Elevate Your Health & Fitness Business Through Your Audio

Jamie Kennedy
Oct 26, 2023
13 min read

Updated: Apr 19

An image of a person recording, showing the impact of podcasting on personal and professional branding. — Elevate Your Health & Fitness Business Through Your Audio

Podcasts have become a widespread medium for sharing knowledge, stories, and experiences. It's a platform that allows you to connect with your audience on a deeply personal level while also showcasing your professional expertise. Whether you're an experienced podcaster or just starting out, the potential for impact is boundless.

In this episode (and article!), we explore the power of podcasting as a tool to build your personal and professional brand. Using examples from Joe Rogan, Glennon Doyle, and Dax Shepard, we discuss how podcasting from home can transform your reach, establish trust, and foster deep connections with your audience. With podcast listenership growing rapidly, it's still early days for podcasting, meaning there’s ample opportunity for growth.

BTW, if you’re wondering who I am and why I’m writing this… I'm Jamie Kennedy, the Executive Podcast Producer behind Brave Moon Podcasts, and we help health and fitness professionals build successful podcasts.

In this episode, we talk about…

How podcasting from home can elevate your health and fitness business.
How notable podcasters like Joe Rogan have turned their shows into powerful brand-building tools.
The 5 hacks to build your brand through podcasting, including embracing quirks, inviting influential guests, and consistently releasing episodes.

Transcribed Podcast Episode

No one that's famous podcasts from home, right? Wrong.

Hi, I'm Glennon Doyle. I'm so grateful to be here and so very grateful that you've come to join me. This is the first episode of We Can Do Hard Things, which means this is the first time I've ever done this. So let me set the scene for you. I'm sitting here at home in Naples, Florida, in my office in front of this fancy microphone that I really hope is working.

It's early in the morning and my wife, Abby, and the three kids are still asleep. I'm in my PJs and I've got a huge mug of steaming hot coffee, which is my favorite thing. My second favorite thing, my bulldog, honey, is sleeping at my feet.

We are broadcasting live. This is my office. Hello world. So everyone knows we're in a, what would be described, I guess, as an attic that's been converted into a little room above a garage of a house that we are trying to move into. And it's, yeah, it's shaped oddly. here's the thing. You and I have different ideas about nesting and how to welcome someone in here.

For me, I would probably get the wood chips off the ground. I would vacuum the carpet. I would possibly take all these like loose cords, this like open live electrical system. So guys, there was a wall in here and it really cut into the open space. So I tore the wall out with my own two bare hands, which I'm just saying, if you're going to be inviting people here to your podcast, you have to have a door on the bathroom. Inarguable. Right. And if you have a guest up here, let's say Robert De Niro does your podcast. He likely will. Yeah. He's not going to want to go to a toilet that first of all, I can see into right now. You have to put a curtain on that.

If you recognize any of these voices, it's more than likely because you've heard of them before. You just heard Glennon Doyle and her podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, Joe Rogan from the Joe Rogan Experience, and Dax Shepard from Armchair Expert. And one thing these people all have in common, besides being famous, they podcast from home.

Don't believe me? Joe Rogan often shared early on that he was recording from home and just a quick Instagram search and you'll see Glennon and her wife still recording from a bedroom. These people are podcasting from home and you can too.

Thank you for joining me today. I'm Jamie Kennedy. I started this podcast to show you that creating your own podcast is entirely achievable. With just my Rode Podcaster mic and a cup of black tea, I bring you the best tools and techniques I've meticulously researched and tested, ensuring no guesswork on your part.

For a comprehensive list of the equipment and software my clients use, head to my website and grab the free start a podcast guide. I've condensed months of research into this guide offering you the industry's best choices. Download it today. The link is in the show notes. Now let's jump into it. How to build your brand by podcasting from home.

So the question we're honing in on today is, can podcasting from home build your brand? Let's review some stats. Before Joe Rogan ventured into podcasting, he was primarily known as a standup comedian and actor. While he had a successful career in comedy, his brand was primarily associated with his performances and appearances on television shows like Fear Factor and News Radio. He had a fan base, but was not widely recognized as a thought leader or influencer in specific fields.

But after he started the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Joe's brand underwent a remarkable transformation. The podcast started garnering millions of listeners per episode, offering Rogan the ability to connect with a much larger and highly engaged audience. His brand started to extend well beyond traditional entertainment.

The long form format of his episodes allowed him to have genuine, deep and unscripted conversations. And the authenticity became a hallmark of his brand. And he was celebrated for his thought provoking discussions. Also by featuring guests from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and perspectives, Rogan's brand became associated with diversity and inclusivity.

He also clearly turned his podcast into a successful business venture, exclusive licensing agreements like the one with Spotify brought significant financial success and highlighted the podcast's role as a business platform. This shift in his media presence significantly expanded his brand in so many ways.

Jumping deeper into the health and fitness industry, Ben Greenfield. Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. Before launching his podcast, Ben had already established himself as a respected figure in the health and fitness industry due to his background as a personal trainer, nutritionist, and author. He was known for his expertise in areas such as biohacking, exercise science, nutrition, and optimizing physical performance.

However, it was this podcast and online presence that significantly expanded his reach and made him more well-known in the broader health and wellness community. His podcast allowed him to share his knowledge, insights, and interviews with experts in a long form and accessible format attracting a larger and more diverse audience.

This increased visibility helped solidify his reputation as a thought leader and influencer in the health and fitness space. Now, before you say it's too late because these people started podcasting when it was unsaturated, let me be the first to tell you it's not too late. Okay, I'm just going to share some quick math with you because I think it might help better understand just how unsaturated this medium is. So.

There are roughly three million podcasts out there. This is give or take podcast you'll find exclusively on one listening platform or another. 21 % of those podcasts have posted an episode in the past 90 days, which means 630,000 podcasts are posting episodes consistently. Now let's compare that to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. YouTube has 38 million active YouTube channels posting consistently. Instagram has 95 million photos or videos being posted daily and TikTok sees 34 million videos posted daily. We're talking about daily.

To compare, let's go back and review. There are only 630,000 podcasts that post daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly. And yet every other channel has millions of people posting daily, regularly.

And yet podcast listenership continues to rise and is in fact considered to be the fastest growing medium in the world. In 2019, there were about 275 million podcast listeners globally. And in 2023, that number has shot up to 464 million. That's a massive audience. The point of what I'm trying to say is podcasting is not saturated. You're still in the early days.

And like they say, the best time to start was three years ago or today. Okay, if you're like me, you're passionate about health, fitness, wellness, and you've got a ton of knowledge and experience to share. You want to help others achieve their health and wellness goals while building a brand that reflects your authentic, open-minded, and supportive self. So what is a brand and why do you need to find ways to build it?

Perhaps in the past few years as well, you've been hearing a lot about why you need a personal brand and a professional brand. I mean, what happened to the good old just being myself sort of thing? But that's beside the point. I think the reason the word brand has become such a buzzword is because with so much online presence, we now have to present ourselves in two lights, in real life and online. And let's face it, what you see online about someone tends to be the highlight reel, you know?

But not only that, online, you can really highlight certain aspects of your personality. So let me give you a personal example. When I started my career, I worked at the North Face in wholesale sales. I sold jackets to Nordstrom, who then sold it to the masses. So yes, I started my career in sales. Health and fitness, absolutely, but sales.

It wasn't until I was 30 that I made a career change into marketing in the health and fitness world, which has ultimately led me to teaching you how to podcast and market your podcast. But if you scroll back through my Instagram, next time you're bored, you'll see very clearly that I used to only talk about yoga and wine, both still passions of mine, and I never talked about podcasting. So someone who followed me might have thought that I was all about yoga and wine.

But really, that's not true, is it? Because we are all so multifaceted. You are so multifaceted with different interests and passions and career goals and dreams. All of that is to say that our online presence becomes our brand. It becomes who people view us as and what people respect us as. Our brand is still us. It's just a more condensed version of us. I could go into the intricacies and the psychology of how confusing that must be to our psyche.

But instead, let's focus on the positive aspect of online branding. Because having an online presence has expanded our networking capabilities tenfold. And therefore, our ability to sell online to more people has grown immensely. So let's review and identify what a personal and professional brand are how they are related, and how you might present yourself in different aspects of your life.

A professional brand is the image, reputation, and expertise that you or your professional entity cultivates and presents in a work or business context. It is how you or your business wants to be perceived within your industry or career. It includes factors like professional qualifications, work experience, skills, and industry knowledge.

Professional brand is often cultivated to advance your career, attract clients or customers, and establish credibility in a specific field. And it also can help you become recognized as an expert or thought leader in your respective industry. Now, let's talk about a personal brand. A personal brand might focus on your identity outside of your professional life. It includes elements like hobbies, interests, personal values, lifestyle choices, and social interactions.

Personal Brand is about how you present yourself on social media, among friends and family, or in personal relationships. Building a strong personal brand can help you connect with like-minded people and build meaningful relationships in your personal life and online. It can also influence how you are perceived by your peers and how you relate in real life and online. So here's what makes podcasting so exciting.

Podcasting gives you an opportunity to build both your personal and professional brand all at once. It opened doors for career opportunities, establishes trust with your target audience, helps you become recognized as an expert in your field, plus it makes you more relatable through sharing your personal stories and struggles, interests, hobbies, personal values, and lifestyle choices. So, ehen you're podcasting, it's important to recognize that you're not only building your brand for monetization opportunities, you're also allowing people to connect with you on a personal level. That's something really special. So let's talk about what podcasting is not. It's not just about promoting your services, courses, or products.

Spending your episode talking about your various offerings will not build your brand. In fact, it will deter your potential listeners. Instead, podcasting is about sharing valuable information your listeners will love. It's about sharing your expertise and bringing new thoughts, ideas, and reflections to your target audience, AKA dream listeners, as you know that I love to say. And podcasts are prime for showing your expertise.

After all, 75 % of people tuning into podcasts want to be educated by podcasts. Now on a podcast, you're not just another voice in the crowd or a quick 30 second attention moment as they scroll through their Instagram feed. No, they're selectively choosing your episode to help them better understand a topic you or your guests are covering. You're a destination for them, meaning they're showing up to listen to you proactively, not reactively like they would be doing if they were scrolling through their Instagram feed.

And the reason they're so willing to do this, to find you on the podcast listening apps and press play is because you're providing them incredible value. And that's a sweet spot for building your brand. Because ultimately when you bring value to your audience, your audience grows quite fond of you. They rely on you to provide them with education in their field of interest, which just so happens to be your field of interest and study. A win, win.

The reason this works so well in podcasting is because podcast listeners are highly engaged, more so than most other mediums. According to a recent study, 80 % of podcast listeners listen to all or most of each episode. And we're talking podcast episodes that average 27 minutes in length. That's an incredibly captive audience for a long period of time that's eager to hear your message.

Compare that to YouTube's average engagement time of two and a half minutes, and we've got a clear winner. I think one of the things that you should take away from this message is that a video, whether it's a video podcast or a YouTube video, requires their full attention, meaning they can't multitask.

But with an audio podcast, it's said that a majority of podcast listeners are multitasking, whether they're on their commute, driving, cooking, going for a walk, going for a run at the gym. This is why audio podcasts are so highly engaged compared to many other mediums, because listeners are able to engage and enjoy the content while they're doing other things, unlike video. The key takeaway from these examples is that podcasting can be your platform to shine.

Whether you're a nutrition expert, a fitness enthusiast, or a yoga instructor, you have a unique story to tell, and there's an audience waiting to hear it.

Let's jump into the five hacks that will help you build your brand through podcasting.

Hack number one. You should embrace your quirks. I don't know about you, but I have been so embarrassed and to be honest, a little ashamed about my quirks over the years.

Some I try to hide from the world, like the fact that I am a control freak, or some I get embarrassed about and always go home after a social event shaking my head, like the fact that I always seem to interrupt people and realize it too late, or my weird laugh. I laugh all the time and I totally snort and I totally have the loudest laugh. But when I really think about it, these quirks are real.

Whether someone actually has those same quirks, it's not the point. It's that these quirks, they make us all human and that's relatable. So what are your quirks? Examples could be physical, like you always crack your knuckles or you talk with your hands. Behavioral quirks, like always being late or that you were super competitive or a mental quirk like having a dark sense humor or being obsessed with a topic like Harry Potter or boy bands, both of which I can relate to at some point in my life, by the way.

The point is this, figure out your quirks, write them down, print it and laminate it. Share them when you podcast. If you love coffee, share that you always have a cup of coffee in your hand or talk about coffee breath, I don't know.

The point is you'll know and you'll find a beautiful way to relate to your listeners that they will love.

Hack number two. Go deep into your niche. You know that finding your niche is a huge thing for me. More so than any other medium, finding your podcast niche is a must. And if you need help with that, I do offer a brainstorming exercise to figure out what yours is.

Specialize in a certain niche that aligns with your brand and then work to attract dream listeners that will love your unique insights into that topic. This will set your brand apart and make you stand out, which is exactly what you want.

Hack number three. You can build your brand through associating yourself with other important brands. What this means is you should invite influential guests in your industry onto your podcast.

By bringing them onto your podcast, you immediately associate your podcast with their brand. That can be huge for you. Their presence will also introduce your podcast to their audience, expanding your reach and credibility.

Hack number four. Consistently and faithfully release new episodes when you tell your listeners that you will. Just this simple act of being there for your podcast listeners when they expect you to be will build respect and loyalty for you and your brand. Your listeners also feel excited to share your podcast with their friends or colleagues because they know you are someone that they can rely on too.

Hack number five. Promote your podcast episodes online. In episode 10 of this podcast, I explained about the podcast marketing funnel and everywhere your podcast should be on the internet because it's not just the listening apps that people should find you and your brand.

You can and should use social media to share your podcast episodes, engage with your audience, and create a community around your brand. If you're struggling to know where, have a listen to that episode because I think you'll find some value there.

So there you have it. Five hacks and some solid reasons why a podcast will help you build your personal and professional brand. Thank you again so much for joining me on your podcasting journey. Don't forget to subscribe. And if you enjoyed this episode, pretty please, will you leave a five star review?

Until the next episode, keep those conversations flowing and keep being the amazing powerhouse that you are. And as always, remember to stay consistent, keep promoting that podcast of yours, and most importantly, keep it real. Happy podcasting.