Planning For Maternity Leave as a Multi 6-Figure Entrepreneur
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Planning for maternity leave as an entrepreneur can feel overwhelming. How long should you take off? What do you want your maternity leave to look like? What needs to get done? The thing about your maternity leave is that it’s going to look different for everyone. There is no right or wrong way to do it.
I’m sharing my experience with planning for maternity leave as a multi-six-figure entrepreneur. If you’re new here and you’re wondering what kind of entrepreneur I am, I am a destination wedding photographer, and I’m also a business coach and mentor for photographers.
One of the things I love to teach my photography students is how to build and scale their businesses so they’re able to work less and make more, but also have their businesses built around their lives. Often, I see photographers burn out over and over again, and this is exactly why I created my mentorship program Scale It to help them not burn out.
That is why I’m so passionate about planning for this maternity leave and allowing myself to enjoy my life rather than my business feeling like a burden to me. Something I said from the very beginning when I found out I was pregnant is that I want to be a mom when I’m a mom and I want to be an entrepreneur when I’m an entrepreneur.
Regardless of where you are in your journey, I truly hope it helps you to feel more confident in your decision of how to operate during your leave.
My Quick Disclaimer
Before we dive into the 7 steps I have taken for planning my own maternity leave, I just want to say that I don’t have it all figured out. There’s a lot of pressure with being an entrepreneur and knowing it’s solely on you to make an income. When you go from making consistent $25k, $50k, and $100k to planning to take time off, you have to wrap your mind around the fact that it’s going to be slower.
It hasn’t always been easy planning for this maternity leave. So, if you find yourself there, just know you have a friend in me and I do hope that these 7 steps that I’ve taken will also help you in your business too.
Deal with immediate and urgent matters
The very first thing I did was deal with the immediate and urgent matters. For example, when I found out I was pregnant, I had just booked a dream photography client who was having a destination wedding in Montana.
I found out 2 weeks after they had booked me that I was pregnant. Their wedding day was the day after my due date. I knew I needed to be transparent with this client and let them know. This way, they could make other plans and find another photographer who was available for that day. Even though it was a non-refundable retainer, I refunded them everything they had paid me. I truly value client experience and serving people over any kind of dollar in my pocket.
While getting those urgent things taken care of isn’t fun, it’s one of those inevitable things. So, have grace with yourself and do what feels good for you and your clients.
Get clear on your non-negotiables
One huge hurdle I found myself dealing with was simply feeling comfortable with taking time off in general. As entrepreneurs, our businesses are our babies. It depends on you to show up and put in the work to see the results you want to see. With this maternity leave, I was feeling such a scarcity mindset. I had to address those limiting beliefs that would rob me of being present during my maternity leave.
One of my biggest goals is to be a mom when I’m a mom and to be an entrepreneur when I’m an entrepreneur. I feel called to entrepreneurship and to serve my clients and students. I also feel called to being a mom and being very present in that kind of way. So, I had to get clear on what those non-negotiables were going to be.
To do this, I just brain-dumped in my Notion template. I reevaluated my goals, my supporting actions, the tasks at hand for those goals, and even reprioritized them.
Even with all of these non-negotiables, I knew I still wanted to continue having the podcast, blogging with SEO-rich keyword blogs, accepting applications and enrolling students, nurturing my waitlist for Scale It, and continuing my email marketing.
I knew I didn’t want to actively work on any digital products or launches, answer any emails, take any calls, or record podcast episodes.
So, take some time to think about what your non-negotiables are going to look like. Maternity leave will look different for everyone, so make sure you do what’s best for you.
Create a maternity protocol and plan
My vision and idea of what I wanted maternity leave to look like have changed quite a bit. At first, I didn’t think I would really take time off. However, I started thinking about the desire to truly pause and be present as a mom when I’m a mom.
What I have decided is that I’m going to take 4 weeks completely off. During the 4-6 week period, I will check in once per week with my admin assistant. After this 4-6 week mark, I’ll still have an abbreviated schedule where I’ll continue to serve my students. It will just be once per week so I can still be active and engage with my community. Once I hit the traditional 12 weeks, I’ll begin returning to more of my work. However, I will have reduced working hours where I can work for a few hours a couple of times a week.
Create tasks around this plan
I needed to create tasks for myself to know what needed to be done in order to have my team feel fully equipped while I was gone. So again, I brain-dumped what I wanted my maternity leave to look like. Then, I came up with a bunch of tasks that needed to be done to get that in place.
For example, I mentioned that I wanted to continue having podcasts, but I didn’t want to record during my leave. That meant I needed to batch out my podcast episodes prior to whenever baby could arrive.
This meant I had to create tasks to get more guests on the show. I didn’t want to batch a ton of episodes by myself.
Prioritize and put tasks on the calendar that need to be done
If you’re anything like me, you love to plan out your tasks and you love organization. However, you also don’t know how to draw a good line between non-negotiables and priorities. Getting clear on those non-negotiables is really going to help whenever it comes down to the prioritization and actually putting things on your calendar to be done.
Have would-be-nice tasks laid out
While I really did need to prioritize the non-negotiables, I knew it would be really cool to get done with XYZ. However, I knew it would be okay if they didn’t get done. If you find yourself having some extra time while planning for your maternity leave, these are things you can work on but know you’ll be fine if they don’t get taken care out.
Be flexible
I chose a word for this year, and that word is adaptability. I knew that this year was going to look different than any other year. Also, I know it’s only going to continue to be necessary that I’m flexible, my team is flexible, and that I’m still serving well. On the flip side, I want to be present in my life. I know I’m going to have to be flexible with myself and know that I’ve done my due diligence in planning as well as I can.
Final Thoughts
The last bit of encouragement I want to leave you with is this: There is no right or wrong for how your maternity leave is going to look. Nobody else can tell you how to take a maternity leave. However, if you remain flexible doing all of these steps, I truly think it will help you to feel more confident in your decision of how to operate during your leave. It sure has for me!
If you have a friend who is thinking about family planning or is even in the midst of their own maternity planning and you think this would help them, I would love it if you would share it with them!
In this episode, we cover:
- Dealing with immediate and urgent matters first
- Getting clear on the non-negotiables you want to continue pursuing during maternity leave
- Creating a maternity leave protocol and plan, and then planning tasks around that plan
- Putting tasks on the calendar that need to get done
- Have some would-be-nice tasks laid out
- Always be flexible
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Scale It
- Episode 32 – How I Took an Entire Month and Still Make 5-Figures
- Notion Template – PODSQUAD discount code
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