5 Tips for taking a Maternity Leave as a Small Business Owner

I’ve just started my maternity leave for the twins and (while they are not here yet), it’s hard to believe that I’m finally at this point. I’ve been preparing for this moment for months and it’s a little surreal to be here now.

When I originally announced to followers, friends and family that I intended to take a year (largely) off of my business for my maternity leave, I got a lot of interesting looks! I guess I can understand that! The average maternity leave in my area of the US is 6-8 weeks. So planning to take 6-8 months as a minimum is a rather large undertaking. Especially when I run my business entirely by myself. But I’m ready! It took some work, but much of this was in place long before that second line showed up on the pregnancy test, and I’m excited to share some of these steps with you now!

1: Craft Your Business CAREFULLY

Who is serving who?

I want to start with this simple fact: I have very carefully tweaked and adjusted my business to give me freedom as a mother and as a creative. I don’t want my family to have to work overtime to make my business work, I would rather have a business that supports my family.

Keep the costs DOWN

I am also very careful to keep all of my costs down on a yearly basis. I don’t pay for anything that I don’t feel is absolutely essential to run my business smoothly. This means that I will drop all subscriptions (Adobe anyone?) or programs (if you use a booking software or marketing app) during my maternity leave. In general, I work like this “full time”. I use CS5 as my design software (no monthly fees) and other than my bookkeeping and internet, there aren’t a lot of regular fees in my business that aren’t associated with taxes!

This is very intentional. I never want a low month in my business to effect my home life. And (knowing that we wanted to expand our family) I have kept my business costs as low as possible so that I have the freedom to take a maternity leave, or even a month off each December (5 years strong and I love it!) to soak in that time.

Invest without going crazy

Now, I am NOT saying that you shouldn’t invest in your business. I believe that you should, and I do myself—workshops, courses, tech, supplies, etc! Just avoid the repeat fees if you can and weigh each item carefully.

2: Diversify Your Income

This is huge.

If all of your money is coming from the same source and something happens to that, you’re in trouble! I think a lot of us a realizing that during this Stay at Home order for Covid-19. While I have my service based side of the business (wedding stationery), I also have art classes, art prints and receive 3 regular checks from other jobs that aren’t related to my main products. I diversified so that if one falls though (and it looks like at least one will with the shut downs), then I’m okay!

A few ideas to consider:

If you’re focusing on one thing—that’s good! It’s good to target and have a clear audience and objective. But if all of your income comes from photographing weddings, what is going to happen if you break your leg and require surgery? Or need to take a large chunk of your wedding season off for maternity leave? What do you have to fall back on? It’s time to brainstorm a “side service” that you can work with along side of your regular offering. What other skills do you have to offer? Most people run to teaching, but I honestly don’t always think that is a good place to start—instead look at other vendors in your industry and find out what they need. Do they need styled mock ups? Can you offer branding packages for small business owners? Or is there a product that you swear by that you could partner with for affiliates? Brainstorm, you won’t regret it!

3: Passive, Passive, Passive

The magical world of passive income

This kind of goes along with point 2—at least one of your income streams should be passive income. If you’re new to this idea, Passive income is basically something that you can sell that requires little to no work on your end after the initial “set up”. Now, there’s no such thing as completely passive income—you have to work hard to create the product or service before you sell it (and make it work the funds), but passive income is really where it’s at if you’re planning to take time off. My goal each year is to find new ways to generate passive income (courses, affiliate links, pre-made designs, etc) so that my revenue is 50-70% passive at the end of the year.

My maternity leave goals

During my maternity leave, passive income will be close to 95% of my income, if not higher. Again, I am planning to pretty much take the year off and just monitor things from the couch. At least that’s the goal! But this means that I worked hard before my maternity leave to make this happen.
That also means that I said “no” to a few service based jobs in order to set this up. It’s a balance, but I rarely regret setting aside time to work on my Passive Income.

4: Focus on Serving

Your current audience and following is the main focus

Before you make a to-do list on things that you want to do to prepare for your maternity leave, consider what would be most valuable to them. You may want to book a hundred weddings or book a bunch of speaking engagements leading up to the big day, but how are you preparing to serve your audience while you’re “gone”.

Break it down

For me, as an arts educator, it was MOST important that I would be able to continue serving my students through tutorials and fine arts education while I am busy snuggling my babies. So my first focus was interviewing my audience and creating/uploading a video tutorial and blog post for every single month that I am planning to be gone! Was this hard work? Absolutely!
A single tutorial means that I interviewed my audience, crafted and filmed the piece, edited the video(s) and uploaded them, wrote a blog post and scheduled a newsletter! Not to mention pins, keyword research and scheduled marketing! It was so hard, but worth it.

And it’s not exactly going to make me a ton of money (contrary to popular belief, YouTube doesn’t exactly pay the bills), but it will keep my audience engaged until I can return. After my audience was cared for, I could turn my attention back to the items that actually bring in funds (focusing on the passive income sources, of course!) and I put a ton of effort into these areas. Not everything that I wanted to do got done, which leads me to tip 5:

5: Drop the Clutter

Like I mentioned in tip 4, my first focus was on what would support my audience while I was unavailable. This means that I had to let other things go—plans that I had made long ago, “dreams” that had formed but are left unfinished—and that’s okay. It is seriously hard for me to accept, but it’s not the end of the world! I will be able to pick those back up when I return if I’m still interested. If not, it was a great way to express some creative juices.

If you’re preparing for your own maternity leave, then you are going to be very used to letting things go that you wanted to accomplish. It’s better to focus on the “most important” things first and enjoy the bonus if you’re able to get to something else! Does that mean that you’ll miss out on money making opportunities? Yes, sometimes it does. But if you crafted your business carefully, you took care of your audience and you have some passive income set up, your baby(s), your husband and your own mental health will thank you!

Why do all of this "work”?

Not everyone can (or wants to) take the time off that I am planning to take and that isn’t a bad thing! I’ve been preparing for this situation since BEFORE my first son was born. And when he was a newborn, I found that I really wasn’t ready to dive back in with clients or service based offerings as soon as I thought I would be (or even as soon as I WANTED to be back to “work). I really struggled with the balance and it took the joy out of both my motherhood and my business!

Now that I know how tricky it can be with a newborn, and with the reality of juggling life with newborn twins and a 3 year old in the near future, I know that I need to prepare extra breathing room. For my mental health and for the sake of my audience/clients! I want to serve them well—not give them my tired leftovers.

If/when I return to my office during this first year with the twins, I want it to be because I am inspired—there’s something I’m excited about or I just have a spare moment to do something life giving for ME that doesn’t smell like baby powder. There’s enough pressure and stress with raising a newborn. Why would I add to that if I could avoid it?

I hope you found these tips helpful as you prepare for your own maternity leave or season “off”. I would love to hear if you found any of these particularly helpful OR what tips you have! I’ll take all of the advice I can get during this crazy season! hah