Aaron Benjamin: Abenz Fishing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Building a Content Business

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 914 with Aaron Benjamin.

Meet Aaron Benjamin: AbenzFishing

Tom: What's going on everybody? We've got an awesome podcast today. If you are on social media and you like fishing, and possibly if you like jiu-jitsu or wrestling, you probably know our guest today, AbenzFishing, Aaron Benjamin. He makes some fantastic content, and we have a fantastic conversation with him about jiu-jitsu, fishing, entrepreneurship — a really great conversation. I really enjoyed getting to know him better, and I think you will too. Here we go.

Aaron: What's going on, guys? My name is Aaron Benjamin, aka AbenzFishing, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom: Alright, Aaron, what's up, man? How are you?

Aaron: I'm good, man. I'm really excited to be here. Big fan of yours, big fan of the podcast and what you're doing, so I'm excited to talk.

Tom: Thank you. Well, you're somebody I wanted to talk to. You've got an interesting background — Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you've got a wrestling shirt on, you're a fisherman. I know we're going to get along just fine right away. What's your background? I know you're a jiu-jitsu black belt. What's your background in jiu-jitsu?

From Wrestling and BJJ to Full-Time Fishing Content

Aaron: So I've been doing jiu-jitsu for quite some time. I'm 30 years old, just turned 30 in February, and I started jiu-jitsu when I was 15. I initially started doing no-gi Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and when I was 18 I went to college. I'm from Sanibel Island, Florida, went to high school in Fort Myers, and then went to college in Gainesville. I was one of the kids that didn't get into UF — deferred, then denied — so I took the community college route and went to Santa Fe. Eventually I ended up dropping out of college for jiu-jitsu because I started training so much in Gainesville. That's when I really picked up traditional Brazilian jiu-jitsu in the kimono, and it just took over my life. I was a lost kid with no direction, and I started training every day. I had a coach — shout out to my first coach, Con Ying, a black belt under Marcelo Garcia — who pushed me to compete. He told me that everybody who's ever been great at anything almost has sociopathic tendencies, because they get so obsessive with the pursuit of their goal that they get tunnel-visioned. I was an impressionable 18-year-old, so I said, okay, done, that's what I've got to do — train every single day for the rest of my life.

I trained there until I was 21, got my brown belt in four years, and eventually my coach pushed me to move because he said I couldn't reach my goals competitively where I was. I was competing every month, making the podium but getting second or third. I went to the world championships as a purple belt and had some good matches but didn't get on the podium. He told me that unless I went to a bigger academy with higher-level, world-class jiu-jitsu, he'd just be hindering my growth. That led me to Boston, where I took a position as an academy manager and full-time instructor under a legend in the Brazilian jiu-jitsu community — Bernardo Faria, a five-time black belt world champion with his own Wikipedia page. That enhanced my journey right alongside my jiu-jitsu.

While I was competing, I was also looking for sponsors, because jiu-jitsu is a sport where you pay to compete — you don't get paid. A tournament entry was $120, plus hotels and flights. It's not cheap. So around 19 or 20, when I couldn't get sponsors, I started my first business — a jiu-jitsu apparel and content company. That's where a lot of what became AbenzFishing actually started, my first journey into content creation and business. I grew a Facebook page in 2014 called Jiu-Jitsu Life to 20,000 likes and millions of views a month, doing limited merchandise drops. It was a terrible business model — I took every penny I made and funded my competition trips. Preorder, fill the order, take the extra money, compete. Preorder, fill the order, compete. But I learned so much doing that while training twice a day, every day, and all of that fed into what's become AbenzFishing.

The Parallels Between Combat Sports and Fishing

Tom: I was a wrestler in high school, then a coach for my kids, then a wrestling parent — all three very different things. But I learned things on the wrestling mat that I didn't realize for thirty years, things I rely on daily. It's so weird, later in life, to realize that — because when you're going through it, it's just hard, and you don't realize you're learning those lessons until later. It kind of reminds me of the fishing tournaments in the Florida Keys before the internet — the Redbone Series. There was no monetary compensation, in fact it probably cost you money to fish them, but if you did well it helped your reputation and you could get booked more. You're making money, just indirectly.

Aaron: Yeah, it's like residual effects, and it compounds over time. What you said about wrestling is true. I joke that I'm a jiu-jitsu missionary because I'm constantly posting about it — I'm more proud of anything I did on the mat than anything I've ever done in fishing. Even a video that gets ten million views doesn't come close to the feeling of being able to say it took me fifteen years to get a black belt. I tell kids: wrestle, it doesn't have to be jiu-jitsu, pick up any sport that teaches discipline. I wrestled two years in high school just to supplement my jiu-jitsu, training with a friend who was the assistant wrestling coach, even though I never formally competed. There's nothing like a wrestling room — the environment in there is incredible, whether high school, collegiate, or middle school.

Tom: In all my fishing guiding, I'd come across people who were really into fishing and could pick it up fast — especially fly fishing for tarpon or permit, something hard. I'd ask about their athletic background, and almost always there was some wrestling in there. The best fishermen I had almost all had wrestling in their background, either as their main sport or for a few years. I've always tried to figure out what it is about wrestling and jiu-jitsu that draws the same type of personality to fishing. I think wrestling is like physical chess — fishing is like chess too. You're playing a game against the weather, against the fish, some things in your control and some out of it, very similar to being on the mat.

Aaron: I've seen that a lot, and I think it's exactly what you said — both are very detail-oriented, and both rely on a tenacious personality that continuously works toward a goal. I see so many similarities between my mindset on the mat and my mindset when I fish. The most prevalent characteristic I have is stubbornness — honing in on a goal and working at it. If I decide I need to catch a giant snook on a certain lure, that's the goal until it happens, whether it takes ten hours a day for seven days or ten minutes on one day. Then you couple that with the detail orientation of a grappler — when do you shoot your takedown, how do you set it up, how do you finish — versus when should I go out, where should I fish, what are the tides doing, what's the weather doing, what type of knot, what type of rod. Fishing puts you in a position where you have to capitalize on a moment. You work so hard and you never even know if you're going to get the bite, and then once you get the bite you don't know if you're going to land the fish. I think that's why people are addicted to it — the feeling of landing a huge fish is almost identical to winning first place, that quick rush of endorphins. There's a primitive nature to fishing, kind of the hunter-gatherer mindset, even if you're catch-and-release. It's primitive, it's goal-oriented, and it's fulfilling — very similar to jiu-jitsu or wrestling, where it's you against another man. That's why I see so much crossover — friends like Captain Matt Budd, Captain Ben Chancey, Captain George Gozdz, all great fishermen and guides, all heavy into jiu-jitsu. Matt's a brown belt, Ben's a black belt of almost twenty years, George has been doing it over ten years as a purple belt.

Tom: Especially as a guide — if you're the jiu-jitsu missionary, I'm the fitness missionary for fishing guides, because there are so many repetitive motions. Unless you're doing other things for fitness, flexibility, mobility and strength besides poling a boat or throwing a cast net the same way every day, you will get hurt. A lot of guys have shoulder problems, lower back problems, issues that could be avoided with a general fitness routine. When I started paying much closer attention to my health and fitness, everything got better — my fishing got better, I started winning more tournaments, and I could stay out guiding more days in a row.

If Fishing Had a Belt System

Tom: Here's an interesting question — wrestling doesn't have a belt system, but jiu-jitsu does. If fishing had a belt system, what would the benchmarks be?

Aaron: The first thing that came to mind is that I'd treat fishing like martial arts as a whole rather than one specific discipline — inshore saltwater fishing might be like jiu-jitsu, offshore fishing might be comparable to wrestling, bass fishing might be like Taekwondo or Sambo. But if we just take inshore saltwater fishing specifically — time on the water. So much of it, to me, is time on the mat, time on the water. I taught jiu-jitsu for seven years, and the most common question was, \"Do you think I'm getting closer to my belt?\" And the answer is always time on the mat. The older recreational guys hate that answer — you've been doing jiu-jitsu five years, but only twice a week for an hour, so that's maybe a hundred hours a year, while a young kid training two hours a day blows past your whole year in a month. It's the same with fishing. I come from a family of serious hobbyist fishermen — my grandfather, who immigrated from Morocco, fished every day; my father still loves to fish; my older brother, who has no social media and is a total ghost online, is honestly the best fisherman I know, better than me, he just doesn't talk about it.

Time on the water is the benchmark, because you develop patterns. If I fish twice a week I don't get the same results as if I get to fish four or five times a week — not because more time equals more fish automatically, but because of the knowledge you attain while you're out there. I caught one snook Monday at 7 p.m., the tide was switching to outgoing, it was four days before the full moon, at a certain spot, depth, and water temperature. Let me use those variables to try to create a bite on Tuesday. More time on the water, take what I learned Monday, apply it Tuesday, and now I've dialed in a pattern — not luck, but studying the days I was there. Ultimately it's fishing, so you might still get skunked even after four great days because conditions change. But that's the best way to measure any benchmark for a belt — how much time have you spent on the water.

Tom: That's what happens when you become a guide — you're not just fishing when you have time, when the weather's nice, or when the tide's right. You're going all the time, people book you on days you'd rather not be out there, and you have to produce. That's where the real learning curve goes up.

Aaron: And you get to refer back to your trips — how'd I do Monday, where'd I do good, let me try to reproduce that Tuesday. It's compounding every week. The best fishermen I know are all guides. The best fisherman I know right now is Matt Budd — always producing, even though he jokes that he hates fishing because he's always working out on the boat.

Tom: Matt Budd is a serious working captain with a commercial background too, and that's another level — if you spent time being the bait guy for other captains, you don't realize how much that helps down the road. He knows where the bait is, where the fish are, he can produce commercially and recreationally, on the days you don't want to go out.

Aaron: It's all just time on the water to me, with subtleties layered on — nerding out on tides, moon phases, water temperatures. There's different strokes for different folks, but for sure the number one aspect of a good angler, if I were ranking belts, would be tied to how much time you've put on the water.

Finding Better Rooms — and Guests That Push You

Tom: And that's also what you were talking about earlier — your coach telling you that to progress you needed to go somewhere else and be around people better than you. That's exactly what happens when you start guiding — you're now expected to produce in conditions you wouldn't have gone out in before, entering tournaments you might not have considered. If you surround yourself with people better than you, your progress goes way up. You're not just the best guy at the dock anymore; you're testing yourself against people who are so much better, and a lot of times you come back with your tail between your legs, but those are the times you learn the fastest.

Aaron: I think that's an important mindset. I try to pay homage to what I call the old salts a lot in my videos — I have a lot of self-deprecating humor, and I always say I suck at fishing. It's my true personality, and then they're like, you don't suck, you catch giants. And I'm like, no, dude, there are so many people who know so much more than me. That's just the mindset for anything in life — you want to be around people who are better and have been doing it longer, they're always going to know more, even if they don't produce as much as you now because they're tired and not going out as much as they used to. I've learned so much from people in the industry, subtle things they might not even know they were teaching me. Roland Martin taught working a Senko with your rod tip up for sensitivity — I've been using that technique for shrimp jigs and small soft plastics for the last ten years, and it just goes down the pipeline. I also think variation is good — even though I'm perceived as an inshore guy and definitely prefer inshore, I think it's good to have variation. I don't film bass fishing, but I live in a neighborhood with ponds and I'll go pond hopping with the family, and there are subtle things you learn. It's like martial arts — if you do jiu-jitsu but go to a wrestling room, you learn perspective on takedowns because they're not concerned with submission, they just want to pin. There's value in that. If you go to a judo gym, they don't attack the legs like wrestling or jiu-jitsu, but they're very good at hip tosses and trips. There's always something in bass fishing, land-based fishing, pier fishing, offshore fishing, that translates. I spent almost five years in Massachusetts, and even while training I was still fishing three or four days a week. I became a regular at the Cape Cod Canal, an infamous land-based striped bass spot, and learned so much from the old canal rats there about working a jig.

Bridging YouTube and Traditional TV: The Sunrun Series

Aaron: It's awesome to get to talk to you — I watched your show and you guys were teaching subtle tips every time, back when it was on channel 61 on Versus with all the fishing shows streaming on the outdoors network. It's hard to find fishing on TV these days, because we're at this weird point where a lot of people are watching on YouTube, and there are still legends like Carter Andrews with a show going, but there's also a wider array of content from big YouTubers producing big numbers. We recently did a show with Discovery called the Sunrun series. It was pitched to four creators from Outdoor Fishing Network, Sport Fishing Channel, and Saltwater Sportsman, ultimately airing on Discovery. The idea was to merge the YouTube perspective with traditional TV — create something entertaining that could air on TV while incorporating the uniqueness of YouTube. They set up a competition in search of viral fishing moments. I was teamed with Ryan Escurdo, and the other team was creators called Fishaholic and See a Dude. We were sent to the Keys at Hawks Cay for one week, uncharted, just fishing the way we normally would while they documented it — like a docuseries. The competition was based on views and biggest fish. It was interesting seeing how it worked, and even the producers are going to use our GoPro chest-mount footage, since that POV is unique to YouTube fishing versus traditional TV's front-facing camera, second boat, or drone footage.

Doing TV felt much more like a traditional job — you're constantly working with a team, listening to producers, discussing what needs to be seen, doing multiple takes to get the best product, whereas on YouTube you have full autonomy to film whatever you want. It was a lot of work, but an amazing experience, and I gained real respect for what TV crews do. The shoot was one week, producing three 22-minute episodes on Discovery airing in October, plus the content creators' own videos, which have already amassed strong short-form and long-form view counts.

A lot happened during the shoot. My team of Fishaholic and See a Dude had been fishing offshore more because they had a bigger, more capable boat — a 24-foot Sea Hunt versus my Mako 18 LTS. On the last day, producers wanted everyone on one boat, but since we had full autonomy, I decided to go inshore alone instead, chasing a permit, a big tarpon, and a bonefish for an inshore slam — spoiler, I didn't get the slam, but it caused some friction since I'd be going without the camera crew. I ended up catching what was probably a 70-to-80-pound-class tarpon on light tackle after two frustrating hours watching tarpon eat crabs right next to the boat but refuse mine, then switching to a small voodoo shrimp and getting bit on the first cast, followed by a thirty-minute solo fight. Meanwhile, my teammates killed it offshore, landing blackfin tuna and a queen snapper out at the humps, and encountered a big storm coming back in.

Building AbenzFishing: From Jiu-Jitsu Entrepreneurship to Full-Time Content

Tom: Before, we were talking about how your jiu-jitsu and your entrepreneurship in the digital business led to what you're doing now. What was that step like?

Aaron: I still have a full career — people are confused when I tell them I genuinely work forty-hour weeks remotely. I've worked for the same company for a decade. Back when I was still doing jiu-jitsu, I made a website selling hats and shirts and did very well in sales, making fair money for a 19-year-old mat bum, but I wasn't profiting because I was pulling all the money back out for training and even a bad Vegas trip. The hype eventually died down and sales stagnated, but I'd built a good following on Facebook and was one of the first pages to have real success with Facebook marketing around 2012 to 2014, putting ads on short-form jiu-jitsu technique videos before short-form video was even really a thing. So I started a one-man digital marketing business called Gainesville Digital Agency, got a lot of clients, and one day my instructor told me that Bernardo Faria was starting a company selling jiu-jitsu instructional videos and I should reach out. Bernardo loved the remote blog work I did and the turnaround time, and eventually offered me a package deal — manager of his school, allowed to teach jiu-jitsu, and work on the instructional video business, BJJ Fanatics. I talked to my dad, who's been up and down in business, and he told me to take the leap. My girlfriend, now my wife, said we should go, so we moved to Boston within about a week.

I worked for that company about eight or nine months before the business exploded, becoming the go-to brand for jiu-jitsu instructional videos and eventually expanding into twelve different instructional sites, now the largest sports instructional distribution website chain in the world. I was the first or second person they ever hired, and I'm still there today as senior product manager. That's what led me into fishing, because when COVID hit, jiu-jitsu was basically shut down and Massachusetts was locked down hard. My wife and I decided to move back to Florida, to Port St. Lucie where her family was from, and once we got there I couldn't train jiu-jitsu for about six months, so I was fishing every single day. My wife encouraged me to start an Instagram since I was already so into social media professionally, and I posted from the Cape Cod Canal before we moved — which is why some people online call me a Nor'easter, even though I was born and raised in Florida and only lived up north for a stretch. The account started getting traction, and when Instagram introduced Reels to compete with TikTok, my wife pushed me to start posting videos instead of just watching myself on playback. The reels started getting 10,000 to 15,000 views right away, and On The Water magazine reached out, which led to writing articles for them, then Saltwater Sportsman, who now supplies the boat in my driveway. By the time I moved back to Florida I already had about 20,000 followers, and I kept doing what I'd always done — snook fishing — and it became AbenzFishing. Everything grew from what I'd learned working in Massachusetts and running my own jiu-jitsu business.

These days I'm one of the few creators who can monetize in a lot of different ways — I have my own website, I make my own lures, and to this day it's still technically a side hustle. I fish two or three days a week, four-hour trips, maybe eight to twelve hours total in a week. My best piece of advice to anyone getting into content is to keep a stable job so you're not chasing the dollar and grinding around the clock. At this point I could make a living fishing full time if I downsized my lifestyle, but I don't see a reason to walk away from a great job I enjoy while also having fishing and my wife's dog training business as other income streams. Everything I've learned from fishing — short-form editing, seeing how different companies are run — has actually made me better at my day job, and vice versa.

Finding the Right Partner

Tom: A couple of things I take away from that — for people who've listened to this podcast a lot, we always talk about this entrepreneurial moment where someone jumps from one career to another, and you just perfectly described it. But more importantly, for people who are young and wondering if the person they're with is the right partner — you want one just like Aaron has. His wife pushed him to do what he wanted, supported him, and then challenged him even more. It's like the old saying, behind every good man is a good woman — it's not cliché at all, it's exactly how I feel about my wife.

Aaron: That's great advice. There's so much vanity in the world today. I think the most important thing is her support. She always asks what my favorite characteristic of her is, and I tell her it's her support — that's it. We've been together almost nine years, married five, and to this day she's shocked when I say that, but without it I couldn't do what I'm doing. These days we've started selling our own lures, and we'll pack a hundred orders together at night after the girls are asleep, because she knows I have other jobs too. A true partner is hard to come by, but they're out there, and you'll meet somebody who only makes you better — then you try to reciprocate. My wife was the head dog trainer at one of the biggest Petco locations in the country, and when I saw what they were taking from her paycheck, I built her a website and some ads and told her to go for it. She ended up becoming a super successful independent dog trainer.

The Hot Seat

Tom: Chocolate or vanilla?

Aaron: Chocolate.

Tom: Text or call?

Aaron: Text.

Tom: Jiu-jitsu or fishing?

Aaron: Ugh, that hurt — jiu-jitsu.

Tom: Hunting or training?

Aaron: Training.

Tom: A million now or ten million later?

Aaron: Ten million later.

Tom: Shore or offshore?

Aaron: Inshore.

Tom: Coffee or energy drink?

Aaron: Coffee.

Tom: This one's from my daughter — chihuahua or hairless cat?

Aaron: Chihuahua, we've got three dogs.

Tom: Sunrise or sunset?

Aaron: Sunset.

Tom: Desert or the Arctic?

Aaron: Desert.

Tom: And in the spirit of the Olympics, favorite Olympic sport?

Aaron: Wrestling.

Tom: Least favorite?

Aaron: The one where they scrape the floor.

Tom: That's curling.

Aaron: Curling.

Tom: Least favorite fish to catch?

Aaron: Catfish.

Tom: Freshwater or saltwater?

Aaron: Saltwater.

Tom: Spinner or caster?

Aaron: Spinner.

Tom: What's the worst advice you remember being given?

Aaron: Honestly, just being told I couldn't do something. I've had disagreements with my parents, who are both very close with me and have inspired me to be my best, but when I told them I was dropping out of college to do jiu-jitsu, it wasn't a good reaction. Being told I couldn't do it lit a fire under me.

Tom: So the worst advice is sometimes the best inspiration. What about the best advice you remember being given?

Aaron: Honestly, the thing that changed me most was what I told you at the beginning — my original jiu-jitsu coach making me believe I could do it, saying that people successful at the highest level in any sport almost all have obsessive tendencies. It sounds bad, like don't be a sociopath, but it made me realize what I needed to do to achieve what I wanted. That's not to say life is perfect — my wife and I have had serious arguments, a lot stemming from my obsessive tunnel vision — but that advice was huge.

Tom: I agree about the sociopathic tendencies of high performers — there's not a lot of balance. People ask how you achieve balance in your life, and I say, maybe eventually you can create it, but if you're going to be really good at anything, there's going to be a period where you do basically nothing else. For me it was fishing guiding — 175 days in a row with no days off. That's sociopathic.

Aaron: That's crazy, and that's why you are who you are.

Tom: Is there a book you've liked so much you gave it as a gift?

Aaron: Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink. I gave that as a gift — it's a super easy read, take it at face value, there's no hidden message.

Tom: Love it. We'll end there, man. Aaron, I really enjoyed getting to know you better. I've been following you on Instagram, and I didn't even realize you had a part in BJJ Fanatics — I've followed that account for a long time. Now with the wrestling side, is there going to be more focus there?

Aaron: Yeah, that's another company we own — Fanatic Wrestling, BJJ Fanatics, Dynamic Striking, all built off the original OG BJJ Fanatics. We've made videos with Mike Tyson at this point, all the top-tier wrestlers — it's an awesome place to be, and it's great to see the growth.

Tom: That's so cool. How can everybody follow you and support what you're doing?

Aaron: AbenzFishing on YouTube, AbenzFishing on Instagram, and abenzfishing.com if you want to try some of my spooks and get some merchandise. They work — you can check the Instagram to see it.

Tom: Right on. Alright Aaron, that's it for today. We'll be back next week with another awesome guest just like Aaron — go give him a follow if you're not already following him. We'll see you next week.