PubLoft is Hiring Our First Employee
It’s interesting to think how the cards have been dealt and played over the last 6 months that PubLoft has been around. From writing this impulsive post and sending it out to my network, to planning to cold email Y Combinator startups to see if I could sell them on something I’ve never done before, it started in a unconditional manner. As it turns out, I could sell.
Flash forward a few months and I was running a total shit show. I was managing writers, content production, sales, and my own mental sanity. It wasn’t going well. Just ask any of the current writers, or ask any of those customers I was interacting with at the time, none of which are current customers today.
I needed help. That help came in the form of Ethan Naluz. He hopped on as a cofounder in June, and helped turn this zoo into some sort of organized madness. Together, we have grown PubLoft to a very strong point. We grew it to a point where I was able to afford my $900 September rent payment, auto insurance, registration, APS, and Cox bill, and some money for ramen all from PubLoft’s revenue.
This is huge, considering mid-August, I was filling out a loan application because I didn’t know if PubLoft was going to be able to make enough money for me to survive. Well, it’s September, I’m not evicted yet, which means August worked out. It didn’t just work out….it dominated. August was our most profitable month by 3x, and we are only growing from here…Which is why I’m writing this post.
We are growing…rather quickly. Some days, I’d say we’re growing uncomfortably quickly but as someone on LinkedIn once posted
“Life is too short to live within your comfort zone” — Fred from LinkedIn
So, as we don’t plan on slowing down much, there is a lot of content that is going to need to go out from PubLoft, every day. Ethan and I are capable writers, and could probably handle this all ourselves for quite some time… but that isn’t the goal here. The goal is to build a really big company. To do that, we need to find writers and people that are WAY more talented than us, because there’s no way we’re building a big company alone. So, this leads us to hire our first employee.
We’re hiring a writer. We’re also hiring employee #1. Which means we’re hiring our first 100 employees because anyone we hire is going to look up to our first employee. The first employee sets the bar. Why not us? Because if we do our jobs right, they’ll be so much more talented than we are, we’ll be looking up to them too.
Yes although they need to have writing chops, which I’ll get into in a bit, they also need to have PubLoft chops. They gotta fit in here. Fitting in doesn’t mean morphing their values to ours. It means they already align. So let’s talk about that….values. What are PubLoft’s core values? No. Just no.
PubLoft doesn’t have core values. PubLoft is an LLC. It’s not even real. The reason that PubLoft works is because people make it work. So, PubLoft has no core values. Instead, we have values that we look for in every person behind PubLoft
What does our first employee value? What do YOU value?
You like working on cool stuff
We could say we value curiosity, leadership, initiative, etc…Which we do. But when talking to Ethan about what we value in our first employee, we realized that this culminates into an easy filter. Do you like working on cool stuff? Do you have side projects? Are you curious, and seek to satisfy that curiosity?
See, we look for people who just #GSD. Not because someone told them to. But because they felt compelled to. Working on interesting side projects is the best way to see this in action. This also makes you an interesting person. We want interesting people on the team.
So pretty much, we want someone who can ask a big question about the world, and try to answer it as well.
You thrive in chaos
Do you like plans? Great. Can you change plans 4 times in 2 weeks when the market decides to throw us a wrench? The answer better be yes too. The truth is, PubLoft has slightly changed our business model and value proposition every month for the last 6 months. This comes from us trying to find product market fit + the woes of working on a startup.
We make plans, but we also know when to break them and act quickly on it. It’s chaos around here, to be honest. Can you thrive in chaos? We will look for that in our first employee. We’re looking for someone to weather the storm together with us.
You Fight For What You Believe In
We’re going up against many forces here. We are young, so we are going against an entire generation who thinks Millennials are only good for snapchat advice. We’re going against every content mill, agency, and marketplace that currently exists. And we’re going up against the ultimate competitor, apathy of the market. To battle those forces, you need a spine. Conviction. You need to fight for what you believe in.
To be frank, you also need a fight what you believe in to work on this team. Both Ethan and I have a spine and we aren’t afraid to show it. Do you have an idea that you feel strongly about? If we question and/or poke holes in it, don’t just say “okay”. Have a spine and fight for what you believe in.
You’re expressive
Both Ethan and I have blogs on Medium and actively post on LinkedIn. It seems like it is common for the CEO’s of companies to have a voice, the people working for them have their voices stifled. At PubLoft, we want people to be able to express themselves how they want.
Have strong opinions about something you believe in? Write about it. If you don’t, you could be holding hostage the next great idea of our time. This shows you’re open to having your thoughts and ideas challenged. That takes guts.
We want PubLoft to a factory of thought leaders. From the CEO all the way across to the janitor, everyone has a valuable insight into work they do every day. You should have an urge to express those insights to the world every chance you get. We’ll help you along the way, and hopefully help build you an audience too!
About The Role
About
We’re hiring a part time writer to write all of the content coming out of PubLoft. We have a wide variety of customers, but every post you would write is researchable. Ideally, this turns into a full-time role for you. Also, you need to local to Phoenix.
Pay
We’ll pay $50 per post for the right person. You pick how many posts you want to write a week. There is a minimum of 3 a day. Do the math. You’ll be making more than a entry level salary, but working part time.
Growth
In a perfect world, you grow the content side of PubLoft forever. We plan on building a giant company, so although right now you’re responsible for writing all the content, in 3 years, you may be responsible for 20 people managing 300X the content we have right now.
We are looking for great leaders with aptitude and great writers, in that order. It starts with a part-time gig, but we don’t want it to end there.
How To Apply
Email founders@publoft.com and tell us about a cool side project you’ve worked on.
