💠 Let’s Be Crystal Clear...

Amelia Hruby: 00:00

Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter: 00:08

Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go

Amelia Hruby: 00:25

Hey there, Off the Grid listeners. Amelia here coming to you raw and real and honest in the wake of this week's election. So as we all know by now, Donald Trump has been elected president again. He got more votes in the popular vote and the electoral college than Kamala Harris seemingly by a very clear margin. And for many of us, myself included, this has been devastating and enraging.

Amelia Hruby: 01:00

And I think that I have definitely felt a lot of anger this week, even if I would echo the sentiments of many others and say I haven't felt necessarily surprised by these events. And I wanted to share this today because throughout the election, off the grid generally functioned kind of business as usual. I shared weekly episodes. I kept up my encouragements to keep going, to find ways to make things work, to share your work, to create your work, to hopefully make some money with your work. And I think that that's all important.

Amelia Hruby: 01:39

And I'm going to talk a little bit more today about why I think that's maybe more important than ever. But I also think that there's something that happened in this election cycle and in the immediate wake of this election that really frustrated me and felt relevant to this show and the things that I talk about here. So obviously everything is political. All the actions we take are political. How we make money, how we spend money, this is all political.

Amelia Hruby: 02:06

So politics is always in the realm of off the grid, and I will speak implicitly and explicitly about critiques of capitalism, critiques of the United States, critiques of genocide, particularly speaking about Israel's brutal murdering of Palestinians in Gaza. And that comes up. I would say it's not the focus of the show, but I hope that you've heard it if you listen to the episodes. But there's something that really clarified for me this week that felt important to talk about today. And that is that Business as Usual or capital B Business, as I think of it, is inherently broken.

Amelia Hruby: 02:51

And I say that because we have just witnessed big business rally around and behind Trump. We have seen tech moguls like Elon Musk stand behind him. We have seen so many other businesses support him. We have seen him uplifted as a business owner. Right?

Amelia Hruby: 03:15

This is how Trump became famous in the first place, was through his father's company and through The Apprentice, where he is a public figure and the figurehead of a business owner. And I tend to think that I'm separate from that. They're over there doing that thing and I'm over here doing something else. And I do think that's true. I'm not doing what Elon Musk or Donald Trump are doing, certainly, but also I've just become more and more uncomfortable with capital B business again and with everything that it stands for in the United States and globally.

Amelia Hruby: 03:57

And I'm smart enough to know there's nuance here. I know that we can think of business as just the act of engaging in commerce and that that's not necessarily problematic, and I know that we can look to capitalism as perhaps the real problem here. I even Googled it this morning. I was like, what is the definition of business? And the second definition is the practice of making one's living by engaging in commerce.

Amelia Hruby: 04:20

So I do understand that maybe business itself is not the issue and that capitalism is the issue, but I also just can't get away from all of these headlines around Trump's election and forthcoming presidency that talk about this as ushering in a business friendly era. And again, I know that that means a capitalist business friendly era, but as someone who is out here with a business podcast, it just feels so antithetical to everything that I am trying to do here with all of you listening. And it felt important to arrive here today in some way this week to say that. As big business rallies behind Trump and looks to more profits amidst a presidency that promises fewer regulations and fewer taxes, as all of that happens, as big business looks to that, I think that small business can stand in opposition to everything that Trump and big business stands for. And while it can be tempting, even to me, to believe that I have no power up against these giant businesses and corporations or figureheads like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, even though it feels impossible to believe that I have any power in this David and Goliath situation.

Amelia Hruby: 05:49

All I feel like I can ever do is re center in myself and in the power that I do have and empower myself to live differently and to make changes with the people around me and the people that I have the pleasure of speaking to, which means you listening to this. I think that we are powerful and I think that the purpose of being a small business owner and of standing up against big business and all of the people who embrace and stand for that is to channel our energy and our money toward change. And I think that one of the ways to channel that money is to divest from the institutions that support big business. We saw very clearly the morning after the election that so many companies on the stock market went up. The stock market itself rose and seemed optimistic.

Amelia Hruby: 06:52

The stock market loves a Trump presidency and that says a lot to me about the values of the stock market and really makes me think, why would I ever trust this to take care of me? Why am I betting my retirement on the stock market when it loves Trump? And I truly, truly do not. Even if I try to do my lovingkindness meditations like Tara Brock taught me, I understand that's a thing, but I still have not brought myself to love Trump even through these most spiritual practices. Back to business.

Amelia Hruby: 07:28

I think that our businesses can be channels away from the worlds that we don't want to live in and toward the worlds that we want to see in the future. And I know that many listeners here may not identify with being a business owner or think of yourself as an artist, a writer, a creative who happens to make money or who is self employed, but all of that is the act of being in business. It's why I'm so insistent on business here. I think business is how we bring structure and systems to those creative practices such that they can make and hold and channel money. That's what I think business is outside of capitalism, but I think that we have to recognize this power that we have in order to activate it, to embody it, to use it to make change.

Amelia Hruby: 08:16

And the reason I'm showing up here today is to invite all of us into that. Of course, to sit with all of the feelings that are arriving for you, to find ways to process grief if you're feeling that or anger if you're feeling that, but eventually to channel that into action in your business and to conceive of your business as something that's bigger than just you. How exactly do we do that? Well, I think there are a lot of answers and I don't know that I have any or all of them in this moment, but they show up on this podcast all the time. Every time someone talks about offering a free class to their community, that's a way of using our businesses to create change.

Amelia Hruby: 09:00

Every time someone's able to do that because they're resourced by their business in other ways, that's an example of our business channeling resources toward change. Every time we create and share a book, a newsletter, a painting that enacts the values of liberation, that's our business enacting change. Every time we bring people together around an offering that helps us get closer to truth and freedom, that's the way our business enacts change. I think that we're all already doing this in so many ways. At least everyone listening to this podcast, I hope, is doing this in so many ways, I believe is doing this in so many ways, and also I think we can get even more crystal clear on our values and on the changes that we wanna see made and what we're willing to put on the line for what matters.

Amelia Hruby: 09:55

You know, I raised that question of myself earlier. Why do I trust the stock market if the stock market loves Trump? And the resounding answer is becoming, I don't. I trust the people that I care about to take care of each other. We take care of us.

Amelia Hruby: 10:08

That's something that me and many of my friends have been saying over and over again as, like, a balm and a recitation over the past few days, and I think that it's an important reframing in the context of what the state is and is about to become. And I think that our small businesses can be one way that we take care of us. All of you out there who are artists, who are herbalists, who are acupuncturists, who are healers, all of you who are writers, who are facilitators, who bring people together, who support people in doing their best, All of that is work that we need in the world that we want to bring to life, and your business is a piece of that. And I think that we can bring a lot more clarity to exactly how our business contributes to that new world, different world, reclaimed world that we wanna see. I also think there's something to say here about social media.

Amelia Hruby: 11:09

I do believe that social media is one of the problematic institutions that represents big business in this era, and that's why I have divested from it, and that's why I'm here to support people in divesting from it. And, of course, I regularly say on the show that you get to do what you want. I'm not here to tell you to leave social media or not. But today I am here to ask you, who is social media serving? Who do you believe it's serving?

Amelia Hruby: 11:39

Because I've made a lot of arguments on this podcast that it's not serving you. So who is it serving? And do you wanna be in service to those people? I think a part of this process of clarifying our values is asking hard questions of ourselves. That's something I do all the time and I don't always live up to all of my values and I'm not any sort of perfect person who has it all figured out, but this is one question that I have held on to on this show and that I'm gonna ask you today, which is if you are on social media, who is it serving and do you wanna be in service to them?

Amelia Hruby: 12:11

And if you want support and resources for stepping away from that, for finding ways for your business to be in service to the world that you wanna live in, all of that is here for you at off the grid. This is one of the ways that I am in service is trying to help all of us feel empowered to be in business and stay in business and to conceive of our businesses as vessels for change by being channels for our time, energy, and money in the world. So in the process of recording and editing and creating this episode, I decided that I want to hold space for all of us to come together and to think about what is the change that we hope our business can enact in the world. And so I am going to host a free session on Wednesday, November 20th. I'm calling it Crystal Clear, How Our Businesses Create Change.

Amelia Hruby: 13:14

And in that session, I will be guiding and working through and figuring out alongside you what commitments we can make for our work in the weeks, months, and years to come. I think that our small businesses can be a force for liberation, not a force for maximizing profits for a small elite that controls the government and the economy. Like, I truly believe that. I have to believe that to keep doing this work and stay so devoted to it. And so you are officially invited, Wednesday, November 20th, at 12 pm CST to join me for an hour long call where we will gather, we will ground, we will journal together, we will share in the chat, we will crowdsource ideas, we will make shared commitments with kind accountability, and we will begin to co create an era of small business that stands against everything that Trump and big business stand for.

Amelia Hruby: 14:13

And I just want to add in here that if you are someone who has the privilege of benefiting from white privilege, from class privilege, from gendered privilege, from any of these things, I especially invite you to consider your role in creating change. We won't all have the same role, but some of us perhaps might have more responsibility to step into this work. So, again, this event is called Crystal Clear, How Our Businesses Create Change. It is completely free. It will not be recorded.

Amelia Hruby: 14:45

You will not be added to my mailing list when you sign up. This is not, like, a play for me to grow my audience. It is a genuine offering of my time and some of the skills that I have been honing to gather us around making different choices in our work, in our lives, in our businesses that help us all take steps toward liberation in this moment, specifically in the face of Trump's presidency. I want to stand against it now and in the next 4 years and beyond. I want to be standing there with you, and this crystal clear call is my way of beginning that process.

Amelia Hruby: 15:22

So there's a link in the show notes to RSVP. That's the only way you can get the Zoom link and join us. I hope to see some or many or all of you there, and please just know that I share this with so much love, so much solidarity, and so much care. So thank you as always for tuning in to this episode. Thank you for lending your attention to me and to this podcast.

Amelia Hruby: 15:44

And until next time, I will see you off the grid.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter: 15:49

Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay. I know that you really wanna put your phone away.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter: 15:59

Yeah. Let's go off the grid.