Building an Anti-Capitalist Business

Becky Mollenkamp (00:00.922)
Welcome back to Feminist Founders podcast. It has been a bit of a break. We’ve been on hiatus since the beginning of the year and a lot has changed around Feminist Founders in that time and realized that we haven’t really shared that with the public podcast. We have a private podcast for our paid subscribers, but we haven’t done anything with the podcast in a bit. And there’s been a reason because we’re trying to figure out what’s next. And you hear me saying we, and I do believe we released one episode talking about

the addition of Faith Clark onto the team at Feminist Founders, but I think it was just sort of a short thing and you may not have heard it. So I wanted to start this conversation by introducing Faith, who has come on as a partner on Feminist Founders this year. And I’m so excited about that. And we’re here to talk a little about her and then kind of what has shifted since she’s come on board. But first, for people who may not be familiar, although go back and listen to.

Faith’s interview on Feminist Founders. That’s how we met and how all of this was born out a year later. But tell people a little bit about you and your work and what made you excited to be a part of Feminist Founders.

Faith Clarke (01:11.406)
I think it was maybe even your own framing, of feminist founders that had me thinking, am I a feminist founder? So yes, so I’m faith for everyone. I am mommy of maverick superhero humans who, you know, they could have been in Professor Xavier’s school and my kids have, parenting my kids have been the introduction and initiation into the world of.

inclusion and belonging as core needs for humans. There’s a way that my own personal living on this planet, it’s been easy to just kind of make do, but I think there’s a way that with kids you get the courage to really try to create a different world. So my kids have a whole range of identities that when you intersect them all result in a lot of exclusion and marginalization for us and so

I want to make the world better for them fundamentally. So I work with organizations to help them people better. I’m always thinking, how can I help you be a place where my kids could thrive? And that means dealing with anything from designing the organization so that it supports people better, conflict resolution and conflict navigation, teamwork. It’s the interpersonal.

everything at the workplace, work culture, all of those things that help us to not just say we want to be inclusive, but actually figure out why we’re excluding people and how do we shift that so that more people get to the table. So it feels very general, but I think I do everything that has to do with peopling. And Becky, by the way, it’s just, mean, you know this, but I think my background is a combination of engineering and psychology. I’m

Becky Mollenkamp (02:58.138)
Thank you very much.

Faith Clarke (03:04.982)
I am both like, how are people going to be better? And then what are the interpersonal systems and processes that are needed to kind of make this actually work?

Becky Mollenkamp (03:16.654)
Yeah, when you asked about the possibility of being part of Feminist Founders, I was thrilled because I don’t love doing much alone anymore. And so it gets much more exciting for me when I can do business in partnership. And so I was thrilled. And when I enthusiastically said yes, one of our first calls about, OK, so what does this look like moving forward was a systems question from you, which is, so what’s your framework for Feminist Founders? And I was like,

we don’t really have one because I mean, while I have some frameworks and things I use with my coaching in my like personal coaching practice, I was really not sure what Feminist Founders exactly was or what it was going to become. I had some loose ideas, but it was really functioning more as a newsletter with like this hope for community to be built around it, but not really sure what that would look like yet. And I think part of the reason that I wasn’t sure what that would look like or how to make it happen was probably because

it was lacking some of that systems piece. So you came in and said, what’s your framework? said, we don’t have one. And you said, well, we’re going to know. And so we worked together to create one, which this series that we’re going to be doing on the podcast is going to be a series where we’re going to walk you through the components of this framework that we created and how it might apply to your business owners or to you as business owners and listeners. And a little bit about the like why we have it. And so today we just wanted to share.

kind of how we came together, why a framework and sort of how we went about creating it. And then the episodes that will be coming up in the series will be walking through the components. So there’s five components of the framework that we have come up with. So that’s what this little series that you’ll be listening to is. But we’re to start with why a framework. And so, Faith, when you asked me, like, what’s your framework and why you feel that’s important, I know you mentioned systems matter to you, but why frameworks? Why do you think those are helpful and what is a framework?

Faith Clarke (05:12.898)
Yeah, mean, framework is a nice word. It could also be medicine, that word. It could also be schematic. I think the question that I was fundamentally asking is, what’s the medicine that we have that will help a feminist founder actually embody the feminist founder ideals, whatever those are?

in every area of their business. What’s the thing that will say you’re going to do this and that, you have to pay attention to this and that, and if you do that, this is how you get there. It’s the Dora and what’s the map. And I think when, and you use frameworks for lots of different things and most businesses have multiple frameworks. A framework for this transformation, a framework for that process. So it’s…

It’s not that you need one framework. I was, I guess I was just asking, what’s our medicine for feminist founders? And how do we kind of define the different nutrients if we’re using that model in our medicine so that when people engage with us, we know, they’re changing in this way and that way, and they know they’re changing in this way and that way. And I think that for most of us, we,

are maybe offering medicine, but we don’t know what it actually is. Like we just go about and do things and we help people and people get results, but we haven’t done the excavation to say, am I actually doing? What is this thing that I offer that creates all this stuff for people? So that’s what I mean by, for this purpose, it’s the transformation portal that when people go through and they come out on the other side,

Becky Mollenkamp (07:02.756)
Yeah.

Faith Clarke (07:06.42)
know, equipped, empowered, more able to embody this feminist founder ideal.

Becky Mollenkamp (07:14.188)
And you said the medicine that we give is often the medicine we need, which I think for a lot of people will resonate. So if you’re like, I don’t know what my framework is thinking about, like, what is it that, what is the medicine you’re giving and the medicine you’re needing? Because usually I feel like often the work that we do as service providers anyway, is work we, where we were a few steps back. And now we’re just sharing that wisdom of what has helped along the way. and so we started this process. go ahead.

Faith Clarke (07:40.078)
Not only that, it is where we were and also as we grow, then the new problems we encounter or the new barriers that we encounter, that’s the medicine that we need to apply. so often, when a client asks me about something to do with, my managers feel like they can’t grab hold of, everybody’s in different places and they can’t get everybody, they feel like they’re herding cats.

then I could tell them how to not hurt cats. But I try to like, what’s the thing that you’re doing outside that’s super effective in that equivalent of hurting cats? And let’s figure out how to apply to ourselves. You know, like me, I give my kids good food and I encourage exercise and I have them drinking water and I’m not doing that. So it’s like, what’s the thing you’re doing that then you can apply inside? And it’s usually an easier process than try to learn something new.

Becky Mollenkamp (08:35.864)
Yeah. Well, and for the case of a feminist founders framework, we started with each of us kind of talking through our work. And then specifically with what I knew about the kinds of folks that are in the feminist founders sphere, because it’s probably at least slightly different. I think our two client bases are slightly different. There’s overlap, but with our readership being mostly entrepreneurs, self-employed, most of them small, like solo preneurs or

maybe have a small team, but they’re all people who have some, generally have some ambition to grow their businesses beyond where they are now. And so we talk through kind of, what does that look like? How would we help those people? What are the things we’re hearing from them? What are their concerns? What are they worried about? What keeps them up at night? All of those sorts of things to kind of begin to piece things together and create.

Like, OK, then what are the major buckets, major areas we’re helping them in? And I think one of the first things you asked me to, which will lead to the first discussion we’re going to have as the first piece of it, was you were asking me, how do you write? Like, if you were going to write, I picture a world where, or I picture a business world where, or something like that, what was the value in that? Or is that how you always start when you’re working with people on frameworks?

Faith Clarke (09:58.35)
Yeah, I think I’m just going to backtrack for a second to say that although our client bases are different, we are exactly like the people in Feminist Founders, right? So although I serve nonprofits and someone’s, you know, small to medium organizations, as a business, I am a solopreneur with a couple of contractors every now and then and hoping to grow. So there’s a way that the both of us together, thinking about our businesses,

and how we want to embody what we’re teaching, then that becomes the place where we can start like what’s needed for our own transformation. And I usually start by trying to clarify the transformation. So it’s like, what’s the current moment that we’re in? And we understood that we know who we are and we know, you know, what’s the landscape? And then where do we want to go? And that where do we want to go is that

preferred future, it’s that, can I imagine a world where all of what is in my heart is fully implemented? And can I imagine a business that is part of that? And so this kind of visioning of that world where our feminist ideals are actually not just utopian, you know, fluff.

but something that’s heavy and living in bodies, what does that look like? And that started to, that was really good for me because I, to do that, to have that conversation, I went and asked other people too, like, what do you pay attention to? Especially explicit feminist organizations. And for me, explicit organizations run by black feminists. What are you looking at? And cause sometimes we have these desires, but we haven’t even named them. And so it was, it was that process of almost,

excavating what’s in my heart. And then we, in our conversation, we did that.

Becky Mollenkamp (11:59.896)
Yeah, and then we don’t have to go through all of the like wrangling of it. But I think the thing here that’s helpful for people who don’t have a framework inside their business when you’re thinking about the the transformation you help clients achieve is that piece of where are they now and where do they want to go? And then what are the things that help them get there? And what we ended up identifying as sort of the key areas were vision.

So helping them understand like for themselves what’s the world they’re wanting to create, which is where we started. So it makes sense, right? And then thinking about leadership. So how do I show up as a leader, both of myself and of others? And then culture, which is like, how do we decolonize work? And then systems, which is how do we decolonize work in the systems, right? So the one is sort of the peopling and one’s more the tools. And those were sort of the four buckets. And then there was one other.

that overlays all of them because as you said, it touches all of them. And this was the piece that like, I think you and I, those other four, we got to fairly quickly agreed. Yeah, those are kind of like when I work with clients, those are the key kind of areas when you’re thinking about yourself as a solopreneur or a small business owner, like those are sort of the key areas, especially as you’re thinking about growth. But then you mentioned disruption. How do we deal with hard stuff?

And at first, my thought was, well, that should just be, it’s like, we integrate that into all of those because there’s always hard stuff and we have to know how to deal with that. But you were really adamant, no, that needs to be its own piece, right? It’s its own piece of this puzzle. It’s that important that it needs to be its own piece. And we’ll get to each of those components soon. So we’ll be releasing two episodes a week this month. So listen to all of them and you’ll hear about each of these components.

But just as a high level overview, what was important to you about making it its own part of the framework disruption? And then I’ll share why I eventually came around.

Faith Clarke (14:00.302)
Well, I think…

know, feminist ideals as an example is really part of revolution. It’s part of how do we upend systematic, systemic harm to humans and create a more just and equitable world, right? And there are lots of ideas and theories that kind of, that’s what they’re trying to do. And the thing that happens,

especially when we are in a space that has centered people harming and you know, capitalistic patriarchal, all the supremacist ideologies, is that we, it’s almost like we get disrupting it is so painful that nobody wants to call it. The people who are the most harmed end up being the people who call it.

But everybody else, the less harm you experience in the system, the less you want to disrupt it. And it’s not a conscious thing. It’s quite unconscious because, you know, the supremacist theories, ideologies have a hierarchy of human value. Everybody knows where they fit in the hierarchy and nobody wants to lose their place because losing your place means losing resources and losing access. And so we do have this built in. Let’s leave things as they are. Let’s find a way to

We almost want to idealize the creating of the new and we don’t want to confront the disrupting of the old. Right. So what I’ve noticed at all, that’s just the backdrop to what I’ve noticed is that it’s very hard. People, a lot of us find it difficult to be in discomfort and to notice what it actually means. And there’s a lot of patching of systems and activating things that will reduce the discomfort, you know, like, let me just be simple.

Faith Clarke (16:00.79)
I’m feeling sad and I’m going to eat a slice of cake. Instead of I’m feeling sad, what’s that mean? And getting to the heart of the matter. And so there’s a lot of perpetuation of supremacist thought process and processes and people having thought processes that we were taught in grad school and high school that we’ve lived out all our lives. And we have to be willing to feel.

the discomfort in our bodies when we decide to do something different. Because right now we’re trying to create businesses that nourish people. Which businesses nourish people? That’s not something that we’ve seen a lot of. And so as we’re doing that, people, especially those of us identifying as not men, we’re going to be seen as not knowing what we’re doing, as foolish, as not being practical. The moment you start to move against capitalistic ideologies, you’re gonna get pressure.

you’re gonna get pressure on the inside because no, you’re gonna try to lead people in a way that isn’t the way you were led and when you’re not getting the results, you’re gonna judge yourself, you’re gonna critique the other people, you’re gonna revert to old patterns because your system is just in such discomfort. being willing to say, I don’t want to feel bad. And so in this moment, I’m talking to Becky, I’m having a feeling in my body.

I’m doing everything inside of me to not acknowledge it. And while at the same time I’m trying to placate Becky because I don’t want Becky to be upset and I don’t want the thing. Being willing to be with that is I feel fundamental. Otherwise none of this works. It doesn’t matter how pretty our vision is. We can’t implement it if we’re not willing to disrupt what’s happening and create something else. So I don’t know. That’s the long form of what I’ve seen a lot of conflict and people have invited me into a lot of

processes for restorative conflict navigation and even in the middle of the process, especially white leadership, it’s just very, it’s very hard to be up close to the pain. And so everybody leans back and then that means that we just don’t come through.

Becky Mollenkamp (18:12.142)
Yeah. And as far as my resistance, it’s funny because now we’re a couple of months removed from it and it feels more distant and and looking at it on this side of it. I’m like, it’s almost hard for me to get back in touch with why I felt resistant to having to be its own piece of the framework. But somehow I think in my mind, I had one like a framework should have four things and five just felt like too many, which is silly, but also part of it.

And I think I just felt like it could be integrated into all of them. Why does it need to be its own thing? But honestly, at this side of it now, I’m like, of course it always needs to be its own thing. I’m sure a great deal of my resistance that I still can’t kind of place a name is rooted in white supremacy and in my own experiences of probably wanting to suppress some of that because I’m most certainly somebody who doesn’t love discomfort, but I’m learning to be with it. So I’m very happy now that it is a part of it, but I remember some resistance. So it’s just an

Faith Clarke (19:06.04)
Part two. Part.

Becky Mollenkamp (19:07.472)
I was just saying it’s an interesting part of building a framework too with someone else and where I think it can be helpful to do this in community. Even if you remain a business of one, having others be involved in the process because people can challenge you on things that you might think either, everybody knows that already or, that doesn’t need to be a part of the thing or whatever it is to help you see spots, blind spots, because that’s certainly what’s happened with, you know, having you be a part of this for me.

Faith Clarke (19:32.59)
Part of your own discomfort was centering discomfort. Like there was a way that leadership and vision and culture and processes, they’re all just like, you know, this is where we’re going. And then to have something as this obvious like, wait, this is a negative and it even speaks to our own presumption that discomfort is negative, which is why we lean away from it. And so was just the…

Becky Mollenkamp (19:45.114)
bright.

Faith Clarke (19:57.588)
No, you know, and we see that so often in society. was like, why are you making a big deal out of this or that? Because we just don’t want to name it, you know.

Becky Mollenkamp (20:08.654)
Yeah. Well, and yeah, that’s absolutely true. Now that you’re saying that, I can think. And that is definitely my own bias and my own disability, not disability, inability to be with discomfort is feeling like it is a negative thing. And I have been working on that. Well, I know we want to keep these episodes shorter. We’re going to talk more about all of that in the episode about disruption. Next, we’re going to talk about vision, which is the first piece of this puzzle. And I will tell you that the sort of

phrase about that is that feminist founders intentionally nourish their vision to cultivate a better, more equitable world and know that their business and organization are essential to that vision. And that is the starting point for all of the work that we build upon with feminist founders. Also knowing that disruption will be integrated into all of those pieces because there is discomfort that comes up with trying to land on a vision, right? Because that’s certainly something that we found as well. As we wrap up,

Next episode will be vision. So make sure you listen. We’ll go into much more depth about it. But anything else that you want to share faith about why we felt it’s important for us to be sharing this framework more publicly and not just in our private podcast feed for our paid subscribers.

Faith Clarke (21:18.488)
think a lot of us hit the ground running as business owners. We have our internal ideals and then we have the service that we want to offer. And especially with all that’s going on in the world now, we can’t live out something that we haven’t named, especially when it goes against the flow. So part of what’s been helpful to me is just having a measuring stick.

When we’re in this process of crafting what we’re crafting, now we have something to say, wait, is this about vision? Did we not clarify vision in this particular area, new podcast thing? Where does this fit in our vision? And what’s our leadership ideal associated with this? There’s a way that the framework gives us something to anchor the one million questions that show up as we’re running our businesses. And so I just invite

those of us who are especially planning disruptive businesses, just to have something that then becomes your anchor. So many ideas come to us. So many people invite us into so many things that feel really good. And having a framework that anchors you on the ground to this is my process, this is my medicine. I think it just helps us have more impact in a steady way.

Becky Mollenkamp (22:38.958)
Yeah. And I think as we build this out as a partnership for our podcast, for public podcast listeners, especially who have not had that experience as much yet. If you’re not a subscriber to the newsletter, hopefully you are. If you’re not, I’ll put the link in the show notes. So please go subscribe. But if you’re not, you may not have had as much exposure yet to what Feminist Founders is evolving into and with faith on board, what changes that brings and what it looks like. And I think what it looks like in my mind anyway, is that it’s looking, it looks more like

a rather than a bit of a hobby for me, right? It’s more of us approaching this more seriously as a business and in doing that, we need this framework. And also we want to tell people about it because we’re proud of what we’ve built and we’re excited to help others do the same. So thank you for listening. And I’m going to shift us for our next conversation to vision. So make sure you listen to the next episode to hear about that. Listen to this whole series to learn more in depth about all of these components of the framework and

I think we’re making an intentional effort to think a little bit too about how does that apply to the small business owner, to the service provider, so that as you’re listening, you’ll be thinking about these things for yourself, for your business, and how it applies to what work you’re doing. So thank you for listening, and thank you, Faith, for being part of this with me and for doing this recording series with

Faith Clarke (23:56.296)
You’re welcome. Bye everyone