Stressed small business owners and their families often pay a high price for the pressure they work under

PEOPLE who start their own business are vulnerable to depression and other mental health conditions due to the financial and family pressures they take on.

Graeme Cooper with one of Tecpro’s products / Picture: Phillip Rogers

SOMETHING rarely spoken about is the mental health of small business owners.

It should be.

People who start their own business are highly vulnerable to depression and other mental health conditions due to the financial and family pressures they take on.

There are cases I have reported on where the pressure of an overbearing, bullying franchisor has undoubtedly contributed to the depression and suicide of franchisees. Similar to many farming families, tough prices or economic conditions — and mounting debts — lead to the darkest of thoughts.

There are so many issues here, including the way suppliers and financiers deal with the failure of a business.

Hopefully, one solution is the creation of schemes of arrangement for many in debt trouble these days, compared with the past where it seemed a one-way street to receivership or liquidation.

But there is also an apparent lack of support for those in business trouble. Some of the stress inside small business is caused by big businesses or government with their delayed payment terms, or their contracts. New federal legislation to clamp down on unfair contracts is to be applauded.

My experience (and this is callous, I know) is that it is easy to make an inventor cry. As you talk to them about their invention (which they are invariably passionate about) you simply ask them about the sacrifices they have made, both financially and to their family. In almost every case, there is an emotional response. It is often divorce; sometimes bankruptcy.

The same is true of small business owners. The hours are cruel, the paperwork endless and the decisions non-stop. There is not only the responsibility for your family; but that of every person who works for you. It can be easy to lose your way.

One of the great initiatives launched in recent years is Beyond Blue’s Heads Up campaign, to create more mentally healthy workplaces.

At any time one in five employees is likely to be experiencing a mental health condition. I believe the figures for small business owners would be worse.

Though Heads Up is about creating a more mentally healthy workplace, there is clearly more work to be done for those people who take the greatest risk by creating their own ventures.

More knowledge — and better ways to relieve business owners of stress — can only enhance employment opportunities and society as a whole.

www.headsup.org.au

www.beyondblue.org.au

MASTERING THE PRESSURE OF MARKETING

Graeme Cooper with one of Tecpro’s products / Picture: Phillip Rogers

IT was two years after Graeme Cooper took over his business Tecpro that it hit. He still remembers it vividly.

“It was the strangest thing. We had just taken out a second mortgage and then we lost our second biggest customer — about 25 per cent of our business. Something just clicked in my brain,’’ he said.

“My brain was saying: ‘Oh poor Michelle (his wife). She can’t accept that we are going to lose everything’. I walked up and down in the kitchen in the early hours of the morning thinking how I was going to top myself.”

Graeme was diagnosed with depression. But just as quickly as he went to those dark places, he came out of it. He considers himself lucky, and that his recovery helped his business grow for the last 15 years.

“I sort of snapped out of it. Things weren’t as bad as I thought and I clicked back in. It forced me to diversify and get a bigger customer base so. If one falls over, there is another one in its place.”

Tecpro deals in hoses, nozzles, spray systems and water cutting.

In the early days it sold retail products through Mitre 10 and BBC Hardware. But as Bunnings emerged, with its product sources, Graeme had to find other business.

As part of his recovery, he walked away from retail altogether and concentrated on industrial solutions, especially in mining and food production. But as he progressed, he realised challenges continued. One of them was marketing.

“I looked at Gerry Harvey. He is marketing all the time. With our business we would market when things got slow. When we were busy we would stop sales and marketing because we didn’t have time.”

Though he loved the sales side of his business, Graeme outsourced to Sonja van den Bosch’s Twin Life Marketing. She is still on retainer today. “It made a big difference to our business,” he says.

And it has grown, though with mainly imported products the falling Aussie dollar is biting into profits.

“This year we had our first shipping container of goods brought in. When we started we had an airfreight shipment once a month. It grew to a point of having sea-freight shipments, but now we bring in container-loads. It causes cashflow problems, because there’s more money in the stock.”

The Castle Hill-based business now has 12 staff and Graeme never forgets the stress, with the knowledge it can be all-consuming.

“Michelle sometimes says when we bought the business it was like a third person entering the marriage.”

The good thing is they have learned through tough times how to manage the stress, and Tecpro.