World Mental Health Day, Why Founders Can’t Sit This One Out
October 10th marks World Mental Health Day, and this year’s theme from the World Federation for Mental Health hits hard: “Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies.” We’re not just talking about war zones or natural disasters. We’re talking about emotional overwhelm, economic pressure, relentless bad news, algorithm anxiety, and the silent collapse happening behind polished Zoom calls. Founders feel it too, because most of the time, we carry the pressure quietly, we lead through chaos while ignoring our own crisis. Entrepreneurs are in their own kind of emergency. And it’s not always visible.
Stats back it up, according to a 2025 survey by Startup Snapshot,
- 81% of founders don’t speak openly about their mental struggles
- 49% lean only on cofounders or spouses, not trained support
- And nearly everyone reports feeling emotionally isolated during crisis
This year’s campaign isn’t just about awareness. It’s about making mental health accessible, actionable, and real for leaders, especially when the world is in flux. If you’re building a business, leading a team, or navigating uncertainty, you’re not just responsible for profits. You’re responsible for the human behind the hustle.
You can’t build a business that thrives if the human behind it is barely surviving. Being a business owner, founder, and now a podcast host, it doesn’t come with a warning label, no one tells you the toll the pressure takes. You just feel it. Quietly. Over the past few weeks, as Rachel and I have leaned harder into vulnerability, publicly and privately, we’ve had an overwhelming response. Not in vanity metrics, though those numbers tell a story too. But in DMs. In messages: “Thank you for naming what I’ve felt.”
We’ve had the best time connecting with people from our podcast.
Silence isn’t strength. Vulnerability is.
The Hidden Load of Mental Health and the Entrepreneurial Mind
Being an entrepreneur isn’t just about freedom. It means carrying the mental load of…
- Meeting payroll while juggling personal responsibilities.
- Making the hard calls when you don’t want to let anyone down.
- Holding space for your team while hiding your own stress.
- Leading when you’re quietly crumbling.
I’ve shared this before in my book Balance is Bullsht*: you don’t have “work” and “life”. You have one life. Trying to keep them separate is what exhausts us. When I went through my divorce, lost millions, and rebuilt everything from scratch… including who I was as a man, a father, a leader, I realized that burnout wasn’t a badge of honor, it was a wake-up call and I wish I saw the warning signs sooner.
My famiLEE! My why, my world, my focus.
Now, as I co-run StandOut Authority with my wife Rachel B. Lee , raise a blended family, and stay real with our community, I choose integration. I’ve let go of the idea of perfection a looooong time ago. Mental health doesn’t just affect your business. It is your business. I’ve seen from my own experience when the leader breaks, so does the mission. And surprisingly only a small number of founders seek external support.
The leadership shift we need is vulnerability, I believe real leadership shows we bleed, breathe, and struggle, just like everyone else. Launching YOUmanize Your Brand has reminded me: the more I YOUmanize™ how I live and lead, the more magnetic my presence becomes. Because people connect with people, not personas, especially in an AI-era drowning in noise.
Shoutout to Marc Randolph (Netflix co‑founder), who speaks with brutal transparency about founder anxiety and resilience. His story reminds us: leadership isn’t spreadsheets. It’s surviving your own doubt.
Action Over Awareness, What You Can Do Now
Talk is good. But it’s the actions and steps you implement to make a change that truly set great leaders apart from the average. Here’s what I do, and you can also try that helps me stay ‘in my YOUman-zen zone.
🟠 Check in on your team, yes. But also yourself.
🟠 Start the convo privately or publicly but break the silence.
🟠 Set the standard, model boundaries, rest, therapy, and truth.
🟠 Serve, don’t sell, especially this week. Be human first.
Mental Health Strategies for Entrepreneurs
Awareness is the first step, but you need real strategies to stay in the game without burning out. These are practices I use to protect my mental health:
🔵 Build Micro‑Routines You don’t need a 2-hour morning ritual. But you do need anchors in your day. 10 minutes of meditation, a walk after calls, or journaling before bed can reset your nervous system and your perspective.
🔵 Create a Founder Support Circle Build a small circle of trusted peers, mentors, or coaches you can speak to without judgment. Sometimes just saying the thing out loud defuses it.
🔵 Schedule Recovery Like Revenue If you plan your launches down to the hour, plan your recovery with the same precision. Therapy, workouts, unplugged weekends, they belong on your calendar before you hit the wall.
🔵 Integrate, Don’t Separate Stop chasing the myth of “work/life balance.” You don’t have 2 lives, you have one. Blend them with intention: invite family into your wins, share struggles with your team, and let your values run through both.
🔵 Train Your Team for Transparency Model it. If you set boundaries, they’ll believe they can too. If you admit when you’re struggling, they’ll bring honesty to you instead of hiding it.
This Is a Permission Slip
To the founder up at 2AM doubting yourself, to the executive carrying the weight of your team, to the business owner showing up daily but feeling invisible… You are NOT alone. Let’s make this week more than awareness. Let’s make it action and let’s hold space for each other. And if nothing else, let this be your reminder: You can be both a standout authority and a work in progress.
ICYMI
🎙️Episode 2 of our podcast has been released, ‘The LinkedIn Algorithm Just Changed. Here’s What Works Now’. In this episode, Rachel and I unpack The Human Algorithm, the deeper, trust-driven approach to thought leadership that makes your content actually land.
Forget funnels and cold DMs; this is about making people feel seen in a digital world that rewards noise over nuance. This episode is for any entrepreneur, creator, or leader who’s tired of “gaming the algorithm” and ready to build real influence through connection.
You can find us wherever you subscribe to your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
Your Brand Speaks Before You Do
At Standout Authority, we help founders, execs, and creators do one thing: Become impossible to ignore. If you’ve built something real offline, we build the system to make sure that authority shows up online. Because in this era, you don’t just need to be good at what you do, you need to be seen for it. That’s why we created Launchpad.
🔵 For leaders who don’t want to play catch up.
🔵 For people who want to lead AI, not fear it.
🔵 For professionals ready to build a personal brand that multiplies their visibility, their voice, and their impact.
We’ve opened up 5 new spots for Q4. If you’re ready to stop blending in and finally take control of your narrative, let’s talk. I’ve also put together a FREE guide to help you tap into LinkedIn’s hidden algorithm, the same one elite execs use to get found by the right people (without posting every day).