Planning and Forecasting for Your Agency, with Tim Kilroy

Episode 51:

This week on the Progressive Agency podcast, I welcome Tim Kilroy to the show. He’s founded three agencies and successfully sold two. Today, he helps digital agencies generate more revenue, more profit, and more happiness. Tim shares his forecasting and planning tips that help agency owners hire better and scale their business. Hear insights about:

  • The three largest financial errors that agency owners make
  • How to label clients to help forecast the fragility of your business
  • Why choosing to work with contractors over employees can be more expensive
  • Why agency owners should prioritize capacity planning and forecasting
  • How tracking hours allows you to provide more accurate quotes and profits
  • Why it’s important to forecast and have a plan for all of your profit before receiving it
  • What an agency CEO’s role should encompass, and why it doesn’t revolve around creating happy clients

More Revenue and Profit

Digital agencies can generate more revenue and more profit without working a million hours.
Just ask Tim Kilroy, my guest this week on the Progressive Agency Podcast. Tim has founded three agencies, successfully selling two. Today, he helps digital agencies generate more revenue, more profit, and more happiness. Tim shares his forecasting and planning tips that help agency owners hire better and scale their business.

Planning and Forecasting

Financial Errors

Tim finds that there are three large financial errors that digital agency owners make in their businesses. The first is relying solely on contractors rather than hiring employees. The second is assuming that their clients will never fire them. The final major mistake that many agency owners make is not treating themselves as a reasonable business expense. During our conversation, Tim explains these financial errors in detail – and how to avoid them.

Capacity Planning

The ability to plan and forecast in your agency is critical for long-term success and scalability. Throughout our conversation, Tim discusses the importance of planning and forecasting in several ways. One of the most pertinent is through capacity-planning. He explains that capacity-planning gives you the ability to make informed hiring decisions, as well as provide more accurate quotes. He shares how tracking hours aids in capacity-planning, and why employees should not view it as a weapon. Listen to the episode to learn more:

How to Connect with Tim Kilroy:

About Tim Kilroy:

“I help digital agencies (and digital agency owners) generate more revenue, more profit & more happiness without working a million hours, being ‘sales-y’ or doing anything else gross,” Tim says of his business strategy.

Tim has worked with over 100 agencies to help them solve problems ranging from “How do I get my 1st client?” to “How do we maximize our exit value?” Tim also focuses on driving dramatic growth by collaborating with agency owners and management teams. He has helped his clients do amazing things – like grow 8x in a year, or by 3x in 90 days. In addition, Tim has helped agencies create account management structures, and coached them through various situations, such as a founder moving to another opportunity.