When enough is no longer enough
And you decide to do something about it
Greetings from Winter Park, CO where I’ve spent the last few days battling the cold in my van whose heater has decided to only intermittently work in the below-freezing weather. You know how much I love winter, though, so the powder days that accompanied my frigid mornings and the space I’ve had to think about so many things have been welcomed.
I appreciate all of you who responded to my poll last week. It’s as if you granted me the privilege to show up here in the way that I want, in the way that feels best to me. And isn’t that what everyone wants? To be able to show up as themselves.
There’s an incredible amount of freedom to that, and certainly, freedom is one of the most important things to me. I’ve designed my entire life around it, carefully balancing on one foot firmly planted in responsibility as the other dips its toes into the hot lava of commitment. The notion of THIS is what I do and I will do it FOREVER has never sat well with me, which is why there are so many things that one is supposed to do that I have pleasantly avoided: marrying, owning a home, having children.
Against all odds, I still live a remarkably full life. There are very few things I would do differently, but there is one critical error I’ve made: I haven’t taken care of myself financially, and it’s not because I haven’t tried. I’ve moved through life believing that all I need is enough, which I have certainly achieved. I have stable housing, a reliable vehicle, nutritious food, and leisure time. But I didn’t take into account rising inequality, healthcare costs, housing costs, cost of living. My enough is no longer enough.
I grew up in a middle-class family. Both my parents were teachers. I always had enough as a child; I never went without. Well, I never had those Guess jeans with the I have money triangle on the back pocket or the Cabbage Patch Kid or the Swatch watch or the clear phone with the colorful inner workings of a landline. I did, however, own more than one Esprit tote (in your face Trader Joes), only because they were free with a purchase over a certain amount (foreshadowing the e-commerce hell I live in now). I was never allowed to have the things deemed too expensive for what they were by my parents. Imagine what we’d do now. I wouldn’t eat scrambled eggs in the morning let alone drink out of a fucking Stanley water bottle.
My perception of enough certainly has been colored by spending 20 years in rural Kenya—I have so much more compared to the global majority. I have running water and a roof that won’t blow off in a rain storm and electricity. My days aren’t spent fetching water and tending to the crops so that I can eat one meal a day. My current reality of enough is their vision of wealth. The thought of amassing more has felt selfish and out of line with my values. Western society places so much emphasis on growth and wealth at the expense of the environment, our mental health, and community. I have never wanted to participate in that.
And yet I did.
With Coalition, I was swept up in the #femalefounder #startup #girlboss nonsense created by Silicon Valley. I assembled a team of formal advisors, I brought on a co-founder (I have so much to say about this that I’ll save for another time), I made pitch decks and stood up in front of hundreds of people and won competitions and raised a round and did all of the things that “successful” businesses are meant to do. It hit me one day that I was not in alignment with my values. So I stopped raising money and I stopped pitching. I put my head down and focused on revenue. The problem was that once you raise inventory money and take on debt, it’s very hard to get out of that mentality—growth, profit, engrained societal standards of success. You feel like you aren’t good enough and that you aren’t working hard enough. And that’s all by design.
I spent the full 14 hours of my drive this week to Colorado listening to
’s podcast “The Pop-Up Pod,” in which the conversations centered around people’s relationship with money. What I found so valuable was to hear the stories of people who are very much like me in the sense that they write, are building small businesses, and their values are rooted in social justice. All of the conversations spoke to me in a way that other business-focused pods, articles, and how-to’s never have. I felt seen and part of a community that I didn’t even know existed.As I ate a package of noodles and soy sauce with a handful of broccolini BECAUSE I’M NOT A MONSTER, I realized that these people were able to turn their financial predicaments into abundance in a few short years because they were dedicated to having the life they knew they deserved. They recalibrated their enough. Running a business that is small and community-centered can work, we just have to believe in a different way of doing business.
I’ve learned so much in the past 15 years building Coalition and Zawadisha, not to mention all of the other projects I’ve started like Après Delight and Sisu Magazine and Far Out, the retail shop we opened last year. I’ve made the mistakes and celebrated the wins and done things differently through it all. And it’s time for me to start on my next project, which I hope includes you. Stay tuned friends :)
If you’re a paid subscriber, don’t miss my next offering on April 10th at 5 pm PST where we’ll share our strategies on how to have the really difficult conversations about what’s happening in the world. Respond to this message or DM me for details.