The “Quick Question” Trap: What Happens After Send
Hear Emily Mori unpack invisible labor, owner dependence, email boundaries, and why a ten-second question can create twenty minutes of work.
31:44 · Published 2026-06-25
Listening map
- 00:40 — Why Emily sold her practice
- 05:14 — When success no longer fits
- 09:45 — What caring was costing
- 10:49 — Ludara sponsor message
- 11:53 — The fishbowl question: email access
- 20:33 — Team contact and owner availability
- 24:50 — Boundaries without punishing questions
- 26:37 — Industry hot take; separate fact-check required
Machine transcript
Machine transcript — may contain wording, punctuation, or speaker-label errors. This is the complete timestamped source record, published for reading alongside the episode. It is not quotation approval.
00:00 — Cold open
You didn't go into therapy to become the biller, marketer, tech department.
00:06 — Cold open
An emotional support human for your own business. But here we are.
00:13 — Show intro
This is Private Practice Is a Bitch, a Ludara original. Real talk, zero filter, better systems, less burnout. Private Practice Is a Bitch. Private Practice Is a Bitch. Private Practice Is a Bitch. Private Practice Is a Bitch.
00:40 — Why Emily is explaining the sale
Hi everybody, welcome back to Private Practice Is a Bitch. You know, the brutally honest podcast about running a therapy practice. I'm your host, Emily Mori, and before we get into today's fishbowl prompt, like I promised last week, that's something that came up a few times after I posted the first episode. I thought it was kind of interesting. Most of the people that listened, I shouldn't say most, but a good bit of people that listened reached out and were like, wait, hold up, you know, you sold your practice. And I was like, thinking to myself, well, maybe I should explain it a little bit more, because I do think that that's a big part of who I am and have been something that I've been exploring. So I figured I would talk a little bit about that today, because a lot of people often think about what is the long-term goals with their own practice and businesses. But yeah, so I did sell my practice. And, you know, that was something that it was said too casually, right?
01:50 — A long decision, not a dramatic moment
And I don't mean it in that way, but I did sell my practice. It was not just like one thing. You know, for me, it wasn't just like a dramatic moment. When I looked out, I was like, oh, I can't do this anymore. This was a long time, you know, coming. I worked it out in my own head, talking to my personal therapist about it. You know, for me, it was my first child. And I think it was really, really difficult, you know, for my family and my friends and understanding all of those things and, you know, kind of what went into that decision. I absolutely was not, you know, just looking out the window on a rainy day saying, I can't do this anymore. Although, honestly, you know, private practice does create a lot of those like rainy window moments. I do think that there's always more sunny outside moments for me, right? It's just more of a slow realization.
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02:58 — The invisible time behind ownership
You know, it's very expensive, very exhausting, and a very humbling, you know, realization that the pay-to-time ratio wasn't making sense for me anymore. And when I say the pay-to-time ratio, I don't just mean like the money coming in versus the hours on my calendar. I mean like the emotional time, the mental time. There was a lot of invisible time that I think people just see flexibility in being a business owner, being a leader in an organization. But that's not really the case, right? Time spent when everybody else's schedules. Time spent managing people, answering questions, right? Problem solving. And then all of those things, right? I own as an owner, right? As a former owner and involvement in other businesses now. But it's one of those things I think I just didn't want to spend my time doing that anymore. I was being a therapist, a CEO, you know, the manager, the fixer, the policy person, billing department, everybody, right?
04:05 — Endurance was not alignment
The emotional support animal for everybody. Didn't have that same, you know, drive or fire that I had. And didn't want to manage people in the same capacity anymore. At first, right, that was really hard to admit. Because when you build something, and especially when you build it young, I started it with, like I mentioned last time, a friend when I was in my early 20s, right? So when you build it from nothing, there's this weird pressure to keep proving you can hold it and be like, look at me. I can keep making it better until my spine exists outside of my body. And that's just something that I didn't want to do forever. I think I had confused, you know, endurance with alignment. And I was good at running in, very capable. You know, I had to admit that selling it didn't mean I wasn't capable, right? I could figure things out and manage all that chaos. But just my fire was not there. And when you lose your fire for something, it took me a while to realize that's not failing.
05:14 — When success no longer fits
Maybe that's maturing. Maybe that's growing in a different way. You know, sometimes your body is even telling you, you know, that it's time to take a break. Because this version of success no longer fits. And for me, it took a huge part of me realizing that and that experience with my kids. You know, I started to look at my life and think, what am I actually building towards my building life? You know, where I technically am successful, but pulled mentally in 37 ways, right? Is that really success? You know, my building a business that looks good on paper, but it takes certain parts of me away when I'm home. You know, I think sometimes that self-employment, like freedom, it just wasn't really working for me. Because, you know, let me tell you, being your own boss can almost be a fake freedom in some ways, right? Everyone loves to say you make your own schedule short, right? And sometimes that schedule eats you alive, right? You get to make every decision. You also get to be responsible for every decision. You get to choose your hours.
06:23 — Wanting her mind back at home
I also, I like to think about the business while, you know, you're doing all these things, right? Like, I would be thinking about the business while bathing the kids, driving, sleeping, dinner, right? Pretending not to be like an email, you know, checking Goblin. And after a while, I realized that's just not what I want it to be. I want it to be, you know, more present and not just like theoretically present, actually present. And, you know, sometimes I think it can feel like you're mentally drafting an email on late notes or something. And you're in the room and you're trying to play with the kids. And I really wanted more of my mind back and my energy and my heart back. So that hit me really hard. Motherhood and business ownership being tangled together. And I am still a business owner, right? It's just a different type of business ownership, you know. So unrelated to my business, when my son was born, I was initially in labor. I was subpoenaed by a former, I was subpoenaed because of issues that a former employer had.
07:29 — New motherhood under professional stress
I had worked at a private school, got pulled into, you know, working with them. And it was just a shitty situation, underreporting things, not myself, but the school was. And, you know, having to work and work in my environment and as a staff member being pulled apart of that was really hard. You know, and at the time I was 28, I had a new baby. And, you know, I also had my business at that time. And I was trying to become a new mom and a practice owner at the same time. And suddenly there was this like other stress on top of it. Like, this is insane. And not in like a cute way, but in like a very stressful way. And, you know, fast forward five years later, I had my second child, my daughter, and I really wanted a redemption delivery. My first birth was traumatic for other reasons outside of the professional stress that was going on at the time. And I don't mean this lightly, right, but it was clusterfuck. And with my second and last child, I really wanted that space to feel different. I wanted it to be very healing.
08:38 — The NICU and the cost of staying on call
And in the way, you know, most things got, that wasn't the case. She ended up in the NICU. I had my own set of health problems. Fast forward the day, we're all fine. We're very blessed in that capacity. But, you know, even in that moment, even with my baby in the NICU, even with my body recovering, you know, I was still having to juggle the business, you know, employees, clients, all of those pieces. And that was probably, you know, one of the most vulnerable times of my life, one of the most stressful times of my life. And I realized, you know, where my heart truly was around that period. And for me, it was with my kids and my family. And I took some time to process that and make sure, you know, this was a choice that I really wanted to make. So for me, you know, selling the practice, you know, it wasn't me giving up. It was me choosing what I really wanted to work towards, right, which was being more involved and being more present with my family. Because during that time, you know, I spent a lot of time working.
09:45 — Selling was choosing what mattered
You know, sometimes those decisions, it comes, you have to kind of figure that out a little bit, right, what makes sense. You know, I chose that. Sometimes, you know, people, you know, they don't want to do that. And that's fine, too. But I didn't sell it because I stopped caring, right? It was, you know, because I started paying attention to what caring was costing me. And, you know, that's, I don't know, my big answer is to why I sold the practice, right? And, you know, I think that that kind of brings me to where I'm at now, which is, you know, obviously doing this podcast and talking about all of the wonderful things of practicing and also some of the things that are really, really, really hard. Yeah. So we will take a quick commercial break and, you know, do that. And then we will talk a little bit more about our fishbowl topic. So woo-boo. Today's episode is brought to you by Ludara.
10:49 — Ludara sponsor message
If you own a health care or mental health practice, you already know that running a practice is about more than serving your clients well. It also takes clear systems behind the scenes. Ludara created a free practice operations health check called Is Your Practice Built to Last? It is a quick 10-minute checklist designed to help practice owners spot gaps in areas like intake, onboarding, EHR setup, documentation, staff roles, business email, file organization, website visibility, and growth readiness. Here's how it works.
11:53 — The inbox is not neutral
All right, guys. A little commercial. Thanks for hanging out and waiting for, you know, our fishbowl topic. You know, I picked a bunch of different things and kind of threw it in the fishbowl. But not really a fishbowl, more like a kitchen bowl. But anything from employee problems, hiring issues. It's all different types of stuff. But the topic that I picked out of the fishbowl today is the inbox is not neutral, which is really kind of cool because I feel like most people start out in their business by creating an email. And that email becomes the biggest trigger for a lot of business owners. People act like email is just email. But no, you know, for a therapist in private practice, the inbox is a psychological jump score, right? You might open it thinking, oh, there's going to be a referral. But instead, right, some people will get a client crisis, maybe a cancellation. And they just, you know, had five cancellations earlier in the week and insurance denial.
13:00 — Where clinical care and admin collide
And a lot of, you know, groups don't really have the billing staff or might have to pay additional money to kind of go through that. Maybe it's a school form you have to fill out, you know, and you don't really want to charge your client for it. But it's extra time, right? And then, of course, billing questions always create, you know, some headaches. But an employee, you know, needing clarification as we even get into bigger practices, right? That's another thing. People emailing, asking the same question, you know, 14 times. Maybe someone that's respectfully asking, you know, can I pick your brain? And, you know, your brain is so full of different things. I think that the inbox is, you know, where clinical care, business operations, and, like, all the emotional labor all kind of meet together and hang out. And the problem is a lot of therapists don't treat the inbox like it's a real part of the job. Sometimes when I talk with people, they'll say things like, well, you know, I worked. I saw all my clients, right?
14:05 — Email is part of the job
And they want to say that they made, you know, X amount an hour and then forget all of the back-end administrative stuff that really comes along with running the business, right? We treat it like an extra, right? And it should count, right? Like, answering emails, that is work, right? Thinking about the emails, work, deciding, you know, how to make that response is work. And I think a lot of people, the client disregarded. So, you know, that's just something that I like to think about with people is how stressful is your inbox, right? A lot of times, client quick questions are not actually, you know, that quick. Sometimes, you know, I might get a client emailing me a longer story about what happened, perhaps, you know, asking a question, thoughts, you know, reflect on this. And in my practice, I make myself pretty available to clients. I have really healthy boundaries and, you know, and I'm off and I'm with my family. I'm off and I'm with my family. But I do make myself, you know, pretty available.
15:10 — Acknowledge now, explore in session
And I find that that allows clients to continue to work on things in between sessions, right? Because it's not just a stop and go. I allow, you know, for my clients to send emails and making that more of like a dumping ground if they need to. People that have never emailed me, if they wanted to find it, I don't think they would know where my email is. And then there are people that, you know, it's there's always kind of something which is OK. You know, sometimes I'll see clients saying things like, oh, did you see this on TikTok, right? Or did you see this on on, you know, Instagram? And I think to myself, oh, no, like, whatever. What are they looking at on TikTok, right? We're not going to diagnose your boyfriend with a 42 second, you know, video and TikTok. You know, so I'll try to say things like, you know, we can explore that in the next session, right? Let's talk about what resonated with you in that video. So it's a way to acknowledge, right, what's going on, but not fully breaking down some of the things that maybe you really can't address in those emails while you're juggling all of the other emails, too.
16:16 — Caring without treating by email
So other things that sometimes people know me about is, you know, dysregulation with their kiddos. I am primarily a child therapist. So, you know, I see a lot of families or people working, you know, with meltdowns and different things like that. You know, and I think that sometimes, you know, people just want to be heard. And it's about, you know, responding, you know, thanks for sharing this, right? At some point, we should, you know, slow down and discuss this in session, right? Give it the attention that it needs, right? It's clear you're being happy, but you're not really, you know, treatment planning for somebody's kid or email, right? I think that a lot of therapists either get into this camp or they never answer emails or they kind of are always absorbed with the emails. And they fall for it every time in both ways because they care. Or I think that a lot of times I'll hear people saying that they feel like they have to respond to every email right away, right? They feel like they're in distress.
17:20 — Availability, fear, and boundaries
You know, they know that they can respond and they know that if they, you know, maybe it's too short of a response, it feels dismissive, right? People want to feel like they're available for other people. And I think that that's really, you know, it's important, you know, but we also want to be unavailable and we're not available. You know, we don't want to be acting out of fear or re-answer because we're worried if we don't answer something negative is going to happen. I think, you know, because practice, it becomes everything for people, right? A lot of professionals, especially that are in their own business, when you're off, you're thinking about your business and what you could be doing more. So I think that that is, you know, kind of how the emailing and walking away from things, it becomes harder. When you work for an agency, you know, or a larger system, there are a lot of structures built in. And the structures, most of the time, have boundaries in place. Like, we're all fit this time, right? Or, you know, do this. Maybe you work for an organization that doesn't have any boundaries, right?
18:30 — What a phone break revealed
And that's a whole other thing. For me, personally, I've gone back and forth with different things I've tried. I know right now I'm on this kick where I'm only on social media for an hour a day. My phone will turn it off if I'm on there more. And I don't know. I think that that has helped me with the doom scrolling or just kind of getting stuck in a loop. That's my big thing. I like to go online and look at different things. But the tough thing is, you know, Facebook, Instagram, social media is also a big thing, you know, for me for work. A lot of professionals, a lot of clients. I don't talk to clients on social media, but that's how they find me, right? And I think that, you know, there is always a balance. I got a new iPhone recently. And everybody knows when it comes to passwords, I have a lot of passwords. So, I don't know, sometimes I don't remember them all.
19:24 — Keeping work email off the phone
I got the new iPhone and I couldn't download any of my apps because I forgot my Apple password. And I was like, oh, no, what am I going to do? Eventually, I got it. But it took about a day and a half to figure that out. And that was the best day and a half, right? Not having, you know, certain things on my phone, my personal phone. And I think that was very helpful. You know, right now I still haven't put my work email back on there. And I didn't feel the need to wake up and, you know, check an email. And that was really nice. When I had my own practice, I went back and forth between having a work phone, a personal phone, right? And I tried all the different things. And it was really hard because I also like to have, you know, relationships with my employees, right? That is something that I really enjoy. I like knowing what people are up to, you know, for as much as they want. When I had my practice, you know, I had people who would tell me all types of stuff. And then I would have people that I couldn't tell you what they did if they had a family, you know, very private.
20:33 — Communication changes in a group practice
So I think that it's really hard to find that balance, you know, for many smaller practices, having a work phone is, you know, an extra expense. And at the end of the day, if there's an emergency, right, you need to be able to get in contact with your team. So I don't know. I don't know that I would get back to that. If people ask me, would I do that again? Probably not. You know, it did help create boundaries. But as I've gotten older, I've definitely learned that not everything is urgent as it might feel has to be urgent. And I think that if you're going into the group practice direction, the other thing that you have to think about, and my husband and I would often talk about this, is you're not necessarily in the business of just providing therapy. You know, in a sense, you know, you're not necessarily in the business of providing employment, you know, for people. And when you're doing that, you have to be very, very, you know, consistent. You have to treat people fairly, equally as much as you can with communication. And I think that that is, you know, something really important.
21:43 — Quick questions and after-hours context switching
A lot of my employees, you know, would ask quick questions like, hey, where do I find, you know, the intake form again? And, you know, is this noted okay? You know, look at this scheduling thing. And in the beginning, right, when I started my practice, it was just me. So it was the only, I was the only person to talk to. I was the only person that would be able to answer some of those more, like, clerical, administrative things, right? We were building it out. And to be honest, I didn't start the practice and be like, okay, this is the system, right? The systems were built out through trial and error and learning over time, right? But still, you know, that's something that really always stuck out to me was how do I have relationships with my employees, in a field where we're giving so much, but also be able to feel like, you know, I'm not having to jump into work mode, you know, if we're talking about, oh, you cook this for dinner at five o'clock at night. And then, you know, someone's asking real quick, well, what about this? You know, it is important to be able to have that space.
22:53 — Preventing death by a thousand pings
And, you know, I think that that's something that's learned over time. But I've definitely worked with different groups over the years to figure out what does space look like, right? What does it look like? Yeah, but communication boundaries all around are really hard with employees, with people. I think it's just one of those things as a helper, right? You feel like you have to be available and answer all the time, but you got to make sure that you're able to help yourself, too. So, now, new employees, though, that's a whole different thing, you know, and you almost need internal communication boundaries, right? Otherwise, your day becomes, like, death by a thousand pings, right? Like, the idea that you're kind of the supportive person and, you know, you're not instantly available. A good leader, right, is able, you know, to have systems in place where people can get answers to what they need without being available in real time, right? Safety plans, like, for example, right?
23:57 — Build routes before emergencies happen
Not, like, for clients, but if there's an emergency in the office, you don't want somebody calling you and there's a fire and saying, what do I do when there's a fire, right? You want there to just be a plan in place for what they're going to do. I think that's fantastic to do. A lot of people, you know, I think it's just, let's get the EHR, but there's not a lot of other afterthought, and it's important. Another thing, you know, is having a billing, you know, question workflow, so you're not feeling like every inbox, you know, or every email is going straight to your inbox. I feel like an unsaid challenge, too, for people is when your practice grows. I know I experienced this, and you get support staff, and you're trying to teach people that have been able to access you for, you know, basically everything.
24:50 — An open door without dependence
Go to the admin, go to the billing department, and that's hard, not only just for other employees, but for clients, too. I know my clients now, especially because I am available way more now, being a solo practitioner versus running their group, you know, it's really different being able to directly ask your therapist, right, the question versus having to go to another department. And that can be a huge, huge transition. I think that, you know, not being upset when people ask questions, not being reactive, right? I always really meant it to people that I had an open-door policy and that it's not, you know, just that's not just said. I really want people to feel comfortable asking questions. But you want to make sure that you're not making people, like, overly dependent on you. So, and that's something that comes up a lot. But, yeah, so other fishbowl topics in the future, I think, you know, in the future we'll have some people on.
25:57 — What changes from solo to group
A lot of people are actually interested in joining and either talking about something that interests them or, you know, something that they want to just get a random thing out of the fishbowl. But thanks for processing that little email journey with me today. I don't know. I definitely think emails change from when you're going from a solo to a group.
26:19 — Hot take: the rules of the segment
Other things, right, we're going to do on this podcast that's fun, right, is we're going to do a hot take, right? So I think every week I want to have a little hot take about what's going on in the world. Seriously, just know this is my opinion, right? This is my idea.
26:37 — CAQH becomes DataSpring
You may or may not agree with me, but today I thought we would talk about, you know, hot take on CAQH, which is now being rebranded as DataSpring. You know, that's been a recent shift, and I think that that's a big deal, right? Shifting into structure where at first it was nonprofit, and now, you know, it's owned by the 12 shareholder companies that are really connected to the larger healthcare plan. And so basically what that means is the health insurance companies all own a piece of DataSpring, right? And, you know, to be truthful, right, their explanation to the public was we're investing more into healthcare data and making sure things are accurate, right? We want to make sure things are safer, more efficient, right? And by doing that, we're all pitching in money, right, to make these systems better, right?
27:36 — The possible benefits for credentialing
But it also maintains the idea that 4.8 million provider records and, like, the member data tied to this is going to be majorly, you know, changed, right? This is a major healthcare infrastructure that we're talking about, and this is where I personally have some mixed feelings about it because there are, like, potential pros and cons. I feel like even since, like, I was in grad school, people were talking about how we were never taught how to properly, you know, do things with insurances. And I think that this is an interesting thing that insurances are doing to, you know, try to make things a little bit easier. If it actually works, I think it's going to make credentialing faster, right, and the payer data a little bit cleaner. And I think maybe, like, the provider directories are going to be more accurate, right, less duplicative, you know, admin tasks when it comes to credentialing. You know, I know I would potentially like to start uploading the same documents multiple times.
28:42 — The payer-control tradeoff
But, I mean, the con of this, right, it's people, companies that already have major power over the reimbursements, right, all that, and now having power over the credentialing process through the data infrastructure, right? And I do think that providers are totally allowed to side-eye that. Here are all the positives, right? And I know not many people are talking about the positives, at least on the internet, but I do think it theoretically is nice that insurance companies are saying, you know what, we're going to try to make the process more efficient and easier.
29:21 — Who actually benefits from efficiency?
But I guess my question, right, is who is it going to be more efficient for? Is it going to be actually, you know, reducing provider burden or is it actually going to, you know, make payer operations smoother, right? And is it going to look like clinicians still giving, you know, unpaid admin labor to keep the machine running? I don't know. Is this going to help independent providers or is it going to create, like, another system where the people with the least amount of power have to constantly prove, update the test, right, all those things and chase down errors? I don't know. But this is my concern. Like I said, I can see some upsides, right, better technology, data, right, fewer mistakes. As for credentialing, especially for people that are, you know, trying to get credentialed now. I've seen a lot of self-pay practices, you know, struggle a little bit and maybe start considering going down that route.
30:17 — Innovation or a shinier obstacle course?
You know, but I also see the downsides, right, more payer control, monetization of the data, right, less transparency, right, another layer that the infrastructure clinicians, like, have to really depend on but really have no control over. My take, right, is not everybody let's go run and panic, right, it's just to pay attention, you know, because when a system, you know, is the central thing that we use for credentialing and insurance access becomes payer owned and it starts being for profit, that really does matter. And if the end result is that providers spend less time finding portals and more time doing extra clinical work, fine, amazing, right, it's fantastic. But if the end result is just like a shiny array, like login screen and, you know, an unpaid administrative obstacle course, then we need to not actually call that innovation. So call it what it is, see a QH with a rebrand and, you know, the interesting business plan. I don't know, something definitely to keep an eye on. But that's my hot take. All right, guys. So, tired.
31:27 — Outro
Done recording for the day. This is Emily Mori with Private Practice is a Bitch. Follow me on social media. Follow the podcast. Do all the things. Stay tuned. Next time we will have a guest. Bye. Bye.