Marketing With Chronic Pain
5 Tips For Partnering With Your Body To Create Irresistible Content
Sharing consistent, quality content is a challenge for everyone. But it’s especially challenging for folks who deal with chronic illness. A flare-up can easily blow up your carefully planned content calendar.
Of course you can’t follow impossible advice.
This is why it makes me cringe whenever a business influencer tells small teams and solopreneurs they should be posting 3-5 times a day, sharing on every possible marketing channel, plus worrying about SEO- or some other impossible nonsense. I’d argue it’s bad for the health of anyone trying to live up to this, but especially folks who have to navigate chronic pain.
And when we just. can’t. do. it- a lot of us wind up feeling more discouraged than ever. I know I did. I could try, for a while. But my body would simply not allow me to market like that.
But I didn’t choose to live with debilitating chronic pain, and you didn’t either. It’s time we stopped shaming ourselves for trying to follow systems that weren’t built for us and don’t work for us. Instead, let’s empower ourselves to partner with our bodies to show up authentically in our marketing, without hurting ourselves.
To be honest: I’m still processing my shame over having my life so affected by chronic illness. (That’s a post for another time.) But, I have made some huge strides in releasing toxic productivity and making work work for me.
I am so proud of the rhythm and flow I have worked out in order to maintain a consistent, quality marketing presence for not only my own business, but for my clients as well.
Here are 5 lessons I’ve learned about how to market effectively when navigating chronic pain. I hope you find them helpful.
#1 Rest when your body asks you to.
Notice I didn’t say “rest when you need to.”
You don’t have to earn rest. It is a requirement of life. No less necessary than food, water, and shelter. Rest is your right.
So just like when you are hungry you should eat, when you’re thirsty, you should drink, when you have to pee, you should go to the bathroom- when you’re tired, you should rest.
And not just when you’re physically tired. When you’re emotionally tired. When you’re mentally tired. Spiritually tired.
If you’re at burnout, that’s your body’s emergency alarm system. You didn’t notice the smoke and the rising heat, so now there’s a fire you have to deal with.
In my case, I had a tendency to ignore it when I felt tired. I’d keep on pushing, keep on producing, keep on hustling. Until a migraine would take me out.
The trick is to rest when your body asks you to. Before you need to. Before it’s an emergency.
If you start smelling smoke, don’t ignore it. Small fires are easier to put out than large ones. If you ignore it, it’s likely to get bigger and more destructive.
So, when you haven’t made a post that day but your body is whispering “we’re tired, please rest”? Rest. You can post tomorrow.
Much better than posting tonight, getting a flare-up, and not being able to post for a week or more.
#2 Know what you can drop.
When I put together Marketing Plans for clients, I make sure to give them a list of marketing channels in order of priority so that they know:
Which 1 channel to prioritize making consistent, quality content for.
How to repurpose that content to post regularly on 2-3 other channels. (Instead of making entirely new content.)
Which channels to experiment with- but drop when things get busy.
I highly encourage everyone to make a list of their marketing channels and rank them in order of priority. That way, when your marketing resources are limited (including your energy levels) you know to drop the stuff lower on the list and not to worry about it. Because you’ve already planned for this.
When setting marketing strategy, never ever make it inflexible. Life will make you bend. Don’t make your content planning so rigid that it’s a nightmare to adapt your systems when you have a pain flare-up.
#3 You don’t need to apologize, but you do need to communicate.
Sometimes, my pain is so debilitating I can’t even do the Priority #1 thing. Like client work.
I used to dread sending that email to let them know that something had come up and the deliverable would be later than expected. I didn’t want them to judge me and my capabilities, so I didn’t even out myself as someone with chronic illness until recently.
So, they were annoyed. I’d often be a few days late with things. They’d assume I was being flaky and unreliable because I hadn’t given them enough information for them to think otherwise. I hadn’t given them the opportunity to understand and show me grace.
But the second I started telling people about my chronic pain flare-ups, they were… lovely.
When I recently had to announce I’d be hosting Club Content Cauldron a month later than expected, I was really nervous to send that email. But I received responses like this:
“Everything about this is perfect and I’m so proud of you for being vulnerable and honest and doing what is best for your well-being! It’s so hard to unlearn hustle culture BS.”
People were so kind. So supportive. So ready to be the good humans they are whenever I trust that they will be.
I’ve started notifying people as soon as I am able to when a migraine has incapacitated me. I keep it really short, just a few sentences. I let them know I’m in a flare-up, I’m moving slower than expected, deliverables will be delayed.
It’s important to me that I don’t apologize because I didn’t choose to be in agony and have done nothing wrong to be experiencing illness. I do thank people for their patience and understanding.
Aligned clients, colleagues, and team members understand.
I’m deciding right now to let people know about the chronic pain situation upfront in the discovery call. I might need to reschedule on short notice. Deliverables might be late. But when you do meet with me, when you do receive my work, I will show up with my full brilliance, my full marketing magic that will benefit you a gazillion times more than if I were pushing through the pain. Consent in all things. My results are worth the hiccups and delays caused by my illness.
#4 Make it easy on yourself to show up.
For me, it’s not just the migraine where I can’t do a damn thing but survive the pain. It’s the migraine hangover too. The exhaustion. The brain fog. Everything moving so slowly.
These days used to be so frustrating, because while I have access to my normal levels of creativity, ambition, and motivation- my energy is usually at about 10-15% of what it normally is. When I miss work, my old conditioning wants me to make up for it as soon as possible.
But, let’s not push ourselves right back into pain and burnout as soon as we recover a little.
When I have less energy than usual but am still committed to showing up and marketing incredible, life-changing offers, here are some ways I make it easier for myself to show up.
I don’t make new content. I repurpose content I’ve already made. (Steal my easy repurposing strategies here.)
I don’t worry about hair, makeup, and glam. God gave us filters and/or IDGAF attitudes for a reason.
I let good be good enough. It doesn’t have to be great. Have I got an amazing message my people need to hear? Cool. I’m making that live or reel even if it’s too painful to add in my hashtags or optimize my caption or change into a more flattering sweater.
I practice trust. My message was delivered in the way it needed to be. The people that needed to hear it will hear it.
#5 Share the load. (Read this section even if you think you’re too broke.)
Accepting help is a big one. Because if you’re like me, feeling stressed and pressured is sure to make my flare-up worse.
If that’s you, make sure to get clarity on where you’re feeling pressured.
Is it at work?
If you have a team, see what more you can delegate. If you are in a position to hire an assistant and pay them well, do that and allow them to take some tasks off your plate. If it’s just you and your To Do List for now, push things out. Don’t stop until you can look at the week’s tasks and not clench up. Then look at the tasks themselves. How can you make them less stressful? Get creative.
Is it at home?
Perhaps it’s time to redistribute household chores or hire a housekeeper. Maybe you should order in more to save yourself the time of cooking. Or get a laundry service. Or book a handyperson through Taskrabbit.
Or, if it’s just you and your own chore wheel- perhaps you can decrease how often you give it a spin. How can you take the pressure off yourself? Get creative.
Is it inside your own head?
Running a business is a lot. Navigating uncertainty and responsibility in a new way can be really challenging. I truly hope all entrepreneurs are in therapy to help them process fear and other big emotions in a healthy way.
I also hope that they surround themselves with people who aren’t going to feed into their doubt, negativity, and scarcity. Instead, I hope they have a great community of like-minded folks who can support their ambitions, give them pep talks, share resources, answer questions, and network them into new opportunities. A community that strengthens their hope, inspiration, and belief. (If you don’t have such a community yet, come join mine!) I know that the pressure lifts when I am around folks who help me to believe in possibility and growth, even when the going feels slow.
I also highly recommend you get yourself a good mentor or 5. One that can show you the ropes of business and effective marketing. Not just in terms of strategy, trends, and tactics- but in the mindset that will get you where you need to go. The things you’ll need to unlearn to stop holding yourself back. The new beliefs you’ll have to decide to place your faith in.
If you are able to invest in a coach, fantastic! One-on-one support is going to be invaluable in preventing you from putting undue pressure on yourself (and exacerbating chronic pain). You can even book me as your own, personal Marketing Confidence Cheerleader.
If that’s not yet in the budget, subscribe to some great podcasts and start soaking in free, nutritious mind food and emotional support. The Irresistible Marketing Pod is free wherever you get your podcasts, as are these gems- some of my favorite mindful business podcasts:
Joyful Marketing
Social Reset Podcast
The Elemental Entrepreneurship Podcast
When you don’t know how to carry your big feelings, get (consensual) help to carry the load. You are not a burden, and you are not alone.
Your Body Is Your Best Marketing Asset
There have been times in my chronic pain journey when I felt as though my body was betraying me and getting in the way of my dreams. But it wasn’t. And the more I listen to my body and give it what it needs, the more I am able to create magickal marketing consistently without burning out. And the more I partner with my body, the more authentically I’m able to show up in my marketing. And the more authentically I can show up, the more irresistible the marketing is and the better the results. I like this for me. I like this for us.
Let me know how you like these tips and if you have other hacks for marketing effectively with chronic pain. DM me on the gram or email me at isa@misamessaging.com
If you’d like my personal practice for partnering with the body for irresistible marketing, grab yourself a copy of my You Are Safe In Your Body Workbook.