Many mom entrepreneurs struggle with this question daily. Of course we know family comes first, but it is not always easy to make sure your significant other and children know that.

• I moved my office back home and took my son out of daycare.
• I no longer travel.
• I am very particular about the clients I work with – I take the time to learn more about them as a person – will my “family first” motto fit with their beliefs?
• I changed my work week to Monday – Thursday and spend Fridays with my youngest son who is not yet in school.
• I changed the message on my voice mail to say that I will be returning calls between 10:00am – 2:30pm, Mon – Thurs so clients clearly know when I will be in touch with them and when I am out.
• I told the occasional client who called me at home that it was not OK to do so anymore.
• I thank clients when I have to switch their phone conference or meeting because my children have a sporting event or field trip.
• I send weekly progress reports to clients about projects so they are clear about what has been accomplished on their account and if there are any unresolved issues.
• I purchased a Blackberry so I can monitor client emergencies via email when I am away from my home office.
• I only schedule evening phone conferences and Twitter parties after the kids are in bed.
• If I say I am going to spend the day with my kids, I stick to my promise.
• I clearly explain to my kids what my work and my play hours are.

This process has worked extremely well. I still have one client who tries to bend my “family first” motto. He waits and calls me on Friday and leaves an “urgent” message. He then leaves a message on my cell phone. I have been working with this for client many years so I know him very well. He is well aware I am off on Fridays. His call is promptly returned on Monday morning and he is fine. He is a family man so I would expect him to understand.

Your clients are extremely important, but NOT more important than family. By making sure clients know when you are available and when you will be in touch with them helps the transition from “work getting in the way” to “family first” a smoother one.

I would love to hear any additional tips or suggestions you have on how to truly put family first.

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.

It’s not enough for us working mothers, to deal with the kids, cook dinner, and keep a clean home. If we want career advancement we need to work a lot of overtime as well. There is some good advice over at workingmother.com, ” Logging extra hours can increase your chances for illness and injuries by 61 percent, according to a sobering study from the University of Massachusetts. And lots of research shows that working long hours induces fatigue and stress, leading to higher risks of job-related accidents. Overtime can also have a negative effect on productivity and creativity.”

So what’s the solution? The article says, “Take frequent breaks during the day to recharge your creativity. Get up and stretch, go outside for a walk with a funny coworker and sign up for a yoga class. Try not to bring your work home with you and even in these shaky economic times, take off at quittin’ time (as much as possible) for your own well-being.”

Something that I have noticed in my business coaching work is that many entrepreneurs have built themselves a company that sucks them dry. The joy and passion that got them started slowly dwindles and eventually they end up depressed and angry with themselves for getting the business-building-bug in the first place.

It doesn’t have to be that way!

Here are 3 Ways to Build a Business that doesn’t Suck You Dry:

1. Know what you want: what lifestyle are you looking for? Are you single and willing to work 24-7? Are you married with children and only have a limited amount of time and energy available? Build your business according to the lifestyle you want first. Nothing else matters as much as this!
2. Know what you need: how much money do you need to make? Take a hard look at the market or industry that you are considering, and make sure that it will be able to afford you the income that you desire based on the answer to Question No. 1
3. Get help: hire people to help you strategically based on what you don’t like to do. Try to avoid the perfectionist trap of not being able to let go of all the tasks because you don’t think that anyone can do them as well as you can. In order to achieve your answer to Question No. 1, you simply must figure out how to get and accept help.

Sometimes I have to be really careful when planning my work days. With just three full days available on which to schedule meetings, I have a tendency to over-book them.

Back-to-back meetings were totally do-able (and didn’t require a second thought!) before my daughter was born. In the past three years, however, although it is possible for me to make it through a fully-booked day, it can be really dangerous for my physical and mental health.

I end up feeling depleted, have almost nothing left to give to my family in the evening, and there is definitely no room for self-care. Without the energy to bolster myself, this depletion extends into the following work day, making the cycle come full-circle and thus impact both my personal and my professional lives.

Today I didn’t realize that I had (once again) booked myself in back-to-back intensive meetings until I was halfway through them. Luckily, I was able to squeeze in 15 minutes between my mid-day and afternoon meetings to breathe deeply and realize what I had done. Then, as soon as my afternoon meeting was complete, I went home, took a bath, and sat on the couch daydreaming for 30 minutes before diving into the piles of paperwork that accumulate after a day of meetings.

Based on these actions, I was able to get a lot of work done in the hour between my daydreams and the excited “MOMMY!” that came from downstairs when my daughter came home. I was able to leave my desk and greet her and my husband with joy and excitement and even, yes, a little bit of energy.

Is this balance? I’m not sure, but it definitely feels better than trying to be Superwoman!

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.

It’s a problem for all parents. You have 1000 things to accomplish in the day including a 9am meeting with a potential client. In order to make it to the meeting on time you need the morning routine to go like clockwork. Unfortunately, your children don’t have the same sense of urgency that you do, and refuse to get dressed. What should you do? Here are 3 tips from various bloggers, to help you get your children out of the house on time every morning.

Kathy Slattengren of Pricelessparenting believes that the child needs to see the benefit of getting ready for school on time. She writes: ” In order for her son to be self-motivated to get dressed quickly in the morning, he needed to see a benefit in doing so. The benefit could be eating breakfast, being able to dress at home instead of at preschool or having time for a story. Whatever the benefit, mom should let him know ahead of time and then follow through on it. Mom could say “Please join me for breakfast just as soon as you are dressed. Breakfast will be served until 7:30.” If he gets dressed quickly, he’ll have time for breakfast. However, if he’s slow then he’s likely to miss the 7:30 time frame and also breakfast. Mom can definitely expect an uproar if he misses breakfast. She might be comforted in knowing that he will not starve and he will probably change his behavior so as not to miss breakfast in the future. ”

Give a weekly reward is the advice from MommySavers. ” I try not to engage in a power struggle, just tell her that if she doesn’t want to get dressed she can go in her pjs or that she won’t get her reward on Fri if she doesn’t get moving. She gets a reward on Friday for not getting any reports home from school all week and I have added getting out the door without tantrums/fights. We having been making it out w/out fights, but we are still rushing (which she doesn’t like and gets grumpy) or late (which I don’t like and I get grumpy). Looking for suggestions so we are happier ppl in the morn!”

Prepare the night before is the lesson from Karaskids. Summarizing her success in getting her kids off to Sunday school she writes, ” I know what you are thinking…it sounds like chaos, and with a little planning it could run smoother. Did I mention that I am a major procrastinator??? Getting everything ready ahead of time really does not even cross my mind. But, this week was a little different. I decided to shower the night before. I also got the lesson printed off and everything ready. I laid out the boys clothes. This morning ran fairly smoothly. Todd took over as usual for breakfast. While everyone was eating I got myself dressed and ready. Then, I ate my breakfast and had the boys dress themselves. I dressed McKenna and did her hair. Todd was ready and we were out the door on time.”

If you have a tip you’d like to share with other BizzyWomen on how to make mornings less stressful, post a comment for all our readers to see.

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.