08/05/2025
I made $150 Doing What I don't Know How To Do
Context:
I hardly use Microsoft Excel; I mostly use Google Sheets for most of my spreadsheet-related tasks.
So I am not even an intermediate user of Microsoft Excel.
The Story:
I build WordPress calculators, from the very popular ones to custom calculators, and I have a few repeat customers. (I’ve been doing this for more than 5 years)
So I noticed most of my custom gigs are usually designed in Excel, which gave me an Idea.
I created a gig for converting Excel spreadsheets to WP Calculators, and that worked interestingly.
One of my long-time clients is Mr Fred (not the real name). I have built many calculators for Mr Fred from his company’s spreadsheets.
Just a few days ago, I completed one of those calculators, and the next day, Mr Fred asked:
“Hi Michael, can you help with building an Excel Dashboard?” (sent with an attachment)
And my response:
“Yes, I can.”
In reality, I have no Idea how to make it.
In addition to my ignorance, this came with a deadline of 3 days.
So I fired up my Windsurf IDE. Copied the whole requirement, pasted it in, but I encountered a lot of errors in the output.
First, the dashboard.xlsm created by the tool couldn’t open with my Excel software, so I’ll have to follow a manual process.
The requirements of the project.
An Excel Dashboard that could read data from multiple (infinite) other spreadsheets that have multiple tabs in them and display them, of course, without opening those files.
The Dashboard should also have the ability to write back data into any of the source spreadsheets.
TLDR
For the first time, I got to know what Macros, VBA, and Active X while prompting, I was able to create the dashboard after hours of prompting
Now that I am over it, I realized it could have even been faster
What I Learned
Instead of sending the full requirement to Windsurf (Codeium), I should just break it down into pieces and use the AI tool to achieve them one after the other. If I followed this, I would have been done in 2 hours.
We are living in times where we can do virtually anything that an AI tool can understand. So the limits are off
In the end, Mr Fred paid me $150 for a task I was doing for the first time with my $10 Subscription on Windsurf (I am an early adopter of Windsurf (Codeium), so I pay 10 instead of 15).
Mr Fred could have as well done this himself with some prompts and saved $140, but anyways - I know I can and that’s why I get paid for it.
I also took the time to do the prompting, right?
What you know is what sets you apart.
If you'd like to see more of the process and VBA codes I used, comment below, and I’ll send you the details.
