Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And now it is time for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback brought to you by Aflac, ask about it at work. And for this mornings flashback, earlier this week Katie Laird sat down once again with Laura Mayes of Kirtsy and Carrie Pacini of OpMom to do a de-briefing on their Mom 2.0 Summit, the event for mompreneurs held 2 weeks ago. I was there and it was real impressive.

Katie: Ladies, thanks for coming back in. Welcome!

Laura: Thank you.

Carrie: -thank you.

Laura: -so much for having us.

Katie: Well, I love that you guys are looking really relaxed today after such an incredibly hectic few weeks, I'm sure.

Laura: Yes. Yeah, we're feeling pretty good.

Katie: So Laura, what was it like?

Laura: It's just overwhelming even to think about now, but there were 250 plus women, primarily, in a room, and the energy in the room was visceral. Everyone was so thrilled to be there and very excited to learn about what's next for their businesses or for their personal brands and really interested in sharing with each other successes that they'd had and networking. So there was really an incredible energy and vibe in the room.

Katie: What were you seeing as far as percentages of marketers versus bloggers versus mommies that just wanted to know it all?

Laura: It really ended up being about half and half which is how we concepted it early on when we were thinking we'd have 50 people for an afternoon. But as it grew, it really kept it's shape and kept the scope.

Katie: It seemed like you had different tracks that those different audiences could be going on as far as what content they're getting from the conference. What was the response?

Laura: It worked out quite nicely and I learned a lot. I didn't know very much about SEO before the conference, and I feel like I know quite a lot now-

Katie: You are the Search Engine Optimizer princess.

Laura: -or much, much more than I did before, so I think that there was kind of something to take from everyone.

Katie: Carrie, what was some of the other exciting parts of the conference that you saw?

Carrie: I met so many women that have a business, and yet they didn't understand how to jump into blogging or jump into social media. They really wanted to understand how to utilize all the tools that we were talking about. So I felt like our content really spanned to people that knew something and just wanted to add onto it and meet other people to see techniques and different aspects that they could potentially add to what they're already doing. So I think it really spoke to so many women.

Laura: There were a lot of individuals from non-profit groups that had a lot of insights on how social media's working really well for them that even non-profit entities were kind of helping for-profit entities. I mean, there was a lot of networking, a lot of people saying like, "Well, what are you doing? What are you trying to accomplish?" "Here's what I'm doing and here's what I'm trying to accomplish. Can we work together?" It's kind of interesting because you go to different conferences and especially in regards to social medial conferences. It's a lot of one-way conversation, typically. It's a lot of presentation, and it's jut so ironic because social media in itself is designed to be a two-way conversation.

Katie: -it's social.

Laura: It is social, so we really wanted the conference itself to have that kind of a take on the spirit of what social media is as far as commenting and people kind of going back and forth and interacting, and I think that we accomplished that pretty well. And by "we" I mean everyone there. It was really amazing, and I think it was the size was just really the perfect size.

Carrie: And to me I think that's what made our conference so amazing because so many connections were made there.

Katie: So other exciting things that were going on-had recording artist Chris Mann and you know I mean wonderful after-hours events, which kind of took in those new friendships and relationships and brought it into a whole new forum.

Laura: Yeah, you can just search images for Mom2Summit and see a lot of really fun Flickr shots and things like that. People had a really good time. I mean, we had Andrea White. The First Lady of Houston kicked off the conference and welcomed everyone.

Katie: And I mean talk about a success story-just since the Mom 2.0 Summit what Andrea White has done in social media with the help of you gals, the Mom 2.0 Summit ladies.

Laura: She was excited. She was about to start a blog and she came and how fantastic is that?

Katie: Yeah, and that's it. It's all over now. The mayor better watch out. She's going to be twittering under the covers you know.

Laura: Hey, she's a great writer, so I think it's going to be natural for her.

Katie: It's a perfect fit. So Carrie, what are your top two moments of the event?

Carrie: Meeting the women that were there, meeting the speakers that were there, watching the connections that were happening. I can't necessarily tell you one exact moment, but it was the overall vibe of the conference it was amazing.

Katie: Good. So Laura, I got to know. What were the highlights?

Laura: That is such a hard question. It really is because there were so many fun moments. Listening to Guy Kawasaki and Karen Walrond kick it off with a conversation. I mean, they were so entertaining and so informative. And then the first session we had immediately after that was the keynote panel which was about the Economics of Women Centered Digital Media with Lisa Stone, one of the founders of BlogHer. And just listening to the depth of their knowledge and experience and how that is implemented and just really how much has changed over the last three to five years as far as how the industry's changed and how media has changed and how just as a country we've changed. My goodness, we're in just a really different place than we were three years ago. And how marketers are looking for smarter, more niche, more direct ways to spend their dollars and to really see return on their investment and to see how these women are assisting with that. I just was really impressed by the quality of professionals and the quality of corporate brands that was in attendance but that also was really open to saying like, well here's what we're doing and here's what worked and here's what's not working. And here's a question I have about like how would you do this moving forward. It was really the spirit of what the conference was. It was very impressive how everyone was interacting, and I learned a lot just from the hallway conversations.

Katie: Looking ahead to 2010, I know that you're just barely able to start breathing after everything that's been happening this year, but, I mean, are you going to be in Houston? Is it going to be a similar conversation format?

Laura: Yes and yes and yes and yes. It was such a success, and it was so fun that we're doing it here again. We're doing it at the Four Seasons. We're doing it the same weekend basically in February. I think it's 18th through 20th. And we're ready. We're geared up. We sold out this year, so I don't know. Maybe we could ask the Four Seasons if they have another room or something but, we want to keep it quite similar in size because the size was-

Carrie: I think the size was key.

Laura: Was a strength. Yeah, so I think we're not going to go up much from it, but we will go up a little bit. We have some fun ideas about what we can take. You know, it's-

Carrie: -we're very excited about it, actually.

Laura: We're ready to get going. We're ready for it to be you know-

Katie: We can't wait.

Laura: -next week.

Katie: Yeah. And being this wonderful conversational social media marketing focused conference, our listeners will be able to jump onto Mom2summit.com and find your blogs. It's mom2summit.com/blog, and you have some phenomenal listings of recaps, and you had live bloggers and-so I mean, it's neat that the love still continues. It's not just you were here, you got it, but anyone can jump online.

Laura: It'll continue on.

Katie: -and you know jump into the comment threads and-you know-really pick upon that energy and that knowledge.

Laura: -and I'm sure we'll keep it going. Like, I'm sure we'll have a couple of events that people can kind of get a flavor for what the conference is like, and we haven't announced those yet, but we'll be on our site and on our blog and update. You can just check it out. Yeah, definitely.

Katie: Fantastic. Well, ladies congratulations. This was definitely a successful event, and I feel we'll be changing the face of women in business and in marketing from the smallest to the biggest. Very, very powerful. Thanks so much.

Laura: Thank you.

Carrie: Thank you.

Katie: We've been talking to Laura Mays, co-founder of kirtsy, and Carrie Pacini, co-founder of opmom on their very wildly successful Mom 2.0 summit in 2009.

Russ: And that wraps up this morning's Aflac BusinessMakers flashback, brought to you by Aflac. Ask about it at work. And now it's time for another Advantage Point. So once again, here's Katie Laird.

Katie: This is Katie Laird with another Advantage Point, providing upgrade advice for turning your small business into a non-so-small business. Let's open up the business dictionary today to talk about a term you may not have heard of before, mompreneur. A mompreneur is a woman who balances being a mom at home with running her own business. An increasing number of women are bitten by the mompreneurial bug as their day jobs become less satisfying or when the financial reality of becoming a stay-at-home mom no longer works. With the power of the internet and a growing community of mom business owners, there are more resources than ever for moms to jump head first into the business ownership world. Here are a couple of tips from the recent Mom 2.0 Summit for budding mompreneurs. Tip number 1, create opportunities for yourself online as an entrepreneur. As the economy shifts, many budget cutting business people are renewing their energies into networking online. Find the channels that work for your clientele and grow your presence there. And tip number 2, never be ashamed of who you are and what you offer. Your prospects don't care if you help their business from your living room or if you spend thousands of dollars on rent. Never qualify your success and be creative and fearless in marketing your brand. You have an outlook on life that many of your competitors may not have, so work it. Whether you are a passionate entrepreneur or a mompreneur, this is a challenging and invigorating time to be doing business. Best of luck, and we can't wait to hear your success stories. To read and comment on this Advantage Point, visit us at thebusinessmakers.com.

Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. Stay tuned for three featured guest interviews from the Mom 2.0 Summit. First up, Guy Kawasaki talking about his new book, Reality Check, followed by Erica O'Grady visiting with Lisa Stone, the founder of BlogHer. And then finally, Karen Walrond, the founder of Chookooloonks.