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There's fishing. It's in my soul.
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Welcome to the Salt Strong podcast, disrupting fishing entertainment as you know it. Prepare to laugh, prepare to get to know fishing legends in a whole new and unfiltered way. And on occasion, you might even learn a thing or two about fishing. Here's your host, Joe Simons. Like diamonds.
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The creator is pretty doggone creative. Hey, everybody. Joe Simons. Like diamonds. Back again. Salt Strong, Unchurched. Isn't God amazing? Take a second to think about something that happened in your life that maybe was unexpected or maybe even unexplainable. And it could be something as simple slash complicated as the birth of your first child. I think anyone who's had a child and experienced that, obviously it's a different experience for the man versus the woman. But either way, it is something that, that you will never forget. It is magical. It leaves you in awe and very emotional, et cetera. And just in general, if you listen to a couple podcasts ago, and we talked about that book that I read that was 500 pages about the science of God and essentially how science is now proving that there has to be a God, there has to be a creator. And I talked about the lady of Fatima. That was in 1917, where the Virgin Mary appeared six different times to three little shepherd kids. These kids had absolutely no authority, no power. They were literally just poor shepherd kids and ended up thousands of people came out. It was on the 13th day of every month for six months. And then finally all the people came out because these kids said that, hey, the Virgin Mary said that she's going to show herself on this day at this exact time. And she did. Just amazing how, you know, God obviously is just super, super creative. And I'm not talking about just because he created like the platypus or something like that, but even just our human design, you know, in that book, I thought so much about that. Just even in our human design, like, our bodies have to be just perfect so that we don't explode on this, on this Earth. The Earth has to have just the right amount of particles and the right AM of plants. Like all the stuff that had to happen just perfectly. If you missed that episode, I believe it was the chance of us, our bodies being able to survive on this Earth. It's like 000 and it's 126 zeros before you get to a number. And then it's like 0, 000. It's 126 times. Then like a 1, 2, 9 6. And it had to Line up perfectly with hundreds, literally hundred. That's the chance it had to be that perfect that we could be surviving. And you could be listening to this right now. Really, really wild. You talk about the parting of the Red Sea. It's unheard of, right? Can you imagine? You're trapped against an ocean, essentially, that's all you see, and you have a huge army behind you. And God's solution, hey, I'll just part this sucker. I'm going to divide the waters, forming a literal wall for the Israelites to cross on the Dr. It went back down again. It was absolutely bonkers. And one of the first things that God reveals about himself in Scripture is he's not just loving and holy and omnipotent, omnipresent and gracious, he's creative. I mean, even in Genesis, the very first part, I mean, it's all about being creative. He created order out of chaos, and all for the good of us here, ultimately. And I started looking back on my life, and I recently got interviewed for this podcast, and the young guy, Steve, had really done his homework on us and really had done a deep dive and read my book Fishing for Happiness, and listened to tons of podcasts and kind of did his research going back to day one. And he reminded me just how many times God showed up in Salt Strong in our little 11 years of being on this earth as a company. I mean, there were multiple times that Luke and I were about to throw in the towel. The very first one. Some of you guys have heard this before, but if you haven't, it's worth repeating. We built Saltstrong off of just really videos and how to videos and essentially fishing education and the very first business model, we were going to get it to where we could get four or five hundred thousand people a month. That was like a legitimate amount of eyeball that we had. And we did it. We actually did it in our first year. And so our plan was to go to some of the big names at the time and do sponsorship deals, essentially, you know, advertising to get on our website in front of our audience of inshore saltwater anglers. And at the time, this company called Under Armour was really getting big and spending a lot of money in the outdoor space. They were sponsoring most of the big TV show, the fishing TV shows. They were getting into a lot of hunting stuff. And I actually got a call with the guy who ultimately makes the decision on where all of that budget goes for the outdoors. So he's in charge of Under Armour for hunting and fishing all the Outdoors and got a phone call with him. I still remember it. I remember where I was sitting. I remember everything. And so everything we've been building for, let's just say six, seven, eight months now, working every day. We literally didn't take a break. It was seven days a week of nonstop just getting to this point. And I gave him the pitch and he actually said, I like it. He's like, however, we're spending most of our money right now on the hunting. We've shifted a huge chunk because of this group called Duck Dynasty, who also at the time was at their peak, Duck Dynasty had blown up. If you remember, they got a deal for Under Armour Camo and they always wore Under Armour Camo on their shows. And he said, so yeah, we'll give you a sponsorship deal, but we can do about $1,000 a month, $12,000 for the year. To put in perspective, we were spending and Luke and I weren't paying ourselves, so we had no income. And you know, we had a web guy who was 4 or $5,000 a month at the time, a couple other part time people, you know, to keep the website up with that much traffic, let's just say we were spending $10,000 a month, 10,000 before we even paid ourselves. And our very first deal was for $1,000 a month, so we'd still be losing $9,000 a month. I remember I sat there and I cried, literally cried before I called my brother and told him the bad news. Because we were thinking, we're going to get like, oh, 20,000, that their under Armour is going to want the whole thing and this is going to change our lives. And we realized pretty quickly that even if we found another 10 under armors, we still would be breaking even before we even made a penny ourselves to even pay our own salaries to. And it just was a busted business model. And man, we prayed like crazy. And it was amazing. The doors that God opened up for apparel, it's wild stories on the, on the apparel and even the next door that opened was these guys who wanted to do exclusive licensing for our apparel. And that was like a dream come true for us. Now we could get back to creating content. We had these guys from Michigan who were just going to cut us a check every month for all the apparel sales. They were going to do all the, the stuff that we hated doing, like inventory management and, you know, coming up with new designs, et cetera. And that whole thing was a huge bust. And looking back, that was another time we were about just shut the doors they, they had exclusive rights to all of our apparel. Like we literally couldn't sell our own apparel at the time because they owned the rights to it. We thought they were going to do what they said they were going to do and it just didn't work out. They weren't necessarily bad people. It's just a bad model. And they lost a partner through the thing. There's just a lot of stuff that was going wrong. And so we got hardly any money from that. We went negative again. And that was another time. Luke and I were like, maybe we should just give it up. Our non compete and the financial service was almost up. And I really, I debated. I talked to some old buddies at the time considering getting even back in that business just to have a normal job or do something. It was really, really a tough time. And yet that was another one where God's creativity opened up this door where all of a sudden people kept saying, hey, we'd pay just how you guys are finding the fish. And really Luke, I'll give Luke the credit there. They were paying money to see how Luke was able to go find fish on, on every trip. And you know, you hear something like that multiple times and you some point get smart enough and say, well, hey, maybe that, that could be part of the business model. And that was the, the genesis of the insider club, which is now the business. And that was, you know, when we did decide to sell, that was really what they wanted was the, the insider club because it's recurring revenue, revenue, it's got an community. It's just, it's a really, really special thing to be really, really hard to recreate. And that never would have happened. That was never. The model is never even the direction we wanted to go, but through God. I'll give God all the credit here because every time we would pray, something would happen and a door would close and another one would open. It was just, it was three different times that that happened where door would close and, and close pretty hard. And sometimes, you know, stubbed a toe or two was painful. And then, you know, right after that a door would open. And every time I look back it's like, man, God is so creative. He does so much for us. And I think if you're anything like me, we tend to miss it. And that's really what I wanted to talk about here in this podcast is for us just to be aware of all the things that God is doing in our lives. And I mean I had one just last week going, going to, to Lakeland from, from Winter Haven. I'm driving the same little route I do all the time. And there's this person who did not see me and think. And I was about to look down at my phone because I just got a text and something like. I don't know if you've ever heard, had that feeling where. And I've done it before, right? I'm on a two lane road, it's, you know, 40 miles an hour. 42, meaning I was going about 42 and so was the car next to me. And we shouldn't text and drive, but I was kind of about to look down to do it and I was like, I'm just going to keep my head up. And a second later, I kid you not, this car swerves over. He was, you know, getting in the, he was in the right lane, I was in the left, swerved over and I was able to slam on my brakes. This car missed me by inches. And he, you know, obviously swerved back over, realized I was there when he saw me in his rearview mirror all of a sudden. And I never in a million years would have had the time and the instinct to do that had I looked down. And I attribute that to God. That was just one of those little, small, little miracles about how amazing God is. If you ever had that little intuition, man, give some credit to God. And it's the small stuff. I love taking walks in the morning and just seeing how creative our God is. I love seeing the bluebirds and now I got some of these red birds as well and just how they interact with each other and just the whole thing is just, just so fascinating. And then sandhill cranes come in every once in a while, have a bald eagle will fly over. I, I just, I love seeing all this stuff and all these birds, the, with the big bills that are digging and, and essentially getting all the cinch bugs and all the bad bugs in our grasses. They're there every morning. I'm like, how is this possible, right? I think we get in such a rush and I watch some of our neighbors who are in a rush. Not anything wrong with it. I get it. That was part of my life. I'm just in this phase now where I'm trying to slow everything down and, and because we're able to sell, I, I feel like that's helped me just create a little bit of, of margin where I'm in margin meaning think of it like a piece of paper on Microsoft Word and it says how much do you want your margin, your white space where there's Nothing. I try to have a lot of margin in my life. There was many times where I had none, where I would put zero margin. I want to put letters on this entire document. But margin is where you have that time to appreciate all the things that God is doing. And I watch some of these people, like our neighbors, fly by. They're late to work, they're going 100 miles an hour. I'm like, you guys just passed some of the coolest stuff on this little small street. In the big scheme of things, even the city and the state of Florida, the country, the world, this little street is just a microcosm of it all. I'm actually recording this, looking out at it right now, and I'm watching some of those white birds I wish I had off the tip of my tongue. If you guys know, it's the same ones they feature in Cypress Gardens here in Winter Haven. But these white birds just come. They're all over the lake, and they just kind of move in these big packs of them, 20 at a time, and they'll just sit there in your grass and eat these cinch bugs, eat all the bad bugs that you don't want in your yard, and kind of do a little cleanup for you. It's so cool. I mean, how wild is that? And even the buzzers, right, as ugly as they are, there's a roadkill. And you got these buzzards who come in there and clean it up for you and fill themselves on really amazing just how creative God is. And so I just wanted to share it. I felt called to do it. We had a C12 meeting where it was about innovation and about creativity and about sometimes changing your business model, like we had to do multiple times. And sometimes that means changing your career, whatever it might be, or even just changing cities or where you live or something that you're just not happy with or don't feel like you're in your sweet spot where God wants you. You to pray and be okay when a door closes and be really, really excited when one new door opens, because God is super creative. He will not ever put you in a situation that he knows you can't handle. I have so many times where I thought I wasn't ready for something, and I've shared some of them on this podcast. Even my very first job was, like, six months in. I was the young guy, and my boss saw something to me. He's like, we're going to move you up. And I almost wanted to tell him no because I was so scared. And I still remember that quote that someone told me, God will never open up a door for you that you can't handle. Even if you don't think you can. God will never open up a new door, a new chapter, or a new opportunity that you can't handle, and vice versa. On the bad side, he will never put you through anything. Whether it's cancer that I went through. I know a lot of you have gone through family members that have. Or just some bad chapter of your life where nothing seems to go right. He will never put you through anything you can't handle. There that's not going to come back and make you stronger. We look back and say, man, that wasn't fun. Just like having to pivot three times in our business, that was not fun. The same point, man, we grew so much, and I wouldn't change it for the world, knowing what I know now. So a couple challenges on this one. One, slow down, create that margin. I probably need to do a whole podcast just on margin. And if you need an analogy, use the paper. We've all used Microsoft Word at some point in our lives where ask you, what margin do you want on the sides and on the top. You can do a margin on the top, the bottom, left and right. And it starts off at one inch. And you can go smaller or bigger. The more margin you have, the more white space. That means there's nothing. It's free. That gives you opportunity to read things like the Bible, to speak to God, to walk with God, to take walks out in nature, to go out fishing. All the things that. That are so amazing, this world and that you can take the time to notice all the amazing things that God has put in our world, how creative it is. I mean, how I'm looking out at a cypress tree right now on the lake, and then this huge pine that is, like, tilted, I don't know, like 38 degree, almost 40 degrees going up into the sky. Like, not even straight. Like, how did that even happen? Was it an old storm? Like, God is just so creative, how he was able to bring, you know, order out of complete chaos, and we're able to live in this world with everything. Even though some days it might feel chaotic, it really is wild how orderly it all is and just how magical it all is. So challenge number one. One, slow down, take some time to appreciate it. And two, thank God for those opportunities and be looking for those new doors that are opening. Regardless of your age, regardless of what you're doing, God is opening up doors for people, regardless of all that stuff. And I think the worst thing that can happen is we're so busy or so consumed or so stuck in our ways or maybe even just fearful that, that, that we don't want a bunch of change, that we miss out on a huge opportunity. So if you see it, if you feel it, if you even have just that intuition like I did last week where I, I, I would have 100% been in a, in a pretty bad accident that probably would have ruined my whole day and maybe, who knows, my whole month truck would have been, I don't know if it would have been totaled or not, but it would have not have been good. You know, getting hit that hard, going 40 something miles an hour and possibly even going if I'd somehow veered the other way or hit me hard enough in oncoming traffic, not, it would have not been good. And that was just that weird intuition. And so in times like that, I literally, first thing I did, I didn't get mad at the guy. I didn't flick him off. I did, I did honk at him. I lay down my horn and he did wave. He was obviously probably pretty shaken up as well. And I took a deep breath and I was like, yeah, thank you so much for protecting me because I, I, it was seconds before that I was about to look down and grab, and actually grab my phone. And for some reason I, I just felt like I was supposed to keep my eyes on the road. And then that happened in just a split second. Really, really wild. So don't ignore those intuitions. Don't ignore the, the doors that are opening, even when it feels scary. Love you guys. Hopefully this hit the right person or people. That's my big prayer before I do every one of these podcasts and I'm excited to have some new stuff coming here this, this summer. So stay tuned and have an amazing day like always. If you have any questions, thoughts, prayer request, or just want to say hey, hey, shoot me an email. Joe saltstrong.com I read everyone Joe saltstrong.com only comes to me and I love hearing from you guys on, on Sundays, Mondays, whenever you happen to, to hear these things, it really does mean a lot that I know people listening because I can see the downloads. But it's even cooler when I do get messages. So if you feel like you want to message me about anything or even like, hey, I've listened to all these podcasts. I, I love hearing from people that shoot me a message out of the blue. Like, man, I've listened like the last 100 of them like, whoa, how cool is that? And hit me up. Seriously, Joe saltstrong.com Otherwise, I will talk to you on the next episode.
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It's been said my papa he wrote the book on catching big reds, 20 pounds look, I wish I knew all the things he knew today for he's the reason why we are this way and he put fish in our souls to stay.