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If you’re a solopreneur, coach, consultant, practitioner or creative who cares deeply about people, and the planet, but also want your work to sustain you emotionally and financially, this is for you.
Much of the traditional advice on building a business comes from industrial, corporate blueprints never designed for solopreneurs. It’s hardly surprising it doesn’t work in the new world of work, or that it leaves thoughtful entrepreneurs feeling not just frustrated but compromised and complicit.
There is another way. By reframing how we think about growth, productivity and success, we can embrace an alternative model of business that is relational, regenerative and liberatory. We can build thriving businesses on our own terms, businesses that advance social justice while still putting food on our tables, that transform extractive systems into forces of regeneration and hope.
This is the future of business for good.
Marisa Guthrie is a business coach, entrepreneur and teacher with 30 years’ experience helping solopreneurs design ethical, sustainable businesses. The former CEO of a health charity and the managing director of a cross-party think tank advocating social policy, she has consulted on policy for the Green Party and an All-Party Parliamentary Group on micro-business.
Marisa Guthrie is a business coach, teacher, and entrepreneur with over 30 years’ experience supporting solopreneurs and social enterprises to grow ethically and sustainably. A former CEO and serial founder, she has worked at both grassroots and policy levels, including as Managing Director of a cross-party think tank influencing social policy and as an advisor to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on micro business.
Marisa’s work bridges philosophy and practice, reframing business as a living ecosystem that integrates profit and purpose while centering social justice and wellbeing. Drawing on decades of experience leading purpose-driven organizations, she helps entrepreneurs design coherent, values-aligned business models through her Thrive Business Ecosystem framework.
Based in Devon, she runs Marisa Guthrie Coaching and writes The Reluctant Capitalist - a weekly newsletter and forthcoming book exploring how small businesses can erode extractive systems from within and model regenerative, liberatory ways of working.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part One: Naming the System
Chapter 1: Let’s Talk About Money
Chapter 2: A Short History of Capitalism: The Justifying Myth
Chapter 3: Isn’t a Reluctant Capitalist Still a Capitalist?
Chapter 4: Neoliberalism: The Hidden Hand
Part Two: Naming the Impact
Chapter 5: Overwhelm and Burnout
Chapter 6: Bootstrapping Sustainably
Part Three: The Thrive Business Ecosystem
Chapter 7: Introduction to the Thrive Business Ecosystem
Chapter 8: Your Personal and Financial Needs/Goals
Chapter 9: Your Capacity and Nervous System Regulation
Chapter 10: Support Systems and Processes (Including Emotional Ones)
Chapter 11: A Business Model that Supports Social Justice
Chapter 12: Creating an Authentic Signature Offering
Chapter 13: Ethical Pricing
Chapter 14: Ethical Marketing
Chapter 15: Your Aligned Sales Strategy
Part Four: Eroding Capitalism
Chapter 16: A New Way Forward
Chapter 17: Four Ways to Resist Capitalism (and Why Erosion Matters Most)
Conclusion
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author