How Miss Excel Is Making $100,000/Day On TikTok

Shaan Puri

I wanted to bring this up. We had talked about this in the past, but this is a story about Miss Excel. Her name is Miss Excel, and I don't know if you've ever seen her. I don't think you're a big TikTok guy, but I am. I had seen this person going viral on TikTok. Basically, it's a woman who puts out Microsoft Excel tips and tricks—little hacks. For example, "Oh, you know how your things are always poorly formatted? Just push Command + G when you're hovering over the column, and look, it auto-formats everything perfectly!" Or, "Do you know what a VLOOKUP is? You do this, this, and this, and boom, you can find anything!" So she puts out these little clips on TikTok, but it's not just the content. It's the way she does it. It's what works on TikTok: cute girls dancing, humor—these are the things that work. She'll put a trending song on TikTok, dress up, and have the screen share behind her. She's kind of overlaid on top of it, showing something funny that's happening while explaining it quickly and in an entertaining way. Here's her story: she's a consultant—kind of a boring job. She was a consultant, and you know, there are a lot of consultants and bankers who, if you watch Miss Excel, won't touch a mouse. They just use a keyboard like a wizard. They can do everything just by hitting shortcuts and macros on their keyboard in Excel. There are actually a lot of people who can do this.

Sam Parr

My friend, who used to work at BCG, mentioned that they had a mouse—like a wired mouse—that was clearly cut. The cord was cut, and it was framed on the wall. They said, "That's what you're going to do here." The mouse... that's it.

Shaan Puri

what this needs to look like

Sam Parr

you don't use the mouse

Shaan Puri

exactly and I don't know how any of this works but I've definitely seen a bunch of friends who can do this they it's kind of amazing when they're doing it so she basically took that idea and started turning it into interesting clips so she starts off and she tells a story where she's like you know I wanted to like try making some content and you know tiktok I felt embarrassed because like isn't tiktok like for kids and like it's just like the silly thing to do I I shouldn't I shouldn't make a tiktok account I'm a consultant and then her gut was like you should do a tiktok and so she listens to her gut she makes a tiktok and pretty quickly I think like within the 1st week or so she goes viral with 1 or 2 clips and she gets over like a 100000 views and she's like holy shit this is awesome and so she does it again and she does it again and then she starts to she like buys a little ring light and gets a green screen so that it looks a little bit better and she does it again she gets a video that gets a 1000000 views and it's like wow this is amazing and so she starts branding herself amazing branding by the way miss excel like she is the one she is the excel woman and and so I thought that was great and so she she starts doing this and she she's getting popular but she's not making any money and she reaches or who who what happened morning brew reaches out they're gonna do a feature story on her and they're like oh we wanna feature you and at the same time a business coach reached out to her and was like hey I saw you have this like really great following I think your your content is super unique you know and she was like yeah it's great I'm gonna be featured on morning brew they're like awesome like what do you have to sell and she's like oh I don't sell anything it's all free content and they're like if you're gonna get featured you should have something to sell and she's like okay challenge accepted you're right I'm gonna make a course and so she decides to make a course she's never done it before and I think she had like something like 2 weeks or something to like pull this whole thing off and she rushes to do it now let's fast forward to today she is making courses and she is making 6 figures a month off this thing so she's making single digit millions a year she has a few days of the year where she's made 6 over $100,000 on a day in course sales that's kinda like her black friday or black friday special or whatever where she where she sold her course and so she's doing 1,000,000 of dollars a year and she's working towards 1,000,000 a $1,000,000 a month that's like her goal I wanna hit $1,000,000 a month as miss excel and she is like Microsoft loves her they're like pumping her up you know she's featured in business insider she's featured in like buzzfeed she's featured in a whole bunch of places there's this great story she's featured on this podcast right now and so she is doing amazing what I love about this is she quits her job as a consultant she now works 15 hours a week unless she's making a course like but just like a normal thing she's she's doing 50 hours a week she has one employee which is an overseas virtual assistant her cost structure is that overseas virtual assistant which I'm guessing is making something like 6 to $10 an hour so you know probably paying them like $500 a month ballpark + she pays $97 for thinkific which is the course platform and she pays a video editor to to edit the videos for the course so like all in all her expenses are probably like sub $1500 maybe sub $2,000 at the time and she's making 6 figures a month so she's profiting you know at least a $100,000 a month doing this thing and there was a whole bunch of like little nuggets in there that I liked but that's the the overall story quick quick reaction to that amazing

Sam Parr

I don't think it's gonna maybe it will last maybe

Shaan Puri

That was my initial instinct. I was like, "Awesome, awesome run!" But, you know, who knows if this is here two years from now? Then I changed my mind when I read a little bit more about her. Here's what I like: Okay, so we had talked about Excel way back, maybe a year ago, when we were discussing creating a course. We had done a deep dive into what the best courses are. It's always Excel. Microsoft Excel is always in the top. If you go to Teachable's top courses or Udemy's top courses, learning to master Excel is always in the top 10 earning courses. I think, you know, it's hard to be the one, but it's a topic people will pay for.

Sam Parr

Ankar from Teachable is a good Twitter follow. He tweets out some of the biggest earners. He won't explicitly say who they are, but he'll say, "One earner we just paid has crossed $20,000,000 in revenue or earnings." He'll also mention, "The top course is this Excel thing," so you can kind of triangulate.

Shaan Puri

It exactly... On Udemy, I think I was able to do this as well. I was able to search and sort for the top best-selling courses, and Excel was in the top as well. That's amazing! So, I think Excel has real demand. Then the question is, who's going to be the best brand in the Excel space? She's the horse I would pick. So why do I think that? First, her content is fundamentally better. She has the best top-of-funnel strategy. What is her top-of-funnel strategy? It's highly exciting, quick-hitting, snack-sized TikTok videos. TikTok itself is like the crack cocaine of content, right? Like, 10-second videos with music overlaid—that is crack cocaine for content. And she's using that for Excel when all the other Excel creators are like bloggers and stuff like that. The second stale, old thing is her brand and her personality. Miss Excel is a good-looking woman who understands how to do content. I know she understands the content. When I was researching her, I found that she is really into some of the things I'm into that are kind of off the beaten path. She said, "Most people, when they think of content strategy—especially for this B2B type of content—it's always strategic and intellectual, trying to figure it out." She goes, "I spend most of my time just getting into a certain state of mind." She said, "The way I run my structure for my business is through energetics." Most people don't even know what the heck that means! She goes, "I get my energy to a place where my presence is truly magnetic. I get a vision of what's going to go viral, then I run to my computer and I create that." And sure enough, it goes viral. She said, "Because most content people don't understand, content is just energy transmission."

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

I'm having a great time! I'm excited about this topic, and so I'm going to push that through the phone into you. Sure enough, you're going to learn something, but you're also going to smile while you're watching my stuff. You're also going to laugh while you're watching my thing, and nobody else is doing that. I read that and I go, "She gets it." She understands one of the most important things about business and life, which is being able to manage your own energy. But the second part is, she gets the content strategy in a way that I don't think anybody else is really going to get in this space.

Sam Parr

did you say the other thing is oh go ahead go ahead

Shaan Puri

She now has scale. At first, I was like, "Oh, okay," but she's just an individual creator on TikTok. Who knows? Maybe the TikTok algorithm changes. So here's what she's doing: she basically is like, "I'm gonna scale in two ways." First, she's expanding into the whole Microsoft suite. It's not just Excel; she's doing PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, and everything that, you know, a billion people on Earth have to use professionally. Microsoft is helping her, and every time they're releasing a new feature, she's getting a first look at it. She gets to come out right away with the content that highlights this new function or feature that you get to use. So that expansion gives it more legs than just Excel. The second thing is she now hired a performance marketing agency. She's like, "Yeah, get my brand to grow." The beautiful thing is, I don't sell my course; I just put one of my most viral things and put ad spend behind it. People love it! They love that content, and they comment on it. So Facebook's algorithm promotes it. I was like, "Oh, that's kind of an unstoppable flywheel." She's gonna keep creating this juicy, quick life hack type content, then she's promoting it. That's already inherently viral. Then she's putting paid ad spend behind it. She's growing her following on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and all these different places. She's like, "Oh yeah, reels came out," so then I just jumped on reels and became one of the most viral reels creators on Instagram. Now she's diversifying the audience, and she's got the courses behind it. She's going into more parts of the suite. I like that formula.

Sam Parr

I was wrong she's gonna did she she's gonna crush it

Shaan Puri

I think she's going to make a bold prediction: she's going to reach $100,000,000 in sales. That sounds outrageous.

Sam Parr

I would like to say $100,000,000. I think she could... I think you could do it. I think $100,000,000 a year or a lifetime.

Shaan Puri

a year

Sam Parr

Yeah, I actually agree with you. I think that's bold. I think likely she'll get to like $25,000,000 a year in revenue and could probably actually do that for many years.

Shaan Puri

Right, so something is crazy. I loved her thing. There were also these other little nuggets. So, she’s basically working 15 hours a week. Then she’s like, “Oh cool, I quit my job. I’m gonna be a digital nomad.” It’s something you kind of did last year. She said, “Every month, my boyfriend and I just move to a different state. We just want to experience it.” So, they’ll just move to a different state in America and hang out there for the month, and then they hop around. The other thing that I liked was that she does these webinars because she understands there’s a top of funnel. If you don’t know, the top of funnel is basically how you get new customers to even get in touch with you.

Sam Parr

your mortgage is is just going viral on tiktok

Shaan Puri

Going viral on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube is great. Then she has the middle of the funnel, which is where a lot of people fall out. That's okay; you've touched base with me once, but you're not ready to buy something just yet. How do I actually get you to participate in a deeper way, to invest in a deeper way? For her, she runs these webinars, and she calls them "high energy Excel parties." She invites people to these, and what happens is, of course, it's like someone from BCG [Boston Consulting Group], and then they go and they're like, "Oh, this is amazing!" Then they're like, "Hey, we'd like to buy 1,500 seats for your course for our company." Or, "Hey, I work for Target corporate training, and we have 25,000 employees that we think would benefit from this. How could you create something custom for us?" And it's going to be like, "Yeah, here's the same thing, but now I say the word 'Target' at the beginning, and I charge you $5,000,000 for it."