John Jantsch (00:01.085)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Derek Coburn. He’s a seasoned financial advisor and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience. He is the co-founder of Cadre, an exclusive community of CEOs and entrepreneurs, which he launched with his wife, Melanie. Derek is also the author of the bestselling book, Networking is Not Working. And we’re going to talk about his latest book today.

Let’s retire retirement, how to enjoy life to the fullest now and later. So Derek, welcome back to the show.

Derek Coburn (00:34.85)

Thanks, John. So happy to be here.

John Jantsch (00:36.797)

So I know you’ve done some research on this, so I’m just going to ask you, like, where did retirement come from? Did people in the Middle Ages retire, or is that like a kind of a new thing?

Derek Coburn (00:45.838)

Yeah, it’s barely 100 years old. It first started in 1889. It was the first social program developed in Germany by a chancellor named Otto von Bismarck. And they selected the age of 70 at the time because that was the age that most people died. They brought it down to 65 about 10 years later.

FDR when he was setting up social security in 1935, thought it sounded like a good number at a time when life expectancy in this country was 71. So, you know, it’s barely over 100 years old and it was certainly never intended to be this thing that you, you know, did for 30 plus years.

John Jantsch (01:28.883)

So is that, is that, is, was that an alternate title of your book? Work till you die?

Derek Coburn (01:35.328)

I’m not sure, you know, I think that might not have gone over as well. Dan Pink like five or six years ago told me, like, I think a good title for your book would be How to Never Retire. And I thought it’s a good title, but I told him that I think that there’s just not enough people, certainly not then, that were raising their hand and knew they already did not want to work. I felt like I needed to have a title that was more inclusive to bring people in and with, you know, with dangling a carrot and then kind of trick them once I got their attention.

John Jantsch (01:38.683)

You

John Jantsch (02:05.235)

Yeah. Well, and we’ll get back to how you’re defining retirement because that’s key to this. you know, as a financial advisor, mean, most financial advisors spend a whole lot of time talking about people saving for retirement. So how, I mean, has that been something you’ve had to kind of correct in your own advising or is that something that’s never really been a part of your MO?

Derek Coburn (02:27.694)

You know, I’ve just been doing this. And the reason that I wrote decided to write this book in 2017 is I realized that collectively the best thing that I had done for the majority of my clients is help them come to the realization that they weren’t going to be happy sitting around doing nothing for 30 years. And I started off writing this book with the intention to use it as a business card to attract more high net worth clients that I might want to work with. But I sold my practice to a private equity company in 2019 and

got some flexibility and then COVID happened. I kind of set it aside for a number of years and I feel like now, because I’m not looking to grow that practice, I was able to write a book that would appeal to a broader audience, be helpful to a broader audience. to your point, financial advisors are not saying, do you want to retire? They’re saying, what age do you want to retire? And everyone is being opted into this concept and they’re just going along with it, I think, without really questioning whether it’s going to make sense for them or not.

John Jantsch (03:27.251)

Yeah. And of course, one variable to this whole thing is that we’re all living longer, right? mean, 65, you you were maybe incapable of doing a whole lot more, you know, a hundred years ago in the workplace, but right. now, you know, well, it’s Warren Buffett, like 90. You know, I mean, so, so how does that factor into this idea that, you know, if you retired 65, I mean, you are probably looking at 25, 30 years.

Derek Coburn (03:38.765)

Yeah.

Derek Coburn (03:44.429)

Yep.

Derek Coburn (03:54.22)

Yeah, well, you’re seeing this, this on, on retirement movement that’s starting to happen. Brian Clark is doing some cool things around it with his new project further, but essentially 25 to 30 % of people who have, who have traditionally retired or going back to work. Some of them are doing it for the money, but most of them are doing it because they missed the connection, the purpose, the ability to, to, to contribute in, in a meaningful way.

And I think there’s just a lot of people that have gone along with this. They were told if they made sacrifices and did things a certain way that they were going to be rewarded. They were going to be rewarded with this free time and this happiness and this ability to do whatever they want to do. it’s not playing out the way that they thought it was going to.

John Jantsch (04:36.925)

Well, and even worse, maybe they worked themselves to the bone, worked more hours, sacrificed their family with the promise of what comes after, right? And then when they got there, it didn’t come, right?

Derek Coburn (04:45.518)

Yeah.

Derek Coburn (04:49.802)

Exactly. Yep. Like the arrival fallacy, this promise that it would be a certain way and then it’s not.

John Jantsch (04:55.719)

Yeah. So that’s a big part of your book. And that’s why I saying, I think you’re saying let’s retire retirement, but you’re also redefining retirement. Aren’t you a little bit in this and a big part of the book is like, let’s have a personally fulfilling life right now.

Derek Coburn (05:10.882)

Yeah, I think that a lot of people just don’t realize how well the math works out. So I’m saying to work longer, but I’m also saying that by recognizing that you’ll probably work longer, it should translate into you not feeling like you have to work a lot of extra hours now when maybe your kids need you more, or maybe when you want to travel or date your spouse more aggressively. It’s more about taking advantage of the fact that this income will be coming in in the future.

And it’s sort of sponsoring the idea that you can do these other things and invest in these other relationships and skills and experiences in a way that maybe you didn’t think you were able to when you wanted to stop at 65.

John Jantsch (05:48.243)

Your next book, I’m sorry I got distracted there, Derek, your next book is Date Your Spouse More Aggressively.

Derek Coburn (05:54.478)

That’s maybe like the second or third time I’ve said that out loud, but.

John Jantsch (06:01.407)

So, you know, there’s a book I read a few years ago that I thought made a lot of sense. I I might get the title wrong. was something like Die Broke, but the idea was that a lot of people also just hang on to all this money that they, you know, squirrel away for retirement instead of like giving it to their kids or their grandkids to send them to college now. You know, like my children when they’re 55 probably don’t need my money.

as, as much as they might now. And, I think that idea of take that, you know, take that vacation now, you know, do that big trip, you know, now, because when you’re 75, 80, maybe you don’t go to China or you don’t go to Vietnam or something, because it’s hard.

Derek Coburn (06:40.724)

Yeah, you I think you’re referring to Die with Zero by Bill Perkins and really good book, you know, and I think that one area where maybe we differ a little bit is he’s making the case that you’re going to enjoy a trip to Europe more when you’re 35 than when you’re 50. You’re not going to be as physically capable to do some of these things, but I’m of the belief, and there’s a lot of science that backs this up, to where if you’re taking better care of yourself now, if you’re going on more trips now, if you’re

John Jantsch (06:43.813)

Yeah, that’s it. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Coburn (07:09.29)

If you’re more active now, you’re more likely to be able to continue doing those things in the future. It’s really the people that aren’t doing those things that I think are going to have a harder time with

John Jantsch (07:14.803)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m actually an avid bike rider and I’m doing a triathlon this year, you know, and I’m 65 and my fear is if I stop doing those, I won’t be able to do it anyway.

Derek Coburn (07:26.499)

Yeah.

Derek Coburn (07:31.424)

I think it’s a valid fear and it’s a fear well backed by science that agrees with you.

John Jantsch (07:35.953)

Yeah. I do have to let the cat out of the bag there. The triathlon I’m doing is a run fish drink. So not exactly, not exactly the same thing, but so you have obviously in your financial practice, I mean, that’s, that’s like literally your research lab, right? To some degree, but then also cadre, you know, you work with a lot of high powered CEOs, folks that run their own companies in that that are

Derek Coburn (07:46.85)

That’s a good one. Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:05.117)

probably looking at, you know, they’re not looking at the pension plan, you retirement. How has that kind of informed some of your views?

Derek Coburn (08:09.325)

Yeah.

Derek Coburn (08:12.738)

What’s interesting is even the people that sort of know that they’re never going to stop working, they’re still living their life like they’re going to. They’re still making financial decisions and choices based on the fact they’re going to retire at 65 like everyone else. So for example, when they meet with their financial advisors, they’re saying, like, what do I need to do to stop working at 65 and to stop doing this? And I would say that with entrepreneurs and business owners, sometimes it’s not

John Jantsch (08:28.465)

Run.

Derek Coburn (08:42.262)

retirement, but it’s I’ll get around to doing X once I have an exit, once I bring in a CEO, once I bring in someone else. And I think that that it’s the same story. It’s the it’s justifying deferring maybe things in relationships that deserve more of your attention right now in the name of getting around to it once you have a certain amount of money or a certain financial experience or exit from your business.

John Jantsch (09:04.637)

Yeah, yeah.

Are you finding, you know, I think some, to some degree, we’re talking about just extending how long you work, but what about a major pivot? You know, it’s like, I’ve, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, done what I want to do here. I want to go do something different. I’m not going to retire, but I’m going to do something totally different. Maybe something that I think is seems totally cool or that I’m more prepared to do today.

Derek Coburn (09:28.59)

Yeah, like so I have an entire chapter. It’s the longest chapter in my book that’s that’s that are case studies about people that have that have taken this and they’ve gone into a lot of different directions. And one one maybe that might be fun to share with you is just our mutual friend, Jay Bear, who I spoke with for the book and Jay sold his agency, I think early on in covid and was sitting around and decided he wanted to start making videos about tequila.

John Jantsch (09:43.475)

Mm-hmm.

Derek Coburn (09:54.73)

And, you know, so he went from that to really leaning into one of his passions and one of his interests. And after sharing the case study, I have a callback later in the book to say, look, I mean, if J. Bear can make a lot of money, you know, drinking tequila and talking about it on video, then I’m sure that there’s a lot of different cool ideas out there that are waiting for you as well.

John Jantsch (10:17.489)

Yeah, that also necessitated some amount of travel to some places he hadn’t spent time into. I think it really…

Derek Coburn (10:25.484)

I think he’s mostly hurt by the fact that more people recognize him as the tequila guy than the keynote speaker.

John Jantsch (10:32.595)

He’s still doing a fair amount of that too. talk about some of the changes, maybe they’re not changes, but if somebody is going to read you, pick up your book and, and really the ideas in it just resonate. What are some of the changes that you they’re probably going to encounter or, maybe it’s just mindset.

Derek Coburn (10:54.57)

Yeah, one of the first things that I want to want to point out is just the financial impact it’s going to have. And so I share an example in the book about a fictitious guy named Tony who’s 45 years old. makes one hundred and fifty thousand a year and he has one hundred and fifty thousand dollars saved up for retirement. You could call it two fifty five hundred, one hundred thousand, whatever you want it to be. But if Tony wants to have a traditional retirement at sixty five, he has to save about twenty five hundred dollars per month in order to make that happen, which is.

20 % of what he’s bringing home, which is a non-starter for most people. That would mean that you are saving about what you’re living on. If Tony decides to work until he’s 75 instead of 65, the amount he has to save on a monthly basis goes from 2,500 down to $110 per month. It goes down by 96%. And even if he doesn’t want to work until he’s 75, he wants to go until he’s 70, it goes down 75 % to 600 bucks a month.

John Jantsch (11:40.136)

Mm.

Derek Coburn (11:50.518)

And so we’ve all seen these articles that make us feel really dumb about how we should have saved more when we were 22 years old and taking advantage of compounding interest. And while a lot of us didn’t do that, and even if we would have done that, we weren’t really earning a lot of money at that time compared to what we’re earning now. Anyways, there aren’t a lot of articles talking about the benefits of having the advantage of compounding interest by letting it sit in for an extra five or 10 years longer.

Immediately, I want people to know, I want people to see they have a lot more money and a lot more time that they can spend differently once they realize, you know, I’ll probably be doing this a little bit longer than what I was originally thinking.

John Jantsch (12:28.657)

Yeah, I mean, doesn’t even factor in, assuming it’ll be there for a few more years. Doesn’t even factor in the escalation to social security, right? Yeah.

Derek Coburn (12:36.022)

Yeah, exactly. I’ll tell you like something maybe more specifically 401k plans became all the rage, mainly because the idea that I can put money away on a tax free basis while I’m working get a tax deduction based on my current tax bracket. And when I pull it out, I won’t be working. So I’ll be at a lower tax bracket. And that seems like a no brainer to anyone when you lay it out like that. But once

John Jantsch (12:42.259)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (12:56.315)

Over. Yeah.

Derek Coburn (13:02.166)

someone realizes there’s a good chance they might be working into their 70s and they’re going to be taking required minimum distributions from their 401k plan and they’re still earning an income, then maybe they’re not in a lower tax bracket.

John Jantsch (13:13.331)

Also, also that tax got tax higher bracket

Derek Coburn (13:17.546)

Yeah, maybe this 401k plan isn’t as good of a deal as it seems. without getting too technical here, like an easy fix for that, right, is I think over 90 % of 401k plans right now have the option to convert it to a Roth. And that might be something that people want to do where they’re making their contributions on a post-tax basis. But that’s just one example of maybe how your thinking should change a little bit once you realize you might be working a little bit longer.

John Jantsch (13:22.696)

Grrrr

John Jantsch (13:43.251)

You’ve also missed, you know, I know in our case, we have a 3 % match on the, you know, employer match. So that certainly helps that out a little bit.

Derek Coburn (13:52.406)

Yeah, and I say that’s the place even like even maybe before you work to aggressively build up your emergency reserve fund. If you’re getting a match, probably take advantage of that.

John Jantsch (14:01.233)

Yeah. Yeah. Plus owners, you know, have the ability to profit share into a 401k. So, you know, which I may or may not have taken full advantage of every one of those.

Derek Coburn (14:11.95)

Wow, amazing. Yep.

John Jantsch (14:17.455)

Is there any lifestyle change? Because I am here, I’m just going to work longer, right? So how does that affect my spouse? How does that affect other lifestyle things? that something that’s going to be realistic in that regard?

Derek Coburn (14:37.39)

I’ll give you like an even short-term example of how it’s playing out for me and some people I know. So I have a 15 and a 12 year old and I spend a significant amount of time with them, with my wife, with my friends compared to most people I know. Yeah, exactly. And one of the driving factors behind that is that when my youngest moves out of the house in five and a half years,

John Jantsch (14:52.115)

as your Instagram account will attest.

Derek Coburn (15:05.006)

I’m going to be ready to turn it up a notch. I’m going to be ready to work even more than I’m working now. And just knowing that I’m going to have this income coming in in five or six years really frees me up and liberates me to lean into spending as much time with them as possible. And I think that’s just the more shorter term, more abbreviated version of how it works in my mind for thinking about what I’m going to be doing 20, 30 years from now.

John Jantsch (15:29.713)

Are you doing any coaching workshops, anything outside of the book?

Derek Coburn (15:35.2)

Yeah, I’m not. know, I’m open to it. I’m interested in it, but I feel really good about where I’m where I’m going right now in this message that I have to share. you know, we’ll see where it goes. I’ve been a lot of people ask me, but I’ve just never.

John Jantsch (15:47.443)

Because I could, yeah, yeah. And because I think one of the challenges, it’s not necessarily just a, implement these five steps in this framework. you’ll be, I mean, it’s really a mindset first, right? I have to accept this idea because I’ve spent my whole life thinking a different idea.

Derek Coburn (16:05.71)

Yeah. Yeah. mean, look, and I’ll give you an example of that. I mean, I have clients who are in their 70s who have significant assets, right? I’ll say client A has, client A and client B both have $15 million. Client A and client B could spend their money as much as they want from now until they pass away and they’re going to be fine. Client A is working a job making about $100,000 $150,000 a year.

doing things the way they want to do on their terms, how they want to do it, and client B is not doing anything at all. Client A is spending their money in so much more of a carefree way. I think mainly because they know they’re still making money, that’s still coming in. They haven’t entered that phase where, my gosh, all I’m doing is taking out right now. So I’d better be.

John Jantsch (16:51.635)

Or or or watching the news or the stock market to see what happened to my retirement account, right?

Derek Coburn (16:57.038)

Yeah, exactly. But I agree with you. mean, it’s, you know, even again, like even the people that that know they’re going to work longer, they haven’t really done the software update to to, you know, make a change to how they’re living their lives.

John Jantsch (17:10.407)

Yeah. Yeah. So are there first steps? mean, is there like, how do you, how do you get people rethinking their retirement plans?

Derek Coburn (17:18.956)

Well, you know, it’s a couple of ways. One is I shared the example about how they now have more money just by realizing, and that usually makes people feel a lot better about leaning into it. gosh, yeah, I’ll easily work an extra couple of years. I would say that

John Jantsch (17:33.777)

Are there, there calculators? mean, have you developed calculators that could actually allow somebody to put that, those numbers in? Yeah. Okay.

Derek Coburn (17:39.168)

Yeah, I have a calculator on my website, which I can share with you. It’s DerekCoburn.com forward slash never retire. And it kind of allows people to enter in their own numbers and, plug in and see the difference that it would make. But, but it’s that, but it’s also combined with, with maybe, you know, appealing to their fears and their concerns. So one of the, one of the examples I share in the book is when my boys were 10 and five or 10 and seven, we had a nighttime routine where we would take turns.

John Jantsch (17:48.349)

Good, good. Yeah.

Derek Coburn (18:07.606)

my wife and I laying in bed with them for 10 or 15 minutes and helping them settle down and go to sleep. And it’s really nice when they’re that little. and I caught myself with my oldest. I’m like, this is not going to last much longer. And here I am most nights wishing it would hurry up and end, hurry up and fall asleep. I’m not telling him this, but I’m saying it to myself. I want to go watch a show. I want to go finish this work, respond to this email. And I really worked hard. was like, I want to appreciate this and value it more.

John Jantsch (18:23.187)

Yes, yes, yes.

John Jantsch (18:28.659)

Right, right, right.

Derek Coburn (18:36.046)

So I had this thought, you what if a company invents a time machine? And 20 years from now, they offer me the opportunity to stroke a check, to go back in time for one night with the 10 year old version of my kid for one nighttime routine, one nighttime snuggle, what would I pay for that? And I called it 50 grand. I’d pay more than that, I know that 65 year old me would pay 50 grand in a heartbeat to do that. And I think we’re just having…

parents are having these $50,000 moments happening all the time that we’re taking for granted. And I think me personally, I’m gonna really miss my kids when they’re gone. And I know there’s gonna be a new phase. I know that it’s gonna be good, hopefully. I know that our relationship will evolve, but I really don’t think that parents are spending the amount of time that they’ll wish they would have spent with their kids.

John Jantsch (19:26.523)

Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m in a different phase and then I, you know, I have grandchildren now and I will tell you that, you know, college is a different phase. But, you know, post college is really, I mean, we, we spend, you know, they’re all over the country now and we spend a fair amount of time, you know, with them as individual family units. And, you know, I will say that’s pretty cool as well.

Derek Coburn (19:30.648)

Yeah.

Derek Coburn (19:48.376)

Yeah, I see how you’re doing it, man. I have a lot of respect and I have no doubt that you guys are just amazing grandparents.

John Jantsch (19:55.859)

Well, that’s one that there’s, you know, just like parenting, there’s no like course or book that you can read that will actually allow you to know how to do it. So making it up every day. Absolutely. Well, Derek, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. It’s always great to catch up with you. Is there someplace you’d you already mentioned Derek Coburn.com? Is there anywhere else you’d mentioned that people might want to connect with you or find more about the book?

Derek Coburn (20:06.786)

First time that we’re all doing this, yeah.

Derek Coburn (20:21.676)

Yeah, that’s great. Like I’ve already been writing and elaborating on a lot of the ideas from the book that aren’t in the book on my website. I’m really just looking forward to starting a movement and seeing how far we can take this thing. So I appreciate you having me here and it’s always wonderful to spend the time with you.

John Jantsch (20:32.486)

Awesome.

John Jantsch (20:35.953)

Yeah. Well, again, appreciate you coming by and hopefully we’ll see you one these days out there on the road.

Derek Coburn (20:40.834)

Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:00.888)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Christine Perkett. She’s a seasoned entrepreneur and marketing communications expert with nearly, can I say 30 years? Is that okay to say in 30 years? I know sometimes, I mean, I start saying that about myself. Anyway, she’s a CEO and co-founder of the Nova Method, a marketing communications and PR firm that emphasizes audience first strategy.

John Jantsch (00:30.626)

So Christine, welcome to the show.

Christine Perkett (00:35.561)

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s good to see you.

John Jantsch (00:37.666)

You bet.

So I mentioned the Nova method. Let’s just start there. Does the world need a merged company? I know you merged with a friend, your two PR firms to create this Nova method. How does that, what does that look like? How does that differ from what you’ve always done?

Christine Perkett (00:59.677)

Well, it’s very different in that I, as you mentioned, almost 30 years of doing this on my own and leading an agency on my own with really wonderful people, one of whom was Michelle in the very beginning. She was my managing director for some time. But the reason that we merged is we see power in the pair and more brains the better and we are…

wonderfully very similar and at the same time bring very different strengths. So my agency started out as strictly PR as you know because I think we talked a lot back then as well and then in the early 2000s we sort of merged into more marketing and PR. We did a lot of social media. We led the way in content on Twitter and those sorts of things, video content and so we started dabbling in more of that and that’s kind of where I’ve been focused the last 10.

to 12, 15 years, and she stayed on the PR side. So we had complimentary skill sets and teams to bring together.

John Jantsch (02:03.63)

And you’re in the Boston area and she’s in Denver, right? I’m just up the road then in the mountains in Denver as well. you mentioned already, started to mention, know, the digital, when digital came along that really dramatically changed the traditional PR landscape. AI is probably changing it in a whole new set of ways. You want to talk a little bit about kind of

Christine Perkett (02:09.951)

So, beautiful.

John Jantsch (02:30.38)

what’s been the transformation of what we’ve called PR over the years.

Christine Perkett (02:35.327)

Sure, I mean, think it’s merging and melding with so many other parts of marketing now, ever since, you know, social media came on to the scene and we started turning into content creators as well as communicators. So our focus is on marketing communications and PR and that continues to be a lot of media relations, but even with the PR side anyway, even with media relations, there’s a lot of AI written journalism. There are a lot of journalists who are saying,

I’m going to send you an interview to do video writing. Don’t use AI. Don’t do that. So, you know, there’s a lot of pressure, I think, on the the PR world to pivot and stay abreast of these new technologies, but also be leading them to help clients understand how to navigate the new world of communications with AI integrated into that.

John Jantsch (03:28.696)

You know, I’ve always thought brand is one of the most important elements of a marketing strategy. And I think that a lot of companies, it’s getting, you know, the, you know, we used to just go to Twitter and say, click on my link and we’d send people back to our website, right? All the social platforms are, you know, they penalize you for sending people away. But by the same token, a lot of people are getting their information.

exclusively from AI overviews or maybe from watching TikTok videos, right? So I feel like we’re entering this era where people are re doubling down on, you know, what it means to be a trusted brand. And I think PR has probably always been one of the best tools for that.

Christine Perkett (04:14.803)

Yes, I would agree. And I think you’re right. I don’t know, last week or the week before, I had a bit of a back and forth with some folks on LinkedIn about this, that the trust is more important than ever now, and building it is more difficult than ever. Because there’s deep fakes, there are automated content that isn’t very thoughtful. If folks are not training their staff, if leaders are not training their staff and their teams to be thoughtful about their use of AI or even

John Jantsch (04:27.842)

Mm-hmm.

Christine Perkett (04:44.021)

how to integrate it into their daily work, everyone’s work ends up looking the same, right? You can’t just throw something in the chat GPT and then send it to your client. It would be very vanilla, it could be wrong. So I think that there are some steps that some brands have skipped when it comes to AI in terms of making sure or even acknowledging that their staff will be using it, especially communications and marketing staff or writing and content and ideation.

acknowledging that that is happening, whether they blessed it or not, and then giving guidelines and processes on how to integrate it. That’s a big part of what we’re seeing from the communication side on the internal piece, internal communications is how do we navigate this? How do we create a process around it? How do we keep our employees communicating in an honest and authentic way while still taking advantage of all the benefits that AI does deliver, right? In terms of…

speed and ideation and those sorts of things.

John Jantsch (05:44.642)

Well, and I, you know, we, I just did an interview with Jeff Woods, who’s written a book called the AI Driven Leader. And, you know, he often refers to it as a thought partner. And I think that, I think that’s really where a lot of people miss the boat is it can actually help you think more strategically, not just do tasks.

Christine Perkett (06:02.129)

Yes, and I love that. also think it’s a great editor. So it’s really leveling the playing field with communication specifically, since that’s my area of expertise is, you know, everyone can spell now and everyone can turn out thoughtful content, but you still need to build the trust by having it be authentic to you, authentic to your brand, authentic to the brand’s voice. So it still takes that human touch. We like to say,

John Jantsch (06:14.157)

Yeah.

Christine Perkett (06:28.435)

at the Nova method that we are at the intersection of humanity and technology. And I don’t think that’s so different than what I’ve always done since we’re in tech PR and marketing, but it is a stronger, faster moving technology than the past tools that have come along.

John Jantsch (06:37.837)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:44.622)

Well, I always think it’s funny because, know, a lot of, a lot of times people are like, you don’t want to just give this and cut and paste. Well, like, you know, what we used to do is hire interns to do that first draft. Right. And we never would just say, yeah, send it to the client. You know, I don’t need to see it. Right. I mean, it’s kind of the same thing. You wouldn’t just do that. Would you, you know, why would you do that with this automated tool? So tell me a little bit about, I know that you are,

Christine Perkett (07:05.417)

I really like that. That’s a good analogy. Yes.

John Jantsch (07:12.578)

Developing a framework or have developed a framework that you are putting out there is somewhat unique. I think I read three A’s, assimilate, align, activate as part of what you’re calling the Nova method. You want to kind of go through a little bit of a dive into that.

Christine Perkett (07:28.661)

Sure, thank you for the opportunity. there are a lot of PR, the competitive landscape is large for PR marketing. And, you know, we really took a year to build this brand, our own brand and say, what can we do that’s different? What do we really need to be doing in the landscape of AI and, fast moving technology and security and cookies changing and all of those things. So as we both actually, Michelle, my partner and I both

John Jantsch (07:35.352)

Yeah.

Christine Perkett (07:57.639)

have taught at the college level as well. So I teach a graduate social media and branding program at Northeastern. She teaches PR or taught PR rather. And so we both have the advantage of understanding and staying abreast of what’s happening. And that involves a lot of case studies. And we were taking a look at those as we were forming our brand. What’s missing? What happens when there’s a crisis? What caused it? And just one example is

It seems that every marketer tactically knows you should be coming at your marketing communications from an audience-first mentality. What does the audience need? How do they think? What are their aspirations and motivations? Yes, intellectually, everyone knows that. From a tactical execution standpoint, even the best and biggest brands have faltered recently with that. And one of the…

most popular case studies that I like to go through with my students and what helped us build this brand in terms of step one, which is assimilate, really dig in, not just demographics, but get into the psyche of your audience, whether it’s internal, whether it’s external being media, VCs, partners, what are their motivations? What do they really want to hear from you? What are their pain points? And I think that one of the biggest brands that faced some pain around that in the last few years is Bud Light.

when they tried to connect with the LGBTQ community without a very audience-centric campaign plan. They sent a transgender spokesperson a can with their face on it, and they went on to TikTok and did a recording. Thank you, Bud Light. This is great. I love it.

But it wasn’t well planned and there wasn’t a deep audience immersion before they made that decision, which ended up alienating both their existing customers. I think it was Kid Rock took Bud Light out and shot them the cans up and said he would never drink it again. And the community they were trying to connect with for the first, well, one of the first times. And they really had an opportunity to connect with that audience, but I don’t think they understood the audience well enough before they did this.

Christine Perkett (10:11.539)

It wasn’t even a full campaign before they did this event or whatever you want to call it. So if even a storied, well-known, well-resourced brand like Bud Light can get it wrong, we thought, well, there’s probably a lot of other brands that could use help really digging in and connecting with their audience. So that’s a long-winded way to say that step one. So assimilating with whatever audience it is that this particular campaign is going to focus on. And then…

So it’s assimilate, align, then align that information with what the brand wants to say. What does the brand want to accomplish? What are the goals? How do we align that with what the customer or prospect wants and needs? And then activate is pretty self-explanatory, activating it in an ongoing campaign or process or whatever it may be. So whether it’s internal communications, external communications, et cetera.

John Jantsch (11:04.448)

One of the biggest challenges that certainly social media brought AI is probably accelerating this a little bit, but, you know, brands have a lot of exposure now because that they didn’t have, you know, 20 years ago, because as long as you didn’t show up on page one or two of the business section, it didn’t really matter what you did. it seemed like what’s that or paid six, right? it almost didn’t matter, you know, to

Christine Perkett (11:24.329)

page six in New York.

John Jantsch (11:31.042)

too much. mean, you could always spin it and control it, but now you can have hundreds of people making videos about how awful your brand is. so, so what kind of challenges does that really present? And some, mean, some of them are completely legit. Some of them are, you know, taken out of context or faked or, you know, done as, mean, can be done for, you know, by somebody just trying to hurt the brand, not necessarily, you know, a, a true, act. So, you know, how do you,

You know, how do you protect brands from really kind of, you know, stepping into, you know, situations, because it’s so darn easy to do now. mean, even, you know, every employee’s got a tick tock, know, account, and, know, can really be doing something to damage the brand, you know, intentionally or unintentionally.

Christine Perkett (12:22.869)

So that’s a really good point. I do think brands are more exposed than ever, which goes back to our previous point that they need to work harder than ever to build authentic trust. so brands have a, communicators, marketers have a big challenge between using something like AI, which can be very fast and efficient, but can turn out false information if you’re not checking it. So we still need that human touch and that human

qualification if you will to make sure that anything you’re putting out there as a brand is authentic and if you remain true to that over time and consistently in all of your campaigns even if there’s a crisis you will be able to recover because you’ve built up that credibility and that reputation but it has to connect it has to connect over time and it has to connect over campaigns so

Brands need to think about it holistically, even if they’re doing all of these individual campaigns. What is the brand promise ultimately to audiences? And it almost goes back to fundamentals of communication, which is to be straightforward, consistent, aware, and accountable. A brand’s gonna get nowhere if they don’t take accountability if they make a mistake or if they communicate something incorrectly.

or they offended someone because they used a hashtag, well, hashtags are kind of dying, but if they use a hashtag that was related to something that they didn’t double check before they use it and it was a negative situation, for example. Brands have to fall on their sword, always and forever. And sometimes you do have to deal with internet trolls and that’s a challenge in and of itself, which should have a crisis communications around it that you have built and…

John Jantsch (14:03.992)

Yeah.

Christine Perkett (14:13.973)

have practiced internally, regardless of whether or not you’ve ever needed it. But other things come up with the AI say, again, you have an employee maybe puts information out there because they use ChatGP, GPT, they didn’t have a supervisor check it, or they didn’t have a teammate check it, or they didn’t even check it themselves. They just trusted the AI and it was false information. So again, that goes back to one of my points in the beginning, which is

have a policy, you need to have an AI policy and make sure that you’re training people on how to use it and how to use it specifically to your brand and what your brand promises. So I think it’s simple in its finest point, which is going back to being authentic, but it has to go across everything that you do, including the use of AI. And that means admitting your brand probably uses AI, right?

I think saying that you won’t use it probably gets more of a side eye these days than if you say, yeah, I’m using it.

John Jantsch (15:17.698)

Yeah, I’m, actually starting to see, you know, like we have privacy and disclaimer policies on our websites. I’m starting to see our use of AI statement, showing up as pages, just so people are very clear about how they’re using it how they’re not using it. think, I think transparency is obviously always been a big part of PR. So what, one of the reasons I always loved PR early on, w in the digital age is because it was always really a great SEO play. I mean, getting a backlink from.

Christine Perkett (15:26.676)

Yes.

John Jantsch (15:45.592)

New York times.com businessweek.com, know, would really helped your, your online presence. I think that that’s becoming even more so because a lot of it appears that the, you know, the AI tools are actually putting a lot of emphasis on, on authority and on brand mentions, as, know, because when they’re turning up results now, when somebody goes searching and they’re sourcing, results, I’m seeing a lot of emphasis on brand mentions and authority.

So do you, and maybe you don’t play in that, you know, that sandbox, you know, as part of what you’re doing, but do you see PR, how do you see PR kind of intersecting with the evolving world of search these days?

Christine Perkett (16:31.093)

I think it goes back to that, you know, our step one of assimilate and really understanding what sort of communications your audience is searching for and how they’re searching for it and where they’re searching for it. Are they using the SEO terms that you think or have you, have you double, doubled down on digging into the terms that you’re looking at, whether you get it from

piece of software or tool or your amazing intern or whatever it is, are you testing and vetting those, you know, with the audience to make sure that they’re resonating? And I think a lot of focus in the past was on engagement. I think we need to take that a step further to resonance. Is it resonating with the right audience? They might engage with it, but it could have been a negative comment or it could have been a negative share. That’s an engagement, right? But is it resonating? So I think

really understanding SEO terms that are working, how they fulfill and align with your brand promise, authenticity and resonance.

John Jantsch (17:41.262)

So when you start.

When you start engaging a client or a client engages you, do you have a process that you go through to try to understand their brand, to try to understand the stories that exist there, to try to understand what they’ve been doing that works? It doesn’t work. you have, have you developed a bit of a, an assessment, I guess, before you ever get started?

Christine Perkett (18:06.973)

Yes, we deliver, we do a full analysis and assessment and then we give them basically what’s a digital booklet that breaks it all down from everything from internal stakeholders and how they communicate the brand to what their external authority looks like, how it aligns with the brand promises they’re putting out there, as well as the engagement and resonance from the audience. So it’s that three step framework, the assembly align activate, but the assembly

is where we really do that analysis and then give them the assessment. And then we say, now that you understand the bigger picture and the deeper ways that your campaigns or marketing or PR has been working, let’s align it with what your goals are. Because a lot of times, know, we have all the right keywords, but you still don’t have any credibility or authority. And I think a lot too now, even LinkedIn, issued…

a report earlier this year that talks about the algorithm favoring individual contributors on LinkedIn versus brand content. So we’re working a lot with executives who are kind of hemming and hind sometimes like, don’t want to do all that stuff on LinkedIn or this channel or that channel. we’re talking about how, again, it comes back to in the world of AI, which is amazing and great and wonderful, but

John Jantsch (19:10.7)

Mm-hmm.

Christine Perkett (19:29.981)

just as important and at the same time rising is that trust and trust comes from the top. Who’s running the company? What is their ethos? What did they say? What kind of brand promises are they talking about? So really trying to align all of those things and help them to understand that each, how each piece works into what they want in step two and step three, which is line and activate.

John Jantsch (19:53.646)

You know, what I always tell people is, go, we work with a lot of smaller organizations and you know, we studied their reviews all the time. and to your point, I challenge you to do this. If you go read 10 reviews on service companies, like home service businesses or something, seven of the reviews that are positive will mention the person that did the work. You know, Rusty fixed our boiler. He was amazing.

Nothing about the company. mean, because Rusty is the company, you know, to that, to that individual. And I think if you, I think you can help make that point when, people start realizing that that’s, you know, that’s the brand, you know, for them.

Christine Perkett (20:32.841)

At end of the day, people buy from people, right? mean, is, and that social media has has played such a big role in that because at least from a consumer side, if you’re doing B2B, it might be a little bit different. If you’re doing B2C, the consumers, they want to know that you care about them, or at least they want to feel that even if they don’t really know it. But it matters to them now. It matters that if they leave a comment on your brand’s campaign or whatever, they, some, someone’s going to respond to them that they’re

John Jantsch (20:35.394)

That’s right.

Christine Perkett (21:02.171)

engagement matters. And I still see that more and more. I think again, with AI, it’s more important than ever that the brand’s messaging and interactions are again, authentic and consistent, even though we use a lot of automation, right? There is a lot of automation. It makes business more, you know, more successful and moves things along faster. But at the same time, you know, we have to

connect with those audience members in an authentic way and in a humane way.

John Jantsch (21:37.41)

Yeah. One of the things I think, you know, a lot of people like, this can allow us to do things faster, maybe even cut head count. I mean, you see a lot of that kind of talk. And I actually think about a healthier way to look at it is this will actually allow us to do more with the same people, but actually give them the ability to be more human, to interact with customers more, you know, because we’ve taken a little, we’ve taken a lot of the so to speak grunt work off of a lot of people’s plates. Yeah.

Christine Perkett (22:02.675)

Right, I agree. it will allow us to do more and to do things better, which is not a bad thing, right? you know, and I think you want to audit the journey of your audience and really understand, you know, at which touch points does AI work and at which touch points do they want to hear from a human or feel like they’re connected with someone?

John Jantsch (22:10.168)

Yeah, yeah, awesome.

Christine Perkett (22:25.843)

I mean, I just tried to call a business the other day and I couldn’t get a human to save my life. And I had a very specific question that the bots were not able to answer. They just kept giving me automated responses and it was maddening. And I think, you know, we see the industry go up and down through this in terms of how much automation is great, how much automation is too much. It’s no different with AI, but we, just have to make sure that we’re understanding when

John Jantsch (22:39.149)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:48.408)

Yes.

Christine Perkett (22:54.741)

Again, when AI is good or when automation is good and when a person needs to step in to save that brand relationship and really build that resonance with the audience.

John Jantsch (23:02.862)

Well, you know, what’s hard is because everybody has their own idea of how they want to interact. And so I think the real challenge for businesses is we just have to give people choices. You know, I was on a website the other day and you know, I got kind of through the process of finding out more information and they were like, would you like a video? Would you like somebody to call you? Would you like to send an email? And it was, and I, and I think that’s kind of where we are is people, need to let people make a decision. want.

They want what they want immediately and we need to give them the choice of how they get that. Which I think is sometimes challenging, but that’s why there’s chat bots. Those chat bots work great for some people. Some people just think they’re the worst thing ever created. So I think we have to give people choices.

Christine Perkett (23:39.752)

Yes.

Christine Perkett (23:45.075)

I agree. And that goes back to understanding what they want, right? And taking the time to work that into your marketing communications campaigns, you know, and not doing, don’t set it and forget it. It needs to be an ongoing communication that’s checked in on, you know, every few months. How are you feeling about this? How are you feeling about that? Do you appreciate this? Do you appreciate that? What would you like to see? What are we not doing? You know?

John Jantsch (23:47.522)

Yeah, yeah.

Christine Perkett (24:07.859)

And again, that makes your brand human that you are reaching out to them and that they get to chime in. People love that. That makes them feel important to your company and your brand.

John Jantsch (24:16.556)

Yeah, 100%. Well, Christine, I appreciate you taking a moment to come by and tell us about your new ventures. Is there some place you’d invite people to connect with you and find out more about your work?

Christine Perkett (24:26.393)

They can find everything at thenovamethod.com, including a link to my LinkedIn, which is where I’m most active these days.

John Jantsch (24:33.898)

Awesome. Well, again, appreciate you stopping by. It’s good to see you and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Christine Perkett (24:39.465)

Yes, thank you so much. appreciate it. Nice to be back.

John Jantsch (00:00.942)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is John Grabowski, Jonathan Grabowski. He’s the co-founder and chief marketing officer at Pengey, an on-demand graphic design platform that provides businesses with unlimited custom design services at a flat monthly fee. Pengey connects clients with top tier designers, delivering completed projects within 48 hours.

So we’re gonna talk about design, graphic design, and maybe how AI is impacting that industry as well. So Jonathan, welcome to the show.

Johnathan (00:35.032)

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.

John Jantsch (00:43.982)

So 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 did it ever get shortened?

Johnathan (00:54.24)

Yeah, so yeah, so my 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, 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.

John Jantsch (01:00.206)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:11.799)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:17.09)

Yeah. Well, you know, we, share a Kansas city connection. So I’ll share this story. I was listening to a sports announcer who was calling our quarterback Pat Mahomes. and the other announcer says his mother has scolded me frequently. is Patrick. so he shares that as well with his mother. So

Johnathan (01:33.002)

Nice. That’s great. And I do have a little bit something over you being that we beat you guys in the Super Bowl this past year.

John Jantsch (01:43.83)

Yeah, that wasn’t very fun to watch, I’ll give you that. the name Pengey, it’s probably on your website somewhere. Anytime I see like a kind of a different, unique name, was there some story behind that?

Johnathan (01:47.415)

Heh heh.

Johnathan (01:59.318)

Yeah, great question. I don’t really share too much about it because people aren’t as curious as you may think. So when we first started, we had this idea of like, well, if you were to slow down the name PNG, you would ultimately lead to a particular file extension that is related to graphic design.

John Jantsch (02:05.38)

No, that’s true.

John Jantsch (02:23.31)

Huh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. What is that programable network graphic or something? I can’t even remember. Yeah.

Johnathan (02:28.811)

And so.

Yes, exactly right. So it’s pretty much PNG. Now, PNG 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 that it is PNG, but it technically came from PNG.

John Jantsch (02:56.612)

Well, now I’m really glad I asked that question because that’s a great story. know, a of times people are like, yeah, I just saw it there. heard it and I thought it sounded cool. The domain was available, but that’s a great story. All right.

Johnathan (02:59.992)

Yeah.

Johnathan (03:04.959)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we, I 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 we’re just like, you know, putting things together and that was the one that stuck. So.

John Jantsch (03:17.156)

That’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. there, was there any story or vision like that?

Johnathan (03:30.166)

Yeah, I would say…

I’m not a graphic designer. So, and we were a digital marketing agency. We sucked. Um, we probably didn’t use the duct tape marketing system, uh, in order for us to grow. Uh, we were terrible. So we basically, uh, but the one thing that people always said was we were really good at graphic design. And then we decided to kind of like niche down and say, this is our, this is what we’re selling. We turned it into a product high 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, it becomes necessary. 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 of

There’s so many aspects of it. The 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 like 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 Penge and how it started. It’s just like, we got good at one particular thing. We got credit for it, turned it into a business and here we are today.

John Jantsch (05:08.285)

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, it’s you’ve built quite an organization.

Johnathan (05:16.95)

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. 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 be like, hey man, what are we doing today? Like

John Jantsch (05:56.632)

Right. So, you know, I’ve preached for years strategy before tactics. A lot of people view even design projects, know, 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?

Johnathan (06:21.09)

Yeah, I mean, that’s actually a pretty hard thing because a lot of times our customers don’t necessarily have like they primarily most of our customers already have existing brands in addition to they are actually digital marketing agencies. So from like a business standpoint, we assess it no differently than a than a typical project. The core differentiation, in my opinion, if you were to hire like a service like PENGIE versus that of like an agency, an agency is probably going to be able to sit down and talk to you and kind of go over like the fundamental

John Jantsch (06:32.398)

Yes.

John Jantsch (06:46.852)

Yeah, give you a creative brief. Yeah.

Johnathan (06:48.696)

Correctly. Creative Breeze can 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. So 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, like, if somebody just tells you, I want this and you’re like,

Well, what the hell does this look like? correct, correct, correct. That is like literally the worst thing that you can say on planet Earth. Like, I know when I say, OK, well, that’s really nice to hear that. But like, listen, bro, I need something in your brain. I need a sliver of your brain to understand what the hell you’re trying to do. 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.

John Jantsch (07:20.356)

I’ll know it when I see it.

John Jantsch (07:41.656)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Johnathan (07:48.248)

Because like you’re going to fail in Pengey. And honestly, like that’s the biggest piece of Pengey’s success and lack thereof is the 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 are actually the best like

the teams aspects like the when a designer works at as a customer works at Pengey, they’re the best customers because they have the empathy and the understanding that is needed to articulate a project. Whereas like a founder is very like, I need this done, I need it done tomorrow, I need it done right now, and it needs to be done, you know, in 1080p, the 18 different styles and please give it to me ASAP. Like, and those are great customers and they can work but.

John Jantsch (08:18.404)

you

Johnathan (08:45.032)

communication is so, important.

John Jantsch (08:49.39)

So do you find that you either you 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?

Johnathan (09:03.33)

Yeah, 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. And it’s OK. I think 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 always just be putting out fires.

John Jantsch (09:24.141)

Yes.

Johnathan (09:31.01)

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.

John Jantsch (09:57.506)

Mm-hmm.

Johnathan (09:59.254)

And it works great. Like we use the AI at Pengey all the time. But I think the reason why you sign up for a service like Pengey is because you want that human interaction.

John Jantsch (10:09.828)

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 of 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’ve done, your team’s done has kind of significantly impacted a brand’s perception or maybe even success.

Johnathan (10:31.606)

Yeah, there is a two things, a very, I’ll try to say it without saying it, 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 of the business. So I can’t necessarily go into detail, but if you kind of use my words, you can kind of 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. has that’s just one from in like 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.

John Jantsch (11:45.891)

Mm-hmm.

Johnathan (11:55.63)

where we pretty much were able to incrementally help their brand from beginning to I would say very close to IPO. I 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 and execution behind that advertising allowed that company to grow exponentially.

John Jantsch (12:25.38)

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 that, I think it can make a huge difference. It doesn’t mean you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on, was H &R Blocks, another Kansas City company, they years ago redid it and they basically, their new logo was this 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. And I was like, it’s a square green block. But, 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. then, you know, ultimately makes people feel good about doing business with the company.

Johnathan (12:56.994)

Hmm. Yeah. Yep.

Johnathan (13:16.086)

Yeah, 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 the on indecisions of, you know, founding partners or executives and things like that. Because I think that’s like where kind of in my opinion, that’s where the beauty of PNG 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

John Jantsch (13:24.171)

sure.

John Jantsch (13:28.356)

Sure, sure.

John Jantsch (13:39.225)

Yeah.

Johnathan (13:44.622)

500 different variations of the of the H &R 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 But yeah, I find it interesting as well

John Jantsch (13:52.964)

Yeah, Yeah, but you didn’t, you didn’t do focus groups and you know, mean.

Johnathan (14:02.21)

Yeah, I mean, that’s a different ball game, right? Like, that’s just like that’s that’s a client that I would say we love 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 that’s just not the company, you know.

John Jantsch (14:12.034)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (14:17.4)

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. know, it’s like, I can’t believe that.

Johnathan (14:25.924)

gosh, Yeah, 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 OK to have opinions, obviously, but like, man, like 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

John Jantsch (14:34.244)

Yeah.

Johnathan (14:54.891)

the business and myself and my co-founder hold that to very high regard.

John Jantsch (14:56.056)

Yes.

John Jantsch (15:00.334)

Let’s talk a little bit about AI. 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, of, you know, images and visuals. What tools are you adopting? What tools, I mean, how are you using AI in the whole design workflow?

Johnathan (15:24.012)

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. However, I don’t feel the I’m not afraid of AI terminating a business like ours, because I think from a business standpoint, one of two things

John Jantsch (15:27.172)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (15:39.15)

Right.

Johnathan (15:52.896)

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 five, 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 and 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

John Jantsch (15:56.536)

Mm-hmm.

Johnathan (16:22.07)

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 for that every company should be implementing right now.

John Jantsch (16:37.038)

about designers? mean, you hire a lot of designers, you probably talk to thousands of folks that want to, you know, kind of come into your stable. Do you have any advice that somebody who’s learning design, you know, today about embracing AI or how like their relationship with AI needs to be?

Johnathan (16:55.35)

Yeah. I mean, I think you’d be foolish not to use it to be honest with you. mean, like, for example, if a client comes up to us and says, Hey, I need a, 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, in order to make it 100 % custom and unique to the person. that is at times how we use AI.

John Jantsch (16:58.104)

Yeah, yeah.

Johnathan (17:26.016)

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 just, right now at least, you need a human being.

John Jantsch (17:50.018)

Yeah, if nothing else, 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. You know, a lot of times design has to be done in the context of a family of designs or the context of, you know, what the service offering is. And I think that at least for right now, we’re certainly not there with AI.

Johnathan (18:14.102)

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I mean, like, 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 same sex, like family, it could be you and a dog, like it doesn’t really

John Jantsch (18:30.404)

You

Johnathan (18:42.946)

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? I 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. like for our business specifically, it’s very numbers driven and very like direct, right? But I would say for a business or like an agency or something like that, they’re probably buying you, right? Now in our world, they’re buying the product, but they’re staying because of the human. And that’s…

John Jantsch (19:33.55)

Yeah.

Johnathan (19:41.398)

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 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 the service, except for a business like ours because of the way the emotional reaction that our customers are having to our team.

John Jantsch (20:18.648)

You 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, how, how infrequently the company’s 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.

Johnathan (20:35.496)

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Johnathan (20:47.662)

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. And 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

John Jantsch (20:59.172)

you

Johnathan (21:16.042)

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 like the people that are listening to this, I want to also give like business advice too. We actually train our sales, excuse me, our support people to find a personal element to that person. Right? And 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, that one of our clients birthdays was that specific day. He didn’t say anything or, or, or mentioned anything. He, send 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 a, and like a

a string of something like that to celebrate the guy’s birthday. And he was just like thrilled and overjoyed. And it’s just like those small little things where it’s like the reason why people are staying at Penge and remaining customers isn’t the graphic design. It’s how the people, how our team is making them feel.

John Jantsch (22:18.434)

That’s fun. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:29.056)

Awesome. Well, 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 PNG connect with you?

Johnathan (22:38.668)

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, in my opinion, on this plan is to help other people. Email me, Jonathan, J-O-H-N-A-T-H-A-N at penji.co. I’d be more than happy to provide you my time to help you any way that I can.

John Jantsch (23:06.786)

Awesome. 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.

Johnathan (23:11.928)

Sounds good, brother.