There is a Microsoft excelinfluencer. She has over a million followers on TikTok and is using that to her advantage by starting a software training business that is now generating up to six figures of revenue a day. That is six figures a day. She has been doing this since June 2020.
There is no staff or management in the operation. She uses her phone and consumer software to make her videos, and she has one of the healthiest relationships with the social platforms of any creator I have ever talked to: she thinks of them as marketing channels for the video courses she sells elsewhere. That is a big change from the traditional creator business model, which is usually aimed at monetizing the platforms directly. Kat is not doing that.
When I talked to her, she said that she draws a connection between the work she has done there and the success she has had as a creator. Listen in to hear how easy it is for her to talk about her metrics and strategies and connect with viewers across devices and platforms. I've spoken to a lot of creators and executives on this show, but I have never met one like Kat. If you have been listening to the show, you might have guessed that I am not the sort of personality type that goes in for energetics and manifestations, but that is not the case.
I don't want to give too much away because it's all in the interview, but I think you're going to like this one.
Okay. There is a person named KatNorton. Miss excel. Here we go.
The transcript was lightly edited for clarity.
You are known as Miss Excel on TikTok. You are the creator of the course. We are here to decode.
Thank you so much for having me. I am very excited to be here.
I'm excited to talk to you. The size of the creator business you have built is remarkable, so I am going to start this interview a little backward. What is your revenue like? Where are you at per day, per week, per month? The notes seem like big numbers to me.
I scaled the business to six figures in six months. We have done six-figure months since then. I had my first six-figure day a few weeks ago and I was excited about it. It has been the most enjoyable journey building this business.
What is the business? What are you selling?
I now sell all of the other Microsoft products. I have courses on the internet. About 95 percent of what I do is passive income course sales.
You are just a one-person creative shop?
Yes. I have a virtual assistant that helps with some of my graphics, but most of the rest has been a one-woman show over here.
That is amazing. You are using TikTok and other social media to promote your business. Your actual product is the videos you have already made that people are buying. How does that work?
My main marketing is the social media channels. Most of the sales are organic from there. I host webinars that are bigger and more popular. I created courses that were fun. Each one has around 100 videos. I make each video as fun and creative as possible. I have to keep it fun if you have seen my social media accounts. I record everything myself so I bring that energy into the videos. For me, video editing is half of the art form. For example, I need to show a picture of a hamburger on the screen for three seconds to make my analogies so the audience understands the concept. I go in with the teacher. These courses are like my babies. I make them from start to finish and I am proud of them. They have been doing well on the market.
Are you selling them individually at $5 a video or are you selling a subscription? What is the model?
The price points are $297 all the way through a bundle of my courses. People buy access to my courses. They are hosted on the platform Thinkific.
Why 97?
The result becomes a nice number when you cut it in half. When I run a sale, it is usually $297 but if you cut it in half, it looks nice at $149.
That is great. I like it. This business is for you. It is very different from other creator businesses that we have heard about on this show or other creator businesses that the average person has encountered. How did you get to become Miss Excel?
Wow. What a great question. I will take you back in March 2020. At that time, I was working at a global consulting firm. I had been doing interviews for banks before this. When I started at the company four and a half years ago, I built an excel training course for fun. The company supported me and had me flying around the US to teach the training sessions. I found myself at my parents' house when I stopped traveling in March.
What happened in March?
There are some nice things going on. I had more time on my hands because I stopped traveling. I began to work on myself and meditate. I was very shy and had a lot of anxiety before starting this project. I highly recommend that you do your fair share of inner work before posting yourself dancing on the internet, and make sure you are at a place where you can handle what comes with that. I got myself to this place where I no longer had the limiting beliefs and constructs that were holding me back, after diving deep into the spiritual work. I didn't create Miss excel until June, two months after April 2020. This was not even a thought in my mind. I told my mother that I was going to be rich and famous and that she needed to prepare her nervous system. She was happy.
This is very intense.
:noupscale is a file on thechorusasset.com
Nilay Patel is the host of a show about big ideas and other problems.
She was confused. Who are you? I said to just watch. I was able to put excel on TikTok. I didn't have a TikTok app on my phone. I was resisting it because my mental voice was telling me that I was 27 years old. You can't make a TikTok. My voice was saying, "Make the TikTok." I put out a few videos a day. The fourth video had 100,000 views. I hadn't told anyone what I was doing besides my mother and boyfriend. It starts being shown to people I know. I'm thinking, "Oh, gosh."
The CEO of an IT company reached out. He wrote, "Hey, I love your teaching style." I want to create training videos for students, parents, and teachers. The schools were going digital during the Pandemic. I know I am a Microsoft gal, but I learn quickly. I said that the spreadsheet products are similar. I'm ready.
I ordered a green screen and a ring light and put them in my bedroom.
I formed a company. I ordered a green screen and a ring light and put them in my bedroom. The furniture was moved out of the way. I started selling videos after work. I am making money on TikTok at this point. Even though I wasn't really getting paid off the Miss Excel, social media part of the equation, I decided to keep this thing going because I'm helping a lot of people. Within three weeks, I went viral. I looked at my phone to see that my video had 3.6 million views. I had 100,000 followers. I asked myself what to do.
That was in June of 2020 when all the rumors were that TikTok was going to disappear or be banned. I decided to hedge my risk because I was convinced that my business was going to disappear. I created an account on the photo sharing site and only a few hundred people followed me. I thought that I have to go viral on the social media platform. Within a few weeks, I grew my followers on the photo sharing site by 50,000.
How did the video get noticed on social media?
There are some techniques I have. The way I run my business is different from what you will see on social media, where the advice is to use certain hashtags and make the content a certain length in seconds. The people giving that advice are trying to frame the concepts in a way that they can give to anyone.
The way I run my business is through energetics. I get my energy to a place where my presence is magnetic and I will get visions of what will go viral. I make those ideas on my computer because social media content is straight-up energy transmissions. You are receiving my energy on the phone.
If I am showing up on your social media feed with low energy. Here is excel. The video is not going to hit with that low Frequency. I do things to get my energy into a place where I can execute it in a way that people are drawn to my energy, and I get the idea that the viral idea is something I can do. I have been able to grow it to over a million people on the platforms.
I had no courses at that point. I was creating content. My social media profiles started going crazy. A business coach reached out to me. Morning Brew reached out at the same time. I was told by the business coach that I should have a product I am selling. I thought, "Oh, touché." I took a couple of weeks off from my day job to make my first excel course, which I sold on Black Friday of 2020.
The course was making more money per month than my job was, by January. I had to ask myself, "How am I going to leave that?" at that point. I was told by another business coach that I needed to quit and set a deadline for doing so. I quit two days later.
Was that the deadline?
The deadline was two weeks, but I got excited. I needed that big sister energy from her. She is incredible. She came in and asked me what I was doing. I did not know. One of my best days was when she told me to quit. Half of my group at my day job knew about my TikTok, but they didn't understand what I was doing. The other half didn't know. I was on the phone all day asking Steve if he knew anything about me on the internet. It was a crazy day.
I started rolling out a second course by April. I made six figures in my first month. Business Insider reached out to them. The Miss excel project had been growing. I received a Microsoft award in June of 2021. I began working with Microsoft to learn more about their products so I could help my audience. The whole experience has been amazing. It reached my first six-figure day a couple of weeks ago. I was very excited about that.
Are you making six figures a day?
Not every day.
There are valleys after you hit the peaks.
Right. I have one two hours after this call, because I use webinars. I teach a lot of free content at the different high-energy excel parties that I host. If you look at my page, you will see that I give away knowledge because my social media presence is what draws people in. To provide as much value as possible. At the end of the webinars, I offer a deal on my products.
Does the strategy convert to income for you?
Yes.
You are a remarkable person and I have a number of follow-up questions.
Thank you.
You mentioned that you have to work on your mental constructs before you dance on the internet. You are the first person to ever say anything in that particular diagram, and I have spoken with a lot of people on this show. What do you mean by that?
I had a lot of things. I don't know if you're familiar with Joe Dispenza. He is a doctor who dives into demystifying the mystical and wrote a book about it. I am an excel girl. I am a person of the zodiac. I needed something to explain the mystical realm in a way that my conscious mind could understand, because I have a very logical brain. I was blown away by the law of attraction when I read that book. I did a program called "To Be Magnetic" by LacyPhillips in which you put yourself into a hypnotic state. You can bring your mind forward through different noises and things once you are in that state.
During certain triggering memories, you show your subconscious that there was another way. You can go in and destroy those memories. Those memories are no longer holding onto them. We don't have critical thinking skills until we are seven. The things that happen to a child are more dramatic. I was able to go into my mind and eliminate all the memories that were making me smaller and preventing me from showing up as my true self.
Everyone has something that works for them, so I would highly recommend doing that. I do a lot of Kundalini yoga, which involves activities that get my energy moving. That was a great tip for me. One of my friends did 75 Hard, a program that reprograms the subconscious mind.
I didn't want any attention directed at me before I did these programs. I wouldn't have a birthday party. I was very shy. I love dancing to dumb TikToks about the functions of excel. I feel good. That change is a testament to the inner work and how anyone can just take wherever they are at and go into their subconscious and redo these things. You don't have to take life for granted. You're a quantum creator. That helped me grow the business. The project has grown because of inbound leads. Everything has fallen onto my lap, essentially. I take action and then go after things. It is really this dance.
You mentioned that you put energy into the world and think about how to draw people to you in order to go viral. A lot of words. What do you mean by drawing people to you?
Some videos make you feel good while others don't. That is the most basic way to frame it. You are going to have a smile on your face when you watch my videos, but you are also going to learn from them. I work on myself and raise my energy to a place where I can make people happy. People want to see things that raise their spirits. People want to see things that make them happy and inspire them. The process involves looking inside and then connecting it to me. I can put that feeling into my content so the audience is learning and having fun. That is the name of the game.
I work on myself and raise my energy to a place where I can make people happy. People want to see things that raise their spirits. People want to see things that make them happy and inspire them.
Do you think of your magnetism as a competitive advantage? It is surprising that the category of "Excel social media star" is a burgeoning one. Do you think of your content strategy as a business? Do you think to yourself, "This is me"? How do you think about that in your business?
Every day I show up authentically. I don't see anything as competition. We are all helping people. We are all on the same mission. I bring my own spin to what I am creating and putting out there.
What was the first feedback where you realized that your strategy was working and that you needed to turn Miss excel into a business that sells webinars, as opposed to other, more familiar types of social media monetization? It doesn't seem like you're doing a lot of brand deals. You are not selling something. I haven't seen you endorse water bottles or anything like that. What are the things that made you jump into this model?
I wanted to create the life I wanted for myself. Financial freedom and geographic freedom were what I wanted. I wanted to be able to do things that light me up. The passive income model was the fastest way for me to get there. I work 15 hours a week if I don't launch courses. A lot of that time is spent in a creative state of flow. The days that the most sales will come in are when I am in that receiving energy. I wanted to travel so I created a life for myself. We fly to a new state every month. I wanted to live and explore while I was young. The business model is very favorable to that.
What are your costs? Did you purchase a fancy camera? You mentioned buying a big ring light.
I bought a ring light and a green screen when I started my business. I use my phone to film. When I started, my overhead was around $500 a month and everything else was profit. I hired an advertising company a few months ago, so I'm starting to get into a new presence, with a few Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads. That has a small overhead, but most of what I do is passive income.
You mentioned that you are selling Miss excel through a platform. Is it a contractual relationship? Is the platform self-service? How does that work?
I pay $150 a month to use Thinkific. It is a platform that hosts all my courses and completely eliminates the whole process of making money from them: a client signs up, pays the money, and then that money goes in my bank account. The platform has all of that lined up.
Does Thinkific take a cut of those transactions?
I think they do. My payment processor takes a cut as well.
Are you considering negotiating those prices down, or are you not at that place yet? Other businesses will see that they are paying 30 percent of their in-app purchases to Apple and decide that they are not getting any value out of that. Are you at that part of the curve?
I am pretty sure I only pay a few pennies per person because my Thinkific plan is the growth model. I think that stripe takes 3 percent. It is not really dramatic.
These are not very interesting questions. Are you paying for the services of Creative Cloud? What software do you use?
This is hilarious. I was worried about how I was going to use an excel screen since I had never edited a video in my life. I needed to find the easiest program to learn because I was still working 60 hours a week. I searched, "What is the easiest video editing software?" I found WeVideo. I watched a video on that program. I have used WeVideo to create all my courses and videos. I don't use apps like TikTok to make sure my videos don't have watermarks.
Is the desire for your videos to live away from the platform the driving factor for you to use another piece of software?
Yes.
This is the center of every creator conversation. Most creators have a business that looks like the business the platform wants them to have, and most have an AdSense business. You aren't limiting your business to the form the platforms would like it to take, you're building Miss excel independently of the platforms. Was it an accident or a planned event? How did you get here?
I knew that model. I have a lot of business coach friends who make millions of dollars a year with 5000 followers and they built their own containers. I followed that model, where you create a course or product and sell it. I have done ads for supplement companies, but they don't make me money. I wanted to work with them, but my audience loves the product so they are here for that. That is what sells.
The products of both spreadsheets and sheets change. New versions of excel are often released and new versions of gd are less frequently updated. A lot of the TikToks are about pivot tables and changing the letters of the name. People don't know about these tricks, but once they learn they are very easy to do. The content is grabby, but the features are added as you get deeper into the program. Do you worry that you have to chase Microsoft's roadmap or do you think your content is evergreen?
It is evergreen. It doesn't change as much as you think. Whenever there is a new function or feature, I usually get to learn about it early and figure out how to implement it. I use that knowledge to drive my courses. My videos always have the newest content, because I add in anything new and cool that comes up, and everyone gets lifetime access when they purchase my courses.
Correct, people get lifetime access for a single one-time payment.
It is for the bundle. You get everything.
Many places in this zone are charging a subscription fee. Why aren't you paying?
The learning curve of excel is a little different. If a customer pays $10 to $25 a month, they can take my course in a weekend and be done. The subscription model does not work out. The subscription-type feature is the secondary feature for me. A client can learn everything in a weekend. My course was knocked out by that person. They understand. Three months later, they need to brush up on what I showed them in the video, after they do a VLOOKUP. I wanted to have it as an ongoing thing.
The subscription model does not work out.
I structure my courses in a way where they are organized by their individual tools. If you need to do a look up, boom! You can see it right there, 10 minutes, get an example, and pop that in. The system was a secondary feature that would align with a subscription model. A lot of people just dive in and study the material, so if I had a subscription at a lower cost point, they could just cancel it after they learn it.
Do you think you will eventually be able to monetize what you are doing?
Potentially. The price points have been great for the courses. I also offer bulk discounts for companies, so I do corporate trainings on occasion. I work in that area.
One of the challenges with platforms is the fact that one app might be shut down and you have to use another. The government might break up Facebook. There is a lot going on with the platforms, for example, the grid is being disfavored in terms of Stories and now Reels, and the shopping app is turning into a shopping app. Do you think about the dynamics? I have to stay present on the apps because they are my core marketing functions and now I have to make sure I know what they want out of me.
I view it from the perspective of abundance. My thought process is that if the Reels are hot, make some of them. I look at it as adapting to whatever the platform is putting out because it will allow me to have the greatest reach, rather than being forced to do something or not be present on the apps anymore. I don't pay attention to what's there. I keep an eye out for trends.
Where do you get your information?
The sounds button on TikTok allows you to see what songs are popular. I get into a state of creativity. It takes me about an hour to get in. When I listen to the snippets of the different songs, I get the hit of, "Boom, that song needs to go with this excel trick." Some people ask how I match rap songs to excel tricks. I get into a flowy state when I go in. When I hear certain lyrics, I think, "Ooh, there we go!" I write them in a note on my phone.
What is your process with social media?
I will still use the TikTok music button because it is very aligned across the two platforms. I create content on all of the platforms, but sometimes TikTok has more music options, so that gets a little dicey. I started making content for the professional networking site. I have no followers but I created a account and Microsoft sent me a message telling me to get on the social networking site.
It's what you do with your mind in the end.
I don't know much about social media.
I promise you, just as little exposure to social media as you can get will keep you in that head space. When you think about how successful your marketing channels have been, and now that you have hired a firm to do the paid side of the marketing channels, what are you hoping that they will accomplish?
Scaling. I want million-dollar months. It is now just creating different types of content on different platforms. My ads are functional because they are excel tricks. People like and comment on my ads. They learned something from sharing the ad.
One of the things that comes up with creators on this show is that if they don't make the next video, their views will go down. If you don't make the next story, you're not relevant anymore and the brand deals might go away. It's a real fear. There is a lot of talk about creator burnout. Are you trying to manage your stress or not?
I don't see the world that way. I see it through the lens of abundance. Energy management is the number one thing I do, and I only call in things that I can handle. I know if an opportunity is presented to me, I can handle it. When I meditate, I come back out 10 minutes later, ready to take over the world. Managing those things is what it is. When I don't post for a week, my audience grows by 100,000 and I go viral the next week. Whenever I feel called to create, there will always be abundance for me. If I want to take a week off and go sit in the mountains, I will do that.
Most of the other creators I talk to have a social following for their product. Your product isn't. Do you think the distance between the two allows you to have a different perspective? The fact that your product is not a social network has enabled other things, so are you focused on making sure that you have a split there?
Absolutely. I know that I will keep creating viral content. A few weeks ago, I had a video for the song "The Assignment" that was viewed over 6 million times on both platforms, and my account grew by 200,000 people in 10 days. It is that type of thing where I just trust that I can do it. That is a huge new customer base. As long as I keep myself happy and I keep myself in this state of abundance, I can keep going inward and getting those hits of what will go viral. It is never a scarcity mindset. My life isn't over if I don't post today. My fans will not be asking where I am. Some of them care about my life, but it is a utility account. They are interested in the content of excel.
I gain the most followers when I have videos blowing through the algorithm and I still create tips and tricks. When people unfollow you, it is usually because you appear on their screen and they remember you exist, and they decide to follow you. If I look at my trends on the days I don't post, I see people who don't follow me being pushed out to people who do. The people who follow me already watched the film. That is a strategy I use for growth because you get less followers on days you don't post.
I have not asked this question yet. Do you use excel to track these things?
They move so quickly that I don't. I just flow because it doesn't implicate what I do. I still go based on my intuition. If I hear a song, I have a hit, so I won't post. authenticity is what really drives me.
You run your business in excel, right? You are not a secret person on the side.
Oh no, no, no! I run my business in excel.
Okay. Just checking. Since there is a big market for training overall, but only one of you, you can scale into other software. It's true that Google Sheets comes along for the ride as well. Do you want to be known as Miss Outlook?
I have an Outlook course coming up. I have courses for the entire Microsoft suite. I am in the mountains and I am in a creative mode. I have been recording videos all day. I have seasons where I am in creation mode and then in flowy mode.
We are in Q4 creating and building all these courses. I was familiar with Microsoft products and had learned a lot, so I sat with them and found some cool things to do. Even though I fall under Miss Excel, people still trust me because I know how to use the other Microsoft products.
It is a different program than all the others. There is a following for excel. It is just a way to build models, and that is why it has passion. It is a freeform app that allows you to create different models on it. There is so much you can do with it as compared to the other products. It is wild. I always learn something.
One of the jokes we tell on our other show is that a lot of businesses are just people using excel. Someone has to use excel at the end of the day. Everyone else is just talking about what the person is doing, and that is actually the work.
I had a guy from the New York Times who was called Kevin. He wrote a book about automation hitting the white collar workforce, and Microsoft sells robotic process automation, which is one of the big pieces of that. The floors of accountants and consulting firms are being replaced by robotic process automation. Do you think a cliff is coming? Are you worried that people who want to see dancing on TikTok won't be able to see the robots use excel?
I think there will always be room for excel. The program will continue to grow and develop. It is going into many different markets. The online space for excel has been growing more robustly. It is being used in schools. 100 million students, parents, and teachers are on Flipgrid, and I just started working with it. I am taking my excel tricks there so people can teach them at a younger age.
I think it will always be around in some way. There will be people in the spreadsheets. There are some cool things happening with Microsoft Teams that will make that realm more virtual. I think it was called Mesh, and it was their own version of the metaverse-type things. Microsoft is going to continue to expand and grow and keep the customer base going.
You have said before that Miss Excel and your social media accounts are a utility. People love it. They want to get better at it. You make it enjoyable. Your personality is the other side of creatordom. You have a big personality, but that is what most creators sell. Come live with me. I'm going to ride my G-wagon through the streets of LA. That works for them. Have you thought about selling that part of yourself?
I want to show people how I can make and manage a healthy relationship with social media, grow a business, and wake up happy every day. I want to blow this business up as big as possible and then teach people how to do it, and also how I stayed sane and happy while doing it. My purpose is to light up as many people as I can while I am here. I want everyone to feel good, show up, and do what they love. I built a platform for myself so that eventually I will be able to light some people up, because that is what I am here for.
Do you think you can do that without tearing down the wall between the utility you make and the people you teach? It seems like your personal life is not on display, which may be why you use social media.
I try to balance it a bit. You will see me running around in Sedona on my IG stories. I get a lot of messages from people saying, "Woah, that just blew my world." How are you doing that? It has been more of a behind-the-scenes thing, but eventually maybe I will just go viral on my personal page and start teaching these different things. I could integrate it into the excel page and use it to help people grow their businesses through energetics and managing their energy.
We talked about how important it is to have a healthy distance from social platforms. Are you worried that you are reliant on one vendor when you see the features of Microsoft? Are you trying to avoid them all?
I love Microsoft.
No. I love Microsoft. They have been great to work with. I talk to different groups about different things because it is a big company. I also teach the products from Microsoft, but I feel like Microsoft is big enough that it's used in so many different businesses, that it just opens doors in different areas. If I wanted to work with different companies, it would be the same base.
I chat with creators all the time. They all agree that YouTube is the gold standard for audience relationship and monetization. You have a social media account, but not a video website. That is not in line with what we typically see. Is it possible that you are staying out of the video sharing site entirely? Do you have a plan for watching videos on the internet? What is going on there?
I think I will start advertising on YouTube, but the course sales make more sense for me. No one would pay for my courses if I were teaching them for free. It made sense for me to continue doing that, instead of trying to grow an audience and get ad money on YouTube. I am not saying I will never do it. I saw new little videos on the internet, so I might look into it. Right now, what I have got going is working well.
I am creating courses and creating passive income streams. If I ever get to a point where I am in the mood to do something, I will never say never. I may try.
It seems like you are in a good head space, because you can watch videos on YouTube. The better off you are, the farther away you are. Do you think about branching out to the whole Microsoft suite? Or other creative suites? If you went for it, you could be MissPhotoshop.
I like the way it works.
You are only one person. Have you ever thought about adding another person?
Yeah. It depends on where I want the business to go and how much it makes. Building it into a full business takes a lot of time. Having to be a CEO with all that entails, hiring and training people, I would need to really gauge whether that is worth my time building it in that direction. 95 percent passive is what I have right now. I don't want to do trading time for money. I would need to have a strong vision and have the right people.
Sometimes I can pick up different skills because I learn things quickly. I will watch a few videos on a skill if I don't know it. I am able to teach it at that point. I would have to decide if I want to learn about it or hire someone to do payroll. I would have to be more interested in it than I am in passive income. I would have to figure out which lifestyle I want to have at that point in my life.
What do you think the decision is going to be? We started with 12 people and management overhead. We had to make decisions where we were thinking, "If we're going to have 50 people, most of my time will become management." Either that or I will have to let someone else do it, which is worse, so I will choose to be the manager. You can choose to be the individual contributor for the next 10 years and that is what your life will look like. You have to do a different kind of work if you scale it. Maybe that is the new challenge. Have you thought about that kind of schedule?
Yes. I would like to give it another year. I wouldn't have thought it would be as big as it is right now, if I'd asked you a year ago. I keep collapsing timelines. It is difficult to tell because I am 10 steps ahead of where I thought I would be. I want to see how big the courses are before I make any changes. I think that would be something I would look into if I were bored. I am just rocking and rolling with Miss Excel right now because she is going so well.
Do you ever think about how bad you were at WeVideo when you made your first video in excel? The interface is different. I need to change it. Are you thinking about your videos on an update cadence?
When new features come out in excel, I will update certain videos. The courses are fun. Sometimes I go through my own stuff because I want to know what it is like for the audience, and I will think, "Dang, I'm pretty funny today." I will watch my videos and just be cracking up at myself, having a grand old time. I made them less than a year ago, so they are still fresh.
The conversation has been great. What is the next thing for Miss Excel?
There are so many things. I can't even tell you what's next because everything keeps flowing with me. The rest of the Microsoft courses will launch in the next few weeks. I am very excited about that. I am scaling from here to see where we land in Q1 2022.
I like it. It has been great talking to you. Thank you for coming on.
Thank you so much for having me.
