Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Kat Norton: Niche to Riches, How I Made Millions Teaching Excel on TikTok | Marketing | E316
Mon, 11 Nov 2024
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Kat Norton discovered TikTok and found it odd that there was no Excel content on the platform. She decided to start posting dance-infused tutorials, and her videos went viral. She then launched multiple Excel courses that quickly generated more income than her corporate salary. This allowed her to leave her job and turn Miss Excel into a multimillion-dollar business. In today’s episode, Kat shares how she transformed her love for dancing and spreadsheets into a viral sensation and a lucrative business. She also breaks down her strategies to go viral, monetize her passion, and build a sustainable business. In this episode, Hala and Kat will discuss: (00:00) Introduction to Kat Norton, Miss Excel (02:07) Kat's Early Career and Corporate Journey (03:41) The Birth of Miss Excel During the Pandemic (05:19) Going Viral on TikTok and Instagram (06:33) Mindset and Inner Work for Success (08:52) Authenticity and Polarity in Social Media (20:53) Monetizing Miss Excel and Course Creation (29:54) Excel vs. Google Sheets: Strengths and Uses (32:15) Promoting Courses Through Webinars (33:15) Affiliate Program Success (35:10) Webinar Retargeting Strategies (36:50) Engaging Webinar Techniques (39:14) Effective Course Selling (47:06) Driving Webinar Attendance (49:02) Expanding Revenue Streams (57:23) Balancing Work and Creativity Kat Norton is the founder and CEO of Miss Excel, the viral brand that transformed Excel tutorials into engaging, must-watch content for over a million followers. Since launching in 2020, Kat's courses have empowered thousands while rapidly scaling her business to multimillion-dollar success. She has been recognized by Forbes as a Top Social Media Influencer of 2021 and featured in top media outlets, including Forbes, CNBC, and Bloomberg. Today, her business generates over $2 million annually, enabling her to work just a few hours daily while traveling the world. Connect with Kat: Kat’s Website: https://www.miss-excel.com/ Resources Mentioned: Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Habit-Being-Yourself-Create/dp/1401938094 LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Selling, Online Selling, Sales, Economics, E-commerce, Ecommerce, Negotiation, Prospecting, Persuasion, Inbound, Value Selling, Account Management, Sales Strategies, Business Growth, Scale, Scaling, Sales podcast
Chapter 1: How did Kat Norton start her journey with Excel?
And that is when I found myself back in my childhood bedroom of my parents' house, no longer traveling, just working remotely. So I had a lot more time on my hands because I would spend a lot of hours per week traveling. And that's where I started doing a ton of inner work because I knew the version of myself that I was at that time was not my highest self.
And I was like, okay, there's definitely some things I need to work on here. So I dove deep into inner child work, shadow work, meditation, Dr. Joe Dispenza's work. And really throughout that, over a two-month period, every single day, I was just finding ways to keep working on myself, leveling up. And I'll never forget, it was about two months into that, I had no business.
I was in my childhood bedroom. I came running out one day and I was like, mom, I'm going to be rich and famous soon, so I need you to prepare your nervous system for that. And I was like dead serious. And she was like, what? Like, okay, Kathleen, go clean your room. But every cell in my body already knew I was on some other timeline, even though my current reality looked nothing like it at all.
And then within a few weeks from there, I got the intuitive hit from Miss Excel. I remember downloading the TikTok app for the first time. I was so against it. I was like, oh, I'm not going to waste time on TikTok. This is like early pandemic days. It's like, oh, I'm going to read a book, you know? And then I opened it up and I started looking and was like, oh, it's kind of weird.
There's no Excel on TikTok. Do people not like Microsoft Excel here or... Could this be something? And I had no idea how to use the app at all. I watched a few YouTube videos and was like, okay, I'll figure out the buttons here. And I had a vision of what the video would look like right when the idea had come up, where I saw the Excel screen above my head but me dancing below it.
And it was to that Drake song, the Tuesday slide, you know, left foot, right foot slide, to the left and the right function in Excel. So that's really where I was like, okay, I want to see this vision come to life. I'm such a creative. I want to get this out of my brain and into something. And I watched the video back and I was like, oh, this is actually pretty cool. Maybe I'll make an account.
Maybe I'll post it. And that's really where it all began.
So basically, you had this viral idea that you said you downloaded it. And a lot of it had to do with your mindset work. Can you actually go a little deeper on that? You mentioned Joe Dispenza. What kind of inner work did you actually do? And how did your mindset change before you actually started posting on social media?
There are three main tools that I use, and I always like to preface this with, these are the ones that I use, but there are so many out there. It's really just a matter of finding one that resonates with you. For me, I was diving into the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza. I've been to a few of his retreats now, but at the time, I was just reading his book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.
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Chapter 2: What inspired the creation of Miss Excel during the pandemic?
So instead of following your intuition, you're following the actions that'll please the most people or things like that. So it's really important to keep coming back to yourself, come back to that intuition and know that the polarity is going to trigger some people and that's okay. That was a big lesson for me as a former people pleaser. You know, I had to let that go.
So you're really big on TikTok. LinkedIn is my main platform. I'm an influencer on LinkedIn and you got me thinking one of my biggest viral posts was this post that had a lot of polarity and I never really put those words around it until right now. But basically I was wearing a hot pink jumpsuit. And on the photograph, it said, I'm a female CEO with female crossed out.
And so there was a lot of polarity because I was wearing a hot pink jumpsuit, but I crossed out female. So like everybody was talking about it. And now I know why it went viral. So how soon did things take off for you? Did you go viral right away? Did it take months, years? What was it like for you? The whole thing happened pretty quickly.
And I do attribute a lot of that to the energetics that happened behind the scene where I was able to actually show up fully authentically in what I wanted to create and was ready to receive the attention back where normally I grew up with an anxiety disorder. I hated having any attention on me.
I had to do a lot of overhauling to get to a spot where I wasn't going to subconsciously limit what was able to come into my field. So it was by the fourth video to that DMX song, X Gon' Give It To Ya, I did the X lookup function. And that one, it was so good. That one got 100,000 views right away. And I was like,
Oh my gosh, because this at the time was my secret TikTok account because I still had a corporate job. I wasn't really sure what I was allowed to do. So for me, I wasn't like, hey, everybody, you know, like my video. Only my mother and my boyfriend knew about this secret account, Miss Excel. So for me, when that video hit, it got shown to all these people I work with.
It got shown to all these people I know. I'm getting all these messages like, is this you? And I'm like, oh. Maybe, maybe it's me. And then within three weeks of that, I had my first video go viral on TikTok. And next thing you know, I looked down at my phone and within a couple of days, I had 100,000 followers. And that's where I was like, whoa. now what do I do?
Because everything was going on in the news too at this time. This was like June, July of 2020, that TikTok's getting banned, all the things. So I was like, well, I got to hedge my risk out here. I'm going to create an Instagram account. So I created an Instagram, started posting on there. And then within a few months, both accounts had gone viral various times.
And we had a few hundred thousand followers across the different platforms.
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Chapter 3: What mindset shifts did Kat experience for success?
Chapter 4: How can you monetize a passion like teaching Excel?
Maybe I'll post it. And that's really where it all began.
So basically, you had this viral idea that you said you downloaded it. And a lot of it had to do with your mindset work. Can you actually go a little deeper on that? You mentioned Joe Dispenza. What kind of inner work did you actually do? And how did your mindset change before you actually started posting on social media?
There are three main tools that I use, and I always like to preface this with, these are the ones that I use, but there are so many out there. It's really just a matter of finding one that resonates with you. For me, I was diving into the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza. I've been to a few of his retreats now, but at the time, I was just reading his book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.
And that, for me, brought my scientific, logical brain on board with law of attraction, manifestation, how all of that works. Because naturally, I've always been a bit of a mystic with that stuff. But there was still this conscious part of my mind that was having a little trouble grasping like, oh, think positive, good things will happen. I need a little bit of that science.
So for me, that book opened up a ton. And then I was also doing Kundalini Yoga, which is powerful yogic technology with breath work and mantra. So that was keeping my energy in a really good spot. And then I started doing Lacey Phillips has a program called To Be Magnetic. And it's a really structured way to do inner child work and shadow work. So for me, Capricorn, I like my structure out here.
So I had a very structured way where I knew every day I was going in and working on certain parts of my brain. And then over time, due to neuroplasticity, I was able to go in and change some of the neural pathways that were creating my current reality because I wasn't as much of a fan of where I was and knew there was somewhere else I wanted to go.
So for me, that was my little trifecta to get my conscious mind on board, to have a yoga practice, and to be just overhauling a lot of the patterns and limiting beliefs that were keeping me in place.
So basically, you didn't realize that you could really break out and become something more. And after doing this mindset work, you've actually got confidence to go out and do it. So did you have any previous social media experience before you first started posting on TikTok?
None at all. So if you looked at my personal pages, you'd be like, okay, this girl is not an influencer. So I was really just learning by the seat of my pants. I would read the comments people had and I'm like, okay, what do they like? What do they not like? But also for me, it really came down to authenticity. So I love dancing. I love helping people and I love Excel.
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Chapter 5: What are the strengths of Excel compared to Google Sheets?
So I was like, what would happen if I put all of that inside of one video, right? so for me, it was just an authentic expression. It was cool. It was something I had never seen anybody do before in terms of the Excel space, especially, but also in a lot of learning spaces, integrating dance, which is more native to the TikTok app, but then layering in the educational piece.
And that polarity is what really helped the videos take off. Because if I just posted Excel tip videos, people would have been like, cool, I don't use Excel and moved on. But so many people were commenting because they were like, what the heck is this girl doing? She is dancing. She's doing the Tuesday slot, left and right function. What is going on here?
And that's really what helped it go through the algorithm. And I want to laser in on something you said. We'll go deeper on it later, but you talked about polarity. So the fact that you combined two things that are really uncommon together, dance and Excel, and It gets people talking. It gets people complaining. Why are you dancing talking about Excel? Or some people will love it.
Chapter 6: What strategies can enhance webinar effectiveness?
Chapter 7: How did Kat grow her audience on TikTok?
In today's episode, we'll learn about how Kat transformed her love and passion for dancing and spreadsheets together to then turn into a viral sensation on TikTok and parlay that into a successful online business and course success. sales. And we're going to get her insights on how you can do it too. I'm going to pick her brain on how she went viral on TikTok and Instagram.
We're going to learn how she promotes her courses and strategies through webinars and so much more. I can't wait to get into it. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Miss XL, Kat Norton. Kat, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation.
So your story is one that a lot of entrepreneurs would envy, but I came to find out that your story actually started with $100,000 in student debt and a job in corporate America that you weren't quite satisfied with. So can you walk us through your early career journey and where you thought you were headed at that time?
Absolutely. So I graduated college back in 2016 with my MBA, and I went right into the corporate path. I was at a consulting firm. And really quickly from when I got there, I realized that I had some enhanced Excel skills because people started just directing questions toward me of, hey, how do I do this?
So for fun, on the side, when I was on the bench for a week in consulting terms, it's when you like don't have a client for a week. I built out the most fun, engaging Excel training for fun just on my computer. And a managing director looked over my shoulder and was like, what are you doing over there?
And I was like, oh, you know, I kept tabs on everyone's Excel questions and I started building out this class just for fun. And they totally backed me and had me flying around the US right when I started as a new consultant on the side of my job hosting these Excel trainings. So I did that for five years before I actually made the business.
passion project and a way to really help people at the company I was at.
It's awesome that you got to learn and hone your craft as an Excel trainer on somebody else's dime. So you ended up becoming an entrepreneur. We actually have something in common. We're both COVID entrepreneurs who started our businesses in 2020. What changed for you during the lockdown? Why did you decide, okay, I want to try to step out on my own now?
It really brought down the amount of travel I was doing, which gave me a lot more time to reflect. So before this with my consulting job, every week I was traveling to a new client in a new state. And I did that for years. So I was just running, running, running, not really analyzing my life and what I wanted. And I was a very creative being, but I wasn't really pursuing anything too creative.
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Chapter 8: What are the unique features of Kat's Excel courses?
I was in my childhood bedroom. I came running out one day and I was like, mom, I'm going to be rich and famous soon, so I need you to prepare your nervous system for that. And I was like dead serious. And she was like, what? Like, okay, Kathleen, go clean your room. But every cell in my body already knew I was on some other timeline, even though my current reality looked nothing like it at all.
And then within a few weeks from there, I got the intuitive hit from Miss Excel. I remember downloading the TikTok app for the first time. I was so against it. I was like, oh, I'm not going to waste time on TikTok. This is like early pandemic days. It's like, oh, I'm going to read a book, you know? And then I opened it up and I started looking and was like, oh, it's kind of weird.
There's no Excel on TikTok. Do people not like Microsoft Excel here or... Could this be something? And I had no idea how to use the app at all. I watched a few YouTube videos and was like, okay, I'll figure out the buttons here. And I had a vision of what the video would look like right when the idea had come up, where I saw the Excel screen above my head but me dancing below it.
And it was to that Drake song, the Tuesday slide, you know, left foot, right foot slide, to the left and the right function in Excel. So that's really where I was like, okay, I want to see this vision come to life. I'm such a creative. I want to get this out of my brain and into something. And I watched the video back and I was like, oh, this is actually pretty cool. Maybe I'll make an account.
Maybe I'll post it. And that's really where it all began.
So basically, you had this viral idea that you said you downloaded it. And a lot of it had to do with your mindset work. Can you actually go a little deeper on that? You mentioned Joe Dispenza. What kind of inner work did you actually do? And how did your mindset change before you actually started posting on social media?
There are three main tools that I use, and I always like to preface this with, these are the ones that I use, but there are so many out there. It's really just a matter of finding one that resonates with you. For me, I was diving into the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza. I've been to a few of his retreats now, but at the time, I was just reading his book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.
And that, for me, brought my scientific, logical brain on board with law of attraction, manifestation, how all of that works. Because naturally, I've always been a bit of a mystic with that stuff. But there was still this conscious part of my mind that was having a little trouble grasping like, oh, think positive, good things will happen. I need a little bit of that science.
So for me, that book opened up a ton. And then I was also doing Kundalini Yoga, which is powerful yogic technology with breath work and mantra. So that was keeping my energy in a really good spot. And then I started doing Lacey Phillips has a program called To Be Magnetic. And it's a really structured way to do inner child work and shadow work. So for me, Capricorn, I like my structure out here.
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