Most Builders Make Lousy Fishermen

When I was seven or eight years old, my dad took my brother and me down to the river with what felt like the greatest gift in the world at the time: our very own fishing poles. They were cheap starter rods with plain hooks and a single salmon egg tied on, and we were allowed to cast as wildly and enthusiastically as we pleased. 

What we didn’t understand then was that he wasn’t about to sacrifice his good tackle on two kids who were almost guaranteed to lose interest before the morning was over. He knew that after ten or fifteen minutes of serious effort we would get distracted, start throwing rocks and wandering the shoreline looking for something more exciting. 

Meanwhile, he had his professional rod ready, complete with the expensive spinning lure and the good power bait, and he was prepared to sit there patiently and do it right.

By the end of the day, when he hauled in a 30-pound king salmon, we celebrated like it was our catch and conveniently forgot all about our own short-lived fishing careers. 

He was a fishing pro compared to us because what he understood (and we didn’t) was that real results require the proper investment of tools, capital, time and patience.

Think of Marketing as Fishing

For many builders and manufacturers, reputation has long been the standard to keep the new opportunities in front of you. If you did good work and treated people fairly, referrals kept coming, projects lined up, and during the COVID boom it sometimes felt like fish were practically jumping into the boat. Instead of marketing, you needed a stick to fend off opportunity. 

But that environment was an anomaly, and it lulled a lot of companies into thinking the lake would always be that generous.

It isn’t anymore. The lake has changed. 

The water is murkier, the fish are more cautious, and buyers are taking their time. Interest rates, global instability, material costs, labor shortages, and plain economic uncertainty have made decision makers more conservative and more deliberate. Projects don’t “swim” toward you the way they once did, and if you want consistency, you have to be intentional about how you attract demand.

Upgrade Your Boat

The first step for many companies is upgrading the boat. You invest in a new website, stronger messaging, and that’s absolutely the right move. A modern website cannot be a static brochure anymore; it needs to function like a knowledge base that answers real questions and positions you as the expert rather than just another vendor in a crowded field. When you publish useful content consistently, you create a signal in the water that tells serious buyers you understand their world.

Invest in Proper Tackle

But a well-built boat with a nice speaker system doesn’t catch fish by itself. You still need tackle in the water. That tackle is paid media. Google Ads. YouTube. LinkedIn. Strategic social promotion. The basics that allow you to show up when someone is actively searching for what you do. 

And this is where I see otherwise smart builders revert to their eight-year-old fisherman mindset. After investing in a new website, you get cautious and decide to set your “Fish Acquisition Cost” budget to a few hundred dollars a month, telling yourself that at least you have a hook in the water.

In certain niche markets that might be enough. But in competitive categories like roofing, plumbing, remodeling, or large-scale manufacturing, that modest spend is the equivalent of one lonely salmon egg drifting in a massive lake filled with well-funded competitors.

When nothing happens quickly, frustration sets in. The campaign is declared ineffective, marketing is blamed, and the line is reeled in long before it ever had a real chance to work.

The Pro

Meanwhile, across the lake, another operator understands the reality of the environment. He doesn’t enjoy writing bigger checks, but he recognizes that if the competition is serious, he must be serious too. He commits to a more meaningful investment, spreads it intelligently across search and digital channels, tracks performance, refines the message, and allows enough time for momentum to build. 

Over time, leads begin to come in, projects are booked, revenue grows, and what once felt like a risky Fish Acquisition Cost becomes a Fish Acquisition Investment that feeds itself.

The Bigger Threat

And just when you think it’s only you and a few local players on the water, the larger threat becomes visible. The corporate fishing trawlers have arrived. Venture-backed, nationally branded competitors with sophisticated marketing teams and six-figure monthly budgets are now capable of entering your territory overnight, dominating visibility, and absorbing demand before you even know what happened. The world has become smaller, and the competition far less predictable.

So the question isn’t whether marketing works; it’s whether you can be realistic about what it takes to compete in the current environment. Underinvested fishermen consistently get underwhelming results and then conclude the lake is empty. Professional fishermen understand that meaningful outcomes require meaningful investment and sustained patience.

Performance will always vary based on competition, seasonality, economic conditions, and brand strength. But companies that consistently invest in a structured inbound strategy, publish helpful content, optimize campaigns based on real data, and stay in the water long enough to let the system work are the ones who land the trophy-sized king salmon.

The rest pack up early and blame the fish for not biting.

Written by Rusty George, with almost zero help from Artificial Intelligence. Well, maybe once or twice to check his grammar, and the hero image was generated using one of them tools, but hey. He's only human.

Rusty George leads a branding, website design and marketing agency serving Seattle and Tacoma area construction companies, developers, subcontractors, manufacturers, material fabricators and suppliers. His goal is to help the building industry become more attractive to the skilled workforce of the future. Reach out to us at any time to develop a plan to be more successful in your business development goals by investing the time, resources and capital to stay visible in a pay to play market.