In this livestream, Amanda Northcutt, CEO of Level Up Creators, explains why she left a well‑paid corporate career to build a consulting and education platform for knowledge creators. She recounts a 15‑year battle with chronic health issues that forced her to seek high‑leverage, low‑time‑investment income streams, leading her to specialize in recurring‑revenue models across SaaS and membership businesses. Drawing on two decades of corporate strategy, operations, and finance experience, she and her team translate “corporate‑level” methodology into a done‑for‑you consulting firm (Level Up Creators) and a done‑with‑you school (Level Up Creator School) that help creators build sustainable businesses. She discusses the financial risk‑tolerance framework she used to quit her job, the surprise of creators’ discomfort with business metrics, and how Level Up simplifies profit‑and‑loss, KPI dashboards, and LTV optimization for them. The conversation culminates with the launch of a free, micro‑learning “Creator Growth Kit” hosted on Mighty Networks, featuring short videos from notable creators (Amanda Goetz, Yasin Mameri, Creator Wizard, Aaron Francis, etc.) that serve as an entry point to the broader school. The session ends with a call‑to‑action for creators to explore the free kit and the paid programs.
Chapters
Creators and Level Up Creator School. I'm our Director of Operations, and Amanda Northcutt is our CEO. Welcome. We are just giving people a chance to log on, on the different platforms. We're so glad you're here. If you're already in the chat with us, let us know where you're tuning in from, and if you have any questions for us, we would love to answer those while we are on the live with you today. Okay, so today we're talking about why Amanda left her corporate job to invest in creators. And so we're so glad to spend a few minutes of our day with you. Again, if you have any questions for Amanda at any time, just drop them in the chat. If we haven't met yet, there's 2 ways that we help creators. First, we have Level Up Creators, which is our done-for-you white glove consulting firm. The second is Level Up Creator School, where we help a global group of thought leaders build businesses through a done-with-you model. Creator School includes all of our consulting methodology that was reserved for our clients in the past, but now we offer them to you guys. Okay, so first question. Amanda, was there a moment when you finally decided to walk away from your corporate job? Um, like, what was the specific experience or event that made you kind of like jump, jump over?
Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, honestly, it was a pretty slow burn. Like I, for those of you who don't know my story, a lot of it, a lot of the last really 15+ years of my life includes really significant chronic health challenges. And so I was faced with a situation in my late 20s where I needed to figure out how to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible. And so I was looking for the highest-leverage application of my skill set, which is in recurring, earning recurring revenue online. And so I worked as a fractional executive half a dozen times at companies all over the world, both membership and SaaS, and then also have consulted for dozens of businesses. And have really been delaying the start of my own organization, because we had to really be careful about my health. And we're really, like, betting on the future when we started this company. So it was more of a slow burn, something that I've always wanted to do. I've turned down also a handful of CEO positions at other organizations. Ultimately, just, it all came down to my health, right? And I wanted to build a different kind of organization. So this is something that has been many, many, many, many years in the making. And again, kind of at the end of 2022, looked at, what are all the skills that I have acquired over the past, you know, almost 2 decades? And Who do I actually want to help? Right? And what's the marriage of those 2 things? And ultimately, I want to help individuals earn recurring revenue through all the methodology that I have gained and formulated over the years, from their own knowledge and expertise, and be able to like break free from that corporate model and the traditional kind of American dream where we work 40 years and then hopefully retire without like getting cancer or a heart attack or like, you know, The model is really, really broken. So Level Up Creators is meant to solve for that. I'm not sure if I answered your question completely, but that's—
You did.
It's a very, very long, long process and very, very thoughtful and intentional.
Yeah. So how has your time in the corporate world influenced the way you help creators now? Do you approach things differently because of that experience? Yeah.
So What we're hoping to bring to knowledge creators specifically in the creator economy, so subject matter experts, like people who are sharing what they know on LinkedIn or X or YouTube in particular, we are aiming to bring corporate-level strategy, tactics, methodology, technology, and bringing a right-sized version of that, if you will, kind of like translated properly for creator businesses. And so we have a very unique take, like all of us have, everyone on the Level Up Creators team has a corporate background. And so we bring the entire business end of the business to the table. So we're, we're the perfect marriage for someone who has knowledge that they are sharing online, but they don't have like the marketing, sales, customer experience, customer journey, technology, operations side. So that's Kind of our unique take.
Yeah. So leaving a stable, well-paying job must have been nerve-wracking. What were the biggest fears or challenges you faced and how did you push through those?
Hmm. Yeah. I mean, that was, that was a big hit, right? Like I had a really cushy, cushy situation. I was working very hard for it, but, um, Yeah, ultimately that was a joint decision between my husband and I. It was very intentional. We have been very financially, um, one, we've been fortunate in that we've been able to sock some money away to invest in something. Um, and so we were able to like pull money from retirement to do this. And we had a lot of deliberate conversations regarding like our risk tolerance. And so that's another like principle that we bring into creator businesses, um, because we are often investing our own funds. And so we have a pretty specific lens that we look through to, like, in our family, and then in our business as we help our clients on, like, what is your risk tolerance? And then how can we apply those funds in the highest-leverage way in order to earn recurring revenue fast? Really, really, really, really fast. So that was a little bit nerve-wracking. But honestly, you know, I've done this for dozens of other businesses. If I can't do it from my own, who am I to even be here? So far, really good. So I feel like we made a good decision.
Okay. Since diving into the creator space, what's something that really surprised you or challenged your expectations?
Surprise me. Well, I think it's interesting to understand, and this is somewhat of a broad generalization, so I don't mean to like paint with too broad of a brush here, but creators who do not have that like marketing operations, sales operations background, finance background, often intimidated by numbers related to business, whether they are on your profit and loss statement, in your bank account, recurring charges from tech-related subscriptions. KPIs on your, you know, what you should have is a metrics dashboard, like tracking the journey that people take from the top of your, or really the left side of your bowtie funnel, the top of your funnel, all the way through LTV maximization, which means getting as many people as it makes sense to pay you as much as possible because you are providing this virtuous cycle of value to them and they are in turn paying you. So I think that was surprising. A little bit, just in terms of like, how can we make this approachable, understandable, easy, and just like really reduce friction in the barrier to entry for helping creators understand, uh, numbers and, and approaching them with absolute confidence?
Yeah. Okay. Last question. If you were just starting out as a creator today, what would be your first
That is a great question. We try and address the biggest creator pain points in all of our marketing resources, right? Like, that's good marketing is where we're trying to solve for pain that you have. And I think the coolest thing that we have dropped to date, we just dropped this last week, 2 weeks ago. It's called the Creator Growth Kit. And it's a completely free course. And the course is full of short videos, like 3 to 7 minutes each. And we pulled in Amanda Goetz, Yasin Mameri, Creator Wizard, Justin, and a number of other creators who are— Aaron Francis— incredibly gracious to lend us their knowledge. And of course, our team created the bulk of the videos on there. But those videos are basically meant to be— Quick hits. solutions to creators' biggest problems in these like microlearning forms. And so you can show up, get exactly what you need when you need it, get your question answered, and then move on to the next video or the next resource or whatever. So, man, that is, if a lot of our clients had had that, you know, to start out, they would be light years ahead. And so I think that's a really, really solid place.
Yeah. And what's cool about the Creator Growth Kit is that it's actually in the same platform that we host our school. So it's like really not that different. So if you're like on the edge of like, maybe I like really need Level Up Creator School and you want just like a taste of what it is and what we offer, it's a great place to start. That's literally no risk at all to you. So that is also a really great perk of Creator Growth Kit.
Yeah. Shout out to Mighty Networks too, for the technology to support that. It's really, really, really cool. You should totally get in there and just check out the platform as well.
Yeah, it's super cool. Okay, so I've dropped the link to the Creator Growth Kit in the chat if you want to check that out. But that is a wrap for us. Thank you so much for joining our livestream today. Be sure you follow us for more tips and insight on how to build a successful recurring revenue business. Have a great day, guys. Bye. Bye.
