Planning for Parental Leave

Happy Friday, all!

Thank you so much to the NCGG leadership and speakers for teeing up a year full of knowledge and learning; and thank you to many of you for sharingย how you share thanks and gratitude around the holidays. My approach this past year (an e-card) felt drab, so I appreciated the boost of inspiration.ย 
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I’m writing to ask for insights and tips on planning for parental leave.ย I’ll be celebrating four years of running my practice in February, and meanwhile my spouse and I are expecting to give birth to our third child in June. As a small business owner and client relationship manager, I am thinking through numerous questions regarding my own leave. (The practice currently does not have employees, though we work with 7-10 partners/subcontractors). For those of you who took family leave, or were proximate to a small business owner who has, I would love to hear insights on the following questions:ย 
  • Did you take leave and how did you structure it?ย 
  • What advanced planning did you do (or wish you had done) for your current projects?ย 
  • What advanced planning/work did you do (or wish you had done) to keep up on business development/marketing? How did you work to ensure you’d return and would have work?ย ย 
  • Acknowledging that one’s health is a privateย matter and comfort/interest levels vary in terms of sharing health news, what did you share with your clients about your leave?ย 
  • What other plans did you put in place to ensure the health of the business, of your relationships, and of yourself?
  • Did you implement any self-management boundaries to ensure you actually took leave (other than, you know, not functioning because of lack of sleep)?
  • What did you learn? What do you wish you’d known, especially as a small business owner?

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