When the World Is on Fire… Do You Still Sell?

If you’ve ever opened Instagram, seen devastation in the news… and immediately felt like it was wrong to promote your work — you’re not alone.

In this episode, Sam Garcia breaks down one of the most common (and rarely talked about) tensions for values-driven entrepreneurs:

👉 How do you keep running your business when the world feels like it’s falling apart?

This isn’t a surface-level conversation.

We’re diving into:

• Why going silent isn’t actually helping (and what it’s really costing you)
• The difference between being tone-deaf vs. being present
• How to identify what’s actually yours to carry (and what isn’t)
• Practical ways to protect your nervous system in a nonstop news cycle
• How to keep selling without feeling gross, performative, or disconnected
• Ways to align your business with your values — including turning revenue into impact

This episode is especially for:

• Conscious entrepreneurs
• Coaches, creators, and service providers
• People who care deeply about the world… and still want to build something meaningful inside of it

Because your work still matters.
And disappearing doesn’t serve anyone.

Want strategy that respects your nervous system—and business growth that feels like a spell, not a sprint?

Join the Regenerative Business Ecosystem: my entire library of courses, live monthly calls, personalized onboarding, and a whole community of magical misfits building world-changing businesses—without selling their souls to the algorithm.

🎟️ Grab your spot now at https://learn.thedirtyalchemy.com/rbe

Open until July 29 at 11:59pm! The Regenerative Business Ecosystem is my membership for values-led entrepreneurs building businesses that regenerate people, planet, and profit. Learn more & enroll while you can here: https://learn.thedirtyalchemy.com/ecosystem-2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Welcome back to the Regenerative Business Podcast. In today's episode, this one is for the moments when the world feels like it's falling apart, like now. And you're sitting there wondering how the hell you're supposed to keep showing up, keep selling, and keep running your business inside of that. Because if you've ever opened Instagram and immediately felt like it was inappropriate to promote your work, you are not alone. This is something I get messages from, DMs about, questions in my membership about, and private client DMs, like so many people are feeling this and thinking this. You're not alone in this. So in this episode, we're talking about how to navigate that tension, how to stay in integrity, how to know what's actually yours to carry, and how to keep your business alive without feeling disconnected from your values. Let's get into it. If you've ever opened Instagram to sell your offer and immediately felt like it was inappropriate or even obscene because of what is happening in the world, you are not alone. I have built a multi-seven figure business, and this is something that I've had to navigate in a very real way. One of the most common questions I get from my clients who are deeply values-driven, politically aware, conscious humans is how do I keep selling when everything feels like it's falling apart and I look around and it's just devastation, everything, or I scroll the feed and it's war, genocide, unrest, deportation. And really, right now, a lot of really good, really conscious people are quietly not selling because it feels weird, it feels inappropriate, or even wrong, and it's actually creating a much bigger problem. So, how do you keep running your business when the world feels like this? That is what we're gonna be talking about today in this video. How do you keep running your business? How do you keep making sales? How do you keep showing up without being tone bef, without performing grief that you don't feel, and without feeling like a sociopath for wanting to pay your rent, pay your people, live a good life. In August 2023, the Lahaina wildfires happened five minutes from where we live on Maui, and we were inside the military blockade. Like the military was there for weeks blocking passage in and out of Lahaina, and we were stuck inside the blockade and choosing not to leave the blockade because we were afraid of and knew other people who were completely separated from their families if they left. Like if someone stayed behind and the other person left the blockade, there wasn't any guarantee that you'd be able to get back in. And so, luckily, we live a regenerative lifestyle, we have built an off-grid regenerative farm, so we had everything we needed, including power and self-service, while everything else was taken out because we were off-grid, and we became this communication hub during this really insane time for our community. And my husband spent nearly two years full-time on recovery efforts, and I spent months doing the same after the fires. So I know what it feels like when something is so close and so devastating and so yours that business genuinely feels impossible. And this often goes two different ways, either going towards it lights you up, it puts a fire under you, or it shuts you down. Or even like it lights you up for a while, but then you can't maintain that capacity, so it shuts you down. And the people in my world, probably you, are rebels, they're witches, they're visionary weirdos, deeply politically conscious, values-first humans. So you feel this. So this question of how do I keep selling when the world is on fire is one of the most common things I hear from people inside of my programs. It's not theoretical, it's like real time. These are the discussions we're having. But I will tell you something that we'll we'll touch on later in the video is in 2025, so last year, very recently, I had some serious health stuff going on, and months and months of it of not sure what was going on, and my energy was completely taken from me. And I eventually found the person who helped me fix it because I found them on Instagram, because they kept posting, because they didn't go silent, and I was so grateful they were committed to their visibility, their willingness to keep marketing their work, even when the world was a mess, it was why I found them, and my energy levels like and like my health concerns on a lot of levels, they're like frivolous in comparison to genocides, right? But that doesn't mean it was something that was drastically affecting my day-to-day life that I wanted an immediate solution for. So by the end of this video, you're going to have a framework for showing up in your business that doesn't require you to choose between your aesthetics and your income. You're gonna know what's actually yours to carry and what isn't, and you're gonna have full permission to keep selling if you so choose. Because going silent is not solidarity, shutting down your business is not activism. And I say that with so much love because I know it's not actually what a lot of people want to hear, but it's what I needed to hear, and it changed so much. So let's start with going silent isn't helping, and let's just be honest about this. You might be telling yourself that, oh, I'll take a break from selling until things calm down, it feels frivolous, I don't want to seem like I don't care. And so, some actual alternatives to this is like option A: you quit your business, you get a nine-to-five job, but then you're not in alignment with your purpose, your dharma, the reason you got started, your soul's mission. If you're like me and a lot of people in my world, your business feels directly connected to your soul's calling. So you're saying no to that. And you're doing less impactful work, not more. In some cases, you can find a nine to five job that feels directly relevant to helping the world, but in a lot of cases, if you're just trying to pay your monthly expenses, you're just taking what's there. It's not like they're doing good work or life-changing work. Option B is you turn your feed into a news outlet. So maybe you don't want to go completely silent on social media and completely silent emailing people, but instead you are just sharing about what's going on in the world and your rage and your commenting on what's going on. But a broadcast channel, a news outlet, that's actually a business model. And for most course creators and service providers, like 99.99% of them, that's not your business model. It's a completely different one. Like, I had a client who was a really beautiful activist sharing about the indigenous traditions she's from and supporting people in their healing arts, and she's like, I really love the slow factory, and I do too. Like the go check out the slow factory on Instagram. Their feed is beautiful and useful and relevant, and they do it so beautifully. But one, they're a nonprofit, and a nonprofit is a business model, a different one, and also essentially a broadcasting news outlet, like that's how they get visibility and a part of their mission as a nonprofit. That's their zone of genius. So, unless you want to completely change your business model, don't choose option B. And then option C is just going quiet. So, no selling, no content. And a lot of people choose this unconsciously, like they're choosing it by default. They're not actually making an intentional plan of how they're going to show up when the world is on fire, how they're gonna keep running their business while the world is on fire. So they just default to not saying anything. This is an avoidance technique. But I mean, who does this help? Your audience still has problems, they still have the problems that your business and your offers solve. Your work still changes lives, you're just stopping showing up for them. So, going silent is not activism, it is avoidance with better PR. So, here I would really invite you to ask yourself and maybe bring this into your journal of do you still believe in your offers? Are your clients and students still getting results? Because if they are, why is that any less valid than the size of the problems happening in the world? Because honestly, this is not going to stop. The structures that are crumbling are going to keep flailing before they fall. And we want these structures to crumble. If you look at the prophecies of a lot of ancient and current day indigenous cultures, so many of them talk about this time period where these structures are falling. So this is not just a 2026 thing or whatever year you're watching this video. We're in this time. So if you're waiting for the world to calm down before you sell again, you're gonna be waiting for a really long time. And I'm sure you notice this at this point of like, oh shit, this next crazy horrible thing is happening in the world. Or with the president, or this next horrible thing is happening, or another natural disaster. And then there's a lot of them that aren't getting a lot of press right now. There are a lot of tragedies and devastating things happening in the world right now that isn't on the current news cycle. I'm sure at some point it will be. So, what does tone deaf versus present actually look like? The fear here isn't that you'll make money. The fear is that someone will see your promotional post next to something devastating and think you're a monster. But what tone deaf actually looks like is using tragedy as a marketing hook. So in these uncertain times, by my course, that's tone deaf. Performing grief you don't feel because you think you're supposed to. Or posting your launch sequence unchanged the day of a major breaking event. That's just like read the room. So, yes, you're going to have to change how you market, you're gonna have to change how you show up, but also you experiencing what is happening with the collective should be changing you internally. So, of course, that's going to ripple out into how you show up on the internet, how you write, how you share. So, what being present while selling actually looks like is you acknowledge the weight of the world when it feels true for you. You're not trying to virtue signal, and in a little bit we'll talk about what's actually yours to carry. You keep selling your work because your work helps people, and that help doesn't become irrelevant because the news cycle is horrific. Of course, if you went through the questions I talked about earlier and you're like, actually, this still doesn't feel right to me. My offers no longer feel right to me. This could be a pivot point for you. Stuff that's happening in the world could be moving you in a different direction, and that's beautiful and perfect. And then you give yourself permission to have a business that is not a news channel, it's not a protest page or a grief account, and there are these accounts on Instagram or on social media that they're just pure activist accounts. And again, I always think about like what's the business model here? If it's a nonprofit, that's how they're getting funds. But for a lot of these accounts, they're hobby accounts essentially, where they have a full-time job over in this area and in their free time, they're creating this account. So this isn't apples to apples, you have a business, and if you want this to be an actual business and not just a hobby, you have to recognize the business model that you have and not trying to compare it to a completely different business model or a hobby account. And reminder, your people came to you for a specific thing, they still need your specific thing. The world being on fire doesn't change that. And I'm not saying that you censor yourself about what you talk about and you have to like pigeonhole yourself into like just talking about that one specific thing. Of course, talk about what's on your heart, talk about how you feel about what's happening in the world, but that doesn't mean your specific thing isn't devastating enough to be relevant. And to name one more thing, I know people who are posting almost exclusively about what's happening in the world, not because it's a line, but because they're scared of losing followers if they don't. They're scared about people and what they'll think about them if they don't post about every little thing. But truly, sharing to your Instagram stories or your Instagram grid is a very shallow form of activism. I'm sorry, it has to be said. Like, yes, is it important to make sure that people know about what's happening in the world? Absolutely. But if it's the only thing you can do, fine. But giving money, giving time, putting your body somewhere, calling your reps, that is deeper labor here. So you can be an activist and you can be making real change in the world, even if you're not posting about it on Instagram stories. Okay, so let's figure out what is actually yours to carry. Because not every devastating thing that goes viral and is in the current news circuit is yours. Not every cause that deserves attention is your cause. And being clear on what is actually yours to carry, what is the fire in your veins, what would you lay your life for, is how you're gonna actually find integrity here. So as I mentioned earlier, the Lahaina Wildfire, five minutes away from me, my direct local community, absolutely, that was mine. That was mine physically, that was mine, geographically, it was mine soulfully, relationally. And I also watched nonprofits parachute in from across the world to ride the disaster news cycle for fundraising. Was that theirs? I'm not sure. I definitely felt the difference between people who actually cared and disaster capitalists. And like, again, let's recognize that's their business model. And there's this concept in the Hawaiian language and Hawaiian culture called kuleana, which is like your responsibility, and also kuleana land is like land that you would ancestrally inherit that you are now responsible for. And this concept hits me so deeply because it acknowledges that not everything is your responsibility, and so you getting clear on what is yours to carry, what is your responsibility, is such a salve here. It's so much healing here. So for me, like if I think about okay, what is the fire in my veins that really gets me riled up that like spark inside of me that when I hear it, I'm like, yes, I need to act on this. Like it's climate change mitigation, it's reforestation, it is land back in Hawaii, and I donate my time, my money, my energy to these things every month, every week. And notice there are so many things, very relevant things that don't fall into these categories. Truly devastating things that I am aware of and I grieve and that are not mind to take a lead on. And I found so much peace in that. But I come back to like staying in my lane. Not necessarily having blinders on, because I think it is so important that we are aware of what's happening in the world and be witness to the atrocities that are happening. But staying in your lane isn't ignorance, it's how you can make an actual impact instead of spreading yourself so thin that you help no one. So, more journal prompts to you. What is the thing that you would lay down your life for? And maybe you wouldn't lay down your life for anything because you have kids or like you know you want to stay alive. But what is something that resonates with you at that level? What is the cause that has been in you for years, not just since you recently heard it? That's yours. Start there, go deep there, and of course it can change over time as you become aware of more things. But let the rest be things that you're aware of without being responsible for fixing. Okay, now let's talk about some practical stuff around protecting your nervous system because Instagram is designed to keep you on it and your brain is wired to hold on to the negative. So the combination of those two things is genuinely not okay for your nervous system, especially right now, especially if your Instagram feed has become an echo chamber of disaster. So putting actual constraints on your consumption of the news of social media is a smart move. There are apps that help you do this. I personally use ClearSpace, I'm sure there's plenty of other ones, but I love it because it will hard limit your time and you can like do challenges with it. So, like you have to do one squat for every one minute, it lets you into Instagram type stuff, which is cheeky and fun and good for your butt. Um, and I also really like the one-for-one rule of if you spend 10 minutes or 60 minutes on social media, spending 10 minutes or 60 minutes doing something that is geared towards the positive. So maybe that's completely offline, maybe that is watching a positive news only news site, or it could be going for a hike, being in your garden, being with your kids, being with your dogs, having no phone. Because the news cycle is geared towards the negative, and our brain is wired to pay attention to the negative, you have to intentionally build this in. So consider that a part of your job because no one else is gonna do it for you. And so for people who feel like opening Instagram feels like opening chaos, that is a real thing, and it makes complete sense. Know that you do not have to be on social media at all. Even for your online business, you can hire other people to do that, you can just do ads so you're not having to be on this organic content creation cycle. You can be on YouTube instead of a social media platform. You can batch your content creation so you're spending two hours once a week instead of opening the app every day. And of course, you can mute, unfollow, and curate your feed ruthlessly. And I do know people who believe that social media is one of the best ways to get certain types of news, but know that there are alternatives. You do not have to be on social media to get relevant news. You're allowed to protect yourself because burning out on other people's pain doesn't make you more helpful. It often makes you less helpful. Okay, so let's actually talk about selling during these times because you do have the option to turn selling into giving and actually make it feel good for yourself. For example, right after the Lahaina Fires, I ran a promotion where literally all the money that came in from any digital product of mine went directly to fire victims and recovery efforts. That felt really great to promote. Every sale wasn't just revenue, it was also a donation, and it connected two things I wanted to do of supporting my community and keeping my business running. What this looks like now is a percentage of my gross revenue goes to local reforestation in Hawaii every month. Every sale I make is also a contribution to the causes that are mine, what I feel responsible for. And it really makes me want to sell more, not less. It gets me really excited about what that money goes towards and what is being done with that money. So, some options for you to try out with this if you want to play this game is you can do a limited time promo where proceeds go to a specific cause and it ties directly to something happening right now or something that feels really relevant to your heart right now. You can set a permanent percentage of revenue that goes monthly to what's yours. Of course, maybe I shouldn't use the word permit, a commitment of a certain amount of revenue that you can change at any time because you set your own rules in your business. You can do a bundle or a bonus where part of the price goes towards a specific nonprofit or organization or go fund me or cause one offer in your offer suite. It could be all the profits from that offer go to this one thing. It's like you're giving offer. So whatever it is, it connects your business to your values in a way that makes every launch feel like an act of service and it gets to make selling so much more fun, especially when you feel connected to yes, my offer is still relevant in the world, yes, I'm still helping people with this, and bonus points, it's also directly connected to these causes on my heart. So if you have been silent for months because you've been in this cycle of how do I fucking sell? How do I do my business when the world is on fire? I want you to hear this. Probably very few people notice you were gone. Just come back. You think you need to write a whole thing of like, hey guys, I've been gone. Here's why, here's what I was processing, here's my first post back, here's what's been up. You don't need to do that. I mean you can if you really want to, but truly, no one needs that. So just post. Just send the email like you normally would. Just show up like you normally would. And the longer you make the return into a thing, the harder it gets to be. And really, like if you post today or email today and you post an email consistently, one month from now, it's just like your avoidance of not posting because of the world on fire. It's just like a thing of the past. So you can just start today and just get back to it. But what actually matters when you come back is decide your rhythm. How often are you actually going to show up? Pick something sustainable. Is it a certain number of posts a week? Is it one email a week? Is it one video a week? Is it once a month? I don't know. Start with your people, not with the promo. So, again, if you've ghosted any sort of posting at all for weeks or months, don't just like jump right into a launch. If you watched my video on the phases of a launch, you gotta go into the pre-pre-launch or the pre-launch. Start in there, don't go just directly into a promotion. Go watch that video if you don't know what I'm talking about. And then you get to go into selling because your work still matters. It mattered when you went quiet and it matters now. So let's remember keeping your business running when the world is on fire is not selfish, it is not tone-deaf, it is not a betrayal of your values. Because your work helps people, that doesn't become less true because the news is horrific. The person who needed to find you, they're still there. And if you go silent, they're much less likely to find you in your work. So make sure you do what we talked about. I gave you some assignments from this video. Figure out what's yours, protect your nervous system, and keep selling. And if you want to connect your revenue with your values, do that too. You can be a conscious human and have a thriving business. Those aren't opposites, they don't cancel each other out. Okay, friends, if this episode hits something for you, if you're navigating this tension between your values, your impact, and your business, this is exactly the kind of work we go deeper into inside of my membership. The regenerative business ecosystem. It is where we're building businesses that actually hold both money and meaning, strategy and ethics, impact and sustainability without burning ourselves out or disappearing when things get hard. So I only open the doors to RBE publicly a couple times a year, but we do open it more often behind the scenes secretly to the wait list. So if you want to be invited into those quieter openings, make sure that you are on the wait list. I will link to it in the show notes, and I will see you in the next episode.