Laurel Anne Stark, interviewed on Mentoresse Collective on the Mental Health Gap for Entrepreneurial Women
This is an interview our founder, Laurel Anne Stark gave for the Mentoresse Collective on closing the "mental health gap" for entrepreneurial women.
AND what we can do about it.
view the transcript below
Transcript:
Marcella Allison (00:00):
Hey everybody. Welcome back and with me today, I am thrilled to have Laurel Anne Stark. She is the CEO and the founder of resurgo.co, I'm going to spell that R E S U R G O. It is the first ever web app designed to support female entrepreneurs in business and in life, as well as, an acclaimed business and marketing consultant. And my favorite, a mental health advocate like me. In her 18 years of self-employment in the technology industry, Laurel battled, and has recovered from bankruptcy, burnout and alcoholism during her years as a wife and step-mom, she also experienced first-hand the negative effects of trying to do it all and be it all. That sound familiar to anybody? I think I resemble that remark. In her work, she noted similar challenges in her female clients' lives, and she knew she had to take action to address the mental health crisis that is plaguing the world's innovators. And that led her, again, to the creation of resurgo. She is also a three-time nominee of the Canadian women entrepreneur of the year awards, presented by women of influence and the Royal Bank of Canada. She is the founder of the new media group, a digital communications agency, and she has been supporting female entrepreneurs since 2003, something of course, near and dear to my heart. So welcome, Laurel. Thank you.
Laurel Anne Stark (01:29):
Thank you so much for having me here, Marcel. I'm really, really pleased to be here.
Marcella Allison (01:33):
I am thrilled to have you. We were just laughing about how I had to stalk you, right, as soon as I found your research on the mental health gap, which I think we have to talk about, we have to stop avoiding the issue and we have to dive in and we have to talk about it. But before we go there, I wondered if you would take just a minute because not everybody knows about resurgo. And if you could tell us just a little bit about your mission and what you're doing here, I would love that.
Laurel Anne Stark (02:01):
Sure. Thank you so much for the opportunity. So resurgo is the very first app designed specifically to support self-employed women. And what we're attempting to do is basically bridge the two silos that we see so often with respect to what supports are available for self-employed or entrepreneurial women. So we see that there's professional support available over here. You can get help with your business plan and maybe your cashflow plan and those types of things. And then over here, right over here, exactly like all the business stuff like hiring and delegating. And then over here, you can get help with your personal life, perhaps managing your stress, these types of things, but those are siloed. And for women, you know, business is deeply personal. So we are trying to bring the supports together into one, an all-in-one tool, because we know as women, that business is deeply personal for us. And when we're feeling well, it's easier for us to do well.
Marcella Allison (02:47):
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think you're right, we pull these apart and yet you get women together at a business event. We're going to talk about our kids. We're going to talk about whether we just got divorced or not. Someone might be dealing with breast cancer. Like we don't do that, right. We don't just show up and do work and go home and do home. Right. And our brains do that differently. Right. So I love that.
Laurel Anne Stark (03:06):
And we're not tiny men and, and the supports that are out there for us need to stop treating us like that. And so anyway, there aren't any, so we're just going to build it ourselves.
Marcella Allison (03:16):
Isn't that just like a woman, like, okay, I can't find this thing and we need this thing, we're going to make this thing. Right. We're going to make this thing together, which I love. So we're talking about the mental health gap because of all the gaps, there are ones that you just tip toe around. Right. And I often think because of my own family's experience with mental health, too often, we tiptoe around talking about this and what I love and what attracted me to you so much was that you're willing to talk about it. Like I'm willing to talk about it. Cause I don't think we can change it unless we talk about it. So can you share just a little bit as an entrepreneur, what your experience of the mental health gap was? What happened? What started you on this journey?
Laurel Anne Stark (03:57):
Yeah, sure. I'd love to. And I share this because I believe that by communicating my story to others, hopefully if anybody is in the same boat or has experienced something similar, they will feel like, oh, it's not just me. I won't feel alone. That that definitely happened to me. So, back in 2017, I was married with three step kids. I had a dog, I had a big house to clean and I was also running my marketing agency and, you know, everything looked great on the outside. My business was booming. My marriage, my wedding photos were fantastic, but on the inside, things were not great. You know, like, so the things that weren't on my LinkedIn profile were, were that, you know, I was a woman in long-term recovery. So I've been recovering from alcoholism. I've been through bankruptcy. And with the stress of the business growing and trying to balance the domestic stuff and the wife stuff and the business stuff, I was regularly experiencing panic attacks really disruptive, negative thoughts, a lot of anxiety, trouble sleeping.
Laurel Anne Stark (04:54):
And then these sort of like manic episodes where I'd be really hyper and up at 2:00 AM, white boarding and stuff. And I didn't, I thought it was just me. I really honestly thought it was just me. And when I started talking to my female clients, specifically, I started to notice that they were experiencing, you know, just challenges with trying to balance the domestic stuff, as well as the professional stuff. And then I came across Dr. Michael Freeman study out of Berkeley university, which just blew the top right off my head, which shared that, entrepreneurs are directly affected by mental illness at a rate of 72%, which is roughly three times the global average. And all of a sudden I felt so seen. And I was like, what? This is normal. And so what he described in his report is how common hypomania is, which really reflects the entrepreneurial rollercoaster.
Laurel Anne Stark (05:39):
It's basically like this, right? Like highs and lows, highs and lows, like one day you're on top of the world, the next day you're under your bed. And again, I felt so seen like, oh my gosh, this is kind of actually normal. What what's happening here. And seeing, you know, the women, I was mentoring and seeing my female clients go through this and think that there was like this shame associated with the experience. And then around the same time, it was like the Me Too movement came out and I was like, wow, like this is, you know, and I'm a survivor of domestic violence. So I was like, yeah, okay. This is like another thing that's that I feel deeply seen. And you know, it doesn't seem like people are talking about too much until, you know Me Too started. And then in Canada, Maclean's magazine released the wage gap issue. And they were saying, you know, it's like 2017 or whatever. And the wage gap is still at 72 cents, if you're white and able-bodied right. If you're indigenous black BIPOC, have a disability, LGBTQ plus, you're going to be earning as low as like 48 cents on the dollar. Right. So I started thinking like, well, what if like one woman is experiencing all of these issues at once? How is she going to be doing?
Marcella Allison (06:41):
The compounding effect
Laurel Anne Stark (06:45):
Yeah. It's like seven layers of being dipped with challenges, you know? And I was like, okay. So if that's what's happening and I identified with so many of those overlapping pieces and I was like, oh my gosh, it's going to be worse than, than three times the global average.
Marcella Allison (06:59):
That's the average. And it's not factoring in this whole stack of compounding issues over here. What is the real number? Right.
Laurel Anne Stark (07:07):
Exactly. Yeah. And so four years of research later, basically what we found is that, you know, self-employed women or entrepreneurial women typically work four jobs and get paid for about half of what.
Marcella Allison (07:17):
So let's break those jobs down. Right. Because one of the things you brought up in your report, that I found fascinating is you talk about the beauty shift. Right. So when we talk about this, we think of, okay, there's the word shift? Whereas an entrepreneur that's almost 24/7, right. So you've got the work shift, the caregiving shift, whether that's parents or kids, right. You added in the beauty shift, which is fascinating, right. Because yeah, I can't, I don't show up on zoom without, do you know what I mean? I can't show up in my board shorts and flip flops, like "the cool entrepreneur dude". Yeah. One, I would look really bad in board shorts, but yeah. So adding, I never thought about that. I'm like, how much time do I spend to get ready for a zoom call versus that as a whole other 40 minutes.
Laurel Anne Stark (08:10):
Exactly. And then there's the expense associated with it. Like the numbers are crazy. It's like the average woman spends about an hour a day on what it takes to be considered professionally pretty. And by the word, professionally, by the way, professionally pretty has been enshrined in U.S Laws since the seventies, women have been fired for not being professionally pretty enough, but they won't define it. So an hour a day, which you could be allocating to your business or, you know, a vacation, sleep, reading a book, anything. And then the average woman, according to a survey done on women in New York, will in her lifetime spend $250,000 on her appearance. Oh my God. So you could buy a Harvard education and you can sleep an hour a day more. And this is to be what we consider most women consider this to be mandatory. It's not.
Marcella Allison (09:01):
It's not like we can not do that. Right.
Laurel Anne Stark (09:04):
Yeah. You can't just roll out of bed and brush your teeth and show up at work. And then everybody will ask you why you're so tired, you know? And then there's all this stuff associated with it, right? So we're in this double bind of having to be like appealing and attractive and accommodating and all the roles that we have sort of put on us as women. And then the roles that we have as entrepreneurs where we need to be assertive and we need to be decisive and we need to, you know, not have our time taken up with things that aren't a priority and,
Marcella Allison (09:35):
And then be the leader and find the team and lead the team and all, and set the vision and all the things. And so it makes, it makes perfect sense to me that, what happens then is the compounding that if we start out just as an entrepreneur with nearly three times the chance of having a mental health issue, by the time you add in all these factors, right?
Laurel Anne Stark (09:58):
Yeah.
Marcella Allison (09:58):
I love that you went down the rabbit hole, right. And I love four years worth of research. Right. What would you say? I'm just curious because the report is fascinating and I want to make sure people know that you can go to resurgo and download that, which is what I did. And that's how I started to understand this layering effect. But what I want to ask is, was there anything that truly shocked you? So you started, you know, with being seen knowing there was this, nearly triple the risk, but was there anything that you were like, oh my God, when you were deep in the research that just like stunned you, I'm just curious.
Laurel Anne Stark (10:37):
Yeah. I think there was probably two pieces that were really stunning and I think it was, the first one was how prevalent violence against women and harassment against women are. The stats that I had sort of heard were like one in three and according to the United Nations, it's closer to three to four. And I think we all, when you like, think about who you know, and, you know, everybody, that sounds about right. But to actually see that statistic, that was really crazy. Like women being harassed online, it's about 70% of us. Women who've had to deal with domestic violence or, you know, et cetera, 70% and up. So that was really freaky to me. The other thing that was really, really hit hard was that, Aristotle, who I used to like, not like personally, but I used to like him, I thought he had some things that were clever that he said, but Aristotle said that we were nothing but lesser men. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because how underrepresented we have been in medical studies. So they don't know about our bodies and then they're creating medication that may or may not work because it hasn't even been tested necessarily on women.
Marcella Allison (11:44):
No.
Laurel Anne Stark (11:44):
And so things like, the lack of testing and the lack of information around some of the things that really do impact women, like postpartum, postpartum is huge. And so many people don't think that they have it, or they think that it's rare, but it's actually super common and it can lead to suicide.
Marcella Allison (12:01):
And especially if you're trying to do it as an entrepreneur. And this year for me, it was menopause. I had no idea of the connection with depression and menopause and trying to put together this whole event and all the things I was trying to do to grow my business. And I'm like, I hated it. I didn't want to get out of bed. I couldn't, and finally, someone, another woman, right. That I work with who's in menopause said, you know, I think you have menopause related depression. she sent me an article. I'm like, oh my God, that's me. Like, right!
Laurel Anne Stark (12:33):
Yeah. And I bet you, if you'd gone to your doctor, you know, they wouldn't necessarily have flagged it either because they don't have that, that precedent. So just like that, that physiological, those physiological barriers and obstacles that we have to go through and like the pill, I didn't know, the pill, a side effect of it was depression. And then if you've been on it for over seven years or any hormonal birth control, your risk of suicide goes up by 7%, I believe.
Marcella Allison (12:55):
So to put all this. Yeah. When you think of, again, these co-occurring or compounding factors and how hard they're hitting freelancers and solopreneurs and entrepreneurs and how much we're carrying. I want to, I know that once you saw the data, you like me said, okay, so who's working on this, right. What's out there. What did you find in terms of solutions?
Laurel Anne Stark (13:23):
It's like a big fat zero. Like, what I found was that there's support for entrepreneurs and there are support for mental health, but there wasn't anything that was for both. Right. And that's the thing is that, like, in order to, my view, in order to properly treat an entrepreneur's mental health, you have to understand the pre-existing conditions or the, the possibility and the increased risks associated with for women. And then you have to understand the systemic issues and the genetic issues and all the other things that can contribute. So that way you have a full holistic picture of what could possibly be going on here. Because otherwise it's just superficial. And then we end up with like really, really harmful statements, you know, where women are hearing like, oh, you just need to fix your mindset. And it's like, actually, no, I'm making 58 cents on the dollar. It's not about mindset. I'm recovering from being assaulted. Like, I'm managing suicidal ideation everyday because of that. And it's not my mindset, so yeah, it's rough. And actually, so what we did was, so I wanted to know, like, what would the numbers kind of look like. But again, I'm not a professor. So anyway, I just did a really casual web poll. And this was just at the beginning of the pandemic. So it was last spring, I would say.
Marcella Allison (14:33):
So we haven't hit the worst of it.
Laurel Anne Stark (14:34):
Haven't even really been in it for that long. Yeah. And so 32% of the self employed women we surveyed described their mental health is good or great, 32%. 39% said just okay, 25% percent said their mental health was either poor or bad. 70% of respondents indicated they regularly experienced feeling overwhelmed, which I feel so seen. But this is the most worrying is 22% of respondents indicated that they regularly experienced feelings of wanting to escape life. That's not a straight up suicide statement, but it's getting darn close. Yeah. So we're starting to crack under the pressure.
Marcella Allison (15:13):
Yeah. And then we saw that it only got worse during the pandemic. You know, we saw all of this and then people are shocked - Why don't women want to go back to work? I'm like, are you kidding? Of course they don't want to go back to work right now. Nobody wants to live like that anymore. So what, I know that you're working, you know, we have a solution coming, you guys are working on it and I got to test drive it, which was fabulous. And if they go to resurgo.co They can see what you've put together, give some feedback, help you build the solution, which I think is wonderful. But just from everything you've been through as an entrepreneur yourself, what you've seen in the research, we don't have the app yet, right. So what can we do, everyone who's with us today, someone who might be feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, feeling like it's them, why can't I get my act together? Why can't I just like, buckle down and do this? What advice would you give to these women who, I mean, like me, you know, I have been really struggling with that sense of overwhelming and I can't do all the things.
Laurel Anne Stark (16:16):
Yeah, exactly. So I think like the best thing that we can do is not doing anything more, really. Cause we do a lot. We do too much. We do too much. And I think the last thing we need to hear is like, oh, here's like three steps to blah, blah, blah. Like no, no more of that. So what I really recommend is getting a better grip or a better understanding of what our risk profile is. So, I can share the link later, but I did a keynote and it's available as a podcast and it's called 'The busy woman's guide to better mental health, how to feel better about doing more'. And it's kind of a recap of some of just like the biological data and the intention behind that was to sort of share with women like, Hey, if you can like tick any of these boxes, you're probably doing really badly and it's not your fault. So I think,
Marcella Allison (17:03):
And the shame that we fall into, we always want to say, it's me. I should be able to do this better.
Laurel Anne Stark (17:08):
Exactly. And you know, that's based on the concept that we live in a mirror, talk and seen like we live in a fair world where everything's equal. And if we just try hard enough, we can get the, you know, the American dream or the Canadian dream or whatever, but that's not actually the case. And that's just like a big fat lie. So what I'm trying to do is show women, like if you have expectations on yourself that you are like, you don't have systemic issues and that everything's clear, and of course you're going to be overwhelmed. You're going to have these standards that you won't be able to hit. But if you take a look at some of the data, even just some, or even the infographic and you see yourself, Hey, you know, two or three of these things apply to me. And when it comes to like reproductive health, it applies to basically all of us, right? So if two or three things apply to you, then you need to drop your standards, in terms of like how much you expect from yourself and how much self care you're putting in the tank. It's like, you wouldn't put, you know, bronze gas in your Ferrari and expect it to go. And that's the thing is, it's basically understanding your risk profile and then treating yourself accordingly.
Marcella Allison (18:03):
That makes so much sense because if you, that idea that you can't be objective, right, like this is not a level playing field. So if you hold yourself to the standards of a level playing field, it literally feels like, okay, there's Mount Everest and he gets to go up with all the supplies and the pack and the oxygen and everything he needs and you're barefoot. Right. And we put 30 pounds of stones on your back and if you thought of it as a mental picture of what those charts represent with our hurdles and the hurdles for a male entrepreneur, you would not expect to run that race at the same pace. And we can't change all of these systemic issues overnight, but we can change that conversation in our head.
Laurel Anne Stark (18:50):
Exactly. Exactly. And I think from my experience, anyways, as soon as I, like, I didn't even realize how much shame I was carrying around or how much, like this is my fault. I should be better, like all that shaming. And as soon as I let go of all that, it's like, oh wow, do I ever have more energy to work on things? You know? So it can really, really help. And then having conversations with my girlfriends about it too, and be like, Hey, did you know that if you're on the pill, like you're gonna want to kill yourself after seven years. Cause I didn't know that.
Marcella Allison (19:17):
Same as my conversation about menopause, I was like, are you kidding me? She's like, no, look at this article, these women, this is what's going on in your brain. This is why your brain is not operating at the same that it was before.
Laurel Anne Stark (19:28):
Exactly. And, and just kind of creating that community, right. Where we're all kind of looking out for each other and saying like, Hey, you know what? I think you might be working too much. Or like, when was the last time you took a break. Did you drink water today? That really helps too.
Marcella Allison (19:40):
Absolutely. This was, I think talking about this is one of the very first steps we can take taking the shame out of it because nobody's doing all the things and I love how you started out. If you had just looked at me on LinkedIn, this is how I looked, but that was not my life. And the more that we can actually talk about what goes on behind that social media picture, I think the better off we're all going to be. I want to make sure that folks know how to reach out to you. So resurgo.co And you can find both the research there. You can find all the research there, which is where I downloaded the report, where you can go through a lot of the stats. And I had the same experience you did reading when I read your report.
Marcella Allison (20:25):
I'm not crazy. This isn't just me. I never thought of the compounding effect before, even though I write financial trading copy. So I know how to compound numbers really quick, right? But reading that report, I was like, holy mackerel. And they can also then, get access to a special self care report that you've got there also. And if you want to help pay it forward because we don't pay Laurel to show up and to share with us her wisdom, one way we can pay it forward we do here, in the Mentoresse Collective is again to support the work that she's doing. So you can go, you can give feedback, you can get to play with it on your screen, like I got to do, so that we can all have the resources that we need to succeed. Any last thoughts that you want to leave us with? I really appreciate this time tonight.
Laurel Anne Stark (21:15):
Yeah. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say that we do have a self care bundle for you. So if you go to the website, resurgo.co there's the research button, there's the news button. And under news, you can just take a quick five minute survey. You'll get access to that podcast that I was mentioning, How to feel better without doing more', as well as a 90 day planner and a daily planner, just to build self care more into your routine. So there's plenty of resources on the site as well. If you do want do a beta test, you could go to resurgo.co, there's a big button that says 'Get involved'. We'd absolutely love you to get involved, but if you don't do anything else and you just do this one thing I would encourage you to please go to resurgo.com/Research, and just look at the infographic and just understand some of the risk profiles that might be affecting you. And like, give yourself a little bit of a break. Just give yourself a rest, reduce your expectations of yourself, understand that it's not a level playing field and that you know what you're doing freaking great. You're doing great,
Marcella Allison (22:12):
Right. Oh, I love that. That's a great note to end on. Thank you again for being with us. I really appreciate this.
Laurel Anne Stark (22:18):
Thank you so much. Thanks everyone.