The Strategy You Need To Prepare Your Business For An Epic Maternity Leave (Part 2)
Today I am excited to be sharing Part 2 of my two-part series on preparing your business for an epic maternity leave.
Last week, in Part 1, I shared the mindset side of things. And if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, make sure you go back and listen here.
In today’s episode, I’m diving into the STRATEGY you need to prepare your business for maternity leave.
I share the key strategic decisions I’ve made and the practical actions I took in preparation for this season, with the intention that it will support you to create your own version of an epic mat leave.
I’m feeling so supported as I head into this baby birthing vortex and a big reason for that is because I’ve been so intentional about setting things up to run as smoothly as possible while I’m off.
Now, have I been as organised as I wanted to be? No.
Has it been frustrating that I’ve lost my voice in this last month before I’m off? Yes.
But because I’ve been strategic about how I’ve gone about it, it hasn’t mattered.
I want to share what this lead up and planning process has looked like for me strategically, so that if you are also planning your maternity leave right now – you’ve got some things to consider while you’re planning.
And maybe you’re not expecting a baby right now, but you’re planning on having a baby sometime in the near future, maybe you’re trying to conceive right now – you might want to bookmark and come back to this episode again at that time.
I’ve also had a question about how I’ve done things differently this second time around, because this is my second maternity leave. If you’re new around here, I have a beautiful little 3 year old, Noah. So I’ll also be sharing what my maternity leave plans looked like with Noah, 3 whole years ago now, compared to what they look like now with this second baby.
Alright, let’s get into it.
What my maternity leave will look like
What I think is worth sharing first and foremost is what I am actually planning my maternity leave to look like, so you’ve got some context going into this episode.
Firstly, I am taking 2 months off coaching and the day to day running of the business entirely.
Secondly, I’ve decided that I will still be online in some capacity. So my team will be able to contact me obviously, but I will also still be on socials.
However I am taking the pressure off what that looks like completely. If you see me on socials, sharing stories or posts in real time, it will mostly be lifestyle content that I’m creating and sharing in the moment. I remember when Noah was born, it felt really fun and special to share that/ time with my community online.
All the business-related content you’ll be seeing from me over those two months, that will mostly be pre-scheduled, batched content that my team is supporting me with. But I’ll chat more about what that looks like in a sec.
The point here is that I will still be on socials, but there is absolutely no pressure or expectation as to what that will look like. And that feels really good to me.
And I think it’s really important to remember that what feels good for me will be different to what feels good for you. I’ve got friends in business who decided to go offline completely during their maternity leave, and that felt great for them.
Like in all things, there’s no “one right way” to do maternity leave. Only you can decide what feels good for you.
The best advice I can give you is to keep it as open ended as possible and to hold any decisions you make on this side of maternity leave lightly. If you decide you want to keep showing up online during your maternity leave and then you get one week in and that is just not feeling aligned anymore – it’s okay to change your mind, it’s okay to break your own rules.
And that goes for everything, not just what you decide about how you want to use social media. It’s okay to change your mind and break your own rules. Flexibility is going to be your friend in this season of your life and business.
The key strategic decisions I made
So knowing there are many ways maternity leave can look – it’s then about deciding what’s going to work for you and planning from there.
So no one-size-fits-all strategy for maternity leave here, sorry team!! It’s all about what feels good and aligned for you.
For me, I finished up with clients at 36 weeks and gave myself another week to wrap things up behind the scenes, record some podcast episodes, finalise things with the team.
I made the decision that I’d still be on socials in some capacity, and that I would batch record guest interviews for the podcast and batch social media content so that I can still serve you through this time in a really valuable way without having to be creating and sharing content in real time.
And when I do come back to client work in October, it will just be to one of my containers initially – the Spiritual Business Mistressmind.
So I’ll return to coaching inside that one container BUT I’ve intentionally made no other plans outside of that. There’s no launches planned for the rest of the year, no plans to create and release anything new, nothing on the agenda outside of coaching my clients in the Mistressmind and settling into life as a mama of 2.
And again this was a really intentional decision – I knew I wanted to come back to coaching in October and that I wanted to do so within the Spiritual Business Mistressmind. I love that container! And in terms of what it requires of me time and capacity-wise, I’ll be coming back to one group call per week plus Voxer coaching & support, and that feels both fun and spacious.
But outside of that, I really wanted to give myself as much flexibility as possible. For example, up until last week, I hadn’t quite made a decision on whether I’d stick with weekly podcast episodes while on mat leave or move to a fortnightly schedule. It really depended on how many episodes I could batch record ahead of time.
Now if I decided to stick with weekly, I would have enough episodes ready and recorded to see me through until early October – and I could totally make that work if I wanted to! But to create the spaciousness and flexibility I want in this season, I’ve decided to move to a fortnightly schedule for the next few months.
And that decision feels SO good! Like so much pressure off knowing that I’ve got enough episodes ready to see the podcast through until mid-November now and that I’ll have the flexibility to shift back to weekly episodes whenever I’m ready. That feeling in my body, that sense of relief – that’s how I know it’s the right decision for me.
Planning for an epic maternity leave
Flowing on from there – once those decisions are made, it's then looking at what plans you need to make around that.
For example, knowing I wanted to come straight back into the next round of the Spiritual Business Mistressmind, I had to change my usual launch plan and strategy, and launch much earlier than I usually would.
It also meant that I ran a shorter Mistressmind container earlier this year, so the April Mistressmind was a 4-month experience, rather than 6 months.
And it meant getting creative in the ways that I could serve and support the women jumping on board for the October Mistressmind, while I’m off on mat leave, which is why we have 2 live guest masterclasses happening during that time.
All of these decisions and plans have been made with 2 things in mind – first, what’s going to work best for me in terms of taking time off to birth and nurture this baby, but also second, taking into consideration how I could serve and support my clients and community during this season.
So when looking at the different parts of your business and what it would mean for you to take this time off – what feels good for you first and foremost? This is the most important thing. But then also, what could that look like for your clients and community?
And just to be clear, stepping fully away from everything in your business is completely possible if that’s what you desire.
Again, there are no rules. There is no one “right” way.
You can also just decide to see how you go on the other side. There’s no need to make promises of “returning to work on XX date”. The decision could be to make no decision.
The difference between my first maternity leave and this one
Noah was born just over 3 years ago now and my business looked very different back then.
Now if you’re a new listener to the podcast or new to my community and you’re not familiar with my business journey yet, this might surprise you – but back then, a large part of my business was product-based. I had my own range of hand-poured soy candles and essential oil products.
And to let you in on a secret – technically, the online shop is still live on the website with a very limited amount of stock. But heads up, I will be closing it down either during mat leave or as soon as I’m back. It is definitely time to let that side of the business go once and for all!!
Anyway, that’s not the point – the point is, the product side of the business was a big chunk of the pie back then.
Strategy-wise, I decided to create a whole lot of stock ahead of time and keep the shop open while on maternity leave. I extended our shipping times to give us more flexibility and spoke to Matt about helping me with the packing and shipping.
On the coaching side of the business, I finished up with 1:1 clients around 36-37 weeks.
And I also had one group coaching program, which I actually created and launched for the first time while I was pregnant with Noah – my “Feminine Fire” group program, the namesake of this podcast. I went back and looked at my calendar – we wrapped up the final call for that first ever round when I was about 38 weeks, which was really pushing it close to the end there and I probably wouldn’t do that again!
In terms of what I had planned for returning to work after maternity leave – I had no solid plans except for hosting a weekend retreat with my mum about 5 months after Noah was born, which I was pretty confident I could do (and I wasn’t wrong!).
But all in all, I kept it as open as possible knowing that I had absolutely no idea what life would look like as a mama. And I’m really glad I did that because it gave me so much flexibility to make really aligned decisions on the other side of mat leave.
I think the one of the biggest differences between now and then is that I do have SOME understanding of what my capacity will be like most.
Obviously 2 kids will be different to 1, but we are keeping Noah in daycare 2 days a week and he’s still going to hang with my mum 1 day a week. And eventually, when we’re ready, mum will look after the baby on that day too – and when that happens I’ll have one solid day a week in the business, which is what I had for the first 18 months with Noah.
And because I have some idea of what that looks like, I’m feeling really confident in these decisions and plans that I’ve made this time around – they feel really good for me and that’s the most important thing.
The support from my team
The other MAJOR difference (and it’s a big one!) is that I now have a team supporting me, which I didn’t have back then.
This brings me to the next thing I want to share with you…
If you have a team, and I know depending on where you’re at in business, you may or may not have a team just yet – but if you do, start communicating with them around your planning and preparations early.
And if you don’t have a team but you’d like one to support you into and through your mat leave – get them in place as early as possible.
Something that has made a massive difference for me team-wise in the lead up to this mat leave is making some changes within my team structure.
So my team now looks like an incredible Content Manager – the wonderful Tahryn from the Social Bolt, who supports me with all things content. Side note: Tahryn was actually my first EVER team member, she is also a dear dear friend and it is an understatement to say that I was over the moon excited when she said that she’d join the team again this year.
And I also now have a wonderful Virtual Assistant, Jilanne, who just makes everything SO bloody easy! Oh my goodness, such a dream!! I actually also knew Jilanne before she joined the team – she supports my mum in her business as her VA. So when I decided I wanted to bring on VA support to complete the team, I knew I wanted Jilanne. Well, ask and you shall receive, because I got the dream team and I couldn’t be happier about it!
I also work with some other incredible contractors – Bamby Media being one of them, who edit the podcast each week, my designer Monique from fawnar, my bookkeeper Robyn. Shout out to all of you!!
Having an incredible team this time around has absolutely changed the game. And I wanted to share this with you for a couple of reasons…
Firstly, if you’re looking at the content I’ll be putting out over the next couple of months and thinking, how is Bec doing that? The answer is…I’m not. There’s a team of people that have made that possible.
And secondly, it’s really important that the team you have suit your needs and your working style.
For me, especially in this season as a mama, having support with content, launching, admin, project management and the behind the scenes running of my containers – that’s exactly what I need! And I now have a team on board that can support me in that.
Making those team changes early in the year was a really big part of being able to plan for a maternity leave that feels as good as this one does.
Strategically, the big advantage of doing this as early as possible is time.
For me, it meant that we had time to clarify, refine and record some of our key processes and also upgrade some of our systems and tech. For example, we were able to get rid of some subscriptions that weren’t serving us anymore, streamline some of our processes and implement some new tech that has made life so much easier.
I was also able to start communicating what I wanted my maternity leave to look like and we had plenty of time to plan it out together – for example, we looked at the different options for what our content strategy could look like during this time and then were able to make plans and create new processes from there.
I also created a maternity leave planning project inside Asana, our project management tool of choice, and started mapping out the different bits and pieces in there.
This Asana project includes pretty much everything that will be happening across the business during this time that isn’t already in Asana, including our processes for different things like our content plan across our different channels as well as a couple of the projects that the team will be working on in the background. And just making sure that everyone knows who’s responsible for what.
Having this mapped out in a shared space like Asana and opening up that communication as early as possible, even if decisions haven’t been made yet, has made a huge difference for me in terms of feeling confident that everyone knows what’s happening.
It’s also highlighted where there might be gaps in our planning and where decisions still need to be made.
And just to be clear, I was still making some of those decisions right up until last week. And that’s okay – because I knew that the decisions that were still left to make ultimately weren’t make or break decisions. If I happened to go into early labour, it wouldn’t have mattered. Because mapping it all out meant that we could prioritise what was important.
Essentially I left all the “not necessary but nice to have” things for last – things like batch recording reels. If they didn’t happen, they didn’t happen. No big deal. My business isn’t relying on them. But because they were in Asana, they weren’t forgotten either.
Some key takeaways for you as you plan your maternity leave
To finish I want to share just some quickfire takeaways for you as a bit of a wrap up / summary because all of my points today kind of all flowed one into the other.
Let’s go…
Start planning as early as possible
Know that there is no one “right” way to do maternity leave
Make your decisions based on what feels good for you – aka trust your intuition
Create as much flexibility and spaciousness as possible
Know that it’s okay to change your mind and break your own rules
If you have a team, make sure they’re your ideal dream team so you feel fully supported
Start communicating your plans with your team as early as possible
Ensure all projects and processes that are happening while you’re on maternity leave are recorded in your project management tool
I hope this episode about the strategy you need to prepare for an epic maternity leave has been helpful!
I really loved recording this two-part series for you and I have no doubt that on the other side of maternity leave I’ll be recording some sort of life update episode for you where I’ll share how it’s gone, what I’ve learnt and what life and business is looking like for me with a second baby.
In the meantime, thank you! And I’ll see you on the other side.
