This is a guest blog series on a young feminist’s challenge to American work culture: how women-owned businesses and abundance perspectives about value and money can do us one better. (This is the final act.)

In the first part of this series, I suggested that women taking business into their own hands is one way of overcoming the limitations of the American workplace. Then I made a case for how knowing the value of what your business provides and setting your prices in a mindful, feminist way can promote your own professional autonomy and empowerment.

This time I want to think creatively, lovingly, about money and lifestyle.  The issue at hand is prosperity.  As women business owners, we want to not only do good, but do well for ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Traditional ways of thinking about money, value and business go something like this:

“Rational man, acting independently with perfect information, seeks to maximize utility in the context of scarce resources that are insufficient to satisfy all wants and needs.” (to briefly paraphrase the assumptions of neoclassical economics.)

Huh? Does that sound like how you want to do business?

Traditional business models take for granted that scarcity is at the root of our decision making. Apparently, there’s not enough of any of the good stuff to meet our wants and needs, and certainly not enough to take care of everyone else’s.

To get from scarcity to a place of prosperity surrounding money and lifestyle, we need some new thinking. We need to start with abundance.

Wait, don’t go! Don’t Alt+F4 me yet!

You may have heard all kinds of woowoo stuff about abundance and you probably read “The Secret” and maybe aren’t so sure that just manifesting positive energy is a good business plan for you.

I hear you.

So let’s just start with money as energy. SARK talks about this in her book Prosperity Pie: How to Relax About Money and Everything Else.

My first reaction was right. Let me just gather up my energy and see if Citibank will accept it as tender for this month’s student loan bills.

But at the launch of my biz, I entered into a trade agreement with a business colleague. No money changed hands, but we both spent time and energy doing things to help each other.

Ohhh, energy. Not hippie aura energy, but the effort and work that it took to create something of value for someone else. That’s exactly the thing I had to assess and put into dollar terms when I was setting my prices! Through my business, energy is turned into money; and I spend money to receive someone else’s energy, in one form or another.

Then it starts making sense that money and intangibles can be interchangeable. Abundance theories start to sound plausible.

And thankfully, thankfully, Mark Silver offers a profoundly simple and complex explanation of why most abundance theories are incomplete. It’s not that there are enough Mercedes or McMansions for every person who wants one, he says. Instead, abundance of the heart is unlimited and easy to manifest – not money or things.

“You do need to focus… but on the relationship with the aspect of your business or life you are struggling with, not on the results you think will solve your problems,” Mark writes.

So achieving abundance takes more than attitude. It also takes savvy, smarty-pants chutzpah and the courage to listen to your intuition. 

SARK may be on to something when she talks about the importance of feeling safe and prosperous no matter how much we have, but the proof is in the pudding.  She didn’t happy-feeley her way into the big time; she restructured her biz around her values of freedom and joy and then hired the help she needed to make it happen.  She built her own multi-bajillion dollar, whole-world-hugging empire by listening to her gut and taking action when returns on investment weren’t working out to her benefit. In her words:

“After I restructured and reshaped the direction of my company, I got better at looking at things from a business perspective. I hired a virtual consultative team, including a business advisor. Unlike before, I began to say ‘no’ more than I said ‘yes’ to opportunities. For instance, I had a chance to do a big deal with QVC, but the margins and terms weren’t right, so I turned it down.”

So what we’re really talking about here are cycles.

An attitude of abundance leads to action, which creates more abundance.

Even if you don’t have a ton of money now, deeply knowing that you’re safe on your journey creates a higher quality of life for you and will prepare you for action when the time is right.

And speaking of cycles…

“Remember that the more money circulates, the wealthier everyone is. Just as the more times inventory turns over, the more prosperous a store becomes, prosperity comes when giving and receiving are flowing freely.” – Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer, Creating Money

How about using our own personal spending power to support networks of other hard-working entrepreneurs? What about buying from within our own communities whenever possible and promoting each other’s work to friends and colleagues when it seems like a good match?

Ask for recommendations from friends, or start here at the Collective-E entrepreneur directory.

Your thoughts: Do you have better, more loving ways of thinking about money, value and lifestyle? What makes sense for you?

Jess Larsen is a young feminist entrepreneur who gets a rise out of helping other women and creative business owners with the day-to-day bizness of business. She reimagines virtual assistance for her clients with a focus on self-care as a necessary piece of the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Jess collects Story People prints and Quotable Cards magnets, adores tiny succulent plants, is a childbirth rights advocate, and has one small tattoo in an undisclosed location.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 8:59 am and is filed under Business plan, Feminism, Finding your voice, Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.