Taking maternity leave as a real estate agent can feel impossible in the planning stages. While taking care of your clients and team are vital to your business, taking care of yourself, and your family is crucial as well. Without proper self-care, your team and your business will suffer. Here is how to structure your maternity leave in real estate.
Before you can adequately structure all the moving pieces that go into planning your maternity leave, you need to know how you want that to look. Do you want to take off 12 weeks, six weeks, three weeks, and then return part-time? It is your journey, so there are no wrong answers, but do not stress yourself into going back before you are ready.
If you are a first-time parent considering returning to work immediately, be prepared for disappointment when your body is not prepared to take on a full workload.
Having automated systems helps make your work life easier. Automation lets you focus on more revenue-building tasks when you are at work, and lets you focus on family while you are on leave.
Set up automated emails instead of typing out the same email time after time. Automate your social media posts and other web content instead of dedicating daily time to content. Turn out content on a mass scale and then set it up with a scheduler to free up more time. Map out the tasks you do daily, and automate as much as possible.
For tasks that require a more delicate touch, it is time to delegate. Start your hiring process a few months in advance. You should consider outsourcing tasks to a transaction coordinator, a showing agent, a real estate virtual assistant, or even a social media manager who specializes in real estate.
Your savings plan for maternity leave needs to come after you’ve gotten clarity on how much time you’ll take off from work. Start preparing your savings in advance, and put it into a separate account where you can drip funds until you reach your savings goal for maternity leave.
You can ramp this up by adding a certain percentage of your commission checks to savings automatically. Cut out expenses that aren’t giving you a good return on investment. Take a hard look at your marketing plan, and stop paying for lead generation services that are only eating cash instead of providing a quality pipeline. You want to come back to a pipeline of quality leads, but make sure you’re only investing in marketing and lead generation plans that work for your real estate business.
Life happens, and we can’t go into enough detail on all the unexpected things that can happen during maternity leave. Give yourself the grace to be flexible while focusing on your health. Reach out to your network or your team that you’ve delegated tasks to if something changes. You don’t have to go through this alone, many strong women in real estate have paved the way before you, and are ready to help.
LeiLani Quiray
CEO at bethechangeHR
Continue the conversation with her here.
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