A Day in the Life of Erica Hsu, Jellysmack’s Director of Creator Success

Close up of Jellysmack Director of Creator Success, Erica Hsu, against a back background with a rainbow graph gradient and engagement icons

Erica Hsu is no stranger to the influencer and creator space: She’s been working in the industry since 2014. 

“I feel really lucky,” she says of getting in on the ground floor of the social media craze. 

Erica Hsu landed her first position immediately following her graduation developing branded content for an influencer marketing agency

That role gave Erica the hands-on experience she needed to hit the ground running in a relatively new industry and market, one that has been in a period of hypergrowth ever since. It was also through this role that she met fellow Jellysmacker Georgia McKay, Jellysmack’s Vice President of Creator Success. 

The two would go on to maintain a working relationship over the years. When Georgia joined Jellysmack in May of 2020, she told Hsu about it.

“It sounded like something a little bit different than the traditional creator space,” says Hsu. “Coming from an agency background, the brands were my clients. It was unique to be able to work with creators and help them grow their own social presence and utilize Jellysmack’s tech and expertise to do so.”

Despite explosive growth in recent years, the social media industry is still a small world. And appropriately enough, Jellysmack is all about connecting people—both on and off line. Georgia would recommend her for Jellysmack, and the rest is history.

Erica was initially brought on as a Senior Creator Success Manager in the summer of 2020. Within a year, Hsu was promoted to Director of Creator Success. 

A Day in the Life of Erica Hsu and the Creator Success Team

Erica spends her day to day cultivating strong relationships with Jellysmack’s creator partners. Whenever they have questions, suggestions, concerns, or feedback, Erica is their go-to.

Erica is also an important liaison and line of communications between creator partners and Jellysmack. She oversees a team of success managers and supports them in managing their day-to-day tasks. She is also responsible for implementing new processes and projects within the team as well as advising on strategy related to new business initiatives.

Like many Jellysmackers, Hsu was living in Los Angeles at the beginning of 2020, braving the City of Angels’ world famous traffic in her daily commute. But when the pandemic brought her routine to an abrupt stop (and everyone else’s too, for that matter), she found herself drawn to more space and a new chapter. 

Thankfully, Jellysmack’s support for remote work enabled Hsu to move to Salt Lake City, Utah while continuing to work with Jellysmack. 

“The pandemic and Work from Jellywhere policy inspired me to try something new. I’ve been around Southern California my whole life so I was looking for change,” Erica recalls. “My good friend had moved to SLC and after visiting her a couple of times, I fell in love with what the city has to offer. Not only does it have the convenience of an urban city, it’s also accessible to the outdoors. As an avid rock climber, I was in awe that I could just drive 10 minutes to get to the local outdoor crag. If I want to snowboard, Park City is just a short half an hour drive away.”

With remote work giving her more leeway, she uses the time before work to get things spick and span. 

“I do like to have a nice morning routine—I like doing things that make me feel like I’m starting my day off on the right foot. A little bit of cleaning. I like to have a clean space,” Hsu shares.

The eight-hour time difference with Jellysmack’s French headquarters does affect her schedule. As such, she sits down at her computer “…no later than 8am–sometimes before.” 

A coffee aficionado, she’s got a nice pour over ready to go. Just hot water poured over coffee grounds through a filter by hand. The grounds are from the coffee beans Erica recently started roasting in a popcorn maker at home. 

While Erica and Georgia’s team is the main point of contact between creators and Jellysmack, the European team handles the development and management of their content and pages. 

For that reason, a daily check-in with her European colleagues is always her first order of business. 

“We want to make sure that everything is running smoothly and of course, that the content is on point.”

Erica Hsu, Director of Creator Success

Mornings are inevitably “the busiest part of the day.” They are often filled with meetings either with internal teams or with Jellysmack’s creator partners.

Lunch, like everything else, is early–sometimes as early as 11:30 a.m. Erica makes herself a green bowl: quinoa with some greens, peaches, strawberries, tempeh, whatever’s in season at the market. Though she no longer lives in Los Angeles, she embraces the healthy food scene championed in the Southern California city and remains on the lookout for the latest superfoods.

Then, “things will start to slow down.” 

Her afternoons are reserved for less pressing matters: non-urgent business, playing catch up. She generally wraps up no later than 5:00 p.m.. That leaves her her enough time to hit a rock climbing gym or try out a new recipe. 

While working from home certainly has its advantages, Erica does miss seeing her colleagues in person as she did in the pre-pandemic days. Though many Jellysmackers are now fully remote employees, maintaining a sense of community and team spirit remains a priority for the company. 

“The LA office is pretty good at organizing cultural events,” Hsu says.

That includes organizing virtual classes and summits or celebrating Juneteenth. In lieu of daily business operations, the team broke out into small groups to brainstormed how they could better “support Black culture, and how to source and hire more Black creators.”

Erica is also learning new skills at home. She balances her healthy eating with a love of baking and a “sweet tooth.” 

Hsu also admits that she hopped on the sourdough bandwagon back at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s perfect for a home office lifestyle. “You have to be home all day so that you can fold the dough every thirty or forty minutes.” It’s her small way of indulging and taking well-deserved breaks.

Erica enjoys working at Jellysmack and takes advantage of her work-life balance. She doesn’t see herself leaving the social media scene any time soon. 

“It’s obviously an industry that has grown tremendously in the past few years, and I just really enjoy doing it.”

You can connect with Erica Hsu and learn more about Jellysmack on LinkedIn.

This article was originally published on Jellysmack’s Medium blog in June 2021.

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