Sharing secrets and experience benefit fishing guides

Sharing secrets benefit your business by building trust and credibility with your client.  When you share something you consider “sacred, privileged information” your client will sense it.  When you teach them more about the sport, they are more likely to stay with it longer and more passionately.

Imagine trying to build a web site without someone showing you how.  If you had to learn it all on your own, it would take a lot longer, you’d probably be frustrated, and you would still have lingering questions.  As a result, you would probably shy away from doing another one.  If you were to do it again, you might also seek the training of an experienced teacher to guide you.  Either way, you are likely to have felt you have already wasted a great deal of time.

On the other hand, if you had found a willing teacher/guide right from the start, you would’ve probably built the site much faster.  It would probably be more efficient and effective too.  A teacher would’ve helped you feel more engaged, excited, and happy about your success.  This is exactly what a good guide does for his sport and ultimately his livelihood.

Guide services, like any other business, are about building valued relationships of trust and credibility.  “Those that give, shall receive.”

Giving away secrets won’t ruin your business, it’ll enhance it

“If I give away my secrets, why would they need me?” you worry.  The person seeking a guide might say, “Why would I pay for a guide that shares nothing with me and teaches me nothing?”  People could go out on their own and save themselves the money, but they elect to pay someone to teach and help them catch fish!

Persons using guide services are not generally locals.  Therefore, they aren’t likely to be a competitor or seeking to be one.  They are only interested in learning more about fishing and catching fish.  They are judging you on:

1. Shared secrets/knowledge
2. Friendliness
3. Catching Fish

If they are happy with you, they will refer friends to you.  Word-of-mouth is the best advertising a fishing guide can get.

Even if you show them the “hot, secret spots,” rest assured that they are not in a position of eliminating the need for your service.  The factors that make and break good fishing are still in play each day you go out.  The weather, time of day and year, water levels, etc. all affect the bite.  The conditions would have to be the same for them to duplicate your day out together.  Likewise, many people take one or two trips a year, and won’t remember what you’ve already taught them.  Essentially, they still need you to find the bites each time.