Founder's Story
2. From $15/hour at Planet Fitness to Building a Therapy Empire No One Believed In | Ep 226 with Nina Ythier Founder of MindSpeak
Tue, 3 Jun 2025
Nina Ythier, after 20 years working inside broken systems, turned rejection into redirection—founding MindSpeak Inc., a therapy practice redefining mental health care through real-world, person-first solutions. In this episode, she shares the power of creative healing, why ego-free hustle matters, and how nontraditional care is changing lives. Key Discussion Points: Why “graduating” from toxic workplaces led to building something better Starting with just a few clients—and a side job at Planet Fitness Building a therapy brand rooted in creativity, not conformity How Nina uses yoga, art, and community as tools for healing Industry backlash: what happened when she challenged the system What Gen Z’s loneliness says about our cultural crisis The future of therapy: tech, touch, and psilocybin Redefining success in mental health care—one Dunkin’ chat at a time Takeaways: Your style is your brand—especially in human-first work Building a mission-driven business starts with betting on yourself Therapy doesn’t belong in beige boxes—meet people where they are True change comes from trust, presence, and showing up without ego Closing Thoughts:Nina Ythier is proving that therapy doesn't have to follow the rules to work. By stepping outside the office and into real life, she's helping clients heal through connection, creativity, and courage—reminding us that the most powerful breakthroughs often happen far beyond the couch.
Chapter 1: How did rejection lead to the creation of MindSpeak?
So great to have you, Nina Ethier, CEO and founder of MindSpeak Inc. We were just talking through how you get graduated from a job, aka fired, let go. I guess there could be many. I like graduated, though, and how it could be the best thing ever. At the same time, you're dealing with rejection. How did you deal with this in your life?
Chapter 2: What lessons did Nina learn from working in toxic environments?
So I've had a lot of professional experiences. You know, interestingly enough, I've learned a lot about what not to do. So a lot of times in working for various companies throughout the span of my career, I've been in the helping profession for about 28 years. Out of those 28 years, for 20 years, I worked for others.
And, you know, a lot of people were engaging in a lot of unlawful, unethical behaviors, practices. And they would try to coerce me into doing some of those things. And I would stand my ground and say, hey, I'm here for the people. I'm here to help out as a social worker. And, you know, unfortunately at times that that would result in workplace harassment.
And eventually I had to be graduated out of that position. You know, what's great about it is that I've been able to amass a whole lot of experience from these various roles, from all of these systems, understand in depth how they work. I have been able to bring that into my own business and help my clients in more ways than I could have ever expected.
And in my own professional experience, be more successful than ever.
So when you look back at working for somebody else and then moving that into your business, what is something that you learned or took away from that experience? And the reason I ask is I'm a huge proponent of working in a job and then opening up your own job versus some people that all they know is, you know, Being a business owner, that's it.
I really feel like working for someone and working at a company can provide a massive amount of skills and learnings that you can translate in. How was that for you?
Suzanne, I thought that that was an incredible question and thank you for that. So going back to this journey, right, of working for others, I was finally at this last job where it was really over the top, the indiscretions that were happening. I was very unhappy and I was exploring other avenues.
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Chapter 3: How did Nina build her client base while working at Planet Fitness?
And at that time, I had come into contact with someone who just started a private practice and was saying, hey, are you interested in doing this? And I said, you know, let's give it a try and took on a few clients. So when I graduated from the nine to five job, I only had those few handful of clients.
And I spoke to the person that said, hey, you know, what would it be like if I networked and started getting even more clients? Dan, can I tell you, everybody thought I was nuts. I went and took a job at Planet Fitness for three weeks just to supplement my income.
I said to myself, well, what could I do to make some extra money so that I can at least cover my bills, whatever I was making in my nine to five until I figured this thing out? Took the job at Planet Fitness. I only lasted there three weeks. I had a full caseload. I got to work with 25 to 26 different clients and was able to make more money than I ever had.
The piece of advice that I would give there is to believe in yourself, believe in your skill set, because that'll take you far and that'll take you everywhere you need to go. And I was able to continue to build on that. There was a community-based organization that was also sponsoring small business administration classes online.
I enrolled in a 12-week program for brand new entrepreneurs, and they were teaching us basic business concepts such as accounting, marketing, things of that nature, and also technical one-on-one support trying to help you write a business plan. I wrote a business plan. I graduated from that program and have been able to continue to build on the business. So not only was I able to
have a small business, right? And I was, though I was working as an independent contractor for this other practice, I was there for a few years, got a little bit more experience. And then I decided, you know what, it's time to do this on my own. And that's when MindSpeak was born. And I saw that there was a great need.
Here we had this niche in this market for having psychotherapy, having it for individuals that have a special needs as well as mental health conditions and doing it in a non-traditional way, going out into the community. Nobody does that. So I thought that this was really an interesting concept and it really took off and exploded.
A lot of things to break down there. But something that I think about is no ego. So knowing that you are building the business, you needed to supplement your income. So you got to have a plan of fitness. You took an SBA-driven class to learn about different things. It's almost like getting an MBA, which I didn't even know they have that.
So to me, it's like no ego, looking out and getting the resources and really making it happen is what I just learned from the things that you said there. When you looked at the social work as a whole, How did you figure out, OK, I need to solve this specific problem within or I need to differentiate myself this way? How did you look at that to build out what your offering was?
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Chapter 4: What unique approaches does Nina use in therapy?
And then the people that were getting the help that you're providing to, what did they say in terms of how this differentiated between what they're used to when it comes to the normal going to an office, sitting down, and the normal talk therapy.
So in terms of just the people, the caseworkers that are charged with looking for these types of services for their clients, love it. They absolutely love it. They love how we're joining a person's circle of support because most times, you know, the people that we're providing services to are in other types of supportive services, if you will, right? Yeah.
And so we joined this person in circle of support. So they love this. They love how involved we are. They love that we show up at people's homes or day programs or even schools, a park bench. You want to sit down, we can go to Dunkin' Donuts like two old friends. People see this approach as more personable in terms of the caseworkers.
In terms of the nonprofits and other clinics, sometimes people will kind of poo-poo and say, well, that's not real therapy because, you know, you're outside. But couldn't be further from the truth. We actually see that there's... improved outcomes. People really are achieving their goals. People are able to process their thoughts and feelings with a therapist.
They are making successful and meaningful gains in their life. And what I think is awesome about that too, Dan, is that People are showing up where they're not otherwise expected. As we spread awareness more and more about these conditions, we're blasting away these old stereotypes and stigmas and celebrating our clients.
And I'm so happy to say that I have clients who are in college who are married and have children. And so we're really supporting from single adults or people who live in institutions because that's the level of support that they require to people who are the most independent they possibly could be. To me, that is the true measure of success. In terms of our clients, they love it.
If you're going to see me somewhere where I'm going to feel comfortable and talk and have my privacy or do the things that I enjoy doing along with this guide that I have, because we collaborate and we partner with our clients. We know that we're the authority in the room as the licensed professional. However, that's not our conduct at all. We're very down to earth.
And so, again, this is very much embraced in terms of the community that we serve, for sure.
Yeah, I have my own experiences with therapy and I would say most therapists, I lied to them because I didn't really have a trust factor and I didn't really learn anything from them except for one person who I really had that trust so I can understand the importance. I mean, if you're going to tell people the things that you would never tell anyone, you really have to have that level of trust.
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Chapter 5: How does community involvement enhance therapy outcomes?
Right now, I think we're at a difficult and challenging time in the sense of... I was reading some stats around Gen Z. It's the most connected ever, but it's the loneliest generation ever. So you have...
It seems like many people are very depressed and there's a lot of challenges, a lot of difficulties in people and how they even have relationships now, whether that's friends or intimacy relationships with partners. It seems like we're in a challenging place. Absolutely.
What do you think now, just current state of what you're seeing when it comes to mental health or even just your thoughts around this?
So I'm really actually, you know, back when I started so many years ago, therapy was still kind of taboo, right? People thinking, hey, I'm not crazy. Hey, I'm not a psycho. Why do we need psychotherapy or mental health or any of those things? So I think with increased awareness, people are more accepting of assistance and are seeking it out. They're seeking it out in different platforms.
We now have platforms where you can do virtual therapy. You can be on the phone with a therapist. So it's more at people's convenience and they're able to integrate that more into their life. I think even seeing it in the media has really been helpful. Social media has been very helpful as well. And so I think it's just for me that...
Yes, we have a lot going on in this world at this time on so many levels, but definitely happy to see that people are utilizing a service to have a guided conversation with themselves, as I would call it, because the therapist is not there to give you advice or tell you what to do or how to live your life.
The therapist is there to really ask you some questions to get you thinking, you know, and figuring things out for yourself. And that's where, again, meaningful and long lasting change truly occurs.
how do you see technology playing into this? Obviously we have AI advancing to the place where if you have a conversation with it, we don't even know if it's human or not deep fake. Like technology is at a point where we don't even know if it is real or not real.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did Nina face from the traditional therapy industry?
So how do you see this and, and this merge of, I'm sure there's going to be some sort of therapeutic merge that might already be happening.
Well, there's nothing like the real thing, Darren. That's what I say to that. I mean, I think that the use of technology can be a support, but I can't ever imagine it being the same as the real thing. So though we've seen, you know, unfortunately we had the pandemic and seeing though it was good that people had some support, it was a time of emergency.
Social work or the business of helping people or working with people, I find in my experience, It's such a personal thing that you got to be there with the person. We miss a lot of nonverbal communication when we can't see the person. And those are messages as well, just as much as verbal messages are. And so we want to be present. We want to be attentive.
So sometimes people will experience that as they're not as present. What about, you know, touch, right? There's so many studies on human touch and what that does and how a person really treats. So I think it really also depends on the person as well. Some people may benefit greatly from those types of therapies.
And then there's other people who say, hey, I really need somebody here with me, just present, you know, with me. And so it really kind of just depends on the person, though I don't feel like technology could ever do the job of a person in that way, not when we're dealing with matters of the heart.
Nina, yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. And I'm with you. I hope that technology won't replace a human when it comes to therapy, 100%. Yeah. So I'm seeing a lot of people that I know, a lot of people talking on social media. I've been to some of these conferences around alternative methods such as psilocybin. I believe ketamine is starting to be legal in certain places.
What are your thoughts on the future of how this is going to go?
Well, I think that there shouldn't be a cookie-cutter approach, whether it's in theory or other alternative methods in order to heal. I mean, who's to say what's the right and wrong way to heal?
If it's guided by a professional, I know that there are ongoing studies, but there are so many overwhelming positive experiences that people are actually reporting, and not just in the short term, in the long term as well. So, you know, my my belief, again, is it's based on the individual and what their needs are and what their goals are and what they're willing to do to kind of get there.
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Chapter 7: How does MindSpeak redefine success in mental health care?
Well, Nina, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for all that you're doing to help others. And thank you for joining us on Founders Story.
Thank you so much, Dan.