Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 2: From Burnout to Multi–Six Figures

Released: 12/12/2025

Show Notes:

In this podcast episode, Amanda Buduris shares her journey of starting her own podcast and private practice, discussing her cultural background, financial trauma, and the challenges she faced in her career. She emphasizes the importance of vulnerability, mentorship, and innovative therapy approaches, while also highlighting her financial success and future aspirations for the podcast and her coaching business.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Your story matters—sharing the real behind-the-scenes (not just the highlight reel) is how you build trust, connection, and permission for other therapists to want more for themselves.
2. Your money story impacts your practice—financial trauma, culture, and “push through” conditioning don’t disappear when you become a therapist, but healing them can directly change your confidence, pricing, and sustainability.
3. Freedom comes from structure + support, not hustle—when you pair aligned strategy (like intensives + clear marketing) with mentorship/community, you can create a practice that serves clients deeply and supports your nervous system.

Connect with Amanda:

• Follow on Instagram: @amandakbcoaching
• Check out the Amanda KB Coaching website

Make sure to hit follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by Jane – use code: AMANDA2MO for a 2-month grace period

Resources & Links:

SEO for Therapists Membership

Therapy Intensives Academy

Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind

Free Training: 3 Steps to Booking Your First Therapy Intensive

Free Guide: 3 Steps to Double Your Income

SEO Freebie

Just a quick heads up, everything I share in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It’s not legal advice, financial advice, or tax advice. Every practice and every state has its own rules. So if you’re wondering how something applies to your situation, make sure to check in with an attorney, accountant, or another qualified professional who can give you guidance based on your specific circumstances.

Transcript:

Amanda Buduris (00:01)
Hello, I am so excited to be here for my first full official podcast episode. Starting my own podcast has been something that’s been on my mind for a long time because listening to podcasts, listening to other people’s stories and just to get like a behind the scenes sneak peek preview of what exactly goes into building a successful private practice and a successful business was so critical to me.

when I was getting ready to launch my private practice. And so I know that even though I’m very active on social media, there’s not a lot that people get to see of like my behind the scenes. I took a lot with my coaching clients who are therapists about, you know, my upbringing, my culture, the things that I’ve had to overcome to get to where I am today. And they just love it. And they love being able to hear, you know, where I’ve been.

⁓ what I’ve had to overcome, how I overcame those things. And so this is really my way of just kind of like bringing more of that realness to the masses to be able to show you not just the, you know, fun successes and the things that light me up, but also to talk about the hardships too, because it wouldn’t be a true picture if I said everything came easy and I knew exactly how to do this right from the start.

And so I’m gonna bring you back in time to the middle of Cicero, Chicago, not Cicero, the suburb, the area of Cicero. If you are a Chicagoan, you know what I’m talking about. It is very important. It’s a very important distinction to say whether you’re from the city or whether you’re from the suburbs. But I grew up in the city of Chicago. I grew up the youngest of three kids to a single mom.

My sister has a different dad than me and he was kind of in and out of the picture with my mom, but primarily it was my mom doing the best that she could to raise all three of us. And culturally I identify as mixed identity. My mother is lots of different types of like Eastern European kind of descent, whereas my father is Mexican. And so I identify a lot as a woman of color. We grew up in an area that was

the Mexican community was very, strong. And so I just always identified that way and yet never fit into either like Mexican spaces or all white spaces. And so that was already, that’s always a piece that I’m navigating around, like fitting in and like, am I doing the right thing? Do I know what I’m talking about? But when it came to like the two biggest messages I took away from my upbringing as a kid, number one, like growing up in a single

parent household, money was the biggest stressor ever. I remember my mom sitting at the computer for hours on the weekend trying to balance her budget and think about, you know, how do we pay down this debt versus try to save for this thing? And I just remember feeling like a burden as a kid. I’m like, my God, I can’t ask for, you know, things that I want to do like this Girl Scouts trip because it’s too much money. I remember being protective.

of my mom’s financial stress, even though she probably like explicitly hinted at it at different places, but was, you know, the kind of mom who was like, we’ll make it work. It’ll be fine. I want to take care of you. But I still felt that guilt around money. still felt like money was this scary thing that we just like couldn’t name. We couldn’t talk about. And yet it was very much in the air. So that was a big thing. That’s something I’ve continuing to deconstruct in my own therapy.

I talk about it in my own business coaching still because it’s still very relevant, like financial money trauma. Like this stuff can take a while to like shed and deconstruct and work through. Outside of that, the other big thing that I grew up with, especially from the Mexican side of my family was this belief that, you know, what’s really strong is to hold things in and to persevere and to push through. And you do not bring your

shit that’s happening inside, outside. Like you keep that to yourself. And so naturally that didn’t really work for me. I did it. I held a lot of stuff in internally, but as I was getting into high school, as I was getting ready to transition from high school into college, I’m already stressed about money, right? Because college is expensive. I found a college that I loved.

But it was a private college and so it was a lot of money. And again, my mom did the like, we’ll make it work, it’ll be fine. She took out loans, I took out loans. And I loved that I did that. And again, there came that guilt around like, look at what I’m doing, look at how I’m being a burden. How am I ever going to repay her? I didn’t know at the time that I wanted to pursue psychology, but I imagine if I did, that just would have been another layer of, I mean, we all know the trope of like, therapists don’t make money.

So I’m already navigating those emotions. I had my longest term romantic relationship that I would be leaving. And so that was really scary. Change in general for me is really hard. But transitioned into college having only, I went to like a guidance counselor like four times, cause my boyfriend at the time was concerned about like how stressed I was in the transition and he wanted me to get support.

And so again, I wasn’t really sold on the idea of being vulnerable in front of others because of my upbringing. But I got into college, got about a year and a couple months in and I was like, oh, I’m really struggling. I need to talk to someone. And so of my own volition, I went to go see one of the college counseling center therapists. And even for again, I went to a private undergrad school. So this was 1600 students.

very, very tiny, there were three therapists on staff. And so clearly not enough, but I probably had like five, six, seven therapy sessions with this therapist. And it was still immensely helpful for me because my therapist was a man of color. And so number one, to see a man of color values creating a space for safe connection and vulnerability.

Like that was huge for me to see that. And so I was able to open up pretty quickly in that space. And that’s when I started to feel like, my gosh, I want to do this for other people. I want to help other people realize it’s okay to open up. And so I made the decision to declare my major in psychology. thankfully, actually, my undergrad did have a counseling skills class.

So that was really, really cool and I think really unique. And I don’t know a lot of undergrads that have that, but it was taught by a professor who graduated from a local university, Iowa State University, which is where I ended up getting my graduate degree. But even at that time, I declared my major, I was like, I wanna be a therapist, I’m so excited for this. Even at that time, I had already kind of heard the trope of therapists do not go into this to make money. And so I was kind of,

worried about that a little bit because I kind of needed to make money. I grew up very, very low income. I was very, very stressed about paying down my undergrad loans. I was very stressed about, you know, how am I ever going to buy a house one day? But I still wanted to be a therapist. So I was like, I guess this is just going to be a passion project and I’m just going to make it work and it’ll be fine. And literally my thought process was

I just need to find the cheapest way to get this degree. And so I was looking at master’s programs, I was looking at doctorate programs, and ultimately I literally chose the school that gave me the best financial package. So again, I went with Iowa State University. It happened to be ranked one of the top programs in the country, which I was actually thrilled about. My high achieving perfectionistic parts was like, look at me. But really I did it because…

They had such great funding. They waived my tuition for all six years, as well as I got a graduate student stipend for doing like teaching and research assistant work and stuff like that. So I actually made money going to grad school, which I know is not the norm. So I thankfully only graduated with my undergrad loans and those were still like $42,000, which is still a lot of money, especially considering that I was gonna be in school for the next six years and definitely not making a ton of money there.

But when I started my graduate program, immediately what they did was set us up at the University Counseling Center. That was going to be where we’d get the majority of our clinical hours. And I was pretty thrilled by that, actually. The one thing I didn’t expect was that I was one of the youngest people in the program. I was like, doesn’t everybody just graduate from their undergrad at 22 and then go right into a PhD program?

No, it turns out most people get their masters, take a few years off, take decades off, and then they come back and do their doctorate. So that’s one of the youngest people there. So again, my imposter syndrome comes out, my like, who am I, where do I fit in, what am I doing? So that was really, that was a stressful process. But working at the counseling center made me feel like, it was funny, I would get this feedback from some clients of like, you just kind of feel like a big sister, you feel like a mentor, and that was.

I didn’t actually take that degrading yet when I started working with 50-year-old clients, did. But to hear that from 18 to 22-year-olds, I was like, okay, so that actually feels welcoming to them, right? That feels safe to them. So I’m about that, I’m for that, I love it. So I thought I would work at a college counseling center for probably not forever, but I was like, I could see myself do this for the next 20 years. Get some experience here, do some groups, do workshops.

eventually maybe be like clinical coordinator. I was really excited by the idea of just like staying at a place where I felt comfortable. And so when I, it was my final year of my grad program, we had to do a year long internship anywhere in the country. I had only ever lived in the Midwest. I grew up in Chicago. I did nine years of education in Iowa, which I was not thrilled about, but I decided for my final year of training, I want to go somewhere that I’ve always wanted to go. So I

almost exclusively applied to schools in the Pacific Northwest because I really wanted to be around more nature. I wanted to be excited by the places that I lived. And so I matched at a college counseling center, which again, the work felt really good there. The training was really diverse. That’s where I started to learn more about trauma work and couples work. Those are the niches that I hold in my private practice now. And I was pretty excited. And then COVID happened, ⁓ I think.

I would have started that in like August 2019. So just moved out to Oregon and then started my internship. then, know, March, 2020 COVID hit. And I think the transition went about as well as it could have given, you know, everyone was up in the air about what’s going on. But still in all of that, I was like, I just need to look for like what’s safe, what’s predictable. So as I was getting ready to graduate, I applied to a full-time job.

at a different university, one that was in a location that I liked a little bit better, where I was, it was a little more rural and I didn’t love that. So I moved somewhere a little bit closer to where it was like a smaller city. So that felt really good. And again, I signed on, I was like, I’m gonna stay here for like five to 10 years, learn the ropes, consider maybe like moving after five to 10 years if I don’t like it here. I did not think about private practice, first and foremost, because I had no idea.

about running a private practice. I didn’t know what that looked like. I didn’t know what it entailed. It just was not on my radar at all. like, I like college counseling work. I’m just gonna keep doing this. And I burned out in about 15 months, maybe less, because it was COVID and because there was a lot of need and like everything just became much more stressful during that time. And the students that were coming in were coming in a lot more lonely, a lot more higher acuity.

I had my first experiences helping someone with a hospitalization process, with people who were just in a lot of need. And so even though I was only seeing a caseload of like 16 to 20 clients, it weighed on me so heavily. And that was just the clinical work I was doing, because I was also still doing workshops and education and other admin related stuff.

I would write letters for, I was a part of the gender affirming care services. And so there was just a lot going on. And I just realized I couldn’t be so stressed and so out of control of my schedule. I think that was one of the biggest things is that my time was not protected. I would think I would have an hour to do notes at the end of the day and surprise, there would be a walk-in student who needed their safety to be assessed. And so I really couldn’t deal with.

both the level of acuity and the lack of control and the lack of autonomy and just feeling like I was a bad therapist. And I probably was, like there were probably a couple of clients who weren’t so stressed. A lot of the graduate students that I worked with, they were more stable. They’re kind of in the phase of like exploring who they are and what they wanna do after graduation and the stress of applying for jobs. So like I could resonate with that a lot more than someone who’s 18, 19 and is in such a place of.

hopelessness and again, loneliness. And so it really was until I like hit this wall where I realized like, can’t do this for another three to eight years. Like I need to get out of here as soon as possible. And so we had the winter holidays coming up, I took a solid two weeks off because otherwise, I didn’t really use a lot of like my vacation and sick time. So I was like, I’m taking two weeks off for the holidays. And I deep

dove into all the free Facebook groups. I listened to a ton of podcasts about starting your own private practice. I caught all these webinars. I signed up for all these trainings to get like certified and being a telehealth provider because for some reason I thought I would need that and that would look better and make me get clients sooner. Hint, it did not. ⁓ But you know, I deep dove into all this information. I was like, I can figure this out. I can do it. Like plenty of people do it. It’ll be fine.

I truly went into it again with the narrative of I’m not gonna make money. So I was like, as long as I can replace my salary, my salary at the counseling center was 59,000 for 10 months of work. So it was essentially like you got summers off and that was supposed to be a part of the perks, so to speak. 59,000 was the most money I have ever made in my life. And so that was thrilling. And I was like, if I can just replace that in roughly 12 months of work, I’ll be happy with it because I’d get my autonomy back.

I would get to choose my clients a little bit more, you know, carefully and intentionally. So that was really all I was looking for. But I went into private practice and I replaced my 10 month salary in about six months. And so I was like, okay, there’s a lot of potential here. And again, growing up with the money mindset with the financial trauma that I had, knowing that I still had these undergrad loans to pay off, I already started having credit card debt because you know.

I liked to spend money on things and it was hard to deprive myself to like say no to experiences because I quote unquote shouldn’t have bought them. So I had credit card debt, I had loan debt, I had debt. So I saw the potential of, okay, like I could probably pretty easily make six figures here. So that was really exciting. I started to see a lot of therapists on social media who were talking about not only making like 100,000, but making 150 and 200,000 and.

250,000 and I was like, okay, I need to know how to do this. Not only for the like financial aspect and some of the safety that that could bring, but also because I’m a high achieving person. I like challenges and like I knew I could do it if someone taught me. And so I hired a business coach less than being a full year into private practice. Cause I was like, I don’t know anything about building a business.

I hodgepodged all my like EHR and phone systems and things like that. Like I got by and clearly I could do the therapy work, but I don’t know what it means to run a business. And I knew if I wanted to make more money and have more work-life balance, I had to learn a little bit more like business mindset. With this too, like I always valued mentorship. It was one of my favorite things working at a college counseling center was, you know, the more that I aged and got like,

promoted, I guess, in each level of my training. I got the opportunity to train other graduate students, to supervise them, to provide them with advanced trainings on the things I was ⁓ making my niche. And so that was always something that was really exciting for me. It’s something that honestly made it really hard to leave a counseling center because I knew I probably wouldn’t get the opportunity for providing that type of mentorship again for a while. Because I was like, I need to figure out what it’s like to

run a practice by myself before I even consider like taking on a supervisee or something like that. And I still to this day have not because there’s just so much on my plate. And I want to be able to provide quality supervision if I were to ever do that. But for me, like being coached, and now that I am also a coach too, like it fills that mentorship cup and it feels really, really good. And so now I’m in a place where

in my first, again, like six months of private practice, I had matched and like slightly exceeded what I was making that $59,000 in 10 months. And that was really exciting. And then my first full year, which I’m counting as like calendar year, January, 2023 to December 2023, I had actually made $180,000 in my therapy practice.

And a lot of that was because of the work I was doing in my business coaching, because I was able to see like, where was I working with clients that were not ideal clients? And how was that draining me? And how was having a mixture between, I had like three to five insurance clients, mostly private pay clients, a handful of EAP clients to have so many hands in too many buckets for me.

It was holding me back in a way because I was having a hard time setting boundaries across, you know, which bucket each client was kind of in. And so I had a lot of hard conversations with my coach around what to let go of, how to be strategic with raising rates, getting off of insurance, getting off of the EAPs. And ultimately what it allowed me to do was honestly create more space for creativity. I had already been, I was probably in private practice.

Fully, I launched like July 1st. And by like October, November, this would have been of 2022, I had heard of people doing these extended sessions. People were asking like, how do I code for a 75 minute appointment? How do I code for a 90 minute appointment? And I started seeing some people say like, I offer like 30 hours in one week appointments. I offer, you know, three hours in one day. And I was like, that’s the type of work I wanna do.

because I work with complex trauma, because I work with couples, like even 75 to 90 minutes does not feel like enough time most of the time. And so I’ve got really excited by this idea of therapy intensives. And as I went into the new year, 2023, I was like, this is something I really want to prioritize in my business. And so I prioritize making space in my calendar for them. I prioritized setting them at a fee that felt really, really good to me.

which to start with, I think they started around like 300 to 350 an hour. Nowadays in 2025, my therapy intensive fees are 400 an hour for appointments that are booked during my like routine work times Monday through Friday, kind of like a 10 to six kind of timing. And if it is something that goes beyond that, if it’s something on the weekends, if it’s something that like starts at four and goes till seven,

then that goes up to $500 an hour. For context, my 50 minute therapy session for an hour is $350. For additional context, I live in the Pacific Northwest, cost of living is very, very high here. And so it’s not completely outrageous to hear those numbers. Most people I would say in the Pacific Northwest still probably charge around like 200, 250. So my fee is on the higher end.

But I know there are some people who are like 350 is entirely exorbitant and it would never work in my area. And if that’s true in your area, totally, I get that. I have some leeway being in a higher cost of living area. I was able that like 180, I think it was, it’s either 181, $183,000 that I made for us from therapy practice in 2023. About 50,000 of that was just from therapy intensives.

And so I really saw a lot more of the power that could come from if I keep focusing on this accelerated focused way to help my clients, then I don’t have to, you know, overwork myself, which even again, for me, I’ve always felt like my sweet spot, if I were only doing hour long appointments, my sweet spot would be between like 10 to 15 and honestly, probably closer to like 10 to 12. But I would need more money than just to see

10 to 12 clients at back then it was like 200 an hour. So I chose to really focus in on therapy intensives. At one point I closed my doors completely to weekly clients and said the only way to work with me was with therapy intensive. I’ve since changed it back to, know, we can do one or either depending on just like what your goals are, depending on my time and capacity. But so many people were excited about these extended sessions.

So many people were like, I do not have time for weekly therapy or we’re both in a couple, we’re both so busy that our schedules do not overlap. And so it was really exciting to fill this gap that existed, especially in my area. I did not know many people offering these extended sessions and to really see that both new clients who had no experience with me before could trust me just solely based on

what I put on my website and what we talk about at the consultation call, and my current clients were super interested in like, can we do this every now and then in addition to our weekly sessions? Because so many people just want more time for healing, right? Like that is such a, not only from the therapist side is it such a privilege to hold that space for people, but clients also feel that privilege of sitting with a therapist for an extended period of time because they value our time.

And so the more I was offering therapy intensives, the more I had other therapists ask me, how are you doing this? How did you fill your practice so quickly? How did you scale so quickly? And that’s when I started to open up the coaching arm of my business, which again, for me, filled that mentorship role. I was like, I am so excited to talk with therapists about how to help them grow and how to do it quickly and how to do it in alignment with their needs and their nervous system, because there are so many.

you know, sources and things out there that will sometimes encourage something that pushes people too fast more than they’re ready for it. Like drop all of your insurance panels at once. Like if you financially cannot do that, that is not realistic advice. Meanwhile, I’m talking with therapists sometimes of like, can we drop one insurance panel every six months so that we can ultimately get to the goal of where you want to be? Because that’s what that’s what’s more important to me is not, you know, cookie cutter solutions for people, but figuring out what works for you.

And so that was really exciting to launch that arm of my business to grow and scale that up. I think in my first year, 2023, maybe like five to six months of coaching revenue was additional like $25,000. So that put my first full calendar year of being in business for myself, I made like $203,000, which I was like, this is never gonna happen. This is gonna take forever to happen. And it happened, right? It happened so quickly.

The following year, 2024, I made about $350,000. As of this recording right now, I’m recording this in October 2025. I’ve already passed $350,000 for the year. And this is across both of my therapy and my coaching practice, just to be super transparent. And so for me, it’s been just so cool. And honestly, what I tell my coaching clients all the time in our one-on-one and our group calls is like running my own businesses.

has honestly been one of the most tremendous things I could do to heal some of my complex trauma, right? My messages around like, I don’t know what I’m doing or I’m not worth it or I have nothing to offer. To be able to offer two strong, profitable businesses, to see ideal therapy clients, ideal coaching clients reaching out to me and connecting with me, like this has just felt…

So, so cool. It’s felt so humbling. And I’m just so excited to see where everything goes from here. I’ve been expanding into more creative projects. I just had my first retreat earlier this year, was earlier this month, which was super, super exciting. And I’m just so excited to help therapists do the same. I just started a mastermind that primarily consisted of people who’ve already worked with me. And I’m helping them with really thinking about like,

no cookie cutter solution, like what is actually going to work for you given that we are all different in terms of our financial trauma, in terms of our current financial circumstances, our current bandwidth and capacity, our personalities. I’m an introvert. I work with so many other introverts who are like, here are the ways I cannot market my business. Here are the ways I will not show up. And so it’s so cool for me to be able to fill in a gap that I think really

exists out there. One thing I really want to say too is I talked a little bit about my culture being mixed identity. I’m very aware that I’m white passing and I name that all the time, the privilege that comes with that. I will get some people who say like, you look like you’re a person of color, but I can’t place, I hate the phrase what you are, but can’t place what you are. But for me, like there truly is a difference between how

literally like what’s built into my DNA and how I think about business and success and ⁓ just like you know historical, generational, intergenerational things that people of color struggle with in terms of worthiness and money and so for me it’s really cool when I get to work with therapists of color who have not seen another therapist of color be so successful.

And so I’m to be talking more about that in this podcast of what that means, what that looks like for me, what it’s looked like with the other therapists of color that I’ve worked with, because I think that’s just so important. And it’s honestly something that I don’t think it’s talked about enough. I think for me, a lot of the coaches, a lot of the really successful people see people I see on social media, they at least look white. Right. I do not see a lot of people of color that are that present out there. And so I

I’m putting myself out there, even though that’s a stretch for me as an introvert and someone who’s still, I’m like a homebody, I’m an internal processor. It’s such a push for me to put myself more out there. But that is, again, exactly one of the reasons that I wanted to put this podcast out there was because I know people need to hear more of the inner workings of people who work internally, right? To hold back.

you know, all of the vulnerable things that I’ve shared so far today around like my financial trauma, my cultural trauma, and just tons of other things. Like it misses a part of the narrative around people who do have either visible or invisible privileges and are able to make things work. Like I so firmly believe when you have the right guidance, when you have the right community, when you have the right type of support, you can.

do such freaking amazing things. And so I’m just so, excited that you are here listening today. I’m excited to hear what you all think of the podcast as I release more episodes. And I would love to hear, what do we relate on? If you are listening to this, let me know if you have similar pieces of your feedback, of your history. Let me know if you have any feedback or on things that you want to hear more about, because I’m just so excited to make this a place where

you get what you need from this. This is not a podcast for me. Like I said, this is pushing me to do this and I’m comfortable doing this. I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t in alignment with my values and how I want to be and how I want to show up. But I want this to be helpful for you. So I’ve got a really cool lineup of episodes that will be coming out each week.

I am so excited to share more with you personally. I’m excited to bring on different guest speakers, both people I’ve worked with in the past as well as other people in the industry who are experts in their fields. And yeah, thank you so much for joining me on this journey. I am looking forward to every step of it and would love to hear what you all are thinking so far. Thanks for being here today. I will look forward to catching up with you and being in your…

Maybe it’s not your ear, maybe it’s your car, wherever you listen to your podcasts in the coming weeks.