Briarpatch Knowledge & Wisdom

Strategies for Right Livelihood Businesses

A Humble Offering

In this page you’ll find:

Learning about the Briarpatch

When Michael Phillips and Salli Rasberry wrote The Seven Laws of Money, a tsunami of interest in Briarpatch was launched.

Between Seven Laws and Gurney Norman’s first issue of The Briarpatch Review, hundreds of queries and letters of support began to flow in. This interest was further stimulated by subsequent issues of The Briarpatch Review as well as the publication of The Briarpatch Book and Honest Business.

In their letters and phone calls, people shared their challenges and their clever solutions with us. We published as many examples as we could in the 11 issues of the Briarpatch Review that followed on issue number 1.

Elsewhere on this site, we share some of this with you and have plans to continue to make the entire contents of all issues of the Briarpatch Review available here, as time permits.

For now, check out these samples by clicking on any of the following links.

The Briarpatch Bookshelf

The seven books in this list constitute the core of a kind of “codex,” if you will, of Briarpatch knowledge and wisdom—collected, evaluated, and reported back to the community and the world through the magic of the printed word.

Combined with the four issues of the Briarpatch Review not included in The Briarpatch Book, they reveal the results of our efforts to cooperate and support one another in doing business in a different way. We don’t propose that what we’ve learned and put into practice will work for all people or circumstances. However, we do a pretty good job of describing who we are and what we tried and what the results were.

Quick Jump Menu:

Use these links to jump to individual pages for each book. Use your back button to return to this list.

Check out the longer, more recent version of the Briarpatch Bookshelf here.

The "Laws of Money"

  • The First Law of Money: 
    • Do it! Money will come when you are doing the right thing.
  • The Second Law of Money: 
    • Money has its own rules: records, budgets, saving, borrowing.
  • The Third Law of Money: 
    • Money is a dream: a fantasy as alluring as the Pied Piper.
  • The Fourth Law of Money:
    • Money is a nightmare: in jail, robbery, fears of poverty.
  • The Fifth Law of Money:
    • You can never really give money away.
  • The Sixth Law of Money:
    • You can never really receive money as a gift.
  • The Seventh Law of Money:
    • There are worlds without money.

Go a little deeper into the Seven Laws here.

Drunk on delusion greed and anger
dazed and unaware
you turn money into a dream
a dream that becomes an iron jail
using one pain to get rid of another
you never get rid of pain
unless you learn before it’s too late
you learn to turn to yourself

Shih Te (Pickup)
p. 291,
The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
Translated by Red Pine

Briarpatch First Principles

Among the many things we learned about success for right livelihood businesses were nine primary principles that seem essential for establishing businesses that can deliver “right livelihood.”

Michael and Salli reported on these principles in the following three books including detailed explanations and examples. In summary, the nine principles are:

  • Passion for one’s work.
  • Honesty and Openness
  • Diligent Bookkeeping
  • Tradeskill
  • Openness (again)
  • Capital
  • Measurement
  • Listings
  • Generosity

Learn more about the Briarpatch First Princples here.