Top 3 Ingredients for a Successful Creator Led Business

Hey, hey, you're listening to season 1, episode 1 of the Level Up Creators Podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. Our mission at Level Up is to help digital creators build thriving, sustainable businesses they love. We have a great lineup of special guests and practical wisdom to share with creators throughout season 1. So welcome. We are really glad you're here. And just in case you're wondering, who are you guys and why should I listen? Totally fair question, and I am glad you asked. We are a team of business experts with 80 plus years of combined experience in helping businesses in all industries of all types make truckloads of money. Our stellar group of co-founders combined forces and collectively pivoted completely to work exclusively with creator-led businesses earlier this year, which is how Level Up Creators was born. Our team is full of strategists. Marketers, tech gurus, sales pros, product developers, and administrators. We coach, consult for, and build thriving businesses for and around creators' areas of expertise, and we call those creator-led businesses. I personally have been very fortunate to enjoy a successful 20-year career so far as a consultant, coach, and 6-time exec, and I'm super honored to bring all of my knowledge from that 20-year history, um, to hardworking, brilliant creators just like you who truly deserve opportunities to build wealth and enjoy doing what you love the most, all while helping others. And I'm joined today by our Head of Revenue Strategy, AKA the money, Natalie Williams. Welcome, Nat.

Thanks, Amanda. Happy to be here. Looking forward to the chat.

Yeah, absolutely. Me too. And just a little bit more about Natalie before we dive in. Natalie is a seasoned marketer, sales, and customer success pro. She has been the mastermind behind a ton of highly successful revenue generation campaigns at all types of companies across a broad cross-section of industries, and most recently, of course, brought her skills here to Level Up creators like you. And again, before we fully dive into today's topic, we need to make sure we're on the same page as far as terminology goes. At Level Up, we define a creator as an expert with influence. Which from our POV or point of view is in sharp juxtaposition to what is traditionally called, well, in the last several years, an influencer, who we actually define as someone who has accumulated a sizable following based on their personal brand and whose primary revenue streams are typically going to be brand deals like sponsored videos, other types of ad revenue, platform revenue, and even sometimes like a sponsored product line.

Yeah, and that's not who this podcast is for. This podcast is for creators who are sharing their knowledge and talent with the world and have built an engaged audience around their area of subject matter expertise. And we define a successful creator-led business as a company built upon an individual subject matter expertise with a product mix that brings a great deal of value to that audience, all while providing a well-architected lifestyle and income for that creator.

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that you included the Well-Architected lifestyle in there. That is really, really important, which we're going to get into more, but we feel like that is a really key ingredient. All right. Now that we're speaking the same language, let's get into today's topic. We are talking about the top 3 ingredients for a successful creator-led business, and we'll actually follow this conversation up in episode 2, where we'll cover the most common roadblocks creators face and how to overcome them. And just to build on the point we shared a minute ago about the type of creator this podcast will benefit the most are creators who have already organized their content around their area of subject matter expertise and that whatever that topic is, is truly the primary draw to potential followers to your social media accounts. So people follow you because they're interested in what you have to say. They wanna learn from you and you're providing the consistent value through your content that's required to continuously grow your audience. As you already know, this— the topics that we're covering in this podcast are really specifically for creators with subject matter expertise who have already amassed a following and are verging on or are already professional creators, or those who put their primary professional efforts toward their creator business and have some form of income from it already. So without further ado, here's the top 3 list. So to run a creator, a successful creator-led business, you need at least 50,000 followers. And there'll be some caveats around this we'll come back to later. Number 2, demonstrable expertise in your area of expertise. So whatever area you're most passionate about, you know what you're talking about. And number 3, you've sold something to your audience before. And again, this doesn't mean if you fall short on one of these 3 criteria that it's not possible to have a successful creator business. I'm not saying that, But meeting these 3 means you have a foundation. You can build a revenue machine that earns between $500,000 and $5 million per year. We've done a tremendous amount of research on what it takes to really drive revenue in a creator-led business. And the research shows again and again, a lot of creators who are not in that top 2%, who are not capturing all of the brand deals and the MrBeasts of the world and things like that, there's so much value in your knowledge, knowledge and expertise and the people who are following you. And so we want to help you really unlock that revenue, build that machine, and build the business of your dreams. And back to Natalie's point earlier, definitely be able to build a business that is both sustainable and highly profitable while taking into consideration your life, you not being the only person responsible for building and running and maintaining the entire machine. But we do want to kind of give you the keys and secrets to What works. So

yeah, let's do it. So I think now you listed the top 3. So I think it's a good time now to just kind of break down each one and go into further detail. So the first one is having at least 50,000 followers. And like you mentioned earlier, this is just a general rule of thumb. It's not a do or die. We've seen creators make comfortable incomes with fewer followers, but typically they have an email list that is somewhere between 2,000 and 7,000 subscribers.

Yeah, that's a really, really good point. Email subscribers are going to be your most powerful form of leverage. Those people are not subject to social media algorithms. You own that contact information unless someone unsubscribes from your list, of course. But these are people who have opted in, signed up, invited you to their personal inbox, which people obviously are very protective over. We all have email overload to some degree. But I get a couple of creator newsletters, and really just a couple, and I absolutely love them. I am so loyal to those creators who have kind of fostered and engendered that loyalty over time through providing consistent, valuable content around a single subject matter. Yeah, Natalie, do you have any newsletters?

Yeah, I mean, I was just gonna say, absolutely, you know, I can kind of follow the same thing. I have a very select few of, you know, newsletters that create that of the creators that I love, that I follow. And I know that each time I read that newsletter, it's going to be something I'm very interested in and going to get a lot of value out of. And, you know, not everybody has an email list, and they can feel a little bit intimidated by that. But I think the important thing is that luckily, if you have around 50,000 social media followers, you can very easily build a list of 1,000 people pretty quickly by starting to make the right offer at the right time to your followers in the form of a lead magnet. Lead magnets are terms for something that are very valuable that you can provide to your followers or whomever in exchange for their email. And we've all grabbed these lead before they are in the form of things like a top 10 list or a coupon, a white paper, an industry report, something that you know you're going to get value out of and you're willing to give your email in exchange for it.

Yeah, absolutely. And we're going to talk a lot in this season and in future seasons about building your email list, the importance of email marketing, newsletters, marketing automation. There's really a lot of magic to utilizing an email list in your creator-led business that will take your followers on a really organic but well-planned customer journey. And ultimately, the intention there is to have people lining up at the door to buy whatever you sell and for that to happen in a very fluid, automated, one-to-many way through your email list and through email. Marketing. So again, come back to that later. I'll put a pin in it now because I have a whole spiel on it. But yeah, I do want to emphasize a quick point. Yeah. Oh my gosh, literally, there's a lot to it. I am going to emphasize a really quick point about follower size. Our follower counts, however many followers you have on Instagram, YouTube, etc., etc. So we mentioned 50,000 followers is a pretty good rule of thumb. You know, if you do a quick Google search, you'll see 50,000 is kind of the starting point for what's classified as a mid-tier creator. But I will, I mean, this is a huge asterisk next to this. If there are only 500,000 people in the world who are interested in what you're talking about and you have 50,000 of them, that is a tremendously high percentage of what's called the total addressable market for your niche, right? So half a million people are interested in, you've got 50,000 of them, you've got 10% of the total addressable market. So. Even if you've got 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 around, say underwater basket weaving is your area of expertise, there aren't that many people who are interested, right? So the smaller the total addressable market, the fewer followers you need to have a solid foundation and baseline from which to build a profitable business. Now, if you're talking about A really, really, really, really, really popular topic, say how to build your first course. There's a lot larger total addressable market for that. There's something like, I think the most recent number I've seen is 50 million influencers in the world. And so 50,000 over 50 million is 1%, right? I think I'm doing the math in my head. I hope I got my zeros right. But, you know, That is significant, but it's not substantial and not necessarily a critical mass from which to build a sustainable business model. So I hope, I hope that kind of drives my point home. Just, it depends on what you're talking about. A 50,000 number is just a nice round number. And again, to Natalie's point, if you have an email list of between 2,000 and 7,000, you're probably in really, really good shape to start building a business with solid MRR. Uh, monthly recurring revenue. Again, we'll come back to kind of that terminology later. But anyway, that's my—

Yeah. And I think that's an important point. I mean, as a creator, you know your audience better than anybody and you know kind of what your following is and what the potential for the follower size is. So it's definitely a, um, a relative number that you can base off of your particular, your particular niche and audience. Um, but go ahead. We're going to go ahead and skip into number 2 on the list. So it's a demonstrable expertise in an area that you're passionate about.

Yeah, definitely. So, again, coming back to our definition of a creator, it's a person who has subject matter expertise with influence. So, just know that kind of going into this conversation. And also, for a little bit more context, I'm sure we're all familiar at this point with the 10,000-hour rule. Like Malcolm Gladwell years ago pioneered this concept of if you spent 10,000 hours on one thing, you're likely an expert at that thing. And so, I know there's a lot of controversy whether it truly takes the 10,000 hours or roughly 10 years of full-time efforts to develop mastery or true expertise in something. But for the sake of this conversation, let's agree that no one becomes an expert overnight. And it's likely that the youngest experts among us are probably at least like 28 years old. And most of the time, And of course, like, I know there are outliers like child prodigies and the like, but let's talk kind of about the general population for the sake of this discussion. Uh, the experts with the most ongoing value to offer are those people who have a growth mindset. We're gonna touch on this quite a lot actually, um, and are students first and masters second. Again, the experts with the most ongoing value to offer are those people who have a growth mindset. Not a fixed mindset, and are students first and masters second. These people typically have an insatiable desire to grow their knowledge through continuous learning. So, I think that's a really important point is, you know, the content machine never runs dry if you are continuing to learn, engage with your community. There's just endless things to whatever your area of expertise is. I am sure of it. And so we want to encourage you to continue kind of going on that narrow and deep trajectory where you really are one of the most formidable or foremost experts in your field by continuing to learn. All right. If a creator has at least 50,000 followers, again, not built on a personal brand or based on youth and beauty necessarily, they're likely— they've likely proven that they have something to say that's worth listening to, right? And If they've sustained that audience over time and continue to see steady follower growth, they have a breadth of knowledge and passion that clearly resonates within that particular niche. So basically, the creator has proven that they're worth sticking around for.

Yeah, and I do have one point that I want to make, which I think is important to mention, that subject matter expertise doesn't always follow a linear path. And I've seen this with some of the creators that I follow on my personal account. For example, maybe there was a creator who got her start in her early 20s as a youth and beauty blogger. And she built a following of young adults around the same phase of life. But then as she got older, she had a couple kids and her content just kind of started to organically shift to becoming more about parenting. Perhaps she kept, you know, some of the beauty elements there, but she became an expert in baby safety because that was what her world was about. And her— and parents of young children became her primary ICP. And many of those followers, again, were in the same phase of life, they'd grown up alongside her, they had children of their own and they started to become interested in that type of content too. So they stuck with her even though her content shifted from being initially about youth and beauty to becoming about baby safety. And so the point here is that creators don't have to get stuck in any one niche if they're passionate about something else. A lot of times those content topics will evolve as they learn more or their life changes. But the one caveat here that's worth mentioning too is that if you do take a sharp turn in your content, you do have to expect that you're going to have to rebuild your audience around that topic. But I just think it's worth, it's worth mentioning that it's not going to always be the same thing. And there are times where it makes sense to pivot or evolve your content a little bit.

Yeah, thank you, Natalie. That's a super good point. I'm glad you're sharing that. I think most of us creators and regular folks who don't consider themselves creators probably got to where they are now in a very nonlinear way. Like, I certainly did not set out in my career to do what I'm doing today. It's awesome. I love it. I can't imagine doing anything else. But I certainly did not get here in a way that I thought that I would. I may share more about that in a later episode. But yeah, probably most creators did not, who are our age, like on the elder millennial side of things, did not set out to become necessarily someone with significant influence and have a significant follower account, but just started sharing about themselves or some kind of knowledge or information, uh, and, and it caught on. You know, you struck a chord with a small group of people, and obviously that, that has grown and grown and grown over time. Um, and sometimes you make a strategic pivot to talk about a specific, pretty tangential area to what you've already been talking about, and then that can kind of lead to a creator-led business. But it's also okay to just have a social media account that you love and enjoy and maybe pick up the occasional brand deal. That's a great option too. That's not really what we're talking about here, um, but is a really valid path to take. And, um, yeah, it is very interesting every time we talk to a different creator about how they got to where they are today. And, uh, it's never the same story twice. So thank you again for bringing that up.

Yeah. I mean, experience is your greatest teacher, right?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, and being opportunistic too, and not in like a sneaky way or anything, but like you, you find out which of your posts kind of have, uh, gotten the most views, comments, engagement, shares, retweets, whatever. Um, and maybe you started building on that and now you've really got something. You're trying to figure out what's next. We're here to tell you what's next. All right. Bring us back around here. So one great, another great thing about building a following around a specific subject matter. Means you're well positioned to create a suite of products and services that your followers are willing to pay for. So that's not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination, but there are so many ways for creators to monetize their knowledge while providing a great deal of value to their communities. And we'll talk about different things creators can sell here in a minute. Spoiler alert, there are a whole lot. So you have options. Anyway, okay, I'll put a pin in it there for number 2.

And that takes us nicely into number 3, which is that you've sold something to your audience before. And this is something that really we can't skip over. Creating something that people have actually pulled their credit card out for to pay for is imperative in the business world. This is calling— is called establishing a product-market fit. And so when you make cool things that people are actually buying, that should signal to you that you're ready to level

Yeah, definitely. And I know that the most prevalent or pervasive, um, kind of like MO out there for creators to take a first step is to create a digital course. You will find unending content, content online, and other creators who are teaching other creators how to create courses. That is a great first step, but it really is just the tip of the iceberg. The reality of a creator-led business is that you'll need a suite of product and service offerings in order to fully leverage and monetize what you've built so far. In fact, the primary work of our business at Level Up Creators is helping creators build the right products around their areas of expertise, which really more fully helps solidify individual creators as thought leaders in their field and sought-after experts in their niche. So having the right product mix can bring all sorts of opportunities your way. So if you have the right product mix, You're positioning yourself as an expert even further. Your superfans are lining up to buy everything that you sell, and other things may come your way, like relevant brand deals, speaking engagements, maybe book deals with a publisher, and so on and so forth. So again, don't think about having one thing or one product being the be-all end-all to your business. There's a way to build a really profitable business just with the right mix of things.

Yeah. And when you find that right product mix and it's offered to your audience at the right time in the right way, that will really catapult your success as a professional creator. So I think now could be a good opportunity to talk about crystallizing what the right product mix could be for a creator and what options they could have.

Yeah, let's do it. So we're gonna, we're actually gonna have a series, a 3-part series about these monetization pathways as we call them. It's like all the different ways that creators can put products and services together to Uh, make a really profitable business. So I'm just gonna give kind of a brief outline now and then know that that's coming down the pipe later for season 1. So there are 8 primary monetization pathways. Again, that's kind of our internal term, but it's just different income streams, revenue streams, ways to make money, products or services. All right. The first bucket, if you will, and it's a big one, is called one-off digital products. This could be a course, an ebook, A workbook, a workshop, a pack of printables, an email challenge, a mini course delivered one day at a time via email, a paid newsletter, or really anything that's digital that your customer pays for once or on a payment plan in some cases, and the transaction ends there. So it's just one time they give you your credit card, they get the thing, everybody moves on, except that's not exactly what's happening because we're gonna again take them on this amazing journey to buy the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and tell their friends, right? So bucket number 2 are products that are co-created with other creators or brands. So that could be like a holiday bundle, a co-branded product, like a course. A lot of creators, you know, you'll see a summit, they'll put together a dozen experts on around kind of a single industry or topic area and sell the summit. And so that's a great opportunity as well. And some creators are even able to license their own content and that totally counts under this bucket. Number 3, um, we actually put speaking engagements and book deals in the same bucket. Oftentimes those kind of play off of one another, and there's tremendous value in self-publishing books, and I don't want to devalue that at all. We encourage creators to do that all the time. But if you can get a book deal from a publisher, um, that still has a little bit more gravitas, you know, at this stage. In 10 years I don't know that it necessarily will. We'll see. But, um, if you can get a published book from a publisher like Penguin Random House or Wiley or something like that, speaking engagements tend to follow, uh, and speaker fees tend to increase as well, uh, depending on how your book does. So that's why we group those. And then we also put, oh, in a separate bucket, we put brand deals, ambassadorships, any kind of ad revenue, platform payouts as well, all in another bucket. And affiliate revenue, uh, is another bucket. And I'm sure we're all fairly familiar with that, but if you're recommending other people's content, uh, courses, products, and things like that, you're probably getting a kickback from that. And hint, hint, if you're doing well with affiliate revenue, that's a really good indicator that you are ready to offer more products to your audience. If they're buying what you're recommending, it's great to recommend other people's stuff and get a kickback from that, but why not just sell your own and make 100% of it, right? Again, more on that later. Number 5, launching your own product or merchandise line. So again, we've talked a little bit about the top 2% of creators and that they're getting, you know, sponsored product lines from big, big brands, right? Big brand partnerships. But again, if affiliate revenue is working, you've got other products that are selling that are under your own brand, and again, you've got at least that 50,000 follower mark, probably you might consider launching your own product or merch line. That's something that has historically been really out of reach, and you've got to figure out the whole puzzle of design, sourcing materials, manufacturing, shipping, warehousing. I mean, there's entire ecosystem in and of itself for that, but there are companies now actually who Uh, do full-service merch lines for creators and brands specifically. Um, one of our partners is BrandOrigin. You can just check out like brandorigin.com. We'll also put that in the show notes. Uh, and they're actually a guest on one of our upcoming episodes and we'll talk really specifically about how to know if launching a product or a merch line is right for you, how to do it if you want to do it yourself, and then what it looks like to have a partner that does literally everything like BrandOrigin. Next monetization pathway is high-ticket one-to-one coaching or consulting. And a lot of creators actually kind of get into being a creator with influence by sharing knowledge that they have acquired and already been selling through one-to-one coaching or consulting. So at Level Up Creators, we're pretty big on one-to-many offerings. So if you are going to offer anything one-to-one, it does need to be quite high ticket to be considered in a product mix because there's only one of you. And so, if you're only helping one person at a time, there's a limit to both how much value you can provide to your audience, how many people you can reach, and of course, your income is capped as well with how many of those one-to-one engagements you can do. So, right into the next bucket, think about group coaching instead of just one-to-one, right? We classify this next bucket of products as recurring revenue digital products and services. And this is another big one, just kind of like one-off digital products, but this bucket would include products like a membership community, again, group coaching, mastermind groups, and anything kind of in that realm. And we're all very familiar with recurring revenue digital products, whether you know the term or not. Think about your subscription to Netflix, Disney Plus, your cell phone service, iCloud storage, Amazon Prime. I mean, there's like an million different examples of this, but we think that's, I guess, spoiler alert for a future episode, group coaching and mastermind groups and any kind of membership recurring revenue model is the ticket to running a really successful creator-led business. So again, more on that later, but hopefully that's helpful and gives you an idea of, I'm sure you're probably overflowing with ideas at this point about what might work for your specific creator-led business. But, um, that's an overview. Again, 3-part series coming later. Nat, do you have anything to add to that?

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that the, the next challenge is just figuring out what the right mix is, because all of these things aren't going to be the best choice for all of these different types of creators. And so really choosing the right offerings from the menu of all the things that you just listed is going to be really dependent on various factors like your area of expertise, your audience size, the industry norms, lifestyle considerations, and financial goals. And it can be a little bit intimidating and overwhelming really trying to crack that nut of your product mix, but that's why we're here to help you. Um, and the key to effective sales is offering the right thing at the right time to the right person and in the right way. And I know that's easier said than done, but it is very, very doable with just some, you know, really intentional thought and planning and knowing your audience and what kind of content they, they will consume and will pay

Yeah, I love that. And again, that kind of takes our conversation back to email list marketing automation, um, and, and kind of building out this backend ecosystem that will help you make— you're gonna hear this a lot— right offer, right time, right person in the right way. And if you're, you're lining those 4 things up pretty well in a one-to-many fashion, the sky's the limit. Thank you again, Natalie, for joining me. That is a wrap for episode 1. And we know that your time is really precious. Thank you for sharing yours with us. Level Up Creators exists to amplify the voice, reach, and impact of creators making a positive impact in the world. With your expertise as our focus, our team of strategists, marketers, sales pros, product developers, administrators, and tech gurus handle the heavy lifting of building and optimizing a profitable business that will transform your life for good. Check out welevelupcreators.com for more info and resources for creators just like you. See you next time on the Level Up Creators Podcast.