What Hard Days Teach Us About Building Better Marketing Systems

Family has always been an important facet of my life. My own family comes from deep Appalachian roots and, before that, was present throughout much of western Europe, including Ireland and Scotland. Stubborn determination is in our DNA, though I’m fairly certain mine occasionally shows up as refusing to ask for help until I’m already holding three broken things and a cup of cold coffee.

Because of this, I was raised by some very strong, resilient, “won’t take no for an answer” women. My mom, Mamaw, my great-grandma Nan, and my great-great-grandma Mimi were all present in my formative years. I was seven when Mimi passed at the age of 95, and twenty-two when Nan had her heart attack at 91. Mamaw passed several years ago, three days after my husband and I were married. We spent our wedding day in her hospital room.

My mom remains of the four women who have been most influential in my life, and while the three before her are no longer here, they left an impact that has carried me through the rough times and the good. They were women who kept going, but not in a performative, inspirational-poster kind of way. Not in a “just smile, and everything will be fine” kind of way, either.

They endured real things. Heavy things. Generational things. They lived through wars, financial hardship, grief, loss, uncertainty, and seasons that asked more of them than any person should have to carry.

And yet, they kept finding ways to make a meal, sweep the floor, wash the laundry, tend the family, say the prayer, dry the tears, laugh at something ridiculous, and get on with what needed to be done. That kind of resilience leaves a mark. It also makes you believe, perhaps a little too strongly at times, that you should be able to handle whatever life throws at you.

Until life throws several things all at once.

My great-great-grandma, Mimi, with Mamaw as a child, late 1940s

When Everything Starts Breaking

Some seasons don’t arrive politely. They don’t knock, wait for you to answer, and ask if now is a good time. They kick the door open like the Kool-Aid man, track mud through the house, and start flipping light switches just to see what else they can disrupt.

For the first half of the year, my husband has been dealing with severe health issues. We’ve been to multiple specialists, and there have been long stretches where doctors’ offices and hospital rooms have felt like part of our weekly rhythm. Despite the tests and scans, we don’t have clear answers, and he’s still feeling poorly most days. That alone would be enough for one season, but life, in its usual flair for dramatic timing, decided to add a few more things to the pile.

Over Mother’s Day weekend, our dryer stopped working. My husband, bless his heart, spent hours tinkering with it until it worked again. Soon after that, the motor in our washer went out. A few days later, the dishwasher stopped working. Then, as if on cue, the transmission in our car blew. At some point, you stop saying, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” because apparently the universe takes that as a challenge.

That night, I had a pity party for myself. Not a delicate, poetic little tear, either. A full mental spiral.

Everything is going wrong. I don’t understand why these things keep happening. Will we ever catch a break? Why, why, why?

We’ve all been there. We’ve all had days, weeks, or months when it feels like anything that can go wrong does. And even if you know other people have it worse, even if you know you have blessings, even if you know this isn’t the end of the world, hard still feels hard when you’re the one standing in the middle of it.

Gratitude doesn’t erase difficulty, but it gives you a steadier place to stand as you face it. That’s what I had to remember the next morning.

The More You Cry, the Less You Pee

The next morning, I got up. I made my bed. I took a hot shower. I put on bluegrass gospel (Ralph Stanley is my favorite), and I made myself notice what was still good. Not because I woke up feeling bright and brave. (Spoiler: I didn't.) I woke up tired, frustrated, and still very aware that the car and the washer were broken, and my husband still didn’t have answers.

But I also woke up thinking about my grandmothers.

Mimi used to say two things that have stayed with me for years: “The more you cry, the less you pee,” and “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

The first one was usually meant to dry up a tantrum, which feels very Appalachian and very effective in the way only old family sayings can be. But when paired with the second, I think it carries a deeper meaning.

It’s okay to have your moments. Cry. Throw a fit. Be mad. Wallow for a little while. Have the pity party. Eat the brownies for breakfast. Scream if you must.

Just don’t stay there.

The real trouble begins when we keep our focus fixed on all the bad things, all the what-ifs, and all the problems. When we do that, the hard things get bigger because we stop looking anywhere else. That’s how tunnel vision sets in.

I could have chosen to get up that Wednesday morning, stay in my pajamas all day, and complain relentlessly. Honestly, no one would have blamed me. But I also know it would have made the day worse.

No, I couldn’t change every circumstance around me. I couldn’t magically fix the car, force the medical answers to come faster, resurrect the appliances, or make the whole season easier by sheer force of will. But I could change my posture toward it. I could make the bed. I could take a shower. I could put on music. I could cook from my grandmothers’ handwritten recipes. I could count the blessings that were still there.

And sometimes, that’s what resilience looks like. Not a grand speech, sweeping transformation, or the sort of moment that gets underlined in a memoir. Just doing the next thing with as much steadiness as you can find.

Hard Seasons Reveal What’s Holding You Up

This is where I’ve been thinking a lot about systems.

Mimi had a daily routine: up by 7 AM, breakfast, housework, tut around barefoot in the garden for a bit, and be off to town by mid-morning to get her hair set and have lunch with her husband at Burger Chef. She would have the rest of the day to visit friends, go shopping, work on hobbies, and then, in the late afternoon, begin prepping dinner.

Maybe that's where I get my love for systems. Not in a cold, corporate, color-coded spreadsheet way. I don’t mean systems that make your life feel rigid or soulless. I mean the kind of systems that quietly hold some of the weight when life gets heavy.

Because hard seasons reveal what’s actually supporting you.

When life is calm, it’s easy to think you’re fine without structure. It’s easy to believe you can keep everything running because you’re motivated, energized, and able to show up and do the work manually. You can post in real time. You can write the caption the day it’s due. You can promote the blog after it goes live. You can remember to send the email. You can keep everything moving because your life has enough margin to do so.

But when life gets loud, margin is usually the first thing to go. Suddenly, you’re sitting in waiting rooms. You’re making phone calls. You’re figuring out transportation. You’re washing laundry by hand. You’re adjusting your schedule around appointments, fatigue, family needs, and all the practical nonsense that piles up when multiple things break at once. And in those moments, a business or author platform built entirely on your daily ability to show up starts to feel fragile.

This is why I care so much about sustainable marketing. Not because I want everything automated into oblivion, think authors should disappear behind scheduling tools and never speak to their readers like real humans, or believe systems will save us from every hard thing. They won’t. The washer still broke. The dishwasher still gave up the ghost. The transmission still chose violence. My husband still needs answers.

But the systems I’ve built have given me room to tend to what matters without feeling like everything else is falling apart behind me.

That matters.

Your Marketing Shouldn’t Collapse When Your Life Needs You

There have been days lately when I needed to be fully present at home. Not half-present. Not phone-in-hand, brain-in-caption-mode present. Actually present.

Present in waiting rooms, present in conversations, present with my husband, present with my bonus-daughter, and present enough to notice what needed to be handled instead of mentally calculating whether Instagram was going to punish me for not posting at the perfect time.

That’s the kind of thing people don’t always see when we talk about marketing systems. They hear “systems” and think it sounds boring, complicated, too business-y, or like something only people with massive teams, tech stacks, and aesthetically styled desks need to worry about. But good systems are not about making life less human but about making room for your humanity.

A good system means the email can go out even if the day gets messy. It means your blog doesn’t sit unread because you forgot to share it after a doctor’s appointment. It means your best content has somewhere to keep working after you’ve logged off and that your visibility isn’t entirely dependent on whether you had the emotional capacity to perform online that day.

Most authors are not only authors. They’re also spouses, parents, caretakers, employees, business owners, friends, daughters, sisters, people with bodies, people with homes, people with responsibilities and lives that do not pause just because a book needs marketing. If your entire marketing plan requires you to push every piece of content every single day manually, then the first hard season has the power to knock the whole dang thing sideways.

And life will hand you hard seasons. The question is whether your systems are kind enough to hold some of the weight.

Good Books Still Need Structure

This is where I want to gently poke at one of the most common things authors say: “I just want readers to find my book naturally.”

I understand the heart behind that. Most authors don’t want to be pushy—I didn't want to be when I published by first book. They don’t want to sound desperate or feel like every post screams, “Hey, I wrote a book, please buy it. 👉🏻👈🏻” They want readers to discover their work because they genuinely connect with it.

But “naturally” can become a very convenient hiding place.

Readers don’t usually discover books through magic, although we would love it if that were possible. They discover them because something points them in the right direction: a recommendation, a review, a podcast interview, a blog post, a Pinterest pin, a newsletter mention, a searchable book list, a reader resource, a quote graphic, a conversation, a website, or a post that actually tells them what the book is, who it’s for, and why they may care.

Your book needs a structure with clear places for people to encounter it, understand it, remember it, and take the next step.

This is where so many authors accidentally make things harder on themselves. They wait until they have energy, time, and emotional bandwidth to market. Then life happens, and the marketing gets pushed aside. Then they feel invisible. Then they panic and try to make up for lost time by posting harder. That cycle is exhausting, and it’s entirely unnecessary.

When you build systems ahead of time, your work doesn’t rely entirely on your ability to keep pointing at it manually.

Pinterest as One Piece of a Better, Sustainable Marketing System

Pinterest is not the whole system. Let’s start with that.

Pinterest will not write your book, fix your website, nurture your email list, create your brand message, or make readers care if the content itself isn’t clear. But Pinterest can be one very useful piece of a better book marketing system because it helps your content remain discoverable.

That’s the part I want authors to understand: Pinterest is not just another social media platform. It’s a visual search engine.

People go there to look for ideas, resources, recommendations, inspiration, and next steps. That means a well-optimized pin can send people to your book page, blog, newsletter, podcast, lead magnet, website, or sales page after you’ve stepped away from your phone.

That is deeply practical, and practical matters when life is already full.

If you’ve written a blog post, Pinterest can help more people find it. If you’ve recorded a podcast episode, Pinterest can help drive listeners to it. If you have a book page, Pinterest can help readers discover it more easily. If you have a lead magnet or newsletter, Pinterest can help bring new people into that ecosystem. If you have a low-ticket offer, Pinterest can keep pointing people toward it without you having to talk about it every hour of the day.

Again, it’s not magic. It’s structure.

It’s one part of a system that says, “My work deserves to keep moving, even when my life needs my attention.”

That’s the kind of marketing I believe in.

Systems Are a Form of Stewardship

The older I get, the more I believe good systems are not about hustle. They’re about stewardship.

They help us steward our energy, creativity, relationships, responsibilities, and work. They help us honor the fact that we are not machines. We can’t be everywhere, all the time, at full capacity, with endless ideas and perfect timing. We’re human. We get tired. Our families need us. Our bodies need care. Our homes need tending. Sometimes cars break, appliances quit, and life decides to stack the deck for a while.

A system doesn’t prevent that, but it can soften the impact. It can make sure your work doesn’t vanish the moment you have to step away, help you return with less guilt and less scrambling, and give your content a longer life.

>> Fun fact: a single pin can last for 6 to 12+ months, whereas an average Instagram post's lifespan is only 24 to 48 hours. <<

That is what I want authors to build. Not frantic marketing in a “post more” panic on a platform held together by caffeine, guilt, and whatever Instagram decided to reward this week. Authors need something steadier, simpler, and that can hold up when the week does not.

My great-grandparents, Eugene and Nan, with Mamaw as a baby, early 1940s.

Build the System Before You Need It

The hard truth is that we usually appreciate systems most when life stops cooperating. We appreciate the meal in the freezer when the day falls apart or the appointment reminder when our brain is juggling too much. But systems feel boring until they become the thing that helps you breathe.

That's true in a home. It's true in a business. And it's certainly true in an author's career.

If you wait to build the system until you’re already overwhelmed, it becomes one more thing asking for energy you don’t have to give. But if you build it before you need it, it becomes a supportive structure that keeps you on track and organized.

That’s what I keep thinking about in this season. My grandmothers knew how to keep going, but they also knew the value of rhythms: recipes, routines, chores, Sunday meals, practical wisdom, old sayings, and small habits that held households together when life was anything but easy.

Maybe that’s part of what we’re really building when we talk about sustainable marketing. Not just content plans, pins, posts, or emails, but intentional rhythms that help our work endure while we live the lives we’ve been given.

A Better Way to Keep Going

We’re still navigating the practical realities of this season. Laundry has been washed by hand the old-fashioned way. There are medical questions we’re still waiting to answer. There are unknowns, frustrations, and plenty of moments when I don’t feel bright or brave or ready to tackle the day.

But I’m grateful for what’s still going right. I’m grateful for family recipes and bluegrass gospel, and for the women who taught me to keep going. I’m grateful for hot showers, clean sheets, reasons to laugh, and the ability to make the bed when everything else feels uncertain. And yes, I’m grateful for the systems that help my work continue gently in the background when my life needs me elsewhere.

If you’re an author in a hard season, or even just a full one, I hope you hear this clearly: you are not failing because you can’t manually hold every piece of your marketing together every day. You are not lazy because you need structure. You are not behind because your real life needs attention.

You need systems that support you and your life. Not the algorithm, not the trends, not whatever is working on social media this week. You.

I hope this gives you a reason to start thinking about the systems your author life may need before you’re in a season where you’re relying on them to hold some of the weight. For me, one of those systems has been Pinterest.

To learn more about why Pinterest is worth paying attention to as an author, I’d recommend reading this next: Pinterest Isn’t Just for Recipes: Why Authors Should Pay Attention to This Overlooked Search Engine

Hard days will come. They always do. But when they do, the right systems can help you keep going without asking you to carry everything yourself. And sometimes, that is the difference between collapsing under the weight of it all and finding the strength to pull up our bootstraps, wipe our faces, and keep going.