Editor’s Note:
Our Terakeet team is filled with tenacious and hardworking individuals who are passionate about pushing themselves toward success. Senior Digital Outreach Specialist Jade Miller is one example of a team member who continues to reach new heights in and outside of the workplace. When she’s not building relationships with online publishers, Jade enjoys outdoor adventures and coaching a collegiate rowing team. Read on to learn more about Jade and what a typical day in her life looks like!
About Jade Miller: Sr. Digital Outreach Specialist
I am a Senior Digital Outreach Specialist, which means that I focus on making connections with influencers and publishers to help our client’s organic search results. I previously interned at Terakeet in college, but ended up traveling abroad in Taiwan after graduating and worked as a community and engagement lead for a retail company.
Other facts about Jade:
- I coach a collegiate DIII rowing team outside of Terakeet
- I also currently have 14 or so tattoos and just adopted my first dog, Prints. He goes with me everywhere.
- I’m half Chinese and spend about 2–3 weeks in Taiwan with family every two years or so! Covid has been tough on that, but I’m so lucky to have such a large family full of love — I think if I ever got the opportunity to move there, I’d do it. I actually spent 4 months in Taiwan after graduating college to do grad school classes and work on my fluency in Mandarin (and Cantonese, but that is still a work in progress).
Why do you like working at Terakeet?
I like the freedom I have to try new things. I’m really lucky to have a client lead and manager that let me have a workflow that allows me to produce results. Not every week has to look the same in outreach, and I think people forget that. I definitely feel like I got lucky in that way by having mentors support the workflow that makes things happen.
And, just starting in October of 2021, I have made friends that I definitely will have for life. I feel like the culture I’ve been lucky to experience is what makes people stay, and I definitely witness and experience that daily.
What’s your morning routine?
In the spring and in the fall, I start my day at around 4:45 am and head to rowing practice where I coach the varsity rowing team at the University of Rochester. I do this 6 days a week, for 19 weeks out of a year. It’s brutal, but I coxed in high school and college and luckily I was able to continue my love for the sport in a different way. (fun fact: I actually was on the same high school rowing team as Caroline Withers, who works in marketing here!).
At around 8/8:30, I start work after practice, and usually go through emails, any dialogue I’m in with publishers, and set up my day. I usually just drink a black coffee, and no breakfast, unless my partner has somehow decided that today is the day he’s going to make pancakes. It happens every two weeks or so. Always on a Thursday.
At 10:00 or so, I take my dog Prints for a walk. We have a large backyard, so if it rains, we’ll just play fetch out back. He usually comes to practice with me (picture in lifejacket as proof!) and spends most of the day asleep afterward.
Mondays and Tuesdays are filled with start-of-the-week syncs. However, we have some members of those syncs on the west coast, so they don’t usually take place until around 11:00.
What do your daily tasks look like?
My team holds a lot of meetings — which is great to help break up a day. Our marketing specialists alone hold weekly meetings, one called a “Coffee Chat,” to catch up, pick each other’s brains, etc., in a casual setting. Our other meeting is more focused to teach us something new or refresh our brains on our client.
Some daily tasks include writing emails, reaching out to publishers specifically to talk about strategic ideas, and writing. I usually find I’m in an ebb and flow with all of these, and no given week is the same. It’s hard for me to define weekly goals because my flow always changes, but not everyone works this way either! Some people like something more specific, but I find that having a more relaxed goal can help me actually overachieve in some cases.
How do you collaborate with members of different departments?
I love using Semrush. I think it’s been great for helping me come up with new keywords, helping a site with SEO knowledge, and overall making my writing better.
One thing I love, however, is collaborating with other teams. Coming up with new ideas together is what makes this job so great, and I definitely feel like we focus on helping each other and not just ourselves at Terakeet and that is so clearly evident when we do brainstorms together.
How do you achieve work-life balance on a weekly basis?
I love the flex policy as well as our PTO! I’m only 25, so I use a lot of it for travel. I was lucky enough to spend a month in Colorado in May and was able to use my PTO to go out west. I was also able to flex and work within central timezone hours so that I had afternoons free during that time to hike, and was able to complete two 14ers, which are two mountains over 14,000 feet in elevation.
Even now, I am able to use my PTO and flex time to hike in the Adirondacks, the Catskills, go to Vermont, etc. It means I can focus on my hobbies and love for hiking/camping/backpacking while still doing my job. I find that most of my time has been spent outside when I’m not working and the fact I can do that not just on a monthly basis but all the time is a luxury I don’t see a lot of my friends in other fields get!
I always feel super supported by my Outreach Manager Leah Deming, and my Outreach Lead Nate Giocondo, to take the time to do these things. It means I can balance both my love of rowing and my job, which is great for me!
I’ve also been incredibly lucky to have a great group of friends at Terakeet — so much so that I’ve been able to travel with them and spend some time in other places together while working. It means I’m able to literally balance work-life by being with my friends while we work side by side on our client work.
This is a continuation of our “Humans of Terakeet” series. Read the previous posts here:
Humans of Terakeet: Leah Deming