EPISODE 20 FINAL
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Danny Lennon: [00:00:00] Probably the benefit of podcasts and the same would be said for for YouTube. I think is that when you have that real detailed content that then could be something people can refer to and can go back and watch or listen to in a year or 2 year or 3 years from now, which is maybe 1 of the benefits of that longer form content over.
Danny Lennon: something where someone is purely creating content on social media. There are ways to do it, but it's very limited in the sense of people are just not accustomed to going back and viewing old content on social media.
Chris Hughes: Welcome to How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business. If you love nutrition and you love helping people and you want to be in the game long enough to keep doing that, Then this is the podcast for you.
Chris Hughes: Let's get into it.
Chris Hughes: Today's guest is none other than Denny Lennon of Sigma Nutrition. When I started my business back in 2015, I had to be a generalist dietitian. I had to be everything to everyone, or at least that's how it [00:01:00] felt. And so often clients or friends would ask me something about nutrition, or they'd present something they'd heard, and at times present me with information or articles that would sometimes question my beliefs.
Chris Hughes: Denny Lennon become the sound of reason for me. He was my safety blanket. I knew I could go to his podcast, his show notes, read or listen to the information and know that it was objective information, evidence based. He gave me confidence to practice as a dietician and had such a profound impact on my business and the way I delivered nutrition content to my clients for all those years.
Chris Hughes: And I'm sure he has done that for many health professionals all over the globe. In today's episode, Denny talks about how he built the juggernaut that is Sigma Nutrition and how he leveraged that podcast to create a business. Let's get into it. Welcome back to another episode of How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business.
Chris Hughes: Today is probably the most excited I've been to interview a guest and I've had some amazing guests, but Denny Lennon is, for me, probably an unparalleled nutrition communicator globally. His ability to translate [00:02:00] nutrition science has certainly been a huge Huge influence on my career and I'm sure thousands if not millions of health professionals right across the world.
Chris Hughes: And tonight, Denny is coming to me all the way from Ireland. And so we've sort of coordinated our times and I'm very thankful for Denny for coming on. So Denny, I'd like to hand over to you, mate, I've done a little bit of research and listening to your podcast. One of the things that I was always so envious of is your ability just to, you were always so well prepared for your guests and so many times, so many of your guests would comment about.
Chris Hughes: Wow, you've looked into this a lot. So you clearly really prepare for every sort of every podcast. I've only done a little bit of research on yourself, seeing that you were a teacher for a period of time. Is that correct? Correct. Done a master's in nutritional science after doing a little bit of teaching.
Chris Hughes: You had some undergrad in biology and physics. And then, okay, so that's all correct. And then you've done your master's and then done some consulting. And then a bit over a decade ago, Sigma [00:03:00] Nutrition Radio started.
Danny Lennon: Yeah, so I can give the brief recap and first of all, thank you for such a very kind introduction, far more kind than I probably deserve.
Danny Lennon: And hopefully I'll be able to live up to some of that for people listening. But yeah, you're absolutely correct. Originally, I started out doing my undergraduate degree in biology and physics education, which at the time in the university I studied in Ireland, I could do studying those two subjects.
Danny Lennon: Concurrently with a higher diploma in education, which then qualified me to be a teacher of those subjects afterwards did that for about a year realized I didn't want to work as a teacher in the school system during that time. And so took a decision to go back to university and study what really at that time was my main interest, which was nutrition science, because that's what I was all reading about in my spare time, just for myself and did my masters in nutritional sciences.
Danny Lennon: And off the back of that, without really knowing what I was doing or [00:04:00] what the plan was going to be or how things would unfold, started Sigma Nutrition, which yes, over 10 years ago now, and the, we can talk about some of the things that's involved, but mainly it has ended up becoming, a business that creates educational content around nutrition science, mainly for nutrition practitioners or academics or medical professionals upskilling in nutrition, or people who are just generally interested in nutrition, but I would say at an intermediate to advanced level of knowledge because of the topics that we get into can be quite in depth and mainly focus on the actual Research as opposed to the very basics of nutrition, let's say.
Danny Lennon: But yeah, that was my kind of entry point in and it was off the background in education. And I suppose that might tie into some of the aspects, at least relating to communication of some of these ideas that thankfully I had the experience of spending that year of teaching classes, Where you're in front of a group of people [00:05:00] that most of them might not want to be listening to you all the time, and you're trying to make sure you're essentially teaching something, not only a value, but maintains their attention to group of people who aren't really that interested.
Danny Lennon: And so maybe it becomes a bit easier than when you have people who are really into nutrition and want to listen to you when you're trying to communicate that stuff in a presentation or a conference and so on. But, yeah, that's the kind of early entry into this world.
Chris Hughes: Mate, you do it very well. Early on in my career when we started our business, I was traveling all the time.
Chris Hughes: So I'd be sitting in the car sometimes up to four hours. And you were my guest in that car, listening to your episodes, it was like, the way you communicate and just translate that information has been so beneficial, so it's, you're really easy to listen to, why, actually, before we get into that, one quick question that I couldn't find online anywhere, how many downloads are you at currently?
Danny Lennon: The the [00:06:00] total accumulative one i'm not sure is probably somewhere around six million but i think that can sound probably more yeah depending on someone's perspective of what other podcasts are comparing to it might sound high or low but it can also be misleading given that it's just the accumulative amount over ten years so that fluctuates up and down of course there's fluctuations depending on the given episode typically if you look at the unique number of listeners per episode it's probably.
Danny Lennon: Uh, on a weekly basis in around 15, 000. Uh, we have some of those episodes that are going like 25, 30, uh, and then some might be a bit below that average, but that would be for the unique number of listeners that is typically there. And so, as is the nature of things, Uh, you're not most of the audience isn't going to listen to every single episode I think is true of most podcasts and people pick and choose and so, yeah, very happy with that, especially given the, I would say, relatively niche nature of the [00:07:00] podcast as I'm sure that you're aware, maybe anyone that's had to listen to it is that it is very much true.
Danny Lennon: A podcast that probably wouldn't be super useful for most people in the general population, because it just wouldn't be understandable. It's also not that useful. For example, if we're talking about methodology in certain nutrition studies, that's really important for practitioners to know, or a dietician or a medical doctor, but for the average person, it's just not going to make any sense and not going to be useful.
Danny Lennon: So given that it's in this kind of any share yet, it's going to be okay.
Chris Hughes: Massive numbers. I think you're being very humble because exactly. It's a very niche listening like audience, isn't it? So like to have those numbers is phenomenal. Why a podcast? Like why, what made you think I might do a podcast?
Chris Hughes: Because I mean, this is back 2014 when yes, podcasts were around, but they're not certainly not what they are today.
Danny Lennon: Absolutely. And this is a huge thing that I all why oftentimes I'll say to people, well, look, there's oftentimes a huge stroke of luck that's involved in most things in [00:08:00] life where that's good luck or bad luck.
Danny Lennon: In this case, the good luck of the timing of deciding to start a podcast in 2014. Where like you say for a lot of people it was like heard of this but i'm not really sure what they are or i've heard of them but i don't listen to them so they weren't really that big and really that boom in podcast probably started i guess twenty seventeen twenty eighteen and then since there's continued just to grow like mad and the last couple of years in particular has exploded and so there's a large part of luck that i had the podcast already there established lots of episodes in in the bank by the time it started to take off so i originally started just because.
Danny Lennon: Like I said, when I first started, I didn't really know what the plan was long term at the business. I knew I want to do something in nutrition. I'd come out with my master's and I didn't want to work within the food industry, for example. So it was either going to look for work as a nutrition consultant for someone else or start my own thing and start working with people.
Danny Lennon: And around that time, knowing that, okay, in [00:09:00] order to be able to do that, people need to be able to find me and Creating content is one way to do that. And it's interesting because at that time, of course, there's people within the business sphere that would talk about creating content, but it certainly wasn't the well known thing that it is now of almost everyone in all professions needs to be a content creator.
Danny Lennon: That wasn't really thought of in the same way. But luckily I had this idea, look, I'll put out some content. That way people will get to know what I do. And at first you're tend to be overly ambitious, right? So I was like, Oh, maybe I'll start doing like YouTube videos. I'll do one of them a week. I'll maybe write a couple of blog articles because blogging is quite big right now.
Danny Lennon: And then I used to, for my own interest, had a couple of podcasts I'd listened to and had found quite interesting. And for me were a nice way to consume content. And so now maybe I can try starting this podcasting and interviewing a few people. And I'll do all these things as a, as a way to create content.
Danny Lennon: So started doing that, you pretty quickly realize you can't do everything at the one time. And [00:10:00] what I also realized is that pretty soon afterwards, the podcasting was the perfect mix of both the thing or the medium that I preferred myself, as well as the one that started to gain a bit of traction and was overlapping with an area that I felt I did a relatively good job of.
Danny Lennon: And I think this is, Probably one of the important points for most people when it comes to deciding how to create content if they're going to do that of realizing despite what some people. Think or other people claim i don't think you need to do everything really well alright and i think it's even better to be able to know what are your current skills what things are you going to likely be able to produce and then focus in on that because i know people who have built tremendous business off the back of.
Danny Lennon: Just being social media people who have done it. Purely through writing. So they've only done articles, people that are in YouTube or people even outside of those things that aren't in any of these social media spheres. So for me, it would just end up being, that's what tended to get a bit of [00:11:00] traction early on.
Danny Lennon: And so with that, when I started to see a bit of uptake and people were positive about some of those early episodes that said, okay, this is the thing I'll do. Consistently and I'll cut back on the others because I just won't have time, but I thought I'll consistently commit to this podcast and then over time that will hopefully allow me to be able to reach enough an audience that I can eventually start either selling stuff to people or by indirectly.
Danny Lennon: They're going to come for consultations. So for those first couple of years that I had the podcast, there was no direct way someone could. pay me for a product. There was no ebook books, there was no courses. It was a time of just getting people, uh, listening to that stuff and essentially keeping afloat by doing my normal nutrition consultancy with individuals.
Danny Lennon: And yeah,
Chris Hughes: that's how it came about. Like certainly more sports nutrition focused, would I be correct in saying, like in your consulting early on, would that be right?
Danny Lennon: So yeah, it was, I suppose, a mix of [00:12:00] people in specific sports, as well as the general population people I worked with were. tended to be people who had maybe started in a, in a gym somewhere or started exercising recently, maybe the idea of improving their health or body composition and wanted to improve their diet.
Danny Lennon: Um, and around that time, a lot of the people that would get were referrals from personal trainers or people who ran gyms. So I'd made quite a lot of contacts, certainly within Ireland of people who are our friends. Uh, now that I would say, that had gym facilities or personal trainers and wanted to have somewhere to be able to outsource people who wanted specific nutrition advice.
Chris Hughes: And
Danny Lennon: then similarly through my writing on the blog, people would find that and apply for some degree of coaching. But it was either generally aimed at, yeah, I would say a lot of general population people looking at changing body composition and or maintaining or improving their gym performance while doing that or then there is a specific group of [00:13:00] athletes so I started working with a lot of combat sport athletes and through word of mouth that spread quite quickly and became a group that.
Danny Lennon: Over a number of years, I was doing a lot of work with combat sport athletes, helping them make weight for fights and so on. And so there was those two distinct things where most of my own practice was based.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. I asked that question because like certainly the theme of Sigma nutrition is where the content is that higher level.
Chris Hughes: So your early clients had that. interest or that there was certainly a lot more invested in that information compared to the typical person that you might be seeing for weight loss that comes in off the street. For example, there are people that were a bit more focused on nutrition.
Danny Lennon: Certainly the people that had came directly off the back of some of the Sigma nutrition content would be at that more interested level.
Danny Lennon: But like I said, I was lucky enough that to have people that were coming off the back of referrals from fitness professionals. And so certainly early on and still even now, a decent percentage of the audience are health and [00:14:00] fitness professionals because they want to keep up with nutrition. They tend to have the interest anyway.
Danny Lennon: And maybe either they're running a facility or they are a personal trainer or they have an online fitness business. And so they tend to be the people who consume a lot of same nutrition content. And so in certain situations they might refer someone on whether that was someone with a Particular issue, or maybe that person preferred only to provide training, coaching, and wanted to have another coach do the nutrition.
Danny Lennon: And so in those cases, it would tend to be a general population. But other than that, yeah, someone who has a deeper interest in nutrition would come more organically.
Chris Hughes: And what sort of timeframe, like how quickly did you see the growth after, and how often, I guess, were you posting episodes? Like, did you saw the growth in the business that paralleled?
Danny Lennon: Yeah, so on the frequency, and I think this is the one of the things that at least for me, and I can't be sure, but I think as a general rule, I think it's true that the consistency is really important here. And I was lucky [00:15:00] enough just to have that idea in my mind early on of, okay, this might not be an immediate success, or it might not be something I can monetize straight away, but the benefit is going to come through consistency over a long period of time.
Danny Lennon: And so I said, okay, this is going to be a. weekly podcast. So that means that if I want to do this properly, a podcast has to go every week. And pretty much I would say there, I can probably count, uh, on one hand, how many weeks over the past 10 years, there's not been a podcast go out. And so that means there's been that weekly frequency is being kept to, and there's ways to work around that with the scheduling and so on, but at least, uh, an episode a week bar, maybe let's say.
Danny Lennon: For five instances that can probably pick out for whatever reason one wasn't able to go that week. But by and large, it's been weekly over that whole period. And so with that frequency, I would say certainly within there was that initial interest, but everything is kind of cool. Then when you first start [00:16:00] something and people that, you know, have listened and they're giving you nice feedback.
Danny Lennon: So that's enough for that first couple of months. And then after that, it was this kind of steady. Growth over time and all I was trying to do was seeing, okay, what are those download numbers that are coming in on a kind of monthly basis? And are they tending to trickle upwards compared to the previous month?
Danny Lennon: And that tended to be the case pretty much for consistently. I would say for the 1st, uh, number of years and in. Hindsight I think that was one of the things that allowed the podcast to be so sustainable as opposed to having this effect where, let's say, there was a certain week and things spike up and then you're just going to lose that straight away.
Danny Lennon: And I think that has been, oftentimes, I feel one of the reasons why people might. not stick with the podcasting thing or not, uh, organize things correctly is that they're trying to have this like moment where things have this hockey stick and suddenly jump up a real high amount. I don't think it's as [00:17:00] sustainable because it's just one episode and not most of those people are going to come back.
Danny Lennon: And it's the same type of fallacy of people used to think, Oh, if I could just get this one person on my show and they have a big audience, then all those people are going to start listening to my podcast. Virtually never happens. Yeah, yeah, and like anyone, like I can go back and see episodes where I had people on who have had huge followings on social media, I've had a bunch, I'd say way more of my episodes of being with people who are academic researchers who don't exist on social media, who you can't find on the internet, and there's not this thing of someone's just going to start following your podcast simply because someone they follow has been on it.
Danny Lennon: It's going to be down to, is this. Podcast good quality over time and if I listen to more than one episode are these ones I want to stay listening to as opposed to if I can just do this one thing if I could just have this one episode that goes viral then my podcasting explode maybe there's cases of that [00:18:00] but I'm not sure of how many they are unless someone Who already is like a huge famous person starts a podcast.
Danny Lennon: That's a different thing. But other than that, I think it's yeah, that the consistency over time and just seeing if it continues to grow.
Chris Hughes: That's right. It's the value that you're providing to the listener, isn't it? So you need to do that repeatedly. I had a newer who's owns Ideal Nutrition and he's got quite a successful Instagram following.
Chris Hughes: And he said for the first two and a half years, He was posting to crickets and not really getting any business as a result, but he knew that at some point it would turn and then, yeah, things went up quite quickly for him then. So, it's great to hear you say that. When it comes to the time, so posting weekly, like how much effort, because as I said earlier, your preparation seems very thorough.
Chris Hughes: How much time goes into preparing, recruiting guests, then the editing process, promoting the podcast?
Danny Lennon: Yeah, it can be significant and it does vary depending on, first of all, the topic and how well versed I already am in that. For [00:19:00] example, if there's a topic that I am very familiar with, or recently I've been doing a lot of reading on anyway, because I just like reading different research and through different times I get interested in a different topic and I've been, if I'm familiar Fairly well versed in some of those papers recently.
Danny Lennon: I've read them that will cut down on the prep time. If it's something that I haven't looked at in, let's say, a couple of years, or it's a topic that is maybe new or there's new workout that will, of course, increase the amount of reading I need to do. So that's the 1st thing. So, with that, it. I tried to combine that with my own ongoing learning and reading anyway, and that's ties into how I source most of the guests for the podcast in large part.
Danny Lennon: Most of the researchers that come on to the podcast are people who have published papers that I have read at some point recently. Because I'm trying to get a grip of a certain topic or keep up to date with a certain topic. [00:20:00] And when I know that, okay, this person is publishing in these areas. Then I'll see if they would be interested in doing an episode and then I can ask some questions off the back of that.
Danny Lennon: So it's tying in those two things together. Then there's other episodes that I do on a alternating basis with my co host Alan Flanagan, where we'll work out a topic we want to discuss, we'll create a kind of structure of what we're going to talk about in the episode. We'll both put in some ideas or a certain structure.
Danny Lennon: We'll go and do our own reading around that. And then we'll go with an episode so there can be considerable research time on those. And like you say, on the editing part, it tends to be the editing itself isn't a heavily edited podcast in the way you have some podcasts, particularly from big productions, where they have like lots of music added throughout different clips from people like really high end production in that I try and have.
Danny Lennon: The [00:21:00] conversation go up as is, which is, I suppose, the standard now in most podcasts, put up the conversation that was had with some editing out for if there was a major disturbance or sound or someone's like went off or there was a phone call or something like that. So yeah, it's hard to quantify. Like I said, it depends on the amount and.
Danny Lennon: Yeah, really, it's most of most, I could probably fill most of the work week with something related to that episode. Um, and so this has been something that's been becoming more of a challenge over time, particularly as there's other projects that I want to get involved with and the time issue. Uh, is that main thing of especially with a podcast and especially currently in its current format, where one of their main revenue models is directly tied to those episodes means that there is a need to continually generate that.
Danny Lennon: New content on this weekly basis, and to be able to fill those gaps. Now, there's probably lots of things that I could and should be [00:22:00] doing in order to reduce those in terms of how many tasks I delegate versus what I currently do. Uh, but that's a whole other topic, but yeah, I consider amount of time for each episode.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. So do you have a team to help you now?
Danny Lennon: No, not really. So there is, I have at different stages done a few different things. So right now I will have. Dietitian go through some of the transcripts and pick out some of the key themes from the episode that they thought would be good and find anything that might be worth flagging in the notes that I end up creating for those episodes.
Danny Lennon: So, for example, I'll get them to take a look through this. If there's any terminology here, you think might be. Particularly important, or there's any papers that you're aware of that might speak to this that I can include, let's put that in a list and then I can use that when I'm going back and creating those notes.
Danny Lennon: For example, if the guest has talked about a certain study, then I'll be able to have [00:23:00] the link to that study and then maybe I can go and take one of the images from that paper and put it in the study notes that I create for the listeners. But in the past, I've Try to outsource the editing of the episodes and did that for a at least a decent number of months but I again this is probably more my own problem than anything just not being quite happy with certain things or a couple of times there was.
Danny Lennon: But one particular that would have made a couple of serious errors. So how did it change that? And then you have to train in the next person of like, how exactly you want stuff. And then, yeah, just over time, uh, again, my own fault of liking things done a certain way and as will be a theme of this episode, I'm sure doing things that from a business point of view are probably.
Danny Lennon: Terrible practices I me spending time editing a podcast when really I shouldn't be doing that it's a very simple thing to delegate and I should be spending my [00:24:00] time on other things but yet I tend to find myself doing that one of the things I kind of like some of that which is why I've kept doing it but yeah this is it's certainly a clear example of one area where I should have a better.
Danny Lennon: Process and be able to release control.
Chris Hughes: Yes. Now I know what you mean. We, we now use a program called Descript. I don't know if you've heard that. Um, yeah,
Danny Lennon: I use that for, uh, my transcripts and so on. Yeah.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. Cause I, I'm the same. I, I, I need to edit it because it's just parts that can't be taken out, even though Descript might see it as.
Chris Hughes: That doesn't make sense. Yeah. So yeah, talking about your, your preparation, certainly, I'm just going to give you a little plug there for anyone that maybe hasn't heard of, of Sigma Nutrition, if they're living under a rock, but the episodes with Alan are phenomenal. The amount of research that goes into that, they're, they're phenomenal.
Chris Hughes: University times 10 in terms of the content and the way it's explained. So for anyone that particularly the cholesterol series, I found that quite insightful and really [00:25:00] beneficial because it's quite a, quite a tricky subject to, to get your head around. Like with all, with the positives and negatives or the, the, the, what's the nice way of saying it.
Chris Hughes: Some of the angst you might get online.
Danny Lennon: Right. Lots of claims that are made, but yeah.
Chris Hughes: Yes. How do you deal with that Denny? Because I, I, I, the guy's name has. It slipped my mind, but you had a guy in there and you were talking about the, what was it? It was with Alan. It was on the cholesterol series. And it was about like basically keto, um, yeah, like the need to reduce LDL.
Chris Hughes: And it was two sides of the argument, but the way he handled it was phenomenal. It was very like opposing views, but it was quite an amicable conversation and a good, really good educational podcast to listen to.
Danny Lennon: Yeah. And I believe that was the episode we did with. Uh, Dave Feldman who has become popular in, in the low carb, uh, community online, let's say, uh, with some of his hypotheses that, yeah, [00:26:00] Alan and I have been quite vocal on the podcast of strongly disagreeing with some of those.
Danny Lennon: Positions or seeing that it's a misinterpretation of some of the area and hence some of the episodes that we did and in response to one of our episodes. In fact, uh, David emailed us about some of those points and wanted to put some ideas across. So we said, let's talk with some on the podcast and did that.
Danny Lennon: Um, and actually some of the. We'll have a upcoming episode relatively soon with another medical doctor who's based in Ireland, who does a great job. Dr. Gary McGowan of talking about some of this amongst other topics, but some of this cholesterol, the claims that are around the internet. And so we're gonna be doing an episode soon, particularly on some of these hypotheses that Dave Feldman and his colleagues have put forward and other people in that space.
Danny Lennon: But yeah, it's one of those ones where it does take considerable effort because oftentimes when someone makes [00:27:00] a claim and says, Oh, there's studies to show X, that is quite easy to do, but to be able to then go in. Understand if that's accurate or not, or to be able to rebut that takes considerable time because I need to go and read through those studies and actually interpret those.
Danny Lennon: And those do take a bit, but they end up having that net benefit of being the most useful, I think, to most people and probably the benefit of podcasts. And the same would be said for, for YouTube. I think. Is that when you have that real detailed content that then can be something people can refer to and can go back and watch or listen to in a year or two year or three years from now, which is maybe one of the benefits of that longer form content over something where someone is purely.
Danny Lennon: Creating content on social media, there are ways to it, but it's very limited in the sense of people are just not accustomed to going back and viewing old content on social media, right? You can't, you can't view an old [00:28:00] story, but even someone that creates a really educational post or a reel, there's no way you can go and search through those in an easy manner.
Danny Lennon: scrolling back three years on someone's profile to find a post. It's not very intuitive. So. The benefit is that the time investment for something like a podcast episode means that you can continue to get people listening and benefiting from it a long time into the future.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, no, it's perfect for that because it's exactly what I use it for.
Chris Hughes: It's always great to go back for a refresh. I've got a car trip coming up. It's, I'm looking at some sort of professional development and you're usually, uh, Sigma Nutrition's on, on the, uh, radio. Mate, monetizing your podcast, we've established that early on, it was. Basically, just not necessarily, it was a bit of a strategy to grow your business, but how you've done it, you certainly come across because you have advertised things on your podcast, but it seems to be things that you certainly, you would really stand behind the product.
Chris Hughes: So a lot of the [00:29:00] US podcasts, they're very ad heavy and it's, they're just advertising sort of anything on there. It seems like you seem to be a lot more selective, if at all promoting anything on your podcast, how have you monetized? Your fame essentially, like how have you been able to capitalize on that?
Danny Lennon: Right. So initially, like you said, that was all off the back of indirect ways to do it. So whether that was the podcast as it grew, more people then would be able to follow my stuff. Either apply for coaching or I ended up doing quite a lot of speaking at certain conferences within the fitness industry, for example, off the back of people having heard me on the podcast.
Danny Lennon: So it was all indirect ways. Initially, uh, the advertising has been, I think there's probably 3, maybe 4, uh, different ads that have run over that 10 years. So very infrequent, as you noted, and none for a number of years. Now, And it been people that I knew or [00:30:00] service that had used and that yeah, so I think there's maybe three, there's three, maybe four, uh, companies I can think of.
Danny Lennon: Uh, but there'd been none for the last number of years. And certainly since the adoption of the way that the podcast is now monetized in that, I decided that I wanted to take a very specific way of monetizing it because right now, probably the most. Well, definitely the most popular and possibly the most lucrative for a lot of podcasts would be through ad revenue and sponsorship.
Danny Lennon: And so hence why you tend to hear that on most podcasts that people can grow a podcast, get sponsors in, and then they know they're going to get a certain amount per episode. However, the problem for my particular podcast, given that it's in the health and nutrition space, and particularly given that the main thing about the Sigma Nutrition audience and why it values the podcast.
Danny Lennon: The Sigma nutrition podcast is not because it talks about just nutrition is that it's seen as something that is objective [00:31:00] and trustworthy and that's what most people in the audience are looking for now because there's so much nonsense in the health information field online and they just want to know, I just want to know that something is objective and trustworthy and even if I could say, look, there are some sponsors that I could trust, I don't want there to be a doubt in people's mind about the potential impartiality of an episode, right?
Danny Lennon: So if I'm doing an episode on the health effects of dairy and I'm talking about the research, even if I do perfectly, uh, evidence based discussion on that, but the episode starts with a, an ad for a company selling whey protein, for example, you're going to have people saying, how can this be completely impartial?
Danny Lennon: And If you're trying to promote a whey protein and then now we're discussing dairy versus claims of, uh, people who are saying dairy is terrible for you this. And so that just might raise a red flag in people's minds. So the decision was, I don't want to have ads. Number one, I don't want to be relying on them.
Danny Lennon: I don't want people to [00:32:00] have a question about impartiality. So the only way then left is to have it supported directly from listeners. And so the way that we've gone about that up to this point, or that I've gone about it up to this point has been through a premium subscription, which is this kind of freemium model where.
Danny Lennon: The podcast on the public feed is available for free to everyone as normal and then people can subscribe to the premium service which gives them extra episodes each month. They also get a set of study notes for every podcast episode and can get the full transcript of the episode. So the, these study notes are a pdf that are probably about 15 page PDF typically of everything that was discussed within the episode, maybe links to any of those papers with diagrams to show certain ideas or graphs from papers that were discussed or an explanation or definition of a concept that was mentioned, but maybe not really explained within [00:33:00] the episode or anything else that might be relevant to number one, help people.
Danny Lennon: understand that information more and then two if they do want to go back a while later and revise over that episode they can go through those notes in a more convenient fashion than having to re listen to the full episode again. So that premium subscription has been the main way we've done to do it which in of itself from a purely business perspective does throw up a number of challenges and I think going into next year is going to be giving me a number of questions of ways to either Potentially modify that or different types of business models that might suit better going into the future and so there are challenges with that type of setup which which i'm happy to talk about but for now that has been the way to try and have this balance of making sure we're not reliant on ads but that the podcast can be self sustaining in that there's.
Danny Lennon: Enough revenue that isn't, I'm not losing money to go in and do this and I can keep doing it. So that's been [00:34:00] the monetization route that we've decided up to this point.
Chris Hughes: So what are the challenges that you foresee with that model? You,
Danny Lennon: yeah, I would say two things. One is just a logistic one, which is pretty easy to get around with, as we mentioned earlier, some delegation.
Danny Lennon: So it is quite heavy as a resource. For me, so not only in preparing and doing the podcasts, now it's afterwards preparation of study notes for people that I want to make sure are actually useful and high quality. And it's also then therefore on an ongoing basis. So I have to be creating amount and of content on a weekly basis, but there's ways around that.
Danny Lennon: And like I said, through delegation or other things that could improve that. I think for me, the other one that is probably the biggest difference is that because. That service that premium subscription is directly tied to each podcast episode it's reliant on the only people that can be sold to our people who are regular listening to the podcast so if you have never listened to Sigma nutrition it's free it's [00:35:00] impossible for me to say, hey, you should subscribe to signature premium and you get.
Danny Lennon: These study notes for each episode, even though you've never heard an episode, right? So you can't sell coal to someone else like you could with another service. And then the second thing is that for a lot of people, even if they are regular listeners, might not be listening to everything. There's also how much content is too much.
Danny Lennon: And would people prefer something a bit different? And this is something I've been considering that At least initially, there's always this thing that we have of, Oh, I want to give people the most value. So I'm going to get these really detailed study notes that I put a lot of effort and time into. But at the end of the day, if someone's listening to my podcast and subscribes to premium and they might not have the time to go through all of the.
Danny Lennon: Uh, this content that I'm creating. So that becomes its own challenge. So I would say that's the main thing of how can this be for people who it doesn't actually address what people want. Uh, first of all, who do listen to the podcast and then second for people who only listen to podcasts now and again, but just [00:36:00] Sigma's content in general, like our articles and other things, uh, for those people.
Danny Lennon: It's not really going to serve them as much. And so that would be the main things in terms of scaling it. And it's very much reliant on the number of people who are going to regularly listen and then hoping that a percentage of them are going to. Uh, pay to get extra material.
Chris Hughes: Mate, I'm not subscribing currently, but when I had my dietician practice, I'm not practicing currently, I subscribed and the value was phenomenal.
Chris Hughes: For anyone thinking about it, check it out. I appreciate that. It's certainly not expensive. And it was great for me because I would then just store all your show notes. And it was just a great summary to go back. If there was something I could say, I knew Denny done a podcast on that. Let me go back. And it was just, A lot easier to interpret and get some information quickly.
Chris Hughes: So I felt confident going into consults or doing a presentation to doctors or whatever it was. So yeah, it was great to
Danny Lennon: hear.
Chris Hughes: It was great value, mate. Okay, just to finish up, because you've been very generous with your time. Denny, firstly, Anyone going [00:37:00] thinking about like any nutrition professional, fitness professional, thinking about getting into podcasting as a tool to grow their business, what advice would you give to them firstly?
Danny Lennon: Ooh, this is the question. It should be pretty straightforward, but I often tend to find ways to make them more complicated. So purely from a perspective of, I find it very difficult to give people advice in the sense that. I'm looking back and presuming I know the reason why the podcast did well and saying, Oh, if you, if you do what I did, that's going to work.
Danny Lennon: Whereas I'm not really sure that's the case. I think a large part of it, like I said, was through a number of random factors, as always the case. So some things that I definitely think are always going to be true. Even if it's beyond podcasting, is if this is something that someone's going to do, number one, set yourself a time that you're going to commit to doing that for x period of time before you decide yes or no to continue.
Danny Lennon: Because some people have like lots of interest in doing it, [00:38:00] do a couple episodes, nothing really happens at first, and then just stop. Or maybe the opposite happens, people are doing it for a long period of time, Nothing is happening and it's actually draining their resources from their business where they could be using that time better so that probably the way would be set yourself on a X number of episodes or X number of months that you're going to do a podcast for on a consistent and sustainable basis and then evaluate at the end of that point and then have some idea for yourself of okay if by that time this is how the podcast is doing.
Danny Lennon: Whether that's in terms of numbers or your level of enjoyment or the number of contacts you make, whatever is important for that person, the reason for doing the podcast. If it's trending in that right direction and it's, I can see that it's growing, then I can say, I'm going to do it for another X period of time.
Danny Lennon: Uh, as opposed to, I'm just going to start and then lose interest after two, two or three episodes. So that'd be the first thing. The second would be pick a [00:39:00] Frequency and a amount of content that is sustainable. So again, there's no point in kicking off and saying, okay, I'm going to do these three hour, like Joe Rogan style episodes every three or four days.
Danny Lennon: And then after a few weeks, you realize, Oh, this isn't sustainable. And then you don't do one for another two months. So I would say pick something that is relatively sustainable, that fits in with your current work schedule that you can work around. And the third thing, if you're starting, start with the, um, Simplest format that you can do.
Danny Lennon: So the way of how could I make this the most simple way to get going? So if the way you're doing it, if you think, for example, Oh, I can't start until I get a cool studio set up and I need to have a two camera view and I want to only do it in this certain way of the professional podcasts, that's probably going to be a barrier to starting, or it's going to be a significant cost at the very least.
Danny Lennon: So think about. What is the most simple way to get going to see if first of all you like doing it and if it's a way that you feel you're going to be able to reach [00:40:00] the audience you want and then in terms of actual doing it if all that stuff is out of the way some of the things that we've already discussed I think preparing for those episodes is going to be the best thing someone can do.
Danny Lennon: So if you are really well prepared for an episode you're going to feel so much more relaxed during the episode like it makes such a tremendous difference if you go in and you're not really sure or you don't really know what someone's back on what you're going to ask it just going to create so much anxiety and it's going to come across in your voice or the types of questions that are asked so go in with like lots of preparation and once you've done a lot of preparation also frees you up to not have to stick to a script.
Danny Lennon: So you don't need to, you shouldn't have a page in front of you reading word for word an exact question you've typed out. Sure. You have your bullet points of things you want to ask. You have a rough idea in your head beforehand. You may be written out some questions you want to think of, but you don't need to go and read that off a page during it.
Danny Lennon: That should roughly somewhere in your head. You've done enough preparation that you can go and relax [00:41:00] and then you can actually listen to the person. And then when they say something interesting, you're able to pick up on what they said and ask them a bit more about it. As opposed to, you can tell the podcasts where that doesn't happen, right?
Danny Lennon: You hear the guest say something really interesting, and then it comes back to the interviewer, and they move on to a completely different topic, a different question, and they just read it off a script. And it's just because they're almost not listening. Out for what someone's saying, they're just focused on what they're going to ask next.
Danny Lennon: And it's going to be, I've just asked question three. I'm going to ask question four on this page in front of me. So it's, I do a lot of preparation. And then actually when you're in the conversation, listen to what someone's saying and pick up on interesting things. And that's it. There's a million and one ways you can do it in terms of format, set up what you might like your topic, all that type of stuff.
Danny Lennon: But those are for someone else to determine.
Chris Hughes: Well, that's what's worked for you and it's worked very well. So mate, thank you very much for your time. What next for Sigma Nutrition? Please tell me there's plans for years ahead.
Danny Lennon: Well, I only hope so. And like I [00:42:00] said, we've talked about some of the decisions that over the next period of time are going to be there.
Danny Lennon: One of the things that this year that I've launched along with Dr. Alan Flanagan has been our course on Applied Nutrition Literacy, which is aimed at people who want to learn how to look. Really read and interpret nutrition studies. And so we've done two cohorts of that this year. So we'll be doing the same in 2025.
Danny Lennon: Um, and then the other, I would like to have, uh, and what is currently being the planning is not only thinking about. the slight modifications that current subscription I mentioned to you, but how can that also serve, uh, that group of people who are that main bulk of Sigma's audience, who are dietitians, nutritionists, fitness professionals, uh, healthcare providers with their patients and getting really more into the translation of the topics that are discussed on the podcast or that we talk about in research, what actually means practically, but then also being able to provide some resources that practitioners [00:43:00] can use.
Danny Lennon: With their patients or with their clients, or maybe with other dietitians and nutritionists that they bring into their consultancy that they want to upskill. And I think that's been a common thing for, uh, talking to some dietitians of saying, Oh, I have a practice of X number of people. And when I take on someone new as part of their training, it'd be great to give them more resources.
Danny Lennon: And rather than a, just a list of Podcast episodes that I could send them. I think it'd be really cool to have some resources that I've created that are verified that I believe is accurate. And so that's the current thing that I'm planning. Yeah. So that's the,
Chris Hughes: we had our practice, we. Would go to podcasts.
Chris Hughes: There's a particular YouTube clip I actually reached out to you on email a number of years ago with Nicola Guess about type 2 diabetes You were interviewing her on stage Yes, and you'd taken the clip offline off YouTube and you'd send it to me You'd put it back on and send it to me This is like probably back in 2017 and it was something that I've got all of our Dietitians [00:44:00] to to watch because it was such a great episode.
Chris Hughes: So I think that idea has some real merit That would be a great a great thing. That's a great business. I'll be taking up
Danny Lennon: Yeah, so that's the plan that's currently there, but it will take a bit of time to format that into something. But yeah, that's the kind of next step of getting more in on that kind of practical basis for practitioners.
Chris Hughes: That's comforting to know that you're around for a while yet, Denny. Thanks again, my mate, I really appreciate it.
Danny Lennon: Chris, thank you so much. I really enjoyed the chat and the great questions. Thanks for having me on.
Chris Hughes: No problem. Do you find this podcast valuable? There may be other nutrition professionals out there will also.
Chris Hughes: If you like, share and subscribe, it's going to help other nutrition professionals make an impact on the world, just like you. Thanks.
