Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 61: How Do You Want to Make Your Money?

Released: 10/9/2026

Show Notes:

Most therapists set an income goal for the year without deciding where that money will come from. Amanda walks through how she plans a full year ahead, starting with the spreadsheet where she tracks money she’s already secured from payment plans and sponsorships. She explains how breaking her income down by offer helps her decide what to scale and what to pull back on, and why she books a full VIP planning day with her coach every December in New York. She also explains the difference between a grow year and a sustaining year, comparing similar revenue in 2025 and 2026 with very different take-home pay. Her closing advice: start your 2027 planning now, and invest in support that teaches you skills you can keep using.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Knowing exactly how much income you have already secured from payment plans and sponsorships lets you reverse-engineer your goals and make strategic decisions about what to launch or promote instead of chasing money from a place of panic.
2. There is a real difference between a growth year and a sustaining year: Amanda spent $310K in overhead in 2025 to net $102K, then carried those investments into 2026 where similar revenue netted over $200K, which is proof that intentional investment during a growth year pays off in years that follow.
3. Planning for 2027 means more than setting an income goal; it means deciding how you want to make that money, from which income streams, and how your expenses, including retirement contributions and annual renewals, will shape what you actually need to bring in each month.

Resources & Links:

• Join the next cohort of the Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind – we kick off November 3rd!
• The Wealthy & Worthy Retreat – Vancouver, CA, June 2027
• Click here for more resources & links

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Transcript:

Amanda Buduris (00:01)
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Happy, Healthy, and Wealthy Therapist Podcast. I’m gonna do something a little bit different today because obviously I talk about money a lot in terms of where you can make money, why you should make money, how I’ve made money, but it’s usually either right like aspirational of here’s why you should do this, here’s why you shouldn’t feel stuck around this, or it’s kind of reporting based on like past.

Data, right? Here’s how I did this, here’s how I earned this, here’s how and why I spent this, here’s why I invest in this, et cetera, et cetera. Instead, today I want to talk about as Q4 of 2026, I almost forgot what year it was, as Q4 of 2026 is started, and we’ve got a little bit less than three months for the rest of the year. A lot of people, yes, are thinking about.

finances for the rest of the year of what else might I be bringing in, what are the last expenses I’ll have, last tax deductions I want to take advantage of. But a lot of people don’t start looking forward to 2027 until maybe like December or January. You might be thinking about this in your therapy practice from the context of do I want to raise my fees? If so, how much do I want to raise my fees and all of that? But I want to

show you how I kind of zoom out and think even bigger picture when it comes to my finances for the year. So there’s a couple different things that I have always done and there’s a couple different things I’ve tried and have not gone well and things that I’ve tried that I really liked and that I’m going continue to implement. So the very first thing that I do if you know me, if you’ve listened to this for a while, if you’re one of my coaching clients,

You know that I swear by spreadsheets. I love spreadsheets to organize and track everything, including literally looking at generally what is coming in on a month-by-month basis, including what is money that I have secured. So what I mean by that is if I sold my Therapy Intensives Academy program and there was a three or six month program like payment plan on that.

then that’s money I’ve secured. Generally, we don’t have people default on those payments. It has happened once or twice, which is why we charge a premium when we, you know, do those kind of payment plans. But generally most people fulfill their obligations, no problem at all. So I’m tracking that on my spreadsheet of I’m going to be looking at my spreadsheet as I read some different numbers to you all. So I can even look at

In October 2026, I already have guaranteed at least $20,000 coming in. For November, I already have secured $12,760. For December, I already have secured $12,260. I even already have money secured for the new year. I have already secured about $37,925, and that’s across

Sponsorships, that’s across payment plans, that’s across mostly their payment plans and sponsorships that I’ve already secured. So it’s so nice knowing what is already secured because it helps you essentially go back and reverse engineer how much do I want to make. Because especially if you are a therapist who wants to diversify your income, you probably have a lot of ideas of.

know I could create this digital product or this course or this that or the other thing I can do coaching can do retreats but a lot of times I have to do this work too. It’s about this question of like slowing down and thinking of not just how much do I want to make in a month or in a year, but how much do I want to make per month, per year from each product that I’m then going to offer. So if you are a therapist who’s expanding and diversifying,

Think about on average what is coming from your therapy practice, right? Is that $5,000, $10,000, $15,000? Okay, so you already have that coming in. If you want to add a digital product, how much income do you want coming in from that digital product? If you want to start a coaching program, how much income do you want coming in from that coaching program? How much do you want coming in from sponsorships, like whatever it is? It’s helpful to get.

that amount of detail in your planning, not just I want to make 250K, but how do you want to make 250K? Because that’s going to be so helpful for then figuring out, okay, well, how do I reverse engineer and make plans for when I’m launching something, when I’m promoting something, when I’m adding something, when I’m retracting something. It gives you a lot more of an ability to make a decision based on data as opposed to

Like what’s the best time of you know year to launch something or when should I do something? It’s about, well, if I have these goals, these very concrete goals to meet this type of income in this way, then how do I want to do that? And how can I do that? So, for example, if I look at my 2026 data to date, I look at my mastermind.

Everything that I’ve collected so far and what I’m expected to collect, that’s about $160,000 for the year. So I can on average, this is where I maybe should have gotten a calculator out beforehand. I can look at $160,000 divided by 12. I can say, okay, if I can expect about 13 grand per month, it doesn’t always work like that. Some people pay in full, some people have extended payment plans, but for example, you could say.

Okay, if I have a $20,000 a month goal, that’s already $13,000 guaranteed. So how do I fill the gap of $7,000? Is that my therapy practice? Is that a new digital product I want to launch? What is it that I want to do? It also helps you to get more clarity around, I was literally just looking at this this morning because my team was my team is always asking me to update their numbers if they’re helping me put out content related to numbers and data.

So I looked at individual coaching to date. So I offer like one to two spots for pure one-to-one coaching because I do offer one-to-one coaching in my mastermind as well. So I’m trying to protect time and capacity. So I have some pure one-to-one monthly container spots as well as I do some coaching intensives time to time. And from one-to-one work that I’ve done or will be doing that I’ve secured so far for the rest of the year.

I’ve made about $20,850. At the same time, this digital marketing membership that I have, it used to be called the SEO for Therapists membership. Now it’s a little bit different because we’re showing that, you know, it’s more than just SEO. But that program has brought in $17,329 so far for the year. That’s only a gap of about $3,000. And the amount of work that goes into

a coaching intensive or a monthly container for coaching versus the work that me and my team do to put into the digital marketing membership is very, very different. So I’m gonna be looking at those numbers and thinking about, okay, in 2027, what is it that I want to prioritize pushing? Because as I do more mastermind work, as I do more live support inside my Therapy Intensives Academy program.

Then I need to think about do I have more capacity to take on one-to-one clients? Or could I make a similar amount of money by scaling one of the programs that I already have that don’t require so much live time from me? So I really want you to hear that way of thinking because so many people can get confused or anxious or sometimes a little frenetic about how do I make money? I just need to make money, I just need to make money. And trust me.

I am there too with my coach sometimes, especially when I have a huge income month and then the next income month is not so great. Then I’m thinking about, my gosh, what do I do? How do I make money? How do I make money? And she reminds me, what do you already have? You have choices. What do you want to scale? What you want to pull back on? And this is when I come back to my data. So that brings me to my number two thing. So number one is I have spreadsheets that track everything as much as possible.

Number two is to really have those conversations strategically with my coach. Last year, December 2025, what I did was booked a VIP day with her. So we literally hung out from 9 a.m. to was it like five or six PM? I don’t remember if we did dinner together. No, I think we did drinks and then I got dinner with my partner afterwards. so we literally spent like ten hours together.

Where a lot of it was coaching, a lot of it was just chatting and talking about life. I love her and we have a great relationship together. And what we did there was we took a look at here is the year 2026 coming up. What are your offers? What are the things you want to scale? What are the things you want to change? What are the things you want to improve? What are the things you want to add? What are the things you want to subtract? And we did that all from this lens of, okay, if you want.

This much income coming in from this offer. If you want to manage what’s your one-to-one time versus your one-to-many time versus your asynchronous time, how do we be intentional about the ways to make money in 2026? And so that has been a lot of the work that I did in that December going into this year. And it’s exactly what I’m doing this December. I’m gonna sit down, we’re gonna do it all over again, and think about my 2027 of

How did this year go? What income streams brought in? What revenue? What do I want to change? What felt maybe a little stickier than I would have liked? What are the things I love? How do I scale that? So I want you to hear the amount of intentionality and forethought that can go into creating a really, really successful next year for yourself. Because even as I was sitting down with my coach in New York City for our VIP day last year.

As we talked about, the mastermind, was it a new offer? It wasn’t a new offer. I think I just started my first cohort in that fall of 2025. So we were talking about if that’s the one that I choose to scale, where could my income grow in 2026? And we had talked about, well, depending on how many cohorts you have, depending on how much you’re charging, if you do any various levels of adding on support and things like that. She’s like, that in and of itself.

Could become a $400 to $600,000 offer. And so far, right, like I said earlier in this episode, what that’s brought in was a hundred and about sixty-one thousand dollars across I had like technically three cohorts, like two cohorts overlapping at the same time, but not three cohorts overlapping at the same time, if that makes sense. And you know, that was not my four hundred to six hundred thousand dollar offer.

Because, you know, a lot of it is I’m still thinking about and being mindful of the therapists who like to work with me, they are typically a little bit earlier in their practice. And so their income and their capacity looks a little bit different than someone who’s maybe been doing this work for five, 10 years and has different financial abilities, let’s say. So even though my coach continues to challenge me to set my prices higher.

That’s something that I have struggled with. I don’t think it’s a money mindset thing. I think sometimes it does feel like a practical, like what is the what is your market willing to pay? And so far I’ve been pretty successful at the rates that I have set. And I know my coach is gonna talk with me in December about raising my rates for the mastermind. So we’ll see if that happens. But I’m pretty sure that is going to be at least a $200,000 this year offer for me.

And that’s really helpful to think about because last year, if I look at my whole last year data, I’m scrolling on my spreadsheet for those of you who are just listening to me. Last year from this mastermind, I brought in $28,155. That was from pre-selling some spots to some coaching clients I had already worked with. That was from my first round of that cohort. So that was again about $28,000.

Overall last year, 2025, I made $428,165. And as of this point right now, I just gave this number to my team. So I’m not gonna remember the exact exact number. because I need to update like my therapy spreadsheets and my coaching spreadsheets because I still earn income from therapy. The last I tracked it, so again, let me go back for a second.

My 2025 total revenue was, I lost my place in my sheet. My 2025 revenue was 428,165. The last I checked, I’ve got to update it. But my 2026 to date, so I still have a little under three months to get more sales coming in, book more clients, sell more retreat spots, book more sponsorships. My 2026 to date income is 421,000.

$477. So that’s only a gap of about $5,000. And again, if I updated my data, I’m pretty sure I would close that gap. I have secured, I think that’s the number I provided to my team. In 2026, what I have secured is $465,414. So that’s already a raise of like $40,000, assuming I get no more sales coming in. So I get to again.

when I sit down with my coach in this VIP day, I get to think about how did this year go? What scaled? What went well? What do I want to invest more in? What do I want to let go of? And really make strategic decisions from there. And I think that is what’s really helpful. Like I decided I’m pretty sure I’m going to do a VIP day with my coach every December because I just love going to New York in December. It’s a beautiful vibe. The hotel that I stayed at last time.

Was absolutely gorgeous and stunning. I literally asked the hotel, can I book the exact same room for the following year? And the point of this is that it’s really helpful to start with big picture planning ASAP, right? Like could I have booked that in October or November if I wanted to start even earlier? Sure. But like I said, I’m very intentional about what month I wanted to be visiting New York City. But I’m not just thinking about Q1.

Of 2027. I’m thinking about the full financial year of 2027. What is it I want to bring in from what income source and why? Right. I think that’s so, so important. So many of us therapists, we just set the goal of, I want to make a hundred K this year, which my God is not enough in this economy. or I want to make 150K or 200K, but we don’t say how we want to make that money.

And we don’t make a plan for how to make that happen. So that’s why I really love this VIP day is that as much as I do quarterly planning, as much as I have my spreadsheets and all of that, I need someone just to bounce back and forth ideas and to really think through and strategize what is going to be the best way for me to do this. We also sat down together last year and we then looked at all of my funnels and like what copy needs to change. How could we enhance things? How do we make our ads perform better? So

That’s just a lovely day that I love doing. And again, I will probably do it for as long as she offers me the ability to do it. But you have to start thinking about your finances now in order to set yourself up for success. We have to start thinking before the new year, outside of more than just our therapy fee increases, especially if you are wanting to diversify, because that is going to give you the intentionality, the capacity, the mindfulness.

And that’s what’s really important, right? Me, for example, too. I want to do better with the more my income has scaled, the more my accountant has talked with me about we really need to max out your retirement account because that is going to be a huge tax savings for you if we can max out your retirement account. And when he told me that in like July, I said, okay, well, I’ve not been saving much towards my retirement. So now that means I need to spend the last.

six-ish months of the year, throwing as much money towards retirement as possible. And that actually became stressful because now it means what my payroll distributions look like. Well, my payroll amount and then my owner distributions look different, right? Than they would look if I had from January one known, okay, if I’m maxing out my account, that means this is how much I pay myself as an employer and I pay myself as an employee towards my

What I have is a solo 401k account. That’ll be very different now that I know this moving forward into 2027. So it’s really helpful to think about not only how are you making your money, but how are you going to be spending your money too? And when it comes to that retirement account, right? That is quote unquote spending money. It is investing. It is a tax write-off. So that’s great. But that’s the other piece I think about too.

And I’m very strategic with where I think we all kind of know our recurring expenses of what is our office cost, our EHR cost, a virtual assistant cost. We know generally on a month to month what’s going to happen. But if you don’t already, I do this. I encourage you to also think about what are your annual expenses and when do those come out. Because that’s a big part of the picture, too, right? When you’re looking at January is my most expensive month because my birthday is in January, and that’s when.

My licenses are up for renewal. It’s when I applied for my therapy business to begin with. So I gotta renew my business. There’s a lot of things that are set to renew and I have to plan for that. So if I don’t want to accrue credit card debt in January, then I need to know what are my recurring and my annual expenses happening in January, and therefore how much money do I need to make in January.

Right. So if I knew that was the goal because I planned that out ahead of time, then that means I get to look down, I get to look at my sheet of here’s the diverse income streams I have, and what do I want to promote? What do I want to launch in January to get more income in to pay for those additional expenses? That’s the kind of CEO level thinking that I think a lot of people do not do because we are not taught that, right? So

Super helpful to think about, as well as we all know that there are slower periods, right? There are slower periods in our practice, like the holidays. Even if you I work with CPTSD, I work with a lot of relationships, so it activates things for people around the holidays. My holidays don’t tend to slow down too much, outside of the fact that you know people don’t want to meet on Christmas Eve and Christmas and New Year’s Eve, usually. I still have had sessions on New Year’s Day though. So

Outside of that, obviously there’s Thanksgiving if people celebrate that. And then the summer break can be slower for people too. So if you knew that, if you knew my income is going to be approximately this during these times, then again, you have a sense of with these diverse income streams, what do I want to promote during those slow periods so that it’s offsetting the amount of money I’m not making in my therapy practice during those months.

So you really can be super strategic about this. And this is something I talked about with my mastermind therapists of, you know, if you are for the first time growing into something, if you want to diversify your income, but you have no idea where to start, it can be a little bit scary at first to invest because you think that’s what it’s always gonna look like to spend money when that’s just not the reality at all. There are grow years.

And then there are sustaining years. I’m gonna pull up my sheet again. Where did it go? There it is. For example, and I’ve posted this on social media too, and people really appreciated it. Like I said, in 2025, I made about 429,000. Sometimes the numbers are a little bit different depending on if I’m looking at my profit and loss statements that my accountant provides me versus my I

write down the gross revenue that comes in each month from my bank account. So this number’s a little bit different, but this one sheet I’m looking at now says total gross annual income was $429,728. I think based on some of the other numbers I’ve looked at, it’s $428,000. So it kind of just depends on how you count what income came in like December 30th but got processed on January 1st. I don’t know. Either way, about $429,000.

My overhead though, because 2025 was a huge grow year for me, I paid for a lot of coaching. I paid for a lot of copywriting support. I was really testing ads for the like first time and spending a lot of money to do that. I hired a OBM, an online business manager for the first time. That was a huge cost. I spent a lot more money in 2025 because it was a grow year.

And not that these should be your numbers, but I’m giving you these numbers for context. Again, total gross annual revenue, about $429,000. My overhead for the year was $310,000, $231. So that was a net annual income of about $102. not $102. my God, $102,000. and I think that’s accounting for, that’s not accounting for retirement savings every saved about.

17,500 for retirement in 2025. So on paper, right? $429,000 seems huge, but I netted about $102,000 because I spent a lot of money. I invested a lot of money. And this year, my accountant still needs to get back to me my profit and losses, I think, for the month of August. Honestly, they were waiting on me. I didn’t get them everything they need. So I do not, I don’t ding them for that. But let’s see.

My total gross annual income, again, around $420,000. So similar amount, but I still have three more months to make income. And my annual overhead is maybe around $200,000. And I pay a lot for team support. I pay a lot. I still pay a coach and she works on a revenue share model. So she makes more money the more money I make. And I’ve saved about $31,000 in retirement. So my net annual income is about $206,000.

thousand dollars. So I literally have already made $100,000 more than I did last year because this is not a growth year for me. This is a sustaining year. So that’s really, really important to remember as well. It can be scary to invest during grow years, but I guarantee I would not be where I am in 2026 if I didn’t invest in 2025.

I had a lot of learning to do. There was a lot of things I needed to change. And now I’m a lot more confident with, you know, the things that I do on the back end of my business. So I don’t need to hire someone to do all the things that I did in 2025. So that’s just a helpful thing to remember as well is you’re not always going to invest as high as it might seem like that you might need to, especially when you’re just starting out. So

I was a little all over the place because I started looking at numbers, the ADHD started kicking in, but part of what I really again want you to listen to, taking away from today’s episode, is really it’s so important that you start thinking about your finances now. Start thinking about the ASAP in terms of what do you want to make in 2027 and how do you want to make it?

And how are you going to be strategic about what you are investing in? Because you should still be investing in yourself as a business owner in 2027, even if the economy is scary, right? Choose what you invest in wisely. Do not buy every single $27 to $49 course out there. Invest in something that’s going to give you as much support as possible, that is going to teach you skills that you can reuse that you don’t.

have to rely on those things moving for those like other low ticket things moving forward, right? If you’re gonna invest in a coach, invest in a coach who you feel comfortable and confident can help you with as many of the things you need as possible. I know when I started working with the coach that I’m working with now, she was very upfront with me about like, I’m not your gal if you want to specialize in getting brand partnerships. Like that is not on me, but I can help you.

With ads and team management and funnels and refining your messaging and your work-life balance and your money mindset and all of that. I like, that’s what I need. Talking about brand partnerships would be a plus. So I did join a mastermind that was all about brand partnerships to still get that need met, but you don’t need to hire a niche coach to get all the support you need, right? In some ways, you don’t want to hire a niche coach to get broad support, right? That’s kind of the weird thing.

With coaching versus therapy, is you are told in therapy to be as niche as possible, even though you’re a generalist and you can talk a lot about a lot of things. Same things for coaching as well, right? Like I coach on intensives, but I can coach a lot more than that. I do coach a lot more than that. But you don’t want to

I’ve heard of some people who are like, I work with a networking coach or a marketing coach, but they couldn’t answer all my questions about all these other things, or they didn’t challenge me when it came to money mindset. All they said was like, well, you paid me to talk to you about network coaching. You paid for me to talk with you about this, that, or the other thing. That’s what we’re gonna talk about. So that’s not the support that you want if you are getting started. You want someone who has support with doing the things you want to do as well as helping you to explore the other potential things out there.

So I’m gonna link some information about my upcoming mastermind in the show notes if you are interested in considering that as a potential next step for you as you are prepping for and then moving into 2027. If you are a good fit for it, if you are a therapist who’s either looking to expand for the first time or you’ve started to expand, but you’re wanting to scale, or even if you’ve been doing this for a while but you just want to refin some things.

I would love to have you inside the group. I’m structuring it a little bit differently this time, and I’m really excited for how it’s gonna go. It’s always a great group, and I hope to hear from you if you have any questions about joining it. But that is it for today. I hope that that was helpful to hear some of how I’m planning for 2027, to hear some of my concrete strategies, to hear some of my concrete numbers, and let me know if you wanna hear more kind of content like this.

Don’t forget to leave a review of what you found helpful. Leave out the feedback form if you want to be considered for the raffle for a one-to-one coaching session. We raffle that off every month for people who leave a review. Thank you so much for listening today. Hope you have a good day, and I’ll talk with you next week.