How I've Prepared for 4 Months of Parental Leave as a Solopreneur

How I've Prepared for 4 Months of Parental Leave as a Solopreneur

We're officially in the home stretch and will be welcoming our first child into the world this month. We are a dual career couple and have put lots of thought into our family leave plan. I am self employed and my partner works for a tech company leading a customer success team. I'm sharing how we conceptualized and planned parental leave with our daughter. It’s my hope that by sharing this information it will help other solopreneurs navigate this tricky process and will also inspire all organizations to provide a minimum of four months paid family leave to all employees.

Length:

As a CEO/Founder I had the opportunity to envision a family leave policy for myself that I felt was fair and would make me feel excited when stepping into it. I wanted to build a policy that I would feel proud to present to another employee (if I had one). To determine this, I outlined questions I wanted answered and I started researching.

• What are companies/organizations leading in this policy offering? I spent lots of time combing through the Skimm’s #ShowUsYourLeave public database of paid leave policies

• How long is the ideal bonding time with your newborn?

• What do other countries offer?

• What makes sense for our family financially?

• What are options for returning to work after leave?

I presented this information to my partner and we came up with four months, with flexibility, as a time frame that felt right for us. If I have the urge to tap into work a little bit here or there, I can. If we need to extend the leave or explore a slow return (15-20 hours per week) we can do that, too. Outlining this from the onset has been extremely helpful and has created an open dialogue around the subject.

My husband’s plan was more straight forward, as the policy is determined by his company. He is given three months paid family leave that he can take any time within the first 12 months of our child's birth. We have decided to take the first two months together and then I will take two months with our daughter while he returns to work and then he will take one more month with her while I return. This will give us a total of five months with her before introducing daycare or another childcare option.

Clients:

70% of my workload is supporting 1:1 coaching clients. With my current parental leave plan I'll be leaving them without a coach for four months, which I knew I did not want to do. To get them prepared for a gap of time without me, I started communicating my leave plan as soon as it was determined, which was four months before our due date.

I also determined that I wanted to provide all of my clients with the option to work with another coach while I'm on leave. This required me to designate time and energy towards finding coaches that I trust and respect to step in. Thankfully, this didn't take long as I have an incredibly rich coaching network and Chantae Sheetz and Kimmie James are the perfect people to step in.

Below is the criteria that I used to work through the vetting process:

• Coach must be certified through an ICF accredited coaching program

• Coach must have some sales/marketing background

• Coach must adhere to ICF best practices and policy

• Coach must be familiar with energy leadership concepts

I gave my clients the choice to pause coaching until I return in April or continue to work with Chantae or Kimmie or find another coach on their own.

Content:

I'm active on instagram, LinkedIn and email marketing. I contribute monthly to Seacoast Moms Collective and also create two - three new blog posts each month. At this point, I don't outsource any of my content creation. I quickly determined that while I'm out, I want to ensure I'm still providing value to my subscribers. To do this I needed a plan so that content still flows despite me not being actively involved. To develop the plan I started with questions:

What's the goal of pushing content while on leave?

Who will be the content point person while I'm on leave?

How much can I automate?

How many pieces of content do I need to create?

How much content do I want to have created ahead of time vs. in real time during leave?

I started with the goal: Distribute three - five pieces of content across social, email and my website to add value and keep my subscribers engaged while I'm on my four month maternity leave. This will enable me to pick up where I left off when I return in April.

I then determined that I could proactively plan for this by creating 80% of the content needed ahead of time.

This included:

Blog posts

Seacoast Mom's monthly articles

LinkedIn Posts

Instagram posts

I blocked two - four hours per week in September and October for content creation. For most of content distribution, I am using technology to automate posts. Technology includes native social apps and SquareSpace for email and blog automation.

I'm active on  Instagram stories, it's a huge part of how I connect with my followers. This is an activity that is done daily, spontaneously and needs to be in real time. I knew I needed to find someone to take this over for me while I'm out. I again, tapped on the relationship I have with Chantae.

Communication:

Beginning in early November, I will start communicating my plan with everyone. Getting in front of this will allow me to field questions from clients, followers and subscribers. It will also prepare content viewers for the changes. Transparency is an important value of mine as I believe it creates trust. Abrupt change can cause feelings of confusion, disappointment and frustration. I want to proactively reduce as much of those feelings from my community as possible and instead replace them with feelings of clarity, support and connection. I'll be making announcements via social, my blog and newsletter!

Mindset/Energy:

There's lots of uncertainty when it comes to having a baby and going out on leave. So many things can change over the span of four months. Uncertainty can often lead to fear, which is normal. I've spent a lot of energy and time working through the fears that have popped up for me, things like:

Will my clients still want to work with me after four months away from each other?

Will I be able to jump back into the momentum I've built over the year and a half?

Will I be able to juggle being a mom and owning my business?

Will I still feel the same passion for my work?

The reality is, I don't know the answer to any of these things and I won't know until I'm in the moment. Trying to create answers to these questions ahead of time only creates stress for me. Accepting this has brought me a lot of peace. It's helped me stay grounded and present and to approach each step of my pregnancy and now leave, taking one step at a time. I can have a plan, but at my core, I know that plan can and likely will change and that's okay. I feel deeply rooted to trusting the process and because of that I'm confident everything will work out exactly as it's supposed to.