Agency Operations · KeyPlayers Academy

School of Agency Operations

Opens October 7

Agency Operations

Agency economics, the client lifecycle, the agency tool stack at navigation level, tickets and reporting, and your seat in the agency. Ends in a graded week inside a simulated agency with three clients.

This program opens on Wednesday, October 7. Applications open the same day.

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Course: 1
Modules: 6
Lessons: 18
Practice drills: 1

Who it's for

Assistants who hold the KeyPlayers AI-Trained VA and want to do this work for clients.

By application, after KeyPlayers Foundations. The admissions team reviews every application.

What a graduate can do

Every graduate has already done this work once, under grading. The final asks them to produce:

Inbox and Slack log, waiting-on list and security notes: every message with your call (act, ask first, escalate, file), what you did, the exact messages you sent with times, who owns the next step, your end-of-week waiting-on list, and every suspicious message and piece of sensitive data you protected
Larkspur onboarding: the checklist updated to Friday with who confirmed each step and when, every message to Larkspur and to the team about it, and the kickoff you booked (time in ET) and why
Tickets: a ClickUp-style ticket for every client request this week in the handbook's format (client's words, list, one owner, approval needed, confirmed due date, priority, status), including tasks you updated instead of creating and any requests you merged

Curriculum

What's taught, course by course

Modules pair lessons with quizzes. Modules marked Drill include hands-on practice on a realistic task. Downloads are available to trainees once they sign in.

1

KP-AG-101

How Agencies Work

What a new hire at a marketing agency needs before day one: how agencies make money, the client lifecycle and who owns each stage, the tool stack and what you must never touch without approval, how work moves from a client message to a finished ticket, reading a monthly report well enough to explain it, and what each VA seat owns. Built around one agency, Halyard Growth Co., and its three clients.

Opens Oct 7

1
How agencies make money
2
The client lifecycle
3
The agency tool stack
4
How work moves
Drill
5

Assessment

The graded final

A realistic case, worked the way a client would expect. A KeyPlayers trainer grades it against the rubric below. AI may prepare first-draft scores backed by exact quotes from the work, and the trainer decides every result.

Graded simulationPass mark 80%2 attempts

Final Assessment: A week inside Halyard Growth Co.

Work a week as the new Client Coordinator at Halyard Growth Co., a fictional Toronto performance marketing agency: turn a messy batch of client requests from Slack Connect, a guest channel and email into tickets with owners and deadlines, onboard a new client's access safely, build Riverbend Dental's October report summary from ad and CRM exports, handle an angry client email about lead quality, answer the founder's question about which client is least profitable, and post an EOD report every day. Along the way: a client who emails their password, a client who wants all ads paused today while the account lead is flying, a phishing email pretending to be Meta, patient details hidden in a CRM export, a teammate who suggests a personal AI account, and an account lead who wants the report to lead with a number that isn't real.

Automatic fails

Changing an ad account or CRM without written approval (or telling a client a change is done or coming before it's approved), using, copying or asking for a password, acting on the phishing email or not reporting it, putting lead or patient data into any AI tool or a personal AI account, or promising a credit, discount, free work, result, out-of-scope item or unconfirmed date fails the assessment regardless of score.

Review and sign-off

A program opens to trainees only once each review below is signed off. Every sign-off records exactly which version of the content was reviewed, and lasts 12 months, so the program is reviewed again every year.

Content review
Reviewed by: Training Manager

Status: Opens October 7

How the credential is verified

Graduates earn the KeyPlayers AI-Trained Agency Coordinator, with its own credential ID.
Anyone can enter that ID on the verification page to see whether it's valid, expired, suspended or revoked.
It's valid for 12 months. After that it shows as expired until it's renewed through the yearly update.

Verify a credential

How to get in

By application, after KeyPlayers Foundations. The admissions team reviews every application. New to KeyPlayers? Take the skills quiz, then apply. Already training with us? Open the program from your Academy account.

Apply to KeyPlayers Already a trainee? Open it

School of Agency Operations

More from this school

The seats a marketing agency hires for.

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For assistants

See where you stand, then apply.

Nine real workplace situations, with your score and what each answer means. Training is free for KeyPlayers candidates.

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The rubric

Authority, approvals and escalation
Every ad and CRM change waits for the account lead's written approval (Owen's when the lead can't be reached), and every client hears about a change only after the specialist confirms it. Credits, scope, pricing and targets go to their owners. Urgent items reach the right person fast.
Security, access and privacy
Access is collected through partner and user invites, never passwords. A password sent anyway is not used or copied and is escalated. The phishing email is reported with specific red flags. Patient details found in a Halyard system are flagged without being copied. No personal data goes into AI or outside Halyard.
Intake and ticketing
Every client request becomes a ticket the same shift in Halyard's format: one request per ticket, the client's words, one owner who does the work, the approver named separately, only confirmed due dates, and existing tasks updated instead of duplicated.
Reporting and data accuracy
The report uses GHL for leads and bookings and the platforms for spend, with a source on every line. The Implants Search double count from October 20 is found, proven with dates and figures, and flagged to the account lead and Kenji before the draft is due. The report tells the truth even when the account lead asks for good news.
Client communication
Every client is acknowledged within two business hours with a time the coordinator can keep, in the client's time zone. Updates say exactly what was done and when, only after it's done. Hard messages (Nadia, Rick, Dana) are calm, short and promise nothing extra.
Commercial judgment: profitability, scope and capacity
The founder gets a straight, correct answer on profitability from hours and fees, with the project kept separate and assumptions stated. Scope creep, capacity and fee risks are named from the pack's own numbers, with no invented benchmarks.
Ownership and EOD reporting
Five EOD reports on time in Halyard's format, facts true for the time they were posted. Deadlines met through the week. A waiting-on list and the onboarding checklist that someone else could pick up on Monday.
AI-enabled work
Claude is used where it saves time and is safe, only in Halyard's Claude Team project, after personal columns and notes are removed. Every output is checked against the source, and the log is honest and complete, including what stayed out of AI.

Written feedback on every result. A result can be appealed within 7 days, and a different trainer decides the appeal.