By Hiran de Silva
There’s a certain kind of performance art that takes place on late-night TV and LinkedIn feeds alike. You know the type: A slick-tongued grifter in a shiny suit gesticulating wildly over a £1,800 watch that, if we’re honest, wouldn’t fetch £25 in a second-hand pawnbroker in Croydon. “It’s rare!” he yells. “Only three in the world! Two gone! One left! Act now!”
And some poor soul, eyes wide, calls the number.
It’s theatre. A farce. But a dangerous one — because the victim isn’t just parted from their money. They’re parted from their judgment. And nowhere is this greasy circus act more repellent than when it infects education, career advice, and professional development — particularly in the Excel space.
The Grift Has Gone Digital
Let’s start with the basics. The structure of the scam is almost always the same. First, make something sound rare. Then, make it sound exclusive. Third, insinuate (with the subtlety of a sledgehammer) that if you don’t buy in now, you’ll be left behind. The final twist? Aim it squarely at an audience who don’t know enough to question it.
It’s as if every Excel influencer attended the same shady sales seminar:
- “Never explain what the skill does — just say it’s ‘essential.’”
- “Don’t link to case studies — post pink square screenshots with lots of emojis.”
- “And for heaven’s sake, don’t mention alternatives that actually solve real enterprise problems. Just shout ‘Power Query’ and run.”
You’d think they were hawking commemorative Brexit coins or knock-off crypto. Actually, scratch that — at least those scams admit they’re speculative. The Power Query brigade pretend they’re selling a career upgrade.
When the Snake Oil Wears a Ribbon
Let me be clear. Power Query is not the problem. Nor are dynamic arrays, pivot tables, or Excel Lambdas. The problem is the carnival of self-appointed gurus selling these tools as if they’re silver bullets — when, in fact, they’re often toy guns for the wrong battlefield.
You’ll see it in posts like the “Top 20 Excel YouTubers” list — every single one teaching personal productivity tricks, standalone formulas, and workbook-level hacks. Now, that’s fine… if you’re tracking your sock drawer or organizing your fantasy football league. But if you’re trying to consolidate 35 budgets across countries, currencies, and cost centres in a global firm with layers of hierarchy, those tricks are dead weight.
And yet, the sales pitch never changes:
“Learn Excel the modern way! Follow this influencer! You too can become a spreadsheet wizard!”
But wizard of what? Rearranging local data? Making dashboards that collapse under versioning pressure? Building report packs that fall apart the moment your CFO says, “Can I see this by country, not department?”
No explanation. No context. Just vibes.
Selling to the Gullible: A Scammer’s Business Model
What ties this all together is one cold fact: these charlatans aren’t talking to you — the thinking professional. They’re not even trying. Their target market is the gullible. The uncritical. The spreadsheet equivalent of people who think VAT goes straight to Brussels or that £2 crypto is “on the up.”
They depend on you not asking:
- “What do you mean by ‘must-have Excel skills’?”
- “How will this actually help me in my job?”
- “Who benefits if I learn this — me, or your YouTube channel monetization?”
This isn’t education. It’s performance. And the sad part is, real learning — the kind that gets you triple the pay because you finally understand enterprise spreadsheet architecture — that gets buried under a sludge of hashtags and affiliate links.
The Excel Industry’s “Brexit Moment”
The tragedy mirrors political manipulation. Remember Ebbw Vale? The Welsh town plastered with “Funded by the EU” signs… that still voted to leave. That’s not irony — that’s the result of people who’ve been fed a message tailor-made for their ignorance. It feels true. It sounds empowering. It’s a lie.
And in Excel-world, the equivalent is someone confidently declaring, “Bottom-up budgeting can’t be done in spreadsheets,” while people who’ve done exactly that — daily, professionally, at scale — are screaming into the void.
They’re not mistaken. They’re banking on the ignorance of their audience.
Truth Is Not a Bestseller
Here’s the thing: truth is boring. “Use Excel as a front-end to a relational database and control access via ADO through VBA with a hub-and-spoke architecture” is not a viral TikTok caption. But it works. It scales. It gets people promoted.
Unfortunately, there’s no glitter in that truth. No emoji. No influencer gloss. And because of that, people chasing flashy “skills” end up mastering the equivalent of learning Morse code in the era of Wi-Fi — charming, but irrelevant to the enterprise needs of today.
Choose Your Education Like You’d Choose a Surgeon
So here’s the offer — the real offer. You can chase pink square hacks and five-minute tutorials from people who’ve never built a control framework in their lives. Or you can learn the techniques that global finance directors pay for — not because they’re trendy, but because they work.
If the choice is:
- Learn Power Query (and stay in a box),
OR - Learn hub-and-spoke architecture and triple your value in the eyes of management…
Why wouldn’t you pick the second?
Unless, of course, no one told you the second option existed.
Which is exactly how the snake oil salesman wants it.
Final Word: If someone is trying to sell you a watch, a coin, a coin-shaped watch, or a flashy Excel skill and they never once explain how it will demonstrably improve your real-world outcomes, walk away. You’re not their customer. You’re their mark.
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