Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]:
You guys are going to have way too much fun on this podcast episode, which is why I'm diving right in. So if you are, if you've ever felt trapped by the very business you built, working endless hours, carrying every decision, and wondering if true freedom is actually even possible, this episode is for you. Today we are joined by Amanda Northcutt, a powerhouse who walked away from Silicon Valley success to help creators and entrepreneurs break free from that burnout and that building businesses that actually thrive without them. Her goal is really putting you in a position, just like you've heard before when I start to preach, building a business that is not reliant on you. And Amanda's journey is one of transformation from being the bottleneck in her own company to becoming the architect of systems and mindsets that create real recurring revenue and lasting independence. In this conversation, Amanda is going to open up about the pivotal moments that changed everything, the habits and the frameworks that keep her grounded, and the practical steps she took to reclaim her time. And guess what? Her life too. So stay tuned as Amanda shares not just the how, but also the why behind her evolution and discover the patterns, the habits, the system, and all the things that can help you do the same.
Yvonne Heimann [00:01:34]:
You won't want to miss the story of how she turned chaos into clarity and how you can do so too. Now let me introduce you to Amanda Northcutt. She is a 6-time executive with over 20 years of experience in building and optimizing recurring revenue businesses. She left her Silicon Valley executive role, uh, a few years ago and funded Level Up Creators, where Amanda and her team of experts help thought leaders and subject matter experts build sustainable business with predictable income. And between Level Up Creators podcast, her weekly newsletter, and her flagship program, the MRR Accelerator, Amanda and her team have made it a habit of building businesses into multi- 5-figure recurring revenue generators, machines, and all the things.
Yvonne Heimann [00:02:34]:
Girl, when I read your bio, not to mention that I've been stalking you online for a few years now, I'm like, oh, I know that face. You are talking my language because let's be honest, too many businesses are reliant on us, right? I'm assuming you run into about as many businesses as I do where it's like, The moment the boss, the founder, the CEO falls away, everything just falls apart. Am I right with that?
Amanda Northcutt [00:02:59]:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Yvonne Heimann [00:03:02]:
So why, why leave the safety of Silicon Valley to start something yourself? Because there's something nice to be said about a safe paycheck, isn't it?
Amanda Northcutt [00:03:16]:
Yes, without a doubt. Um, the funny thing about money is If you don't have it, you can't think about anything else. And then when you do have it, you're looking for something much greater and yeah, something that really matters, that really moves the needle. And you want to use your money as a tool for leverage, ideally to pull others up the ladder or send the elevator back down or whatever analogy you want to use. And so I think so many of us had, you know, a major COVID-level epiphany and it called, um, called us to account for our life and how we spend our time. It was a reminder of our mortality and that, you know, we don't have infinite time and infinite opportunity. Community. That doesn't mean you should be thinking in like a scarcity mindset.
I want everyone here to be thinking really abundantly. But the reality is we do have a limited amount of time and how you spend it matters. And I think a lot about legacy, impact, lifestyle architecture, and generational wealth constantly. And I think about those as sort of like 4 different dials or knobs, you know, on a stereo or something like that, for instance. And you cannot have it all. So I'm a firm believer you can't have it all, but different different phases in life, we need to turn up different dials. And so for me, it was time for me to make a move away from a money play. And I really loved the people that I was working with too, at the company I was working with.
Amanda Northcutt [00:04:37]:
I mean, really, really loved them. But at the end of the day, the work that we were doing, or that I was doing individually and as a leader there, did not align with my sort of long-term vision and purpose and did not feel like, while I love the people that we work with and I love our clients, what we're doing here is not aligned with what I want to leave behind. It's not the way that I want to spend the last third of my career. And so that the intersection of COVID and hitting age milestones, and I've got this crazy health story as well that's a constant reminder of mortality and that we have limited time and opportunities for impact here, yeah, enabled me to step up to the plate leave the, leave the job and go out on my own and really like go whole hog, if you will, to borrow a very American phrase, on something that was much more aligned with mission, vision, purpose, and values to the end of legacy and impact rather than just wealth.
Yvonne Heimann [00:05:38]:
So similar, similar to me, right? It's been interesting over the last year for us and our company how our target market has changed, so I'm really focusing on where I'm really leaning into. Between COVID, between losing my husband to cancer, I had similar wake-up moments where it's like, you know what, I'm not gonna get younger. There is an expiration date to this. I hope it's not tomorrow, but there is an expiration date. We all have one. And it's like, what is that legacy that I really want to leave behind? And then originally in my story, it was the same way. It's like I was doing everything, and the moment I stepped away for fortunately, I had already planned in some residual income in a couple of things, but not enough. Everything was still way too reliant on me with not having standard operating procedures, not having process mapping, not having anybody being able to step in and get things done.
Yvonne Heimann [00:06:36]:
It doesn't even have to be me. So, God, are we talking the same language? And then often comes the realization that how are you bringing money in? Because especially as a creator, as a lot of us entrepreneurs, we are the face of the company, we are the one doing. So how can we build this into a residual income? So let's dive into that. How do you turn something like this into recurring revenue, into residual income? How do I build something when I build a business out of a passion. How do I turn this into an income and into a safety net that is not fully reliant on me?
Amanda Northcutt [00:07:21]:
Yeah, that's a great question. It's a huge topic. And it'll be interesting to see kind of where we zoom in on that today. But I think it'd probably be helpful to provide a little bit of context on kind of like where I'm coming from and then what we do and who we help specifically in our business, just because it is, it's not the go build your audience to a million followers. Sell tons of courses and, you know, totally passive revenue opportunities that require constant selling, constant emailing, constant selling on social. Um, so I'm talking about something a little bit different here. If you're, if you're into that, that's cool. The market is saturated with information on how to build an audience and sell courses and a membership.
This is not that.
Yvonne Heimann [00:08:02]:
So, um, I, I think especially with having followed you for a while, you are going way much more a sustainable route where it's not, you don't want to have to be constantly on because now you are just digging the same grave again. Don't get me wrong, all of these things are working. I'm not saying none of these are working, but I think you are similar to me where it's like, I want it sustainable. I don't want to have to be launching every single month and every single month selling and doing all the things. So I love your approach of, okay, let's actually build the sustainable.
Amanda Northcutt [00:08:39]:
Yeah, yeah, thank you. I am a firm believer in leverage. I'm like the leverage queen. And so I have, I work a lot of hours, you know, this is like a multimillion-dollar bootstrapped startup. And that requires, you know, has required a massive season of effort. And so, you know, that dial was really, really turned up. And now it's time to go back and turn turn up the lifestyle architecture dial, right? You have to think about shifting and phases like that. But, um, okay.
So we help individuals, subject matter experts, and thought leaders. So think about folks who have had jobs in corporate or really have any body of knowledge and demonstrable expertise. So 10 years plus in any area that we can package and sell in a B2B environment. So business to business, as opposed to business-to-consumer, or DTC, direct-to-consumer. Because when you sell into a business, is it a little bit harder to do? Does it take a little bit longer? Yep. Is it worth the effort?
Yvonne Heimann [00:09:37]:
The payoff is so much bigger.
Amanda Northcutt [00:09:38]:
Yep. Yeah, you can charge exponentially more for effectively the same thing because the value realized to the organization you're selling into is exponential over and above what you can, what your ability is to impact in an individual environment. So that's a huge paradigm shift for so many people. And it can feel terrifying also if you, if you're, you weren't going into entrepreneurship thinking that you were going to be selling, you know, a multi-six-figure, even seven-figure package to a Fortune 1000 business like that requires you to step into a much bigger pair of shoes, if you will, look through a different lens and to see much larger opportunities in front of you. So that, but that is my point of view is that if you have expertise, that is packageable and sellable in a B2B environment, you are like, we're speaking the same language. You're in the right place for that. And we have experts on our client roster that span the gamut. I mean, like super niche fintech advisors and, you know, people that broker relationships between different parties.
Amanda Northcutt [00:10:42]:
We have experts in sales, marketing, branding, positioning, leadership, executive training. Midlife women's health. I mean, it's really like all over the place. But again, that core, the core thing is, can we extract, codify, order, and repackage your knowledge in a way that businesses are used to buying? So we are big on high-ticket, higher-touch, yet very high-leverage and lower-volume businesses. We want to take that knowledge that we have extracted and codified into your methodology and frameworks, your intellectual property, that if you're of a certain age and experience level, you have a methodology, you have intellectual property, whether you know it or not, we're always able to extract that from our clients. You have the ability to match who you are and what you have to offer and what painful, pervasive, urgent, expensive problems you are uniquely equipped to solve, to plug that into a specific type of company, an individual within a company that you want to sell that to. So, who are you and what's your positioning? What can you offer? What value outcomes and transformation can you bring to the table? 'Cause you're gonna have to make a case for selling into a business when you're selling, you know, big contracts. And then who is having those problems? We're selling must-haves, not nice-to-haves, right? This is really, really important as well.
Amanda Northcutt [00:11:59]:
And so we want to package up your knowledge and methodology and to help you deliver it through speaking engagements, one-on-one coaching, group coaching, fractional executive work, entrepreneur in residence or executive in residence. Sometimes even expert witnesses can be a very interesting way to make money.
Yvonne Heimann [00:12:14]:
I didn't even think about that.
Amanda Northcutt [00:12:15]:
Yeah, advisory brand deals are sometimes on the table for people who do this. And you can also— we're doing some really interesting testing around selling a brand partnership and then our client also being an advisor for that brand. And so it's a double dip. It's not just kind of like a unidirectional relationship. There's ways to license intellectual property now with AI that weren't available to us just even, you know, 5 years ago or 2 years ago, as now it's available to literally everyone. Creating certifications. I mean, there's all sorts of interesting kind of paths that you can take based on what you want to do and what that lifestyle architecture looks like for each individual. So hopefully from like a framing and like container for the conversation that we're going to have, hopefully that makes sense.
Did that make sense?
Yvonne Heimann [00:13:04]:
It made, it at least makes complete sense to me. And one of the things that I wanted to pick out too is if you listen to all the things Amanda just mentioned, is one of the pieces is also you are going after a must-have. And that's where you know you're talking to the right person, because what is the first thing that when something goes south anywhere in the world that people cut down off? They're cutting down their luxury items. If a company that you are working with is like, cool, this is nice to have, whatever it is, if it's a company retreat for lack of better explanation, they're going to cut down on those experiences, on those trainings, on bringing people in. But if you are tapping into must-haves, meaning it has a straight-up impact into the company, it has a clear value that you can show them and tell them, this is the clear value, you have a must-have. And it's a built-in, pretty much, follow-up contract because when you're looking at, it's interesting, my brain is making like 10,000 different connections right now. Where with my late husband, one of the things he was always talking about is when the market takes a dive, everybody stops marketing. And he's like, don't stop marketing, ramp up because everybody goes quiet and suddenly you are the one that shows up.
Yvonne Heimann [00:14:34]:
And it's the same with the must-haves. It's not a luxury that's just going to be thrown out like a free lunch. It's the thing that helps this company to survive the storm, and they are not going to even consider remotely canceling your contract. So it's like the whole, between the packaging, between the frameworks, and Amanda is right completely. I'm like, this is why I was like, oh my God, I have to have Amanda on the podcast. Because you have frameworks, even if you just have been in business for 5 years. I promise you, if you have worked with clients, you have a framework, and Amanda is the one to tickle them out of you. Because now suddenly, and correct me if I'm seeing this different than you, now suddenly, number one, it's kind of like a social proof when you have a framework.
It's like, oh, she knows what she's talking about. And it's an easier sell, it's an easier explanation. People can follow along easier, right?
Amanda Northcutt [00:15:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad you pulled on that thread. That is such a good point. So there's a lot of research that's been done kind of on this creator economy, thought leader, influencer, attach whatever word makes the most sense for, for your niche. But, um, it's fascinating. So for folks about our age, we have 3 to 5 people online that we love. We feel like we know them, we're attached to them, we trust them, we look forward to their content in our feed, whatever platform, right? 3 to 5 top people.
And the coolest thing, how this translates in a B2B sales cycle, is that if you are one of those 3 to 5 people online sharing content, you don't have to be an influencer with a million followers. I built a multimillion-dollar business in 18 months with no funding, with 2,000 LinkedIn followers. So don't give me an excuse about I don't have followers. That's not the way this works. Okay, when you need revenue, you go to sales. Marketing is a long-term play, but you, you've gotta, you gotta be willing to step into this, this comfort of sales.
Yvonne Heimann [00:16:38]:
You can fluff up and do all the things later on. What's important is the sale getting in the door, right?
Amanda Northcutt [00:16:44]:
But if you can become one of those 3 to 5 people online for your buyer, for your ideal customer persona, you've got to know who you are and who they are and what problems you solve for them. And what value outcomes and transformation you can provide. You need, your content needs to be so thoughtful and dialed in that it feels like you reached inside your ICP's brain, pulled out their innermost thoughts and fears about their job and their work and their upcoming promotion or lack thereof or layoff rounds or whatever the case may be, and you reflect it back to them in your content. So you make this deep, trusting connection that creates compound interest over time. And when that B2B buyer has the opportunity or the need to purchase your services, they have like horse blinders on. If you're in that top 3 to 5 group, they're not going to go look at competitors, at least not seriously. If they have an RFP or something like that in their buying process, they may go do that to check the box, but they know they're going to hire you. And when you combo that high affinity factor, that already gives you 50% of a leg up over anybody else.
Amanda Northcutt [00:17:44]:
Half of a B2B buying decision for like an individual consultant, coach, speaker, trainer, facilitator comes down to if the buyer likes you, if the person in charge of making the buying decision likes you or not, that is enormously important. And so many people miss that piece. But when you combine that with your own intellectual property and like demonstrable, hey, this is how I solve that problem, you have no competitors at that point. If you are not beg, stealing, and borrowing other people's stuff and cobbling together engagements and reinventing the wheel for each client, but you have a tried and true methodology that works for a specific company and a specific persona, individual within that company to solve specific problems. It's like gangbusters. And that is a terrifying thing to go like kind of narrow and deep into a niche because it requires entrepreneurs who really need money to say no. And yeah, it is in the saying no when the yeses will start to happen. The more aligned yeses will start to happen.
Amanda Northcutt [00:18:42]:
If you are a yes man or woman and are saying yes because you're desperate for money and your friend at this company asked you to do X, Y, and Z, and you're like, well, I can do it and therefore I will. And then if you've also thought about like, how much should I charge? Well, at corporate I used to make $90,000 a year, and that works out to something like whatever, you know, per hour. So my hourly rate is whatever my previous, you know, effective hourly rate was in corporate. You're leaving so much on the table and you're also not differentiated at all. You're a commodity at that point. And so it is so imperative that you know who you are for and who you are not for, to the point where, like, think about the strongest magnet you can imagine. You want to attract people to that sticky side of the magnet, um, that you want to work with, and with equal and opposite force, repel those who are not aligned with what you have to offer.
Yvonne Heimann [00:19:32]:
It makes life so much easier. Don't get me wrong. I'm like, that breaking point, that time of saying no and being really clear on who you work with. That is a freaky time zone. That is, oh my God, especially when you're digging yourself out of, you just left corporate or whatever it is. It is so difficult and it is so frightening. And oh my God, get the pillow ready to scream because it can totally happen. But the shift will happen.
Yvonne Heimann [00:20:04]:
The shift completely will happen. And because I also believe there is, there is a multitude that's going on. Yes, it's a clear message. But you're also setting boundaries. It's a, yeah, I can, but honestly, no, that's not what I'm here for. And now suddenly, because you are setting the boundaries, first of all, people do appreciate boundaries. There is something to be said of just the human nature and the emotion of setting a boundary where it's like, oh, and either way, you're going to have somebody that has a problem with boundaries in general, and you don't want to work with them to begin with. Or you're gonna get the respect for setting those boundaries because now suddenly you look even more like the expert because you say no.
Yvonne Heimann [00:20:47]:
There is this, I haven't dug too deep into the research of it, but there is this thing that happens when you say no. And then secondary, the brainpower and the time you are saving for not doing everything and being able to implement repeatable processes and really follow your own frameworks and polish the things up and now suddenly you can run your own business much more efficient because you are niched down on what you are doing. It's such a rat's tail that comes after this where I'm like, yeah, welcome to Ask Yvi 2026. We've been working on a lot of all of those things because I'm multi-passionate. I like to play around with things and I literally had to get to the point where I'm like, I know, not doing it. I, this is really what I want to do. Here's really who I want to work with. And oh, by the way, yeah, I have frameworks.
Yvonne Heimann [00:21:44]:
Let's actually finally talk about them. And seeing the shift, and I always love how podcasts for me align with what happens in my business and my life, seeing the shift of coming out of going digital nomading in 2025, remapping everything, figuring out who I want to be when I grow up, getting into perimenopause, which means I don't give less shits than I used before. And all of that changed. And literally this month, as of January 2026, the floodgates have opened. And I'm like, 2 hours ago I was sitting here with my business manager and my assistant, and I'm just breathing, and I'm like, we can do this, we have the resources, she is coming on full time, everything is working out. And now I'm falling back into my own training of I can. Don't start self-sabotaging just because you might not know yet how this thing works. Oh my God, girl, yeah, there was a reason I wanted to have you on.
Yvonne Heimann [00:22:46]:
Now, all of that external processing of mine, welcome to the state of Ask Yvi. I'm curious, as I was talking about, there is a lot happening when you niche down like this, when you get really specific. What have you seen with the people you are working with when those floodgates open? Are they experiencing similar things like I do, where it's like, "Oh my God, now the human animal brain comes back of this is something new, this is something bad just because it's new," and it's not bad, it's actually what we ask for, but my body and my mind is going like, Holy crap, this is something new. This wants to kill us. And I'm, I'm working with my coach on all of those things. Are you experiencing the same things with your client?
Amanda Northcutt [00:23:36]:
Oh man, the things that our amygdala, our back brain, does to us is so unfair. If we could just stay up here in the front, we would be in such better shape. But, uh, so what happens? Let me talk about 5 things that must be true to run a successful business. And this is all like, there's a cascading impact here. So, and this is absent mindset, which is easily half of the equation. So you've got to be willing to step into discomfort. The only way over is through. There's no way around to be successful.
There's no shortcuts. There's no such thing as an overnight success. That is absolute unfettered bullshit. And people think that I maybe am an overnight success. I have been in business since I was, I was working full-time at 19, age 19. I was a full-time student and working full-time. I have tried and failed so many times at so many things and they have all led up to this, this organization at this time in this way. So I want to be clear about that.
Amanda Northcutt [00:24:32]:
I don't believe in overnight success. I think it's absolute crock. And a lot of people, I don't know, the way that the media portrays people and the way that even like influencer economy and everything is portrayed, it looks like an overnight success, but it's not. And I can tell you that because I talked to people with gajillions of followers all the time. And I want to tell you that building followers does not equal the ability to drive revenue from those followers. Those are separate.
Yvonne Heimann [00:24:57]:
We've seen that creator that had how many millions of followers and couldn't sell one tank top. Yep.
Amanda Northcutt [00:25:03]:
Yeah. Yep. So I hear this all the time. So I want to be clear that those skill sets, while both are really good, are not necessarily, they don't both exist at the same time and they don't, they don't have to. So I want to be clear about that. Okay. What must be true in order to run a successful, sustainable recurring revenue business? You've got to know who you are, what your positioning is. Again, I'll go back to what painful, pervasive, urgent, expensive problems are you uniquely equipped to solve based on your wisdom, experience, expertise, what you love to do.
Amanda Northcutt [00:25:33]:
So who are you? Number 2, who are the people having those problems? And again, like we already talked about, must-haves versus nice, nice-to-haves. It's like the knife has to be in their back. Somebody is turning it. And they are going to bleed out metaphorically if this problem is not solved. So who are you and who are they? Go ahead.
Yvonne Heimann [00:25:49]:
And there's, there's a, there's a piece that I think, and I know you and your clients don't, but I want to mention in the, in the podcast where I've seen some of the people make sure that problem really exists and you don't just think the problem exists.
Amanda Northcutt [00:26:08]:
Yes, you have to validate it. And problems, like, it might be the right company and the right individual within that company, but the wrong time. Because when they are experiencing that problem is when it's your job to orchestrate a meet, a meet-cute between you and the prospect. Okay, so there's a lot of things that must be true, but who are you and who are they? Number 3, what is your methodology and what are your frameworks? How do you take that prospect or that client from that painful, pervasive problem space to solution land? This is your methodology, your frameworks, your intellectual property. It's quite impressive, right? And then what are the packages, the containers that you're wrapping up your methodology in? Is it that list I talked about earlier? Keynote speaking, one-on-one coaching, group coaching, facilitation, training, consulting, executive in residence, advisory. There's about 15 things that, you know, individuals can sell into corporations. And then question number 5, this is the hardest one. How do you most efficiently and effectively acquire best fit clients? That's the hard one.
Amanda Northcutt [00:27:08]:
And that's like, but let me tell you, you will never be able to answer that question if you can't answer the first 4 things. Who are you? Who are they? How do you solve their problems? And how are you packaging up solutions to those problems? If you don't nail that, any business diagnostic I have ever done, and I've worked with and consulted for hundreds of recurring revenue business businesses, it always comes back to one of those first 4 things. They've missed on their positioning, their ICP, or the timing, how they solve problems, and that could be with technology or knowledge, and then how that is packaged, and therefore how the ideal customer sort of like receives that packaging. Like something's off there. But if you can nail those things and validate them through market testing, 5th grade experiments, basically voice of customer interviews, surveys, polls, content, how people are interacting or not interacting with your content is important, how podcast interviews views are landing or not. That enables you to solidify those first 4 things. And then answering number 5 becomes much simpler because you know who you're actually looking for. We're not going bass fishing in the ocean for your clients.
Amanda Northcutt [00:28:10]:
They don't exist there. We are going to, you know, wherever the ponds are where your proverbial fish swim. We want to narrow the, narrow the playing field significantly. And when you are so narrow and deep into a specific niche, it's easy to identify those pockets where your customers live. And there's only about 10 types of activities that will allow you to access those customers. And your job is to design low-risk experiments in order to figure out what are the fewest number of actions you can take, and therefore highest leverage actions, in order to achieve the revenue that you want.
Yvonne Heimann [00:28:44]:
Mic drop, mic drop, mic drop. And I love how you put in there too the Just do. Because I do the same thing, right? Between public speaking, between podcasts, I just test messages. First of all, I'm an external processor, so I get to just play through them at a low risk. I'm like, okay, how do I feel with this language or that language? How does it land? How does it, doesn't land? And I just get to test it out because it comes down to we can build the perfect thing on paper, but if you don't test it out, you're not going to get actual real data back.
Now let me ask you, do you have, do you have one tip for my audience right now? If somebody is like, oh my God, she is speaking my language, I was always trying to do the whole B2B, the corporate contracts, and I just can't seem to get in and it's just not working and I'm just going back to what I've been doing because at least I can pay my bills. If anybody that feels connected to this right now, where do you get started? What's the first thing I should be doing when I'm like, okay, I'm ready to take this leap, what do I need to do?
Amanda Northcutt [00:29:55]:
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, okay, let's go back to kind of like baseline. I love this exercise, and this is an adapted exercise from Jim Collins, a famous business researcher and author. You are going to draw 3 big circles on a poster board or a whiteboard or a piece of paper. Okay. This is not a sexy exercise. You can do it on a notepad. You can do it in Miro, wherever works for you.
3 circles. And it's a 3-circle Venn diagram. Okay. So there's overlaps and in the middle, all 3 circles overlap. Okay. In the first circle, you're going to write what you are passionate about, what you love to do, what informs sort of like your big picture decisions. What do you, believe? And what are you just super, super passionate about? Almost to the level of like, what do you feel is vocational for you? Okay. So what do you love? What are you the best at? Okay.
Amanda Northcutt [00:30:46]:
That's circle number 2. What are you the best at? This is not the time to be humble. And you might ask your best friend to answer this question on your behalf. So what do you love? What are you the best at? And then the third circle, really, really important. What will people pay you for? Okay, so find the middle of those first two circles first. What do you love and what are you best at? But it's in the smallest overlap of those three is your business idea. What will people pay for? Specifically, what will businesses pay for instead of individuals, even though we're all buying from individuals or selling into individuals in corporations? But what will businesses pay for? And then from there, start doing uncomfortable stuff. Like, uh, we, we do this, we have our clients do this exercise called network mining.
Amanda Northcutt [00:31:33]:
You go through your phone contact list, your LinkedIn connections, your LinkedIn followers, your alumni group, um, any groups that you're a member of, like organizations, associations, memberships, masterminds, and you start reaching out to people and asking for a coffee chat, you know, 20 minutes Zoom, use Calendly or some kind of booking service like that. And just say, hey, I'm thinking about going in a new direction in my career. You have been, you know, say something personal, like remind of the connection, um, instrumental in this or that, or I really respect you for this and that. I would be so grateful if we could spend 20 minutes together on Zoom or on the phone. Um, so I can ask you a couple of questions and also see if there's any ways that I could be helpful to you. That is very important. Building relational equity and offering to be helpful matters a great deal. It's very hard to ask for a favor if you have not built any relational equity.
It's like you have to put some marbles in the jar before you can take any out.
Yvonne Heimann [00:32:30]:
You mean don't do the damn reach out on LinkedIn that we get every time we actually agree to add somebody to the network?
Amanda Northcutt [00:32:37]:
Yeah, yeah, don't do that. People that, start with people that you know, okay? You're gonna ask questions, ask about what they're up to, what's going on in their world, and if you can be helpful to them. And then you're free to ask them some questions and tell them what you are thinking, sort of your hypothesis, like tell them what's in that, the middle of that 3-circle Venn diagram and ask them if they're experiencing those problems in the marketplace or their business specifically. And if they have any specific advice for you, record those conversations, take the transcripts, put them into your AI tool of choice. Like in aggregate, you're going to do a lot of these. Spoiler alert, you want to do as many as humanly possible. And if you're not making money and you're trying to spin your business up, do not tell me this is not a worthwhile exercise. This is an incredibly high leverage exercise.
Amanda Northcutt [00:33:23]:
Do not think that your LinkedIn post is better and over and above having a one-on-one conversation when you need to get money in the door, because money comes from sales when you're starting out in particular. Now we want to get a switch flipped a little bit later on where you doing outbound activities, you going and knocking on other people's door. Switches and people knock on your door. But this is how that starts. If you're starting with what feels like not a lot, go to the individual level. That's really important. Do as many of these as you can. If you got nothing going on, you're trying to get your business going, do 40 of these a week.
Amanda Northcutt [00:33:57]:
40. If you can do it, do 40 a week. Aggregate the transcripts, throw them into your tool of choice, ask for thorough analysis. And say, okay, Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT, what the hell should I do based on all this information? Here's the hypothesis I came in with, the middle of my Venn diagram. Here's what everybody said. Can you identify and spot like trends and specific quotes and things that would be helpful toward building my business? And then you have a shitload of fodder for content. Okay. All that voice of customer information and what you kind of narrow it down to that's helpful.
Amanda Northcutt [00:34:32]:
That will help you speak much more intelligently to your target audience as you get closer and closer to them. It will allow you to write content that feels like you reached inside their head, pulled it out, pulled out their thoughts, and reflected them back to them on the screen because you actually know them because you've taken the time to speak with individual humans. That's really, really, really, really key. But then the trick is at the end of the voice of customer interview, don't just say thank you. And hang up. Instead, create more leverage because we don't have time for skimming the surface and wasting any time. Any activity that we do needs to provide a 10x return. So at the end of that call, I want you to say, thank you.
Amanda Northcutt [00:35:11]:
How can I be helpful to you? That's thing number one. Think through your mental Rolodex. Is there anyone you could introduce that person to that would be helpful to them and whatever they're working on? Because that role of connector in society, that's speaks to the back part of our brain in the best possible way. And it elevates the person's perception of you in society. If you are able to connect them with someone that could be helpful, then you can ask them, now that you know what I'm up to, who in your network should I speak with? Sometimes even people will be like, how can I buy from you? You know, and these are not veiled sales calls. They are voice of prospect or voice of customer calls. But it's like, how do you continue to create leverage and get an intro and a reference for the next voice of customer interview and the next one. These will turn into selling conversations if you're doing what I'm saying to do here.
And then beyond that, there's other activities. But if you're starting out, that's what you should do. That is exactly what you should do.
Yvonne Heimann [00:36:02]:
And it's been interesting to listen to you with the outreach and everything, and then coming to the close of these will, on their own, turn into a sales conversation at some point, where it's literally how I have my discovery calls. I never actually do the hard ask at the end. It's 90% of my calls. There is always some that trickle into my calendar that are not necessarily a fit, but 90% of my calls end up in, cool, how do we fix this now? How can I work with you? I don't even need to sell anymore. And that, that comes simply from, as you said, understanding the language, understanding the pain points, and asking the questions. It's like when I look through my discovery calls, I ask 10,000 questions in 20 minutes to just understand where they're at. And that already right there gets me to the point of, okay, cool, you're the right one to solve this problem, awesome, how can we do this? And again, coming back around, I don't think my audience is one of those, but please, please don't do the whole cold outreach on, on LinkedIn and be a pain in the ass and just try to cold sale because somebody added you to LinkedIn. Not that I had 5 of those this morning.
Yvonne Heimann [00:37:23]:
Um, having said that, actually, I'm following Amanda on LinkedIn, so you better make sure you do that too. As always, we have all of the links and everything accessible about Amanda, um, right in the description. It's all down there. You just can click on it wherever you're watching, listening, and all the things. And oh my God, Amanda, I am so excited. I actually finally got to meet you kind of in person and got to chat with you. I have the feeling I'm going to be stalking your LinkedIn even more than I already have. Thanks so much for coming on and thanks so much for also giving me ideas where I'm like, ooh, because corporate and full-on B2B, so not on the level where I'm at right now, but the big speaking and everything, When I asked about how to start, that was me, because I haven't managed to, other than once or twice, get myself full on into that market.
Yvonne Heimann [00:38:16]:
And I'm like, oh, some ideas here and some things we might start working on and planning on in our own company. So thank you. Thank you for coming on and just thank you for sharing all of these things with us, me and my audience.
Amanda Northcutt [00:38:31]:
You're so welcome. I'm honored to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. And I would just remind everybody that Everything you want is on the other side of fear. And if this were easy, everybody would do it. And you have got to play bigger. Stop playing small. Um, think about what limiting beliefs are standing in your way and what you need to remove in order to step into whatever maximum you looks like.
And know that people who are successful are very uncomfortable the vast majority of the time, even if they make it look easy. And that is how you become successful. You are constantly doing things that are uncomfortable. I did not say unethical or yucky or immoral in any way, shape, or form. I said uncomfortable, yet moral and ethical and within your values. But I think that is the key to success is consistent discomfort.
Yvonne Heimann [00:39:17]:
And to, to tail tag onto that, I did an exercise a couple of years back where at least once a week I did something new. I put myself in a situation that wasn't life-threatening, that was just uncomfortable. To get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. So with that, there is your exercise, everybody. Your to-do is going to be make sure you're subscribed because we have more amazing women coming on, and then go stalk Amanda. I know she's active on LinkedIn. I guarantee you there's more links in the description too, and go follow her. And yes, stalk in the ethical way, just like I do online.
Go have fun, go reach out to her, And I'll see you on the next episode. Bye, everybody!