339 Musings on Redefining Maternity 'Leave' for Ambitious Female Entrepreneurs
Navigating Entrepreneurship as a New Mom
Balancing Business, Motherhood, and Life
As we transition from the lively summer months into the reflective autumn season, I've been pondering the last eight months since welcoming my first baby in December 2023.
In today's solo riff, I'll dive into my unique maternity experience, navigating the entrepreneurial landscape without taking a traditional maternity leave.
I'll share how personal factors like my baby's sleep patterns and my drive have influenced my business decisions, and how I've managed to maintain a solid foundation built over the past eight years.
We also talk about :
How I have condensed my workweek
Balancing motherhood, business, hobbies, and joyful life.
The power of solid systems and delegation
& where I plan to go from here!
Episode Time Stamps:
[05:56] Condensing workweek, as well as balancing family and business
[07:20] Work Transformation, pregnancy and unexpected comments that left me a little angry.
[13:13] How I balance motherhood, business, and hobbies
[20:09] My business continued to thrive due to my solid systems and delegations.
[26:58] Every business is unique and nuanced
To connect with Kelsey:
Access the transcript for this episode:
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Hey, visionaries. Welcome back. How's it going? It's September. When I'm recording this, I almost can't believe that summer was here. Now it's kind of gone, as we know those July and August chill months, and it seems like we're right back into it. There are program launches happening. Everybody is back in momentum, sending the kids to school, packing lunches. The diet starts tomorrow.
And no matter how you're feeling right now, because I feel like we all want to hit September being uber productive. But also, sometimes life has other plans, and I'm no stranger to that. I have gone through periods of grief. I have been challenged with dealing with health issues. I have a baby now, and, you know, most days I wake up feeling extremely motivated. But if you are in a season of non momentum and in a season of just keeping things afloat, that's okay, too. And I just wanted to start by saying that because I know that there's a lot being targeted at us right now to just get into routine for the final four months. And everybody wants you to join their program right now.
So make sure you tune in and really support yourself in what you need in this season of life. All right, so in this episode, I'm going to be sharing a recap of the last eight months of my maternity experience, a term that I use instead of maternity leave. Because as you'll find out in this episode, I never really took a maternity leave. So my hope is that by just opening up, sharing this, guys, I'm doing this completely off the cuff. Like, this is not a scripted episode. I'm just sitting down on the mic and I'm just going to talk to you because I know I felt very alone and unsure of how I would run a business as an entrepreneur and as someone who wanted to have babies. And then when I had my first baby in December of 2023, I still had no plan. I had scoured the Internet in the nine months leading up to having my son, and I was like, oh, maybe I'll hire a coach.
Like, can someone help me? But what I've realized is that there isn't that much information specifically for mamas who are passionate about their work and who also want to step into motherhood. And so I'm sharing a lot of my experience. A lot of it's already posted online because I know that I was craving this content when I was entering into this new season. So, as I've mentioned to you guys previously, I was actually pretty worried about what would happen to my business if and when we had kids. And I didn't have our first baby, our only baby for now. I didn't have him until I was 34 years old. So we waited quite a while. And like I said, I was worried.
I have loved working since. Well, really ever since I got my first job doing a paper route. I just, I crave having that structure in my week. I've always sought out jobs that I enjoyed. And when I became an entrepreneur eight years ago, I just started running full steam ahead. I don't know if you've ever found a project like that where you're just like lit up and you just, you never want to take a break because you don't need one. Like, you're not doing work that burns you out, you're just creating and you're focused on things that totally light you up and that capitalize on your skill sets. And that's what I've been building over the last year.Eight years, sorry. With the Visionary Life podcast, with the visionary method, and all of the courses that fall within that, under that, with my one on one coaching, with all of the work workshops that I've taught, with all of the hundreds of blogs that I've created and Instagram posts under the Visionary Inc. Banner. And I do this work because I truly feel like it is my life's purpose. And so, coming into a time when I knew I was going to be having our baby in December, I just had no idea what was going to happen. And I wasn't sure. Would I jump back into work one month in? Would I want to take a whole twelve months off? Because here in Canada, if you work in a, I guess, typical job, we'll call it, you get a twelve month maternity leave and you get some top up from the government or from your employer. But because I have never paid into EI, I am not someone who's able to collect employment insurance.
So I don't get any money on maternity leave as an entrepreneur. So it's not that that was skewing my decision, but it's not like I was just sitting back being fed thousands of dollars each month. And there are many reasons why I chose to never pay into EI, but it was the right decision for me just because I felt like it wouldn't, it wouldn't make sense given that my business generates a decent amount of money. And even if I wasn't there, I figured I would still be able to earn more than on EI. So anyways, feel free to dm me about that. But again, as December came closer and closer, I realized I still had no plan, but I had to trust in myself that I was entering into a new and upgraded season. And I'll kind of just, like, skip to the end here and say that motherhood has been the best season of my life, yet it has forced me to become so hyper focused on all things. Like when I want to do my workouts, when my husband and I are going to have a date, when I'm going to see friends, if I want to say no to things.
If I want to say yes to things. But particularly, too, in my business, like, what are those tiny percentage of things that I did previously that I should still do in order to keep the business where it was at in 2021? And 2022. And 2023? So essentially what I am getting at is that I've had to condense my work week from a five day week which I worked previously in some way, shape or form, and now into a two day work week. And I'll dive into that further. But let's just say, number one, it has been a trip. Number two, it has been so amazing and beautiful and I'm so proud of myself. I don't think I've ever said that out loud, but I'm so proud of myself for figuring it out and taking the stress off and trusting that if opportunities came along that felt aligned, even if it was 40 days after having my baby, that I could take the call and I could consider if it would be a fit for my twelve month maternity experience or however long I decided to take. And honestly, my heart has grown and I have so much love, not only to give to Freddie and to my family, but also to my clients and to my business.
And so I'm excited in this episode to chat you through how I've been able to transform my work week and what it has looked like and where I plan to go from here. All right, so when I first announced my pregnancy, I started building a visionary mama community. And 99% of it was like, really positive, upbeat conversations. But I distinctly remember this one comment, and, you know, I'll first caveat this by saying I open myself up to comments and feedback and I love hearing people's opinions and I ask for advice because I genuinely love talking to everybody. But sometimes when you get a DM that's just so unhelpful, even though you open yourself up to it, it's kind of just like, what the actual heck? Like, I just. Why would you even write that? And so I remember it was about September, so I was maybe six months pregnant and I was just getting into conversation, posting a few things, and I remember this girl who I know through a friend, she messaged me and she said in all capitals, by the way, prepare for pure exhaustion with, like, these, like, angry emojis. And I felt first just kind of pissed off. Like, that is a very unhelpful comment.And, okay, I know that I will likely be more tired than ever before, but why would you say that to a mama to be for the first time? And so part of me kind of just said, whatever, like, she's obviously going through something. But then part of me was like, oh, my God, maybe I am delusional for thinking that I will ever go back to work as a mama of a newborn. And maybe I should be a bit more skeptical of whether I can return to work within three months or six months. And I remember also someone saying to me, just in a passing conversation, how are you going to take time away? And I was like, oh, like, I don't know. I don't really have a plan, but at this point, I just have to trust that I'll figure it out when that time comes. Like, we always do figure it out in the moment. And the reason why I didn't have a plan was because I felt like I hadn't thought about it and nobody really talks about it. And the nine months that I was pregnant went by so fast.
And also because there is no one right way to navigate maternity experience. If you're a female entrepreneur and you've had babies, I bet all of us could stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder and recap completely different experiences. I know some mamas who had to lay the business dormant for twelve months because they weren't sleeping or their pregnancy was brutal, or they just lost their mojo. Maybe it was while they were pregnant. Maybe it was while or in those first few months postpartum. And so none of us experienced this the same. And I could add so many caveats as I go through this episode. You know, my baby sleeps well, or I've always been a driven person or I had systems set up.
But I. I do also just want to say that, like, none of our experiences are similar. I may have a second child and go through something completely different, but overall, I feel like being a mama is a superpower. And that's my experience. And I don't mean that in the way of, like, I'm doing everything perfectly, but I just mean, you channel this different energy and it's almost this magnetic force that moms carry around with them, and it really is beautiful and inspiring. And I know if. If you've ever had that before or you feel that right now, then you get it. But I will also say that things have had to be dropped.
And there are certainly many areas over the last eight months where I haven't been able to keep things afloat. You know, my house is not spic and span. I have lost contact with friends for a temporary time. I've missed out on social gatherings. I've maybe nothing been on top of the grocery. I've killed my sourdough starter twice. I don't have all my ducks in a row, but one thing I do have in a row is my business and the foundation of it. And again, my hopes by sharing this episode are that you can realize, a, nobody has their shit together, and when they're thriving in some areas, they're obviously not thriving in other areas.
And B, if you're going on mat leave, just know that having a good business foundation can go a long way. And you can kick ass. You can kick ass. As you go on to your maternity experience, don't let anyone tell you otherwise or make you assume that your business is going to die. I do think that part of me feeling somewhat confident going into a maternity experience was that I'm eight years in. I started my business by working really, really hard on a foundation. I hired coaches. I joined masterminds.
I built out my website, my email list, my social media platforms. I built processes for my podcast, my blog, the way in which I show up. I have launch plans prepped, and at this point, I have some really good systems that help me run my business with ease. I also have an amazing teammate who has been with me for five years at this point. So I'm very lucky to have spent time and a lot of time like, I was a hustler the last seven years, but I've spent a lot of time building this up. And I did work some 60 hours, 80 hours weeks. I did work five days a week not taking breaks. And I'm obviously in a different season now, but it didn't start that way.
So I feel like that's also something that I can lean on, is that the work was put in, but at the end of the day in this episode, I'm just going to basically share how it's been going and I. It's an honest look at how I've managed motherhood and running my business and still feeling joyful, still having time for my hobbies, for my husband, and to take care of my health. So I think what's interesting is the first reframe around why we believe we have to have a 40 hours a week work week or work five days a week consecutively. And I think we have to remind ourselves that that is a product of the industrial revolution. And that may not be your purpose, personal preference, it may not be the best situation for your personal circumstances at this phase of life. And what's really cool is when you have kids or when you go on a maternity leave, you're actually forced to completely rejig that. And you almost have to start compressing time because you don't have as much time. Especially if you're like me and you're a stay at home mom, you're a working mama.
Your husband's out of the house five days a week and you have childcare sometimes two days a week, sometimes one day a week. And you work on nap times, if there is a nap time. So you have to figure out a different way because the 40 hours per week work week which you may have once had as part of your schedule, that has to be dropped. You have to completely eliminate the idea that you would be sitting at your computer 8 hours a day, five days a week, and you have to look at everything you need to do to run your business and say, how I'm gonna, how am I going to fit this into 1 hour or 5 hours or 10 hours a week or 20 hours a week? And you just do it. You literally look at time differently because time is so precious. The time with your baby is you want to be fully present, not scrolling your phone, not on TikTok, and the time at your computer. There is no way you are wasting it. You're not going to waste it managing your inbox or, I don't know, like scrolling social media because you have high leverage work that needs to get done.
And so the first thing that I'll say is, like, you have to drop the story of the five day a week workweek or the 40 hours a week workweek. The next thing that I had to navigate was the return to work plan. Like, I almost thought that there would be like this structured rollout of me announcing that I'm back and people booking in and, and having a start date and having childcare lined up and having all my ducks in a row and giving myself at least three months off. But it's so funny because I remember in those first few weeks of being a mom, it was December and January, so the days were short and it was cold out. So we were indoors a lot. And, you know, there wasn't as much going on as there might be during summer months. My creativity was through the roof, and, you know, as my body was healing from giving birth, I was sitting in my rocker chair with Freddie a lot, and I had this notebook beside me, and I just wrote down idea after idea after idea for, like, two or three weeks straight. And I was creating content, I was writing blogs, I was recording my birth story, and all of a sudden, I kind of realized, like, oh, I'm back to work.
Like, I haven't taken time off. And I've created this role of founder of my company because I love being a creator, and it's in my blood. And to actually step away from the business and be absent or to leave, like the word maternity leave describes, it just didn't make sense. It's not who I am. And I almost had this story that, like, I should just stop working. Put the pen down. Don't open the laptop. But more than ever before, I just felt this fire in my belly to create.
And I wasn't seeing clients for the first, I'd say six weeks. But all of a sudden, I got a few applications, and people were trying to book me for either a one off session or someone wanted to embark on my six month coaching package starting in February. So two months after I had given birth. And these were just wonderful opportunities that truly lit me up. And so I ended up returning to work way sooner than planned, but I didn't really have a plan. So I'm really glad that I kind of leaned into my intuition here. And I remember it was, I think, the first weekend after my husband had gone back to work. He took four weeks off on, like, a little paternity leave.
And that following weekend. So maybe Freddie was five weeks old. I was out. We were out for dinner, and we were at one of our favorite places. We were having a drink, and then we were gonna go to dinner, and I got this application, and I was like, hey, do you want to jump on the phone right now? And so I just, like, tethered my laptop from my car, and I spoke to this woman. She was on the east coast of Canada, and we clicked, and she's like, yep, I'm ready to go. This is exactly what I need. And so here I am, six weeks postpartum, telling myself I was going to take a maternity leave, but also so lit up about working with this client and having something to pour my energy into.
So I said yes. And from that moment on, I was right back into work. I booked a bunch of clients to start March, April and May. I had a few one on one audits that came through and it just felt effortless and easy. And that is the lesson that I would share here is if you're in a season where it just doesn't feel effortless to get back to work, especially if you're running your own business and you're a creator and you're used to having this creative output, maybe it's just blocked, it's not there, and you just need to rest and sleep and chill. But if you're on the other end of the spectrum and it's like, whoa, I am buzzing. I feel like I'm electric right now and I want to create, I want to say yes to opportunities, then go for it. And I think one of the things that really helped me to say yes to going back to work is because I have a strong foundation after seven years and the systems and processes that the business has in place have really served me.
And I was actually chatting with my assistant Alex about this because I kind of said to her, like, I don't even know what we were talking about, but she said something along the lines of, I think this is why you've been able to continue working in the business, and that's all because of the systems that you have set up. And I never really thought about it that way. Like, the business has been able to keep going because it has a super, super solid foundation and it runs, for the most part, even when I'm not working a ton, because things that have to happen have a step by step process behind them. And Alex is actually able to execute so much of it. And I show up for more of the creative work and to kind of give the ideas and present the launch campaigns. But then the rest of it is just done on the back end without me needing to micromanage, which is really, really cool. And recently in our wave mastermind, we had Johnna Lee, who is an operations expert, and she really broke this down for us that when you want to have a business that generates, whatever, ten k a month, twenty k a month, fifty k a month, you can't be running it in your head anymore. Right? Like, it has to be broken down into.
Here's how we communicate internally, and for me, that's Asana. Here's how we communicate with clients. And for us, that's through slack and Asana. Here's how we manage our tasks. Here's how we track finances. Here is how we onboard a new member. Here is how we off board somebody. Here's how we cancel their payment plan.
Here's how we create a ten out of ten experience when they join our community. Here's how we whatever, like send out gifts with a templated thank you note. Everything kind of has a process behind it. And after seven years, I feel like I just naturally had to put all this in place so that I wasn't repeating the same thing over and over, and that I could kind of lean on Alex for so much while I focused on managing my one on one clients and really serving them in a bigger way. But if you've never thought about your business in terms of repeatable processes, as if you were going to go on mat leave or maybe you want to, like Jona was sharing, she took a month off to paddle through the Grand Canyon and she was only able to do that because of the system set up. So if you want to take any amount of time off your business, this is something so vital to consider of like, are you reinventing the wheel every single time you show up, or do you have structure in place? Is everything a repeatable process? One of the other things that I've really had to dial in on is as I was coming back to work and seeing one on one clients and showing up for them every day in Asana, which is something that I promised them, I really had to be careful with what I was saying yes to outside of that, because my one on one clients are kind of my bread and butter and doing speaking opportunities or getting on discovery calls and connection calls, or being on people's podcasts or, you know, whatever the opportunity was. I really had to be careful because I was working in such a compressed time. This also applied to my marketing.
So, you know, we're always needing to be marketing and planting seeds for the future of our client load. But I was in a season where I wasn't necessarily trying to attract a ton of clients. However, marketing is what I do, it's what I talk about and it's what I live and breathe. And so I really had to take a keen eye to my marketing efforts from the past seven years and ask myself, what are the highest leverage things that I can focus on that will still bring in the same number of clients? We always think about the 80 20 rule here. What are the 20% of marketing efforts you're doing that are leading to 80% of your results? For me, that was leaning on my search engine optimization, and I have an entire course that teaches my methodology around this called everyday SEO. And I rank for a lot of terms like business coach Toronto or marketing consultant or business coach in Canada. And that brings me the majority of my leads. So I did work over the last eight months to continue producing content and optimizing my keywords for my website.
And then I did want to still do a few other high leverage marketing activities. So I still hosted a meetup. Actually, no, we did two meetups at a local cafe and we hosted a retreat for our mastermind members. So those were kind of like the two things that I prioritized outside of SEO, in addition to a semi regular email newsletter and social media posting. So really I pared down my marketing to SEO hosting live events and these are just like short one day events, email and social media, and then continuing to prioritize referrals. So just doing a great job incentivizing referrals. And among those, what was that? Five marketing efforts. I know that I can have a full client load, which is really, really cool.
I think above all else, the reason why I have continued to work throughout the first eight months of my motherhood journey are because I really enjoy what I do and I do feel that deep down I have created a business that taps into what I'm good at and what I enjoy. And it hasn't been an easy road, but I am the person who tunes out what everybody else is saying. When somebody's trying to sell me a course that I have to be on Pinterest, I am so laser focused that that is not the platform for me. You can't derail me because I'd rather follow what my own inclinations are when it comes to marketing and visibility. And I don't want to follow someone else's template for success because when it breaks down and you think, oh, well, I just didn't do it right or that just doesn't work for me, it's because you're tuning into somebody else's playbook. And at the end of the day, when we can turn off the noise of the world, deprogram yourself from what you've been told you have to do. If you think you have to post Instagram reels to go viral in order to have a business, you have a program running. If you think that you have to sit behind your laptop and figure out Facebook ads or figure out complicated funnels in order to have a business, you have been programmed.
Someone is always trying to sell you something, or a software or a tech tool or a system. And at the end of the day, every business blueprint is different. And I feel like nobody really wants to hear that. Because that means that when you buy someone's course or when somebody's trying to tell you that having an email list of at least dollar 250 is going to be the best thing that you invest in in 2025, they're probably. It's nuanced, right? It is completely nuanced. And I've really noticed that over my past 14 years in the online marketing space, eight of those years in my own business, and then another six years working for other companies, I've really seen how things have unfortunately evolved from time tested, psychology based principles to a lot of these like gimmicks and quick fixes and course launches and hyped up strategies offering to fix your business or change the way that you approach it. But at the end of the day, it's so important to just root down and ground yourself in what is the most sustainable way that I can show up and test this idea and find product market fit and still have a strategic approach to building a multi six figure business or whatever your income targets are. And I really do believe now and eight years ago when I started my coaching business that your marketing funnel needs to work for your unique lifestyle.
Which is why I will never force a client to turn the camera on themselves if they're not comfortable. I will never force a client to become a blogger if they're really not a strong writer and they don't want to become one. I will never force a client to start a YouTube channel if they don't even watch YouTube. Right? And so there are such a plethora of lead generation strategies. There are so many ways to run a business, whether you're a mama like me, you're also passionate. Like, I hosted a mountain bike meetup last night and then we went to the bar after and I want to be able to do things like that among running a successful business and still feel like I'm in control and not overwhelmed and not stressed and I don't ever want to quit this thing. And so I hope that what I've shared today has been helpful in some way, shape or form. Consider this a riff, just a solo episode where you get to listen to me and my wild thoughts and you're keeping me company while my little guy naps.
And so I hope you have a visionary day. If you have any feedback or questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram and I will see you guys next week. Bye.
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