Briarpatch Living

The following downloads are practical, time-tested tools from the Briarpatch. They are meant to be used, marked up, shared, and returned to as you explore right livelihood and simple living in real life.

These guides and workbooks grow out of decades of shared learning in the Briarpatch. They are offered here as practical resources for anyone seeking to build a right livelihood, alone or together.

Workbook: How to Start a Briarpatch Where You Live

This practical workbook is a step-by-step guide for anyone who wants to start a small, local (or online) mutual-support group grounded in right livelihood, simple living, and shared learning. Drawing on more than five decades of Briarpatch experience, it shows how a Briarpatch can begin with just two people and grow organically into a trusted circle for honest conversation, problem-solving, and encouragement.

The workbook walks you through clarifying purpose, inviting your first participants, choosing a meeting format, building group culture, and sustaining momentum over time. It’s not about creating an organization—it’s about creating a human-scale community where people help each other do meaningful work their own way.

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15 Principles of Right Livelihood Businesses

This document distills fifteen core principles that have guided hundreds of Briarpatch members in creating businesses that are ethical, resilient, and personally satisfying. These principles were uncovered over decades of lived experience and documented in foundational Briarpatch books such as The Seven Laws of Money, Honest Business, Marketing Without Advertising, Running a One-Person Business, Mindfulness and Meaningful Work, and In the Company of Others.

Rather than offering trends or tactics, this guide focuses on first principles—passion for one’s work, openness, tradeskill, honest marketing, purposeful customer selection, and more. It’s meant to be read slowly, revisited often, and used as a compass for decision-making at every stage of a right livelihood business.

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12 Questions Every Business Must Answer

If you want to start—or stabilize—a right livelihood business, these twelve questions tell you where to focus. They cut through complexity and get straight to the fundamentals: what you’re offering, who it’s for, how money flows, how decisions are made, and what keeps the whole enterprise sustainable over time.

This is not a worksheet filled with hypotheticals; it’s a diagnostic tool. The quality of your answers reveals the health of your business. Whether you’re just beginning or feeling stuck years in, these questions provide clarity, grounding, and a reliable starting point for next steps.

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Basic Practices for Success as a Right Livelihood Business

This guide translates Briarpatch principles into everyday practices—the things successful right livelihood businesses actually do. It covers topics like treating business as a lifestyle, cultivating tradeskill behaviors, focusing your market, cooperating rather than competing, managing expenses, and growing income without losing your soul.

Written for small, really-small, and one-person businesses, this document emphasizes sustainability over scale and alignment over hustle. It’s especially useful if you want your work to support your life—not consume it.

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Grassroots Marketing for the Right Livelihood Business

This is a deep dive into marketing as relationship, reputation, and lived values—not advertising or hype. Grounded in Briarpatch experience, it explains why personal recommendations outperform interruption marketing and how trust, service, and generosity form the real foundation of business growth.

You’ll find practical frameworks like mapping your “circles of intimacy,” understanding transaction-based marketing, and aligning your purpose with how you show up in the world. If traditional marketing feels off—or exhausting—this guide offers a humane, effective alternative.

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Let’s Parti! A Participant’s Guide to Web Meetings

Online meetings work best when everyone knows how to show up well. This participant-focused guide covers the three essentials of successful web meetings: how you sound, how you look, and how you participate. It’s practical, detailed, and surprisingly important—especially for groups that value presence and mutual respect.

Originally developed through years of online facilitation, this guide helps meetings become more engaging, less distracting, and genuinely enjoyable. Whether you attend Briarpatch meetings or host your own online gatherings, it will make a noticeable difference.

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