Yesterday's conversation with Joe Simonds — co-founder of Salt Strong, author of Fishing for Happiness, and the guy who walked away from six figures in financial services to teach people how to catch fish — runs the full story of how he built a company around a mission that had no business model. I sat down with Joe at the ICAST show to talk about what drove him to leave the money, how he convinced his wife to take the leap, and why he believes every kid in America should have the chance to go fishing.
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Joe Simonds is the co-founder of Salt Strong, an online saltwater fishing education company that teaches inshore fishing through courses, a private Facebook community of 51,000 members, and weekly content. Before starting Salt Strong, Joe worked in financial services as a wholesaler selling annuities and life insurance. He attended Georgia Tech and is the author of Fishing for Happiness, a book that distills lessons from hundreds of self-help and business books into a practical guide to finding fulfillment.
Joe and his brother Luke were making six figures in financial services but realized they were unfulfilled. During a conference in Chicago, they had a conversation in their hotel room and admitted they did not want to be doing the same work five or fifteen years later. They also struggled with the ethics of the industry, seeing advisers recommend products that benefited their commissions rather than their clients. That realization led them to quit and start Salt Strong.
Salt Strong is an online saltwater fishing education company focused on inshore fishing. It offers fishing courses taught by professional guides like CA Richardson, Peter Miller, and Dylan Hubbard, as well as a weekly fishing club that shares new spots, trends, and techniques. Salt Strong also runs a private Facebook group called the Salt Strong Fishing Tribe with over 51,000 members. The company's mission is to help people create fishing memories and get more kids outdoors.
The Salt Strong Fishing Tribe is a private Facebook group with over 51,000 members. It is one of the only family-friendly fishing communities online with a strict no-cursing policy. Joe and Luke created the group because they saw too much negativity, inappropriate content, and keyboard policing in other fishing groups. Members are removed immediately if they violate the rules. The group has become a core part of Salt Strong's community.
Salt Strong courses range from around 47 dollars for introductory topics like wade fishing to 200 dollars for advanced courses like trolling and kite fishing with professional guides such as Peter Miller. The courses condense hours of scattered YouTube content into organized, step-by-step instruction designed to get anglers from beginner to consistent faster. Salt Strong offers a money-back guarantee, and less than 1 percent of customers request refunds.
Fishing for Happiness is Joe Simonds' book that summarizes key lessons from over 300 self-help, business, and personal development books he read while searching for fulfillment. The book covers topics like finding your mission, overcoming discontent, and designing your ideal life. Joe wrote it to share what he learned during his transition from financial services to building Salt Strong. The book is used by book clubs and anglers looking for practical advice on happiness and purpose.
Joe and his wife Lauren each completed a 16-question questionnaire that asked them to describe their ideal life in detail — including their dream home, daily routine, who they wanted to spend time with, and what kind of work they wanted to do. When they compared answers, they realized their answers were very similar to each other but drastically different from the life they were actually living. That exercise gave them the clarity and confidence to make the leap together.
I have always had a great amount of respect for what Joe and his brother Luke are doing with Salt Strong. When I first met Joe a few years ago at ICAST, he and Luke had just left stable, high-paying careers in financial services to start a fishing company with no clear business model. A lot of people in the industry saw them as competition or dismissed them as naive. I did not. I saw two guys who were genuinely trying to help people catch more fish and have better experiences on the water, and I wanted to help however I could.
The other reason Joe mattered to me on a personal level is that his story is one I think a lot of people need to hear. He was not broke. He was not desperate. He was making six figures, living in a big house on a golf course, and checking every box society tells you to check. But he was unfulfilled. And instead of resigning himself to decades of discontent, he and his brother made a conscious decision to walk away and build something that aligned with their values. That takes courage, and it takes clarity about what actually matters.
I also wanted to talk to Joe about his book, Fishing for Happiness. I have read hundreds of the same self-help and business books Joe references in that book, and I thought he did an outstanding job distilling the core lessons into something practical and actionable. We used it in our book club, and the response was strong. Joe is not just a guy who built a successful fishing company. He is someone who thought deeply about why he was unhappy, did the work to figure out what would actually make him happy, and then executed on it. That is worth hearing in his own words.
I have wondered for years what the actual breaking point looks like when someone decides to walk away from a career that is working. Joe told me about the night he and his brother Luke were sharing a hotel room at a financial services conference in Chicago. They were wholesalers selling annuities and life insurance, making good money, traveling, and building momentum. But they were also miserable.
Joe said they realized they hated about half of their customers. Not disliked. Hated. Because the financial services industry attracts a lot of greed, and they were watching advisers recommend products that padded their own pockets instead of helping their clients. Joe and Luke were in the middle of that system, and they could see the whole picture. They knew what clients actually needed, and they knew what advisers were actually selling, and the two did not always line up.
But the real moment came when they asked themselves a simple question: Do we want to be doing this five years from now? Fifteen years from now? The answer was no. And if the answer was no, why keep going down the same path hoping something would magically change? That conversation led to the decision to quit, sell everything, and start Salt Strong. The way Joe tells the story — the doubt, the clarity, the speed with which they moved once they made the decision — is the part that stuck with me from this episode. You have to hear him say it.
Joe got a set of 16 questions from a buddy named Jason Wink. The exercise is simple: write down your dream life in detail, assuming there are no limitations. What does your house look like? How many bedrooms? Is it on the water? What time do you wake up? Who do you have breakfast with? How long do you work? Are you traveling? The goal is to create a blueprint of your perfect life, not a vague wish list.
Joe went down to his basement. His wife Lauren stayed upstairs. They each filled out the questionnaire separately. Joe finished first and was sweating it, hoping their answers would line up. When they compared notes, their answers were very similar. Not identical, but close enough that they both saw the same future. The problem was that the life they described on paper looked nothing like the life they were actually living.
That realization was the second breaking point. They gave themselves a timeline — twelve or eighteen months, Joe does not remember which — and then cut it in half. They decided there was never going to be a perfect time to make the leap, so they might as well do it now. The way Joe describes that moment, and what Lauren said to him after he came home discouraged from pitching TV stations, is worth hearing in his own voice. Listen to that section in the episode.
Salt Strong started with free content. Joe and Luke filmed knot-tying videos and posted them on YouTube and their blog. They tested knot strengths against each other using small pulleys and shared the results. People responded. The audience grew. But six months in, they had not made a single dollar, and they had a third kid on the way.
Someone suggested they sell apparel. People liked the logo, so Joe and Luke launched a line of shirts and hats. Within a year, they were doing 50 to 60 thousand dollars a month in apparel sales. That paid a lot of bills. But it also turned Salt Strong into an apparel company. They were managing inventory, hiring customer service employees, and spending all their time on logistics instead of fishing or teaching. They went back to the why — the mission they started with — and realized they were off track.
So they made one of the hardest decisions of their lives. They cut the apparel business overnight. Gave customers thirty days to buy remaining inventory, then shut it down. They lost 55 thousand dollars a month in revenue and had to let employees go. But underneath the apparel business, their online courses and fishing club were starting to grow. Joe and Luke bet everything on that side of the business, got back to low overhead, and rebuilt the company the right way. Joe tells the story better than I can summarize it here. The fear, the risk, the way it worked out — it is all in the episode.
Joe's brother Luke did not want to start a Facebook group. Luke is anti-social media and only uses Facebook because the business requires it. But Joe saw a problem in the fishing world. Every fishing group on Facebook was full of negativity, cursing, keyboard warriors, and inappropriate content. Joe wanted to create the first family-friendly fishing community where you could scroll without worrying about your boss or your kids seeing something embarrassing.
So they launched the Salt Strong Fishing Tribe with one rule: no cursing. Not a warning. Not a three-strike policy. If you curse, you are removed immediately. People thought they were crazy. Some of the people Joe and Luke kicked out went to other fishing groups and complained publicly, calling them Bible beaters and worse. But that negativity had an unexpected effect. People in those other groups saw the complaints and thought, "Wait, there is a fishing group where I do not have to deal with this garbage?" and they joined.
The group started with a thousand members. Joe and Luke high-fived when they hit that milestone. Today it has over 51,000 members, and it is one of the most engaged fishing communities online. The no-cursing rule worked because it created a space where people could actually learn and share without the toxicity that dominates most online fishing forums. Joe tells the story with more detail in the episode, including how the group became the backbone of their business.
I asked Joe about the ethics of hiring a guide and learning their spots. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it, and the difference matters. The wrong way is what Joe calls low down and dirty: hiding a GPS in your bag, tracking the guide's movements, and then going back to those spots without permission. I have had clients try that on me, and it kills the relationship instantly.
The right way is to be honest. Tell the guide you just moved to the area, you bought a boat, and you are trying to learn your way around. Ask if they can help. Most guides — not all, but most — will be happy to take you to public spots and teach you the trends so you can find your own places. The key word is trends. A good guide will teach you how to read water, understand tides, locate bait, and predict where fish will be. That knowledge is more valuable than a single GPS mark because it scales to every body of water you fish.
Joe uses that approach with the pros he works with at Salt Strong. He does not ask CA Richardson or Peter Miller to film in their best spots. He asks them to take him to a good public spot, fly a drone overhead, and explain why it works. Then they find a similar spot in a different state and show how the same principles apply. That way, the guide protects their business, and the audience learns how to fish, not just where to fish. The full conversation about this is in the episode, and it is one of the most important parts.
Joe Simonds is one of the happiest people I know. Every time I see him, he has a smile on his face. He radiates positivity, and it is contagious. But that was not always the case. A few years ago, Joe was unfulfilled, overweight, drinking too much, and going through the motions in a career that paid well but left him empty. He made a conscious decision to change that, and the result is Salt Strong, a company that is helping tens of thousands of people catch more fish and create better memories on the water.
The lesson I take from Joe's story is this: if you are unhappy, it is not too late to change it. You do not have to wait for the perfect time. You do not have to have all the answers. You just have to have a clear why, the courage to take the first step, and the willingness to fail forward. Joe and Luke did not have a business plan when they started Salt Strong. They just knew they wanted to teach people how to fish and help kids get outdoors. Everything else came from listening, pivoting, and staying true to that mission.
I am grateful Joe sat down with me for this one. The article gives you the topics. Joe gives you the energy, the laughs, and the way he talks about his wife and his brother and the moment he realized every person he called had a fishing story. None of that translates to text.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio.
Luke Simonds · Lauren Simonds · Jason Wink · CA Richardson · Peter Miller · Dylan Hubbard · Daniel Andrews · Chris Whitman · Phil Knight · Walt Disney · Peter Deeks
Joe Simonds is the co-founder of Salt Strong, an online saltwater fishing education company that teaches inshore fishing through courses, a fishing club, and a private Facebook community of over 51,000 members. Before starting Salt Strong, Joe worked in financial services as a wholesaler selling annuities and life insurance. He is a graduate of Georgia Tech and the author of Fishing for Happiness, a book that distills lessons from hundreds of self-help and business books into a practical guide to finding purpose and fulfillment. Joe is based in Florida.
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