Gretchen Leslie: How To Build a Lean, Mean, Multimillion-Dollar Team - Part 1

There’s a danger every creator faces in scaling their business: doing it too fast. 

Today’s guest has the ultimate experience in scaling in revenue, but keeping her team lean and profitable.

Gretchen Leslie, President of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, is reinventing the way small and mid-sized companies think about growth. In this episode, Gretchen shares her secrets to running a lean, mean multimillion-dollar team with just nine people.

She shares how creator businesses can scale even in the face of financial constraints. She explains when to hire full-time vs. when to lean into fractional hiring, and the benefits of leveraging off-the-shelf SaaS tools instead of reinventing the wheel.

Gretchen also opens up about her personal style and her journey from corporate roles to the thriving creator economy. She offers practical advice to optimize the integrator-visionary relationship, encourage open communication, and diagnose business problems.

Show Notes:

Here are the key takeaways from our conversation with Gretchen:

Embrace Strategic Leadership Over Daily Operations:

Gretchen advocates for removing barriers so your talented team can excel. She offers a roadmap for creators to rise from day-to-day nitty-gritty to providing visionary guidance. Her consultative role at Wolf and Company demonstrates the power of diagnosis before action—crucial for creators looking to evolve from being practitioners to strategic leaders. She encourages Creator COOs to shift their mindsets from micro-management to macro leadership, cultivating an environment where both creativity and structure thrive.

Leverage Fractional Talent & SaaS Solutions for Growth:

Gretchen shares advice for scaling your business even with financial constraints. She explains the pivotal role fractional COOs can play in diagnosing business needs and spearheading strategic hiring, allowing creators to focus on their vision and creative output. She also recommends leveraging SaaS solutions to avoid reinventing the wheel. She shares practical tips for growing your business in a sustainable way while prioritizing profitability, and finding support through networking and trusted industry recommendations.

Pinpoint Your Needs with Jobs to Be Done:

Gretchen introduces the Jobs to Be Done framework, a technique for pinpointing your business’s operational needs. This approach encourages you to think beyond job titles and focus on the specific tasks and outcomes that your business requires. By categorizing operations based on what 'job' needs to be accomplished, you'll be able to identify the skills and support your organization truly needs.

Jump into the Conversation:

[02:00] Gretchen’s experience in the creator economy

[10:25] Leveraging existing resources vs. building your own

[17:15] Using the jobs-to-be-done framework to determine when to hire an integrator

[26:39] Fostering integrator-visionary relationships

[30:30] Saying “yes” to visionary ideas

[39:18] Diagnosing culture problems in companies

Continue the conversation with these resources:

Follow Gretchen Leslie on LinkedIn

Read Traction and Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman

Reach out to EOS Worldwide for integrator recommendations