Only Fans Teaches Us Why You Should Eliminate Middle Management — And Why Building a 100% A Player Team is Imperative

OnlyFans may be best known for salacious content, but under CEO Keily Blair, it’s also delivering a business lesson most companies need to hear: eliminate middle management. Her radical approach—hiring only senior experts and hungry up-and-comers—perfectly aligns with Scaling Up and A Player Advantage principles. When you cut the “layer of clay,” coach to playbooks, and demand performance, you don’t just run lean—you win big.

• OnlyFans isn’t just for cam girls anymore. They are a case study in elite execution.

• Removing middle management is a must. If they can’t coach, they’re a cost—not a value.

• Only hire senior pros or high-potential rookies. Skip the expensive, ineffective middle.

• Build systems, not supervisors. Playbooks + rhythms = performance without the corporate hierarchy.

• B Players don’t “grow into” greatness. They were hired to be A Players—if they can’t perform, they must be coached up fast. Remaining managers must be coached out.

When OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair declared in a recent Fortune article that she refuses to hire “that squidgy layer of middle management,” she didn’t just deliver a zinger—she diagnosed a disease that suffocates performance and blinds C-suite leaders. Middle managers who don’t know their people’s jobs can’t coach, can’t drive accountability, and can’t scale. They’ve become the infamous “layer of clay” that strangles talent development, grounding your A Players before they can perform.

Yes, we’re talking about that OnlyFans.

The platform known for cam girls, adult creators, and monetized pillow talk might not seem like the place to find such a powerful lesson in organizational structure—but behind the buzz, burlesque, and well-compensated pictures of pretty, manicured feet lies one of the leanest, most profitable teams in tech, raking in an eye-popping $37 million in revenue per employee, a true masterclass in leveraging human capital. And let’s be honest: some of your staff are probably side-hustling on the platform right now. It’s more common than leaders like to admit for younger professionals to pad their income with a few grand a month serving up salacious content. (You’ll never look at those company-sponsored pedicure team-building outings the same way again—turns out they might be doubling as content creation costs!) We’ll let you wrestle with the ethics—but if you’re moonlighting with a sultry alias, just know: a clever boss can likely reverse-engineer your profile with the NSA-grade image recognition tools and social media clues now available through Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

Here’s the kicker: while most HR departments ban watercooler talk about OnlyFans, its leadership may be running a tighter and more strategically disciplined business than yours. At a recent Web Summit in Lisbon, Blair doubled down, saying, “Nobody’s ever had a really good middle manager in my experience.” Instead, she insists on hiring only the top and the bottom, bypassing the middle.

Let’s break down what Blair’s bold stance teaches us, and how limiting managers aligns with the Scaling Up and A Player Advantage frameworks.

OnlyFans Is Lean and Profitable—and Almost Manager-Free

OnlyFans, a $1.41 billion content platform, employs a shockingly small number of full-time staff at only 42 employees! Blair explains why: every person must be accountable for delivering measurable value. And she refuses to hire traditional middle managers because “they’ve never added value” in her career. Her hiring strategy either finds “incredibly senior talent” to drive strategy or “incredibly hungry junior talent” to drive execution. There’s no room in her org chart for middle management roles and corporate spectators—only those who drive the organization’s performance are needed in their flatter structure.

This ultra-lean org chart is no accident—it’s a competitive advantage. It avoids the trap of “managers managing managers” and forces everyone to own their performance. And it’s working: the company is one of the most profitable tech businesses per headcount on the planet.

Gallup and A Player Advantage Agree: Nobody Needs to Be Managed

Gallup’s First, Break All the Rules states that the best managers don’t “manage” in the traditional sense—they coach. But that only works if they understand the jobs of their direct reports. At A Player Advantage, we go further: anyone who can’t coach to the job should not be a manager. That’s non-negotiable.

When managers can’t coach because they don’t know the job, they fall back on status reports, bureaucracy, and “administrivia.” This creates a permission-based culture where A Players stagnate, and B Players seek shelter.

Our system demands that leaders:

• Know the job at the level below them.
• Coach to the playbook at least weekly.
• Run execution rhythms that enforce accountability and drive results.

Scaling Up: Middle Managers Break the Rhythm

In Scaling Up, growth expert Verne Harnish emphasizes execution rhythms: daily huddles, weekly priorities, and monthly strategic checks. These require fast decisions and clarity around accountability.

But middle managers who don’t know the work can’t run these rhythms. They dilute clarity, delay execution, and massively drive up operating expenses. OnlyFans’ refusal to install these roles aligns perfectly with Scaling Up’s insistence that structure must serve strategy—and lean teams win. We preach “fewer, better people paid well.”

And let’s be blunt: as companies scale, they tend to add management layers because they’re unwilling to invest in coaching systems and playbooks. It’s laziness in disguise. A better alternative is to build a team where everyone can run plays without asking for permission.

What Senior Leaders Must Do Now

If you want a business that grows like OnlyFans and executes like an elite Scaling Up firm, here’s how to eliminate the “clay layer”:

1. Maintain an “every hire is very important” mindset: Ensure that you treat every hire as an important revenue-enhancing business case. Someone who cannot add revenue, but who only adds cost, will quickly erode your efficiency and net income.
2. Deploy Job Scorecards and A Player Agreements: Clarify what great looks like for each position. Middle managers without scorecards and A Player Agreements for their roles default to subjective opinions instead of objective coaching.
3. Build and enforce playbooks: Coach to process, not opinion. Every function should have a playbook with 1–3 best practices and compliance tracked weekly. No manager? No problem—coach to the playbook.
4. Upgrade or exit your B Players: B Players are the silent killers of accountability and culture. If you tolerate them in management, you’re fertilizing clay. Coach them up or out.
5. Drive the 4 Decisions: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash: People decisions are the hardest. But middle managers who don’t know the jobs below them make bad people decisions every day.

Final Word: Fewer Managers, No More Clay

Keily Blair’s anti-middle-management stance isn’t edgy—it’s enlightened. Her executive strategy aligns directly with what elite growth companies have already figured out: if you want a 100% A Player team, you can’t have a middle management layer that lacks job knowledge and coaching chops.

And if one of your “coin-operated” B Players complain they are overworked and underpaid, tell them they can always kick-start their OnlyFans account!

The world’s best companies don’t manage—they coach, they execute, and they scale. That future is available to you—if you have the courage to clear out the clay.

Let us help you get there. Schedule a call, and we’ll show you how to replace your “layer of clay” with a team of 100% rock-solid A Players.