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Columbia Inspired

Revinention At Its Finest

May 09, 2022 12:27AM ● By Angela Davids

Many times in your life, you’ll ask, “What’s next?” It can be scary but exciting. The next move can be clear on the path ahead, and other times it’s a big leap of faith. In this case, it was Faith’s big leap — Faith Wachter, principal, and owner of Faith Wachter Consulting.

After 14 years directing community outreach at Maryland Public Television, Wachter harnessed everything she had learned there as an early adopter of social media. For seven of those years at MPT, she figured it out as she went along, just like every other business had done before formal training existed.

She redirected that knowledge and resourcefulness toward launching a marketing agency dedicated exclusively to social media. It has grown to an all-remote team of 11 contractors in three different time zones. Her clients are primarily small businesses and nonprofits from all over the country, including Howard County businesses like JustLiving Advocacy, Fitness Together Ellicott City, Premier Health Express, and HorseSpirit Arts Gallery.

Wachter says “equal parts necessity, challenge, and logic” drove the decision. She was between jobs, taking time to consider her next chapter, when friends and colleagues reached out to her regularly for social media advice. They encouraged her to start her own business. So, in June 2015, she built her website, put the word out, and the clients came calling.

“I worked for someone else my entire professional career, so opening my own freelance business was a huge shift with no safety net,” Wachter said about those early days.

Wachter had no formal training as a business owner — an experience she describes as simultaneously riding a rollercoaster and running on a hamster wheel. Fortunately, she found her tribe with the Business Women’s Network of Howard County in 2016. She joined the board in 2017 as director of marketing and communications, served as president from 2018 to 2020, and is now a sponsor and active member.

“I’ve learned so much from this dynamic group of professional women, and I’ve become a huge supporter of woman entrepreneurship as a result,” she said. “My team is nearly all women, and most of our clients are woman-led or woman-owned. It’s not intentional. We just seem to attract other women in business, which I’m really proud of.”

Wachter says she’s still in a state of reinvention, adapting to the rapidly changing world of social media and making shifts that will allow her to grow her business. She sees how the pandemic has created new opportunities for other women to reinvent themselves.

“The pandemic allowed people to realize that they may not have been happy doing what they were doing, typically for someone else, and feeling undervalued,” Wachter said. “As companies rethink their workforce and their workplace, they are more willing to hire cost-effective consultants over full-time employees, plus business owners can seek opportunities beyond their local region. It’s easier than ever to chart your own course.”

 

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