Vol. IRunning with StrategyMiami
§02 · About
Chloe Nelson · Miami, FL
About
The story of how a dream became an agency.
- Founder
- Chloe Nelson
- Founded
- Nov 2022
- Based
- Miami, FL
- Currently
- Booking Q4 2026
I
The Naming
I · November 2022
named this agency in a dream.
Five months before I quit my corporate job, I woke up with the words Running with Strategy in my head and a feeling I couldn't shake. I didn't know yet what the business would become. I didn't have clients. I didn't have a plan. I just knew the name was already mine.
II
The Exit
II · March 2023
The job I had at the time was at one of the loudest, most hustle-coded companies in the business world. I was working what felt like seventy-hour weeks for not much money, in an environment built entirely around the gospel of more. More clients. More hours. More output. I was learning a lot. I was also slowly losing myself.
I started praying every morning that I wouldn't have to walk back into that building.
The call came in March. An old client from college told me her social media manager had just quit and asked what it would take for me to leave my job. I put in my notice the next day. They walked me out before the week was over.
It was the most aligned thing I had ever done.
III
The Evolution
III · 2024 to 2025
The early years of Running with Strategy were strategy-first. I built campaigns for clients across industries: real estate, activewear, SaaS, faith-based brands, political work, personal brands, service businesses, med spas. The work was good. I'm a strategist by nature: I think in patterns. I can read a brand and see what it's actually trying to say before the founder has the words for it.
But something was shifting in me the whole time.
I kept noticing that the agencies winning the biggest deals were selling marketing to businesses that couldn't yet absorb it. Founders who didn't know their numbers. Founders who didn't know who they were speaking to. Founders whose brand was a polished version of a self they hadn't actually become yet. The agencies took the money. The marketing didn't work. Everyone lost. Except the agency, briefly.
I couldn't keep doing that. Not because it was wrong, though it was. Because I could feel the misalignment from the first call, and I didn't want to charge people for a campaign I knew wouldn't work.
"Marketing has to be in service of something true. Otherwise it doesn't last."
So the agency started to change. Slowly. Then all at once.
Now the work begins with the foundation: the founder, the brand, the numbers, what's been built, what's actually wanted. All of it. Before I touch the marketing. AI handles the execution layer. I handle strategy, pattern recognition, and the kind of listening that takes presence to do well. More on how I work →
It's the most aligned the agency has ever been. And the most useful.
How we work
How does Running with Strategy work?
Most marketing is built backwards. Agencies sell campaigns first and ask questions later. They build content calendars before knowing who's behind the brand. They run ads for businesses that aren't yet ready for the leads. The work fails, and everyone wonders why marketing didn't work.
We work the other way around, on five principles.
Marketing follows alignment.
Before a single campaign gets built, I want to understand the whole business: who you are, what you've built, what your numbers look like, who you're actually trying to reach. Sometimes that work shows marketing isn't the problem yet. Sometimes the offer needs clarifying first. Whatever the answer is, you'll know it before we spend a dollar on a campaign that won't work.
The founder is the brand.
We work almost exclusively with businesses where the person behind the work matters: personal brands, service businesses, real estate, law firms, med spas, nonprofits, clothing brands. When the founder is the brand, the marketing has to actually sound like them, the truth of them, which means knowing who that person is. That kind of marketing is harder to make. It's also the only kind that lasts.
AI handles execution. Humans handle truth.
Behind the scenes I run on a layered system of AI tools that handle the parts of marketing that used to take a whole team: research, drafts, optimization, image generation, SEO. That frees my time for the things only a human can do: strategy, pattern recognition, reading the founder, sitting with what the brand is actually trying to say. AI multiplies the work. The thinking stays with me.
No hustle, and no self-abandonment.
Marketing built on urgency and pressure produces work that's loud and forgettable. Marketing built on alignment and presence produces work that lasts. We work at a sustainable pace because the quality of the thinking requires it. Ambition stays. What goes is self-abandonment.
Soul and strategy, together.
A lot of agencies treat marketing as a technical discipline, and a lot of spiritual entrepreneurs treat strategy as somehow beneath the soul work. Both miss it. What you're trying to express through your business is already inside you. The marketing, done well, is the work of bringing it out into the world clearly.
IV
The Agency Now
IV · 2026
I'm based in Miami. I work remotely with founders everywhere.
If you're comparing agencies first, read the rankings of the best marketing agencies in Miami and the best personal branding agencies. The agency is on both, with its starting rates.
The agency works with a limited number of clients at a time so that every partnership gets the kind of presence and strategic depth the work requires.
If you've built something real, and you want it to be seen for what it actually is (not the polished version of who you wish you were), this is the agency for that.
— Chloe
Founder · Miami, FL