Mindset Mastery is a weekly newsletter about the psychology of self-employment from Jenni Gritters. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while and you receive value from it, I’d encourage you to sign up for a paid membership. By doing so, you’re also helping me make business coaching for self-employed folks more accessible to all.
Lettuce is a financial services company built for all of us self-employed folks and if you’ve attended one of my masterclasses lately, you’ve heard me talk about how much I love their services. They recently sent me a calculator tool to show freelancers and self-employed creatives how much they might save if they become an S Corp. Try it out:
As you read a few weeks ago, I’m mostly out of office through the end of June. But I pre-scheduled a few quick newsletters based on podcast interviews I’ve done during the past few months! Today is an excerpt from my conversation with Rachel Meltzer, a freelance writer and business coach who runs The Guidebook podcast.
Rachel: So Jenni, you have two kids now and you've taken maternity leave for both of them, right? How did you do that? I honestly never thought about this until I read one of your newsletters. And I was like, How will I do this if I decide I want kids? Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Like, how did you make maternity leave happen? And what the emotional aspect of that? It’s scary to step away from your baby business!
Jenni: Totally, my business is like my other child! In 2019, I got pregnant with my son. It was about a year after I started my freelance business and stepping out felt really scary. I will say, I was lucky because Washington had a paid family leave program even then. (I think 10 more states have that coverage now.) So because I was an LLC, because I had gotten myself set up officially, I was technically a business — I was both the employer and the employee! And I could apply for the plan.
I paid into it quarterly, I think it was about 50 bucks per quarter, and then they paid me $1,000 per week while I was on leave. (That number is even higher now in most states, and is based on your income.) That was part of the reason why I was able to take 16 weeks of leave with my son, which ended up being really important because he was born two weeks early and he was in the NICU.
It’s still a financial hit, though. My husband did not get paid leave, despite being a nurse. So he took time off too, but we drained our savings account both the first time around, with my son, and then again the second time with my daughter.
I want to acknowledge that this is very tricky. It's hard enough to take two weeks of vacation! Imagine taking four months of leave. Truthfully, the momentum shift is what felt most complicated, though; it takes a while to ramp back up and if you’re getting paid 30 or 60 days out, it takes a while for the paychecks to start coming in again. So the second time, I was much more intentional about that. I made plans, my clients knew what was happening, and I front loaded work for them. I stepped away. And then six weeks before I came back, I was like, Hey, I'm coming back soon, what do you need?
I do a lot of strategy sessions with freelancers who are planning for leaves of various kinds and it’s definitely half logistical but you’re right, it’s also half emotional. You’re sitting there knowing that your business is something you could be touching but you're also taking care of a newborn and not sleeping, or recovering from a big surgery. It’s tough to figure out how to interact with work when you’re in that mindset, and your old identity is also so attached to the way you used to work. In some moments your business feels like a comfortable place to land in the chaos of new parenthood or illness. And in other moments, you wonder if you’ll ever be able to work again.
Then when you come back to work, you’re essentially juggling two jobs, right? Caretaking and professional work. Likely you only had one job before. So there's this whole reorientation that happens to you, psychologically and logistically, during a leave of absence. It’s not an accident that each time I've come back from a leave, I’ve completely changed my business model.
I always teach people to plan for four months of parental leave and to make a financial plan. The freelancer version of nesting is making a lot of money before you give birth! You use those 9 months to set yourself up. Then you try to have the discipline to set the business aside and trust that it will work when you return. Then you come back and make new decisions based on the new person you are, with new capacity and new priorities.
Rachel: That’s really interesting and makes sense.
Jenni: Yeah, I mean the honest truth is that parenting and freelancing is really complicated. Your bandwidth shifts all the time. To manage your workflow alongside that is something I'm frankly, four years in, still learning how to do.
Rachel: I just don't think that like it's ever you're ever going to have it all figured out, especially your schedule and your workflow, because your energy changes as you age, and the way that you your brain works changes, too.
Jenni: Yes, the things that make you feel good change over and over again. The seasons change. The way the sunlight comes out changes. Every season, every quarter, I have a different schedule because my energy is different. Parenthood is another layer on top of that.
I feel like people have this idea of “if I can just find the perfect schedule for me, then I'll be better, my life will be better.” And that is just not realistic. What you need keeps changing. And that's the best part about freelancing: You can do what works for you. You can change your mind.
My pacing is so different in different seasons. And then top that off with kids who are constantly changing — it’s ever evolving. I talk a lot about mindfulness in business and what that’s really about is noticing what’s happening right now, noticing what you need right here. To me, the measure of business success is being agile. It’s not about dollars. It’s the ability to shift around, to take a week off, to care for a sick kid, to prioritize seeing friends. That’s the reason I keep doing this.
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach based in Central Oregon. I have two small children and I work part-time so I can spend a lot of time with them. I’m obsessed with teaching people how to build successful businesses that support their human needs first. Check out my coaching offerings here, and follow me on Twitter & Instagram.