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Kat Norton
He comes running and we're staring at the Stripe account and we're just like, how did that just happen in one hour? Like $48,000 in an hour. And I was selling like a 297 course.
Renee Warren
Hey, it's Renee and welcome to the into the Wild podcast. Each week I'll unravel growth, mindset, methods, authority building techniques and the secrets to living an integrated life. Plus chat with expert guests to teach you the fearlessness needed to step into your greatness. Are you ready for it? Let's get wild. This podcast is a Martell Media production. Please welcome the incredible Kat Norton.
Kat Norton
Hi. I'm so grateful to be here.
Renee Warren
We were in Nashville and it's funny, when I was landing here, I kept calling in Texas. Sorry, I'm a Canadian. It's all the same to me. Cowgirls, cowboys, really good vibe. Definitely has an Austin vibe, but.
Kat Norton
Oh, it does.
Renee Warren
We are here because we are going to end and CEO goddess gathering tomorrow with some exquisite human beings. And when I was looking at who was invited, I was like, who is this Catwoman? And I'm like, wait, she's in spreadsheets and she's this cool? Seems like such a juxtaposition. It is, but you are so cool. You're like the bees knees of spreadsheets. But I know you're more than that. So tell us a little bit about what you do.
Kat Norton
In a nutshell, I make learning Microsoft Office products and AI fun and this whole brand started with me danc under a spreadsheet. We have been fun in our DNA since day one. And that's really where the whole accounts just started going viral because people are like, what is this girl doing dancing under a left and find function in Excel. And really it was more so bringing parts of me together though inside of content because I love dancing, I love fun and teaching. And then I also loved spreadsheets and data and Excel and I was like, what if I merge them together and see what happens? And that's how it all grew.
Renee Warren
Wow. And how long have you been doing this for?
Kat Norton
So since 2020 is my first video in June of 2020 and I started selling courses in November of 2020.
Renee Warren
And what were the courses on?
Kat Norton
Excel is where we began. And then within two months of selling that first Excel course, it was actually bringing in more money than my day job when I was a consultant. So two months later I quit my job and became a full time entrepreneur despite everyone's best interests. You know, I had my parents being like, what are you doing? You know, 401k insurance. You can't just quit your job. But I told them, I was like, listen, I will have a 100% success rate if I just don't give up on me. And I made that agreement with myself. So we're good here. So quit my job. And then I had 40 hours a week back on my calendar. I was dangerous with that. So I built out nine more courses across the Microsoft Office suite over the next few weeks and then started scaling it. And from there, we hit a million dollars within that first year after that.
Renee Warren
Wow, okay. So you're like, see mom?
Kat Norton
Yeah, retired. My mom, too, after that whole scenario.
Renee Warren
So what were you doing? What was your day job?
Kat Norton
I was in consulting. So I was doing risk and compliance consulting specifically. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I realized, you know, after I got super into more of spirituality and manifesting, I was like, dang. Risk and compliance consulting is literally manifesting what could go wrong. You're looking at risk. And I had a little bit of a mental breakdown. This is back in like 2018, 2019. I was like, what am I doing? I don't know if this is my purpose. And on the side of my day job there, though, I was teaching Excel right from the beginning. I became that person in the office that everyone asked their Excel questions.
Renee Warren
You knew all the functions.
Kat Norton
Yeah. After my mba, I got super into Excel from IT Cause I was a data analytics major. And when I got into corporate, I was like, huh, I do know a lot about Excel. So I built out an Excel training internally for the company, and they had me flying around the US for an Amazon gift card doing all these trainings for the company. And then when 2020 rolled around and I stopped traveling every week for work, I started putting the Excel tips to dance on TikTok. And that's when it first went viral. And then I scaled the company out after that.
Renee Warren
How'd you get that idea?
Kat Norton
It was wild. So I went down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And this was around March of 2020, when I first started doing a lot of inner child work and shadow work and figuring out why I'm holding myself back in the way that I was. I grew up with really severe anxiety. I hated having any attention on me, which, if you look at my brand
Renee Warren
now, you'd be like 2 million followers across social.
Kat Norton
Yeah, yeah.
Renee Warren
Look at you now.
Kat Norton
Yeah. It's crazy. But I realized that was just limiting beliefs holding me in place. And so once I worked through those, I was very Diligent. Twice a day I was going under self hypnosis and clearing things out to rewind. Here I was in my childhood bedroom of my parents house. I was 27 years old, buried in student debt, like 80 grand in the hole. I couldn't move out because I was just paying down my loans. And I was also paying my parents to live there. And so it was one of those things where I was like, I don't know if this is my highest timeline and I feel like I'm just riding the corporate hamster wheel and I've got to get off at some point. And once I cleared those limiting beliefs, I fully became aware that I'm limitless. And I never forget it was May of 2020, so I didn't even have the idea for the business until June. I ran out of my childhood bedroom and 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, so serious. And you know, I'm in my like high school footy pajamas looking and she's like, kathleen, go clean your room. And I'm like, all right, mom, you'll see. And I retired her within two years of that conversation because something dropped in where every cell in my body knew that something really big was on the other side, but I just didn't see it yet. So fast forward about a month or so later, I was on the phone with one of my friends. We were trying to figure out side hustles for me. I was dabbling in like the drop shipping era. That was when everyone started everyone's drop shipping. So I was actually speaking biohacking. I was drop shipping EMF protection products. So that's how I was starting to dabble in the biohacking space too. And she was like, what if you put excel on TikTok? And I was like, wait, who said this?
Renee Warren
Your mom?
Kat Norton
My friend Anna.
Renee Warren
Okay, Anna, you're the best. Yeah, way to go with her.
Kat Norton
We love her. And she's like, what if you put on TikTok? And I had so, so much resistance because in my head, TikTok was for like middle schoolers dancing on the Internet. And it was early TikTok days. And I was like, I'm gonna read a book or something, you know, like, I'm not going on TikTok. Well, I couldn't let go of that idea. Ever since she said it, I saw it when she said it, and it was me dancing to that Drake song. Twosie slide, left foot up, right Foot slide to the left and the right function in Excel above my head. And I was like, that's weird. And for a couple days, this is when rewinding and looking back at my life and trying to examine the moments where I quantum leaped. This was absolutely one of them, where I was almost manic. Like, I felt like this energy, like, bubbling, like exploding, where I couldn't let go of this idea. So it was a Friday afternoon. My schedule magically cleared. I was working from home at this point, from my little teeny, tiny bedroom, like the size of this table. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to test out making one of these little Excel videos. I don't know how to video edit. I don't even know how to screen record besides zoom. So I recorded some clicks on zoom. I did full glam in the bathroom. This is like, you know, June of 2020. My mother was like, where are you going? It's the middle of the pandemic. I'm like, don't worry, Mom. And I run back in my room, move my furniture into the corners, and film this first video. And I edited it, looked at it, and was like, dang, that's pretty cool. So I, you know, I'm a generator in human design. I just whipped out 10 more. Was like, I gotta go, gotta make some more. I had so many ide. And I started just posting one video a day. By day four, this video reaches 100,000 views, gets shown to all these people I know at work. I'm getting messages like, hey, is this you?
Renee Warren
I'm like, oh, your workmates?
Kat Norton
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, my boss, you know, it was going around and I'm like, oh, yeah, it's me. Don't worry about it. I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. It was my secret TikTok account. Not so secret after four days. And then within a month, I had a video go viral. It hit 3.7 million views. I looked down, and I had 100,000 followers on TikTok.
Renee Warren
TikTok what, in four days?
Kat Norton
It was in, like, three weeks from that first post.
Renee Warren
Wow.
Kat Norton
And the whole, like, jump happened within 24 hours.
Renee Warren
I went from, like, people just want spreadsheets, apparently.
Kat Norton
Yeah. Oh, yeah. And, well, a lot of it was the polarity I created in the content. Reflecting back on my whole entrepreneurship journey, I've been diving a lot into the concept of polarity. And I realized that if I did just Excel videos, I probably would have had linear growth. I've seen a lot of other Excel creators If I would have done just dance videos, probably linear growth, but when combining opposites, it created this exponential growth given the polarities were really authentic to me and my own essence. And that is what allowed it to blast through the algorithm. Because a lot of times when you're going viral, it is negative comments or people just being confused and triggering that polarity. I say in a healthy way, you know, it's just dancing out here. That is what really gained those comments and got it pushed all around the Internet. And then fast forward from there. I created an Instagram and we just kept going viral on both platforms and now we're at about 2 million followers across all of them.
Renee Warren
And then you used to have social anxiety.
Kat Norton
Oh, yeah.
Renee Warren
And so you get this download. So I think of these as like gifts from God, spirit, source, whatever it is. And it's a gift given to you in that moment. And it's kind of like, are you going to do anything with this? Because if not, I'm just going to move on to the next. And you probably had these little sparks along the way at some point in your life, but you're like, wit's end with your job and you're like, I gotta do this. Yeah. How did you not ignore it this time?
Kat Norton
I think it was due to the inner work I had been doing leading up to the ping dropping through.
Renee Warren
Okay, so you were doing the work and then it's almost like it opened up.
Kat Norton
Exactly. And that's really where when I know I want to jump in my career, I do a lot of work on myself because my business is a direct reflection of how much my nervous system can hold. So if I'm already tapped out, it wouldn't come through or I would have a million reasons why you can't just go and make a TikTok right now. Like, you have your job, you got work, you know, you got Netflix to watch. It's the Pandemic. But no, I was on one at that point. I call it Delulu Energy. Like I was already living in a reality that did not look like my current surroundings. Living in my like ripped up high school pajamas in my childhood bedroom. I was already a multimillionaire in my head. I just didn't know how I was going to get to it. But I was living my life as if I was already there. To the point where I was warning my parents. I was like, you got to know that something huge is about to happen to us. That's really where it all began.
Renee Warren
This is what people dream of knowing that the Work needs to happen before, but also during because you're like, now you're here, and it's like, there's this next level and there's always going to be a next level. What were some of your biggest fears and doubts in these moments of growth?
Kat Norton
I think a lot of the things I had to work through leading up to that was around being seen. I, growing up, hated having any attention on me. I was that kid in the guidance office. Like, I had a pass that got me out of any class at any time to go to the guidance office. And you would constantly find me crying in there, like, fifth, sixth, seventh grade. By high school, I started becoming a little bit more my own skin. And then by college, I was doing a bit better. But there was a huge arc where in my pivotal years, where we're forming, you know, those childhood memories in the beginning, that shape who we are today, I was really scared. I was scared of dying. I was scared of being alone. I was scared of not being with my mom. I had a lot of separation anxiety from my mom. And that kind of formulated into this version of me that was perpetually hiding. And once I started uncovering and healing a lot of those wounds that had nothing to do with where I was currently as a human, they were just, like, holding me back. Once I started clearing those out, that's where things started just opening up. So it was really, for me, those initial fears, it wasn't even around failure because this was more so just a fun experiment to me, which I do credit. Like, going into the business helped a lot. I wasn't going into it. Like, I quit my job. I have to make money. Oh, no, I was already in the hole. You know, I had my day job. I was used to living on very small means. Like, I would go to Starbucks with my friends and not buy anything in college because I was buried in student debt. And I would just sit in the Starbucks with them. I didn't want to spend the money. And that's where I had all of these different past beliefs where once I started just operating from a place of, this is all just extra, this is all fun, and let's just see what happens. And that allowed it to jump really quickly.
Renee Warren
And then you got comfortable just dancing on camera.
Kat Norton
Oh, yeah.
Renee Warren
Was it instant or you're like, oh, I'm so embarrassed by this.
Kat Norton
Interesting. Because I think what helped was the only people who knew about my secret TikTok that didn't last secret very long was my mother and my boyfriend. So I didn't even Tell my friends. Like, nobody knew. I wasn't like, everyone watching, like, myself. Like, I didn't have that energy to it. I was just like, listen, I'm just gonna secretly make this because I'm getting the idea and we're just gonna slip it on. TikTok. TikTok's interesting. Like, it is where you have, like, a set of people you follow back and you see each other's stuff. But it really, in those early days, was just shooting out to the world on the algorithm, especially when I didn't connect it to my contacts or anything like that. So it really just shot out to all these people. And then within a few days, I had proof of concept. So that's where I was like, you know what? I gotta give the people more of what they want. Yeah. Like, it's working and it's helping a lot of people because the videos are actually getting in front of people so they learn. And I did cool things. You know, I'd like, point when the beat drops. It was all very dialed, and it made learning more cool and fun. So the people who thought it was cool, a bunch of people thought I was cringe. Like, no doubt.
Renee Warren
Khan Academy meets spreadsheet. The cute woman who's dancing.
Kat Norton
Yeah, that was the early days. I just really had dancing kind of ingrained. I don't think I talked on that page for, like, eight or nine months. People thought I was British.
Renee Warren
What?
Kat Norton
Oh, wow. Yeah. Everyone was like, what? She's from America. Because I was just dancing to music. And then eventually my content transitioned into more of the talking head videos.
Renee Warren
So how do you discover your thing? You realize, like, boring spreadsheets, fun dancing, you mix it together. But there's people out there that are just trying to find their edge. How do you. How do you explore to find what it is?
Kat Norton
I think doing a lot of inner reflection. Like, I remember I just wrote down all the things I loved one day, and naturally your brain is going to go, these don't go together. What, this is your hobby. This is your work? They're separate. But I would challenge you to look at it and be like, okay, I like these things, and they're really authentic to me. How could I create something unique? Because we're in a place right now where unique thoughts and unique ideas, especially now within the age of AI, just a lot of things are being recycled, and people are using AI to generate recycled information from the Internet. So when you come up with things that don't really go together, you do find this unique edge that you'll actually have fun doing because it's all stuff you already like.
Renee Warren
Oh, my gosh. So personal reflection, there's a point where you're like, is this even going to work? Do you try it? Do you kind of like throw the spaghetti out, see if it's going to stick or.
Kat Norton
Absolutely. Because really messy action is the answer to all of this. And there's so many times where I could have held myself in that perfectionist bubble and I could have been like, it's not ready. It's not good enough. The messy action still to this day is what I credit for the business growing so quickly because I get things out the door before they're ready. You have to. You can always go back and edit and tweak, but in my mind, nothing's ever going to be perfectly, perfectly ready. And I fought that thought form off. In my early days, that was something where, you know, I could have let it control me and got caught in this perfectionism paralysis. That's where when I kind of shut that part of my brain down and was like, no, no, it's okay to not be perfect and just get things out there. That's when I saw the momentum pick up.
Renee Warren
Was there ever a moment that you experienced something in growing your personal brand that you dreaded when you first started? Like the hate comments?
Kat Norton
Yeah, it was interesting. I did a lot of work on myself before the hate comments started coming through. So a big chunk of them I was good with. People were telling me, stop dancing or this. But then I had a revelation where I was like, okay, I can use these hate comments to help myself. And when I would have a comment that would actually trigger me and I would feel something in me that would show me that a little piece of me believes that that could potentially be true. Because if you think about it right, if someone said you're a purple elephant, you'd be like, okay, like, thanks, cool. Like, great. Cause you know deep down, like, it's not true. But if someone says you're self centered, you're selfish, you're crazy, all these different words. So I started reviewing. This is a little hack. If you are in your Instagram and you do block certain words from your comments, go take a look at those words and see what you blocked about yourself. And that I used as a tool to figure out what I needed to work on next.
Renee Warren
Words from your comments.
Kat Norton
Oh yeah.
Renee Warren
I did not know that.
Kat Norton
Yeah, people block certain words out.
Renee Warren
Does that mean that other people can't see that or just you can't see
Kat Norton
that other People can't see it. Like, if someone puts a comment with a certain word in it, it won't
Renee Warren
come up terrible mom as something I need to block because that is so triggering. I posted something with my husband because we do a he said, she said every month. And I even started out by saying I feel guilty. I feel like I'm a terrible mom because of xyz. And we go into, like, this research. It wasn't even my research. Somebody else's research about kids that talk back are actually kids that are testing their boundaries at a certain age. And I was like, oh, this means my kids are normal.
Kat Norton
Right?
Renee Warren
And then someone goes, no, it means you're a terrible mom. And I'm like, but they said the thing that I was so worried about, and I was so triggered by it. Yeah, but this is so eye opening because it's never about them. It's about you. It's like, what is it about that? Cause I already admitted I feel like a terrible mom, and somebody's telling me I'm a terrible mom. So now I'm like, what inner work do I gotta do to release this?
Kat Norton
Yeah.
Renee Warren
So fascinating.
Kat Norton
It's literally the best mirror is using comments for that to help myself grow. So I would find the things that were triggering me and I would go after them and I would work on those things about myself and make myself realize I'm not actually those things.
Renee Warren
What is. You're obviously not a purple elephant.
Kat Norton
Yeah.
Renee Warren
But what was one of the things?
Kat Norton
Oh, there were so many. There was ones about, like, me being cringe and awkward. I grew up being so awkward. So when people would tell me I was awkward, I'm like, well, I'm kind of awkward. So I lived this. But, like, that was one that was triggering me at first. Or someone said I did something in poor taste once and that I had a lot of blocks around doing something wrong. Like, I was a straight A student growing up. I wouldn't raise my hand unless I knew I was right. Or else I could be embarrassed or feel shame.
Renee Warren
No pressure at all.
Kat Norton
Yeah. So I always had things where I'm feeling, like, wrong. So when people told me things like that, I was like, okay, like, I have something to work on here for my inner child that is telling me, you know, you have a fear around being wrong. How can you be an entrepreneur if you have a fear of being wrong? We gotta constantly be wrong. It's a grow. So I was like, okay, that is a beautiful beacon that I can work toward to clear out. So that was something for me, too. When I would get those comments, I shifted them and was like, okay, these are blessings for me to be able to see what I can work through. And now I'm at a spot where, like, it takes a lot to trigger me. Like, I'm a pretty neutral person at this point. Unless you go after, like, my family or something like that, I'll get a little fired up. But now I'm just like, okay, it's you projecting your inner securities on me. I'm a public figure. I'm holding the energy. I'm going to send you back some blessings.
Renee Warren
We always say, you can attack my opinion, but don't attack my character.
Kat Norton
Yeah.
Renee Warren
Because the moment, all of a sudden now, like, that woman summarizing me as being a terrible mom, I go, you can disagree with my opinion.
Kat Norton
Yeah.
Renee Warren
But don't come after me. And so that was an immediate, like, delete and block.
Kat Norton
Yes.
Renee Warren
And here's the thing about it. You can delete anything you want on your account. You can block whomever you want. You can also do, like, the restricted stuff on Instagram we're talking about. We always feel this, like, insatiable need to make sure, like, Bobby sue, our cousin, sees everything, especially during the pandemic. But during those, like, first silly days of yours, were you blocking people like crazy?
Kat Norton
I did the ones that were really inappropriate. I was dancing on the Internet. You got some crazies up in there. So I still do. Yeah. Yeah. So I was blocking people that were inappropriate because then it transitioned, too, to me doing live webinars all the time. Now, these webinars, we'd get like 40,000 registrants a month.
Renee Warren
Dang.
Kat Norton
And I would have all these people in a live chat from all around the world. And at first, my partner Mike, like, he's now my bouncer in these live events when I do them. Because at first I couldn't see the chat while I was sharing my Excel screen, and things would go wild. At one point, he had to open the door and be like, you need to kick Marcus out of the chat. And I'm like, what? So that's when, too. I was like, okay, there's definitely some interesting energies because we live on a polarity planet, right? There's always good and bad. And whenever you're doing things, you are going to attract both. And the bigger you get, the more hate comments you're going to get, the more lovely comments you're going to get. And that's something I came to grips with early on. I was like, okay, I know I'm meant to live a big life. And with that, I'm going to need to be able to hold the frequency of the polarity and everything else going on. And the more I can hold, the bigger I'll get. And that's something I'm always working on myself with, with my nervous system and everything to make sure I can hold all the crazy out there.
Renee Warren
That's not one thing that I thought I was signing up for in business was like, all the spiritual work. The best investment I made was hiring a spiritual therapist full time.
Kat Norton
Like that.
Renee Warren
She just gets it.
Kat Norton
Yeah.
Renee Warren
And I remember when I first started working with her because it was like, for couples therapy. And I was like, I'm just going to lay it all out. It's all his problem. It's all his fault. And after the first, like, four meetings, I was like, why do I feel so guilty? It's like, you're blaming me. And it was never about that. As my friend Claire says, you have to turn your edges inwards because those triggers, those. Those inflection points whenever you fight is never the other person. It's your triggers that you have to work on.
Kat Norton
Exactly.
Renee Warren
For us, like, we just started this game of social, so I just hired a full time creative director and we started like two and a half months ago. My husband's been on this rocket for a long time, so I got to see the background. I will say there is so much emotional, spiritual, mental preparation that comes into deciding to do that. You can't just show up one day and be like, let's go. Because the hardest part is showing up when you're exhausted. The hardest part is showing up when you just had someone tear your character apart and you still gotta do it. It's like a mental Olympics. I will say, other than having two babies in the same year, this is probably one of the hardest things I've ever done.
Kat Norton
Yeah.
Renee Warren
Yeah. And like, last night, terrible sleep. I woke up this morning, I was like, renee, you're not tired. You got this.
Kat Norton
It's a mindset. Exactly.
Renee Warren
I'm like, you're not puffy. You're perfect. Let's go.
Kat Norton
I'm deep in that bottom. You're not, puppy. You're perfect.
Renee Warren
And I showed up here and, like, did a little dance and was with the people here. They're amazing. And you can just allow yourself to melt and not perform. But there's so much good. There's so much good around us. There's so many beautiful people. I think it's easy to reflect on the Hate or the negative comments. And you'll see it just comes from the same people. But when you look at that, you miss the 10,000 great comments about how much you've changed my life. I didn't know that. That's cool. Let me try that. Let's go. It's like this perpetual work. It never ends. I want to rewind just a little bit. How did you, not knowing anything about doing business, decide to dance on TikTok with spreadsheets but then come up with an offer and then turn it into a million dollar business now multimillion dollar. How did you do that?
Kat Norton
I did go to business school and have an mba. But I will say you don't learn the wild, wild west of digital marketing out in the MBA program. So I pretty much came into it with a little bit of marketing background. I was marketing major, but that was it. Did not know a thing about social media. If you looked at my personal page, you'd be like, well, this girl doesn't post much. And I was really just flying by the seat of my pants. So fast forward, I had probably like 5, 600,000 followers, no link in my bio, no mail list. And a business coach slid in my DMs and was like, hey, notice you have all these followers and what's going on? So I did like a one hour session. Was like mailing lists. I was on mailchimp at the time, link tree, got it and ran with that. Then from there. When it came to actually scaling it with webinars, if you know Natalie Ellis from Boston, I joined one of her webinars. It was like January 2021, and I'm really good with the mirror neurons and watching people and getting expanded. And I just went to her webinar. I was like, webinar jam. Got it. And I watched. I was like, slides got it. She runs the chat freebie from coming live. I watched her system and was like, got it. Turned around and built that out for Excel because this is a crazy story. So Business Insider had found me and reached out around December of 2020, January 2021, and they were like, we want to do a feature on your business. And we had made I think like $85,000 at the time. And they wanted to say I had a six figure business. I was like, yeah, like we're basically, you know. And they're like, we need proof. Which honestly respect Business Insider. And I think CNBC are two of the only news outlets that ever verified things because people have written so many things about me online that are absolutely false. And I just, you know, the media does what the media does. But, like, we're like, we want proof. And I'm like, respect. Love that. I need to come up with some cash then. So what did I do? I watched Natalie's webinar, and I'm like, okay, this is going to push me to my next edge to do a live event.
Renee Warren
This is bonkers. Yeah.
Kat Norton
I was like, I gotta pull in some cash here. So I did my very first webinar, and it brought in $48,000 in the hour selling my Excel.
Renee Warren
Course you did it.
Kat Norton
And I was like, oh, my gosh. And, I mean, I was making maybe a hundred grand a year at my day job, and this was before I quit. So I hang up the computer. I was like, mike, he comes running, and we're staring at the stripe account, and we're just like, how did that just happen in one hour? Like, we had both come from corporate. We've never seen anything like that happen. 45k said $48,000 in an hour. And we were like, oh, my God. And I was selling, like, a 297 course. That's where the addiction begins. And so that was when I was like, okay, we're set for Business Insider. And then fast forward, we start just doing rinse and repeat. And we were getting so many registrants, it would max out webinar jams. So I started doing multiple dates. It ended up I was doing seven or eight webinars in a week each month.
Renee Warren
Live.
Kat Norton
Yeah. And I would rent a house in Scottsdale because Sedona doesn't have great WI fi. We had one crash there and lost a ton of money and learned our lesson. So I would be doing, like. It would turn out to be, like, 90 minutes, because I would stay on extra with the chat. I'd have, like, an hour break and then get up and do it again. Then we started expanding it to affiliates like the Morning Brew and, like, people with huge newsletters and, like, tens of millions of dollars.
Renee Warren
There's no, like, strategy or is that. Here is like, this is how you're supposed to do it. You're just making this shit up.
Kat Norton
Yeah. I would, like, watch someone do it, and I'd be like, all right, I'm good at learning softwares. Teach software. So I'd be like, all right, webinar jam is pretty. You know, click the buttons, and we would test and learn. And it got to the point where I had so many huge affiliates sending me leads, I would give them their own sessions so now fast forward to like October of 2021. We had our first six figure day because I had two back to back webinars, so it was like, bound to happen.
Renee Warren
Business Insider.
Kat Norton
Look at this. Yeah. Yeah. And I was talking about it with Neelay Patel on the Verge podcast. He took that and it became the headline of the story. And then it got picked up by like 50 global news outlets. And next thing you know, I woke up and it was in Forbes, it was Business Insider, Entrepreneur magazine, six page spread. Like, everything blew up from that six figure day. So at that point, I'm like, let's do it again and do it again. And so I ran that hamster wheel for about three and a half years.
Renee Warren
Like up until how many a week were you doing?
Kat Norton
This was every month. And I would do it for one week. I would have like my webinar week. So we were two weeks on, two weeks off with promo. And I did for three years. Yeah. So now fast forward this one. I started learning more about the nervous system because I'm a very sensitive, energetic being. I've since realized. And I can feel other people's energy. So when you're in a room, even though it's virtual and it's, you know, 4,000 people live, like saying all these things in the chat, the chat moves so fast you, like can't even read it. It's like, okay, you know, like, what can I do to help myself? But then the business was becoming reliant on me being the face and coming and doing these things. And then the affiliates, like morning brews, ad placements are huge. Like to have one. And we weren't paying them. They were just putting our stuff in their newsletter because they're affiliates. Yeah. So they would push us for weeks. And then it all was riding on my one hour performance.
Renee Warren
Wow.
Kat Norton
And I would bring it every single time because even I was having panic attacks on the live sometimes. And if you watch back, you would have no idea.
Renee Warren
I'm totally gonna.
Kat Norton
My body is super good at regular. Oh, yeah. For one minute. And I talk to myself about it because it happens from time to time. And I'm now reframing them. Instead of panic attacks, I'm like, this is just my body catching up to the higher timeline. And it's just like a little energetic. Like, okay. Because it happened to me literally the other day where I felt myself and I'm like, okay, I know this is. For one minute. It's going to be uncomfortable. And my mouth knows the words. And we keep rolling the show and we keep smile. No one knows. And then you're tired after, but you roll out. So that was starting to happen though, like, every time. And my body was just so tapping out and my anxiety was starting to, like, bubble up again. And I was like, okay, remember, it was like a Friday. It was my last webinar of the week in November of 24, and I woke up with a crazy migraine. I popped two Excedrins and had some leftover steak and was staring in the mirror and was like, this is not my highest timeline. And I turned to my team and I'm like, we're done. We are transitioning my entire business into Evergreen. And I don't care what happens. I'm done. I'm taking care of my body. And that's that. Everyone was on board. We're like, yep, let's go. Yeah. They're probably like, oh, yeah. Cause it was a lot of high pressure for all of us. And that gave us the challenge to essentially take our existing webinars now. Luckily, I've done about 200 live webinars at that point to choose from inside my webinar Jam account. So I was able to transition a lot of them into Evergreen. And then with that, we started learning how to scale through Evergreen. And we did that for 2025, and we're still that way in 2026. I'm actually challenging my nervous system and doing my first live webinar in May again. So I'm gonna test out how my body feels now. Cause now I've been doing so many speaking gigs and chemo and stuff like that. Yeah, like, I've changed so much since November 2024. I'm speaking all the time now. So I think I'm going to feel a lot more calm and in my body. And I'm only gonna do three.
Renee Warren
So much fun.
Kat Norton
Exactly. I, like, I miss them. And a lot of people don't realize we're not live because we still have webinar jams, like full chat features and everything. So they still get a great experience. My fans over in, like, Australia love it. Cause I was always getting yelled at that the times and stuff like that. So a lot of people have loved it up until this point. And it really helped us scale with ads now, too. We were able to just having that machine running at all times. So that's where we're going to keep that one running with ads. I'm going to start doing a little bit more lives and see where. How I feel, where it flows. So in the end, I'm like, I built this business for freedom, and I built this business to have the life I want. And the second it turns to not being the life I want, we pivot.
Renee Warren
Exactly. Amen. So I ran a PR agency. So, like, I know this whole world of Business Insider, and I launched it when I was eight months pregnant with my first son and welcomed my second son 11 months later. So first year, we blew up. We were like the PR agency for recently funded technology startups in the Valley. So we had clients from South Africa to San Diego, and I had two babies and a small team. There was just something that's like, keep going. Burnout eventually just hits you like a ton of bricks. But I had to put in the reps. Now it's like, now I get that time back with my kids. And I ended up burning out so bad. I shut down that agency as we were going through due diligence, almost got acquired, and I just couldn't even deal with the earn out. It was like a two year earn out. I was like, I can't be in this industry anymore. It eventually evolved into another PR agency, which I sold, which was great. But I knew the moment when you start hitting those same feelings of burnout. You're like, whoop, I've been here before. Nope, not doing that. And you pivot. But also it's like you love doing these lives. Yeah. And now you're gonna test it again, and it's gonna be so different for you.
Kat Norton
I'm really excited. I feel really good about it.
Renee Warren
How big is your team?
Kat Norton
Depending on how we count the contractors, we're around 15. We just hired five more corporate trainers, though, in the last, like, week.
Renee Warren
Okay, so what do they do? They literally.
Kat Norton
So we have two halves of the business. We have the B2C side, which is the side we mostly talked about, where I'm doing webinars, I'm selling courses, we ally 18 of those. Then on the flip side, we also work with over 400 companies where we go in and train their employees on Microsoft Office, AI, all that kind of fun stuff. And we sell courses, new hire bootcamps, and at first, Mike, my partner, he leads our corporate division, he was selling me, and he was the number one ranked sales rep in North America when he left at his other place. So he came over and just started selling me all the time, but I was still running the company. So it was interesting energetically because he would be like, I just closed you on like a $90,000 deal for all these trainings and I was like, let's do all these now.
Renee Warren
Oh, no.
Kat Norton
You know, And I'm like, oh, God, our tribe. We're going to Europe. How are we gonna do that? You know, I was spiraling. So that's when I felt the push. And I was like, okay, I need to try to sell someone else doing these trainings that isn't me. And we found an amazing trainer, and this was two years ago, and I haven't done one since. We have had her running with all our trainings for the last two years.
Renee Warren
Virtual trainings?
Kat Norton
Yeah, virtual trainings. And then now we're really starting to scale the B2B side of things that all grew from me. Just for one minute, at the end of my B2C webinars, I'd get on and be like, if you like this and want it for your team, click the QR code. And that scaled us to 400 clients. So now I just built a B2B webinar last weekend that we are going to be running ads to to scale it. So I was like, we need more corporate trainers. So now I just hired five more corporate trainers to go out and do these.
Renee Warren
Okay. And you did this all in five years? We talk about luck a lot in my business. I don't necessarily believe in luck.
Kat Norton
Yeah, we make our luck.
Renee Warren
It made me think the word should exist as an entrepreneur, because it's almost like when you do the thing, you get into momentum, you open up the possibility for more opportunities. So when someone says, I just got lucky, it's like, no, you created something that created the opportunity. And so you're seeing these places for opportunity. You never thought when you first started you'd be doing corporate training now. AI too. Like, let's talk about that for a hot second. Because people might not associate spreadsheets with AI.
Kat Norton
Yeah, yeah.
Renee Warren
How is it integrated?
Kat Norton
Oh, yeah. I saw the writing on the wall back in, like, 2022, 2023, when Microsoft came out with Copilot, I was like, okay, the business is going to shift eventually and I'm going to be ahead of this. So back in 2023, we put out our first AI course, and that was more so focused around ChatGPT and also corporate use of AI. So a lot of companies that we work with, they want things around, like, AI hallucinations, how to prevent that, and AI ethics, AI bias, and, like, more of those compl trainings. So we integrated that into it. But then we also integrated ways to save time at work going into it with the mindset of we need to be teaching the tools that people use at their corporate jobs. So fast forward to now where AI is everywhere. We have expanded into now. I teach advanced AI, I teach Copilot. We have like a suite of AI courses. And Copilot, for example, was one of our top sellers this past quarter, which is interesting. We're seeing like a shift into a lot of AI core sales. And we also have a lot of bundles where we bundle the Microsoft Office with it. So that's been still our top seller too.
Renee Warren
Oh my God. I just started getting on AI more so this weekend. I don't know. Have you met Kellen Faulkner?
Kat Norton
Yes.
Renee Warren
It's scary when you like up level to the next thing. Like even last night I had my laptop open in my room and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna open up Dispatch on Claude and I'm gonna see. So essentially it allows you to use the functionality of the Claude desktop from your mobile device. And I know it's like risky sometimes, but I'm sitting there prompting it to like, go and search for things on my computer. Y and it's so crazy. I go back up to the room and it had opened the tabs and it was working. And I'm sitting there thinking, this is bonkers.
Kat Norton
It's incredible.
Renee Warren
So there is no excuse for people in business, because people ask me questions in business all the time. I'm like, literally can go and ask Claude, oh yeah, or chatgpt or something. What do you think the future of your industry is?
Kat Norton
I think it'll be interesting. I think as long as we keep pivoting and learning and staying on edge when it comes to AI, I do think there will be a place for the Microsoft Office tools. But I do think as Copilot continues to get better and better, it's going to become easier for people to use now. It's interesting too, is people entering the workforce now, how they're conditioned to work with AI. Very different from people who have, you know, grown up using pivot tables, grown up from corporate life. I'm used to just doing things quickly in Excel, but as younger generations come in and they're more used to using AI, I'm curious to see if they end up just prompting the tools more versus knowing the tools. I always teach you need to know the tools just because AI can be wrong.
Renee Warren
Totally.
Kat Norton
And when you're in a spreadsheet and if one cell is wrong, that could be catastrophic. Yeah. And literally every time you use it, it's like, this might be wrong. I don't know about you, but with my spreadsheets, if this is wrong, it's a big deal. So you need to be able to click into the formula. Copilot does this really well now, thankfully, where you could click into the formulas it creates and you need to know how the formula works. You'd be like, all right, it's referencing this and this. We know it's good versus, like, at times it would hard code things in which you don't want that. Obviously, that's where, I mean, I'm very curious to see how it continues to grow and just learning with it. Growing with it.
Renee Warren
Yeah. So going back to like the parenting thing, one of the things people ask us about, what does AI look like in your household?
Kat Norton
I listened to that episode. You guys said I was very good. Right.
Renee Warren
Because people ask, like, people know Dan now to be the AI guy. To be honest with you, we don't really let our kids use it that much because it's still kind of like we're figuring out how to parent around this to put in the bumpers. But really what it comes down to is teaching them how to write the best prompts. Because it's not like you can just go in and be like, show me the best barbecue in Nashville. It's like, do you want to get the right answer? It's how you prompt.
Kat Norton
Exactly.
Renee Warren
So if you're teaching the 2020 version of yourself and now AI is coming into your life and you're getting schooled, what is the one thing you're going to teach her about prompts?
Kat Norton
I would say, really specificity is key when it comes to prompts. So having the different layers to it, what role are you acting as? What context are you giving it? Context is super important. And then from there also I would teach a little bit of safety around AI because I think a lot of people right now are using it a little blindly. And it's very interesting. I kind of see two different camps rolling here and I'm at the intersection of them where on the corporate side, everyone's like, don't put your data in there, only use corporate approved things. Don't do this entrepreneur side. It's like the wild, wild west out here. Everyone's like hook and clawed up to everything. We're like loading in your emails, this, that. So I kind of live on the intersection of it where what I do, especially if someone's listening and they're kind of scared about that stuff and they want to like inch into clawed and start using it more, but they feel like they're not. Something I do is I create a sandbox folder on my computer. I just labeled it sandbox, and I only allow cloud access to that folder. When I need it to work on something for me. I put it in the folder cloud works on it, puts the results back in the folder, and I kind of work based out of that. Granted. Could it come in and do things to my computer? I'm sure.
Renee Warren
Oh, sure.
Kat Norton
But, yeah, exactly. But it's one of those things that, like, make me feel a little better than just, like, hooking it up to everything at once just because, like, we have, like, our tax information in there. And, like, things where I'm like, I don't want it scouring my email.
Renee Warren
It's like, honestly, I feel like we're at this intersection where you get this into the wrong hands. Everyone thinks that.
Kat Norton
Right.
Renee Warren
It's so devastating. But also, what about the good in it? When we look at, like, healthcare and education, there's so much opportunity. And with business, it's like you kind of have to be doing.
Kat Norton
Oh, yeah, totally.
Renee Warren
I can't imagine not using AI even like, five years ago, not even three years ago. It used to be just Chat, maybe even two years ago. ChatGPT.
Kat Norton
Yeah.
Renee Warren
Like, and now there's so much. And it's so exponential, the growth in the tools. You're doing it?
Kat Norton
Yes.
Renee Warren
And we have friends that are doing it. And I guess the message is like, don't be intimidated by it. Yeah. I say go, just explore, poke around, see what's up. What's your favorite AI tool right now?
Kat Norton
Currently cloud.
Renee Warren
Yeah.
Kat Norton
So I went out to my team and I was like, you all need to outsource your jobs to Claude. So here is a training video. Here's how you can learn it. And now take that and go build out Claude's skills that replace certain sectors of your job. We had, like, AI week, like two weeks ago where we all just went in and built a ton of different. Like, I had each employee built, like, three to four different skills for the jobs that they do. That's something I would say we use the most. And one of the coolest parts about building with Claude skills, especially if you're intimidated, is you just ask it how to build the skills.
Renee Warren
That's it. So, kids, for clarity, you can build skills within Claude that Claude will default reference to. For example, is a personal brand voice. And it could just be as simple as, hi, my name is Renee Warren. I always use an accentu. Please don't ever not use it. I never say These words, I say these words. It's like you build out your brand voice becomes a skill. So it's like it kind of sits underneath everything that you're doing and Claude so that it references that. So what would be like a skill that your team that's like not brand voice would build that cloud would reference.
Kat Norton
So we have our social media team building out different social media ones that are looking at our content, looking at others content. I believe they're using Manus actually for that. Yeah. And then we built out one for email generation, which has been huge. Mike is really good at copywriting. And it was taking though, like an hour to write our webinar emails every month. And there's six emails and we loaded that all up with like 50 different emails we've written and all that kind of fun stuff. And he got that down to first shot, knocks out the email. It's super dialed. So that one has been one we're really exciting about. He built one for trading. He was super hyped on is trading methods for stocks. We've been just using them across the board. I use them to help me develop keynotes now. I did build out like a personal brand one. So I'm in the process of like really figuring out what that means to
Renee Warren
me and like, which is so bonkers because people are like, no, you got it. You got this figured out.
Kat Norton
There's this like marriage to Excel that I'm like, slowly. It's just playing out my. Of my world. Yeah. Where we'll have the two machines. So that's been something really helping me figure out. Even if you're diving, I'd say into inner work too, and trying to figure out, like, what is the best option for me, what should I do? Like, there might be different methods you haven't even thought of that you can use Claude to figure out, like, hey, I'm working through this. What tools would you recommend? Just see what other tools are out there too.
Renee Warren
They're so crazy. Like, Manus just blows my mind. This was just the other day, I was standing in my bedroom and I took a picture of the room and I was like, I don't like my duvet cover. I don't like the color of it. And I threw it into Manus minimal prompts saying, I don't like the color. I like my room. Based on what's already in my room, could you suggest a different duvet cover color? Not only did it suggest it and it gave it reason, but it photoshopped it to a point where you wouldn't even know the difference.
Kat Norton
Oh my gosh.
Renee Warren
And I was like, this just totally killed interior design. So then I went to my powder room, took a picture of it. I'm like, I don't like my powder room. And I have minimal prompts based on the color palette of my house because now it knows for my bedroom. Here's my design style. Can you come up with five suggestions? And within two seconds I was like, okay, I like this one. By the way, I live in Kelowna, British Columbia. Can you find me three vendors for like, tiles, flooring, sinks that I can source from? Created the list. So now my general contractors are gone. It's not necessarily killing jobs. What it's doing is it's enhancing the people that are willing to use it. My creative director, when she started a couple months ago, I said, your number one job is to find a way to replace yourself using AI. We had a company wide hackathon, which by the way, you don't have a big team. Even if it's just you and one other person. Take a few days and do a hackathon. Don't know what that means. Go and find out what that means on cloud. And we built a product that we are probably going to eventually offer to our coaching clients that allows you to essentially create the most beautiful content for like podcasts and social based on things that are trending, based on your history of content that actually like, you know, those viral posts that end up creating, like raising your standard of new followers. I'm calling it Maven. But if it wasn't for the thought of trying to find a way to replace her job, we would not have been so creative. And now what it did is it made her more efficient. It made her better and more excited that we can show up in Nashville and do these things as opposed to being always in the weeds. It's a beautiful thing.
Kat Norton
I love it.
Renee Warren
Okay, one last question for you. Cause we could chat all day. When I ask you what it means to be a wild woman, what is that for you?
Kat Norton
That is someone living fully in their authenticity. That was the first thing I dropped down. So really not being held back by limitations, knowing that you're limitless and operating from that mindset to go after what feels authentically good to you.
Renee Warren
Okay, so Kat, people want to go online to find you. Where are they going?
Kat Norton
Ms. Excel across social media. It's M I S S Exel. We're on all the platforms.
Renee Warren
Love it. Well, thanks so much for joining us today.
Kat Norton
Thank you.
Renee Warren
Wait, before you go to support this show. Please rate and review and share it with your business besties. It means the world to me to get this message in front of more women who are also on the pursuit of greatness. Tune in wherever you subscribe to podcasts, watch us on YouTube and follow me on Instagram. Reneewarren this show is produced in partnership with Martel Media.
Turning a "Boring Skill" Into a Multi-Million Dollar Brand with Kat Norton (Ms. Excel)
Host: Renee Warren | Guest: Kat Norton
Date: May 12, 2026
In this energizing episode of Into The Wild, host Renee Warren sits down with Kat Norton, famously known as Ms. Excel, to unpack her extraordinary journey from corporate consultant to multi-million dollar entrepreneur. Kat reveals how she transformed her love for spreadsheets—a traditionally "boring" skill—into a viral, joyful brand blending dance, digital marketing, and personal development. The discussion traverses her viral TikTok beginnings, the mental and emotional work behind her success, tools for resilience amidst virality, the impact of AI, and tips for entrepreneurs seeking their "unique edge."
Origins of Ms. Excel:
The Viral Leap:
Combining Opposites for Growth:
Addressing Haters & Triggers:
Messy Action as a Growth Strategy:
From Side Hustle to Multi-Million Brand:
Building Offerings and the Webinar Machine:
Shifting Business Models to Protect Wellbeing:
Inner Work as the Foundation:
Handling Emotional Ups and Downs:
Integrating AI:
Practical AI Use in Business:
Advice for Entrepreneurs Getting Started with AI:
Merging Passions for Unique Offerings:
Embracing Messy Action:
“Once I cleared those limiting beliefs, I fully became aware that I'm limitless.”
— Kat Norton (05:08)
“The messy action still to this day is what I credit for the business growing so quickly, because I get things out the door before they're ready.”
— Kat Norton (15:12)
“I did my very first webinar, and it brought in $48,000 in the hour selling my Excel course.”
— Kat Norton (25:48)
“My business is a direct reflection of how much my nervous system can hold.”
— Kat Norton (09:47)
“I built this business for freedom, and the second it turns to not being the life I want, we pivot.”
— Kat Norton (31:15)
“That is someone living fully in their authenticity…knowing that you're limitless and operating from that mindset.”
— Kat Norton on being a “wild woman” (45:05)
This episode reminds listeners that creativity, inner work, strategic action, and adaptability—plus a little dance—can transform even the simplest skill into a global brand and a life on your own terms.