Clay Cowart: From Media Professional to YouTube Fishing Fame with Life by the Bow

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 908 with Clay Cowart.

Introducing Clay Cowart of Life by the Bough

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show today. We have a fantastic guest for you today. If you like YouTube and you like fishing on YouTube, you're probably going to know our guest, Life by the Bough. Clay Cowart and his wife, Stephanie, are the hosts of Life by the Bough, and they just had a brand new baby. Lots of changes going on in their life, but the thing that is staying consistent is that they're making great content, and it's available for you right on YouTube at Life by the Bough. Clay joins us for a good conversation about all kinds of things -- how he got started, what he's doing now, what his production looks like, going to The Bahamas, fishing regulations, and on and on. We had a great conversation. I look forward to having Clay back already, and we're just getting started. Here's Clay Cowart from Life by the Bough.

Clay Cowart: I'm Clay Cowart, and you guys are listening to the Tom Rowland Podcast. She's an absolute rock star -- she's letting me get all of my sleep, taking care of the baby. So she's kind of taken a little bit of a step back, but no complaints, getting plenty of it. I'm rocking and rolling the same as ever.

Tom asked about his own kids, and Clay asked how Tom's daughter was doing. Tom explained he has two boys and a girl -- his oldest son is now twenty-six, he has a twenty-four-year-old, and his daughter is twenty. Both boys are all over the place doing all kinds of things: one works with Tom doing sales, and the other works for a company called Moondance that takes high school kids on trips all over the world. He's currently in France, Italy, and Switzerland doing a tour of Mont Blanc, on his third year leading that kind of trip. Last year he was in Alaska. Tom reflected on how fast kids grow up -- it seems like yesterday they were little, and now some are getting married.

Clay agreed it's a little scary how fast time goes, especially now that he has a daughter of his own. His daughter, Keeley, is three months old. Her name isn't a family name -- Clay and Stephanie did a shoot with Sidu a couple of years ago, and one of the marketing team's names was Keeli. They liked how it sounded with Cowart and gravitated toward it.

Tom said he'd been excited to have Clay on because he'd been watching his content, including a recent video where Clay took a bay boat over to The Bahamas. Clay appreciated the compliment and said he was sure they'd get into all of that during the conversation.

Falling in Love with The Bahamas -- and with Video

Clay explained that he tries to get over to The Bahamas as much as possible, partly because the internet loves The Bahamas. Fishing in the Keys is always exciting, but having it in his backyard makes it feel a little more routine, whereas every trip to The Bahamas holds something new -- there's always a surprise, and something inevitably goes wrong. There's also real pressure to deliver because it's expensive to make the trip, but the reward is bigger too: less fishing pressure, easier fishing, and stunning water. For Clay, it's a fisherman's and a videographer's paradise, combining the two things he loves most -- he enjoys the videography just as much as the fishing itself.

Tom asked how Clay got into shooting video. Clay said he's basically done it his whole life -- there's an ongoing family joke about old home videos of his mom yelling at him as a little kid because he'd just sit there rolling tape, back before everything was digital. He got into editing around age ten on Windows Movie Maker, and always had a natural knack for videography and editing. Throughout high school he filmed himself and friends fishing and boating, and even filmed football games at the end of his JV season alongside varsity. When it came time for college, he wasn't interested in much of anything else, and his parents pointed out he'd always been good at film and videography, so he went to school for that. He did his freshman year at Alabama, then transferred to the University of Miami. Once he transferred, it became a rhythm of fishing and being on the boat over the weekends and going to school during the week. Throughout school he started a media company and did various video jobs, including filming weddings, and now he does it full time as a career on his YouTube channel.

Tom mentioned he also went to Alabama and asked what drew Clay there in the first place -- was he a football fan? Clay said no; his family is big into sports, but his dad was always into boating, and the real draw was following his older brother, who went to Alabama. Clay had applied to the University of Florida and didn't get in, but did get into Alabama, so rather than go to a community college like some of his friends who also didn't get into UF, he decided to go to a four-year school and try to better himself. He didn't like it much at Alabama -- he's not a partier or a drinker, so he didn't fit in well, and he missed home and being around the water. He worked hard, got straight A's, and eventually got into Miami, describing the feeling of finally transferring as being "released out of jail." From there it was back to the familiar rhythm of school during the week and fishing on the weekends.

Tom brought up guides like Paul Ross and Richard Black, South Florida and Keys guys who could have started guiding right out of high school but chose to finish college first, and asked what drove Clay's own decision to go to school rather than start working immediately, since it sounds like he could have found plenty of work. Clay said going to college was something his parents pushed him to do, and he's grateful he went, even though he doesn't think it was strictly necessary for what he does now. It taught him responsibility and work ethic, and moving away from home taught him a lot about how things change once you're out on your own. He thinks college likely contributed to guides like that succeeding as fishermen too, since fishing demands full commitment and the right mindset -- without that, it's easy to become unsuccessful. Ultimately, he believes education helps in every avenue of life and never hurts.

Tom shared that both of his boys graduated from Montana State and his daughter is at Auburn, and each had a different experience -- his daughter loves college, but both boys went through a period of questioning whether they needed it. His oldest son did an internship at a startup, saw how things really worked in the business world, and then went back to theoretical business classes that didn't match reality, which was a real struggle for him. Tom tried to help him understand that college is about more than just what's taught in the classroom.

Clay agreed that's true in his opinion, but noted he knows plenty of successful people who never went to college -- it depends on how it meshes with someone's personality. He pointed out that everything he learned about starting his own fishing brand -- sourcing products from China, designing them, hiring people to help design things -- he taught himself, aside from some graphic design fundamentals from school. He learned all of that from the internet, which he finds fascinating: in 2024, more and more people are educating themselves purely through the internet, and it's changing both the economy and society.

AI, Deepfakes, and the Changing Media Landscape

Tom brought up a question he likes to ask guests for a "hot seat" segment later, but raised it early because it fit the conversation: how does Clay think AI is going to change his job or his life, especially given that people are now building successful businesses purely off internet-based, self-directed education?

Clay said he already uses AI in his workflow -- for example, generating some of the elements in his YouTube thumbnails, and sometimes using it to help write voiceovers. One thing he's found, though, is that AI is still really bad at replicating fish, so it has a long way to go on that front. In other niches, he thinks content could eventually be produced almost entirely by AI, though he doesn't think it will ever fully replicate something like a real movie -- he used the example of trying to imagine AI producing an entire Adam Sandler movie, though he allowed that it might get there eventually.

Tom brought up the show Outer Range, noting that it's filmed with the Tetons composited in via CGI even though it was actually shot in New Mexico -- despite having started his own career in Jackson, Wyoming, where the Tetons are unmistakable, Tom said the effect was so well done, with realistic rack focus and depth, that it looked like they were really shooting there.

Clay pointed to Avatar as another example of how unbelievable that kind of visual effects work has become, and said it's something that worries him now that he has a daughter -- he wants her to always know what reality is. He mentioned that Instagram has started labeling certain AI-generated photos, including some of his own, and thinks the industry is reaching a point where this kind of content needs to be regulated because it's becoming too believable.

Tom agreed, noting that a slightly exaggerated fish photo is small potatoes compared to a fabricated video of a world leader saying something they never said -- that's where it gets genuinely scary, since a single person with a computer could spark a real crisis by putting convincing fake content on the internet.

Clay agreed and said he questions everything he sees on social media now, though not everyone does. He compared it to how drones were incredible when they first came out until people misused them and flying got restricted in places like Everglades National Park -- he expects something similar will eventually happen with unregulated AI content online, because people are more disconnected from reality than ever and some type of regulation will likely be needed to prevent real damage.

Tom talked about the echo-chamber effect on social media, comparing it to the old days of flipping between CNN and Fox and getting two very different versions of the same event, with the truth probably somewhere in the middle. Now, he said, people get served the same narrative over and over on social media until it feels like everyone believes it. He then suggested moving on to fishing -- and to a quick hot-seat round.

The Hot Seat

Text or call? Call. Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate. Inshore or offshore? Offshore. Fly or drive? Fly. Favorite athlete of all time? Sean Taylor. Destination you'd like to visit for fishing? Louisiana. Three baby names you considered but decided against? Clay said they never really got that far -- they just picked Keeley and went with it. A movie that makes you laugh? Talladega Nights, always a go-to. Most productive time of day? Morning. One thing you've changed your mind on in the last few years? Business. Best piece of advice you remember being given? Trust your gut. Standard order at a coffee shop? Black coffee. Favorite cheat meal? A good hamburger and some Dairy Queen. Catch of a lifetime? Clay said the most memorable catch was a swordfish he and Stephanie caught together on the show, about two and a half years ago -- since swordfish in the Keys are something of a holy grail, going out and catching one themselves was a huge challenge and a great feeling, and swordfish happens to taste amazing too.

The Rise of Daytime Swordfishing

Tom asked if Clay had ever tried swordfishing at night. Clay said no -- he's not a big fan of being on a boat at night. Tom said he felt the same way. He recalled that night swordfishing used to be the only way it was done, a huge production involving a seven- or eight-foot light lowered into the water on batteries. He went out once during tarpon season with his friend Kenny Harris, who insisted he had to see it -- the star show out there was unbelievable, worth the price of admission on its own, but since Tom was already fishing hard every day and getting up at 4 a.m. for tarpon, that single overnight trip took him two full weeks to recover from, and they didn't even catch anything. That experience made him appreciate all the more when daytime swordfishing became viable, since it turned out you didn't need to go out in the middle of the night to catch them.

Clay asked when daytime swordfishing really started catching on. Tom credited Scott Walker with a lot of the early pioneering work on it in the Keys -- Walker was one of the first to really dial in a workable daytime rig, since if the rig tangled on the way down, the drop was ruined. Tom recalled filming an early episode of Saltwater Experience with Walker and catching a swordfish on the very first drop, which he described as one of the most amazing things he'd ever seen. He noted the show has been on the air for twenty years now, so that early swordfishing episode dates back quite a while. Walker told Tom he'd gone through barrels full of failed rigs before landing on one that wouldn't tangle -- experimenting with everything from hook choice to how to get the bait down without it twisting, since a tangled rig meant no bite even if you were in the right spot.

Clay said he has a lot of respect for anglers like that -- today you can search up almost any fishing technique on YouTube and learn it quickly, but back then figuring out how to catch a fish in fifteen hundred feet of water took enormous amounts of time and money. He said it's mind-blowing to think about the amount of trial and error that went into it. He mentioned that some of the very videos Tom's shows produced actually taught him how to swordfish -- he remembered watching Scott Walker explain a swordfish rig on a Beastmaster reel, which Clay happened to own at the time, and trying it himself. He recalled the drag being so loose that the motor essentially destroyed itself as they cranked on it.

Clay then told a story about another trip where he and his crew caught a thresher shark. Tom was impressed, noting he'd never caught one himself and considers it a serious fish. Clay said the shark's tail wasn't thrashing like it does when hunting because it was already worn out by the fight -- they'd just hired a new videographer from Colorado who wasn't very familiar with the ocean and wanted to get in the water with the shark to film it, not realizing how powerful its tail really was.

Tom said the fish he'd never want to swim with is a swordfish -- he recalled a diver on one of his shoots who was attacked by one. The fish's eye tracked toward the diver before it charged straight at him; the diver was holding a scooter-style device with a camera mounted on it in front of him, which is apparently sometimes used as protection against exactly that kind of attack. If he hadn't had it, Tom said, the bill would have gone straight through him -- as it was, the bill punched six inches into the hard plastic and snapped off, which Tom said he and Clay probably couldn't do even swinging a sledgehammer.

Clay agreed swordfish are incredibly powerful and, in his experience, the most aggressive fish he's dealt with -- more so than marlin, which he imagines can also be dangerous to be in the water with. He added that swordfish will also tear up a boat if they're not dead when brought aboard; he recalled the first one he and Stephanie caught, which was basically dead, but its bill still sliced clean through a boat cushion with no real force behind it. Clay said the growing popularity of swordfishing in the Keys does worry him a little, and more broadly he worries about fishing pressure across all fisheries, since fishing is more popular now than it has ever been.

Fishing Pressure and Regulations

Tom brought up that they'd talked about touching on fishing regulations, noting it's a timely topic given how much more popular fishing has become. He acknowledged that older generations always say fishing isn't as good as it used to be, and that some things have genuinely changed, though in other cases -- like snook fishing right now -- it's better than ever, so there are natural ebbs and flows. He asked for Clay's thoughts on regulations, especially as they relate to The Bahamas.

Clay said he wouldn't necessarily call for stricter regulations, but thinks some people need to be more conscious of their impact. He acknowledged he's spoiled -- he can go fishing whenever he wants -- whereas some people only get out once every six months and understandably want to bring home as much as they can for the freezer, which he's fine with. What concerns him more is seeing experienced anglers running big center consoles over to The Bahamas frequently, catching far more than they need, especially during runs of yellowfin tuna and wahoo. His own approach is to disperse his catch across species rather than focus on just one -- a couple of yellowfin, a couple of wahoo, maybe some lobster -- which is what he tries to do on every Bahamas and fishing trip. He said he knows for a fact that a lot of the fish being caught aren't all being eaten -- much of it goes into freezers, and he's seen careless filleting that leaves meat on the carcass simply because there's so much of it. He hopes he's wrong and that the fisheries are as strong as ever, acknowledging it might be his own bias since he doesn't enjoy filleting large quantities of fish.

Tom said he's seen real changes over the years, mostly in the form of shifting patterns rather than outright decline. He described how bonefishing in Islamorada used to be extraordinary when he first arrived in the Keys, with world records coming from the area and massive bonefish visible right off Shell Key, even if you didn't know what you were doing. A cold front, in his view, hit those fish hard, and for a long time they were scarce before eventually coming back strong. Meanwhile, when he started guiding in Key West, there were very few bonefish there -- what few existed around Big Pine, the Contentment Keys, and Sugarloaf tended to be small -- but that fishery is now excellent and the fish are getting bigger. Similarly, permit used to be rare around Islamorada, possibly because heavy bonefish pressure pushed anglers toward the flats where bonefish were, while permit sat further back. When Tom first started fishing with his friend Rich, Rich had little permit experience but a lot of bonefish knowledge, while Tom was confident in permit from fishing Key West, and the two of them shared knowledge and learned from each other -- Rich learning bonefish, Tom learning to appreciate what Rich knew. Tom doesn't think these shifts are necessarily about fishing pressure or netting, but rather natural cycles: a cold front hit Islamorada's bonefish hard, a surge of bonefish showed up in Key West, and permit numbers seem to move around similarly. He's also seen big regional shifts with redfish throughout the Lower Keys, with strong years followed by tougher ones, and though he doesn't know if the fish move or die off, he suspects they move. Tarpon fishing, he said, has genuinely declined compared to twenty years ago, even though some anglers still have huge days -- anglers, flies, and technique have all improved, which helps mask some of that decline. When he first started, everybody was hooking tarpon, even without expert casting -- now there's clearly more pressure on the fish. He also pointed to the sheer growth in the number of boats: when he first started guiding, only guides had true poling skiffs, and if you saw one on the water it was almost certainly a guide; today lots of people own skiffs without guiding for a living.

Clay agreed that boating and fishing in general have grown tremendously in popularity, which he attributes partly to people wanting to escape city life and traffic -- everyone ultimately gets on the water for the same reasons, the love of being out there and the serenity it offers. He speculated that it could be some combination of all of the above -- fish moving, ebbs and flows, and possibly more boat traffic in areas like Islamorada versus harder-to-navigate water in the Lower Keys, where fish might feel safer in tucked-away flats and bays compared to Islamorada, where boats run close overhead on the way to the sandbars.

Fish Behavior, Boat Traffic, and Filming Challenges

Tom said he isn't sure boat traffic itself is always the deciding factor. He described how filming a fishing show sometimes forces you to approach fish differently than you would if you were just fishing for yourself -- camera crews often need to shoot with the sun in a certain direction, meaning what looks like an impossible approach, circling all the way around a school of fish that you'd normally only get one quick cast at, can actually work if you move slowly and patiently. He said the show has had to forcibly learn a lot about fish behavior because of those camera-driven constraints, and that sometimes if a boat runs right through what you're fishing, the fish can come right back and be catchable again twenty-five minutes later.

Clay shared a story about being in Chub Cay with Stephanie during a different trip, hunting all day for tailing bonefish on their Pathfinder. He described himself as roughly five percent inshore and ninety-five percent offshore, but he enjoys challenging himself with different types of fishing -- he actually grew up inshore fishing on a little fifteen-foot skiff he called his "ugly boat," similar to a canoe, which was his first real freedom to fish on his own since his dad's older thirty-foot Scarab was never trusted offshore and always had something wrong with it. On this particular day, he and Stephanie finally found a school of around a hundred tailing bonefish and got excited, when a Bahamian man in his own boat began running close to the fish. Clay tried waving him off, but the man mistook it for a request for help and instead ran directly toward them, right over the school of bonefish. Clay explained he didn't need help and had been waving him away because of the fish, to which the man replied, in his Bahamian accent, not to worry -- they'd come right back up. Sure enough, after the man pulled away and they waited a few minutes on the trolling motor, the bonefish rose back up, and both Clay and Stephanie immediately hooked one on shrimp -- suggesting that sometimes boat traffic isn't necessarily the deciding factor, and fish can get accustomed to it.

Tom agreed he's experienced the same thing -- someone thinking a wave means they need help, when really it's best to just let a boat run through and keep going rather than have it slow down and idle, which spooks fish far longer. Clay added that with something like a trolling motor, a consistent tone doesn't seem to bother fish nearly as much as a change in tone -- fish seem to dislike change more than steady, predictable sound. He mentioned a particular creek he wouldn't name on the podcast where boats blow in and out constantly, and where he once caught around eight tarpon in an hour while live-chumming with pilchards, boats running full speed by the whole time.

Tom noted that running a boat through a channel that almost never sees traffic has a much bigger spooking effect than one that's used to it, and that sometimes the best move, rather than getting frustrated and leaving, is to sit down, eat a sandwich, and wait -- often the bite picks back up. He admitted he doesn't always know what the "right" answer is; on a tournament day, if you need one fish to win and someone runs through, that's usually the end of it, but on a day when you don't really need anything and you're about to head in anyway, the fish often start biting like crazy right afterward.

Attitude, Confidence, and What Makes a Good Fisherman

Clay said that observation raises a good question -- how much does attitude have to do with success in fishing? Tom said he believes attitude is the vast majority of success in anything -- he even has a T-shirt that says "mindset is everything." He's thought a lot about how confidence in a fly, lure, or bait affects whether you stick with it or move on too quickly, and he isn't sure whether it's the confidence itself that produces results or the willingness to stick it out that confidence enables -- either way, having an optimistic attitude, believing you're always one cast away from a bite, makes the whole experience far more enjoyable than assuming it isn't going to happen and being pleasantly surprised.

Clay agreed it's both -- you need the optimistic attitude and the discipline to stick it out. He said he didn't really get serious about fishing until he and Stephanie started Life by the Bough; growing up, his dad would take him mahi fishing every couple of years, trolling seaweed behind some fifty-pound tackle more often than not, or take him into the mangroves to catch mangrove snapper, since his dad was more of a sandbar guy. Clay said that whatever he gets into, he takes very seriously, so once he started the show he told himself he had to actually learn how to fish, and that process involved plenty of trial and error. One thing he learned early on is that everything is far harder with a bad attitude, which he said applies across every walk of life -- alongside a good attitude, being logical about conditions, like whether there's current and what kind, matters enormously. Ultimately, he said, an optimistic attitude combined with time on the water is what turns a fisherman into a good fisherman.

Tom agreed it's easy in fishing to feel like the conditions are against you, and that a negative attitude makes it easy to give up early, whereas the best fishermen tend to be eternally optimistic -- almost like Ted Lasso, always believing the fish are right around the corner because they've seen it happen so many times before. He said that's the kind of person who makes a great fishing partner, someone who wants to see what's around the next corner. He described how the most rewarding part of guiding, or of loving fishing in general, is that craving to learn just one small thing that unlocks an entire new world of opportunity -- like learning how short the crossing to The Bahamas really is in a bay boat, and suddenly a whole new range of possibilities opens up. He said that kind of discovery is the most exciting part of a life on the water, and it only has to happen once before you're completely hooked, unable to stop wondering what else might be out there.

Clay agreed that as a fisherman you genuinely have to enjoy challenges, or you're doing the wrong thing. He reflected on how, even with everything going on in his life -- fatherhood, time management -- he still wishes he had more time simply to be out on the water fishing and exploring, since so much of his time now goes into editing, preparation, gear maintenance, and talking to sponsors. He noted the added complexity of fishing while also producing a show -- you can't always shoot into the sun, for instance, which changes how you approach a fish compared to just fishing for yourself. He gave an example of shooting with Justin Lewis in a bay boat, a great guy who moves at a hundred miles an hour wanting to catch fish immediately, while Clay has to balance that against the practical needs of filming.

Producing the Show and Growing on YouTube

Tom asked how many people are typically in Clay's crew when filming. Clay said it's usually just one videographer, though he stays heavily involved himself, jumping in to fly the drone or shoot additional footage whenever he can because he genuinely enjoys it. He said he'd like to eventually build a full crew, and has tried working with a camera boat and additional crew before, but found it slows things down significantly -- everyone has to be perfectly coordinated, and a camera boat operator often doesn't know exactly where to be. For now, he's comfortable keeping expenses low as long as the storytelling and production quality hold up, though he'd love to eventually find a group of guys who get it and can handle long days in the sun on a boat.

Tom said finding people like that is genuinely difficult, especially once you go offshore -- plenty of people can handle inshore work, but a lot of otherwise great, creative people get seasick offshore and it just doesn't work out.

Tom then asked about the challenges Clay has faced or is still working through specifically in the YouTube space. Clay said YouTube is a roller coaster that plays with your emotions -- some periods are great, others rough. He said the biggest early challenge was understanding the platform and audience: viewership spikes in the summer when people are out on the water, then drops sharply in the fall, which used to cause real panic before he understood the seasonality of it, followed by a rebound through winter with snowbirds and back up through spring into the next summer peak. His second major challenge has been understanding what the audience actually wants, since building a connection with viewers is very different from television -- when things are tough out on the water and he's still trying to stay upbeat on camera, some viewers see through it and leave critical comments not realizing the pressure involved in producing the content. He said his biggest current challenge is selling sponsors on YouTube as a legitimate platform -- not that he has it all figured out, but he's made real progress, because he knows firsthand how valuable and lucrative it can be, in part because YouTube content never disappears. He gave an example of videos he produced three years ago still generating a hundred thousand views a year later, and said his ongoing effort is helping brands understand that YouTube isn't just a platform for kids on iPads.

Tom agreed that some sponsors have been slow to embrace YouTube, though not all -- he said Clay seems to be doing as well as anyone he's seen on the platform when it comes to sponsorships, and complimented the quality of his content overall. Clay said he appreciates that and credited Tom's shows as a genuine inspiration -- he remembered his dinner-time ritual in his dorm room at Alabama, watching Saltwater Experience, Into the Blue, and Addictive Fishing on his laptop, which felt like a piece of home and motivation to get back to the Keys. Tom said it wasn't that long ago he was doing the same thing himself, watching Flip Pallot, Bill Dance, and Roland Martin and thinking that's exactly what he wanted to do -- it's hard to imagine a dream like that actually coming true, but it did for both of them, and he sees YouTube as an incredible platform because it lets people pursue almost any passion, no matter how niche, and actually build a livelihood around it in a way that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago.

Clay agreed and pointed out that early on, he wasn't satisfied unless a video hit ten thousand views, then fifty thousand, and now he's not happy unless he hits a hundred thousand -- there's always a push to do more. But he tells people starting their own YouTube channels that the actual view count matters less than the community you build. What he and Stephanie have built, in the fishing niche, centered in the Florida Keys and The Bahamas, functions like a real community -- he compared it to his wife's real estate career, where even with only modest viewership, it only takes one viewer out of a thousand to buy a multimillion-dollar house. The same principle applies to any niche: it doesn't matter what the specific viewership number is as long as you're building traction and using the platform toward whatever your larger goal is. He mentioned he's even thought about eventually moving into boat sales, since he loves boats and could leverage the community he's built to sell them, though he doesn't see YouTube as a sole source of income -- he believes every creator should build revenue streams around their channel that they could exit to if needed, which has always been part of his mindset with his own product brand, not because he wants to exit, but because it's good to have that fallback.

Commitment, Quality Over Quantity, and Final Advice

Tom said you never think you want a fallback plan until you actually need one -- when he was guiding, he never thought of it that way. He shared one of the best pieces of advice he ever received, from a friend who probably doesn't even remember saying it: whatever you're doing, do it as if it's the only thing you'll ever do for the rest of your life, and put everything into it as if there's nothing else in the world. He said that mindset shift -- rather than telling yourself you'll just try something for a couple more years -- changes the entire way you approach a business or a craft, pushing you to be a little better than you were yesterday rather than just waiting to see what happens.

Clay called it fantastic advice, and said he thinks that if more people lived and worked with that mentality, it would take them much further. He observed that especially living in the Keys, relatively few people have the mindset to fully commit regardless of whether things are working, and even fewer can separate genuine passion from simply going through the motions. He said he's had to learn that lesson himself -- early on, he used to pour huge amounts of money into producing content without much of a plan, whereas now he makes sure every shoot has an accommodations sponsor and a fuel sponsor lined up in advance so expenses are covered rather than dipping into savings. He said a lot of people in media right now, not just in fishing, chase quantity over quality, cranking out as much content as possible rather than working smarter -- but treating one project like your baby and putting everything into it takes you much further than spreading yourself thin across constant output.

Tom agreed that's excellent advice, and Clay thanked him, saying he'd enjoyed the conversation and would love to have him back on. Tom asked how people can watch Clay's show and follow him. Clay said it's simple -- search "Life by the Bough" on YouTube or Google, and find him on Instagram at cowart_media. Tom thanked him, congratulated him on the new addition to the family, and said he hoped Stephanie was feeling good and would be back on the show soon -- meaning two new people would eventually be joining the show, since the baby has already appeared on a couple of episodes. Clay confirmed Stephanie would actually be returning for the next episode they post, filmed at a Bahamas tournament where she won heaviest mahi and brought home a seventeen-pound yellowfin tuna -- nothing huge, but a fun tournament that's been running since 2020. Clay said he isn't normally a tournament fisherman since he takes competition too seriously, but he enjoyed this one with a good group of guys -- and a girl -- on the boat. Tom signed off, saying they'd do it again soon and would be watching the show, thanking Clay and promising another guest next week.