Solopreneurship for Software Developers
How Kat Norton Built a $2 Million Microsoft Excel Business – Miss Excel
Kat Norton popularly known as Miss Excel brought in $2,000,000 from her Excel teaching business in one year.
Kat had spent 4 years teaching Excel at a consulting firm. when the COVID pandemic hit and lockdowns were in effect, she found herself bored and restless.
“One day, I was on the phone with my best friend, Anna, tossing around side hustle ideas that could leverage the four years I spent teaching Microsoft Excel at my consulting firm,” she recalled.
That is when she decided to start posting mini Microsoft Excel lessons on TikTok. She posted her first video on Tiktok in June 2020.
The video went viral and she gained 100,000 followers. That was the beginning of great things to come.
In January 2021, Kat quit her job as a full-time management consultant to focus on her Excel Training Business (Miss Excel).
HOW DOES MISS EXCEL MAKE MONEY
Kat Norton teaches Microsoft Excel to individuals, businesses, and educational institutions. In October 2021, she made $100,000 in course sales in just one day.
DIGITAL COURSES: About 90% of Miss Excel’s revenue comes from Selling Digital Courses.
Her courses are centered on Microsoft 365 Applications such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Teams, OneNote, Outlook, Power BI, etc.
Here are some of the Digital courses she offers
- Excelerator Course ($297)
- Advanced Excel ($397)
- Microsoft Powerpoint ($297)
- Microsoft Word ($297)
- Microsoft Outlook mini-course ($149)
- Microsoft OneNote mini-course ($99)
- Microsoft Teams mini-course ($99)
- Excel Dashboard mini-course ($44)
You can learn more about her courses on her website Miss-Excel.com
Some courses are bundled and offered at a slightly lower price than if you were to buy each one of them individually. This strategy also helps her to bring in more money.
CORPORATE TRAINING: Kat also makes money by offering corporate training. She however has been working to get rid of this income stream as she does not like directly trading time for money.
Corporate training requires that you are physically present to conduct the training and you only earn once from it.
KEYNOTE SPEAKING: Kat has been featured in major media platforms such as CNBC, Forbes, Business Insider, Bloomberg, Daily Mail, The Sunday Times, Morning Brew, Daily Express, and many others.
She is also a Microsoft Valuable Professional (MVP). All this combined has made her a highly sought-after speaker.
She recently spoke at Social Media Marketing World in early 2023.
GROWTH STRATEGY
Kat has been able to grow Miss-Excel in different ways, the major drivers of growth when she was starting were social media, TikTok and Instagram in particular.
SOCIAL MEDIA: As of December 2023, Miss Excel had 929,400 Followers on TikTok and 898,000 followers on Instagram. She also has 68,400 followers on LinkedIn.
INTERVIEWS: Major media companies such as The Verge, CNBC, The Times, Business Insider, and many other publications helped to grow her business with their coverage.
Kat has also featured many Podcasts and YouTube channels such as Decoder, Creator Science, My First Million, and many others, giving more coverage to her business.
WEBINARS: Kat also offers free and paid webinars to boost her growth. Participants in the free webinars are channeled to her email list which is a great strategy to grow her email list.
LESSONS FROM MISS EXCEL
When you read that Kat made $100,000 in one day, it may seem like something that can be easily done. However, it took a lot of consistent work, creativity, and sacrifice to get there.
CREATIVITY: Miss Excel took a topic (spreadsheets) that seemed boring to many people and made it interesting through her unique teaching style.
She was teaching Excel while dancing which is so unheard of in this formal, business environment.
But her unconventional methods attracted a lot of people and separated her from the rest of the competition.
CONSISTENCY: From the time Kat uploaded her first video on TikTok in June 2020, she went to upload one video every day to keep her audience entertained while learning.
NICHE DOWN: While many content creators want to make videos about anything and everything, Kat focused solely on Microsoft Excel for a start.
This approach separated her from other TikTokers who do not have a specific area of focus.
Since everyone is not your customer, you have to understand your target audience and build a product that appeals to them specifically. Kat understood this she has been able to make millions.
In the Jacobs Formula for Success, I explained how Jacob became very successful by focusing only on one thing and knowing it so well.
QUICK IMPERFECT ACTIONS: One of the great lessons I learned from Kat is that focusing on perfection can derail your growth.
Instead of spending time overplanning and thinking about what could happen, Kat takes “messy action,” opting for speed rather than perfection.
For example, when Morning Brew was about to feature her story, they suggested that if she was going to get that kind of exposure, she should have a product to sell.
She took that advice and took a week off of her day job to create her first Excel course: The Excelerator course.
HERE ARE 5 BOOKS THAT MISS EXCEL RECOMMENDS
When she was interviewed by CNBC about 5 Books that helped her get started, here are the books she recommended.
- Dot Com Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels
- You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
- Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success
- Quantum Success: 7 Essential Laws for a Thriving, Joyful, and Prosperous Relationship with Work and Money
- Think and Grow Rich – By Napoleon Hill
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