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Welcome to Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists, where you’ll find conversations about marketing, scaling, and building a private practice that supports your clients, your nervous system, and your biggest dreams.

Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 46: The AI and Overdelivering Trap

July 24, 2026

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Released: 07/24/2026

Show Notes:

Amanda calls out something she’s been sitting with for a while: the obsession with building faster using AI, and why it’s actually working against you. This isn’t an anti-AI episode, but it is an honest one. She breaks down why handing your program design, landing page copy, and curriculum over to AI creates something that could belong to anyone, and in a crowded market full of therapists-turned-coaches, generic is the most expensive thing you can be. She also gets into the over-delivery trap, why five group calls a week is not the flex it sounds like, and what actually drives results in a coaching container. If you’ve been cranking out content and wondering why it’s not landing, this episode is probably going to tell you why.

3 Key Takeaways:

  1. AI can help with idea generation and organization, but when it writes your landing pages, curriculum, and program structure, you end up with something generic that could belong to anyone, and generic is the most expensive thing you can be in a crowded market.
  2. More calls, more touch points, and more deliverables do not make a program better; they often signal that the program does not trust its own structure, and what actually drives results is depth of relationship and specificity of support, not volume.
  3. The thing that makes your coaching offer, course, or program impossible to copy is you: your clinical lens, your lived experience, your specific way of thinking about the problems your clients face, and none of that can be generated by a prompt.

Connect with Amanda:

Apply here for the next round of the Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind – a 6-month hybrid, high-level mastermind with high-touch 1:1 coaching for therapists who are ready to stop relying on trading hours for dollars (even premium ones) and scale beyond the therapy room.

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Transcript:

Amanda Buduris (00:01)
Welcome back to the Happy Healthy and Wealthy Therapist Podcast. Today I want to talk about something that has been sitting on my mind for a really long time. And I’ve been thinking about kind of what I want to say about it and ultimately then what I want to do about it in my own business, which is this obsession with building something faster, and especially building your business faster with AI.

So if you have ever been working on something, whether that is you’re creating a landing page or mapping out your program curriculum or generating your content calendar for the month, you’ve probably used AI. And I need you to hear this so so clearly, which is, you know, this is not a question of does AI work or not? Because does it work to create content? Sure, absolutely.

But the problem is that depending on what you’re really doing in AI, I know like three percent of how to use AI. I use Claude, I use a paid subscription for Claude, and I know I’m not taking advantage of all of the features inside. Most of us do not know that much outside of let me pull it up and ask it a question. So yes, it works in creating our content and giving it its ideas.

But it works as well as it does for everyone else, which means it does not work at all. So today we’re going talk about why the do it faster movement with AI is actively tanking your business and what actually makes a business impossible to copy and irresistible to buy from. So the thing I want to say up front obviously, I use AI. I am not anti AI.

But there is a version of this kind of topic that’s gotten really popular in the coaching and course creator world, where the entire pitch is let AI map out your ideas, your programs, your content, your offers, and you’ll have a business built in a weekend. And look, if that actually worked, if that were the shortcut everyone claims it is, we would all be billionaires, every single one of us. And you know.

I love that. I love that for us therapists. I love that for us women. I love that for us people of color. Love that because you know the barrier to entry of being financially wealthy and independent now is essentially zero. Anyone with a laptop and an AI subscription could build the exact same offer, the exact same curriculum, and the exact same landing page copy. Like that is literally not a hypothetical. That is what’s actually happening.

And I’m seeing therapist coaches, people who are expanding their practice by creating workbooks or worksheets or workshops or programs, whatever it is, build their entire programs by feeding AI a prompt. And then what comes out on the other side is, you know, it’s generic. It’s vague. It sounds like every other program in the space because it’s built from the same training data.

every other program was built from. I have literally no problem with starting like, okay, I want to create a course or a program around X. Give me some ideas around that. And having that just kind of help with some of the blank page paralysis that you might experience. I know I experience that. So I don’t have a problem with that, but I have a problem with, okay, well, AI said this is what I do, so I’m going to do it now.

That’s that’s just not good because yeah, you built it fast. You now know here’s what the curriculum’s gonna look like, here’s my program with the deliverables and the bonuses, but at what cost? Like the cost is that you built something that could belong to anyone, right? Anyone could have made that exact same thing by putting in your exact same prompt. And in a market where therapists are being pitched.

12 different how to add a coaching arm to your practice programs a week. Generic is the most expensive thing that you can be, right? We’ve all heard niche down, stand out, all of that. And that is because nobody signs up for generic. People sign up for specific and people sign up for you.

Right. You are not just selling a program, a course, a digital product. You are selling you. And so much of that gets missed when we are just relying on AI. Again, use it to like help with some idea generation. Use it with like organizing stuff like that. I do not have problem with that. I have a problem with people putting so much just kind of weight on the product itself, and especially when the product was created by AI.

Even if you are the one who’s recording video lessons, leading the workshop, stuff like that, you’re going to show up in those. But are you showing up in what the overall curriculum plan is? Are you showing up in the sales page copy of not just why should someone buy this course or program or whatever? Why should they buy it from you? So let’s talk about what actually makes you different, because I think.

This gets lost with everyone just chasing speed of how do I crank this out? How do I create, you know, I’ve got this one thing, but do I need a bump offer? Do I need a tripwire? Do I need more? I have a high ticket. Do I need a low ticket? Like we’re so prone to just want to create, create, create that again, we’re thinking about product. We’re not thinking about us. So, me, for example, I am a woman of color, I am a therapist, and I am a coach. That is not a marketing angle that I picked.

It is the lens that every single client interaction, every framework, every piece of content runs through. Right? All these other different identifiers I have about growing up with a single mom, with divorced parents in a low-income area up the south side of Chicago. Like there’s all these different ways that I’m thinking about something differently than someone.

with the exact opposite kind of identifiers as me, and even I’m gonna think differently than someone with very similar identifiers as myself. When I talk about building a sustainable practice without burning out, I don’t talk about it from a theoretical place. I’m talking about it as someone who has had to navigate that burnout, who had to burn some bridges with the last agency I worked at. And with the client expectations,

That’s a lot of my, I know I’m white passing, but a lot of my white colleagues never have to think about. Right? There are a lot of things that are unique about me and my lived experience and how I think about things and why I value things and why I put things together the way I put them together. AI cannot generate that. It cannot generate your specific clinical lens, your specific client population.

The specific way you talk about the issues that matter to you and your ideal client, it can generate a version of that, right? Like it will literally give you something, but it cannot generate your version of that. And yes, you can start with a draft and then infuse your personal style and your writing and maybe a little example in it.

But if you’re still primarily basing what you’re writing off of something that was generic to begin with, right? Sometimes it’s one of those like trying to s fit a square peg into a round hole situation of like how much am I trying to make this fit? What in theory is supposed to be this beautifully well-informed, well-written AI copy framework. How much am I just trying to force myself into that versus

Would it actually have been quicker, more effective, and more authentic to just write it from scratch myself? So when I say stop having AI write your landing pages, what I mean is actually stop outsourcing the thing that is supposed to be irreplaceable. Use AI to edit, use it to organize things, but do not use it to decide what your business stands for, because

No matter how many, you know, ask me 20 questions, or here’s my values, like here’s my identifiers. No matter how much you train AI, it is still always going to miss your uniqueness. And again, part of what you are selling as someone who is selling things and experiences to people is yourself. You know that from the therapy world, it 100% translates into the coaching.

course creation content world, right? Just because you see people cranking out a bunch of content doesn’t mean all content is good and doesn’t mean people are buying that content. And you could create 57 courses, you know, in a weekend with AI. Doesn’t mean you’ve sold those 57 courses, right? So we really have to think about how do we bring ourselves and our value into what it is that we’re marketing.

And as someone with CPTSD, as someone who has struggled a lot with self-esteem and self-doubt throughout the decades of my life, I get that it is so, so hard. The number of times my coach tells me, brag on yourself here, bring yourself in here more, really embody that boss bitch energy. I’m just like, but I can’t, right? Like I get self-conscious about it. I think.

Am I actually a boss bitch? Like I know that I am, but the times when things don’t go exactly how I wanted them to, or when they’re not exactly perfect, they do make me doubt myself, right? They make me think I’m supposed to be doing something better, even though I’m paper, I’m doing something amazing. And what I know from experience, because I’m always willing to try something. I unless I’m vehemently internally

values aligned opposed to trying something, I’m always willing to test, right? Okay, so if I test a different type of energy, if I test swearing more often, because I do swear quite a bit in my real life, I try to cut it back on the podcast and in my social content, and I’ve I’ve pissed people off. I’ve had people ask, take me off of your email list because you use bad language. And that’s fine because it’s me, right? Like rejection sucks.

I’m not gonna deny that to be told, stop doing this, or I’m not gonna give you my money, like the money scarcity part of me is like, shoot, I just lost a sale. But what I also know in testing, when I bring more of myself into my products and my marketing of my products, which is ultimately me, right? Bring myself in, I know that it generates.

More conversations, more authentic connections with people who then join my mastermind, join my programs, reach out for one-to-one coaching. Because people want to work with an authentic human. Even if you buy a course from someone, you want it from an authentic person. I would be so upset if I bought a course from someone I thought I knew, and then the videos were like.

An AI voice or something or one of these AI duplicates that my God, I really get upset when I see when I see these AI videos of people or I get these ads for like, I took one selfie and it generated 20 AI videos that I’m using for my content this month. And like if you want to use that and if that’s what helps you be consistent, perfectly fine, go ahead and do that. That’s not in alignment with how I wanna show up, so I’m not gonna do that. So again.

Your business really needs to reflect you and who you are and the value in working with you and what’s unique about you. We cannot outsource that to AI. The other thing I see happen is this feeling of I have to way, way, way over deliver. I have to give all the bonuses and all the deliverables. And I feel like I’m giving everything away, but also like, should I be giving more away? And now am I giving too much away?

Like we we simultaneously feel like we have to produce something really quick and over-deliver or no one’s going to buy our stuff. So I think this really shows up in our program design because I I know of a program out there right now. I’m not going to name it, but there is a program that has group coaching calls five days a week. Five. And when I heard that, I genuinely could not wrap my head around it because

Here’s what I know from running my own business and my own coaching containers, which is you do not need a million calls in a program for people to see results. I think one of those reasons that that kind of rhetoric is out there is, you know, I’ve got everything you’ll ever need in this program if you just commit to this process. But if you’re selling something like business coaching or life change or whatever.

It might be, how many of you have time five hours a week just to be on calls and then to go implement stuff? Right? Like that’s a lot of time. And if you are burnt out, you’re a busy parent, you can’t afford to let go of five client sessions because you need the money, like that’s just not sustainable. And now it feels like it’s a you problem. Like, well, the program had all the calls that you needed, so clearly you just weren’t invested enough. But again, that is not true.

Again, in my programs, I keep my therapy intensive program is a little bit different than my mastermind. My mastermind is capped at eight therapists because I do want it to be this more intimate environment where people do feel supported to show up and ask their real questions. This is the case for my therapy intensives academy program too. It’s just they’re different price points, right? They are for people who are looking for different things, who are looking for different types of support.

And honestly, people are okay with the trade-off of this program costs less. And I know I’m not gonna get the as intimate or one-to-one support, and that’s totally fine. And people who know that they need that intimate and one-to-one support, they will pay the higher fee for the mastermind. Even on my Therapy Intensives Academy calls, when I do a launch, then I’ll maybe see 20 to 25 people on a call. But on average, there’s really like

Five to six people asking questions in the call with maybe like twelve to fifteen people on a call. So I also only do these calls currently at this point of filming. I might change it in in the future. But currently I’m only doing calls me two a month. And then I have a copywriting coach twice a month and a mindset coach once a month. So we’re not asking people to come to five calls a month because we know that not.

Five calls a week because we know that is not what it takes to see results. People just need to take advantage of the things that they need, right? And to ask questions. Because more calls is actually not more support. It’s really just, if anything, a sign that the program doesn’t trust its own structure to give people results. So it’s compensating with volume, right? Volume does not mean quality, right? It’s just it’s quantity. So

The part that really gets me about programs like this is I see things like, well, you get unlimited one-on-one calls as like a headline feature. And there are a lot of us therapists, myself included, who are really drawn to something that has one-to-one calls because it’s kind of like why we like being therapists, right? We know the value of one-to-one connection. We know the power of what can happen in a one-to-one call. So it sounds incredible if you get unlimited one-to-one support, except

Programs like this typically offer these one-to-one calls with a support coach, not the main coach whose name is on the program. And I’ve talked to therapists who have gone through programs like this, and what they’ve told me is that the calls didn’t even feel that helpful. It was a lot of like, well, like they covered in the course, or well, like they said here, like it’s just it’s a repeat. It’s not actually someone digging deeper with them.

It’s not anyone treating their specific situation like it’s specific. It’s just all about this formula of like just follow the formula, just follow the brewprint, like it’ll work. It’ll work. And there’s something to be said for strategy working, but you literally have to adjust strategy for specific individuals. I will never give a new mom of a four-month-old the same marketing advice as I will give.

A 54-year-old who is an empty nester and has all this time in the world. Right. I will not give the same advice to someone who’s like, I don’t want to be on social media, to someone who’s like, I love social media, I have so much fun with social media. We can’t just apply one blank template or blueprint to people. Right. So whether that is with AI, whether that is just this volume,

Kind of concept of like just give more, just give more, over deliver, like these are the problems, right? If we don’t have depth, that’s a problem. If we have access, but we don’t have actual expertise behind it, that’s a problem. You can market unlimited calls all day long, but if the person on the other end of that call is just reciting curriculum back to someone instead of doing real coaching, well then that’s just a script.

They’re following. They’re not actually supporting you. They’re not actually coaching you. They’re just trying to get through their calls for the day. And let me just highlight again that is another reason so many therapists burn out is when they feel like they’re just phoning it in, when they feel like they’ve lost their connection and their passion for the work. When they feel like they’re just, I just gotta get through these worksheets for the day. Like I’ve talked through so many CBT and DBT therapists and even some, what’s the other one? CPT. There’s so many.

And what’s the word called? when multiple words make a little one-word thing. Acronym. There we go. There’s so many acronyms out there. But so many therapists, like they know they can do the job, but yeah, they want to feel excited about it again. So please do not get yourself into these circumstances where you’re just having someone phone it in for you because that sucks. Right? Like I would rather give someone

Four calls a month where I actually know their business, their history, their blind spots, then do 50 calls where they’re just talking to whoever picked up or whoever’s schedule happened to match their availability. Because as we know as therapists, long-term close relationships, your therapeutic connection, that is the thing that is the biggest driver of results, right? It is not.

many calls you gave someone, how many worksheets you gave someone, your best AI templates or whatever it is, it’s, you know, that you showed up and that you care and that you know them and you remember things about them. So if you are building something right now, whether that is a course, a coaching container, an intensive, whatever you’re doing, here’s what I want you to take away from this episode. First, speed is not the metric that matters.

The metric that matters is whether what you built could have come only from you. Right? Are you standing out? Are you offering something specific? Why should someone learn this thing from you? There are so many other coaches out there teaching therapists about intensives or scaling, but why should someone work with me? Right? That is what I’m working on. I’m not always doing a perfect job.

But that is what I’m working on incorporating into my content because I want people who want to work with me. I don’t want people who want to work in a program, right? Because everyone has different expectations from a program. People are gonna have more accurate expectations of what it’s like to work with me the more that I market myself. So focus more on that. Second, having more access points, more calls, more touch points, whatever you are thinking of adding more of to your offering.

This does not automatically make it better. Ask yourself if you are adding depth or if you are just adding volume for the sake of volume to build up this quote unquote tech stack you may have heard of, or this value stack. Third, if you’re going to use AI, use it as a tool to move faster on the parts that do not require your specif your specific expertise. Don’t use it to skip the parts.

That do require your specific expertise, right? Trust yourself more. I think AI has made us all trust ourselves less if we are, you know, really relying on it of like, well, that’s not a good idea. Well, this wouldn’t work because of this. Or it almost enables shiny object syndrome. If it’s like, you’re right, that is a great idea. Go you, you’re amazing. I love how supportive it can be. And right doesn’t mean it’s right.

So, if you are therapist thinking about scaling into coaching courses, group programs, whatever you are working on, this is exactly the thing that I work on in my happy, healthy, and wealthy therapist mastermind. I do not have a generic framework inside of it. I’ve had some people ask me on discovery calls like, is there a curriculum? Is there like a calendar that we follow? But no, I don’t do that not because I don’t want to support you. Obviously, I want to support you.

But it’s because I tailor it to here’s what makes sense given who you actually are, who you actually serve, and what your actual capacity is. Right? I can’t I tailor things to you inside my mastermind. And sure there are goals and kind of program check marks of like by the end of month one, maybe you want to be here. By the end of month two, maybe you want to be here, but there is no shade or shame that I, you know.

Bring to any therapist who maybe is on a different timeline or gets clarity on their offer finally in month three because they needed that long to get clarity on it. So remember that, you know, blueprints and syllabi and whatever you want to call them, they are not all they’re cracked up to be if you’re just working through it for the sake of working through it. Work with someone who wants to work with you.

And if you are looking again for that type of support, my mastermind is closing doors. We are starting on August 3rd, as of the time of this recording. I only have three spots left in it. And then I’m pausing it for a little bit. I’m not going to open enrollment until 2027 because there’s a few other things I’m shifting my attention to. And I want to make sure to not overwork myself so that I can truly show up for the therapist inside this mastermind. So feel free to reach out. There’s information in the show notes all about that. But

That is it for today’s episode. If this hit something for you, or if you’ve been worried that your program feels a little too much like everyone else’s, or that you don’t stand up, stand out enough, I’d love to help you figure out how to actually make things yours. So go ahead and check out the information on the mastermind in the show notes, and I hope to see an application come in from you soon. Otherwise, thanks for listening to the Happy, Healthy, and Wealthy Therapist Podcast, and I will talk with you more next week. Bye.

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