Another Job for Founders: Taking Care of Their Mental Health
Founders are twice as likely to suffer from depression, undergo psychiatric hospitalization, and have suicidal thoughts.
By Ludmila Leiva
Melissa Kimble was building a business on the side when she got swept up in a media layoff in 2017.
Suddenly without a job, Kimble found herself thrown into entrepreneurship, putting all of her time and efforts towards scaling and monetizing that side passion project: #BlkCreatives, a digital collective for Black professionals and creatives. “Being laid off forced me into entrepreneurship, it wasn’t necessarily a jump I wanted to make,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh I need to eat today, or pay my rent — how’s that gonna happen?’”
Though not all entrepreneurs are thrust into starting a business in this way, it doesn’t mean that they are prepared for what it means to be a founder. Soon after starting her business, Kimble was faced with the financial uncertainty that came along with being a solo and first-time entrepreneur. “I wasn’t eating; I was obsessively working out to release some steam and was overdoing it,” Kimble tells Supermaker. “I was driving myself crazy.”
