by Scott Howard | Apr 29, 2016 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Tuesday was the monthly #SMBFW and Kevin Mullett lead an interesting discussion that inspired me to write this article today. (#SMBFW stands for Social Marketing Breakfast Fort Wayne, a monthly event that you are welcome to attend on the last Tuesday of the month. Just ask me for details.) 
I was sitting with Ryan, a friend and co-worker. My friend is the Program Director of WOWO radio and he recently started a weekly podcast that is available at WOWO.com. Others from our news department are also doing weekly podcasts. These are filled with content that is not heard on the air at WOWO.
Each of these podcasts are due to a passion. It takes time to come up with content and record these each week. My friend also mentioned that he writes a monthly piece for a national trade publication, but that writing the article isn’t as much fun as doing the prep work which includes interviewing industry insiders and other fun stuff. Specifically what he is struggling with at times is the actual writing of the article.
As I looked around the room, I saw other friends who are using different social media platforms to communicate including a realtor, Chris, who does YouTube videos, etc.
For me, I find writing articles like this easy, but that’s because it is a passion of mine. Just like the realtor’s passion is recording YouTube videos and my co-worker’s passion is to record audio podcasts.
The take away from all of this is each of us have a passion and it’s okay to have different ways to express our individual passions. Find the platform that you enjoy and begin there. If you want to expand to another platform, ask someone who’s doing it for some tips.
The other part of this is persistence. I know I titled this article Passion or Persistence, but there’s also Passion and Persistence. First the or version:
You may not know if something will be a passion until you try it. Not just once or twice but multiple times. That’s persistence.
For me, the writing that I do online is Passion and Persistence. I started around 2005 but it wasn’t until a couple years later that I was doing it regularly. In 2008 I was publishing several articles every day and never stopped. I changed formats and kicked off this website in 2011, but I had already edited and published over 10,000 articles on my other sites before then.
Now in about 4 and half years I have written and published about 2000 articles on this site. I used to do a couple articles a day, then just 7 per week. Recently I decided to limit myself to 3 times a week. I doubt that I’d ever do a podcast or create videos with any regularity the way I write, but that’s okay. This is my passion and that’s why I’m persistent.
How about you?
by Scott Howard | Apr 6, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Last month I was meeting with someone who was trying to describe his business in 10 minutes and it reminded me of an exercise I do regularly. Narrow down your words to hone in on what makes you … you. 
In my business, the radio advertising business, commercials are 60 seconds long, max. Actually several of my advertising partners use messages that are less than 15 seconds.
Here’s a small challenge for you: Sum up what you do into as few words as possible.
Every Wednesday I meet with 40 other business leaders and owners for breakfast and to help each other build our businesses. It’s the Fort Wayne Chapter of B.N.I. Ten years ago I was a member of another B.N.I. chapter that had about 25 members and we struggled at times to get everything done in our 90 minutes together. Not so with this chapter.
We meet at 7:30 and end at or before 9am. Our first 15 minutes are spent grabbing breakfast and getting settled in, but at 7:45am when our meeting starts, it takes a good 5 to 10 minutes to do introductions and have an educational presentation. With 40 to 50 members and guests we each have 45 seconds to stand up and talk.
After all the 45 second presentations are over, one member has a 10 minute presentation followed by another round of everyone standing up for 10 to 30 seconds, one at a time and passing referrals, thank-yous and then a few more closing comments and we are done.
Can you present yourself and what you do in 45 seconds? How about 30 seconds, or 20?
I was talking with a co-worker and told him, I have it down to two words. Want to know what those two words are that accurately describe what I do?
Connect People.
Or to put in a complete sentence structure:
I connect people.
Notice that I did not go into all the details of who, how, or a number of other questions. I have simply boiled what I due to two words. Connect People.
When someone asks me what I do, I can simply say, “I connect people.” This often leads to a conversation, which is much better than giving a sales pitch.
Are you ready to take the challenge and sum up what you do in as few words as possible?
by Scott Howard | Apr 1, 2016 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
For college kids, Spring Break was last month. But for most of the K-12 schools in the Fort Wayne area, spring break is the first full week of April.
In this world of 24/7 connectivity, do you need to take a break for awhile? Especially if you are on vacation, can you take a break from work and all your connected devices?
I know it can be hard. Last month, my wife and I took a couple days off and left town for our anniversary. Not once during that trip did I pop open my laptop to do work.
I did spend about 4 minutes one of those days replying to a couple emails on my phone, so I wasn’t completely shut down from work. But one of those emails was simply, “I am out of town and can we talk on Monday…”
Enjoy your spring break. You need it and you deserve it too. This is no April Fool’s Joke.
by Scott Howard | Mar 18, 2016 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo
Funny thing about writing blog posts and articles for a website that you have total control and ownership of… 
I’m talking about this one, ScottHoward.me . The funny thing is I get to decide what to write and when to write and how often and all those other things that you get to decide when it’s all yours and you don’t have to answer to others.
Did you notice that I finally reduced the number of weekly updates?
The past couple of years, I was publishing 5 or 6 days a week. Now it’s 3 days.
This is quite a departure from 2010 when I was publishing over 30 articles a week on multiple blogs.
But I bet you didn’t notice the change from 5 to 3 articles a week.
I did it to free up some time and work on quality over quantity.
I do not get paid to do this, quite the opposite, I pay all the fees and what not myself.
There is no advertising on this site either. Not a penny comes my way from typing out these words or hitting the publish button.
Except something has been happening that has been profitable as a result of posting over 1,900 articles on this site.
I have had people contact me directly to talk about how I can help them with their marketing and advertising. I wrote about this before regarding the SEO benefits. For years I have told my advertising partners to blog and none have done it consistently the way I have. My start in doing this was 10 years ago.
I’ll continue to write and share each week and if you want my help, please ask.
by Scott Howard | Jan 9, 2016 | Monday Money, Really? The Personal ScLoHo
About 6 weeks ago, I cut our family phone bill by upgrading and switching companies. Since I have been mentioning this to some friends and family, I thought it would be worth sharing with you too.
I receive NOTHING from writing and sharing this in any compensation. But when you discover something that works and could help others, sometimes you feel compelled to share.
If you want to skip ahead and go where I went, go here. Here’s the story…
In October 2012, I started a series I called Monday Money which was a series of stories that began with how my wife and I were saving $2500 a year with a few changes. A big change was dropping our Verizon 2 year contract and going with a prepaid monthly plan.
I was able to go from spending over $167 a month down to $91 a month back in 2012.
Jump ahead to November 2015 and we were paying just under $100 a month for service on one old smart phone and one old dumb phone. I wasn’t thrilled with the phone I was using but I was also stubbornly not going to spend a bunch of money and go back to what I was paying before.
Enter my son-in-law Brandon. Thanksgiving weekend he shared on Facebook:
I have sinned. I bought a fancy piece of electronic hardware on “black friday”.
For the first time ever I will have a smart phone… It is replacing my dumb phone that was on a prepaid plan that had only 250 minutes but only cost me $15 per month.
I can hear you now, “How could he be so wasteful with his hard earned money? What a foolish sucka consumer he is!!” Well that would be the case, if I had not just bought a smartphone from republic wireless, which will give me unlimited minutes and wifi data for just over $10 per month. Take that cell phone companies!
This prompted me to talk with him and my daughter Rachael and I learned that Rachael had been using Republic Wireless for a year without any issues. I did my own investigation and a couple days later ordered new phones for myself and Kathy.
I bought the Moto X (like my daughter has) and bought the Moto E for Kathy (same as what Brandon was buying for himself.
Two new smart phones for $428 plus tax & shipping was free. The plans I signed us up for for the first month were a total of $65 (an immediate $30 savings).
Before our next phone bill was due, I lowered the amount of data and our next bill was only $45, less than half what it was before the switch.
Republic Wireless also has an automatic refund plan on unused data. So I really didn’t pay $65 and $45 for the first two months. Instead I paid $65 and $14 due to the credit refund for the unused data from the first month!
The Republic Wireless plans are so inexpensive because the default is for the phone to use the wifi instead of cell data. My first month I signed us up for a total of 3 gigs of data, the 2nd month I cut that in half.
Certainly there are some draw backs right?
Here’s some of the pros and cons my wife and I have discovered:
Con: Her phone, the Moto E has a design flaw or needs a software fix to take care of voice quality. Their is a microphone on the back of the phone that I ended up covering up with a small piece of electrical tape which solved the problem. Weird, I know but that leads me to…
Pro: The Republic Wireless Support. There is an online community forum that has some of the best support available. That’s how I finally decided to stick the tape of her phone, as it was suggested by others until a software update is available.
Con/Pro: There are very few retail stores. Everything is online. I am fine with that. Beats waiting in line at a store. Besides I have become more of an Amazon Shopper in the past few years.
Pro: My phone the Moto X (2nd Gen) is still on sale as I write this. Retail price is $399, on sale for $249.
Con: My wife’s phone the Moto E (2nd Gen). I would not recommend due to the design or software issue I mentioned. The mid-priced Moto-G at $199 might be a better choice but do your own research.
A side note is that before the tape fix for Kathy’s phone, I added an app that force her phone to always use cell service and not wi-fi when making phone calls. I still have that app running on her phone.
That’s our experience and perhaps you could benefit too by switching to Republic Wireless?
Do your own research and weigh the pros and cons for you and your family.
Here’s some additional info: http://republic-wireless.wikia.com/wiki/The_Complete_List_of_Caveats
And: http://republic-wireless.wikia.com/wiki/The_Complete_List_of_Kudos
by Scott Howard | Jan 5, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Welcome to this humble website of mine. Now that we are back and recovered from the holidays, I wanted to set the stage for what you can expect to see at this website this year.
First, the name. The URL: ScottHoward.me was not my first choice when I launched this site in 2011. Sounds a bit egotistical with that dot me after my name but the dot com version was taken as was dot net. 
ScLoHo was my online identity for several years and continues on multiple social media sites like Twitter and Instagram and other places. ScLoHo is a way to distinguish myself from the other Scott Howards in this world and even here in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It’s a mashup using the first two letters of my first, middle and last names. Google “ScLoHo” and nearly everything that appears is probably related to me.
But back to the future…
5 days a week I will publish a new article. One day will be a sales tip curated from a newsletter I get from RAB.com. Mondays, like yesterday is when they will appear.
The other 4 days I will publish articles I wrote with an occasional article from others. They will mostly dealing with marketing, and media with some personal articles too that have nothing to do with those topics.
Have you ever been asked, “What’s your WHY?”
Early in your career, you may not know, or even if you do know, it can change.
Now as a 50 something year old, my why is pretty straight forward. I want to help people make smart decisions regarding their business marketing. That is the primary theme of this website.
I have been given permission by the company I work for and our consultants to write and share information that our competitors would be terrified to share publicly. As a matter of fact, I once worked for another radio station in Fort Wayne that prohibited me from sharing this kind of info online. It was hand-written into my contract by the station management.
While my background is in radio broadcasting, I have also worked with other old school media including print and television, plus I spent time working full time in the website development world and social media marketing world. Add in time away from all of this media stuff and living life as a plain old consumer who worked a couple of jobs where I punched a clock and you’ll begin to get the full picture. (Yes, I was paid to drive a forklift and operate a thermoformer.)
I’ve sat on all sides of the media and marketing universe. Served on the Board of Directors for 7 years with the American Advertising Federation. I’ve seen the ignorance and arrogance of advertising agency people, but also have found several that I respect too. Unfortunately they are in the minority. The same is true with others that I have known who sell advertising. There are a few good ones that are trust worthy, and the rest, well God help you if you have to deal with them.
I am not all that wise and knowing all by myself. I have been blessed to have meet with hundreds of business owners over the past 30 years who have told me their stories and together we learned what works marketing wise and what to avoid. I read a lot too. One day I’ll share some books you might want to read to gain some insight like I did.
So this year, I will give you insider info on WOWO radio and the Fort Wayne radio market; marketing principles that you can apply to any business; share some stories from my advertising partners and the continuing adventures and misfortunes that some people experience.
You can subscribe and have this pop up in your email, you can follow on Twitter, or Facebook even LinkedIn will feature some of these articles. And if you need help, have a question or want to discuss anything, feel free to contact me.
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