How to Bounce Back Stronger After Your Business Falls Apart, with Gemma Downing

What do you do when the recruitment business you've poured everything into starts to fall apart?

Gemma Downing Mapp came back from holiday to find Mixxos £100,000 behind budget. Two months later, the company recorded its highest-billing month ever with roughly half the team.

Gemma is co-founder and CEO of Mixxos Group, a boutique recruitment consultancy she built with her business partner, Chris. They grew the company from a team of two into a multimillion-pound firm, with the numbers moving in the right direction year after year.

But the foundations had not kept pace.

Gemma and Chris knew within the first few months that a senior operations hire was not working. They liked the person and wanted the appointment to succeed, so they continued trying for 18 months. During that time, leadership became misaligned, standards slipped and financial forecasts became unreliable.

Gemma is open about the responsibility she and Chris carried for allowing the situation to continue. She explains why recruitment business owners delay difficult people decisions, what finally forced them to act and why the first thing she would fix is always the person leading the team.

The turnaround involved restructuring the company, reducing headcount by 50% and redefining the founders' roles. Gemma became CEO, responsible for the people and culture. Chris became Commercial Director, focused on revenue and gross profit.

They also brought in Sam to restore operational control. He introduced consistent one-to-ones, clearer financial reporting and a skills matrix, while helping the business prepare for a new technology rollout and launch a retained executive search desk.

Throughout the restructure, approximately 99% of Mixxos clients stayed with the company. Gemma credits the relationships she and Chris had built and their determination to do what they said they would do.

In this episode, you'll learn:

How fast growth allowed problems to develop behind the scenes

Why Gemma and Chris delayed a senior leadership decision for 18 months