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b'Businesses are all about relationships, right?\\n\\n\\n\\nSure, I think we can all agree on that to one extent or another.\\n\\n\\n\\nBut what exactly do we mean by that?\\n\\n\\n\\nMost often, a business\\u2019s relationships are understood in terms of customer service, promotional partnerships, and management structures. They\\u2019re draped in the same words we use to describe our time and money: optimization, efficiency, investment, opportunity.\\n\\n\\n\\nThat\\u2019s not the language we use to describe our relationships with the people we genuinely care about, though. Most of us don\\u2019t want to optimize our marriages or see our friendships as opportunities for advancement.\\n\\n\\n\\nWe want to connect.\\n\\n\\n\\nTo relate. To belong. To nurture. So what happens when we apply this same motivation to our business relationships?\\n\\n\\n\\nThis month, I\\u2019ve got a series on relationships for you. We\\u2019re going to explore the obvious\\u2014our relationships with customers, with our teams, and our colleagues. We\\u2019re also going to explore the not-so-obvious\\u2014our relationship to ourselves and our businesses.\\n\\n\\n\\nAs I mentioned, much of the talk about relationships in business is couched in the language of optimization, opportunity, and even domination and exploitation. When Gary Vee says he\\u2019s \\u201ccrushing it,\\u201d it\\u2019s not really an \\u201cit\\u201d he\\u2019s crushing but a \\u201cwho.\\u201d When we talk about likes, shares, clicks, and eyeballs, we forget that there\\u2019s are living, breathing humans on the other side of that metric.\\n\\n\\n\\nOur capitalist culture has taught us to reduce all of these interactions to their ability to help us earn more and get ahead.\\n\\n\\n\\nWe\\u2019re taught to value individualism, speed & efficiency, competition, ownership, hierarchy, and the myth of the meritocracy. Jennifer Armbrust, who you\\u2019ll hear from later in this episode, describes these traits as part of patriachy and the masculine economy. Jennifer proposes a different type of economy, the feminine economy. In the feminine economy, we value abundance, gratitude, empathy, care, collaboration, and interdependence\\u2014the roots of true relationship.\\n\\n\\n\\nIt\\u2019s tempting to think that, because we\\u2019re small business owners, we\\u2019re always on the side of good, honest, sustainable business.\\n\\n\\n\\nBut since the patterns of domination and exploitation are baked into our definitions of power and success, we don\\u2019t get a free pass. Small business isn\\u2019t the solution to our problems but it can be a vehicle for pursuing business relationships in a more human way if we\\u2019re willing to examine how we do business and what that means for the people we\\u2019re in relationship with.\\n\\n\\n\\nThis is one expression of how Jennifer describes feminist entrepreneurship. She writes in Proposals for the Feminine Economy:\\n\\n\\n\\nFeminist entrepreneurship requires that we quit equating masculine principles with success and power, and feminine principles with inadequacy and weakness. To do something as audacious as call your business \\u201cfeminist\\u201d requires showing up every day with humility, heart, intrepid creativity, criticality, courage, self-love, and a passion for growth. It requires accountability to yourself, your business, and to the larger social project of dismantling patriarchal & oppressive systems.\\n\\n\\n\\nHow we understand the relationships we form in business and how we pursue nurturing those relationships can be a huge step in the direction of doing business through a feminist lens.'