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34. How to Take Maternity Leave as a Small Business Owner with Dusti Arab
7 Plays5 months ago
In this episode, we chat with Dusti Arab, a mom of three, fractional CMO, and founder of The Reinvention Co., a marketing consultancy for personality-driven companies.
Dusti shares her journey from running a full-service agency to becoming a solopreneur, and how that big pivot was key to taking a 12-week maternity leave—without losing business momentum or her sanity.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to restructure your business to support your life.
- Strategies for taking extended leave without sacrificing business growth.
- Ways to balance kids and work for long-term sustainability and joy.
- Tips for setting up your business financially so you can stay flexible.
- Insights into balancing mental wellbeing, childcare, and time management.
For more inspiration, subscribe to Unbound Turnarounds on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
LINKS:
- Connect with Nicole
- Connect with MalloryConnect with Dusti: https://www.thereinvention.co/
- Aupair in America: https://www.aupairinamerica.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Unbound Turnarounds
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Unbound Turnarounds, a podcast all about the challenges women business owners think about constantly, but rarely voice. We're Nicole and Mallory, entrepreneurs, friends, and co-founders of Business Unbound. Our mission is simple, make business feel better. And that starts with honest conversations about the ups, downs, and turnarounds of entrepreneurship.
00:00:26
Speaker
So whether you're just starting out or you've been your own boss for years, tune in for stories, insights, and strategies that actually make work work for life.
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome back to Unbound Turnarounds. To remind everyone, in this season, we are digging into different aspects of time management because time is so precious to all of us, especially the woman entrepreneur. So we're really excited for our guest today because she's going to talk to something really specific, which is how to take maternity leave as a business owner. So Mal, who do we have with us
Meet Dusty Arab
00:01:00
Speaker
today?
00:01:00
Speaker
We have Dusty Arab and I'm really honored to welcome her to the show. Thank you for being here. So Dusty is a fractional CMO and the founder of the Reinvention Co, which is a marketing consultancy specializing in working with personality driven companies with small teams.
00:01:17
Speaker
Intense, fun, and relentlessly practical. Dusty understands the lives of small business owners are deeply entwined with their businesses. So if marketing is going to be sustainable, it can't get in the way of why they do what they do.
00:01:32
Speaker
shouldn't it be that way? So Dusty is also the host of the new podcast, Referralworthy, and it's a podcast for small business owners ready to go from best kept secret to the go-to name in their niche. So you got to go hop over right after the show and subscribe to hers.
00:01:48
Speaker
Now, I've personally known Dusty for about three years. We've had a few chats about business and life, and especially when we were just starting out with Business Unbound. So I got to say publicly thank you to her for kind of supporting us from the get go and kind of brainstorming and sharing your insights and just the chats along the way. So Dusty, thank you for being here and welcome to the show.
00:02:09
Speaker
Oh my God. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to help out anybody who I meet at summer camp. So yeah. Yeah. And they've already know about summer camp. Any of our listeners because Molly was on this season as well. So yeah, that's where we met. That's exactly where we met.
How did personal challenges reshape Dusty's business?
00:02:25
Speaker
Full circle. All right. Well, let's set the stage for this conversation and talk about what your business looked like back when you were expecting.
00:02:36
Speaker
Oh, man. So my expecting story is a little bit complicated, actually. Normally, these things aren't, but mine was for a couple of reasons. So my husband and I decided we were going to move, buy a house, have a baby, do all the things back in October 2020. So first of all, we got in before everything super spiked on the pricing scale for housing. But also, we were just like, we're like, fuck it. We don't know when this whole thing is going to be over.
00:03:05
Speaker
we need to... We might as well get moving on this. I ain't getting any younger here. And I also have two older kids. So right now, they are 15 and 12. So they were a couple years younger at the time. So that is useful information here too.
00:03:23
Speaker
I did. I did get pregnant. Like, I mean, we closed on the house and I was like officially pregnant, like three days later. So all that, all that was great timing was working out and then I miscarried and then I miscarried again and again, like 12 weeks into a couple of these pregnancies. So I had a really hard time not getting pregnant, but staying pregnant. So I was actually in and out of pregnancy for like
00:03:48
Speaker
two plus years. So I spent a lot of time pregnant without getting the payoff of a baby, and that was the lamest ever. And honestly, it was way...
00:04:01
Speaker
It was difficult for me, but it was even more so for my husband because I already had two kids. I had already gone through that. When we talk about where my business was at, boy, it went through some friggin iterations during this period because I spent so much time just ill. It takes a lot to bounce back from a miscarriage, especially one where you're that far in.
00:04:26
Speaker
And so I moved from having like a full service agency model to knowing that, okay, if I'm going to have another baby, like let's be real, it's been like 10 years since the last one. I don't have that kind of energy anymore. It's got to be scaled back. So I ended up scaling back the company to just me and I spent
00:04:44
Speaker
a good chunk of that time working for one main client and just having some smaller ones peppered through that before I finally was able to step out and just be a solo marketing consultancy.
00:04:59
Speaker
Thank you for being so open about that. And, you know, this is your story. So of course we wanted to let you share whatever you're most comfortable with, but we appreciate the vulnerability because it's, you know, I mean, that's not even necessarily what this is about, but just, I sure a lot of people can relate to that. So thank you again for that. We're going to get into, you know, how to have a maternity leave as an entrepreneur, because it seems like really hard. It seems hard to do. And people might think that they can't do it or, you know, that they,
00:05:27
Speaker
shouldn't do it. And so I'm excited to dive into this. But before we kind of get into the practical steps of what you did, I know you believe that personal life is super intertwined with business, as we said in your intro. So what else was the personal situation like with your family? So obviously, how did these miscarriages? Did the kids know, your other kids know that this was all happening? What was the conversation like with you and your husband about
00:05:55
Speaker
you know, continuing on and also with the transitions to your company, what else was kind of going on in the personal front and how did that connect to the business?
00:06:04
Speaker
Man yeah, I mean I definitely have like an honesty first policy I'm bad at keeping secrets at least mine I can keep other people's secrets, but I'm really bad at having my own so it's just easier to just you know talk about it for me and So like my older kids kind of knew what was going on, but they're at an age where like they don't really understand They don't really get it. They know that mom was pregnant. No mom's not pregnant. So like especially for my younger son it was like mom's sad or mom's sick again and
00:06:32
Speaker
And like, I mean, anyone who has any sort of like ongoing chronic illness thing, this is kind of what that felt like for me. I don't have any chronic illnesses that aren't, you know, mental health related. So for me, it was very, very new. And it definitely made me rethink structurally what was going to be supportive in my business. And that really reflected back to my personal life as well. So, you know, COVID obviously gave all of us a very
00:06:59
Speaker
Large opportunity and non-negotiable period where we had to kind of rethink a lot of our relationships and for me I realized how vapid a lot of my in-person ones were and So while I had all this going on
00:07:14
Speaker
I really leaned into my business friendships in a whole new way. And it felt amazing. Honestly, that part of life over the past couple of years has just gone from 0 to 100 because I realized once COVID hit,
00:07:30
Speaker
The people I'm actually the closest to who actually understand me are the other people in my entrepreneurial circles. My in-person people are now starting to become those people as well, but I realized that there was just such a gap between those things. That was a pretty substantial one that took up a lot of my time.
00:07:50
Speaker
Gotcha. That makes total sense. I think it's interesting. And I wonder if, looking back now, you think that having that kind of two-year pregnancy on and off again was what the main catalyst was for changing the structure of your business? Or was it also COVID and everyone suddenly being home, working remotely? Or do you think it was some combination of the two?
00:08:18
Speaker
It was some combination of the two. The agency model really didn't work for me for a lot of reasons. I learned so much and I'm so glad that I did do it because I had already done all of those digital marketing things in various capacities at various companies for various clients. It made a lot of sense to be running a shop like that.
00:08:40
Speaker
forced reactivity in a business model like that. Uh-uh, absolutely not. Never again. And I had to learn twice on that one. But the second time around, my team was fantastic. And when it did come time to close the agency, I made sure to
00:08:59
Speaker
Like, all my clients were taken care of. All my people were as taken care of as I could make sure that they were. Like, if I had one client who she really loved my copywriter. And I was like, you know what? She's yours. Like, be blessed. Have fun. Please keep, yes, keep partnering together. Absolutely.
00:09:17
Speaker
Well, that's one of the things that can feel really daunting about changing the structure of your business and take it to a new level when you even think about stepping away from your business to take a leave. So that's incredibly daunting for a lot of people.
00:09:34
Speaker
I'm wondering if you remember some of the initial concerns or challenges that you faced when you even started talking about taking time off. Was that always something in the back of your mind or were you like, you know what, I'm going to change how this works so that I can take this time away? Was that a connected decision?
00:09:53
Speaker
You know, it was more connected to how my first two pregnancies and maternity leave had gone because with the first one, I got like zero. I had two weeks in between my classes. Like I had my oldest on the very last day of finals week.
00:10:09
Speaker
And so I literally went from college, I had my oldest very young, and being too big to sit in one of those little fold down college seats. So they had to go get me a table and a chair so that I could take my econ final. By the way, I aced everything that term in my third trimester. That's one of those little gold star moments I will hold on to for life.
00:10:32
Speaker
But I had the two week break and then I was right back in school. So that's, you know, thank God I was 20 because otherwise I wouldn't have made it. But even with my with my younger son, it wasn't much different. Like I'd managed to take like four weeks off. But I mean, it was rough. Like we were so poor at the time. And like while I was self-employed, like it was still very like I was still very early stage at the time.
00:10:58
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense and I think some people can probably appreciate that. If they're a new entrepreneur and they're thinking, okay, well, this isn't even on the table for me, but let's set that aside. Let's say people are established and we're going to get into some of the key factors then that you were considering that really influenced your decision making
Managing a 12-week maternity leave
00:11:15
Speaker
process.
00:11:15
Speaker
because I remember when we spoke, you were pretty adamant that you were taking time off for this pregnancy. You're like, I make it up for these last two and I can't. So what were some of those decisions and key factors you were considering when you were deciding to take an actual maternity leave?
00:11:31
Speaker
To be completely honest, a big piece of it was knowing that my husband is so he's a fully remote worker, too. He's a software engineer and his company has 12 weeks of guaranteed leave. So for me, I was like, OK, if he's got 12 weeks, I'm taking 12 weeks like.
00:11:48
Speaker
That's, that's how it's going to go. We'll both be on deck for this whole period. And we needed the entire 12 weeks. Like my youngest was very high maintenance until fairly recently. Now he's just different high maintenance, but he didn't sleep well, any of that. And like, so both of us were just on parent duty, basically full time, you know, that, that entire period there. But yeah, I mean, part of it was like knowing I was going to need more recovery time than I'd had previously.
00:12:18
Speaker
or assuming that I would, I actually didn't. My recovery time ended up being pretty much the same for being 10 years apart on those two babies, which was just shocking to me. But it was also the fact that I hadn't taken more than two weeks off.
00:12:34
Speaker
ever. For me, I was like, if there's going to be a time for me to try this, this is the best excuse I could possibly have. To be honest, I was afraid that it was going to kill my momentum, especially as a service-based business. I was terrified that 12 weeks out would just be like, oh my God, what am I going to do? But that's not what happened at all.
00:12:58
Speaker
OK, so you you were thinking, you know what, I want to give myself some buffer. I'm also very much do this break like this. I have earned it by working forever and I am taking this time.
00:13:13
Speaker
How did the money piece of this factor in? Like you said, your husband had 12 weeks through his job, but you were worried about killing the momentum on your own business. So what was kind of going through your mind about the earning side of things? And how did you kind of, I mean, I'm guessing you had to reframe just that kind of constant need that we all have to be earning all the time. So how did you reframe that in your mind?
00:13:43
Speaker
So cohorts helped a lot. So my business runs, I think, really well in quarters. Like 90 days, that is a size stretch that I have been working with long enough that I feel really confident about the amount of work I can get done in 90 days and my ability to match expectations with reality.
00:14:03
Speaker
over 90 days, which was also part of why I picked 90 days effectively for my mat leave, because that felt doable for me. So I knew that moving up to it, I needed to be just holding away cash. I was also focused on reducing my expenses. I knew there were
00:14:23
Speaker
some pieces of software that i would just like i've been paying for them on an annual basis for a long time and that usually saves me enough money that like is it worth it shutting it down for twelve weeks but i did for instance. I have bench accounting software and that's expensive so i didn't need a bookkeeper for most of last year so i ended up just closing that account temporarily and then i came back with them earlier this spring.
00:14:48
Speaker
So what other practical steps did you have to consider? So if people are like buying in and they're like, okay, I think I want to try this. What other things do we need to look at software when you look at other ways to cut expenses? Were there other things that you had to consider beforehand? Yeah. So one of the things that I think is really important and obviously I'm in the United States, so this is, you know,
00:15:11
Speaker
one of those things where it might not make sense for everybody. But a couple years ago, I switched my business to an S corp, which means I'm writing my own paychecks. And I know we all write our own paychecks as entrepreneurs, but I have to do it as a W-2 employee. I am not a W-9 worker. I am not a freelancer.
00:15:29
Speaker
I am working as the sole employee in my own business. And that distinction is incredibly important for a lot of reasons. But from a tax perspective, that put me in a really good position. So for last year, did I make what I normally make? No, I did better than I thought I was going to, considering I took three months off. However, it did take some finagling to kind of get there.
00:15:57
Speaker
cost reduction, did I need any help during it, setting up my auto responders to make sure that if people, for instance, wanted to get on my wait list and be right at the door as soon as I was ready to start taking people on, I had all of those things set up.
00:16:12
Speaker
I also had referrals set up if people needed somebody faster than me. If they needed help now, then I made sure that for the things I get emails about most frequently, that all of those people had resources. So that's just something that I care about a lot and I'm never one to
00:16:30
Speaker
You know, when it comes to referrals, like I want to be as generous as possible with my community there. That's incredibly important to me. And so I considered those things. I also had something really amazing happen during my pregnancy. And that was like right at the beginning of my third trimester, I got a referral. And that referral was for a two and a half month campaign.
00:16:55
Speaker
I was like, it was like perfectly timed. And I was very honest with them. I was like, hey, y'all, there is a chance I could pop early. And I did. Fortunately, not too early, but I had only finished all of my part of the project like two days before I went into labor.
00:17:11
Speaker
cutting it close. It was cutting it the closest, but that campaign went really well. So this was with like a dream client. And the referral came from someone who I'd like helped in a Facebook group one time, but we'd never exchanged money. We'd never talked outside of that Facebook group, like nothing. She was just like, Oh, I caught a vibe. I just knew you guys would jive. And I was like, bless you, woman.
00:17:34
Speaker
But it went really, really well. So that project ended up being like the last, I had to work way less hard as a result of that particular campaign. Like I did have other things structured and ready to go up until
00:17:49
Speaker
I mean, that week, I mean, that week that I went into labor, so I went into labor two weeks early, but that week I did, I kicked off, you know, cart open for this campaign and it was not, not a small campaign. We did like almost 500 grand. So it was, it was substantial. I was running a team, et cetera. I did a webinar with a friend and colleague of mine, Jen Loudon. So we had like a ton of people on there and then, God,
00:18:19
Speaker
I think I did a marketing workshop, like a quarterly marketing workshop the same week. Like I was subsisting on like pure vibes and Adderall, which that was, you know, we made it, we made it, everything worked out fine. But it really was a slog. Like that third trimester, I mean, you're so tired and you're so fucking huge anyway, it was a lot. And I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't. And fundamentally, like my
00:18:46
Speaker
confidence in being able to take that 12 weeks off is that I knew that even if I had $0 in my account before it started, my husband makes fantastic money. So I try to be really honest about that with folks. Being an entrepreneur is hard. And the realities of capitalism in America and elsewhere make it really difficult to take sustained time off like this.
00:19:11
Speaker
but there are things you can put into place to try and mitigate it that can absolutely help.
00:19:17
Speaker
Husbands. Husbands help. So timing wise, how did this align with when you changed from an agency model to being a solopreneur? Was that during this pregnancy period, was this something that you were communicating to your client base at the same time you were saying, hey guys, heads up, I'm going to be out. If you need referrals, go here. If not, like you could plan on maybe being back at this time.
00:19:45
Speaker
Was that all happening at once? It wasn't because of how like once I realized that the miscarriage thing was not like a fluke and not just going to happen once. I mean, I did not make any sort of pregnancy announcements until we were like good to go.
00:20:02
Speaker
And everybody knew that I was trying to get pregnant. I was open with clients about that. I feel like that's only fair. And honestly, I work with almost all women and most of them are moms. They get it. Nobody works harder than moms do. That's just how it goes. And so as far as when the change happened.
00:20:23
Speaker
It was late 2021 when I started closing things down. So my husband and I had our honeymoon in England like right after Delta had peaked there. So we just like slid in under the radar and got to go to London and Paris when there was nobody there.
00:20:43
Speaker
We got so lucky. It was amazing. Managed not to get sick while we were out there. We were very hardcore masking and stuff. But when I came back from that, and that was like I had gone completely off-grid for two weeks. I let my team handle everything. And oh, Nellie, it did not go well.
00:21:03
Speaker
The two guys I had in charge were brilliant. They were great. It was through no fault of their own. I had a lot to learn still about what it took to run a business like that successfully. By the end of that, between then and October, I was like, guys, I can't do this anymore.
00:21:21
Speaker
Like, it is too stressful. It is not serving me. And also like, oh, I'm pregnant again. And so now I'm really tired. So now I'm like, I've got my brain operating at like 50% capacity on a good day. And yeah, you just like, you feel like a dipshit all the time. Like it's the worst. But I mean that, you know, your honeymoon sounds like it was kind of a two week trial period of can I have any flexibility to step away from this? And the answer was no, not really.
00:21:49
Speaker
you know, you tried, you tried. It just, you know, it made it worse when you got back. Yep. And that was not a price I was willing to pay ever again. So this is side note, I'm slipping this question in. So I know your husband, actually, did you say he works for himself as well? Are you both entrepreneurs? No, we're both remote. So we've both been, yeah, I've been fully remote since like,
00:22:15
Speaker
God, like 2011. So people used to like look at me funny being like, don't you miss people? I'm like, no, but my husband is fully remote. He works for a startup based out of West Hollywood. Okay. So you guys have insurance through his company was where I was getting. Okay. I was going to get that insurance question because we do get that sometimes. Yeah.
00:22:36
Speaker
get an insurance agent, like there are, at least on the state side, there are people who you can go and talk to who like they will not charge you for this service, but they will go and help you find insurance. But yeah, I don't know of a single entrepreneur with a business like mine who's paying less than $500 a month. Love what you're hearing? Go from big idea to business owner in five days with our free Be Your Own Boss Bootcamp email course.
00:23:04
Speaker
Or learn how to implement the insights from this show in your existing business with our complimentary guide, Five Ways to Make Business Feel Better. Packed with practical tools and solutions, these resources draw from our collective 15 plus years of entrepreneurship and work with more than 100 clients. Visit unboundboss.com to grab your freebies. It's time to make work work for life.
00:23:33
Speaker
Okay, so community, I know you love community too, because we met in a community aspect. So I think we're both going to agree that community is really important. Who and what other resources did you rely on for support during the time off, maybe even after?
00:23:51
Speaker
I have really lovely in-laws. So they would come over once or twice a week and hold the baby for a while. And we'd go shower and do dishes and things like that. So that was pretty nice. We did start trying to find our nanny situation. We knew we weren't going to do a daycare. It doesn't make sense for us to do a daycare. We both work from home. That's not the play for us.
00:24:18
Speaker
And that was a struggle. We had a little bit of very part-time help a couple of times, but it was very start and stop. We couldn't get anybody reliable, and it didn't matter how much we were willing to pay them, basically. My sister is my nanny, straight up. But that didn't happen until after our 12 weeks was over.
00:24:43
Speaker
Well, you make it work. Yeah. Yeah. So did you find that there were, because I think we don't often talk about clients as members of our community, right? Because they're a little bit separated from us. But did you find that any of your clients were
00:25:01
Speaker
especially supportive of this or some were hesitant or any of that, like how did those conversations go? I mean, so the most important one was with the client I had the large campaign with and she sent me a text like after, you know, after I'd had the baby, of course I had to send them a baby pic from the hospital.
00:25:25
Speaker
And I was like, oh, sorry for peacing out early, guys. Here's the baby. But she was wonderful. And she was like, hey, you've got a job with us as soon as you want to come back. Take all the time you need. Nice. Yeah, that makes it quite a bit easier, doesn't it? That's why I like working with women. Yeah, right. OK, so then let's talk about you said you had all these plans. You had these assumptions, we've heard. But you've already hinted that it didn't line up with reality of what actually happened.
00:25:55
Speaker
You already kind of gave it away. There were some unexpected things and maybe either obstacles or surprises that happened when you came back to work. So do you want to get into those now?
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah. I think that the biggest one honestly was that even, I mean, my whole pregnancy with Emerson, like we, I was going to take the summer off from baby making and then that's not what happened. It's like Emerson is proof that it only takes one time. And so,
00:26:26
Speaker
That happened. Right rolling into September, I was finally starting to gain a lot of momentum as a solo consultant. The money was good. I wasn't having to pound the pavement nearly as hard as I had even a year previously. When I landed that gig with the big client before she sent me that lovely text,
00:26:51
Speaker
I was very concerned. I was like, this is the biggest contract I've ever landed. And now I'm going to go take 12 weeks off and nurse. And I hate breastfeeding. I'm so excited about this. I'm going to go stop doing the one thing I really enjoy and I'm really good at to do the thing that I'm maybe the worst at, at least for that early stage. So I had a lot of big feelings about it.
00:27:15
Speaker
And what actually happened was that I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only did I pick up with that client, I signed another huge client very shortly afterwards. By September, I was rocking and rolling again, and it has not slowed down.
00:27:31
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Do you think it's something to do with being honest? And I mean, cause I know you're on your platforms, you were saying like, this is what I'm doing. Like it's non-negotiable. I need this for my family's health, for my mental health. I'm taking this time. Like, do you think part of that was that transparency and that vulnerability and authenticity was part of it? Or you think it was just that momentum didn't skip a beat for those three months?
00:27:56
Speaker
I mean, I think it's both. I've been in this space for a long time now, and I really feel like the last couple of years I've stepped into my expertise and my mastery of it in a way that I just hadn't had previously. And so on the one hand, people who really wanted to work with me, who were at a certain level, they were willing to wait. 12 weeks is nothing. Three months?
00:28:20
Speaker
Like, they could be doing so many other things besides working with me during that period. So, I mean, it was, you know, clarity of offers, people wanting to work with me specifically versus just any service provider who could do that particular function.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of it just has to do with where I'm at in my career. I think I'm just established enough at this point that I have an email list. I have a connected network. As soon as I came back, I hit everybody up the same way that I do when my pipeline is starting to get dry. Be like, hey guys, I'm still here. These are the things that I'm doing. Here are the projects I'm interested in working on.
00:28:58
Speaker
Yes. And a lot of that is just setting those expectations, putting out there what you're willing to do, having that wait list set up, like you said, like just being proactive in that way, having the email list and just having all the pieces so that you know when you get back, you can pull the levers that you pull to get business and it'll be there. So I think that's huge.
00:29:20
Speaker
Tell me about prioritizing the self-care aspect, all the wellbeing while you were taking this time off, because this is your third baby and you've done this before in many different contexts, but your life was in a different place now. So how did you go about supporting your own personal wellbeing during a time that you knew was going to be 12 weeks of both less busy in traditional ways and incredibly busy in new ways?
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like I hesitate to call maternity leave a break for anybody. But yeah, it was definitely we didn't we didn't rest a lot during that 12 weeks. Let me
Balancing self-care and family during leave
00:30:03
Speaker
tell you. So we my husband and I, when we sat down and we're like kind of sort of planning out the time, like we had some ideas on like trips that we might want to take, just like me, him and the baby, because I knew that I was going to get stir crazy. And I absolutely did. Like I was like, OK, six weeks.
00:30:21
Speaker
And once we hit there, I'll definitely be in a situation where I'm like, I'm ready to start walking a lot. So like we did an hour drive out to the coast. And even though it was like shitty out, you know, we went to someplace on the boardwalk and you know, the baby's still like teeny tiny. So we could like hang out and drink margaritas. And you know, I hadn't been drinking for like a year at that point. So one margarita, whoo, man, it was a good margarita.
00:30:47
Speaker
I'm sure it was. So we did that. And then my sister-in-law also was getting married that June. So it was like two months into it. So we had like two little trips planned. And other than that, we live in a community. I'm like 10 minutes outside of Portland, Oregon. I'm really close to the airport.
00:31:08
Speaker
And on this side of the river, Vancouver, Washington, we have a beautiful walking trail up by the river. So one of my big things was getting rehabilitated as soon as I could because I just felt like I gained so much weight with him. That last three months, I was totally sedentary. It was like a couch to 5K situation for sure coming back from that.
00:31:33
Speaker
And so we would go and walk that at least three days a week. So honestly, movement for me, for my mental health especially, that was the biggest one. The other thing, honestly, was my husband is so great. He's so supportive. If I'm like, yo, I need to tap out for an hour and take a bath, even now, he's down 100% of the time. But one of the things that I knew I was going to struggle with was going off my Adderall while I was trying to breastfeed.
00:32:00
Speaker
So I've been on Adderall for my ADHD since September of 2020. And so I was late diagnosed, but previously I'd struggled with anxiety, depression. As soon as I was diagnosed with ADHD and went on Adderall, all of that went away. Never had another depressive episode.
00:32:18
Speaker
with the exception of post-barm depression. So I had it with both my other kids. I knew it was going to hit again. I was ready for it. You know, as ready as you can be for stuff like that. But I mean, I only made it like, I think 10 weeks breastfeeding and pumping because it just having to be off my meds made me insane. Like it was not a good time for anybody involved. And like once, once we did that and switched to formula, it was, that was the biggest self-care act I could have
00:32:47
Speaker
taken for myself That's great. Thank you for thanks for being honest about that. Yeah, yeah and advocate and I mean Yes, if you're not it's just goes back to the whole if you can't take if you're not taking care of yourself How are you taking care of others and you just knew you just knew that yeah And it was it was the right turning point for us for sure like after that like I was just so much more with it You know two weeks later
00:33:11
Speaker
John went back to work. I knew we had to get some help before I could go back to work. Like, you know, now I'm making as much as he is. But at that point, I was like, I'm not quite starting from zero. But you know, it it made more sense for me to be the primary parent for a minute there. Yeah, yeah. Get everybody situated. OK, so looking back, is there anything that you would have done differently about making your plans and taking your leave?
00:33:39
Speaker
I think I probably would have tried to start figuring out the childcare situation earlier because I was just so brain dead from not sleeping. It really wasn't a good situation for anybody involved, and I didn't anticipate it being so difficult.
00:33:58
Speaker
I don't know. I didn't have a lot of childcare help that wasn't family with the other two when they were young. And I don't know what I thought this was going to look like, but oh my God, what a pain in my ass. It was the worst. And fortunately, we were in a situation where my sister was transitioning careers. And so she'd applied to be an electrician, but she was on this big old wait list and she was working a job she hated. So I was like, I'll tell you what.
00:34:26
Speaker
How about you come hang out with your nephew for the next year or four days a week and I'll pay you more money than they're paying you. And then both of us win. So yeah, it works out. I mean, you have to you have to sometimes rely on your own networks and families and communities.
00:34:42
Speaker
and things like that. And I'm glad you brought up the childcare piece though because that is a big consideration because now you have this other being and that's going to affect your time to work. So it is a big piece of coming back to work from taking time off.
00:35:00
Speaker
Because we all had COVID, people who were moms at that time. We tried the whole working, parents at that time, working and childcare thing at the same time when they were in school. And that didn't really go over well for a lot of people.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah. So we recommend the childcare situation when you come back from your leave. It's true. The other thing that we ended up doing, not until later, we didn't start looking until summer when we realized that this could be an option for us, but we ended up getting an au pair. So the US has a really great au pair program where
00:35:38
Speaker
You can work with different agencies and they get a visa to come and like be here for, they can be here up to two years, but it's only like one year per family that they can do. And that is a really, really phenomenal option if you have an extra room in your house. I cannot recommend it enough. We love our au pair. She came in October. She's from Brazil. And so as far as like cost goes, it is very similar or better than daycare.
00:36:06
Speaker
And we really love having her here. She gets along with my other son really well, and they hang out and watch movies. And so she's only really responsible for the baby when she's on. But she gets to come and see the states and come and do stuff. And so it's a really cool situation.
00:36:25
Speaker
Oh, awesome. Yeah. Great tip. Yeah, I've had another one of our guests, a friend of mine has done that. But just to be clear, the au pair lives with you then. That's why you have to have a separate bedroom. Yeah. And you have her for a year in your home. Yeah.
00:36:40
Speaker
Gotcha. So since you decided to do childcare within your home, when you came back to work, what did your day generally look like? How are you organizing your time now that you're back? You still have a baby. He's still in the house. He's with someone else technically, but probably you're still getting questions. You're still a little bit distracted. How are you structuring your work time at that point?
00:37:11
Speaker
Honestly, not really.
00:37:13
Speaker
I have an office with a lock on it for a reason. I've been an entrepreneur long enough that I'm not screwing around here. It's one thing if some shit goes down and then I'm available, which I'm so grateful I can be available. More than once, it usually happens when we're driving somewhere. Me and my sister will go run errands together with the baby and that's his favorite time to poops, blow it up his back because of course it is.
00:37:43
Speaker
but i've gotten that that call from the other room but it's always she doesn't come and knock she sends me a text so she's not interrupting she knows i've got other things going on in here so i mean like it's. If as long as you're like treating your business like a business i don't feel like it's really any different than other kinds of distractions or coworkers or anything like that honestly my twelve-year-old interrupts me more often than the baby does so.
00:38:05
Speaker
Right. Well, just having those expectations set and someone caring for him that knows how you work and how you expect to be communicated with. I think that gives you the space and time to be in a mindset that is a little bit
00:38:22
Speaker
better able to handle those a couple of times when someone needs to come in. It's true. And like, I mean, as far as like my, my schedule and stuff goes, like I'm, I'm
How does Dusty balance work and family?
00:38:32
Speaker
an early bird. I always have been like at five 30 is my natural wake up time. So I do morning shift with the baby until my sister comes on at seven. And you know, from there I pass the baby off and
00:38:45
Speaker
if I didn't wake up before him, which is like half the time, I have varying morning routines. It depends on who wakes up first. If I wake up first, I can get dressed, I can eat breakfast, and then I can just hit the ground running by 7.15 in my office here and get crack in here because those hours between then and noon, that's my golden hour. That for me, that's my best work time. I try to do all my big content creation tasks
00:39:13
Speaker
anything I need an entire brain for. I try to save interviews like this one. It is early afternoon. This is usually when I'm starting to, if I try and force myself to be productive at my desk, I'm like, ooh. Yes. If I'm talking to lovely humans like yourself, it's a lot easier to function. So it's a good way to coast over that right there.
00:39:35
Speaker
Well, and a good reminder to arrange your day in the way that your body naturally works, and the way your brain naturally works, and saying, when are the times when I feel like I can do these kind of tasks, and I'm going to block these out here. When are the times when I need a different kind of task? So that's an excellent reminder. Yeah, and that's part of why my husband takes evenings, too, because he's way better in the evening. He needs a little bit more time. He's not functional at 7 AM. He's just not. Love him dearly. I don't ask him important things before 9 AM anymore.
00:40:04
Speaker
Smart. You figured each other out. Is there any advice you'd give entrepreneurs listening who are considering taking a maternity leave? Do it. I mean, yeah. The answer is do it. You will figure it out because you're an entrepreneur and that is literally your job, is to figure it out.
00:40:24
Speaker
you're never ever going to get that time back and you're going to be exhausted. So you're not going to be doing your best work. If you do have some early childcare help early on, definitely give yourself some space. If you've got ideas on different things, I had
00:40:43
Speaker
a handful of times where I was really ready to write something. Not necessarily business stuff, but I have a handful of things that I've written from that period that have ended up being parts of different books that I've gotten progress.
00:40:59
Speaker
underestimate what can happen with that kind of like open space where you know in a lot of it you're just existing for sure but those pockets where you're not like you're not in a regular routine you're not doing your regular like work thing anymore that is such an incredible opportunity like I mean six weeks minimum minimum but do more if you can
00:41:22
Speaker
I love that advice. That's great point. So as we close out here, let's shift gears and have you tell the people about your podcast and all the things about Referrer Worthy. So what are you talking about on the show? Who is it for? Why do you love it? Tell us all the things. Yeah. So last September,
00:41:46
Speaker
I had just taken on another one of my big clients and it occurred to me that I was like, oh man, I have priced out of working with a lot of the people who I really love working with. I love small businesses and I've really been enjoying the last year getting to work on bigger problems and do these bigger launches and stuff.
00:42:08
Speaker
So referral worthy was really my gift to my small business buddies who haven't quite like gotten there yet. Like why is it that your business is still like you're still kind of hunting for clients. You're still like it still feels like feast and famine a lot. So with referral worthy, I wanted to focus on conversations with people whose businesses are stable for the most part.
00:42:31
Speaker
and how they got there. And so every single person who comes onto my podcast is somebody who I know personally who has a referral-based business first. Their business has not gotten full from posting on social media. It has not gotten full from paying for leads or whatever. It has been a mostly organic approach and this is how they've done it.
00:42:56
Speaker
So they're quick, quick little episodes like 20 to 30 minutes tops. I really try to just like cut straight to the quick there. And the idea is that your business can be all referrals and that's actually a really good thing. And I think we've, we've seen that in our businesses as well. And it's so nice because it takes off of that icky sales piece, right? That stops so many women from actually doing their own businesses because they don't want to be outselling all the time.
00:43:25
Speaker
Well, and I mean, you're still absolutely selling, and I don't find sales icky. But it feels better, right? It does feel better when they're coming to you. Yeah, exactly. And just giving people that alternative to say, you know what? You can set this up in a way where, like you said, your dream clients are knocking on your door instead. It's true. Yeah.
00:43:50
Speaker
That's the focus for me for referral worthy because I've been working in the online space for so long and it's so easy to feel less than because you're not on every platform and you're not doing whatever that the guru says that you should be doing. And realistically, if you go to any brick and mortar in your community and ask them where their
00:44:10
Speaker
business is coming from, it's referrals 100% of the time. I mean, especially like tax season is my favorite example. You want to find a good CPA tax season in your community? You can't because they're already booked solid. That's the dream. You don't have to scale it to millions of dollars. You can have a really successful small business that is strictly referral only working with people who you adore.
00:44:35
Speaker
That's the dream. Okay, as our fun closer, if you got to spend more time on anything in your business, one thing, what would you spend it on? Being on stage. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Tell us more.
00:44:54
Speaker
Well, like many a marketer who has transitioned to the online space, I have a theater background, which I'm sure is very surprising. Yeah, like I talk with my hands and I make funny faces. I also do these things on stage, but I have been speaking for the last 15 years or so aside from theater. And now that the baby's getting a little bit bigger, I really, really would love to spend more of my time doing that because I think that that's where I make the most impact.
Dusty's passion for public speaking and her podcast
00:45:23
Speaker
Awesome. OK, yes, that does totally make sense. Perfect. Yes. Oh, amazing. Well, Dusty, it has been so fun to have you on. And thank you for being open. I knew you would be about all these ups and downs of being able to take time off when you are expecting a baby. I hope it has inspired some others to do just that. So thank you for being on the show. We really appreciated you.
00:45:48
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. All right, you guys, that wraps us up for this week. We will see you next time. Thanks for listening. Visit UnboundBoss.com to download free resources, browse our courses, or leave us a voice memo for the podcast. And if you like the show, please subscribe, leave us an Apple review, and share your favorite episodes with other women entrepreneurs. Talk to you soon.