Business Feed Formulation – No. 3 of 4
Download above PDF
*******
New Ebook (58 pages): Best Practice Farm Business Marketing – No. 4 of 4
Download above PDF
*******
NEW: KUKURU DANGER™: 5 True Stories About the Adventures – & Misadventures! – of a School Age Child Trying to Find Purpose in Life
Download above PDF
Download above PDF
Download above PDF
*******
FREE TALK: How a Best Operating Process Management Sysem (BOPMS)™Will Earn Your Farm MORE Profits!
Download above PDF
FREE TALK: 3 Zero Cost Strategies to Attract Profitable Buyers for Your Farm Products!
Download above PDF
NEW: Coaching Program for Farm Products Marketing Success
Click here to view a page I’m adding ALL my products previews/prices/offers to…
How a Real Life Restaurant & Bar Data Handling & Report Generation Problem Was Solved Using Low Cost MS Excel-VB Automation
Mid-2005, Lagos – Nigeria. Kazeem(not real name), the owner of a restaurant and bar operation grossing a million naira in monthly sales approached his bank for funding towards expansion. Unfortunately, after some meetings, the bank was forced to turn down Kazeem’s request, but NOT due to lack of collateral!
He could not supply adequate and comprehensive records of daily sales and expenses covering the ten years his business had been running!
Most of the records were on paper, disorganised, and therefore not easily retrievable. The bank manager, who knew Kazeem well, was shocked to learn that Kazeem did not even have a paper based accounting system in place, that tracked the inflow and outflow of cash in the business.
As a result there was almost no way to accurately determine how much sales and expenses had taken place over a particular period. As money came in, portions were often taken, for routine purchases and expenses, without formal documentation being done by those involved.
Only at the end of the week did the manager try to collate receipts and invoice totals, to arrive at estimates for reporting. But that did not happen regularly, and was often done in a haphazard manner.
All of this came to the fore, when the bank requestred for records to enable the bank estimate the turnover volume of Kazeem’s operations. Before then, even Hakeem had paid little attention to the need for proper record keeping, based of a formal system.
Luckily, all was not lost. The benk told him to get his records in order, and then return with them for discussions.
Kazeem called up Wale(real name) his accountant/auditor – who had repeatedly advised this line of action for years – about the most cost-effective way to do what the bank requested.
Wale recommended that an external developer be engaged to develop a custom application – and suggested a self-taught Excel spreadsheet solutions developer* he knew, having seen work the latter had done for other clients at a fraction of the cost of other software solutions.
15th July 2005: The first meeting was held with the developer*.
Over the weeks that followed work progressed on the development of the app, with review meetings held intermittently, with the manager, to discuss progress, and conduct trial runs/demonstrations.
15th September 2005: The finished app was called Restaurant & Bar Manager™ 1.0
The manager of the restaurant (who had NEVER attended a single day’s computer training prior to the time) was already confidently using the “Restaurant and Bar Operations Manager” Excel VB application developed for use in the restaurant – on a daily basis.
NB: The bank had requested for up to one year of records to be provided – so data entry continued in earnest.
July 2006: The developer* called in to conduct a coaching session for a new employee
The new staff was specifically recruited to post daily entries into an improved version of the application. This was done so the manager could focus on monitoring daily operations.
A user-friendly, custom floating form based worksheet navigation menu and login authentication interface was added to the app, to prevent unauthorised users from gaining access to the data posted.
NB*: The developer’s name = Tayo Solagbade i.e. me.
The Restaurant & Bar Manager was an MS Excel-Visual Basic driven spreadsheet application (containing over 12 inter-linked worksheets).
It was built to help owners:
1. Use the computer to very easily, and accurately record their restaurant and bar operations raw sales/expense data for data analysis, trending and report generation, without having to undergo the pains of acquiring elaborate PC/Software user skills.
2. Maintain an accurate inventory of all food products, prices and period ending totals(you get daily, monthly and Year Till Date/Annual totals and percentages; profit margins estimates etc). You simply had to do daily posting of raw sales/expenses data using the automated custom data entry forms provided.
The app can be customised – or built from scratch – for other outfits to accommodate any peculiarities in their individual operations.
In 2008/2009 I built 2 new apps for large hotel clients. Each app has a restaurant module, incorporating the major features and functions of the Restaurant & Bar Manager.
One is called “Hotel Restaurant & Bars Manager (HRBM)™” – a single workbook application, like the Restaurant & Bar Manager.
The other app is called “Hotel Records Management System (HRMS)™“. It works across an intranet, allowing different hotel departments to post entries into seperate but interlinked workbook modules, which were all connected to a central reports generation workbook.
For details of how to purchase above described apps, and/or how a custom app can be built for you/your business, click here to send me a message.
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NEW: EXCEL-VB DRIVEN POULTRY LAYER FARM MANAGER SOFTWARE
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NEW: Your Practical Feed Formulation (& Compounding) Home Study Video Series Is Now Available
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NEW: Speaking Ideas: 25 Articles and True Stories for Experts Who Speak and Those Aspiring (Volume 1)
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NEW: Get 2 Real Life Poultry Layer Farm Start-up Business Plans (PLUS Customization)!
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New Ebook (55 pages): Best Practice Farm Management (& Performance Measurement) for Profits – No. 1 of 4
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New Ebook (57 pages): Farm Business Start-up (Information, Education & Inspiration) – No. 2 of 4
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New Ebook (55 pages): Best Practice Livestock Farm Business Feed Formulation – No. 3 of 4
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New Ebook (58 pages): Best Practice Farm Business Marketing – No. 4 of 4
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NEW: KUKURU DANGER™: 5 True Stories About the Adventures – & Misadventures! – of a School Age Child Trying to Find Purpose in Life
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FREE TALK: How a Best Operating Process Management Sysem (BOPMS)™Will Earn Your Farm MORE Profits!
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FREE TALK: 3 Zero Cost Strategies to Attract Profitable Buyers for Your Farm Products!
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NEW: Coaching Program for Farm Products Marketing Success
Click here to view a page I’m adding ALL my products previews/prices/offers to…
No. 167: To Succeed Authentically, be a Model of the Possible Human
As an expert in your chosen field, your ability to excel will depend on how well you stand out from others who do what you do, in terms of the results you deliver. That means you need to be exceptional.
But No One Can be Exceptional If S/he Chooses to Think and/or Act Small!
Or to paraphrase Jean Houston, you cannot stand out if you refuse (or fail) to “leave your littleness behind”.
SCROLL DOWN TO READ FULL ISSUE
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If You Never Stop Believing in the Creator, Haters Will NEVER Stop YOU! (True Story)
On 4th May 2014 my 9 year old spontaneousdevelopment.com was taken over by Aplus.net. But within a few days I moved my content to what I boldly declared would be a SUPERIOR reincarnation at www.tayosolagbade.com.
As at October 2014, I’d surpassed ALL performance levels I achieved with my old domain spontaneousdevelopment.com.
Indeed, with the exception of traffic, when I wrote about this incident about 4 months ago, I was already recording more than double my old newsletter subscription rates, as well as sales leads generation and conversions.
However, website traffic on tayosolagbade.com was still much lower compared to what it used to be on my lost domain, which peaked into May 2014 at just under 2,500 visits per day. And I was feeling quite cool about it back then – especially since I was getting formal emails from advertising companies wishing to partner with me to post ads for my visitors.
Other than that, I’ve never been one to make much of a fuss about traffic.
It goes without saying though that attracting more traffic – especially if it is the right kind i.e. from a pre-qualified target audience – implies more eyeballs on your offers/content.
Over time, this does boost name recognition and search engine visibility as well.
I always knew the traffic to my website – especially the blog – would eventually pick up.
I knew this from past experience. It was just to be a matter of time.
If you’ve been a follower of my writing for a while, you most likely know that I have said that authentic success is always repeatable and reproducible.
And I have always been an advocate and keen practitioner of authentic success achievement.
You see, the key to achieving that kind of success is carefully studying what you do to find out WHY you succeed, then making diligent efforts to do those things that make you succeed, again and again.
Where possible, you will employ improved methods and strategies, to increase your rate and quality of success achievement.
If you do it right, it’s just a matter of time before you climb right back up to the former levels of success and eventually exceed them.
That is exactly what has been happening on this blog over the past month and a half.
In my usual habit of periodically checking to see how things are progressing, I’ve been monitoring the website visitors “Stats” auto generated by the WordPress plug-in installed in the right panel of this blog.
[NB: I know this is not necessarily a finely accurate indicator of actual traffic. But it serves my needs because, what I use it mainly for is to get a “feel” for the difference (be it an increase or decrease) in visits over time.]
Since May 2014 when I moved my blog to tayosolagbade.com, I’ve had to start from zero visits showing on that widget.
Then for several weeks on end, I saw only single digit counts for Daily Visits. But gradually those numbers began to rise – though only to a few hundreds per day.
Rather than fix my attention on that however, I focused on creating new and varied content daily, as had been my practice with the old domain.
But this time around, I drew from the lessons I’d learnt from over a year of daily making DAILY blog posts.
Not too long ago – on 18th October 2014 – my eye caught an unusually high number of visits (over 3,000) for the day before (i.e. 17th). Also, the visits for that day itself were already above 2,000 even though the time was still around noon!
It was the first time in a long time that I had bothered to look at the stats.
Weeks before then, I’d seen numbers around the 1,500 to 1,800 visits per day range.
But they never went up to 2,000 visits per day!
So this made me pay attention over the next few days, and that was when I realized how far my efforts had gone.
By the 21st October 2014, I was seeing visits shoot well over 5,000 per day several times, and generally stay above 4,000 for others!
See some screenshots I took below…
Now, I hasten to note again, that I’m not so interested in traffic. I only discuss this development because it shows another way to measure the impact of one’s blogging efforts.
For me, since I don’t do adverts and do not get paid for “traffic”, it’s not my priority.
However such noticeable improvements provide useful feedback. I was keen to see which aspect of my content was getting that much attention.
So I began checking views per posts to establish some trends.
Eventually, I narrowed down to my weekly newsletter on public speaking and weekly blog posts on entrepreneurship (especially those on farm business), followed by those on parenting, and career development – in that order.
These are some of the categories under which I publish posts on this blog.
I believe most of the visits are from people with interests in those areas, and the experience based stories I often tell resonate with them – hence the growing interest.
Other than that, I cannot think of any other thing that could have generated that much interest.
This brings me to my main reason for recalling the above and writing this piece…
As with everything else in life, the above described positive development has also attracted some negative attention, from mean spirited individuals.
In this case I refer to hackers.
It’s nothing new. Most websites online, especially those deemed to be getting good traffic, ultimately become targets of hacking attempts.
Years ago, I had a spammer hack into my website (on spontaneousdevelopment.com) via a security flaw in the code contained in a CGI script I naively installed. He then used a spam robot to launch massive spam campaigns from my old domain – and that got my hosting account suspended by my webhost for a week at the time, because they assumed I had done it!
More recently, before I lost spontaneousdevelopment.com (my 9 year old domain), I wrote several blog posts sharing security issues I was alerted to by Google via email updates they sent me.
At a stage mid-last year (2013) I even had a case in which efforts were made – over several months – to use negative SEO strategies to discredit my website with Google etc.
For instance, some people went to great lengths to link BACK to different pages on my website from ADULT (i.e. pornographic) websites!
Yep. It happened!
Each time I discovered this during my checks, I would use the DISAVOW tools in Google Webmaster interface to try dislodging them.
But a week or two later, I would discover more simply got added!
Eventually, I chose to ignore them and instead began “fighting back” by focusing on publishing better content MORE often.
Over time, that problem went away. That happened with spontaneousdevelopment.com.
I could be wrong, but it would appear tayosolagbade.com’s success has begun to attract some negative attention…
Something VERY strange and unusual has been happening.
This blog’s website statistics widget (which I earlier showed screenshots of) NOW periodically gets reset to zero!
I don’t know how or why it happens, but it has now happened several times over the past few weeks. And the frequency of occurrence is increasing.
In fact, earlier this afternoon, the abuse level had been taken up a notch:
Instead of just the day’s visit being reset, even the week and month’s visit have also been reset so the numbers now make no sense – see below.
I already know what I need to do, but I share “news” of this development here, only to point out that pursuing success will sometimes attract detractors, and negativity.
Rather than complain, we should always aim to use those attempts to pull us back or bring us down, to MOTIVATE ourselves to do even better than we are already doing.
Remember that if you were not doing well they would not bother about you.
You would be where they WANT you to be i.e. down, and out.
So, if they are coming after you, it can only mean they see that you’re going places – and that bothers them.
Be proud of yourself for achieving that!
Rest assured in the knowledge that as long as you keep your heart pure and your faith in the Creator strong, NOTHING they do can ever stop you.
They can hurt you, but it will only be temporary.
You WILL always bounce back to even greater reckoning if you don’t quit.
And if you keep doing that, your progress will ultimately take you out of their reach.
Enjoy your weekend!