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VZJ6RfBTGUHwxvJxkGHY Amanda Northcutt, founder and CEO of Level Up Creators

"The most of my professional life is comprised of many happy accidental events," starts Amanda Northcutt, founder and CEO of Level Up Creators. "My journey has been incredibly irregular and non-linear. It's the case for most people. The way we end up is exactly where we're supposed to be in the event that we're intentional and strategic."

Her parents always joke that she never spoke before my brother started the college. "My brother's an extremely accomplished lawyer, however he took up most of the airspace within the house. He started college when I was fourteen and heading into high school. I was beginning to become my own once the airspace was readily available within the home."

Amanda's first gig was a shoe boutique. "Everyone thought that I would not be successful due to my shyness. I burst out from my shell and began selling shoes with aplomb, breaking national sales records. It was amazing! I was enthralled by business around the age of 16, and I was sure at that time that's the path I'd like to take."

Then Amanda went to university and connected with a colleague who had a site up and running and was looking for someone to sell advertisements on it. "This was 2005, when selling online advertising was like banner advertisements. It was similar to selling air! I heard the word "no often and got past any apprehension of selling to people pretty quick," she recalls.

Being thrown into the deep of the

"I gained my skills through being thrust into deep water," she continues. "I parlayed that little sales gig into a bigger sales position at a small company named TexAgs.com and eventually worked there for almost a decade. That's where I really learned business." During this time, she figured out the membership model that recurring revenue can bring, increasing value, increasing LTV, and selling sponsorships.

"It's no longer a cute small website anymore. It's the biggest collegiate fan site in the world. I was the second employee there, and I had an absolute blast," she says with a smile. "I learned how to manage and lead individuals. This is where I fell in love with the concept of membership as well as regular revenue. This was back in 2005. The next year, I'll be in the space for two decades. It's amazing how fast time passes!"

The company attracted thousands of people paying $13 a month to get information on Texas A&M University sports teams. "We have also broken the code on changing banner advertisements to sponsorships (brand deals in today's terms). Companies were trying to reach our target audience, and we gave the access of very specific points that could be tracked, and thus made a difference for these companies," she says.

Amanda took that model and created Northcutt Media, using the sponsoring model they had developed at TexAgs then applied it to similar websites around the country. "That is my very first job when I was 22 years old. We traveled frequently and do such things."

But a few years afterwards, her health started to decline. "I had to get some time off and as well, I needed to adjust my the way I live my life," - Amanda needed to adjust the balance of her priorities including her health, husband and the baby boy.

Amanda has started to share the details of her medical journey publically and is planning to share more. She's found that a lot of women working in intense, stressful jobs tend to be afflicted with an autoimmune condition or similar. "The more I can be at risk, the more likely I am able to lead with this kind of vulnerability," she says. "Every time I say something concerning my experience, somebody who isn't familiar with me comes in and texts me asking 'Hey, could we have a chat?', and it's so amazing."

Amanda has changed the rules. "I needed to be a mom. I was required to be a manager of my health and I needed to be a consultant." In an effort to get back to a normal profession, she along with her husband sold their business partner from Member Up and took it on, and made it run as a consulting company.

"I have had an amazing experience helping members run businesses that covered all kinds of subjects - stuff that you would never think of except if you're living in this universe and know there's an area for every sort of topic as well as online users who want what you have." After a prolonged time in the niche of membership then she switched to fractional executive work at various SaaS organizations around the world.

With this more balanced life, Amanda reduced her work by 20-30 hours a week. She aimed to be "extraordinarily impactful" in all the companies she worked for. She left Silicon Valley at the end of 2022, to found Level Up Creators: "I wanted to take everything that I had learned in this B2B, primarily SaaS world, and bring it to creatives, and specifically women.

"I'm really interested in helping women create generational wealth cycles and apply their expertise by providing huge amounts of worth to their communities of followers and get paid in kind."

The services offered by Level Up Creators

What exactly does Level Up Creators do? "We're trying to maximize impact and income for female creators in particular. It's my belief that I've gathered the most experienced team of entrepreneurs around the globe," she replies.

They help people identify their current location, the direction they're headed and what's preventing them from getting there. They then plan how to knock down these barriers and get you there you're looking for. "Our ideal situation is when you've gathered followers around one specific topic - that's very crucial - and you have 50,000 social media followers as well as over 2,000 email subscribers."

"When you contact us, I'll probably ask you about a hundred questions at first," says Amanda. "I'm always trying to figure out before being understood." She gathers a quantitative and qualitative data collection from the creator, so they can help them identify their options.

"We are looking to assist specialists in the field create a product suite. We'd like to create lead magnets. Then, some kind of course, possibly a three-part masterclass or something similar to that And then, we'd shift to a recurring revenue product. Perhaps it's $49 or $79, or the $249 monthly membership."

In the future, Level Up Creators would move clients to group coaching, which comes with greater levels of recurring income. This is when "you have proven you're capable of providing regular, consistent value that's really on point to your followers and customers," she adds.

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

This is how she assists people professionalize their creator mindset. "Oftentimes experts in their field of expertise creators don't want to engage in branding deals or create products and ask their audience to buy their products. I'm on a mission to educate creators about the fact that they're in such an extraordinary position providing value over what's available with no cost on social media.

"We all seek to be respected, power, love, relationships - foundational desires," she continues. "We feel that we know the people we follow. We know so much about their lives and we want to be more like their style." Amanda believes that if creators can provide an avenue for us to grow like them, there's an chance for creators to offer items that are valuable and help those followers achieve those desires, creating "a beneficial cycle".

"We have so much more affinity for creators than we have for these massive global legacy brands because we're speaking with a person rather than a logo. Our mission number one is to say, 'It's fine to market your products - since consumers want to purchase what you have.' We don't do unsavory sales or marketing, and we don't work with people who aren't giving real, legitimate value to their communities. That's tables stakes."

The future as well as the end of legacy brands

"I'm thrilled to be in the position in which we're helping creatives in a new way, and also increasing our efforts to help women,"" Amanda muses. The company is a professional firm, but we're striving to mirror our clients' business, by being a Creator-first business for ourselves." Amanda sums it by saying that they're helping creators learn the ways to be CEOs in their thinking and effectively run their companies.

"We are developing some amazing items!" she laughs. Actually, the group is launching their Level Up Creators School on the 1st March in 2024. It is a member-based business school specifically designed for creators. "We'll offer our knowledge and experience to provide the right training, community, tools as well as high-touch assistance to assist creators in reaching their next major income goal which for many creators will be $50,000 million in revenue. We'll also be using the Fastest Path To 50 framework to get people there. This is awesome!"

As a last thought on the business in general, Amanda concludes: "The trend is towards a direct-to-consumer approach where the creators hold more control when it comes to spending on content and curation. It's crazy the level of loyalty that people have for creators they love."

Amanda says that millennials and Gen Xers do not rely on big legacy brands to get their updates anymore "These major cable networks are nothing but dinosaurs! They can either get on this train or they are gonna die."

"I am totally calling my shots: that's the direction of the future. I've created a business to make that dream a reality, and to help others become extremely successful. I'd prefer that money go straight to creators rather than huge companies. The idea is, "All right, let someone else take over!' The time is right to be a content creator!" she smiles.

More information

Amanda Northcutt is a consultant coach, coach, and six-time executive who has created and grown online businesses to D2C, B2C, and B2Bs.

She established Level Up Creators to help influential creator educators build viable businesses. Level Up Creators offers strategies and tools to those with at minimum one current product or service in areas such as personal finance, wellness, travel or sports, and are ready to scale the value and earnings of these products. For more information, visit welevelupcreators.com.