There are no individual solutions to systemic problems.
Systemic problems require collective solutions.
Financial accessibility is a systemic problem.
Therefore, you cannot solve it alone.
As anticapitalist small business owners, we have been trying to solve financial accessibility as individuals. And that, my friends, does not tend to work.
I know there are lots of kinds of people who might end up here, so I want to tell you directly: this is written for those of you who run a small business that you’re not sure should even be called a business because you’re giving away so much of your work for free. If you’re making tons of money, or you don’t care about financial accessibility, or you’ve got great boundaries about money, this probably isn’t for you.
So for the rest of us, let me describe us:
We are small business owners who care about the world! We want to help everyone! We want everyone to be able to access our work! We feel big pain when someone can’t afford our prices! And because we run our own businesses, we have agency to help that most people who are traditionally employed don’t have access to. So very often, we end up overextending our financial access beyond the point at which it’s sustainable for us too.
Here’s what I see this looking like with my clients and students: You have lots of clients but hardly any of them can pay your full rate. All your inquiry calls are with folks who need a reduced price. Your sliding scale functions as if the top half of it doesn’t exist.
Your big beautiful open heart is taking the hit for centuries of financial inequality.
Your business is paying the price for capitalism’s shortcomings.
You are trying to individually fill the gaps of systemic failure.
Creating financial accessibility is important. It’s doable regardless of the scale of your enterprise. And it’s essential if we’re trying to build an anticapitalist business inside the capitalist hellscape we’re living through.
I’ve been preaching the necessity of not paywalling our work for almost 10 years, and I’ve practiced what I preach for longer than that. As a yoga teacher, all my classes were sliding scale. As a life coach, I always had solidarity discounts. As a business consultant, you can get my online course right now for $50 or $25 or $0 depending on your budget.
I feel great about my choices! I am contributing to my community! I am modeling liberatory ways of doing business!
But at a certain point, I realized that I was overextending. WhenI looked at my bank account, I was paying into my community way more than it was paying back to me. My payment structures didn’t have nearly enough boundaries. My sliding scale was only sliding me closer to financial precarity. The exchange was not reciprocal, because it couldn’t be.
I was trying to solve a systemic problem (“people can’t afford my work”) with an individual solution (“so I’ll just give it away for free”).
When we overextend ourselves in these ways, we may end up becoming a burden to the very communities we’re trying to help, because this kind of saviorism inevitably leads to burn out. How much can we actually help if we’re dramatically depleted?
I propose a twofold antidote: containment and community.
Setting boundaries about the way we offer financial accessibility is essential for long-term sustainability. It is okay to sometimes turn someone down because they can’t pay you. It’s not wrong to limit the number of sliding scale spots you offer. You’re allowed to prioritize making enough money. We can’t just let our desire to save the world spill out willy-nilly in our loosey-goosey business policies.
Set a boundary.
Make a limit.
Write a policy.
Stick to it.
This is containment.
Secondly, we need to invoke the support of our community.
Some people in the world don’t have a lot of money. Many people have plenty. Some people have way more than they need. You’re allowed to take money from all of them.
Lots of my clients and students really resent (and therefore resist) working with people who have money. It is very easy to think that it’s somehow more ethical to say you only want to work with people who have financial need. I know that may seem to assuage some guilt about needing money and some discomfort about receiving it.
But if what you’re trying to build is not a capitalist business obsessed with endless growth, but instead an anticapitalist livelihood, a form of work that will support you materially for all of your working life and beyond, I VERY STRONGLY RECOMMEND letting some people with wealth into your orbit. I say this with all the love in my heart: picking a low income niche is like not sustainable business strategy.
Side note/caveat. There is a lot of capitalist business advice that will try and convince you that you need to position yourself as a “premium” business to attract “premium” buyers. This is not that.
But attracting customers of a variety of income backgrounds will absolutely make your business more sustainable.
Quick reminder, because I know this one is easy to forget: You’re allowed to need to make money. You’re allowed to actively pursue a thriving business. If you believe in collective liberation, you have to also believe that you are part of the collective you’re liberating. Your financial wellbeing is part of that.
So listen, you need some clients who can pay at the top of the sliding scale or afford the full fee.
In this way, the community is helping to hold the systemic problem. Rather than just little ole you, taking the hit financially, your entire client network can pay into your sustainable salary. All of your clients together can help subsidize the cost of the lower income people who you are committed to serving.
This builds a stronger network of connection.
And it weaves you into the web.
Let us all hold all of us.