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Name: Samantha Howe 

Business: Howe Social, a digital marketing and PR firm 

Industry: Marketing & PR 

Location: Bay Area, California, U.S. 

Reason for starting: Balancing family life with 2.5 kids (I’m pregnant with my 3rd!) and a full time job as a Marketing Director for a fashion start up was challenging – I wanted to experience life as a freelance consultant and be able to find my own projects and clients and make my own schedule. 

Related: Read about another female entrepreneur who created her own family-work life balance here. 

How do you define success? Success is not a number or a figure to me – it’s that I delivered a strategy to a client that they are excited about it and that I still get to take my son to his swim club meet and be there to support him in his development. I like helping brands make changes that will impact their ability to reach their dream customers and spread their message further. 

Biggest Success: I’ve spent the past year working with one contract as a consultant for an ad agency, building social strategies for new mobile and entertainment technologies that will revolutionize how we pay and enjoy these services moving forward – it has been pretty exciting. I have also helped a local jewelry designer increase her social presence to the point that she was discovered by the Hollywood elite. Her pieces are now worn by celebrities and stocked in major retailers. 

I’d like to develop a new series of online training courses for business owners to guide them through my marketing strategy process. I find that they are often so busy, that though they have good intentions, they cannot always meet and get things done within my consulting timeframe. So building a structure where they can self guide and reach out to me for support as needed would be ideal. It would also enable me to market my business nationally and grow from just being a local provider. 

Related: Our Small-Biz “Secrets of Growth” Panel 

What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it? Time management! Finding the time to complete everything I need to do to run my business and market it successfully alongside with managing the schedule for my kids is pretty impossible but I’m slowly chipping away at the challenge. I’m more focused with my work time – setting tasks and to do’s for each day and not getting distracted and because of this I allow myself to switch off from it during the “kid time.” I’ve had to let go of the feeling that I’m not doing “enough” and be content with what I can do and achieve in a day! 

In one of my long term roles prior to starting my business, I experienced having 14 bosses during a 5 year period – the constant turnover made finding a mentor and an advocate for my career was very difficult and it meant that I had to learn quickly to advocate for myself with my superior’s superiors! As a result I am now comfortable presenting to all levels of management in large companies which helps my business enormously. 

Who is your most important role model? My mom – she worked full time while raising three kids as a single mother and we never felt like she was absent or not present. Her independence and Scottish born resilience has taught me to try again if at first you don’t succeed! 

[box_light]Website   www.Howesocial.com 
Twitter   @howesocial 
Facebook   www.facebook.com/howesocial 
Pinterest   www.pinterest.com/howesowcial [/box_light]

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Edited by The Story Exchange