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Johnathan Grzybowski is the Chief Marketing Officer and Co-founder of Penji. Penji is an on-demand graphic design service that simplifies the creative process by offering unlimited and real-time access to vetted designers that will deliver a project in under 48 hours.

Penji obtained an Inc. 5000 in under three years and was nominated as a “top startup to watch” according to Philadelphia Magazine. Johnathan is also the host of The Blind Entrepreneur Podcast, which has been mentioned as a “top business podcast” on Apple Podcasts and downloaded over 100,000 times.


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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Why Johnathan Grzybowski ‘ate dirt’ for four to six years — and what sustained him
  • How Johnathan and Penji serve the nonprofit, Hopeworks
  • Johnathan talks about Penji’s hiring and vetting process
  • Tools Johnathan uses for managing processes
  • How Penji’s pricing has evolved and why they were priced low at the start
  • Who’s an ideal customer for Penji?
  • The challenge of finding good talent
  • How Johnathan juggles roles with his co-founders
  • The Penji outreach process revealed
  • Johnathan shares how they help their clients experience Penji better and reduce churn
  • What is “Penji to the moon?”

In this episode…

Imagine becoming a brand that offers complete creative services to businesses whose design needs are limitless. How significant would your monthly recurring revenue be? Now visualize how much work and chaos you’d have to face to become that brand — the struggle to find and retain good talent, keeping high client satisfaction, and the whole gamut.

Johnathan Grzybowski had to ‘eat dirt’ to get his graphics design services brand, Penji, off the ground. Not only are they offering unlimited design services at a monthly flat rate, but doing it in record time, quality, and with vetted and highly skilled designers. How have they managed to build such a brand with limited resources, and how can you do the same?

Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz and guest, Johnathan Grzybowski, Co-founder of Penji. They discuss the challenges of building a brand that renders unlimited services with a limited pool of promising talent. They talk about Johnathan’s humble beginning to keep the lights on, the Penji marketing process, and more. You don’t want to miss it!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

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Sponsor for this episode

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Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz 0:19

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. You know, I’m going to introduce today’s guest, founder of Co-founder of Penji. Johnathan in a second John, I always like to mention other episodes people should check out. It I was thinking based on today based on Penji like will be an interesting interview. So I interviewed Daniel Harmon of the Harmon Brothers, and you know, they talk about creative and they did some of the ads that you know, are behind Purple Mattress and Poopourri and some other amazing stuff. So check that out, he breaks down their process or creative process and and what was what was struck me, Johnathan with that is you think, oh, the videos go viral? Well, yeah, but they drove tons of traffic to those videos. So the organic, you know, the the paid, you know, meets the eye appealing all of these went totally viral, but they had a lot of back end steps and paid traffic to help with that stuff. So check that out many more on InspiredInsider.com, and this episode is brought to you by Rise25, Rise25 we help businesses give it to you and connected to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And we do that by helping you run your podcast. You know, Johnathan, for me, the number one thing is relationships. And I’m always looking at a way to give to my relationships. And I found no better way over the past 10 years to profile the people in the companies I admire and give it to them and shout out from the rooftops what they’re working on what they’re doing. So if you and I’ve been doing it for over 10 years, we were just talking about good friend, Andrew Warner at Mixergy. Back in when that was like one of the early on business interview podcasts and video also. So if you have questions, you’ve always thought I want to start a podcast, I want to do it the right way. So you can go to Rise25.com And check out more and we’re happy to answer any questions that you have. And I’m excited. Johnathan Grzybowski is the CMO and Co-founder of Penji. And if you ever heard of Penji It’s a service that basically simplifies the creative process. And it does that by offering unlimited and on demand access to vetted designers that will deliver a project in under 48 hours. And the key to this Johnathan is vetted designers, because you and I both know you can find designers, but you know if then you have to go through all those work and you have to manage them. And then you have to well, then it drops off, they don’t get the project like forget about that they’ve already vetted these people and that you give them what you need. And they have beautiful design. You go to Penji.co Penji.co actually to check them out on Penji obtained an Inc 5000 or three years it was nominated as one of the top startups to watch, according to Tech.co and Johnathan, thanks for joining me.

Johnathan Grzybowski 3:10

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Jeremy Weisz 3:11

You know, I was doing research ahead of time and one quote you said stuck out. And you said I ate dirt for four to six years.

Johnathan Grzybowski 3:22

Yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy Weisz 3:25

No real paycheck for six years. What kept you going during those times,