What happens when feminist founders stop trying to outrun burnout—and start redesigning work around care, capacity, and real life?

In this episode of Feminist Founders, Becky Mollenkamp and Faith Clarke are joined by Meg Buzzi and Sarah Durlacher, co-founders of Fixchr, a boutique consulting firm that helps organizations navigate change through behavior, engagement, and collective practice.

Together, they unpack what abundance actually means when you’re juggling caregiving, leadership, partnership, and survival inside systems that were never built for human needs. This is a conversation about decolonizing time, rebuilding capacity after burnout, refusing urgency culture, and reimagining work that flows—rather than drains.

If you’re a founder who feels stretched thin, caught between care work and paid work, or craving a more spacious way to lead, this episode will feel like an exhale.

In This Episode, We Talk About:
• Why abundance isn’t just about money—it’s also about time, restoration, and choice
• How caregiving (especially for elders) reshapes leadership capacity
• What it means to decolonize time and stop moralizing productivity
• Moving from crisis-driven work to preventative, sustainable change
• The tension between billable work and long-term investments in community and ideas
• Why founders often become the last people to receive the care they offer others
• Designing businesses that can bend without breaking when life happens

Meg Buzzi and Sarah Durlacher are the co-founders of Fixchr, a boutique consulting organization that supports organizations, teams, and leaders through periods of transition and change. Their work focuses on behavior change, engagement, and helping groups move together—without defaulting to urgency, extraction, or burnout. https://www.fixchr.com/

About Feminist Founders
Feminist Founders is a podcast and community for business owners who want to challenge capitalist norms and build human-first, equity-aligned businesses. Hosted by Becky Mollenkamp and Faith Clarke, the show blends real conversations, feminist analysis, and practical reflection for founders who refuse to hustle themselves into the ground.

👉 Learn more and join the community at feministfounders.co

🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE: http://feministpodcastcollective.com/

🎟️ Join Us December 18th for the Planning Sprint

If Amanda’s story hit home — if you also feel buried under tiny tasks, unclear on the big picture, and craving time to breathe, think, and reset — come join Faith and me for a 90-minute Planning Sprint on Dec. 18th.

This is not productivity theater.
This is support.
This is resourcing.
This is creating space for actual clarity so you can end the year grounded instead of gasping.

$199 • No sales page • Register here:
👉 https://beckymollenkamp.as.me/planning

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This week we sat down with Feminist Founders member Amanda Laird, a growth marketing strategist and creator of Slow & Steady, a feminist business practice rooted in integrity, intentionality, and the belief that women and creative entrepreneurs deserve to thrive without burning themselves to the ground.

Amanda helps solo creative entrepreneurs rethink their relationship with marketing and growth, and she does it through a holistic, feminist lens—one she developed through 20+ years in communications, deep study with Jennifer Armbrust (Sister), and a background in holistic nutrition that taught her to look at root causes, not symptoms.

But today’s conversation wasn’t just about her clients. It was also about Amanda’s own edges—the place where so many of us find ourselves:
the overwhelm of being a one-woman show, the longing for a slower pace, the guilt of resting before we “earn” it, and the capitalist potholes we keep falling into even when we know better.

Faith and I walked with Amanda through what it means to rebuild capacity, tap into community, hear the voice she keeps locked in the closet (her words!), and reorient her work away from exhaustion and back toward restoration, creativity, and support.

Spoiler: the answer involved a tiny sketchbook, a five-minute daily practice, and reclaiming the truth that we don’t build feminist businesses by doing it all alone.

It’s tender, it’s real, and it’s a masterclass in taking your own medicine as a feminist leader.

In This Episode We Discuss:
• Amanda’s core value of integrity and how it anchors her work
• Why “slow and steady” is both a philosophy and an aspiration
• How the feminine economy (Jennifer Armbrust) shapes her business
• The honest truth of being overwhelmed by tiny tasks and big dreams
• The eldest-daughter conditioning that tells us we must do it all
• Why capacity and organization aren’t the real issue
• How shame shows up around asking for or paying for support
• The myth that we must “earn” rest
• The voice in the closet: the wisdom of community, reciprocity & tapping into our network
• Rebuilding leadership from restoration, not exhaustion
• Help, harm, and why individualism keeps us stuck
• A practical (and compassionate) plan for moving forward:
• A “not right now” list
• A five-minute daily sketchbook practice
• Anchoring back into alignment-before-action
Turning toward community instead of isolation

🎤 WE'RE PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE

In this episode of Feminist Founders, Becky Mollenkamp and Faith Clarke reflect on The Weight We Carry — a focus group conversation about invisible labor and how it shows up in our personal and professional lives.

They share insights and takeaways from the powerful session, where participants told stories, named the unseen work they carry, and began exploring ways to release it. What emerged was both deeply personal and profoundly collective — a recognition that the exhaustion so many of us feel isn’t personal failure, it’s systemic.

Discussed in this conversation:
• How storytelling reveals the collective wisdom we already hold
• Why invisible labor is both embodied and systemic
• What it means to refuse to participate in your own sacrifice
• How trust, accountability, and community intersect in the work of release
• Why simple “one-two-three” solutions don’t work — and what does
• How shame, guilt, and perfectionism keep us in patterns of overwork
• The power of community in reprogramming the conditioning that makes us overfunction
• What medicine looks like when it’s rooted in collective care and belonging

Becky and Faith also share details about their upcoming small-group program—Releasing the Weight—a community container designed to help you identify, name, and release the invisible labor weighing you down — just in time for the holidays.

✨ Join the group experience: feministfounders.co/group

📰 Subscribe on Substack: feministfounders.substack.com

Business owners can contribute to the white paper

🎤 PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE

This week looks a little different. Becky’s out sick, so we’re sharing a powerful conversation from Assigned Reading where Becky and Faith dive into Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s essay and TED Talk We Should All Be Feminists.

It’s a wide-ranging and deeply personal discussion about feminism across cultures, the intersections of race and gender, and how we carry both the weight of oppression and the responsibility of shaping culture ourselves.

👉 Don’t miss our upcoming free event, The Weight We Carry on invisible labor, happening October 9, 2025. Sign up here: https://evt.to/eoieheisw

Discussed in this episode:
• How Adichie’s centering of Nigerian culture resonates with Afro-Caribbean experiences
• Why feminism often defaults to “white feminism” in the U.S.—and the harm in that invisibility
• Chimamanda’s 2017 comments on trans women, her clarification, and what it says about growth and accountability
• How women are held to perfectionist standards under white supremacy
• The challenge (and necessity) of contextualizing feminism through race, culture, and personal story
• Why “people shape culture” is both a call to action and a permission slip
• Owning our own stories of privilege and oppression—and how whiteness itself can be a prison
• Shame as one of the sharpest tools of oppression and how it maintains systems of power
• The many ways activism can look: rest, storytelling, parenting, teaching, healing, and beyond

🎤 PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE

In this solo episode of Feminist Founders, Faith Clarke reflects on the invisible labor women carry, the stories that connect us, and the power of collective truth-telling. Drawing from Desmond Tutu’s teaching on Ubuntu—“a person is a person through other persons”—Faith invites listeners to consider how our common humanity can be honored through deep listening, shared storytelling, and co-creation of solutions.

Faith shares her background in qualitative research, her belief that human stories are data, and how the Feminist Founders community is engaging in collective storytelling to explore invisible labor. This episode is both a personal reflection and an invitation: to join a larger conversation, contribute your story, and help co-create liberatory solutions for founders and communities.

💡 Discussed in this episode:

• The wisdom of Ubuntu and how it calls us into shared humanity
• Why listening to stories is a spiritual practice
• How invisible labor impacts women’s health and lives
• The limitations of traditional research methods and the power of lived experience
• Why collective truth-telling is essential for creating solutions
• The Feminist Founders initiative to document and share a white paper on invisible labor

🎤 Proud members of the Feminist Podcasters Collective

What happens when you step away from everything you’ve built—not just for a week off, but for months of deep rest and reflection?

In this episode of Feminist Founders summer series on women’s invisible labor, Becky talks with Mai-kee Tsang, who took a two-month sabbatical after seven years of running her business. What started as a response to grief became a radical reimagining of work, worth, and identity.

Together, they explore:

• How grief and pet loss led Mai-kee to create space for healing
• Why sabbaticals are not just breaks, but tools for reclaiming agency and rest
• The “ego death” of stepping away from business identity and embracing the messy middle
• The guilt and fear many entrepreneurs feel when stepping back or walking away
• How invisible labor shapes women’s relationship to work and rest
• The importance of redefining success beyond productivity and business ownership
• Why giving yourself permission to “just be” is a feminist act

Mai-kee reminds us that walking away doesn’t erase the value of what you’ve built. It can be a form of liberation, a chance to listen to yourself again, and to reimagine what’s possible when you’re no longer defined by your work.

Mai-kee Tsang is a writer, mentor, and former Sustainable Visibility® strategist. After seven years of entrepreneurship, she took a sabbatical to grieve, heal, and reconnect with her identity outside of work. Today, she continues to hold space for community through her email letters, Cup of Catch-ups, and experiments in simply being. Sign up for Mai-kee’s email list

🎤 PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE

Host Faith Clarke sits down with burnout recovery specialist and relationship coach Jay Asooli to dig into what we often call “invisible labor”—and why Jay insists it’s more accurate to say invisibilized labor. Together, they explore the emotional, cognitive, and care work that keeps households, workplaces, and communities running—work that’s hidden in plain sight, disproportionately carried by women, non-men, and marginalized people.

Jay shares deeply personal reflections on being a family caregiver, the countless jobs rolled into that role, and how the systems around us deliberately minimize and erase this labor. She names the many categories of relational labor—repair initiation, resistance moderation, stress regulation, social hosting, educational labor—and how these patterns play out in both families and workplaces.

This is not just about naming the problem. Faith and Jay talk about how protest, grief, and awareness are radical acts of resistance, and how community care and co-creation are essential for building new ways of living and working.

If you’ve ever felt exhausted from carrying too much, unseen, or guilty for “not doing enough,” this conversation will remind you that you’re not alone—and that your labor deserves to be recognized, valued, and shared.

Discussed in This Episode:

• Why Jay calls it invisibilized labor instead of invisible labor
• How systemic oppression allocates and imposes unpaid care and emotional work
• The parallels between caregiving at home and “extra” labor in the workplace
• The hidden categories of relationship labor—from repair initiation to resistance moderation
• The role of protest, grief, and truth-telling in reclaiming our lives
• How community, curiosity, and co-created care can shift the weight

Connect with Jay Asooli:

Website | Instagram

🎤 PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE

What happens when you’re raising young children and caring for aging parents—or even siblings with disabilities—at the same time? That’s the reality for millions of Gen Xers and millennials in the “sandwich generation.”

In this episode of Feminist Founders, part of our summer series on invisible labor, Becky talks with Anna De La Cruz, a social impact consultant, writer, and caregiver based in Seattle. Anna is the voice behind GenXandwich on Substack, where she writes candidly about navigating multi-generational caregiving while raising three kids and caring for her brother with Down syndrome.

Discussed in this episode:

• What it means to be “sandwiched” between kids, parents, and other loved ones who need care.
• Why women—especially women of color—carry the bulk of unpaid and underpaid care work, and how sexism and pay disparities reinforce that reality.
• How capitalism has failed caregivers, creating a system where care is unaffordable for families but still undervalued and underpaid for workers.
• The emotional toll of invisible labor, from guilt to burnout, and how naming it helps us fight for systemic change.
• The importance of collective care, community, and policy solutions—not just “self-care”—to support caregivers.
• Reimagining how we talk about death and aging as part of creating healthier, more honest conversations about caregiving.

Anna reminds us that making invisible labor visible isn’t just about validation—it’s about shifting culture and demanding policies that actually support people.

🎉 Read Anna’s writing at GenXandwich on Substack: https://substack.com/@genxandwich

🎤PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE