How Capitalism Shows Up in Small Business (and How to Resist It)

Big acts of violence don’t erupt in isolation. They’re cultivated. Layered into us through a thousand small choices, reinforced compromises, and the ways we replicate harmful systems inside our homes, our bodies, and our businesses.

Another school shooting. Another act of state-sanctioned violence reminding us how unsafe our systems are—and always have been.

I write this as a white woman who has benefitted from those very systems. That reality shapes how I can engage this work: I am not navigating the daily risk of being policed, dispossessed, or erased in the ways Black, brown, queer, disabled, and other historically excluded communities are. I don’t want to brush over those differences.

At the same time, I refuse to pretend that violence only lives “out there.” It is reproduced in how we lead teams, how we define excellence, how we normalize disposability. Even the contradictions that light up the internet (like public figures who defend gun deaths until gun violence touches them) are symptoms of something deeper: extraction and hierarchy are coded into our operating systems.

That’s why, in the middle of the chaos, I stayed with the work I’d committed to. Not out of discipline or “consistency,” but because these small practices are how I stay grounded (and how I remember we don’t have to replicate what we’ve inherited).

I committed to three minutes a day. Each three minute segment names one “business as usual” practice, the cost it carries, and what building beyond might look like.

Introduction to 7 Days to Build Beyond Capitalism

I’ve called this series 7 Days to Build Beyond Capitalism. But to be clear: what I’m naming isn’t only about capitalism. These “business as usual” practices are also rooted in white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, and other logics of domination. They overlap and reinforce one another, which is why the patterns feel so pervasive. I use “capitalism” as a shorthand, but the truth is we’re interrogating something bigger: the culture of extraction and hierarchy we’ve internalized, often without realizing it.

And let me also be clear: this isn’t about being anti-money or anti-business. I believe business can be a site for activism; a place where we practice something different, more liberatory, more human. Small business doesn’t have to replicate the systems it was born inside of. It can be the practice ground for something better.

Because if we don’t interrogate both the capitalism weaponized against us and the capitalism living inside us (exhaustion rebranded as excellence, ownership mindset as unpaid labor, hierarchy disguised as strategy), we will keep perpetuating the very logics that make the big acts possible.

I want to share the full lessons and practices from Days 0–4. A kind of micro practice guide to catch us up.

So much of what we normalize in business isn’t really “just business.” It’s capitalism inextricably intertwined with supremacy in disguise. Exhaustion dressed up as excellence. “Ownership mindset” that really means unpaid labor. Growth for growth’s sake, no matter the cost. Pull back the mask and you see the same old logic: protect hierarchy, extract labor, keep the person at the top free while everyone else props them up.

I don’t believe in playing that game. I don’t believe liberation is a pitch; it’s a practice. Small business can be the practice ground for something better.

Practice: Name one thing in your business that feels normal but doesn’t actually feel good. Write it down. Naming it is the first act of refusing it.

Day 1 — The Myth of Winning

The cracks in a business show up in people long before they show up in revenue. And yet, business-as-usual teaches us that “winning” is the goal—even if it means climbing a ladder designed to pass the weight downward. I know, because I climbed it. My 30s were peak capitalist years, trying to reconcile my values with a system that rewarded me for betraying them.

What I know now: the goal isn’t to win capitalism. The goal is to build beyond it.

Practice: Map the ladder. Who benefits when you carry more than your share? Who pays when you pass the weight down? And then audit your “excellence”: where are you rewarded for over-functioning while someone else is denied growth?

Day 2 — Exhaustion as Excellence

Burnout isn’t emptiness—it’s accumulation. Layer after layer of demands until what was once warm gets freezer-burned. And the system rewards it. Leaders get praised for auto-exploitation: extracting from themselves first, then unconsciously building cultures that do the same to others.

That’s how capitalism—and supremacy—keep themselves running.

Practice: Audit what your business actually praises. Do you reward the person who stays late, says yes, picks up the slack? Do you celebrate output regardless of cost? If so, you’re replicating capitalism’s most reliable lie—that exhaustion equals excellence.

Day 3 — “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”

The phrase originally meant leaders need new habits at new stages. Fair enough. But business-as-usual twisted it into a justification for disposability: your early team isn’t who you need anymore. Thanks for helping us launch, but we’ll bring in “the real talent” now.

That’s extraction. Loyalty flowing only upward.

Practice: Take inventory of the people who carried weight from the beginning. Have you invested in their growth as much as they invested in yours? If not, choose one way to rebalance.

Day 4 — The Team Is Not Your Friends (releasing today)

Hierarchy teaches leaders to keep distance, to equate professionalism with isolation. But distance doesn’t build trust—it builds fear. I believe connection is structural. Compassion isn’t coddling; it’s what makes coherence possible.

Practice: Ask yourself: where are you holding back connection because you think it undermines authority? What would it look like to build trust instead; not as family (because that’s a different kind of broken practice to install in a business), but as humans working side by side?

Each one is an invitation into practice. Not as theory or perfection from a pedestal. Practice.

Because the future of leadership, in my opinion, isn’t going to be won on a debate stage or inside another broken institution. It will be shaped in the small, daily choices we make to stop replicating extraction, and to start building something more liberatory.

As Audre Lorde reminded us: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

That’s the ground I’m standing on.
That’s why I’m staying with this work.

If you want to practice refusing extraction in your own business, you can catch up on Days 0–4 here. And I’ll keep releasing Days 5, 6, and 7 on social media next week if you’d like to follow along.

With you, in practice,
xo
Brittany

P.S. When I talk about building beyond capitalism, I don’t mean showing up with a red pen to circle every place capitalism lives in your business. This work is more nuanced.

Together, we look at how “business as usual” patterns are showing up in real time—in your marketing, in your team dynamics, in the way you’re operating day to day. We center profit, of course. We track where there are leaks. And we ask: where can we root out the inherited patterns that no longer serve, and replace them with something more values-aligned, more human, more future-centered? How can your business feel good?

That’s what a Studio Session is designed to do: not theory for theory’s sake, but practice that makes your business more coherent, more sustainable, and more liberatory.

If you’re curious about what that could look like in your business, just hit the link above.