The Stories We Hide

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Dearlessness, there's a version of entrepreneurial story that we tell publicly. And then there's the one we carry alone in the middle of the night. The deaths we don't talk about. The months we nearly didn't make it. The moment you realize that building something from nothing doesn't come with the instruction. And surviving it doesn't guarantee anyone will understand what it does. So most of us only hear the highlights, right? And today we are talking about what happens between them. Yeah. So hey dear listeners, I'm your host Avega, and this is Mind Meets Machine. This is the podcast where we slow down and ask the questions that matters the most, not the one which is designed to sound impressive. So we explore what it actually takes to build, to sustain, and to keep going when the systems you believed in stopped working. And today's guest, please welcome Joshua Griffin. So welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Abby. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here, Joshua. And dear listeners, like before we get into the discussion, I'll quickly introduce you to Joshua. So he's a serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Intrinsing. I'm so sorry. It's Intrincy, right? Intrinsy, yeah. Yeah. Intrinsic. Yeah. So he's the co-founder of Intrinsy and the author currently writing. So built it. Nearly lost it. Built it again. So the honest account of what building a business actually costs. So he left school with D's and E's and taught himself marketing under the real commercial pressure and built business from nothing before nearly losing everything and rebuilding it. So there are there are a lot of things to learn from it. So I do not want to take much of a time. Let's get started. Welcome to the show again. Thank you again. Amazing.

The Myth Of One Perfect Shot

SPEAKER_00 1:49

So so uh Joshua, like I mean, I believe there's this myth is already there that the entrepreneurs are just wear differently and they are kind of they see the opportunity where others see risk, and somehow that makes the hard parts easier. So you have lived through the version of the story most people that don't post about. So what do you think is the biggest misconception here that people have or people carry about what it actually takes to build something from the scratch?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

I think I think the biggest thing people tend to tend to mistake is that they've only got one shot. And it's not the case. I mean, many, many things take numerous attempts or tries, people fail. I heard something not long ago saying that there is only really success and setbacks, not so much using the word failure. So I believe the biggest thing is people think that they have to have everything figured out. They have to understand every single part of it before they take action. And I think a lot just it's quite it's quite funny because we're always told to walk before we run, you know, don't jump before you get there. And I think sometimes with entrepreneurship, it it is just doing it and then taking it and you know, shooting, then pointing in instead of taking the time. And I think the biggest things I've learned is I've been through a lot, and every single thing has been a learning point. And addressing that and paying attention to why it didn't work is is the most important thing. But yeah, to fully answer your question, I think people believe they have to have everything figured out and they have to understand it, but it's not always the case. I think it's impossible to know everything and it's all about learning.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yeah, exactly, exactly true. And

Learning Marketing Under Real Pressure

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I mean, when you are in the middle of it, like teaching yourself marketing under commercial pressure with no safety need, then what did you tell yourself to keep going? Like, yeah, I mean if we can share that.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, I think uh ironically, marketing, I'd settled my first business just before COVID, coronavirus, and things were a bit rocky then. So I looked at getting a job in order to earn a little bit on the side. And at the time I was looking at like marketing jobs because I thought, you know, back then I was naive thinking that I can do social media, just do some posts for a company or do this. So I went for the interview and I remember being asked loads of questions I didn't know the answer to, and I remember sort of winging it and trying to negotiate my way through the door. And what it was is at the time I I pretty much failed school, but I've always been good at writing and talking. So I I I sort of set the tasks at the time to set me a task for the job of copywriting, so to create a blog and then to do some Photoshop work. And to cut a long story short, I got the job. But then I didn't have a clue about marketing, so I had to learn on the go, and every evening I had to research and I had to learn to prove myself. And then that's how it kind of worked because what happened then eventually was I was learning loads of things about marketing with Dan, who he's now my co-founder actually, about the full circle has come round. And I was then taking things back to my business and building it that way, and then I was taking things from vice versa, from the other way and taking it from my business that's worked to that business. And it was almost like growing two brands at the time. So I think from the start, it was if I didn't perform in any way, I'd lose the job. And if I never did any of that marketing to begin with with the first business, it probably wouldn't have even taken off. So I'm a firm believer that a lot of things happen for a reason and perseverance always pays off in the right ways, and that I think there is a slight percentage of luck in in building anything, and I think that was my initial look and starting out, to be fair. But yeah, it was being in a place I didn't know what I was doing, like I said at the start, is I didn't know, but I was learning and keen to learn in order to continue going forward.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

I agree, I totally agree, yeah. I mean I I think I mean that's that's the part that we don't talk about enough. The stories we tell ourselves to survive a moment are not always the ones that that age well. Like sometimes survival mode demands a kind of narrative that gets us through the day and even if even if it leaves out the full picture. So yeah. So we talk about I mean, nearly losing everything. So that's not an abstract fear for most of the founders. So it's the thing that keeps them up at night. So I mean, what do you think are the deeper patterns or the forces that push someone from kind of building something real to standing on the edge of losing it all? So what do you have to say?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

I

Loans, Events, Stress, And Collapse

SPEAKER_01 6:15

think um so there was numerous points in in how I nearly lost it. It was it got to the point where the business was going really well. The first business I built alongside the last company I left there went full-time and decided to build it. And in a way, coronavirus really helped. It sounds really bad saying that, but everyone was online, people were all on social media, so the sort of cost per conversion was so cheap, it was unbelievable, never met anything like it. And sales were growing, and then to fast forward a couple of years in, everything was growing year on year, numbers were great. I went and did loads of uh physical events, and I remember the first event taking in close to £2,000 for about four or five hours, and I remember it was my dad at the time came to help me, and I looked at him in a way that I was just completely confused. And I'd made so much money to the company in one day that I could do this every single week for for almost half a year. And um, I did a few more and then essentially took out a load of loans in my own name, all in all, is around about £30,000 at the time. And that was for the following year because I'd gone, well, if I make £2,000 at one event, call it even £1,000 if it's a bad one, then I can forecast that I can go and do 50 events next year. And then straight after the COVID, the coronavirus, the cost of living hit the UK really hard, and I think it hit a lot of of the world really, especially the West. And um, I remember going to the first event, and the whole day I think I took £400 and I was I was like, oh, this is a problem. So then went to the next one and made two to £300, rough, rough figures, but basically like less than quarter of the amount. And I was like, I'm in trouble. I'm not gonna be able to afford to pay these bills. What am I gonna do? The only way I could sort of keep it going was to get more money, and the business was already at full capacity by me. I was picking a packing orders, my service, you know, couriers. It was a full-time thing. So I couldn't really scale that any quicker or faster. So I remember jumping in an Amazon van to do courier work, and that was supposed to be for the weekends, and then the online sale started dripping a little bit because of the cost of living. And it got to the point of five days, six days a week. I was getting up early at five in the morning, going to my warehouse, packing orders, going and doing Amazon. And it was this strain after so long of doing it, months and months went by, and I wasn't getting out of this situation whatsoever. It was only getting worse. And I mentioned three, three words of the well, three mentions of the word stress. I remember I had a really bad foot and it was hurting a lot, and I went to the doctors and and they missed it, but it turned out a year later I had another scan because it was hurting and it was a stress fracture because I'm a big guy and I was jumping on it all the time and then on my feet. So that was the first one. And then I remember going to the dentist and for the general checkup, and he asked me, Did do I grind my teeth? And I was said, I don't think so. And he said, Do you are you under a lot of stress at the moment or any pressure? And I was like, Yeah, that's that's that. So he thought I was grinding my teeth in my sleep at night, and then it all came to an abrupt figure one evening when I'd done the whole day. The Amazon 16 hours later, I get through my door. And to cut a long story short, I essentially was stood up and the next minute I'm on the floor and I've woken up. I didn't have a clue what happened, had physically collapsed, and um went to the hospital. And the NHS in the UK is the case of well, you're not dying now, you're alive, go home. If it happens again, then um then fair enough. And then I went to speak to my doctor a few weeks later, and I explained the const, like how much I was doing. And he looked at me like I was some idiot, basically telling me you can't do this, and you're very, very lucky that you only collapsed and there's no sort of long-term damage on the heart or brain or health. So that was like the stress part, and it was something I had to give. And when you build a business, it becomes like your baby, it's part of you. And I remember spending many evenings thinking about it and doing a lot, and it came to the point where I just decided to sell it, and I need to get rid of it, like it's it's gonna kill me, is the honest answer. If I continue doing the thing I'm doing right now, then I'm not gonna be here in another year or two. So that's like the nearly lost it part in regards to it's my own health, it's the business, because I was looking at selling it, and it was still growing, like the numbers are okay, and year on year it was growing. But this is the things I talk about when I'm writing the book, is there's many mistakes in there. In at the time I was spending more money than I should have been. I was enjoying the the nice bits of entrepreneurship, I was enjoying holidays and festivals. Nothing lavish, but I was spending more. Now I track every financial data point I can. And if you look at the PLs and all the profit, that's one thing I'd tell any entrepreneur, know your numbers and know exactly where you stand. And then the other bit was thinking that I could exert more of my time. Like my entire business relied upon me, and nobody could do anything for it. And when it came to selling it, that's the issue I managed to realise. No one wanted to buy a business that completely relied upon one person. And to cut a long story short, I mean it essentially it is kind of lost it because the business is no longer operational. It got turned into like an online blog in order to try and monetize, and then over time, I just completely stopped doing anything with it. So it but it's still there because I just don't want to let go of it. And um went back to the company the way I worked at originally on the side, they'd grown quite sick significantly since I left. A lot of work that I'd put in, as well as Dan doing a lot of work, and then continued scaling that for another year or so. And then, long story short, I don't know how much I can actually mention, but we we left the business and then had some financial runway. And me and Dan sat together and thought, well, we've done this, we've built a big business for a company in the past, we've both built our own businesses in the past, let's go and do another business and actually do it right between two of us, and that's where intrinsic is now. That's what we're currently building. We're just over a year in and we're already sustainable and making profit, so that's the quickest year I've had in any sort of business in regards to that. But yeah, that's the sort of synopsis of it. I mean, if I spoke about the entire history of of my career, it would be sat here for hours, have we? I tried to do it quickly.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Yeah, no, no, that that's definitely true. And obviously, I mean that recognition that we are not just responding to the external circumstances, but running old scripts we didn't choose kind of consciously, right? So that is kind of hard. So yeah. And if you talk about our daily life, right? So you left school with these and e's, and that could have been the end of the story for a lot of people, I believe. But in those situations, also, instead you taught yourself marketing, you built the businesses, you kept going. So, how does that early experience of being told that you are not good enough show up in your everyday life right

School Labels, Proving People Wrong

SPEAKER_00 12:53

now?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

So how how it to be honest, Abby, it's quite funny. I was speaking on a previous podcast last week, and I got asked not the same question, by the way. I'm not I'm not belittling the question. And it was something similar, and it made me that this reason I'm giving a similar answer is because writing the book has been almost like counselling. Uh there's so many things that I completely forgot about, and it's made me understand the reason of why I do things the way I do. And to answer the question completely, I I wouldn't have been able to answer this way before writing the book. I think there's a lot of wanting to prove people wrong that started a lot of it. People, teachers saying that, you know, you what you are you gonna go work so in the UK in Hazda, Walmart, are you gonna go and push trolleys in Walmart or are you gonna go work at McDonald's? Which quite ironically, if you if I went to work at McDonald's and worked my way up and became like an area manager, it's quite good money. The teachers used to put that as a negative. I don't think teachers should be telling anybody any job is negative. I mean, if somebody's happy and it can afford their bills, that's more important than anything. I'd rather I'd rather have just enough money and be happy than earning £100,000, £200,000 a year and be stressed and burnt out. But anyway, that's my hatred on teachers. I think it's it's a point of proving people wrong for the start. I remember starting things out years ago, like YouTube channels and when Twitch came out streaming, and a few friends would joke, somewhat to me and sometimes behind, oh Josh is doing something again, how long will this last? And I think it's always been a case of it. And when I created Joshua Lloyd, like my first business completely where this is a thing I'm gonna build from scratch and grow, was almost like an F you to people who'd always said I'm not gonna do anything, I don't account to it. And I think that's what started it. And then recently going through diagnosis for ADHD, I think that's a lot as well. I think I get hyper focused, and if I want to do something, I'm completely going to do it no matter what the consequences are, even if I suppose I physically collapse and have stress in my life, I'm not gonna stop and unless I'm forced to. And I read something not long ago and that I think if you have ADHD or ADHD people are about 300% more likely to build a business, which is quite ironic because a lot of people out there might not think they can because of that, but it's quite quite the opposite. But yeah, to answer the question, I believe it was to to prove people wrong, especially teachers. I didn't like school, didn't fit in and wanted to prove them all wrong.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

That's lovely. So and like I think most of us carry that version of that. So when you're working with other founders or building teams right now, do you see that same pattern in them? Like that early story they were about, I mean told about who they are or what they are capable of, still running underneath the surface, shaping how they make decisions or the take risks.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah, so ironically, when I when I first started building my own personal brand alongside the businesses that I'm building, I was going to create my own my own podcast because I thought I I've done it unconventionally. I've come from, you know, debt and hardship. And I thought I was unique in a way, quite big-headedly, thinking that I've gone through stuff that not that many people have and all and stuff. But it's only the last few months of networking heavily, podcasting, net talking to other founders that I think a massive majority of people who have built anything successful have failed or set back, like I mentioned, many, many times. They've they've made issues and mistakes, they've lost relationships, property, houses, money. And I think it's all in the to quote the film, like the pursuit of happiness, I think is the answer. I think they're like a dog with a bone and they have to go for it no matter what. And I think it's it's a skill or talent that I think I don't think you necessarily have to have it, but I think it definitely helps in growing in having complete and utter, almost like blinkers on this is what I'm gonna do, nothing's gonna get in my way. And yeah, so I agree that yeah, the majority I think have gone through really, really tough times, and I think some of the most successful ones I've spoken to have come from really, really bad childhoods and and traumas.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Yeah. Okay. Okay. And regarding because I mean, uh, you rebuilt after nearly losing it all, so that is not a kind of straight line. So do you think the work of sustaining change is fundamentally different from the work of building something the first time, or is it just a longer, wider version of the same thing?

SPEAKER_01 17:20

I think I don't think any entrepreneur or founder has has a linear path. I don't think it starts from A and goes to B, and then that was the entirety of it. I mean, even looking at the likes of Elon Musk now still has rockets exploding and big, big companies have big issues, cyber companies are still getting targeted, banks still get hacked, or things happening.

Rebuilding Smarter With A Co-Founder

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yes, there's there's insane amounts of infrastructure in any business and also leaders with a lot of brain power. But like I said, I think my story, I originally thought it was different, but I don't think it is. I think there's probably hundreds of founders out there who have done something similar. And I don't know the stats these days, but I know it's high. It's like 60-70% of people who start a business fail in the first one to three years, but it it's not clear how many of those are going to make on more and more successful. But I think I think you have to make mistakes. So all the things I did with my first business, I pretty much that was that was wrong. I don't think I do any of them now because of that. And I believe my business partner Dan had a business years ago, and then we both scaled this company together to multi-millions, and there's both mistakes we've made or setbacks, there's both wins we've made, and and coming together as a co-founder has, I believe, accelerated growth by a hundred percent if any of us were doing it singer singular. And that's one thing I would definitely say to people is that when I first started Joshua Lloyd, I was I suppose I was big-headed enough to think I can do it all on my own. And I don't want any angel investors or any crowdfunding or any help. It's my brand. And I think if I'd looked at the beginning to network more and to try and connect with somebody, it might have helped a lot. And I think it's important to look at those options.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

The lessoners today who were there right now, what would you suggest? Or any any practice or suggestion that you have to give, what type of be?

SPEAKER_01 19:07

I think it's in two parts. I think if you're really, really struggling and you really think that things aren't going right, then you need to really address the current situation. You need to address the finances and every piece of data. If you're not collecting data already, make sure you are doing because there is points if you are insolvent and there's nothing you can do within the next three to six months, then nothing's really going to improve much. And I that's a really hard thing to hear, and I wish I'd heard it at the time. In fact, I actually did. I read a book on Alan Sugar, the the business type, you know, in the UK, and there was a point that said something really similar, and it basically said, This is you, you're insolvent. And I'd read it and I was like, no, it's okay, it's fine. And I completely ignored it. And then six months to 12 months later, I'm in 35,000 pounds of debt, and because I didn't listen. So I think if you definitely are in a position of your outgoings are more than your incomings significantly, or at least enough that you're not going to be able to get out of that foreseeably, then you really have to assess. And don't burn yourself out for the sake of pride in keeping a business alive when you can always start something. And then I think the people who are going through hardships and it's it's not too bad financially, it's just difficult on the mental health, maybe straining relationships. Really look at the whole picture of what is most important to you right now and make the decisions based on that. Because I know right now building, I I value my health, my friendship and family's relationships more than anything else in the world. That I could quite happily go and work in a supermarket if I was told my entire family would be healthy until the till the end of days. And I think losing relationships, losing people close to me, and losing people like grandparents and basically losing all the things around me of importance whilst so fixated on business is something that I can't fix. So I think ensure you're balanced, ensure that you're not heading into a deep financial hole. And if you aren't any of those things, then just keep going. It does get harder, but there is another side if you keep on going.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Exactly. So if you have to say, like if someone wants to connect with you, how they can connect?

SPEAKER_01 21:11

So I'm pretty much everybody's told me I'm very, very proliferant, uh proficient on LinkedIn. I'm on there all the time. I spend too much time on there. So if you just search Joshua Griffin, I will come up quite highly. And then every other social is Joshua Griffin SEO, even though nowadays my core background is SEO. I don't really do as much. I'm sort of building businesses in different ways. And then I suppose the biggest thing I'm trying to build is my own newsletter at uh joshgriffin.co.uk forward slash newsletter. And that is where I put all the personal stuff and the most important stuff, obviously, that aren't really available publicly. So if you're wanting to find out the truth and

Hard Advice, Balance, And How To Connect

SPEAKER_01 21:48

occasionally upsetting and things you don't want to hear, like the insolvency part, then that is where you'll find the most accurate version of me. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Okay. Lovely. So dear listeners, what always will put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for the easy reference. And I'd say, like, building something real doesn't mean you get it right first time. It means you learn what it costs and you decide whether you are willing to pay it again differently. So Josh, thank you so much for being here. It's really, really great to have you here today. And generousness, like I mean, it's easy to think the entrepreneur story is all about the wins, launches, the moments that look good in kind of retrospect. But the truth is kind of quieter and harder and more human than that. Like it's all about the deaths we carry, the patterns we repeat, the version of ourselves we become uh kind of when when no one's watching. So yeah. So Josh's story reminds us that nearly losing everything is not the end. It is the it is just the it's just the part where you decide what kind of builder you want to be, right? So thank you so much for listening to Mind Mix Machine Everyone. I'm your host, Rabbi, and take what resonates, leave what doesn't. And always remember that the most important work you will ever do is the kind that no one sees coming. So thank you so much.