Finance and Microsoft Excel for Entrepreneurs

[LibertyForMe]

I have been thinking a lot about skills that are important for an entrepreneur to have, and an understanding of finance is pretty high up on the list.

Understanding finance, financial calculations, and financial statements can help you spot areas of weakness in your business, evaluate opportunities objectively, and ultimately understand your business and industry more effectively.

The most effective tool to do these things is Microsoft Excel. With Excel you can easy evaluate all sorts of different things, and quickly change inputs as you find out more information.

Apart from financial things, Excel is also a good platform to build your own resources when you are small. You can build anything from real estate deal analyzers that pull in real-time information from the internet and notify you when things change, to basic inventory tracking systems, to smart shipping invoices.

In this thread, I am going to cover a mix of financial things that are worth knowing, how Excel works with those financial things, and also non-financial things that you can use Excel for.

If anyone is interested in a specific subject, or has a question about how to do something in Excel, post it here! I am stuck using Excel 2007, so it may not be the same as the newer models - fyi.

Thanks,
LibertyForMe


Table of Contents:
Lesson One: Fixed References -https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ft-excel-for-entrepreneurs.52038/#post-358789

Lesson Two: Future Value - https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ft-excel-for-entrepreneurs.52038/#post-358930

Lesson Three: Automatic Data Gathering - https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ft-excel-for-entrepreneurs.52038/#post-358938

Lesson Four: Intro to Pivot Tables - https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ft-excel-for-entrepreneurs.52038/#post-360089

Lesson Five: Pivot Tables 2 and Pivot Charts - https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ft-excel-for-entrepreneurs.52038/#post-360092

Lesson Six: Opening Multiple Hyperlinks At The Same Time - https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ft-excel-for-entrepreneurs.52038/#post-360370

Lesson Seven: Using VLOOKUPS to find and join information - https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ft-excel-for-entrepreneurs.52038/#post-360757

 

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[RogueInnovation]

That sounds great, as soon as you said it I thought "man, I gotta watch some tutorials on this".
(currently watching, lol)

edit:
vid1 = great!
I can use it to create tons of graphs I needed xD
looking forward to the rest!!!

 

[LibertyForMe]

Lesson One: Using fixed references to save time!

Change resolution to 720p and go fullscreen for best results...

This video covers a helpful trick that can save you a lot of time.

Let me know if you have questions.

 

[LibertyForMe]

Lesson 2: Using the Future Value formula in Excel

Change resolution to 720p and go fullscreen for best results...

This video covers the basics of the future value formula through a simple example.

Let me know if you have questions.

 

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[LibertyForMe]

Lesson 3: Automatic Data Gathering in Excel

Change resolution to 720p and go fullscreen for best results...

Video shows the power of Excel's data gathering tool, similar to a web scraper. Useful for real estate watching, stock quotes, or a myriad of other things.

Let me know if you have questions.

 

[Wimtbimtb]

Very good Idea for a thread for the newer folks... +++++SPEED

 

[Eskil]

Excellent thread my friend. +rep for putting together the videos!

I thought about making a similar thread a while ago, since I'm also a huge Excel nerd, lol... I've spent more time in my life on spreadsheets that I care to admit - but I actually enjoy it (most of the time).

I love figuring out new ways to use Excel to my advantage.
Among other things, I've used it for;
- Automation / script generation
- Content writing / spinning
- PPC analytics / optimization
- Deep keyword analysis
- ROI / Business model estimates
- Datafeed manipulation, cleanup, conversions
- Getting a better understanding of several pieces of data, combined into one piece
- Database exports / imports management
- Project management

Heck, I even use Excel sometimes for swipe files and "to do" lists for my projects.

Excel (or similarly advanced spreadsheet tools) is one of the most underestimated tools in any entrepreneurs arsenal.

 

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[LibertyForMe]

Excel (or similarly advanced spreadsheet tools) is one of the most underestimated tools in any entrepreneurs arsenal.

I agree. Super useful for all sorts of things. Feel free to do a writeups or videos of things that you find helpful and post them in here, I know I could learn some stuff from you!

 

[TheSilverSpoon]

Awesome!

Had no idea data gathering was so simple in excel.

Any thoughts on bundling up a few videos into an informational course?

 

[LibertyForMe]

Any thoughts on bundling up a few videos into an informational course?

No, hadn't really thought about it. There are tons of tutorials online, so this stuff isn't exactly revolutionary or anything. If I did anything with it, I would make templates for people, so they could do complicated stuff easily, but I don't have plans for that at this time.

 

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[DennisD]

This is really good stuff.
About a month ago @LibertyForMe helped me put together an excel presentation.
I had a few cells bandaided together but he reformatted it in a way that blew my freakin mind.

From then on he earned the title "Math Wizard"
(not to be confused with Meth Wizard, that'd be something else entirely)

 

[LibertyForMe]

Lesson 4: Intro to Pivot Tables in Excel

Change resolution to 720p and go fullscreen for best results...

This video walks through how to make a pivot table and some of the things that a pivot table can help you with.

Let me know if you have questions.

 

[LibertyForMe]

Lesson 5: Pivot Tables 2 and Pivot Charts

Change resolution to 720p and go fullscreen for best results...

I talk for another minute about pivot tables, and then quickly cover pivot charts and how useful they are.

Lemme know if you have questions!

 

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[ImpactMillions]

Thanks for videos, can't wait to watch them!

 

[LibertyForMe]

Lesson 6: Opening Multiple Hyperlinks At The Same Time

Change resolution to 720p and go fullscreen for best results...

This video comes in response to a question that @ImpactMillions sent to me via PM. He (or she) was spending lots of time opening hyperlinks one by one, and was wondering if there was a faster way to do this. Check out the video for the answer.

Here is the code:

Sub Hyperlink_Follow()
For Each c In Selection
On Error Resume Next
c.Hyperlinks(1).Follow NewWindow:=False, AddHistory:=True
Next
End Sub

If anyone has questions, let me know! I am also open to doing consulting work or helping you build a custom solution, I dunno if anyone needs this but I figured I would mention it.

 

[LibertyForMe]

Lesson 7: Using the VLOOKUP function to find and join information

Change resolution to 720p and go fullscreen for best results...

Let me know if you have any questions about this function or my video.

 

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[DennisD]

Lesson 6: Opening Multiple Hyperlinks At The Same Time
This video comes in response to a question that @ImpactMillions sent to me via PM. He (or she) was spending lots of time opening hyperlinks one by one, and was wondering if there was a faster way to do this. Check out the video for the answer.

Rep$+.
Somebody pin this thread

 

[pickeringmt]

Thanks a million for these!

 

[Andy Black]

Rep. Bookmarked. Coming back to study these. Thanks Jacob.

I use Excel a LOT. The better I am at it, the bigger my competitive edge.


Here's an Excel video I linked to on the inside:

 

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[Andy Black]

Lesson 3: Automatic Data Gathering in Excel

Change resolution to 720p and go fullscreen for best results...

Video shows the power of Excel's data gathering tool, similar to a web scraper. Useful for real estate watching, stock quotes, or a myriad of other things.

Let me know if you have questions.

Ha! Awesome. I never even saw the "from Web" button. It's been sat in front of me all those years. That's sooo useful.

My instant thought is to wonder if I can get it to read a Google shared spreadsheet. I'm trying to get clients to fill in a leads/sales/appointments spreadsheet (they never do), and maybe I can drag that data automagically into an Excel spreadsheet where I can join it with the AdWords/Bing cost data. There's probably a simpler way of doing this, but regardless - thanks for this video.