Frequently asked questions
Here are direct answers to the 44 questions small agency owners most often ask about agency coaching with Tim Kilroy, from what it is and what it costs to positioning, discovery calls, and how to get started. Each answer leads with the short version, then gives the supporting facts.
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Mostly whether it fits their stage, what it costs, and how to win clients beyond referrals. Jump to a topic:
Agency coaching for small agencies is ongoing guidance for owners of marketing, creative, and PR agencies on the business side: positioning, lead generation, sales process, and operations. Tim Kilroy starts by diagnosing what is actually broken and in what order to fix it, then helps turn that understanding into revenue. He reports coaching more than 300 agencies.
Marketing agency coaching helps an owner run the agency as a business rather than only deliver client work. Tim Kilroy covers numbers, pipeline, go-to-market, positioning, team, and leadership, and works through whatever is on fire that week. The outcome his site names is more revenue, more profit, and more happy.
Usually a mentor shares experience while a coach works a structured process with you, though the labels overlap. Tim Kilroy offers both sides: more than 25 years of agency and marketing experience, three agency launches with two exits, and weekly sessions where founders bring live problems and leave with a number, a decision, or a next action.
No. Business coaching for a digital marketing agency focuses on the commercial machine: numbers, pipeline, offer, sales, and team. Life coaching focuses on personal goals. Tim Kilroy's coaching is business coaching, although it does address the founder's role, including getting out of being the only person in the agency who can sell.
Common ones Tim Kilroy names include lead generation that swings between feast and famine, revenue that will not move despite harder work, founders juggling sales and delivery, cash flow swings, hiring mistakes, and sounding like every other agency so every deal comes down to price. He treats these as symptoms of positioning and process gaps.
It is Tim Kilroy's framework for finding out what is actually going on in an agency before prescribing tactics. It centers on Return on Understanding: the depth of your understanding of a prospect's business drives your ability to sell to them, serve them well, and keep them. Diagnose first, then fix things in the right order.
Owners of small marketing, creative, PR, development, and content agencies who have outgrown referrals and want sharper positioning plus a repeatable way to win clients. Tim Kilroy's group program, Agency Studio, is built for founders under $50K a month in revenue, and Agency Studio+ is aimed at the $25K to $50K a month range.
Possibly not yet. Tim Kilroy's own guidance is that below about $20K a month you do not need a coach, you need reps and a clear offer. Once you reach around $20K a month, he says hustle stops being the problem and structure becomes the problem, which is where Agency Studio is designed to help.
Often, yes. Referrals do not scale on demand, because they come from past work and relationships rather than anything you can turn up this month. Tim Kilroy describes three keys: a defined ideal client, scalable lead generation, and the right offer for that client. Coaching helps you build those three in order.
Yes. Tim Kilroy's about page lists marketing, creative, development, PR, and content agencies among the businesses he works with. The common thread he names is that the agency sits inside its clients' marketing and sales layer, so the same positioning and sales work applies to PR firms.
Yes. For agencies between $1M and $20M in annual revenue, he offers custom work through SalesOS and DemandOS, scoped after a free WTF call. His site describes that range as the point where off-the-shelf programs stop working because the bottleneck is now your specific agency.
He publishes a list of ADHD resources for entrepreneurs on timkilroy.com and writes about it as an entrepreneur with ADHD himself. He invites ADHD founders to talk about building an agency that works with their brain instead of against it. Confirm specific fit for your situation through the contact page.
Tim Kilroy's published prices: Agency Studio, the group program, is $399 a month. Agency Studio+, which adds a custom plan and a monthly one-on-one with Tim, is $999 a month. Custom SalesOS and DemandOS work for $1M to $20M agencies is scoped after a WTF call, so it has no fixed published price.
Yes. The WTF call is a free 30-minute strategy call. Tim Kilroy describes it as no pitch: you explain what is going on in your agency, he helps you see the real problem rather than the symptom, and you leave knowing what to fix first whether or not you work together.
There is no single number, but margins give a benchmark. Haus Advisors reports the average digital agency earned a 13% after-tax net margin in 2025, down from a long-run average of about 15% since 2015. Tim Kilroy's planning workshop suggests owner salary at 10 to 15%, a 20% tax reserve, and operating expenses at 50 to 60%.
Use the same math Tim Kilroy uses for hiring: divide the monthly cost by your real profit margin to find the new monthly revenue you need to cover it. At a 13% margin, $399 a month needs about $3,069 in new monthly revenue. The calculator on our cost page runs this for your own numbers.
Cancellation terms are not published on this site. Agency Studio is priced monthly at $399, and Agency Studio+ at $999 a month. Ask about notice periods and any commitment through the contact page at timkilroy.com or on the free WTF call before you join, so the terms are clear up front.
Because it is scoped to your agency. Tim Kilroy's site says that once you cross $1 million a year, off-the-shelf stops working because your bottleneck is your specific agency. SalesOS and DemandOS are therefore scoped after a WTF call, with custom diagnosis and no templates, and priced from that scope.
Founders bring whatever is on fire each week and work it on the call. Examples from Tim Kilroy's site: opening your P&L live, running the math on your next hire, rewriting an email that is not getting replies, stress-testing risks like single-channel inbound, and finding what makes you forgettable. You leave with a number, a decision, or a next action.
Agency Studio+ costs $999 a month and adds a custom plan and a monthly one-on-one with Tim to the group program, plus the accountability to install the plan. For agencies between $1M and $20M a year, SalesOS and DemandOS are fully custom, done-with-you engagements scoped after a WTF call.
Group fits founders under $50K a month who need structure, frameworks, and straight answers at $399 a month. Agency Studio+ fits founders around $25K to $50K a month who want a custom plan and monthly one-on-one time. Past $1M a year, custom work fits better. The free WTF call is designed to tell you which side you are on.
SalesOS is Tim Kilroy's custom sales engagement for agencies from about $1M a year. His site describes the work as positioning before tactics, then a sales engine built around your agency, scoped after a WTF call with custom diagnosis and no templates. It also covers installing discovery as a repeatable stage of your sales process.
DemandOS is Tim Kilroy's system for turning the whole agency team, not just the founder, into a demand engine. The strategist, project manager, analyst, and founder each show up for the same target buyers from their own seat, so the agency's positioning lives everywhere instead of only on the founder's LinkedIn.
His Agency Growth Stack includes Call Lab tools that review sales calls and return coaching feedback, Discovery Lab for researching a prospect in about 60 seconds, and tools aimed at content visibility. Some tiers are free, including Call Lab Instant, which needs no account. Details and current tiers are listed on timkilroy.com.
There is no guaranteed timeline, and this site makes no performance promise. Founders quoted on timkilroy.com describe changes over weeks to months; one describes a new offer, sales script, onboarding process, and way of talking about the agency within three months. Results depend on your agency, your market, and how much you install.
Vertical positioning means focusing your agency on one industry or buyer type instead of serving everyone. Tim Kilroy frames positioning as burning the boats: taking options away so what remains is the strongest connection between your impact and the market need. He also warns that a niche concentrates risk, so watch for over-concentration.
Tim Kilroy uses a simple test: if a prospect, a client, a teammate, or you cannot describe what you do in under 20 seconds, you have no defensible position. Name the buyer you serve, make sure your case studies back the claim, and commit long enough for the market to notice.
In Tim Kilroy's view, because the agency sells effort while the buyer pays for an outcome. When a prospect cannot see the specific change you create, the rate is the only thing left to compare. He calls a price objection a positioning problem in disguise, and fixes it by shifting the conversation to outcomes.
Agency discovery is the stage where you learn what is broken in a prospect's business, how big the problem is, what they have tried, how they make decisions, and whether you can genuinely help. Tim Kilroy is emphatic that a discovery call is not a sales call. Its goal is a next call, if one makes sense.
Prepare by actually thinking about the prospect's business before you dial in, then spend the call learning rather than presenting. The most common problem Tim Kilroy hears is a pitch with a question stapled to the end. Leave knowing the problem, its size, what they tried, and how they decide.
In Tim Kilroy's sales funnel, a prospect counts as qualified only when you have both agreed out loud that there is a real problem, that it is worth money, and that they are the one who decides. A useful test: you can name the problem in their words, not yours.
Usually because the call was a pitch, so you never learned enough to make your proposal land, and the generic version sounds like every other agency. Weak follow-up adds to it. Tim Kilroy recommends every follow-up include a recap of what they said, relevance to their situation, and guidance through the friction between interested and yes.
Yes. Tim Kilroy's sales work focuses on getting what the founder knows out of their head and into a process the team can run, so good-fit deals close whether or not the founder is on the call. It runs through coaching for smaller agencies and through SalesOS for agencies above $1M a year.
Tim Kilroy's formula: quarterly revenue goal divided by average deal size gives deals needed. Divide by close rate for proposals needed, then by proposal rate for conversations needed, then by 13 weeks for your weekly number. Pick one constraint to improve each quarter rather than fixing everything at once.
It depends on your bottleneck. Tim Kilroy's own answer points to Blair Enns for positioning and value-based pricing, David C. Baker for M&A positioning and agency structure, Jhana Li at Spyglass Ops for operations, and his own DemandOS for whole-team demand. For founders under $50K a month, Agency Studio is his group program.
On published facts: Jason Swenk's own page says he is the best fit for agencies between $750K and $15M that still depend on the owner, and that he is not the right coach under $750K. Tim Kilroy's Agency Studio is built for founders under $50K a month, with custom work from $1M to $20M.
Look for named founders and specific outcomes on each coach's own site, then ask for references you can speak with. Tim Kilroy's testimonial page quotes named founders, such as Dan Budai of Budai Media. This site does not show star ratings for his coaching because no public rating for the coaching business was available.
Tim Kilroy's hiring rule is that you need a function, not a person. A role makes sense when a constraint has existed 60 or more days, directly blocks revenue, margin, or focus, and removing it funds the role within six months. If your sales knowledge still lives in your head, a new hire has nothing to run yet.
A course gives you frameworks; coaching applies them to your numbers. Tim Kilroy describes Agency Studio as a clinic, not a curriculum: founders bring live problems and leave with a decision. If reading is enough for now, his free playbooks on positioning, discovery calls, and sales at timkilroy.com are a sensible start.
Match the coach to your revenue stage and bottleneck, look for named client outcomes, and be wary of speed promises. Jason Swenk's guide puts it bluntly: anyone promising to 10x your agency in 90 days is selling a countdown timer, not coaching. Ask how the coach diagnoses before they prescribe.
Use the contact page at timkilroy.com/contact. It is the direct route for questions about Agency Studio, Agency Studio+, or custom SalesOS and DemandOS work. Share your revenue range and the main problem you want solved so the conversation can start with what matters to your agency.
Your revenue range, a rough profit margin, where your last several clients came from, and the problem that keeps you up at night. Tim Kilroy's WTF call covers revenue, team, pipeline, and operations, and aims to separate the real problem from the symptom you have been treating for months.
Yes. Tim Kilroy offers the WTF Assessment, a two-minute diagnostic that points to where your agency is stuck, plus free tiers of Call Lab Instant and Discovery Lab, and the free 30-minute WTF call. All are listed on timkilroy.com, and the contact page is the quickest way to ask which fits.
Tim Kilroy's Agency Studio page describes a common pattern: fixing problems in isolation, so each fix creates the next fire. A sales fix overloads delivery, hiring squeezes margin, and price rises strain positioning. His approach reads the whole machine and runs the math on what is wrong before recommending the next move.
Tell Tim where your agency is stuck. The contact page at timkilroy.com is the direct route for questions about group coaching, one-on-one coaching, or custom work.
Published by Tim Kilroy
