Last week you heard about a nasty anonymous letter sent to my fellow farmer, Tricia Park of Creekside Meadows farm, berating her about her prices.  All of us small, independent farmers and business owners…if we’ve been in the game for a while, have a few of these war stories to tell.  This week I’m going to share one of my favorites, about Agnes and The Cloak of Shame.  This is part two of my three part series on Pricing &Spiritual Well-Being.  This section is excerpted from my newest book, Redefining Rich.  

 

 

The haughty prejudice against trade is not new: Cicero reported 

that the ancient Germanic warriors despised store owners as lazy 

and spiritless. They decided it was more manly to kill, rape, and 

steal than weigh out corn every day.
 — Tom Hodgkinson, Business for Bohemians 

TERMS THAT I LIKE: free spirit, independent, self-reliant, creative, gen- erous, Earth mama. 

Words that I don’t like: corporate, greedy, slick, commercial, sellout, selfish. 

So it was a tough morning when I received an email from one of our longtime customers, Agnes,1 after Bob and I had committed a few hundred thousand dollars to buying the old building and putting in the café. Rather than simply unsubscribing to my weekly emails, Agnes made a special effort to write and explain, in detail, why she no longer wished to patronize Sap Bush Hollow Farm, and me, in particular. She used every word I don’t like to describe me. She accused me of corrupting my parents, sullying their years of hard and honest work by increasing prices, using slick graphics in my emails, and then going corporate by opening a café and farm store. 

Upon reading her words, I grew sick in my stomach. Agnes had found me out. She had seen right through me, to the truth: I am a greedy, selfish, horrible person. My rhetoric about saving farmland, keeping families together, and living in harmony with the Earth is just a heap of branding bullshit, designed to sucker hapless consumers to eat my cooking, buy my products, read my books, and make me rich and famous. Look out, Kardashians! 

Shaking, I had to stand up from the computer and walk away. My body wanted to be angry at Agnes’s words. I wanted to fire back arguments, defend my honor. But all of it would have been a thinly veiled effort to mask what Agnes had successfully done: blanket me in a cloak of shame.  So I took my dogs and walked up the road in my cloak, letting it penetrate my consciousness. I wandered to one of the ponds in the state land and sat down on a rock, safely hidden from my family, my customers, and my neighbors. With no one to see me naked, I mentally slipped out of that cloak and visioned it falling in a heap beside me. And something about it shocked me. It wasn’t new or unfamiliar. I knew every thread of my cloak of shame. Agnes hadn’t woven it for me. I made it myself with fretting threads every time I sent a marketing email, every time I made a social media post promoting my writing or the farm, every time I stood before a customer and asked them to pay for my family’s meat, every time I sold a book, every time I charged a speaking fee. Somewhere along the line I’d bought into the paralyzing myth that to embody my favorite terms—free spirit, independent, self-reliant, creative, generous, Earth mama—I had to live above money. I had to not need it. I had to provide for my family, secure the future of our land, and live a joyous, balanced life without money. And every time I held my hand out and asked for it, I was living a contradiction, weaving my cloak of shame. 

If I kept wearing it, that cloak was a surefire way to kill every dream I ever had. No one was going to come and buy my products if I didn’t market them. No one was going to visit my café if I didn’t tell them it was there. No one was going to support my work if I didn’t ask for their support. No one was going to pay what we needed to live and keep the farm afloat if I didn’t ask for prices that were fair to my family. No one was going to waltz into my café and say, “Wow, Shannon! You didn’t email, call, post, or make any other marketing effort that might annoy me in some way. Sap Bush Hollow deserves all my business! And wooo- hooo! Did you say you’re no longer charging for your products? You’re a truly honorable businesswoman. I’ll be your faithful customer!” 

This is what my cloak of shame was directing me to do: Don’t be annoying. Don’t ask for what you need. Disgusted with my wardrobe, I left it in a heap behind the rock for the birds to peck at. Then I walked home and sent Agnes an email thanking her for her years of support and her candor. I wished her well then deleted her from my email list. 

Agnes did me a huge favor that day—she showed me what I was wearing. It was a ridiculous garment. And while she—a bohemian artist who somehow manages to live above the sordid business of commerce— thought I should keep it on, I did not want to live in the helpless image that Agnes painted for me and that I was painting for myself. 

Since then, I’ve learned that self-reliant, free-spirited family lovers who want to save the Earth, support their families, and keep their lives and businesses intact have to do something important. They have to sell themselves constantly and ask for many things: for customers, for readers, for donations, for fair prices, for help. 

If we don’t learn to wholeheartedly engage with sales and marketing, we will chronically undervalue our work and our gifts. When we undervalue our work and our gifts, the life-serving economy we are trying to build crumbles to dust. 

And while asking people to buy our wares and support our work sounds like a form of dependence, at its core, it is an assertion for independence and dignity. “The petite bourgeoisie are the true revolutionaries,” writes Tom Hodgkinson. “They are the ones who take the risk and open the store. They start the small business. They are not content to follow the path of professional or employee. They are the anarchists, the ones who take responsibility, the ones who do not allow themselves to shift the blame on to boss or government.”2 

Sales and marketing are not just a means of supporting your business. They are a way to honor the labors and contributions of your customers and supporters. To deny or play down their participation and financial contributions when you require them is a way of saying, “I don’t need you.” It strips them of their dignity. We all need to be needed. To accept the prices that you need to feel good in your work, to accept their choice to support you, is a way of seeing them, of letting them play a role in this new and better world we are trying to build. Just remember to say, “Thank you.” And mean it. 

Is all this discussion hitting a nerve with you?  I hope so.  If you’re like me, you’re forever on a quest to live more deeply, make time for what matters and still keep the bills paid.  So Be sure to check out my new book, Redefining Rich: Achieving True Wealth with Small Business, Side Hustles and Smart Living, where I talk about the balance between being creative & recognizing the riches right under your nose…I also give a lot of helpful advice about money and small business.  Don’t miss it!

1. Not her real name
2. Tom Hodgkinson, Business for Behemians: Live Well, Make Money (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2018), 80.

This podcast happens with the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Maria Berger & Margaret Ferguson.

Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you!  If you’d like to help support my work, you can do so for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.