5 steps I’ve put in place to leave my business baby to have a real one this maternity leave

Any business owner who’s navigated the murky water of self-employed maternity leave will know two things to be true:

1. The scariest thing you’ll ever do is put your out-of-office on and leave your business for an extended period of time;
2. Running a business is a lot like having a baby; you’ll already be very used to the only constant being change.

As I face my second round of maternity leave, I feel like a seasoned pro at stepping out of my business baby to have the human-kind.

Since I’ve been asked (and interviewed) many times about what structures I put in place to do it so well the first time, I wanted to share my blueprint for other entrepreneurs thinking about doing the same.

While I’m certainly not the first or last person to run a business and have a baby, I know firsthand that the road is a challenging one for women in particular, and requires intense organisation and preparation.

Forget a birth plan, female entrepreneurs need a business re-birth plan – to ensure their business still runs effectively without them in it.

To give you some context, my partner is a small business owner as well, and the footer on his email signature about slower than normal response times is the extent of his business birth-preparation plan. By comparison, mine could fill several blogs like this one!

Any help I can give to other women wanting to navigate both having a business and a baby is something I can happily do – because anything that makes this juggle a little easier is worth reading IMO.

Are you running a business and thinking of having a baby (or worried about how you’ll make it work)? Here’s what’s worked for me both now and two years ago.

1. Hire a rock star team and then get out of their way

As the saying goes, you don’t buy a dog and then bark at the fence yourself. Unfortunately, for many business owners (myself included), that’s exactly what I do.

My team know I have a tendency to step in to finish highly talented people’s work under the well-meaning intent of being helpful and a team player. However, if your business is going to run well without you in it, you can’t do everyone’s job for them along with your own.

The first step of my maternity leave process was letting people do their job, which is easier said than done for a D-type personality like mine. This meant clear roles and responsibilities, job descriptions and expectations around each task, and timelines for all team members.

For my day-to-day, I spent months documenting a task audit of all the jobs I do within the business including all the ones no one else sees.

As it so happened, my task audit became the perfect blueprint to become my job spec to hire a General Manager as these were the very tasks that needed covering.

2. Replace yourself with someone wildly different

One of my favourite rules of hiring is not to hire clones of myself – ask the team, one Hannah is enough.

When it came to hiring a General Manager, my number one rule was to hire someone who brought completely different skills to me.

Armed with a job spec detailing the exact parts of the role my General Manager would be expected to take on and manage, I was able to take it to market among my network landing two absolute rock star covers for each pregnancy.

While certainly, my future-GM needed to be able to do the work I was doing, I knew it would be more advantageous to the business to hire someone who brought a completely different style and flair for management.

As a leader, one of my strengths is self-awareness and I’ve always known I can do the best for the team when I can set the vision, drive the sales and execute the big ideas. The worst thing I can do for the business is get bogged down in day-to-day leave requests, performance managing and listening too much to what’s going on outside the office walls.

In hiring both Bel and Liz, I was drawn to their inclusive and empathetic natures – two things a good manager needs in spades (incidentally, two of my weaker personality traits). Both General Managers are firm but fair managers, but most importantly, always happy to tell me when my ideas aren’t good (because they are often not). We don’t do ‘yes’ men here.

3. Go all McDonalds on it

Instead of spending my summer by the beach before having bub, I spent it writing standard operating processes (SOP) for the team. Lots of them. A SOP for literally every single thing we do in the business, so we had a well built out team manual that’s always growing.

I believe that discipline sets us free and when people know what’s expected of them, they have clear goalposts to kick – and our SOPs have proved to do just that.

From how to onboard a client in Facebook Business Manager to how to lock the doors, anything you can think of is documented.

As a result, with or without me in the business, everyone knows how I like things written, what they should be checking in peer reviews, and when and how things should be labeled.

4. I wrote terms and conditions for myself

As a self-confessed workaholic, the biggest barrier to any maternity leave was always going to me. After being asked to leave the office at 39 weeks during my first pregnancy, I’ve tried very hard to start winding down much earlier this second time around.

I set clear deadlines with the team about when they could expect me off their projects, meetings and clients, when my work hours would be decreasing, and what my eventual return to work would look like.

Being a small business and a small team, I wanted everyone to know there may be times I would need to come back from leave to do work. I was never going to have a maternity leave where I didn’t look in on work – it’s not in my nature, nor any small business owners I think.

However, to ensure I’m not swept back into the day-to-day (not by the team, by my own doing), I’ve created a set of criteria for what I will come back from leave for.

For me to come out of baby land, the team know there needs to be:

1. A surmountable strategic value to the business
2. The project price is an agreed amount
3. The entire team is at capacity – not busy, we’re talking burning capacity and all of our subcontractors / temps have been exhausted
4. No one else has the skills to be able to complete the task and therefore no one to outsource it

These are the very rules I followed last time and will be using again like a contract and commitment to myself.

5. I made check-in rules for the team

As a professional communicator, you better believe clear lines of communication were established too to support my maternity leave. I established a triage system around how things would be escalated to me through our superb GM Liz – giving Liz the autonomy to make business decisions, while equally feeling supported to do the same.

This maternity leave, Liz and I have plans to talk daily, something I did with Bel on my first maternity leave – even if only for two minutes while feeding.

The purpose of these calls is simple – merely a pulse check for the team, and what may or may not need my attention. Nothing formal – no agenda – just a check-in.

While there’s nothing Liz can’t do – it is nice to know you’re never alone (at least I think so anyway).

As I sign off for my final week of work and step into maternity leave, I am so excited for both this chapter with my little human and also for the business.

I truly believe babies bring abundance and I am here for this wild baby ride and all the joy that comes with it.

To my amazing team – thank you for holding the ship. To our amazing clients – thank you for trusting us. To my rock star GM Liz – thank you for everything you’re allowing me to do.