In this livestream, Erin (Director of Operations) and Amanda Northcutt (CEO) walk creators and solopreneurs through a practical, no‑fluff goal‑setting system. They start by defining a 10‑year vision that articulates the unique change the founder wants to create in the world, then break it down into a 3‑year mission that represents roughly a third of the long‑term goal. Each year they set exactly three high‑impact goals—one each for revenue (cash‑focused), marketing/operations (sales, customer success, funnel conversion), and infrastructure (hiring, product development, systems). They explain how to set stair‑stepped revenue targets, differentiate cash from revenue, and tie marketing and operational goals to the metrics that will move the revenue goal forward. KPI selection emphasizes conversion rates and product‑level revenue while dismissing vanity metrics like follower counts unless they directly drive income. The conversation also covers how to prioritize when one area lags, using a simple “delegate, defer, do, don’t do” framework to ruthlessly prune tasks, especially during busy periods like the holidays. Throughout, Amanda shares concrete examples from Level Up Creators’ own 2025 planning, making the methodology both actionable and demonstrably practiced.
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Stream. We are Erin and Amanda of Level Up Creators and Level Up Creator School. I'm our Director of Operations and Amanda Northcutt is our CEO. Today we are going to be talking about the topic of goal setting and hitting your goals and how to do that. So we are so glad to spend a few minutes of your day with you. If you have any questions at any point, drop them in the chat and we will answer those during this live stream. livestream. If you haven't met us, there are 2 ways that we help thought leaders like you build rock-solid recurring revenue businesses. First is Level Up Creators, which is our done-for-you white glove consulting firm. And the second is Level Up Creator School, where we help a global group of thought leaders and businesses build a business through a done-with-you model. Creator School includes all of our methodology for our consulting world and our entire consulting team. And we offer that now to creators in a way that used to be exclusively just for our consulting clients. So welcome. Let's jump right in. Amanda, how do you approach setting big picture goals for the year without getting overwhelmed by the daily task and the demands of running a business?
Ooh, that's a great question. I know it is so hard when you are working, I mean, working your butt off in your business instead of working on your business, right? Like looking at these big-picture things like your 10-year vision and what you're trying to accomplish in 3 years, and therefore, you know, what you need to bite off in 2025, as we're like barreling toward January 1st here, which is really hard to believe. So I'm a really big fan of creating a vision, and that can be something that is quite simple. We define that at Level Up Creators as a basically a 10-year goal, and that includes like different components. It's not like a one-liner. This is a one-pager, and it's sort of like, here's how we're showing up in the world. Here's why we're here. Here are the problems that we are uniquely positioned to solve for this specific group of people on the internet. And we're, you know, matching our expertise and solutions with the people who have these problems that we can solve. And then it's like, the big point of the vision is to answer the question, what is the unique possibility or change that I see that is possible in the world in 10 years? How could the world be different? And how am I going to use my business to create that change? And so if you've got this, like, 10-year thing. That's pretty hard to crystallize though. I mean, that is a— that should be a big-ass goal, really, really hard to reach, and something that you're willing to dedicate a literal decade of your life to. But if you don't know where you're going, you will end up somewhere else. I love that quote. It's a Yogi Berra quote. And so figure out where you're going, and then try and figure out, okay, what is going to get me 30% of the way to that 10-year vision? And that should be kind of a one or a two-liner, and that is your mission as we define it at Level Up Creators. And once you have a 3-year mission, it's like, oh, I can see that light at the end of that tunnel, right? That is not— it's 36 months out. That is not 10 years out, right? Or 120 months. And so, well, what does it take to get a third of the way to my vision? And that's kind of how we think about this. It's really hard to set annual goals if you don't have that sort of like larger carrot dangling out there that's a little bit further out, right? 3 years and then 10 years. So that's how I think about that really big picture. That was a long answer to your very short question, but I think it's really hard to set annual goals if you don't have a long-term idea, at least, of where you're trying to take your business.
Nope. That's really good. Okay. So as you are doing this, how do you prioritize between revenue, operations, and marketing? And what do you do when one area starts falling behind? Yeah, like a process for like realignment almost.
Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm actually going to pull up our 2025, uh, goals right now because we just spent a lot of time together working on these goals, and we actually do practice what we preach. It's not just like we're telling other people to do this, we're actually doing it ourselves. So we, um, do 3 goals per year, and I mean 3 and 3 only, period, end of story. And we have like 3 categories. So it's really easy to slot in a goal, again, when we have that 3-year mission and that 10-year vision, to each of these 3 buckets. And the 3 buckets, 1 goal per bucket, are revenue, marketing or operations— marketing, sales, customer success— and then infrastructure. And so we are, we have a, you know, big a money target, right? Like, that's really, really important in your business. Make sure you get the money in the door because you don't actually have a business unless you are selling things. And so that's like number one, keep your eye on not just revenue, but cash. And those 2 things are not the different, not, not the same thing. So we need to come back and probably talk about that a different day. But you need a money goal. And, you know, that could be based on how much you made last year, if you're trying to replace your corporate revenue, Or if you've been a creator for a while, you know, maybe it's what you made last year, plus 20%, if you're going to make a big, you know, push toward growth, or maybe even 50%. And then you would want to kind of not be like, OK, well, I'm at, you know, $5,000 a month in December of 2024, but I'm going to be at $20,000 a month in January of 2025 so that I can have a $240,000 year. Like, that's not necessarily how it works. So you would kind of want to stair-step. OK, let's go for, you know, $7,000 in January, $10,000 in February. And then your other 2 goals help you make a plan to actually bring that financial goal to fruition, because you can't just be like, I want to make $240,000 and it's not just going to magically happen, right? You've got to have tasks and things that like actually roll up to that. So the next goal bucket, if you will, is operations, marketing, sales, customer success. And so what would have to be true in order for you to make your revenue goal or your projections? I love that question. What would have to be true in order for, right? So if you know how your conversion rates are performing kind of across your bowtie funnel and you know where you can go in and make improvements, then maybe your goal is a marketing goal. If you're selling something that is automated fully, like, literally someone goes to your website and buys something without speaking to a human, that's kind of where we differentiate between marketing and sales. But if you have a fully automated funnel and automated products and services that people can just go and buy on an evergreen basis, then a marketing goal would be super appropriate. So what would have to be true in your marketing tech stack, your content marketing strategy, Including your email marketing automation strategy, maybe your paid ad strategy, partner strategy. What do you have to do, based on what you know, to help support that revenue goal? OK? And then an infrastructure goal would be like a product or service or leveling up something inside of your business. It could certainly be hiring and training a VA and handing off XYZ processes from my plate so that, you know, I can spend 80% of my time doing the things that only I can do. OK. It could be building out a new product or service. So anything that happens sort of behind the scenes in your business, that counts as an infrastructure goal. So that's how we think about this here. It kind of covers the big broad strokes of your business, keeping your eye on the money and figuring out how you're actually going to bring those money goals to fruition.
Yeah. And when you're looking at key results, how do you pick the metrics that you should be paying attention to and ignore the Vanity metrics.
That's a great point. I mean, the least vanity-driven metrics that you can have are your conversion rates across the funnel and then what your actual sales number— numbers are. And you want to differentiate by product and service line. So in your profit and loss statement in QuickBooks or Xero or wherever you're— or Google Spreadsheet, whatever you're doing to count your money, make sure that you are differentiating between, you know, which product or service is bringing in which amount of money, because that will give you quantitative data from which to make educated decisions in the future. And so your, the products and services that you sell and the type of marketing that you do determine the types of key results or KPIs, key performance indicators, the numbers that you keep track of. And so there are different numbers for each thing. And so like not all the same metrics are relevant and across different businesses, right? It just doesn't make sense for everybody to be paying attention to the same thing. But you should be paying attention to numbers if you aren't. But the later on during the funnel, expansion revenue, referrals, things like that, that's going to be more important than what's happening with like your social media follower count, unless your whole business model relies on brand deals and sponsorships.
Yeah. For somebody that is running a business that's already making money but has never done goal setting, where should they start?
Yeah. Um, again, where do you want to be in 10 years? What are you going to spend the next 10 years doing? What is the change that you want to bring about in the world through the activities in your business? So if you can get that kind of like big lofty goal out there and then make it a little bit more tangible, again, with a 3-year goal, and then think about, OK, what do I have to do in 2025 in terms of Money, revenue, or you can think about this in terms of profit, right? Depending on the type of business you run, if you have employees or not. So money, revenue, profit, whatever works for you. And then operations. So it's marketing, sales, customer success, and customer success, you would be thinking about retention, a retention goal, and then an infrastructure goal. So just try and think about like, what do I have to do to make this money as it pertains to how I acquire and/or keep customers? And then what needs to happen behind the scenes in my business Yeah.
Any parting words for business owners, solopreneurs, creators to keep themselves sane during the holiday season?
Oh my gosh. I'm trying to figure this out for myself right now. So think in this framework of delegate, delegate, defer, do. And so what can be deferred to 2025? What absolutely has to happen versus what can, what can wait? really wait. Oh, and I forgot to say don't do. Or did I say that? Delegate, defer, do, don't do. Yeah. So what can just not happen? Like, what can you just delete from your calendar? Or cancel? Or again, like move to the new year? Delegate if you have a VA or a team or a friend or anyone that can help you. So that's how I think about that is like, really, you get like ruthless in your prioritization this time of year because It's all kind of hitting the fan at this point with everything that's going on. It's a lot. It is just a lot.
It is. Okay. Well, 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. Bye.
