PROGRAM OVERVIEW

Whether it is the stress of financial inconsistency, pressure from family and friends, or anxiety experienced from regular rejections via cold calling, the mental health of an entrepreneur, expectedly, can experience great difficulty.

We believe that the Complete Entrepreneur Development Ecosystem must include mental and emotional counseling to support the growth of the entrepreneur and their business.

Our model is devised to support the most important part of an entreprenurial endeavor - the person.

By complimenting customized business training with mental and emotional support, the entrepreneur is able to identify, address, and manage common stresses, ranging from anxiety to difficulties in managing relationships. The addition of accessible counseling, we believe, will change how communities will grow in the future.

Our Purpose:
To support entrepreneurs, wholly, in growing their knowledge, skills, health, and community.

Our Mission:
To build sustainable ecosystems aligning custom training, university and college counseling programs, economic development, and local entrepreneurs.

Our Focus:
To grow relationships with academic partners who share our vision for supporting entrepreneurs, advancing students, and growing local economies.

PROGRAM EXPECTATIONS (OUR DESIRED MODEL)

NOTE: Most importantly, we will honor, serve, and protect the standards of your institution, overseeing organization (such as CACREP), as well as your program culture. Our “desired model” is a version that serves the widest communities and provides the broadest access. If you program cannot or does not work in this way - we will flex our idea to meet your needs.

In a perfect world, our entrepreneurs are able to work in alternating weeks with our business trainers and mental health counselors. If desired, we encourage the entrepreneurs meet weekly with both, but will not require that volume of support interaction.

The rationale behind our alternating week model is that it provides the entrepreneur with enough time to review, assess, identify, plan, and act upon the counsel provided by their respective support experts. As we expect for there to be “bad day” or a plan “does not make sense anymore”, we want to make sure that the complete support team is readily available (through scheduled meetings) to support the entrepreneur “where they are.”

In the event an entrepreneur warrants clinical behavior or phramacological support, a referral will be made to a licensed professional capable of serving the clients needs.

Attaining Required Counseling Hours:
In this model, a student is assured 2 hours of direct counseling per entrepreneur they work with, as well as demand some expected follow-up administrative reporting.

Building Counseling Entrepreneurs:
We also encourage students to consider developing educational materials - videos, podcasts, etc. - for use by the clients outside of session, as well as to serve as a model for private practice activities (should they desire to work in a private practice setting).

The experiences of entrepreneurs are very similar, regardless of their product or service delivery. Commonly non-delivery related issues - sales, staffing, taxes, etc. - the stress associated can cause declines in productivity, as well as quality of life.

As noted in the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA, June 2019) report, Going It Alone: The mental health and well-being of Canada’s entrepreneurs, many entrepreneurs and their business capacity are negatively affected by mental health instances. 

Some key findings include:

• Three of five (62%) entrepreneurs felt depressed at least once a week 

• Nearly half (46%) say that mental health issues interfere with their ability to work 

• Although more than one-third (40%) reported talking to someone, fewer than one in five (16%) were likely to seek help from a professional. As well, fewer than one in ten were likely to access help online (6%) or use a mental health app (6%)

• More than one-third identified stigma-related concerns (36%) as a barrier to seeking mental health support.