The Armor of Positive Thinking

Why have so many entrepreneurs embraced spiritual, mystical, or straight-up “woo-woo" ideas? Because when you're doing something this hard, you need all the help you can get. And just because it's all in your head, that doesn't mean it's not real.

- PAUL KIX

The lie of entrepreneurship is that it will change your fortune. The truth of entrepreneurship is that it will change you-and in ways that far exceed your balance sheet.

This happened to me. It happened to Kat Norton. It's why she wants to talk about “energy transmissions."

We're on Zoom, discussing something that may seem decidedly low-energy, outright boring even: Microsoft Excel. But that's only to the uninitiated. Kat Norton is an Excel ninja. During demos, her proficiency with the application literally leaves managing directors speechless. Her love of Excel has made her, of all things, an influencer: dancing on TikTok and Instagram while highlighting Excel functions under the name Miss Excel. Millions love the videos; roughly 1.4 million people follow her across both platforms. It shocks Norton herself, a 29-year-old who once saw her geeky crush on the old-school application as a somewhat shameful secret. “Like, I would never go to a bar and say, "Oh, man. I love Excel."

A lot used to shame Norton. She lived in unholy terror of how she might screw up while walking down the streets of New York. She sat silently in meetings at the consulting firm that employed her. She refused to speak up "unless I was so sure I knew the answer,” she says. “Just uncomfortable in my own skin.”

Almost two years later, she's dancing alone to Top 40 and hip-hop tracks while performing Excel functions. In her videos, she wears an infectious smile on her inviting face, her blond hair whipping from side to side, having quit that consulting job to make up to $100,000 a day-yes, a day-from the Excel webinars she offers.

What explains all this?

Energy transmissions.