By Hiran de Silva
We’ve all seen the slogan: “Your value with Excel depends on how well you know Excel.”
It’s plastered across courses, feature launches, and training programs. But let me tell you — this isn’t just marketing. It’s reality.
I know this firsthand. In four different companies, across four different industries, I was hired as a temporary worker to do something simple and specific. Within weeks, my clients discovered that the Excel solutions I created solved problems they didn’t even know could be solved. Each time, they tripled my pay.
That’s what I call “Triple Your Pay with Excel.”
Not a slogan. A lived experience.
But there’s a darker flip side to this truth.
Recently, Frank Coster, a former CFO, shared a painful story on LinkedIn. He said Excel let him down. He listed the shortcomings of Excel that, in his words, cost him his position. Without them, he believes he would still be a CFO today.
And yet — if you read through the responses, you’ll see a different picture. Dozens of professionals pointed out that what he called Excel’s shortcomings were, in fact, Excel’s strengths — capabilities he didn’t know how to use.
One example: forecasting.
Frank said his downfall was that he couldn’t keep track of how sales forecasts changed over time. Each time the forecast was updated, the old one was overwritten, leaving no history. That gap in process, he said, was fatal.
But here’s the truth: Excel has always had the ability to solve this. You don’t overwrite. You version. You design your process so that every forecast is saved, timestamped, and comparable. You build the system around the need, not just the tool. That is what Excel is for.
So what’s the lesson?
Excel can triple your pay — or it can cost you your job.
The difference is not the tool itself. It’s your knowledge of how to apply it in the environment you’re in.
- If you’re a freelancer or a solo business owner, certain Excel skills will take you far.
- If you’re in a larger organisation, where bosses and bosses’ bosses need history, granularity, and transparency, the Excel skills you need are very different.
Which ones matter for you? That depends on the career you want. But the decision is urgent, because the wrong skills in the wrong environment can leave you exposed.
Frank’s story is a tragedy. It came too late for him. But it doesn’t have to be too late for you.
Learn the skills that matter for the environment you want to work in. Learn the Excel that saves your company from failure. Learn the Excel that makes you indispensable.
That is the Excel that triples your pay.
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