Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 8: What “Scaling” Really Means for Therapist

Released: 01/09/2026

Show Notes:

In this episode, Amanda reflects on her personal journey as a multi-business owner, discussing the challenges of perfectionism and capacity. She delves into the concept of scaling in the therapy business, emphasizing that it is not merely about increasing income but about enhancing impact without overwhelming one’s resources. The conversation explores various business models, including low-cost memberships, courses, high-ticket coaching programs, one-on-one coaching, and retreats, highlighting their pros and cons. Amanda encourages listeners to choose business models that align with their values and personal capacities, rather than following trends or external pressures.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Scaling isn’t just about increasing revenue—it’s about increasing impact or income without proportionally increasing your time, complexity, or nervous system load.
2. Every business model (memberships, courses, group programs, 1:1, retreats) has trade-offs, and the “right” one depends on your capacity, values, and tolerance for logistics and emotional labor.
3. The smartest way to scale is by choosing the model that reduces pressure on your life—not the one that’s trending, flashy, or most talked about online.

Connect with Amanda:

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

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

Sponsors:

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

Resources & Links:

SEO for Therapists Membership

Therapy Intensives Academy

Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind

Free Training: 3 Steps to Booking Your First Therapy Intensive

Free Guide: 3 Steps to Double Your Income

SEO Freebie

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

Transcript:

Amanda (00:05)
Hello, happy 2026. I am coming to you from my brand new apartment. I just moved into a few weekends ago and I am so, excited for 2026 and everything that’s to come. Now, if you are listening to this episode live, I guess, when it airs, it is airing on January 9th. I did have a podcast episode come out last week, but…

I’m going to tell you a quick story about capacity, perfectionism and getting sick. So I very rarely get sick. is something actually that I’m kind of like proud and thankful of for generally. My immune system is fairly healthy, but when I get sick, man, does it really, really hit. It may even come up in my voice a little bit today during the podcast episode, but I really struggled with wanting to deliver.

of I said it’s going to be weekly episodes. I’ve got to get an episode out. I was pushing it out with my team for so long. what is the deadline of when you need to know whether I can record something new for you or not? And we were really pushing it. And at some point, I just had this thought and idea around like the idea that I have to produce something new every week is 100 % a perfectionism block.

right, the thought that I have to do something perfect and new or people are going to get mad at me. But I just simply, literally, physically did not have the capacity to do a new recorded podcast last week. And so we actually repurposed one of my most watched trainings that I did in the Facebook group that I had. And that worked perfectly fine for getting content out. did the job. Therapy intensives are still a thing that I talk about, but

I just wanted to name that aspect of what it’s like to be a multi-business owner, managing multiple obligations while also being human. So thank you so much for tuning back in to Happy Healthy and Wealthy Therapists for this brand new episode. Now, if you’ve spent more than five minutes on the internet as a therapist business owner, you have probably heard some version of you need to scale.

one-on-one work isn’t scalable. Courses, memberships, passive income, that’s the goal. And honestly, for a lot of therapists, that messaging just creates more pressure, more confusion, and more self-doubt because no one really explains what scaling actually means. You just hear the word and you’re like, what, huh? So, especially for people who’s…

nervous systems, ethics, and identities are wrapped up in care work, it doesn’t really make sense to us how to scale that because we can only see so many clients or patients in a given day and in a given week. So I want to use this episode today to slow this way down. We are going to talk about different business models between courses, coaching programs, retreats, memberships, all of it.

the real pros and cons of lower ticket versus higher ticket offers and how to choose the right way to scale for you. And here is the spoiler upfront. Scaling is not just about making more money because if you’re earning more but taking home less, working more, thinking more, holding more emotional labor, that’s not scaling. That’s just a fancier version of burnout.

So I really want to again, start with a definition of what does scaling mean? So scaling means increasing impact, income or reach without a proportional increase in your time, energy or nervous system load. Notice I did not say more followers, more revenue screenshots, bigger launches or more things on your plate.

because I’ve seen therapists double their revenue and have their quality of life, like H-A-L-V-E, half their quality of life, build quote unquote passive offers that actually require constant tending, scale outward while shrinking inward, right? And so instead of asking, because we don’t wanna repeat those things I just named, instead of asking just how do I make more money,

I want you asking, how much do I actually want to work? How much complexity can I tolerate? How much unpredictability stresses me out? What do I want my days to look like? Not just my numbers, but my days. Because scaling without those answers is just reacting, honestly, usually to anxiety.

It’s not designing our practice with intention.

So let’s talk about some of the different business models out there. What are the pros, what are the cons, and what are the trade-offs? Because I wish someone had this conversation with me early on. I feel like I got blasted more with the messaging of you should have as many diverse streams of income as possible. So you need to have low ticket and high ticket and mid ticket. You need to have all the things, but no one really talked to me about pros, cons, and trade-offs. So I wanna start with

this idea of a low cost membership because some people think this is going to be super easy, right? Have a membership for 20 to a hundred dollars a month, something that’s very, very accessible because right, if it’s low cost, then it must be really, really scalable. So some of the pros of a low cost membership, it can be predictable recurring revenue, right? If someone is paying 20 bucks a month, they’re getting a lot of value out of something. They’re probably going to stay

with that service for a long period of time because at some point when it’s so low cost and they’re getting something out of it, it may not yet be worth it to let go of the subscription, so to speak. Another pro is that it can be great for community building. If that’s what your membership is about, if there are live or asynchronous calls, if there’s some aspect of like a community chat, there can be

community building. And obviously you all probably saw a ton of memberships explode during COVID because we were all isolated. So it’s a really good pro of a membership that has some kind of community aspect to it. And then like I said, another pro can be there’s that lower perceived barrier for entry to your audience, right? I got the message so many times, just have your high ticket offer. Do not have anything else because

the more you give people ways to work with you, the more you have competing offers, right? So you have this high ticket program and if people can’t afford that, if people believe they can’t afford it or don’t want to invest at that price point, well then like there’s just never gonna be a client, which I’ve learned is not true. A lot of times it really just is the financial aspect that keeps people from.

investing in something that is higher ticket, whatever that means for them. That could be $500, $1,000 plus whatever. But when you have something that is lower ticket, it’s a low barrier for people to start to work with you because if they’re kind of interested or they want to check you out before investing a higher price, then $100 a month membership is definitely going to save them when otherwise working with you is $1,000 or $2,000 a month or whatever that is.

So there’s definitely pros to low ticket memberships. But some of the cons that people don’t talk about is you need volume, and I mean a lot of volume, to make meaningful income. You can’t have a $10 a month membership, have five people signed up for it, and that replace what you’re looking for, right? Even if your therapy session fee is $100 per session,

Right? Like that canceled session, that no show that you didn’t have a no show policy for, or, you know, someone’s late on paying you, whatever that is, that $50 that you’re getting from your membership, not that it’s insignificant, but it’s not covering those things that we worry about being covered. Right? When the client’s sick, when we’re sick, when we go on vacation, we are trying to make meaningful income with our diverse streams.

and low ticket memberships, it can be hard to have that be the thing that is meaningful income unless we have a ton of volume. Another con, obviously, is that members do expect ongoing value, right? They don’t wanna pay one time for something that has a little bit of value, but then the value depreciates with time, or actually the product or services get worse with time, and…

It’s not that that is inherently bad, right? I totally understand. I want to, and will only pay for something ongoing if I’m getting value in it. But what becomes the negative here is that it can create such anxiety on the part of the therapist, coach, whatever role you have to keep adding value to it. Right. And now we’re doing that part of spending more time investing into it, which

then it becomes a conversation of are we putting too much work into it for what we’re charging for it? So there’s a few different ways that that’s a really challenging con that I don’t hear people talking about. And the churn, the turnover of low ticket memberships, it is real and it is emotionally exhausting. It’s been challenging for me. At the beginning of 2025, I launched my SEO for therapists membership. It was called SEO for therapy intensives.

I got a lot of questions about, this only for therapy intensives? No, it’s not. So I rebranded it to just SEO for therapists. And honestly, it can work for coaches or psychiatric nurse practitioners or whoever, because it’s really just SEO tips and some blogging strategies and tips. But it’s hard when I’ve tried so many things with that in 2025 to, you know, what if I do a free two week trial? What if I do a free one month trial? There’s a lot of ways I’ve tried making it.

even more accessible and just to see the cancellation emails come through, ⁓ people canceling before their paid month activates. Like, yeah, it’s exciting to see people sign up, but it is also exhausting to see people leave, right? So there is an emotional aspect to low ticket memberships, again, that I don’t see people talking about. depending on…

what this membership is, depending on how much you’re putting into it. And because it’s low ticket, your hope is people are staying with this forever, for like as long as humanly possible. It also means you have to be on and contributing to this thing all the time, right? 24 seven for as long as it exists. So there are cons to this as well. And I want people to see that and really consider then is this worth their time?

their emotional investment and their financial investment, whether you’re building something or hiring a virtual assistant to help you build something. So really a low ticket membership. This is best for people who do enjoy some kind of consistency and community. It’s best for people who like showing up weekly or monthly again, whether you have live calls or some kind of asynchronous support. It is very good for those who have strong boundaries and systems.

because in a low ticket membership, people are still going to try to push the boundaries of what’s included or not. There’s been a lot of people who have asked for more in my SEO membership, and it’s not like I’m trying to gatekeep things, but I am considering the time energy financial trade off, right? Of like, could do more trainings, but that would take more time. I could provide more resources, but that would take more energy.

I could do a live Q &A call about SEO because it’s easy enough to understand most things in text format. But some people have asked for a live call and I totally understand that. And again, I don’t always have capacity to do that month to month. So it’s really not that a low ticket membership is this passive income. I hope you’re hearing that from the things that I’m sharing in terms of pros and cons. It is more relational income. You are exchanging

some type of help, some type of value for a lower fee so that more people can access you, more people can build a relationship with you. And again, that is for some people and it’s not for all people.

The next thing I hear people talk about are courses. And courses are often positioned as this like holy grail of scaling. you know, if you just, you just have to do a course, like a course is the answer. Take all of the knowledge, everything you’re saying over and over and put it into a course. And I have one signature course and some smaller courses that I kind of sell behind the scenes. So don’t get me wrong. It’s not that courses aren’t a part of my strategy, but again, there are pros.

and there are cons. The pros, they can be leveraged over time. That’s the part that I really want people to hear is that it can take time. How much time? A lot of that depends on again, what it is you’re selling, what your strategy is for selling it evergreen or launch style, but it’s not instantaneous. With AI these days, I think a lot of people are used to having a lot of information at their fingertips, so it’s not that people are whacking in

but what it means is people might have to build more trust with you before they buy something from you. So just because you put together a course, you launch it, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna have dozens or hundreds of sales the first time you launch it, but it doesn’t also mean that that can’t happen with time. The first time I publicly sold my Therapy Intensive’s Academy course, I think I got…

like 24, 25 signups. And like that is amazing. At that point I was selling it for $747 and that’s, you know, a great income that I earned. But I had high expectations around, I’m going to sell 50 of these. I’m going to sell a hundred of these because that would have been really great too. And over time I’ve sold 30 or 37 or whatever it is. So it’s grown, but it does take time.

I think it’s taken me about a year to get from the mid 20s to the mid 30s when I am doing a live launch of this product. The pro two of a course is that it is a little bit more of a clear container and curriculum. Generally when you’re thinking about a course, you’re thinking about what is the goal? What is it I want people to learn? So then you are putting together that curriculum and it’s very clear, like this is the course on this topic and like that’s it.

you can decide whether essentially you want to add to that same course with time to essentially like expand the parameters of that container or whether you have more information to add. And now there’s ⁓ you know, volume two of your course, whether you start selling another course, there’s pros and cons to each of those methods. Really, when it comes to a course, this can work really well for brains that are very teaching based. Like I,

Love teaching. I loved teaching ever since I started doing it in grad school where I got to teach my own course. And I just, it works really well for my brain to be able to think about different concepts, think about how they connect to one another and help the learner follow a like A to Z kind of step plan blueprint, whatever you want to call it. So it works really well for me, but not everyone does work that way. Not everyone prefers to share information that way.

So it’s helpful too to think about is that actually how you prefer to disseminate information ultimately. Now the cons of a course because there are cons, there is a high upfront creation energy that is needed, right? You have to put together that curriculum. You have to record the videos. You have to figure out where you’re gonna store the videos and then you need to come up with the marketing, the funnels, how to update the course with time. This can take

a lot of your time. And again, your time is precious. That’s probably why you’re looking to diversify your income. So then a lot of people go to, maybe I’ll hire a virtual assistant, but that also takes financial investment to do. And not that it’s not worth it, but I think a lot of people in the early stages of scaling do feel like their finances are at a premium and it’s harder to invest in that type of support. So they end up doing it themselves. And I’ve talked with so many therapists

who get a course like 80 % done and then they just don’t finish it because they got burnt out. They got tired. They didn’t know how to build out a funnel or a sales page or whatever that is. So it’s helpful to remember all of the components that you need in order to make a course successful from its first launch to going more evergreen style where it’s selling in the background. And what is your ongoing launch strategy if you’re trying to kind of like promote this?

two, three plus times a year. Another con with a course is that completion rates can’t be quite low. Depending on how long your course is, depending on how much content is in the course, how long each video is in, think about when you’ve bought a course and you probably got so excited, you logged in, you watched the little welcome video and maybe like.

20 to 30 minutes of some videos on like 1.5 to two times speed. And then you saw how much there was, you saw how busy you were, and you kind of just gave up, right? So the completion rates can feel low, which then makes it hard to collect testimonials that you use for social proof. It can make it feel really defeating for you in terms of your confidence when you’re talking about what are people getting out of it because you know what’s capable of what people can get when they finish the whole thing.

but people aren’t finishing the whole thing and they’re not sharing their feedback of how it’s going, it can create again another block when it comes to marketing your course. And another con depending on your preferences is that it can feel surprisingly disconnected. Like you can have people sign up for your course, go through the whole thing, submit these beautiful testimonials about how much you helped them.

but you never actually interacted with them, if that’s not a part of the course to have like live Q &A calls or group or one-to-one kind of like coaching or FAQ kind of support, it can feel surprisingly disconnected to be like, wow, I kind of influence or change this person’s life and I have no idea who they are. And so if that’s not in alignment with you and who and how you wanna be, then of course may not be for you or again, may not be the main strategy for how you scale.

So again, this is best for therapists who do like structured teaching. It is for the therapist who is okay with more delayed gratification because again, you’re gonna put in a lot of work upfront and not get that immediate reward, but the reward can grow with time. Courses are best for therapists who really enjoy content creation, potentially more than live interaction. And courses can scale knowledge,

not necessarily connection. So if those things kind of like check the boxes for you, if those are all good with you, if that’s how you operate, that’s how you want to scale, a course might be a really, really good option for you.

Now the big one that we’ve probably all heard of is a high ticket group coaching program. I’m to talk probably a little bit more about this one because I’ve had so many experiences with it, both in the pros and the cons. So a group coaching program, generally it’s mid to high ticket. Again, what that means for you, depending on where you are in the States, in the world, it’s a different number.

Usually they are time bound, right? There might be, here’s this four week program, this six month program, this two year program. And generally they are cohort based, except when it comes to the scalability part, I’ve seen a lot of guidance out there around having it be open enrollment forever, right? Because you can get a hundred people on a call and then as two people graduate, 10 more people enrolled. So your reach is limitless. So.

I have over time learned to prefer more of a cohort base instead of an open enrollment base because I mean, maybe I’ll just dive right into some of the pros and cons. Like when it comes to the impact you can have, like yes, the pros are this is high impact, right? You can reach more people, whether that is you’ve limited it to a cohort of 12, whether it is you have open enrollment and there’s 57 people on a call.

You can definitely reach more people in one hour than you would if you were doing one-to-one sessions or couples or family sessions. If you already do group sessions, if you do groups of 10 to 12, you kind of already know what it feels like to do a cohort coaching program model. Also the pro around like community transformation, right? We know so much that if people could just like get with people like them and hear that they’re not alone, that that in and of itself can be really transformative. And so.

coaching programs have that ability. I have seen across multiple of the cohorts and the programs that I’ve facilitated that connecting with others like them and feeling like they’re not dumb, they’re not alone, they’re exactly where they’re supposed to be, or actually, wow, look at how ahead of people I am, like that kind of upwards comparison too, that can be really helpful for people. A pro for group coaching programs is that they can leverage your time well.

Right? Again, you can reach more people at with the same amount of time that you’d be working with a one-on-one client, for example. And if you are doing something that is higher ticket, you don’t necessarily need huge volume. Right? So at some point when I was doing my coaching program that was focused on intensives and SEO that had multiple weekly calls, one-on-one calls, lots of different types of support included, people would pay $7,000 for that program. And so I could either

focus my efforts on booking one coaching client for $7,000 or trying to sell seven courses, which does take more work. It does take more marketing, even though my course is lower ticket, right? So it can take more energy to sell something lower ticket than something that is higher ticket, even though it also takes a lot of energy and intention and strategy to sell higher ticket too. So the con

of a coaching program is that the emotional labor is very real. You will likely feel a lot of responsibility and a huge desire to control everything. This was huge for me in my coaching program when I saw, well, people weren’t getting the results that I said they would. Some people are, but some people aren’t. And then I would look at the difference between those getting results and those not, and those not getting results.

weren’t going through the course that I provided. They weren’t attending all of the coaching calls, even the one-on-one calls they weren’t taking advantage of. Or we worked on maybe mindset stuff and logistics first, and they didn’t have time or energy or capacity to implement the website changes, or they felt a huge block in actually raising their fees. But then their time in the program was up, right? Like it was really hard for me to know the difference between I have set everything up for success

but the person has to take advantage of the success. Right? I used to feel a lot more responsibility if someone didn’t get, I literally had a return on investment guarantee, if someone didn’t meet that return on their investment. But the more that I have learned, I feel really confident in what I’ve put together and how it can support someone. And it’s not actually on me if they don’t take advantage of the support. The more I’ve learned that, that’s been helpful.

But at the beginning of that journey, that was really, really hard because I took it all personally and I felt a ton of imposter syndrome of like, clearly my program sucks and it doesn’t have enough value and I should probably stop doing it at all. And I have stopped doing that specific group in that way for a number of different reasons. I’ll probably talk about that on a whole other podcast episode. But when it comes to a coaching program too, there’s a lot of group dynamics that do require skill in facilitating those groups.

right, depending on how you run them, even if they’re open Q &A style and people just bring questions and you answer them, it still does require some skill. And I know a lot of therapists who hate group therapy, but they want to do a group program. I’m like, why, why do you, what’s the difference to you? Because if what you hated was the group facilitation part, then it’s going to be kind of the same. And you’re going to now bring this thing that you didn’t like or that you actively hated into your business.

And if it’s just because you think it’s going to make more money, like that’s the wrong reason for it. When it comes to coaching programs, there is this aspect of launching. So launching is essentially like announcing something and maybe running a sale for something. And to come back to this piece around, like, do you have an open enrollment group or do you do cohort model? Like launching can be intense regardless of which one you’re doing. If you’re doing cohort style,

It’s a little bit intense from this aspect of like, you really hope that it fills. And if it doesn’t, maybe you’re a little stressed about money. Maybe that imposter syndrome comes back up of why did only X number of people join when I made space for a higher number or launching from the open enrollment perspective is scary in its own right to feel like some months it feels like you’re speaking into the void and that no one is reaching out to you, but you’re supposed to be consistent with your marketing or

Some months you feel like you did no marketing and like you were kind of launching and like 10 people joined. So having a business that requires launching as the primary form of how you’re marketing carries its own degree of, again, emotional labor and it takes a team literally like my team of virtual assistants. They work between 120 to 150 hours a month because they need to help me with.

the emails and the sales pages and keeping track of everything and following up with people, like it can be intense. so like group coaching programs, while they have the ability to help you have really fun financial months, right? Like on paper, it’s important to remember all of the other things that are happening behind the scenes that a lot of people don’t talk about so actively in terms of that emotional labor, that financial investment that you’re doing.

So it’s really important to think about if group coaching programs are right for you to facilitate because there is this balance that you’re doing ultimately between holding space and teaching content. And sometimes you’re doing both and sometimes you’re doing one and not the other. So if you are thinking about group coaching program, just think about not only is it right for you, but in what way is it wrong for you? Because if you know how it’s wrong for you and how you don’t want to run a group,

then that also gives you more information on how you do want to run that group coaching program. So these programs are best for therapists who really do love like process, who love to see an unfolding, especially if you work with your clients over a longer period of time. It is for the therapist who is comfortable leading groups because obviously there’s a lot of those dynamics, whether you’re leading calls once a week, multiple times a week, or even every other month, like you have to learn how to lead that group.

Coaching programs are best for therapists who want depth and leverage because you can scale it in a number of different ways depending on how many people are in the group, ⁓ what you’re offering inside the group. If you outsource any of that, like I at some point had a copywriting coach and a mindset coach that were a part of my coaching program so that yes, I could lead those calls, but also mostly people had questions for me around SEO and intensives. So I decided to save myself some time.

and hire people to lead those groups. And again, that’s another investment that I was able to take because of the revenue I was getting from that group. But I still had depth and connection with the therapist inside the group because I offered that one-on-one support as well. So really this is often kind of the sweet spot for a lot of therapists that like depth and leverage, because we all do want connection. I don’t know any therapist who sells workbooks or books or courses.

who feels like it has meaning for them, so to speak, in terms of that, like, this is my calling. Your calling may not feel like it’s creating courses. Your calling might be, I’m just reaching more people at once. But again, your nervous system has to agree with all these other pros and cons that I’ve laid out.

The other option you can consider is one-to-one coaching or coaching intensives. These, primarily the biggest difference is that you’re taking away the group coaching aspect and a lot of people do charge higher ticket and provide more higher touch care when it comes to one-to-one work. So the pros obviously is there is a deeper impact you can have. I mean, it’s why we became therapists, right? It’s why a lot of us like working with people one-to-one is there is that connection. There is that.

deep ability to transform someone’s life. There’s a very clear return on investment. Like if you are primarily just doing what you are already doing in your therapy practice, but in a coaching capacity, you don’t necessarily have to hire someone to help you build out a course. You don’t have to spend the time building out worksheets. So you’re not investing as much to get those clients. And depending on the fees that you’re charging for these containers or these intensives, you might need fewer clients.

They can often be easier to sell based on your price point because I’ve talked with so many therapists for my group coaching program where people are like, I just don’t really like groups. I kind of get shy in front of other people and I want to take advantage of the program and I just don’t know if I can do that in a group capacity. So that’s when people started asking me about one-to-one coaching. So it can be a little bit easier to sell depending on who your ideal client is if group spaces are their own kind of barrier for them.

Now, some of the cons is depending on how you set up your structure of one-to-one, they can still be time bound. Like if you’re doing a coaching intensive with someone, that’s kind of one and done, or you might have a coaching container with someone. And if someone doesn’t renew their container, then you’re back on the kind of marketing hamster wheel of like, okay, I got to fill that slot. One-to-one coaching can kind of recreate some of that therapy fatigue if it’s unbounded, because people might have

more hopes, more kind of expectations from coaching compared to therapy, because there’s not, if you don’t set it up, right, a lot of us in therapy are like, the work happens in the session, and we have boundaries around being contacted outside of the session. So if you’re recreating that, it’ll probably be fine. But if it’s like, you can contact me whenever and there’s Voxer support and you can call me day or night.

that can not only recreate the fatigue, but make it significantly worse. So it really does require strong container design. And this is really best for therapists who love depth, who want some flexibility, people who want profit without massive infrastructure, like hiring a team. I’ve seen some people who run group coaching programs who are like, I’ve hired nine team members. I’m like, that’s a lot of people to look over. And that personally does not work for my nervous system.

And often this is more the bridge between therapy and scalable offers. So it can be a good step for someone who’s looking to start to scale but doesn’t want to spend all this time and emotional energy and money building something different.

Now there’s a million more options out there, but the last one I want to talk about here is any kind of retreat or live event, because I think a lot of us see retreats exploding and again, post pandemic and the more people who go on them, the more people want to facilitate them. I myself have been on, I think I went on like five in 2025 alone. I actually might’ve done more than that. I’ve done probably around 10 in the past couple of years and I’m going on one in the next couple of months here.

The reason so many people like them are because they are high impact, they are immersive. There’s this real life connection, right? A lot of us are on Zoom for a lot of these coaching programs or one-to-one coaching situations. Your therapy practice might be fully virtual. And a lot of us like that, but there is also a power to in-person immersive connection. So the pros, obviously, there can be powerful transformation, there’s strong community bonding.

there is a high ticket potential, right? I ran my first retreat in October of 2025 and the price of it was maybe high ticket. It was around $4,500 per person, but I chose, and again, this is where choice comes into play. I chose to give people more of an experience that was also high ticket. A lot of people who do these retreats sell it for high ticket.

but then the accommodations are, you know, maybe not the best and the food is maybe not the best. And there is almost this aspect of like maximizing the profit as much as possible. Whereas my perspective was it was actually a lot of my returning coaching clients that I’ve worked with who signed up for the retreat. I was like, I just spoil people. I want to give them a good time. So I hosted it at a lodge and spa and the rooms were super fancy. It was very spacious.

The meals were delicious and they were priced accordingly. We had some spa time. So like I didn’t make a huge ROI on that. So even though it was priced high ticket, my intention wasn’t let me make a ton of money off of this. This was how do I build more connection with the people in my circle and anyone who may want to enter my circle in the beginning. So that’s something to think about in terms of with any of these models that I’m talking about is

What is the intersection between money and your values? Some of the cons when it comes to retreats is that they are logistic heavy. There is so much coordinating that needs to take place when you’re contacting vendors or places for accommodations or excursions. There’s sheets to keep track of in terms of who signed up, who’s paid, who has allergies. There’s a lot of things to consider, including there are

there can be big upfront costs because you booking vendors and lodging people are going to want deposits for that. And you may not yet have people who have signed up for the retreat, but you are paying for these deposits and some retreat hosting locations can take advantage of people who are trying to host retreats. I’ve seen a couple of my friends who host retreats. They were locked into like, well, if you cancel, there’s a $20,000 cancellation fee. Like that’s wild.

So read your contracts, look into where you want to host, see that there’s like also a good relational vibe. It’s not just about the vibe of the place, but the people who you’re working with is super, super important too. And again, it can be pretty energy intensive to do retreats, especially if you are neurodivergent, autistic, introverted. Like I love being in retreats and I loved hosting my retreat and they take a lot from me.

And so I have to be really intentional around when I sign up for them, the ones I sign up for with more or less people, how do I take care of myself during the retreat experience? So retreats really are best for people who are more experienced business owners because of all the logistics that are involved, because it’s much more helpful if you do have a bigger team to support you. It’s really good fit for people who love that in-person facilitation, those who have some operational support.

and ultimately retreats scale more with experience. The more you get experience with them, then more people will sign up. More people will see, you know, clearly this is the thing that you do and people must be signing up for a reason. So it’s not necessarily that people do retreats because they’re easy. It’s because they love them. They love doing them and they have experience with

So again, I just named some options and there are so many more options. So how do you pick the right offer? And I think here’s the part that most people skip or don’t understand, or you you’re looking at a 30 second reel, people aren’t diving into all this information. You do not pick your next offer based on what’s trending, what someone else is selling, or what sounds scalable. You pick it based on constraints.

asking yourself, how many hours a week do I realistically want to work? How much unpredictability can I tolerate? Do I want live interaction or asynchronous space? Am I in a growth season or a capacity protection season? And most importantly, does this offer reduce pressure on my life or add to it? Because again, regardless of what you move forward with, if an offer requires more tech,

more customer service, more emotional availability, more constant online visibility, it must give something back in return. It has to give you back time. It has to give you back money. It has to give you back spaciousness in your life. Otherwise, it’s really just a lateral move, right? You’re not scaling. You’re just adding something on that is just as tiring as your therapy practice. If

I say that with the caveat of like, if what you’re doing is looking to reduce your burnout, do not make a lateral move, right? Like if you’re doing just two of the same thing, you’re just going to be a whole new level of burnout. So here’s what I want to leave you with. You do not need a course and a membership and a mastermind and a retreat. You do not need to monetize every idea or to scale just because you can. Scaling is not about becoming someone else.

It’s not about, they can do it. Why can’t I do it? Or she makes it look so easy. Why can’t I? It’s not what it’s about. And I get the comparisonitis and I get how it’s a little bit different than being inspired. There’s a difference between being inspired and feeling like, if other people are doing it, I must too or something’s wrong with me. So scaling is not about any of those things. It’s about building a business that supports your nervous system, honors your values, and pays you well without

costing you yourself. If you are craving expansion, but also more ease, more clarity and more intention, that’s not a contradiction. That’s honestly wisdom and intuition. So choose the right business model for your nervous system. Don’t do something just because others say it’s the right thing to do, the best thing to do, the most profitable thing to do. Choose it based on what works for you.

And if you’re wanting any support figuring out what to build next, not just how to sell it, that’s exactly the work I do inside my mastermind program and inside my one-to-one containers. I’ll link everything in the show notes. am currently looking for interest for people to join my mastermind that is starting next month, February, 2026. That was a wild number to say. ⁓ I’ll link everything there in the details if people are interested in basically continuing these conversations.

Right, because again, it’s not just about doing all the things because you can, it’s about doing it with intention, strategy, and personalized support. So all the information will be in the show notes if you are looking for that type of support. And as always, thank you for being here. I’m excited to see you all next week, and please reach out with any questions and yeah, let me know what you thought about this episode.