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VZJ6RfBTGUHwxvJxkGHY Amanda Northcutt, founder and CEO of Level Up Creators

"The vast majority of my work was comprised of a bunch of happy incidents," starts Amanda Northcutt who is the CEO and founder of Level Up Creators. "My path has been super irregular and non-linear. It's the path of most people. We tend to end up where we're supposed to be in the event that we're conscious and strategic."

Her parents always joke that she never spoke before my brother started university. "My brother's a very successful lawyer, but his practice took over most of the airspace within the house. He started college at the age of 14 and heading into high school. I began to come into my own once the airspace was available inside the house."

Amanda's first position was in the shoe store. "Everyone was convinced that I'd be a failure due to my shyness. My confidence was completely restored when I came out of my shell and started selling shoes like crazy, breaking national sales records. I loved it! I fell in love with business at the age of 16, and I was sure at this point that's what I'd like to take."

Then Amanda was a student at university, and teamed up with a friend who was launching a website and needed someone to sell advertisements on it. "This was 2005, when selling online advertisements was similar to banner advertisements. It was like selling air! I heard the word 'no' a lot and got over any fear of selling to others fast," she recalls.

Then being thrown to the bottom of the

"I got my chops by being thrown into the middle of the ocean," she continues. "I made that sale into a much bigger sales position at a small company called TexAgs.com and ended up working there for almost a decade. This is where I learned the most about how to run a business." At this point she worked out the concept of memberships that recurring revenue can bring, increasing value, maximising LTV as well as selling sponsorships.

"It's not a cool small website anymore. It's the biggest collegiate fan site on the planet. I was the 2nd employee there and had an absolute blast," she says with a smile. "I learnt how to lead and manage individuals. It was at this point that I was enthralled by the concept of membership as well as recurring revenue. This was back in 2005. The next year, I'll be here for more than two decades. Crazy how time flies!"

The business attracted thousands of users who pay $13 monthly for information about Texas A&M University sports teams. "We also cracked the secret to changing banner advertisements to sponsorships (brand contracts in modern terms). The companies were trying to get their message out to our target audience, and we were allowing the access of very specific points that were trackable and helped those companies," she says.

Amanda adopted the model and began Northcutt Media, using the sponsorship model that they refined at TexAgs Then, they expanded it to similar websites around the country. "That is my very first business aged 22. We got to travel often and other things like that."

A few years after, her health began to decline. "I needed to take the time off but as well, I needed to adjust my lifestyle architecture," - Amanda needed to adjust the balance of her daily life priorities which included her health, husband and newborn son.

Amanda is now sharing the details of her medical journey publicly and plans to do more. She's found that many women who have work that is stressful, intense and demanding tend to suffer from autoimmune diseases or similar. "The more vulnerable I become vulnerable, the more I'm able to take the lead with this kind of vulnerability," she says. "Every whenever I talk about my situation, someone who isn't familiar with me comes in and texts me and says 'Hey, do we want to talk?' and that's amazing."

Amanda has changed the rules. "I wanted to become mother to my children. I was required to be a manager of my health and I wanted to become a consultant." To restore some normality to her profession, she along with her husband sold their business partner from Member Up and took it on, and made it run as a consultancy.

"I have had an amazing experience helping members run businesses that covered all kinds of topics. It was stuff one would never even consider unless you're in this world and realize that there's a niche for each sort of topic as well as users on the web that want the same things you do." Following a lengthy stint in the membership niche, she pivoted to an executive role that was a fraction of SaaS businesses around the globe.

With this more balanced lifestyle, Amanda reduced her work to between 20 and 30 hours per week, but she was determined to be "extraordinarily impactful" at all the companies she worked with. Amanda left Silicon Valley at the end of 2022to create Level Up Creators: "I was looking to bring everything I'd learned in the B2B, primarily SaaS world, and bring that to creators - especially women.

"I'm really interested in helping women to create wealth cycles that last generations and apply their expertise by providing tremendous amounts of value to their communities of members and receiving compensation in cash."

The services offered by Level Up Creators

What is it that Level Up Creators accomplish? "We're looking to optimize impact and income specifically for female creators. It's my belief that I've gathered the best team of operator on planet earth," she replies.

They help people identify the place they're at, where they're heading and what's stopping the way to get there. And then they plan out how to knock down these barriers and get you the direction you'd like to take. "Our ideal situation is when you've got followers gathered around a particular topic that's crucial - and you have over 50,000 social media users and/or over 2,000 email subscribers."

"When you come to us, I'm likely to ask you about a hundred questions at first," says Amanda. "I'm always looking to understand before being understood." Amanda collects a quantitative and qualitative data set from a creator so they can help them identify the options available to them.

"We want to help subject matter experts create a product suite. We'd like to have to create lead magnets. Then, an educational course, maybe the three-part masterclass, or similar, and then we would change to a recurring income product. It could be a $49, $79, or an annual membership of $249."

Then Level Up Creators would move customers to group coaching with more recurring revenue levels. It's the time when "you can prove that you're able to provide consistent, repeated quality that is on the mark for your audience of followers and customers," she adds.

The Level Up Creators team - image (c) welevelupcreators.com

She helps others to develop their creative mindset. "Oftentimes experts in their field of expertise creators are hesitant to do deal with brands or even to create products that ask for their fans to buy their products. I'm on a mission to assist creators in understanding that they're in such an amazing position to continue to offer value above and over what's available for free on social media.

"We all seek the power of respect, honor, authority and love, as well as relationships. fundamental desires," she continues. "We believe that we are connected to creators we follow. We are familiar with their lives, and want to emulate them." Amanda believes that when creators provide an avenue for us to be more like them, there's an possibility for them to market things that add value and assist followers in achieving their goals, resulting in "a virtuous cycle of value".

"We are a lot more appreciation for creators than do the massive legacy global brands because we're speaking to an individual and not just a logo. The first mission we have is to tell people that it's OK to market your products - since people want to buy what they can get. We do not engage in poor sales or marketing and we do not work with people who aren't giving real, legitimate benefits to their community. That's tables stakes."

The future and the death of brands that have been around for a long time

"I'm happy to be in a place in which we're helping creatives again, and really expanding our help to women,"" Amanda muses. We're a professional service firm, but we're striving to mirror our clients' business, by being a Creator-first company our own." She sums up that they are here to educate creators on the ways to be CEOs in their thinking and run their business effectively.

"We are developing some amazing product!" she laughs. The team is launching the Level Up Creators School on the 1st of March 2024. This is a membership based educational institution for creatives. "We'll share our experience and experience to provide an environment of educational, community, and resources as well as high-touch assistance to aid creators to reach their next major income goal the very first one is for a lot of creators, $50,000 in RR. We'll use the Fastest Path To 50 framework for helping people get there. It's exciting!"

A final note on the entire industry, Amanda concludes: "The trend is towards a direct-to-consumer system where creators are having more power in consumer spending and content curating. It's incredible the degree of loyalty that people are feeling for the creators they admire."

Amanda says that millennials and Gen Xers aren't relying on big legacy brands to get their information anymore "These major cable networks are dinosaurs! They can either get on the train or are gonna die."

"I completely believe in my shot: that is the direction of the future. I've created a business to propel that future into reality, and to help others become wildly profitable. I'd like money to go straight to creators as opposed to gigantic companies. The idea is, "All right, let somebody else get a chance! This is a great time to become a creator of content!" she smiles.

More information

Amanda Northcutt is a consultant, coach and six-time exec who has created and grown online companies for D2C B2C, D2C, as well as B2Bs.

She founded Level Up Creators to help prominent creators and educators create profitable businesses that are sustainable. Level Up Creators offers strategies and tools to those who have at least one existing product in fields like wellness, personal finance sports, travel, or wellness and is ready to expand their impact and income. For more information, visit welevelupcreators.com.