So much of entrepreneurship is individually driven
and if we don't take care of ourselves as individuals
then your ability to lead your ability to communicate
your ability to realise the vision that you have is going to be much more limited.
The motivators and the drivers and often the root core purpose of that business
are going to be social injustice or social need and
so the emotional pressure can be even greater
for a social entrepreneur.
Mental health is a global crisis. Depression is the second biggest disability worldwide.
South Africa as a whole is still a deeply traditional, conservative country
so mental health is still, you know, stigmatised.
People don't kind of go and seek out medical help, they don't believe in that.
In Brazil there is a very dark legacy of cruel institutions that have simply locked people away
for issues around mental health.
Mental health is quite a problem in Indonesia, because we cannot say what exactly is happening within us
because you should not do that. You should be okay in front of everyone.
In Pakistan there has been some recent efforts to increase awareness around the mental health issues.
We're at the tipping point now where there is more access to tools
and resources around mental health and we've ever had in many ways.
Thank god for social media because I think that's kind of like where the revolution started.
Where it became normal to talk about depression, it became normal to talk about anxiety,
and to share stories of the struggles we've had.
More recently you've been trying to keep very clear boundaries and also be very articulate - try to -
with partners and sponsors as to what they can and they can't demand from a project,
and the impact they might have on the people in a project.
I did start to tell some of those stakeholders
that I was having a really difficult time - some of them I said what was going on, some of them I didn't,
but that instantly made me feel less lonely and I was very surprised actually at how understanding a lot of those stakeholders were.
Starting to be vulnerable
kind of encourages other people to
feel okay being vulnerable but it also
encourages them to
step up to the plate in terms of the support that they might be able to give you.
A lot of this dynamic really is driven by the investor, because there are terms and conditions and
expectations that the entrepreneurs are trying so hard to meet. I think the better investors are ones who recognise that
and are focusing almost as much on the
entrepreneur and their team as they are on the team's ability to execute against a strategy or certain deliverables.
If you know a founder, if you know someone leading or starting up or scaling up a business,
whether it be a social purpose-lead business or not,
asking them how they're feeling today, how they're feeling at the moment, how they're really feeling is the most important thing.
It has always been a team game and we need to surround our individual entrepreneurs
with teams that are supportive of each other and recognise that creating
value and sustainable organisations is something that we do together.
It's not something we do alone and apart.