Joe Simonds is the CEO and co-founder of Salt Strong, one of the largest saltwater fishing clubs in America, which he built with his brother Luke. In this episode he came back to walk me through the inside story of selling Salt Strong: why they walked away from fifty thousand dollars a month in apparel, the five criteria they set before they would ever sell, the family office that bought them, and why he says members ended up getting more than they bargained for.
Salt Strong is one of the largest saltwater fishing clubs in America, founded by brothers Joe and Luke Simonds. It started as a content project with no business plan, grew through apparel sales, and became a membership fishing-education platform with courses, an app, a community, and proprietary tackle such as the Slam Shady and the Prawn.
Joe explains that Salt Strong was acquired by a family office connected to Sportsman's Guide, a decades-old buyer's club. He emphasizes it was not private equity, and the buyer had a long track record of never selling a company it acquired, which was the dealbreaker criterion for him and Luke.
Joe says apparel was doing roughly fifty thousand dollars a month, but it did not fit their mission of helping people make memories on the water, and the returns were brutal. He describes deciding to step away from that revenue to focus on education and community instead.
Joe says he and Luke wrote down five non-negotiable criteria, and the final one was that they would never sell to private equity. He walks through how those criteria protected the members and the brand when the right buyer finally appeared.
Yes. Joe says he and Luke remain fully operational, and maintaining control was one of their conditions. He describes the buyer as hands-off, telling him to keep doing what he was doing and ask for help when he needed it.
Joe says the deal made the membership better rather than worse, with active members gaining access to the larger partner club and lifetime members keeping lifetime access. He frames the whole thing around adding value for members instead of cashing out.
I remember when Joe and Luke first told me about Salt Strong, back before they even had the name locked in. I have watched them go from not knowing exactly what they were selling, to crushing it with t-shirts, to walking away from that money to build something that actually helps people catch fish. When I heard they had sold the company, I had a lot of questions, because selling a brand you built with your brother is a different animal than selling a normal business. I wanted Joe to walk me through the whole thing in his own words.
The part that surprised me most early in our conversation was Joe describing why they killed a line that was doing real money every month. Most people would protect that revenue at all costs. Joe explained how it kept pulling them away from the mission they actually cared about, and how the math on returns was uglier than it looked from the outside. Hear him explain the decision in the episode.
Joe and Luke did not just wait for an offer. Joe told me they wrote down five things that had to be true before they would ever sell, and the last one was the line in the sand. When you build something with your brother, you think hard about who you would ever hand it to. Joe walks through each criterion and why the final one mattered most. Listen to that part.
The skeptics showed up the second the sale was announced, and Joe gets it, because we have all watched brands we loved get hollowed out after a sale. What he describes is the opposite, a deal structured to make the membership better the day it closed. He breaks down exactly what active members and lifetime members got. Press play to hear how he thinks about taking care of the people who got him here.
The day after we talked, the thing that stuck with me was how intentional Joe and Luke have been at every step, from the five criteria to the refusal to sell to private equity. That is rare.
If you have ever thought about building something, scaling it, and what it actually takes to sell without selling out, this is the conversation. Listen to the whole thing.
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Joe Simonds is the CEO and co-founder of Salt Strong, one of the largest saltwater fishing clubs in America, which he built with his brother Luke. What began as a content project with no business plan grew into a membership platform with courses, an app, a large community, and proprietary tackle. Joe hosts the Salt Strong podcast and recently sold the company to a family office while retaining operational control, structuring the deal to expand what members receive.
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