Sequre Style Store Associate - Full Time

To keep things manageable, I am reducing the inventory of the Sequre Style Store to just items that have sold before in the past, and mostly items that I can keep in stock to prevent extended shipping delays, often from other countries. I added quite a few random items to see what folks were interested in, and I think I have a good idea now. I want to keep the store less cluttered.

Also, don’t like the idea of me drop shipping. The margins are too thin, and while it is profitable and popular, making it worthwhile, my time is taken away from all the other things I do for this business; it’s not something I can scale on my own. Having a smaller inventory and keeping what I can in stock locally helps mitigate shipping delays (though no one has actually complained yet), but it also reduces the complexity and time required to manage and fulfill orders.

The ideal price range for items is $20-$100, but we can make special exceptions for hot items. I just haven’t had anything sell for more than $100, I don’t think. Most people see these items and buy them on impulse, and since I’ve tested almost all the items I’ve sold in my store, I know they’ll actually be entertained when they arrive on their doorstep. So they don’t actually return it and are happy with their purchase.

I am probably as stereotypical a child hacker turned security professional as there could possibly be, so I do feel like my taste in products is fairly accurate, and it’s been somewhat proven. As you go through potential products to add to the store, I can help refine the hacker culture for you, and before you know it, you’ll be auto-picking with high accuracy, and you just might need a raise by then.

I introduce items on a probationary period to test the market and popularity, then remove them from the store if there wasn’t much to write home about. I know hacker and cyber culture very well, but it has changed a lot as we’ve become more diverse over the years (which I love, I love women, not to sound like a pervert, I just have a good relationship professionally with women, and I’ve been married to only one wife for over 10 years). I think women have investigative skills that make them uniquely well-suited for some cybersecurity roles, such as SOC analysts. If there ever was a cyber war, there’ll be posters hanging up of a woman with their arms pumped, saying, “Yes, we can!”

I don’t really know what a female tech nerd is into, so if I am adding what appear to be typical male computer nerd things, that is only because I am a typical male nerd.

The store manager will work for a percentage of the store’s profits, and there will be a week or two when I will help you become familiar with how to manage our store, while remaining always available to answer any questions. It will really mess up business if I hire the wrong people, mistakes I have already made and put behind me. Scrutiny to protect my brand reputation by hiring someone careful and detail-oriented, and if I had it my way, well-rounded in other areas outside of IT, and can get along with and relate to diverse groups of people. Most of my members are not white-males, or close to it, though we do have some really fantastic ones of those, too. Essentially, I’m looking for the qualities people actually hire for entry-level cybersecurity, because you’re not expected to be a technical expert.

You would need to know a bit about hacker culture, as we are a hacker-themed store, but we also extend the shop to include what I know are common hobbies in this community and activities enjoyed by hackers beyond hacking, if they seem popular.

By far, our red team items, including our signature items, sell the most. Your job would be to research and introduce new products to achieve the highest possible margin, while I can focus on store marketing and increasing traffic volume. I’ll get them there, and you convert them.

At the end of every month, we’ll run reports and split profits according to what we agree upon, given your experience and enthusiasm, which will adjust over time based on performance. I am NOT a greedy person. If you make me money, you’re getting a lot of it.

You would run your operation out of your home, and I will send you all the supplies you need for shipping, like bubble mailers, label machines, and credit for shipping accounts. You wouldn’t need to come out of pocket for anything. If you’re local to Georgia, it’s better for me because shipping charges can get expensive.

The way an unbelievable $9 item from China turns into a $30 item I sell in my store is because when you’re buying from AliExpress or the likes, you’ll pay several dollars in shipping unless you want to buy one where the shipping is free and the shipping costs are built into it. Then it takes two to three weeks to get it, if it doesn’t get lost and good luck tracking it. And then you get it, and you repackage the item because the way it comes from china would make anyone sick and is not presentable to your customer, then you make whatever modifications to the item that you need to make to turn it into your product, then you need to use a few dollars in custom branding packages, and bubble mailers, and then you have to pay the $5–7 shipping to the customer who bought from you, and the end result is a professional looking items that took a little less than a month to get there. With all the extra expenses, your customer can look it up on the internet and see they just got ‘ripped off’ because they paid 3x more for it (I have only actually seen this happen once). Those cheap Chinese tricks on drop shipping stores really add up.

Not to mention you can’t return a $20 item to China. So the peace of mind they get with us is, as long as it’s reasonable, I’ll just refund the money, apologize, order a new one (this time directly from China so they can see how this crap comes and that I was attempting to be professonal, not to mention the R&D money I spent already buying it and testing it so I know it’s not a cheap chinese product) and I let them keep the item. I just did this with a $99 game emulator the other day, he bought the RG32S and was disappointed it couldn’t play the game he wanted, so I bought him he more expensive one and let him keep both. You really can’t afford to upset customers when you’re really early in the game. He was thrilled.

Chinese products have a wide range of quality. Some of my most favorite electronics are chinese but a ton of them are wastes of money, so the R&D for testing I do is an actual investment to be aware of. If someone wants to go to those types of sites themselves and buy five different ones because they keep breaking, be my guest :)

As I mentioned as a proof of concept, I built this store over the last few months, and it has been pretty much popular among my customers, so now I need to turn it over to someone who can make it their baby and run full speed with it.

Duties include:

• Researching new products on various websites

• Creating the product in the store (descriptions, images) — this has to be done very carefully or else the product won’t sell

• Using AI for ideas and to get your descriptions and info 80% to the goal, and spendb the other 20% reading through it and editing it for accuracy and adding sales spins to it

• Creating marketing emails for products in the Security Style Store (there are builders and some AI tools to generate a lot of what you need but it’s still very much the 80/20 rule)

• Calculating the total costs of acquiring the item, packaging, and estimates of postage to determine to minimum sales price and adding padding for our split profits.

• We do not post products to our social media accounts, or at least I don’t try to.

• Keeping an inventory of all of your postage supplies and putting in a request when you need more

• Must watch Hackers the Movie

• Must be willing to receive copious amounts of Cyber NOW swap

• Must be able to commit to at least a year of service. I know things might come up, but I want you to get started on the right foot. I’m a great guy, very honest and transparent, so I’ll always let you know how the business is going. Ask any of my instructors. After the year is up, I’d be happy to write you a fantastic recommendation to continue to pursue your career. If you leave, then it just didn’t work out and I still wish you the very best ( but no letter! :P). I think by a year the store will have grown so much it might in all of our best interests to stick close by. As I mentioned, I started the POC of the store and it had really great early success.

• Follow the company vision the best you can. I am a fast-moving, fast-chattering, and extremely agile startup owner. I really don’t have time to waste on things that do not work so I switch up strategies often. I also can not afford to waste time on ideas that don’t show any promise. Those kinds of ideas become Hail Marys, and investors pour millions of dollars into them, and they lose everything. I have a lot of ideas and I test them and I often fail hard and fail fast — however, the shop is one that shows promise!

It would even be best if you were in drivable distance to North Georgia.

Requirements:

You have to be interested in hacker culture and know things about it, or willing to listen and learn. Just have a general interest; think it’s intriguing.

Have an interest or even the ability to be technical enough to run an online store with training — I need a quick learner and someone who can just explore and pick things up on their own. Basically, just someone who is technically adept.

You do not need professional cybersecurity experience

You will on a daily basis search the internet (dropshipping, aliexpress, temu, amazon, etsy.. etc). And look for products to add to the store.

You will use a combination of AI and personal editing to write compelling product descriptions and information.

You will calculate all of the costs of procuring the item including relevant shipping, and the time it takes for the order to finally arrive at it’s final destination, to determine what is a fair price for you to ship this product, adjusting on the fly as needed. I suggest just start somewhere lower where someone will buy it and increase it little by little.

You will own the growth of the shop. I will be available to answer any questions and provide some guidance and pointers to get started. If you ever need help with the store because you’re overwhelmed, I will be happy to lend a helping hand, and if we grow even further, I’d be happy to let you hire your minion.

Your commissions will come from the profits, not the gross sales. If you make me more money, I will make sure you make more money. I’m a very benevolent and generous person until I feel I’m being taken advantage of, and then I will cut you off like a knife. When you’ve lived an entire life as a great guy, it becomes part of the territory to recognize manipulation, and it’s always very bad.

Only take this job if you’re honest. If you’re dishonest, I will part ways. I have a community of members because they trust me. I tell them truths that aren’t in my best interest, and in return, I gain respect; however, sometimes I lose customers. You don’t need to be overly pleasant either.

I’d prefer you to speak your harsh truth and let it sink in for a few hours, giving me something to think about. I’m a grown, married man. Again, lying and manipulation won’t be tolerated by me or my customers. Most of my customers are lifetime members who trust me to do what’s best for them to improve on their investments. Last time. Don’t do it. If you’re dishonest, this isn’t the right place.

I am not entirely sure why I waste time on LinkedIn any longer. They’ve bastardized the algorithm to reduce its usefulness to the economy that they so brilliantly created, and I capitalized on a lot, and just abandoned it at the blink of an eye because they want you to start boosting your posts to get reach, and they’re promoting short-form video, which every video that I have ever seen never has many interactions. Impressions don’t mean a dang thing because you know how many bots there are on LinkedIn and social media.

But I do have over 50,000 contacts on my email list, which grows via a number of ways, and that is how we make our money until we can get some investments into SEO and AI SEO, which, when we do secure, isn’t an overnight thing. It will take up to six months to see significant increases in organic traffic. We took a hit for a while, figuring out what to do and how to reach an audience for free. I have 100% bootstrapped this business into a sustainable living. When the algorithm changed, it crippled my business, but we persevered, and I have resolved never to have my revenue at the mercy of another company, especially one I have no personal interaction with and cannot reach. You see, I’ve already made a ton of mistakes getting started, but the important thing is that we’re still standing and we keep improving. It doesn’t matter to me what I look like today because the public forgets FAST. It’s gone in the poop of an eye.

I simply don’t like the idea of having to post things to drive traffic to my website because it takes time to develop content, and I could be doing other things. So many people are creating fantastic content, and it’s reaching absolutely nothing anymore. I feel so terrible because I know how time-consuming it is to create content and get nothing from it. Most of them were doing it for attention, and they’re not even getting that any longer. Creators weren’t making any money to begin with; now they’re wasting even more time trying even harder and reaching fewer people. Listen, it’s not your fault. It’s not your content. I love all of your content. They are suppressing it because you didn’t pay for advertising. I want people to organically come to me, and I don’t want to run ads either because I’ve tried, and social media ads are a total waste of money, at least for cybersecurity training.

I just want to remind you that our end goal here is to become the world’s first cybersecurity media company. Master plans include aquiring exclusive content from creators, that isn’t posted anywhere else, paying them higher that they can get from YouTube, and show these lineups through our various cybersecurity media TV channels, which companies pay for the ads because people watch it and people want to watch our media because it’s free quality training, I mean quality by some of the best creators, and these cybersecurity product companies have tons of money for ads.

It will be regularly scheduled content like getting TV guides in the mail when you were a kid and making an effort to show up on time (and finish) the show. It’s an intentional behavior, something you’re doing, not spending 30 minutes scrolling through Netflix until you find a show you want to watch, then turning it on and falling asleep because it took so long to find something. We’re going in a circle, back to cable TV, where people commit to their media.

I strongly feel on-demand programming is NOT the right approach for training. I know this because out of my 40k students across many platforms, these places sell you courses for just a dollar or two, people don’t take them seriously, and the entire training industry has been a predatory way to get you to sign up with your momentary ambition and not even care if you watch it. They are literally selling you low-quality garbage, knowing you’ll never watch it, and you’ll never ask for your refund for $3.

It makes every single one of us who cares upset. Something like 70% of students browse through subjects in catalogs, see the value of learning the subject, get excited about all the benefits they’ll have to their career, sign up, and then, the next day, the moment passes, and they’re no longer interested.

That is how most people are. A small percentage of people on my own platform has taken every course I’ve offered and asking for more because they’re UNIQUE! It’s not boring. It’s different! I wanted it that way!

That is the state of on-demand training. I have tried very hard to combat this (because I do care ok) by offering instructor grading to promote them to finish all of the assignments and get feedback, I offer certificates, I even ship them plaques to their home when they become a decathlete by completing 10+ courses (which we have several now!). These plaques cost me 30% of their dues or more, so it’s not something just a little that I do. It can really hurt the pocket. I needed to drive engagement. My goal is that people finish my courses so they become proud of it, and brand ambassadors. It’s a long-term strategy in a successful wager against what everyone else is doing. Buy courses for $1 that you’ll never take. You see, they’ll go about their business because their catalogs are so massive and filled with absolute garbage that no respectable expert would ever put their name in it, and there is nothing worse than paying for cheap training that teaches you wrong stuff. You see, that is malicious, that’s not even careless. You’re going to get fired because some dimwit told you to rm -rf.

And it’s very difficult to maintain courses, which is why the most respected training companies only have a select number of courses and not millions like Udemy. Because courses take a ton of time to maintain, and every course on Udemy has been dropped there and rarely, if at all, gets updated for years, but it doesn’t really matter to them because you’ll never watch it anyway, and you’re probably not going to get your $1 back.

I am only one person trying to run a 20-person company, but I do it because I love it. While this business was very gravy-train rich when we started and saw our first big success, I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of my own money with the sole intent of building a brand — and I did!

A lot of people know who Cyber NOW is. They might not know what to think of me yet, I’m new to the CEO job, and it’s a very difficult job that requires a very broad understanding of not only business, but also in life to be effective because it’s all about relationships and I don’t meet a lot of people I relate to most of the time, and there were just a lot of areas where I just needed some work in. It’s like every other job you start out in, you’re just going to suck at it for a while. Any new CEO who’s well polished is a pretender with no substance. They are just pretending to be competent. While I will crash headfirst into a wall and reflect on a better strategy, hopefully, I will never make the mistake again. The vast majority of the time, that is how it goes. However, there are many mistakes to be made, and older, wiser CEOs are a little more on solid ground. It’s a hard job. I had a dozen employees working for me this time last year. I didn’t have the money to pay them, so I stopped asking them to do things, but they were all willing to work for free to get somewhere. Many of these aspiring SOC analysts just want something they can put on their resume as having experience; many never actually did anything, and it was a waste of everyone’s time, and if they did do something, they never took it seriously. Hiring free work doesn’t work; let me just tuck that into the obvious bin in my brain. I had three people who actually put in some work for an extended period; all three were military.

The market is flooded with internships that both pay you and require you to pay them, which are completely worthless and a waste of time. If you don’t see the store driving down the street, or unless it has over 500+ employees, only take that job opportunity if you don’t have anything else to do but I promise you if you get in there and it looks like a joke to you, then you will treat it like a joke, you’ll have nothing to talk about in an interview about it, and you’re just sitting there wasting your time with worthless filler on your resume that makes you look bad in an interview.

The only solution to this problem is what my mentor at SANS did: make training so pricey that there is a lingering thought at the back of your mind of how much hot water you’re going to be in if you don’t get something out of this and finish it. And they built an empire by making, admittedly, the highest-quality training available (because they have the budget to do so) because of psychology. So SANS isn’t just expensive for the sake of being expensive; SANS is expensive because they want you to finish. And enjoy the training too. I love SANS. If you can swing SANS, do it — they’re doing a lot for the community these days, too, which was partially at Stephen Northcutt’s behest and continues his legacy. He told me 15 years ago he hated how expensive SANS was, but it had to be done that way, and I never really understood the big picture until today.

He is a complete genius, and he is one of the very few people that has stuck by me through very turbulent times over the years. He saved my marriage. The best mentors are interested in the holistic you, not just the professional you.

If you’re interested in taking on the Sequre Style Store (a full-time job), we can discuss profit-sharing and details. Email me at tyler@cybernoweducation.com

I give out so much information because maybe I want competition. I want someone to make me angry so I can get back to demolishing things.