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Amanda Northcutt, founder and the CEO of Level Up Creators

"The majority of my professional life has been made up of a bunch of happy accidents," starts Amanda Northcutt the founder and CEO of Level Up Creators. "My path has been super nonlinear. But that tends to be the path of most people. We tend to end up where we're supposed to be as long as we're being intentional and strategic."

They always joked that she didn't speak until her brother was in college. "My brother is a highly well-known lawyer, but his practice took over all the 'airspace' in the home. He started college at the age of 14 and was about to enter high school. I began to come into my own once the airspace was available in the house."

Amanda's first position was in an online shoe shop. "Everyone thought that I would not be successful because I was very shy. My confidence was completely restored when I came out of my shell, and I began selling shoes with aplomb with record sales across the nation. I loved it! I fell in love with business at the age of sixteen, and knew from when I was 16 that that's where I'd like to take."

Then Amanda went to university and linked up with a fellow student who was launching a website and needed someone to sell advertisements on the site. "This was in 2005 when the selling of online ads was similar to advertising on banners. It was similar to selling air! I heard the word "no' a lot and got over any fear of selling to people pretty quickly," she recalls.

In the process of being tossed into the deep of the

"I learned my craft through being thrust into the deep end," she continues. "I took that small sale into a much bigger sales gig at a young company known as TexAgs.com and ended up working there for more than a decade. This is where I learned the most about business." In this period she worked out the concept of memberships, recurring revenue, adding value, maximising LTV, and the sale of sponsorships.

"It's no longer a cute little website anymore. It's more like the biggest college fan site on the planet. I was the 2nd employee there and enjoyed it to the fullest," she laughs. "I learned how to manage and lead employees. It was at this point that I was enthralled by the concept of membership as well as regular revenue. This was back in 2005. The next year, I'll be in the space for more than two decades. Crazy how time flies!"

The business attracted thousands of users who pay $13 monthly to get information on Texas A&M University sports teams. "We were also able to crack the mystery of moving from banner ads to sponsorships (brand deals in today's terms). Companies were trying to reach our audience and we gave the access of very specific points that could be tracked, and thus helped those businesses," she says.

Amanda took that model and created Northcutt Media, using the sponsoring model they had developed at TexAgs, and took it to similar websites around the United States. "That was my first business when I was 22 years old. It was a great opportunity to travel often and other similar things."

A few years afterwards, her health started to decline. "I required some time off and be aware of my the way I live my life," - Amanda needed to change the order of priorities in her life including her husband, health and newborn son.

Amanda is now sharing the details of her medical journey publically and is planning to share more. She has found that many women who have work that is stressful, intense and demanding tend to be afflicted with an autoimmune condition or similar. "The more I can be vulnerable, the more I can lead the charge with this kind of vulnerability," she says. "Every whenever I talk about my circumstances, someone new comes forward and messages me and says 'Hey, can we talk?' and that's amazing."

Amanda altered the way things were done. "I had to be a mother. I was required to be a person who was in charge of my health, and I needed to be a consultant." In an effort to bring back some order to her job, she and her husband sold the business of their former partner Member Up and took it over to operate as a consultant.

"I enjoyed my time helping membership businesses which covered all sorts of subjects - stuff that you would never think of except if you're living in this universe and you know that there's an area for every sort of topic, and there are users on the web who would like what you offer." Following a lengthy period in the industry of membership her focus was shifting to the fractional executive work at various SaaS companies around the world.

As part of this re-balanced way of life, Amanda reduced her work to between 20 and 30 hours per week but focused on being "extraordinarily effective" at all the companies she worked with. She quit Silicon Valley at the end of 2022, to found Level Up Creators: "I decided to apply everything I'd learned in the B2B, primarily SaaS world, and bring that to creators - especially women.

"I'm keen to help women create generational wealth cycles and leveraging their experience by providing tremendous amounts of value to their communities and followers and get paid in cash."

The products offered by Level Up Creators

What is it that Level Up Creators accomplish? "We're seeking to increase the impact of our work and increase income especially for female creators. We are confident that we have the top team of operators in the world," she replies.

They help people identify their current location, the direction they're headed, and what's keeping them from getting there. They then plan the best way to break down those barriers to get you where you want to go. "Our best time to start is when you've gathered followers around one specific topic - that's very crucial - and you have more than 50,000 followers on social media and or over 2,000 email subscribers."

"When you contact us, I'm likely to ask you about a hundred questions," says Amanda. "I'm always seeking to know before being understood." She gathers both qualitative and quantitative data of a creator to ensure they are able to help them determine their choices.

"We would like to help the subject matter experts develop an entire product line. We want some lead magnets, then some kind of course, possibly a three-part masterclass or something similar to that Then we could move into a recurring revenue product. Perhaps it's $49 or $179 or even an annual membership of $249."

In the future, Level Up Creators would move customers to group coaching with more recurring revenue levels. This happens an indication that "you have proven you're in a position to deliver consistent, repeated quality that is on the mark for your audience of followers and customers," she says.

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

It's how she helps people to develop their creative mindset. "Oftentimes, subject matter expert creators don't want to engage in brand deals or to make products and ask their audience to purchase them. I'm on a mission to help creators understand the extraordinary position to provide value over and over what's available with no cost on social media.

"We all desire to be respected, power, love, relationships - fundamental desires," she continues. "We believe that we are connected to the creators that we admire. We are familiar with their lives, and want to emulate them." Amanda believes that the creators who create opportunities for us to be more like them, there's an opportunity for creators to sell items that are valuable and help those followers achieve those desires, creating "a beneficial cycle".

"We are a lot more appreciation for creators than have for these massive global legacy brands, because we're talking with a person and not just an image. Our mission number one is to say, 'It's fine to sell stuff - because people want to buy what they can get. We don't engage in icky marketing or sales, as well as we won't collaborate with people who aren't providing real legitimate benefits to their community. It's like table stakes."

The future and the death of legacy brands

"I'm excited to be in the position that we're assisting creators once yet again and increasing our efforts to help women," Amanda muses. We are a professional services firm, but we are striving to mirror our clients' companies, and being a creator-first firm for ourselves." She sums by saying that they're helping creators learn the ways to be CEOs in their thinking and effectively run their companies.

"We have been working on some awesome product!" she laughs. In fact, the team will launch an initiative called the Level Up Creators School on March 1st 2024. This is a subscription-based educational institution for creatives. "We'll offer our knowledge and experience to provide the right education, community, resources and support that will help creators reach their next big income milestone - the first of which for many creators will be $50,000 million in revenue. We'll also utilize our Fastest Path To 50 framework to help people reach that goal. This is awesome!"

A final note on the industry in general, Amanda concludes: "The industry is moving towards this direct-to-consumer model where creators have more influence with regards to consumer spending and content curation. It's incredible the degree of affection that fans are feeling for the creators they admire."

Amanda clarifies that millennials as well as Gen Xers don't go to large legacy brands for their information anymore "These big cable networks are a dinosaur! You can choose to get on this train or they are gonna die."

"I am totally calling my shot": that's the direction of the future. I've built a company to help bring that vision into reality and help people be immensely prosperous. I'd prefer that money be distributed to creators, rather than huge companies. This is like saying, "All right, let somebody else get a chance! This is a great time to become a creator of content!" she smiles.

Additional information

Amanda Northcutt is a consultant, coach and six-time exec who has developed and scaled online businesses to D2C, B2C, and B2Bs.

She created Level Up Creators to help influential creator educators build viable businesses. Level Up Creators offers strategies and solutions to individuals who have at least one existing product in fields such as wellness, personal finance sports, travel, or wellness and is ready to expand the value and earnings of these products. For more information, visit welevelupcreators.com.