Community Manager for eCommerceFuel at eCommerceFuel

Overview: We’re looking for someone to jump in and make our Community better through world-class moderation, personalized member onboarding, spearheading special projects, developing relationships with partners and proactively improving our Community.

You’ll work closely with the owner, have the ability to work from anywhere, be given responsibility and autonomy to execute on impactful projects, regularly connect with highly successful entrepreneurs, enjoy a month-long paid sabbatical every year, receive a share of the company’s profits and build genuine community in a world that’s often lacking it.

What You’ll Be Doing as Community Manager

• Discuss and plan high-level projects with our founder and then implement them with minimal hand-holding
• Proactively make recommendations – and then implement them – on how to improve our Community and better serve our members
• Vet new member applications and manage our waitlist to onboard members who are the best fit for our Community and culture
• Help keep the forum well-organized and create resource sections that point to the best content in our archives on crucial topics
• Create and execute a dynamic onboarding process for new applicants. The goal will be to connect them with existing members and help them identify and share unique lessons from their business experience
• Lead the moderation efforts in our Community: ensure members are acting according to our values (respectful discourse, reciprocity in asking/sharing), tag members to bring them into appropriate discussions, kickstart new discussions weekly and be the point of contact/assistance for other community mods
• Assist the founder in developing and leading an Ambassadors program of key members who are moderators, local meetup leaders and subject-area experts.
• Work with our developer to suggest/implement new features that make your job more effective and improve the experience of our members
• Identify experts on topics of interest to our members and organize member-only training sessions via webinar/live online hangouts
• Spearhead a local meetup program to cultivate and grow meetups in our top cities/areas of concentration worldwide
• Build relationships with key industry partners (important software vendors, respected agencies, etc.) to help with community trainings, meetup partners, event sponsors, etc.
• Work with an outside event planner to help plan and execute live Community events, such as ECF Live. You won’t be the primary person in charge of event planning but will help with decision making, writing and scheduling communications, assisting on the ground during the event, etc.
• Know our forum software inside and out in order to update settings, create new categories and configure it to serve the needs of our Community (programming not required)
• Write a weekly community roundup of the best from the forum each week
• Be available to our customer service team as a third-tier line of help for unusual problems when needed

Why Work With Us?

First and foremost because we’re a company that will treat you like an owner and understands that there’s more to life than working. Two of our core values are:

Deeper Purpose: We realize we’re not here for long and there’s more to life than work. We feel strongly that it’s crucial to take time for rest, growth and making the world better. That’s why we:

• Provide a month-long paid sabbatical each year to recharge, grow and pursue what’s important to you. The only requirement is that you must have a stated goal/mission for your sabbatical and report back to the team on what you accomplished or learned.
• Offer three weeks of paid vacation to relax and recharge as long as it’s respectful of the company and doesn’t impact your (or others’) ability to get the job done well.
• Give a portion of our profits to help vulnerable people in the world each year

Ownership Mentality: We expect you to bring an ownership mindset to your role and think it’s only fair to give you owner-like perks, including:

• Deep autonomy over your work and process. We’re not going to micromanage you. Instead, we’ll talk about what we need to accomplish, give you the necessary resources and then let you tackle problems in the best way you see fit. (Although we’re always available as a sounding board and coach when needed.)
• Ability to work remotely (North America preferred). Our owner works remotely in multiple locations throughout the year and thinks you should be able to as well.
• No fixed hours (unless needed to facilitate regular collaboration/meetings), so long as your finished work is high-quality and done within the time frame required.
• A share of the profits in the business beginning the quarter after you’ve been with us for a year.

Other Perks of Being a Part of the Team

• Retirement plan with company match
• Stipend for health insurance
• Work closely with the company’s founder, but with the autonomy and freedom to implement your ideas in the business
• Interact daily with and learn from smart, successful seven-figure-plus merchants

Here’s What You Look Like

You’re Interested in Development:  The short to medium-term responsibilities of this role center around Community Management.  Long-term I’m looking for someone who can run and manage all aspects of the business in a COO-type role.  That should sound appealing to you.

You Like People. And They Like You: Ninety-five percent of this role will be interacting with and thinking about people. So it’s pretty important you enjoy them! And it’s important that they like you, too. You especially need to be good at developing rapport and communicating a sense of warmth through your writing.

You’re Proactive and Take Ownership: You don’t need much hand holding. You’re willing to run with projects and get creative to accomplish end goals. You’re willing to own the results of your work.

You Communicate Really, Really Well: You write extremely well. You’re succinct. It drives you nuts when people ramble in a conversation. You feel an uncontrollable urge to recap what you’re responsible for at the end of a call just to make sure nothing gets missed. You take feedback well, and can give candid feedback respectfully.

You’re OCD Attentive to Detail: You proofread important emails and re-read them once sent just to make sure they were typo-free. You rarely forget things. You take notes during calls. You love lists. Some people might call you “anal,” but you don’t care because those people are just sloppy and jealous of how on top of it you are.

But Seriously, You’re Crazy Detail-Oriented: It’s worth mentioning one more time. This is one of our company’s core values and it’s not going to work out if you’re regularly dropping details.  

You’re Tech Savvy: You don’t need to know how to program satellites, but you need to feel comfortable with modern technology. And I don’t just mean Word, Excel and Google Docs. You’ll be responsible for managing our Community forum software and many of the connected SaaS apps. You need to be comfortable with diving into unknown SaaS software, learning how it works and configuring it without a lot of hand holding. (Programming experience not required, but attention to detail and the ability to dig into and understand new platforms is.)  Basic knowledge of CSS/HTML is a plus.

You’re Able to Travel: You’ll need the flexibility to be able to head out on 4-6 trips per year, ranging anywhere from 3-5 days each. These will include our annual ECF Live summit, Ambassador summits, off-site team meetings, industry events and more.

You’re Interested in Business/E-commerce: E-commerce expertise is not a hard requirement. Being interested in learning about business and e-commerce, however, is required. If you are familiar/experienced with the e-commerce landscape, that will obviously be a big advantage.

Community Management Experience a Plus: While not required, experience managing an online community would be a great addition to the above. But for the right candidate, we’re happy to train for this. So don’t let this stop you if you’re interested and have the other qualifications above.

Why This Might Not Be a Good Fit for You

You’ll Have to Meet Our High Standards: This position offers lots of autonomy, ownership, great perks and the chance to connect daily with highly successful entrepreneurs. As a result, we’re looking for someone who can step into this role and — with the right guidance and resources — level up our Community through incredible community management and involvement. You’ll be expected to make a noticeable difference for the better and live up to the high standards of everyone on our team.

You’ll Need to Be 100% Self-Managed: There will be zero babysitting in this role and you’ll need the ability (and suitable remote environment) to be able to execute well on your own. You’ll be responsible for taking ideas and projects, executing on them and owning the outcomes. Note: Self-managed doesn’t mean no training. You’ll be well-trained but will be expected to meet deadlines, manage your own workload and handle projects independently.

You’ll Have to Wrestle With and Solve Problems: Along with our ownership mentality (and perks) comes the expectation of solving many of your own problems. You’ll be expected to troubleshoot, improvise and often make decisions on your own about how to overcome issues that arise vs. passing the problems to someone else.

The People You’ll Be Working With

I’m a bit biased but I think we have a pretty great team. Here’s who you’ll be working with on the eCommerceFuel team:

Andrew Youderian | Founder — Quit his soul-sucking finance job to get into eCommerce in 2008 and hasn’t looked back. Responsible for setting vision and priorities and enabling his amazing team. Loves travel, sunshine, driving/working in old vans, getting outside, detail-oriented people, reading and adventuring with his family.

Sheral Torrecampo | Systems and Special Projects — Sheral has been with the company nearly since the beginning — almost a decade! She’s responsible for lots of special one-off projects as well as making sure all our SOPs and systems run smoothly.  Loves writing, photography and mission work with her church. When applying for this job please include the sentence “I caught the hidden Easter Egg” in the first question we ask you to answer.

Tim Jensen | Developer — Tim is our programming wizard who knows PHP and WordPress better than just about anyone. He’s responsible for custom tools like our proprietary review directory and for developing tools that help make our lives as community builders easier. Loves fly fishing and getting outside with his family.

Lauren Caselli | Events — Lauren is our events guru and does an incredible job at making our events come off spectacularly! How good you ask?  After our last event, ECF Live 2019, 98.7% of attendees said they wanted to come again next year. She is passionate about creating events/spaces where people can feel comfortable in their own skin, connecting and supporting women entrepreneurs and running away from cold weather.

Joey Peteros | Customer Support — Joey is responsible for taking care of all our inbound requests from members and readers/listeners of eCommerceFuel. She’s incredibly upbeat and loves spending time with her family more than just about anything.

Annie Youderian | Writing and Editing— Annie is our resident wordsmith and copy editor. She managed dozens of reporters for Courthouse News Service and covered live oral arguments for the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. She’s a self-professed word nerd/news junkie who loves to read, travel and explore with her wonderful family.

Salary and Benefits

• This is a full-time, salaried position
• Salary dependent upon experience
• One month paid sabbatical for each full year of work
• Flexibility to work from anywhere (remote position)
• Retirement plan and company match
• Health care stipend
• Profit sharing
• Three weeks paid vacation and major U.S. holidays off

To Apply

To apply please answer the following questions:

• Why are you attracted to this position?
• Apart from family and friends, what 2-3 things do you value most?
• How would your friends describe you in three words?
• How do you think you’d fit into our culture?
• What do you think motivates people to participate/add value in a Community like ours?  How would this inform your strategy as the Community Manager for eCommerceFuel?
• What one company do you find most interesting and why?
• What’s something you’ve taught yourself and/or learned on your own in the last few years?
• Is there anything you’ve created that’s public and online we could see to get to know you better?  (Blog, photography portfolio, videos, music, etc)
• Why do you think you’d excel at this position?

Send your answers to jobs@ecommercefuel.com with the subject line “I’m Your Next Community Manager.” Please do not send and/or link to your resume at this stage in the process. Submitting your resume at this step will disqualify you from consideration.

Deadline for submissions is April 20.