COVID-19: Stress is up, but mental health improving for business owners

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Running a small business through the pandemic has been like balancing on the end of a yo-yo for Jullianna Charlton, who has endured multiple highs and lows with her clothing company over the last year.

“As an entrepreneur, this business is my baby. And when you see your baby going through all of these trials and tribulations of life, you do your best to protect it,” said Charlton, owner of NoMiNoU, which sells locally created active wear in Tsawwassen Mills mall.

“I’m worried about my employees as well. I can survive on a bare bones budget and all that. But it’s the people that rely on me.”

NoMiNoU, which opened in 2014, has 22 employees and pays royalties to eight artists who create the designs for the “athleisure” line of clothes. It is holding its own financially, but Charlton worried a year ago that her business might not survive the pandemic, then hit a high last spring when she pivoted to selling face masks and online sales boomed, but then recently hit a low again when Ontario and Quebec stores cancelled online orders for her stock after those provinces were hit with lockdowns.

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“It’s been a real yo-yo,” said Charlton, who looks after her own mental health by doing yoga and talking to herself about problems. “It went from, ‘Holy crap, oh my god’ to ‘Oh, this is great’ to ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen again.’ … There’s been way more late nights, sleepless nights for me.”

Charlton, a good-humoured and resilient entrepreneur, is not alone experiencing this kind of stress and mental health angst.

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) will release a new survey today that shows while the mental health of business owners has improved slightly since the start of the pandemic, their stress levels continue to rise. The survey was conducted during the first two weeks of March, before the third wave descended on B.C., and with further restrictions now in place it is likely these sources of stress have increased again for entrepreneurs, the bank said in a statement.

The survey found two thirds of business owners are now adjusting relatively well to COVID, although one third are still struggling, an improvement compared to last August, when the BDC conducted its first survey. However, mental health challenges today continue to be more pronounced for younger entrepreneurs, and among those whose businesses continue to struggle financially.

More than half (56 per cent) of business owners want a better work-life balance, and this concern was highest in B.C. compared to the other provinces, a BDC spokeswoman said.

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While there are signs that Canadian business owners are feeling less overwhelmed by the financial impact of the pandemic, it is clear that many are still struggling: Half say they have not coped with mental health challenges effectively, and more than half say they feel tired or lack energy.

When it comes to stress, more than half of entrepreneurs (52 per cent) say they are worried about the impact of COVID restrictions on their companies, and that’s up since November, when the BDC conducted its second survey. In this third survey, stress levels had increased over the economic recession, survival of businesses, and the health impact of COVID on owners and their families.

Vancouver-based FISPAN, which uses a platform to connect banks directly to businesses’ accounting systems, has seen sales skyrocket during the pandemic, so the five-year-old startup is not under financial stress. But co-founder Andrea Zand still has other worries during the pandemic.

“The biggest stress right now is because of how much we’re growing. … Keeping the company culture while we’re hiring remotely has been a big stress of ours, making sure everyone’s still connecting the way that they should be connecting and that no one’s feeling isolated,” she said.

“Offering them tools for support, offering them check ins, and the company really showing up with other activities to keep their spirits high. We still do everything that we did before COVID, just virtually — birthdays, corporate parties, celebrations.”

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Zand and her co-workers were feeling Zoom fatigue in the winter, and then spirits rose with the sunnier weather this spring, but they’ve fallen again with this latest round of restrictions during B.C.’s third wave. Zand looks after her own mental health, so she can help to motivate her team, by “doubling down on reading books and meditation exercise.”

The BDC, which offers banking services to entrepreneurs, found that at the time of the survey, 41 per cent of Canadian businesses were either closed or only partly operating. These national findings are similar to more local studies: A Vancouver Board of Trade survey released in January found only half of businesses expect to return to normal when government support ends, a quarter expect to layoff employees and more than one out of every five plan to reduce employee hours.

Charlton, though, feels optimistic that the vaccine rollout will mean consumers will one day soon be given the green light to return to malls, restaurants and services, which will ideally mean a big boost in sales again for local companies. And that gives her hope.

“If I can get through this (pandemic), there’s nothing I can’t get through now. And so in some ways, it’s empowering to know that we are surviving, we’re getting through it, we’ll get through it. It’s not been the year that I had hoped and projected it would be, but we’re still profitable, we’re still strong,” she said.

The BDC surveyed 507 businesses between March 1 and 12. For this sample size, the maximum margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

lculbert@postmedia.com