We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kat Norton a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kat, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
To be successful, I feel that mindset is the most important factor. Many limitations we have in life are ones we are placing on ourselves and once we remove that block it opens up so many new doors! An example of this from my personal life was my fear of the ocean. I got tumbled as a kid and never went back in past my ankles. At age 25, against all my mental constructs, I booked a surf & yoga retreat in Morocco! I mentally overrode all of the fears in my head, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and pushed past my fear. I spent 5 days in the ocean learning how to surf and had the most incredible time. Most importantly I realized if I had never pushed myself that day, I probably would have never swam in the ocean again. That small example I constantly apply to my life now to push myself beyond my own mental constructs.
Kat, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Since launching Miss Excel in June of 2020, Kat Norton has grown a community of over 1 million people on TikTok & Instagram through viral Excel trick videos infused with creativity, music and dance. If you haven’t seen her content before, picture freezing your Excel cells to “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice or creating a drop-down menu to “Drop it Like it’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg. That is the type of energy she brings to her videos!
Since then, Kat has scaled Miss Excel into a multi 7-figure course sales business on the Thinkific platform and trained millions of people around the world. She built 10 courses (including the Microsoft Office Suite, Google Sheets and a kids course) that have been featured in Business Insider, Entrepreneur Magazine, CNBC and 50+ global news outlets. Kat also applies her fun teaching style to live virtual corporate training events and has had the opportunity to work with some amazing companies such as Kraft Heinz, Enterprise, Vimeo and even Microsoft! Kat’s online courses on Thinkific.
Kat was recently awarded the Microsoft MVP award and was named one of the Top 10 Social Media Influencers by Forbes, but her proudest moment was retiring her mom last year.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
When March of 2020 came around, I found myself back in my childhood bedroom pondering life. It was the start of the pandemic and I had stopped traveling full time for my consulting job. In this time of reflection, I started to realize my life needed a change. My job was getting me by financially, but it was not lighting me up. On a quest to find my purpose, I dove deep into inner work. I developed a daily meditation practice, began reprogramming my limiting beliefs from childhood and got really clear on what I wanted in life.
Fast forward to June of 2020, I was tossing around business ideas on the phone with my friend. Then the idea of putting Excel on TikTok came up and it was like a lightening bolt hit. I got the vision: an Excel screen over my head. I spent the next 48 hours agonizing over the prospect of putting myself out there on TikTok. I didn’t even have the TikTok app on my phone at the time. My mind was yelling “You are 27 years old with a corporate job – you CANNOT dance on TikTok!!!” but my gut was like “MAKE THE TIKTOK!!!” The next day, my schedule magically cleared. I had no idea how to video edit, nor how to get an Excel screen over my head, but I knew I would figure it out as I go. By the end of the day, I had a few solid video drafts and after some video editing trial and error, I saw my vision come to life.
I started posting one video per day. I didn’t tell a soul besides my mother and my boyfriend because it made this whole venture seem less daunting to test out. However, my 4th video about the new XLOOKUP feature to DMX’s song “X Gon Give It To Ya” surpassed 100,000 views and started getting pushed to all these people I knew!
By my 6th video, the CEO of an IT company had reached out saying he loved my teaching style and wanted to pay me to create training videos in Google Workspace products for students, parents and teachers as schools were starting to go digital. I wasn’t as familiar with Google products at the time, however I trusted that I was a fast learner and would figure it out along the way. I ordered a green screen, a ring light and formed an LLC. Next thing you know, I was in business!
I was working full time at my consulting job during the day and recording training videos and TikToks by night. I had moved all the furniture around my childhood bedroom and was cranking out videos until wee hours of the night feeling fully energized by what I was doing. Every part of me trusted that I was on the right path. I continued posting on Miss Excel each day, and within a few weeks I went “viral” with a video surpassing 3.6 million views. I looked down at my phone and I had 100,000 TikTok followers.
By October of 2020, I was dreaming of being a full-time creator. I wanted to help people on a larger scale, and realized I needed my own course to really make an impact. I searched around online for easy to use course platforms and made the easy choice to use Thinkific’s course platform. After a few tutorials I realized how simple it can be to get a course up and running on Thinkific and decided I needed to just go for it! So I took a couple weeks off from my day job and built out my first Excel course. I meditated on my course outline and infused it with much creativity and fun as I could imagine up. I then filmed over 100 training videos and edited my magic into each video.
By November 27, 2020 – I made my first course sale. Less than 3 months later, the passive income from the course sales was surpassing my day job and I really started rethinking my life. February 1st was my last day in corporate America, and my first day as a full-time entrepreneur.
Since then, I have scaled Miss Excel into a multi 7-figure course business and trained millions of people around the world. I built 9 more courses (including the Microsoft Suite, Google Sheets and a kids course) that have been featured in Business Insider, Entrepreneur Magazine, CNBC and 50+ global news outlets. I also apply my fun teaching style to live virtual corporate training events and have had the opportunity to work with some amazing companies such as Kraft Heinz, Enterprise, Vimeo and even Microsoft!
I was recently awarded the Microsoft MVP award and was named one of the Top 10 Social Media Influencers by Forbes, but my proudest moment was retiring my mom last year. I have been having the time of my life supporting people around the globe with this business and I can’t wait to see what the future holds!
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
In a little over a year, I have grown an audience from 0 followers to over 1 million people across TikTok and Instagram. My largest growth spurt was 200,000 people on Instagram in 10 days. My secret: Viral Content.
My recipe for viral content has been: Creativity, Utility and Polarity.
• Creativity: If you haven’t seen my videos before, picture freezing your Excel cells to “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice or creating a Drop-Down Menu to “Drop it Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg – that is the type of energy I bring to my videos! I infuse each piece of social media content with as much creativity and fun as possible. I meditate to get myself into a creative flow state and that is when the viral ideas come to me! It is so important to think outside the box when creating content and to make it uniquely you!
• Utility: Miss Excel was formed to help people save hours in their week by becoming more efficient in Microsoft Excel. I wanted to help as many people as possible feel empowered at work. Each piece of content has a learning objective. This encourages people to save and share the videos which results in the content being pushed through the social media algorithms.
• Polarity: If I had boring Excel screen videos, my content would have never gone viral. If people were not interested in Excel, they would simply keep scrolling without any engagement. However, the polarity that was created when I combined a program traditionally viewed as boring with energetic dancing to trending songs is what initially got my content off the ground. By combining two things that are polar opposites, it created conversation. Some people loved it, some people hated it and others in between were just plain confused because they had never seen anything like it! This generated tons of comments that initially got my content flying through the algorithms. An important piece to remember is to combine things that you genuinely love so the content is authentic! I personally love to dance and love helping people with Excel, so it was a natural marriage between the two.
My biggest piece of advice for people just starting out is to take MESSY ACTION! I see so many people inadvertently blocking their own success by waiting for the “right time” to put themselves and their offerings out there. It is important to realize that it will always be easiest to stay in your comfort zone and to talk yourself out of acting now. Your subconscious mind will try to make a compelling argument to keep you in place! It takes a conscious and consistent effort to compete with those subconscious patterns and push out of the stagnancy.
For example: When I first got the vision of me dancing on TikTok with an Excel screen over my head, everything in me wanted to resist this crazy idea! I did not know how to video edit nor have any fancy equipment. I also didn’t even have the TikTok app on my phone at the time. My mind was yelling “You are 27 years old with a corporate job – you CANNOT dance on TikTok!!!” but my gut was like “MAKE THE TIKTOK!!!” If I had chickened out that day, my whole business would not exist.
The more you take messy action, the easier it is to propel yourself forward. Taking messy action has been the catalyst for scaling my business within a few months.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.miss-excel.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miss.excel/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theMissExcel/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kat-norton-7187aa58
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/themissexcel?lang=en
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@miss.excel My Free Top 31 Excel Functions Guide: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/606918775a1c0a154ab29e65