Basic principles of a sustainable business
While swimming in the deep end of late stage capitalism
*Note: This is primarily for businesses that require human-centered services that are provided directly from you, the businessowner.
On September 1, 2023, I started my business from (almost) scratch. I say “almost” because I still come to this decision with experience in business, but I also say “from scratch” because I decided to turn all of my assumptions about business on its head.
The reason I did this is that I was getting sick of “business as usual.” I was no longer interested in the traditional “rules” of business like: building an audience, making offers, being specific in my marketing.
I noticed myself becoming more obsessed with my own truth because I became increasingly intolerant of the ways people were lying their way to making money and then at some point failing miserably at it, unsure what to do next and losing grip of their humanity.
I had a feeling that the ways we were told to run a business were coming to head with our collective intolerance for the way late stage capitalism was treating us as human beings.
I wanted to start from a fertile ground upon which my business would become a place that felt like home for me and my community.
Over the course of this month, I focused on unraveling all the truths that I have been keeping to myself originally out of fear of rejection. But I began being transparent about who I was and what I stood for so that people who enter into relationship with me have clean and informed consent.
I did not have any clear expectations on how this month was going to go except how I knew I was going to show up, honoring and expressing my truth at the pace of my own body.
I went on a rampage burning bridges talking about white supremacy, polyamory, mental health, and destabilizing capitalism. Things that mattered to me. I used Substack as a place to unpack a lot of the wrinkles of my humanity I was aching to express. I made no requirements of myself on how I decided to show up.
Here were the results:
Over 6,500 people visited my Substack, 88 people subscribed, and 8 of those subscribers became paid subscribers. I was floored by this because I did not once ask anybody to subscribe to my Substack. I just wanted a place to vomit all my thoughts and invited people to read if they wanted to.
Six whole human beings decided to book a peer support session with me even though I had exactly one post on September 1 saying they can message me to work with me. Even that invitation was hidden in the middle of a long post. (And maybe I did one IG story and invitations at the end of some Substack posts? I forget.)
I met dozens of polyamorous people online and offline that are now besties or potential candidates or simply a safe space for me to be me.
The grand total of my revenue for September 2023 is $692 USD.
I have never been more delighted to make money than I have this month.
Somehow, it feels more delightful than the $10,000 DAYS. On those days, my only question was when I was going to get my next $10,000. Perhaps I felt a sense of accomplishment and pride, but I don’t remember much delight during those days.
On those $10k days, I was existing to prove myself to people I didn’t like. People who were dictating how I needed to exist in my body. People who had no idea what it was like to be in my body.
This month, on the other hand, I came from a place of knowing exactly who I was, what I was willing to feel, what I was willing to lose. Proving was the least of my priorities.
My priority was about building a home in my business so that it could become the heart of expressing my truth and a place where others can do the same so that we can feel our own heartbeat.
While proving myself was determined by other people, building a home for my community was not something anyone could take away from me.
That is how I found sustainability.
Sustainability, for me, is cultivating an ecosystem that is interactive, non-hierarchical, and alive.
Here I outline the three basic principles on building such sustainability.
Business operates sustainably on congruence.
Congruence is when your outward state of being is a reflection of your inward state of being. I see incongruence everywhere:
-People talking about how to be successful in their career to have a beautiful life while they feel unsafe, unseen, and exhausted at home.
-People talking about how to make the most amount of money to feel sufficient when they actually feel that making a lot of money has nothing to do with feeling sufficient.
-People talking about how to build a business flawlessly without sharing any of the struggles they experience while building a business.
We have been trained to show only the good parts of ourselves, which has driven us to pathologize all of our internal struggles that nobody talks about congruently.
So then businesses are built on shaky foundation: people enter into relationships with businesses thinking that they are going to get the golden ticket to their “dream life” and then realize that they face a whole new set of problems even once they check off everything on the to-do list that they paid thousands of dollars for.
And when they face these new challenges, these so-called “experts” have no idea how to actually walk with you because they have also been hiding from their own problems.
I have proclaimed to be one of these experts. Sure, I had “tools and strategies” to look at some of the things that they were experiencing, and there is some degree of effectiveness that people experience at different levels. But the one thing I did not really do was actually honor who they were as human beings.
Because I did not know how to do that myself.
I was constantly trying to “help” them and “fix” them because that is where I perceived my worth. Instead of seeing my worth as inherent, I attached it to an external activity of me “helping” people. Which then went back to the vicious cycle of attaching my clients’ worth to how much they were able to “improve” their lives.
So I was incongruent in the way I showed up. What I was selling was actually a mirage.
At some point, we burn out from the lies we tell.
That is unsustainable.
Congruence thrives on your awareness and acceptance of yourself (with the help of all the privileges you have).
I say this warily because I don’t like to throw around the words “awareness” and “acceptance” because it can feel a bit gaslighty. Sometimes it is necessary to not know things and not accept things because it is unsafe to do so in a world that is unkind to our differences. Sometimes it is just safer to accept oppressive systems so we can afford rent.
That is why I would also say that creating a sustainable business is most optimal with the greatest amounts of privilege and keen awareness of those privileges.
Sure, there are stories of rags to riches. But the problem with those is that they, again, do not talk about all the privileges that gave them space to take that path, which is why it disproportionately comes from those with white privilege. Which is why we internalize that white supremacy and believe that we need to operate like white people when we literally do not share those same privileges. (White privilege is just one of the many privileges people have but don’t talk about.)
Coming up with a product that you actually want to sell, looking at information on how that resonates with other people, conducting experiments on what works and what doesn’t - that takes an inordinate amount of emotional skill that is extremely laborious when you do not have a proportional amount of privilege.
It is very difficult to get creative when you have next month’s rent to worry about. Or children to raise. Or unexpected health conditions. Or differences that simply make it even more unsafe to exist. Not only that, if those things require most or all of your emotional, financial, and physical resources, you will also likely find a lot of strain trying to build community and find mentors that can walk with you in practicing your creativity.
I’m going to say something rude or hopeful or both, depending on who you are: no matter where you are at in your life, you have privileges that are unique to you that allows you to run a business. Even if it means your business ends up looking very different from others’.
Which then brings us to the next conclusion: In order to build a business that is wildly unique to you, you need to be wildly aware of your privileges that speak to how you move through this world.
If you have white privilege: How can you use the awareness of your whiteness to build safety for those you care about? How does your whiteness allow you more resources to create spaces that those without it have less access to?
If you have class privilege: What are the resources that you are hoarding for yourself, and what if it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person? How would you build capacity to feel shitty so that you can start being aware of it and share the resources you have been hoarding?
If you have cis het privilege: In what ways have you taken your cis het privilege for granted, and how can you use your awareness of it to build more understanding for those who don’t share that privilege? Are you willing to be wrong to build human connection?
We have arrived at this point of late stage capitalism because we are all trying to be more like each other so that we can be likable to each other. Which prevents us from being aware of our own differences and deficiencies and blindspots and privileges and insecurities. Which leads us to lying about who we are. Which leads to burnout.
Awareness and acceptance of yourself, with the help of your privileges and resources, comes with expanding your capacity to feel shitty. We cannot avoid feeling shitty when we are building new culture or interrupting existing culture. The only option we have in building something bigger than ourselves is to know how to feel like shit.
Shame is often trying to tell you about a rule you were never meant to follow to begin with.
Shame has quickly become my favorite tool for building a sustainable business. It tells you exactly where oppressive systems and arbitrary rules have failed you. Examples:
-If you are feeling shitty about how you are not making “enough money”: whoever said that business needs to be about making money? What if it is about building community and finding your besties and using it to build a world that holds differences more competently?
-If you are feeling shitty about not being “clear enough” for your clients: whoever said that you need to be clear? How many people have you hired just by having conversation with them and simply feeling wonderful in their presence?
-If you are feeling shitty about “not showing up”: whoever said that you need to show up in any particular way? As Tricia Hersey says, “Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. Our bodies are a site of liberation. Naps provide a portal to imagine, invent, and heal.”
-If you are feeling shitty about “losing people”: whoever said losing people is not the best thing to happen to your business? What if congruence has always been about inviting the wrong fit to leave so that you can create space for the right fit to walk with you?
Where are you outsourcing your own agency in your business to someone who proclaims some imaginary authority over your own sense of freedom?
Shame is very useful in shedding light on rules that we can discard for the sake of our sense of agency and freedom. What you are doing right now has very, very good reason. I promise. (Even if you don’t believe that right now, at least it has been introduced to your vernacular.)
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As my teacher Simone Seol says, “We go at the pace of our own body.” There are so many things we want to do, so many things we want to say. That is a testament to our brilliance, and it is our responsibility to steward those ideas by honoring the one and only body that we have to hold and express that brilliance.
Capitalism has violated our bodies all too much over the course of its existence, and if you are recognizing its violence, I congratulate you for being right, and I also stand with you at this very lonely helm in the movement of dismantling toxic capitalism.
We do our part in being different to challenge the culture of violence. We will be messy as we fall forward. But we will nevertheless remain a force, even if we don’t see a single fruit of our labor in our own lifetime.
Here’s to you and me and sustainability.
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There is a lot here to digest, which can mean we’re now dealing with even more questions. If you want to walk with me as you respond to those questions for yourself, learn how here: angela-han.com.