Khai Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant, is the CEO of Penji, a tech-enabled service aiming to be the world’s most dependable and seamless graphic design service.

His companies have made the list of INC 5000 and worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Express, Rebook, Pepboys, and Lyft. Despite his company’s global presence, he believes success comes from the local impact his companies make in each and every community they’re a part of.

Key Moments

[00:02:13] Start-up tried to boost job market in Camden.

[00:05:57] Tech blog highlights local growth and success.

[00:08:05] From basement dweller to American dream.

[00:12:28] Website building takes time; 6-12 months.

[00:12:58] Efficient CBD wholesale client gets project done.

[00:17:59] Working with both local and global teams, managing fatigue.

Find Khai Online

https://penji.co

https://www.linkedin.com/in/khai-tran/

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Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Khai [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everybody.

Khai [00:00:33]:

Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast. I’m your host, as always, Seth, I have Kai Tran with me today, a good buddy of mine. He is the CEO of Penji. Now, if you’re in the Philadelphia area, you’ve probably heard of them. They are a graphic design multimedia shop that is a subscription base. So you get to work with them on eliminated revisions. I guess unlimited is always one of those words. I feel like it’s kind of like, within reason.

Khai [00:01:05]:

Let’s not abuse the privilege here. But it’s a great shop, great product, affordable. So for the agencies, it’s very easy to use them and get the graphic designs that you need. Kai is originally from Vietnam. He’s over here now in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. I think it’s the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection, which is very weird. It’s like Rhode Island has had a weird name until recently, too. So I’m going to bring Kai in here and we’ll get started.

Khai [00:01:34]:

Hey, Kai. How’s it going, buddy?

Seth [00:01:36]:

Going fantastic yourself, Seth. How are you?

Khai [00:01:39]:

I’m doing well. I’m doing well. I can’t complain. I got you on the show, which I’m thrilled about. We’ve been talking about this for a little while now. Tell me, how does all get started? Have you always wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Seth [00:01:51]:

That’s a good question. No, I’ve actually never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I actually didn’t know what the word means until I think.

Khai [00:02:02]:

How did this all start? I mean, now you’re an entrepreneur. You’re the CEO of a pretty successful company in the Philadelphia area. How did this whole thing get started?

Seth [00:02:13]:

Long time ago, we were actually based in Camden, and the original company was actually called Waterfront Media. And at that time, myself and Jonathan, we were trying to do something useful for the city because there were a large population of just underrepresented individuals that were looking for job opportunities. So our idea was that, well, if we could bring more companies and startups into the city, of course that would spark the job market there. So the campaign at that time was actually called Penji. At the time, it wasn’t even a company yet. It was more campaign. Yeah. And what we did was we started, I think, like a blog.

Seth [00:03:01]:

It wasn’t even like a website that talks about this unlimited subscription idea where we were trying to be the first startup in the city because you wouldn’t join the city if there were no other startups there. Right.

Khai [00:03:15]:

Like minded people. Yeah.

Seth [00:03:16]:

Yeah. So we want to get people here. We should be the first startups here ourselves. And so that idea, that initiative, was originally called Penjay, and we didn’t really have expectations for it to go very far. And so what we did was we offer our service for free to all the nonprofits in the city. We were hiring interns to help accommodate the design needs, and myself and a couple other team members were doing all the designs. Wow. So we didn’t really make money off of Penji.

Khai [00:03:50]:

You never did at the beginning, yeah.

Seth [00:03:52]:

And it was afterward, I think after we serviced the nonprofits, they started sharing a lot of the work that we did and started putting us into their newsletter. And then we started getting actual people, customers, contacting us exactly. And saying, hey, can you also service us as well? Can you also and we’ll pay you.

Khai [00:04:13]:

We’ll pay you. Exactly. Yeah.

Seth [00:04:14]:

And then we’re like, oh, whoa. That’s the case. Sure.

Khai [00:04:18]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:04:19]:

So we put together a quick landing page, and I think we accepted PayPal or something. It was really scrappy at that time.

Khai [00:04:28]:

When was this? When was this?

Seth [00:04:29]:

Early teens, 2017. So this was right around, I would say April, May 2017.

Khai [00:04:35]:

Wow. Yeah. I remember hearing about you guys. I remember hearing that campaign and hearing the name Kai come out, and I remember hearing about there’s something going on in Camden.

Seth [00:04:44]:

Yeah.

Khai [00:04:45]:

Other than a concert or violence. So it’s a good thing.

Seth [00:04:49]:

Of course, the city has an interesting city, but there’s a lot of great people there a lot of good organizations trying to revitalize the city and bring more opportunities to it. And we were trying to also help with that initiative. Well, fast forward. Things went well. We got our first ten actual customers, and we started making actual income with it. And so at some point in 2017, myself and my co founders thought, you know what, let’s make a real company. Let’s actually do this full time.

Khai [00:05:23]:

Were you doing things on the side? Were you doing other jobs other than waterfront at that time?

Seth [00:05:29]:

Yeah, we were doing a lot of things on the side to earn income. I didn’t make a lot of money, but one of the major thing that we did was web development. We were just doing web development, SEO consultations, social media management. You named it. We probably did it. Honestly, you needed me to wreck your yard. I would, yeah.

Khai [00:05:47]:

It was a lot of hustling going.

Seth [00:05:48]:

A lot of hustling. We didn’t have any ambition for the company to grow to where it is today, and we’re obviously exceptionally proud of all the people.

Khai [00:05:57]:

Oh, yeah. It’s been fun to watch from afar and see how things have grown, because you’ve been highlighted in Technically, the local tech crunch. I like to call it Chris Cringe is when compared to TechCrunch. Chris is the CEO and editor of Technically, but it’s that kind of the technology blog of our area. And I’ve been watching you guys grow. I was lucky enough to be on your show, which by the time this comes out, will have been out. So of course we’re talking in the future, but about the past. It’s kind of inception like here.

Khai [00:06:31]:

We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show. Kai, so you’re originally from Vietnam. When did you come over here?

Seth [00:06:40]:

I came over with my family in 93.

Khai [00:06:45]:

You’ve been here for a while.

Seth [00:06:46]:

Actually, technically, it was January of 94, to be exact. Literally 29 years ago.

Khai [00:06:55]:

Yeah, because you give a no accent. So how old were you when you came over?

Seth [00:07:01]:

Think about four.

Khai [00:07:03]:

Yeah, that’s the reason why you have no accent.

Seth [00:07:05]:

Because I was so young at that time.

Khai [00:07:08]:

You’re still young. You’re still young, but still. So you came over here and were your parents entrepreneurs at all, or what did they do?

Seth [00:07:18]:

So I didn’t come here with my parents, actually. My parents had to stay in Vietnam at that time. Let’s just say it was a complicated situation. My dad couldn’t come with my mom. I think that’s a long and a short of it, because the program that I qualified to come here, my grandfather, because he fought against the Communists during the Vietnam War, that made him eligible to bring his immediate family to the States. But immediate means that excludes my.

Khai [00:07:49]:

Semantics.

Seth [00:07:51]:

Yeah. So of course, he couldn’t just leave his wife there and other family members, so he states to take care of the remainder of a family.

Khai [00:07:59]:

But then is everyone over here now?

Seth [00:08:01]:

Yeah. So my parents, all my siblings, everyone’s here now.

Khai [00:08:05]:

That’s great. And then I guess where you’ve come from, where you’ve gone, you are the American dream here. I mean, look at this. You’re rocking it now. It’s great. I remember when we first talked about me being on your show, you’re hanging out in your basement, and you had said something very interesting about how maybe you can reiterate what that was about, how you stay in the lowest part of the you don’t turn on the AC if you can help it kind of thing. Immigrant mentality.

Seth [00:08:31]:

Yes. My family, we came from very humbling beginnings. We have never been wealthy. And so for me, even though I have a private place that I can call my own now, I still live with that mentality that this is where my family came from. So we’re just not used to turning the AC on. We just don’t turn the heat on.

Khai [00:08:52]:

Is it on today? Because right now it’s at 98 degrees.

Seth [00:08:55]:

It’s on today.

Khai [00:08:57]:

Homage to your past only goes so far.

Seth [00:09:00]:

Yeah, I decided to splurge a little bit today and turn on the AC. You got to treat yourself once in a while.

Khai [00:09:06]:

Oh, my God. Yeah, it’s insane. We’ve been lucky in Philadelphia. It’s not been like the south, where it’s been, like, 110. We had a few nice weeks here. I always talk about the weather on this podcast. It’s like a side thing on this podcast, but today is hot and we’re like the first week of September. But it’s like the end of August was nice.

Seth [00:09:28]:

Actually.

Khai [00:09:28]:

It wasn’t too bad.

Seth [00:09:29]:

Yeah. August just went right by you.

Khai [00:09:31]:

Blink, it’s gone.

Seth [00:09:34]:

Is it just me or like no.

Khai [00:09:36]:

The older you get, the faster things go. So just wait. You think it’s going fast? Wait till you’re 42 like me. It goes really fast.

Seth [00:09:44]:

September 1 was like yesterday. Right? And then we had the weekend.

Khai [00:09:48]:

Yeah, exactly.

Seth [00:09:49]:

And then today September 7. What happened? What happened to the first week of September?

Khai [00:09:53]:

Yeah, it was a blink. I mean, my kid went back to school, so that was kind of trying to get back in that flow of things. But anyhow, go back to entrepreneurship here. What is the best thing about entrepreneurship in your mind? Because you did the hustle mentality, which is kind of entrepreneurship, but this is entrepreneurship. Penji, what’s the best thing about it.

Seth [00:10:18]:

Difficult to say because as much as I hate to admit it, it’s luck.

Khai [00:10:24]:

It is.

Seth [00:10:24]:

The vast majority of it is. As much as we want to attribute talent, skills, hustle, late night hours, these things all affect the outcome for sure, but a large part of it really is just luck.

Khai [00:10:39]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:10:39]:

And I can say that confidently because in my early, early twenty s, I didn’t have much luck with business. Well, right out of school I started selling websites because I didn’t have a real career path. So I was going around selling WordPress websites.

Khai [00:10:58]:

Hey, nothing wrong with that. I still do that.

Seth [00:11:00]:

Yeah, no, nothing wrong with that at all.

Khai [00:11:02]:

No, but when you’re young it’s like, what am I going to do? Oh, I can build a website. Great. And you just start doing that.

Seth [00:11:07]:

Yeah. I pretended to be an agency. It was just me. I was a secretary, I was everybody in the company and I would go out as the salesman. Listen, you just got to do what you got to do.

Khai [00:11:16]:

You got to do what you got to do. Absolutely.

Seth [00:11:18]:

Yeah. And you eat what you kill. Model. So you get customers. Eat what you kill.

Khai [00:11:28]:

That Twinkie.

Seth [00:11:29]:

Yeah, exactly. Done a lot of different startups and ideas and each one fails for various reasons. Never because you didn’t work hard enough. That was really the reason. Most of the reason were just outside of your control. People didn’t want your product as much as you thought they did your product, your service was far more difficult to provide than you originally thought.

Khai [00:11:55]:

It’s always the case.

Seth [00:11:57]:

And websites.

Khai [00:11:57]:

Right.

Seth [00:11:58]:

The hardest part was not designing or coding the website, it was content.

Khai [00:12:03]:

Oh my God, that’s how I started on that.

Seth [00:12:05]:

Because you put the demo content in for customers, it looks beautiful and they keep forgetting that what makes the website gorgeous is the content they provide.

Khai [00:12:16]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:12:17]:

It takes years for them to even provide you.

Khai [00:12:20]:

The.

Seth [00:12:25]:

Good thing with Chat GPT nowadays, you could just write it yourself.

Khai [00:12:28]:

You put it in there. Let’s get a starting point. You don’t have to stare a blank screen anymore. It’s my biggest thing with my clients. They always say, how long does it take to build a website? I’m like, Four to six weeks. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, almost always. And they say, well, that sounds great. I’m like, but it’s going to be six to twelve months.

Khai [00:12:47]:

Why? I’m like, Because you yeah, exactly. I’m like playing, so I stop and I wait for them to respond. Why me? Because you will take forever to get me the content.

Seth [00:12:56]:

Yes, exactly.

Khai [00:12:58]:

Even sometimes I’ve had one client. One client, and they were a CBD wholesale client, an ecommerce website. So something that you think would take long, a long time. I got that in three weeks. You know why? They had all their ducks in a row. They had everything ready for me. They handed me a binder, literally full of stuff. Then I asked for digital, and then I took up another day, but only a day to get me everything digital and be band at the site.

Khai [00:13:27]:

I tell everyone that story and I’m like, but you’re not going to do that for me. And they always laugh. On the flip side, what is the scariest thing about being an entrepreneur?

Seth [00:13:38]:

The scariest thing? That’s a great question. For me, it would be losing respect and reputation within your own company.

Khai [00:13:47]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:13:47]:

It’s not a sexy thing to admit, really, but what I found to be most difficult is to be consistent. Because the excitement when the company first started, it’s going to wear away very quickly.

Khai [00:14:01]:

Oh, it does.

Seth [00:14:02]:

And everyone starts their journey as this fun, upbeat, easy going, very relaxed attitude. And then once the stress, the anxiety, the challenges start rolling in. That’s when not that you become a different person, but you are required. It’s more so like graduating school.

Khai [00:14:25]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:14:26]:

What you were in kindergarten, how your attitude? The things that you learn, you have to upgrade when you get to fifth grade.

Khai [00:14:32]:

Right.

Seth [00:14:33]:

You’re just not the same person. And when you get to high school, of course the company matures similar to your school journey. As the further along you go, you have to change. You do. You can’t be so right now, today, we’re over 400 people right now for Pengi.

Khai [00:14:50]:

Wow.

Seth [00:14:51]:

The same company as we were when we had 14 people.

Khai [00:14:54]:

No.

Seth [00:14:57]:

And of course, it’s regretful. The scary thing for me, to answer your question more directly is how to still maintain respect with everybody as I get stricter and as the company becomes more rigid and more formalized.

Khai [00:15:15]:

Yeah. More processes go to place. You’re not flying by to see your pants as much, because you can do that more with 14 people. You can’t do that with 400 people, they turn into the Titanic.

Seth [00:15:28]:

Yeah. At 14 people, you didn’t have that many things happening at the same time. There weren’t that many decisions or problems going on at the same time. But of course, as you grow, the problem keeps multiplying. And the idea that delegation does not make your job easier, that’s a completely misunderstanding. Right. So at first you are let’s say I was the first designer for the company course.

Khai [00:15:54]:

Of course.

Seth [00:15:55]:

Yeah. Once you hired designers, I became, of course, the squad leader or design manager. And you thought, well, you have less work. No, you don’t have less work. You have more complex work.

Khai [00:16:06]:

Use different work. It’s different.

Seth [00:16:08]:

Exactly. It’s just different work. It’s a bit more complex. And then once you have your little team, you thought, okay, I’ll step back and I will hire team managers, and I should get less work. No, even more complex work. And what I notice is that the larger problems, they always exist. It’s just you’re not mature enough to know about it. Like, a kindergartner doesn’t understand that calculus exists.

Seth [00:16:34]:

It’s wasted. They have no idea.

Khai [00:16:36]:

Very few kindergartners know about that.

Seth [00:16:38]:

Exactly. But it’s there.

Khai [00:16:42]:

Absolutely. Yeah. That’s wild. That is a very good analogy. The kindergartner I love that. So what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Seth [00:16:52]:

You mean physically or mentally?

Khai [00:16:55]:

It can be both.

Seth [00:16:56]:

Well, I would say the most valuable thing to carry is a consistent personality.

Khai [00:17:03]:

Oh, I like that. Yeah.

Seth [00:17:06]:

And what I mean is, whenever anyone at Penguin asks me, how was your day? There’s one response fantastic. There is no other response. It’s never good, never great, never okay. Never anything. It’s always fantastic. So as your company grows, you are expected. Like, everything is a reflection of me. So if I come in and I’m looking grumpy, grouchy, or I seem to be having a rough weekend right.

Seth [00:17:31]:

Who knows? People’s opinions of the company could fluctuate as well. So I need to always carry a consistent persona, personality, language, everything.

Khai [00:17:42]:

Yeah. Also, if you highlight that you’re fantastic, it makes you feel fantastic psychologically, it’s like you’re not just good, you’re fantastic. You actually start to believe that even if you might not be fully fantastic that day, you’re at least working towards that. So that’s a good thing.

Seth [00:17:59]:

And I think if I could expand on that a little bit, please. So I work nighttime as well. I work with our team here in the HQ office, but I also work with our global team. During nighttime. Other big challenge is just not looking. Oh, can’t look exhausted. When I go to meetings with them, I can’t say, oh, I’m so tired, so sleepy. It slips once in a while.

Seth [00:18:20]:

But you always have to look energetic, and you have to look and just be your optimistic self, no matter which.

Khai [00:18:27]:

Time of day that hey, Kai, how are you? Feeling at twelve midnight. Fantastic. They know you’re lying through your teeth. Exactly. Yeah. They know that you’re lying through your teeth, but they’re like, we appreciate your enthusiasm, Kai.

Seth [00:18:43]:

Yeah.

Khai [00:18:49]:

Where can they find you online? Where is your main watering hole? They can connect with Kai emails.

Seth [00:18:55]:

I’m always in my inbox. I don’t check it throughout the day, but that’s where I’m most responsive.

Khai [00:19:01]:

And also penji is P-E-N-J-I-P-E-N-J-I.

Seth [00:19:05]:

Correct.

Khai [00:19:05]:

Yeah. Are you on LinkedIn or other spots or are you mainly just kind of head down working?

Seth [00:19:14]:

Yeah, LinkedIn. I mean, I have a social media account for everything, but I think where I’m most active would be LinkedIn.

Khai [00:19:20]:

Yes, absolutely. Kai, this is so much fun. I’m so glad we got to hang out here. We went sidetracked, know the weather a little bit, which was so yeah, likewise, Seth.

Seth [00:19:30]:

Fantastic.

Khai [00:19:31]:

Yes. And we’ll see everyone next time.

Seth [00:19:34]:

Thank you, Seth. Fun talking to you. I’ll see you.

Khai [00:19:37]:

That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast Network@marketingpodcasts.net. Goldstein Gear hopes you have enjoyed this episode. This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.