[VIDEO SCRIPT]
Type: Pre-Learning Intro to Live “Excel Happening”
[Opening: Presenter On Camera or Animated Character]
Presenter (smiling):
Welcome.
This is a short introduction—and some essential pre-learning—for the upcoming live Excel happening called:
(beat)
“How I Tripled My Pay with Excel — Beyond Power Query.”
Now, this isn’t the live session itself.
This is to give you the background—the foundational knowledge—so you’ll get much more value when you attend.
It’ll also help you quickly decide if this session is right for you.
If it is, you’ll know. And if not—well, you’ve just saved yourself some time.
[Segment 1: Who’s Speaking?]
Presenter (playfully):
Now, full disclosure:
I’m not real. I’m a scripted character.
But this script comes from someone who is real—Hiran de Silva.
And what you’re about to hear is based on his lived experience—transforming how businesses use Excel, and yes… tripling his consulting pay, more than once.
Let’s begin with a story—a sketch Hiran calls The Purple Square Parable.
[Segment 2: Purple Square Parable – Visual Storytelling]
Presenter (voiceover, with animated visuals):
Imagine this:
You’re hired to paint a tiny 1cm x 1cm purple square on a wall.
That’s it. That’s your whole job.
You’re trained how to hold the brush.
How to get the corners sharp.
How to keep the color consistent.
You do your job well.
You get more squares.
You become the “go-to person” for purple-square painting.
You collaborate with others—pass the brush, give tips to the newbies.
You get better. You train. You upgrade your brush.
Now everyone’s happy. The system works.
You’re successful within the system.
Presenter (leans in):
But then… one day… you take a step back.
And you realize something startling:
The real job… was to paint the whole wall purple.
Not just your square.
And now, seeing that whole wall, you ask:
“Is there a better way?”
Yes.
A spray gun.
Load it with purple paint. Squeeze the trigger.
Wave it across the wall.
Job done—perfectly, quickly, efficiently.
That’s transformation.
And that’s what this session is about.
Not painting faster. Not using better brushes.
But putting down the brush entirely… and picking up the spray gun.
[Segment 3: The Problem with Modern Excel Consolidation]
Presenter:
Let’s apply this to a real-world Excel example—consolidation.
It’s one of the oldest, most common Excel use cases.
Early spreadsheets—VisiCalc, SuperCalc—had no linking. You’d print reports, add them up by hand.
Then came MultiPlan from Microsoft—built by a Hungarian engineer named Charles Simonyi.
It allowed linking spreadsheets together. For the first time, consolidation could be dynamic.
Years later, Simonyi’s team built Excel, for a different platform.
A new product, not a renamed one.
Excel gave us the “Consolidate” function—a built-in tool that works great… if your data has the same shape.
But what if your files are messy? Different structures? Different locations?
That’s where external links came in.
You could link workbooks together—any shape, any folder.
And it works.
Presenter (serious):
Until it doesn’t.
Try doing this with 400 spreadsheets.
Long file paths. Deep folder structures. Multiple departments.
One broken link—and the whole model collapses.
Ask anyone who’s been there. They’ll tell you:
This isn’t a spreadsheet model. It’s a house of cards.
And when it crashes—under pressure, with deadlines—it’s chaos.
[Segment 4: Power Query – The “Modern” Solution]
Presenter:
Enter Power Query.
YouTube loves it. So do webinars.
It feels modern. It’s visual. You avoid external links.
But here’s the catch:
It works great… for four files.
Four sheets. One quarter. A handful of rows.
Presenter (leaning in):
Now scale that to 400 files, 12 months, 28 rows per sheet…
Four levels of consolidation.
Suddenly, the cracks appear:
- You need to collect all files into a single folder.
- You’re working with copies, not live data.
- There’s no write-back.
- And refreshing takes minutes—maybe 10… maybe 40.
This isn’t live. It’s batch.
And budgeting is not a batch process.
Budgeting is conversation.
Discussion. Negotiation. Live feedback.
Without that, you don’t have a budgeting model.
You have a data delay.
[Segment 5: The Real Problem – Complexity vs Desirability]
Presenter:
Each “solution” gave us more power—but at the cost of more complexity.
- External links? More powerful than the wizard—but fragile.
- Power Query? More powerful than links—but rigid and slow.
So what’s happening?
Power ↑
Complexity ↑
Risk ↑
Desirability ↓
Presenter (direct):
At enterprise scale, Power Query isn’t viable.
It’s too brittle. Too disconnected. Too slow.
And so… people give up.
The person who built it leaves.
Nobody else knows how it works.
And now you’re stuck with a “modern” model that no one wants to touch.
[Segment 6: The Sweet Spot – Transformation with Enterprise Excel]
Presenter (hopeful):
But what if we flipped it?
What if you could:
- Cut complexity massively
- Slash risk
- Skyrocket desirability
…all at the same time?
That’s what Hiran’s going to show you.
He calls it the sweet spot—and it changes everything.
Not by adding complexity.
But by removing it.
It’s a radical re-engineering of how Excel is used.
It’s client-server thinking. SQL. VBA. Controlled processes.
It’s simple enough to grasp.
Powerful enough to transform.
[Segment 7: Why Consolidation Is the Perfect Example]
Presenter:
Why consolidation?
Because every ERP white paper, every FP&A vendor, says the same thing:
“You can’t consolidate bottom-up with Excel.”
And they’re wrong.
This model proves otherwise.
You’ll see Excel doing things they say it can’t do.
Not with tricks. But with architecture.
[Segment 8: The Career Payoff – Tripling Your Pay]
Presenter (personal):
This isn’t just about efficiency.
This is about career acceleration.
Hiran’s clients hired him for basic Excel work.
When they saw this—when they saw the spray gun—they tripled his pay.
Why?
Because the value was so visible, so immediate, so powerful…
that management couldn’t not act on it.
And the best part?
80% of you watching this… could do the same.
[Segment 9: Your Invitation – The Excel Happening]
Presenter (inviting):
So if any of this resonates…
You’re invited to the Excel Happening.
This isn’t a webinar.
This is live.
A hands-on walkthrough of the model that changed Hiran’s career—and could change yours.
Come for the model.
Stay for the transformation.
[Closing]
Presenter (smiling):
So that’s your pre-learning.
The wall is waiting. The spray gun is loaded.
Hope to see you at the Happening.
Thank you.
Would you like me to format this for teleprompter delivery, YouTube captioning, or split it into slides and voiceover chunks for a video production team?
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