The Enough Experiment: Deconditioning from Capitalism's "More" Mindset

What if the answer to burnout isn't doing more... but defining enough?

In this episode, I sit down with Becky Mollenkamp—feminist business coach, author, and liberation advocate—for a conversation that challenges everything we've been conditioned to believe about success, productivity, and money. Becky assigns me a 30-day experiment designed to decondition my brain from capitalism's relentless "more, more, more" and help me discover what enough actually looks like.

This isn't about deprivation or settling. It's about freedom. Freedom from the straight jacket of hustle culture, from chasing arbitrary revenue goals, and from sacrificing sleep, joy, and creativity in pursuit of someone else's definition of success.

If you're a manifesting generator like me (or just someone who constantly feels like you should be doing more), this episode will make you rethink everything. We explore how to define your own enough across money, time, productivity, and values... and why that simple act is one of the most radical things you can do as a business owner.

Topics:

• Why capitalism conditions us to believe "enough" means failure or settling
• The four-week framework for defining and implementing your enough
• How to audit your time and money against your actual values
• Why defining enough is harder (and more liberating) than you think
• The difference between needs, wants, and what capitalism tells us we want
• How Becky's quarterly hotel retreats became part of her enough

You can find Becky Mollenkamp at:

Website: beckymollenkamp.com

Mentioned in the episode:

• Liberate Your Business by Becky Mollenkamp (releasing late April)
• The Enough Experiment details at jackihayes.co/podcasts

What next?

• Follow Here's What I Learned on your favorite podcast player
• Leave a review so the podcast is seen by more people like you
• Share this episode with a friend who needs permission to do less
• Follow me on Instagram at @jackihayes_obm

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Transcript

Jacki Hayes

Welcome to season 10 of Here's What I Learned. I'm Jacki Hayes, a systems and ops strategist, romantasy reader, and D&D nerd who's endlessly curious about what makes a business actually work. This season is about experiments.

Big, small, accidental, and transformative. Because every business is built on trial and error, noticing, and iteration. If you're growing a business that changes with you and you're tired of one-size-fits-all advice, you'll feel right at home.

So let's get into it. Welcome back to the show, Becky. I am so excited to have you here once again.

She's going to be assigning me an experiment that I'm excited for and also really not excited for. Yeah, a little bit of one of those, oh, I'm going to get a taste of medicine I really don't want but desperately need. Your experiment isn't enough.

Tell me why you picked that one and just a kind of a little bit of a rundown of what you're suggesting I do during the 30 days.

Becky Mollenkamp

Yeah, well, it's going to actually be a lot more about what you're not going to do than what you are going to do. I am writing a book that's coming out. I don't know when this is going to air, but I think it'll be coming out in probably late April.

I'm still finalizing the date. The book is actually finished. So I've written a book, I should say, called Liberate Your Business.

And it's all about how do we as entrepreneurs and business owners start to decouple ourselves from white supremacist capitalist patriarchy while still having to exist inside of capitalism, right? And we want to still make money and making money isn't inherently bad. It's about an energy exchange.

It's about being able to care for yourself. There are good things about money, but where capitalism teaches us there's never enough money, liberation is about what is enough, right? And so as I started to think about what is one of the core things that also would then lend itself well, I think, to an experiment, for me, it came down to that concept of when I really think about how do we begin to, especially as business owners, sort of pull ourselves out of the conditioning we have around capitalism, I think so much of it is how do I get out of the cycle of more, more, more and start to train myself to think about enough, enough, enough. And that doesn't just look like money, although that's a big piece of it, right?

But it's also how much is enough sleep, which that's where we end up not having enough, right? With money, we're constantly chasing more at the sacrifice of a lot of things that we actually do need more of, which includes things like sleep, joy, family, all these other parts of our lives. We sacrifice those in this pursuit of more fame, more money, more accolades.

And so my goal is how do we start to make that shift? And I loved the challenge of this, of, okay, it's enough, it's one thing to talk about, okay, I want enough, but what does that start to look like if we want to implement that? In this case, I'm thinking 30 days, you can choose, but I gave you four weekly assignments where we kind of break that down into something that you, an action you can take every week to start to be reconditioning your brain to be thinking about enough instead of more.

Jacki Hayes

When I saw this experiment, I thought, this is absolutely perfect. As somebody who, if you're into human design, I am a manifesting generator. Yeah, it's really hard to like this idea of enough because I'm just constantly bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing of things that I want to do.

And then as I started to read through your suggestions for the four weeks, I was like, well, wow, there's not a whole lot to the assignment each week, which goes back to the enough. Like I think when a lot of us want to adopt new habits or behaviors, we cram all of it in, like I'm going to do this thing. And like week one is literally just define what enough is.

That's it. Not even the second week is now put it into practice, which is so not what we're used to.

Becky Mollenkamp

Yeah, and I think that's important. And I think we undervalue how challenging something as what seemingly simple as define your enough actually is. And so we think, oh, I'll do that in the first 30 seconds and then I'll go and I'll plan 60 more activities that are going to help me start to implement this thing.

We need to slow down and actually really think what does that look like? Because when I ask you to define what enough looks like for you, there's going to be a whole lot of resistance that comes up because capitalist conditioning has told you that enough means sacrifice, that enough means settling, right? That enough means surrender, that enough means all of these really failing, giving up, right?

It means these bad, quote unquote, bad things. That's what we've been conditioned to believe, that when you ask somebody how much is enough money, they think they're immediate, like there's tension in their body that says, well, I shouldn't have to settle for enough. Enough is not asking you to limit.

I'm not, in fact, telling you any rules about what enough is. I'm not saying you can only do this this month. You can only do this much of whatever this month.

You get to determine that. And you may say enough is, I actually need to make this much money. And that actually still feels like a challenge.

Okay. It can still be more than you're currently making, right? That might still be what actually enough looks like, but we don't even know what enough is.

And so taking that time to think about how much do I actually need, not want because someone else told me I want, not get because I think it'll make me look better in other people's eyes, right? None of these things. But what do I actually need to live a life that feels good, right?

None of us, hate to break it to you, need a billion dollars to do that. There's just no need. No one needs a billion dollars.

And you can't make a billion dollars in a way that's ethical. You might need a million. Depending on where you live, you might need to make a million dollars a year to live a life that is actually feeling really good.

Maybe because it looks like housing where you live is astronomically high. Maybe it because you live in a culture that says, I need to take care of my parents. That's part of the expectation.

And that might mean more money. There are real reasons why you might need to make a million dollars a year. But what I also find is often people sit down to really define their own enough.

And that looks like, let me actually look at my real budget. And that can include my quote unquote, aspirational budget, things I would like to have that would make life feel better. And by the way, that might include, I want to be able to give this much money to mutual aid every month, right?

I want to be able to give this much money to my parents to help them, whatever. But once we actually sit down to do that, what I find over and over again is people actually need far less than they thought they did. Because we live, rarely do we ever define it.

In fact, we're not encouraged to do that, right? That is not what capitalism wants us to do. It wants us to think, just take out the credit card and get more.

Don't worry about what you actually need, just more. You always need more. And unless, if you actually sit down to define it, you'll realize, oh, I don't.

And so that's important. And then the other piece, because I really want you to think beyond just money, which is productivity. How many episodes of this podcast do I actually need to put out this month?

How many social media shares do I actually need to do? How much time do I actually want to spend on social media? And then how much time do I want to sleep?

What do I need in order to make that happen? How much time do I want to spend with my family? So I want you to think about productivity and time, how we want to divvy up that time, what you actually need for that, because that then begins to, then is where the play comes in, right?

This dance of, if I say what I value most, and some of this looks at our values, what I value most is, it might look like community, or what I value most is family, or what I value most is creation and art. I have to then back that up with, how am I spending my time in those categories? How am I using my money in those categories?

So if the thing you value most is creativity, it's not for me, but for many people that is, like art, expression, beauty, that is something that many people have as a very high value. Then when you look at how they spend their money, they're putting no money towards that. They're not giving themselves the gift of a class.

They're not giving themselves the gift of some beautiful new supplies or a room where they can actually create, and they're not giving themselves the time also for that. So that becomes where you start to get to do this dance of allocating time and money, the resources, towards the things that I actually need and want more of, versus, and maybe at the expense of, things that I thought I needed, often money, or amount of time spent at work, that maybe I actually need less of. So that's not a five-minute exercise.

So that's why I'm saying, let's take a week, because there's a lot to consider in that week. There is.

Jacki Hayes

There was so much that you said that I was like, oh, I have so many thoughts on this. The first part was, I did an exercise years ago with money mindset type stuff, and I discovered that I put the word just in front of enough all the time, which made me think, I'm barely scraping by. I have just enough money to cover my bills, or I have just enough money if my car breaks down, and realizing that that's not really what enough is.

And then, like you said, having a good life. Enough isn't about just survival. It's about thriving.

Becky Mollenkamp

Yes. Yes, exactly. And that's why we need to start to shift our thinking about enough.

Enough does not mean settling, quote unquote. It does not mean failing or sacrificing. It means how much do I need to have a life that reflects my values, and that feels good to exist inside of?

Would it feel amazing to have a personal chef, and a personal masseuse, and my own indoor swimming pool? Could I name a million things that would make life feel amazing? Yeah, but do I need those to actually be aligned with my values, and living a life that feels really good to me?

No, no. But do I need safe and reliable transportation? Yeah.

Do I need my child to be receiving an education that feels really good by people who know what they're doing? Yeah. And in my case, that means the public schools.

That may not mean that for some people. Do I need a home where I have reliable heat and air conditioning? Heck yeah.

I do. I'm in the Midwest, and it's unsafe to not have those things. So there's a lot of things that I need that are not just survival.

Because I could survive on less. I could survive on public transportation. But do I need for the vision I have for my life, my own vehicle?

I do. I do. Because where I live, public transportation is not super reliable.

I could do it, but it would change drastically the amount of time I have to spend every day walking to and from public transportation and all of that. So this is not a lecture or me trying to make people feel bad. For wanting, but it is an invitation to consider wanting and how much of it is actually what you truly want aligned with your values and the life that feels good to you versus what you've been told life should be, that you somehow are supposed to be living a Kardashian life.

That may not be what you want. And in fact, it might not be aligned with your value set at all.

Jacki Hayes

And you mentioned the hours working, whether that's for somebody else or for yourself. But I think one thing as business owners, a lot of times, especially if we come from corporate, we start off working that 40 hour a week mentality. But I remember learning, and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this idea, but basically it's you fill the time that you have.

So if you say that you have a five hour workday, you will find a way to fill that five hour workday. It doesn't matter actually, if it was really, I don't want to say productive, but was that moving the needle to where you want to go? Or were you just doing busy work because you gave yourself five hours that day?

Becky Mollenkamp

Yeah. So it's Parkinson's law, which I would have never remembered. But I do remember that it's the idea that time work fills to expand the time given.

And it's been proven again and again, through studies where if you tell someone they have 15 minutes to complete a task that could reasonably be accomplished in that amount of time, they will get it done. If you give them 30 minutes, it will take them 30 minutes. We do that.

And so that's often what's happening to us is we're sitting down at our desk and like, well, I'm supposed to work nine to five to be a real business owner, to be a real business person. We have all of, again, it's this conditioning and these beliefs we have about what makes us valid or real or worthy. And I want to challenge those because if you can get your work done in two hours a day, and that allows you to bring in the income and the personal satisfaction that fills up the bucket that you're trying to fill to, again, meet your enough, more power to you.

And if that then means that you have additional hours to put towards those things again, as you do your own sort of audit of your value set and how you want to be spending your time, if it then says, now I can actually put time towards the things I really value, right? And some of us value our work because my work feels like a contribution. It feels important to me.

I want to spend time working. So my enough includes enough time to do that, but it doesn't mean it has to fit some arbitrary number of eight hours, right? But I also want to make sure I have enough time for creation and for family.

And for me, solitude is really important. I'm an introvert. I need solitude.

I like that time for just thinking, for moving my body, for writing. There are things I do in my own solitude, so I want to make sure I have space and time for that, which for me looks like quarterly I go to a hotel alone for a weekend. And that is part of my enough.

I discovered that, which may feel like a luxury or not a need for survival, it is part of what allows me to survive, to show up as the person I want to show up for my family. So that weekend, four times a year, it's about $2,000 a year I spend, right? That is included in my enough.

When I think about what's enough for me, it has to include those $2,000 that I spend towards getting my quarterly hotel retreat, because it's what allows me to show up as the mom I want to be, as the partner that I want to be, as the business owner, the friend, right? So again, this is this invitation. I don't want you, Jacki, as you approach it, or anyone who might decide to do it, to feel like it's some sort of punishment or a limiting thing.

This doesn't have to be limiting. It actually can be incredibly opening and freeing, which is what happened for me, where after I started to finally shake off these ideas about what I needed and that it's always supposed to be more, when I was able to give myself that permission and freedom to figure out my enough number and realize I don't have to make a million dollars a year or anywhere near it. I don't need to join your seven-figure club online business owners, because that's not going to satisfy what I need for my life and my value set.

And all it does is rob me of so many other things. When I was able to let that go and settle into my enoughness, that actually felt way more freeing than when I was making six figures or trying to get after seven figures or working endlessly towards some pursuit of more. I can't tell you the freedom in it.

So at the beginning, I think we will often feel resistance of it feels like you're wanting me to put on a straight jacket. But in truth, I'm wanting you to take off the straight jacket that capitalism has already put on you. Yeah.

Jacki Hayes

Yeah. That resistance, you have to ask yourself, is that your internal values and beliefs? Or is that something that you've been basically programmed to believe is the way things should be?

Becky Mollenkamp

Yeah. And as you do this, also, I just want to make sure too to say like, yeah, it's not you. It's the system.

So as you start to notice that stuff, it's easy to start to feel guilty or icky or just like, oh, why did I believe this or feel bad about ourselves? But of course you feel it. This is literally the air we all breathe.

And even when you start to do this work, and I've talked to many people who are farther on this journey than I am, who are like my goals around liberation, and they still, you do all the work, you go out and you breathe the same damn air. So you, again, you're like, oh, why am I finding myself again, getting caught up in uber productivity, hustle culture, needing to make more money or wanting more things in my house or whatever. It's like, oh, that's because I did the work.

And then I went out and breathed a little more air and more of it got in. And now I got to excavate that. So like, it's so normal.

So don't like resist the stuff that starts to make you feel icky and shamey and bad when you start to do this work, because that does happen.

Jacki Hayes

Becky, where can everybody find you if they want to follow along more and also find out more about your book that will be coming up? It'll be released about a month or two after this goes live.

Becky Mollenkamp

Well, good, because then you can sign up if you're one of those people who hears this and signs up for the wait list early at beckymollenkamp.com slash book, or you just go to beckymollenkamp.com. You'll see it at the top there. I'm going to be doing book bundles, which I'm really excited about that are also, speaking of like my creativity, I've started doing embroidery this year and I need a way to like, it's a handcraft that gets me off my phone, which is part of why I want to do it.

I want to have a creative outlet. I also want to spend less time on social media. So this works really well.

However, what am I going to do with a million embroidery projects? I don't really need all that. So I'm making little key chains that I'm super excited about along with other things.

There's also going to get access to a private podcast feed. That's going to help you actually implement the book for a full year after purchase so that you can actually put these things into practice in your business and some other goodies. So you can sign up for the book bundle if you're one of the earlier people to purchase.

So I'm glad this is coming out before, if you're listening, go to beckymollenkamp.com book, and you can sign up for the waitlist so that you know when those bundles are available or just when the book's available, if you want the ebook or the printed book.

Jacki Hayes

Excellent. And for those of you who want to know more details about the actual experiment, if you go to my website, Jackihayes.co slash podcasts, they're going to be in the show notes there so that you can follow along and get all the details that Becky assigned to me. So thank you for coming today, Becky.

I'm so excited for you to do this.

Becky Mollenkamp

And then we're going to meet again, right? To follow us.

Jacki Hayes

Yeah, we will have Becky back on. I will probably actually do a mid experiment episode, solo episode where I talk about how I'm feeling about the experiment. And then we will have Becky back on to talk about it after the 30 days.

Becky Mollenkamp

I can't wait to hear how it goes. And during the whole thing, I just want to let you know to email me if there's any questions, because I know I gave you some stuff, but I feel like I could have probably gone even more into depth. But again, don't want to overwhelm, want less is more.

So let me know if you have any questions and I can't wait to come back and hear how it went.

Jacki Hayes

Excellent. Thanks so much, Becky. Thank you.

Thanks again for spending time with me on Here's What I Learned. If this episode gave you something useful to try, rethink or explore, the best way to support the show is to follow and lead a review that helps more curious business owners find their way here. And if you want more real talk about the experiments that shape our businesses, plus practical doable system ideas, join my email list.

I send one to two emails each week with stories, insights, and strategies that help you build a business that supports your life, not the other way around. You'll also get updates on workshops, new offerings, and the things I'm learning as I experiment alongside you. Until next time, keep experimenting, keep paying attention to what those experiments tell you, and keep building a business that fits you.