A Little Story about Ice Fishing3 min read

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I want you to introduce you to an Eskimo boy named Tulok from Inukjuak, Canada.

Although born in the Arctic, he didn’t spend a lot of time living there. Because of his high intelligence as a child, he was lucky enough to get a scholarship to a private boarding school and ultimately earned a degree in engineering.

Tulok visited his family in the summer and also learned the tribal customs of the Inuit people. But he never visited in the winter during the ice-fishing season as he was away at school.

After graduating, Tulok returned to his village and when the winter came, everyone was talking about ice fishing.

However, as an engineer, he had the thought, “There must be a more efficient, effective way to do ice fishing.”

So, as an educated person, Tulok decided to search the Internet: “How to ice fish successfully.”

And boy, did he learn a lot! (actual Google results)

How to get started in ice fishing

How to cut the perfect ice fishing hole

The best fish to catch with ice fishing

What bait to use when ice fishing

How thick the ice needs to be for ice fishing

After several hours of searching and reading, Tulok felt he knew a whole lot about ice fishing.

As a newly graduated engineer, he felt confident that he could show the members of his tribe a thing or two when it came to ice fishing!

So he grabbed his parka, fishing gear, ice saw, and snowshoes and headed for the ice-covered Hudson’s Bay near his village.

And eight hours later, Tulok returned, half-frozen to death and without a single fish.

Ashamed, and with his tail between his legs, Tulok asked the members of his tribe why he had failed so miserably at ice fishing.

After a good laugh and a lot of jokes, they told Tulok, “Well, you did everything right except you missed the most important thing of all. You need to do ice fishing where the fish are!”

This little fable, of course, is about marketing.

No matter how much you know about marketing, if you are not marketing where the prospects are, you won’t land any new clients.

Now, I know this sounds stupidly obvious, but if you’re struggling to find clients, I’m willing to bet that you aren’t spending enough time around the right prospects.

You need to be seen by prospective clients, you need to be noticed by them, you need to engage with them and you need to have conversations with them.

As the tagline of my logo at the top of this email says, you need to “get out there.”

It all starts by asking some basic questions:

1. Who are my best prospective clients?

2. Where exactly are they?

3. What organizations do they belong to?

4. Where are they on LinkedIn?

5. Who do I know who knows them?

6. What existing clients could refer them?

7. Where can I give a talk to them?

8. Where can I hold a webinar for them?

9. Where can I publish an article they’ll read?

10. What online services could connect me to them?

I encourage you to try to answer all of these, in some cases asking Google for help (that dude is free, willing, and available). Access to your prospective clients is often much closer than you realize.

Had Tulok put a little time into researching where the fish actually hung out, I predict he’d have eventually landed some fish!

Cheers, Robert

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