Impress your dinner guests with Excel 🐟

Hey! Happy New Year! 🎉 I’m so excited to see what this year brings for all of us. What are you hoping for in 2026? 

A quick fun fact to start your year on a high note: You can stretch the 11 days of PTO on the 2026 working calendar to 43 vacation days. Seriously! I’ll share the article on how to do this below. 💚

The Dinner Party Excel Trick 🐟 

Imagine you’re organizing a dinner party and have offered your guests three platter options: salmon, chicken, and steak. How do you tally their preferences so everyone gets their top choice?

Sure, you could count them yourself. But whether you're tallying meal preferences, votes for the best meeting time, or PTO requests, there’s a better way. Let me show you! 

Just rinse and repeat with the other two dishes!

The Easiest Decision You’ll Make in 2026 🎁

Ever tell yourself, “This is the year I [get the promotion/advance my career/get better at Excel]” and then…nothing changed? 😅

Congratulations! You’re normal. But normal is how you get stuck. So, we’re making it easy to switch it up. Right now, we’re running a 50% off New Year sale on all courses and bundles. Over 30,000 members have followed through and leveled-up in their careers! Now, it’s your turn. 

Here’s what’s new (and on sale) ➡️ 

• My AI Course is at its lowest price ever. It goes up $100 soon! 

• I just launched two new AI courses. Get all three in the AI Bundle: AI Fundamentals, Advanced AI, Microsoft 365 Copilot! 

• The Smart Suite Bundle is going up $300 to include our two new AI courses. 

In addition to 50% off, you’ll get three bonus items with any purchase! 

1. The Career Advancement Toolkit

2. The Excel Glow-Up Kit

3. The AI Productivity Playbooks 

Use code NEWME26 for 50% off any course or bundle. And heads up, the sale ends soon. 2026 can be your year, if you decide it is. 💪

The Most Important Investment You Can Make In 2026 💫

I’ve spent a lot of this holiday break reflecting on 2025. What a year! From growing the Miss Excel team to receiving my 5th Microsoft MVP Award, 2025 was one of the best yet. 💚

But building Miss Excel hasn’t always been rainbows and butterflies. In November of last year, I burnt out, and my body was holding so much tension that I had migraines 24/7. 

One morning, rushing before a meeting, I found myself scarfing down a very unbalanced breakfast of cold leftover steak from Capital Grille and two Excedrin. 

I stared at that plate and thought, “This is not my highest timeline.” 

I turned to my partner, Mike, and told him I needed a break. A real one. But the idea of going incognito terrified me. How would the business cope? Would it lose all momentum? 

After many late-night conversations with friends and family, I realized: Rest isn’t “pausing” your career. It’s part of your career. It’s virtually impossible to build something when you’re running on fumes and leftovers. 

Taking that time off gave me something I didn't know I needed: ✨ my energy back. ✨ I could think clearly again, and everything that came after—the launches, growth, and wins—happened because I recharged. 

As we head into 2026, remember that every big goal you have, every big swing you want to take, starts with having the energy to execute it. Don’t be afraid to rest, recharge, and invest in your self-care.

Here’s to a 2026 where taking care of you is priority number one. 🫶

• We’re leaving copying and pasting behind in 2025. Here’s why. 

• How to hide sensitive Excel data from snoops in 15 seconds. 🕵️

• Turn Excel into your personal image-fetching assistant. 🫡

• “This is gold,” says a comment on my video on automatic borders! 🥇

• Here’s that tip I mentioned re: how to maximize your vacation days in 2026. 🌴

Thanks for reading! If you’re unsure what 2026 resolutions to set, start here: What did you love doing as a kid? 💭 Then bring that into your adult life! 

That’s how Miss Excel started. When I was little, I loved to sing and dance (I wanted to be a rockstar 😂). I took my love for performing and infused it into my videos on Excel. The rest is history! 

Stay Exceling,

Kat