A2S Talks Entrepreneurship with Mike Faubert

Can you share a bit about your background and professional experience, and what motivated you to become a mentor for A2S’s Entrepreneur Incubator? 

I grew up in a suburb of Boston, MA, and am the 5th of 6 children. I have lived in several cities in the US, and my wife and 2 kids and I settled into Davidson 12 years ago. I worked for a consumer products manufacturer that is in several product categories, but when I started, over 25 years ago, we were only in 1 category. I learned about many aspects of the business as it grew and took on a lot of responsibilites. Those experiences allowed me to learn a lot about starting and growing a business as we treated each category as a separate business unit. From our manufacturer partners, mostly in Asia, through product development and then partnering with wholesale and retail partners, I have learned a lot about developing a business. I am currently a mentor with LaunchCLT and also with Davidson College and the NEXT Level program. A local friend of mine asked me if I had the energy to also help with A2S and I agreed. I enjoy being a mentor and helping businesses plan their growth and avoid potential problems that I may have already encountered.

How did you first become involved with Access to Success, and what has your journey been like as a mentor in the Entrepreneur Incubator program?

Agronadol was my first venture with A2S, and it was a great experience learning about their honey business and trying to help them in any way I could to achieve the monetary prize that would help their business grow. It was very interesting learning about how business works in their culture and still be able to find fundamental business practices so that they could be implemented there.

What do you believe are the most important qualities or skills that a successful entrepreneur should possess, and how do you help aspiring entrepreneurs develop these attributes?

They need to understand that there will be a lot of failures along the way and that the business will not grow the way they think it will. Having a lot of patience and an ability to listen to others, and implement those messages, is very important as well. I like using past examples to help the entrepreneur understand how they apply to their business.

Can you recall a particularly memorable or inspiring moment from your time as a mentor, where you saw significant growth or success in one of the business teams you worked with?

Agronadol sells a lot of their honey to customers that use the honey to make medicine. They were selling the honey using their retail packaging, and we discussed the idea of creating a new much larger package size so that they could have a commercial package, which would allow for less plastic use, and allow therm to make more margin as their costs would be lower. They implemented that, and the benefits were great.

Mentorship often involves building strong relationships with your mentees, but the physical distance between the two in this case poses some challenges. How do you approach mentorship to create a supportive and productive learning environment?

Video calls are very important as it is the closest you are going to get to them. There are technology challenges with the distance, so everyone has to be patient and sometimes be flexible with their schedules. It also helps to start with getting to know the team on a somewhat personal level so you are remembering the human element of the team.

In your opinion, what sets A2S’s Entrepreneur Incubator apart from other entrepreneurship programs, and why is mentorship so critical in this context?

The biggest thing that sets it apart is the difference in cultures and how business is done in Nigeria. Both sides have to remember that and learn about some of the differences in how things work in different countries. Mentorship is critical simply in the fact that the entrepreneur has an experienced sounding board that likely has already experienced most of the issues that the company is going through or about to go through and that support is very helpful.

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