Leading a Versatile Team: Chris Lee on the Growth Think Tank Podcast

🎧 Listen to the full episode: Ep. 967 — Leading a Versatile Team with Chris Lee at Reel Axis

I recently joined Gene Hammett on the Growth Think Tank podcast — a show focused on leadership lessons from Inc 5000 founders and CEOs. We talked about what it actually takes to lead a versatile team, especially in a fast-changing industry where adaptability isn't optional.

Here's what we covered and why it matters for any leader scaling a B2B company.

Versatility Starts with Hiring for Adaptability

When we were scaling Reel Axis through the Inc 5000 growth phase, the biggest lesson was this: skills can be trained, but adaptability can't. The people who thrived weren't the ones with the most experience — they were the ones who could context-switch, learn new tools in a week, and operate without a perfect playbook.

In a demand gen agency, the landscape shifts constantly. New platforms, new buyer behaviors, new data sources. If your team can only execute last year's playbook, you're already behind.

The Agile Approach to Agency Operations

We borrowed heavily from software development's agile methodology — not because we're a tech company, but because the principles translate perfectly to service delivery:

Short sprints: Two-week cycles with clear deliverables. No 90-day plans that go stale in 30 days.
Daily standups: 15 minutes, three questions — what did you do yesterday, what are you doing today, what's blocking you? No status reports. No hour-long meetings.
Retrospectives: After every client engagement, what worked, what didn't, what do we change? Continuous improvement isn't a buzzword — it's a practice.
Cross-functional teams: Instead of siloed departments (creative here, analytics there), we assemble pods around client outcomes. Everyone sees the full picture.

Playing to Your Niche

One of the biggest temptations in B2B services is trying to be everything to everyone. A prospect asks "do you do social media?" and the instinct is to say yes, figure it out later.

We went the opposite direction. Reel Axis focused specifically on B2B demand generation — go-to-market programs, buyer intent data, and pipeline acceleration. Not B2C. Not brand awareness campaigns. Not social media management.

The result:

Deeper expertise: When you do one thing, you get really good at it. Our team knew B2B buyer journeys cold.
Better clients: Companies self-selected in. They came to us because they needed exactly what we offered, not because we were the cheapest generalist.
Clearer positioning: In a crowded agency market, specificity is a competitive advantage. "We do B2B demand gen" is more memorable than "we do full-service digital marketing."

From Wall Street to B2B to AI

Gene asked about the career arc — Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, then leaving finance to build a B2B agency. The thread connecting all of it: solving problems for resource-constrained companies. On Wall Street, the entrepreneurs I worked with taught me that growth comes from focus and execution, not from having the most resources.

That lesson carried straight into Reel Axis. And now, as we've evolved into an AI-powered operational leverage company, it's the same principle: help companies do more with less by applying the right technology to the right problems.

The Flywheel That Still Works

We talked about the flywheel model — attract, engage, delight — and why it still works even as channels shift. The specific tactics change (AI optimization is now part of the attract layer), but the underlying principle doesn't: create value at every stage, and growth compounds.

The companies that struggle are the ones optimizing for one stage. All acquisition, no retention. All content, no conversion. The flywheel only works when every stage feeds the next.

🎧 Listen to the full episode on Growth Think Tank →