How to Start Thinking About Maternity Leave as an Entrepreneur

Jordan Gill: 00:00:01

Welcome to the System Sami podcast.

Jordan Gill: 00:00:03

I'm your usual host, Jordan Gill.

Jordan Gill: 00:00:05

But this season I am so thrilled to share my feed with some absolute gems from my community.

Jordan Gill: 00:00:11

Zahra Marie Henry of Zara Marie Online Business Management is back on the podcast speaking out how you can start to put together your dream maternity leave.

Jordan Gill: 00:00:21

And it may feel overwhelming, but I assure you, Zara Marie's step by step process is so soothing.

Jordan Gill: 00:00:26

So get excited to hear from Zara Marie again speaking about how to start thinking about maternity leave as an entrepreneur.

Zara Marie: 00:00:35

Hey, System saved me listeners.

Zara Marie: 00:00:38

Welcome back to the podcast.

Zara Marie: 00:00:40

I am so excited to be here again.

Zara Marie: 00:00:42

If you didn't catch my first episode in this two part series, hello.

Zara Marie: 00:00:46

I am Zara Marie, an online business manager for service providers and I have a service special interest in helping entrepreneurs with family planning and preparing for maternity leave.

Zara Marie: 00:00:57

I'm an island girl from the beautiful tiny Caribbean island of Jamaica where it is always sunny and the vibes is always great.

Zara Marie: 00:01:06

That sounds like a tourist ad, but for real, it's, it's pretty nice here.

Zara Marie: 00:01:11

So the last time we talked about my baby framework, which is designed to help entrepreneurs plan for their maternity leave in a way that is flexible and in a way that will align with their personal and business goals.

Zara Marie: 00:01:25

I love the baby framework because it really appreciates the fact that something like maternity leave is so precious and so specific to the person who is going to be planning it.

Zara Marie: 00:01:37

Right.

Zara Marie: 00:01:37

So I don't put it in a box.

Zara Marie: 00:01:39

Instead I just give you a roadmap so that you can know exactly where you're going to be, what you're going to be doing at each stage.

Zara Marie: 00:01:46

So it gives you a kickstart, a guide.

Zara Marie: 00:01:49

So if you missed that episode and you want to learn about the baby framework, I highly recommend that you go back and listen.

Zara Marie: 00:01:56

It's a great starting point for today's topic.

Zara Marie: 00:01:59

So in this episode we're going to dive a little bit into how to start thinking about maternity as an entrepreneur.

Zara Marie: 00:02:05

So whether you're years away from needing this or you're already expecting, yay.

Zara Marie: 00:02:10

This episode is the one that will talk about the actual steps to begin.

Zara Marie: 00:02:14

So remember in the last episode I spoke a lot about the fact that I am in this B stage.

Zara Marie: 00:02:19

Right?

Zara Marie: 00:02:19

We are in this B stage and it is breaking down your goals or your desires.

Zara Marie: 00:02:25

And one of the things that really stood out to me though when I started talking about not just maternity leave but family planning is that even though the whole family planning conversation is tied to reproductive health as entrepreneurs and having kids and Stuff like that.

Zara Marie: 00:02:40

If we were supposed to take the words literally, Family planning, planning for the family, it could really mean any change in your family.

Zara Marie: 00:02:47

So for some of us, it actually won't be babies.

Zara Marie: 00:02:50

It might be aging parents.

Zara Marie: 00:02:53

It might be something like the diagnosis of a terminal illness for a family member who has listed you as a guardian, so now you have nieces and nephews who are under your control.

Zara Marie: 00:03:02

It might be that your siblings need your support and they have to move in for the next three, four years.

Zara Marie: 00:03:07

It might be that you have a sibling who has always had special needs and your parent died and now you have to take over.

Zara Marie: 00:03:12

Whatever it is, changes can happen, and whatever new changes happen will shift things up for your immediate family.

Zara Marie: 00:03:20

And yet we have to start putting things in place.

Zara Marie: 00:03:23

And so anyways, today we're spending a little time in the B part of the baby framework, as mentioned before.

Zara Marie: 00:03:29

And it's okay to spend years in this phase because that's, as I said, this is where I am now.

Zara Marie: 00:03:35

And as I think about it, as an only child, I want to make sure that my business is built in a way where when I have to take over responsibility of my mom, it's not a big deal.

Zara Marie: 00:03:47

Right?

Zara Marie: 00:03:47

So the first step is to reflect on your long term personal and professional aspirations, understanding your personal and professional goals.

Zara Marie: 00:03:57

Family planning is deeply personal, but as entrepreneurs, it's so intertwined with how we run our businesses.

Zara Marie: 00:04:04

And the things that I'm thinking about is what are my personal goals for starting and growing a family?

Zara Marie: 00:04:09

What are my professional goals over the next few years?

Zara Marie: 00:04:12

What do I want it to look like and how can they align?

Zara Marie: 00:04:16

In my former life, as I like to say, I actually went to school to become a lawyer in the Caribbean.

Zara Marie: 00:04:21

We do a law degree first, which is a bachelor's of laws, and then we go to law school and we do that.

Zara Marie: 00:04:26

It was supposed to be really nice.

Zara Marie: 00:04:27

I was supposed to be a lawyer who was in court, dressed up every day.

Zara Marie: 00:04:30

I did it all.

Zara Marie: 00:04:31

I went to got the first degree.

Zara Marie: 00:04:32

I went to law school.

Zara Marie: 00:04:33

I graduated.

Zara Marie: 00:04:35

We still wear black robes and the little white scarves.

Zara Marie: 00:04:38

I did it and it was great.

Zara Marie: 00:04:40

And it felt like that's what I wanted to do.

Zara Marie: 00:04:42

And if you had asked me five, six years ago, hey, what do you want to become?

Zara Marie: 00:04:46

I would have given you the whole Elle Woods, Legally Blonde explanation and, you know, just trying to find ways to make it pretty.

Zara Marie: 00:04:53

And my entrepreneurship journey is one of those journeys that always blow my mind because I started off as a creative and I had A social media agency before that was specifically for law firms.

Zara Marie: 00:05:03

Anyways, why am I going around and around all this?

Zara Marie: 00:05:05

What I'm saying is that the dream that I'm living, the life that I'm living now, was Not My Dream 5, 6 years ago in terms of practicality, like in terms of specifics, right?

Zara Marie: 00:05:17

So specifically I thought I would be still practicing as a lawyer fully, I would be in like some pink suits in court, just really turning heads and breaking the stereotype.

Zara Marie: 00:05:29

But that didn't happen.

Zara Marie: 00:05:30

But I'm still living the dream life because one thing never changed is where I think I wanted to be at this age.

Zara Marie: 00:05:36

So at the recording of this podcast, I'm 27 and everything on the vision board that I created at 23 or 20, 22, they're all done.

Zara Marie: 00:05:46

I've accomplished them, but the way I've accomplished them and the specifics look a little bit different.

Zara Marie: 00:05:51

So yeah, I still did really well in my professional career.

Zara Marie: 00:05:54

I launched a business and if you launch a business and lasted more than a year and it start, it can pay you, it is successful.

Zara Marie: 00:05:59

I do don't care what anybody wants to say, it is successful.

Zara Marie: 00:06:02

And I did that and I'm very proud of it.

Zara Marie: 00:06:04

I was able to accomplish the smaller goals and accomplish the things that I wanted to accomplish, but the vision didn't change, right?

Zara Marie: 00:06:10

So because I knew what my personal goals were and I knew what those things are, I just kept at it, even if the specifics looked a little different.

Zara Marie: 00:06:18

Now for the future, it's time for me to be very clear about what I want the future to look like.

Zara Marie: 00:06:24

When kids come in, even though the specifics might change, the vision will remain the same, right?

Zara Marie: 00:06:31

So maybe you want to expand your business, but you also want to start such a family next year or two or three or four.

Zara Marie: 00:06:39

And in the balance, in.

Zara Marie: 00:06:40

In the pursuit of balancing these goals, or as one of my friend likes to say, harmonizing these goals because she doesn't believe in balance.

Zara Marie: 00:06:47

I don't believe in balance either.

Zara Marie: 00:06:48

It's a fluke.

Zara Marie: 00:06:49

These goals might mean prioritizing your systems.

Zara Marie: 00:06:53

No.

Zara Marie: 00:06:54

It might mean prioritizing things like building.

Zara Marie: 00:06:57

No.

Zara Marie: 00:06:57

Prioritizing some of the profit.

Zara Marie: 00:07:00

No.

Zara Marie: 00:07:00

Some of the owners paying.

Zara Marie: 00:07:02

No.

Zara Marie: 00:07:02

So that your business can run more independently in the future.

Zara Marie: 00:07:06

And I have a little reflection prompt for you.

Zara Marie: 00:07:08

What does success look like for you personally and what does success look like for you professionally?

Zara Marie: 00:07:14

Write it down.

Zara Marie: 00:07:15

Get your journal, write it down.

Zara Marie: 00:07:18

Because if the vision remains the same, the specifics can always change as we go with the ebbs and flows of life.

Zara Marie: 00:07:26

All right, second thing, assess your current situation.

Zara Marie: 00:07:29

So remember, we're talking about how do we start thinking about family planning as entrepreneurs?

Zara Marie: 00:07:33

Assess your current situation.

Zara Marie: 00:07:35

Evaluate where you are now, both in your business and your personal life.

Zara Marie: 00:07:38

Because we always talk about, okay, what do we want that to look like now we have to understand where we're coming from.

Zara Marie: 00:07:42

Because if you don't know where you're coming from, how are you going to know where you're going?

Zara Marie: 00:07:45

How are you going to know what things you're measuring, how you're going to be moving forward, what adjustments may be needed?

Zara Marie: 00:07:51

You know, you have to evaluate, you need to evaluate your business stability.

Zara Marie: 00:07:57

How is your business doing now?

Zara Marie: 00:07:59

Do you have consistent income?

Zara Marie: 00:08:02

Do you have mrr?

Zara Marie: 00:08:03

Monthly recurring revenue, by the way, is the only MRR I know.

Zara Marie: 00:08:07

And on mrri, what's the word I own mri say yes to?

Zara Marie: 00:08:16

I can't remember the word.

Zara Marie: 00:08:18

Anyways, are your operations running well?

Zara Marie: 00:08:21

Is it smooth enough?

Zara Marie: 00:08:23

What's going on there?

Zara Marie: 00:08:25

What's your service like?

Zara Marie: 00:08:27

Does your service feel tacky, whether it be a membership or digital products, or do we need anything to just, just what is here?

Zara Marie: 00:08:33

What is it?

Zara Marie: 00:08:33

The stability?

Zara Marie: 00:08:34

Do you even feel stable or do you don't have any sort of stability?

Zara Marie: 00:08:38

What is your, your weekly finance workflow like?

Zara Marie: 00:08:42

Also financial health?

Zara Marie: 00:08:44

Do you have any savings, any emergency funds, any investments?

Zara Marie: 00:08:48

Do you have any type of predictable income, whether it be you and your partner, any other streams of income?

Zara Marie: 00:08:53

What does that look like for you?

Zara Marie: 00:08:55

For you?

Zara Marie: 00:08:56

Because remember, this is not me.

Zara Marie: 00:08:57

It's not Zara asking her services for you.

Zara Marie: 00:08:59

And then what does your support system look and feel like?

Zara Marie: 00:09:03

Are you living close to relatives, close to your parents?

Zara Marie: 00:09:07

Do you have friends who are like more like family who come over or who you can rely on, lean on?

Zara Marie: 00:09:13

Do you have any support systems professionally?

Zara Marie: 00:09:16

Who are your business besties?

Zara Marie: 00:09:18

What's that like?

Zara Marie: 00:09:18

Are they moms too?

Zara Marie: 00:09:20

What will that look and feel like?

Zara Marie: 00:09:24

What kind of support do you have?

Zara Marie: 00:09:26

We have to ask those questions too, because then it will help you to decide on timing, will help you decide on even the decision on whether you actually do want to have kids.

Zara Marie: 00:09:36

You know, that's also something that you completely have the opportunity to make that decision.

Zara Marie: 00:09:41

And of course, personal health, you must be able to assess where you are currently with your personal health.

Zara Marie: 00:09:46

Do you have health conditions that you need to address before that, you know, like, what will that look like?

Zara Marie: 00:09:53

Do you have tests that you need to run?

Zara Marie: 00:09:55

Will you have an issue?

Zara Marie: 00:09:56

You know, we'll hear talking all nice and dandy about planning for baby, but you may have some fertility issues and baby might decide to come in his or her own time or maybe not at all.

Zara Marie: 00:10:06

You may have to now think about adoption.

Zara Marie: 00:10:08

No, adoption takes a little while.

Zara Marie: 00:10:09

So in the same time that you're planning on strategizing the 2, 3 years old for the business, that might be the time you might need to start applying to an agency as well.

Zara Marie: 00:10:17

You just never ever know.

Zara Marie: 00:10:18

And that's why it's so good.

Zara Marie: 00:10:20

Just assess your current situation to see where you are and to help your and to give yourself the ability to make those reasonable decisions.

Zara Marie: 00:10:29

And I guess a good example of that would be I have a client who right now we are in the B phase where she's just starting to think about it and she travels so much to the west coast for some of her meetings.

Zara Marie: 00:10:42

And because she travels to the west coast for some of her meetings, one of the things that now as we move into the building stage, we will now have to find a solution for that.

Zara Marie: 00:10:51

But we're not in the building phase yet.

Zara Marie: 00:10:53

We're just in the B phase.

Zara Marie: 00:10:55

The first B phase, I mean, where we are just talking about her desires and we're assessing the situation.

Zara Marie: 00:10:59

We're like, okay, here's what's happening now.

Zara Marie: 00:11:01

When we start to build out this plan, then we'll have to make a plan on what we will be, how we'll be dealing with her frequent travels to the West Coast.

Zara Marie: 00:11:09

All right, what's the third thing?

Zara Marie: 00:11:10

Oh, you don't know?

Zara Marie: 00:11:11

I'm going to tell you.

Zara Marie: 00:11:12

But the third thing to start thinking about when you are thinking about family planning, you know, I just thinking about like three.

Zara Marie: 00:11:18

Anyways, the third point you will no need to prioritize things like flexibility and adaptability in these initial stages.

Zara Marie: 00:11:26

It's really good for you to just embrace these tricks as an entrepreneur because you need to be able to roll with the punches because punches will come, right?

Zara Marie: 00:11:36

And you're going to start doing in the east, you're going to start thinking about what type of flexible hours you would want.

Zara Marie: 00:11:42

Do you even like working at home?

Zara Marie: 00:11:44

Try to fight a bit.

Zara Marie: 00:11:45

If you are in office, what does that look like?

Zara Marie: 00:11:48

And then also how adaptable is your current business operation?

Zara Marie: 00:11:53

That type of thing, you really have to prioritize that and you really have to look into how much of an impact that can make on your life going forward.

Zara Marie: 00:12:02

I remember I worked with a CEO and she implemented project management tools and automated workflows and when the project management tool came in, there was so much kickback.

Zara Marie: 00:12:13

We got so much fire because we don't want to use ClickUp.

Zara Marie: 00:12:15

ClickUp is ClickUp that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Zara Marie: 00:12:18

However, ClickUp starts to work so well for their brains because they gave it a choice and through then because they were flexible and they were adaptable.

Zara Marie: 00:12:28

By the time she was ready to go, they were all good.

Zara Marie: 00:12:32

So here's the engagement prompt I want to share with you.

Zara Marie: 00:12:34

Ask yourself, what adjustments have you considered in your business and also in your family life to look at it, how big is where you're living those type of things to accommodate new life.

Zara Marie: 00:12:47

To accommodate changes.

Zara Marie: 00:12:48

Not just new life.

Zara Marie: 00:12:49

But remember we spoke about the fact that aging parents can also be a part of the consideration.

Zara Marie: 00:12:54

How.

Zara Marie: 00:12:54

Yeah, what.

Zara Marie: 00:12:55

What are those adjustments?

Zara Marie: 00:12:56

Write them down.

Zara Marie: 00:12:57

Next thing I want you to be thinking about is just thinking about what you want to plan to look like.

Zara Marie: 00:13:02

We're not going to be planning in this phase.

Zara Marie: 00:13:03

It's just a thinking phase.

Zara Marie: 00:13:05

So in this thinking, we're going to be thinking about how your team is built up.

Zara Marie: 00:13:11

Who are the people?

Zara Marie: 00:13:13

Do you have a current model plus a future model?

Zara Marie: 00:13:16

So leadership coaching and is something that I just do inadvertently because of I do work with 6, 7, 8 figure CEOs, which means that we work with teams.

Zara Marie: 00:13:27

So what does your current team org chart look like?

Zara Marie: 00:13:30

And then what does your future org chart look like?

Zara Marie: 00:13:32

So you want to start having those conversations so that you can now think about the roles and the responsibilities that you have to shift up.

Zara Marie: 00:13:40

And then after you figure that out, of course you're going to just write it down.

Zara Marie: 00:13:44

I love writing things down.

Zara Marie: 00:13:45

I love just being open and transparent of how I feel.

Zara Marie: 00:13:48

And then you can use your little tools to organize.

Zara Marie: 00:13:51

I said before you do, I'm a processes person.

Zara Marie: 00:13:55

Right.

Zara Marie: 00:13:55

I love processes.

Zara Marie: 00:13:56

You have processes over tools.

Zara Marie: 00:13:58

So yeah, that's where we are.

Zara Marie: 00:14:00

I'm going to go.

Zara Marie: 00:14:01

I'm going to be going into the fourth thing to start thinking about when you are thinking about maternity leave planning and family planning.

Zara Marie: 00:14:08

But I wanted to stop now and go ahead and post a story post and just tell me how much you are enjoying this episode.

Zara Marie: 00:14:17

And when you do that, you will be entered into a draw that I will choose randomly and you will get my maternity leave DIY kit.

Zara Marie: 00:14:26

Maternity planning kit for.

Zara Marie: 00:14:27

Yeah, you get that as a gift, 100% free.

Zara Marie: 00:14:30

Because as I said, especially if you're just thinking about saying you're in that B phase, I think it would be so great for just.

Zara Marie: 00:14:37

It's all laid out.

Zara Marie: 00:14:38

Yeah, go ahead and do that.

Zara Marie: 00:14:39

All right.

Zara Marie: 00:14:40

And the last thing I wanted to talk about is in this preliminary phase, when you're just thinking about it, start seeking guidance.

Zara Marie: 00:14:49

Start seeking guidance.

Zara Marie: 00:14:50

Build the support network.

Zara Marie: 00:14:52

You can go far alone.

Zara Marie: 00:14:54

You can go further with people.

Zara Marie: 00:14:56

You don't have to do this by yourself.

Zara Marie: 00:14:59

Even if it's in the thinking stages, you don't have to do.

Zara Marie: 00:15:04

You don't have to tell everybody your business, but support.

Zara Marie: 00:15:06

Just surround yourself with the right people.

Zara Marie: 00:15:08

Use the opportunity to talk with other entrepreneurs who are parents so that I can give you their insights.

Zara Marie: 00:15:13

I can tell you what are the things that they're struggling with.

Zara Marie: 00:15:16

Lean on the people who are above you, your family, your friends who have gone down the road before you.

Zara Marie: 00:15:21

Right.

Zara Marie: 00:15:22

And okay, consider, like, okay, who are the people who I can potentially hire?

Zara Marie: 00:15:26

Like, I know I've told this to my husband that when I have kids, I want a night nanny.

Zara Marie: 00:15:32

So until my business can afford to pay me in a way that I can pay a nanny with, not having kids.

Zara Marie: 00:15:38

And that's because I have sought guidance.

Zara Marie: 00:15:40

I have a good support system around me of other mommy entrepreneurs, and I see what they go through and they are stressed out for the most part, and I really value my sleep.

Zara Marie: 00:15:49

So if I can get a night nurse who can come in one, you know, every now and again, maybe two, three times a week to kind of help me to get that extra sleep, I know it's going to be transformational.

Zara Marie: 00:15:57

So that's something that I got from seeking guidance.

Zara Marie: 00:16:01

I remember I worked with an entrepreneur one time and.

Zara Marie: 00:16:03

And she joined a mastermind group that was specifically for mommy entrepreneurs.

Zara Marie: 00:16:08

And it was really interesting for her.

Zara Marie: 00:16:10

It was really nice.

Zara Marie: 00:16:11

And I'm sure that there are a lot of other mommy group that are really nice.

Zara Marie: 00:16:14

So honestly, family planning.

Zara Marie: 00:16:16

As an entrepreneur, thinking about kids and my time to leave, it can feel that it's overwhelming, but I think it's absolutely doable.

Zara Marie: 00:16:22

Just break it down in steps.

Zara Marie: 00:16:24

Remember the steps that I spoke about, Reflecting on your personal and professional goals, assessing what your current situation is, making sure that you think about ways to prioritize flexibility and adaptability in your current business operations.

Zara Marie: 00:16:37

And just start thinking about what, like your preliminary planning and of course, building a network of support to guide and encourage you.

Zara Marie: 00:16:45

Remember, you don't have to figure it all out at once.

Zara Marie: 00:16:49

Start where you are.

Zara Marie: 00:16:51

Refine it as you go along.

Zara Marie: 00:16:53

Everybody's situation is different.

Zara Marie: 00:16:55

Everybody has something different working with, and we have to be okay with that.

Zara Marie: 00:16:59

It is our uniqueness that makes us special and that's what's going to always be our differentiating factor.

Zara Marie: 00:17:08

My story is not your story and your story is not my story.

Zara Marie: 00:17:12

If this episode resonated with you, please you would love my maternity leave checklist.

Zara Marie: 00:17:16

It's packed with tools and prompts to help you take the first step.

Zara Marie: 00:17:19

If you want to connect, find me on Instagram on Threads.

Zara Marie: 00:17:24

I've been hanging out a lot on Threads these days and on YouTube @Zaramarie.

Zara Marie: 00:17:29

I'd love to hear your thoughts, your questions, strategies, just drop them in my DMS in my Instagram DMs, especially questions because I think that really fuels me to make my maternity leave planning kit even better.

Zara Marie: 00:17:41

But I'd love to connect with you.

Zara Marie: 00:17:43

Until next time, remember, you've got this and I'm cheering you on every step of the way.

Zara Marie: 00:17:48

Thanks for tuning in.

Zara Marie: 00:17:49

Bye.

Jordan Gill: 00:17:51

So good, right?

Jordan Gill: 00:17:53

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Systems Amy Podcast Cast.

Jordan Gill: 00:17:57

If you loved this episode, I would so appreciate a review on whatever platform you're listening on.

Jordan Gill: 00:18:03

But also go up on the guest host.

Jordan Gill: 00:18:05

Connect with them on Instagram, LinkedIn or wherever they suggested to reach out.

Jordan Gill: 00:18:10

I hope you're having a great day and I will see you on the next episode.