321: Becky Mollenkamp on Why the Business Advice You’ve Been Following Was Never Built for You

The business rules we’ve been handed were written for someone else. That’s not a vague complaint. It’s the central argument of Becky Mollenkamp’s book Liberate Your Business, and it’s the thread that runs through every minute of this conversation.

Becky is a business coach, the founder of the Feminist Podcasters Collective, and co-host of the podcasts Messy Liberation and Feminist Founders.

According to Becky, the standard “build your empire” playbook is just corporate America repackaged with a different CEO at the top. As long as we follow it, we’re still inside a system designed to extract from our communities, from our collaborators, and eventually from ourselves.

Key Takeaways

• The hustle culture playbook wasn’t built for women, and following it just replicates the same broken system inside a smaller package.
• There’s a meaningful difference between capitalism (always more) and commerce (what’s enough to make you whole), and it changes how you run your business.
• Ethical business isn’t charity. It’s collaborative, sustainable, and still pays the bills.
• Your network is more powerful as a spider web than as a personal asset. When everyone is connected to everyone, it grows.
• Injecting humanity back into your business, even in small ways, is both a business strategy and an act of gratitude.

You Didn’t Fail the Rules. The Rules Failed You.

The “norm” that business advice is built around is, as Becky puts it plainly, “white, cishet, educated, upper-class male.” Any deviation from that, whether that’s chronic illness, caregiving responsibilities, or a body or life that doesn’t fit the template, means the system isn’t just indifferent to you. It actively works against you.

I say this from my own experience. I’ve been building a solopreneur business while living with metastatic breast cancer since 2014. When you’re running a business around a chronic illness, you are already refusing rules that were never made for you. That’s not a disadvantage. That’s a head start.

And it certainly is not a reason to opt out of business. It’s a reason to build differently.

Capitalism vs. Commerce and Why It Matters for Women Solopreneurs

Becky defines capitalism as being about more, more, more. It’s the hedonic treadmill, the goalpost that never stops moving. Commerce is simply an exchange. It’s about wholeness. What do you need to feel whole? What’s enough?

“The house payment doesn’t get paid on love and light. We got to make money. But the question is how much is actually enough. Capitalism does not ever talk about enough.” — Becky Mollenkamp

This reframe is genuinely useful, not just philosophically but practically. If you build your pricing, your offers, and your client relationships around enoughness, enough to sustain you, enough to pay people fairly, enough to not burn yourself to the ground, you get off the treadmill. You stop chasing a finish line that keeps moving.

Becky outlines several concrete ways this shows up in her own business. She uses sliding scale pricing where those with more capacity pay more and those with less pay less. She engages in mutual aid structures and equitable community spaces like the Feminist Podcasters Collective. And she starts every financial goal by asking, “how much do I actually need?”

What Ethical Business Actually Looks Like in Practice

This is where the conversation gets practical. Becky isn’t talking about dismantling your entire business model overnight. She’s talking about small, deliberate choices that add up.

• Spread visibility, not just money. If you’ve had six podcast appearances this month and you know a brilliant woman in your space who’s been overlooked, suggest her instead. That’s collective care in action.
• Pay living wages. Even if you’re a solopreneur who only occasionally hires contractors, this is a choice you can make right now.
• Ask collaborative questions. Instead of “how do I grow?” try “who else could benefit from this?” and “who could help share the load here?”
• Build a spider web, not a spoke. Stop thinking of your network as a personal asset to extract from. Introduce your contacts to each other. When your whole network is connected to itself, everyone gets stronger.
• Inject humanity back into your transactions. The last pitch you received from a podcast booking agency? Becky deletes those on sight. Not because the guests might not be good, but because transactional experiences strip the human out. She’d rather reach out herself, after a real connection, in her own words.

Your Network Is Your Community, Not Your Asset

One of the most quotable ideas in Becky’s book Liberate Your Business challenges the phrase “your network is your net worth.” That framing is everywhere in online business, and it’s a very individualistic, extractive way to think about the people around you.

“I think of a network as a spider web. How do all these people get to also meet each other? When you stop thinking of ‘my network’ and how to extract from it, that’s when networking becomes collective care.” — Becky Mollenkamp

I’ll say this from my own experience. My biggest asset is my network, and I am generous with it on purpose. Every introduction I make, every time I pass an opportunity to someone who needs it more than I do, that grows the web. It comes back. Not as a transaction, but as a community that actually holds.

Note: Some of the links here are affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission, at no additional cost to you, if you choose to purchase.

Care Is a Form of Gratitude

We ended our conversation on the idea that community care is gratitude. Not the thank-you-card version, though I do love to send greeting cards. The version where you create space, make introductions, show up in the collective, and say with your actions that you want more of these people in your world and you want to see them succeed.

Becky says she thinks gratitude in her head a hundred times for every one she says out loud. But she expresses it through generosity. She builds the Feminist Podcasters Collective, passes visibility to others, and thinks in spider webs instead of spokes.

That feels right to me. Gratitude isn’t just a feeling. It’s a practice. And in business, it looks a lot like how Becky runs hers.

About Becky Mollenkamp

Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) is a business coach, author, and the founder of the Feminist Podcasters Collective. She is the author of Liberate Your Business, a guide to building a human-centered, ethically grounded business that works for people who were never the “norm” the rulebook was written for.

Becky co-hosts the podcasts Messy Liberation and Feminist Founders, and has a forthcoming podcast called Analog(ish) exploring the balance between online and offline living.

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Gratitude Geek is the podcast for Gen X women solopreneurs building genuine, lasting connections with clients, colleagues, and community. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen.

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