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Get Grounded | Calm Marketing

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8 contributions to Get Grounded | Calm Marketing
This week we're talking about minimum viable marketing. ๐ŸŒฑ
Not as a cute phrase. As a real question you can answer for your specific business, with your specific energy, in your specific life. Most of us inherited a marketing system. We watched someone else do it, or read a course, or copy-pasted a strategy from someone with a team, a different audience, and 6 hours a day they don't use for caregiving or a day job. Then we blamed ourselves when we couldn't keep up. That's a design problem, not a discipline problem. So before we talk about what to add this week, let's figure out what's actually happening right now. Here's a quick audit โ€” grab a piece of paper or open a note: List every marketing thing you're currently doing or "supposed to be" doing. Email newsletter, social posts, a podcast, a YouTube channel, SEO, collaborations, a Facebook group, daily stories โ€” whatever's on the list, written or unwritten. For each one, answer two questions: 1. Is this actually bringing in new people or revenue, or do I just believe it should? 2. If I stopped doing this for 30 days, would anything measurable change? Most people find that 1-2 things are doing most of the work. The rest is either faith-based marketing (we believe it helps but can't prove it) or obligation marketing (we feel like we should, so we do). Neither of those is wrong necessarily โ€” but you should know which is which. The goal of this week: figure out what your actual minimum is, get really good at that thing, and make peace with letting the rest go for now. Drop one word in the comments: what marketing activity are you most suspicious of right now? The one you keep doing but kind of wonder about. ๐Ÿ‘‡
This week we're talking about minimum viable marketing. ๐ŸŒฑ
1 like โ€ข May 18
I think I'm really good at newsletters - I'm consistent each Saturday you can expect one from me. I'm really bad at: everything else.
The advice is always "be consistent." Nobody tells you consistent at what size. ๐Ÿง 
Here's what actually matters: the frequency you can sustain without white-knuckling it. Not the frequency that sounds impressive. Not the one the course told you to hit. Because here's the math most people skip: Posting daily for 2 weeks then burning out and disappearing for 6 weeks performs worse than posting once a week, every single week, for a year. The algorithm notices. More importantly, your audience notices. Inconsistency trains people not to expect you. So let's figure out your actual number. The right-sizing exercise: Think about your lowest-energy week in the last 3 months. Not a crisis week โ€” just a hard, draining, nothing-left week. How much marketing could you have done that week without it feeling like punishment? Be honest. Not aspirational. That number โ€” that floor โ€” is your minimum viable consistency. Whatever you can do on your worst week is the frequency you should build your system around. Everything above that is a bonus, not a baseline. If the answer is "one email per month," then build the best monthly email in your niche and own it. If it's "one post per week," make that post count. Depth and reliability beat volume every time for the kind of audience we're building โ€” people who actually read, actually buy, actually stay. One more thing: if you're writing content from scratch every time, you're making this harder than it has to be. Batching 4 posts in one focused hour is a completely different cognitive load than writing one post four separate times. If you haven't tried batching, try it once. It changes the math. What's the floor for you โ€” what could you actually do on a hard week? ๐Ÿ’ฌ
The advice is always "be consistent." Nobody tells you consistent at what size. ๐Ÿง 
0 likes โ€ข May 18
I don't suppose my floor can be zero, can it?
I get it... but this stresses a lot of people out
This is from the main Skool room from one of the founding people. People look at this and start stressing - they get worried "they are failing" because they are only making $2k a month or $500.... THIS STUFF DOESN'T MATTER in the end! So ignore these styles of posts ๐—ฆ๐—ฒ๐˜ ๐˜†๐—ผ๐˜‚๐—ฟ ๐—ผ๐˜„๐—ป ๐—ด๐—ผ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฑ ๐˜†๐—ผ๐˜‚๐—ฟ ๐—ผ๐˜„๐—ป ๐—ฝ๐—ฎ๐—ฐ๐—ฒ.
I get it... but this stresses a lot of people out
2 likes โ€ข May 18
I'm getting so tired of other people bragging about what they make per month without telling people how much they paid to make that amount. 'Yeah you for making $1,000,000 last year, but how much did that cost you? $750,000 in marketing/ads?' They just don't tell the whole story and for authors that don't realize that, it can be so discouraging.
Today is Saturday. Take the day off. ๐ŸŒฑ
And if Saturday is actually your busiest day โ€” if you work retail, have kids home all weekend, or your business runs on a schedule that makes Sunday your Monday โ€” then pick a different day and take that one off instead. This is not a wellness post. This is a business post. Here's the practical case for intentional time off: Most of us think we're being productive when we're in low-grade work mode all the time. Tabs open, phone nearby, half-thinking about the email we need to send while we're supposed to be watching a movie. It feels like we're staying on top of things. What we're actually doing is never letting our brain fully disengage โ€” which means we never get the creative recovery that happens when it does. The ideas that solve your problems, the reframes that unstick your copy, the decisions that have been sitting in a pile in your head โ€” those tend to arrive in the gap. On a walk. In the shower. The Tuesday afternoon you gave yourself completely off and just read a book. You can't manufacture the gap while you're still half-working. What intentional time off actually looks like (vs. what we usually do): What we usually do is stop the official tasks but stay in "available" mode. We check Slack. We scroll Instagram and call it research. We answer one quick email. We're technically off but cognitively still on, which means we get none of the restoration and all of the guilt. Intentional time off means closing the tabs. Turning off the notifications โ€” not forever, just for the block of time you're protecting. Doing something that has nothing to do with your business and not framing it as inspiration-gathering. It means telling yourself the business will still be there when you get back. Because it will. If you can't take a full day, protect a window. Two hours where you are actually unavailable, actually not thinking about it, actually doing something else. That's not nothing โ€” for a lot of us, that's significant. One thing worth setting up so time off doesn't break everything:
Today is Saturday. Take the day off. ๐ŸŒฑ
1 like โ€ข May 18
I don't have this luxury, but... I do take days off once I've submitted my final draft to my PA for uploading (I did this yesterday and then spent the rest of the day in the pool).
How to Ease Into Next Week Without Losing the Rest of Today
Sunday has a reputation problem. โ˜€๏ธ For a lot of people it starts fine and then quietly gets swallowed by a low hum of dread โ€” the week looming, the to-do list unwritten, the emails not yet sent. You're technically still resting but your brain is already Monday. The fix isn't a three-hour planning session. It's a 15-minute reset that closes the open loops so your brain can actually let go. Here's what that looks like: ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐Ÿญ๐Ÿฑ-๐— ๐—ถ๐—ป๐˜‚๐˜๐—ฒ ๐—ฆ๐˜‚๐—ป๐—ฑ๐—ฎ๐˜† ๐—ฅ๐—ฒ๐˜€๐—ฒ๐˜ 5 minutes: Brain dump. Grab a note or a piece of paper and write down everything that's sitting in your head about next week. Not organized, not prioritized โ€” just out. Every task, every thing you're vaguely worried you'll forget, every "I should really..." that's been floating around. Get it out of your head and onto the page. Your brain is a terrible storage system and a great processing system. When you use it for storage โ€” trying to hold all the things you need to remember โ€” it runs background processes all day trying not to lose them. The brain dump ends that. It's not on your brain anymore. It's on the page. 5 minutes: Pick three. Look at what you wrote down and pick the three things that actually matter most this week. Not the full list โ€” three. The things where if you did only these and nothing else, the week would count as a success. Write those three somewhere you'll see them Monday morning. That's your week. Everything else is extra. 5 minutes: Set one thing up. Do one small thing that makes Monday morning easier. Draft the email you've been putting off. Set out whatever you need. Respond to the one message that's been creating background noise. Clear your workspace if that's what you need to walk in calmly. One thing. Five minutes. Then stop. That's the whole reset. ๐Ÿง  The goal isn't to plan your entire week โ€” it's to close enough open loops that your brain stops trying to hold everything and actually lets you rest the remainder of today. The difference between preparing and worrying is agency. Worrying is passive โ€” your brain spinning on things you haven't decided yet. Preparing is active โ€” making a decision, writing it down, letting it go.
How to Ease Into Next Week Without Losing the Rest of Today
0 likes โ€ข May 18
I do something similar. I have a notebook for work. Each day is a different date. I add things I think about (work, home, authoring) on the Monday page. This lets me 'forget' it for now because I know I have it written down. Monday comes and as I'm able to accomplish the tasks, I get to cross them off (dopamine hit). What doesn't get done gets moved to the Tuesday page, and so on. It lets me decompress without panicking. Great plan for me and my little brain.
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Annie Carlisle
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@annie-carlisle-8067
Romcom author

Active 8h ago
Joined May 11, 2026
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