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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 many happy accidents," starts Amanda Northcutt the founder and CEO of Level Up Creators. "My path has been super fluid. However, that's common for the majority of people. It's not uncommon for us to land exactly where we're supposed to be as long as we're being conscious and strategic."

Her parents always joke that she never spoke until her brother was in college. "My brother's an extremely well-known lawyer, but it was him who occupied most of the airspace within the house. He attended college when I was 14 and was about to enter high school. I was beginning to become my own when that space was readily available within the home."

Amanda's first gig was a shoe boutique. "Everyone was convinced that I'd not be successful because I was shy. I burst out of my shell and started selling shoes in a blaze of glory, breaking national sales records. I loved it! I fell in love with business around the age of 16 so I knew at that time that's the path I wanted to pursue."

In the following years, Amanda went to university and teamed up with a colleague who was starting a website and needed someone to sell advertising on the site. "This was 2005, when selling online advertising was like advertising on banners. It was like selling air! I was hearing the word "no frequently and was able to overcome any fears of selling to people pretty fast," she recalls.

Then being thrown to the bottom end

"I got my chops by being thrown into deep water," she continues. "I parlayed that little sales gig into a bigger sales job at a new business called TexAgs.com and was there for almost a decade. This is where I learned the most about how to run a business." At this point, she figured out the concept of memberships and recurring revenue. She also figured out how to add value, maximizing LTV as well as the sale of sponsorships.

"It's not a cool tiny website any more. It's the biggest collegiate fan site in the world. It was my second time working there, and I had an absolute blast," she laughs. "I learnt 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. Next year, I will have been in this space for more than two decades. Amazing how quickly time passes!"

The business attracted thousands of users who pay $13 monthly for details about Texas A&M University sports teams. "We also cracked the secret to moving from banner ads to sponsorships (brand contracts in modern terms). Companies were trying to reach our readers and we gave them very unique access points that were trackable and made a difference for these firms," she says.

Amanda used the same model to began Northcutt Media, using the sponsorship model that they refined at TexAgs, and took it to similar websites around the nation. "That was the first time I had a venture in business, at age 22. We traveled often and other things like that."

A few years after, her health began to decline. "I had to get some time off and be aware of my living a healthy lifestyle," - Amanda needed to adjust the balance of her daily life priorities including her health, husband and baby son.

Amanda has started to share about her health journey more openly and hopes to continue doing more. She's found that many women working in intense, stressful jobs 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 concerning my experience, somebody is new and comes up to me, messages me, asking could we have a chat?', and it's so wonderful."

Amanda changed things up. "I had to be a mom. I was required to be a one who managed my health. I needed to be a consultant." 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 on, and made it run as a consultant.

"I have had an amazing experience helping members run businesses which covered all sorts of topics. It was stuff people would not even think about until you're in the world and realize that there's a niche to suit every type of interest as well as users on the web who would like what you offer." Following a lengthy stint in the membership niche, she pivoted to part-time executive roles at various SaaS organizations around the world.

In this new more balanced lifestyle, Amanda reduced her work by 20-30 hours a week but focused on being "extraordinarily impactful" for each of the organizations she worked with. She left Silicon Valley at the end of 2022to create Level Up Creators: "I wanted to take everything that I'd learned in the B2B market, specifically SaaS market, and transfer that to creators - particularly women.

"I'm really interested in helping women to create wealth cycles that last generations and apply their expertise through providing enormous worth to their communities of 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 impact and income for female creators in particular. We are confident that we have the best team of operator in the world," she replies.

They aid people to determine where they are, where they're headed and what's stopping their progress from happening. And then they plan out ways to remove these barriers and get you where you want to go. "Our best time to start is when you've got followers gathered around a particular topic that's significant - and have over 50,000 social media users and/or more than 2,000 email users."

"When you come to us, I'll likely ask you about a hundred questions at first," says Amanda. "I'm always seeking to know before I'm able to comprehend." Amanda gathers a quantitative and qualitative data collection from the creator, so they can assist them in determining the options available to them.

"We would like to help specialists in the field create a product suite. We'd like some lead magnets, then a course, perhaps the three-part masterclass, or something like that And then, we'd shift to a recurring revenue product. It could be a $49, $179 or even a $249 a month membership."

In the future, Level Up Creators would move clients to group coaching, which comes with higher tiers of recurring revenue. This happens the time when "you can prove that you're able to provide consistent, repeated quality that is on the mark for your audience of clients and followers" she adds.

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

This is how she assists people professionalize their creator mindset. "Oftentimes the subject matter experts creators are hesitant to do deal with brands or even to create items and then ask the audience to buy their products. I'm on a mission to help creators understand the extraordinary position to provide value over and above what can be provided by social media for free.

"We all desire the power of respect, honor, authority, love, relationships - fundamental desires," she continues. "We believe that we are connected to the people we follow. We know so much about their lives that we would like to be more like the way they live." Amanda believes that when creators provide an avenue for us to grow than them, it's a great opportunity for creators to sell products that can add value to the lives of their followers and assist followers in achieving their goals, resulting in "a beneficial cycle".

"We are a lot more affinity for creators than we have for these massive global legacy brands, because we're talking with a person and not just a logo. Our primary goal is saying, 'It's okay to sell stuff - because people want to buy what they can get.' We don't do unsavory sales or marketing, and we don't work with people who aren't providing real legitimate value to their communities. It's like the table stakes."

The future as well as the end of the brands from the past

"I'm thrilled to be in a place where we're helping creators again, and really expanding our help to women," Amanda muses. We are a professional services firm, but we're striving to mirror our clients' businesses, being a creator-first business for ourselves." She sums it up that they are working to teach creators the ways to be CEOs in their thinking and run their business effectively.

"We are developing some amazing product!" she laughs. Actually, the group will launch the Level Up Creators School on the 1st March in 2024. It is a member-based business school for creators. "We'll offer our knowledge and expertise to create the right education, community, resources, and high-touch support to help creators reach their next big income milestone the very first one for many creators will be $50,000 million in revenue. We'll also use our Fastest Path To 50 framework to help people reach that goal. This is awesome!"

As a last thought on the industry in general, Amanda concludes: "The world is moving toward this direct-to-consumer system where creators have more influence in consumer spending and content curating. It's amazing the amount of affinity that followers feel for the creators that they love."

Amanda explains that millennials and Gen Xers aren't relying on the big brands of the past for news anymore "These major cable networks are dinosaurs! They have the option of getting on this train or they will die."

"I completely believe in my shot": that's the way of the future. I've built a company to propel that future into reality, and to help others become extremely successful. I'd prefer that money be given to creators directly rather than huge companies. The idea is, "All right, let another get a chance! This is a great time to become a creator of content!" she smiles.

More details

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

She founded Level Up Creators to help powerful creator educators develop viable businesses. Level Up Creators offers strategies and systems to people with at least one current product or service in areas such as personal finance, wellness, travel or sports, and is ready to expand the impact of their work and earn a profit. For more information, visit welevelupcreators.com.