Hello Bundle is a parental leave consulting company helping parents in every state understand and maximize their paid leave benefits. This is how it started, from founder Linzay Davis.
Hello Bundle didn't start as a business. It started as a bad parental leave experience. I was working at a nonprofit when I took leave, struggled to return to work, quit a job I thought I’d have forever, found out I missed out on 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and decided I wasn’t going to let another mom go through what I had.
The team meeting
Last month we had our first all-hands team meeting for Hello Bundle. There were nine of us there. Nine! Just a few years ago it was just me running consulting calls, posting on social media, creating all the guides and templates, sending all the emails. Now I have an incredible team of women making it all happen.
I never started out thinking I was building a business that would end up helping thousands of parents earn millions of dollars in benefits. I just had a bad parental leave experience and wanted to make sure other moms didn't miss out on paid time off with their babies like I had.
How it started
It all started with a viral Instagram reel about how to get paid during maternity leave. I’d been posting what I had learned about parental leave and was talking with any HR leaders and business owners that I could about how to make the workplace better for working moms. The last thing I wanted was for moms to have to pay for help. But after two years of trying to get employers to adopt better leave policies, and moms still messaging me nonstop, I started consulting in CA. Then moms outside of CA started asking for help.
I'd figured out the system in CA. Figured I could do it in other states too.
And I did. But I was also losing my mind. Some weeks I was doing more than 15 consulting calls along with running what was becoming a very real business.
Building the team
So I posted on Instagram that I was hiring a consultant to help me and found my dream hire, Stacy. Within a couple months, Stacy and I were both booked out weeks in advance. So I hired again. This time expanding our team outside of CA with Laura consulting in DC and MA, and Danielle in NY and NJ. And along the way Meghan came on board to help with social media, Lex and I started building a tech platform (I'm a tech founder now?!), Ashland started writing blog posts, another Meghan (also spelled with an h) came on board as my right hand lady helping with marketing and beyond, like way beyond, and just a couple weeks ago Amber joined, expanding our consulting team even more.
Where we are now
When I started Hello Bundle my goal was to make sure no other mom missed out on CA paid leave like I did. A nationwide team, a software platform, more than 2,000 parents helped, and $70M in benefits claimed later, the goal is still the same. It's just bigger now: every new parent, in every state, taking the leave they deserve.
If you're expecting and want to make sure you maximize your parental leave benefits, book a consulting call with us. Select your state here. Or if you have questions about what you qualify for or how we can help you, come to one of my free Q&A calls. RSVP here. I’ll see you there!
