September always feels like the real start of the year to me - more than January ever does. Kids are back in school, calendars fill back up, and suddenly everyone's operating at "normal" pace again, whatever normal means for your particular brand of chaos.

This September feels particularly "get back to normal"-ish because I wrapped up my final round of chemotherapy this week. I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer at the end of March, started chemo in April, and have been handling the usual "summertime as a business owner with kids" chaos while also dealing with all that chemo entails.

So now - chemo is over, and I can start getting back to my actual, real normal.

With all of that said... back to our regularly scheduled Marketing content. Getting my life back on track makes this a good moment to ask a question I don't think gets asked nearly enough: what is your marketing actually costing you?

Most business owners can tell you their ad spend to the dollar. Almost none of them can tell you how many hours a week they personally spend keeping their marketing alive - checking it, tweaking it, worrying about it, doing the thing where you open five tabs to "just look real quick" and 45 minutes disappears.

That number matters more than people think. Every hour spent manually operating marketing is an hour not spent on the thing only you can actually do. Nobody else can have the sales conversation the way you have it. Nobody else can make the call on the thing that actually needs your judgment. But plenty of things could, in theory, run without you standing next to them - if they were ever built that way in the first place.

This Week's Clarity Cue: Roughly tally how many hours a week you personally spend keeping your marketing running - checking, adjusting, creating, worrying. Don't round down to make yourself feel better. In fact, round up a little bit to account for the time you spend thinking about it but not actively looking at it.

Just sit with the real number for a minute, then reply and tell me what you landed on and whether you were surprised by the amount.

~ Courtney

P.S.: This is the exact question myVIP Intensive is built to answer: what's actually worth your hours, and what isn't. If that number surprised you, hit reply - happy to talk through what it would look like to change it.

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