How to Show Up in Your Biz When Sh*t’s Hard

Today’s episode? It’s for when things are really hard. Like… the world’s-on-fire, tech’s-breaking, brain’s-short-circuiting kind of hard. Whether you're grieving, dealing with burnout, or your business is scaling faster than your sanity can keep up—I got you.

We’re talking about how to keep showing up when you feel like hiding under your desk (no shame, I’ve been there).

In this episode, I dig into:

• What “hard” really means (hint: your hard is valid, period.)
• Why showing up doesn’t have to mean showing up everywhere
• One-minute-at-a-time wisdom from an English professor
• The difference between finding community and getting help (both matter)
• Why “bare minimum” is sometimes exactly what’s needed

This isn’t your typical “just push through” pep talk. This is grace-filled, real-world advice for humans who also happen to run businesses.

So if you’re in the thick of it, press play. Then send it to a biz buddy who needs it too.

Learn more about BizMagic or the BizMagic Podcast.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast, your place for all things tech in your online business with solids of General Biz Chat too. My name is Patty Meyer and I am the CEO and founder of Biz Magic, where my team and I support entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed. By the backend tech of their business, we create, implement, and teach the tweaks that help our clients make a bigger impact with less stress.

Today I wanna talk about something that I think is super important and it's relevant now especially, but the truth is that it's relevant. Always at some point or another, and that is how do you show up in your business when shit's hard? The reality is that most of you who are listening to me right now share similar political beliefs as me or.

Have similar feelings about things that are happening in the world as I do, and what is happening in the world around us right now can make showing up in business really hard. It can make showing up in our lives hard. But the truth is also that whether or not things are happening in the world around us, we also have our own lives and throughout our lives, hard things come up.

A lot. And so how do we continue to show up in our business? Because that's the path that we have chosen. Those of us that have have decided to run our own businesses, have become entrepreneurs. This is the life we've chosen. This is the path we've chosen, and that means there's nobody else that's gonna show up in our business and keep it running when it's hard for us to do it because.

It has to be done. So today I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about how to show up in your business when shit is hard. And I mean, gut wrenching, overwhelming. Why is the world on fire? Why my, my life beyond fire? Kind of hard, but it can also be I'm super sick. Hard. It can be a, any kind of hard. So what does hard mean?

I think we should start there. So hard can be everything from global chaos to your systems breaking down in your business. It's a constant barrage of headlines that make you wanna crawl under your weighted blanket. The divisiveness, the economic rollercoaster attacks on personal freedoms, rising hate, fear for safety, misinformation everywhere.

But somehow with all of that happening, we're still supposed to hop on Instagram and tell people why they should hire us. Right? But again, hard can also be really personal. It could be losing somebody love. It could be watching a parent decline. It can be navigating illness, yours or someone close to you.

It can be looking in the mirror and realizing, oh shit, I have been masking for 30 years and I actually have a DHD. How do I figure out now how to reorganize my life in a positive way around this? That has always affected me in maybe a less positive way or made things challenging. It could be a relationship challenge.

It could be the burnout that is deep inside of you that you just keep pushing away because you don't have time to be burnt out, right? It could be your business revenue stalling out, your tech melting down. It could be your VA quitting. It could be your Slack channel being a digital dumpster fire. Or on the other side of it, it could be things growing way too fast in your business and your business blowing up in the most amazing way, but it's still overwhelming and it's still really hard.

All of these things are hard and your heart is valid, period. Like let's just be clear. Whatever hard looks like to you is hard. So how the hell are you supposed to show up? Lead in your business, market your business, connect with your clients, be visible when things feel like a mess, when things feel hard, whatever that hard is for you.

So here is things I do to show up when things are hard and some ideas that that I've come up with for you because I do think this is just extra, extra relevant right now. The first thing is one step at a time. Literally, as some of you might know, I went to college in my early thirties and I had this one English professor that I really loved, and she once was talking about the loss of her mother and how for her coping was.

Making it through the next minute. It wasn't, okay, I have to make it through today. I have to make it through this week. It was one minute at a time, and I really thought that that was brilliant. As somebody who struggled with anxiety for pretty much the majority of my life, that really spoke to me because.

It is sometimes just making it through that next minute, right? So when you're in the next storm, you don't have to figure out your six month vision in your business. You can grab onto the next safe thing, and then the next, and then the next. So maybe today showing up is replying to one. Client email, or it's scheduling one social media post, or it's recording This one podcast episode that is coming out next week because I have fallen behind on bulk recording my podcast episodes.

It could be opening your laptop and staring at it for five minutes and then closing it again. That counts. Give yourself credit for that. Okay, number two, find community, like actual community. You're not the only one struggling. Whatever it is you're struggling with, you're not the only one. Even if it feels like everyone else has their shit together.

When you look on Instagram, when you look wherever, filters lie. They don't have their lives together. None of us do. We're all really hot messes and we're all struggling in some form or another. Find a group, a space, a person who gets it, Facebook groups, slack channels, friends, peer masterminds, spiritual circles.

Sit in a room with people who you don't have to explain yourself to, and if you can't find that space, try to build it. Drop a message to one person and say, Hey, can we talk? I'm in it right now. That's how community begins. Start small, grow from there. Do some research. If you don't have communities that you know about, if you have communities, reach out to those communities.

Number three, get help. Like for real help. And this isn't just in the community, right? There's no word for doing everything by yourself, especially when it's hard. You don't wanna prize for muscling through everything. Outsource delegate. Hire a tech VA for a few hours. Get a therapist if you are in a position to do so, and that is a need you have.

Call the closet organizer to help organize your closet or have somebody come in one time and clean your space because you don't have the fucking bandwidth to clean your place. Or every week or every other week, you know, like do what you can within the means that you have it. Pay the teenager down the street to walk your dog or pick up groceries.

Ask your friends to check on you if you need help. Or if you're struggling, ask for it. And I'm not talking again. This isn't. Dire dire straits at all times, where you, you need professional help, but it's, Hey, I'm fucking struggling right now and I don't wanna do shit. How many times I have friend groups that I'm in that somebody comes on and they're like, oh my God, I don't know how I'm gonna shower today.

I just don't have it in me. And we are all like, do it. You can do it. It's gonna make you feel so good. That's huge. That's getting the help that you need to get you through the next thing. Ask Chad GPT to help you write your next blog post. It's a game changer. Support comes in all sorts of forms. Take it.

Number four, redefine what showing up means. So maybe if we're talking social media, you used to post on social media four times a week. Maybe you used to send new weekly newsletters. Maybe you used to show up live every once a week, right? And in between all of that, you were doing client work. But right now, if that version of you is unavailable current, you might only be able to post once a week or once a month.

Showing up might just be responding to the current clients you have and saying no to everything else, and that is also a hundred percent okay. It is okay to adjust the dial. To what showing up means you don't always have to have showing up, be the same at all times. Right? Showing up for me at the time of recording this episode, showing up for me and Biz Magic has been having posts on social media three times a week.

And I don't do that anymore. That is not something I have availability for. And so right now. Currently on Biz Magic Social Media, it's promoting the podcast once a week. That's what's happening, and that is okay because I'm still having these episodes. I'm still connecting with people. I'm still working with my clients.

I'm still doing other forms of connection and outreach, so showing up and I'm doing emails right, so showing up. Is changing for me right now for what my capacities are, and that is, okay, create a version of showing up that you can do without self-judgment. Then give yourself the gift of grace when it's still hard to even show up that way, because that's okay too.

And remember that minimal effort is still effort. If your strategy this month is to keep the lights on or to stay afloat, you're still in the game. That still counts. Survival mode is sometimes the only place that we can be at. That doesn't make you a bad business owner. It makes you human, and your business can handle you being human.

Your audience, they will also understand you being human. Because there's a good chance they're human too and they get it. And if they don't understand that, they are likely not your people. So those are kind of the tips I have for you, but I wanna say one last thing. There's no perfect way to do this.

There's only the next right. Small thing, right? The next breath, the next click, the next client call you show up to with a messy bun and a half functioning brain, right? We've all been there. You are still showing up. And that's what counts. Even listening to this episode, you're choosing to stay connected to your business, to your mission, to your people.

That's what matters. If you are laying on the couch listening to this episode and not doing anything else, this is still helping. This is still a step. This is still showing up. So give yourself credit. Go easy on yourself. And remember, this shit is hard. Life is hard. The world is hard. Business is super fucking hard, and you're not alone.

And I'm here. I'm here. If you wanna reach out, feel free. Say hi. I get it. It is hard for all of us. I can only take the news in small chunks right now without melting down and laying under a blanket on the floor. Things are really challenging in a lot of ways for a lot of people right now, both personally and in the world, and so.

Show up the best you can show up for other people when you're able to do that and they need you to show up for them, do that too. This is me showing up for everybody else right now because that's what I can offer. So feel free to shoot me an email patty@bmmagic.co. Check me out on Instagram at Biz magic ho say Hi.

And uh, if you need anything, you always know where to find me, and I'm so proud of you for showing up and doing what you're doing and doing the hard thing. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast. Like most small businesses and podcasts, we rely heavily on word of mouth. So if you like what you heard today, or in any episode, please share with your friends and colleagues and rate, subscribe, and comment on your favorite podcast platform.

Till next time, cheers to your magical biz success.