She Drove Her Company Into the Red - Then Sold It Five Years Later. Here's What She Learned.

Most founders will admit, privately, that there were moments they weren't sure their business was going to make it. Very few will say it out loud. Mindy Gibbins-Klein says it out loud.

In a recent episode of Founder Unfiltered, Mindy - author of 15 books, coach to over 50,000 leaders across 18 countries, and TEDx speaker - joined the show to talk about something founders rarely discuss in public: the years spent quietly drowning. She took her publishing company into the red, clawed her way out over four brutal years, and eventually sold it. And she'll tell you exactly why it happened and what it cost her - no spin, no sanitizing.

Here's a detailed look at the conversation and the lessons inside it.

You Can Know Why It Happened and Still Have Done It

After buying out her co-founder, Mindy watched her publishing company post its first-ever loss. She doesn't mince words about the cause.

"I listened to people who didn't understand my industry. I made certain decisions. I was a bit reckless."

That clarity matters. A lot of founders, when things go sideways, get busy assigning blame - the market, the timing, the team. Mindy took a different route. She looked at her own decisions, owned them, and got to work. It took four years to return to profitability. Four years of one month at a time, one quarter at a time, trying everything she could think of to reduce costs and generate revenue.

What kept the company alive? Relationships. She was transparent with suppliers, partners, and clients - explained the situation, made arrangements, and found that most of them had been in similar spots and were willing to work with her. Honesty, it turns out, is a surprisingly effective financial strategy.

Radical Ownership Is Not the Same as Self-Destruction

Here's the nuance that most people miss when they talk about accountability: taking ownership of your results doesn't mean making your results mean something about your worth.

Mindy separates these two things cleanly. She drove the company into the red. She also turned it around. Both are true. Both are hers to claim. She doesn't carry shame about the losses - she just holds an accurate view of what happened and why.

"The buck stopped with me. That's just the way it is."

But she's equally clear that she is not the business. The company's loss was not a verdict on her as a person or a leader. And that distinction - between accountability and shame - is the difference between a founder who learns and grows versus one who either deflects blame or collapses under the weight of it.

If you're in a tough stretch right now, that framing is worth sitting with. You are responsible for your outcomes. And you are not your outcomes. Both things are simultaneously, annoyingly true.

Own the Wins, Too - Nobody Else Is Going to Do It for You

There's a cultural reflex in the founder world to perform humility, especially around success. You won a big client? "Oh, it was really a team effort." You turned your business around? "We just got lucky with the timing."

Mindy's take: cut it out.

"If you are taking complete responsibility, you could take responsibility for the good stuff as well."

The same logic that makes you responsible when things go wrong makes you responsible when they go right. If you spent four years fighting to keep a company solvent and it worked, that's yours. Claim it. Not with arrogance - with accuracy. There's a version of servant leadership that tips into shrinking, and shrinking doesn't inspire anyone.

As Mindy puts it, leadership literally means "to show the way ahead." You can't show a path you're refusing to stand on.

Your Information Diet Is Making or Breaking You

When things aren't going well in your business, there's a pull toward doom scrolling, comparison spirals, and consuming content that confirms the fear that you're behind, that the market is impossible, that everyone else has figured something out that you haven't.

Mindy calls this out directly. The people and content you consume daily are shaping your beliefs about what's possible - and most founders haven't made a deliberate choice about any of it.

Her prescription: do an audit. Notice what triggers you. Notice what you're actually reading, following, and listening to. Then exercise what she calls "the power of the UN" - unfollow, unsubscribe, unplug where necessary.

The goal isn't toxic positivity. It's strategic inputs. A founder's greatest asset is their clarity, their confidence, and their ability to lead despite uncertainty. You don't maintain that by accident. You maintain it by being intentional about what goes into your head every day.

Visibility Is the Game - But Not the Way You Think

When it comes to growing a consulting or fractional practice, Mindy is blunt: if people can't find you, your expertise doesn't matter.

But she's equally blunt about what visibility actually means - and it's not chasing follower counts or trying to go viral.

"How do you get to be one of the winners? Visibility - but visibility with the right people."

She runs about 25 conversations per week. Five a day. Not because she's trying to scale a pipeline spreadsheet, but because she genuinely believes that conversations are where trust gets built and business gets done. One of her authors sold a thousand copies of their book - a number that sounds small until you find out one of those copies landed in front of a CEO and turned into a million-dollar deal.

The lesson: a thousand engaged connections will always outperform ten thousand passive followers. The gold is already in your existing network. Most people just aren't doing anything with it.

Be Willing to Be Bad - Seriously, Just Do It

Fear of looking stupid is the silent killer of more consulting businesses than any recession ever was. Professionals who spent 20 years building credibility inside companies suddenly find themselves exposed - posting on LinkedIn, speaking on stages, writing content - and the instinct is to wait until it's polished enough, good enough, ready enough.

It never is. That's the trap.

Mindy started speaking publicly at 23, training salespeople for six straight days at a time. She was nervous. She watched her early videos and cringed. Someone told her she sounded nervous but was good anyway. She kept going anyway.

The alternative - saying nothing, sharing nothing, staying invisible - serves no one. Not you, not your potential clients, not the market you're supposedly trying to help.

Mindy frames it this way: if you have a valuable perspective and you don't share it, you're doing your audience a disservice. That reframe - from "what will people think of me" to "what am I withholding from people who need it" - is genuinely useful when the fear kicks in.

The Takeaway

Mindy Gibbins-Klein built multiple businesses, took one into the red, turned it around, and sold it - all while coaching thousands of leaders and writing 15 books. None of it was clean. None of it was linear. And none of it was possible without a willingness to own both the failures and the wins, to be visible before she was ready, and to be ruthlessly intentional about the beliefs and voices she let into her head.

That combination - radical ownership, curated inputs, and unapologetic visibility - is the through-line in everything she does.

If you're a fractional executive or consultant trying to attract better clients and build a more sustainable practice, the fundamentals Mindy describes aren't complicated. They're just uncomfortable. And the ones willing to get uncomfortable are the ones who win.

Want to connect with Mindy? Find her at mindygk.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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This article was written by Mylance, the LinkedIn content system built for founders and experts who want consistent, high-quality posts that attract clients. We help you lock in your positioning, clarify your ideal customer, and build a content strategy that actually resonates. Then our system gives you a content calendar, drafts posts in your authentic voice, and keeps you accountable - so you stay visible and attract the right clients while saving hours each week!If you’re ready to grow your presence and pipeline on LinkedIn, sign up at Mylance.co.