There’s something about a success story that is inspiring to all of us.

We imagine the “what if” scenarios including more respect and recognition. Imagine what it would look like not to worry about jobs or making a living. It is a dream we start to imagine a world where we are able to take control of our lives and not be subjected only to corporate orders.

Kat Norton, also known as Miss Excel, was successful because she tried something different outside her comfort zone. Hint: It involved dancing and making videos. If you are looking to be an influencer on social media in 2022, then this could be your wake-up call.

“When I first got the vision of me dancing on TikTok with an Excel screen over my head, everything in me wanted to resist this crazy idea,” she told me recently. Norton, who explains the intricacies of Microsoft Excel to her nearly a million subscribers on her YouTube channel now has over 500,000 followers. My favorite clips involve an alter-ego named “boss” who often doesn’t understand the hacks.

“I did not know how to video edit nor did I have any fancy equipment,” she explained. “I also didn’t even have the TikTok app on my phone at the time. My mind was yelling ‘you are 27 years old with a corporate job, you cannot dance on TikTok’ but my gut was like ‘make the TikTok!’”

She posted her first video in June 2020, and has never looked back. “If I had chickened out that day, my whole business would not exist.”

This business is now quite lucrative. One report states that she earns between $250,000 and $300,000. She once earned $100,000 in less than 24 hours.

Her advice to anyone debating whether to become an influencer is to take what she calls “messy action” (e.g., taking the step without waiting). “It is important to realize that it will always be easiest to stay in your comfort zone and to talk yourself out of acting now. You subconscious mind will attempt to convince you to stay put. It takes a conscious and consistent effort to compete with those subconscious patterns and push out of the stagnancy.”

“The more you take messy action, the easier it is to propel yourself forward,” she added. “Taking messy action has been the catalyst for scaling my business within a few months.”

One “messy” step she took was to also start an Instagram. Many thousands have viewed her TikTok videos and she has a few sponsors. In just 10 days, her Instagram followers grew to 200,000. Inherent risk is a constant part of entrepreneurship in all business sectors. I’ve written before about how those risks are sometimes not worth it, but for Norton, explaining Excel hacks made perfect sense. While explaining complex Excel operations, she dances and has fun. 

The secret to viral content was what she said. You can make everyone want to watch your videos. The secret to her success is in the recipe. Norton encourages people to try something new and creative, or to risk taking a chance with an entirely new idea. She says next to provide something useful and practical (what she refers to as “The Next Step”). Utility). Her advice is that content must include an educative element.

She also mentioned polarity. It is an interesting one because this seems to have been the spark that ignited her success. “The polarity that was created when I combined a program traditionally viewed as boring with energetic dancing to trending songs is what initially got my content off the ground. By combining two things that are polar opposites, it created conversation,” she says.

Norton who has self-taught the hacks, videos and dancing, says not believing in herself is the greatest obstacle to being creative. She says everyone has creative ideas, but some of us just don’t know it yet.

“I learned it takes me at least an hour of brainstorming to get into a creative flow state,” she says, looking back on making her first videos. “Throughout my corporate career, I never allotted myself such time. This prevented me from reaching my creative full potential. I did not realize how creative I was because I never gave myself the space to be.”

The next step after she came up with the idea was to build a fan base.

“I focused all my energy on creating free content that helped people,” she says. “In turn, that grew a massive audience and built trust with my community. My community was already enjoying the course and learning along with me. So, by the time that I created a course my community was eager to get started! I set out to create impact before wealth, and the business naturally followed.”

In the end, it’s not an easy road. Being an influencer has a bad name, and it’s hard to build a followig initially. This often involves being well-known and then talking about products. What Miss Excel proves is that you don’t need to be famous before you start. The main thing is to find something innovative, useful, and fascinating. The sky’s the limit once you have done that.