Ilija Stoev
I write about marketing, search, and the old books on strategy I keep rereading. Here's a good place to start.
Start readingThe Five Rings of Search
Five layers of how visibility actually gets built: foundation, adaptability, timing, awareness, and the kind of judgment that can't be templated.
Earth
Musashi opens with Earth for a specific reason. Before you can fight well, you need to understand the ground you're standing on: your tools, your environment, your own discipline. It's the least exciting section of the book, and I think that's deliberate.
The Art of War
Thirteen chapters on assessment, positioning, timing, terrain, and intelligence, read for what they still get right about marketing and competition.
Laying Plans
Instead of moving straight into tactics, he spends the whole first chapter on assessment. Five factors. A short list of comparative questions. Nothing about execution yet. Most campaigns are decided before the first move is made, by whether the assessment was done honestly.
There's more on the shelf
Every essay in both books, the published books, and new writing on marketing and search, all in one place.
Browse all my work
About me
I help cybersecurity service firms get found by the buyers who need them, in search results and in AI answers. I do that work through Kryston, the agency I founded. This site is the thinking underneath it.
I started in web development, and by 2022 marketing had become my career. For several years I ghostwrote and managed LinkedIn profiles for IT and security professionals, until platform changes showed me what happens when your visibility lives on someone else's platform. Kryston exists to build visibility firms actually own.
I'm not a security practitioner and don't pretend to be. My job is helping the people who are get found, understood, and trusted.
- Studied
- Digital Business, and Finance
- Certified in
- SEO, content strategy, digital marketing
- In marketing since
- 2022
More of my work
Why Cybersecurity Marketing Doesn't Work
On why conventional marketing and sales strategies often fall short in a market where the buyer isn't just purchasing a service. They're trusting a company with their infrastructure and their organization's future.
Buy on AmazonThe Cybersecurity Visibility Gold Rush
On the commercial opportunity created by AI-driven changes in how buyers find and evaluate cybersecurity firms, and the gap between that opportunity and the industry's adoption of it.
About the book