In this Level Up Creator School interview, the Director of Operations talks with CEO Amanda Northcutt about her key takeaways from the Craft & Commerce conference. Northcutt stresses the outsized value of meeting online connections in person, describing how face‑to‑face interactions foster deeper friendships, partnership opportunities, and a sense of community that combats the isolation of solo entrepreneurship. She challenges the dominant creator narrative that low‑ticket, high‑volume funnels are the primary path to success, arguing that most creators benefit more from a high‑ticket, high‑touch, low‑volume model that can be turned into recurring revenue. Northcutt outlines a practical framework for repackaging a single product into a multi‑month subscription and extending its value proposition to B2B markets, where budgets are larger and value can be multiplied. The conversation showcases concrete examples from the conference—workshops with Amanda Goetz, conversations with Barrett Brooks (former ConvertKit CEO), and the “Working in Public” partnership between Level Up and Northcutt’s brand—illustrating how strategic alliances and public collaboration accelerate growth. Throughout, she stresses vulnerability, intentional outreach, and the long‑term benefits of building genuine, non‑competitive partnerships that align with shared ideal‑customer personas. The interview concludes with a call to action for creators to seek allies, show up in person, and design high‑leverage, recurring‑revenue business models.
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Level Up Creator School. I'm our Director of Operations and Amanda Northcutt is our CEO. Thank you for joining us. We are always so honored and feel it is a great privilege to just spend a few minutes of your day with you and to be able to hold your attention just for a little while. If you have not met us before, there are 2 ways that we help thought leaders, consultants, and coaches build rock-solid recurring revenue businesses. The first is Level Up Creators, and this is our done-for-you white glove consulting firm, and this includes our MRR Accelerator program. And the second is Level Up Creator School, and this is where we help a global group of thought leaders, consultants, and coaches build businesses with a done-with-you model. Creator School includes access to our consulting team and our methodology in a way that used to be reserved exclusively for our consulting clients. So Hello and welcome. This week Amanda is just getting back from Craft and Commerce, and so I just wanted to kind of pull some nuggets out of her time there. So we're just gonna jump right in, and if you have any questions at any point in time, feel free to drop those in the chat and we will pause our conversation and, and hit those up. So, okay, what was your biggest takeaway from KIT conference, Craft and Commerce? Something that either shifted your perspective and your thinking or validated what you already kind of know and what we already use in Level Up?
Yeah, that's a great question. My biggest takeaway though, I think I'm going to take this a totally different direction, is just how important it is to spend time with people in person that you're friends with on the internet or that you want to be friends with in real life and on the internet. It's just such an incredibly valuable use of time and investment in relationship to go and be together in the same physical space, as opposed to like, you know, if you and I were sitting in a studio on a couch together or something like that. I mean, that would be so cool. It's such a different environment. And I'm quite extroverted. And so that was very refreshing for me to be around people and make some new friendships and solidify some others. And it was a good, it was a good event for sure. Yeah.
Did you have any unexpected or memorable conversations with other founders or creators that stood out to you?
Oh man. Um, you know, to be honest with you, I went to some of the talks, but I spent the vast majority of my 16-hour days in meetings. And so, um, I had, yeah, really, really lovely conversations. I mean, I spent a good amount of time with Amanda Goetz. We had a workshop together. It was fantastic. Her keynote was next level. So I definitely was there in the front row for that. And my goodness, Amanda's book went up for preorder while we were at Craft+ Commerce. And so that was a very exciting moment as well. It launches in October. And yeah, I mean, frankly, she just freaking dropped a hammer and crushed it. It was incredible. So that was a lot of fun just to see after our work together over the last year. And The girls going places. I'll say that. Chris Donnelly had a great keynote as well. Tory Dunlap and many, many, many others. And yeah, I made some new friendships that were unexpected for sure. Had a great long conversation with Barrett Brooks, the former CEO of, it was ConvertKit, now Kit. And that was great as well. Shout out to Tim Grahl. DeeDee Moore of More Than Grand and Creator School was there. Dan Cumberland traveled all the way from Merida, Mexico to be there. And that was really, really fun to see.
Yeah. Yeah. What was something that you saw or heard while you were there that you wish more creators or business owners understood?
Yeah. I mean, this feels funny because it was like me and Amanda's talk was very spicy and it went, it was, it was a contrarian take basically the whole thing. So we were busting the top 10 creator myths. And, um, I was told that was, that talk was an unlock for a lot of people and just to help them think about business in a completely different way. And that, um, I think that's something that we're going to be courses, challenges, and low-ticket memberships are like not actually a productive path for the vast majority of creators. You know, if you have tons of followers and like a killer funnel that works, um, and there are some people that I know and that were there where they have killer funnels and large audiences and that works, Sam Vander Wieland being one of them, absolutely crushing it, Leila Pomper. Um, so that works for some of us, but for us mere mortals who do not have, you know, 6 and 7 figures of followers, high ticket, high touch, low volume can be a path to a pretty like high leverage exceeding your previous, you know, corporate career salary, uh, track and a life of enjoyment where you can work toward lifestyle architecture and generational wealth and impact and legacy and all those things that we like. And so we were really challenging people to think about what's one product you have that you currently charge one time for that you could charge over the course of 3 months. Right? Let's— what's the recurring value that you could charge in order to earn that recurring revenue? And then what is the B2B application of what you are selling? So most people sell B2C or DTC, direct-to-consumer, to individuals. But if you're actually selling into businesses, you can charge a lot more if what you're delivering provides, you know, 10 or even 100x value of what you're providing to that individual. And then businesses have budgets as opposed to your You know, fighting over a limited amount of discretionary income from an individual. So, and especially those 2 things together can completely change the trajectory of your business.
Yeah. And it's crazy because today is the 2nd year anniversary of our business.
It is our anniversary.
So crazy. I just saw that on the calendar. I was like, oh my gosh, I need to post in Slack. I need to be like, hey team, this is awesome. And it's crazy because we were kind of at Craft and Commerce last year and it was like, we're kind of launching into this new space. Was there any shift in difference in people recognizing you this time around and kind of striking up conversations just because they've seen your face?
Yes. Which was great. I mean, that feels like we're making an impact and it feels like our content is helping other people. And our business is successful. I mean, we are— I talk about being a demonstrably effective business model and we have that at this point because we are making that for our clients. That's what I love about our company is like our success is tied directly to our clients' success. They are inextricably tied. And so that's a great indicator that our clients are being successful as well.
Yeah. In your workshop with Amanda Goetz, what was one of the most common questions that people were asking?
Oh man, questions were all over the map because we covered so many different topics. But we did have a good bit of questions, really follow-ups to almost everything. People were getting into the weeds. It was great. There was standing room only. And so we had a lot of people show up and take a lot of notes. And that was cool. But yeah, there wasn't any like particular question theme, I guess, more just like some unlocks. And people shared at the end ideas that they had and how they were going to take their business forward and changes they were going to be able to make because of what they learned there. So that was really great.
Yeah. Okay. One last parting shot from your time at Craft and Commerce. Nothing's off the table.
Go. Oh, parting. Oh, no question prompt. Um, sorry. That's funny. I'm having trouble with my speakers this morning, you know, like before you hit live and I was like, did she ask a question? No, she did not. Okay. Parting shot. Um, Oh, okay. The big parting shot from Amanda and I's workshop was find a partner, not necessarily a business partner, but find some allies, find some business friends, be vulnerable enough to show up and to create a connection and to instigate a connection. We're really big on partner marketing here at Level Up. And that can mean all different sorts of things and take all, you know, many different forms. But the important thing is that you are finding businesses who have similar ICPs, ideal customer personas, as you, and they are tangentially related. So there's some sort of like logical connection between your business and theirs, but those businesses are non-competitors. And so when you can, like we did with Amanda, I mean, we're trying to set an example here, obviously. So Amanda had an audience and we had operations and each needed the other thing. And so that's where this born, uh, This Working in Public campaign was born and that changed a lot for, for both of our companies. And that was a really, really fantastic partnership. And also, you know, friendship has come from that. It's really, really important because, you know, running these businesses at home largely by ourselves, most people work by themselves, is hard. It's very, very lonely and it is a grind. And that's why, you know, showing up and seeing people IRL in real life in the flesh is super important. Like putting forth the time and the budget and the effort to do that. And the vulnerability. I'll just like keep coming back to that because it is vulnerable to show up and it is vulnerable to go and approach other people as an adult and, you know, make new friends and forge, you know, business relationships and find things that are aligned in order to be able to effectively kind of pitch an idea and be willing to be rejected. But the rewards, I think, far outweigh the risk of going in and doing those kinds of things. And I mean, I think that the benefits are, you can see kind of what's in front of you potentially is what's more obvious from like a business perspective, you know, if you're doing a business kind of marketing partnership or a joint product launch or something like that. But I think the benefits extend far, far, far beyond that, from just a relational standpoint, from a learning and growth mindset standpoint. And you never know kind of what other doors are going to be unlocked because of Doing something like that. So find partners, work together, work in public, show people what you're doing, uh, and show up in person. So build relationships.
Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you guys so much for joining today and following along. Be sure to follow us for more tips and insights on building a successful recurring revenue business. Until next week. Bye.
