Amanda Northcutt (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Level Up Creators podcast. I'm Amanda Northcutt, founder and CEO, and we help digital thought leaders turn their knowledge and experience into rock solid recurring revenue. Today's episode is part of our special series featuring MRR Accelerator participants, giving you an inside look at who they are, what they bring to the table, and how we're teaming up to transform their businesses. I'm so excited to introduce my repeat guest today, Mr. Dan Cumberland.

Dan has one of the most diverse and fascinating backgrounds from ministry and music to software development and now AI consulting. He's built an audience of over 10,000 subscribers through the meaning movement and is now helping creators and entrepreneurs integrate AI while staying true to their authentic voice.

Through the MRR Accelerator, Dan is developing a scalable recurring revenue model that helps creators and entrepreneurs integrate AI into their businesses while staying true to their authentic voice, enabling to make work smarter and more efficient. Dan, I'm so excited to have you. Welcome back.

Dan! (00:58)
Thank you so much. So excited to be here yet again. Just so much, so much fun.

Amanda Northcutt (01:05)
Yeah. And for anybody who hasn't listened to that first episode, I would certainly encourage you to go back and give it a listen and you can get a deep dive on Dan's background and also a deep dive on his perspective on AI. We'll kind of hit those at a 10,000 foot level here right now, but that is a don't miss episode. It's super, super interesting. Okay. So Dan, like I just said, background, ministry, music, software development, and now AI. How have those? Yeah. I need some... No, not... What an interesting nonlinear path, I think is how we would put that.

Dan! (01:27)
Yes. What a mess. Yes, yes.

That's a better spin.

Amanda Northcutt (01:35)
But I want to know,

I want to know the why behind that again at that 10,000 foot level and how have these different experiences sort of shaped and molded your approach to helping entrepreneurs and creators now.

Dan! (01:38)
Yeah.

Yes, such, such good questions. I will, know, the YAI, let's start there and then we can dig into the more ancient history if there's interest. I...

Well, where do I start? I'll rewind a little bit beyond the AI. Got into entrepreneurship, building the meaning movement over 10 years ago with this passion to help people navigate questions of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, those kinds of things. I've gone to grad school, had a background in ministry prior to that.

And jumped into the deep end of just figuring out, piecing it together, how to build a business, how to be an entrepreneur. had no frameworks, no background, no one in my family that was entrepreneurial. it was really, I felt like venturing out on my own. And that, I'm very much a, like, let's just jump in and figure it out kind of person. so that worked well for me. Opened doors, eventually opened doors into the software realm.

jumped in with a private equity team, ran a software company for them, exited that, started a sales agency that quickly pivoted to be a venture studio building software projects. Wrapped that up about two years ago and then found my way into fractional.

Fractual CMO work, so marketing, marketing consulting, mostly for software companies. As I wrapped up, the Venture Studio, the Venture Studio model was a core group, about 12 of us, launching software projects. The idea was to launch things, see what works, double down on the ones that do, kill off the ones that don't, the hopes that we'll find some hits that we could scale those up.

exit those or stick with them, whatever, just gives us optionality, kind of shared resources across the portfolio of companies. But I was CEO partner with two business partners, one on the sales side, one on the technical side, and was very much the one who was kind of the glue of the organization in really every aspect. Was the manager of the teams, was the one who did the hiring, the firing, was the one who settled the disagreements between the partners. And it's just a lot to manage, a lot

of herding cats.

make sure all the right butts are in the right seats and we're moving in the same direction and making a lot of hard calls along the way. As I started into my marketing consulting, I started scaling up these systems for these companies that range from $5 million to $20 million software companies. I wanted to build a different way. around the same time, AI had come on the scene in the more user accessible models and interfaces that we know now.

leaned heavily into AI just to see how far can I get with a more simple streamlined operations utilizing good systems and good system thinking and process oriented thinking around what I'm doing to make the deliverables that I'm making for my clients and found that I could get just as much marketing done if not more with a much leaner team by using AI. And then started comparing notes with some of my colleagues, other people in marketing,

and running companies and started to notice that I do things a little bit differently. And I think that goes full circle to my background in psychology and ministry and maybe even in music and creative expression of like, I have a fascination that I've been pursuing for a long time and what does it mean to be human and how...

where's the dividing line between what is human and what is not? And I think there's a question that AI forces us to ask more and more. But I think because of that perspective, I was able to just maybe fight my way up the learning curve and develop some really good approaches to AI and eventually started.

consulting, helping others do the same in their businesses, which looked like AI, custom AI builds, sometimes it's training, and it has gone on from there, which I'm sure we will get to. That's the not that short, not as short as I wanted it to be answer to your question. How'd I do?

Amanda Northcutt (06:07)
Well, when

you say it like that, it actually does sound like a pretty logical linear path. Like the case could be made that, okay, I see how that created leverage in one area that helps you kind of evolve and move and take what you learned before and then bring it forward into every subsequent step. And so I see it. I like hearing that.

Dan! (06:13)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's, you know, hindsight

is 20-20. Steve Jobs has a quote that like, you know, that the dots don't all connect until you see them in reverse or however he said it much more eloquently. And I really think it's true and I can see how all those steps, you I can tell that story, but by telling that story, I'm also leaving out so many of the steps that were just fraught with like, you know, fear and doubt and uncertainty. And so it's not as clean of a path as

as maybe I just made it sound.

Amanda Northcutt (06:58)
That's okay. That's all right. We get the gist. One thing that you've said that I love, I hope I'm going to quote you correctly, but let me know if I don't. people are the answer to every problem. Did I get that right? Or do you say it the other way? Okay.

Dan! (06:59)
Yeah.

Yes, yeah, totally. No,

that's totally, that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (07:14)
That's really stood

out to me from one of our earlier conversations months ago. And, you know, another kind of like key message that you, where we're really kind of centering your organization around is that AI should help us do more meaningful human work, not replace it. Okay. And people are the answer to every problem. So put that all together for us and talk about how we're bringing that forward into kind of your new business model.

Dan! (07:29)
Yeah. Yes.

Yes, totally.

man, I have so much to say about both of those ideas. I think first, just to start with the people piece, any and everything in my life that I've been able to accomplish that I can point out on a resume or a LinkedIn profile.

If I ask the question of how did I make that happen or how did that come about, the answer is always people. And I think that people are the answer to the problem. People are the way forward. People are the way to get unstuck. And great partnerships can either be such a multiplying force that

It's like two plus two equals 10 when done right. And so I believe that to the core of my being. And I think when it comes to AI, I think a lot about work. This is where the meaning movement started, really thinking with people around work and meaning and how do we find.

find fulfillment in that realm. And what we know as work is a product of the Industrial Revolution. And the Industrial Revolution, I'm going to give a short overview of history. won't get too heady here. But the Industrial Revolution really took people out of their context, where they were a part of a family, a part of a community, where they felt rooted and grounded. And there was a story about

Amanda Northcutt (08:57)
Do it.

Dan! (09:09)
who they were and some contribution that they were making. In the West, many people's names are derivatives of that work context. It's Smith, it's these words, it's so rooted and so connected. And the Industrial Revolution pulled people out of that context.

and put them in a factory where the goal of the factory was to reduce a person's contribution to the smallest possible part. So that they are as close to literally as possible a cog in a machine. And if you look at Henry Ford and some of these thinkers that were designing these amazing, amazing processes to create, to manufacture, but the way they talk about it is that they want

people in their factories to literally not have to think. And there's a quote of Henry Ford, and I'm going to butcher it, but you can Google it and find it. It's like the problem with every worker is that they have a brain attached or something along those lines. I feel like I need to take a shower after saying that. It's so bad. It's so bad. But the people who, the brains of the operation were the owners, the managers, and the people in the operation were

Amanda Northcutt (10:13)
Yeah, yep. Really cringe, yeah.

Dan! (10:27)
the cogs, the cogs in the wheel, it's very, very dehumanizing in a lot of ways. The opportunity and what gets me excited about AI at its best, and of course, AI is going to do many things, good and bad, in this inflection point that we're in, is that for many of us who are...

Amanda Northcutt (10:31)
Yeah, yes.

Dan! (10:47)
knowledge workers, many of us who have the privilege to be listening to content like this and be thinking about what we want to do in the world and what we want to make. those of us who are already having that conversation, we know that AI is going to change jobs, AI is going to take jobs, and that's going to be painful for many people. But for the future belongs to those who can let that happen.

if not even accept that and work with that transition in order to free yourself up to do something bigger, better, more meaningful. And so for the creator, for the people in your audience, that means you get to do more of that thing that only you can do because you can use AI to do the rest. Not literally all the rest, not yet at least, but...

more and more of the menial, if we want to use that word, can be accelerated, handed off, and delegated to AI in order to then allow you to do that thing that only you can do to get closer to the fire that fills you up and fires you up to make a bigger impact in whatever the realm it is that you work in. So that's...

sum of that's the beginning that's the pre preface pre preface to to my to my book about this the book that hasn't been written but we're writing it together

Amanda Northcutt (12:18)
Yes. And I love your perspective on this and the paradigm shift that you're asking us to make as we think about AI and, you know, there's a lot of fear around the negatives around AI and AI taking over a lot of the human element of life and work. But what you're talking about is no, it lets humans be humans and lets machines do what machines can do. And so that is a really, really important cornerstone.

Dan! (12:33)
Yeah.

Yes. Because what if

that work wasn't the human part anyway? What if working the fry machine at a fast food restaurant isn't the best use of someone's time? And I'm not making any judgments about what is or isn't good for someone and their choices. But just to say that the more that the lower kind of work.

can be accelerated with AI, it means that we get to focus on the human things. That we no longer have to wrestle with the question of, I wish I could be doing something different with my time, or I hate this part of my job, because AI can help move that part along.

Amanda Northcutt (13:28)
Yeah, and this reminds me of conversation we were having this morning with the accelerator cohort. And I have this kind of delegation rule that I live by, and it's taking the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule, completely out of context. But it's where I want myself and everyone on my team to be spending 80 % of their time doing the work that they are uniquely positioned to do based on their passion and expertise and experience. And when someone

Dan! (13:49)
Yes, I love that.

Amanda Northcutt (13:53)
or something can do something 80 % as well as you, should hand it off, unless it's something that you absolutely love and you're the owner of your business and you get to decide, right? So let's put a little context and color on that. So if we're following that 80 % rule and the people who are listening are subject matter experts who are more than likely selling or wanting to sell high ticket one-to-one or one-to-few services and are drowning. They're drowning in content creation, in marketing automation, trying to understand

Dan! (13:58)
Yep.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (14:22)
how all of the tech works to make their website work and the zaps and talking to ActiveCampaign or Kit or whatever, whatever, right? On and on and on. So let's give some specific examples for our listeners today of like how you can be using AI now well.

Dan! (14:27)
Yes. yeah.

Yes, man. So, so many ways, especially for creators. It's so, like creators are the easiest application, right? So what am I, my...

philosophies, theories, maybe hypotheses, that's the right word, for creators is that like, we're always creating, it's every, content is everywhere, we're drowning in it, we would be drowning in it, except like, it just disappears out into the ether. And what AI and good AI systems can do for us is allow us to capture all those insights that we are having when we're.

in a networking conversation or giving a webinar or working with our team or out on a walk or whatever, capture those and then help us, help feed them back to us when we're going down to make, sitting down to make content, whether, in whatever format that might take. So like literally we should never have to stare at a blank, a blinking cursor again, wondering what we have to say because we've said so much and AI can just tell us more about what we've.

what we've already said. So to get super practical, and this is an example that you and I were talking about just yesterday of record all your meetings, transcribe those, feed those into an AI that's trained up on who you are, what your perspective is, how you like to communicate, and let it pull out those insights and feed them back to you so that then you can use those to create content. And then you can automate that whole thing. And that's just one of many, examples that you can use to move

Like you think about every step of the creation process from ideation, drafting, or even outlining, drafting, formatting, editing, publishing, every step in that process, you can insert AI to help it move faster, move better. So you can do the parts that you love and let AI accelerate or replace the parts that you don't.

Amanda Northcutt (16:29)
you.

Yeah, constant creation is a great example, think. And you also mentioned content repurposing. You can just name that specifically. Like, tell us, say an example of like how we could take the content from this podcast and automate the repurposing of it in a number of different applications, if you don't mind.

Dan! (16:48)
Yeah, totally.

Yeah, yeah, like this in particular. I would first look at, let's take the transcript, let's pull out insights, let's run those through a training, a voice document that knows who you and I are. I would start by like, give me 20 ideas from what we talked about here that could be relevant to my subject matter, relevant to my voice, and then choose those. Draft those, then you can ask it to then draft those into short form video scripts. You can draft those into LinkedIn posts, social

posts,

whatever might be. You could take this podcast and put it into a tool like dscript, is an AI-driven video editor, have it cut up into video shorts for you. There are so many...

so many possible applications. it do the same thing. Take those ideas, turn them into blog posts. Take this podcast, turn those ideas into lead magnets, right? That you can publish on your website. You can take these ideas and use it as a brainstorming, jumping off point into other content that you can develop into other pieces of content. Whether those be webinars or other long form.

you know solo episodes that we could do all about the industrial revolution or all about content repurposing or Whatever whatever might be like just keep keep cranking that wheel and and think about any any possible output that you would want to create and Use this as the input use AI as the vehicle in between in order to take you thing a and make it into thing B

Amanda Northcutt (18:40)
Yeah, and this is the kind of work that you do is so far and away beyond just cutting up clips that like Descript or [Opus.pro](http://opus.pro/) or Riverside, you all these different tools can do. You talked to me about a client that you have helped take, I think it's their podcast episodes, it makes, I mean, an unbelievable amount of content. It's not just clips. is bespoke, net new, custom scripts with excellent hooks, you know, for LinkedIn or for TikTok or for Instagram. It's incredible.

Dan! (18:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Totally. And just

to describe what that can look like for her, she has a solo podcast episode. She records her own thoughts in each episode, just her talking. We take the transcripts of those, and then we have an automation that runs that takes those transcripts that she was already drafting, already in written form. So we just take what she's already created, and then it runs it through a series of prompts and training, with training, good fine-tuned training documents on who she is, and then fills out this spreadsheet where every row is an episode and every column

is a different prompt and a different output. So every one of her podcast episodes, she gets 12 plus short form video scripts out of it. And she has a backlog of like 500 episodes, right? And so like she has more content at this moment than she will ever need. And I think that we're all like that. We're just blind to it because we don't have the systems to capture it.

Amanda Northcutt (19:53)
my gosh.

Yeah. And like, again, that's just one application. I you and I had a great brainstorming yesterday talking about project planning and project management functions and goal setting and budgeting and a decision-making engine and strategy. Yeah. It's unbelievable. So you gave us part, know, your story, kind of the 10,000 foot level story coming in and you started doing AI work a couple of years ago and you hit a fork in the road at some point.

Dan! (20:14)
Yes. Strategy, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (20:35)
where I think maybe you thought something to the effect of, what got me here won't get me there, and I'm not sure where there is, maybe. So what were sort of like the events leading up to you and I starting to have conversations about the accelerator?

Dan! (20:41)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

yeah,

totally. Yeah, this is so good. The events were a very, you know, I glossed over like, yeah, we wrapped up the Venture Studio. The Venture Studio was, it was my...

The thing that I had decided, I am building. I'm building software with my business partners. beginning of 2022, a handful of things happened. It was a really hard season. My grandmother passed away, my accountant passed away, and my business partner, our CTO, decided she had a job offer from a mentor in her life that she's like, this is my passion. I can't not take this job offer.

And my remaining partner and I tried to replace her with another team and it just crashed and burned the whole thing. So 2022, 2023 was really painful season for me of just letting go of what I thought I was on this path. This was what I was doing. I was scaling something that was creating scalable and sellable assets that was going to be my future. And that all fell apart. And I think there were

I could tell so many stories about that departure, the grieving and having to lose what feels like lose parts of yourself and had to come to the point where...

I really feel like the last piece was like, think, like, is it just that it felt like everything was being taken from me? And the last remaining piece was like, OK, maybe it's just that I'm not an entrepreneur. And maybe that's the piece that I have to give up. I'm like just wrestling with that.

And then making the decision like, I need to provide for my family. You know, I've got to figure out a way to, we were living in Seattle and it's an expensive city, to put bread on the table and started applying for product roles. And like, isn't what I want to be doing, because what I want to be doing is what I was already doing, but this is what needs to be done. applied to 500 and I think it's 47, 40 something jobs. have a spreadsheet I could show you with the details of every single one.

I had some great interviews with some great companies, and every single one of them cast me up. Google, Meta, Reddit, Vimeo, and I could go on and on. These brands, I'm like, this would be great experience. I would learn so much. I started to be able to envision this as like, OK, here's a path forward. Here's a new version of VAM that's not, it wasn't in the plan, but it's something I can get behind. And then just like, no, no, no.

But then over time, I started falling into some of these marketing contract work. And that started adding up. And then I started comparing. I feel like, OK, I could be making as much doing this as I would be doing that. And I would maybe then get to welcome back that entrepreneurial part of me that I had to put in a box on the shelf.

And that's the journey that I've been on. then building alongside the CMO work, the AI consulting, it's been so, so fun. to your point of like, when we met and when I first landed on, came across your work and the MR accelerator, at first I was like, this sounds incredible. Too bad I don't qualify, for one.

Because I don't know what I'm doing. I don't have a business here. It's just piecing it together. And what I've wanted is something that can scale again. And the CMO work is hard to scale. very much based on me. It's very hard to productize. There's a couple different ways that people can do it, but none of them are that attractive to me. so what really

Amanda Northcutt (24:29)
and we'll see you in a couple of

Dan! (24:45)
Yeah, got me excited was one when you said, have you thought about joining our MRR accelerator? was like, Amanda, I don't think I can. And to begin to dream again that I could build something that's bigger than just me, because that's what I've wanted for the last three plus years. so that's.

That's the future I'm here to pull into, know, the future reality I'm trying to pull into the present day.

Amanda Northcutt (25:20)
Yeah. Has your vision for what's truly possible in your business evolved since the program started? And like, we're five weeks in here where this is so fresh.

Dan! (25:30)
Yeah, we're early still.

A little bit, yeah. I mean, like, I think it keeps, it feels like it keeps growing, right? And I think that, you know, with that story I just told, like, it is, it takes an extra ounce of courage, it's more than an ounce, it takes like an extra gallon of courage to like, to dream again. And I'd say that like,

And I don't want it to sound sad. It's just honest. When you've had to give up so much, it's hard to hope, right? Because the more you hope, the more it opens you up to be hurt, and the more it opens you up to have to let go again. And one of the things that I feel that's happening in me as part of this program is that you and the team are helping

If not, like, the picture, like, make the, you know, paint by number outlines that I can, that we can fill in, fill in together and.

And so even not too long ago, as we talking about, where do we want to be? And we started talking about, if we're building for an exit? That could be cool. I haven't thought about exiting anything in three years, right? And so just, to begin to hope again, I think, has been a really beautiful and powerful part of this process that I'm...

It's definitely expanding my vision.

Amanda Northcutt (27:08)
Awesome. And then it certainly earned confidence in the future of your organization and that you have such a wide breadth of experience that we're kind of like bottling up into this new thing that we're launching into the world this year. I'm so excited for it. Let's dig into, as you know, I'm like a thinking and decision-making junkie. I love to think about how to make decisions and collect data sets and all those things. So how do you approach

Dan! (27:20)
Yeah.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Amanda Northcutt (27:38)
big decisions. mean, this is a six figure program. How did you decide that this was the right thing for you?

Dan! (27:41)
Yeah.

Yes, it's such a good question.

There's two stories I could tell about it. The first is like, it just felt right. That's not like a very thoughtful engagement, right? But there was something about it. Like I said, at first I was like, I didn't even consider it because I didn't think my business was big enough yet, and stable enough, and old enough yet.

And so even after our first conversation when you were inviting me to actually consider it, I remember walking away from that conversation, walking downstairs to talk to my wife, and I was like, listen. And I think we had already talked about that program because I'd seen what you were doing with Amanda Getz. And I was like, that's so cool. I would love to do something like that maybe in a year or two.

Amanda Northcutt (28:29)
I think we are.

Dan! (28:40)
And I was just like, you won't believe what just happened. And yeah, so then it just felt like, OK. Then it just felt like confirmation. Like, OK, who are the people in my life that I should talk to about this? And I have a handful of advisors. I have my board of directors, if you will, friends that have witnessed me along the way. Yeah. And I just took it to all of them and was like,

Amanda Northcutt (29:00)
Yeah, the brain trust.

Dan! (29:07)
Here's this thing, tell me if I'm crazy. And some of them were like, you know, maybe it might be a little fast, might be a little bit too much too soon. But many of them were like, if this speaks to you, it sounds kind of like a no brainer.

And like, that's kind of how I feel. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, the MRR guarantee. Amanda, the MRR guarantee is nutty. I don't know what you're doing, but it's super compelling. It's super compelling. And so to know that like, there's a guarantee on, you know, that we're so, have to be so aligned that I have to be, you have to be as bought into me as I am, you know, financially bought into you is like, that speaks volumes.

Amanda Northcutt (29:30)
Yeah.

Dan! (29:52)
And I think alignment is everything. I say that knowing, like, our venture studio fell apart because we weren't aligned with the partner that we brought in to replace our CTO.

And so paying attention to where that alignment comes from and knowing that we have to be aligned in order to make this happen, I think that was a big part of it. And so just the confirmation. One friend was like, and he's a business guy, but he's all in real estate and real estate and ministry. And he was like, Dan, you could give me a machine that I could put $140,000 into and it would make $40,000,

a month on the other side, I would print that money machine all day. I was like, that's, you know, it's not that easy. It's not that easy, Bill. But that's the right idea. And so yeah, that was some of the process. And I think a lot of it, you know, again, I think the other piece of confirmation is just getting to know you and the team. I think also the fact that like,

We share so many connections. I think we talked about that on the last episode. I have a lot of people who would be DMing me saying, stay away from that Amanda lady. And it's very much the opposite. Literally people saying, I'm so glad you guys are connected. So, yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (31:21)
Awesome. Thank you. So it sounds like intuition played a big part. Brain trust, like you're getting advice from trusted proven advisors who have good decision-making track records. The guarantee outcome is big, I'm sure. And then, yeah, it seems like the pieces kind of like fell together. Maybe the timing didn't feel exactly right, but I hope on the other end of this thing that it does in hindsight look like, wow, this was perfect. I needed a nudge, but yeah.

Dan! (31:30)
Yeah. Yes.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Yes, yes, yeah.

One other piece about that, part of my brain trust is Julie Boll. Shout out to Julie. She's a strategic consultant. She's brilliant and a coach. And she's been with me through all of this transition. We met as things were starting to fall apart. And she.

you know, as we were talking about this, she told a story about, I won't get the details, it's somewhat private, but someone that she knew who went to a dance and sat on the sidelines for like the whole thing and just watched. And then like, you know, the last like half hour got out on the dance floor and then just like tore it up. And she's like, that's just like you. You've been just, you've been, you know, not sitting on the sidelines, but like also like not

like really, really doubling down, like not really venturing out all the way. And now look at you, like now it's like, okay, I'm going all in. And that just spoke to me. I just think the timing was right. So, yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (33:02)
Awesome.

She sounds like a cool person. I would like to meet her. How has, thank you. How has the first five weeks been? How has it been? What's it been like on your side of the table?

Dan! (33:05)
She's incredible. Yes. I'll intro you.

Yeah.

It's been good. feels like the snowball is starting to get bigger and collect speed. And so at first it was like, OK, we're doing a little bit of this very foundational work. I know that's important, but it's not what I want to be doing right now. I want to be making money, you know? But I'll do it because I trust the process. And we're now to the point where, OK, I've got to start, you know?

talking to customers and making offers. And so it's like the rubber's starting to hit the road. But it feels like there's been lots of great insight along the way, lots of great support along the way. And it just gets me more excited for what's ahead. I'm anxious to get, know, I'm anxious to see what's around the corner. I think we all are. But I know that we've got to go through the process to get there.

Amanda Northcutt (34:11)
Yes, there is truly a method to our madness.

Dan! (34:15)
Yes.

Amanda Northcutt (34:17)
But yeah, it is a lot. That's tough, right? I mean, that's why this is a seven month program and it's like, you are invited and once you're in, you're in. There's no like out in the contract. so, and that is because we as humans are, become conditioned to want what we want when we want it yesterday. You know, same day delivery, next day delivery with Amazon. So I think we've a lot to our psyches.

Dan! (34:26)
Yeah. No. No.

Yes. Oh,

totally. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (34:46)
As as that is, I also feel like kind of right alongside that are, maybe not right alongside it, but the same thing that does this thing to our brain that makes us think that we should get what we want when we want it, like a child, are really shitty marketers who promise the world and have nothing to back it up, right? There's no substance. There's only style. And people will buy their course that promises that they'll teach them how to launch a six-figure course. But in fact, you're just...

Dan! (34:59)
You

Yeah. geez. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (35:15)
facilitating that really good marketers with no all style, no substance, like you're facilitating their six figure horse launch. And so I really hate that. I really hate when marketers, yeah, know you hate, yeah, we could like go on a long soapbox about this. I hate it when marketers and people prey on vulnerable people who are feeling a tremendous amount of pain. Half of people, like half of the workforce would like a new job.

Dan! (35:18)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Me too.

Hahaha

Amanda Northcutt (35:44)
50%. So that's a pretty big market of people and a large percentage of those would consider entrepreneurship. And when you promise six figures in six weeks or some crap like that, it's hard for us to show up and be like, this process takes seven months, but it's the most sure bet you're ever going to make because we're actually putting our money where our mouth is. I don't know, that just...

Dan! (35:51)
Yes.

100%.

Yes.

Amanda Northcutt (36:12)
That's an interesting thing about like, cause I'm anxious to get y'all results too, because I'm a human and I have fear of judgment and want to produce results. And so that's an interesting line to walk because of our brains work.

Dan! (36:16)
Yes, yes.

Yeah, It is,

yeah, but I do think it's some of what attracted me to the program is that like, this isn't just like a, you know, I don't know.

Nail your offer, right? And there's nothing wrong with programs like that. But I need more than an offer. I need a business. And I think that that's really what spoke to me about you and your team and the process, that it's not just like, here's this one little corner of your, corner of the house that you're building. Now go build the rest of the house, but let's step by step build this thing together, because that's what I need.

Amanda Northcutt (37:08)
Yeah, and that's what everybody who wants to actually build a sustainable business that provides recurring value in exchange for recurring revenue has to do. And part of the reason why we structured things the way that we have for the accelerator is because every single one, except one, I think, of our clients since we've launched the consulting firm, which is just like 20 months ago, needed their business to be rebuilt because they missed the foundational pieces.

Dan! (37:35)
Yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (37:36)
And it was

so painful once you have some customers and you have the emails and you have a social media following and then you're backtracking. It's like 10 steps backward in order to make those giant leaps forward. It's so painful. It's a lot easier to do it upfront, but it does require some patience. And I appreciate that. And yes, you are contractually here for it and I'm here for your MRR guarantee.

Dan! (37:43)
Yes.

Yes, totally, totally. Well, I'm here for it.

Yes, contractually

and in every sense.

Amanda Northcutt (38:06)
Yes. Okay, so the accelerator

runs in a cohort model. You're working with four other brilliant, dynamic subject matter expert professionals, and we have, know, Slack collaboration, have weekly group coaching. So I'm curious to know from your perspective, this is a two-part question, how is the group dynamic and community sort of resonating with you so far, and how do you feel about the group vibe versus what this program...

Dan! (38:18)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (38:33)
might have looked like if my team and I were just working with you one-on-one without the group.

Dan! (38:38)
Yeah, yeah, that's great. I'm going to answer them in reverse. One-on-one versus the group. I love, the group is powerful and super, I think at a baseline, if nothing else, because it's still early, it just makes it more fun just to be in it with people who are.

as equally crazy to sign up for this and maybe balances out the tables, right? So it's not just me on one side and your team on another. We're all at the same table, of course, always. But to know that there's other people who are in a similar position with similar hopes and dreams and emerging a vision for what they're building. it's, yeah, I think way more fun and less

I think because of that. And then as far as like the group dynamics themselves, I love to be in a room where...

I know that everyone else is smarter than me, and that very much feels like this group. I know that there's so much I can learn from every single person. And again, it's still early. we haven't gotten to fully see what that feels like yet. But there's already a great sense of community, a great sense of camaraderie.

And lots of comments about like, we need to talk more about this and we need to dig more into that. my customers, my people struggle with this and you can help them. And so think I know there's going to be great relationships and great collaborations and great partnerships that come out of the group. so I think it's just another layer of multiplication, amplification of the work that we're doing.

Amanda Northcutt (40:30)
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That has been so fun for my team and also to think about the potential for collaboration in future, not just necessarily for partner marketing, but I think there are potentially bigger things down the road for some of the folks in this cohort. And that's pretty exciting to have the honor of being the connector of those people. yeah.

Dan! (40:51)
Yes!

Amanda Northcutt (40:54)
That's really cool. I'm so far, I'm glad that we did it this way. I mean, we have been working one-on-one with clients and this just brings kind of a different energy, you know, and then the level of support you all are giving each other for wins and difficult days and difficult moments and things like that in Slack and in our group coaching sessions. It's really cool and it's so necessary because entrepreneurship can be a very lonely journey, like you said.

Dan! (40:57)
Yes.

Totally.

you

Absolutely, Yeah,

no, I think you've brought together, you've masterminded quite a group of people. And so you should be proud of the folks that you brought together. I hope we get together at some point in person. I think that'll be a fun day.

Amanda Northcutt (41:34)
Yeah, that will be a fun day when it happens, not if for sure. So other than hitting, this is another two-parter, other than hitting your multi-five figure MRR guarantee, first, what are your biggest goals for the program? And what will you be able to do that you couldn't do before once we're done?

Dan! (41:37)
Yes, yes, good, good.

man.

Let me ask a clarifying question. mean, I'm assuming, my answers are assuming that we hit that goal. So I'm gonna answer this question, assuming that that's where we're going. The things that jump to mind. I think there's two pieces. One is the confidence and...

How do I say it? The transformation that I think going through this process is going to bring to me, I know that I'm going to be a different person on the other side of it. even if we weren't to the goal, which we are, I know that that's a priceless transformation and that that's worth the investment above and beyond everything else.

excited to meet the next version of Dan, to become the next version of myself in the process. And the process is a forcing function. think that's what I love about entrepreneurship is it's such a forcing function for personal development, for transformation, for becoming the people that we feel called to be in the world. That's not the only way, but it is one of the most intense and one of the...

The places and parts of life, maybe like parenting and maybe like relationships or the other, you know, similar where it's like you either have to figure this out, you have to become something new or else things fall apart. Like that's really a big factor. And I love that part of, I love that part of being human. I just love.

Amanda Northcutt (43:33)
Well.

Yeah.

Dan! (43:50)
that to be human is to grow and to be able to be doing that with this team and in this moment, in this year. I'm just all here for it. And the other piece is optionality. Like to have...

a business that's generating income consistently that is not just dependent on the next contract that I can drum up or the next product I can launch.

Amanda Northcutt (44:16)
Yeah.

Dan! (44:21)
that would then give me and my family option as to what we do with our lives and where we go and the future that I'm building for my kids. I have three kids, six and a half and four and a half. And I care about the life that they're having and I want them to have a quality of life and to have options for what they do in the future and to not have to make all of my decisions based on what the price tag is associated.

with them. And so I'm really excited about that.

Amanda Northcutt (44:55)
Yeah, the confidence and the sort of like mental load, the heaviness that comes with being an adult and leading a family and everything. It's like, if you have a predictable revenue and you feel like you have some like modicum of control over this area of your life, and obviously none of us are in full control and things come out of left field all the time, but when you build your own business and you do it the right way and you build it for recurring revenue, there's a tremendous amount of peace of mind that comes with that.

Dan! (45:09)
Yeah.

Yes.

Amanda Northcutt (45:25)
And

Dan! (45:25)
Yes.

Amanda Northcutt (45:26)
our business is a recurring revenue business, right? We have a level of creator school that earns MRR and ARR and our clients provide us with MRR. Our accelerator is built to earn my company MRR. And so it's this virtuous cycle of us practicing what we're preaching very, very much. So yeah, and the accelerator, that is a great forcing function, right? This is moving straight into, you know, potentially quite a lot of discomfort and growth.

Dan! (45:38)
Hmm.

Amanda Northcutt (45:53)
but you're not on your own. You've got like my ridiculously amazing, you know, $100,000 a month team as your full fractional team. And then you've got this group of amazing, brilliant peers who are going through that same, those same stages of growing pains as you. And so it feels really powerful and exciting and fun. So I hope that that's not just on my team.

Dan! (46:15)
Yes, yes, it is.

No, it totally is. It is powerful and exciting and fun, exactly like you said.

Amanda Northcutt (46:24)
Cool. Well, let's land the plane here. One, do you have any quick parting shot or any advice for anyone considering the accelerator?

Dan! (46:33)
man,

if Amanda will let you in, you should absolutely join. I think that's really what I come down to it. I mean, I think for me, it just felt like the logical next step in so many ways. Like I felt like I knew I was ready and I knew that I would go so much further and so much faster.

with the right team in my corner. I think, you know, like that the saying goes, like when the student is ready, the teacher arrives. And I think that that was very much one of those one of those moments for me. And so if you're in a similar a similar place, listen, listen to that voice inside you.

Amanda Northcutt (47:14)
Love it. Thank you so much, Dan. Where can folks find you online?

Dan! (47:20)
yeah, you can find me. I write three times a week on LinkedIn, Dan Cumberland, just search my name. And I also have a newsletter that talks about, I mean, all the things I talked about here, like what it means to be human in an age of AI at [themeaningmovement.com](http://themeaningmovement.com/). You can join 10,000 other subscribers there and get my thoughts in your inbox. And I love connecting with people. If this has meant something to you, I would love to hear from

you in whatever capacity that looks like. Reach out and say hi.

Amanda Northcutt (47:53)
Yes, and we will of course link all of those good places up on the internet in the show notes and the show description. And if our conversation has piqued your interest about AI and how it might gain significant efficiencies in your business, Dan is the man. Dan is the guy for you. And what we're building, can speak with full confidence, is a really damn good product and service. And Dan is genuine, true to his word, a man of integrity.

runs his business with values and morals and ethics and which of course you can read about and he has a very long history of operating in this way. And so if this feels like you and you are drowning in content and emails and project management and delegation and accountability and budgeting and decision-making and you're just overflowing with overwhelm, Dan, Dan Cumberland is your guy. So definitely click the link below and give it a look.

Dan! (48:47)
Bye

I'd love to connect. Thank you, Amanda. Yes, so wonderful.

Amanda Northcutt (48:51)
Thank you again, Dan. I really, really appreciate it. Great conversation. And thank you listeners.

Yeah, we know your time is so valuable. Super appreciate you spending a little bit with us. And if you're a subject matter expert looking to build a scalable, high impact business built on recurring revenue, visit [MRRExcelerator.com](http://mrrexcelerator.com/) to learn more and follow me, Amanda Northcutt on LinkedIn for daily consulting insights. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time on the Level Up Creators podcast.