Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 21: Time vs Money: How to Think About Investing in Your Business (Without Burning Out)

Released: 03/27/2026

Show Notes:

In this episode, Amanda breaks down one of the simplest (and most overlooked) truths of running a business: you only have two resources—your time and your money. She explores how every decision in your business is a trade-off between the two, and how to start making more intentional choices that actually support your growth. Amanda also dives into how to use money to collapse time, what return on investment really means beyond just dollars, and why staying in DIY mode too long can keep you stuck. Throughout the episode, she highlights the importance of capacity, strategy, and support—especially for therapists who want to grow their income without burning out.

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3 Key Takeaways:

1. Every business decision is a trade-off between time and money, and learning to intentionally choose which one to spend is key to reducing burnout and increasing sustainability.
2. Using money strategically can collapse time, helping you move faster, avoid mistakes, and create more space for higher-level thinking and income-generating work.
3. Return on investment isn’t just about money—it also includes time, capacity, clarity, and skills, all of which are essential for long-term growth and a sustainable business.

Connect with Amanda:

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

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Sponsors:

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Resources & Links:

SEO for Therapists Membership

Therapy Intensives Academy

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Free Guide: 3 Steps to Double Your Income

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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 (00:03)
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Happy Healthy and Wealthy Therapist podcast. I wanna talk about something today that I think simplifies so many decisions in business, and that is this. You really only have two resources as a business owner, your time and your money. That is it. Every decision you make in your business is a trade-off between those two things.

Either you spend time to save money or you spend money to save time. Or ideally, you spend money to create more time and more money, right? That is the ultimate goal for so many of us. But I think a lot of therapists are making these decisions without realizing they’re actually making them. And that’s where we start to feel overworked, underpaid, confused about what to invest in.

or resentful about where our time is going. So today I wanna break this down in a really simple way. How to think about time versus money, how to collapse time using money, what ROI, return on investment, actually means and how this shifts as your business grows. So let’s start here again by breaking down what actually are your two resources as a business owner.

Every single thing you do in your business costs either time, money, or both. When you write your own blogs, that’s costing time. When you post on Instagram, that’s costing time. To learn SEO and AIO, it’s costing time. DIYing your own website costs time. On the other hand, when you hire a VA, that’s money. Running ads, more money. Joining a program, money. Hiring a coach, money.

There’s no neutral option. Even doing nothing costs time because you stay stuck longer. So the real question becomes, which resource am I willing to spend right now and why? So now let’s talk about one of the most powerful concepts in business, which is that you can use money to collapse time. This is what people are.

actually talking about when they say things like invest in support, hire help, join a program. What they mean is you don’t have to figure out everything the long way. So for example, instead of spending six months guessing your messaging, you can get support and figure it out in two weeks. This is one of the reasons I fairly early in my coaching business, I would say I maybe went about

four to six months writing a lot of my own copy from either templates that I bought from other content creators out there. I don’t think I relied on any AI stuff super early in my business. There’s some ways that I use it to help me draft things now, but originally I was spending all of my money, all of my time on my own messaging because I was trying to save money. I was trying to…

earn more money at the cost of doing something myself. But you all have heard me say this. You’ve heard so many other people say this. Like I was not trained to be a copywriter. Creative writing was never even specifically a skill of mine, right? I learned academic writing as a psychologist. And so even though I knew what my message was and what I want to take out there, that doesn’t mean I knew how to combine that with sales psychology.

That doesn’t mean I knew the difference between how do you sell to an analytical buyer versus an emotional buyer versus someone who is led a little bit more by community and seeking that. So when I hired a copywriter, no, did not love spending, I think I spent like $5,000 on a copywriting package and I didn’t love that, but I did get the support and they were able to figure things out so much faster.

for me, they were able to go way more into depth about my ideal clients pain points and what they’re struggling with and why, in this case, what they were writing about was my program that was all about therapy intensives. So why therapy intensives? Why now? Why in this specific coaching program and why with me? And that was a lot easier for someone to do that.

And for me to now work off of that professional blueprint instead of continuing to kind of test and see there are times I haven’t done this in a really long time, but a while ago I scrolled through my own Instagram feed and I was like, wow, my messaging sucked. I was not good at it. And my team and I look back on some old like nurture sequence emails we have and we’re like, wow, we’ve gotten so much better at this as time goes on because I got that support and I was able to do that on a shorter timeline.

Another example is a lot of us these days, especially if we started trying to get more of an audience, if we’re trying to build up either followers or an email list or whatever it might be, a lot of us these days are seeing that very slow build in terms of visibility. Again, even on your website, because I talk a lot about SEO and SEO is still a strong foundation for a lot of things. AI is changing quite a bit of things, but it’s not changing the foundation.

But there are ways to build our visibility slowly, surely, but slowly. And there’s value in that too, right? There is value in creating the strong foundation, but when you want results faster, right? Organic marketing is literally only going to go so far. And that’s where we can explore things like Google ads. That’s where we can explore things like.

boosting a post on Instagram or doing meta ads that push to Facebook and Instagram. And this is what I’ve done a lot more in the past six to eight months is really just put money behind ads so that I don’t have to worry about my visibility so that I don’t even last year in 2025, my coaching business still grew relatively quickly, but I wanted it to grow faster and more easily.

in 2026. And so I’ve approximately $2,000 a month on ads and right, that’s time. And I don’t love putting money behind those things, but that’s the importance of tracking your return on investment. Like, yes, I’m spending $2,000 a month on ads, but if that’s bringing in course sales, if that’s bringing in clients who want to join my mastermind program, that’s

still really meaningful, right? And the important part for me is that I did not have to use more of my time to, well, I guess I got to create another reel and I should be posting three times a day. And I guess I got to keep, keep just putting up blogs and more service pages as in the example of the website, because everything you’re doing organically, yes, this is super, super helpful. This is putting the gas in your car.

This is charging your electric vehicle if you’re an EV owner like I am. All of that is important, right? The car will not go if it does not have fuel. But if you want to move the car faster, what do you do? You slam on the gas pedal, right? And that gas pedal oftentimes is that paid marketing efforts, especially if you need results sooner. Because yeah, you can cruise along and that’s fine. And there’s enjoyment in that too.

before the therapist I see who is really feeling that sense of desperation. I’ve heard that word so often of like, I’m impatient, I’m desperate, like I need results now. It is worth learning how to do paid marketing efforts effectively so that you do not have to work as hard. That’s actually something I’m teaching a lot of therapists in my mastermind right now because, you know, starting a business and managing EHRs, all of that stuff is hard enough already.

Definitely no one probably taught you ads in grad school unless maybe you did marketing. The other example of this is again, instead of doing everything else yourself to hire a team and that can start with one virtual assistant. I’ve had this conversation a lot in my mastermind as well because of course, as we have a therapy business and that’s going pretty well, I think most of us are always like, it could be better. I could be bringing in more revenue. I could be booking.

more therapy intensives, I could be working a little bit less, but we already have that. If you’re a person who’s also trying to scale something outside of therapy, your time is already very, very limited. Your capacity is more limited, even if you have a bunch of time, because you’re also running a whole separate business. So give yourself some grace, give yourself some credit. And at the end of the day, what we do not have to do is everything ourselves. We shouldn’t be doing.

everything ourselves. Because what this is ultimately going to cost us is our personal life, right? Like you can only work on nights and weekends for so long. Right? Of, I’ll just create this webinar sequence of emails by myself, or I’ll just create this 42 page PDF on Canva myself, and I’ll do all the designing and I’ll build out

the funnel and the tripwire and manage all the emails coming in for people who want customer support. You maybe can do that for a while, but it’s not sustainable. It’s not sustainable if you’re looking to scale a business. You can sell things, absolutely. You can sell things by making them yourself. But if you want to scale it, if you want to see true revenue with meaningful profit margins, if you actually want to feel like

building a second, third, fourth, and beyond revenue stream is worth it, then you need to hire someone to help you to do the things that you don’t have to do, right? You do not have to design things. I these days, for example, give my team, here’s the copy I want on the webinar slides, please design the webinar slides, or here’s the concept of an ad creative that I want to put into ads.

make the ad and come up with example of the copy that we’re going to use based on our past marketing materials. And that has saved me so much time and allowed me to make so much more money because I’m not doing it. I’m not burnt out. And the more I hire out, honestly, the more it creates creative space in my brain because if I’m doing everything myself,

then I’m spending time doing everything myself. I’m not thinking about ways to be creative. I’m not thinking about ways to be strategic and intentional. I’m just trying to get by and get something out as soon as possible. So if you’re in the beginning stages of wanting to diversify your revenue, highly, highly recommend hiring a virtual assistant, even if that’s for five to 10 hours a month, because they can take over.

writing your blogs on your therapy website. They can take over writing that email sequence for you or designing your social media or add creatives that you’re doing. So you can do this. It doesn’t have to start with a lot of investment on that part. I’ve heard some guidance out there around like you should be able to hire someone for $20 a month or $20 an hour. These days I see most quality virtual assistants

charge a little bit closer to $30 to $35 an hour. mean, think about state of the economy. Think about where people are at financially. Like $20 an hour does not go very far these days. But if we assume $30 an hour, you’re hiring someone for 10 hours of support a month, that’s $300 a month. That is very, very worth it for what you can get back in your time to either work on selling some products.

or booking a new therapy client, a therapy intensive, a coaching client, whatever it is that you’re trying to do. So whether it’s hiring a virtual assistant, putting some money behind paid ads, or hiring a copywriter or website designer, whatever it is that you might hire out, essentially what you’re doing in these cases is you are paying to move faster, avoid mistakes, and reduce trial and error. And this is

very useful, but only if you understand this next piece, which is what ROI actually means. Because here’s where I see a lot of people get tripped up. They think ROI only means money. Like, well, if I invest $1,000, I need to make $1,000 back. And yeah, sometimes that is the goal, but ROI can also look like time.

Investing in something could help you save 10 hours a week, can help you stop overworking, can create some breathing room. Investing and getting an ROI can mean more capacity. You are less burnt out. You can think more clearly. You have enough energy for higher level decisions. An ROI can look like more clarity. You stop feeling like you’re spinning on why is this not working and what do have to do next?

It can mean you now know what to focus on. You stop throwing that spaghetti as the wall, as we all say. And ROI can also look like a skill. You might learn something that compounds long-term. For me, this looked like I invested in a course that kind of came with some coaching support around ads, because previously I was hiring an ads team to manage my ads for me.

But there’s the monthly maintenance cost of that, which for me was anywhere between $1,000 to $2,500 on top of ad spend. Like that racks up really, really quickly. And I talked with my coach about like, my team can learn this. I can learn it too. But again, I do not need to be the one to learn how to do it. I just need to have the strategy and skill behind encouraging people. Like here’s what we want to do and why, and when we’re going to do it. And so I invested, it was maybe like,

less than $3,000 for this course with coaching support. And I have absolutely seen that return on investment. Like that’s gonna compound long term because the more my team learns that and gets better at it, then the more we’re going to see lower cost per results, the more we’re gonna see more people coming in from ads. And so yes, sometimes the return on our investment is immediate revenue. And sometimes the return is

you finally have the space to build revenue. Right? So whether it’s I bought this thing and it gave me the skill and I immediately made money back using that skill or whether it is I paid someone to help me do some things and now I finally have all that time back, both of those things matter. But if you are only measuring return on investment in dollars, you are missing half of the value.

And that’s going to continue to keep us all in the scarcity mindset of I have to hold on to every dollar I have. I am not much of a woo-woo person, but I have a little bit of woo. And I genuinely believe the more I have treated money as this scarce thing, this unpredictable thing that’s gonna come and go, the more I’ve believed that, people…

don’t reach out as much for coaching people opt into my coaching program less often. And the more that I’ve embraced a little bit of like money can be easy. I am good at marketing. I do know what I’m doing. Like putting that energy out there honestly has helped business to feel easier. And that is what helps me to, okay, like maybe I don’t want to spend more money on we’ve got a

launch coming up in my business for the Therapy Intensive Academy. And I’m like, maybe I don’t want to put more hours into team support, but I also know the value of doing that. know that outsourcing that work and empowering them to do what they’re really good at so that I don’t have to do it all myself. I know I’m going to see that ROI, not just in dollars, but in not having a miserable month leading up to the launch. So we have to pay attention to both. It’s both dollars as well as

the space that we have. Now, I talked about this a little bit a few minutes ago, but let’s talk about early stage business because this is where I think therapists can get really confused. Early on, you are going to rely more on sweat equity, right? Meaning you are doing more yourself. You are learning as you go. You’re spending time instead of money. This is totally normal, right? This is how most of us start.

build your website, you maybe learn some basic SEO marketing, we’re writing all of our own content, maybe with the assistance of some AI. Assistance is fine, but do not have pure AI on all of your, pure AI copy on all of your webpages. We’re also figuring out our niche. We’re experimenting with pricing. There’s a lot of energy and effort we are putting in at the beginning of our private practice. Because at that stage, you don’t have a ton of extra cash and you need to understand your business.

Right? That sweat equity is essentially giving us that foundation. I know what I’m doing. I know my strategy. I know the vision. And all of that is really, really important. But here’s the important shift. At some point, staying in sweat equity becomes expensive. There becomes this point where your time is actually the most expensive resource.

So continuing to DIY everything, figure it out alone, stay in trial and error, it honestly starts to cost you more than investing would. This is usually when you have some revenue coming in, right? You’re starting to book some clients, you’re starting to get people on your email list and some people are buying your low ticket products here or there. So you have some proof of concept. You have proof of concept that therapy clients are resonating with my website.

whoever’s signing up for my free resources and my paid resources. Like clearly some people want it, but you feel stuck. You feel plateaued, you feel maxed out. And this is where support becomes less of a luxury and more of a strategic decision. Because now you’re not just asking, can I afford this? You’re asking, what is it costing me to not have this? And that’s probably lost income.

lost time, ongoing confusion, continued burnout. That’s the real math here that we think about as we become not just business owners, but if you want to move into the space of more like an entrepreneurial person, a CEO, someone who is trying to have a business that is scalable to see some of these.

multi five-figure months or even a seven-figure year that you’ve seen is capable for therapists just like you, right? This is the math that we really have to think about. So when you’re thinking about investing in something, whether that is ads, a support team, coaching, a program, whatever it is, I want you to ask what problem am I actually trying to solve? Is this the fastest?

or the clearest way to solve it? What kind of ROI am I expecting? Money, time, or capacity? Do I have the capacity to implement this? Those are really, really important questions to ask yourself because throwing money at something you don’t have capacity for, it will not collapse time, it will create more stress. So we have to know we are doing the right thing for the right reasons.

And obviously do your due diligence when it comes to hiring a team, hiring a coach, joining some kind of program, read the testimonials and reviews, talk to other people who have gone through that program or worked with that coach if you can, because I just think that’s super helpful for your peace of mind. Nobody loves spending money they feel like they didn’t have and not getting anything out of it, whether that’s money or some kind of benefit that’s going to help them long term.

So here’s what I want you to really take away from this episode. Scaling isn’t about doing everything faster. I know you probably like me have seen so much social media content around how you can make 50K in one week or how to scale to six figures in 90 days. And I think that’s just not helpful messaging for all of us to see, especially those of us who are high achieving and over performers. Like it is so easy to feel like,

If we just can’t figure it out, like we must be dumb, we can’t figure it out, we’re not worthy of that kind of success. But that is not what scaling is about. It’s not about speed. It’s about knowing when to spend time, knowing when to spend money, and making decisions that actually support your life. And that’s something I care a lot about in my work as a coach for other therapists, because I don’t want therapists

just making more money because yeah, sounds great on paper, right? Like why wouldn’t I just want more money? But I’ve seen so many therapists make more money, but it’s also costing them time. Right, people who have scaled outside therapy, but they’re also still doing all that work themselves. So they might have the same amount of therapy clients or even less therapy clients, but now they’re doing

six hours of admin on a Thursday night. Like that is not the goal of all of this stuff. So I don’t want therapists just making more money. I want them working fewer hours. I want them feeling more regulated and building businesses that actually feel sustainable. And that’s exactly what we focus on inside my happy, healthy and wealthy mastermind. We look at where your time is going, where your money is going, what is actually moving the needle.

and how to make strategic decisions that create both income and capacity. Because it is so easy to just try everything to get the shiny object syndrome by everyone that’s inundating you with what they’re trying to sell you on social media and in your email boxes. But again, the point is not to just work harder, right? That should never be the goal. It should be to work smarter and more intentionally. And that…

absolutely explicitly includes being intentional with your time and your money. If all of those types of conversations and all of those spaces sound like something that you are craving, I’m dropping the details about the mastermind in the show notes. I’m enrolling for the April mastermind. There’s a couple of spots left. So either way, if this is helpful for you, I want you to start thinking about your business a little bit differently because none of us need more hustle.

We just need better decisions. We just need to be in the room with people who are exactly where we are, right? Because at each stage of business, we go through something different. We have different plateaus. We have different things to learn. And literally nothing I have achieved in business has been just because of luck. It’s been because I learned a new thing, because I spent time with someone who had a different lens on things, someone who has been where I’ve been before.

to really help me with that. So if you’re interested in the mastermind, I would love to chat with you on a free consultation call. And otherwise, let me know your thoughts on this episode. What was helpful for you? You can either reach out via DMs or leave a review if you want to be included in the raffle for this month. And otherwise, I will look forward to chatting with you more next week. Thank you for being here. Take care.