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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 63: What I Wish I’d Asked Before My First Coaching Program

October 23, 2026

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Released: 10/23/2026

Show Notes:

Amanda is heading into her yearly reflection season. This time she starts with a decision: after the November cohort, she’s pausing the HHW Mastermind so she isn’t launching it every three months. That leads into the story of the first coaching program she joined, which worked on paper but left her running a business she didn’t like until she burned it down and started over. She explains why blueprint programs leave so many therapists feeling burned and why she chooses long-term coaching relationships. Her closing advice for anyone choosing their next program: look past the deliverables, and ask whether you want to work with this person and whether you’ll show up for the support.

3 Key Takeaways:

  1. Following someone else’s blueprint without checking whether it actually fits your life, your values, and the business you want to build is one of the most common and expensive mistakes therapists make when they start diversifying their income.
  2. Long-term coaching relationships outperform short program hops not because of the content inside but because someone who knows you over time can see your patterns, call out your self-sabotage, and personalize guidance in a way that no template or support coach following a script ever will.
  3. Launching the same program too frequently without giving enough time to build demand is a real strategic mistake, and slowing down the cadence of your launches is sometimes the counterintuitive move that actually grows the program.

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Transcript:

Amanda Buduris (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Happy Healthy and Wealthy Therapist Podcast. I am definitely in that season of life where I’m really feeling like, my God, how is time passing by so quickly thinking that this episode is going to be dropping on October 23rd? Yes, October 23rd. it’s almost November, it’s almost the holiday season, and it’s a time for me where I do a lot of my reflections on.

How has business felt this year? What has gone well? What is it, what are some things that I want to change in the future? I don’t remember if I talked about it this podcast or if it was in my email newsletter, but I last year scheduled a VIP in-person, all-day coaching day with my personal coach in New York City. And it was so, so fun to really just do that reflection of, okay, here’s how things went.

Here’s what we want to scale in 2026, and here’s what we want to let go of, and here’s how we’re gonna do that. And it was so, so helpful that I’m actually going back in December again to do that. So I’m really looking forward to dissecting how 2026 went and then making a plan for 2027. Because there’s been a lot of things that came up in 2026 and that are still coming up that are just leading me to question things, reflect on things, think about.

you know, the things that feel like they are going wrong, so to speak. Nothing is going wrong. We’re just, you know, seeing ebbs and flows and things. And me as someone with ADHD who has a zillion ideas of all the things I want to do, I think right now what I am feeling the stress test of on, I don’t know what preposition to use there, is this aspect of I want to do so many things at once. And so my brain is pulled in so many directions at once.

And any marketing business coach guru will tell you generally one of the most scalable things that you can do is focus on one thing. And I’m not focused on one thing. I have my mastermind. I have my therapy intensives academy program. I have my digital marketing membership for therapists. I am hosting multiple retreats. Like though I’m doing this podcast. Like there are so many things that I’m doing. So I’m probably sh shooting myself in the metaphorical foot.

In some ways, of okay, yeah, I have to take a pause from thinking about promoting that program so I can promote this program, so I can promote that experience, whatever it is. But that’s okay for me. The trade-off is overall worth it because everything I’m doing, I love doing everything serves a purpose, everything feels really good. And at the same time, there are themes that I’ve noticed as I launch a program, as I launch a program.

I don’t want to say too much, but with maybe too much frequency. Like I’m doing it in a my coach and I just had this conversation the other day of like the cadence of launching this mastermind, for example, is maybe such that it’s not really giving enough time for people to, you know, it’s not really giving me enough time to build demand for the program because what I’ve done since I first launched this mastermind I’m offering in

The first group was October 2025. So I probably launched it like the summer of 2025 to start raising awareness for it. I did that. That was going really well. So a few months later I was like, you know, I’ve got space and capacity to do another cohort. Let me do that. So then it started to become basically I was launching the program every three months, which is not enough time for more people to become aware of you, more people to want to work with you. We started a wait list for it.

maybe early 2026. And some people would get on the wait list, but not everyone would join from the wait list. And that’s totally fine. Because again, people might be hoping for and waiting for more time until the next round comes around. So even that’s something, for example, where I’ve taken a look at how it feels to launch something so frequently and what’s the impact of that on ultimately how marketing and conversions go.

And what I’ve decided is I need to not launch this mastermind so frequently. And so I’m actually gonna take a pause after this November cohort coming up and really just see what else I could create space for in my business. How do I focus even more on my therapy intensive academy program, focus more on my digital marketing membership, and ultimately sell out my retreat that is happening in Vancouver, Wa not Vancouver, Washington, in Vancouver, Canada in June 2027. So there’s a lot of things that I’m focusing on, and again, I’m

pulled in all these different directions, but the thing that my coach always challenges me to do, and so I’m gonna challenge you to do as well if you are listening to this, is really to slow down and think about what am I building? And is it something that I want to be building? And this can mean lots of different things. This can either mean a specific offer, it can be a specific work-life balance.

It can be how much am I focusing on therapy versus alternative streams of income? Because really and truly, like the more that we just see examples of what other therapists who add alternative streams of income do, it’s really easy to see like, well, that’s the way. That’s what’s successful for them. So I’m gonna do it. And then maybe we do it, and then maybe it doesn’t actually work for us. Like I’ve told this story.

A couple times now on the podcast, and if you’ve seen my socials and things like that, like you’ve you’ve heard the story before, but some of you may not have, which is when I first decided I wanted to start a coaching business, all I knew was that I really want to help other therapists with their private practice, right? I want to help them with whatever I can help them with, whether that’s booking private pay clients, if that’s booking premium fee therapy intensives, if that’s you know, now they’re ready to scale beyond it, like I am.

That’s all I knew was I wanted to help people. I really loved supervision when I was a graduate student. And I don’t want to do supervision in my solo private practice because it’s just I have such a small business. I have such a small caseload that I don’t really want to complicate it with how big my coaching business is and everything that that demands from me. So where was I going with that? Yes. So coaching really fills this.

love of mine for mentorship. And I’ve always been told that I’m a really good teacher. So I can break things down that seem really complex and make them seem actually pretty easy. Or now I know exactly what my next steps are instead of feeling overwhelmed by what the hell are my next steps. And so for me, when I was getting ready to launch my coaching business, there was a program out there that was all about therapists adding

Coaching intensive. This program is still out there. I still get recognized for being a member of this program. I’m a past member of the program because that coach uses me in their marketing, obviously, because I’m a very successful case study, if you follow that. But the problem that I had with that program was that it was very much, you know, here’s exactly how I’m doing it. Here’s exactly how I’m building it. So do it like this, build it like this. And I did it and I was successful, but

I didn’t like a lot of the things that I built. It was not sustainable to do those things. And I really had to have multiple conversations with I was working with a different individual coach at that time, with that coach around like something is feeling off about this. I don’t know how I’m feeling about it, but I’m feeling like I want to burn it all down to the ground. But you know, naturally some generally good coaching advice to give is like, you know, how do you push through?

The uncomfortable feelings of launches not going the way that you want to. How do you improve your marketing? How do we make each launch better? How do we convert those warmer leads? Like, yes, that is good coaching advice generally, except we weren’t really getting into like, okay, but there’s something else other than, you know, just the day to day of entrepreneurship and some of the stressors that come with marketing and putting yourself out there. It was actually.

That there was this extreme lack of alignment in I’m offering this thing because I’ve been told to do this thing in this way, but I actually don’t want to do this thing in this way. And so I had to spend a lot of time once I really realized that there’s this personal barrier that I actually don’t want to get over. I don’t want to make myself more comfortable sitting in misalignment. I don’t want to make myself more comfortable with.

You know, no, I’ll just do it because like at least it makes money and that’s good. I actually wanted to be more in alignment with what I was feeling outside and what I was feeling inside. And so I made the decision to eventually, yeah, burn it all down to the ground. And I think we all joke about that in the times where we are feeling really stressed about business of wanting to burn it all down, but usually we come I don’t know if come to our senses is the right word here or phrase here, but usually we’re able to

Talk ourselves off the metaphorical ledge. But again, this was not a case where that was the solution to my problem. The solution to my problem actually was burn it all down and restart fresh. And it’s something that I continue to see even coming up in the mastermind. I’ve held multiple cohorts of this. I’ve done coaching intensives with individual clients where really all we see is again the things that have been done before us.

Right. We see the things that look big. We see the things that look successful. And again, we think that must be the one for us. But we are all unique individuals, right? Like we know this from therapy. Even if you follow some kind of protocol intervention, like EMDR or cognitive processing therapy, or I don’t know, there’s so many of them out there, you know. Even if there’s a protocol for it, we know that we adapt.

Based on that individual person’s nervous system, their neurotype, if they process things differently. And it’s the very same thing with business, right? Whether it is your therapy practice or whether it is your whatever you’re doing outside of therapy. But even for example, I will be the first person to say as much as I believe therapists can and should charge premium rates, whatever that means for them, for some people.

$175 is a premium rate. Amazing. For some people, they shoot for $350, $400 plus an hour, and that’s their premium rate. Amazing. Love that too. Whatever that means for you, I obviously believe in that. I believe in therapists taking financial care of themselves. And I have never applied this band-aid solution to everyone of like, well, your problem is just that you’re on insurance panels. Like you gotta get off those.

Because growing up low income, having currently a pretty good amount of credit card debt and personal loan debt, and my student loan debt is actually my smallest amount of debt. That’s very ironic. That’s because I specifically chose a grad school that was fully funded. But I know what it’s like to not have the privilege of just, well, yeah, I’m just gonna do the thing that comes with all the risk, and I have no idea if there’s gonna be a reward. Even though

I also coach therapists of I will teach you how to market yourself. I will teach you how to book private pay clients. I will teach you how to book high pr high fee premium therapy intensive clients. That said, like I can trust myself in how I teach people to do those things and still know I’m never gonna know their financial circumstances better than them, even if they tell me on paper what that’s like, even if we coach around that, all I can do is help someone.

really take that step back from this is what everyone seems to say to do and this is the path you’re supposed to take to be successful. And my job is to ask you the questions of, and does that actually work for you? And is that actually something you want? And how would that feel to do that thing? And I think it’s something that’s ironically really annoying. Like I personally, I can get caught up in this mindset too of like,

I’m stuck with something and I just want to ask my coach, and I kind of just want my coach to tell me the answer for me. Like we were just talking about my Black Friday offering that I’m planning. And I was like, well, I’m kind of caught between this and this. And like I knew what I wanted her to say. Like I wanted her to say, you know, offer B, but she kept saying how offer A might be helpful. And I could do offer B, but offer A maybe has a lot more benefits. But I was like, but I really think offer B is the one.

And ultimately, right, like it’s me looking for reassurance. It’s me looking for validation of like, I’m not gonna fuck this up, right? Like I have a high chance of selling this, right? I know that I want sometimes for my coach to provide me the answers. And I love that she does not provide me the answers. And I think we could probably say the same thing for therapy as well, which is our clients, not that this is about like withholding or gatekeeping or anything like that. Sometimes clients really do just want you to tell them something straight.

But there’s something to be said for helping someone discover their answer as opposed to saying this is the one answer that is out there. Right. Like it’s the same thing when I’m working with clients who have complex trauma and complicated family histories. Like when we talk about boundaries, I don’t tell everyone, just cut your family off. That’s what I did. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I say, yeah, it’s complicated. There are pros and cons.

You and your culture, like you are very family centered and your family pisses you off. What do we do about that knowing what’s important to you and how you want to live your life? Right. So we know that that’s true in therapy, but I think we can forget to apply that to business. Right. We just think, I just want the plan, I just want the roadmap, because of course that feels safe, right? It feels like if I know exactly what to do, when to do it, how is it successful?

How can I guarantee it’s gonna be successful? Well, then we would all be millionaires and billionaires, right? There is so much risk in business. My coach has kind of reframed it as testing. There’s a lot of testing in business of like, okay, if we’re gonna put a lot of money behind ads, are you okay with that test if it fails? If you’re going to price this offer at that price, are you okay with testing if it fails? And so.

That is ultimately the thing that matters most to me. And it’s something that I’ve really embodied embodied in my coaching style as well, which is I will give you my genuine view of pros and cons. I would tell you, if I were you, here’s what I would do, but here’s my circumstances. Like again, I’m not going to withhold information or guidance or advice. But my job, I really think, is to help an individual figure out their right answer. And that is the thing that I think a lot of these.

Big coaching programs where a lot of people say they get burned, right? Like whether it’s a program on how to get private pay clients, whether it’s a program on how to add coaching for therapists, a lot of people get burned or feel burned because there’s not that depth of relationship, right? These programs that are scaling themselves so big, what they rely on is yeah, we’ve got the answer. We’ve got the answer for everyone.

Just come in here, we’ll take care of you. And again, right? Seems safe on the surface, but usually it is not. Usually it’s not actually safe because some things can be applied the same, right? Some SEO strategy, for example. Yes, those can basically be the same across all in-person practices. They do look different for multi-state practices. They do look different for virtual or hybrid practices, right? So there’s a lot of different things to consider, but some stuff is yes, apply all.

In this kind of situation, if we’re thinking about what, like Microsoft, Microsoft Word functions, paste all, copy-paste all, something like that. So when we feel like we’re getting burned, when we feel like I got nothing out of that program, it’s because there is no personalization in it, right? Someone doesn’t actually know you. And that is something that I don’t think I took for granted. I

I ironically, well, I don’t think it’s actually ironic. Like I’m a therapist. I love intensives. I love short-term solution-focused work. And I love working with long-term clients. I have a few clients on my caseload at this point. One of them is like my second ever therapy client. So we’ve been working together for like four years. Another one I’ve been seeing at least weekly or every other week for maybe like two, three years at this point.

I love long-term relationships because the longer I get to know someone, the better I can help them. Right. And so I think I kind of naturally did that with coaching too. Like I signed up for a one-to-one coach, I think a f literally like 11 to 12 months after starting my private practice. Cause I was like, there’s more I want to do. I want to do better. I want to up level. I want to be successful. I want to make more money. I want to have a great life.

And so I reached out to a one-to-one coach, and we worked together for maybe like a year and a half until she went on maternity believe. And then she recommended me to my current coach. And I’ve been working with her for maybe like 14, 15 months at this point. And I have no plan on leaving her because what I really value with these long term coaching relationships is this person doesn’t just know my business, but they know me. Right. They know.

My circumstances, they know what applies to me, they know when my money mindset shit comes up, they know when my anxiety brain takes over, they know when my self-sabotage part takes over, and they call me on it. Right. Like that I think is so different than just, okay, here’s the strategy. Okay, yep, here’s the template. Okay, yeah, just do this. Because yes, you can just do the things. We’re all very successful, highly intelligent therapists. We can do the things, but if we do the things,

just blanket slate without reflecting on is that actually what I want? Why do I think I want that? What feels good about that? What might be the trade-offs if I do that or another thing? Well then you might find yourself weeks, months or years down the road with this question of like, what the fuck am I doing? Right? Like if we don’t know and if we don’t feel good about what it is that we started, that is not to say that anxiety is not going to come up, even if an offer feels really good.

But if we don’t feel good about it, if we just chose it because we felt rushed to choose it, if we just chose it because someone demonstrated or showed us or told us this was the thing to do, I really, really don’t think that that’s worth it. Right. And I get this sense of I want to do something ASAP. I want to hit the ground running. I just want to get something off the ground. I totally get that, right? We are a society socialized and kind of trained for instant gratification. We all want to do the

The Jesse Jean thing of I launch a thing and I make $7 million, right? Don’t get me wrong, I would love that too. But I also don’t think I want that life. I don’t want the life and I don’t want the business of the business coach I originally worked with who, yeah, she’s scaling to make a ton of money, but I don’t like what that business looks like. I don’t like and I don’t think I would feel good running a business in a way where I’m so removed.

From my clients, right? And this is personal preference for everyone. That’s not saying that that’s the wrong approach, but it’s the wrong approach for me, right? I want to be in it with the people I’m supporting. I want to develop long-term relationships with the people I’m supporting. I have people who have my coaching clients who have my cell phone number. They have me on WhatsApp. We DM on Instagram about personal things. That’s what I want. I want, you know, I’m not saying we gotta be friends, but like I want you to feel like

We can be friends and we can hang out. And I have gotten like ice cream and dinner and lunches with some of my people outside of a business context. And I think that somehow we lost that importance. We lost that relationship when we’re looking at how do we grow our business. And I think a lot of that is we’re kind of set up for it. I don’t know if it’s on accident, but right, you see all these programs out there that are like,

Eight weeks for this, 12 weeks for this, six months for that. And we think, okay, cool, like that is the time that I’m doing the thing, and then I’m done with the thing, and then I’m moving on to the next thing, or I’m taking a break until the next thing. But I really, really want to encourage you all, if you are thinking about business mentorship in any way, whether that’s for your private practice, whether that’s for scaling outside of your practice, really want you to think about how do I actually work with one person long-term and consistently because

Because that is going to benefit you way more down the road than switching between all these different people and all this different guidance. And I have worked with therapists where like I’m working with you, anim in this program, anim in that program, and there’s conflicting advice about this, that, and the other thing. And like, that’s confusing. And again, if everyone’s trying to give you their blueprint, their template, their way, no wonder you’re confused. No wonder you’re stalling on things. And my God, do not even get me started.

Trying to use ChatGPT as your business coach because Chat GBT just wants to blow smoke up your ass and make you feel great about things. It can feel good in the moment, but it’s really not gonna challenge you. And it’s probably not gonna give you good ideas, it’s not gonna give you good guidance because it doesn’t know you. Right? You might train it as best as possible for I like how I said don’t get me started, and now I’m going on this soapbox, but I’ll just finish it. You might train it on your business, your tone of voice, your things like that, but

It’s just like why we stand so strongly against why AI cannot replace a therapist. It is the same thing, right? Chat GPT, clawed perplexity, whatever it is that you’re using and chatting with. Yes, you could even tell it, I’m nervous about this. Help me with blah, blah, blah. You could train it on your emotions, but it does not see your nonverbals. It does not hear your tone of how you’re feeling about things. It’s just not.

Please don’t do it, right? Just like, don’t do it. work with a human, work with a human long term. Because truly and genuinely, I think that has been the biggest thing that has led to my own success. When a lot of people are like, How did you do it? How’d you do it so quickly? It’s like, well, I have, I have invested in high level, which in my case has also meant high cost, coaching support from the very beginning, right? Again, I started it.

11-ish months after I started my private practice. And so it’s almost like inevitable that I would be where I am today because I’m not only signing up for the support, but I am taking full freaking advantage of the support. Right. Like I am always showing up. I am always asking questions. I’m always talking about here’s my personal situation. Here’s what I’m bored about. I’ve talked with my business coach about such personal things that like some of my friends and family don’t even know about. And it really just helps her.

Help me better. Right. And the therapists that I’ve worked with on and off or pretty consistently since 2023 and 2024, they’re the ones who are doing so successfully in their private practice, in their second or third income streams that they’re working on and scaling. And I think again, it’s because long-term relationship. It’s because they trust someone to call them on their shit and of like,

Don’t do that, right? You’ve got a million ideas, but we’re gonna focus on one. And I know how your brain thinks, but well, let’s actually like scale it back, as opposed to just again, if you want to go back to ChatGPT or if you want to go back to a program where nobody knows you, people might just be like, no, stick to the path, or like, yeah, go ahead and do that, but you’re not going to get what you actually need from, you know, that kind of mentorship, that guidance, that support, that coaching, whatever you want to call it. So.

That’s something that I’ve been reflecting on. That’s something that I really want people to hear as they are thinking about. I know we’re all in this season of thinking about like our goals for 2027, reflecting on 2026, thinking about how we make our next year and all years beyond better. Something I just wanted to bring to the podcast to really help you all sit with and slow down in those decisions as you might be looking at what program I might want to invest in for the next year or before the year is over, because I think it’s a really, really important.

To think about not just what can the program offer me, like right, what are the deliverables, what’s included, what’s the value stack, but do I want to work with this person? Right? Will this person can I see them helping me? Do I see us developing a relationship? And do I trust myself to show up for it? Right? Do I trust myself to take advantage of the support when it’s given to me, when it’s like so like pushed in my face, right?

so if any programs you’re looking at have one-to-one support, take advantage of that. Also look for the programs that don’t have like support coaches giving you the support because things that I’ve heard is in those programs that are big, where there’s like the main coach and then there’s support coaches, and it’s the support coaches giving you the one-to-one support. What I’ve heard is that honestly they’re just not helpful and they kind of seem checked out and they kind of just say, follow the blueprint, follow the blueprint. So work with someone who

runs the group and is the one supporting you one-to-one and, you know, just remembering you and caring about you and wanting to build a relationship with you. If that’s something that you’re looking for, if you are at the stage where you are ready to add on diverse streams of income, I do still have openings in my happy, healthy, and wealthy therapist mastermind, where that is everything that we are focusing on, which is how do you build the thing that works for you? And how can I

Get in the business with you. I love getting in people’s business, not their personal business. I mean, as a therapist, yes. And if you want me in it as your coach, yes. But how do I partner with you? Right. That is what I care about. That’s why I keep this group small. It is intimate. Everyone’s gonna get high touch support. So if you’re interested in that, you can check out the information in the link in the show notes and either sign up or if you want to submit an application so we can talk more.

I’d would love to have you in if you are a great fit. I’m looking for people who are ambitious, people who are willing to be vulnerable, people who are willing to just try things and really like bet on themselves. So if that’s you, reach out and I would love to chat more. All right, everyone, thanks so much for listening to today’s podcast. And I would love to hear what you thought about this episode. And I will look forward to talking with you all more next week. Bye.

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