How entrepreneurship can help us in the pursuit of liberation

It’s no secret that the society we inhabit is built on broken systems. I like to sum this up under the header: “white capitalist patriarchy.” These systems aren’t just the foundation; they are also influencing every level of society in order to perpetually benefit a few, exploit the rest, and give little glimpses of hope that one day we can be a part of the few.

The catch?

We probably won’t be, and even if we do, reaching those levels requires some level of exploitation of workers, resources, or customers. This is a problem if you’re a person who is communally focused … you don’t just want success or flourishing for yourself, but also for others.

And here’s where we get stuck. Because everything is designed to continue this cycle: hustle, benefit a little yourself, pass wealth up to the richest among us, and be encouraged to focus on our individual selves instead of the communities we inhabit.

Spoiler alert: So much of the “best” advice to optimize and strategize for our businesses were also designed to prop up these systems rather than resist them. And resistance is how we break the cycle for ourselves and bring others along with us.

So what could it look like to use business as our means of resistance for the broken systems of society? What does it look like to seek our liberation — individually and collectively — through entrepreneurship?

I call it the Freedom-First Business. (Yeah, I know freedom is a buzzword for those who focus on individual freedoms at times to the detriment of others, but I can’t resist a good alliteration opportunity.)

This is where I meet my clients — at the corner of their social consciousness, desire to break the burnout cycle, and make real change wherever they are that frees others today and forever.

Most of us want to make an impact … a meaningful one. But it’s all too easy to get caught up in the sweep of the systems — resulting in us abandoning ourselves and those we wanted to help.

With a “Freedom-First Business,” we put our values first so we can resist the capitalist grind, break the cycle of exploitation, and help our communities flourish.

Breaking the “Business as Usual” Cycle

I am not the first to speak on how we can free ourselves from the white capitalist patriarchy. In fact, all the principles I have learned and begun to integrate in my own life have come from the wisdom of people of color, philosophers, sociologists, historians, scholars, and other deep thinkers. I am constantly learning from those on the margins — from their expertise and their lived experiences. (And on that, I’m open to discussion and correction because learning is a lifelong process.)

But I’ve been in the online business world for a long time now, and I’ve had all kinds of businesses, models, mentors, and clients. I’ve even suffered because of the systems at play — leading to my own burnout and challenges.

Today, the work I do is focused on bringing together multiple disciplines, systems thinking, and longheld wisdom to co-create a unique path forward with my clients. In doing so, I consistently have seen 4 particular value shifts create the most impact in their businesses and their lives.

4 value shifts for the Freedom-First Business owner

These shifts below are not new, nor are they exclusive or comprehensive. But when we make these shifts, we can find ourselves on the path to embodying our values and resisting the systems that trap and harm us and others.

Optimized for extraction -> optimized for autonomy

A lot of business advice wants us to optimize for extraction — getting the most for our dollar, our time, or our work. And that sounds well and good until it means …

• Being ruthlessly “efficient” until we burn ourselves out and can’t work at all
• Creating a business that works for someone else’s life but not ours
• Hiring contractors we can pay a little to do a lot so we can continue to do more more more
• Endlessly moving clients through an ascension model because you’re “supposed to” and that pressures them into decisions or programs that don’t actually help them

It’s all about extracting the most from ourselves, resources, and others. But what if we flipped that to creating a business that optimizes for autonomy?

A business optimized for autonomy means you design it to work the way your brain and your life need you to. We’re not pressured to do more or make more or charge more if it doesn’t make sense for us. This means we can choose our model, the people we want to work with/for, and the journey we take our clients on.

What good is more money if we don’t use it? What good is success if we can’t enjoy it? What good are our services if we wear others down as we wear down ourselves? Optimizing for autonomy allows us to make our business our way with blinders on to the success of others.

But it’s not just meant to be optimized for your autonomy but also for your clients and customers.

There’s so much talk about “empowerment” in the entrepreneurial space, but often the focus is actually on creating dependence or handing out cookie-cutter strategies rather than helpful frameworks. Empowerment means equipping and supporting our clients as humans and not just as steps on the way to our next milestone.

We can design client journeys that make sense for our clients, while giving them the power to stand on their own to make the right decisions for themselves. In the end, it’s about them getting what they need and not just pushing them through your packages because it benefits you.

Optimizing for extraction may help us get a lot done and make big money, but if we leave ourselves or our clients trapped in cycles that hurt us, we aren’t doing any good. Instead, optimize for autonomy to create a more authentic path to your success that you actually enjoy.

Big impact -> Community care

I used to believe that I had to do “big things” in order for my life to count. This ended up being a hindrance to me actually doing anything because the goal was too abstract to be helpful and too intimidating to even start. I would end up frazzled and frantic in everything instead.

The trap in this mindset looks like …

• Seeking fame or vanity metrics
• Centering our desire to impact instead of the needs of others
• Missing the ways we can help that are right in front of us
• Passing over people who need us because they’re not “important” enough for our “big impact” agenda

Seeking our own big-ness often works against our desire for impact. It keeps us chasing specific numbers and external validation to feel like what we do matters. But from many years in nonprofit work, I’ve seen one pattern over and over: those who tend to do the most good focus smaller and more specifically on a people, place, or problem.

They don’t fix everything. They don’t spend all their time throwing the net wide.

Instead, they see a clear need in their community and they use what they have to meet it. Then they create tools, frameworks, and systems to multiply that work in others.

We have a tendency to think all change comes from the top down, and that keeps us distracted — vying for a position at the top without asking what it will take to get there or what we will have to compromise to stay there. Meanwhile, meaningful change is often small and specific.

Business can make a big impact, to be sure, but the Freedom-First Business owner does this with close attention to their community and how they can serve and support them — however small that may be.

It doesn’t have to be big to make an impact. When we’re not worried about who gets credit or clout, we can free ourselves to do good wherever we are, however we can.

Exploitative marketing -> Ethical sales

I’ve spent most of my career outside of the entrepreneurial sphere (and good chunks within it) in marketing and communications, especially as a copywriter. And one of the frameworks for writing that I loathe is the “problem-agitate-solution” formula. This means you identify their pain and push on it.

We should absolutely know and articulate the pain points of our clients, but we ought to meet them with empathy, not pressure or shame. It’s common and manipulative, but it’s indicative of a larger problem — exploitative marketing. This comes in many forms these days like …

• Using false scarcity
• Promising unrealistic results (especially in tight timeframes)
• Shaming you for not buying
• Blaming your mindset for not doing more
• High pressure sales tactics

It’s tied up in multiple systems that oppress us. It can rely on creating a scarcity mindset to drive overconsumption (capitalism). It may use female solidarity and empowerment language to push you beyond your means (patriarchy). It may paint a picture of success that is only accessible or centered on white, middle class ideals (white supremacy). Or maybe it pushes “no excuses” messaging that ignores different abilities, processing styles, energy levels, and circumstances (ableism).

This kind of marketing upholds systems and standards that we’re all beholden to that harm us and doesn’t allow us to be autonomous or authentic. That keeps us from being our whole selves — and often perpetuates the cycle as we uphold those same ideas.

The shift here needs to move from exploiting one another through the appeal to particular systems toward ethical sales practices, which can include …

• Transparency about capacity limits
• Meeting challenges or pain points with empathy
• Genuine deadlines
• Focusing on values and alignment for best fit
• Setting realistic expectations
• Respecting boundaries in sales conversations
• Clear, fair, and accessible pricing

It should be about empowering people to make informed decisions in their own time. Ethical sales practices don’t promise a quick result when that’s not available, and they don’t ignore the work involved. They also don’t pretend that everyone starts from the same place or has the same working style or goals.

When we shift from exploiting pain to connecting with empathy to connect in sales, we can focus on the right clients instead of the most clients and we can feel good about how we do it.

Comparison and keeping up -> Enoughness

I’ve never been a luxury girl. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I would love to fly business class and get good sleep on an airplane for once (especially since travel is the one luxurious thing I’m all about, even though I do it cheaply). But when I was coming up in online business the first time around, it was all about designer bags, photoshoots in Paris, and constant bragging about your income (but probably leaving off what it cost you to get there).

When you’re always stuck in comparison or keeping up with the competition, you end up in perpetual discontent, extend yourself financially, head toward burnout, and probably end up paying someone else beaucoup bucks because of the pressure to succeed that you end up concentrating that wealth in other hands anyway.

We’ve let others define what success looks like for us. So we fall into capitalism’s need for endless growth, white and middle class markers of status/worth/power, and the consumer culture’s endless push for more … all to forget that we didn’t want all that in the first place!

This kind of mindset kept me burned out, feeling like an impostor, and spending more money than I kept from my success. When I came back to the online space a couple of years ago, I decided that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to operate from a space of “enough.”

• What’s sustainable for my life?
• How much do I want to work?
• What’s important to me in how I operate and what I do?
• What does success look like for me?
• What do I really need to take home and what’s the minimum viable way to get there?

It became about profit over endless scaling and creating a business that supported my life instead of consuming it. It allows me to consciously choose the support I need and pursue my values in and out of my business. I get to prioritize stable and spacious businesses I love instead of working to keep up with the Kylie next door.

My measure for success now is if I have enough — money, work, and time — and if I get to be healthy and whole in the process.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition and wanting to go big. But enough is just as powerful because it allows you to opt-out of overconsumption and discontent, and it gives you the opportunity to exercise your autonomy outside of your business too.

You can be more conscious when you know what “enough” is and you make decisions from that grounded place. That’s why this is such a powerful value shift.

The Freedom-First Check-In

Because the systems that create and uphold these mindsets are so vast and pervasive, we have to be intentional about resisting them and creating something new for ourselves. For that, I like to do a weekly or monthly check-in with myself.

I take 15 minutes to self-assess with these prompts:

Autonomy vs. Extraction

• Where did I feel pressured to optimize for “more” this week, and how did that impact my wellbeing?
• What decisions did I make that supported my authentic work style and boundaries?

Community Impact

• How did I serve my immediate community this week, even in small ways?
• Where did I get caught up in “big impact” thinking that prevented me from taking meaningful action?

Ethical Sales & Marketing

• Review your recent marketing: Where are you relying on pressure or pain points rather than empathy and transparency?
• What authentic connections or conversations could lead to natural business growth this week?

Enoughness Practice

• What triggered comparison or “never enough” thoughts this week?
• Reaffirm your “enough” for this season: Are your current efforts aligned with that definition?

Integration

• Which of these four areas needs the most attention next week?
• What’s one small shift you can make tomorrow to better align with your freedom-first values?

What to Expect and Why This Matters

This isn’t just about doing what we want — though, why have a business you make if you can’t, you know? This is about tapping into our own wisdom, measuring the intangible outcomes, and supporting the collective health and liberation of others.

When we get caught up in the systems, we tend to think of ourselves and start to think less about others and how to truly help. But most of us got into this to have freedom for ourselves and make a difference. Our own success can blind us to the bigger purpose we sought at the start.

There will be resistance and challenges. There will be times you go against the grain or that people don’t understand you. You’ll have to be mindful about the people you learn from and the information you filter through, but in return, you get to live fully and meaningfully into your values.

In creating a new path forward for yourself by supporting others, you also give them a vision for a way that doesn’t capitulate by default to the systems that hurt them or us. With that comes more freedom for us all.