Welcome back!  I’m pregnant. So pregnant. Oh my gosh. At the time of this recording, I am almost 33 weeks pregnant. This baby could theoretically come any day now, but it will definitely be seven weeks or less, which is psycho – that is psycho to think about.

We’re almost at the end, for those of you listening or watching. I’m a first-time mama, and if I’m being brutally honest I still feel like I’m not ready. Like the nursery? Ready. Me? Mentally, emotionally, I don’t know.

But the nursery is set up, and business is still being prepped. Right? I still have a ton of classes that I wanna attend, like labor and delivery and all those things. So yeah, lots still happening. But uh, I’m doing a lot of things to make sure that I am prepared. So I did sign up for a ton of classes, and I am prepping my business a lot over the next few weeks so that I can step away once this baby enters the world, and be present with this little human.

If I’m being completely transparent, I love working. I love working when it comes to my own business and the things I do for my clients. I love it so much. And I just don’t know what’s gonna happen when the baby comes. Like how I’m going to feel about that? Will I still feel the same way?

So what I’m doing really is prepping my business to be able to step away, like for the rest of the year, if I really want to. I also have things in place to be able to come back to work after a few weeks, if I really to. That’s kind of what’s exciting about doing all this prep work. Now it’s also a little stressful because it’s a lot to get done, but it’s all really fun. 

I feel good because I have a plan, and that’s what I want to talk about today. I wanted to share some tips on how to prep your business for maternity leave. Coming from someone who’s a first-time mom, and has no idea what the other side of this looks like yet, I just feel like I’m winging it.

So I will absolutely be coming back to do an episode on “did it work ?” But this is what I’m doing to prep my business for maternity leave. I’m going to parallel it with how I’m setting up my business. I’m going to give some tips for prepping for maternity leave, based on what I’ve done. Then I’m also going to tell you what I’ve done to do that!

Your Trimester List

So first things first, start with a list as soon as you hit your third trimester, if not even sooner. So everything is up in the air, at this point in the third trimester, baby could kind of come whenever. But it’s really good to be prepared. So I encourage you to look at everything. Client work, marketing sales operations, and make a plan.

Next, how did I handle client work? Can you schedule new clients or new projects around this? We’re adding buffers to your timeline. What did I do for this? I treated trimesters like quarters in my business. (This is where everyone who knows me says “of course you did Lauren, what else would we do?”) Trimester one, first trimester I cruised. I just kind of was like, that’s what you do in Q1. Usually, you’ve got your plans from the previous year, you’re going ham on them, and you’re just cruising. You’re on autopilot.

In trimester two, I got realistic and began to wonder how we can innovate. We’ve already gone through trimester one. How has this worked for me? How can I innovate for the future trimesters and corners of this year? Trimester three, I implemented a ton of new strategies, and in trimester four, my plan is to take most of it off.

And that’s actually how I operate in my business too. Like Q4 I cruise, I typically have my plans and everything situated, my strategies situated by the end of Q3. During Q4, when the holidays come, I can take those six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s and just cruise.

I’m really, really big on that and being prepared for that. So that’s just how it’s gonna work for me this year. Thank God my baby is due mid to early November! So I’m gonna be able to treat that the same way as my business, and be able to kind of cruise and take the rest of the year off if I really wanted to.

Client Work Management & New Projects

So what did I do, client-wise, in my business? How have I prepped that? I didn’t take on any new clients for Q4 unless they were web design-related – there’s a reason for that. I buffered in timelines with these clients, knowing that I have a baby on the way, but also if I wanted to open my computer and work on a website in between dealing with the baby and cleaning the house, I can do that.

I’m not gonna feel pressured to do so. It’ll be more of like a passion project, and building websites Show-It websites. If you don’t know, I’m a show-it web designer. So it’s really like a passion project for me to be able to do those. 

I love the mix of strategy and creativity, and I just don’t advertise that I do them. I get a lot of leads straight from Show-It. So I’ve been fielding those leads and saying, okay, I can either start in Q1 of next year or I might be able to take on a few and Q4. As of right now, I’m not taking on any more for Q4 and pushing them all to Q1.

But there are a few things I’ll be able to do, like while I’m on maternity leave if I wanna open my computer and do them. Lastly, I let all my clients know that I’ll be taking time around the baby being born completely off – as you should. My current plan at the time of recording, is two weeks post-baby, completely computer and client call free. I will have everything directed to my marketing coordinator. She will field any emergencies. If there are any, let me know of them and I will get to them in a timely manner.

But for the most part, those first two weeks, I do not plan on opening my computer for work-related reasons. And I’ll ease back in when the two weeks is up. That is my current thought – is opening my computer, getting back to some emails, getting back to some clients, doing some like due diligence here and there.

I really don’t want to have to worry about sitting down and hashing out planning and doing all of that. That is kind of gonna be what I save more for towards the end of December before Christmas, I will regroup with a few of my clients that I do consulting and strategy with. And we will look at all those things together. We did a lot of prep for that already, the middle of Q3. So really set me up for success there with those clients.

Operations & Sales Restructure

All right. Let’s talk about operations and sales. In the late second trimester, also the late second trimester of this pregnancy, I decided to completely restructure the pillars of my business and get it from my head to paper. So what this looks like for me is instead of just going gung ho all in on mentorship, I was like, you know what? I really enjoy consulting. I really enjoy strategy. I bring a lot of strategy into what I do for mentorship. How can I restructure this?

So I restructured the mentorship side of my business to be more passive programs, group programs, things of that nature, none of which I’m running. I’m not running any live programs for the rest of the year, after the one I’m doing right now which is “Data Driven Money Moves.” But I do have products I sell passively through there.

I have workshops and masterclasses and ways to bundle those things, to continue learning in your business. I also recognize that people in that industry and that sector who buy into that pillar of mine are also taking a lot of Q4 off. If they’re doing anything, it may be a little bit more passive as well. They may be like watching courses or doing things like that, but they’re not investing in a lot of one-on-one, and I’m okay with that.

So what I did instead was beef up my consulting pillar, which people from my mentorship pillar can bleed into that with brand strategy intensives I have. So I loaded up Q3 with a ton of brand strategy intensives. I’m not really taking on any for Q4. Those are my one-on-one sessions with clients where I sit with them and we create a strategy. “Data Driven Money Moves” was part of my mentorship and consulting pillar. 

It acts as a group consulting program, and I’m currently working with people for the next four weeks in that program to help them build out their strategies for the rest of Q3 or Q4, and then going into 2021. Then on the Show-It side of things, I just decided I’m gonna do custom sites, template sites, and then creating some templates. So I decided I could have a little bit of fun with that in Q4 if I really wanted to create website templates.

So I completely restructured all of that. I put it all on paper. I looked to see how things could intersect and I developed some new programs within each. I’m so excited about that. This allowed me to plan for Black Friday, knowing I’d want to have some sort of more passive type of sale and squeeze in one more live program for mentorship before black Friday. This just happened to be “Data Driven Money Moves” that I’m running now, and then that’s it for the rest of the year.

Putting this plan together allowed me to clearly see capacity on how many more brand-intensive consulting clients I could take on if I wanted to for the start of Q4. But like I said, I’m not. How many websites I could realistically take on with extended timelines, knowing that a baby could come midway through the project, and all of my clients understand that. So that’s worked really well in my favor.

Don’t go MIA

The last thing I wanna talk about in terms of prepping your business – marketing. You can’t just go dead. You can’t because when you try and come back in Q1, it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. So how far ahead realistically, can you get?

This looks different for everyone. I do a lot of foundational stuff when it comes to marketing: podcasting, YouTube, blogging things, Pinterest – things that people search for and that I can kind of like let run on autopilot on the back-end. So then showing up on Instagram, or showing up on LinkedIn, that’s just kind of more fun for me. 

So as someone who identifies as a marketing pro, this is actually something I decided to hire help for. I was so deep in sales, operations, and client work, that I was like, “I don’t really have time to create a marketing strategy for myself right now.” So I’ve hired a strategist. I will be meeting with her next week, I’m really excited. She’s gonna help me come up with a 90 day content plan to carry me through baby and the start of 2022, so my shit doesn’t fall flat, which is the worst thing you can do. 

I’m actually really excited about this to get an outside perspective on the pillars of my business and how I can effectively market them on different channels. Freaking stoked. Again, something I could probably do, but the capacity – I recognize the capacity of my business is just not there.

 So really excited again, have someone come in and provide that other opinion and help me build a strategy. It’s just something I could outsource for idea’s sake and feel confident about having a plan, having something to follow, having that structure. I really thrive on like structure and routine. So again, very excited about that.

But in addition to this, I planned all podcasts and YouTube videos for the rest of the year. I am literally sitting here today batch recording like four of them, so you’re listening to like 204 right now or watching, if you are looking on YouTube, I decided to do this for a reason.

I didn’t want to have the pressure of needing to get on the podcast weekly when the baby’s here and scheduling that around times that she’s crying, or needs feeding, or whatever it may be. I wanted to get ahead as far as I could, and really align it with the marketing strategy. So knocking some of those things out was really awesome.

And then lastly, I plan for my Black Friday promos and we’ll have those completed prior to the baby. That is on autopilot, I’ll have some things I can talk about if I wanna pop on stories. I’ll have my emails all set up everything is just done and ready to go so that I can sit back and enjoy Thanksgiving and that time of year with my family.

Practice Time Off

A few other things I’ve been doing to prep for this. I’ve been practicing over the last few weeks, like taking Fridays pretty much off. Working like maybe a little bit on the weekends or working a shorter burst. So maybe three or four hour days, instead of like seven, eight hour days, and spreading those out over sometimes the weekend too, which I’m okay with. 

I’m kind of a homebody. I don’t mind opening my computer for a few hours on a Saturday just to feel productive. And I’ve gotten a few things done, it’s totally up to you, how you wanna work and operate.

Being pregnant I have this burst of energy in the morning, and then I fall off completely in the afternoon. So knowing that I will sometimes work in the mornings on Saturdays and Sundays, so I can be my most productive self and get the most done that I possibly can. And it’s worked really well for me. But as of right now, I only work like 17, 20 hours a week. So I’ve been able to spread that out as efficiently as I possibly can. 

But I’ve also been prepping my marketing coordinator and other contracts I work with well, ahead of time with standard operating procedures, I’ve made them privy to the list of things that need to get done before the baby comes and they are jumping into help and it’s been absolutely amazing.

Final Thoughts

So some final thoughts here. I don’t believe that having a baby makes me any less of a strong worker than I am or that my work ethic will suffer as a result. Thankfully the people in my life, the clients I’ve had, I’ve got a few comments such as “I know we’re working against a timeline here, and a deadline here”. But for the most part, they know that about me and they know that like, I want to continue to work. I want to continue to help. I’m not just going to fall off the face of the planet – or at least that’s not my plan.

 So my clients have been extremely supportive and I’m really excited to continue my business and do the best I can to balance business and baby. It’s just a new, exciting and terrifying thing that you get to balance. Especially as a first-time mom, again, I have no idea what to expect alongside being a business owner, being a mom, and contributing to my household all at the same time. Like that’s what’s important to me.

 So I’m really excited about this challenge, but I want to end with this. I did get a question on how I’d be sharing my baby on social media, and I’ve just decided I’m gonna be very transparent. I decided that I really wanna protect the privacy of my child. I don’t know how long I’m gonna feel that way. If that’s gonna be until they’re 16, 17, and can, you know, make their own decisions on when to post a social media. But as far as my public accounts for business, I’m just not going to be showing her face. So if we are friends, you might get to see pictures of my baby.

 If you follow my personal Instagram, but we have kind of set the same boundaries with our family. We do not want her face to be public. We don’t want that to be the focus. My business doesn’t revolve around my child. So I don’t feel the need to share a lot about her in my business.

I kind of wanna keep that to myself and keep that like private. And I think that’s a little controversial in today’s day and age with social media. But hey, if you’re my friend or family, you can follow me on my personal Instagram and you will see all those updates there. I will text them to you.

But as far as business is concerned, gonna keep her pretty private. So that’s what I’ve decided for now. You’ll see what happens around that. But I really, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you were expecting mama, I’d also love to hear how you are prepping your business.

And if you’re already a mama, I’d love to hear what worked for you. I know everyone’s different. Everyone’s children has different needs, but this is my first time doing this. I am totally winging it based on you know, things I’ve seen and how I like what I know about myself, but again, not fully knowing what to expect anything could happen. So if you enjoy this episode, please, please share message me again.

If you’re not expecting mama, tell me what you’re doing. If you’re another mama already, like, what did you do? I seriously love having conversations like this and hearing from you guys. So please don’t hesitate to reach out. All right. Well, that’s it for today’s episode and I will see you on the next episode of She’s Busy AF.