Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing a behind-the-scenes look into my 3 month maternity leave with my second baby. Specifically, what my maternity leave looked like as a business owner! I’ve done this once before (and actually took off 5.5 months with Colin when he was born). Back then I planned to take 2 ½ months off, but ended up taking longer for a lot of reasons!
This time, I was more up in the air about how long exactly it would be, but ultimately thought I’d want to take around 15 ish weeks. I have to say though, it felt a lot more fluid this time. In this episode, I’m going to share a behind-the-scenes look at how I planned this leave: from what I had to do to prepare my business for me to be gone, what I’d do differently, what I thought worked well, and what I did do differently from my last leave.
I also want to say - you can apply this stuff to another type of business leave too, so if you want just my tips and thoughts in general for planning time away, you’ll enjoy this episode too!
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It’s always so interesting to talk about a “leave” or “maternity leave” because going back as a business owner, at least for me, doesn’t just go from “you’re not working at all” and now you’re working everyday! It’s been way more subtle than that.
First, I’m still home because I work from home. I’m Ethan’s primary childcare. So I’m starting with just 2 work days a week right now, which is really limited. To some people, this would even be considered back at work. But the truth is that my business is really really lean and I’m fortunate that I’m able to work less and still keep things stable (or even see growth).
Taking time off as a business owner
When you’re a business owner, it’s hard to truly take off “all the way”. I know this is true of some jobs when you work for an employer as well, but it is especially true as a biz owner. That said, I do take off the best I can, and I did for both my leaves. Personally, I also don’t struggle with taking time off from work for a new baby. I actually love the time and if anything, I struggle more getting back into the swing of things. While at the same time, I’m also being hit with a ton of great business ideas while on leave!
How I Prepared During My Pregnancy
First, I went on two trips with Showit that happened basically immediately after finding out I was pregnant. First trimester trips are not my favorite (partly because of the heat, and partly because I wanted to start planning right away!).
I also decided to make another course! I made Booked Out Designer pregnant with Colin, and something about pregnancy gives me a course itch. It felt really ambitious to make Podcast Success Blueprint while pregnant since I was not just pregnant but also had a toddler. That felt a lot different than when I made my first course “just” being pregnant.
But I did it. I beta launched the course in October last year, then created it basically my whole pregnancy, then opened the doors again in January. Now, the Podcast Success Blueprint is on evergreen and available now!
But with that said, during my pregnancy itself I was working on creating the course, maternity leave prep, plus maintaining everything happening in the business already. There was PLENTY to keep me very busy!
I always recommend starting earlier in your expecting/waiting for baby time if you’re able to. I know with things like adoption, you can’t always plan as much, and that is hard! But if you’re able, starting earlier is great because you lose energy around it often as you get later into pregnancy because you want to just be in baby nesting mode. At least that has been my experience!
Planning My Maternity Leave as a Business Owner
When planning for this new baby’s arrival, I did the planning part really similar to how I prepped for Colin, only with more experience this time and some of those things I really had to focus on delegating and eliminating with Colin, were already done. So that was nice and easier. Also Ethan was born at a totally different time of year, which I think made for an easier leave actually. With Colin, there was an upcoming Black Friday sale which was a bit more stressful.
I used a ClickUp system for planning a leave and mapping things out nearing the due date that I just LOVE. I plan to make it into a little mini offer and sell it at some point - if that interests you, let me know. I literally have it planned out month-by-month up until my leave.
When I think about the biggest things I had to prep before my leave, it was:
- Internal communication things for our team
- Autoresponders and communication outward
- Podcast episodes
- Social media content
- Any sales/promos
- Projects happening behind the scenes with my team
So let’s walk through those! And I’ll share what I did and how that went.
Internal Communication
On leave with Colin, we weren’t using Slack or ClickUp yet! We were on Voxer and Basecamp back then, so internal communication was just really different. Personally, I like Slack so much more than using Voxer when it comes to team communication with multiple people. It’s way more effective.
But when planning my maternity leaveI had to decide: what would the set up be? What’s the expectation for communication? I was planning this mentally throughout my whole pregnancy, but really got down and made a written plan in early February, a month before my due date.
The plan lived in ClickUp documents and then it was mainly executed in Slack. Again, I might make an eBook/audio course on this at some point!
But basically, I had documents for:
- Important dates/contact info
- My plan for unplugging
- Best methods for communication about different things (Slack or ClickUp based on urgency)
- The new maternity leave slack channel I wanted to use
- Managing the inbox notes about different requests we get and how to reply (plus information on all the canned emails I made)
Then, I shared that with my team, everyone read it over, and then we all had one-on-one meetings before my leave in the month of February to discuss questions and just touch base about things! I feel like all of that went really smoothly too. I loved our slack set up, and think that things felt clear to everyone. I also felt like I knew what was going on, while being unplugged!
Outward communication
This was mainly between me and Stacey since she responds to most things in my inbox! I made some canned emails in our email software for her to use and I set up an autoresponder. Business and customer service inquiries were responded to by Stacey as per usual, but for anyone emailing me, they got an auto response. I can’t recommend autoresponders ENOUGH! It gives you so much peace of mind when an important email does come through.
Podcast Episodes
This was the biggest thing probably that I actually had to prep for before my leave. ALL THE EPISODES! This can feel like a lot of work because you’re prepping ahead, while also just recording episodes for the month when you’re not on leave yet.
You need to make a decision: do you stop airing episodes and take a break? Record anything in real-time? Recast stuff? Interviews? All solo episodes? There is a lot to decide.
I have to say that I prepped this better than I did with Colin’s maternity leave, which I’m proud of. With his, I didn’t go as far out because of Black Friday looming and feeling like I needed to record in “real time” for that. I batched 15 episodes for this leave. That’s a LOT of episodes.
That said, it was a mix of things:
- 2 recasts from other shows
- 3 interviews I pre-recorded with guests
- Solo episodes
- 2 recasts of my old solo episodes
I was really strategic too in mapping out when things would happen. For example, one of the recasts happened the week that I assumed (correctly) that I’d have a newborn baby on my hands and might not want to promote an episode much on social media. I also left a gap for me to do the birth story if I wanted to.
When planning, I tried to vary up when things were airing so it wasn’t like 3 motherhood episodes in a row (for example). Ultimately, I looked at a 3 month period and the episode ideas I had and mapped them all in.
It’s worth noting too that my podcast team worked on these not in advance, but in real time, so I had communication with them every week for episodes. Tuesdays were a little bit of a work day for me on leave for episode things. I also recorded a few reels ahead of time for specific episodes, but mainly did social media content to promote the episodes in real time. It probably would have been easier if it were all prepped.
Read more: 3 Easy Hacks To Grow Your Show With Podcast Guests
Social Media
Social media was so different when I had Colin! While Reels were a thing, I could also post an image with a caption a lot too. I did a prep day for social media where I recorded some things. Ironically some of the stuff I prepped, I never posted.
Generally over my leave, I felt less engaged on social media and felt less of a need to show up this time around. I would go days at a time not posting anything, even to stories. I liked that.
I didn’t do that with Colin, I was on a lot sharing everything. I enjoyed the privacy this time posting less but then when I felt inspired, really going for it. For example, I did a few content pieces that I made while on leave that I really loved! I also had a doc going my whole leave with social media ideas that would come to me and some of them I made while holding Ethan in the dark nursery rocking him while he napped.
I can’t say I’d do anything different on the social media prep honestly. But it would have been easier on me if I had made more in advance to post. I also would have something planned to post and then just keep delaying and delaying it. So that’s the disadvantage of prepping.
Sales/promos
Ethan was born March 5th and I actually had a leap day sale going when he was born. It was a last minute decision which ended up being true pregnancy brain because I set up the coupon code wrong.
Generally with the timing of his birth, I decided no sales or launches were needed while I was on leave or even immediately when I returned! Which was SO GREAT AND NEEDED.
I did do a quick Memorial Day sale that I just put on my website and sent one email about, but that was it.
My products are all evergreen, which is the business model I love for this season of life! Things are always for sale. And that works really well for planning maternity leave because money can keep coming into the business, and people can still access your products while you are away.
Read more: Want Better Results from Your Launches and Sales? Steal My Launch Debrief System
Projects happening
The fun thing about having people work with you, is that you can have things happening when you’re not working.
We had a few projects that were actually tackled while I was on leave where I’d approve things and communicate about them over Slack and ClickUp like:
- Redesigning all my freebies into new brand look
- New social media graphics to go with new branding to use as needed on stories
- New blog post graphics to promote offers
- Making Podcast Success Blueprint evergreen
- Created two new freebies that went with podcast episodes (my guide to team check ins on Slack and my podcast equipment guide!)
- Weekly episode emails going out with weekly podcast episodes
Those were the main things, but I’m sure I’m forgetting something!
I originally had myself doing some 1:1 consulting meetings at 37/38 weeks pregnant and ultimately asked those people to reschedule for after baby was born. I was so beat at the end of pregnancy, feeling myself in more nesting/privacy mode and couldn’t do it.
So those got canceled and ended up being meetings I did when Ethan was like 2 months old. I am so grateful that they were ok rescheduling! I was just truly feeling so exhausted and anticipating birth at the end of pregnancy and felt honestly overwhelmed by to do list things for postpartum season like freezer meals, nursery, thank you cards for the baby shower, appointments, and I felt like I couldn’t take on anything else! And needed that break from meetings.
Next week, I’ll be sharing what the leave was actually like on a personal and professional level.
In the meantime, if you want more maternity leave episodes, tune into:
- Episode 139 was when I shared how I planned my leave with Colin
- Episode 158 is where I share what the maternity leave was like with Colin
- Episode 157 where I share my postpartum journey as a first time mom
If you're an expecting mom right now listening to this, I just want to say you're doing amazing. Pregnancy is really hard. Running a business while pregnant is really hard. Planning this leave on top of everything you're already doing is really hard, and you're doing amazing. Keep going. It'll all be worth it when you get to have that planned time away where you're just snuggling your baby, enjoying that phase, not having to worry about work.
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