By Hiran de Silva

There is something almost comical—if it weren’t so damaging—about the Excel education industry today.

Scroll through YouTube. Sign up for a “masterclass.” Join a webinar.
Watch closely and you’ll notice something very odd:

Nobody ever tells you who the teaching is for.
Not once.

It’s as if content creators have appointed themselves as universal doctors, prescribing treatments to anyone who wanders in—without ever diagnosing the patient, asking the symptoms, or checking whether the remedy is appropriate.

The omission isn’t the issue.
The indifference is.

Most Excel educators do not know—and do not care—where their audience sits in the real world. They don’t ask what your responsibilities are, what your boss expects, or what problem you actually need to solve. They simply teach the feature, record the demo, and chase the view count.

But in the workplace, the context in which you use Excel matters more than anything else.

And this is where the entire Excel education industry collapses.

---

The Reality No One Mentions: The Excel Audience Is Not One Group

In reality, the Excel world contains a vast range of audiences:

• Complete novices curious about what Excel even is
• New hires learning the basics for a narrow task
• Social-media enthusiasts drawn to Excel as “digital Lego”
• Departmental managers who built or inherited spreadsheets their teams rely on
• Ambitious professionals looking beyond their box to solve their boss’s problems
• Experienced operators with real business pain to fix
• Retired hobbyists who simply enjoy tinkering

These people are not the same.
They do not want the same things.
They do not face the same stakes.

Yet nearly all Excel education treats them as if they are one homogenous group.

That is why YouTube tutorials and social media demos feel unfocused, trivial, repetitive, and disconnected from real enterprise problems.

It’s not your imagination.

The teaching is aimed at the lowest rung of the ladder.

---

The Two Audiences That Matter—and Why Only One Gets Any Education

Let’s condense it into the two groups that really matter:

Group 1: The local operators

People who use spreadsheets to do their daily tasks.
Their thinking is local, file-based, and inside-the-box.
They make up 95% of the YouTube metrics.

Group 2: The systems architects

People who design spreadsheets that entire teams and departments depend on.
They deal with deadlines, risk, scale, auditability, reconciliation, approvals, and management visibility.
They create processes, not files.

These are the high-value professionals.
These are the people whose work affects entire organisations.
These are the ones bosses rely on.

And there is almost no Excel education for them.

This is not a mistake.
It’s simply what the attention economy rewards.
Volume over value.
Clicks over consequences.

---

YouTube Comments Reveal the Truth

If you really want to see the hidden divide, look at the comments section under any Excel tutorial.

Among the hundreds of beginner questions, there are always a handful—always—who ask something that lies outside the narrow boundaries of the demo:

• “How does this work with 80 users?”
• “How do I automate this monthly for the CFO?”
• “What happens if 12 departments feed this?”
• “How do I avoid breaking when someone leaves?”
• “What about audit trail?”
• “Can this scale across the whole company?”

These are not hobbyists.
These are not trend-chasers.
These are not tutorial-junkies.

These are enterprise thinkers trapped in novice-focused content.

They are trying to create value at a higher level.
They are thinking about their boss’s pain.
They are thinking about the workflow, not the feature.
They are asking architectural questions that the content creator simply cannot answer.

These people are invisible in the metrics—but they are priceless in the enterprise.

They are the ones who could genuinely transform industry.

But they are being fed beginner-level education.

They are starving.

---

This Is Where the Opportunity Lies

While the social media world teaches tiny tricks and shiny buttons, something extraordinary is happening under the surface:

A huge, underserved, high-value audience is quietly searching for answers the influencer world cannot provide.

And here is the liberating truth:

Excel, when designed properly—when architected—beats every FP&A, ERP, and planning tool on the market.
Not in theory.
Not in wishful thinking.
In practice.
Every day.

I’ve done it repeatedly.
Others can too.
You can too.

The hub-and-spoke model.
GET/PUT architecture.
Relational database backbone.
Fully controlled, fully auditable, enterprise-grade Excel.

The sort of approach that eliminates chaos in budgeting, consolidations, reporting, reconciliation, approvals, and data sharing.

The sort of approach nobody teaches—
but everyone desperately needs.

---

The Visible Audience Is Not the Valuable Audience

YouTube sees viewers.
You see enterprise impact.

Social media sees clicks.
You see business problems.

Influencers see popularity.
You see responsibility.

They teach the “inside-the-box.”
You are aiming outside it.

They teach entertainment.
You seek architecture.

They teach operators.
You are becoming an architect.

And here is the beautiful part:

The gap between what’s taught and what’s needed is your opportunity.

The world has been taught the wrong game—and you now see the real one.

This is where careers accelerate.
This is where visibility grows.
This is where value multiplies.
This is where you amaze your boss—and your boss’s boss.

---

Be Happy—You’ve Found the Path That Changes Everything

Most people will stay in the small version of Excel.
Most people will stay inside the box.
Most people will follow the hype.

But you’ve found the big version.
The enterprise version.
The strategic version.

You’ve discovered the path nobody teaches—but every organisation needs.

You can follow this path.
You can lead others.
You can reshape your workplace.

You can become the person who shows that:

Excel, done properly, fights back—and when it does, it wins.