A little more than a year ago, Kat Norton didnt have the TikTok app on her phone. Today, she is viral on the social media app as Miss Excel, enjoys a million followers, and dances around while teaching Excel tips and shortcuts. She is also dancing her way to the bank as from enjoying six-figure months, the 27-year-old entrepreneur now has successful six-figure days. Based in Long Island, New York, Norton started ‘Miss Excel’ while being stuck at home during the pandemic. Her job involved working at the global consulting firm Protiviti where she conducted Excel training sessions.
With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, the job that took her places halted and she was back at her parent’s home. Self-conscious of joining TikTok at first, she resisted her unusual idea. But call it the power of manifestation and mindfulness, as she believes, the gut didnt give up and urged her to take the TikTok plunge. Norton shared with The Verge, “I didn’t even have a TikTok app on my phone at the time. I had so much resistance to it because my mental voice was saying, You’re 27 years old. You cannot make a TikTok. My gut voice was arguing, Make the TikTok. I ended up putting out a few videos, one per day. The fourth video hit 100,000 views. At that point, I hadn’t told anybody what I was doing besides my mother and my boyfriend. It starts getting shown to all these people I know. I’m thinking, Oh, gosh.”
Her videos are incredibly easy and catchy.
Two months into preparation and in June 2020, Miss Excel was born to dramatically change her life. As they say ‘Luck favors the prepared’, only six days into creating Miss Excel, Norton was approached by the CEO of an IT company who reached out to create training videos in G Suite products for students, parents, and teachers. Norton wasted no time to form an LLC, order a green screen and a ring light to get her videos rolling. With the help and advisement of a business coach she created her first product- the first Excel course and started selling it on Black Friday of 2020.
Users just love the simplicity and the fun element to learn something as mundane as Excel.
Hardly 8 weeks after creating her first course she raked n more money than her day job which obviously resulted in her quitting it. With her second course hitting the market, Norton reached her first six-figure month and bagged a feature on Business Insider along with the Microsoft MVP award. This one-woman show is scaling and how! She has a following of 535k on Instagram with only 114 posts, though I would like to add fun and very useful content at that. She has now roped in an advertising company to help her build her presence via ads on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Her success journey has been anything but spectacular.
Norton is living the good life as at times she doesn’t have a course that she is launching, she only works about 15 hours a week. Norton, the nomadic excel influencer shared, “Since launching the business, my boyfriend, who also quit his corporate job shortly after I did, and I are now full-time digital nomads living out our dreams of traveling the world. Each month we move to a new city.”
While the pandemic proved to be the most gruesome time for most people in the world Norton surely turned it to her advantage. And with travel restrictions easing out is living her best life. Express UK shared, “I got super clear on my intuition and opportunities started flowing toward me. From corporate clients, to press opportunities, to viral video ideas — everything in alignment with my vision just kept falling into place.” Kudos to you Kat Norton!
