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
03 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.
Full Episode
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?
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.
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.
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