Am I expecting too much from a SEO provider? I'm now doing it myself now

Hi SEO experts,

My business is in Perth. I signed with the largest firm here almost 2 years ago. My ranking has essentially been static in this 2 years after 3 months of initial improvements. I still ranked around 15 on all the long-tail local keywords that matters to me.

I complained about it several times with no improvements and so I fired them and took over myself.

They did some on-site keywords optimisation on several pages. There were 90 or so backlinks added which were mainly all business listings.

They updated my google business and google plus profile a little as well. That was the extent of their work after 2 years and over 5 figures.

After I took over, I found out that my site still had 60 pages with duplicated content. There was no sitemap.xml. My business was not on 2 of the largest business listing out there. There was missing backlinks on some of the suppilers and publishers I told them I worked with.
There was no semantic keyword strategy. There was no strategy offered to get me editorials in high exposure sites. Essentially no strategy to improve the rankings other then wait and see...

The question is, am I expecting too much. Since taking over, learning from this forum and other places, I have seen significant improvement in my ranking over 6 weeks. But I'd rather stick to my day job and not working another job afterhours.

Should I be expecting an SEO person to guide me towards editorials, sponsorship opportunities and basic site upkeep?

I am happy to contribute to copywriting and pay for sponsorships to nonprofit clubs/organisation to improve our rankings.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.