Latest / WTF to Unstuck™ with Clint Williams / Passion Fuels Resilience with Ben Johnson
Transcript
- speaker-0: Today I have the pleasure of chatting with my friend Ben Johnson. He is a kick-ass designer and founder of Good Drift, which provides marketing for fly fishing businesses without all of the hassle. He is down in Austin, and I am super excited to talk with him today. Ben, welcome to the coffee chat. speaker-1: Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. It's been probably a year since we spoke last. I'm so happy you agreed to to hop on with me this morning. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, no problem. It'll be fun to have a conversation. speaker-0: For sure. Okay, I'm gonna get right into it because you got these questions earlier and the format is you know five or six minutes. So I would love to know what is your ⁓ favorite aspect of owning your own business? speaker-1: Yeah. There's probably a lot of different things that I really enjoy. But the favorite my favorite aspect of owning my own business is getting to work with clients that I like to work with. It doesn't always happen and people don't always turn out to be as joyful as you might want them to be. But ⁓ with a fly fishing marketing business, I get to work with fly fishing brands that are doing the things that I love to do. We get to talk about fishing, we get to talk about how to grow their businesses. ⁓ They're passionate about the same things and ⁓ it makes the work a whole lot easier. It ⁓ it makes it a lot more fun. speaker-0: Man, that's awesome. So fly fishing, how long have you been a fly fisherman? speaker-1: Fly fishing for probably six to seven years at this point. Okay. speaker-0: That's amazing. ⁓ fun to be able to turn your passion into something you can actually do for work. speaker-1: Yeah, it's it's a lot of fun. I mean, it makes it a lot easier to do the work. It makes it ⁓ enjoyable to kinda write content or talk with other people. It's not something that I wake up just dreading to go do. speaker-0: Yeah, that's fantastic. I'm curious what has been the driving factor for you that keeps you going through the hard parts? Because you know, entrepreneurship it's a big it's a big roller coaster. Highs are really high and the lows feel like they're just underwater. speaker-1: Yeah, for sure. ⁓ yeah, I the last few months even, I've gone through a lot of ups and downs. This last year I had some successes that were surprising and I was really thankful and and blessed to kinda have them come my way. But then in the past few weeks, past few months, I've run into some situations with some clients and some projects and ⁓ just they didn't go the way I had anticipated them going. And so I even found myself guessing and second guessing myself of like, do I Do I know what I'm doing? Am I cut out for this? Do I have it all wrong? Is this worth it? And ⁓ I probably ask myself those questions every day, anyways, when even when things are good. But ⁓ for for this particular season, I I felt convicted and I felt like I did kind of have enough of an idea of where I should go that I wanted to keep going and keep trying. And that that was the motivation that I needed, but To sit down and to get some ideas out of my head and to write them down on a piece of paper and to really start to problem solve and to try to think of a different solution. I was okay with just having this this idea or this new strategy that I wanted to develop being a test. Like if it all crashed and failed, that was okay. It was going to be a test to see if this new idea would work. And so the thing that motivates me through the hard parts is is the motivation of doing the work with the people that I like that I like working with. ⁓ but it's fun to see it. kind of all come to fruition and and to see the successful systems kind of come together. And I got to test some of those new systems with a with a pr prospective client ⁓ a couple of days ago and it went really well. And I'm I'm just excited to see how it might all come together over the next couple of months. speaker-0: Man, that is fantastic. I and and you find that you get you get energized when you put those processes in place, yeah? Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ I ha side side story, we we had a shed in the middle of our yard. It's been there for years. I wanted to move it. I moved it a couple of weeks ago. I was so happy. I put together a hundred and forty four page document the other day with all these processes. Well and I was just as happy about the shed and the d four hundred a hundred and forty four page document. So yes, it it it makes me very happy to get all these things put together and ⁓ to see it all come together. speaker-0: Man, that's fantastic. ⁓ okay, last question. And this one I didn't ask you, but I I'm curious if I if I wanted to get into fly fishing, which I've a little Tinkara, but I want to do like real, real fly fishing, like where do I start? speaker-1: ⁓ definitely find Google a local fly shop in your area. Go there. Don't be don't be scared. Don't be afraid. Just go in and say, I'm totally new. I don't know what I'm doing. What do I need? They will help you. They will set you straight. If you don't do that, ⁓ find a fly fishing brand, Orvis, Reddington, something like that. ⁓ go buy a beginner kit. They come with a rod, a reel, a line, and go find a woolly bugger fly and a clauser minnow, and you'll probably catch a fish no matter what. ⁓ bass, bluegill, trout, you'll you'll you'll get a fish no matter what. ⁓ but you can go in a lot deeper than that and we would be here for an hour if I kept talking. So speaker-0: I love it. I appreciate the advice. That sounds great. Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for joining me today. I'm Clint Williams. I work with small agencies and owners and within their teams to really help people figure out how to get unstuck. Thanks for being here today, and we'll see you guys later.