My son went to overnight camp for the first time this summer. Same camp I went to as a kid, which is how I ended up spending two weeks up there myself — mostly playing games and helping kids shoot videos.
I worked maybe three hours a day. Some days it was closer to ten hours total.
In that same stretch, the business ran three launches, delivered a couple of audits, and scheduled north of a hundred emails for clients.
Most of it happened without me.
I want to be careful here, because this isn’t a passive income story. It’s a much more boring one.
What changed is that I stopped hand-building the same things over and over.
A client proposal used to take two hours. It takes fifteen minutes now. A scope of work, same deal — two hours down to fifteen. An account audit was a solid four-hour block. Now I talk through the account on a screen recording for an hour and spend thirty minutes cleaning up what comes back.
None of that is the work people hire me for.
It was the tax I paid to get to the work.
And I paid it for years without ever asking what it was costing me. Because it felt like work. It looked like work on the calendar.
So here’s the test I’d offer you. Look at your week and separate what you actually do from what you set up in order to do it.
Most creators aren’t overworked.
They’re over-prepared.
Matt “the setup tax” Ragland
P.S. I’m starting the next Claude for Creators cohort late this summer. Click here to learn more and grab your spot. I limit the group to 10 people so everyone gets attention and support.