Promise to Show Up Before You Promise Page One

A UK agency founder on why client retention, honest promises, and a human approach keep clients coming back

By Austin Holmes, Co-Founder & President, Publicity For Good & Signal Raptor / Host of OverPressure Podcast

Focus Insights

• Client retention grows from showing up for people consistently.
  
• Choosing clients carefully and writing expectations into the service agreement takes most of the pressure out of hard client conversations.
  
• Founders who mistake a packed schedule for progress tend to burn out before the business pays them back.
  

Joshua Griffin told me about a cold call he made about six months before we recorded. He promised the business owner on the other end that he would pick up the phone, meet with them and do everything he could to get them results, and he says people rarely hear that kind of promise from an agency.

Joshua, based in Lancashire in the northwest of England, co-founded Intrinzi, a full-stack marketing agency, with Dan, who led e-commerce at the brand where Joshua ran marketing. His road there included failing school, a string of dead-end jobs, a print-on-demand and dropshipping business that took off during the pandemic, and a stint as head of marketing for a consumer goods brand in a restricted industry that ruled out paid ads, leaving email and SEO.

The Burnout Behind the First Business

His first business did well enough that he took out personal loans to scale it, assuming the next year would look like the last. Spending dropped sharply instead, and he spent the next year maxed out, driving for Amazon as a courier for up to 16 hours a day, five or six days a week, while still packing orders and handling customer service. That pace ended in a full physical and mental collapse, and he sold the business.

Joshua sees the same pattern in many founders he talks to. Pride in what you’re building can push you to keep going long past the point where the hours are helping, and a full calendar starts to feel like proof of success. His rebuild with Intrinzi focuses on recurring revenue that doesn’t cost him his health.

Retention Is the Business Model

Joshua estimates that 80 to 90 percent of UK agencies run on a churn model, signing as many clients as possible, delivering basic template sites and thin SEO reports, and replacing whoever leaves. Intrinzi’s packages are built around results, and clients from six to twelve months ago now send referrals, buy more services, and in a few cases bring the agency in to run the digital side of brand-new businesses.

He works with fewer, higher-value clients, which lets him know every one of them. On calls, he asks about small things they’ve shared, like a trip to a theme park. Our agency works with a lot of retail and direct-to-consumer brands. What people want is one team that can take a problem off their plate, and when that team brings a system that works, there’s little reason to leave.

Choose Clients Who Fit

The biggest lesson Joshua shared was about prospecting. Early on, they took clients for the money who were a poor fit. Now they screen for owners who want to grow, plan to invest and understand that results take time. A prospect who only wants Google Ads for quick money is one they now try to avoid, since Joshua compares that approach to renting space that disappears the moment the payments stop, and the leaks on the website stay unfixed in the meantime.

Every new client goes through a Zoom call, or an in-person meeting for bigger accounts, and a service level agreement with clear objectives. If a client feels the agency fell short, Joshua will give them the benefit of the doubt once or twice. After that, he points back to what was agreed in onboarding, in meetings and in the contract. In my experience, that kind of preparation works like a pressure relief valve, because when a client is frustrated you already know you did what you said you would.

Being Human Stands Out in an AI Inbox

Intrinzi uses AI for admin, reporting and scheduling, and keeps custom builds and onboarding in human hands. Joshua is seeing some backlash against AI from blue-collar business owners in particular, and most of us get piles of emails that all read like the same tool wrote them. He thinks the outliers will be the people who call, meet in person and remember the details. The sit-down where you learn what a client actually needs is very hard to automate.

Lessons From Joshua Griffin on Agency Growth

• Agencies that focus on client retention tend to earn referrals and upsells over time.
  
• Screening prospects for fit, and putting objectives in a service level agreement, reduces disputes about results.
  
• AI handles reporting, admin and scheduling well at agencies like Intrinzi, and the team keeps client relationships in human hands.
  
• Personal debt taken on to scale a business based on one strong year carries real risk if demand falls.

Start, Then Protect Your Energy

For someone starting out, Joshua’s advice is to research enough to understand the market and then begin. He went into e-commerce knowing little about it and learned on the way, and he would take a setback over the regret of never trying, as long as you have a few months of runway. I’d add that you only need to solve a given problem once before you can repeat it.

He also takes far more time off now, and he wants founders to protect time with family and friends from the start. My first trip after leaving the military was Bali, and these days we try to break routine about once a quarter, because a change of scenery is usually when the next step becomes clear.

You can find my full conversation with Joshua Griffin on the OverPressure Podcast feed on YouTube and Spotify.

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About the Author
Austin Holmes is a Navy Special Operations veteran, father, and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and President of Publicity For Good and CEO of Signal Raptor, a SaaS-enabled PR platform that modernizes one of the most traditional industries by productizing services and pairing technology with human expertise. He hosts the OverPressure Podcast, where he interviews veteran entrepreneurs about building businesses under real-world pressure.