Keep Your Chin Up, Kid...

This sh*t is hard...get used to it

Author

Tim Kilroy
09 May • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes

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In This Week's Bag of Fun

This Is Really F’ing Hard (It’s supposed to be…)

In AIC 58 (It’s the End of Agencies As We Know It) we talked about a bunch of existential threats. In the days after that, I heard a lot of tough stories…

  • An agency owner who is down 40% YoY after prepping for 40% YoY growth

  • An agency that has lost 3 clients because of tariffs

  • An agency that had to kill quarterly bonuses

  • An agency that has had 30% of their client base ask to renegotiate contracts

  • An agency that lost 2 clients at renewal time because “they had to bring this in house for cost reasons”

These are brutal stories - and I don’t think the agencies did anything to precipitate these events. I, for one, thought that the pandemic was going to usher in an era of the “Wartime CEO”. It turns out that the pandemic brought about a huge boon and build out in the digital advertising world. It created a bunch of “growth at all costs” kind of CEOs.

I built my 1st agency in the rubble of the dot com crash (if you are old enough, you know that the streets were littered with crushed digital dreams). My second agency was founded just a few minutes before the financial implosion in 2008. So, I’ve had my share of “WTF are we going to do!?!” moments as a CEO.

Those were hard times, but there were only economic issues to contend with…today we have economic AND technological threats to business as usual. You could spend some time a whole lot less well than taking a few minutes to read/re-read The Hard Thing About Hard Things by a16 whiz kid Ben Horowitz. Basically he spends a few hundred snappy pages talking about leading from a place of “Oh sh*t”. It will be some soul food for you.

How Should You Be Showing Up For Your Biz & Team?

First, if you are asking that question…you are gonna win this fight. Most people aren’t asking “How should I…”, they are asking “How do I…” If you are beyond the mechanics of taking on your role as leader, you will outlast this nonsense.

You can’t lead them with bravado. BS is a very thin veneer. Fear of losing their job gives team members a fear-driven x-ray vision power that pierces BS easily. You have to acknowledge that things are hard and that you are doing what you can to smooth out the bumps and to make the journey comfortable. You have to lean into the reality and perhaps even acknowledge that you can’t see far enough into the future to know the team is going to make it through unscathed. But you have real clarity on your numbers and will be able to give ample warning and will be as generous as you can be if changes need to be put into place.

You need to be showing up in a way that is:

  • Authentic

  • Concerned

  • Resourceful

  • Scrappy

  • Honest

  • Compassionate

(If you need some help or a pep talk - grab 15 mins - free - gratis - to talk through whatever)

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So What Do You Do Next?

Obviously, we all know about cost controls and financial management. And if interested, friend of the Agency Inner Circle, Marcel Petitpas from Parakeeto has a great FREE Agency Profitability Toolkit (and a really terrific Agency Profitability Foundations Course - not free, but worth it).

But let’s focus on the things that you can do to address the “gotta keep the cash flowing” aspects of your business:

  1. Reach Out To Every Old Client You’ve Ever Worked With (who loves you): Drop them a note with 1-3 cool things that have happened with you, your agency, the industry, the platforms, etc. Start a conversation and offer up a low cost check up to get the transactional juices flowing again.

  2. Reach Out To Everyone Who Said “No” or Ghosted You In The Last 12 Months: Be friendly, be happy and let them know that you were thinking about them, and share 1-3 cool things that have happened with you, your agency, the industry, the platforms, etc. The ask is if they are happy with where they are (about 50% will be, 50% won’t be…) and if they are not, offer then a low cost audit or review to see if there is a way to re-kindle the romance.

  3. Stop Waiting On Referrals (Non-client Partners): If your business is driven by referrals (according to a survey we conducted, more than 50% of agencies under $5mm in revenue get 80% or more of their new business from referrals) stop waiting for them to happen. For non-client referral partners, hit them up RIGHT Now, and tell them 1-3 cool things that have happened with you, your agency, the industry, the platforms, etc. and ask if they have any folks that might be open to a discussion.

  4. Stop Waiting On Referrals (Client Partners): This nifty tactic has a double benefit. Start asking your clients what else they might need that you do not offer - eg, if you are an email agency, ask your clients if they are open to an intro to an SEO agency. If yes, say, “Cool - I have someone in mind - and while I am organizing the intro to them, can you think of any marketers you might know who could benefit from what we do?” That gets the client thinking. And then when you intro the SEO agency, both the client and the SEO agency will be thinking they owe you one…

  5. Start Building Visibility: I yak about this all the time…but start mining your content to create social authority content that will keep you in the “aware of” zone, so that when a need arises, you will be in the consideration set. (That is my GEN+ program, BTW)

  6. Start Building Velocity: Listen, I know outreach is hard and it can seem like a waste of time. But without outreach, you are in largely a passive zone. You aren’t getting into the market, you are hoping that the market finds you. That doesn’t happen all that often…but it tends to happen a lot more often if you are active. Motion creates luck. Our GTM program, GTM OS builds creativity, activity & momentum for you so that your sparkling personality show up in the inboxes of people who are on point and more likely than not, in market.

  7. Get Your GRIT On: Grit is that “never give up” ethos. I like to think about it as GET REAL, IT’S TOUGH. Even under the very best circumstances, building a business is really hard. You have to be acting with urgency and forethought even day…

Some Financial Resiliency Inspiration From My Ever Growing Podcast List

1. 🎯Small Business Financial Strategies to Build Resilience and Thrive Source: Redwood Credit Union | Date: May 4, 2025

TL;DR: Practical playbook for staying solvent when things get sketchy—think cash reserves, controlled debt, and generating revenue from every angle. Less fluff, more CFO-brain for the founder.

TL;DR: Turns out, your team’s mindset matters. This one zooms in on emotional resilience as a competitive edge—especially for customer-facing teams. Think less burnout, more bounce-back.

3. 🎧How to Build Resilience (with Ben Walter, Chase for Business) Podcast: The Happiness Lab | Date: May 2, 2025

TL;DR: CEO of Chase for Business shares gritty founder stories and explains why resilience isn’t just mindset—it’s structure, relationships, and a willingness to change course fast.

4. 🌍 Economic Resilience & Trade Wars (with Erica Charron) Podcast: The Business Gay | Date: April 15, 2025

TL;DR: Smart take on global ripple effects. Erica breaks down how macro nonsense like tariffs and trade wars screw with SMB survival—and what you can do when your supply chain melts.

Want To Learn How To “Fix This F*cker Before It Breaks?”

Last week, I spoke at the All In Agency Summit (and welcomes to those new subscribers from the Summit!) and gave a 30 minute chat around the ideas of premortems, postmortems & RACI. I put the presentation and some other goodies (a discount on my GTM OS program, for instance) all right here in a WTF Agency ToolKit - Fix This F*cker Before It Breaks

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