Tools & Tips for Agency Success #99 - The Spreadsheet Edition

A weekly medley of tools, tips, and items of interest to help grow your agency

Issue #99 - 12/13/22
The Spreadsheet Edition

“Nobody sets out to create
a mission critical spreadsheet, they ‘just happen’. ”
-Felienne Hermans

Hey there,

Spreadsheets are everywhere. Is there any other tool in your arsenal that can solve as many problems?

Practitioners of spreadsheets are often thought to possess a mysterious power and uncanny ability when it comes to creating dynamic lookups or PivotTables that can answer all kinds of business questions. However, using Excel (or any spreadsheet program, for that matter) doesn't require superhuman abilities. It's just a matter of getting familiar with the various features and formulas it offers.

Here's some history, options/alternatives, tips, and spreadsheet templates to help run your agency.

Last week's newsletter had a 31.3% open rate. The most clicked link was 7 Thought Experiments To Expand Your Mind And Business.

The History of Spreadsheet Software
A brief history of the ubiquitous spreadsheet from VisiCalc to Excel.

Spreadsheets Are Hot—and Cranking Out Complex Code | WIRED
Although many folks are happy with Excel and Sheets, several startups are providing more spreadsheet solutions for "nocoders" to automate their businesses.

Google Sheets Tips – 21 Awesome Things Google Sheets Can Do
Here are some great tips to get additional value from your Google spreadsheet.

Calculating Project Profits at a Creative Services Agency - Peter Kang
What a profitable engagement looks like and why a projects biggest levers for profitability are costs and ability to price.

Find Existing Spreadsheets

Building a checklist can be time-consuming, but you're in luck: there's a wealth of pertinent info online. Whether it's using Google to look up specific topics like "checklists," or browsing through our blog for helpful tips and tricks that help improve your productivity at work, we've got some great resources just waiting to assist!

Here are some more specific searches you can use to find already-made spreadsheets of checklists. Just replace the "intitle" or "inurl" with what you are searching for.

site:http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets intitle:checklist marketing

site:http://airtable.com inurl:checklist seo

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New Business Questionnaire
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Project Profitability Calculator
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Thanks for reading,

Chuck & Peter

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Tools and Tips for Creative & Digital Agencies is a weekly email from Barrel about things that we find useful for digital agencies. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

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