Jade Boyd: I knew that that’s something that I needed to create going into maternity leave, knowing that I was taking time off and needed to be able to serve people while I was unplugged. That is one thing related to my goals that has been a huge initiative, but specifically within second trimester.

Jade Boyd: So this winter, I was reading a book about how to set up a business in a way that it runs itself. That you’re not constantly tied to the day to day and have to show up in order for your business to run. And at the beginning of this book, the author challenged the reader to set their business up in a way that allowed them to take a 12 weeks sabbatical. That was the litmus test. If they had truly set up their business to run itself. And they talked about it like a sabbatical, but in my mind, I was thinking that’s basically just a maternity leave. Something that every women business owner should be able to set her business up to do, because I do think that time off to take a maternity leave or just the freedom to be able to take a week of vacation or a month off in the summer, whatever that might look like, is such a necessary thing in order to build a sustainable business one that served your life and not the other way around.

So today I want to share about how I’m planning to take a maternity leave this summer, but knowing that if you’re not planning to take a maternity leave, a lot of the stuff that I’m going to be talking about in this episode will be applicable for other business owners as well who are not due anytime soon, but also again, just want to create a business, that can run itself, that is sustainable when they’re not plugged into it, 24 /7. So, I’m going to walk step-by-step through the last few months, what I’ve been thinking about and what I’ve been doing in order to prepare my business, to take eight weeks off, fully off where I will not be in touch or communicating with anybody in my business, not doing a single thing for my business while I’m gone. And then an additional six weeks where I will be only serving clients. So showing up to a one hour weekly coaching call and then being on-call virtually via slack and voice messaging to serve my current clients, but not really sitting down at my desk or creating any content or doing any admin work, anything other than serving my clients for an additional six weeks.

So today I’m going to lay out my plan and what I’ve been doing in order to make that possible this summer in hopes that it gives you some ideas and maybe a framework that you can use yourself. If you’re planning to set your business up for a way that allows you to take a maternity leave, or allows you to take a sabbatical or a summer long trip to a foreign country, whatever that ideal time off would look like for you.

So the way I’m going to break this episode down, we’re going to go trimester by trimester, and then we’re going to go through the same categories that I use for everything in my business, goals marketing claims and admin. So we’re going to start with first trimester and all the things that I was thinking about and doing when it comes to goals, clients, marketing, and admin, and then second trimester and then third trimester.

And again, hopefully this gives you kind of a step-by-step framework and a chronological framework of how I was thinking about this time off and what I was doing way way early on versus what I’m doing now in third trimester, which looks a lot different.

So starting with first trimester under goals for my business, the first thing that I did even before we found out that we were pregnant, honestly, when we were thinking about trying to get pregnant was casting my vision for what my business looked like as a mom and what I wanted my maternity leave to look like as a business owner. Deciding how long would be my ideal time to take off, what made most sense, what I wanted to do and not do during that time of maternity leave. For me, I ended up obviously deciding that I wanted to do absolutely nothing business related during my maternity leave, but it kind of started with that vision casting in what did I want this to look like before I started doing things or breaking that down and how do I actually make that happen? Productivity starts with clarity. I’ll say it again. And so first I wanted to get really clear on what I wanted my maternity leave to look like. So I wasn’t tempted to like half bake this and kind of show up for business or kind of leave myself on the hook to have to check email or messages at least once a week, you know, it’s really easy to fall into that pattern if you’re not a super clear on what your boundaries are.

So starting very, very early on I cast my vision for how long I wanted to take off and what I wanted those boundaries to look like while I was on maternity leave.

And then I started breaking that down into a strategic plan. So once we actually found out that we were pregnant, that is when I started planning since I had the timeline and the due date. And so strategic planning, I update that every single quarter and I plan about 12 months out. And so this happened in October is when we found out that we were pregnant. And so it was naturally that end of the year time, where I was thinking about strategic planning for the upcoming year anyway, but I was just planning that around my due date. And when I wanted to take time off and then planning for my business goals, what is my financial goal, and how is that going to work around me taking 14 weeks, eight weeks fully off in six weeks half off, to have this spacious not plugged in maternity leave that I was envisioning. So that’s what was happening in first trimester, a whole bunch of vision casting and reflecting and strategic planning.

That it’s on the goal side of things. Next on the marketing side of things. I also created a signature lead generator because I knew that one of my goals for this year was to not have to show up so much on social media and get my audience onto my email list because I’ve seen by experience in my business, people buy through my email list, they engage and we build relationships on social media, but my email list is where the real strategy and like actual control over driving metrics and my business happens. And so I created a new signature lead generator, you can take it if you want to download it, it’s called the Double Your Profit While Working Less Masterclass. And this is my signature opt-in that leads into my signature offer. So in first trimester, I was creating that in the funnel to make sure that that was set up to run on autopilot. If I was advertising that while I was offline over the summer, that leads were still coming in.

And then clients, what I was doing to set myself up for success to manage client work. In first trimester, I completely reinvision the way that I was going to do coaching this year. So I moved from one-on-one services into group coaching and created The Business Edit. Which is way more compatible with me being unplugged from my business, because before that I was coaching people one-on-one and I had no documented trainings, like if somebody asked me a question. I would answer it and help them work through it one-on-one in a live call, instead of having this really well thought through an organized workbook and recorded resources. I had none of that when I was doing one-on-one coaching.

So in first trimester, October through December, which is amazing because I didn’t have terrible morning sickness, but I wasn’t feeling my best during first trimester. So I’m actually very impressed with amount of content that I recorded and documented. And the program that I launched during first trimester, because it was a beast.

I literally went through every single thing that I taught clients and coach clients on and created The Business Edit framework and recorded all of those trainings and made this like masterful, hopefully, this doesn’t sound too braggy, but I’m very proud of the program and the materials that I’ve created, but this masterful workbook that took people step-by-step. So even if I wasn’t able to show up one-on-one on a call, everything was documented and recorded so that they could access this when I’m offline. Right? Or if I had support coaches, they would be able to refer people to the right location, to get the information that they needed to move forward. So on the client side of things, I was reinvisioning the way that I was doing business and productivity coaching and packaging that into my signature group coaching offer and launching that.

So that all happened in first trimester, which is a lot, but again, when I was thinking about my goals and my strategic plan and how I wanted to hit my financial goals while taking all this time off, there was no other option for me to scale other than to move into group coaching. And I’m so glad that I did, and honestly, I’m serving my clients so much better through the group coaching offer than I was ever able to do through one-on-one services, because it forced me to document and get organized and stop just like answering questions and coaching people as things came up. And start giving them the exact roadmap from a to z. Where it was super, super clear and organized what they had to do next.

So that’s what I was doing to prepare, to serve my clients while during first trimester. And then I also announced to my clients who had contracts with me as soon as I was able to, we didn’t want to announce that we were pregnant until 12 weeks for obvious reasons, a lot can happen and so I didn’t want to go super public with that until at least the 12 week mark. And so as soon as I was able to tell my clients who were pregnant after we told our closest friends and family. Then I announced that and kind of gave them the roadmap of what was going to happen moving forward because honesty and early communication and planning ahead of time, I know it’s something that I would appreciate as a client, and I wanted to give that to my clients as much as I possibly could. So again, that happened during first trimester as well.

And then lastly, admin, what I was doing to prep all the admin work for maternity leave during first trimester. I focused on simplifying my workflows and automating as much as possible. As, you know, if you’ve been listening to the podcast, my favorite tool is ClickUp. So as I was creating and launching this group coaching program, I automated the hell out of everything that I could possibly automate. So that the week to week stuff, the admin work that comes along with it, would truly happened on its own. Clients would get automated emails at the right time during their coaching contract, the notifications and slack for recurring zoom meetings, like that was all set up to be automated every single week so I didn’t have to manually go in and share a zoom link with anybody. Everything is in the calendar and multiple places. Like, I tried to make it as automated and streamlined and foolproof as possible to eliminate as much work off my plate and as much work off of my support coaches plate when they will have to take over for me in the summer.

The admin work is really, really smooth on the backend, and that was specifically for this new offer in this new program. But I also started looking at other places and my business when it comes to marketing workflows and the podcast content and repurposing things for Instagram and Pinterest and really streamlining and cutting back as much admin work as possible on my part so that it just like didn’t exist and didn’t need to be done. So I could free up more time and more space for that still to be happening while I was offline, but not have to, yeah, not have to have me online in order for it to happen.

In addition to automating and delegating, I also just started documenting as much as I possibly could, knowing that I might have to pass certain tasks over to other people or contractors in my business to do things for me. As much as I could I just started documenting any processes, like Descript, for example, if I record a quick video and descriptor, a quick ad for the podcast, there’s certain buttons that I click in Descript, which is my audio and video editing platform in order to just like tweak the sound a little bit before I’m able to export it.

But I just documented screenshots of all the settings that needed to be changed and how I did that, so that if somebody else needed to do that in the future, it would be documented. And so in first trimester is where I really started to think about all of the remaining areas in my business that didn’t have a standard operating procedures yet and started a master list of those things and started documenting them as I was doing them so it wasn’t like I was taking extra time out of my day to create everything all at once, it’s just as I was doing something and realizing that there wasn’t a standard operating procedure, I was recording that as I went. So, all of those things I started doing in first trimester.

Okay, moving into second trimester.

So this is more of like January through March of this year was second trimester, which was. This blessed period of time, where I had my energy back and I felt good and I was not as tired as I am now getting in third trimester yet, so this was a highly productive season for me, and I got a lot dine during second trimester, but here’s what that looks like.

So, first of all, again, starting with goals. Going back to my strategic plan, I launched The Quarterly Reset which is a program that’s kind of an introduction to my coaching philosophy, but it’s going to be a passive income product. I launched it once live during second trimester to like retest the framework. I did this live in the fall as well. So this is the second time I updated it and relaunched it, did it live. And now I’m working on rerecording it and making it a passive income product so that people can still get access to kind of an introduction of what it looks like to coach with me and my framework, my basic process for refreshing and resetting your business. I I knew that that’s something that I needed to create going into maternity leave, knowing that I was taking time off and needed to be able to serve people while I was unplugged. That is one thing related to my goals that has been a huge initiative, but specifically within second trimester.

And then I also launched my Digital Quarterly Wall Calendars, which again, passive income needed to get that live so that I could promote that while I was offline during the summer. So goal related, those are the two major things that happened during second trimester in order to help me prep for a successful maternity leave as a business owner.

On the marketing side of things, second trimester is where I started batching content, specifically podcast content, because repurposing it from there is a little bit easier, but I started batching content like crazy and planning out episodes nine months in advance, basically, and batching a lot of guest episodes ahead of time so I could get all of those recorded before I left for maternity leave. And at this point, I’m feeling really good about that. I still have a few more episodes left to batch, but my team is great. Once I record them, they do the editing and cutting it down and can do the scheduling for me, but batching content is, for marketing at least in second trimester, was a huge focus and man it’s actually been kind of easy to batch content ahead of time. Solo episodes are always harder for me to press record on, but the guest episodes, especially doing guest episodes a little bit more often during the summer and the fall we’re in batching out content and also scheduling all of them ahead of time was not as difficult as I thought it would be.

So that’ll make it really, really well. And then I also, from a marketing perspective, have leaned really, really heavily into what I call business minimalist marketing practices this year. And this is something that obviously was part of my business and is part of the way that I coach clients to grow their business as well, but more than ever in second trimester, knowing that I was going to take that much time offline away from my business, I wanted to be able to set up my sales funnel in a way that ran itself. So once I did have that signature lead generator, I started pitching as many other business owners to do guest presentations and guest podcasting and collaborations. And all of those things to get my business in front of as many new audiences as possible.

And some of those have happened and gone live already. But some of them will go live while I’m offline over the summer, but still will lead into a lead generator that leads people to my email list with content that’s scheduled ahead of time. Where they’ll get warmed up and served while I’m offline, before I’m ready to like, come back and start nurturing live again more regularly. So in second trimester, that’s where I was focusing most of my time and efforts when it comes to marketing.

Okay, and then in second trimester on the client side of things, the biggest thing that I was working on is hiring support coaches and figuring out what that would look like, finding the right people, figuring out the timelines, getting contracts signed. I’ll link in the show notes to the contract that I’m using with my support coaches, I love the legal page for legal contracts and she has an independent contractor agreement that worked really well for this purpose. So in second trimester, I was finalizing who was going to do my support coaching during those eight weeks where I wasn’t interacting with clients.

I have two different support coaches, each of them is going to do four weeks and I’m stoked with the people that I have set up. That was my number one priority and really becoming pregnant, making sure my clients were going to be served really, really well while I was gone. And so in second trimester, the contracts were officially signed.

I announced the names and the timelines to my current coaching clients. So they knew well ahead of time what was going to happen over the summer and they could start building that relationship with support coaches, if they wanted to follow them and vice versa. So all of that happened during second trimester.

And then from an admin perspective, during second trimester, I was really focused on reducing expenses and becoming super, super efficient in my business. So a couple things that I did, I, which took some time and intention on my part, I moved from QuickBooks into Xero. And I think I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but QuickBooks for me was getting really, really expensive, especially with the bookkeeper that I was using with QuickBooks and the way that it did not integrate and everything had to be done manually. So I switched over to Xero X, E R O, and have absolutely loved it.

And also because the software platform is so much easier. And because I went in understanding the finances and just needing to learn the software, which QuickBooks was impossible for me to learn, but Xero was very, very manageable with the help of Madison Dearly and her bookkeeping club, which I can also link in the show notes for you. If you want to learn how to do your own bookkeeping and the software part is holding you back. I learned how to do my own bookkeeping in a month. Transferring everything over took a little bit more time. But it went from like $400 a month to pay for bookkeeping to now I think $7.50 with the initial discount and Xero, and then it’ll be about $15 a month. And it also only takes me 30 minutes. So reducing expenses is a way to increase profitability. And so focusing on the nitty gritty things that, just sometimes get in the way of pursuing goals. So ultimately I always preach that profit is more important than revenue and if I can spend 30 extra minutes a month, really, really understand my books and my numbers, which I would dig into financial reports for 30 minutes a month anyway, if my bookkeeper was giving them to me completed. I wasn’t really spending any more time on it, but also saving a whole lot of money from an admin perspective, that makes a lot of sense to me.

So, that’s one way I reduced expenses and then I kind of went through the laundry list of things that I’m spending money on, subscriptions, different software programs. And made a few other switches, none of them as major or transformational as bookkeeping, but some other software that I switched, I was doing social media scheduling in Later, and switched to Plann PLA N N which was a little bit cheaper and basically does the exact same thing. I got rid of Tailwind because we’re doing Pinterest scheduling in Plann as well, my VA is. And so they’re just small changes like that from a software perspective that I did to be able to reduce expenses so that I could increase profitability more easily over the summer and not reduce the amount of money that I was paying myself. Knowing that I wouldn’t be booking as high end clients over the summer, I would be booking more of those like passive low ticket, digital courses. And that’s how I’d be making money for a significant part of the year.

So focusing on reducing expenses was the biggest admin focus in Q2. And then also just continuing to identify areas that I was wasting time or things that didn’t need to be done or things that could be streamlined or assigned to somebody besides me. Things that could be automated things that could be like postponed for later, I was just very strategic and there was a ton of very small things in my business that during Q2 I identified like, okay, let’s get this out of the way and make sure that this is not something that’s going to hold me back from taking real time off during the summer.

So a couple of examples of that, like I was filing sales tax monthly. But technically the rules said that I didn’t need to file monthly and I’m not sure how I originally got signed up for monthly tax filings, but now I’m filing annually, so I’m not having to do that every single month and that doesn’t have to be done while I’m off for 14 weeks during the summer at all, it just has to be done at the end of the year.

So that was an example of one thing, and then again, automating things and Click Up, streamlining my workflows and Click Up. Whenever I noticed something was a little bit like clunky or tedious, just gradually making those improvements, setting up more zaps in Zapier for automations, as I was noticing things that are like, okay, I’m doing this manually, but this could be automated, especially for content re-purposing.

So those are some of the things that I was continuing to do in second trimester.

Okay, moving on to third trimester. So third trimester for me started in late March and I am due in June. So that’s the timeframe that we’re looking at, but in third trimester, on a goal perspective, the number one thing that I’ve been working on is changing the amount of time that I’m working in my business, knowing that my goal coming back from maternity leave is going to be to work two days a week, like two days where I’m actually in my office working, I’m going to be supporting coaching clients who have virtual access to me during the week. When I’m like out and about, you know, voice messaging basically, I can do all of that from my phone while I’m on the go. But two days a week where I’m like sitting down taking meetings doing calls, recording, podcast, content, all of those things that require me to be in my office.

But prior to third trimester, I was working four days a week. And I knew that if I tried to move from four days a week now, and then come back from maternity leave and somehow magically work half as much time, that was going to stress me out because there would probably be a lot of things that needed to change. So in third trimester, I moved down from working four days a week to working three days a week in my office. And it has stretched me and I have been forced even more so to be very organized and very disciplined with the time that I do have to spend in my office and have been forced to make some decisions on things that I’m not going to do. And made changes to my systems and processes to accommodate that schedule, but I’m really glad that I’m doing that now, when it doesn’t seem as urgent, rather than waiting until when I come back from maternity leave to make those changes. So over the last few weeks, I’ve been working three day weeks and experimenting with that. And so far it’s stretched me, but in good ways and has forced me to make changes for the better.

Another thing from a goal perspective that I’ve been processing through in third trimester is not making decisions. Because in third tri I’ve entered this nesting mode where I just want to focus on home and slow down. Like I said, my body is telling me to slow down and I think getting ready for labor, reducing stress has been a really important priority for me. And so I just feel myself entering maternity leave very slowly and third tri being kind of a transition process into that. But also with that has come all of these what if questions about my business. And from a goal perspective, I’ve decided not to decide any big changes in my life or business while I’m in this phase because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I have a baby or how I’m going to feel about business afterwards or what might change or what I might want or not want when I come back, and so it’d be really easy for me in the state that I’m in, in this season that I’m in to make drastic changes or to burn certain parts of my business to the ground, but I’ve decided not to make any major changes until I come back.

So from a goal perspective, I think it would be really easy, for me to, like reinvision my business, almost all over again and guess at what I might want. And coming back from maternity leave, but I’ve decided that’s not healthy for me right now, and kind of have given myself the grace to not have to think or stress about those things and slow down at a pace where I am going to keep doing business as usual until my life tells me that other things are needed.

And again, I’m not going to know that until after I had the baby. So, we’ll see what happens after maternity leave, but for now sticking to the plan for the year and planning as if I’m coming back, two day work weeks, still showing up on the podcast every week, you know, all of those things that I have set and I’m batching out of time now, that’s what I’m planning and preparing for. And I’m not making myself make any major life or business decisions until the fall when I come back.

With transitioning to three-day work weeks and that process of preparing to be a mom I’m also just slowing down and letting go of my identity as a business owner, even more so. I think when I first started my business, I was very wrapped up in the success and status of it all. And like the pride almost of, you know, when you meet somebody new and they ask you, what do you do, your identity is almost wrapped up in what your business is or what you do for a living, and in this season of life, especially since I’m in that nesting phase and personal life seems so much more, like in all of life in general, I feel like life has always come first for me before business, but I feel like I’m entering in a new era where it’s becoming that much more important and necessary for me to make space for the personal side of things. And I think that’s just allowed me this freedom of letting go of that identity as a business owner and holding it in a looser grip, knowing that it’s not the end all be all in preparing to take a maternity leave where I’m going to spend 14 weeks very very differently than I’ve been used to spending them. That is going to cause some identity struggles I’m sure. But slowly letting go of that drain third trimester and processing through like the pride that I have around business success and that status reflecting on what’s really important to me. Like the type of mom that I want to become and what that’s going to look like.

All of those things has been not even something that I’ve been doing intentionally or planning to do or setting time aside for, but just something that’s naturally happened as I’ve slowed down and cut back on work a little bit and force myself to make some of those decisions on how to fit my business goals into a smaller timeframe, which is totally possible if you forced yourself to do it, somehow you find ways to make it happen. So it’s been a really good challenge for me. But also in slowing down, I found myself spending more time doing things outside of business. And then my identity is slowly shifting too, and I’m finding pride and identity and joy and fulfillment in a lot of different things that I didn’t find as much fulfillment in before, because naturally I was spending less time doing them. Right? So goal-wise, I know that one’s really, really vague, but from a business perspective, slowing down letting go of my identity as a business owner, something that is like huge for third trimester right now.

On the marketing side of things, obviously I’m here recording this episode. So I’m still batching content and getting content scheduled for Q2 and Q3. So that it’s all scheduled for when I come back from maternity leave. Cause again, I don’t want to be creating content eight weeks after baby. When I come back, I don’t want to be doing any marketing stuff at all. I want that additional six weeks just to do coaching and like ease myself back into the business side of things.

So continuing to batch out all of the contents, starting with podcast content, but then working down to blogs and emails and Instagram and all the things. So something that’s still to be done in third trimester.

And then on a client note, third trimester is when I’m training, support coaches, getting meetings on the calendar, putting together their, everything that you need to know portal, and then I’ve also decided to close down applications for The Business Edit early, so that anybody who joins the coaching program, which is my 12 month signature group coaching program that I talked about creating during first trimester. That’s going to be closed a few weeks before maternity leave so that anybody who is applied and onboarded has a significant amount of time to spend with me before I go on maternity leave to make sure that they are really set in the program and are in a flow state before my support coaches take over for the summer. And so if you didn’t know, applications are going to close on May 10th. And there’s only three spots left in The Business Edit right now. So if you do want to apply and get in sooner, rather than later, definitely submit your application and book your discovery call sooner rather than later, but on a client side of things, that’s how I’m kind of planning and prepping for maternity leave in third trimester.

Okay, and then lastly, third trimester on an admin perspective. What I’m planning to do is that auto-responders for my emails at the end of third trimester, when I’m about to go on maternity leave. And then delete all of my emails that I get while I’m on maternity leave when I come back. When I come back I do not want to be stressed out. I want it to be a gradual, like easing back into work thing in a way that I feel good about. And I know that if I come back and I have, it’s going to be like over a thousand emails easily, easily in my inbox, I’m not going to want to do that. And I’m also not going to have time. With my reduced time capacity that I’m working on business. So my autoresponder, this. This is my plan, at least is going to say that if this is urgent or important, email me again after this date, which is going to be the date that I return from maternity leave full-time, and most people will probably will not email me again because the majority of emails that I receive are very, very unimportant and the people who need to be in contact with me, like my support coaches or my clients or potential clients, all of those are worked through different systems rather than Gmail, so it’s not like I’m going to lose anything that’s truly, truly important in a crucial area of my business. So everything else will be deleted and I’m sure that I might miss some great opportunities, but my mental health is way more important than that. So from an admin perspective, that is what I’m planning to do right before I piece out for maternity leave in third trimester.

And then lastly, like I said, moving down to a three-day workweek during third trimester has forced me to realize that I can’t do everything that I was doing when I was working four days a week in three days a week. Surprise surprise. I think part of me knew that was going to be true, but then part of me naively thought that I would just get really efficient and fit everything into three days a week, but that is not the case.

So from an admin perspective, continuing to that refining and deleting and delegating, in the small and the big things in my business to make sure that it’s set up in a way that’s going to be sustainable for me to show up consistently when I return from maternity leave. And it’s really funny that when you put your time under those time constraints, yes, I found that I have naturally just gotten more diligent about getting the things done that needed to be done within the time that I have, but also I’ve found that I was kind of just like stretching things out that didn’t need to be stretched out and was wasting time doing things that were nice to do’s that didn’t really need to be done either.

And so have deleted a lot of things, both from a personal life perspective and from a business perspective from my to-do list. And not much has changed results wise. And so it’s funny when you’re experimenting with not doing things, how little actually changes. And so if you’re listening to this and thinking about cutting back on your work hours, know, that it might take a little bit of an adjustment phase, but even after doing this for a few weeks, it’s getting more and more manageable.

Am I still being stretched? Am I still having to find things that I have to delete off my list that I’m just not getting to week after week? Yes. Absolutely. But overall it’s already getting so much easier and given me a lot of hope for what life is going to look like after maternity leave.

So I hope listening to this episode has given you an idea of what it’s looked like for me to plan for maternity leave and what it could look like for you to set up your own business in a way that is going to allow you to take 12 to 14 weeks off to take a maternity leave or to take a sabbatical or a big trip or a summer off, whatever that might look like for you, and if you have any questions about this or want to connect offline, please come find me at jadeboy.co. I would love to meet you, learn more about you and your business goals, and here are your takeaways from this episode and just connect with you. So please go find me if this episode resonated with you or if you got something helpful from it, or if you’re planning for your own maternity leave, I would love to know what’s missing from this list or any tips and recommendations you have for me as well, since I do have a few weeks left before I peace out for maternity leave.

So, until next time, business minimalists, take what you learn today and get 1% better this week.