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VZJ6RfBTGUHwxvJxkGHY Amanda Northcutt, founder and chief executive officer of Level Up Creators. Level Up Creators

"The vast majority of my professional life has been made up of lots of fun accidental events," starts Amanda Northcutt, founder and CEO of Level Up Creators. "My path has been super fluid. But that tends to be common for the majority of people. It's not uncommon for us to land in the place we're supposed when we're intentional and strategic."

The family jokes that she was never a talker until my brother went to university. "My brother's a very well-known lawyer, but it was him who occupied all the 'airspace' in the house. He attended college when I was fourteen before entering high school. I began to come into my own when that space was available inside the house."

Amanda's first job was at an online shoe shop. "Everyone was convinced that I'd be a failure because I was very shy. My confidence was completely restored when I came out of my shell, and I began selling shoes like crazy, breaking national sales records. I loved it! I fell in love with business at the age of sixteen, and knew from that time that's the path I wanted to pursue."

After that, Amanda was a student at university, and linked up with a colleague who had a site up and running and was looking for 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 as if you were selling air! I heard the word 'no' a lot and got over any fear of selling my products to customers quickly," she recalls.

Then being thrown to the bottom at the bottom

"I gained my skills through being thrust into the middle of the ocean," she continues. "I parlayed that little sale into a much bigger sales gig at a young company known as TexAgs.com and was there for more than a decade. It was there that I truly learned business." In this period she worked out the concept of memberships that recurring revenue can bring, increasing value, maximizing LTV and the sale of sponsorships.

"It's not a cool little website anymore. It's the biggest collegiate fan site on the planet. I was the 2nd employee there and had an absolute blast," she smiles. "I learnt how to lead and manage people. It was at this point that I was enthralled by the membership model and regular revenue. That was in 2005. The next year, I'll be here for more than two decades. Crazy how time flies!"

The company attracted thousands of people paying $13 a month to get information on Texas A&M University sports teams. "We were also able to crack the code on switching from banner ads to sponsorships (brand contracts in modern terms). The companies were trying to get their message out to our target audience, and we were allowing them very unique access points which could be tracked and moved the needle for those companies," she says.

Amanda adopted the model and created Northcutt Media, using the sponsorship model that they refined at TexAgs Then, they expanded the model to other websites across the country. "That was the first time I had a job aged 22. We got to travel a lot and such things."

However, a couple of years afterwards, her health started to decline. "I had to get some time off, but be aware of my the way I live my life," - Amanda needed to adjust the balance of her daily life priorities including her husband, health and the baby boy.

Amanda has begun to talk about her health journey more publically and is planning to share more. Amanda has discovered that women working in high stress jobs are more likely to be afflicted with an autoimmune condition or similar. "The more I am vulnerable, the more I'm able to take the lead in that way," she says. "Every time I say something concerning my experience, somebody is new and comes up to me, messages me and says 'Hey, could we have a chat?', and it's so amazing."

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

"I had a wonderful experience helping members run 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 a niche to suit every kind of passion, and there are online users that want the same things you do." After a long stint in the membership niche then she switched to fractional executive work at various SaaS companies around the world.

In this new more balanced life, Amanda reduced her work to between 20 and 30 hours per week, but she was determined to be "extraordinarily impactful" for every organization she worked with. She left Silicon Valley at the end of 2022, to found Level Up Creators: "I wanted to take everything that I learned from this B2B and primarily SaaS industry, and apply that to creators - particularly women.

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

Level Up Creators offers services. Level Up Creators

What is it that Level Up Creators accomplish? "We're looking to optimize earnings and impact specifically for female creators. It's my belief that I've gathered the most experienced team of entrepreneurs in the world," she replies.

They help people identify their current location, the direction they're going and what's preventing the way to get there. Then they orchestrate the best way to break down those barriers to get you where you want to go. "Our sweet spot is if you've gathered followers around one particular topic that's important - and you've got 50,000 social media followers and or over 2,000 email subscribers."

"When you contact us, I'm likely to ask you about a hundred questions at first," says Amanda. "I'm always seeking to know before I'm able to comprehend." Amanda collects the quantitative and qualitative information of a creator to ensure they can assist them in determining the options available to them.

"We are looking to assist specialists in the field create a product suite. We'd like to create lead magnets. Then, an educational course, maybe the three-part masterclass, or something like that And then, we'd shift to a recurring revenue product. It could be a $49, the $79 price, or perhaps the $249 monthly membership."

Then Level Up Creators would move customers into group coaching and more recurring revenue levels. This happens an indication that "you have proven you're capable of providing regular, consistent worth that's right for your audience of clients and followers" she adds.

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

It's how she helps people professionalize their creator mindset. "Oftentimes, subject matter expert creators hesitate to sign brand deals or to make items and then ask the audience to purchase the products. It's my goal to educate creators about the fact that they're in such an extraordinary position to offer value above and above what can be provided with no cost on social media.

"We all desire the power of respect, honor, authority, love, relationships - the basic desires of our society," she continues. "We believe that we are connected to creators we follow. We know so much about their lives that we would like to be more like their style." Amanda believes that the creators who create an avenue for us to grow like them, there's an chance for creators to offer products that can add value to the lives of their followers and assist followers in achieving their goals, resulting in "a beneficial cycle".

"We have a greater respect for the creators we work with than we do these gigantic global legacy brands because we're talking with a person, not an image. Our primary goal is to say, 'It's fine to sell stuff - because people want to buy what you've got.' We don't do icky marketing or sales, as well as we won't collaborate with creators who are not giving real, legitimate benefit to their communities. It's like table stakes."

The future, and the demise of legacy brands

"I'm excited to be in a place where we're helping creators 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' businesses, being a creator-first business our own." Amanda sums it in the sense that they're here to educate creators on the ways to think like CEOs and properly run their businesses.

"We have been working on some awesome items!" she laughs. In fact, the team will launch their Level Up Creators School on the 1st of March 2024. This is a membership based business school for creators. "We'll offer our knowledge and know-how to offer the right training, community, tools as well as high-touch assistance to aid creators to reach their next major income goal - the first of which is for a lot of creators, $50,000 MRR and we'll be using the Fastest Path To 50 framework to help people reach that goal. This is awesome!"

In a final thought about 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 feel for the creators that they love."

Amanda says that millennials and Gen Xers aren't relying on large legacy brands for their updates anymore "These big cable networks are a dinosaur! You can choose to get onto this train, or they are gonna die."

"I have decided to take my shot: that is the future. I've built a company to make that dream a realisation and assist people to become immensely profitable. I'd prefer that money be given to creators directly instead of huge corporations. This is like saying, "All right, let someone else have a turn!' This is a great time to become a creator of content!" she smiles.

More details

Amanda Northcutt is a consultant, coach and six-time exec who has launched and scaled online businesses for D2C B2C, D2C, as well as B2Bs.

She founded Level Up Creators to help influential creator educators build profitable businesses that are sustainable. Level Up Creators offers strategies and tools to those who have at least one product that is already in use, such as fields such as wellness, personal finance, travel or sports, and are ready to scale the impact of their work and earn a profit. For more information, visit welevelupcreators.com.