The Many Hats of a Mental Health Practice Owner: What Building Ray of Light Wellness Taught Me About Wellness

When people hear that I own an online mental health group practice, they may picture me sitting at my desk with my laptop talking to clients, having meaningful conversations, helping people navigate difficult moments, and doing the work I love.

And yes—that is a very important part of what I do.

But being the owner of Ray of Light Wellness means wearing a lot of other hats, too.

For a few years, I wore all of them myself.

I am the therapist. I am the biller. I am the credentialing department. I am the marketing department. I am the HR department. I am the scheduler. I a the person answering referral inquiries. I am the person monitoring caseloads and audit notes. I am the person managing payroll, taxes, budgets, contracts, state regulations, and insurance requirements.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something important:

I have been building a mental health wellness practice while forgetting to practice wellness myself.

The work behind the work

One of the things people don’t always see when they think about private practice is everything that happens behind the scenes. For example, insurance billing. Submitting claims isn’t simply clicking a button and moving on with the day. Eligibility has to be checked. Claims have to be reviewed and submitted. Issues need to be investigated. Rejections need to be addressed. Payments need to be reconciled.There have been days when sitting down to work on claims could take me several hours.

Then there is marketing. Keeping up with Psychology Today, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, the website, newsletters, advertising, referrals, and trying to maintain a consistent presence is essentially another job in itself. I recently hired a graphic designer to help with our website and social media, and the difference has been tremendous. Delegating some of that work has reminded me that asking for help isn’t a failure. Sometimes it is what allows a vision to actually grow.

And then there are progress notes, credentialing, contracting, employee management, state regulations, taxes, payroll, budgets, referrals, scheduling, caseload management, and the constant need to make sure there are enough new clients coming into the practice to maintain sustainable caseloads.

This has been my life since 2023 when I started to grow a group practice out of my once solo practice. I have been working around 12-14 hours a day Monday through Friday, and about another 12 hours during the weekends. And eventually, I am not simply tired. I am burned out.

When growth doesn’t automatically mean sustainability

One of the biggest surprises of growing a practice was realizing that bringing in more money doesn’t necessarily mean you are making more money. As a solo practitioner, my financial picture was much simpler and honestly I was doing very well. Things were great. As a practice owner with multiple therapists, everything becomes more complex. There are additional taxes and expenses across states. There are platforms and electronic health record systems. Clearinghouse fees can increase as the volume of claims increases. Malpractice insurance changes as the practice grows. Payroll grows. Benefits grow. Administrative costs grow. The infrastructure required to support more therapists becomes increasingly expensive as the practice expands while insurance companies do not compensate us enough for our sessions. I found myself carrying an enormous amount of pressure. I wanted to provide my employees with meaningful income. I wanted to provide benefits. I wanted them to have clients.I wanted the practice to be financially healthy.I wanted clients to receive excellent care.I wanted everyone to feel supported. And somewhere in all of that, I stopped asking an equally important question:

Is this sustainable for me?

The irony of owning online mental health and wellness companies

This became particularly meaningful as I began developing The Ray of Light Collective and thinking more deeply about wellness. I talk about whole-person care. I believe in the bio-psychosocial-spiritual aspects of wellness. I believe that mental health professionals are whole human beings, too. But I wasn’t always extending those same principles to myself.I was carrying the weight of the practice as though everything depended on me. And because I was the owner, I felt responsible. When something wasn’t working, I felt responsible. When someone was struggling, I felt responsible. When finances were difficult, I felt responsible. When systems weren’t working efficiently, I felt responsible. When there were problems within the team, I felt responsible. Eventually, I realized that responsibility and over-responsibility are not the same thing.

When boundaries disappeared

One of the most humbling realizations for me was recognizing that I am actually pretty good at boundaries in my personal relationships. But professionally? That was different. Because I was the owner, I felt like I had to carry more.I allowed professional boundaries to become blurred because I felt responsible for everyone and everything. And when my professional boundaries disappeared, my personal boundaries began to disappear within the practice, too. I wasn’t separating myself from the business. I was becoming the business. And that isn’t sustainable. When the person responsible for holding everything together becomes depleted, the systems begin to feel the effects, too. Communication becomes harder. Collaboration becomes harder. Decision-making becomes harder. Creativity becomes harder. And even a team that started with a strong sense of connection can begin to struggle when the person leading it is operating from a place of chronic exhaustion.

Sometimes leadership means making difficult decisions

There were challenging situations within the practice that forced me to take a hard look at what wasn’t working. We weren’t collaborating the way we needed to. Some systems had become ineffective. Financially, things weren’t stable enough to continue indefinitely without significant changes. And I had to make some difficult decisions. That meant having difficult conversations. It meant holding big meetings. It meant creating boundaries that I had previously been afraid to enforce. It meant acknowledging that some things needed to change—not because the original vision was wrong, but because the way we were operating wasn’t sustainable. And those decisions changed the course of Ray of Light Wellness. But they also helped create something stronger.

The lesson I didn’t expect

Today, I can look back and see that those difficult moments taught me something I probably needed to learn all along: I am a human being before I am a business owner. I am a therapist. I am a leader. I am an entrepreneur. I am a creator. But I am also a person who needs rest, boundaries, support, connection, and time away from work. The practice cannot be healthy if the person holding the vision is unhealthy. The team cannot thrive if the systems supporting them aren’t sustainable. And growth isn’t truly growth if it requires sacrificing yourself to maintain it.

Building something that can last

The changes we’ve made will help to create a stronger team and a much more knowledgeable and sound infrastructure behind the practice. We’ve learned where we need better systems. We’ve learned where we need clearer communication. We’ve learned where responsibilities need to be shared. We’ve learned that collaboration isn’t something we can simply assume will happen—it has to be intentionally created and maintained. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned that sustainability has to be part of the vision from the beginning. Not something we think about after burnout happens. Not something we address once the business becomes overwhelming. But something we intentionally build into the practice. That means delegation. It means boundaries.

It means financial planning. It means systems. It means asking for help. It means knowing when something isn’t working. And it means being willing to change course.

Wellness has to include the person doing the work

Building Ray of Light Wellness has taught me that wellness isn’t simply something we offer to our clients. It has to be something we practice as professionals, leaders, and human beings. We cannot endlessly pour from an empty cup and call it purpose. We cannot continue saying yes when our entire system is telling us that we need a no. We cannot build sustainable businesses through unsustainable lives. And sometimes alignment doesn’t look like pushing harder. Sometimes alignment looks like stepping back. Sometimes it looks like restructuring. Sometimes it looks like delegating. Sometimes it looks like setting a boundary that feels uncomfortable. And sometimes it means admitting: “This isn’t working anymore, and something needs to change.” For me, those changes have ultimately created a stronger foundation for Ray of Light Wellness and a stronger team behind it. But they’ve also created something just as important: A version of the practice that allows me to remain a human being while I lead it. Because at the end of the day, whether we’re therapists, business owners, caregivers, leaders, parents, or professionals, we all need the same thing.Our lives and our work have to be in alignment with who we are and what we value. Otherwise, eventually, something gives. And I don’t want to build a practice that requires me to lose myself in order to sustain it.I want to build one that can grow, serve others, support its team, and last for many years—without sacrificing the person who started it.