11 Scary Truths About Mental Health & Entrepreneurship, and What to Do About It | Yael Benjamin

Imagine devoting your blood, sweat, and tears to make your wildest vision a reality. Working tirelessly day and night to transform your creative spark into a thriving business. The thrill of bringing an idea to life and watching it blossom fuels you through the long hours and roller-coaster highs and lows.

But soon, the stress starts seeping in. The nonstop, high-stakes, goal-driven ethos leaves you drained. Self-doubt creeps up in moments of uncertainty. Your personal relationships start fraying at the edges. Your mental health takes a beating. And, for so many, you keep it largely to yourself, feeling like you can’t own the suffering or let others see, because they’re relying on you to “stay strong” and “hold the vision.”

In my experience, this emotional tailspin is an all-too-common companion in the journey of many, if not most entrepreneurs. I’ve been there myself. What’s really going on here? How prevalent is this level of near-systemic suffering, and does it really need to be a part of the journey of creating something from nothing?

In a recent episode on the SPARKED podcast, I spoke with Yael Benjamin , founder of Startup Snapshot , who is on a mission to pull back the curtain on the toll entrepreneurship takes on mental health. She’d just concluded some powerful and eye-opening research. Here are some of her findings that were gathered via a digital survey from a wide community of startup founders around the globe:

1. 72% of founders struggle with mental health.
2. 37% suffer from anxiety.
3. 36% experience burnout.
4. 10% have panic attacks.
5. 54% of founders are very stressed about their businesses, with fear of failure being the main stressor.
6. 81% of founders hide their stress, fears and challenges from others, and more than half hide their stress from their own co-founders.
7. 77% of founders refuse to seek qualified professional help. Younger founders associate a greater stigma in seeking help than older ones. And, male founders are nearly twice as likely to hold stigma around seeking help as female founders.
8. More than 50% of founders lose sleep since founding their companies, and that number skyrockets in step with the amount of money raised.
9. 47% of founders exercise less (when they need it most for mental health) than they did before founding their companies.
10. Founders spend 60% less time with spouses, 58% less time with kids, and 73% less time with friends and family, and the average level of loneliness reported is 7.6 out of 10.
11. 93% of founders would do it all again, even in light of so many forms of suffering.

As a lifelong entrepreneur who has founded a number of companies, this all rings true. But, that last one really struck me. Despite all the suffering, the vast majority of founders would (and do) do it all over again, and again, and again.

The big question here is:

How can we step into entrepreneurship, own the uncertainty and risk, but also build scaffolding and support to ease the mental and emotional burden the journey takes?

Some ideas Yael and I explored include:

1. Normalizing open conversations about the psychological toll - While there’s often no easy way to minimize the level of uncertainty or stakes in a startup environment, it can help to normalize the fact that making decisions and allocating resources in this context can layer emotional brutality on top of hope and possibility. Knowing you’re not alone in feeling what you’re feeling can help ease the burden.
2. Sharing the struggle - Founders often feel like they “can’t” share their struggles with their teams or investors, or even family members who look to them to project the illusion that everything is awesome and we’ll make it through. It can be incredibly helpful to either seek the guidance and support of a qualified mental health professional and/or bring together a group of other founders who are experiencing the same thing, so that you can all share your experiences, feel less alone, and have an outlet.
3. Shifting the culture of entrepreneurship - to make a real difference, we need a larger-scale shift in the culture of entrepreneurship, one that acknowledges how hard the journey is, and the emotional toll it can take, and puts resources behind supporting founders not just on a financial or strategic level, but also on a psychological level. Imagine an investor meeting where instead of pretending everything's fine, you're able to be honest. "I'm struggling and I need to see my partner and kids more, work with a therapist, and maybe even - gulp - take a day off once in a while." And instead of judgment, you're met with empathy and understanding.

This change starts with leaders. A more humane entrepreneurial journey benefits founders, investors and businesses alike. But it also requires rewriting unspoken rules that’ve been a part of entrepreneurial culture for decades.?

It’s time to make the founder journey more human.

For the full discussion on how we can foster wellness amidst uncertainty, listen to the conversion with Yael Benjamin on the SPARKED podcast. Together, we can transform startup life into a journey of creativity, wisdom and wonder. #startups #worklifebalance #wellness

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