Human Connection Is a Growth Tactic

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tapeaket marketing podcast. This is John Chance. My guest today is John Grabowski, Jonathan Grabowski. He's the co-founder and chief marketing officer at Penji, an on-demand graphic design platform that provides businesses with unlimited custom design services at a flat monthly fee. Penji connects clients with top-tier designers delivering completed projects within 48 hours. So we're going to talk about design, graphic design, and maybe how AI is impacting that industry as well. So Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I've been a fan and we've known each other for some time now and excited to explore the podcast and any questions that you may have.

0:50So I started to introduce you as John. I don't think my official name is Jonathan. I've always just been John. Is Jonathan always been your thing or do you ever get shortened? Yeah. So there are probably about like three people on planet Earth that call me John like every day. My mother, who unfortunately passed away about five-ish years or so ago, was very, very particular about Jonathan and pretty much corrected them and scolded them anytime anybody ever said John. So I've always just been Jonathan, you know? Yeah. Well, you know, we, we share a Kansas city connection. So I'll share this story.

1:27I was listening to a sports announcer who was calling our quarterback, Pat Mahomes. And the other announcer says his mother has scolded me frequently, it is Patrick. That's great. Shares that as well with his mother. And I do have a little bit something over you being that we beat you guys in the Super Bowl this past year. Yeah, that wasn't very fun to watch. I'll give you that. So the name Penji, it's probably on your website somewhere. Anytime I see like a kind of a different, unique name, was there some story behind that? Yeah. Great question. I don't really share too much about it because people aren't as curious as you may When we first started, we had this idea of like, well, if you were to slow down the name Penji, you would ultimately lead to a particular file extension that is related to graphic design.

2:24What's that, programmable network graphic or something? Yes, exactly right. So it's pretty much PNG. now PenG speeding it up of course and that's related to the graphic design so although we are originally a graphic design company we've kind of morphed into more of like a creative services that expand well beyond but kind of paying respect to the graphic design aspect it is PenG but it technically came from PNG. Well now I'm really glad I asked that question because that's a great story you know a lot of times people are like yeah I just saw it or I heard it and I thought it sounded cool the domain was available but that's a great story Yeah.

3:02I remember very vividly, it was like 12, one o 'clock, two o 'clock in the morning when my co-founder and I were talking about it and we're just like, you know, putting things together. And that was the one that stuck. So. It's awesome. So was there any particular vision? Like, you know, a lot of people start companies because like I couldn't find good graphic design myself. So I started a company. Was there, was there any story or vision like that? Yeah, I would say I'm not a graphic designer. And we were a digital marketing agency. We sucked. We probably didn't use the duct tape marketing system in order for us to grow.

3:37We were terrible. So we basically... The one thing that people always said was we were really good at graphic design. And then we decided to niche down and say, this is what we're selling. We turned it into a productized service. And it obviously focused very heavily on graphic design. Obviously, now it's a little bit more expanded beyond just graphic design as the world of AI and marketing as a whole becomes necessary. But finding people, finding reliable people, hiring people is a pain in the absolute butt. It's terrible. I don't like hiring people simply because there's so many aspects of it.

4:20The emotional aspect, is this person a good product fit into the culture of the business? Are they actually good at their job? Are they just telling you that they're good at their job, even though they're not good at their job? I mean, there's a lot of fundamental factors. So what if there was a solution where you could go onto a website, hire immediately, and find and talk to somebody who is reliable and good, inherently good at what they could do, and can pretty much turn things around within the timeframe that you're looking for? That is really the ethos behind Penji and how it started. It's just like, we got good at one particular thing.

4:53We got credit for it, turned it into a business, and here we are today. And I think the last time you and I talked, I mean, it's not just you and another person sitting around a room anymore, right? I mean, you've built quite an organization. Yeah. I mean, at this point, we have over just about 500 people, and we have thousands of customers all across the country, all across the world. And the problems that I had then, just getting it off the ground, now the problems are completely different. and they're more meaningful and impactful because if you make a mistake, you have lives of other people that are going to be hurt or be better off because of your decision-making.

5:36And then, so it's just systematically, you have to become more systematic and more thoughtful in your approach to every day rather than just kind of being like, hey man, what are we doing today? Like, you know, I've preached for years, strategy before tactics. A lot of people view even design projects, you know, oh, we need a brochure. We need a banner. We need a logo. And there's really no thought given to it. It's just like, yeah, okay, I like that one. How do you help businesses kind of establish maybe a brand identity as opposed to just doing one-off projects? Yeah. I mean, that's actually a pretty hard thing because a lot of times our customers don't necessarily have...

6:12Primarily, most of our customers already have existing brands. In addition to that, they are actually digital marketing agencies. So from a business standpoint, we assess it no differently than a typical project. The core differentiation, in my opinion, if you were to hire a service like Penji versus that of an agency, an agency is probably going to be able to sit down and talk to you and go over the fundamental... Give you a creative brief. Correctly. A creative brief and talk to you for several hours and be able to do that. We're very factual with what it is that you're looking for. And we're very project-oriented or visual-oriented.

6:44So if you have a new company, it's the art director's job to find out more about your company. and then you have to provide us a visual. And what I found personally is that, and maybe you could attest to this too, John, is like if somebody just tells you, hey, I want this and you're like, well, what the hell does this look like? I'll know it when I see it. Correct, correct. That is like literally the worst thing that you can say on planet Earth. Like I know when I see it. Okay, well, that's really nice to hear that. But like, listen, bro, I need something in your brain. And I need a sliver of your brain to understand what the hell you're trying to do.

7:26Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we start there first. And if you can't provide a visual, to be honest with you, we don't really want you as a client. Because you're going to fail in Penji. And honestly, the biggest piece of Penji's success and lack thereof is the customers not communicating efficiently and effectively. And you would be surprised at how bad, at times, entrepreneurs and business professionals are at communicating. And what I found is that the designers, as a customer who works at Penji, they're the best customers because they have the empathy and the understanding that is needed to articulate a project.

8:07Whereas a founder is very like, I need it done. I need it done tomorrow. I need it done right now. And it needs to be done in 1080p, the 18 different styles. And please give it to me ASAP. And those are great customers and they can work. But communication is so, so important. So do you find that you either don't... I mean, you fire that customer or do you find that you are moving a little more towards being a consultant on brand strategy? Yeah, I think there's a... Well, so number one, my claim to fame is that I fired more customers than people. And I'm very quick to be able to say, listen, this isn't a good fit.

8:48And it's okay. I think that discipline is really important when it comes to business. If you focus all of your time and energy on the loudest customers and problems, I don't think you will ever complete anything ever because you'll always just be putting out fires. but when it comes to the consultancy yeah i think that's like a core differentiation between us and like probably our competitors is that there's a human aspect and i think that's like the approach that we're looking for is the human element of talking to our customers understanding them getting letting them know that the project is completed or the project is being worked on and that is kind of like the differentiation between us and like ai you can easily use ai and it works great.

9:33We use the AI at Penji all the time. But I think the reason why you sign up for a service like Penji is because you want that human interaction. Do you have, and I do want to dive into the AI a little bit. I didn't want to go straight there though. So set the table a little more. Do you have any examples that you can think of, and you don't have to share names if you don't want to, but where the work that you have done, your team's done has kind of significantly impacted a brand's perception or maybe even success? Yeah, there is a very reputable university and institution that is located in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania that we have worked with for multiple years, created slideshows, presentations, basically, where the presentations were then presented to making change internally within the infrastructure.

10:30structure of the business. So I can't necessarily go into detail, but if you use my words, you can put two and two together. We've instrumentally made... The presentations that were made and the conversations that we had with that team has made significant changes in the business structure, the acquisition of multiple other institutions and hospitals and things like that. And then in addition to that, serving people that have illnesses and things like that. So that's just one from a feel-good type of one. Then there's another one that's also located in Philadelphia, which I'm not going to be able to go into with the specific name, but it is a delivery service where we pretty much were able to incrementally help their brand from beginning to, I would say, very close to IPO.

11:21I don't necessarily know if what we did specifically orchestrated the growth of what it is, because I think a lot of it has to do with strategy. But from a visual standpoint, and the advertising, the execution behind that advertising allowed that company to grow exponentially. Yeah, I think a lot of businesses, most businesses, quite frankly, really underestimate the value of the visual aspects of their brand. And I think it can make a huge difference. It doesn't mean you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on, you know, I was H &R blocks, another Kansas City company. And they, you know, they years ago redid it.

12:00And they basically, their new logo was a square green block. You've probably seen it because they use it now. And I was talking to their marketing person and they'd spent$150 ,000 on that logo. It's like, it's a square green block. But I do think that companies, you know, who really get that idea, you know, are willing to invest and do spend a lot of money on the right look and the right feel because it supports the overall message and then ultimately makes people feel good about doing business with the company. Yeah. I mean, I would actually like on, on the slight contrary, I would say, I would love to understand the amount of money that was wasted on, on indecisions of, you know, founding partners or executives and things like that.

12:43Because I think that's like where kind of, in my opinion that's where the beauty of pengy is is because it decreases the inefficiencies of the actual graphic design process so like you could have easily asked for within a month's time frame you could easily ask for 500 different variations of the of the hr block square and i can almost guarantee you that there's something in there that's going to be moderately decent if not the the one um but yeah i find it interesting as well you didn't do focus groups and you know yeah i mean that's a different ball game right like that's just like that's a that's a client that i would say we love the the the revenue but at the same time i don't know if i want to get involved in it because there's just so much emotion that it that's just not the the company you know well and of course you know when they the other thing with the company that's that that publicly known too when they rolled it out then they had to take all kinds of crap about it I can't believe that.

13:41Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's always interesting, the world of marketing nowadays of how sensitive a lot of people are in social media. I think it's okay to have opinions, obviously. But man, one bad thing could absolutely destroy a company. And that is actually very true in the world of business too. If you're not making the right decisions, one wrong move can just fundamentally destroy trust, can fundamentally destroy the business. And myself and my co-founder hold that to very high regard. Let's talk a little bit about AI. You know, the AI graphic tools are getting better, but I still think that they are not there to where like the normal user could just, you know, grab anything and have a whole set of, you know, images and visuals.

14:29What tools are you adopting? What tools? I mean, how are you using AI in the whole design workflow? Yeah, we love AI. We use AI every single day. Are there specific tools? None that I could say, but when it comes to internally, we use AI for pretty much everything. Right. However, I'm not afraid of AI terminating a business like ours. Because I think from a business standpoint, one of two things. We as humans are very human-driven creatures and want that human interaction regardless. And right now, as you said, and I don't think even in the next 5-10 years, unless there's some type of way in order to get people to think for you, you need a human being to submit these AI prompts.

15:22And you need AI to at least make modifications. Even if you use do-it-yourself models, there needs to be some human touching it. So with that said, I don't think there'll ever be a need for full-on AI specifically. But I do think that it's a necessary tool that every company should be implementing right now. What about designers? I mean, you hire a lot of designers. You probably talk to thousands of folks that want to kind of come into your stable. Do you have any advice that somebody who's learning design today about embracing AI or how their relationship with AI needs to be? Yeah. I mean, I think you'd be foolish not to use it, to be honest with you.

16:07I mean, for example, if a client comes up to us and says, hey, I need a project, right? Done. Okay, cool. I need it done 12 hours. Well, we could use AI, right? And give them at least like 90 % of where it needs to be. Ask the client, hey, what's the stat? Like, what do you think of this? And then make them the proper modifications in order to make it 100 % custom and unique to the person. That is at times how we use AI. It just depends on a case-by-case basis. But again, you can't, in my opinion, I don't think you can make anything custom directly from AI. it's passable at best and it can be used if you're okay with the ultimate solution but if you want something on brand and if you want something specific to your company it's just right now at least you need a human being yeah if nothing else i i think you know i still find that the human being is going to bring empathy is going to bring strategy is going to bring context.

17:07A lot of times a design has to be done in the context of a family of designs or the context of what the service offering is. And I think that at least for right now, we're certainly not there with AI. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think the best phrase to use in this, and I kind of say this at times to some, like to our salespeople, is like, imagine going into AI and saying, hey, could you please put a photo of a family? right like the word family is so different to so many people you know it could be a man and a woman it could be a same sex like like family it could be you and a dog like it it doesn't really there's no boundaries to that and i think like that's where you said john very very eloquently is like the empathy behind it is the understanding of like who is your target audience who are the people that you're trying to go to so i would say like if a designer is listening right now and they're trying to figure out themselves, well, how do I take my business to the next level?

18:05I would say understand the other person's business to the fullest extent and have some level of empathy and conversation skills that you can display to understand the company in full. Because that's why people are actually buying. They're not necessarily buying. In our business, they're probably buying because of the service, because it's very obvious. Hey, you get unlimited graphic design for this particular cost. So for our business specifically, it's very numbers driven and very... direct. But I would say for a business or an agency or something like that, they're probably buying you. Now, in our world, they're buying the product, but they're staying because of the human.

18:44And that's a little bit of a different buying process. But at the same, it's still, we're buying from other people. We're staying because we love X person or X designer. And I think if you were to look at our reviews versus our competitors, we get reviews pretty much one to two times a day from or every other day, at least from our customers. And it's because of how we make them feel. But if you were to look at the landscape, there isn't a single company that's genuinely writing reviews about their, about the service, except for a business like ours because of the way, the emotional reaction that our customers are having to our team.

19:22You know, it's interesting. I've, I, you know, we, we review companies reviews as part of our strategy process. I've read millions of reviews and it I'm struck by how often, uh, how, how infrequently the companies actually mentioned it's always rusty fixed my boiler. And he was amazing. He was like, I don't even know the name of the company. And I think that people really underestimate the, the, that experience is such a big part of, of getting that positive reaction. Yeah. I mean, just look at all the best companies in the world. I mean, you have Disney, right? Like my father's in Disney. This is why I brought it up without us.

19:58And I think he's a selfish piece of crap for going there by himself and not inviting me. No, I'm just kidding. When you leave Disney World, like you feel, wow, man, they made my child feel so happy, right? Or man, I feel like a kid again. Like these are all things that you're constantly thinking about. And if we can alleviate just like an ounce of that effort and that stress that you probably have in your business day to day, it's a world of hurt. And specifically from the people that are listening to this, I want to also give business advice too. We actually train our support people to find a personal element to that person.

20:37And so I'll give you a quick story. And speaking of names, I'll mention the person's names. But a gentleman by the name of Pepe found out somehow, some way that one of our client's birthdays was that specific day. he didn't say anything or mention anything he sent him a google meet or whatever to like talk and then he changed his background and we never told him to do this like specifically but we do teach the aspect of having that level of empathy he had a happy birthday sign in the background and pretty much had like a hat on and like a string of something like that to celebrate the guy's birthday and he was just like thrilled and overjoyed it's just like those small little things where it's like the reason why people are staying at Penji and remaining customers isn't the graphic design, it's how the people, how our team is making them feel.

21:26Well, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where do you want to invite people or where would you invite people to find out more about Penji, connect with you? Yeah, absolutely. Penji.co. If you feel inclined to be able to become a customer, that'd be amazing. But if I provided even an ounce of value at all, and if you need help in your life or business, I'd be more than happy to assist. That's kind of my purpose on, in my opinion, on this plan is to help other people. Email me, Jonathan, J-O-H-N-A-T-H-A-N at pengy.co. I'd be more than happy to provide you my time to help you any way that I can.

22:01Awesome. Well, again, it's great catching up with you again and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Sounds good, brother.