How I Planned a 3 month Maternity Leave from My Business – The Highs & Lows

Quick trigger warning: this episode starts with the story of how I found out I was pregnant. To read about how I planned for my maternity leave when self employed, please skip to the second section of this post.

I found out I was pregnant on Memorial Day 2019. On that day my life completely changed.

I’ll start by saying that even though I was trying to have a baby, there’s still nothing more surprising and shocking than seeing that positive line show up on a pregnancy test. I was beyond thrilled. 

I also know that I was (and AM) incredibly lucky. I was told by doctors early on that I’d likely have a very hard time getting pregnant. They said it could take a year or longer if I’m lucky – and that there was a chance that I’d need fertility treatments. 

Well jokes on them because I got pregnant in my second month of trying – so you can see my surprise! 

Nine months later, my beautiful, healthy, amazing baby boy showed up and our whole world has changed. But what happened in between finding out I was pregnant and then?

After the buzz and excitement of finding out I was pregnant, I knew I needed to get to work to figure out how I’d plan time off. 

We had a vacation planned to Banff National Park in Canada the week right after I found out (by the way, 10/10 do NOT recommend going on a massive hiking trip right after you find out you're pregnant, because that’s right when my symptoms started kicking in).

But pretty much right when we got home, I started planning for what I hoped would be a 3 month maternity leave.

Planning for My Maternity Leave as a Self Employed business Owner: Setting Goals

My main goal for my maternity leave were to make sure that my business continued to operate as usual, with little to no support from me. This meant making sure that:

• My email was taken care of (I wanted to disconnect entirely from email since it's a major source of stress for me
• To continue business sales while supporting customers without me needing to do anything
• Setup an automatic launch so that I could inject additional revenue into my business
• Continue my podcast, social media, and automated email engagement (weekly messages to my list)

Planning for Parental Leave when You Run a Digital Product Business

First of all, it's important to start by saying that my business is a digital product business. It makes money even when I am not working. 

Click here to learn how to launch a digital product in 90 days

When I was planning my maternity leave, I didn’t have to stress about losing clients or losing income. I knew that all of that would stay the same and it even had the potential to grow if I played my cards correctly. 

Planning my maternity leave when self employed more so meant that I’d have all the systems in place to continue engagement, maintain customer support, and maintain a presence online, if even an automated presence. 

The first thing I did was pull out a calendar and map everything out. Mind you – I’m not a planner. So this was pretty tough for me.

But I learned that you really need to know what you’re planning for before you can start knocking things off your to-do list and outsourcing.

Here’s what that looked like for me. These are all of the different events, dates and times that I mapped out to make sure I knew what I had to expect:

1. I picked the start day of my maternity leave (remember, plan for just before your due date since most people go late) and the rough end date.
2. I mapped out the content I wanted to publish for the podcast, focusing on how many would I need and trying to stick to once a week for entire leave
3. I then mapped out all the promotions I would be a part of, both the virtual summits and product bundles that I would be a part of, and my own promotion calendar
4. I selected the next date for the Rebel Boss Summit, which was a bit tricky. Typically I’d host the Summit in February but that’s when the baby was due. So I ultimately had to move it which was a bummer for me, but in the end was the right decision. 

Want to learn more about how I planned for the May 2020 Rebel Boss Summit? Listen to RBL episode 052, Behind the Scenes of my $32,000 Rebel Boss Virtual Summit (May 2020 Launch Debrief).

Planning What to Set Aside During Your Maternity Leave – self employed

The next thing I did was a pretty big challenge – I mapped out the projects and tasks that I knew I couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to focus on during maternity leave. 

I’m a doer. If I have an idea, I like to act on it immediately. 

I set super high goals for myself and then put a lot of pressure on myself to reach those goals. Just like many others, I also struggle with comparing myself to other people. 

If I’m not growing, I’m shrinking – at least that’s my mindset a lot of times, so I knew this would be a struggle.  I also really value my work time. 

I’ve wanted a baby ever since I could remember. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t struggle with the idea that my time would no longer be my own and lots of things would need to be put to the side. 

So here’s what got put to the side: 

1. Outreach – I usually like to pitch myself for podcasts and opportunities every week. I decided that maternity leave was not going to be the time for that. For me, it would be a season of maintenance not a season of growth, and that just needed to be fine even if it was a mental challenge. 
2. Product creation – I’ve wanted for a long time to repackage my offerings and create a product suite. It’s been on the backburner for a long time and the plan was for it to stay there. 

Planning Your Workload Leading Up to Your Parental Leave

After I thought through what needed to be put to the side, the next thing I did was figure out what the workload would look like leading up to maternity leave.

When you have a traditional job, parental leave typically means that your work is going to be hired out to someone else while you're gone, or they're going to move your tasks to someone else in the interim, or they're just not going to do those tasks.

 But when you’re running your own business that's not how it works. 

It is your job to figure out the entire process. You have to figure out what work you're going to be responsible for completing in advance, what work you're simply not going to be able to get done and what work you're going to need to hire out to other people to do in advance or while you're out.

With the limited time that I had, here’s what I ultimately decided to do: 

Podcasts:

I spent my time recording as many podcast episodes as possible, solo episodes and interview episodes. 

I edited and scheduled when those episodes would go live.

My VA created the social media posts, transcribed them and turned them into blog posts. I then drafted and scheduled emails that would be sent to my email list each week corresponding to the dates of publication, so my email, social media and blog/podcast content was covered.

Product Promotion and Launch:

Next, I focused on the weeks that were dedicated to specific products promotion. I decided to plan an automated launch for my Instant Customers Course in the middle of my maternity leave. It’s a relatively low cost, high value product. 

Essentially my launch consisted purely of emails and some automation on the website side of things. So I spent some time setting that up, including scheduling pre-launch nurturing emails and launch emails.

I also deliberately created and scheduled tripwire-related podcast content to publish in the weeks leading up to the automated launch.

Virtual Summits:

I also had some virtual summits I was participating in during maternity leave that needed promotion scheduled. I set that up as well, including some emails and social media content.

I also needed to do a lot of the initial work for the May Rebel Boss Summit. By May I planned to no longer be on maternity leave, but summit work usually starts 90 days in advance. This would have been the beginning of my maternity leave, so obviously I needed to do this all before baby!

I ended up finding all of my speakers, pitched them, and trained my VA on everything she needed to know: how to onboard speakers, support affiliates, and set up the website. 

Ultimately, it ended up being not too much work. And I’m so grateful I did so much on the front end because it let me soak up all the baby time during those first few months.

What I Hired Out During My Maternity Leave

To summarize, the things that I ended up hiring out included:

• Podcast transcription, editing and social media content creation
• Email management
• Customer support and membership management
• All of Rebel Boss Summit prep besides pitching

Some of these I normally hire out, like my podcast creation work, and some of these I don’t, like my email. After spending a few months not managing my inbox, though, I NEVER want to go back.

Email Management During Parental Leave

Email is a big drain for me. I am not somebody who regularly achieves inbox zero. My email inbox is the place you go where you want to feel insane and crazy because there's absolutely no sense of organization there. 

I knew that I did not want to be in email during my maternity leave. So my teammate, Alana, ended up completely managing that. 

We created a system for what emails she would handle versus what emails needed immediate attention from me and what emails needed to be handled by me but could wait a bit for a reply. What worked really well for us was:

• We created a maternity leave to-do folder that I logged into once a week to check out and address any issues that I needed to reply to, but weren’t urgent,
• Any emails that needed my immediate attention were forwarded to my personal email that I was still checking, and
• Anything else, I trained my teammate Alana to handle herself.

For the most part, everything worked out well and as planned. It wasn’t always that clean of a process and sometimes things slipped through the cracks. 

But overall that worked really, really well and I recommend that process.

My teammate would also keep the inbox clean, so if ever I felt tempted to look at my emails the inbox was always clean and nothing stressed me out in there! Which is great because as I’m sure you know, work can be stressful sometimes. And I did not want to have that.

Dealing with the Unplanned and a Global Pandemic

I was really proud of myself throughout my maternity leave that I didn’t feel the pressure to work and that I wasn’t feeling badly about not working either. I truly was just soaking up time with the baby. 

And then of course, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and we had to go into quarantine.

At the beginning, it was fine. My husband was actually home for 6 weeks with no work, so he was there to help with the baby and we got to spend a lot of amazing quality time together. He definitely wouldn’t have had that time if things were “normal.” 

But then he went back to work right when my maternity leave was wrapping up and I had no childcare. We were quarantining away from my mom, who usually helps with childcare, and so I was like, what am I going to do?

 My plan to go back to work after maternity leave was gone. There was no way I could go back to work as usual because I was one hundred percent of the time alone with my child. 

Honestly? That was really, really tough because I had planned for ninety days and I did not plan for anything longer than that.

It was especially tough because that landed us in about April, and right when the Rebel Boss Summit prep really needed to pick up. Most of the work was done but there were some things I needed to do – like record introduction sessions with every speaker, get the promotions all set up, and video editing.

All throughout my maternity leave, I was confident that I would be going back to work at the end of ninety days. And then when that didn't happen, I was just lost and confused.

I ended up needing to work a few nights and a few hours during the weekend here and there to make sure everything went off for the summit without a hitch. And it did, of course, and I’m very proud of that.

Lessons Learned Post Parental Leave

Things are definitely better now. My mom is now taking care of the baby for a few days a week, which gives me a few hours to do my own thing, to record podcasts, and  to get some new projects rolling. 

And I’m going to be honest, if there's something that I learned throughout this whole experience is that I really don't want to be a caretaker 100% of the time. 

I really want to work. It's important for my mental health and it's important for my well-being. I love to work and I love to accomplish things. And that's really important to how I value myself and my time. 

It's important to me that I continue what I'm doing and continue working towards the big goals that I have for myself. And it’s still something that I'm trying to figure out, even as my child is just about six months old.

It’s still very, very much a work in progress. 

Something I would love to share with you is one of my takeaways: if you are planning for the maternity leave of your first child in particular, just know that the process continues even after your maternity leave is done. 

It will continue to be a struggle and a learning process. And that's okay. 

I went from working full time, 30 to 40 hours a week, to maybe 10 hours a week. I’ve been working with the time I have, and honestly, I've had my best year financially so far! I couldn't be more grateful or privileged, to be completely honest. 

Another key takeaway that I learned: whatever amount of time you think that you want to take for maternity leave, add another month to it. So let's say you’re aiming for three months – you should actually plan for a four month leave. 

Not to say that you should take that fourth month and not work, but you should plan to use that fourth month as a transition period, a time to ease back into things. 

I planned for three months, but I wish I had planned for four because then it would have been easier. I would have had four months of content rather than three. That would have made it easier, because I wasn’t able to stay on top of the things I wanted to accomplish.

I was struggling with the postpartum hormones, learning how to be a mom, getting back in shape and adjusting to a new dynamic as a first time mom with a spouse amidst a global pandemic and all the emotions that come with that. It was absolutely a lot to handle and it still is a lot to handle.

Looking Back and Looking Forward in My Business

To finish up, there are definitely a few things that I’m really grateful I did before I went on leave. 

• I moved my summit from February to May, which was a smart decision. 
• I participated in summits and bundles during my maternity leave, which really helped keep me sane because it helped my income remain consistent throughout my maternity leave 
• I batched a TON of content. And that helped me feel like the wheels were still spinning even in my absence, and that my business wasn't completely at a standstill. 

What was your experience going on parental leave? What worked and what didn’t? Reply in the comments or talk with me on instagram @edenfried. I’d love to hear from you!