But First, Protect Your Sanity.
We’re all out here trying to run businesses in a world that feels like it’s cracked down the middle. Division everywhere, outrage everywhere, hate everywhere. People are fighting online, fighting in real life, fighting over everything from politics to parking spots. And in the middle of all this, you and I are just trying to make a fucking living — keeping clients and customers happy, paying the bills, and maybe even building something meaningful. Or at least meaningful to us.
It’s beyond surreal. You scroll your feed and it feels like the world is on fire, and then your inbox dings with someone asking if you can make their logo “pop” more. The whiplash is real. Running a business while living in a fractured culture means carrying two realities at once: the heaviness of the world, and the need to keep your own little corner of it alive.
And that’s where mental health stops being a nice-to-have and becomes the only way forward. If you’re already carrying the weight of a broken world, you can’t also carry every unreasonable request, every late-night email, every demand that drains you. You’ll snap. I’ve been close to snapping more than I'd care to admit. And I’ll tell you, no client project or invoice is worth losing yourself over.
Small business owners aren’t just making products or services — we’re building tiny communities. We’re bringing people together, even in small, almost invisible ways. A restaurant isn’t just serving food, it’s giving people a place to sit across from each other instead of across from a screen. A shop isn’t just selling "stuff", it’s creating a space where neighbors bump into neighbors. A brand isn’t just an identity system, it’s an invitation for people to gather around something shared.
That’s powerful. But you can’t build those bridges if you’re running on fumes. You can’t hold space for connection if you’re crumbling inside. So protecting your sanity isn’t just for you — it’s for the people you’re trying to serve. It’s how you make sure your business doesn’t just survive in this broken world, but actually becomes part of the antidote to it.
The world may stay divided. The chaos may not go away. But you still get to choose how you show up in it. And the only way to show up with clarity, with creativity, with any kind of generosity... is if you’re taking care of your own head and heart first.
