Every video Kat Norton ’15, MBA ’16 posts on TikTok and Instagram fulfills a promise: you’ll learn something about Microsoft Excel while having a little fun.
Norton’s meteoric rise as social-media influencer Miss Excel has established her as the go-to instructor for the ubiquitous software among those under 30. In just two and a half years, she’s taken a necessary tool used by millions to track finances, manage projects, and make to-do lists and turned it into a multimillion-dollar business powered by her positive attitude, can-do spirit, and creative abilities.
Not bad for a “painfully shy” Long Island girl who got her start on the internet at the Binghamton University School of Management. “Binghamton was truly the best experience I’ve ever had,” she says. “I look back at it and tear up — I love it. It’s just such a unique place.”
Discovering her voice
Norton has always had a strong entrepreneurial spirit. She sold paper fortune-tellers — the kind that children everywhere seem to know how to fold — to classmates for a quarter as a kindergartener in Plainview, and she started a newspaper on her block and collected subscription money for a few months in third grade.
She told people she wanted to be a rock star when she was young, but paralyzing self-doubt set in as she grew older. She hung out with theater kids but sat in the audience as they stole the show. She was crippled by public speaking, trying to talk to people resulted in awkward silence, and she even stopped having birthday parties because she couldn’t stand being the center of attention.
She majored in business administration, with concentrations in marketing and leadership, and consulting, and minored in education as an undergraduate at Binghamton, her top college choice. As a member of the Dickinson Community, she found a group of like-minded students led by then-Collegiate Professor (and SOM Associate Professor) Kimberly Jaussi.
“My favorite class was Leadership 353 with Professor Jaussi. You work from start to finish on a nonprofit consulting project, and at the end, you create this beautiful book and give it to the client — I still have mine!” Norton says, laughing. “We worked with the Boys & Girls Club, and it was incredible to be able to give back. The skills I learned in that class were extremely useful in my career.”
Becoming a TikTok celebrity
Norton began working as a senior consultant for Protiviti, a global consulting firm where she had interned the summer before earning her MBA, in early 2020. She’d leave New York City before dawn every Monday to travel to a different state and a different client, do the consulting job for three or four days, fly home, type up the report, and then jet off somewhere else the next Monday. She continued to live with her parents because why would she get her own place when she was never at home?
“I’d been doing that for three and a half years,” she says. “I was living in airports and hotels, bouncing around and running without really looking at myself.” Because the COVID-19 pandemic effectively halted all travel, Norton was forced to work from her childhood bedroom, battling feelings of isolation. It did, however, give her time to reflect on her fears, goals, and where she wanted to go next.
Norton used her Excel skills to create training workshops for coworkers as part of her role at Protiviti. “I remember literally writing it down: ‘I like helping people.'” She was trying to figure out what made her happy. Excel appeals to me. ‘I enjoy dancing.’ I was on the phone with a friend when they suggested, ‘What if you put the Excel tips on TikTok?’ My brain and gut were at odds for the next 48 hours.”
She kept hearing Drake’s song “Toosie Slide,” with its lyrical repetition of “right foot up, left foot slide,” in her head, and she saw a screen above her describing Excel’s left and right functions. The thought wouldn’t go away, so she recorded a 14-second clip when she had some free time. She learned how to edit it by watching a YouTube video, and “it actually looked really cool.”
Norton was inspired and redid her hair and makeup before filming 10 more clips. In June 2020, she created the Miss Excel account on TikTok and began posting a video every day. She told no one except her mother and boyfriend, but her coworkers quickly informed her that they’d seen her online.
By the sixth video, the CEO of an IT company had contacted her and asked if she could create training videos for remote learning students, parents, and teachers.
Living the American Dream
Norton’s life went into overdrive. Her TikTok account has over 870,000 followers as of November 2022, and she has over 650,000 Instagram followers. She was able to quit her job at Protiviti in early 2021 and become the “chief Excel officer” full-time as she made more and more money through Miss Excel. She and her boyfriend moved to Sedona, Arizona, earlier this year after spending 16 months as “digital nomads” traveling around the country.
Norton’s business model is straightforward: provide social media videos as a free sample of the Miss Excel brand, then sell training courses to generate revenue. The courses cover Microsoft products as well as Google Suite and business fundamentals for younger students. They take things slow and don’t have constant music or dancing, but she’s still willing to have fun. Shooting a video in the desert, by the pool, or while running around the house in a superhero cape is sometimes necessary.
“I see Excel as a blank canvas on which to draw little working things,” she says. “One of my professors at Binghamton told the class that if you played The Sims growing up and like simulation games, chances are you’re going to like modeling and Excel. Guess who was a computer nerd who spent her middle school years playing The Sims with herself? Me!”
Norton is expanding her course offerings and considering motivational speaking, business coaching, or even NFTs as the Miss Excel brand grows. She also has her own theories about how to cultivate creative states of mind and maintain a positive relationship with social media.
“How can I best assist you? “That’s really what it comes down to for me,” she says. “I’m just listening and determining what people require.”
