What do you do when the world is burning, and you still have to ship the product?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because grief is no longer a personal detour. It’s the terrain. We’re launching, pitching, raising, shipping, all while holding the weight of collective sorrow: war, injustice, betrayal, burnout, and the quiet ache of watching too many good things break.

And yet… we’re still expected to market.

As a GTM strategist, I help founders navigate funding rounds, write copy, recalibrate signals, and pitch investors even when their personal lives were crumbling. I’ve even done it while mine was.

But something’s shifting. We can’t afford to keep pretending our industries exist outside these grief fields. And honestly? I think our strategies are suffering because of that denial.

A Grief Economy Is Not a Growth Economy

The typical GTM playbook is built for optimism, expansion, traction, momentum. But grief doesn’t move like that. It spirals. It pauses. It forgets. It questions everything.

So what happens when your audience is grieving?
What happens when you are?

You can’t just “optimize your CTA” when the person reading it just lost their sister. You can’t guilt people into converting when they’re already carrying guilt just for surviving. You can’t pitch joy without also honoring what’s been lost.

This isn’t about being sad. It’s about being honest.
It’s about building strategy that understands the emotional weather.
And right now, the forecast isn’t sunny.

So How Do You Build in This?

You build with reverence.
You build with precision.
You build something people actually want to carry with them when everything else is heavy.

Maybe that means making your copy a little softer.
Maybe that means naming the grief.
Maybe it means doing less but doing it beautifully.

I don’t think GTM is dead.
I just think it has to grow up.

Because this isn’t a growth economy anymore.
It’s a grief economy.
And the brands that survive will be the ones that remember how to feel.

Strategy matters.
But trust moves markets.

— Rhea Lynn Mascarinas
GTM Strategist | QuietConversion
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