Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 54: How I Plan for 2 Week Vacations While Running 2 Businesses

Released: 8/28/2026

Show Notes:

Amanda gets into what time off actually looks like when you run two businesses, and why it looks nothing like the social media version of passive income and unplugging for weeks at a time. She breaks down how premium fees and a smaller caseload changed what taking time off even felt like, why she still chooses to take some calls while traveling, and how she thinks through which commitments to keep and which ones to move when she’s out. If you’ve been telling yourself you can’t take time off because you can’t afford to stop seeing clients, this episode is worth a listen.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Taking time off as a therapist gets dramatically easier when you have a smaller caseload at a higher fee, because you have fewer sessions to reschedule, less income lost per day off, and more flexibility to choose which commitments you keep while traveling.
2. There is no single right way to take time off in your business, and choosing to take one or two calls while traveling is not a failure of your boundaries but a legitimate trade-off that can actually feel exciting when your rate makes it worth it.
3. The version of success social media sells, complete unplugging and fully passive income while traveling, is not practical or even desirable for everyone, and building a business that lets you work in ways that genuinely feel good to you is the actual goal.

Connect with Amanda:

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

Resources & Links:

• This episode is sponsored by:
  • Alma – learn more here
  • Jane – use code: AMANDA2MO for a 2-month grace period
• Therapy Intensives Academy – use code HHWPOD250 as a podcast listener to get $250 off at checkout: https://amandakbcoaching.com/therapy-intensives-academy
• Apply now for the next round of the Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind: https://amandakbcoaching.com/mastermind
• Free Training: 3 Steps to Booking Your First Therapy Intensive: https://www.amanda-kb-coaching.com/ewo-registration-organic
• Free Guide: 3 Steps to Double Your Income: https://www.amanda-kb-coaching.com/vsl-opt-in

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Transcript:

Amanda Buduris (00:00)

Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Happy Healthy and Wealthy Therapist podcast. If you happen to be watching the video of this podcast, we take all of our podcasts and we upload them into YouTube as a part of our SEO strategy. and I know most people just listen to podcasts, but if you happen to be listening, my cat is sleeping in the chair behind me right now and he is so cute because he he sleeps

Kind of like a human falls asleep on a couch. so I’m just mildly distracted by that because he’s adorable. But I wanted to come on today to talk about how I manage time off and what time off really looks like for me as someone who runs two businesses. I still am very, very active in my therapy practice as well as I have this coaching business. And a lot of people will ask.

How do you take time off? What does your schedule look like? Aren’t you just doing things all the time? And yeah, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna break that down today. I do not have a script today, so my mind might be in typical ADHD fashion all over the place. Also in full transparency, I am finishing a launch of my Therapy Intensives Academy program as of this recording today. I’m recording this a week before it’s gonna get posted. And I’m also leaving for Paris in the morning. So

Paris, France, to be clear. So my mind is a little all over the place. I’m little bit scattered. I have one personal appointment and then I’m doing one last therapy session before I log off for the day and finalize my packing and cleaning and things like that. So bear with me if my mind roombus a little bit. So when it comes to our therapy practices, number one there.

That has been one of my biggest drivers for even going to private practice to begin with because I love travel. I love not being in one place for too long. I love home. I love nesting. I’m very attached to my cats. Obviously, I don’t want to leave them all the time, but I also love going to new places or even there’s plenty of countries I visited multiple times because I just love them so much. I just I love travel. I do not love

Flying. I hate flying. I usually get motion sick. I always think I’m gonna die, but I do love traveling. I love being in a new place. How about that? So when I worked for someone else, number one, I only had so much time off. And it wasn’t it was such an arduous process to like request time off and hope that it’s approved and hope too many of your colleagues aren’t trying to take time off at the same time. And I just

I wasn’t having that for a million of other reasons, like burnout and seeing too high of acuity of clients and not being able to work in the ways that I wanted to work. So with even being in private practice, the biggest thing I faced in my first year, and that I know a lot of therapists resonate with this, is but if I’m not working, if I’m not seeing therapy clients, then I’m not making money. So

So I can’t take time off. I shouldn’t take time off. Or I have to build up this nest egg before I take time off. And that is one reason I talk a lot about both premium fees and therapy intensives, because both make the process of taking time off a lot easier. Whether you’re taking time off because you’re sick, you need a mental health day, you’re going on vacation, whatever it is, like.

You deserve to take time off. So we shouldn’t have to worry about the money aspect. And so being able to have a smaller caseload because you have a higher fee that already helps with being able to take time off without it feeling as scary. Like I know a lot of therapists that I have worked with in implementing higher fees and therapy intensives, they’ve shared really exciting numbers with me too, around like

You know, being able to take two full weeks off and still making over 10K in a given month because their fee is giving them what they need, and because, you know, also taking that much time off when you have twenty, twenty-five, thirty clients. That’s a lot of rescheduling, cancellations, et cetera. But it’s very different to do that when you have five or ten or fifteen clients. So I myself only have

a handful of weekly and bi-weekly people. So and a lot of them are on vacation too or they’re wrapping up different things. So I’m not even skipping that many therapy sessions. but I did do a therapy intensive earlier this week. And so that brought in $3,000. And so I’m gonna end up my month generally where my therapy practice needs to be. Most of my income these days comes from my coaching practice because that’s the thing I’m really working on building and scaling. But my therapy practice is meeting

my basic needs and that is all I needed to do. So in general, having a smaller practice does make it easier for me to take more time off. That said, I think there is a lot of, as we know, there’s a lot of black and white thinking when it comes to anything you do in business. People say one way of doing things is bad and one way of doing things is better and good and ideal and whatever it is. I personally don’t.

Ascribe or subscribe to that because I really think the best thing, the most fun thing to do as a business owner is doing business in a way that works for you. And so there are times where even though I only have a caseload of sometimes it’s like three to five weekly people on a very busy week, I might see like six to eight people. But there are times where even though I could just say, No, I don’t, I can’t meet, I’m taking time off, whatever.

I’ve still made time to see clients. I have seen clients while I’m in Ireland, when I’m in Scotland, when I’m in Norway, I have chosen to sign on for an hour-long appointment because it at least felt a little better to me to like, okay, yeah, I am taking a lot of time off, and let me take an hour away from my day and make three hundred dollars, make three hundred and fifty dollars, whatever my fee is at the time when I was.

seeing those clients while traveling. And that’s a good trade-off to me, right? That still feels good. And I think it would feel very differently if my fee was 125, 150, maybe even if it was 175. Then I would have a lot harder of a time. I think I would feel more resentment if I was like, like these people are stable, but my guilt tells me that I need to sign on because I’m not allowed to take time off and I’m so scared about losing the money.

That like I have to see people while I’m on vacation. That is very different. Then it excites me to think about, okay, yep, I did my traveling for the morning, I did my tourist activities, and now before dinner, I’m gonna sign on for one session and call it good, right? And make $350. Like that sounds fantastic. That’s a wonderful trade-off for me. So that works for me. And if that works for you, let it work for you. If you do purely wanna take

all that time off, I’m all for it, right? Like protect your boundaries based on what you want to do. But also again, remember, do things in a way that work for you. And if you want to see one or two clients while you’re on vacation, you’ve got the good Wi-Fi for it, you’ve got the bandwidth for it. It’s not too stressful for you to rearrange your schedule around it, then do it, right? That’s what feels good to me. And then when it comes to the coaching arm of my business, I have

As of this point, so the Therapy Intensives Academy has I do two live calls twice a month. So usually it’s the first and no, it’s the second and the fourth Wednesdays of the month, but I might change it if the winter holidays interfere or next week I’m gonna be in Paris, France, and decided like you know, I don’t want to rearrange that schedule. I actually think I’m in the moment. I actually think in the moment how the timing would work out. I’m flying from Paris.

to Valencia, Spain to visit one of my friends. So I’m like, I think I’m gonna be in the airport or on an airplane. And that that’s not convenient. That doesn’t work for me. So I shifted the call up a week and everyone was fine. Plenty of people still made it to the call. No one complained. We’re all good there. So I’ve got that community that doesn’t require too much live support from me. A lot of it is asynchronous support as I’m managing the messaging board in there.

But then I have two cohorts of a scaling mastermind, my happy, healthy, wealthy therapist mastermind, where we do two weekly calls. Each cohort gets one weekly call. So I’m doing two weekly calls. And then they also get one-to-one calls with me as well. So next week, while I’m in Paris/slash Spain, I am still holding my weekly mastermind calls, but I did close my calendar to one-to-one calls. And again,

That felt like a really good balance to me because it with the I looked up the time difference. With the time difference, my 9 a.m. Pacific calls will be 6 p.m. Paris time. And I’m like, you know what? That actually would feel really good to me to, you know, go do some touristy things, grab a meal. And I know in Europe they just generally eat later anyway. So I already accepted I’m probably gonna be eating dinner later, even though I am like a

If I be done eating by five every day, I would love that. I can’t wait to be older and get like senior specials at restaurants. But that felt like a good trade-off to me. It felt better than pushing the calls out a week because of the time off that I had planned. Right. And I still I’m very committed to that community. I want to show up for them. And again, it was just easier for me ultimately. It is not a burden. It’s something that I look forward to. And generally.

I am always choosing to stay in accommodations that have reliable Wi-Fi. So I’ve never worried about my Wi-Fi’s gonna go out. I actually took multiple mastermind calls when I was in New Zealand for two weeks because again, I just wanna be able to do things. I wanna be able to do the work that I do love doing while also traveling to places that I love traveling to. So that felt like a really good.

Trade-off for me, but what wouldn’t have felt good for me is to take the one-to-one calls because those get scheduled more sporadically throughout the day. Sometimes I have morning and afternoon appointments, or sometimes it’s, you know, a morning or afternoon chunk back to back. And that wouldn’t have felt good. That would have significantly interfered with my travel plans, or I wouldn’t have wanted to stay up till 10 PM to see my individual calls based on how they typically schedule in my Pacific time zone. So again, it’s all about.

being kind of like what’s the word for it? It’s really thinking in advance. It’s not just strategic.

It’s thinking about being intentional. And if I am intentionally making the decision of which calls I’m going to take, which calls I’m going to block off or to cancel or to reschedule, because I’ve done that too. I have, again, I just said I did it with my other community and I’ve done it before even with my mastermind. I am my own boss. I know I am allowed to do what works for me. And so those are, I think when we think about therapy, scaling outside of therapy, there are always going to be.

Trade-offs either way, right? If you have a therapy business where you see a lot of weekly one-to-one clients, there’s more things you have to think about when it comes to taking time off. When you have a therapy business where most of what you see is, you know, a small handful of weekly clients and then therapy intensives, then you have a different set of choices that you can make.

If you have a large weekly caseload, that is obviously something you have to take into account and make choices around when you think about taking time off and what that’s going to do for your income. If on the other hand, you have a handful and you have a mix of a small weekly caseload of hour-long clients and then you do therapy intensives, that gives you a different amount of flexibility when thinking about taking time off and what that does to your income. If you then also, or maybe instead,

like I feel like a lot of therapists these do these days have, if you have another business where you are making money, whether that’s coaching or you’re selling digital products, retreats, whatever you might do, it’s still something to consider in terms of how you take time off and what that does for your business and your income. I think that’s why a lot of people like the aspect of digital products is feeling like those can in theory

continue to sell themselves no matter what. I don’t believe that there’s any form of true passive marketing and income. You still have to promote those products, whether you plan to sell, send emails about those digital products and sell them while you’re traveling, whether you have to make a plan to make that your organic social media marketing strategy for the week or weeks that you’re out. So you still have to find a way to sell those things. But if you do offer things like

Group coaching, one-on-one coaching, it’s the same, I don’t want to say problem as it is with therapy, but it’s the same points of consideration of you need to decide are you squeezing a bunch calls in? Are there some calls you’re taking and some calls you’re not taking? And ultimately decide what works for you. Because again, if you want to take a couple calls while you’re traveling, but not others, then that totally works, right? Like my whole thing, right? I’m talking a lot about how.

While I’m in Europe for a week, I am minimizing my calls as much as possible. So I will only have two work-related calls. That’s two hours out of my like 168 hours in a week. I am more than happy to do that. And the timing works really well for me. The following week, I’ll be in Portland, Maine for the Doubt Yourself Do It Anyway summit, which I am both attending as well as sponsoring. And so I’m doing a mixture of

I’m gonna be at the summit in the mornings. They’re only morning sessions. It’s like 9 to 12 a.m. Pacific or no Eastern time. And you know, I decided I’ve been to Maine before. I’ve been to that area of Maine before. I’m gonna take off the Monday and Friday around the summit. That’s Tuesday through Thursday. And otherwise during the Tuesday and Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I’m gonna treat it like it’s a regular work week. I’m going to work. So I’m gonna go to the summit in the morning and then

That’s actually like before I even wake up on Pacific time. So then in the afternoon, I’m basically gonna treat it like it’s a regular workday. So I’m still got I still have some of my mastermind calls. I still have some one-to-one therapy clients and some one-to-one coaching clients that I will see. But again, I made that choice because it works for me. I could have told, I know everyone would have been fine if I said I’m out for two weeks and unavailable and I can’t do coaching, can’t do therapy. Everyone would be fine. But

I’m making choices that feel good to me. And that is how I’m able to take quote unquote two-week vacations, is I still find ways to do the things that I’m committed to and do the things that I’m excited about. When it comes to holiday times, for example, you know, honestly, it doesn’t even look that different for me. Like I wanna say, maybe that looks different, and maybe I take even more time off and I’m more protective of time.

But I traditionally don’t travel for the holidays. I’ve got a very complicated relationship with my family, so I’m typically not visiting them during the holidays. There are other people I spend time with during holidays, but I usually do not travel. I just hate traveling around the holidays. We all know how airports get even worse and traffic is worse. I just don’t do it. And working with complex trauma, I work with a lot of clients who have the similar relationships.

with their families where they’re not traveling. In fact, they’re more activated than normal. And they they definitely want their therapy sessions. And so I still do therapy sessions during the holidays. So I take the time off. That feels really good to me. If I work an hour a day, I am okay with that. And again, you make the decisions that feel good to you. Some people truly need a full week or two to completely unplug. And I am all for that, right? Do you?

My brain doesn’t work that way. When I take more time off, that’s the time when I feel most creative, which is great, but I’m also, I don’t want to say impulsive, but I like to see ideas turn to action quickly. And so I know if I ever tried to take two pure weeks off, it would really just be me working on business stuff for two weeks without having any meetings because I’m excited about things and I like what I do. I love what I do. And I think that’s the whole point of this anyway, right?

So just wanted to share some of those thoughts and not not give permission. None of us need permission, but to really think about and remembering why it is you’re doing what you’re doing, why you’re in your own private practice, why you’re thinking about scaling. And it may not be this version that social media can kind of glorify of unplugging for large amounts of time and traveling for half of the year without working because I’m still making money passively and stuff like that.

That is one version that works for some people and it doesn’t work for all people. It’s not practical for all people. Not all of us have that amount of financial privilege either, just to just to really name that piece. So you can still travel, you can still make good money, you can take whatever time off feels good to you while also working, right? In a way that feels good to you. So hope that that was helpful to hear that all being said.

as you’re listening to this podcast when it drops, I’ll already be kind of wrapping up my European vacation and then moving into the part where I will be in the summit in Maine, which I’m super excited to be at. And it’ll be my first time sponsoring an event. So I’m excited to yeah, just kind of meet people in a different way there. Cause I think you show up differently as a sponsor than you do as just a maybe more passive participant.

So I’m excited to see everyone there. If you are planning to attend the summit as well, feel free to stop by my table. My plan is to bring some European goodies over to my table. And I’m gonna do some fun little raffles for anyone who comes to see me. So thank you all for listening today. Reminder to just take care of yourself, do business in a way that works for you, and you know, follow, follow the things that are exciting to you. If you like traveling, you can find a way to make it work.

regardless of what your schedule looks like and what you hear out there about what you should be doing. All right, everyone, take care and I will talk with you soon.