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Mental Health and Founders

Mental Health and Founders I’ve summarised last week session contents so we can discuss and come to an agreement about the video content.  What’s been your biggest mental health challenge as a founder? Combined with group feedback from the question: How has building a business affected your mental health? ** Top mentioned challenges: Imposter Syndrome, followed by anxiety and burnout – what you had already identified as common challenges **  I have categorised the remaining responses into the following:  Personal struggles and mindset-related challenges: belief in self and trust constant comparison frustration motivation to continue procrastination stress Feel like I have put myself in this position External challenges expectations financial burden isolation - difficult for others to know what you are going through time constraints how long everything takes getting seed grants Barriers relating to neurodivergence adhd dyslexia neurodivergent getting the relevant support – not much support out there for neurodivergent people Group discussion feedback summary: What’s helped you to cope? Community and Peer Support Being proactive to find a community Find people who understand (other entrepreneurs) Going out and finding a physical space to meet other entrepreneurs Finding groups where you can get support and help Pitching groups, sales talk groups Talking with friends and finding support These reflect the importance of connection—being part of networks where shared experiences reduce isolation and boost motivation. Learning and Self-Education Reading books and listening to podcasts Online resources These are examples of self-directed learning, which supports coping by building knowledge, confidence, and a sense of agency. Professional and Organisational Support Accessed local council business development services Local enterprise businesses who can help Networking, finding accelerating programmes Aware of Unlimited, and that’s how they got the seed grant Business and Intellectual Property services Seeking coaching What do you wish you had known or had access to earlier? Where to find right and relevant information Not much culturally sensitive resources, including migrant groups Revisiting your brief: As mentioned, over the last year, we’ve learned there are some key challenges that affect young SEs, such as dealing with failure, burnout and impostor syndrome and we’d like to offer them some tools to help with these. We also understand that these might be universal / not age-specific challenges and that there might be other areas that might be important to our SEs too. Overall, since this is an area that we’d like to offer more support on, we would like to produce something that we could share with other SEs, regardless of their age or area of focus. Therefore, as we briefly discussed, I think it would be great if we could refine the focus of these videos after the session in April to ensure that these reflect the needs of our social entrepreneurs (provided this will be a relatively small sample!).  Based on the above, I have put together some suggested topic areas to determine the appropriate coping strategies and tools that would make up the bulk of the video content. Once we’ve agreed these topics I’ll develop the content outline and send this over and then get to work once it’s all agreed. Introductory video – general impact of being a SE on MH Imposter Syndrome Mindset related challenges – something around the motivation associated with being a SE in reference to the mentioned challenges of frustration, comparison, motivation to continue etc Managing stress and anxiety Burnout Neurodiversity Connecting with others – finding like minded communities

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Downloadable Resources