OverPressure Podcast Joshua Griffin & Austin

The Overpressure Podcast's latest episode features Joshua, co-founder of Intrinsi, a full-stack marketing agency based in Lancashire in northwest England. His path to entrepreneurship started from what he calls failing school and leaving with nothing. He talked his way into college anyway, then cycled through dead-end jobs, growing comfortable and then uncomfortable enough to move on, all while knowing the nine-to-five wasn't for him. He tried YouTube videos and gave up. When Pokémon Go launched, he built a UK fan page that peaked at about 40,000 members, an audience he now realizes he could have monetized if he'd understood marketing back then. Then, late one night on YouTube, he came across print-on-demand and dropshipping, and launched his first real business just before the pandemic. The best material isn't the scrappy origin story, though it's a familiar one. It's how openly he talks about watching that first business collapse. During lockdown, with everyone at home and on Facebook, e-commerce was booming, and he scaled fast enough to open physical locations. Based on that year, he took out personal loans to fund the next one. What he didn't understand was that a spending surge after a pandemic or war is usually followed by a sharp decline. When it came, no one was buying, and he was carrying tens of thousands of pounds in debt. He spent another year working as an Amazon courier on top of running the business, 16 hours a day, five or six days a week, until he physically and mentally collapsed. That is when he sold. His takeaway, after one failed business: many founders push far past their limits because of pride, mistaking being busy for being successful. Quick gems from the episode: → The old joke applies, he says: he didn't want to work nine to five, so now he works 24/7. The difference this time is building monthly recurring revenue without destroying himself in the process. → After the e-commerce business, he led marketing for a fast-moving consumer goods brand in a restricted industry where paid ads weren't allowed, so everything relied on SEO and email. He scaled that brand significantly before leaving with some financial runway. There he met Dan, the company's head of e-commerce, who is now his co-founder. → He and Dan split the work cleanly. Dan is the full-stack developer behind everything technical. Joshua handles marketing, sales, being on camera, and client relationships, all things Dan would rather avoid. → He estimates that 80 to 90% of UK agencies run on a churn model: sign as many clients as possible, deliver a basic template site, keyword stuffing, and a generic SEO report, then replace the clients who leave. Intrinsi is built around retention instead, and its early clients now send referrals, buy more services, or bring the agency in to run the entire digital side of new businesses they launch. → Ironically, the e-commerce world he burned out in has come back to him. Struggling online stores are now hiring the agency, often on a percentage-of-profit basis that fits neatly with recurring revenue. → Being valuable to clients comes down to small things. He calls clients personally and remembers details like asking how their trip to the theme park went. Working with fewer, higher-value clients makes it possible to know every one of them. → His biggest recent lesson is to prospect carefully and stop taking on clients just because the money is there. A good fit leads to better results, a stronger portfolio, and natural upsells rather than forced ones. → On the software side, he and Dan are exploring an affordable CRM, AI-powered live chat for busy tradespeople and solo operators, and social media planning tools, all designed to plug into the websites and lead-capture systems they already build. → He sees a backlash against AI building, especially among tradespeople, now that AI-generated posters show up everywhere from the dentist to the local bar. His answer is to use AI for admin and reporting while staying personal with clients, because humans buy from humans. In a country where he can drive to Scotland or London in four hours, showing up in person has paid off more than anything else. The thread connecting a school dropout with a 40,000-member fan page, a founder worn down by debt and courier shifts, and an agency built to keep clients rather than cycle through them is what makes this conversation land. It isn't a rags-to-riches story. It's an argument that most people quit just before things start to work, and the ones who last are the ones who build slowly, treat clients as partners, and stop confusing busyness with success. Check out the Overpressure Podcast for the full conversation.