Marketing Apprentice @ Fun Ecom Co | Great People & Flexible Hour [CLOSED]

- Is learning new things like crack to you?

- Could you sell hair care products to Patrick Stewart?

- Do you feel discouraged because everyone around you is overworked in jobs that suck?

- Do you thrive in a high-stress environment filled with political infighting, bureaucracy, and corporate nonsense?

If so, then we are the place for you, except you might hate how nice of a company we have - filled with happy, generally competent people that don’t put up with jerks. Frankly, it makes me sick how nice everyone is.

We are remote full time, have very flexible hours, people are judged by their output, not by how much they suck up to the boss, and turnover is super low because the company believes that happy employees = happy customers = happy bank account. Simply disgusting, if you ask me.

--Is this a real job ad?--

Yup! Amazingly enough, we actually paid money to post this on a bunch of different job sites. And it’s not even a pyramid scheme! Plus, get this: the owner just started paying our 70ish employees with money instead of Pizza Hut coupons - we’re big time, people.

Our careers page is actually worth checking out to learn more about how insane we are (sidenote: it won a web design award in 1993 - we’re a pretty big deal):

http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/

And check out our reviews on Google, Glassdoor, or Indeed to see that it’s not just the founder’s mother who says we’re cool.

--What do you guys do?--

Our business involves taking random products and then marketing the heck out of them, primarily on Amazon. We have hundreds of SKUs at the moment and are launching a lot more. A small sampling:

- Bad Parking Cards (https://amz.run/5Eya)

- Cable Tie Mounts (https://amz.run/5EyY)

- K2-D3 Capsules (https://amz.run/5EyZ)

We’re also embarking on other related ventures beyond just consumer products. Our business is growing rapidly every year, and it’s our intention to continue that for as long as possible, which means we need good people to help us keep up with the growth.

--What is your company like?--

1. Full Time Remote/Flexible Hours. You will be working from home in your pajamas, on your schedule. And we don’t care if you work 10 hour days 4 days a week or want to catch up on the weekend. So long as you get a lot of work done, we’re happy campers.

2. Complete Work/Life Balance. If you’re routinely working more than 45ish hours, you’re gonna get a friendly talking-to. We want you to be operating at 100% capacity, which means that you need to rest.

3. You Can Be Yourself. You don’t have to put on a fake, professional face. You can just be yourself. You can talk smack to the CEO, and no one will think anything of it.

4. Major Opportunities for Career Growth. We are not trying to just be a small business. We plan to be doing $100 million annually in the next few years. We promote quickly once we identify talent. It doesn’t matter what your credentials are – it matters what you get done.

5. Strongly Anti-BS. Anybody in the company can (and is expected to) tell the CEO when he is wrong. There are no bureaucratic or BS rules getting in the way of getting work done.

6. No Micro-Management. Once you’re trained and have demonstrated you know your stuff, we are pretty hands-off. In fact, if you need external management to stay on-task and motivated, we probably aren’t the place for you.

7. Supportive Environment. We don’t operate via intense stress or unreasonable top-down deadlines. Everyone wants you to be successful – internal politics are at a minimum here.

8. No Toxic People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. Imagine never having to interact with toxic people at work - how nice would that be?

9. We’ll Invest in Your Training. We want you and everyone to get better constantly. You’ll be learning new things all the time, and are strongly encouraged to invest time every day to learn new things, improve your system/work process, and just generally try to make your life easier.

10. Four+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.

11. Self-Funded So We Can Do What’s Right for Us. We don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves, so we can make the right decision for the long-term health of the company vs trying to get big too fast or cut corners to appease some selfish investor.

--What are your company’s values?--

See here: http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/

Yes, those are legitimately our values. The careers page is definitely worth checking out - it’s not just normal corporate BS. We promise you’ll learn a lot about us.

--OK, so I’ve read like 8 dang pages about you guys. Will you tell me what the actual job is?--

No.

--Wait... What?--

OK fine. Super short version:

Getting paid to learn marketing strategies/techniques and then execute on what you learned for the company.

You are going to become a marketing generalist. Our best people are almost all generalists, who can tackle any problem thrown at them. I want you to become one of them.

Another way of describing things is that you’re going to become the ultimate problem solver, with a focus on marketing/selling our products.

We’re gonna test you, teach you, and put you on progressively harder projects as you gain skills and demonstrate capability. We might eventually ask you to:

- Take a course on Facebook ads, talk to some consultants, and then begin execution

- Make product videos

- Write content for SEO

- Design a new website for a product or brand

- Find and exploit new marketing channels that are relevant to our products

- Create a social media strategy for one of our brands

- Design and implement an email marketing campaign

- Learn Google Analytics and increase traffic to our website

Things like that. There won’t generally be an SOP - you’re just gonna have to figure it out on your own. We’ll pay for training and coaching so you can learn this stuff.

The ability to figure things out independently at a high level is a rare one, and the more people we have in the company with the ability, the better off we’ll be.

--Why are you doing this?--

Longer explanation here

Hiring really good people is really, really hard. We’ve tried hiring senior people in the past and have failed almost every time. What’s worked in the past is hiring junior/mid-level folks, training them, and letting them run free. We’ve done one round of apprentices in 2022 and it was a massive success, so we’re ready for round 2.

--Do I need experience?--

No. We want special people, and don’t give AF what their background is. Most of our best people did nothing remotely related to their current roles. We hire much more for potential than existing knowledge.

--Is this only for complete noobs?--

Well, maybe not completely. But we do want to get some more junior people in and train them to become kick-ass generalists in the future. We have hired mid-level apprentices before, and we’ll do it again. This round is focused more on true beginners, but there are no hard and fast rules here.

Also, HR required me to say that we’re definitely not vampires recruiting young people for their fresh blood.

--Do I need a college degree?--

You just need to be awesome.

--Are there any geographic restrictions?--

As long as you are in a country that doesn’t have active sanctions from the US government, we are interested. Our founder isn’t known for respecting the government much, but they have all the guns, so…

--I’m not a marketing person, should I still apply?--

Yes. Most of the problems that we need solving are marketing-related. But we will probably have other generalist tasks we could use some help with so go ahead and shoot your shot.

--This sounds completely ridiculous and fake--

Definitely fair. To help convince you, please check out what the first round of apprentices say about the program here and decide for yourself.

Spoiler: It’s not fake, we’re just led by a crazy person (he insists on “eccentric,” but we all know what that really means).

--I have so many more questions.--

This document has a reasonable chance of answering them

--This sounds pretty good, though I’m still skeptical that this isn’t a pyramid scheme.--

You sound just like our tax auditor!

--That doesn’t resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?--

Please submit your information on the following page to apply. We promise to respond within 5-10 business days even if our answer is No.

There will be multiple steps in this process, FYI, including a long written application, interviews with potentially a few different people, and paid work test(s). Hiring the right people is really hard and very expensive if we do it poorly, so we have to front-load the process. I'm sorry about that and thank you for sticking with us.

Once you’re in our pipeline though, I would anticipate giving you a final answer within a few weeks, depending on how it goes. We definitely don’t want to string you along, and as long as you do what we ask, we promise to tell you “yes” or “no”, and to not just ghost you (like everybody I match with on Tinder).

Thank you for your time and interest, and I hope we can work together soon!

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JLS Trading Co. provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, JLS Trading Co. complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

JLS Trading Co. expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of JLS Trading Co.’s employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge