“I’ve had multiple founders say ‘I cry on the bathroom floor before my weekly stand up,’ and that same founder was at an event doing the ‘rah-rah’ spiel.” Such is the nature of business-founding, says today’s guest Brad Baum: the personal and professional stress and sacrifice is hidden by the (albeit necessary) public-facing hustle culture, which, in turn, creates yet another element of pressure. As common as mental health struggles are among entrepreneurs, they remain, nonetheless stigmatized. Brad is seeking to change that with the Founder Mental Health Pledge, which he founded and co-created to support founders’ mental health and promote a culture of mental health in the startup community.

Signing the pledge—which many industry leaders already have in the short period of time since its founding—means promising to treat the direct cost of caring for founders’ mental health as a legitimate business expense and puts mental health as a priority. Brad talks to host Alex Raymond about the ability of such a pledge to build a bridge between the historically distant relationship between founder and investor, and the founders and VCs reporting that the pledge helped them win deals. They also discuss the changing attitudes toward mental health among Gen Z and on social media.

The overwhelming consensus from the startup world has been one of compassion and a desire to help. Join today’s discussion to learn more about how the Mental Health Pledge is doing its part to change the way we treat founders and their well-being.

Quotes

• “On the periphery, founders are sort of forced to run around to the Forbes Under 30 Summit and all these conferences and in board meetings and when they’re fundraising, everything’s ‘Up and to the right. We’re crushing it, man! Hustle-hustle, Grind,’ eighty-hour weeks, that whole spiel. And it’s not that that’s not true sometimes, it’s that, I think, the bulk of the time, you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to figure out what to do next, you don’t have guidance, and it’s a struggle.” (4:55 | Brad Baum)
• “We think the right signal to send is: treat mental health the same way you would treat accounting, legal, etc.— all these other expenses.” (12:59 | Brad Baum)
• “It’s been incredible to see—the ‘community’ word gets played out—but it’s more like this recognition of both the problem but then also recognition of the opportunity to change it.” (25:29 | Brad Baum)
• “There’s a social—not a moment in time, not fad—but a complete societal shift in how we think about our mental health, especially propagated by the rising generations and social media, where it’s no longer—actually, I can’t say it’s no longer—we’re getting to a place where it will no longer be, ‘Hey, I’m struggling. Hey, I think I might have anxiety or bipolar or depression.’ You go on TikTok these days, people 18 to 25 talk about it without batting an eye.” (26:13 | Brad Baum)
• “We’re not saying go to your investor and say, ‘Sit down, I need to tell you about all my anxiety and depression.’ We’re saying that conversation does not even need to happen because they’ve signed a pledge and/or have the clause…You should feel empowered to just go out and do it. No one needs to know if you don’t want them to. I think you’d be surprised with how much people can empathize and sympathize if you do, but that’s your prerogative.” (33:28 | Brad Baum)

Links

Connect with Brad Baum:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/baumbrad/

Website: https://www.founderpledge.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“The biggest mistake people make is that they’re not themselves,” says today’s guest authenticity expert Erin Weed. Using a process she created called “The Dig,” Erin helps entrepreneurs and thought leaders discover and cultivate their most authentic selves in order to most effectively communicate with their audiences. Through a series of questions, she helps her clients discover their message on both the macro and micro levels, the ‘why’ behind the ‘how,’ so that they can clearly, confidently and concisely deliver their singular message to the world in a way that makes audiences sit up, listen, engage and trust. On today’s episode of Conscious Entrepreneur, Erin talks to host Alex Raymond about getting to the head/heart core and the biggest mistakes most leaders make with their messaging. Drawing from her own experience in founding a personal safety and self-defense company Girls Fight Back, she’ll share how you can get started on your own process of discovering your true self and the unique story you have to share with the world.

People are craving human connection beyond the facts and figures. We all have three core truths running within us at the same time, Erin says. She reveals what these truths are, what they mean, and how to plug into all three to begin expressing your fullest, most honest and most genuine self.

The journey to the core isn’t an easy one, but where entrepreneurs lead, the rest of the world tends to follow.

Quotes

• “Things started to shift over time, where audiences started appreciating the polish and the perfect less and they started craving the authenticity and the realness more.” (3:41 | Erin Weed)
• “I just think it’s our responsibility to be communicating our truth. It’s not up to other people to be mind readers or heart readers or gut readers. We have to, as conscious leaders, one of the things that I feel really passionate about is encouraging conscious leaders and entrepreneurs to be the ones to go first. To be willing to go into maybe the more uncomfortable of the three dimensions of your truth.” (9:32 | Erin Weed)
• “There are all these different bypasses to get to the truth, based on how a person is wired and what’s important to them.” (14:04 | Erin Weed)
• “I realized I would create the best talks of my life when I was simply telling a story, and then finding the bigger meaning in the story so that everyone else in the room could get something from what I just shared.” (16:16 | Erin Weed)
• “A lot of people don’t like their dig words because it’s your biggest life lesson, it is your path, and sometimes we can be very resentful of what we’ve been dealt. But I’d like to believe, on some spiritual level, that we picked it for ourselves for a very big reason.” (28:28 | Erin Weed)
• “One of the things that holds conscious entrepreneurs back is we do not know or accept the fact of how unique, special and needed our voices are.” (32:49 | Erin Weed)

Links

Connect with Erin Weed:

Website: https://www.erinweed.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“It can be difficult for people to know who they can speak to about it,” says Amy Lewin, of entrepreneurs who are unhappy in their own companies. Amy is the Editor at Sifted, a media platform focused on Europe’s startup ecosystem and she joins The Conscious Entrepreneur podcast to discuss a survey Sifted recently posed to a number of entrepreneurs, the vast majority of whom reported experiencing poor mental health, high stress and even a strong desire to leave their businesses within the coming year. Though these figures may seem alarming, they merely shed light on common struggles and pressures felt by entrepreneurs which are so often swept under the rug for fear of looking weak or needing to maintain an ultra positive mindset in order to see their businesses succeed. On today’s episode Amy will reveal more of the survey’s findings as well as what venture capitalists (VCs) can do to support entrepreneurs, in whom they, after all, have a vested interest.

The survey highlights the importance of a community in an entrepreneur’s life. Family and friends share the entrepreneur’s burden, while simultaneously being unable to relate. Professional networks of like-minded contemporaries can go a long way toward making isolated individuals feel heard and connected, as well as ease the mental health stigma.

Today, Amy shares the common regret shared among most entrepreneurs and why quitting might be the best thing they could do for their careers.

Quotes

• “It was just a real sign of the personal toll—and not just even on the founders, but on their family, on their friends, on their colleagues—just another reminder that building startups is really tough.” (4:48 | Amy Lewin)
• “Whenever we publish stories about that personal side of company building at Sifted, we get the most amazing response. People love knowing that they’re not the only ones. And I think sometimes, startup culture is so much that you’ve got to be optimistic. You’ve got to believe that your company can be the one in 100 that’s going to really make it. You hear from so many people that your idea is never going to work and you have to believe in it yourself and I think when times are really hard it can be difficult for people to know who they can speak to about it.” (6:27 | Amy Lewin)
• “That attitude that’s going to be out there from some corners that if you are struggling in any way then you are weak and that you’re not in it for the long term, which I obviously don’t believe, but is obviously what some people still think.” (13:04 | Amy Lewin)
• “Encourage founders to go on holiday. Encourage them to have a personal life. These things are important. We all need to recharge our batteries and ‘visionaries do,’ too. There’s that famous saying that comes from the VC world: “I’ve never seen a company go bust because the founder took a week off, but I have seen plenty of companies go bust because the founder didn’t.’” (18:26 | Amy Lewin and Alex Raymond)

Links

Connect with Amy Lewin:

https://sifted.eu/articles/founder-mental-health-2024

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm