Do you have a hard time letting go of agency operations and overall control? Have you embraced your role as the visionary and taken a step back from minor tasks? If you haven’t, why not? Today’s guest realized at one point that autonomy was his personal core value and that his agency would fail unless he prioritized it. This realization led to a new point of view, where he imagines how he would run his agency if he knew nothing about the business. This exercise has greatly helped him detach himself from agency operations and trust the agency can run without him. Tune in for an interesting discussion about autonomy in business, having employees vs. hiring contractors, and the benefits of building a personal brand.   Nicholas Kusmich is a digital marketing expert who helps businesses rapidly scale revenue using Facebook Advertising. He’s behind the highest campaign ROI's in the world thanks to his “Contextual Congruence”– a proprietary process based on the marriage between direct response marketing and understanding social behavior. He’s also the founder of H2H Media Group, a paid media agency that has been helping brands be heard since the onset of Facebook. Nicholas shares his journey of starting his agency in 2008 and how he transitioned from being a one-man show to building a team of autonomous contractors. In this episode, we’ll discuss: Strategies vs. tactics to build businesses. The power of personal brand. Putting autonomy first. An exercise to help take yourself out of the equation. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Long-term Strategies vs. Tactics as a way to Build Business Back in 2008, Nicholas was told having his own business would require selling an ebook and a course. In order to sell said ebook, he started running ads on Facebook. Once he became good enough, people were contacting him to do these ads for them. Suddenly, he had an agency. Since then, his agency has had the fortune of working with big brands and helping businesses that needed to be heard become brand names. In the beginning, Nicholas admits he was charging way less than he should have, with an initial fee of $500 a month. However, compared with today’s landscape where you can get offers from people promising to work for free, it seems far more tamed. As an alternative, to get the attention of your first clients, he suggests being clear on what the fees are from the beginning but offering to only charge them after they see results. It’ll allow you to build leverage, get those new clients and not ruin your reputation. Furthermore, you’ll get much better results by building your reputation using long-term strategies. Instead of emailing a prospect offering to send them a video, create 10 custom videos that offer value and send them over a certain period. You’ll be much more likely to get their attention and start a conversation. For Nicholas, “strategies build business and tactics make sales.” Yet everyone in the business seems to be using tactics. Too many marketers are constantly chasing the latest trends in an attempt to capture attention and make quick sales. To some extent, of course it makes sense to always be aware of new developments and using new technologies. However, the consistency and focus on long-term strategies is what will allow you to build a successful business. Recognizing the Power of Building Your Personal Brand Nick, unintentionally, built the agency’s brand around himself and his knowledge. Now he’s spent the last few years pushing off the notion that working with his agency means working directly with him. In the beginning, he was very much the button pusher, running the ads