Do you lack a clear vision for your agency? Communicating the vision is the best way to empower your agency team. An unclear vision leads to a lack of direction and makes it more difficult to scale your digital agency. Today's guest has grown his agency to nearly 8-figures and admits only recently things have become more clear. He expands on how a lack of direction was one of his first mistakes with the agency and how he has been getting through rough times thanks to the support of other entrepreneurs. Ryan Kutscher is the founder and CEO of Circus Maximus, an advertising agency focused on brand narrative and content creation. They are entrepreneurs, branding, and advertising specialists led by a constant team of proven professionals. As an entrepreneur, Ryan’s passion is building brands, telling unique stories, and creating scalable systems that help brands grow long-term. In this interview, we’ll discuss: How to be the beneficiary of your own hard work. An unclear vision leads to a lack of direction for the team. 2 ways to stop being the problem solver and empower your team. Finding the right support to get your agency through hard times.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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.   How to Be the Beneficiary of Your Own Hard Work Prior to starting his agency, Ryan had freelanced and worked at several good agencies as a creative, so he knew the industry. At some point though, he felt he had to at least try to have the American dream of owning his own business. This way he would be the benefactor of the hard work he’d been putting in. Additionally, at that point his career was about smaller goals like selling ad campaigns, being a Creative Director, and becoming a CEO. It seemed all those goals were leading to him wanting to own the business that generates the ideas. Initially, Ryan had a business partner who specialized in strategy. They figured a strategist and a creative would make a great agency partnership. However, it wasn’t as successful as they’d thought because they didn’t create a pipeline based on their specialties. Instead, it felt like they were running two separate businesses under the same name. This wasn’t the vision he had for his agency and he wasn’t able to do the things he enjoyed and is good at. He realized he needed to give it a try on his own. An Unclear Vision Leads to a Lack of Direction The first couple of years after starting the agency Ryan had no real vision. When you go into a market you should have a clear message, target audience, and specific offer. Ryan didn’t have any of this and just jumped in knowing he is good at advertising. He realized in order to build the agency he wanted, he needed processes, pipelines, and people that would bring his vision to life. The first step was clearly defining the vision, followed by communicating that vision to everyone in the agency. He found that communicating the vision led to attracting the right people for his team. He’s made a lot of progress since taking that first step. However, as the owner, he still felt he was constantly making adjustments and imprisoned by the agency. Defining lack of direction. Making so much progress but still feeling trapped in the business is a sign of a lack of direction. For Ryan, having a lack of direction felt like the agency was running him. He had no way to identify what was going right or wrong and had no clarity on all the moving parts. If you don’t know what’s going wrong, what to do to improve it, and how to measure it, you don’t have a clear vision. Good or bad, you should know why certain things at happ