Have you recently gone into business for yourself? BDC’s latest survey indicates a higher likelihood of you facing some mental health challenges. 

And you’re more likely to seek professional help if you’re a: 

• Women
• Younger business owner
• Business owner with 20+ employees
• Business owner in the arts, entertainment, and recreation fields
• Startup business owner

While men and older business owners were less likely to seek professional health, that doesn’t necessarily equal fewer mental health challenges. 

Indeed, BDC’s latest survey on 1,500 Canadian SME business owners and mental health illuminates a concerning 45% increase in Canadian business owners facing mental health challenges (compared to 38% last year). 

Here are some more highlights from the report: 

More Canadian entrepreneurs feel tired and depressed, with fewer seeking help

The survey responses show that 67% of entrepreneurs felt tired and low-energy at least once a week. Similarly, nearly 50% felt depressed and like they didn’t accomplish everything they would have liked to. 

“Entrepreneurs often comment that it feels lonely at the top and rarely speak candidly about organizational and personal challenges,” said Hassel Aviles, co-founder of Not 9 to 5. 

While certain groups are more likely to seek support than others, the survey still only shows about a third (35%) of respondents actually sought mental health support. 

And the hesitation isn’t a matter of pride. The top barrier to seeking help was the high costs of mental health services, with uncertainty and discomfort discussing things following close behind. 

“I currently pay out-of-pocket for a private therapist,” said one anonymous survey respondent. “I am very grateful for that, and I click with my therapist well, but it typically costs me $200- $400 per month. This is a hard expense to tend to in the current economic situation.”

Inflation and work-life balance are top stressors

The survey showed that 54% of entrepreneurs cited inflation and work-life balance as top stressors. The two go hand-in-hand, since rising costs fuel longer hours to make ends meet. Notably, work-life balance was a more sought-after support to mitigate the stress, followed by better access to mental health resources. 

“Inflation rates and other factors are affecting their businesses in ways that are harder to control, leaving many entrepreneurs resorting to working even longer hours just to stay afloat,” said Annie Marsolais, CMO at BDC. 

Small business owners are just as mentally strained as medium business owners

You might assume these findings apply more to “bigger” business owners with 20+ employees. But the survey profile indicates that 88% of respondents have under 20 employees, with 56% having under five employees. 

“As individuals, we can’t control the rates of inflation and the stress it may cause,” said Aviles. “But we can learn to manage our reactions to that stress. Learning how to do this is an opportunity to create separation between who we are and the work we do, which is healthy, and supports the work-life balance entrepreneurs are seeking to achieve.”

Read BDC’s full survey results. 

It’s not unusual for the tech sector to experience a high degree of turnaround, as many employees are eager to walk away from dissatisfying work environments and burnout, according to ICONIC’s survey from last year.

But lately, there appears to be even more examples of workers jumping from company to company. Brenda Beckedorf, the executive director for Alberta IoT Association —  a 200-member nonprofit that focuses on scale up tech companies — said that in the Wild Rose province alone, she’s familiar with a large number of tech workers in the past six months landing their third and fourth jobs. 

Various reports and surveys show employees are lured by the promise of better flexibility, better pay, and better benefits — all increasingly important after the radical workshift during the pandemic. In certain instances, employees cite a want for professional development, or opportunities for advancement. Still for others, a new job that affords them work-life balance.

Further driving the point, a poll from December 2022 found that about one in seven Canadian employees at middle market and larger organizations report actively applying for jobs outside their current company. The reasons given range from the promise of better work-life balance, seeking more fulfilling work, and the potential for advancement, among other goals. The exodus is acutely felt by middle market businesses — nearly 70% of whom said they face staffing challenges.

In fact, Canada as a whole is facing challenges holding onto talented IT professionals. Whereas many migrate to other companies within the country, there is definitely a contingent who migrate to the US. They’ve told various pollsters it’s because of better pay and the prestige of working for a recognized brand such as Google, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and others. 

Indeed, there is a marked wage gap, providing a massive incentive. The average IT worker in Toronto rakes in $117K, in contrast to Silicon Valley ($196K), New York ($180K), and Seattle ($186K).

A study reported in the Globe and Mail, showed that two-thirds of Canadian software engineering graduates find work in the US — and end up staying there. 

Half of Canadian workers will job hunt in 2023 because they’re seeking higher pay and perks, according to a poll by recruitment firm Robert Half. 

The number of active job-seekers, in fact, was much lower just a year or so ago. In 2021, it was 21%; in 2022 it was 28%. After the tangibles of compensation, job-seekers also want a comfortable corporate culture, and good company values, according to the survey. In an article titled “Tech companies want workers, but it’s getting tougher to find them,” the Globe and Mail confirmed that, while “from fledgling startups to industry stalwarts – are firmly in expansion mode,” wages continue to lure staff away. 

The secret to retention? Culture.

Given the bleed out of staff, the secret to retaining talent is “culture all the way,” Beckedorf said. “I really actually do believe that if people believe that they’re valuable, they feel like there’s a place for them to move up… When you take a chance on someone, invest in their potential, and treat them well, they’ll do the same for you.”

Furthermore, to mitigate employee losses, human resources might want to consider taking a new approach to hires. 

As a sample paradigm: After a six month course, a would-be staffer might not have an impressive tech resume, but their decade as an engineer, for example, could be an asset. “And so giving time for those people and having a culture to say, ‘we’re going to train that person,’ I think that’s a big part of what we have to focus on,” Beckedorf said.

She added that companies are very much feeling the pressure to increase in-house training — hiring people to build out their own internal courses, with the recognition that otherwise, staff won’t reach the seniority they desire.

Another out-of-the-box solution to retention could be a little help from taxpayers, she added. 

It’s common for small and medium businesses to lose staff to a better paying company, but one way to attract (and keep) star talent, she added, is for the government to step up to the plate and offer grants to assist in covering the cost of the hire. “They need to put their money on this expensive person that’s actually going to help them move the needle on the organization,” she said. “We really don’t have any support around that. And that’s where we need to start really having that conversation with government.”

The benefits of a diverse workforce

Still another idea to fix the retention problem comes from the World Economic Forum (WEF), who add what might be an unexpected twist. 

Diversity of the workforce, they maintain, is good for corporate growth — i.e. higher revenue and innovation. They add how diversity fosters worker satisfaction, and by corollary, helps with retention. 

Suffice it to say, human resources may be well served by ensuring that the hiring pool isn’t homogenous. And if that wasn’t reason enough, Forbes reports that companies with diverse crews do better financially.

Entrepreneurs who become successful at an earlier age can have a bigger impact on the economy, one expert told DX Journal. 

But entrepreneurship also presents unique challenges for young people, who don’t have as much experience to draw from.

It’s why that expert, award-winning business advisor and global entrepreneur Craig Elias is passionate about mentoring students.

“The first time I became an entrepreneur, it was super hard, but I was super lucky that I had some amazing [work] experiences,” Elias said.

“But if you’re young, or a new Canadian, or if you’re a student, you don’t have that 15, 20 years of experience you can then throw at something, and be as lucky as I was.”

A top sales performer at every company he worked for, Elias’s first startup won the $1,000,000 prize in a global billion-dollar pitch competition, and was later twice named by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America. 

LinkedIn named him as one of its top 50 B2B sales experts in 2019, Forbes magazine named him one of the most social sales people on the planet, and he was named one of the “Calgarians We Love” by Avenue Magazine in 2021.

Today, Elias is the entrepreneur-in-residence at Bow Valley College in Calgary, where he conducted a 2019 study with student research assistant Issha Shah that suggested a first-time 23-year-old entrepreneur can have quite an impact: they’re likely to generate an almost $24 million increase in GDP and add nearly $14.5 million to local economies.

“It’s a bit like investing early, right?” Elias said.

However, Elias and Shah’s research also suggested that first-time entrepreneurs between the ages of 23 and 25 are also in need of the most support — and after experiencing a lot of success, Elias is paying it forward.

Through his role at the college, he taps into his years of experience and serves as a mentor to students hoping to become first-time entrepreneurs.

“I will tell you what I would do if I [were] you,” Elias said. “I’m really focused on giving people honest, candid, authentic feedback.”

In a conversation with DX Journal, he offered insight into traits of successful entrepreneurs, some of what he offers young people in mentoring sessions, and how mentorship is changing.

Useful traits in entrepreneurship

A useful thing for young entrepreneurs to understand, according to Elias, is that entrepreneurship can’t be taught.

“It’s learned,” he said. “[So] the question is, how do you help somebody learn?”

Curious people who are lifelong learners, coachable, and like to read tend to have advantages, he added.

A lack of prudence is also an asset — those who are willing to break the rules and do things differently are often rewarded in entrepreneurship.

And finally, you’re only as good as your network. 

“The data says the number one predictor of success for an entrepreneur is how big is your network,” Elias said. 

“[And] if you suck at networking, you simply just find a way to get better.”

The goals of a mentoring session

When it comes to a mentoring session, Elias says his first priority is finding out what the mentee wants to take away from it.

His second priority is finding a way to be helpful — and not necessarily nice — with that honest, candid, and authentic feedback of his.

Often, his goals include helping a mentee think about things they haven’t considered, and an example is helping them understand the difference between competitors and competition.

While competitors do very similar, or the same, things that an entrepreneur does, Elias says the competition is “all the different ways the same problem gets solved.”

“I say, ‘Okay, well if you want a jewelry store and I own a jewelry store, what do we compete against?’” Elias said.

“People say, ‘We compete against each other.’ And I’m like, no – you compete against all the other ways that someone could say to someone they love, ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m sorry for being an idiot.’”

It means that in actuality, a jewelry store owner is also competing against flowers, chocolate, perfume, cars, purses, shoes, pets, and trips, Elias says.

“So, helping them understand,” he said.

“They go, ‘Oh, no one does the exact same thing I do. We have no competition.’ You always have competition.”

Mentorship can also help foster diversity among entrepreneurs, Elias says, and one of his goals is to help facilitate that.

“How do we get more people that are not like me — stale, male, and pale — to [get] into the ecosystem?” Elias said. 

It led him to establish a program that pairs successful people with mentees who share life experiences.

“It’s all about helping people understand that they belong.”

How mentoring has changed in the last five years

The pandemic changed the way we work, and Elias says it changed mentorship, too: young entrepreneurs no longer have to travel to sit down with someone they are hoping to learn from.

“Everybody’s so used to doing things virtually,” Elias said. “You don’t have to be in the same geography as the person you want to get some time with.”

Students have a unique advantage because people immediately understand why they’re asking for help, Elias said.

LinkedIn is also a place for easy introductions that he says is frequently used by senior executives.

And speaking of those executives, a lot of them have become more approachable, Elias says.

“I think because they got some help, they’re much more willing to give it back. Karma, you know,” he said.

“And for some people, the way they make a difference is by mentoring.”