The method
Profit for Keeps®, explained for therapists.
A values-based, therapist-friendly cash flow system created by Amber Dugger. Everything I teach is built on it. Here’s what it is, what it isn’t, and why I bring it to private practice specifically.
Created by Amber Dugger · Taught to therapists by Maren Londahl-Smidt, LCSW
A cash flow system that starts with your life, not your spreadsheet.
Profit for Keeps® expands on the cash flow principles in Profit First, but it’s a separate system created by Amber Dugger — at the encouragement of Profit First author Mike Michalowicz — for service-based businesses, with a strong focus on mental health professionals and private practice therapists. It adds the pieces Profit First doesn’t address: your personal finances, your actual life, and the emotional weight money carries.
The approach is holistic. It starts with your why — the life you want your practice to support — and then works backward into your personal financial goals and the business from there. Because plenty of therapists look successful on paper but still don’t know what they can safely pay themselves. It’s designed for more flexibility, fewer bank accounts, and easy integration with a budgeting tool like YNAB.
What makes it different from generic financial advice is that it’s practical and shame-free. There’s no judgment, no hustle-harder messaging, and no pretending money is purely a numbers problem when it’s also an emotional one.
Three things that make your practice money easier to manage.
A revenue goal based on the life you want
Not a number you were told to want. What your practice actually needs to generate so that you’re paid properly, taxes are covered, and there’s room for the things that make you smile.
A simple plan that tells every dollar where to go
Owner pay, taxes, profit, operating costs — allocated the moment money comes in. The decision gets made once, by the system, instead of every week by a tired version of you.
A repeatable way to pay yourself, set aside taxes, and build reserves
It works even if you hate spreadsheets or your income fluctuates month to month. That’s the point: it has to survive contact with a real practice and a real brain.
I bring it to therapists because I needed it as one.
I’m a licensed clinical social worker with a full self-pay practice, and I run that practice on this system. I’m also the first licensed therapist to complete the Profit for Keeps® certification, and I teach it through a therapist-first, ADHD-affirming lens. Amber built the method; I help therapists put it into practice in a way that works with a real caseload and a real brain.
More about Maren
Three doors in. Pick the one that matches where you are.
Full build · 6 months
The Practice & Profit Cohort
Install the complete system live, with me and Amber, in a small group of therapists. This is the program itself, and it lives on the Profit for Keeps® site.
See the cohortFirst step · 2 hours
The Right Revenue Number
A live workshop where you calculate your own Profit for Joy® Number — the first piece of the system — and leave with a 30-Day Cash Plan.
See the next workshopFree · A conversation
A Profit Discovery Call
Not sure whether this fits your practice, your brain, or your season of life? That’s exactly what the call is for.
What happens on the callWant company while you figure out where you fit?
The Profit for Keeps® for Therapists Facebook group is a free community of therapists working the same system: questions, wins, and the money conversations nobody has in grad school. Join the Facebook group
The full program is on the Profit for Keeps® site.
Dates, the curriculum, and how to join the next cohort all live there. This link takes you across.
Profit for Keeps® for TherapistsRather talk it through first? Book a free Profit Discovery Call.