The Exchanges

Q Okay. So what's Waterfront today? Did you guys sell it or is it just shut down and all the developers are now part of Penji?

A Yeah, we shut it down. Um, we shut it down completely. There might be a time where maybe we might consider opening it back up, but at this point, Penji's doing well, and, uh, we don't have a need to actually do it. But yes, everything that was once Penji, uh, was once Waterfront Media. We actually did something very interesting. We fired every single person on Waterfront Media, and then rehired them under Penji. And that was a very emotional thing that we did. Um, we actually sat in a meeting. We gave them a slip that says you're fired. Basically, it was a little bit nicer than that. Um, we watched them tear up and say, like, how could you do this to me? And that emotional thing that we did was, was so needed because we needed to strip away that, like, uh, everything that we once did and remove that blunt mental block in order to focus on the future and what we believe was the future, and that was Penji.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, we shut it down. Um, we shut it down completely.”

Q Okay, a thousand. And so where, today, where are you getting most of those new customers each month? What's the growth strategy, acquisition strategy?

A Yeah, acquisition strategy is, is in our favor, SEO. We're doubling down on content and just delivering a crap ton of content on a daily basis. Uh, we're doing a lot of retargeting. We're doing a lot of advertising. Email marketing and, and, uh, inbound leads has been, uh, has been a godsend. We're still doing, that's the main one, the, Additional side stuff would be, um, cold, cold outreach. That's actually how we got on this show right now is, is literally saying a cold email saying, Hey, what's up? You're awesome. And would you mind, uh, putting us on your show? And you, you ended up saying yes. So, um, it does work for the people listening at home.

AI assessment note: “acquisition strategy is, is in our favor, SEO. We're doubling down on content”

Q You know, I think people get that. I think they totally get that. Um, okay. This makes good sense. Um, anything else that you want to touch on that we haven't chatted about already?

A No, I mean, you know, I think in, in, in all, I hope that people resonate with this story and I hope that they hear the numbers, the dollars, the cents, but also the fact that we're bootstrapped. We've never received an ounce of funding. We never plan on doing that. I think those types of businesses are few and far between. I think it's now sexy to go out and get capital, and I think that is an extremely awesome thing to do if your business needs that. Uh, but if you can go as long as possible and eat as much dirt, if not more dirt than we did, uh, I think that you'd be far better off as a business and as a human being, um, than just succumbing to capital right out the gate without an MVP or initial idea.

AI assessment note: “I hope that people resonate with this story and I hope that they hear”

Q Yeah. Um, what, have you tried any sort of strange new channels that have worked well, or is it all traditional Google, Facebook ads, et cetera?

A It's a lot of grit and grind when it comes to SEO. SEO is like our, our biggest thing, uh, content, um, lead gen, things like that. Uh, we do a lot of like outreach when it comes to partnerships. So we do have a special connections to a couple of accelerators and incubators, uh, that generate, uh, affiliates, essentially affiliate commission and things like that. So that's been a channel that we're consistently growing. We see a lot of opportunity for, we want to definitely grow that in 20, the rest of 2020, which is only a couple of months, but for sure in 2021, uh, we're going to go pretty heavily and inside of just network marketing and things of that nature, which essentially is you, um, or us, excuse me, uh, getting other people to promote who we are and what we do and getting ourselves in front of new audiences because a lot of people don't understand what unlimited graphic design is. They have no idea what subscription models are when it comes to graphic design, and we're trying to fix that. So when people use an adjective or like a verb that says, I need graphic design or graphic designing of any kind, we want people to start using the word pengy and not that of other industry leaders that are either in our space and also in a marketplace space.

AI assessment note: “SEO is like our, our biggest thing... outreach when it comes to partnerships.”

Q Okay, got it. 2013. And then, um, how, what was your best year in terms of revenue at the agency?

A Oh man, probably like, 200 at most. Uh, and that didn't happen until four years into actually just making it. Like, we were, it was enough to pay the bills, but, And it was only, like, maybe four people, five people to the max. Um, and we knew we had to pivot because a lot of the stuff that we were doing as an agency just wasn't fulfilling. Um, but the one thing that was consistent was a lot of people loved our graphic design. Um, as you may know, it's extremely tiring. Networking, going to networking events. At least for us, we started local. Uh, and we went to those, like, you know, BNI meetings. We went to those, like, networking events that just, for me as a young guy, I was 24 at the time. Um, I was the youngest guy in the room networking with people that were two times the age of myself. So it made it very difficult. And through those struggles, we, we knew we had to pivot. We knew we had to do something different and make it more accessible for everybody.

AI assessment note: “probably like, 200 at most. Uh, and that didn't happen until four years”

Q the thing to consider is really in a business like what you're doing, it reminds me a lot of virtual. Every designer you hire is essentially their own P and L. So if you, if they have unallocated time where they're not working on designs for one of your customers, it's basically like wasted money essentially for you. So what margin do you like to make per full-time graphic designer?

A Yeah, I'll be perfectly honest. I don't even think that I've even thought about that. Um, and from a dollar amount, because my particular background isn't necessarily the, the, the, the numbers and sense type of thing. And that is definitely a valuable thing to, to think about. But what I would say is in terms of percentages, it may not have been thought of in terms of the process and the flow it has been. And so our unique Our unique, uh, strategy is there's two sides to Penji, right? There's the customer facing side, and there's a whole nother world of Penji that pretty much eliminates that type of, uh, downtime. And essentially once a designer is here, And they do a project, it's automatically given with as much detail as possible, spoon fed to them on a silver platter, so they know exactly what to do. But in terms of like percentages and numbers and things like that, that I won't be able to give you.

AI assessment note: “I don't even think that I've even thought about that.”

Q Yeah. Who takes the business? I mean, who do you compete with?

A I'd rather say, not say the names on there, um, but there are some competitors that if they were, if you were to Google the word unlimited graphic design, you'd definitely see a lot of people. The thing is, this is a super easy to understand, um, this is a super easy to set up type of market, um, where it doesn't necessarily require a lot of straight up investment. You know, on your end, you can literally start a business like this with a website and a funnel in order to just drive, uh, to drive them through. So you could use it through Trello. You could do it through email if you really wanted to, you could do it through Slack. So the cost of starting this up isn't necessarily all that high. And I think for that in particular, it kind of just, it destroys the market. So if somebody has a 15 day money back guarantee, which we do, somebody else has a 30 day money back guarantee, somebody has a, a free trial, a freemium model, it kind of disrupts it. And so we have to separate ourselves in the marketplace as the industry leader, A, uh, and also a reputable resource for them to use. So we're not gonna, so they go on our website, they feel that, that we could take care of them.

AI assessment note: “I'd rather say, not say the names on there”