How to Uncover and Use Your Superpowers to Grow a Successful Nutrition Business with Danny Lennon

Transcription

Hey guys, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. Yuri here with you, welcome to today’s episode.

We’re going to be speaking with Mr. Danny Lennon, who is the founder of Sigma Nutrition and the host of a great podcast. If you’re interested in nutrition, check it out—Sigma Nutrition Radio, really popular. Lots of downloads, lots of listeners. It’s very, very cool. They have actually amassed over two million downloads.

Danny is the performance nutritionist for several professional MMA fighters, boxers, and he’s presented at several conferences across Europe, including Amsterdam, Vienna, and Dublin. He’s a pretty cool dude.

We actually have a really great conversation in this episode. And specifically, what we’re going to talk about it is how to uncover your superpowers to grow a successful business. This is one of the things that Danny does so well—really focusing on what matters most and putting the blinders onto everything else.

So without any further ado, let’s bring Danny onto the show. Let’s jump right in and let’s have some fun.

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Yuri:                Danny Lennon, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How’s it going?

 Danny:            I am great. Thank you so much for having me, Yuri.

Yuri:                Yeah, I’m excited to chat and it’s always great to connect with someone who’s across the pond and doing some pretty cool things. I think I tend to forget that there’s an internet outside of North America, so it’s cool to see that people like yourself are doing some really cool things.

You’ve got a great company, Sigma Nutrition. You’ve got a really popular podcast called Sigma Nutrition Radio. Talk to us about how it all started. How did you go from this nutrition experts to building this company and getting into podcasting?

How focusing on Danny’s super power created a great podcast

Danny:            Yeah, sure. I suppose it depends on how far we want to go back, but to try and keep it to some brief CliffsNotes for people … I originally started getting interested in the whole nutrition thing, I suppose, when I first went to university.

I started studying science—I was doing biology and physics as my majors in university—and during that time, reading for my own interest in athletic performance, I started reading research that might help me in my own endeavors on the field and in the gym. So, obviously I came across nutrition and different elements of sports nutrition. I got super excited about that.

After graduating from college, I actually became a high school teacher of science for a year, but decided to go back and do nutrition afterwards.

I did my masters degree the following year in nutritional sciences, and during that time I started taking on some clients, working with some people on their nutrition and their habits. Just the same way many of us get involved in fitness—starting small and working with people locally, just trying to help them and just building up my coaching base from there.

As that expanded, and once I’d completed my masters, I decided to start putting some content out online just to kind of grow my business—knowing that I probably would prefer to work for myself. We can dive into that a bit more in a while, but I started to get the inkling that my nutrition consultancy would probably be my own, as opposed to going and looking for jobs working within an organization somewhere.

So, obviously at this time I realized the importance of putting out some content, and with so much there I thought as a lot of us probably have, “I need to be everywhere.”

I started a blog, started putting out articles. I said, “Okay. I’m going to put out an article every week. I’m going to do YouTube videos every week. I’m going to start this podcast, because I love listening to podcasts.”

I soon found very quickly that, number one, my skillset and my personal preference was best suited to one of those mediums, which is obviously audio at this point. And two, that was where I was getting the most traction, in terms of where people were resonating with my work most. At least that’s what the analytics were telling me, and that was where my business was growing the most.

I just really doubled down on that area, and pulled back on this kind of pressure to put out content all the time everywhere, and started thinking about what was the quality of the content. I decided to put more of my energy towards the podcast.

This was early 2014, when the podcast went out. Around that time podcasting was nowhere near as big as it is now and obviously the last three and a half years we’ve seen considerable growth in all podcasts, not only my own. I kind of got lucky, I suppose you could say, with the timing of starting that.

And yeah, just from there it started to grow organically, but that was really how it came about. I think a mix of, number one, luck—deciding to start at that time because I was interested in it.

But I think also two main elements were my own awareness of what my skillsets were best suited to, and what I knew I could work the hardest on because I actually like doing it. I decided just to focus on that area and kind of let some of the other stuff go by the wayside and not try to do it all.

That was really how the podcast itself took off. Then obviously there’s other elements to the business we can probably talk about. Most namely, the coaching service we run, and we do a lot of seminars and conferences

But generally the podcast itself is the main way a lot of people get to know Sigma Nutrition. That was how it really kind of came about.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. I think you did a really smart thing, which was cutting off the things that were not serving you, and that’s very tough for a lot of people who are starting off, let alone already established in business.

Because as you said, you think you have to be everywhere doing everything. Sure, if you have a team of 100 people you could do that, but if you’re a one man show or a small team, you really have to focus.

That’s really, really good advice. A lot of people as they’re transitioning from the one-on-one in-person type stuff to being online, they struggle with how people find them. How do people find you and how do you start engaging clients in an online medium with people that are not in your local vicinity, for instance?

For you, was that something you faced as a challenge? Or how did you initially get people to come onto the nutrition coaching side online? Was it mostly through the podcast, or was there a lag between starting the podcast and people engaging in your services? What did that look like?

Playing the long game

Danny:            Yeah, sure. Certainly, there was this kind of slow steady growth over time. It certainly wasn’t this, “I started a podcast and now suddenly everyone wants coaching.”

I think for me at least, there was no real master plan when I look back on it, but I think the one big thing that I had that maybe some other people lack was, number one, patience. Understanding that this is going to take a considerable amount of time.

With that, not putting too much pressure on myself to immediately start taking in a certain amount of clients. Again, I do realize there’s my own personal circumstances were dictated I didn’t have a family, or a mortgage, or kids, or any of this stuff that may be extra demands on people where they need to focus on immediate income right now.

I had a bit of wiggle room there, where I didn’t have to put that immediate pressure to grow the coaching side as rapidly as possible, at the expense of doing it correctly or the way I wanted to.

I put a lot of my focus on the main marketing strategy essentially being content, and thinking that if I could put out good enough content consistently over the next period of time, then that will be in and of itself driving more awareness of me and getting people interested in it.

And if they already get to know what I’m about, and actually like my content, then I’m in a much better position to be able to start saying, “If you want to take this a step further, I actually also offer coaching.” As opposed to trying to hook people in from the start who maybe are unaware of me, or haven’t been able to see my value. I think it was really built around that, that content marketing strategy.

Again, there’s a lot of people that are a lot smarter than me in that area, who can probably give much better advice, but certainly what worked for me was having patience and really, at least at the start, having a belief that if I do good enough quality work for a long enough period of time consistently, then it’s all going to work out.

I think that can be a scary thing to buy into because there’s obviously lots of uncertainty. But I think that’s ultimately what allowed it to grow to the point where it was organically at a pace that was manageable for me. It was focusing on making sure the content was good quality, making sure I could do it consistently, and then growing a solid reputation based on that. Then thinking about, “Okay. How can I start scaling up the coaching side of this, and get more clients in, and get more people aware of what we’re doing?”

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s awesome. And that’s a really great mindset to have, is really thinking about, as you just said, the long game. If I just do this long enough, it will pay off.

Did you ever find yourself wavering? Because a lot of people producing content, they don’t really see the results of that content for a long time, if at all. Were there ever moments where you were like, “Man, I put in so much time to this piece of content and I’m not really seeing anything?”

Or did you go through these periods of up and down, of disbelief? How did you stay on course even when there may have been tough times?

Focus on the things you actually enjoy doing

Danny:            Yeah, sure. That’s a really great question, because I think so often we hear in a lot of different areas of life to trust a process, and essentially that’s what we’re talking about here to people.

But I think that can be very difficult on a day-to-day basis when we’re in a situation where things are tough either financially, or we’ve put in this ton of effort into this business that we’re really passionate about, but we don’t seem to be getting back from it, at least right now, what we would hope to, or what we think our efforts deserve.

For me, there were certainly those times, but in order to try and keep putting in the work and to kind of keep the faith with it, I think one of the things—and again, whether this was out of a smart decision of mine, or just purely from luck—was that early decision to look at what work was best suited to my personal skillset. And look at what things I actually enjoy doing.

I think that allowed me to consistently do that. Doing the podcast and getting to talk to the types of people I was getting to talk to and look at the areas of research that I was looking at each week on the show … That was stimulating and interesting enough to keep me going even if, on the flip side, it hadn’t grown to the point where I wanted yet.

This might be a slight tangent, but when people talk about, “Do something you’re passionate about,” or “pick a passion area,” I think people don’t drill down far enough. For example, I could say, “Sure, I’m passionate about nutrition,” but there’s lots of areas of nutrition, number one, that I might not be passionate about.

Number two, that tells me nothing about the tasks each day that I’m going to complete, that I’m actually passionate about.

I’m passionate about creating a podcast and creating content like that. Whereas, there’s other areas of it that I might not be passionate about. I think it’s having an awareness of what things you actually really enjoy doing. What are those day-to-day tasks that you can see yourself doing even if there’s no immediate reward?

If you can build your business around that, I think that to some degree is going to mitigate that kind of nagging voice in the back of your head saying, “Look, you’re not getting any payoff from here. Just give in.”

Because it’s certainly not this steady linear path, as we kind of all know, and there’s certainly times when I would second guess myself and wonder, “Is this going to pay off? Is it going to get to a level it needs to be if I want to make a good living from it?” When you have that, it’s tough, but you need to trust the process.

But I think we need to have some sort of strategy to even not need that trust, right? Just do it for the sake of doing it because we like doing stuff.

Yuri:                Yeah. There’s a lot of wisdom there for sure. That’s really, really good advice. For everyone listening, rewind if you have to and listen to that again. It’s such a great question.

Actually, it’s funny, because for Healthpreneur I asked myself, “What is the one way I can produce content that I’ll actually really enjoy doing?” For me, it was a podcast.

Because I’m like, “I’m not going to set up another YouTube channel. I’m not going to start blogging again. I would rather just have great conversations with people like yourself.” This is something I’m happy to do forever, because like you realized, it’s just something you enjoy doing.

I think that’s really, really important, especially when there’s so many things you could be doing in any specific niche, like nutrition, right? That’s really, really good advice.

Don’t get caught up in what others are doing

Danny:            For sure. And if I could just add to that, I think the big thing I’m trying to get people to take from that is … finding the things that they’re going to be passionate about is the right question to ask when thinking about what tasks they enjoy doing.

Because so often people might see, “Oh, this guy’s being successful, and he’s got this podcast, how do I just kind of replicate that?” Without questioning, “Is a podcast something I actually would like to do, or be good at? Maybe my skills are better suited to something else.”

Similarly, you can look at people who have no podcast, but have built their whole business around writing amazing articles, and that’s all they do. Or similarly, people who are YouTubers, and that’s all they do. It’s finding what medium is going to suit you best and really pushing forward with that, I think.

Yuri:                Yeah, it really is a balance between doing you and putting your blinders on. It’s nice to model what works, but at the same time, in today’s day and age where there’s so much distraction and so much comparison, I like to stay in my lane as best as possible and not even compare myself to what others are doing.

Is that something you battle with?

 Danny:            Yeah. I think it’s at times easy to do. But generally I think—and maybe it’s just a natural way for me—I don’t get too caught up in what others are doing.

I enjoy seeing what other people are up to, but I think, again, it can just come down to some awareness. I just think I’m pretty aware of stuff that wouldn’t suit me, regardless of how well someone is doing at it, and how well they’re building their business based on this. I just know, “this thing might not suit me” and kind of try and stick to things that I’m going to be better at. Not only a skillset, but things I kind of enjoy and I know are going to work for me.

I mean, I’m aware of what other people are doing and I try and look at those things because I think they can be quite informative, but as you said, we can look at them to try and tease out why this person is being successful without saying, “I need to replicate this.”

We can also learn, “Okay. This person might be a really successful YouTuber, and I might not want to ever set up a YouTube channel, but what is it about them that allowed them to grow this, and scale this, and how are they being successful? How are they engaging their audience?”

When we answer these questions, now we can maybe take that and apply it to a different area that has nothing to do with YouTube videos.

I think there’s definitely a value in looking to what other people are doing, but don’t get caught up in thinking, “I need to replicate it,” or saying, “Well, this person is doing this. I wouldn’t be able to do it to that level, why should I even start this because someone else is already giving out that information and they’re super smart, they have all this great stuff out there, they’ve got this big team behind them. Why would I even bother?”

I think we can certainly do ourselves harm by comparing to what other people are doing, instead of just getting on with it, to be quite honest.

Yuri:                Yeah. No, I completely agree with you.

So Danny, what was a big challenge in your business over the last couple of years? If there’s one that really jumps out at you that was like, “Man, that was a real tough time.” How did you get through that and what was the lesson you learned from that experience?

There’s no summit to the mountain

Danny:            Yeah. I mean, this is always a tough question to ask, and I think people are different in how they perceive challenges.

To me, the biggest thing when I think about the challenge is not so much one big obstacle to come over, or one big challenge. Because I think they may pop up from time to time and they can be tough to take, but generally just with time we’ll get over that.

I think the biggest problem for a lot of people in terms of the challenge, is the ongoing feeling that it’s never going to stop being a challenge, right? There’s no point where you get to, at least I haven’t found yet, where you’re like, “Okay. My business is successful enough now. Now I can kind of relax a bit and I don’t need to keep doing more. There’s not something that’s going wrong.”

In fact, as I think things scale and grow more, there tends to be more fires to put out, more problems, more challenges, and I think the biggest risk is to let those challenges get to you too much, because they’re always going to be there.

And I think starting out, we can have this false assumption that if we just had a bigger business, if we had more capital behind us, if we had more people in our team helping us out, if we were only able to get to the amount of subscribers that this person over here has … Then everything would be okay, and it’d be fine, and I could relax, right?

In fact, that point never comes. It’s always tough.

For me, when I think of entrepreneurship and challenges, I think it’s the small little things on a day-to-day basis—the things that aren’t exciting that you just have to get done and the ability to get up each day even when you don’t have a super exciting project right now. Or maybe there are just some tasks that need to get done but you still need to put in that work today.

I think that can be a real challenge, especially when motivation is low. For me, that’s the biggest challenge of how you can consistently do it and keep working at it when there’s not this big exciting task to overcome, if that makes any sense.

Yuri:                Yeah, totally. That’s a really good way of looking at it.

It’s funny because a lot of people are looking for like, “Hey, what’s new and exciting?” It’s like, “Well, I’m working on this thing,” but a lot of times business shouldn’t be new and exciting.

As you said, if you’re just podcasting and that’s your thing, that’s your bread and butter, it’s just like, “Well, we’re doing more of the awesome stuff we’re doing,” right? I think a lot of times we tend to confuse entertainment with what actually needs to get done in our business and we distract ourselves with all sorts of stuff to raise the excitement in our business.

As you said, that can be a challenge to really kind of stay on course. Just understanding that these little things on a daily basis don’t really go away.

As you’ve grown the business, what are some of the challenges, maybe the little things you were not aware of at the beginning that have crept up over time, how has that helped you develop as a business owner, in terms of dealing with those and overcoming those?

Danny:            I think this kind of builds on what I just spoke about. At least in the early stages thinking, “Okay. Stuff is really hard now because I don’t have many people following me. I don’t have that many clients. I don’t have much capital in the bank. I don’t have this team I can fall back on.”

All these other things and just believing that, “Okay. I’ll put in the hard work now and as these things start to take shape, then things will get easier and easier over time.”

I think the thing that I realized is that that’s not the case, and if it were the case, there might be something going wrong, in fact.

Because I think, like I mentioned, if it’s growing and continuing to get big, you’re taking care of more people, your services are getting wider and more diversified—if that’s the case, then just by the laws of probability there’s going to be more stuff that’s going to go wrong. And there’s more stuff that you have to deal with—stuff that you don’t really want to deal with, because there’s just issues going on. I think that’s one element to it.

I think maybe another that has taken a while for me to realize is that there’s no kind of endpoint as such. It’s never like, “Okay. I’ve got to a certain level now. Now I’m kind of comfortable and now I can start relaxing and offloading stuff.”

You don’t end up really doing that, so I think those two points are very connected, and obviously we touched on a lot of it in the last answer, but that certainly has been the biggest challenge or change from when I initially set out to kind of realize over time.

Yeah, that’s I think how I’ve dealt with it. Just realizing it’s always going to be there.

Yuri:                Nice. There’s no summit to the mountain, it just keeps on going.

 Danny:            Right, yeah.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. Knowing what you know now, would you do anything differently if you started again?

 Danny:            Oh man, I’m sure this list could be super long and I think pretty much everything, we could probably think of a different way to do it.

Yuri:                Well, what would be one thing that you would do differently?

Nothing is ever going to be 100% perfect

Danny:            I think for sure it would be having less of a need for things to be perfect before I put them out.

I even still struggle with this to this day, but certainly for the first couple of years when I was putting out content—particularly when it was my own content, either articles, or a webinar, or presentations. I had a real high level of perfectionism, but really it was this fear of putting stuff out in case it could be criticized in any way and needing everything to be 100% perfect in my eyes before I could hit publish on something.

I remember talking to a friend of mine before and at that stage in my drafts folder on WordPress I had like 10 different articles that I’d written, and they were just still in draft. I hadn’t hit publish on them purely because in my mind they weren’t good enough yet.

And on one end, I do think there’s a certain level of wanting to have high quality work, and certainly that’s the model I’ve gone with—less frequent, but more high quality work. At the same time, letting this feeling of, “Okay. Where could someone possibly say something bad about this piece?”

Because 1) really, there’s never going to be one piece that’s 100% perfect, I don’t think. 2) There’s probably going to never be something you can put out that no one can criticize in any way, but what we have to get to is … If I’m putting this piece of work across, is it a high enough quality that I’m going to be generally happy with it? And is it going to serve and help the people that it’s intended for?

If that’s the case, then you have to put it out. Otherwise, you’re just detracting from your whole mission anyway.

That’s something I struggle with—and to be quite honest, still struggle with—is being able to be happy enough with work, even if I think it’s going to help the vast majority of people, just having that fear of putting it out. Because someone could potentially say something bad about it, or I don’t think it’s good enough, or if I put more time into it, I could make this even better.

You could end up spending three times the amount of time on that piece of content for the extra 1-2% at the end. Certainly, that’s what springs to mind for me.

Yuri:                Yeah. A lot of it is a mental game, right? It’s like, “What if this happens, and so-and-so happens?”

As you said, there’s never going to be something we put out that doesn’t polarize people. And that’s fine. If certain people disagree with it, whatever.

It’s just fun to see how certain topics get certain reactions. Like, Keto is obviously a big theme these days and I did a video on YouTube about the Ketogenic diet and it got absolutely blasted by the number of negative reviews and bad comments compared to most of my other videos. Just because it’s a topic that polarizes people, right?

They either love it or they hate it. I knew that, “Okay, whatever. I’m just going to say my thing on this and see what happens.” But yeah, I think it just comes with maturity. Initially we try to please everyone and we don’t want to be disliked, because God forbid we should get some bad comments, or thumbs down.

But I think as we grow as entrepreneurs and business owners, our skin becomes a little bit thicker to that kind of stuff. It’s cool. I appreciate you sharing that.

Danny:            Yeah, for sure. I definitely see it. I think, especially when it comes to health and fitness and nutrition, it’s even more important that we realize that your goal isn’t to go out there and please every single person. Like, “Put this out.”

It’s your job to base it on what you know and what you currently have seen within research, or talking to people, what you believe is a sensible and helpful opinion to put across to someone that’s going to help them, and is most objectively accurate.

Sure, like most things, nutrition is notorious for having people who have certain dogmas and almost cults in certain areas, so you’re going to have people that don’t like it. But if you truly believe it’s objectively what you believe to be true and most helpful, then just go with it and just accept sometimes that happens.

The Rapid Five

 Yuri:                Yeah, totally. Danny, this has been awesome. Are you ready for the rapid five?

 Danny:            Let’s go for it. I can’t promise I’ll be that good with them. I’m not so good with on the spot stuff.

 Yuri:                Don’t worry, you really can’t fail at this. I mean, it’s all good. All right. Here are the rapid five, or the five rapid fire questions one by one. Whatever comes top of mind is the right answer. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

 Danny:            I’ll go with perfectionism, just based on what we said.

 Yuri:                Yeah, cool. Number two, what’s your biggest strength?

 Danny:            I think I don’t get overly stressed. I think I’m pretty good at managing stress and emotion, which can help when you’re running your own business—if you run it on objectivity and logic, rather than too much emotion.

 Yuri:                Yeah, no kidding. That’s good. Number three, what’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

 Danny:            I would say effective communication. In that, I think over time I’ve become much better at being not only concise and clear at my communication, but making sure it’s communicated in a certain way that the recipient is super clear on it and there could be nothing lost in translation.

Because that can often happen, especially when you’re dealing with subcontractors online, or whatever the case may be. I would say, communication online.

Yuri:                Awesome. Number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Danny:            First thing in the morning is usually to go down and get a cup of coffee like I think a lot of people, and kind of take stock of the day. I have no clear routine, as in everything is regimented the same every day. It tends to change across the week.

So, usually it’s have a cup of coffee, take stock of what’s up for the day, and then make a plan of when stuff is going to get done.

 Yuri:                Nice. Finally, complete this sentence. I know I’m being successful when.

 Danny:            I think it’s I know I’m being successful when I feel fulfilled.

Obviously, that’s probably quite vague for some people, but I think that that sums it up to me. There’s just something when you know you’re being either productive or doing things right, that it gives a sense of fulfillment.

Yeah, that’s the best way I think I can describe it.

Yuri:                I can definitely relate to that. That’s good. Awesome.

Danny, this has been a lot of fun my friend. Thank you very much for joining us on the Healthpreneur Podcast. What is the best place for people to check out what you’re doing up online?

 Danny:            Awesome. First, thank you so much for having me Yuri. I’ve really, really enjoyed this conversation, some great questions-

Yuri:                Thank you.

 Danny:            Thanks for having me on.

If people are interested in finding me, they can go straight to the website, which is just SigmaNutrition.com. They can find the podcast Sigma Nutrition Radio on pretty much any podcast app, just search for that.

Then they can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all that stuff if they just type in my name. I’m pretty easy to find I think on those places as well.

 Yuri:                Perfect. Danny, once again, thank you so much for taking the time and I appreciate you sharing your journey and a lot of your wisdom too, which has been refreshing. Thank you so much for taking the time my friend.

 Danny:            My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

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Yuri’s take

All right. Pretty awesome interview, right? Danny, just a great guy. What I love about him is that he’s just so focused. He knows what he’s great at doing, he knows what he’s not best at doing, and he just focuses on what he’s great at, right?

It’s such a simple message for any of us to really remember and then hopefully do our best to apply. Hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Again, if you have, again, check out his podcast Sigma Nutrition Radio. Great, great stuff. Great guests, great information.

If you’re a podcast junky, like so many of our listeners are, and are interested in the nutrition side of things, then check it out.

Once again, I want to thank you for joining me on this episode and if you are interested in taking your business to the next level, then be sure to check out our free training, the Seven Figure Health Business Blueprint.

Inside, I’m going to walk you through a new way to attract your perfect clients to help you build a six or seven figure online coaching business without spending years building your platform, without doing all the crazy stuff that we don’t want to do, by actually focusing on what you love doing best—which is probably coaching, teaching, and serving your clients.

If that’s of interest to you, and you want a more predictable, more sure fire way of growing your business without all the nonsense, then check out this training over at HealthpreneurGroup.com/training.

That is all for today. I want to thank you once again for joining me. If you haven’t yet subscribed to the podcast, I would really appreciate if you did because I’ve got lots of great stuff coming your way, including next week we’ve got a solo round on Monday and I’m going to be sharing the golden rule of marketing with you. Then on Wednesday, we’re speaking with Dr. Daniel Stickler about what he’s learned after investing $1.5 million into marketing his health business … and sadly a lot of that was lost.

We’ll also be talking with Pat Riggsby about some of the secrets to really building a lasting business in the online health and fitness space. So, that’s coming your way. Subscribe today and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Continue to go out there and be great, do great, and we’ll see you then.

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