As seen on the TheMomEntrepreneur, a great site for information regarding working mothers, raising kids, and running your own business.

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This post is one in a series of three about the phenomenon we call Twitter. Many people in The Mom Entrepreneur Support Group I run, and clients, have been asking about this form of micro-blogging. What is it? Why should I care? How do I use it? My goal is to answer these questions and more.

“New to Twitter - not quite sure how this works but I am sure I can figure it out. Love this social networking stuff.”

“I am here, now what?”

Start by posting some practice tweets, which are limited to 140 characters. My second tweet was:

“Working on my blogging clinic, which will be offered for four sessions in April in Barrington, NH.”

When the blogging clinic write up was ready on my website, I tweeted again about it and included a link to the page on my site. Now remember, you are limited to 140 characters. This can easily be used up with one URL; especially a blog URL. Visit http://www.tinyurl.com/ and turn your long URL into a short URL. You can even customize your URL so it is easy to remember.

As seen on the TheMomEntrepreneur, a great site for information regarding working mothers, raising kids, and running your own business.

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They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend. As a mom entrepreneur however, my best friend is Garmin Nuvi.

On Friday, I really put my friend to the test. I was traveling to Dedham, MA to meet with a client. As I made the 1.5 hour drive down, I saw miles of traffic on the North side of the highway due to construction. I knew I would have to leave my client’s office by 1:00pm in order to pick my son up at school on time. The back up of traffic was a concern.

When the meeting was over and I was heading towards home, I noticed that the traffic was now backed up to the exit I entered. That meant sitting in seven or more miles of construction traffic with cars creeping along at a turtle’s pace.

My options: call the school and see how long they could watch my son once school ended, call my husband and have him leave work two hours early to pick him up, or put my friend to the test.

I decided to test my friendship with Garmin Nuvi. I pressed “detour” on the GPS navigation system. It told me to turn around and head South. Just great, without a map, I was at the mercy of my friend. I had no idea how close the other major highways were to me. And I was concerned I would not make it to my son’s school on time.

Garmin detoured me to I93, took up me Route 1 and back to I95 above the construction traffic. The detour only took me 14 minutes out of my way and I made it to my son’s school with three minutes to spare. I was still a hero…and I am in love with my friend Garmin Nuvi. (Don’t tell my husband:))

Traci Bisson has been a mom since February 2000 and an entrepreneur since August 2000. Eight weeks after she returned from maternity leave, the company where she had been employed for five years went out of business. She decided to try doing her own thing and failed miserably. After another year of working for two different companies (the first laid off the department she worked in and the other was showing signs of going under), she decided to try entrepreneurship again. Raising her two children and growing her company, Bisson Barcelona, has been both challenging and rewarding. Her story has been told in dozens of publications, including the Associated Press, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB.com), Plan Ahead Get Ahead (cover story), Union Leader, The Portsmouth Herald, Our Times and Seacoast Ventures

As seen on the TheMomEntrepreneur, a great site for information regarding working mothers, raising kids, and running your own business.

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In The Mom Entrepreneur Online Support Group, I recently posted a topic on how to secure investment money to start or grow a business. There is a speed venture summit coming to our area hosted by the NH High Tech Council and I am considering presenting my business plan for The Mom Entrepreneur.

I asked members of the group if they had any advice. Julie Lenzer Kirk, president & CEO of Path Forward International offered the following tips:

• Know the forum, respect the forum. If you have 2 minutes, do not go over by even a second. If they give you an outline, follow it.
• Know what type of investor you’re pitching to. Angels are different than VC’s and will be listening for different things
• Be able to tell the investor how they will make their money back, how much they will make, and when.
• Focus on the problem you’re solving and monetize it if you can.
• Have a compelling elevator pitch ready and practiced. Include the market size (in $) where you can. For example, “We are targeting the 10M women entrepreneurs” is not as compelling as “We’re going after the $10B women entrepreneurs are spending on x”.

Susan Marks, CEO of Pinstripes, Inc. suggests checking out the Kaufman Foundation website. This organization is dedicated to all things entrepreneurial, and is a great resource for a wide variety of information, education, tools and connections.

Susan is both an experienced angel investor and a recipient of venture capital. She also recommends the book “Winning Angels: the 7 Fundamentals of Early Stage Investing” because it helped her think about her business plan and company from the investors perspective. “For a young company and entrepreneur, this is invaluable in shaping the message to the investor community.” Thanks to our members for their helpful information.

Traci Bisson has been a mom since February 2000 and an entrepreneur since August 2000. Eight weeks after she returned from maternity leave, the company where she had been employed for five years went out of business. She decided to try doing her own thing and failed miserably. After another year of working for two different companies (the first laid off the department she worked in and the other was showing signs of going under), she decided to try entrepreneurship again. Raising her two children and growing her company, Bisson Barcelona, has been both challenging and rewarding. Her story has been told in dozens of publications, including the Associated Press, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB.com), Plan Ahead Get Ahead (cover story), Union Leader, The Portsmouth Herald, Our Times and Seacoast Ventures.

As seen on the TheMomEntrepreneur, a great site for information regarding working mothers, raising kids, and running your own business.

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Sometimes its 30 minutes, sometimes its two hours. It all depends on how ambitious you are in those early morning hours before the children wake. This is usually the only time I get to myself when the space around me is quiet and my kids are not machine gunning questions at me at the same time. So the 30 minutes I take for myself is sacred…that is if I can get my butt out of bed promptly at 6:30am. My night usually ends between 11:00 - 11:30pm so sometimes 6:30am can be difficult.

The tasks I try to accomplish during this time include laundry, making two lunches, checking email and packing backpacks. It amazes me how fast the time passes. If I get too caught up in email then I can not accomplish anything else and I usually end up leaving the house late. I would like to think that I am an organized person, but I am not so sure.

I talked with three other mom entrepreneurs about their precious morning time and here is what they had to say.

Heather Cabot of The Well Mom established a website that offers moms a space to gain encouragement and advice on nurturing themselves as well as everyone else they care for in their lives. Heather is another early riser whose day usually starts between 5:30 - 6:00am.

“My two-year old twins get up between 6:30 and 7:00am. A couple of days a week, I leave the house at 5:45 to go to a 6:00am spinning class. Other days, I get up at 6:00am to finish writing or answer emails. Sometimes I just make the coffee and read the newspaper before everyone gets up.”

The former ABC News anchor and correspondent admits that on days she is able to get a workout in, she feels much more relaxed. “It is amazing the transformation between walking into an exercise class bleary-eyed and emerging 50 minutes later feeling pumped and ready to start the day.”

Heather’s advice to other mom entrepreneurs is to find a way to go to bed a bit earlier (so you can still get in seven or eight hours of sleep) and start your day a little earlier. “This will help you feel more centered,” she explains.

“Obviously, it’s hard to do this every day. Sometimes my husband travels, so I can’t go to the gym in the early morning or there are times the kids are up during the night and I am fried the next morning. I think the early morning is a wonderful and guilt-free answer to carving out some me-time, a necessity for every mom.”

Mary Schulman of Snikkidy Snacks, a line of fun-to-eat organic snacks for kids made from original family recipes, also starts her day around 6:00am, but admits she is in bed no later then 10:00pm unless she has a deadline to meet for work.

The mother of two says she cannot always find the time in the morning before her kids are up so she prepares everything she needs the evening before. “I will have clothes laid out (for me and them), take a shower the night before, make it a quick breakfast or grab something for them ‘to go’,” said Mary.

The additional time Mary takes in the morning when she can, allows her to feel energized and ready to spend a morning of quality time with her children. “We like to sit and eat breakfast together. It’s as enjoyable, if not more so, than dinner time.”

Liza Lowenberg starts her day at 6:45am. She is the founder of Miles of Marketing, a consortium of hundreds of stay-at-home moms across the country who market to other moms.

Before her two young children wake, Liza takes time to exercise. “I like to do it in the morning so that I do not have to think about it for the rest of the day.” When she does not have time to exercise first thing in the morning, she finds that her routine is off. “I would always be thinking about “when can I exercise” and it takes the focus away from my children . If I can do it while they are still sleeping, then I can dedicate the whole day to them.”

Liza’s advice for other mom entrepreneurs is to take the precious quiet time that is needed so that you can dedicate the whole day to taking care of your children. “We need the time in the morning and in the evening to take care of ourselves,” said Liza.

Traci Bisson has been a mom since February 2000 and an entrepreneur since August 2000. Eight weeks after she returned from maternity leave, the company where she had been employed for five years went out of business. She decided to try doing her own thing and failed miserably. After another year of working for two different companies (the first laid off the department she worked in and the other was showing signs of going under), she decided to try entrepreneurship again. Raising her two children and growing her company, Bisson Barcelona, has been both challenging and rewarding. Her story has been told in dozens of publications, including the Associated Press, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB.com), Plan Ahead Get Ahead (cover story), Union Leader, The Portsmouth Herald, Our Times and Seacoast Ventures.