Amanda Northcutt (00:00)
Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators and thought leaders like you turn your knowledge and experience into rock solid recurring revenue. And we're so glad you're here. Welcome. We have something completely different for you today.

So welcome to a very special series of the Level Up Creators podcast where we are going to interview each of our new MRR accelerator participants, the very first cohort ever. So you can see for yourself who these amazing subject matter experts are.

and what's actually going on behind the scenes of the accelerator. We have made some massive guarantees in black and white, signed, sealed, and delivered to these participants and are going to change their lives over the course of the next few months.

So today I'm thrilled to welcome a very special guest, Mr. Liron Segev. Liron is a YouTuber with over 1.1 million subscribers, a thriving brand deal and speaking business. And importantly, through his work with us in the accelerator is overhauling his YouTube growth consulting practice so that he graduates from the accelerator with an MRR generating machine all on his terms. Welcome Liron.

Liron Segev (01:04)
Thank you for having me. And it's lovely to be a guinea pig in this experiment. We're having so much fun doing it. Love this program.

Amanda Northcutt (01:11)
Appreciate it, and we're just getting started too. But for those of our audience members who might not yet be familiar with you, could you share your incredible backstory with us and how you came to do what you do now?

Liron Segev (01:13)
Hmm.

Sure. Okay. I'll do the PowerPoint version, the quick version. So basically I'm in technology is my specialty. And I don't know if you can tell from my accent, I'm not from the US. So originally from South Africa. And I did what every person did in South Africa, who's into technology, went through the whole stages of being support and IT and blah, blah. And then I could do this thing called

programming and back in 2008 there wasn't this thing called blogging and this wasn't this thing called influencer marketing, none of that stuff. I could just write a website. And why did I do that? Frankly, cause I got super lazy and super tired of answering the same questions again and again and again, you know, as a tech support person, you get asked the same questions. So I decided, Hey, let me just write it out once on this website. And whenever somebody asked me the question, I'll just simply send it over to them.

And I'm done. That was kind of my view. Turns out this thing kind of evolved and it became a talking point and people were asking more questions and people were reading and the brands, various like really large international brands were also reading. And they kind of saw this thing called this website and said, well, hold on a second. If we work together, this person can explain our products.

not better than we can, but in a different way that people can really understand it. Because remember, I'm not a churchnical journalist. I don't have to abide by a brand Bible. I could just say like it is. And I started working with a lot of companies and been flown all over the world to attend events and be part of this tech community, which grew into this massive blog. mean, today blogging is everywhere. Back then, it wasn't a thing.

I kind of really got my start in 2008, I would say, my first blog, first website, got a lot of traction from that, some lovely deals with some lovely companies. And it just became a thing that I could do, which is taking the super complicated technology and make it easy for the average person to understand. And we're talking about where there was the old Blackberries for those who are old enough to remember those days.

We have, like, know, whether it's complicated tasks on the phone or whether it's your computer, whatever it may be, geeks tend to geek out and they forget about the end person who just wants something that works for them. And that's where I kind of came in, made it simple, and we started there. And then I was sitting on a plane once and coming back from an event, I think it was in Amsterdam, coming back to South Africa. And that's a long flight for those who know that journey. And I had a wild idea.

I thought this writing thing is so difficult. I'm just going to make a little thing called a YouTube video. That's got to be so much easier. Spoiler, it's not. And I did this and I started a YouTube channel and I started uploading the solutions to problems onto the channel as well. And that started getting some traction. That started growing and was super fun being able to write and create videos until we got to a certain point where we realized that meant to

Go all in on video. I've got to move to the US and everything's happening here in the US thing. know, there's lots of creative events. There's a of activities, all the technologies here. And it was really at that stage that we said we have to be here in the US to make this thing happen and kind of started working with companies in the US and starting to help them with their YouTube channels, whether it was an individual creator.

or whether it was a actual company that was trying to figure out their YouTube strategy or their video strategy. That's the kind of people I started working with. Love the platform. So much fun. Lots of data, which for some reason I kind of like. And the data tells a story and I was able to help them understand their story so they could develop a real meaningful plan and grow their content. So South Africa moved to the US and it's been

A wild ride since 2016 when I first got off the plane in Dallas, Texas with my wife, my two kids and a bunch of suitcases and ready to start this new life.

Amanda Northcutt (05:55)
You

incredible. I mean, I don't know too many people with that story and they're willing to really jump into the deep end like that. Like, okay, we're gonna do this. We're all in. We're going. But I also want to call out this theme throughout the beginning of your career where you are serving as the bridge between the highly technical audience and the layperson, regular folks like me, who do not want to necessarily get into the weeds, but we're looking for value outcomes and solutions to our problems and we don't need all of the technical jargon per se. And so

That's a really, really, really rare and unique role to play. I'm familiar with that. I told you this early on that my husband serves in a very similar capacity. So I have a tremendous amount of respect for that. But when you layer that on top of, you're at the very forefront of blogging. mean, pre 2010, that's incredible. And then you're on the very front end of this whole YouTubing thing. I feel like the way that you described your story is far...

You make it sound very organic and natural and like happenstance, but I'm sensing that there was some calculated strategy to this. I mean, did you know that you were trendsetting?

Liron Segev (07:06)
It doesn't kind of hit you at the time, but I will tell you that there was, when the time I saw that this was a thing, and that's a technical term, right? It's a thing, was when I remember this distinctly, where I was with a big brand and we were sitting in a room and we have these days called media briefing or press days.

Amanda Northcutt (07:21)
You

Liron Segev (07:34)
And the press days are specifically for the people of the media to come and understand, get a briefing about the new technology, new device, whatever it may be. And that's before it comes out to the public so that we have a bit of a head start to understand, get a hands on it, review it maybe, just kind of before everybody else does. And the idea from a brand's point of view, it's, I mean, let's be honest, it's marketing for them. When they get all these articles written about their product,

when the product is available and starts to launch, people are going to naturally start searching for it. So I tell you this because I was sitting in a room and I looked around and I'm surrounded by these veteran, hardcore media trained professionals who've been to journalism schools and have walked that hard walk. And here I am sitting there as somebody who writes a blog, who writes an article and publishes, no editor.

I don't have the business processes behind that. I just like what I see, I explain what I see, and I just upload it. And that caused a lot of friction at the beginning, because rightly from their point of view, they were thinking, we spent years and years and years honing our craft and being this journalist and paying all these dues. And here comes this guy's been able to sit in a chair next to us, getting invited to the same events, gets flown.

around the world to the same locations with the same brands. And it's not fair. That was kind of the original attitude. And I remember that distinctly as saying, hold on, maybe we were onto something. This is, I kind of saw that the future is going to be, is evolving very, very quickly. Remember this is early days. So cell phones were just coming out. There was Blackberry, I said, are smartphones.

Amanda Northcutt (09:21)
Yeah.

Liron Segev (09:26)
It was just that evolution between texting only on a flip phone, moving over to these apps. This was kind of just started. And I kind of saw that people are going to stop buying newspapers. People are going to stop listening to traditional radio and watching traditional TV at a point. I'm not saying it wasn't immediate. And I wanted to be on that that bleeding edge and learn what's working, learn what's not working, not be afraid to experiment.

and then start building this business whilst I have made a mistake myself. So before I go tell the client something, I want to be certain that I have tried it and it works, or I have tried it and it doesn't work. And those are two very valuable bits of information. So being ahead of it was important. And I guess that was kind of a big motivation to move to the US, right? It was to kind of be ahead of it.

Well, you've got to be where it's happening and it was happening. Yeah.

Amanda Northcutt (10:28)
Okay, that's incredible. Thank you for explaining that. you have a very strong bias for action, incredible growth mindset, like you said, this dedication to experimentation. And oftentimes you and I both know that it's sometimes more helpful to know what doesn't work than what does, right? And then your technical background, your appetite for data, the picture's making a lot more sense now.

Liron Segev (10:51)
Good.

Amanda Northcutt (10:53)
I

mean, it just, this all is perfect. And I just love your tolerance for calculated risk taking. And I think it's important for people listening to this and to understand how successful people come together, how the pieces come together and of the puzzle and like get put in the right order. And then, you you're trying pieces here and there and they work or they don't work, but it's like not a big deal. You have to take that attitude of, oh, well, I'll just try the next piece in a different way. And like, it'll be fine, right?

So let's talk about you. You've told me in the past that you deliberately chose to build a YouTube channel about security and connectivity, which is not the sexiest topic. think we could we could both agree on that. But you wanted to choose something, to use your word, boring to prove that you could build a YouTube channel about anything. So what have you learned in that process over the last, you know, nearly a decade that has informed your YouTube growth consulting methodology?

Liron Segev (11:52)
Yeah, so the word I used was the most unsexy bit of technology ever, because in the history of mankind, nobody's ever woken up and say, I wonder what my Wi-Fi router is doing today. Like, it's just never happened. And the reason I chose that as my starting point to really hone in that technique of YouTube is because there was this whole misconception of you have to be funny. You have to be good looking.

Amanda Northcutt (11:57)
You

Liron Segev (12:21)
You have to be able to deliver on a TEDx level in order to deliver your message. You've got to have the best equipment. You've got to have the best of everything. And only then can you be successful on the platform. That's not true. Completely not true. And whether it's for an individual or whether it's for a business, same not truestness applies. It just doesn't exist. So I had to show that. I had to show that it actually can work. So what is a boring topic?

Amanda Northcutt (12:45)
technical term.

Liron Segev (12:51)
connectivity, faster Wi-Fi. Yes, people want that, but it's not really top of their, like, must search list today, right? And I decided to kind of go in on that topic, understand what's going to work, what's not going to work, the experimentation again. And the entire aim of this was not to create yet another, hey, I'm a YouTube helper. I can help you grow your channel. And my entire channel is dedicated to helping you grow.

There are so many great channels that do such an amazing job of that and I fully respect their way of doing it. I personally just didn't want to go down that road because I wanted to show that a boring, unsexy topic like connectivity can still be successful. And if you can make connectivity successful, everything else can be workable. As long as you understand the rules of the platform, you can play the game.

The problem that I discovered along the way and talking to a lot of businesses, lot of organizations, a lot of creators is that they're not understanding how to play the game. They don't know what the rules of the game is. There's so much noise out there and they're picking and choosing what they think works. And then they're frustrated because it doesn't work out that way. My channel is my testimonial, my case study, however you want to look at it, saying, look, here is a video with

Nine million views talking about changing a setting on a wifi router. If that works, let's talk about your business and how we can make that work. So it was very, very intentional.

Amanda Northcutt (14:29)
Yeah, and this is a total proof is in the pudding moment. So I love that approach. I mean, it's very creative. And that is undeniable social proof that you can do it. So tell me about, let's talk about data. And you talked about if you don't know the rules of the game, you cannot win the game. It is impossible, right? So you've worked with creators and businesses who have millions of subscribers. So.

talking about the data, understanding the platform, what separates channels that plateau from those that continue growing?

Liron Segev (15:02)
good question. So I kind of look at it. They literally divided into two categories. There are those who would start every call very defensive. Right. Tell me why that didn't work. I did this. Now did all the right things and look at this and look at this and look at that. Very in your face. I don't know what I'm doing. All of that. And then there's those on the other side who start every call with tell me why I suck.

Explain to me what I can do better. What have we learned from this? What do we change for next time? And there's no in-between. There is, you're either super defensive or you're super kind of absorbent and want to learn and want to learn and want to learn. And that is what separates those who are going to make it versus those who are not going to make it. And by the way, when I say, tell me why I suck, I'm referring to channels with multi-million subscribers, hundreds of millions of views.

They certainly by any standard do not suck. But no, that is not good enough. Tell me why I suck. What can I improve? What should I be doing next? What else should we be looking at? What should we be experimenting with? And the differentiator between the two is that those who have kind of, but last year this used to work, this year it doesn't. Guess what? Technology changes. Algorithm changes. The system changes. The world changes.

You know, like they say, if you do what you've always done, you will get what you've always gotten, right? If you don't adapt and you don't update and you don't carry on, you don't keep up with the latest and what is changing in this ever changing world, you're just going to be left behind. Super frustrated, begging your hand against the wall saying, why in 2023 this worked, but it's 2025 and it doesn't work. Cause everything has changed and you have to keep up. So if you'd come in with the attitude of tell me why I suck,

Amanda Northcutt (16:50)
Yeah.

Liron Segev (16:54)
Then we start exploring, so, we used to do this. The audience has shifted. Let's understand your avatar again, your ideal viewer who's watching your channel, who are we making videos for? Do they still fit into what we're trying to achieve? Has the audience shifted? Have they aged up? Have they aged down? All of the psychological, psychographics part of the audience is super important. Once we understand that, well, then the answers become super clear why something worked or didn't work. And what do we do for the next one?

Amanda Northcutt (17:24)
Nice. Okay, well, I think one broad takeaway, I hope everybody listening grabs from this is that people who make it to the top and stay there are doing that because they have a growth mindset, they have humility, they're not afraid to fail, and they're continuing to push, push, push, push, push. They're not doing the whole definition of insanity thing where you keep doing the same thing over again, expecting different results. Okay, so then on YouTube, how this plays out is there are...

dozens of variables or maybe a dozen. don't know, but you've got demographics, psychographics, you've got all the different types of data and analytics that YouTube is serving up. You can have third party platforms pulling data from your YouTube channel. You've got the algorithm. Is that kind of like the big buckets of variables? Am I missing something?

Liron Segev (18:13)
Yeah, so YouTube kind of looks at videos and it looks at videos differently and over the years that has changed. I mean, back in the day, it used to be all about an SEO play. Everything must be an SEO play. And people were titling all their videos. What, where, why, how, who, when, you know, just to kind of get that ranking. And to some degree, that still exists today, but it's certainly not the majority. Then it used to be about views.

So a video with high views would get priority. So what do people do? They made super click-baity thumbnails, typically someone half naked and with a really cool title and that would get the views because that's all that mattered was the number of views. And as soon as I a high number of views, it would go up in the ranking. Those days are long gone. People were able to gamify it. So they said, okay, well, the longer that somebody watches a video, they, um, gives it more priority. Well,

What do these people do? A two, three hour live stream. Two, three hour live stream, insane watch time, prioritize their channel. That's also gone. Now YouTube is about satisfaction. So somebody sees your video, sees your thumbnail, sees your title, they click. If they click immediately off, guess what? You didn't deliver. If they watch, if they rewind, if they fast forward, if they leave a comment, if they like, share, if they dislike.

All of those are signals and signals and signals telling YouTube, telling the algorithm, is this good quality? If it is good quality, well, who liked it? Well, let's go try this video on this audience. Do they like it? Are they also satisfied? they are? Great. Let's push it out to a bigger audience, so to speak. mean, it's a situation where YouTube is understanding viewer satisfaction with a whole bunch of signals to understand quality and whether it offers value.

And if it is, bigger audience. If it isn't, you're to be stuck in your little circle. So all these data points come into play. once you understand, again, the rules, how does it work? YouTube does not push a video. When you make a video live, people think that it pushes it to the audience. It certainly doesn't. YouTube is a pull platform. When you log into your YouTube app or the website, YouTube looks at

your likes, your searches, what are you into, what did you watch, what are you likely to watch next? And based on that, it falls in the home screen for you. understanding the rules is super important so that you know how to play the game.

Amanda Northcutt (20:53)
You make it sound so approachable and simple, and it's because you're a definitive expert on YouTube growth. But that just makes me feel like I'm wrapped in a secure blanket here, like, oh, I can do this. If Liran is helping me, I can totally do this. So that's very helpful information. So let's talk about founder-led brands for a quick second. So obviously, the last five years or so, it's probably fair to say that the concept of a founder-led brand has really risen to the forefront, whereby an executive,

usually the founder and CEO for like a small to mid-sized company in particular, although we're seeing, I bet we're gonna see Super Bowl ads with CEOs that should not be on videos on Sunday, but really. What can founder-led brands, like CEOs of founder-led brands take away from this conversation and apply to their YouTube channel, right? What do they need to do? And no, besides we've talked about growth mindset, we've talked about data, what are some other key things?

Liron Segev (21:53)
So this is kind of where we really get into it because I love this. Firstly, if you don't have a YouTube channel, what are you waiting for? Like really, what are you waiting for? 2.5 billion people use YouTube on a monthly basis. Are you telling me your customer is not one of those people? It's impossible, right? Your customer has to be there. So the platform's there. It's free. You can experiment for free.

You can do has never has been an opportunity where it gives you so much freedom to express yourself, to understand the situation before you commit to it. So there's lots of that. There's no excuses. That's that those days are gone. You have to be on YouTube. That's the bottom line. Now, the typical objections that people normally come up with that politically correct term is objection. I call it bullshit excuses. What it is, it's the main one is.

My business is too boring. It's I don't know. I'm not good looking. I'm too old. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, That's just not a thing. Absolutely not. Because guess what? You have experience. And most important, you have answers. A lot of us have serious questions. We cannot all be specialists in every field. But you may be a specialist in life insurance, in retirement.

Roth RAs. mean, you can be in so many different fields that my brain would melt if I try to understand them. But I still have to deal with it. It's still part of life. Right now, we're going through tax seasons as we're recording this. Do you think people have questions about their taxes? Absolutely. If you're a tax person, if you're a CEO of that company, why are you not providing answers? And I'm not saying super specific, know, hey, Amanda, you said this, not that.

It's more of what are people asking? How can you help people? How can you serve that community? Why are you not taking out your good old phone, pressing record and say, hey, my top question of today that I hear is, can I claim blah, blah, blah in my tax return? That's a great question. Here's what the tax law says. This is not official advice, but I'm just letting you know what I think. We are seeing this happening all the time now where someone who's an airline pilot just keeps answering people's questions.

Hey, what are those dings on the plane before we take off? that's what this means. So we have those. We have people teaching family recipes. They're not YouTubers and neither are you. You're not out there to become a Mr. Beast, a someone with hundreds of millions of views. Amanda, I speaking to one of my clients and they're in real estate. They have a YouTube channel. That channel gets on average 500 views a video. Now, by

somebody else's standard, you go, that's pathetic. It makes their business look bad. Well, they could directly track sales of multi-million dollar apartment blocks or flat blocks. don't know what you guys call them. Apartment blocks and complexes. They could directly trace it back to their YouTube channel. I promise you one thing, those CEOs are not sitting around a boardroom going, my God, only 500 views.

Amanda Northcutt (24:56)
Mm-hmm.

Liron Segev (25:12)
They have the results. They don't care what you think. They care about results. So a lot of companies, a lot of CEOs are too afraid because they're saying, it's going to make my brand look bad. I have a video talking about this topic and it's only got 500 views. Well, don't forget, those are 500 of really interesting, interested people. It's the people who are going to be potentially your client down the road. But you're not there

You're not setting out with that intention in mind. You're setting out to serve that community. You have experience. You have answers. People have questions. I argue that you actually owe it to the community to share your knowledge so they could learn and they could get better. And then eventually they like and trust you. They like your approach. They like your no-nonsense approach. Great. Who are they going to call when they actually want to engage?

Amanda Northcutt (25:57)
Mm.

Liron Segev (26:10)
Odds are pretty good that if you've been their expert all the way, you've guided them all the way, you're probably going to pick up the phone and call you.

Amanda Northcutt (26:20)
That's a really good point about number of views and things like that. But when you are, I mean, in particular in real estate, it's a lower volume as opposed to someone who's selling courses. Obviously your widgets, you're talking about, you know, exponentially higher customer lifetime value in that kind of an environment. So I think that's, I mean, that's a very important, that's a mindset switch, right? And so you do make a strong argument, sir, for everyone being on YouTube at this point. I did not.

Liron Segev (26:31)
Turn around.

Amanda Northcutt (26:47)
No, I think that updated statistic that 2.5 billion people per month use the platform. That's insane. That's just that's hard to fathom.

Liron Segev (26:55)
It's Just

on that, Amanda, it's every business is different, right? So every founder led business, they might have a mindset of, we just want to sell widgets. We just want as many widgets sold as possible. If that's their attitude or their mindset, that's the way they want to go, then I would actually argue that perhaps they don't need a YouTube channel because they could spend a fraction of the price, run a whole bunch of YouTube ads.

Amanda Northcutt (27:01)
Mm-hmm.

Liron Segev (27:23)
and they could just go down the ad direction. If all you want to do is sell, sell, sell, sell. I'm a salesperson. The problem is that our bullshit detector for the average viewer is pretty, pretty attuned there. We know how to filter out nonsense. So we can very quickly tell whether an entire video is just a promotion. So don't waste your time. So that would literally be my advice. And yes, I have said it to many, many a CEO or a CMO saying,

Amanda Northcutt (27:26)
Mm-hmm.

Liron Segev (27:51)
Do you not create a YouTube channel because you're wasting your time? Spend a fraction of the money. Go create YouTube ads with an agency and just go run ads, traditional ads, go for it. Have a good day. If you really want to offer value, if you really want to create that personal brand as well as your business brand and be that authority and be on that stage, there is no bigger stage in the world than YouTube. It's a big stage. Think about studying in an auditorium, presenting to a class of 10 or

a bigger stage, you're doing a keynote to a thousand people. That's considered pretty darn good. You have an opportunity to present to literally millions and millions and millions of people. And the best thing is that it lives forever. So videos that you did, there are evergreen videos that you do today will pull you relevant in a couple of years time. I've got people commenting on videos from 2018 and they're saying, I can't find this option.

Dude, it's 2018, we're in 2025, things have changed a little bit. But the point is those little videos are my little agents. As I press upload, I do the whole farewell and off they go and they're little money making agents for me because you get paid on YouTube ads, but they're out there building my brand, building my reputation and they'll live forever until I disable them. if you're, it's all goal orientated. What is the goal of the business? What are you looking to achieve?

Amanda Northcutt (28:51)
Yeah.

Liron Segev (29:19)
and what's the best way to get there. Different people have different ways of doing things and that's fine. We just got to find the right way that suits all that.

Amanda Northcutt (29:28)
and you've got the playbook. So you're the guy. You're the guy for it. All right, well, let's talk about, I'm glad you mentioned YouTube revenue. You've got brand deal revenue. You've got revenue specifically from YouTube, like platform revenue. You are a speaker. I mean, you speak at VidCon and all the like major conferences among other places. You've got consulting revenue. You have a course. I mean, you've got the mutual fund.

Liron Segev (29:30)
haha

Amanda Northcutt (29:55)
income portfolio, right? This is not, you know, all of your eggs are not in one basket, but this is also kind of what led you to me ultimately at the end of last year. And so let's talk about kind of that pain point that you were feeling, if you will. And so you work or at least you know, Justin Moore, creator wizard, who was the guest on our podcast last week. So that'll be awesome. Put these out pretty close together. So you approached Justin about kind of like, Hey,

Liron Segev (30:19)
Mm-mm.

Amanda Northcutt (30:24)
I'm ready to do the next big thing because like all successful people, you're continuing to move the ball down the field over and over and over. You're never stagnant. And so if you can kind of, I don't even know the answer to this question, kind of tee up for me what led to you getting onto my calendar.

Liron Segev (30:41)
Back in the day. So I'm a really firm believer in always be learning. And if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Right. And I know whenever I do my YouTube consulting gig, and I kind of talk to the company and I show them the data and I go through it. And many times they would say, why didn't I see it?

But it's so obvious now that you told me it's so obvious. Why didn't I see it? I do the same for my own channel. I get somebody else who's a he understands the YouTube data and they have a look at my channel and they give me suggestions and ideas. I go, duh, why didn't I see it? It's always easier to get somebody else from the outside looking in because they fresh eyes is just such a blessing to have. So I realized that at a certain point I needed to get.

to that next level. And if I keep doing what I'm doing now, well, then I'm not gonna advance. I'm just gonna carry on spinning around and it's super fun, it's exciting, but it's not gonna get me to that next level. And that's when you need help. And I'm super coachable. I know I don't know everything about everything. I'm very open to understanding and experimenting. So I reached out to Justin and someone that I've known for many years, I respect him.

super honest, he'll tell you that like it like it is. And I explained to him my therapy sessions that hey, here's where I am, here's where I want to get to. And he said, All right, I have the person and I you and I then kind of had a little email introduction. And rest is history as they say.

Amanda Northcutt (32:23)
You

Yeah, and you and I had like a half hour call booked, I think it was right before taking off for the holidays. We ended up on Zoom for 90 minutes and just kind of clicked. mean, that was an incredibly fun conversation for me. But I don't think either of us showed up to that sort of like meet and greet call thinking we would end up working together much less in this capacity. I the accelerator is a six figure program. And so I feel like we kind of went from it's nice to meet you to, hey, let's build something big together.

Liron Segev (32:32)
Yeah.

No.

Amanda Northcutt (32:56)
in just a couple of weeks and I think that time period would have been shorter had we not been over the holidays. So, weren't you skeptical? What was that like on your end of the relationship?

Liron Segev (33:08)
So I wasn't skeptical because of Justin. And I really believe that you surround yourself with the right people and the right people who are smarter than you. They may be in some areas, they're allowing you for your smarts in your areas. And so Justin kind of became was like my filter. I knew if it came from Justin, don't have to like vet it further as opposed to

Dear Google, I am looking to spend a lot of money. Send me some ideas. Okay. Like that's a different approach. So, so it wasn't skeptical. My, the way I always approach thing is I want to understand it. I want to get it a full kind of width and breadth of what are we doing? I do not like fluff. Sorry. I know some people love mindset and some people love to get up in the morning and do the cold plunge. And that's awesome.

Amanda Northcutt (33:42)
you

Liron Segev (34:06)
and meditate for three hours and journal for another five. I love you. Well done. You go. People have been super successful pre cold plunges, meditation and journalism, right? They're heavy and it wasn't work for me. I just don't do fluff. Again, personal much my personal way that I do things. So when we started chatting, that was the kind of things I was looking for. Are we going to spend the first couple of months

discussing the pros and cons of the universe and how those who'd an abundance mindset will be pushed that I'm out like that would have been the end. But you had a very different approach. You had my approach. All right, listen, dude, here's what we're going to be doing. Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six, everything is transparent, you get a dashboard, you know exactly what we're doing. If we fuck up, you're to tell us we're going to fix it. like, whoa, whoa, Yes.

That is what I'm looking for because I don't want the mindset stuff. I want practical. The way I teach, the way I consult, the way I help my clients is not by patting them on the back and giving them a participation trophy. that's a great you uploaded a video. Come on. proud of you. No, that's doing them a disservice. My whole thing is I got to tell them what it is so that we can deal face reality and then learn and adapt and do the next one.

You've got the same approach. Listen, we're going to do this and we're to start off doing that. And then we're to change it to here. Then we're going to pivot here if we need to. And if we need to change that super practical. So when you go like pros and cons and all of those, it was super easy for me to understand it. I need a time to process it. So I kind of go to my little not due diligence, but more of what happens if I do this? OK, what happens if I don't do this? I always like to look at every

Amanda Northcutt (35:36)
Hmm.

Liron Segev (36:06)
unknown, I like to look at it in three. I ask three questions. What's the best case scenario? What's the worst case scenario? What's likely to happen? Those are my three ways I approach it. So I feel like best case scenario, this thing shoots to the moon. We get bought out by big corporate and they, you know, buy my yacht and retire. Great. That happens in a couple of weeks. What's the worst case? Well.

Worst case, I have learned a bunch. I've got systems built in place and I carry on. We didn't hit where I wanted to get to, but that's the worst case. I have a business in the box. I just carry on. What's likely to happen is a combination of both. I have a business in the box. I know what I'm doing. I have system and processes in place, things that I've been putting off for years. We're going to get them done. I have a full-on style guide, brand guide. I know exactly what's going on.

super focused and we're hitting that monthly revenue goal and we're just growing and growing and growing and growing. That is probably what's going to happen. Well, based on worst case, best case likely to happen, I go, perfect. Let's rock and roll.

Amanda Northcutt (37:19)
Thanks for sharing how you think about that. I'm a mega nerd on how to think about how to think. I think about thinking all the time because if you can make excellent decisions, you will be far more successful. That's definitely a piece of that puzzle. so, yeah, best case, worst case, and then what's likely to happen, probabilistic thinking. think that's really important. So thank you for sharing that. And I mean, with the accelerator, I think what ended up being most important, which we certainly have as part of the MRR method and our methodology,

is the guarantee, right? So we're literally guarantee you results. And so you're paying, I mean, the way that I was thinking about this at least is you're paying a flat fee in known quantity and in return you are guaranteed a very specific results. And this is all ironclad in contract. And so, I mean, what level did our guarantee, what percentage of your decision would you attribute to the guarantee?

Liron Segev (38:16)
I'm not going to lie. So it definitely was definitely was what was was a factor because somebody who's willing to put a guarantee down is someone who says, I've got this. I'm super confident. I know we're to hit that hit that mark. What's the question? And then I got your the agreement and we went through the agreement and it was like, this is what we're to do.

It wasn't a question. wasn't a, well, you know, unless the weather changes and there's 10,000 get out of jail free closers, like a lot of these, mean, I've been down this road with others and there's always ways that you can feel that they're looking for ways to not deliver. With this, I felt you were looking for ways to over-deliver.

That's kind of came through very, very clear in our conversations, in our emails, which if anybody ever wants to write a book, they could literally just copy and paste our emails because they're like just mega marathons of answers. You know, I ask a question, you don't kind of give me the sales pitch. It's like, no, I think you got that wrong. Here is why. Like, no, I don't think you should do this. Here is why. It's not what I wanted to hear. And that was great. I didn't have.

confirmation bias. Like I didn't like, yes, like, they're telling me what I want to hear. So therefore I'll be able to just sign on the bottom line. There was times in our conversation where you said, no, I just don't think you should do this. Like when we talked about one of the products or one of the opportunities, like, I don't think you should do this at all. Here's why. Okay. Logically, that makes sense to me. putting us all together, it wasn't one specific thing that went,

because you said this, therefore everything else is a go. It was the overall, the attitude, the noble should approach very, very practical. The guarantee is obviously a good thing to have. And I like the transparency. Like here's where we are. Here's where we're going. Here's what we're doing. And ownership is key. So I own it all. In other words, again,

just bad experience with others, it's you use their system and you use their processes. And as soon as you end the contract, well, you're to square zero. What have you got here? You've got some knowledge. You can go rebuild the whole thing, but you've just spent a whole bunch of time building it. And yours was, no, absolutely not. You sign up, you give us access and it's your platform. How dare we take ownership of it? cool.

tick, tick, tick and tick altogether was, let's go.

Amanda Northcutt (41:09)
Okay, that's great to hear. I mean, yeah, our personality, me and you, like, we're not necessarily for everybody. I'm not for everybody. I get that. Like, if, if you want the big pat on the back kind of situation, I give encouragement and kudos and things like that in a way that when I do give it, it's very meaningful. People tend to remember. And so, but yeah, if we're going to work together, you know, especially in this kind of capacity where I'm guaranteeing very significant

Liron Segev (41:15)
Right.

Amanda Northcutt (41:38)
real tangible results on an ongoing basis, because this isn't like a one-time revenue guarantee. we hit it in one month. Like, we're done. No, this is MRR. This is monthly recurring revenue. And so, yeah, I have no qualms about making sure that we're stress testing our relationship before we enter into a contract and that we are jiving in on the same page with regard to just like mutual respect. mean, my god, I have mad respect for your expertise. And I think we're

you know, a hell of a pair, especially when you combine that with my team and the other accelerator members. I but you're, I love everything that you said. I really also appreciate it because we are striving so hard toward all of those things that you mentioned, like the noble should approach the antithesis to online, icky marketing. We're putting our money where our mouth is. And I mean, people have been like, Amanda, are you crazy? Like this is insane. You know, the, I don't know of any other organization who has provided a guarantee at this level.

Liron Segev (42:29)
You

yeah.

Well,

I want to interrupt you for one second because I just think it's very important that one crucial element here. It's not a service provider stroke client relationship. I just want whoever is listening to really understand that this isn't I am paying for a service and I'm getting a service and have a good day. This is I have just built a team and scaled my team from

a two, three people to, I don't even know, however many you have on full-time plus retainers, plus, plus, plus. This is definitely a partnership as opposed to a service agreement. this is like, hate when people go, you're using an agency. No, because an agency, you pay, they deliver some ads or they do some copy and they upload on social media for you and you do your thing, they do their thing. This is certainly not it.

This is part of my team. This is, I don't know, would you call it fractional team? Okay, great. There's a new term for everybody. But it's, that's what it's, that's what this is. And it doesn't feel like it. It is. And there's a big difference because a lot of people will sell you on, Hey, we're to be part of your team. And then you get, just in, just email info at my [company.com](http://company.com/). Like, come on.

Amanda Northcutt (43:40)
It's a full fractional team. is. Yeah. The full, the full deal.

Liron Segev (44:04)
This is it. This is direct contact. This is updates. This is here's what we're doing. Here is just these constant as if you're running a team without the headaches of running a team that's on Amanda's head, which for some reason she decided it was a good idea. Very easy. And that's why I really like part of this process is you're not just getting one person and you're not just getting a someone from fiverr.

Amanda Northcutt (44:16)
That's right. I love it.

Liron Segev (44:32)
not disrespect for people in Fiverr, but it's not I have to hire a copywriter and then a designer and then an editor and then this and this and this and then it's all down to me. If that's if I was going to do that, I would have done it. I just don't want the headache. I don't want the time management. I have managed teams before, large teams. I don't want to do that. And that's when this just became like, such a beautiful fit. I focus on what I'm doing. Your team focuses on what they're really, really good at.

and we just interact all the time and we're just getting there and we're just building and building and building and rebuilding. That's just, sorry, I had to throw that in there. So I don't want anyone to think that this is a, hey, that's an agency. Let's sign up here. Next, next, next finish. We'll see you at the end of the month of the report. Certainly not that.

Amanda Northcutt (45:07)
And thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that distinction because we are, I mean, we're a boutique consulting firm at this point. I think that's a pretty accurate, but for creators, you do need a lot of help, but only episodically. Like there's some times when you are birthing this new business in a box and then, you know, if you're making big changes or rolling out new product lines or things like that in the future, you need that level of help. But once the machine is demonstrably working, meaning we have hit your MRR guarantee,

These kinds of businesses can run with whatever you need to ship your content, right? Obviously there's editing, there's script writing, there's research and stuff like that. But otherwise, our goal is for you to be able to run your business by yourself and with one VA. And it will still grow and it will still work. And we're here if you need us kind of a thing, but like you said, it's yours, you own it. There's nothing that is decouple or undecoupleable. Man, we're making up words. We need to make a list.

Liron Segev (46:15)
Welcome to my world.

Amanda Northcutt (46:16)
There's nothing

that can't be like stripped away and because it's yours from the beginning. And so that's our goal is to do the no bullshit thing and be real people. Even though we are people on the Internet, I'm a real person. I feel weird that I'm now a person on the Internet. I can't imagine how you feel with 1.1 million followers. But OK, thank you for all that. That's really, really helpful information. And I think just to kind of start to land the plane here.

Liron Segev (46:34)
You

Amanda Northcutt (46:46)
What are your greatest hopes in terms of outcomes from the program other than hitting your five figure MRR guarantee? So in other words, in seven months, what will you be able to do that you could not do before?

Liron Segev (47:00)
So the important thing for me, and I keep going to this term like the business in the box, right? We know as entrepreneurs, business owners, we know we have to do certain things. We have to have processes, we've got to have procedures, we've got to have systems. We know this. I mean, this is not breaking news here. And yet we kind of put it off and put it off and we'll get to it eventually.

And then we rationalize it thinking, oh, it's just me and one other person. don't need 12 page systems document. And, and we push it down the road a little bit more and a little bit more. So what I really kind of fast forwarding to the seven month period, um, it's things that I've been putting off, we'll just get done. And I'm going to get done by some serious caliber individuals within your team. Right? These are like the top people who.

can build and design this and have it done. So I'm hoping that this is going to happen in terms of all those deliverables be kind of be put in place. The business in a box where we're building foundations, we're building structures, and now we're feeding this machine and we're making changes and we're learning and we're adapting and we're experimenting until we get it right. Because I'm OK for things to go wrong until they go right. So we learn and we...

fix it and we just get it. But at the end of the day, by the time we're done and you hand over the keys, so to speak, then it's like we have a machine and the machine is built and the machine just needs to be maintained and needs to be and can we expand if we need to and we can grow it. And that is kind of where I'm looking for this thing to get to. I can still focus on what I do best and all the stuff that we're putting in place from simple.

to the super complex AI stuff that we're to be doing. And all of that in between is now ready, has been worked, has been tested. We have a process, we have a flow. And by the time you're done, I just don't want to think about it as I'm sitting on my yacht, you know, on my three week vacation. And because I'm always working, I know that it's built, I know it's tested, it's battle hardened, and it's there, and I own it. That is just, that's where we go.

Amanda Northcutt (49:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly right, and that's great. Good summary. All right, thank you so much for your time, Leron. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you online?

Liron Segev (49:30)
Lots of places. So my kind of growth, YouTube growth strategy business where I helped creators, helped companies build their YouTube presence with real strategy based on data, believe it or not, it's at [Lironsegev.com](http://lironsegev.com/). can go check that out. Good place is on Twitter or X, I'm never going to call it X, it's on Twitter. It's at Liron underscore Segev, S-E-G-E-V. And then I have a YouTube channel, just look for my name and...

It's going to be there. And if you care about your security and wifi, go check that one out there.

Amanda Northcutt (50:04)
And we will, of course, include all of those links in the show notes. Time is precious. Thank you so much for sharing yours with us. If you're a subject matter expert and would like your own fully customized business in a box with five-figure MRR guarantee, visit [MRRExcelerator.com](http://mrrexcelerator.com/) to learn more. And follow me, Amanda Northcutt, on LinkedIn for daily consulting tidbits. We'll see you next time on the Level Up Creators podcast.