How I'm Preparing My Design Business for Maternity Leave
Last year, 2019 was my first year as a full-time entrepreneur as a brand and website designer. And it was amazing. Ups and downs that you can read all about here, but basically working from home and doing work that inspires me everyday is such a blessing and I love it.
Well, my world is about to change as I’m due with our first baby in just a matter of weeks! As I’ve been pregnant I’ve had so many questions for how to prepare for maternity leave, especially being a solopreneur which means I’m the designer, marketer, CEO and everything else for my business. How does one go about this huge transition with time away and more importantly coming back?
Well, today I’ll pulling back the curtain to what I’m doing and hopefully, it helps give you some ideas for yourself if this is where you’re at or if this is something you’re hoping for in the future.
I know for me, I reached out to several friends of mine in the online space who recently had their first baby. We’ve chatted about how they took a maternity leave and more importantly how they’re navigating it all as they go back to their businesses as a stay-at-home mom. It was incredibly insightful so I hope this can be that for you–even though I’m figuring it out as I go–hopefully, this will be helpful!
Decide the length of time:
I work well with direction and planned steps so when I asked for advice on maternity leave it was frustrating to hear, “it’s whatever you want” because that doesn’t sound helpful to me. But the truth is, it WILL be different for every person so coming up with a maternity leave that fits you and your personality is how you need to approach it. While this was a struggle at first, I am now so grateful that I get to decide. So with that in mind, I’ve planned for 3-month maternity leave.
I knew I wanted to take the full amount of time to be with our new baby with no distractions and enjoy this precious time. For you, it may be 6 weeks or a couple of months, but whatever you decide to know that it will be just right for you. My maternity will start at the end of March and I’ll be away through the end of June. Practically speaking, I’ll share more about what that looks like with my clients in a minute.
Save for time away:
As an entrepreneur, I don’t have paid time off, so I had to create this for myself. The good thing about pregnancy is you have about 9 months to save and plan for when you’ll go on leave. So that’s what I did for months leading up to maternity leave I’ve been putting away so I can feel like I don’t have to worry as I have time off.
Talking with my husband about putting money aside and planning out how this would work financially was important and now it makes me relieved that we have our financials sorted and in place so I don’t need to worry about this, I can just enjoy the time away and come back to work when the time is up.
Tiered maternity leave:
I heard about this from my coach, and I love the idea. She explained that you don’t need to be away 100% of the time if you don’t want to be, you can always do 6 weeks completely off, then the next 4 weeks in and out of your business as you please, and the final 2 weeks reconnecting with upcoming clients, etc. This will look different for everyone, but I really like this idea. This gives me the chance to be fully away, dip my toe in, and gradually come back to work.
This is something I plan on doing and while the weeks may shift for how long I plan do to each tier, I like the idea of gradually coming back, taking Discovery Calls, and reconnecting with clients for when I fully return.
Book clients for when I return:
Which brings me to booking clients for when I come back. This is another suggestion from my coach that I was excited to implement. I decided I wanted to have clients ready and waiting to work with me when I return so that’s what I worked on leading up to my maternity leave so that I don’t need to scrabble to find clients when I come back, it’s already taken care of.
I now have most of my summer spaces filled and it gives me a huge sense of security, not only financially, but that I have work that I truly love to return to. I’m not gonna lie, I have a lot of concerns about how working from home will look while having a baby but that’s one of the reasons I scaled back my project workload and raised my prices. I want to take on less work while still providing for what we need.
Which brings me to…
Come back with an open mind
While I do have a lot of plans, they’re all fluid. Things may change. My baby may be harder to handle than I expect, but I want to plan on coming back with an open mind. So the best thing for me to do, is hope for the best, plan for what I want to happen, and go with the flow as it unfolds. My word for 2020 was “flow” because I want to be open to what’s in store so that’s how I’m approaching this new season of life.
So those are my plans (for now!). I hope this was helpful and would love to hear from you!
If you’ve gone through this process, what’s something you wish you did?
If you’re hoping to take a maternity leave in the future, what’s something you hope to implement?
