Mental Health Check Up for Your Business

During Queensland Mental Health Week (5-13 October), the Chamber hosted an event featuring the region’s Business Wellness Coach Kristy Wilson and Gus Walsgott of the Small Business Financial Counselling Service.

Here’s what our guest speakers had to share on the topic of Mental Health Check Up for Your Business.

Business Wellness Coaching program

The Queensland Government have established a network of wellness coaches to provide free one-on-one support to small and rural businesses to address the impacts of health and wellbeing. The coaches have a background in business, combined with qualifications in social work or psychology.

Kristy believes the most common health issues business owners face are:

• Relationship issues predominately between couples working together, but also between business partners, or partners not involved in the business. The common cause is not creating strong relationship boundaries and time prioritisation and management, with impacts felt at work, home, and personal productivity.  
• Stress presenting as fatigue, headaches, irritability, overwhelmed, and depression due to business financial issues, lack of skilled staff or their availability, managing staff, drowning in administration, and dealing with client situations.  
• Anxiety is a persistent and excessive worry that don’t go away even in the absence of stress. Symptoms include trouble concentrating or making decisions, irritability, heart palpitations, sleep disturbance, or feeling panicked and not being about to explain why.

“When business owners are impacted by stress common impacts to the business seem to be not meeting deadlines, not working to your usual standards, feeling less engaged than usual, and withdrawing from staff and customers,” said Kristy.

“We all react to stress in different ways. Taking the time to recognise any changes in yourself is very important not only for your wellbeing, but also your staff and your businesses success,” she said.

Kristy’s top tips to business owners:

1. Seek professional help when you need it, be it financial or personal related. It’s always best to get on top of your challenges before they get on top of you.
2. Look after yourself, stress and burnout can present itself in a number of ways and if not managed effectively it might force you out of your business for a period of time or slow you up.
3. Manage your finances. Business finances and wellness are connected. Know your numbers, keep overheads low, and regularly review cash flow.

Small Business Financial Counselling Service

Gus Walsgott is our region’s small business financial counsellor, providing free support to help businesses understand their finances, deal with debt, identify risks, access government assistance, succession and business planning.

Gus shared with attendees the top three common issues he is seeing business being challenged by:

1. Cashflow deficiency often caused by cost of living pressures facing consumers, input cost increases associated with the raw materials and resources required to produce a business’s product or service, fixed income contracts for services, increased labour challenges (such as unemployment below long term average, skills mismatch or availability, immigration restrictions, attracting staff to the regions), and slower paying creditors.  
2. Drowning in debt which might be driven by cashflow challenges, lasting impacts of surviving Covid trading challenges, the ATO becoming more aggressive post Covid with their concessions, and the ease for small businesses to obtain loans and equipment finance from predatory lenders.  
3. Having an un-viable business where business owners underestimating or not understanding the demand and ongoing potential for their products or services. Some business owners start a business because of their love and passion for a product or service without doing the critical research on sustainable consumer demand.

“Whatever the cause – cashflow deficiencies, unserviceable debt, or low demand – will make some businesses no longer viable or create a real struggle to others to survive or even thrive. These circumstances present increased risks to a business owner’s mental health and wellbeing, relationship breakdowns, or risking the loss of home or assets or even personal bankruptcy,” said Gus.

The Mental Health Check Up for your Business event was proudly sponsored by a 2024 Queensland Mental Health Week community events grant.