Meet Howard Flint | Content marketing expert, husband, and father.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Howard Flint and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Howard, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I was the youngest of five children. For my entire life up until junior year of college, my father was the president of a bank. Then in the middle of my college career, he lost his job. He was part of a larger banking group that simply decided to change up management during one of thus countries many financial crises. This had a big effect on me. It didn’t stop my college education, frankly it didn’t impede my parents lifestyle much because he was very good at acquiring assets. My epiphany was: ‘you could give most of your life to a company who would then let you go’. I never wanted to be in that position.

At that point in my media/sales career where I was working for a newsletter publishing company in Atlanta. As they were being broken up to be sold off, I had the opportunity to buy of their newsletter titles. I took that newsletter and created my first company BUZZ Publishing in 2001. Shortly after I established BUZZ, I went out and acquired two other newsletters from another publisher. This gave us a trio of software-user based, subscription supported, print newsletters.

My thought process was part “I need my own business so no one can fire me” and “I think technology is going to make it so I don’t have to work a traditional job like my father did”. My wife and I had two young children and a third on the way at that time, and I also wanted to be around for all of them.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
In 2007 I had the opportunity to sell my first company, BUZZ publishing. I sold it to another newsletter publisher out of North Carolina. At the time BUZZ was three monthly, subscription-based, print newsletters. As a derivative, we were also doing a shorter version of one of those newsletters, the QuickBooks newsletter, that we were customizing for accountants across the country.

I worked for the company that acquired BUZZ for about a year. They didn’t pay close attention to my compensation package. They gave me a lot of upside if I succeeded in doing “business development” for them. So when I was successful, and they had to pay out a lot of money. They were angry. So our relationship didn’t last very long. After one year, we parted ways.

As I was departing, they asked me if I wanted to keep the custom QuickBooks newsletter part of the business. They didn’t see a future in it. I said, yes of course, I will take it. I used that as a springboard to create Ghost Partner in 2007. We still have www.TheQBC.com as one of our businesses.

At that point, the Internet was on fire (in a good way), and social media was just coming up. I had a sense that companies were going to need a lot of content. The Internet was a lot of content. I knew certain size companies wouldn’t have the time or expertise to create it. From the years of owning BUZZ and now Ghost, I had assembled a bench of really good writers. So we made the thrust of ghost partner to be custom content:, email marketing, social media, white papers, etc.

It would be easy to say that it was all success from there. It was still a lot of hard work. It was still the nascent days of the Internet, where we had to feel our way around. I will tell you that people answered emails and answered phone calls back in those days. It’s hard to get any reaction these days.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I lived in a nice suburban area north of Atlanta, Roswell. There are a lot of nice restaurants in our area. We enjoy going out to some chef driven, unique restaurants here in Roswell. A favorite of ours is IPs. Great Italian food. Sometimes you can’t be going to Taco Mac for a big plate of wings.

I am a big fan of going to concerts. As a musician myself, I have wide and very tastes in music. I’m not a big fan of large venue concerts. I don’t want to spend the money to be up close. I will take my kids if they want to see certain bands coming through at the larger venues. As for myself, I like going to the smaller venues around Atlanta to see up-and-coming bands, or bands from my youth that are still hitting the road. So I like going to the Masquerade, the Tabernacle, the Eastern, and because it’s so close to my house, the Ameris Bank amphitheater. That’s an outdoor “shed” and we’ve seen some great shows there.

To be honest, if a good friend was coming in town, we would be on our back porch, cooking out, and spending a lot of time talking and laughing.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Definitely my wife, Canita. She supported my ideas. Not without discussion, though. I’m sure at times she thought I was crazy.

I also spent a lot of time reading Inc magazine, Fast Company magazine, and even Forbes. I need to go back and do more of that now. I would spend a lot of time reading about other businesses around the country the world and how those businesses succeeded. I think the stories are important because you get below the surface and see all the challenges that were there for others. It’s comforting to know that you are not alone in facing certain challenges.

Website: https://www.ghostpartner.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ghost-partner-inc-

Facebook: http://facebook.com/ghostpartner