Beyond Six Figures: The Hidden Challenges of Successful Creators

Stream. We are Erin and Amanda of Level Up Creators and Level Up Creator School. I am our Director of Operations, and Amanda Northcutt is our CEO. Today we're going to be talking about all the ways that six-figure creators get stuck and a little bit more about our business audit, like behind the scenes. So we're so glad to spend a few minutes of our day with you. If you have any questions at any point in time, drop them in the chat, and we will get to them. If you have not met us, there are 2 ways that we help thought leaders build rock-solid recurring revenue businesses. First, that is Level Up Creators. This is our done-for-you white glove consulting firm. And the second is Level Up Creator School. And that is where we help a global group of thought leaders build businesses through a done-with-you model. Creator School includes access to our consulting team and our methodology. In a way that used to be exclusively reserved for our consulting clients. Okay, so we are going to jump right in. Amanda, in the last newsletter, you mentioned that 6-figure creators get stuck too. Can you share like maybe an example without obviously giving names or too many details of how you've seen this and how we have helped them overcome that obstacle?

Yeah, for sure. So I think I've got to get a little bit of prerequisite context so everybody's on the same page. But we do see the same 3 problems, not just with creators. But I mean, we, my, my team and I, we all come from the B2B business, you know, technology world. And this, this happens everywhere. So no one needs to like feel bad or anything. If anything, I hope this is cathartic. And you know that people who may be a few steps ahead of you, certainly people who are a few steps behind you are experiencing. So First of all, you have to understand that your business should be looked at on a bowtie funnel, not a traditional funnel. And so this is kind of like the basis of the MRR method and how we approach building monthly recurring revenue businesses, right? So traditional marketing funnel looks like a V. You've got the top of the funnel, the middle, and the bottom. And then the point here is where the first purchase is made. And so that's like a traditional marketing funnel. And then, you know, marketing teams feel like, all right, we did our job. Boom, you know, somebody made a purchase. That's great. But really, in a long-term customer business relationship, you've got to actually turn that V 90 degrees. And so it looks like, you know, a literal, like, bow tie. I need a bow tie prop, Erin.

That doesn't look like—

Yeah, like, I can't turn my hands. I can't turn my hands that way. I don't think anyone can. If your hands can turn that way, see a doctor. So, OK, we have this side of the funnel now and then we have— oh, I can do this. OK, so we have the first purchases made and then over here on the right side, the relationship is not over at that time. We actually want to continue to provide recurring value in exchange for recurring revenue. Right. So we want to have a suite of products and services. I'm talking about like 2 to 5, not, oh my God, do I need 10 things? No, you do not. Please do not do that. That is not a good idea. So these, these product ladders are built with a great deal of intention. But you want to be able to solve as many problems as you can for the same customer so that you can continue to earn business from that customer that you've worked so hard to earn on the left side of the BowTie over here. And you want them to then tell their friends. And then it's this virtuous cycle of the right types of customers coming into your business. So the first major problem, as we're trying to move as many people as we can, best-fit prospective customers through the BowTie and then into right-side purchase world, is getting people from social media or from like a live or a podcast or a webinar appearance or paid ads, anywhere people can find you on the internet, getting them from that place to your email list so that you can, quote, own your leads. And that is an enormous challenge even for our biggest clients. Their social media audiences or their total top of funnel audiences is I mean, truly disproportionately measured. I can't think of the right word, but it's disproportionate to the number of leads that they have, the people in the middle of their funnel who's, you know, ideally first names and email addresses that they have. So we have this like 7-stage funnel methodology where it's a very specific, like guided, beautiful, intentional problem-solving customer journey where we're taking people from they've met you over here on social or podcast or webinar or whatever. Or an ad, and then you have given them a really good reason because you are solving a problem of theirs through like a free lead magnet, whether that's your newsletter or a guide or a mini course or a challenge or a drip course, any number of like lead magnet opportunities. But we've got to get that message in front of people on the top of your funnel and get it in front of them the right way, at the right time, to the right person. so that they will get your free thing. And then you have the opportunity to nurture them through your inbox and your top of funnel channels, right? So you've got there, you've got this like multichannel access to people, but that's much, much easier said than done getting people from social top of funnel to email list, right?

Yeah.

So the next major problem or bucket of issues that we see is getting people from the bottom of funnel to making that first purchase. So if people are on your sales page, or if they put whatever you're selling in their cart, or if you're in a high-touch sales process, if they've had maybe an intro call and a discovery call, and now you have a proposal out, or even, you know, um, an SOW, a scope of work, a contract out for their review, and then you just can't quite close the deal, you can't quite move them from the left side of the bowtie to the right. So that is a major, major problem, and every business has that. And so you're not alone, but it's, it is really tricky. And then kind of the third bucket of issues is getting people who are on the right side of your bow tie. They have purchased something for you, which congratulations if you have people over on the right side, is getting them to then buy something else that earns you recurring revenue. Again, in exchange for recurring value, there should be this equitable, ongoing, mutually beneficial relationship. And so your product and service offerings. Sometimes it's called an offer ladder. We call it a product ladder or a value ladder. It's what you sell, right? We're trying to get people to buy more of what you sell because you are doing a damn good job of solving their problems and they have decided to give you some of their discretionary funds in exchange for the solutions that you're providing. Not your course, not your group coaching program, not your one-on-one consulting, your solutions. They're purchasing— we're purchasing Solutions to our problems. So that's an important thing to remember, and that will also help you with your sales as well. Is you're not selling this widget; you're selling a fixed something or other, or you know a problem. You're solving a problem. So those are the three problems that we see in every business, no matter who they are, no matter how successful they are. You can always stand to improve your conversion rates across your funnel, and no one is at 100%. So there's always room for improvement.

Yeah. So to pick up back off of that, are there any common recurring blind spots that you see that fairly successful creators have?

Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. We all have blind spots. I mean, I have blind spots too. It's like having people, one, I have wildly intelligent people like yourself on my team who can come in and fill those blind spots and then have a mentor and things like that. And so if you don't have somebody looking into your business, It's really, really hard to see the blind spots. But my gosh, they're, they're everywhere. They fall into those 3 buckets for sure. They fall into like customer success or service buckets. Like, hey, you've gotten— this problem has been brought to your attention like 15 times. Fix it, you know? Or have you gone in and looked at your quantitative numbers? Like, are you able to track your funnel metrics? Or do you have, you know, literal blindness into what the hell's going on in your business from a quantitative perspective. So, yes, we all have those. And usually, they're fairly simple. I mean, we work with, like, extremely emotionally intelligent clients as well. And so, like, people are aware that they have blind spots and, you know, are approaching their work with us with a growth mindset. And so being open to, you know, you don't know everything because no one does, is an important way to approach Optimizing your business for sure.

Yeah. So we normally always work with well-established experts who have fairly large audiences and proven offers. What has surprised you the most about any of the structural gaps that you have found in some of these businesses?

You know what the funny thing is, Erin? It's like they're the same, no matter if you have like 2,000 followers or 200,000 followers. It's typically with this like subject matter expert archetype, like the type of person that we work with, whatever the size of their following is, they know their shit left, right, backwards, forwards, like the back of their hand. They know their subject matter. But it's the, the challenge is pairing that with the business and especially technical expertise to fully monetize a business in a way that doesn't like absolutely run you into the ground. And people usually come to us after they're like, oh, I hired this contractor for this and this contractor for this. And I was sitting— I had a— I had drinks with a woman last night, um, who lives here in Fort Collins, which is super cool, and started talking about— we had a great business conversation. And, you know, she is a subject matter expert, brilliant, 20 years of experience, um, and she's trying to make a very significant pivot. And it's the same, same stuff. It's like, I have no idea how to build a presence online, an online business, what the technology is. You know, what the hell is a funnel? What are you talking about with this bowtie thing? What's a customer journey? How do you make it all fit together? And if you are putting together like all of these disparate contractors who have different opinions because they have different experience, I'm not like discounting anyone's opinion or personal experience in any way. But when you are, when you got too many cooks in the kitchen and you're getting too much advice from too many people, it is confusing, almost always contradictory on some level. And it just makes people go. Like, I cannot do this. It is so overwhelming. Our brains just stop, right? We get into that fight, flight, or freeze space. But if you have, you know, people with a demonstrable track record of success, and they can handle everything for you, and you're getting a, like, single congruent message, and you're on like a linear path, my gosh, is it so much easier to learn and understand and to be less overwhelmed. And so Everybody kind of has the same problems, which is pretty interesting. It's been an interesting learning for us over the last, you know, year and a half, right?

Yeah. So this Friday we are officially going to be handing over our participants' business audits. Could you give us a little like behind the scenes of what it takes and what like we put into these business audits?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to pull— they're, they're all right here in front of me. Okay, so the first step in the MRR method is the audit. It is like level setting. Let's figure out where things stand right now, because if you don't have a good idea of that, it's very, very hard to make, um, unignorant consultative suggestions, right, for moving forward. So the audit is just like a, here's sort of the state of your business, here's the state of the union for you right now. And these suckers take 20 to 25 hours each. They are incredibly labor-intensive. And it's, it's a balancing act to try and determine, you know, what all we end up including in these and actually, like, sharing with our clients, because it can be, be so unbelievably overwhelming. And so basically, we're, we start with like an overview of findings. And so it's the TL;DR. If everything below here is way too much, you can get the big picture here. And then a really important piece of what we do with our clients because the accelerator is a 7-month process. It's a long process. And we don't relaunch products and services and new funnels and new websites and all that kind of stuff until month 4. And so the, a very significant portion of the audit is a quick wins section where everybody gets like 3 to 7 quick win suggestions and then instructions on how to carry out those quick wins. And so everybody in this cohort is getting one-on-one sales coaching from me. And that is already working great. So that's awesome. That's very, very fulfilling And so there's things that we can do to impact revenue, especially after we do this audit and we get our hands like really dirty in the back of someone's business, like all the technical debt and things that they have. We're getting in there and understanding like, can we put together the current customer journey? What numbers can we get ahold of? What customer feedback can we get ahold of? And then what's the lowest hanging fruit, right? Like what is this individual creator business owner capable of doing now? Uh, who's your current customer? And then what we're seeing, like in terms of customer behaviors, again, from a qualitative and quantitative standpoint. And I mean, I'm like, I could go through all the section headings. I mean, it's, it's like a beast. I'm, uh, I'm using Notion and there's like 20 section, little 24 sections.

Toggle under another toggle.

Yeah. Uh, and so it's just like, what's going on? And we're sort of translating that into the Level Up Creators methodology, our MRR method. You know, we've got like a bowtie plotted for everyone. All the metrics we can get a hold of. And again, we're trying to like reverse engineer what is going on. And in a way that will translate. So we have sort of like, here's where we were when we started. And then we're using this same sort of language and methodology to get to where we're going. So what are you selling? How are you selling it? How's it going? And just pricing structure, legal and brand protection stuff, lifestyle alignment, because that's a big deal. And then next steps, so people always know what to expect. But it's, it's a huge beast to take that much information and distill it down to something that is just 24 sections, honestly. And so we're a very thorough, leave-no-stone-untouched shop. And so we're not lazy about things. Like, we're the ones who are willing to show up and do the hard work and are cool with that.

And if you can answer this last question very quickly. So many of the creators that we work with, they're successful by traditional metrics. What made them decide they needed a guide or help instead of continuing to do it on their own?

Ooh, that's a good one. That's a, that's a little bit of a thinker too. Um, off the top of my head, they were sort of having like an identity crisis. Like, this is Maybe, you know, I'm in the last, latter half, if not latter third of my career, for sure. And what I'm doing isn't working. I'm very frustrated. You know, I either want to, I want to maybe leave my current arrangement and step out on my own. And I don't have a path toward that because, again, I'm a subject matter expert, but not a technical marketing, sales, retention and all that kind of expert. And so, yeah, being at a crossroads and knowing that help is required to come in because they're feeling so much pain trying to do this on their own. And the guaranteed results is a huge, huge piece of it. Like, it's our offer for the accelerator is undeniably compelling because you are paying a fixed amount for a fixed outcome. And so you can just do the calculation and be like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And so I think it's just people being stuck, feeling a lot of pain and not knowing what to do next and being frankly tired of like trying to piece together all these different content contractors and, you know, do this on a small budget or anything like that. It's just like, oh my gosh, I've tried everything and I'm so tired. Or I heard you guys are awesome and I don't want to go try everything and beat my head up against the wall like that. Please just help me now.

Yeah. Cool. All right. Thank you guys so much for joining our livestream. Be sure to follow us for more tips and insights on building a successful recurring revenue business.