Excel-ing at His Career: Mount Thriving as a LinkedIn Learning Instructor
Written by Doug Goodnough
George Mount, ’10, is a teacher, but he does not have a classroom. At least not in the traditional sense.
However, he has more than 400,000 “students” throughout the country in various careers and professions. What binds them all together is Microsoft Excel, which is a valuable business tool, if one knows how to use it. Many do not, which is where Mount “excels.” As an instructor in the LinkedIn Learning network, Mount helps people become more proficient in the spreadsheet editing tool.
Early in his career, he found his own Excel skills lacking and was looking for ways to improve.
“I was using a lot of Excel and just didn’t do a good job with it,” Mount said. “I wanted to get better, and I thought blogging about what I learned would be useful. Having been at Hillsdale, I enjoyed writing and sharing my thoughts, so I started a blog about Excel. It took off over the years, so that is what I do full time now.”
He eventually became so successful in training and teaching others in Excel that he started his own company, Stringfest Analytics, in 2014.
“It really is helping people, particularly in finance, get better at Excel, so that they’re able to do their jobs faster, make fewer mistakes, get things done on time, and not think they need to buy expensive software,” he said. “I do trainings for a lot of banking and finance clients. I’ve written a couple of books about Excel. I present at conferences.”
He rarely does any “one-on-one” training and works with corporations and groups that want to learn more advanced data analysis techniques. Mount has become so proficient that he was named a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional).
“It’s not a paid position. It’s totally independent of any employment status there, but you do get some insider tips on what is coming along with Excel,” he said. “It’s really meant to be a community service award—somebody who’s done something exceptionally technical to help the community or just went above and beyond with that tool. For me, it’s Excel.”
He said being an instructor for LinkedIn Learning is a rewarding experience.
“We come up with topics. I work on the script with them,” Mount said of his process with LinkedIn Learning. “They’ve got a recording studio out in California. One of the best parts of the work with them is going out there. You can basically see the beach from their studio.”
He said the rapid advancement in technology, especially the emergence of AI, is a constant challenge.
“My area of focus is very technical, which means that these tools keep changing so rapidly it’s getting increasingly hard,” Mount said. “Everybody has an opinion about that. It seems like for the first couple of years after AI came out, the messaging was that it was going to help you think faster and give you this creative partner. And I get that. I think Steve Jobs said the computer is like a bicycle for the mind, and it just helps you get more momentum with your thoughts. I like that idea with AI, but it does seem like over the last couple of months, it’s shifted more to like AI is going to think for you. That’s something I can’t really buy into.”
Mount has also authored a couple of books on Excel and has plans for more. He believes the tool is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
“The reason it’s so popular is that people like it to do quick calculations,” he said. “You’re trying to figure out your profit and loss. You’re trying to figure out your break-even, and you just want a really quick, easy place to run the numbers into a spreadsheet. There are all these things in the real world that keep emerging and they need a human mind to bring it into existence. So that is where I think Excel will always have a place.”
Mount has more than 24,000 followers on LinkedIn and is also considered a Sheetcast Ambassador.
“That is the closest thing to a social media influencer,” he said. “[Sheetcast] is a company that has software that lets you turn an Excel workbook into an app, and I am just an advocate for them. If people have questions about the tool and they want to learn, I’ll post stuff that gets sponsored by them.”
He said his Hillsdale College education has been instrumental in his career.
“As far as setting myself up for what I do now, it worked,” said Mount, who was an economics major and received the Ludwig von Mises Economics Scholarship. “It worked out because there are plenty of people who can use Excel and who are technically proficient, but there are not many people who can communicate and distill those ideas to others. And because I’m able to do that, I have the publishers, the people at LinkedIn Learning. They all tell me I am the best writer that they’ve worked with, and it has to be from Hillsdale. There are so many people who just can’t write. They really can’t articulate their ideas, and because I’m able to, I am well positioned for what I do.”
Mount was active in the Music Department at Hillsdale, playing guitar and violin, and was a member of the Hillsdale College Orchestra and String Ensemble. He said he is still involved in the music scene near his Cleveland, Ohio, home.
“I am still playing guitar and violin and I’m learning Greek, and I do a lot of house-sitting,” he said. “I signed up for a house-sitting service where people go away, and they have animals they need someone to watch. I usually just watch cats because they are a lot easier. Last year I went to Hawaii, New Mexico, Austin, and New Orleans.”
He said having a remote job allows him that kind of flexibility.
“To do so many different things all the time, you really have to be a liberally educated person,” Mount said. “I think Hillsdale set me up really well for that, because whether I’m putting a presentation together, going to conferences, or even writing my books, it takes a tremendous amount of groundedness and the ability to communicate.”
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in March 2026