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This Googler works more than 100 hours a week at her 'dream job'

Jewel Burks
Jewel Burks

(Jewel Burks)
Jewel Burks.

Jewel Burks has the kind of schedule that will tire you out just thinking about it.

For the last two years she's held the title "entrepreneur in residence for diversity markets" at Google, which means that she technically holds two jobs.

She educates business owners on how to use Google's ads and enterprise products while doubling as a startup founder.

"I work a lot," Burks tells Business Insider. "Nights, weekends. It's tough, but I'm really passionate about helping other entrepreneurs, so it doesn't really feel like work. It's something I love doing."

All told, she spends 40 hours per week on her Google responsibilities and 60 hours — or more — a week running her startup, Partpic, a visual-search app that lets users take pictures of screws, bolts, or any other parts they need to replace and then reorders those parts for them.

Why the crazy schedule is worth it

Even though Burks has a pretty exhausting routine, she describes the situation as her "dream job" because it gives her the flexibility required to hustle on her company while still working full-time for Google in an area she cares about.

Her team respects that she's also running a business and understands when she completes her work at odd hours. Plus, a big part of her Google role is meeting other entrepreneurs in person — speaking at conferences and hosting events — which she says also keeps her motivated and inspired, especially because she specifically works with black, Hispanic, and female founders.

A lot of people she works with are just getting their businesses online for the first time, and she encourages them to get started with Google products and ads.

"I'll meet people at an event who had never heard of AdWords before," she says. "And then I'll see them attending another program nine months later and they'll be completely set up and have seen their business grow because of one of the events that I held. It's really rewarding."

AdWords is Google's online-advertising service.

(Jewel Burks)
Not a typical Google job

"Entrepreneur in residence" isn't a standard Google position. It was created specifically for Burks given her history with the company.

In 2009, Burks had a summer-marketing internship at Google after her junior year in college, and she came back to school in the fall with a mission.

Sick of the legacy systems her school used, she wanted to convince the administration to try out Google Apps for its email and collaboration tools — think Gmail, Drive, and Docs.

So she wrote a proposal and presented it to the provost and the president. When Google got wind of her efforts — and ultimate success in getting her school to make the switch — the company offered her a full-time position on its enterprise-sales team.

Burks attended Howard University, one of the historically black schools where Google has started embedding engineers as professors to help fix Silicon Valley's lack of diversity. This program, which started at Howard after Burks graduated, has seen slow success, as detailed in a Bloomberg feature.

After nearly two years at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, Burks decided that she wasn't loving the state and wanted to move home to Atlanta. She got a job at a parts-distribution company.

Her inspiration for founding her own startup came after trying to help her grandfather find a replacement part to fix his tractor. The frustration of being completely unable to figure out what part was needed led her to found Partpic. She has raised $1.5 million and put together a team of nine employees.

Partpic
Partpic

(Partpic)

Throughout that process, she kept in touch with coworkers at Google. In 2013, the company decided that it wanted more targeted outreach for its services to minority business owners, and Burks came on board. She works out of Atlanta, but puts a lot of her educational content online as instructional videos.

The content is easy for her to create because she's basically just demoing techniques she's already using for Partpic: "I get to help other entrepreneurs use Google for their businesses in the same way I use it for mine."

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