What to Focus on When Everything Feels Important: A Guide for Anti-Capitalist Business Owners

Last Thursday’s Office Hours were a joy — a mix of longtime participants and new faces, all bringing their unique perspectives from across the U.S. One of my favorite things about hosting these sessions is the diversity of people, thoughts, and business structures in the room.

If you’ve never been, here’s the flow: everyone introduces themselves and their business, then shares something they want to talk about. It could be a specific question, a frustration, a piece of work they’d like feedback on, or just a topic they’d like to shine a light on. After that, I connect the threads and offer a free-flowing “lesson” that ties everything together in a way that blends practical advice with radical ideas.

This week, two big themes came up:

1. What in god’s name should I be focused on right now?

2. How long should I try something before throwing in the towel? (This one was mostly about marketing strategies, not the entire business — though that’s a good question, too.)

These questions live at the core of running a micro business. Whether you’re running a service-based practice, a product shop, or something hybrid, knowing how to choose what to focus on in business can be the difference between staying stuck and moving forward.

The Four Buckets of Business

No matter what kind of work you do, all your business activities can be sorted into four buckets:

1. Internal – The behind-the-scenes systems that keep everything running. This includes your business budget, client onboarding process, bookkeeping, policies, and workflows.

2. Delivery – The actual work you get paid for. Meeting with clients, fulfilling orders, creating the product — this is the bucket most micro business owners feel most comfortable in.

3. Marketing – Activities that help people discover you. This might be social media, SEO, networking, podcast interviews, speaking engagements, or community events.

4. Sales – Turning interest into income. Discovery calls, follow-up emails, proposals, onboarding — all the ways you invite people to engage more deeply and commit to working with you.

As micro business owners, we’re responsible for all four buckets. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to be working in all of them at the same time. In fact, trying to do that is often what leads to burnout. You can theme your days, weeks, months, or even quarters to focus on fewer buckets at once.

One of the best questions to ask yourself regularly:

“Do I need more people to know about my work… or do I need to get more comfortable selling to the people already here?”

 

The Bucket Most Micro Business Owners Avoid

In my experience, most micro business owners spend the majority of their time in Delivery. It’s the comfortable bucket. It’s what you started your business to do — make the art, see the clients, bake the bread, design the websites.

From an anti-capitalist business perspective, that makes total sense. Delivery is the bucket where you get to be of service without being pulled into the more extractive parts of capitalism. You’re creating real value for real people, seeing the impact directly. Marketing and sales can feel uncomfortably close to manipulative corporate tactics we want nothing to do with. And internal work? That often feels like the paperwork-heavy bureaucracy we left behind when we decided to work for ourselves.

From a purely practical perspective, Delivery is also the most immediately rewarding. You complete a project, a client says thank you, you get paid. Marketing, sales, and internal work have slower, less tangible payoffs. They require you to trust a process you can’t always see.

The challenge? A business can’t survive on Delivery alone. Without marketing, sales, and strong internal systems, your delivery work eventually dries up — and so does your income.

Marketing vs Sales: Why We Avoid One More Than the Other

When faced with the choice between spending time on marketing vs sales, most micro business owners lean heavily toward marketing. It feels safer to focus on getting new eyes on your work than it does to actually ask someone to buy.

That often leads to getting lost in the weeds of creating more content, planning elaborate campaigns, and chasing new followers — all while neglecting the people already in your community.

Selling to strangers feels less vulnerable than selling to existing customers because if a stranger says “no,” it stings less. But the truth is, it’s almost always faster, more effective, and more sustainable to sell to people who already know, like, and trust you.

That could mean:

• Reaching out to past clients with a new offer

• Following up with someone who inquired but never booked

• Inviting your email list to join a workshop before registration closes

Selling to Existing Customers Without Feeling Gross

Many values-aligned and anti-capitalist business owners avoid selling because it feels pushy, manipulative, or greedy. We’ve seen sales done badly — with inflated urgency, guilt tactics, or playing on insecurities — and we want nothing to do with it.

But here’s the reframe: selling is part of delivering the remedy. If your work solves a problem or fulfills a desire, then telling someone about it — and inviting them to say yes — is an act of care. Without sales, your solution never reaches the person who needs it.

Good marketing and sales feel like:

• An honest invitation

• A clear explanation of the value and the fit

• Space for the other person to say yes or no without pressure

When marketing and sales are rooted in consent and clarity, they stop feeling like “closing” and start feeling like connecting. And when they feel good, you actually do them more often — which builds the momentum your business needs.

How to Choose What to Focus on in Business

So how do you decide which bucket to spend time in?

1. Check your numbers – If you don’t have enough inquiries or traffic, it’s a marketing issue. If you have plenty of inquiries but few conversions, it’s a sales issue. If you have clients but struggle to deliver, it’s a delivery issue. And if your systems are a mess or you’re flying blind financially, it’s an internal issue.

2. Consider the season – Your focus might shift depending on the time of year. Maybe winter is for systems-building, spring for marketing pushes, summer for delivery, and fall for sales.

3. Look at your energy – If you’re in a creative slump, maybe sales follow-ups are easier than new content creation. If you’re energized, a big marketing project might be the right move.

4. Ask what’s most impactful – Sometimes the thing that moves your business forward is not the most urgent task, but the one with the biggest long-term payoff.

The 90-Day Rule

When you’re trying a new strategy — whether it’s a marketing plan, a sales approach, or a new internal system — give it 90 days. That’s enough time to gather real data without wasting half the year on something that’s not working.

If you’re tempted to quit earlier, ask yourself:

• Have I actually implemented the strategy as planned?

• If not, why? Was it too complicated, not fun, or misaligned?

• What would make it feel better or more doable?

Your Next Step

If you’re stuck in Delivery and avoiding marketing, sales, or internal work, start by categorizing your to-do list into the four buckets. Then decide which one will make the biggest impact on your business in the next 90 days.

For many micro business owners, the shift from chasing new people to selling to existing customers can be transformative. For others, building a stronger sales process or creating more consistent marketing rhythms makes the difference. And sometimes, the best move is to pause and shore up your internal systems so everything else runs more smoothly.

Wherever you start, remember: an anti-capitalist business can thrive while marketing, selling, and running internal systems that are ethical, consent-based, and values-aligned.

If you’d like support in figuring out how to choose what to focus on in business, join us for the October 22nd Workshop: Intentional Growth – Planning an Anti-Capitalist Business for 2026 . Or, if internal systems are your sticking point, start with Liberatory Finance on September 4th.