What You Can Expect From Salt Strong in 2018 [State Of The Union]

Back in my prior career (in the financial services industry), I used to love delivering my “State of the Union” address where I discussed where our company was going, where I believed the industry was heading, the exciting new opportunities that lay ahead, any roadblocks to be aware of, and how we could serve more people.

So after hearing from a few of our Insider members who asked me what BIG things we had in store for them this year, I decided to start doing a Salt Strong State Of The Union to share we have coming on the horizon.

Below, we’ll cover the FIVE BIG THINGS we are concentrating on to help you catch more fish in 2018.

And yes, you might notice a trend in all of these strategies below…

A deliberate focus on creating as many THRILLED Salt Strong customers (aka Salt Strong family members) as possible.

For those of you who have already entrusted us and invested your hard-earned money into our fishing club and/or fishing courses, know that we have some REALLY EXCITING things coming for you.

And for those of you who haven’t taken us up on our risk-free offers to become more consistent fishermen, we’ll be working hard at earning your trust.

In no particular order, here is what you can expect from Salt Strong over the next 12 months.

1. More Professional Online Fishing Coaches Joining Salt Strong

If you didn’t already know, Capt. C.A. Richardson, the host of Flats Class TV, officially joined us here at Salt Strong as our first “professional online fishing coach” a few days before Thanksgiving.

He already released his much anticipated “Trout Mastery Course” (you can learn more about it here if you missed the initial launch), and we’ve got three more courses in the works with CA.

And we are just getting started…

In fact, over the next two months, you will hear about two other professional fishermen who have agreed to join the Salt Strong team as online fishing coaches…

I can’t tell you their names just yet, but here are their specific areas of expertise:

• Live bait expert
• Offshore/nearshore expert

These next two pro fishing coaches who are coming on board will have the following roles with Salt Strong:

1. Create new (exclusive) fishing tips for Salt Strong Insiders only (none of the tips these pros do with us will be public – so you won’t see them on YouTube or anywhere else but the Insider Fishing Club for that matter)
2. Create new online fishing courses exclusive for our Salt Strong audience

Which brings me to my next two points…

2. Many MORE Online…

I can barely believe it, but our very first online fishing course, “The Inshore Slammer,” is almost two and a half years old now!

And the crazy part is the amount of new inshore fishermen seeing their fishing game get transformed from that original course is HIGHER than ever right now!

I can still remember when we first launched the Slammer course and we weren’t quite sure what kind of response we’d get back from it.

We knew the methods worked, but we had never shared these tips with anyone else before…

And then one morning, a guy named Tony Acevedo (one of the very first anglers to invest in The Inshore Slammer online fishing course), sent us this picture with a little note saying he had never caught a single saltwater fish in his life until recently… and that his entire fishing game changed once he took our course.

Not only that, but it was the Inshore Slammer course that helped him land his first slot snook and first redfish ever (see pic below of his first ever redfish).

That was when we knew were we on to something.

Note: Tony went on to catch countless inshore slams, hundreds upon hundreds of nice fish, and is now getting paid to fish full-time as a Salt Strong kayak fishing coach. You can see a sampling of his catches he documented here.

More and more testimonials started coming in (along with requests for more courses), so we continued to work on producing top-notch proven online fishing courses.

This year in 2018, we have 9 new courses planned!

But the real BIG focus is on our Insider family…

3. Focus On The Insider Fishing Club (Aka “The Salt Strong Family”)

The heart and soul of Salt Strong… the Insider club.

At a 30,000 view, our entire 2018 Salt Strong business goal boils down to just 1 thing:

Continue growing the Insider Fishing Club by creating so much value, adding in so many benefits, and making it incredibly affordable for all fishermen who want to their game up a notch.

In short, we want it to be such an over the top good deal that anyone who enjoys saltwater fishing will at least try out the club.

Here’s what we’ve learned over the past two years about fishermen who join the Insider Fishing Club:

• Insiders see the most improvement in their fishing game (multiple members have gone from being weekend warriors to actually winning money in legit fishing tournaments)
• Insiders become more consistent (and more confident) than those who try to figure it all out on their own
• Insiders have more FUN out the water and feel like they belong to a group who gets them

And it’s our Insiders who are at the core of making the Salt Strong movement happen…

So it makes sense that we focus most of the attention on our Insiders.

In fact, in 2018, you will see MUCH LESS public content (like YouTube videos, free blogs, etc) and MUCH MORE paid Insider content (exclusive tips, reviews, tactics from the pros, spot dissections, private fishing reports, etc) rewarding our Insiders even more for investing in their fishing success.

We’ll always have some stuff out there for everyone (because we truly do want to help as many anglers as we can), but our emphasis will be on helping those who support us and are part of our family.

That includes our Salt Strong apparel as well (we actually have an Insider Only store where club members can get awesome discounts on fishing gear).

To learn more about joining the Insider Fishing club, click here now.

4. The Fish Strong Podcast

Many of you might not even know this, but we have a pretty darn good podcast…

In fact, it has some of the best ratings for any of the fishing podcasts out there.

We started it quite some time ago (please SUBSCRIBE here on iTunes if you haven’t already), and quite honestly, we dropped the ball on keeping it going (because we incorrectly believed that no one was listening).

But then something funny happened.

For one, people started reaching out to us saying they were waiting on our next episode.

Lots of people.

One guy, in particular, was a farmer in Iowa who said he listens to us on his tractor while working and he wanted us to bring it back.

Secondly, our download stats kept going up even though we weren’t coming out with new episodes.

Now, we might not be rocket scientists over here, but when people are begging us to keep something going (including farmers on tractors), we answered by making a pledge to bring it back.

Our goal is to record at least two new episodes per month (and many months we’ll get multiple in). As an added bonus, we’ll be filming many of them so you can watch it on YouTube if that’s what you prefer.

Here’s the latest episode on catching trout right after a cold front.

5. Creating More Memories Out On The Water…

Back in 2014, when we left our old jobs to pursue Salt Strong, something very interesting thing happened.

As I called all of my best clients around the country (I had customers is almost every single state) to tell them what I was doing, one by one (as in pretty much every single one of them) told me a fishing story they had experienced in their past.

What’s funny is most of them finished their fishing story with something along the lines of “… what a great memory…”

It took me a while to piece it all together, but once the testimonials from our online fishing courses and our Insider Fishing Club testimonials started coming in, I replayed all of those old conversations and put two and two together…

Yes, we are certainly in the fishing education business, but more importantly, we are in the “creating memories that matter” business.

Because isn’t that what fishing is all about?

Isn’t that why we love it so much?

It’s the memories that can’t be taken away from us.

It’s that time out on the water that we’ll remember for as long as we live… the amazing days, the skunk days, the falling off the boat days, and even the stuck on a sandbar days… they are all great memories.

So that is our final focus for the year… to help create as many amazing memories with our customers as possible.

Conclusion

There have been a lot of changes since we first kicked off Salt Strong back in early 2015.

We’ve changed business models (three times), we’ve changed addresses (four times), and we’ve had countless makeovers to our website and our online community.

But there has been one thing that has been CONSTANT through it all…

It’s our MISSION to help fishermen catch more fish in less time.

And thanks to amazing anglers like you who’ve trusted us, invested in our fishing club/courses, and have shared the good things we are doing with your friends, we’ve been able to make a pretty big impact.

But just know that this it’s only the tip of the iceberg…

Many BIG things to come.

Thank you for the support, the love, and all the great ideas.

This Salt Strong MOVEMENT isn’t possible without YOU.

In your service,

Joe Simonds

Co-founder of Salt Strong