Mahfuz speaks with Christine Faulhaber, CEO and founder of Faulhaber Agency, about how she found and mentored the right person to take over when she stepped away from day-to-day operations of her PR agency.
Key takeaways:
[00:09:51] Have a vision for the future of the business and your involvement in it, and then map it out in writing. Revisit the plan often to avoid frustration and hold yourself accountable, Faulhaber says.
[00:12:03] Give yourself and your team plenty of time for the transition. You can't expect things to happen overnight, and some team members will be more comfortable with change than others. Maintaining a presence and regular check-ins can help smooth the transition.
[00:14:21] Be serious about your role as a mentor. Faulhaber points out that the stakes are especially high when your mentee is taking over at the helm of the business you built from the ground up.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Welcome to Growth Decoder, a podcast that digs into those pivotal moments that real entrepreneurs face every day to find out how they rose to those challenges. I'm your host Muhfuz Chowdhury.
Christine Faulhaber: You're never going to scale or get richer if you're just the only one doing it. And so you really need to be able to set forth expectations. You know, you're not necessarily relinquishing the control completely, but handing out the rope with a framework.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Today on episode nine, we are taking another look at succession strategy. Every successful business starts with a plan. What will your business look like in five years, 10 years, or even 20? Most entrepreneurs can answer these questions, but what would your business look like if you took a step back? When does it make sense to move away from the busy day to day and into a more senior advisory role?
How do you pass along what you know and make sure the company that you build thrives all while mentoring the next generation of leaders? To help us answer these questions and sculpt a vision for the future, we welcome Christine Faulhaber. Christine is the founder and CEO of Faulhaber Agency, a full service public relations and digital marketing firm she founded when she was 26, more than two decades ago. Through commitment, passion, and innovation, the agency has created award winning work and generated growth for a list of clients that includes Levi's, Neostrada, Caesarstone, Etsy and others. In 2021, Christine set a plan in motion to take that step back from her operations, appointing a president to lead the company, officially moving Faulhaber into its next chapter.
Here's my conversation with Christine.
Christine, I have a feeling that your story is going to inspire a lot of different entrepreneurs. I'm extremely excited to have you on the show.
Christine Faulhaber: Well, my aim is to be inspiring. So I hope so.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: I want to make sure we get a chance to talk a lot about the early stages of the business.
As we know, the landscape of public relations and digital marketing was very, very different when you initially started. Can you talk a little bit about what your vision was when you first started the agency? What was your vision? The vision that you had in mind, the ideal type of clients, how many team members, what the personality and brand would look like.
I want to get all of that. Share a little bit about what that looked like when you first put your pen to paper.
Christine Faulhaber: So the beginning of the business was, there was no plan. It just happened. Um, I was working with a fashion designer, and I was doing sales and marketing, which I was very good at. And a big life event happened in the world.
It was called 9-11, it was 2001. And I had what I call a quarter life crisis. I quit my job. I went on a trip to Greece by myself and did this just reset. And when the dust settled, after 9-11 the clients that I had been working for via this fashion designer, these retail clients that I had sold designer clothes to, wanted to know where I was and could I help them?
And that's really how it started. Honestly, it was a couple of retailers that wanted what I had. And what was that? This sort of charisma, this energy, this ability to see opportunities. And so at the beginning, I didn't know I was an entrepreneur. I know now that I'm an entrepreneur. I'm not a publicist.
I didn't actually go to PR school. I have a commerce degree with a marketing major. So I started doing what I knew, which was media relations and doing events and getting websites set up and doing trunk shows and navigating turned into the beginning of Faulhaber, but I didn't really know it at the time.
My brother helped me make a business card, and it was literally Christine Faulhaber, Marketing and Public Relations. I still have that card. It's amazing. And then it evolved. I needed some help, and so I had interns. I had people that I met along the way that said, uh, there was one fabulous woman, Rachel and she was a model and she said, I don't know what I'm going to do for you, but I need to work for you, which was an amazing thing.
We still keep in touch. And so over time, I acquired people. And before you knew it, I had a business and then I needed to make some serious decisions. So I renamed the business, which was Faulhaber PR and got an amazing, fabulous logo by an amazing designer called Scott Christie. That was a moment, I'll tell you, when he showed me that business card, I cried.
I literally burst into tears and it was one of only a handful of moments in my life where you just know it's the thing. And that's, that's amazing. Ooh, that brings up emotions for sure.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Yeah. Yeah. I like to think that original business card is up there somewhere on your wall today. I'd love to see it. I think it sounds amazing.
And you, you shared a lot about the beautiful serendipity of maybe going in with uncertainty and walking into the unknown and just having the confidence. And as you said, the charisma, which I think is, uh, an understated characteristic that can go a long way in the early stages. What was that “it” moment where you said, maybe this could be something remarkable.
Maybe there's a legacy behind the agency. Talk to me a little bit about what year of business you felt like that was happening and what events were taking place that made you feel that way.
Christine Faulhaber: I would say there's probably three or four moments in the business and they were all around growth and finance. I remember the first time I went to a bank machine and took out $1,000 and thought, okay, like, this is real. This is real. I'm not asking my sister to pay for the groceries. Like this is real. Um, so there was, I would say that at the beginning, it was maybe in year three where it was like, okay, I'm not struggling here.
Um, I would say another big one is maybe in year seven or eight, where, okay, I know that most businesses fail within the first five years. I've made it. I'd have to look back, but let's just say I had four or five employees at the time. And I was still working out of my apartment, which was interesting.
Um, I would say this very cool apartment that I squished all my whole belongings into one of the bedrooms. The other bedroom was my office. And then the main area was literally a showroom. I did that for the first 10 years of my business. It saved a lot of money. And, uh, economized. So, um, so yeah, other benchmarks would be getting a big client, like one that we couldn't really service.
And I remember hiring my mentor, who was a decade older than me, to work on it. It was one of those duck moments where you just paddled. You're like, oh my gosh, really? You're going to give me this job? Okay, no problem. You know, I'm ready. There were a couple of those. I would say the next one was having a big win that I didn't do all myself.
I remember I was away, and this big RFP came in, Request for Proposal, and I said, okay, well, if we don't go for it, it won't be the end of the world, but we want it. And if we do go for it, it's a long shot. So I ended up hiring one of my very first employees who had long gone and was in between jobs and said, can you pull this thing together?
And she did. And we won. And it was big. And I remember thinking, wow, like I let someone else in here and it was a success. So that was a big, big, big, big milestone.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: That's a beautiful story. And that feeling of knowing that magic is still happening under the roof of the business, even when you're stepping away from it, it might have been even that first moment that you have those realizations that maybe there is an opportunity for you to do more.
Then just having all your hands and feet dipped into the operations side of the business.
Christine Faulhaber: That's right, because you're never going to scale or, you know, get richer if you're just the only one doing it. And so you really need to be able to set forth expectations.You know, you're not necessarily relinquishing the control completely, but, um, handing out the rope in a way with a framework.
I do want to say that probably after a decade, what I needed to do was write down everything about the business. And I realize it's kind of backwards, like, because I didn't start the business with a business plan. It's almost like I had to go back and create one. And we just did that again when we relaunched the Faulhaber brand in November by tweaking the values and tweaking the manifesto.
So I think really, really important is whether you do it at the beginning or you do it in the middle, is writing down all of those magical things that you as an entrepreneur know and making sure that it's relatable and that you can show this to other people in your business and that they can repeat it.
This is the magic. If you don't do that, then it's all in your own head. And so realizing that I needed to do that so that I could teach what was this magic that I was and did at the beginning, it's no longer useful if I'm the only one that knows how to do it. So that's where live the values comes in, which we've been using forever. We recently sat down with an expert and re-looked at our values.
And, to be honest, just tweaked the wording. Like, it's the same that it was when I was 26, that it is now. Like, we maximize everything. We say 1 plus 1 equals 3. Yeah, because if 1 plus 1 equals 2, you're doing what everyone else is doing. 1 plus 1 equals 3 needs to be constantly looking for what's, what's ahead of, what's down the road.
What other, what other value can I offer? How can I make this better?
Mahfuz Chowdhury: I'm really enjoying hearing about the different years and different stages of your business from the origin story to the parts of your business where you're starting to provide a lot of mentorship to your team members and thinking about the next chapter.
What was a moment that made you realize that a very specific person is the ideal person that you want to spend time and your energy dedicating towards making them the best that they possibly can be?
Christine Faulhaber: It's really I would say, like, in a relationship or in a marriage, how do you decide to commit to somebody?
And to me, it's, do they live the values? Are their values aligned with your values? And at the top of that list is trust. There's this great, great, um, book that I would encourage any leader to read, The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey, it's a standard in my opinion. And the idea of the trust bank or the trust tax, if you've got a person that has developed a trust bank with you over time, then that's definitely a candidate that you should consider, but it needs to be more than that.
This person needs to….you need to really look at their skills and their interests and are those aligned? Because you can't really make assumptions. And this isn't the type of role that you can go shopping for and put a job posting up and hope someone shows up. For me, fortunately, it was someone that was within my organization for a decade and I could see and we knew that our values were aligned and we knew that once we were ready to evolve this person's role that, um, we needed to take a serious look at it.
And, um, I can talk a bit more about how we did that process, um, because it was, I just took a look at all my documents that really date back to 2017. Like, this has been, this succession planning has taken a long time. It's definitely not something you snap your fingers. Really, years in the making.
Yeah, years in the making.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Let's dive deep into that. You know, I think about the time that's being spent into it and what you're doing day to day to make sure that you're really putting the most, um, in this relationship with your mentee. Well, walk me through, um, maybe a week's worth of scheduling and time being put in, whether it's in the planning before getting together with the mentee or the time being spent together.
What does that look like for someone that maybe wants to be a mentor for someone in their team?
Christine Faulhaber: So let me talk a bit about what it looked like at the beginning, and when we talk about being a mentor, it's different when you're mentoring somebody outside of your organization, because there's very low stakes.
If you add value, great. If you don't, it's okay. You might get a bad review. But when you're mentoring somebody within your organization, it's critical. Their success is your success. And in my case, essential. I'm the CEO and the founder and I'm a shareholder and I need the business to go and I need this person to be amazing.
So for us in that case, when we identified that, um, it made sense to have a succession plan, we literally worked with somebody to map out the job. And this is the coolest part. We actually created a job posting for my new role as CEO and founder, and Lexi Pathak, who is the president and partner at Faulhaber, her role, and I just re-looked at them today, actually, and I think we need to, um, re-look at them together, because here we are almost three years into the succession plan, and I am sure there are a few things we probably haven't held ourselves accountable for.
And I love that and I hate that at the same time because you, you write it down and you have a roadmap, but then it's not perfect, but that's what it is. So writing out the roadmap fairly granularly, how many hours do we think it's going to take for her to work on her LinkedIn networking? And how many hours is it going to take for her to sit in finance meetings with our CFO and learn how the tax strategy works?
And it's not an overnight situation. And you keep building on it. So at the beginning, it was very granular. Uh, and we had a road map and we would have weekly meetings and lots of chats in the background. And then, of course, um, in person time and then trying to carve out time for what we call our PM or people meeting where we're not looking at a to-do task list and we're getting to know each other and reminding ourselves of all the great things that are happening and talk about personal wants, you know, what are her personal goals?
Because these things are critical, especially at a senior level. When you've got somebody that is running your company or as a senior person in your company, you want to know what drives them professionally and personally so that you can do whatever you can in your power to motivate that and, um, enable that.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: At the very beginning when you were starting the relationship with her, talk to me a little bit about how much time you were putting in in the beginning and what were those KPIs and success criterias that really made you feel like there was a lot of value being put in this relationship and it’s headed down the right direction?
Christine Faulhaber: I love these questions. Deciding to move ahead with someone and invest in them is the first step. And we talked a bit about making sure that they have values that are aligned and making sure that they have, um, proven themselves in the, you know, in the jobs that they've been doing. But to take it to the next step.
Again, it's looking at actually writing out SMART KPIs. What does success look like from a marketing standpoint? What does success look like from your people standpoint and having those skip level meetings and making sure that the people are resonating this feedback that I'm seeing, you know, directly with the feedback.
I like to have an analogy around having all the spokes in the wheel. There's many different spokes in the wheel and you need to be looking at them all at all times. So writing out SMART KPIs, having a monthly meeting to look at those, making sure we have lead and lag indicators. I love that so much for anybody that's setting goals.
Before you get started, write out what does good look like? And then that way everyone knows what the benchmark is, but also what does bad look like? Bad looks like, well, they haven't done any LinkedIn posts or bad looks like clients are calling to say they're not happy and so on and so forth.
And so when you have those things in black and white, you can measure against them. And both parties are aware there's no gray area. Yeah. Because I think that's one of the biggest things being clear and then holding accountable. It's so easy, but it's so difficult. It's so difficult. Right. And then having to have a difficult conversation.
That's a whole other thing.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Christine, when I read your story and I got really excited to talk to you about the agency life and all the great things that you've done in your journey. The part that stood out to me the most was, you know, I thought a lot about the fact that your, your name is up on the wall here at Faulhaber.
And I thought about, okay, Muhfuz Chowdhury, you know, if Chowdhury was up on a wall, could I ever really walk away from the business and let someone become a president and, um, run a lot of the operational stuff that I used to do? Can you walk me through that emotion? I really need to understand this to the full extent of what was the moment that you felt like it was the right moment, if that even exists and, and what steps were taken to help you even emotionally navigate to those discussions.
Christine Faulhaber: I'm glad that you bring up the emotional piece because as a business owner, it is emotional and yeah, my name is on the wall. There definitely was a discussion that, um, that I did have with Lexi about, does she want her name on the wall? And that was an interesting conversation and she was adamant that she did not.
Um, interestingly, I spent a lot of my early years in the spotlight on the red carpet, um, you know, being featured in different things and photographed, and it's definitely not something she is interested in. So that was okay. That worked. Um, but we did discuss it in detail in a very serious conversation.
And you know, I'm not ever gonna leave. Um, because I don't want that. And that was also like a real, just deep discussion. Like, what exactly is it that I wanna do? I wanna add my value to the business and not do all these other things that I no longer wanna do or that I'm no longer best suited to do within the business.
It’s allowed me to step back and have a look and say, okay, emotionally I might be sad about these things, but practically speaking, she's a better person to do that. She's absolutely a better person to be managing the day to day team today. My way probably wouldn't fly with the new generation of employee.
So that's, that's better. It's better that she's doing that. So the emotions, I would say we're almost in year three, um, I'm less emotional now than I was, but it's taken a long time. Um, the other thing I want to say about the brand is last November, we launched a new iteration of the Faulhaber brand. Some might say it's Faulhaber, like 6.0.
We've changed logos sometimes. We've evolved our motivational statement. Now it's called a manifesto. We worked with a different agency to take this digital marketing first approach to the brand and really collaborated and the most interesting thing and perhaps the most difficult but also the most rewarding is I let Lexi lead it.
I needed it to be her brand. Her iteration. She needed to be able to speak the brand values in her language. Of course, I approved everything, but I think that allowing her to lead that was not only an investment in her, but also, um, Probably provided a lot of encouragement and I think the brand is now something that she wants to be the champion of, and that's critical.
That's really, that's, that's what we're doing right now. What we're doing is talking about succession planning and having the new generation of leader be in the driver's seat, because if I was still in the driver's seat, then there probably would be more dissonance.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Can you talk a little bit about what a fit looks like?
I think what I'm hearing a lot about is where self awareness played a big role, realizing what you like doing and what you're able to do and where you're best suited versus where someone like Lexi is. What are the characteristics you saw in Lexi? A president's role versus your role that allows you to make that transition a little bit easier.
Christine Faulhaber: So what we really did was look at all of the different requirements of the job by doing the job posting and looking and evaluating Lexi's strengths against each of those. Literally one out of ten. So some areas she was a ten and some areas she was a five. So we really decided in those scenarios is, okay, well, what are the priorities now?
And what needs to happen in the months leading up to this succession? What are the things that are going to be critical so that she's internally and externally credible? What are the things that the client might be missing if I wasn't around as much on those client calls? Um, thankfully, there were very few areas that were a problem.
Um, and we made a plan to solve for some of the ones that were not her strengths. Um, it's never perfect. It's never perfect. And as someone with, um, my strength is, uh, is seeing all the opportunities, or nitpicking all the problems, some people they love to be annoyed by that. But at the same time, that's, I think, why I'm successful and why I'm here.
So those are interesting things. And seeing those opportunities and then presenting them in a way that, you know, can be received and have people, um, act on them or want to act on them, I think is, continues to be a challenge for sure.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Yeah and you're absolutely right when you say no one will ever be the perfect fit, right, there will always be some gaps.
And you said something really interesting where you found resolutions to fill that gap, you found ways to solve that problem. Can you talk a little bit more about what that looks like?
Christine Faulhaber: It's a combination of additional training and knowing that over time this list of opportunities will get covered. Um, it needs two-way conversation.
So the, you know, the mentor and the mentee need to be constantly collaborating on that. So, you know, questions like, what's challenging you today? Or, you know, how can you, how can I help clear the path for certain things? And, and having time for them to ask questions and say, oh, I noticed this thing.
But in addition, it's if somebody really isn't good at marketing or somebody really isn't good at an area of the job, like, you know, administration or HR, or, you know, and in this case, we're talking about a president role. They have to be all those things, uh, but they don't have to do all those things. So I think it's important to really go back to this organizing framework, look at the areas of the job that need doing, evaluate the person in terms of what their strength, what are they great at, what do they want to do, what do they not want to do, and then making sure you've got some buffer around that so that you can set them up for success.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: What does stepping back look like for you where you're still devoting the right amount of energy and commitment to make sure that the business succeeds and gets supported every step of the way?
Christine Faulhaber: So it's a combination of regular routine meetings. So Lexi and I have a two-hour meeting every single week.
It's at the same time. We have a joint, um, digital tool where we can put all of our notes and our tasks and we can keep in touch using those tools during the week. That's a given. I have a weekly senior finance call with our CFO and Lexi where we talk about what's going on, the health of the business. In addition to that, there will be strategy sessions where we'll have a finance strategy session maybe once every month or every couple of months.
And then the same thing with, um, with the business itself, sort of a quarterly strategy session of how are the KPIs going? What's happening? I also have a bi-weekly meeting where the vice presidents are included, and that is a bit more granular. Let's talk about the people. What are the other pain points?
What's happening with new business? Um, I'm doing active new business outreach, networking, looking for ways to fill the funnel and get leads in the door. I'll attend some client events and some big high profile, um, other outside events as well. So it does add up. Like this idea of me stepping back and only really apparently working one day a week is probably more like three days a week.
I also do mentoring, um, with the forum. So I have two mentees at the moment that I mentor on a monthly basis. Um, and essentially being there as well. Like when we go through HR problems or if there's something else that happens in the business, I'm always available. If someone needs me on the weekend, I am available because my name is on the door and it's my business.
So there's never a scenario where someone couldn't get me. I almost feel like, um, I'm still, you know, in the background going, do you need me? Do you need me? How about now? How about now?
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Your love for mentoring and really being available for the team is very evident. You know, it looks like no matter how much your schedule and calendar starts filling up, you always shuffle your priorities to make sure that you're still available and the team can reach out to you at all times. I'd love to wrap up by sharing a few insights and takeaways that businesses in any industry can really take advantage of.
I think mentorship is a common topic, it comes up a lot in a lot of businesses that we speak with. And what's been the most intriguing thing to me is how different people approach mentorship and building a relationship with a mentee. If you had to share advice for any businesses that want to get that thrill of providing their collective experiences and knowledge and pouring into a community or a team.
What are some thoughts and ideas that you would share for them to consider, especially at the early stages of that process?
Christine Faulhaber: Well, I think looking within your industry and seeing where you can make the most impact. For us, we have a trainee program and the trainees come from schools. And oftentimes those trainees get hired.
Um, many hundreds and hundreds of students have been hired, uh, by Faulhaber over the years. And so, the schools are, um, for me, an easy one. Um, and perhaps for other industries. Where did you go to university? Perhaps reaching back there and saying, hey, I'd like to do a talk or how can I be of service to your students, which really is the next generation of people that might come and work in your business.
So I think that's, you know, and you might not call that mentorship, but in fact, that's exactly what it is. You don't have to take up a teaching role, but you can give an hour of your time to a class of graduating students and totally move the needle for them. So I think that's an, that's an easy one. Um, other ways, there's so many organizations out there, whether they're female entrepreneurship organizations or, um, you know, startup businesses or, you know, dozens and dozens of opportunities where you could use your expertise. I think that's the thing. What are you an expert in? And then just talking to people in those areas, um, can really be, uh, can be useful. Like for me, I'm a mentor with the forum and it's an organization that, um, pairs up, uh, female entrepreneurs with other female entrepreneurs, essentially.
And there's a matching system. And so, um, I've been fortunate enough to work and mentor all kinds of different people, whether they're startups, what I love is a business that's maybe three, three to five years in. So they're not completely fresh. They've had some success. They know what I'm talking about and they can get the most value.
Cause that's what I like to talk about. I like to like, let's pull up your P and L. Let's have a look at your headcount. What, what have you done for your contracts? And what do you mean you don't have contracts with your employees? Like, let's discuss that. And just digging in on all the different parts of the business so that, um, you know, it's something I know a lot about, been doing it for two decades, and it's something I can add a lot of value.
So I think look to your own skill set, look within your industry, look within your world, schools is an easy one, uh, charitable organizations, and there's all kinds of opportunities and people are always happy to have a free senior person give their time and wisdom.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Such an exceptional way for you to start testing your capabilities of being a mentor and working on that skill set.
And finally, if, uh, if you have to give one piece of advice to Christine, maybe three years ago that, uh, is that the early stages of, okay, I'm walking away, I'm stepping back a little bit. I need to prepare myself mentally as a lot of businesses might, a lot of entrepreneurs might be in that same situation today.
What is one piece of advice you'd give to that, Christine?
Christine Faulhaber: Regular conversations. Have a regular weekly meeting. Pull up what you agreed on and revisit it on the regular. I think that had I done a bit more of that, it would have eliminated some frustrations. So I think, do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. Hold yourself accountable to what you agreed on and have a regular open dialogue so that if the rules need to change, you can change them together.
Because assumptions just don't work.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: That's excellent advice and one that I'm going to keep in mind. Your journey has been incredibly inspiring and it sounds to me like a lot more exciting things around the corner. Thank you for your time today Christine. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Christine Faulhaber: Thanks so much.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: That was a great conversation with Christine Faulhaber of Faulhaber Agency. My first big takeaway from today's episode is the importance of having a vision for the future of the business and your involvement in it. And then mapping it out in writing. Revisit the plan often to avoid frustration down the road. The second big takeaway is to give you and your team plenty of time for the transition.
You can't expect things to happen overnight. Change can be tougher on some more than others, so check in with your employees often, at least once a week, to take the pulse of how things are going and address any pain points. And finally, get serious about your role as a mentor. The stakes are especially high when your mentee is taking over at the helm of your business you built from the ground up.
Have hard discussions about what they are and aren't comfortable taking on. Understanding what drives your successor, both personally and professionally, is critical in being able to support them.
If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to Growth Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. You can also visit www.cwbank.com slash podcast for more about Faulhaber Agency, as well as the other businesses and topics featured on Growth Decoder. I'm your host, Mahfuz Chowdhury. Thank you for listening. Growth Decoder is brought to you by Canadian Western Bank with production by SJC.