You Asked Us!

1. Is BigKidSmallCity.com hiring?

I am not hiring for salaried positions, but there are unlimited opportunities to earn money with commissions.

If you refer someone who purchases a sponsored post, event listing or advertisement, I offer a 50% commission on the first sale. (Of course, posts, listings and ads need to fit with the tone and theme of BigKidSmallCity.)

If you are interested, contacted me at Jill @ BigKidSmallCity.com.

2. If I want to work with BigKidSmallCity.com to reach Houston parents, what should I do?

First, please email me at Jill @ BigKidSmallCity.com instead of messaging me on Facebook. I focus on my email and don’t keep up as well with FB messaging.

Second, if you are being paid to promote something, or plan to make money with what you are promoting, please don’t ask me to promote it for free. This is a pet peeve of mine.

Third, active members of the BigKidSmallCity community, with small businesses/websites/services, can be featured in a Friday post for free. Active members are email subscribers, blog readers/comment-ers, Facebook fans, Meet-up participants, etc. (This is not for just anyone to promote themselves… that is handled with advertising!)

Forth, if you want to partner with BigKidSmallCity.com, go HERE and contact me.

Lucky for us, we have experts (teachers!) in the BigKidSmallCity community. Here’s what they recommend:

1. Unless you really know the teacher well, avoid teaching motifs. The classrooms are usually already full… and their homes aren’t classrooms!

2. Give handwritten thank you notes or pictures from the kids.

3. Give something consumable! Consider giving Giftcards. Starbucks, Chickfila, Barnes an Noble, Amazon, Target…

4. Books for the classroom! Seems like there can never be enough books in the library.

Are you a teacher… what else would you like?

After 13 years as an electrical engineer, after 7 years as a full time working mom, after returning to work after 3 maternity leaves and after 3 years as a full time engineer, blogger and mom, I left my career in telecommunications.

I wrote about the leap HERE, and the number 1 question I’ve gotten since is, how is life now?

Life is really good.

That said, life was good even before the transition. I had a very good job and very good (and steady) paycheck, a very very good healthcare plan. I was instrumental in getting cutting-edge phones and tablets to market, and this made me feel accomplished.

The issue was that with the career in telecommunications, the website and, most importantly, the family, everything had to go exactly as planned. There was no margin for error.

School drop off, work meetings, extra-curricular activities, business travel, blog posts, Houston events, homework, dinner, bedtime… it all had to be executed perfectly. We were extremely efficient and got a heck of a lot done in a day.

But if someone got sick, if a factory went offline, if the server crashed, or *gasp*, some event ran long… everything fell apart.

This was all good for a time, and got me to where I am today, but parts of the last 13, 7, 5, and especially 3 years were extremely stressful.

The balancing act worked for so long because it wasn’t every minute that was painful. Because of this, sometimes I think it was foolish to leave the steady paycheck…

My cure to this second-guessing is to think about last August.

A major customer was taking 3 devices to market, each 1 was failing the final tests and I was in meetings and debug sessions for 18 hours a day for 2 weeks… and I was the person responsible for managing and resolving the issues, while caring for the kids and running my own small (and secret!) business.

I can still recall the feeling of having a 500lbs weight on my chest and not knowing when I could get out from under it. And this was not a one time feeling.

Fortunately I had grown BigKidSmallCity.com and BKSCGroup.com enough and had the option to make it my full time career, and did in December 2014.

And I feel like it is much easier to breathe these days.

The posts on BigKidSmallCity.com have increased some, the videos have become a weekly thing and we’ve expanded into doing consultations with business owners, writing long-form copy and helping others build their own websites and businesses.

I’m exploring the direction to take the business and certainly feel stress at times… but I get to be in control of exactly what I do.

No jumping on a plane to solve a customer problem, no more late night conference calls and no more muting and un-muting, pretending I was working from an office and not helping my kids with homework.

Do I get more done? Absolutely not. Over the last several years, I gotten more done in a day than some do in a month. I was efficient, always thinking ahead and had every single detail planned out.

But now I am getting the right things done. Growing my own business, signing up for little league, sitting down for dinner and reading a few extra books to the kids.

So, I’d say life is really good. Not as safe and steady with changing routines and paydays, but certainly of a higher quality.

So, what am I giving my own kids this year?

For Joe (Age 7) – When Joe turned 7 last summer, he was finally old enough to be Engineer for a Day. This morning of preparing the train and driving it around Hermann Park was probably one of the best of his life. He’s been asking to do it again… so Joe will get this for Christmas.

Another idea I have for him, but might save for his birthday, is to to adopt a bald eagle for him. You can support the Houston Zoo by “adopting” your favorite animal. It comes with a certificate and a plush animal… plus you get to visit “your” animal at the zoo whenever you want. Joe is a serious American history buff, so he might just fall over if I told him he adopted the bald eagle.

For Brooke (Age 5) – This girl loves nothing more than a girl day with her mom. (I happen to love the same exact thing.)  She also loves dolls and is absolutely certain she needs an American Girl doll. So, this little girl will get to take a new blue eyed,curly haired American Girl with her to Snip-Its for a makeover and then to lunch with her mom. You can be sure we’ll be dressed as fancy as Fancy Nancy… and I have her tickets to see Fancy Nancy: The Musical in June.

For James (Age 3) – I wish there was a “Trash Man for a Day” program for this boy. He loves trash trucks. Trains and firetrucks are a close second. For his adventure, this guy will get to the trash can job with his brother, visit our local fire station, visit the Fire Museum, ride the Hermann Park train and then the METRORail. It’s not hard to please this little guy.