The BABY Framework: A Roadmap to Maternity Leave for Entrepreneurs

Welcome to the System Sammy podcast. I'm your usual host, Jordan Gill, but this season I am so excited to share my feed with some absolute gems from my community.

And today I have Zara Marie Henry of Zara Marie Online Business Management hosting the podcast and sharing about the roadmap to maternity leave for entrepreneurs. And now I will share here that I've never had a child through childbirth as I have a bonus on who is turning 11 soon. Like what is happening. And my husband and I, Marcus, have actually discussed having one of our own as well. Someday maybe. But I can admit that it has crossed my mind.

How in the heck would I be able to manage my business while taking significant time off? I know right now as my business stands, it would not make it. So I'm thoroughly thrilled that Zara Marie did these episodes for my reference later. So many folks I know are going into this season, so I hope that you enjoy Zara Marie's episode today on the Baby Framework, a roadmap to maternity leave for entrepreneurs. Hey System, Save me listeners.

My name is Zara Marie and I am an online business manager for service providers and I am super excited to have you here. I'm super excited that you have decided to tune into this series of why are my podcasts now. Being an OBM for me is such a sweet spot because I get to combine all my skills and help to create big transformations in the lives of others. And that's super important for me.

I'm an island girl from the island of Jamaica, and because I'm from the Caribbean, sometimes, you know, I don't get tied into many things because opportunities just don't flow as easily when you're outside of North America or outside of the bigger countries in Europe. So if you're listening this and you are from the Caribbean, whether you are a descendant of somebody from the Caribbean or you're living in the Caribbean still, or you are an immigrant child, big up yourself right through.

I work predominantly with women and as a woman myself and someone who knows that I eventually want to expand my family. This area that I'll be talking about about maternity leave and family planning, it feels really personal to me and I've seen in this space how little support exists for entrepreneurs who really want to step away from their business. And that's why I chose to offer this as a service, because it's not just a logistical problem.

It is deeply tied to how we run our businesses, how we see ourselves as CEOs, and even how we balance our ambition with our family goals. Right the main ways I help people are through my OBM retainer service is a fractional service and my clients, thankfully I feel like I have I get to work with the best women in the industry.

They trust me as their right hand, their second brain to ensure that their systems run smoothly, their teams stay aligned and the major projects hit their goals so that they can focus on being a CEO in their business. As an obm, you don't have to tell me what to do. I find the things to get done because we make our planning very early. We do our planning very early and we are strategic thinkers. My second offer is my maternity leave toolkit that I'm going to be launching in 2025.

So in this first episode of my two part series, I'm going to be talking about maternity to leave planning for entrepreneurs. I'm introducing you to my B A B Y Baby framework which I designed to help you plan for your maternity leave. Even if you're just starting to think about it, it's not a one size fits all solution. And because it's a one size fits all solution, I really like to give that disclaimer. But it still gives you a roadmap to help you to start planning with confidence.

Now here's the thing, and I like to say this clearly and boldly. I'm not a mom yet, just a dog mom. But I know I want to be one one day, right? And I know you're listening to this and you may want to be one one day, keep on listening even if you're not a mom yet. Once you have that passion and you you have the desire to eventually be a mom, just keep on. When I started looking for resources to help me plan, I found I didn't find much. And as an obm, I have, as I said, I serve women.

So I was diving into finding out how to help my clients prepare for maternity leave who were going off to have precious babies or even if you're not having them in the same way that like the conventional way welcoming babies into their world. And in doing the research I realized that there was such a huge gap in the market. I've successfully so far supported two entrepreneurs through their maternity leave planning from beginning to end.

And I am currently helping three more with with the planning in the stage B which you'll hear a little bit more later. But the three who I have in stage B, obviously I can't talk about them because they haven't publicly said it to anybody. That's one of the thing about being being an OBM you hear all the things very early. My clients always joke about the fact that she told me that she's planning for a baby even before she mentioned it to her mom.

And that's just because we want to make sure that the things are in place for the business. So when I was doing my research, I was like, I'm going to create a resource to make this process easier for others. And that's how I came up with the framework. It's what helps my clients, it's what I'm currently using, and it's what I will continue to use and I'll continue to refine it. So the Baby Framework is a simple yet comprehensive guide that you can use to plan your maternity leave.

And it focuses on four key phases. Phase one, B phase breaking. This is where you break down your desires, your goals, your expectations, and any myths or assumptions about how your maternity leave should look. This is in the region where you ask yourself why you, what you want your maternity leave to feel like, what do you need to let go of to make everything possible? Right. Second stage is A, because you know it's B. A adjusting.

Because once you've clarified your vision, now you have to adjust the things in your business, your expectations. Then the second B is for building. Because now you have to create the plan, you know, the timelines, the roles, the, the communication protocols, the contingency plans. You have to build that. And then the Y stage is yielding because you have to yield control. You done the work. It's time to now trust what you've done. Right.

This phase is where we do the test run and, and we just allow nature to take its course. Because guess what? We live in a world where things will always fall apart. Nothing will ever not go wrong. I don't even know that makes sense. But things will always shift. Things will never go as we've planned them. So just being in the mindset is going to be so life changing. So let's break this down a little further, right? I've always heard these things from people.

I can step away from my business without it falling apart. My business needs me. Oh, I'm not ready for kids yet because this is not going to happen. Oh, oh, oh, oh oh oh oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, the truth is, when we break down the beliefs, we break down our desires. It helps us to create a plan that aligns with our visions. Now, this B stage is a stage that a lot of us stay in for months, years.

I currently am in the B stage, so that's one of the Beautiful things about this B stage is that you can stay here for as long as you want to stay here. And you can start thinking about what you want your maternity leave to look like. What do you want to be able to do while you are away? How much do you make? How much do you want to continue paying yourself? How long you want to take? Do you want to take six months or three months? Stuff like that?

How do you want it to be when a child enters into your world and into, into your plans? Now we have to break down those desires. We have to write them down.

And the beautiful thing about this section and why I wanted to start here and I wanted to show you how important it is to even this at forefront of our minds is that we can go further to see what the next four or five years needs to look like if we just start breaking down these myths, breaking down these desires, breaking down these dreams, writing them down and being very intentional about them. Right? It's so, so, so, so important now what that looks like for me.

My husband and I, we got married at 24, so we're pretty young. And yeah, we wanted to be together, wanted to get married, but we didn't want kids yet, right? And now it's been three years, we're 27, maybe about 28, maybe about 29, 30 there. But that's when we would want to welcome children. So I'm in this first B stage. What that looks like is being honest with myself about how much I want to comfortably earn. So that's the first thing.

And also be honest about with myself about how much time I would want off. Where will that, where will that money come from? Do I. Yes, I need to know. Start thinking about building an emergency fund. And okay, now because I have those desires, how am I currently setting up my business operations? Okay, the business operations is set up in this way. I might have to shift it. So those are the questions that I'm asking. No and yes, I am a little bit way, I'm a little way up.

But can you imagine me asking this question where I am already way into my first trimester, it looks different. And the power that I have there is a little bit different. I've had clients who come to me and they say, hey, Zara, I just found a time pregnant, just started telling everybody I am in my first trimester and in my first trimester, and I'm now ready to create a maternity leave plan. And what we have to do at this point is that we have to work with what we're Given, right.

What I'm giving is already pregnant, mommy. Then there is no time to break down any dreams and goals and expectations in order to shift to new beginnings. Right. We are now bugged down with this seven month or six month Runway versus no. If you start working these things down years in advance, we just get a little bit more control. And for me, I like control. So it really is dependent on what you, what type of personality you have. All right? And I could stay there for long because.

Because that's my phase. It's very personal to me. And then adjusting.

So we now have to go into the second stage A adjusting. This is how you're going to adjust things like your operations. We're going to be creating SOPs. We're going to be assessing the financial stability of your business. Is like I had a client who, when she was preparing from IT for maternity leave, what she did, she had a launched based model. She's a coach and she had a launched based model.

So she was launching four or five times a year and it was just launch after launch after launch after launch. And she realized that, okay, that wasn't going to be sustainable during the time when she was pregnant. Cause she never knew what type of. You don't know what type of symptoms, symptoms. You don't know what type of symptoms pregnancy will bring to you. For some people, they get no symptoms. Some people, it's a lot.

For some people it just, it just messes with your body in a way that's so unpredictable. So because she knew that, what we did was that we transitioned her from a launch based model to a retainer model so that we can have predictable revenue and so that we could predict some of her operations. Now that is an adjustment that we made for you. We may decide to not choose a retainer model.

We might just push up the launches up further, have bigger launch goals, maybe pull some things in place that, okay, let's try to use ads to get some more volume so that you can have a bigger launch at this point. So it doesn't really mean that the adjustments that you need to make will have to be business model changes. However, we will have to be intentional about making sure that the adjustments are in line with the desires that we broke down in the stage one. You get me?

Does that make sense? Okay, now moving on to the third stage, the building stage. This is the second B and this is where we actually put the plan in place. We start writing down the timelines, we start writing down what are the contingency plans you have to have a very detailed communication plan, you have to have something in place so your team knows. When do you contact you? Do you want to go off the grid completely? Do you want to leave comments in Slack? What do you want that to look like?

Who's in charge of what? Who are the vendors, who we normally use? How will the workflow work? You know, those are things that we write down down and we make it plain. And this is going to look different. This, the building of the maternity leave plan is going to look so different for everybody because everybody is so different.

But just like a tip, in general, I think what's important to have in this plan is to make sure that one, you set what type of date you're working with, what's the timeline? So when are you due? When are you going to be having your final days in office? In what the transition period will look like? So in the next in the why, we'll talk a little bit about yielding and you'll see why it's important to do a transition.

And we'll also talk about in this phase in the maternity leave plan, we'll talk about the different roles that everybody has to play while you are gone and stuff like that. It's going to be super important to build this and put this in place because things can, like things happen so quickly, you know, and things not just happen quickly, it's just unpredictable. So you have to just make a plan and put these plans in place. Who's going to take over your work? What will that look like?

Will we communicate to your clients? At what point do we need to communicate to your clients type of thing? What will the automations look like when you are gone and how do we do this? I love our project management tool. So I am a systems nerd. Okay. I love our project management tool. I think that especially if you're in the world of online business and you work with people, you need a project management tool. It doesn't have to be. You need a project management process.

It doesn't have to be a tool as long as it is a process that works for you. I'm a big fan of process over tools because I strongly believe that any tool can apply a process. As long as you're collaborating, your to do list cannot stay in the place that only you alone can access it. Right.

I think people who say I don't use project management tools or I don't use any type of collaborative tools are great, especially if you're by yourself, but as soon as somebody else comes in, you need some type of collaborative tool process. And if that is just using the Google Suite, if that's just making sure that you are doing your updates manually, whatever it may be, as long as there's a process.

And most of us have processes, they're just not written, nor are they streamlined, nor are they efficient processes. But we usually have a process. So I like a project. I like using a tool to write my maternity plans and to help to delegate the responsibilities. My tool of choice is ClickUp, but I know that everybody doesn't like ClickUp. You can create a great one in Asana as well. You can create one in Google, in Google Suites. It really, really doesn't matter.

What matters is that there is a plan in place.

And then now we come to the final stage, which is yielding stage. And this stage is actually a stage I find most people having an issue with, because you have to let go, you have to trust your team and you have to also trust the process. Yielding isn't about giving up control, to be honest. It's about stepping into your new role as a CEO. And as a CEO, you lead, you empower, you are the combining force. You don't always have to be the one to do the doing. So we're in the last stage, yielding.

In this stage, it's about letting go. Remember, you've done the work. You have broken down your desires in stage one, you know what your goals and expectations are. You have made the adjustments in stage two, so the vision has been clarified and you've adjusted the entire business operations. You've had the SOPs in place. You have delegated. You've also built the plan. And the plan is in one central place. Everybody can see it, everybody has access to it. Even if your team is just a va, right?

Like one single person who will help you to hold it down. You already have that built. It's no time to yield control. And during this stage, I highly recommend doing a test run, doing a trial run, where you leave people in charge with the plan that you made initially. This trial run can be a day, it can be two days. Because one of the things that's going to make maternity leave even better is for you to trust that everything is going to go well.

Because you don't want to be having a little cutie tiny baby or a big baby who just entered your family in some other beautiful way, like adoption, right? You don't want to have to be in those precious moments. Moments. And you can't really focus because you're worried about what's happening on the background, because, yes, the plans are in place, but you're worrying if they're following it and stuff like that. So just do a test run. Just do a child run. Yeah, run. Run it a week before.

And then what you do with those test runs is that you can identify the gaps in your plan and you can literally make the amendments right then and

there. All in all, planning for maternity leave, as an entrepreneur, it can feel overwhelming. It can feel overwhelming. But with the B A by framework, you have a roadmap to guide you. And I think, for me, I want you to always remember that ultimately all of us are so different and all of us will have different experiences.

So, yes, you can listen to people and they can give their experiences and their breakdown and they can tell you all the things that they did and all the things that made sense for them, but it might not be the same for you. Maternity leave expectations are also different, based on your culture, based on your religion, where in the world you are living.

Because, for example, like, Canada, if you're in Canada and you're listening to this, I know that in your regular nine to five, you can get up to a year. In the us. That is just absurd. In the Caribbean, you know, we're talking three, four months. In the uk, I know some people get up to six months. So it's just so different, it's so wide, it's so vast. So this is going to be such a personal experience. And that's why I like the framework, because it's.

You're free to make this into anything that you want to make it into. What I want you to do in this moment is take a moment to reflect. Where are you in this journey? Are you where I am in the first B stage, in the breaking it down stage, we're just thinking about it and you're like, okay, here's what I'd want it to be. Now, what do I need to do for the next two, three years?

Are you in that stage or are you already in the planning phase where you're like, I want a baby, I'm trying for a baby actively. I want to get pregnant in the next six months. Or am I. Or are you, like, currently pregnant? You're like, zara, just tell me what to do. I don't know, just think about it. And then you can place yourself. It might be something that's nearer than you expect. If you're ready to deep dive into this framework, you can download my free maternity planning checklist.

And it was created with the baby framework in mind. It's really good and it has everything that I spoke about, but in steps. Right. So you can check it off. I have a maternity leave toolkit, as I told you before, that goes even deeper into the framework and gives you a more comprehensive planning. It's like I help you to plan it step by step. It's way more detailed than the list, but trust me, the list alone will give you an immediate relief.

And in the second part of this series, we'll talk about how to start thinking about maternity leave as an entrepreneur. So I told you what the baby framework was. Now we're going to say, okay, how do we start thinking? I want to expound a bit on that first stage, the B stage. So whether you are months or years away from this moment, this is the episode that will help you to get clear on your first steps. That was it. I love sharing with you today.

If you want to connect, you can find me at ztheobm on Instagram and Threads where I mostly hang out. I'm loving Threads these days. Send me your questions, your stories or even baby pics. I love baby pictures and I think that I, I consider myself like the business godmother. Cause I'm help all these businesswomen really prepare their businesses in a way, like in a supportive role for these babies that are coming in. So I consider myself a business godmother and I love this for me.

But until next time, remember you've got this mama and I'm here cheering you on every step of the way. Take care. Bye. So good, right? Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the System Save Me podcast. If you loved this episode, I will would so appreciate a review on whatever platform you're listening on. But also go love on the guest host. Connect with them on Instagram, LinkedIn or wherever they suggested to reach out.

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