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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canada's podcast, the number one podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
[00:09] SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone and welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:14] SPEAKER_01: This special is really covering a BDC initiative on mental health and wellness and really how
[00:25] SPEAKER_01: COVID-19 especially is impacting entrepreneurs, mental health.
[00:30] SPEAKER_01: I think it's really kind of something we tend to miss and it's pretty interesting.
[00:38] SPEAKER_01: So I'll be interviewing Annie Marsollis, the Chief Marketing Officer of a BDC and their mental health advocate.
[00:45] SPEAKER_01: And I think you can find some of the findings extremely interesting and over the next couple of weeks we'll be interviewing a couple of entrepreneurs who have overcome their mental health challenges and I think their stories are certainly ones we should listen to.
[01:07] SPEAKER_01: So without further ado, Annie, I'd like to welcome you to Canada's podcast and thanks for thanks for this initiative.
[01:19] SPEAKER_01: Let's kick off and just maybe give us just kind of overview of the study, you know, and especially as it relates to the COVID just now and you know, the sort of the overall health and well being of entrepreneurs in Canada.
[01:37] SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, thank you for having me and for talking about mental health for entrepreneurs.
[01:42] SPEAKER_00: I think it's a very important topic.
[01:45] SPEAKER_00: So at BDC we started getting into interested into the topic of mental health about two years ago when we were hearing of stories of entrepreneurs really struggling with mental health, with depression, anxiety and to the point where we had people or entrepreneurs we knew who committed suicide.
[02:04] SPEAKER_00: So obviously it was concerning to us and so we wanted to find out more what was the real state of mental health of Canadian entrepreneurs because there's no such thing there was nothing available.
[02:16] SPEAKER_00: So we started off last year with the help of the Canadian Mental Health Association and we conducted a first study.
[02:23] SPEAKER_00: But in recent months with the pandemic hitting we really wanted to understand what the impact of the pandemic on entrepreneurs, how are they coping with it, how are they facing these challenging times and although there was some good news some other findings in our research were more concerning.
[02:46] SPEAKER_01: Okay, you know, so you know, I mean I think you know we all know being an entrepreneur for most of my life, probably the biggest source of stress is physical stress and you know cash flow and this and that the next thing.
[03:04] SPEAKER_01: But you know you've done a study so what are the greatest sources of stress, entrepreneurs right now i'm sure it changes but what is it now you just did the study.
[03:16] SPEAKER_00: Well you just mentioned it well obviously the recession is number one that comes to mind right now dealing with cash flow and making sure that you're you're getting back into financial health if ever possible right now because some businesses are still shut down depending on where you are across the country.
[03:34] SPEAKER_00: Some cities have we gone into lockdowns again so and also the third thing is not financially related it's really the high self expectations and the fear of failure of entrepreneurs because you know their businesses their life and blood and you were an entrepreneur and you know that it comes even before lots of things in your life.
[04:01] SPEAKER_00: So right now the fear of failure or losing your business is really really something that is impacting entrepreneurs.
[04:11] SPEAKER_01: So there are any specific groups that are facing you know greater mental health challenges than others and curious to me.
[04:22] SPEAKER_01: What did the report find on that.
[04:25] SPEAKER_00: Yeah indeed there are certain groups that consistently face more severe mental health issues and that's not the first study that tell us so so in August when we served again women entrepreneurs came out as experiencing more mental health issues and it can come back to why visible minority entrepreneurs or newcomers immigrant entrepreneurs for instance experience more mental health issues.
[04:52] SPEAKER_00: And the context of the pandemic business owners whose operations or activities have not fully resume or not resume at all this is a group where the severity of the mental health issues interfering with their ability to work is most concerning so maybe I can talk a little bit about women entrepreneurs.
[05:16] SPEAKER_01: Really really useful yeah.
[05:18] SPEAKER_00: Good and and and again it's not specific to this study we've seen it in the past so but in the current context there's a lot of women entrepreneurs whose businesses are built in the hardest hit sectors for instance retail tourism wellness.
[05:39] SPEAKER_00: We know gems are closing in in red zones restaurants have been struggling at tourism so the hotels as well so women entrepreneurs then to be well a majority of them are in these businesses so that's the first thing that we're seeing in second there's still highly responsible for the household responsibilities plus child care so it's a lot on their shoulders and that's why.
[06:08] SPEAKER_00: For instance one of the stats is they feel half of them are feeling depressed at least once a week and that compares to 35% for men so more than 50% women compared to 35% for men.
[06:24] SPEAKER_01: So you know I've got friends that are entrepreneurs we've all got friends that all on their own businesses.
[06:34] SPEAKER_01: What kind of something you know we want to help them if they need help maybe they don't but we want because they do is there any kind of triggers anything that we should be looking for because you know that people don't like to talk about this kind of thing so anything we should be looking for though so we can support them.
[06:54] SPEAKER_00: For sure and for you you're right in saying that people don't like to speak about these things especially entrepreneurs because of this stigma and the fact that you know what will my employees think about you know if I'm expressing that i'm vulnerable what will my customers think about me being vulnerable what will my vendors will not want to do business with me again so so we can definitely help and and one of the early signs.
[07:24] SPEAKER_00: So I think that's the kind of things of troubles or if if if you want to be able to to help well just listening is is a first important thing but for instance if you have somebody around you that's constantly not sleeping overeating or not eating enough so changes in behavior is that you can observe this is relative increase in alcohol or drug consumption this is another red alert.
[07:53] SPEAKER_00: withdrawal or if you tend to isolate if people don't want to be in front of the camera because we're all living remotely in front of screens and if the people are not opening their cameras anymore you might wonder why.
[08:07] SPEAKER_00: If the person constantly is reminiding about things that can go wrong so really thinking the glasses really have empty all the time these are signs that you should be watching and encouraging that person to either speak to you or to seek professional help.
[08:31] SPEAKER_01: We entrepreneurs.
[08:33] SPEAKER_01: Our self help people because we can solve most things ourselves so.
[08:40] SPEAKER_01: The report had a number of tips about you know helping entrepreneurs you know overcome the negative effects of the pandemic and their mental health maybe you can give us some of those and that you know is they don't want to read your report we can listen to.
[09:01] SPEAKER_00: Yeah for sure I mean I mean it is true that entrepreneurs have an innate resilience and that's probably the first thing you want to tap into because you know entrepreneurs are driven their resilience and they're they're they're able to bend not to break so that's that's true and that said you know we're all human beings.
[09:20] SPEAKER_00: And we're all human beings and at times it's more difficult to to get back up than other times and that's why it's it's really important to ask for help to others and the and what's happening since the pandemic but also you know we're in a digital era there are more and more emergence of self care tools or tell it therapy so you can have remote therapy and it's more convenient it's more accessible than you just walking in.
[09:50] SPEAKER_00: So I think that's really important to me to a clinic I remember an a serial entrepreneur that that we've worked with was saying you know he he experienced depression so now he's he's really comfortable in talking about it but he sent in the early days in in accepting first that he was experiencing a depression.
[10:08] SPEAKER_00: He needed to go to the clinic and he was literally a walk of shame so you know heads down and walking into the clinic because this is not something that you want to admit and so right now with the emergence of these remote or virtual tools you have very
[10:57] SPEAKER_00: very easy to get there for easy reference for people to go to.
[11:01] SPEAKER_01: That's great. The resources is really good and you know I think that it's you know I think BDC's on to something in the sense that I don't know other initiatives that really be like this and you know as I was told you earlier I mean we are interviewing a couple of you know couple of entrepreneurs that are sort of standing up and saying
[11:26] SPEAKER_01: here's something and how I solved it so I think this is the intro to a series that we're doing on on basically mental health and well being so.
[11:40] SPEAKER_01: Any I want to thank you and thank BDC for the initiative we you know we entrepreneur as needed as much guidance as we can you know then not just kind of hammer on but but find solution so thanks very much for coming on show really appreciate.
[11:59] SPEAKER_00: I want to thank you for talking about it thank you very much.
