Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Surviving Startup Hell & Thriving: How Johnathan Gryzbowski Built a Global Powerhouse with Penji.
Transcript
- 0:00Foreign.
- 0:06Jonathan Grzbowski, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
- 0:11Super excited to be here.
- 0:12Can't wait to drop some knowledge.
- 0:14I hope I am at least moderately helpful today.
- 0:19I think you will be.
- 0:20I think you will be.
- 0:21We're just talking off camera.
- 0:23I read your bio.
- 0:25You've got quite an interesting entrepreneurial journey and you really had some early grit, based on what I read, as far as what you had to do to get started and to grow your company and get it off the
- 0:37ground and much less to where it is today, where you've got a team of.
- 0:45More than one.
- 0:48You've got a pretty big team.
- 0:49You've scaled the company quite well, it appears.
- 0:52But if you could just set the stage for our listeners.
- 0:54Can you talk about how and why you became an entrepreneur?
- 1:01How and why?
- 1:04It's like, it's like, you know, it's like drinking water, right?
- 1:10Like as a person and as a very early on in baby, it's like you, that's just what you do.
- 1:18Like, that's just what I've always done is that I've never not been that.
- 1:24And it's, it's like, it's hard to be able to say like the why, right?
- 1:29Like, like, of course there's why for every business.
- 1:32But in terms of what I've, what I've done in my career, it's always been a very relatively grind and focus on just like solving problems and creating solutions for people.
- 1:46So I guess that that also leads to the how.
- 1:49But I'll kind of go.
- 1:50That's like the broad answer.
- 1:51But I'll try and go as micro as possible.
- 1:54There's a very brief period of time where I became relatively depressed and sad and I had like no vision in my life.
- 2:03And I kind of sat down at a previous job that I used to work for.
- 2:06I used to work at a company called Apple.
- 2:09And I sat down with a manager and I just said, hey man, like, I'm not happy here.
- 2:13Like this, this isn't my, my future.
- 2:15This isn't my, my thing.
- 2:16So I put in my two weeks notice.
- 2:18The guy said, you know what, how about this?
- 2:19Just leave now.
- 2:20Because like, what are these two weeks?
- 2:22This two week time period doesn't make sense.
- 2:24So within that two weeks, I kind of started the business doing social media management.
- 2:30From there that grew to making multiple connections and relationships with my now co founder.
- 2:36The two of us started a company called Pengi.
- 2:39We were a digital marketing agency at one point in time where we, our biggest things that we solved were like web design and SEO and branding and marketing and things like that.
- 2:51And then we realized that that in itself wasn't like our end goal because the people that we were solved, we were helping were very much so focused on just like locality.
- 3:03So the digital marketing agency, although our agency technically could have helped and established like world widespread people, we only helped people within like a 30 to 50 mile radius within ourselves, within our business of like our location of
- 3:18Philadelphia.
- 3:19So we were like, well okay, let's see.
- 3:21Like we want to create a business that, that people can use and benefit from worldwide, like globally.
- 3:30That's what we've always envisioned in terms of our, our ourselves, like our own goal.
- 3:35And then from there we're like, well what are we good at?
- 3:39Well, we're good at graphic design, we're good at being creative, we're good at, you know, jobs that people provide us.
- 3:46So we took our core strength and turned it into a product.
- 3:51And then that's what ultimately turned became what Pengi is today.
- 3:55Okay, all right, so let's just go through.
- 3:59So you're at, you're at Apple, you're not happy, you quit.
- 4:03They say don't even take the, don't even give us two weeks.
- 4:06Just go.
- 4:06You immediately start a social media marketing agency.
- 4:09So you had some interest there and some expertise there's.
- 4:12And then eventually you meet your co founder and you found Pengi.
- 4:15But at first you're just digital marketing, graphic design, that type of thing.
- 4:19And then just to kind of set the stage as well for our listeners, talk about what Pengi is today.
- 4:27Pengi is a creative subscription service that pairs you with the top 2% of creatives in the world that are all trained and use AI on a daily basis.
- 4:41So if you have any type of creative task, you can give that task to Pengi.
- 4:48And Pengi will use a combination of AI in addition to fine tuning skill sets.
- 4:59In order to receive the deliverable that you're looking for.
- 5:02So for example, instead of wasting all of your time editing things, whether that be video or whether that be an actual graphic of some sorts, if you don't want to ever log into Canva ever again, if you, if
- 5:16you never want to wait for your prompt to be finished on AI, you give the high level job to Pengi and then they'll complete it as quickly as possible for you.
- 5:30Okay, so I mean when you're saying you don't want to wait for your prop to be finished on AI, I mean AI sits like typically in my experience, generates stuff pretty quick.
- 5:40Are you saying like this is like almost like a similar type of thing where you're using AI and a combination of skill sets and you put it in if you're a member, you put in what you need and
- 5:50you can generate videos there kind of right away in the same way.
- 5:53Not exactly, although that is something that we are working on and we probably will build towards in the future.
- 5:59This is more or less like a on brand customized like piece of like document, like a, like an actual piece that's well branded, that is has their color palettes, has your font choice, et cetera, et cetera from our
- 6:14my personal experience.
- 6:15And maybe you have a different one.
- 6:16Dave, that prompt that you're sending to AI, it most likely you're probably just accepting whatever it sends you.
- 6:24But in order to fine tune it, in order to get it exactly the way that you want, using a template or whatever it is that you use, it usually takes at least a couple of iterations or revisions in
- 6:36order to achieve that.
- 6:37And also you're only doing potentially again I don't know your use case, but you might be doing like one or two things at a time where this prompt is being done.
- 6:45Whereas what we're trying to do is basically be the ARM where you don't have to even log into these portal, these platforms.
- 6:54You just tell us the high level, whether it be via email, Slack message or even just our Pengi portal and we'll be able to deliver as much as we possibly can.
- 7:02That's based on the deliverable needed.
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- 7:45Okay, all right, so and you founded this company in 2017, so you're about nine years in, right?
- 7:54So let's talk because you've had several iterations until you got to where you are today.
- 7:59I mean talk about the early days when you decide to go out on your own.
- 8:03You kind of leaving the job for good.
- 8:05You meet your co founder, you found this agency.
- 8:07I mean what was the early days like of actually getting it off the ground, getting customers, getting revenue, becoming profitable, kind of surviving those early years?
- 8:18Talk about what that was like.
- 8:21It was hell.
- 8:23It was absolute hell.
- 8:25There was a five year period where my co founder and I never made a dollar to our name.
- 8:29We had no money to our name.
- 8:31We took every single amount of dollar and profit and we put it back into the business in order to make sure that it stabilized and grows that and that it grows.
- 8:40We got our first 100 customers relatively simple, believe it or not, because our price point was really low.
- 8:46So in the very beginning of Penguin, we were only charging $79 per month and we pulled all of our friends and our, in our business relationships.
- 8:56I was the, I am the salesperson, I still manage, I manage the sales team as we speak.
- 9:02But I was the main connector where I leveraged all of my audience, my, my friends, my, you know, family's family, whatever it may be.
- 9:10And I asked them to fill out a form.
- 9:12I said, hey, if we were to build this particular thing, would you buy it?
- 9:16Here's what we need in order to make it our product better.
- 9:19Can you fill out this questionnaire?
- 9:21They filled it out.
- 9:22We said, hey, by the way we built it, are you interested in it?
- 9:25They became our first customers.
- 9:27We got about 200 relatively easily.
- 9:30Once we got those 200, we then were making like around $10,000 a month or so from that point in time.
- 9:38We then took all the money, reinvested it back into advertising in order to help grow to our first like thousand.
- 9:47Obviously people churned and people left and people came and go and everything else like that.
- 9:52And then we were able to stabilize ourselves to about 20, $25,000 a month.
- 9:56And then that's when it just became explosive growth.
- 9:59People started to recognize a little bit more about our brand.
- 10:02They started to see our name in a lot of places from an advertising perspective.
- 10:06And then they started coming over to our website to buy.
- 10:09And now we're at a point where we have a pretty.
- 10:12We are the most reviewed creative subscription service in the world.
- 10:18We have the highest rating, we have the most amount of reviews.
- 10:22But it was like a very slow process in order to make that.
- 10:25But to answer your question, Dave, the very early beginning was just a very slow grind.
- 10:31And I would say out of the 10, nine years of success, we've only been successful within the past couple of years.
- 10:40The rest of it has just been floating, survive, surviving to be honest.
- 10:46Wow.
- 10:46Yeah, I appreciate the, the, the raw honesty there with that.
- 10:50And let me just ask a couple because also I read that the way you came up with $79 is you basically threw something at a dartboard.
- 10:58And that's the number that it hit.
- 10:59And that's.
- 11:00Is that true?
- 11:02I mean, pretty much, yeah.
- 11:03I mean, we had no logic.
- 11:04There's, like, zero logic to the 79.
- 11:07We were just like, well, you know, what do you have in your, your pocket?
- 11:10I have, like, 80 bucks.
- 11:12And then we just said, well, we'll just do that.
- 11:14There are different tiers, right?
- 11:15There was, like, a 79.
- 11:17There's a 390, 349 offer, and then there's like, a 700 offer at the time.
- 11:22Some people obviously chose the 3, 4.
- 11:25Like, some people did choose the other options, but for the most part, a large majority of the people, you know, use the $79 one.
- 11:36And there's actually still one customer in our business right now, because you'd be a complete moron if you decide to cancel this service.
- 11:43But there's one person in the company right now, like, on our customer base that's still paying US$79.
- 11:50Wow.
- 11:51All right.
- 11:51And so when you talk about, like, the reality of, you know, you're not charging very much, you're just doing what you can to get known, to get customers, to, you know, keep customers, to grow the business, to get
- 12:04experience, to get reviews, and you're literally, I gotta imagine there's long hours in the beginning where you're putting your everything into this, and you're literally like, like you said, you're not making any money.
- 12:16Everything is going back in the business.
- 12:18Like, how, how often did you think about giving up?
- 12:24I mean, I still think about giving up every day.
- 12:26So the answer is, like, every day.
- 12:31I mean, like, entrepreneurship is super lonely.
- 12:35It's depressing at times.
- 12:37I mean, who do you go to to talk about your problems, right?
- 12:40Like, you go to your business partner, which, if you're lucky enough to have one, if you're not, and you're doing it yourself, like, you can't go to your employee.
- 12:48You can't even go to your.
- 12:49Your wife at times, which, graciously enough, I, I, I do have a great partner.
- 12:55But, like, you know, her background is in entrepreneurship, which is fine.
- 12:59You know, I'm, I'm, I'm glad she's not stupid like me.
- 13:02But, you know, like, you can't really go to many people to talk about your problems.
- 13:07So, like, you're in your own head.
- 13:08A lot of the times.
- 13:10You, you might have a bad day or a bad sales day or a sales week or a sales month, people might leave your company.
- 13:18You have to find new people.
- 13:19Like, it's ridiculously hard.
- 13:21So like I would say I still think about it every day, but I just know at the end of the day what my goal is and what our goal is as a company.
- 13:35And the unfortunate truth is, is that at this exact moment we didn't meet the goal.
- 13:42So therefore I have no reason to.
- 13:46To quit.
- 13:47At least not right now.
- 13:49I will quit.
- 13:50And when I quit, it means like we achieved, but I'm not stopping until we hit.
- 13:59Hit that goal.
- 14:01Okay.
- 14:01And I guess when you say quit, I mean, is that like fall back?
- 14:05Is that like sell?
- 14:06Is that kind of like.
- 14:07Yeah.
- 14:07When I say quit, is it more or less like I'm not quitting?
- 14:10Like I'm using it in like a, a very click baity type of word.
- 14:14But like when I say quit, I mean it in the sense that like I'm not stopping until I.
- 14:19We get.
- 14:20We achieved a goal.
- 14:21Okay.
- 14:22And I love the point that you brought up the loneliness.
- 14:25Right too.
- 14:26Because like you said, you got to be strong for your employees.
- 14:29Everything is running through you.
- 14:32People, if they're not in it, are not going to understand.
- 14:35Right.
- 14:35Other than maybe other entrepreneurs.
- 14:37Right.
- 14:37That maybe you're fortunate enough to have in your network that you can trust and kind of open up to.
- 14:42So like you said, there's this lonely feeling and especially when you have a bad day or things don't go right or whatever.
- 14:48Right.
- 14:48Like what got you through those, those tough moments, especially in the beginning when it, when like you said, you're, you're not making any money.
- 14:57Yeah, I mean, it was just, it's.
- 14:59Just that,.
- 15:03It's just the, the combination of like, goal.
- 15:06If you don't have a goal, if you don't have a goal in mind, then you're, you're completely lost.
- 15:13Like, you have to have a goal, you have to have an objective.
- 15:16Us is some crazy objective.
- 15:18Excuse me one second.
- 15:23Man.
- 15:23When a dog barks.
- 15:24Holy moly.
- 15:27That's a great thing.
- 15:29It sounds like, I'm sure like a lion of some sorts.
- 15:32But it's.
- 15:34Yeah.
- 15:34Anyways, like if you don't have a goal, right.
- 15:37If you don't have an objective, then you have nothing to go off of.
- 15:42And I would say that's number one.
- 15:44Number two is that the reason why most startups and business and entrepreneurs fail is because the problem that they're solving isn't large enough.
- 15:52I get excited every single day.
- 15:54Even with the adaptation of AI, I know that businesses need our service and it's up to me to be able to find A creative way in order to change the positioning of the service so it's a little bit
- 16:05more digestible for new clients.
- 16:09I need to be able to, we need to be able to create new offerings that's, excuse me, enticing to old customers and new customers that are interested in our service.
- 16:23And so if the problem that you've started this business on is no longer achievable and you can't solve it anymore, then it ends up becoming an even larger issue about, you know, the validity of the business.
- 16:38But like, I know deep down inside, regardless of how bad things ever get or how great things are, I know for a fact that, that the company is solving a legitimate problem with businesses.
- 16:50So it's almost like your, your mission, right?
- 16:53The mission that's kept you going through all the, whatever shit you've dealt with and the hard times and the financial issues and, and whatever else.
- 17:01It's not about anything material.
- 17:03It's more about your mission and your commitment to solving a bigger problem is, is what got you through and keeps you going even to this day.
- 17:11I mean, I think the, the money is definitely a motivator for sure.
- 17:14Like we, we can't sit here and say that like money is just a byproduct of the problem that you solve.
- 17:19So if you're solving like a legit problem, like, you don't have to answer this question, but if you were to hire somebody right now, or if you were to conceptualize how much time you're spending on AI prompts of
- 17:33some sorts, regardless of the output that is delivered realistically, could you spend that time or money or allocation somewhere else?
- 17:43And the short answer to that question is 99.9% of businesses should probably get rid of that aspect.
- 17:52Because unless, Dave, you're a great marketer and a designer yourself, you know, or some type of creative marketer, sure, maybe you might be able to do it and it might be able to take you time.
- 18:05But for a large majority of people, even in high level positions, they don't want to be behind a computer doing the, or even an AI prompt, sending the messages and making the modifications.
- 18:18So outsource that to a company like, like us or some, somewhere else to be able to get it done for you.
- 18:27The problem has always existed and I don't think it's ever going to go away.
- 18:33So now are you replacing like team members or literally like are a lot of the people you like?
- 18:40There's literally entrepreneurs doing this stuff themselves versus having maybe in house marketing people or graphic designers in house like who are you actually?
- 18:48Or is it kind of a combination of that?
- 18:51So I mean we'll take anybody that has that problem, but for the most part in terms who we talk to and marker market to our digital marketing agencies.
- 19:00So very people that used to be similar to us in the past and then number two, internal teams, entrepreneurs and small business owners can absolutely use Penji and they'll do a great job at it.
- 19:11But for the most part it's agencies and marketing teams.
- 19:15Marketing team.
- 19:15And I'll give you an example.
- 19:16I can't use the company name, but I'll allow you to use your creativity in order to come up with the who who I'm speaking to.
- 19:25So it's a printer company that is not your sister's printing company.
- 19:30They are a massive organization, globally recognized.
- 19:34They, their entire team uses Pengi in order to help generate ad creative at scale.
- 19:42And they have designers, they freelance from time to time, they have internal people, but they don't want to do all of the creative for all of the platforms like Best Buy, Staples, Target, Walmart, you know, their website.
- 19:59So how can you do that effectively at scale but also save on cost?
- 20:06Pengi is that solution.
- 20:08If you're a digital marketing agency and you have 10, 15, 20 clients, you have 10, 15, 20 brands that you need to be in charge of your one designer that you have in your business or your two designers
- 20:23or your, your design department most likely will not be able to facilitate the, the end deliverables for the client because they're probably only skilled in one thing like two things.
- 20:36Like try hiring a video person and ask that video person to create a logo.
- 20:41It's impossible to do it.
- 20:43Try and find a logo person in order to create a video.
- 20:47Almost impossible.
- 20:49So I mean there are some people out there that can do it.
- 20:52And I'm not saying that they don't exist, they certainly do.
- 20:54But it's ridiculously hard to find those people out in the wild.
- 20:59So with a one subscription of Pengi, sure you're spending around a thousand dollars or so $2,000 a month, but you're getting the skill set of hundreds of different types of people and you're going to be able to ask
- 21:11for anything that you want in your business.
- 21:13Okay, all right.
- 21:14So you basically have a team of experts with whatever needs to be done, logo, graphics, website, video, you name it and then you can and obviously using AI as well and sourcing through your talent pool to basically provide
- 21:29that deliverable to the either the marketing team or the business owner.
- 21:34Exactly right.
- 21:35And we have our.
- 21:36Like, the talent is us.
- 21:39So, like, we are not outsourcing to like random people.
- 21:46Like, every single person that is a part of Pengi is, are our employees of Penji.
- 21:54Okay, okay.
- 21:56All right.
- 21:56And so you kind of detailed earlier the, the rough start and, and how things took a while to develop.
- 22:02What was the inflection point where things really started to take off?
- 22:07I would say Covid.
- 22:10Covid was probably the, the catalyst because when the world was shutting down, people needed marketing to, to survive and they weren't able to touch or interact in the office.
- 22:27They found themselves not communicating well with their internal team.
- 22:31They had to reduce cost because of a pandemic.
- 22:34They came to Pengi and, you know, the rest, the rest is history.
- 22:39Okay, all right.
- 22:41And so talk about kind of what things are like present day and what you're working towards with the, like the.
- 22:47How big the team is, what your days are like, that type of thing.
- 22:51My days are pretty boring because I'm just managing people.
- 22:55But we're.
- 22:55We have over 500 staff globally, all over the world.
- 22:59We have two different types of teams.
- 23:01We have people in the, you know, United States working hours.
- 23:05Then we have a team that works our hour nights.
- 23:10So we're around the clock service.
- 23:13I primarily am in charge of the sales and the, the, the sales and the, the experience for the, the west side.
- 23:21Like this, this is the.
- 23:23When I say West, I mean like the United States.
- 23:28So I'm in charge of most of the United States working, working people.
- 23:31But my job in particular is like, how can we get more people to know about Penge?
- 23:38How can other.
- 23:39More people learn about us and become customers?
- 23:41And that starts off, Dave, by jumping on your wonderful podcast.
- 23:45You know, use.
- 23:46Leveraging your audience, leveraging you in order to share our story in hopes that other people resonate well with it and can ultimately become a customer one day.
- 23:57Okay, all right.
- 23:59And when you look back at this journey too, right, because I don't even think we talked about this, but like I read this and you confirmed it was true, right?
- 24:07You, you started off in the early days going to Starbucks and not even buying anything, just going there for the free WI fi and bringing peanut butter jelly sandwiches, just really just doing whatever was necessary to survive.
- 24:20And years and years without taking any money from the business.
- 24:23And now, like you said, you're a well recognized name.
- 24:29You've got over 500 staff globally, right.
- 24:33You've come a long way.
- 24:34Business is, is doing very well.
- 24:36When you look back at this whole journey, what's been the best part of it for you.
- 24:48I have a joke and I have a real story.
- 24:53The first joke.
- 24:54The first one is the joke.
- 24:56Apparently, I've been allergic to peanuts this entire time.
- 25:00So I would have peanut butter because I couldn't afford anything, and I was allergic to peanut butter or I was allergic to peanuts, so that wasn't good.
- 25:12So I was, like, literally killing myself for, like, five years because I would eat peanut butter and jelly every single day.
- 25:18And then every single day, I would go home and be like, man, my abdomen really hurts.
- 25:22Like, and I'm like, I'm just stressed out, you know, because, like, that's what you do when you grow up.
- 25:27I'm just stressed out.
- 25:28You're stressed out all the time.
- 25:30You have anxiety.
- 25:31I'm like, oh, it's just anxiety.
- 25:32It's just stress.
- 25:32No, I was freaking allergic to peanuts.
- 25:35Anyways, the other day I spoke to a customer and she had me on her podcast and she told me point blank how revolutionary Penji has been for the business and that she's been trying to hire somebody for years
- 25:53and no one has ever been able to articulate her brand.
- 25:57And we've been able to save her thousands upon thousands of dollars from not only finding the right person, but, but hiring somebody in house.
- 26:07I was able to talk to her and she expressed that to me publicly.
- 26:13And I think you don't.
- 26:16In this world, this digital world, you.
- 26:18You don't really have a metric of, like, success.
- 26:21Like, there's nobody really telling you that you're doing a good job.
- 26:24And it was really nice to be able to finally hear that our business affected somebody.
- 26:31And, like, I was able to speak to the person that was affected by it.
- 26:35And, and I think overall that was.
- 26:38That was really, really cool because it's just validation that regardless of the.
- 26:44Of the innovation of AI and the implementation of these technologies, that there are still people out there that are confused and don't want to use AI or don't have the skill set of understanding AI to the fullest extent.
- 26:57And I'm really happy to be able to serve those people with our.
- 27:01With our business and our solution.
- 27:04Okay.
- 27:05All right.
- 27:05And Jonathan, if people want to learn more about Pengi, potentially reach out to, to become a customer or connect with you, find you online.
- 27:13What's the best way they can reach out?
- 27:15Email me directly.
- 27:16If you.
- 27:17If you liked anything that you heard and you Resonate any remotely, even 1% of the story, you can email me.
- 27:23Jonathan Ng Co It's J o h n a t h a n g co I'd be more than happy to help out.
- 27:30If you liked our story and you want to become a customer, just head over to Pengi co P e n J I co okay.
- 27:37And we will link all that in the show notes for everyone.
- 27:40Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
- 27:46We greatly appreciate it.
- 27:48Thanks Dave.
- 27:52Sam.