--What is your company like?--

1. 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 (highly encouraged), and no one will think anything of it. You don't have to dress up, or use formal language, or pretend to be something you're not - you can just be you.

2. 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.

3. 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 6 hours a day and catch up over the weekend. So long as you get a lot of work done, we’re happy campers.

4. 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.

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. No Toxic/Incompetent People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean or stupid people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. You will never have to interact with someone who is an obvious idiot or straight up malicious. No toxic or incompetent people at work - could it really be? [Yes]

8. 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.

9. Lots of Raises. We do our absolute best to get ahead of things and give raises preemptively, so you don't have to ask for one. It's not unusual at all for someone to receive 2+ raises per year.

10. 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.

11. 4-6+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.

12. Paid Maternity/Paternity Leave. We’ve even started letting people skip meetings during labor!

13. 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:

Learning like crazy in order to set you up to be an internal entrepreneur (intrapreneur) to take on some business opportunity.

To prepare for entrepreneurship though, you are going to become a 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.

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:

- Go find a new vendor for X

- Recommend a solution for expanding our warehouse space

- Figure out the basics of marketing channel Y so we can hire for it

- Build a complex Google Sheets tool

- Create a video for product Z

- Launch our products on Amazon UK

- Figure out who we should talk to get into retail

Things like that. There won’t generally be an SOP - you’re just gonna have to figure it out on your own.

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.

The ultimate goal is to give you a well-rounded education and then throw you at some mutually beneficial entrepreneurial opportunity that excites you.

--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. So, we formalized this into an official apprentice program which has worked out wonderfully.

--Why do you need internal entrepreneurs?--

Video of our founder explaining the situation/opportunity some more.

--Do I need experience?--

We expect you to have a minimum of 70 years of experience (120+ preferred).

Oh, you haven't lived two lifetimes eating and breathing business 24/7/365? Who TF do you think you are, reading this job description? You complete buffoon.

Oh, you haven't been directly involved in at least two (preferably three) World Wars? You're not even qualified to operate our coffee machine, you sentient potato.

Oh, you didn't observe the Big Bang as it happened? Get out of here, you pirated copy of Windows 95.

I might throw up from your arrogance. The hubris to think that you, an absolute fool, could apply for an apprentice position... sickening. I’m literally shaking right now.

Also, no you don't need any experience.

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, so if you've never done anything like this before, don't sweat it. We hire 100x more for potential than existing knowledge.

The Big Bang requirement still stands though.

--Do I need a college degree?--

You just need to be awesome.

--Is this just for beginners?--

Definitely not. We have amazing apprentices of all ages and experience levels, and this is no exception.

--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…

--This sounds completely ridiculous and fake--

Definitely fair. Check us out online 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).

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

You sound just like the tax authorities!

Entrepreneurial Apprentice

Anywhere in the world

Remote

Entry & mid-level

JLS Trading Co.