Growing a business on maternity leave: what you need to know

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Shopify, the perfect tool to help you grow your business. Whether you just want to get rid of something you longer need to make some extra cash (e.g. sell concert tickets)or creating an online store for a passive income product.

If you haven’t noticed, things have been a bit quiet here on The Bloglancer! That’s because I’ve been on Maternity Leave and, if you don’t follow me on Instagram, I’ve been busy with the arrival of my baby boy-Jude Harris Farmer. Apologies in advance for the baby pics, I’ve become one of those moms against my best wishes. Today, I wanted to chat about freelancing whilst on maternity leave-whether, you’re 100% self-employed or thinking of turning your hobby into a job whilst taking time out from your main job. I’ll be sharing what you need to know, how to be compliant and being super productive whilst on maternity leave.

Maternity Leave as A Freelancer: What You Need to Know

So if you’re 100% freelance and self-employed, let’s talk about what you need to know about maternity leave. The good news is, if you’ve been earning over £30 a week, been registered as self-employed for at least 26 weeks before your baby is born and have been paying your National Insurance contributions, you are entitled to maternity allowance as a self-employed worker. I’ve written a whole article about this for freelance site Underpinned (read my article here) so I won’t repeat it all but you’ll need to apply for maternity allowance once you’re 26 weeks pregnant and you’ll receive £145 a week if you’re eligible. You can apply here.

You can receive maternity allowance for up to 39 weeks and you’re allowed 10 ‘keeping in touch days’ during this time to keep your business ticking over. I won’t be using the 39 weeks as I suspect my 10 KIT days will run out long before then! Just a quick tip, apply for maternity allowance in plenty of time as mine took about 6 weeks to finalise. Often you’ll be told you need to pay more NI contributions to be eligible (I was offered a lower rate of £27 a week but given the full amount once I sorted my contributions), so you’ll need to allow time to pay this and for things to be confirmed.

Starting or growing a business whilst on maternity leave

Not quite gone freelance yet? The good news is that this is very much to your advantage when it comes to maternity leave. If you work a permanent role and receive maternity leave/pay from that role, you can still work freelance or self-employed without it impacting the maternity pay or keeping in touch days. Unlike being 100% freelance, you can work as many days freelance/self-employed as you fancy without it affecting any statutory maternity pay and you won’t have to stick to any keeping in touch days for your freelance work. Of course, check with your employer first to make sure they’re happy with any side hustles but for many, maternity leave is a great time to start a business for this reason! Business for Mums is a really great resource if this is you.

My top tips for building a business on maternity leave

Obviously, it’s early days in my maternity leave journey but I thought I’d share some tips that I’ve learnt from others and plan to incorporate.

–Maximise keeping in touch days. Even working for an hour or two counts as a ‘day’ so plan them carefully to do as much as you can in a day. Arrange childcare so you can fully focus and be as productive as possible. Luckily my mom is retiring so I am hoping she can take care of Jude on my KIT days!

–Try to automate/outsource where possible. Look into ways to streamline your business whilst on maternity leave. Consider using a VA to help things ticking over (especially important with a blog where new content is key) and using sites like Tailwind to automate Pinterest. Using a site like Shopify can help streamline your business if you’re selling a digital product, with a dashboard that keeps all your payments and orders in one place.

Talking of digital products now is the time to use them! If you’re a freelancer, consider creating a passive income product (more on how to do this here) before you go on maternity leave so it might automatically bring in an income whilst you’re off work without you needing to do anything! If you’re currently employed, you could dedicate time on maternity leave to build up a bank of passive income products to sell on your return to work-or to support your potential transition into full-time freelancing! I already have two ebooks and was toying with starting a 3rd before I went on maternity leave-but sadly I haven’t gotten around to it!

–Use the time to develop. I love an online course and I’ll be using whatever downtime I have (perhaps I am being naive!) to revisit online courses I’ve done in the past such as The Blogger Course (Read my full review and get a discount here). If you aren’t able to work as much as you’d like, why not take the time to focus on personal development instead?

-Aim to be as productive as possible, this post has some great productivity tips for working parents.

-If you’re looking to return to the workplace instead, this is a great resource for finding part-time jobs for mums.

I hope these tips are useful-I’d love to hear any more you have! Read next: 10 tips for starting a business alongside raising a family.