When Leaders Care: Why Mental Health Starts at the Top

If you’ve ever worked for a leader who truly cared, you already know the difference it makes. The energy feels lighter. The work feels meaningful. You feel seen, supported, and valued. On the other hand, when leadership is cold, disconnected, or overly controlling, the effects can ripple far beyond the office walls.

In this week’s episode, I sat down with entrepreneur and nonprofit founder Staci Wright, who is doing extraordinary work through her organization, Heart Profit. Her mission is clear: to transform workplaces into environments where people thrive not only professionally but emotionally.

Staci’s journey to founding Heart Profit began with something deeply personal — the story of her sister. Her sister was brilliant, capable, and full of potential, yet her life took a difficult turn due to addiction. For one incredible year, though, everything changed. She found herself under a leader who cared, who took time to connect, and who saw her potential. That season of compassionate leadership rekindled her motivation, helped her quit drinking, and reignited her love for life.

That story struck a chord with me. It’s a powerful reminder that leadership is not just about metrics, performance, or deliverables. It’s about human beings — their hopes, struggles, and sense of belonging. We spend a huge part of our lives at work, and the way we’re treated there shapes how we show up everywhere else.

Leadership That Heals

Staci’s mission with Heart Profit is to teach leaders how to build organizations that value both performance and humanity. She calls it heart-led servant leadership, and it’s built on the belief that when leaders truly care, performance follows naturally.

As she shared in our conversation, “When we take the time to connect human to human and get to know the people we’re serving, we can change the trajectory of their lives.”

That’s not just a nice sentiment. It’s a truth backed by research and lived experience. Healthy leadership practices directly influence employee mental health, engagement, and overall well-being. A caring leader can literally change the course of someone’s life — sometimes saving it.

The Power of Alignment

One of my favorite moments in our conversation was when Staci said, “As a leader, it’s my job to ensure that the vision is very clear and that we know where we’re going, and that the people who come on board align with that vision. When that all comes together, it is enormously powered.”

That is the heart of sustainable success. Leadership isn’t about control. It’s about clarity, alignment, and connection. When everyone knows the mission and feels seen within it, the energy becomes unstoppable. People don’t just work for the paycheck; they work because they believe in what they’re building.

Mental Health Starts with Leadership

We often talk about mental health as a personal issue — something to be managed individually. But as Staci so beautifully pointed out, mental health is also a leadership issue. When leaders cultivate environments that value respect, communication, and care, they reduce burnout and help people thrive.

Staci’s story is a wake-up call. The boss who cared didn’t just manage a team well. She helped a person heal. That’s leadership at its most profound level.

In contrast, when her sister’s leadership changed, so did her mental health. It’s a heartbreaking example of how much impact leadership truly has — for better or for worse.

Leading Through Service

Heart Profit operates as a nonprofit, and that choice was intentional. For years, Staci ran successful for-profit companies. But when she wanted to create something that could mobilize community, attract volunteers, and focus fully on social impact, she shifted to a nonprofit model.

It’s a reminder that leadership takes many forms. You can lead a company, a nonprofit, a team, or even your own family with the same heart-led approach. What matters most is how you treat people along the way.

In her words, “The biggest, hardest part of leadership is being the leader of that group of people. How do you lead efficiently and effectively? That’s what Heart Profit teaches.”

Creating a Ripple of Change

Every time I talk with someone like Staci, I’m reminded that leadership is one of the greatest forces for change in the world. It can build confidence or destroy it. It can heal wounds or deepen them. The difference lies in whether leaders choose to connect.

If you are a leader — or even if you lead yourself through the day — take this as a gentle challenge. Ask yourself:

• Do the people around me feel safe and seen?
  
  

• Do I lead with clarity and kindness?
  
  

• Am I creating an environment where people can flourish?
  
  

When leaders care, people grow. And when people grow, organizations thrive.

Your Turn to Lead with Heart

If this conversation inspired you, take a moment to reflect on the kind of leader you want to be. Maybe you’re an entrepreneur building a team, a coach helping clients, or a professional who simply wants to make work feel more human.

Remember, mental health starts at the top. You have the power to make someone’s day, their week, or even their life better simply by caring.

That’s the true legacy of leadership — leading with heart so others can shine.

Chapters List

00:00 Introduction to Stacey Wright and Heart Profit

04:32 The Impact of Leadership on Lives

09:12 Choosing the Nonprofit Route

13:55 Transforming Workspaces and Leadership

16:42 Conclusion and Call to Action

Full Transcript

Staci Wright (00:00)

And so as a leader, it's my job to ensure that the vision is very clear and that we know where we're going and that the people that are coming on board align with that vision.

Amanda Kaufman (00:29)

Well, hey, hey, welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And this week, I am super excited to share with you a conversation with my friend, Stacey Wright. And Stacey is an incredible entrepreneur. We happen to be in a business incubator together. We're local business women, which is super amazing, especially given I've built most of my business online. It's such a treat.

to get to meet such accomplished entrepreneurs locally here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. so, Stacey, just welcome. Welcome to the show.

Staci Wright (01:04)

Thank you so much, I am so excited to be here and I appreciate the opportunity to meet your community and to talk about whatever it is we're gonna talk about today.

Amanda Kaufman (01:13)

it's gonna be good. So dear listener, Stacey is, she's so grounded, she's so humble, but she is a serial entrepreneur. She's built and grown six different companies, which is just outstanding. And when I say company, I don't mean Etsy stores. Like these are like big, awesome companies. But what really drew me to wanting her to come join us on the show today is her

current endeavor, which is actually a nonprofit. So Stacey, do you want to just take a moment and share with us, you know, tell us what the nonprofit is. Be sure to share why you're doing it this way and then we'll take it from there.

Staci Wright (01:50)

Yeah, absolutely, thank you Amanda. I will start by saying I have had six startups and if you're an entrepreneur, your journey is squiggly one. So some have been.

successful and large and some have not and that is just part of the process. But I do appreciate that warm introduction. I am truly love solving problems with the power of business. And I'm also, I care about people, I care about humanity, I care about where we're going. And I think the easiest way to explain what heart profit is, is by.

talking about a story. And the story involves my sister and it was a very personal story. My sister was a beautiful, beautiful woman. She was valedictorian of her senior high school class. She had a tremendous amount of potential and did a lot of amazing things. She actually ran a startup and scaled it to a multi-million dollar business. So she, in and of herself, was very capable and smart and...

never had an enemy in her whole entire life. But life hit her heart, as life does with all of us, and she had her share of adversity. And she ended up succumbing to alcoholism later in life. And so for the last 15 years of her life, we really watched it come apart.

And it was so sad to see such enormous potential waste away. But there was one year during that 15 year come apart that she was different. There was one year where the light came back on in her eyes and she started getting excited about life again and she started enjoying her job and she would talk about her job nonstop. She loved what she was doing and she got a promotion, she was managing people and she actually quit drinking that year.

It was amazing and she started feeding the homeless because that's what she loved to do in her spare time. She would literally cook food in her kitchen, bag it up, take it to the park and hand it out. And that's just the person she was. And so that one year was just the highlight of all of our lives. And we were very excited to see that change in her. and when we look at that period of her, her life, that one year, there was one thing that was different.

and that one thing was her boss. She had gotten a new boss and that boss was one that actually cared about her people. And she took the time to connect with the people that she was leading. And my sister was fortunate enough to be one of those people. And she really got to know her.

My sister's name was Jemma and the boss's name was Griselda and Griselda would go take walks with my with Jemma on her breaks and she would spend time with her and she was the one that encouraged her to apply for the promotion because what Griselda saw in Jemma was the potential to manage people and that she had such a gracious warm

attitude and love for people and she encouraged her to take that promotion and she literally just, she was a servant leader, Griselda was a servant leader and she said, how can I help you be successful? Because I see this in you, what do I need to do? What can we do to help you be that? And she's provided what my sister needed. And so about a year later, Griselda wanted to be a stay at home mom so she left and the new boss that came in was command and control. And we watched my sister

go downhill after that and we never got her back and we just lost Jemma in January of this year. So what... thank you. It was... she's gone way before her time. But what that showed me was the enormous impact that we can have as leaders on the people we serve.

Amanda Kaufman (05:07)

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Staci Wright (05:20)

And when we do take advantage of that opportunity, when we do take the time to connect human to human, and we get to know the people that we're serving, we can change the trajectory of their lives. And we spend so much time at work, how we are treated at work, how we feel about our work impacts the way we go home.

And so that was one of the reasons I started Heart Profit. Heart Profit is a mission to transform workspaces and workplaces and leaders into the type of environment my sister had.

The other thing that played into the starting of Heart Profit was I did a lot of volunteerism. During one season of my entrepreneurial journey, I was going through a tremendous loss. We had lost a $5 million business to a lawsuit, and there was just complete grief going on in my life.

And I found that being of service to others eased my pain. We were talking about this before the show. And so I poured myself into service. Well, as I was being of service, I served on a couple of different boards. One was the child welfare board. One was a guidance center that did therapy for kids. And what I started seeing was that we had waiting lists for kids to get help, waiting lists for kids to get even to get families in the child welfare system.

was a really sad situation, but the therapy part really got me because we had a waiting list so long that we couldn't get to all the kids that needed therapy. So I'm watching.

the society we live in that has a huge mental health crisis going on. And we have children that need therapy that have been through traumatic events that are not getting the therapy they need, which means they're going to turn into adults that have a mental health crisis. And so we're not helping the trajectory by not addressing these issues. And so I realized that we have to do something different. Humanity is just on a really bad trajectory. And if we don't do something

this mental health crisis is going to take us take over humanity. We're not going to be able to do any of the things that we want to do. I thought, can we use the, you know, as an entrepreneur, how can we use the power of business to solve this enormous social issue that we're facing? Because addiction is the number one killer of people ages 15 to 59. How can we leverage the power of problem solving that businesses provide for social impact? And that's where heart profit came from.

Amanda Kaufman (07:46)

That's incredible. I know just I'm thinking about several, several, several, several people in our community who are listening to the show, watching us on YouTube and hearing this story. You know, I've helped coaches for years. You start their business and so many get really, really frustrated with the honestly, they're super motivated by the social change, just like you're talking about right now. And it's really about.

Staci Wright (08:08)

Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (08:10)

You know, being a heart centered person who wants to take your core genius of your empathy, your coaching a capability, all of these things to change the world in a meaningful way. However, so many, so many coaches flame out, burn out, tap out and don't get to really realize the power of business. I love that phrase stealing, really showing up with impact and something.

that really struck me about your strategy that was really different is you went the non-profit route. So a lot of coaches, know, I'm definitely a for-profit coach, full disclosure. However, that does mean that my customer generally has to be someone with means. It generally means that I am helping people and I am impacting via a ripple because when people do good, they tend to do good.

You know, but you're more directly going after it by choosing a nonprofit route. Can you like walk us through how you determined that was the strategy? And like, if somebody who's listening wants to serve an underserved community, I hear this all the time, like all the time, this frustration that they can't do it because they can't get paid to do it. Can you walk us through how you're doing it?

Staci Wright (09:23)

Yeah, that's a great question and that's something that I actually fought for a long time because I wanted a for-profit because the power of business to solve problems comes from the sustainability, it comes from the revenue, it comes from the money that it's creating to be able to.

afford that sustainable change and that sustainable problem solving. So I was very much, this is a for-profit, this is a for-profit, and I've been doing this for like five years. I stayed on the for-profit route because of that power. I wanted that power to impact change. What I realized last year, and it was just last year that I finally took the hardheadedness off of, and took the blinders off, I had an enormous amount of people that wanted to help.

with this organization, this movement. And in a for-profit model, it doesn't make sense to volunteer. And so I had people say, well, why aren't you a nonprofit? I kept saying, because there's no power, there's no power. And they're like, well.

you know, I finally, looked around, I'm like, look at all these people that want to volunteer, that want to be a part of this. And part of the conversation, you know, with the for-profit, you own it, you know, as a person, you own it, you have control of it, you can, you know, drive it wherever you want it to go. When you turn it to a nonprofit, you lose ownership and you don't have the control. But what, okay, so what, this is interesting because it's,

Amanda Kaufman (10:42)

Right. People don't know this. So where does the power go?

Staci Wright (10:51)

The power of people, when you have aligned, like-minded, synergistic people, the power that comes with that is enormous. And so as a leader, it's my job to ensure that the vision is very clear and that we know where we're going and that the people that are coming on board align with that vision.

And when that all comes together, it is...

enormously powered. The amount of ground that we've covered in the last year, and we just became a non-profit in October of 24. So it's just been a full year, but the amount of ground that we have covered has been amazing. And I have, in volunteers, about a half a million dollars in payroll that I would have to pay for the same people to do the same work.

Amanda Kaufman (11:28)

Happy Anniversary!

Staci Wright (11:41)

that they're doing if it was a for profit. So just think, you know, think about that. It's just.

leveraging the enormity and the power of people in a like-minded way that love the mission and that are passionate about the mission, bringing them together. And the biggest, hardest part of that is being the leader of that. And how do you lead a group of people efficiently and effectively? And ironically, that's what Heart Profit teaches. It teaches about leadership and how to lead in a servant, a heart-led servant way.

so that the mission is accomplished and the performance is high.

Amanda Kaufman (12:20)

So wanna loop

back just real quick because I know that this is a missing piece of the puzzle for a lot of people. You said earlier, like one of the hard things is when you're not the owner, you're not the founder, the steward, the CEO of a for-profit, you have to let that power go. That's to a board of directors, right?

Staci Wright (12:41)

When you're a nonprofit, yes. Yes.

Amanda Kaufman (12:43)

when you're a nonprofit. Yeah, so I think a lot of

people don't know that. I think a lot of people think like, oh, I can just start a nonprofit and they don't even realize that it's like, okay, well, that's completely different governance structure. It's no long, right? But there's so many advantages to it, like you just said, because you have that power of the movement itself. You can use the same strategy, by the way, y'all, of having a real movement behind your for-profit as well. But to your point,

Who wants to volunteer for a for-profit enterprise versus somebody who's volunteering for the nonprofit the movement? That is so super fascinating. So In terms of like the impact that you get to have and you know, you're still the leader. You're still the founder You're still directing all of this. You're carrying the vision. You're jumping on the podcasts, right? So can you walk us walk us through like how do you actually help your customer now that you're in a nonprofit format?

Staci Wright (13:31)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, we still charge. So we're a revenue generating nonprofit. our, yes, so our curriculum, our leadership curriculum, we actually charge for that. So that is how one of the ways that we, well, that is the main way that we generate revenue for the organization is through that. So just because you're a nonprofit doesn't mean you can't generate revenue.

Amanda Kaufman (13:45)

fascinating.

Staci Wright (14:02)

It just means that any profit you have doesn't go in your pocket. The profit stays in the organization to continue the movement. So there's not anybody getting rich off of a nonprofit, typically, traditionally. There are still nonprofits where people are making a healthy salary. But typically speaking, there's no profit sharing at the end of the year. Anything that any revenue that's generated stays in.

Amanda Kaufman (14:23)

You know that again, that's like super

helpful for our listeners, right? Because I think sometimes they think that, well, if I go in the nonprofit route, if I go this other way, then that means that I have to suffer. But that doesn't mean that. It just means that there's going to be a fair and reasonable salary, which, P.S., by the way, that's the way it is in a for-profit as well. Like you need to pay a fair and reasonable salary to anybody that works for the company.

Staci Wright (14:37)

Hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (14:51)

and it's the same in the nonprofit. So I just love how creative this has been. Talk to us a little bit about the impact you're having with companies. They're enrolling, they're getting your curriculum. What are you really helping them to accomplish?

Staci Wright (14:51)

Yes. Right.

Hmm, we're giving them their life back. had...

One person that came through our curriculum, owned a commercial janitorial company. And so all her crews were cleaning at night and she was micro, she was like having to manage everything. People were doing, you know, doing, just doing the minimum that they had to do. And she would go out and double check. She'd have to go out and make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. And she was constantly having to follow up and follow through and making sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to do.

exhausting to her. She was exhausted. She was ready to throw in the towel of entrepreneurialism and she came into the curriculum. She came into the cohort and she fully like engaged. She was at every single class. She did all of the homework. She did the assignments that she was to do and by the end of that class, literally it was two months later, we had a reunion because we do it cohort style. So the cohort went through for 12 weeks and then a couple months later,

we had a reunion and people looked at her and said you look completely different. She said the reunion was at night. It was in the evening. She said I'm actually home with my kids having dinner, which I never could do before heart profit. She said now today the way we the way I lead my employees is that we trust each other. She said there was one person it was the bad apple that was causing a lot of toxicity in the whole organization and one of the things I learned

heart profit is there's 5 % of the population you're not ever going to be able to change. Get rid of them quick. You know, those are the ones that will take everybody down. So she's like, I got rid of her and then the ones that were left. said, look, you all are good people. I trust you. Here's the expectation. She started leading them with the leadership that she learned and literally the relationships just changed completely. And that night when we had the reunion, she said, my people know that I've got their back and I know that they've got my back and we have

a good working relationship and now I'm home with my kids fixing dinner for my kids at night instead of running around making sure they're doing what they need to do.

Amanda Kaufman (17:11)

Stacey, this has been so generous and thank you so much for taking the time to like walk us through your story and how you help people and the very awesome and creative way that you figured out to balance out your business so it could be sustainable. Super cool. Like if somebody wanted to keep up with you, what's the best way to do that?

Staci Wright (17:31)

Well, on any of your favorite social media, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, you can search for Stacey Renee CEO and you will find me there.

Amanda Kaufman (17:41)

Amazing. we'll make sure that all her links are in the show notes below, dear listener. Stacey, thank you so much for joining us.

Staci Wright (17:49)

Yes, thanks for having me, Amanda. And thank you for having these great conversations.

Amanda Kaufman (17:54)

My pleasure and dear listener, don't forget to hit that subscribe button before you go so you don't miss another amazing episode and we're gonna be back very, very soon. So make sure if you're talking to a friend and they're like, maybe it's a nonprofit, maybe I do it another way or maybe you just know somebody who would really like to improve their leadership skills. They should check out what Stacey does.

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All right, we'll see you in another episode and until then, do what matters.