Maternity & Beeco

As you may know we had our first little one in the summer, 2021. And it was a hell of a change to our lifestyle, perspectives and general outlook on the business as well as many other things. I wanted to collect my insights during this time that was…. Liberating, Intense and Life Changing!

I know this is very cliche when someone says that becoming a parent changes who you are. They are right. And it sneaks up on you. Or it did for me. When Lily was first born I remember expecting one of those incredible light bulb moments of change. It didn’t happen. It snuck up on me over the last few months, and suddenly I looked at myself…. And saw my Mum. Which actually was an incredible feeling and gives me an immense appreciation for everything her and my Dad were, did, and did and still do for us all the time. You never realise the impact you had on your parents until you do it yourself with your own children.

So I wanted to collect a couple of items about being a new mother, before and then on maternity leave, and being part of our Beeco venture.

Pregnancy…..

Ok, so this was the aim. It was even in our 2020 goals (yup, we did business & personal goals and in there was the goal to expand our family this year). But was it what I was truly expecting…. No! Thank God for the incredible books by Emily Oster’s Expecting Better, Milli Hill’s Positive Birth Book and the wonderful hypnobirthing course by Positive Birth Company. The great thing about being pregnant is everyone is SO nice to you (once you can tell them obviously) but the nausea (16 weeks for me!) and the heaviness later on are not so fun.

For the business, I suddenly felt the frantic need to learn what this all meant! Why we don’t talk about this stuff until you are actually pregnant is crazy… There is SO much to know! So this meant that we had a very quick division of labour. Phil took the business and kept things running to par, I helped to review things as needed but otherwise, I dove head first into the bump books.

I mean, this worked out pretty well in the end. I felt confident and settled in what I needed to know about being pregnant, AND we managed to secure our first HMO project in the process.

Win-Win!

The BIG event

Thankfully due to my pregnancy due diligence (even with someone doing some very last minute acrobatics in my tummy) I was pretty prepared for the eventual popping of this giant tum! See due diligence is perfect for every occasion, be prepared!

In the end Lily did NOT want to come out and having been induced at 41 weeks and trying for 32 hours we gave up and she entered the world via the sun roof.

Everything takes a back seat

As you can imagine at this point everything about the property business went out the figurative window for me. It just happened that we had already submitted planning for the conversion so there wasn’t too much to do anyway! Lily was born in July and our approved planning came back in August (after being submitted just before she was born). Talk about good timing!

But as you can imagine this is just one of the many parts of the business we needed to work on. Things continued to tick along, mainly driven by our wonderful assistant, Sheryl, who kept working on the tenant packs, investor packs, social media, websites, books, and sourcing. What would we do without her! If you haven’t already I would HIGHLY recommend employing a virtual assistant like Sheryl. You can speak to Imogen at Freedom Geek who has a great system to find candidates that fit your business needs best.

Take it slow

These first few weeks and even months were a reality check for me. Lily changed my pace of life entirely. For anyone who knows me, they will tell you that I am the type of person who is always doing something: something new, something challenging, something different, something fun! Whether that is a new project at work (yes, the full time one!), taking on extra projects, doing Beeco, walking the dogs, signing up to triathlons, going dancing, seeing my sister & friends, organising games nights, or dinner dates or simply sitting down to read a good book. I can’t stop myself.

So as you can imagine with Lily, all those things had to be put aside. And it was difficult. We are super lucky with a beautiful, happy and calm baby. So I can imagine if you had more of a handful for a baby this would be another level! As it was, I was suddenly stuck under a sleeping infant that I couldn’t consider disturbing (she was just too cute) with nothing to do. The laptop gathered dust, the TV remote always just out of reach, the phone dying on it’s last battery after being hammered by the all day scrolling. This took planning (always have everything ready before a feed in case the inevitable snooze happened) and adjusting to just not needing to do everything!

Now I set my expectations lower. Achieve one thing a day. This is all you need to move forward (and this can be business, admin, or general just life). It feels great to fulfil that one thing each day and just enjoy each little moment more.

Spend the time wisely

When you have decided to go down to that one thing a day, obviously you want to make sure that one thing counts. Well I had mixed results with this. During the past months I can certainly say that I have seen more of Dubai (I originally have massive plans to visit museums or galleries… I managed two), saw more of friends (it was actually great to see the mums that do remote work, or the cabin crew teams, and even better to see the group of new mums I met whilst pregnant) and yes, I did get some business stuff done. It was good to actually sit down and work out my brain for a little bit. I finally ticked off one of those things that I had been meaning to do for AGES! So now we have a wonderful first draft of a Financial Dashboard for Beeco based on our Google Sheets accounts sheet and displayed in Datastudio!

Let me know if you want to know more about this (if you aren’t already using a more sophisticated software). I love to see the stats behind what we are really doing! Drop me an email at sam@beecoproperties.co.uk.

Back to the Grind Stone

So the next adventure looms. I had an incredible time learning with Lily for the past 5 months. Of course I wish it was longer. One day it will be more (5 year goal). But for now we need to keep everything floating to achieve our short term goals: personal and for the business. Currently the best way to ensure this, is still to work full time. I can’t say I’m not apprehensive. Having slowed down during maternity leave, I have really enjoyed the pace of life. Now I’ll need to ramp up again, to make sure that I add value at work, and to ensure I’m still very much present for Lily in the between times, and then to work on Beeco whilst she is snoozing! But it will be worth it, it will be exciting and it will work. We will make it work! The goal is in sight and is now in sharp focus after having this time to really imagine it.

Can you do it all?

Can you? Can any of us? Well yes, we have so many wonderful role models out there in the property business and elsewhere. New mothers have more support now than ever. We are superheroes who can do it all. We make sure that the essentials are in place. You, your family, your health and your business. Learning how to tick off the important items, utilise your team (like a virtual assistant) and enjoy the time you have, by really living it and taking a reality check regularly.

We all learn through practice right? So next time (yes, we hope there will be another coming at some point) I’ll feel ready to do more by being prepared and optimised. This is the plan! Then the goal becomes achievable! Watch this space!

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