May 2026 is National Mental Health Month. In the last few months two events brought to us how mental health is front and center for the business community.

 

First at a talk at the Robbins Business at University of Richmond A VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) professor was describing a study they had done on the SME community. The assumption was traditional challenges like access to capital, getting new customers etc would top the list of challenges these businesses were facing. To their complete surprise “mental health” was clearly the biggest challenge these businesses were facing. 

 

Around the same time I was speaking with a friend who works in economic development for the city of Minneapolis. Unprompted, she was describing how they hired an AI firm to bring AI skills to the main street businesses. The firm repeatedly reported back that no one wanted to talk about AI,”mental health” was the primary topic they were facing.

 

Spending time with younger folks these days it is entirely clear to us that “mental health” is front 

and center in their lives including all their friends and colleagues. Mental Health affects everyone either directly or indirectly, each inflicting a level of human and financial costs. 

 

Observationally at present the business community is failing in its response to this crisis.

 

For our part we often or even usually act as a business therapist for our clients. No, we don't diagnose depression or multiple personality disorder.  We do go deeper getting to the root issues of your business challenges. If you want your business to be different how will you be different? And let's not forget that owning a business is the loneliest job in the world. 

 

Back to the VCU professor mentioned above we are working on partnering on  study if our interventions are effective. Stay tuned this could be  a big deal.

 

One of our interventions we have produced is a book called Thr33 Minds. We are finalizing editing for release as an e-book next month. We offer a variety of practices to support you. Many paths, one destination. 

 

Thr33 Minds is very fundamental to our work. We into depth of why we believe wisdom is becoming a requirement for business leaders. Very few firms are supporting independent businesses with both deep “mental wellness” and deep understanding of your finances, marketing and operations including people issues. As a teaser the global consulting firm McKinsey has studied folks working in a flow state and established they are 500% more effective. At some point this will no longer be optional. Are you ready?

 

Sometimes our biggest challenges become our path to success.