For CIPR’s 16th anniversary, CEO Christina Pilarski sits down to talk about how the agency actually started, not the polished version, but the real one: a side hustle off the side of a corporate desk, a logo designed when she was “just a girl with a dream,” and the moment in 2015 when leadership changes at her day job pushed her to go all in on her own business.

Christina talks about the imposter syndrome that came with suddenly being the boss, why it took her years to put “CEO” on her business card instead of “strategist,” and the mental block she had around being a “comms person” who thought she wasn’t good at numbers (turns out she was). She walks through the moment Peter officially joined the company, right as she was starting a family with no maternity leave and no roadmap, and how that partnership became the foundation for CIPR’s growth.

She also shares what she’d tell her younger self, what she wants future-Christina to remember on the hard days, and her honest advice for anyone thinking about starting their own business: you have more levers to pull than you think.

The episode closes with Christina’s message to CIPR on its sweet sixteen: a thank you to the company and the team that built something different than the agencies she used to work with.