Alyson Caffrey: [00:00:00] So if you’re bought into taking some time off, taking sabbatical, taking maternity leave, taking a month off in the summer with your family, this is a great opportunity to just get up out of the weeds of the business and look at everything from a high level and ask yourself one of two questions. Is this something that I really enjoy? Or is this a lever inside of the business? Right? So if it lights you up and it’s creative, then great. It’s fulfilling a purpose. If it’s moving the business forward, if it’s a lever for you, then awesome. If it’s both, that’s amazing.

But if it’s neither. It has to be on the chopping block.

Jade Boyd: Welcome to the business edit podcast, a podcast about redefining productivity for the modern woman in business and finding ways to work smarter, not harder in business and life. I’m your host, Jade Boyd, an MBA business minimalist and productivity coach. I help overwhelmed business owners simplify and scale their service based businesses by doing less but better.

I help my clients create business minimalist strategies [00:01:00] and systems that allow them to pursue ambitious goals while working at a human pace. On this. podcast. We’ll explore simple ways to grow your business with a life first approach. If you’re ready to scale your business, bring order to chaos, ditch the busy work and spend more time living your life than managing your life.

You’ve come to the right place. Welcome to the business edit podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, Alyson.

Alyson Caffrey: Jade, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Jade Boyd: I am so excited to have you here because we have not in depth talked about how to plan for a maternity leave. And this is obviously something that you focus on and something that so many women in business struggle with or, you know, stress about. And I would love for you to start out just for people who haven’t met you yet, just a little bit of background of who you are and how you got to where you are today.

Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. So as many entrepreneurs often tell me, I like fell into business a little bit. I didn’t like wake up every morning in high school and grade school [00:02:00] thinking like, "Oh my gosh, I’m going to be an entrepreneur." I started out as, often most folks do, in a nine to five. And I quickly realized that I had a skill set and I started working for myself back in 2017.

So I’ve started an operations consultancy. I’ve been running that now we’re in our ninth year. So we celebrated our eight year birthday toward the end of 2024, which is honestly like humbling to even say out loud. And, you know, I took my first maternity leave with my first son in August of 2020 when we got pregnant with him and my business was about three years old.

And I remember doing a quick Google search when I was pregnant with him and the top search criteria that came up like before AI and all that stuff was largely self employed women are on their own when planning maternity leave. And I was like, I don’t know about you, but this was like the first time I’ve ever gotten like a non responsive Google search criteria.

Like they’re basically like that you’re out on your own. And I was like, how is nobody figured this out yet? And so at the [00:03:00] time I didn’t really think too much into it. I was like, Oh, this is the path I chose. I’m a business owner, all the things, but like a little seed kind of got planted in the back of my brain.

And you know, then what, a couple of years later, so it was about three years later, I started Master Maternity Leave and Master Maternity Leave helps business owners plan for maternity leave, but really just create some space to welcome and bond with their new baby in a way that feels good for them and their business.

Because what I’ve noticed is that when we think about maternity leave in a business, you know, we really think about the way that companies define maternity leave for their employees, right? We think about, oh, I get eight weeks off or I get three months off or whatever that looks like for them. And oftentimes what we forget as business owners is like, we create stuff out of nothing all the time.

So, like we can imagine and re imagine and re imagine what maternity leave looks like for us, how long we take off, how intermittent that time off might be, where we do like some seasons in the business, some out, some in, some out, like. Doing things the way that we want to do them. And I always say to my [00:04:00] clients like your maternity leave on your terms.

And so that’s what we really do at Master Maternity Leave is we help folks thrive through the transition of becoming a mom and also owning a business. But also connecting them with resources that can help them financially that can help them with their team, that can help them delegate, that can help them manage things with their hands off the wheel for a little bit.

So it’s been quite a journey. Master Maternity Leave is about two and a half years old and yeah, I’m just loving being able to honestly support women in this way because I felt so alone in the process of planning and even in those early stages postpartum just feeling like nobody understood what I was going through , and you know, although like my parents and you know our siblings and our friends and family and all of them, they really meant well, they wanted to love on us they wanted to support us, but I just didn’t have that community of folks that like really knew what it was like to just trying to be finding money in sock drawers to like pay myself through this period and so it’s just something that’s been on my heart for a long time.

Jade Boyd: So you mentioned that [00:05:00] your first maternity leave was pretty early on in your business and you didn’t have obviously the support that you’re giving other business owners today. So I’d love to kind of just like go back to what that experience looked like for you and what ultimately led you to be able to take that maternity leave.

What were the processes and systems that you initially had to put in place and how has that like evolved over the course of you kind of perfecting this methodology?

Alyson Caffrey: This is a great question because I always say I didn’t get a first maternity leave. My maternity leave looked so wildly different from what I had expected and I always thought back to kind of the, you know, the business that you’re employed with defines your maternity leave. Like I defined maternity leave success, quote unquote, as taking three months off and being like in this, you know, relaxed Parisian type of state, you know, bonding with baby, you know, barefoot and shirtless and like the whole thing. Right. And so the first thing that I always encourage folks who come into our community with is like redefine maternity leave, of course, but also [00:06:00] someone can do something that really works for them and it might not work for you and that’s totally okay.

And I just didn’t know what I didn’t know as a first time mom and a business owner. So started with that Google search that was just like pit in my stomach, oh, my gosh. And then I really went through the rest of maternity leave or the rest of pregnancy being a little bit more distracted by the state of the world because it was COVID.

Like we had shut down three months maybe after I had found out I was pregnant. And so I use that as an interesting distraction to be like, well, I’m a business owner. I’ll just figure it out. I figured everything else out and I have a strong background in operations as I’ve mentioned. So I was like, well, I’ll just, you know, figure this out.

And so it was a lot of like creating checklists. And a lot of creating processes and all those types of things, which felt very natural to me. However, when our son came, it was a Thursday and thankfully he came on a Thursday. I was like really hoping that he was going to come on a Thursday because I infamously have never worked Fridays ever since I started a business.[00:07:00]

And so he came on a Thursday night and we got moved to the room that we’d be spending the night in, so it was like 12:50 something, so like very, very early the next morning on a Friday. And my husband snaps this photo of me and Frank, like the first photo of our newborn son, and me, and my hair was like still crazy from birth.

And he had just fallen asleep in my arms. And the next frame, the one that he didn’t snap a photo of, was me taking my sleeping son and placing him in the clear bassinet next to the bed and whipping out my phone and like emailing my clients and my team and being like, I’m not going to be until Monday because I just had our baby.

And at the time I was like, look how dedicated I am to my business. Look how flexible this can be. And I was like wearing it like a badge of honor. The oxytocin was flowing, right? I was like, I could do anything. And then, the reality kind of set in where I had never really gotten such a distinct, like, physical representation of, like, where my [00:08:00] priorities were.

I was like, man, I really didn’t do anything in the business outside of what I was normally doing, like, prepping operationally, all that stuff, to really prepare for our son. Like, I wasn’t putting any cash aside. I was like, I’m just gonna work. And that’s when it dawned on me that like I had literally chosen my business over my baby in that moment.

And I did what, I don’t know, maybe any person who doesn’t really know what they’re doing in the first stage of motherhood. And it’s, I just like kept working. I was like, I’m just going to do everything I was doing, but with a baby on my hip. And that didn’t quite work out. I was like littered with postpartum anxiety.

I was like, what if we can’t make this work? What if the baby has to eat? What if I’m in the middle of a zoom call? And all of a sudden the baby starts crying and Steve can’t calm him down and all the things right started flooding in. And it really wasn’t until about six months postpartum where I really like wove the white flag.

I was like, I can’t do this. I need to like re imagine what my role in the business looks like, how I can actually take some time off and press pause. And thank God I did that because just three months later we were pregnant with our second son. And that was [00:09:00] like. Honestly, I’m very grateful. A lot of families struggle for a long time to have multiple kiddos.

And I hear so much of like second child infertility and all these different things. And we’d tried for quite a while with our son, Frank, and we knew that we wanted to have kids close together. So we were like, Oh, if it took about two and a half years to have Frank, then if we start sooner rather than later, maybe six months later, we’ll be pregnant or a year later, we’ll be pregnant.

Right. And then month one, by the grace of God, we got pregnant with a second kid out. And that was, proverbially speaking, like, the end of it all. I was like, okay, there’s gotta be a better way. I have to figure this out. I was like, on the clock for the second kiddo to come. And I just remember thinking, like, you can do this.

Like, you just went through this. You just made all the mistakes. And so that’s when the first First iteration of our Master Maternity Leave curriculum was born. I just started writing out all the things. I was like, here’s where I’m looking here. The state resources I found here are the grant programs. I [00:10:00] found, here’s how I’m setting my team up for success.

Here’s how I’m creating boundaries. And it was like literally all of the things. And I think you just don’t know what you don’t know in the first experience. And what I keep telling my moms, especially my first time moms, am I trying to conceive first time moms is like you can prepare and there are definitely things that you need to do.

You have to have financial support. You have to have time freedom. You have to have resources, team or, you know, automations or something like that in place. But above all of that, you need to have space. You need to have space to decide space to really lean into how you’re feeling. You have to have space to think about what your new role is going to look like because I believe that maternity leave is what made Operations Agency and now Master Maternity Leave so successful is because of the fact that I was able to weave myself out of a lot of those big picture operational elements of the business.

Jade Boyd: Being able to separate yourself from your [00:11:00] business, speaking, especially for service providers, I think there’s so many mindset things that happen, not just with maternity leave, but building a business that allows you to not be necessary in general. Right? So what are some of the mindset issues that you see come up often when you’re working with clients through this, even helping them dream and imagine like planning for a maternity leave that they wouldn’t get from a from a full time job that they could create for themselves.

Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, totally. I’ll just list a couple. So no one can do it like I do it. Big time thing that comes up. Second is it feels really good to be needed, like full on, like absolute, just kind of sit with that too. Because if we think about a mom who has a service based business and is in a position Where you know, she’s never had a kiddo before and this is her first at bat with this.

The business has been the baby. It’s been the priority. It’s been the creativity. It’s been the emotional or like identity, right? Is like, I’m a business owner, I’m a web developer, I’m a this. And so now the identity starts [00:12:00] to shift. So it feels really challenging to detangle yourself from the identity of who you are in that business.

So nobody can do it like I can do it. It feels really good to be needed. The identity changes. And then the other thing thing I think is particularly true for early stage entrepreneurs, I know it’s true for me, a lot of my clients that have come through the halls of Operations Agency is we’re addicted to chaos, like truly addicted to chaos.

A lot of us start our business and this like really rapid like startup phase and we’re hunting for new business and we’re networking and we’re building the website and we’re just hustle, hustle, hustle. And then we either get addicted to that. or we don’t even literally know how to operate outside of that.

And so mentally, we need to kind of set down the, if I’m not doing something, then the business isn’t growing. Does that make sense? Like we attach our productivity and our checklist to the business growth versus creating systems that grow the business and like its own kind of ecosystem that you add to write that you add to that you’re not responsible [00:13:00] for.

And I think from a mindset perspective, it is super hard, especially when either you don’t have anybody to support you. So I’ve always been an advocate of getting a coach or somebody to like walk you through the process. Because sometimes you can’t even imagine what that would be like to take a month off or whatever.

When I wrote my book, The Sabbatical Method, I remember I was at a book signing, and one of the gentlemen came up and he was like, Oh, sabbatical, that must be nice, but I can’t do that. And I was like, well, nobody’s ever like really showed you, I don’t think, right, that it’s possible that you can step away from the business and you can come back in refreshed with new ideas with a new lens on how things are going to go.

And so I think like just releasing and just knowing that some of those things are going to come in. So it’s not about stopping the, you know, anxiety about not doing more in the business. It’s not about stopping that feeling of wanting to be needed. It’s just really redirecting or responding to it in a more positive way.

I say that like some of our business owners that we work with to weave them out of the day to day [00:14:00] operations. They’ll like throw a hand grenade in their business, like all of a sudden and like change something up. Cause I’m like, you guys are addicted to chaos. It’s just wild. So yeah, those are just a couple of the most common things I’ve seen over the years.

Jade Boyd: hmm. For the business owner who is like committed, I want to take, you know, X number of weeks off. Their business has never operated without them in the past, especially with your background in operations, what are kind of like the key systems or automations or systems that you recommend? The top priorities to have in place in order to give yourself the freedom, whether from maternity leave or sabbatical, or, you know, any reason to be able to step out of your business.

What really needs to be on that checklist looking at it like big picture?

Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. So if we’re going to go big picture here, operationally speaking, your business needs four key systems. It needs a lead getting system, a conversion system, a fulfillment system, and an improvement system. Those are the only four. It’s all you need. I fully reject like, EOS for small businesses [00:15:00] fully reject scaling up for small businesses.

Like if you’re a team of 30 and under, those are the only four systems that you need to be investing in. And there can be multiple types of lead getting systems, but the hope is that you at least have one that works well, that you can consistently count on to bring new people into your world. Right? So.

The big thing about it is I think a lot of times what we do as small business owners, and I see this all the time. Like I talk, I was talking with a gal earlier this week and she was telling me about weaving herself out of her business and how everything is really hectic inside of the business. And she’s got two little kids at home.

When I asked her, I was like, Why do we feel like this is so tough? And she said, well, my business is really complicated and it’s really nuanced and it needs a lot of me. And I drew this out for her. I was like, these are the four systems that you need and here’s how they might go. And I was like, like, give me an example.

How do you get leads? What’s the main way? And so then we started going through this and she was like, Oh, this is actually really simple. Then I was like, yeah. So I think oftentimes what we do and when we’re stuck in the weeds of the business, as we end up [00:16:00] overcomplicating things, right? We end up being in a position where we’re like, Oh, I need all these automations and I need all of these teammates and I need all of these moving pieces.

But at the end of the day, if you really look at the business and I think maternity leave is a really, really excellent opportunity for this. So if you’re bought into taking some time off, taking sabbatical, taking maternity leave, taking a month off in the summer with your family, this is a great opportunity to just get up out of the weeds of the business and look at everything from a high level and ask yourself one of two questions. Is this something that I really enjoy? Or is this a lever inside of the business? Right? So if it lights you up and it’s creative, then great. It’s fulfilling a purpose. If it’s moving the business forward, if it’s a lever for you, then awesome. If it’s both, that’s amazing.

But if it’s neither. It has to be on the chopping block. It has to be, especially if you want to weave yourself out of the business, especially if you want to create something that’s more sustainable. So there’s seasons of pruning. And I actually think more of the work that we do with [00:17:00] clients, both at Master Maternity Leave and an Operations Agency is more about what can we remove and simplify versus what can we put in?

And because I think a business that’s really simple to understand is also really simple to operate. And anybody that comes in, whether that’s a part time VA or a full time operator, depending on your size, I mean, they can get it and they can help push the initiatives for it as long as things feel really simple.

So how to get leads, how to convert leads, how to fulfill on the promises that you’re making and then how to improve the business. Those are the four key systems that I see every single business owner needing.

Jade Boyd: A common objection I’m guessing that you hear often is, well, I don’t have a team or I can’t afford to hire a team to replace me while I’m gone. So what then, how do we plan for maternity leave if you can’t afford or don’t currently have people to delegate to?

Alyson Caffrey: Totally. So I would challenge in two ways, basically. So first there’s an amount that you likely pay yourself and it’s likely too expensive to be doing administrative stuff. So. [00:18:00] If you consider that hiring somebody in the business part time at 15, 25 an hour, you are going to get a positive return on investment.

If you can fill your time back up with revenue generating activities or pouring into your family, that investment to me is one I will make day in and day out. So I would consider what your hourly rate is, whatever you’re paying yourself out of the business. And if you can get some support for some administrative tasks for about half that, then I think you’re in the, in the clear there.

The second thing I’ll say is especially for my business owning service provider moms. The reason we are business owning service providers is because we love to help people sometimes more than we love to help ourselves. And at our own detriment, oftentimes we will do anything and everything we can to help our clients, but then all the things start bursting behind the scenes where we neglect our health, we neglect our home house care, like any of those things.

And so I often find that if you don’t feel like you have the bandwidth, or you don’t feel comfortable delegating something inside of the business, You are [00:19:00] still likely spending time doing things in your home that you could delegate to be able to approach the business if you absolutely need to be in the business.

True story of a mom I helped a few years ago. She was a talk therapist. She’s like, hey Allie, if someone’s not in my chair, I’m not making any money so I have to do this thing and I don’t have the money to hire another therapist because they would cost just as much as I’m paying myself and I would rather earn that money for my home.

And I said, great, would you be opposed to hiring somebody to come in and do the laundry and clean the house so that you had more available bandwidth to like work on the business and you didn’t have to just be sitting in sessions with patients all day. And she was like, actually, yeah, that would make a lot of sense because the investment was much lower, but it gave her a really similar amount of time back.

So I think get creative. With that you know, team, quote unquote, I always say, like, build your bench and your bench is for your business, it’s for you, it’s for your house, it’s for your spouse Steve, my husband, does the [00:20:00] lion’s share of our cooking and during really hectic seasons, I’m like, hey, hon, I want to get you some more time back, so could we have somebody do some meal prep for us this week and then that way you don’t have to cook as much, so that’s another pair of hands too, right, for baby or for early postpartum care I think just get creative with your, quote unquote, team.

Jade Boyd: I think a lot of service providers also worry, even if they have some money saved up, like you said, lead generating and making money as a service provider, it takes serving people. And especially if you don’t have a team to serve your people while you’re gone, do you recommend other revenue generating strategies for maternity leave, especially for service providers who are not offering services?

Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. I mean, listen, if you can, and here’s the challenge with this. So if you can whip together a digital product as a service provider and say, Hey, here’s my three step process for X and sell that on autopilot, best case scenario. If it were easy, every service provider would do it. It’s not easy. I think service and product have this like really interesting relationship where each of them think grass is greener, right?

Like it’s really true. [00:21:00] And I think like if you were to put that in place, I don’t think it would do your business a disservice. It’s always great to diversify your revenue picture. And my opinion is train somebody to do the majority of the service that you are providing and continue that stream.

Because what will happen is you’re going to spend a ton of time on developing the marketing strategy, the funnel, the product, all the things, the delivery. They’re going to spend a ton of time figuring out how to market that, how to sell it on autopilot, when in reality you could just serve the people that you already have.

Keep those retainers intact if that’s your model and train somebody to take over and be like, Hey, I’m going out on maternity leave, but Jade on my team, she’s fully briefed on your project and I’m going to let her shadow me for the next three months and she’s going to take things over while I’m out.

Now you’ve just created double the capacity because if you return at full time when baby is born, then you then could have two folks taking on clients and taking on accounts. So my [00:22:00] thought process as a service provider is like, yes, do that. But I do think that pregnancy and maternity leave is actually a really challenging time to just like do a full on brand new thing that perhaps you’ve never done. I tell my service providers, if you want to create something a little bit more leverage, something that maybe a teammate could take over, somebody could do on your behalf, maybe create a spliced out version of what you already are offering. So let’s just say, for example, like if you’re building websites, instead of doing the full blown website package, you only do the audit and you sell the audit as much as humanly possible, because then you can have somebody take that off of your plate.

I think those types of shifts are the ones I would personally be pursuing as a service provider.

Jade Boyd: I feel like after my maternity leave, like you said, first time moms, it’s so hard to know what you’re going to need or what you’re going to want. And looking back, like there’s so many things that I would do differently, but do you see from a client perspective, like a trend in some of the common mistakes that are made most often, [00:23:00] especially from business owners trying to take a maternity leave for the first time.

Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, totally. So I think most business owners are like afraid that all their clients are going to leave. And I think giving folks the benefit of the doubt because every single client that I told I was pregnant, both times was very, very excited for us. And if you provide an excellent service and are really having great relationships with your clients, like they are going to be excited for you and they’re not just going to run for the hills and drop their retainer.

So like give everybody like a little bit of grace there. I think the second big thing, so that is like personal and mental. Like I stress myself out way too much wondering what my clients were going to think about me being pregnant. So there’s that. The second thing. Is literally creating the transition plan.

So like I just said, Hey, I’m going to go out on maternity leave on this time, Jade’s going to take over your account. She’s going to shadow me for three months. Like I’m going to really pour a lot into and supporting her and all that type of thing. Ask me any questions. So like giving your folks a runway to, to like really acclimate to the new changes. Because [00:24:00] sometimes when I work with moms who’ve been on a maternity leave before and they run a service based business. They’ll be like, Oh yeah, we told them like, Hey, I’ll be out for two weeks. And then they just gave them to the account director and then it was just not enough time for them to really fully feel like they’d felt like baked a plan together.

So that I think is an additional thing.

The third thing that I think is really, really important is making sure that you establish those boundaries with your clients ahead of time. So I’ll give you another example, and this isn’t a mom, but it’s a dad who I know he’s got three little kiddos at home and he built websites forever and his clients had his cell phone number and they would text him.

And he, I remember him telling me like years ago, he was like, Allie, how do I get these people to stop? And I’m like, well, first of all, they’re not going to stop overnight because you’ve already built the habit that they can text you whenever they feel like. And if you have something like that going on in your business, give it some runway to get figured out and make sure that you can establish some of those communication boundaries around projects because what’s going to end up happening is you’re going to be in the middle of a [00:25:00] feed in the middle of the day and get a text from a client and you’re going to feel like you have to drop everything and go attend to that question that they have.

Jade Boyd: Yeah, totally. I feel like we think so much about planning for maternity leave as women that we often don’t think about like, okay, what is it going to look like on the other side going back to work? And for me, that was the hardest part figuring out like, okay, especially since we were delayed on daycare and still haven’t gotten her in daycare, which is a whole other thing.

,But coming back to business and be like, Oh my gosh, my life is entirely different. I’m entirely different. Like you said, you’re adopting this whole new identity. You have this human that takes, you know, a hundred plus hours of your time every single week. And so what does a successful transition back to work look like as a business owner after maternity leave?

Are there certain things you suggest for your clients of like, okay, here’s how to ease back into things or how do we make that transition as smooth as possible?

Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, I mean, [00:26:00] listen, every transition, just like every maternity leave is going to be different and personal and based on the size of the business, the needs of the business, the needs of the family, the preferences of the mom. So I will say I always recommend going part time for as long as humanly possible.

So, and the reason why I do that is because here’s the thing that I’ve found true. I work two days a week and sometimes I’ll flex in a half a day if I need to do some planning or if we’re like in a busy season. So two and a half days of work a week. And I haven’t really been in a position where I’ve had to compromise on that.

And I think it’s an incredible forcing function when you come back into the business to consider that your role that you previously occupied, if you successfully delegated, if you’ve gotten some things off of your plate, that role for you no longer exists. It does not exist. And so, something that I tell my moms to do, and I don’t often do it, like, too often [00:27:00] early in the postpartum period because frankly there’s just like so much going on and all the feelings are there and you’re not sure you’re not confident and so oftentimes I like to look like six to nine months postpartum and just consider like what’s really exciting me right now what do I really leap out of bed and like think about or the first thing that I want to do you know when I wake up in the morning or the last thing I want to do before I go to bed.

And like really start to lean into just that natural excitement that you have about it, you know, the things in the business, because that will guide you toward your future role. Like for me, when I was postpartum with my son, Frank, all I wanted to do is write and I haven’t written, I have an English degree.

I haven’t written really since college, like writing in my business was just not a thing I did. I wasn’t like writing blog posts or any of that stuff. And so I was just like, I’m going to start writing blog posts and I don’t know why. I just. decided that I wanted to do that. And now I write all the time.

I write long [00:28:00] form and I write blog posts and I write all these different things. I wrote a book a couple of years ago. And so I just remembered leaning into that a little bit more. And the fact that I gave myself the space and the awareness to just reimagine what my role did actually look like inside of the business, it was honestly amazing. And I’ve heard from so many moms. Like one of my mom friends who also runs like a super successful agency for account managers, she took a maternity leave. She’s in Canada. So she has like, well, her employed counterparts have like a lot of maternity leave and they don’t get any if you’re self employed in Canada, by the way she told me she confided.

She’s like, I wish I didn’t come back. I wish I didn’t come back from maternity leave. She was like, I was in a CEO role. And that was really amazing to pour myself into when I was not a mom. And then when I came back, I just felt like I was mothering everybody and it was just really overwhelming for me.

So I want to also say that if you have a transition plan that you feel like is the good direction for you, maybe you decide it before the baby comes or early in that postpartum. season [00:29:00] and you move into maybe a similar role or another role in the business and you’re like, I don’t like this. That’s totally fine.

Like pivot to go the other way, hire that sort of thing out. She hired her husband to come in and do this role full circle. It was so great. She was like, he has all the same skills that are necessary for this role. And I don’t want to do it. And this feels like exactly where he belongs. So I think like just giving yourself the space, like I always say.

The space is the best. If you have the space to be able to come back on your terms, come back part time, really assess where you want to be and how you’re feeling and all that sort of thing, and give yourself the space to just maybe even be wrong about what you thought you wanted, it feels less overwhelming when you come back and I don’t know, perhaps folks are listening like, yeah, Allie, but I have to like, get back to work. Like, I don’t know. I don’t know what else to do. I really do think that over the years of having our two sons and just the growth that happened afterward, the [00:30:00] excitement that I had about my role, the way that I brought that into my leadership for my team, when I was really honest with myself about what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do has led us into some of the most tremendous growth years that we’ve seen at Operations Agency and of course birth the whole new business and all of the exciting stuff that we’re doing at Master Maternity Leave.

So I just want to say like, I know it’s scary making a full transformation is really scary and sometimes finances, I know they were for me very top of mind in the first leave. And I’m just being able to build this time in is going to be an investment into the business. So maybe it’ll cost you a little bit right in terms of immediate growth, but it will absolutely pay off in the long run.

Jade Boyd: I love what you said earlier about how your son was the most physical representation of, like, where your priorities were. And maternity leave does just create that special time where there’s this tiny human that is really pulling your attention and obviously giving you a big, important reason to step away from your business.

But like you [00:31:00] mentioned, you also wrote a book about taking a sabbatical. And sometimes Business owners want to be able to step outside their business, even if there isn’t a pregnancy or a due date looming ahead in the calendar year. And so I’m curious, does planning for a sabbatical look similar or different to maternity leave in your opinion?

And then for the business owner who is thinking like, you know what, I, I’m too stuck in it. Like I do need to get out and actually take time off to force myself to actually create the systems that allow me to do that on a regular basis. What does kind of the, the timeline and planning process look like for that?

Alyson Caffrey: ?

Yeah. I always say, you are literally 90 days from a totally different life and business. Like if you wake up with a 90 day runway and about 90 minutes of time, you can make anything. And I say that in my book, The Sabbatical Method. So it’s really supposed to be used as like a 75 hard ish, right?

For like taking time off from your business, which I love because it’s like a little challenge. And If you don’t have the right [00:32:00] ingredients for the challenge, then you might not see right the results. And so sabbatical looks really, really similar to maternity leave. The difference is, is that you can redo sabbatical.

I mean, you can redo maternity leave, but you don’t do it as many times. You can do sabbatical every single year if you want to as a business owner and really keep things in that state of pruning, right? So I believe that sabbatical gives us the opportunity to address the weaknesses inside of the business, the weaknesses in our team and the weaknesses in ourself that’s holding us back from growth.

And so if we get out of the business, let’s just say, for example, one of my friends did this. He took sabbatical from the business and the team found an amazing, amazing way to encourage partners to promote their services and they got a ton of new business while he was out. And he was like, what the heck?

Why don’t we just do this before? And he was like, they were like, well, you were giving us all these other projects. And so we’ve been talking about doing this for a while. And I’m like, stop, think about your team and all [00:33:00] the incredible ideas and things that they’re bringing to the table and just let them actually bring them to fruition, let them help the business.

And so a lot of what we talk about in the sabbatical method is really figuring out like, what is like, what is up with your business? What does it need? What, what is it lacking? And then really determining, are you as the founder holding that back or are you amplifying it? And I think by getting us out, we start to see what grows and what goes right through the cracks.

And I love this opportunity because like I was saying before, when you’re out of the day to day weeds of the business, you can start to think about, okay, what do I want out of this business? You know, what direction do we want to go? How do we want to best serve our clients? What you know, injustice do we want to right in the world, really get connected with the purpose and the why behind it?

And additionally speaking, you can really actually make the business stronger by allowing it right to operate independently of you. So it kind of kills those two birds with one stone there. If you want to take sabbatical, I do think that one of the biggest things I tell my clients is like, yeah, yeah.

If you’ve been [00:34:00] thinking like, oh, I can really use some time off, like that guy at the book signing, if you’re like, I can’t do this, but I really need it, that’s a sign that you probably need it. And the thing I don’t want to have happen is you know, honestly, the reason why I wrote the book is because I was approached by a client in 2021. And she had advanced lipidemia. She was running this like incredible high growth business, coaching executives at air table and go daddy. And she completely ran her personal health into the ground. And her doctor told her straight up. She was like, if you keep going like this, you are going to be hospitalized and you very well may die.

And this was like, a full moment for her. Like she was like digesting it. She’d had health issues for such a long time, gotten the run around from all these docs. And basically then her doctor said, here’s your diagnosis. And the treatment here is you need to lay down and drain your lymphatic system every three to four hours.

And she was like, I’m s Speaking on stage, I’m coaching, like I can’t do that. And so she comes to me and [00:35:00] she’s like, how do I get out of my business? How do I do this? And how do I make it work? And I remember when I was writing the introduction about Lisa and some of her challenges, I was like, this shouldn’t have to happen in order for you to really feel like you deserve a break from the business.

Like you deserve to take that time away and build a better business that supports your and not the other way around. And what I hope for, I mean, moms and just any business owner listening, right? Is like, we don’t want to look back at those early stages postpartum, right? And think that we just kind of floated through totally unavailable because we felt like we had to be in our business.

Because although everybody says this time is so fleeting, it goes by so fast, like triple it. And then that’s actually how fast it goes by. Like it really is so fleeting. And I think I would, I would really, really be so proud if, you know Master Maternity Leave and Operations Agency has helped a lot of clients, you know, through that sort of process and making sure that they [00:36:00] can actually put themselves first and put their family first.

And if we can do the same thing at Master Maternity Leave on a larger scale and like really help moms like savor those moments, build space for them, build space to bond with their babies. Like that’s what it’s for.

Jade Boyd: Oh my gosh, just mic drop right there. I am so grateful that you came to the podcast. I feel like this is a conversation I probably needed to hear about a year ago. And I know that it so many people listening to this are going to be challenged, but also encouraged. And so many just really important ways.

Like you said, that is such a fast time and it’s just so important in the grand scheme of things. So thank you for being here. One question we’ve been ending the episodes on recently is what is one thing you think business owners can stop doing?

Alyson Caffrey: Ooh, stop doing, hmm. Well, okay. All right. I got a good one. Judging themselves for the first thought that pops in their head.

Jade Boyd: Ooh.

Alyson Caffrey: I think a lot of times, I was talking about this with a friend earlier a lot of times [00:37:00] we can’t control our first reaction to things, but we can control our second one. And I think like in the early stages, I remember imposter syndrome, right?

I mean, it still happens to be totally transparent, but like, you know, you have your first thought and you’re like, I shouldn’t be here. I’m not good enough or whatever else. And you can’t control that thought. It’s just your natural reaction, but you can control the second one. You can control what you tell yourself in response to that thought.

So I think a lot of mimes are like, Oh, you know, mom guilt is so present. I just want to eliminate mom guilt. I’m like, you’re never, ever going to eliminate mom guilt. It’s always going to be something that creeps in. But if you sit there and you say, In my brain, I’m thinking, Oh, I’m not a good mom. Then the second response better be something in the contrary, because you are doing your best.

You are doing great. And so be a little easier on yourself. Don’t try to control the first thought. Just try and control the second one.

Jade Boyd: And for everybody listening who wants to get in your circle and follow you and learn more from you, where can they find you after the show?

Alyson Caffrey: Thank you. I’m [00:38:00] super excited to have had this conversation. Honestly, thanks for providing the I don’t know, like the venue or outlet to be able to talk through some of this stuff because I know sometimes it just feels really lonely. So I am super active on Instagram at Master Maternity Leave is where we’re at.

If you are in the thick of either pregnancy or trying to conceive and you own a business and you want some support we have a free guide over at mastermaternityleave.com/guide. You can also find it at our linc in bio in Instagram. That’ll get you on our email list too. As I said, I am like obsessed with writing, like I love writing beautifully long emails that also have some really cool tactical takeaways in them.

So you’ll get love letters from me also at least a couple times a week. And yeah, I would love to have you in our community. One of the things that’s really, really important to us is making sure that moms don’t feel alone through this process. So whether it’s us or someone that you meet in our community from like interacting with our stuff I’m so, so excited to just make sure that moms have their little buddy through this experience, because they really do need one.

Jade Boyd: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you [00:39:00] so much again for being here.

Alyson Caffrey: Thanks, Jade.

Jade Boyd: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the business edit podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, I’d be so grateful if you take a screenshot and share it on Instagram, tagging me at jadeboyd. co. I’m on a mission to empower a new generation of women to become the type. Of wives, moms, and business owners that they’ve always wanted to be because empowered women change their families and communities for the better, and this is how we’ll change the world.

Sharing your takeaways from this episode on Instagram will help more women in business discover helpful episodes and level up in life and business each week. Don’t forget to check out the show notes for the tools and resources mentioned in today’s episode because good ideas don’t grow businesses.

Action does. I’ll see you next time on The Business Edit podcast.