Toni Lodge & Ryan Jon On How Eating Nuggets Led To Over 700 Patreon Subscribers

Toni Lodge & Ryan Jon On How Eating Nuggets Led To Over 700 Patreon Subscribers
Mary Madigan
By Mary Madigan



There’s a video on YouTube of Ryan Jon and Toni Lodge eating over 700 chicken nuggets. Without context, it would seem like an insane quest and even with context, it’s still slightly mad.

Of course, there is a perfectly normal explanation. The pair are celebrating how many Patreon subscribers they have for their podcast –  welcome to 2021.

They promised anyone that signed up to their Patreon account that they’d eat a nugget to express their gratitude. Of course, things got a little out of hand but they made the best of it and over 21,000 people tuned in.

Originally Jon thought they’d be dealing with, about, “fifty or so nuggets.”

Yet the subscribers piled up, possibly because there are plenty of options, you can pay anywhere between $4 dollars to $1000 dollars a month.

If you drop a thousand, Lodge has agreed to officiate your wedding – so there are perks if you support them.

Lodge will be marrying someone next year in Philadelphia and attending a 30th birthday party. Jon will, obviously, accompany her.

But despite the spike in subscribers Jon and Lodge remained true to their words and proceeded to attempt to eat as many nuggets as humanly possible, cue many laughs and lots of processed chicken.

When I speak to them, it’s only the day or so after and Lodge admitted the nuggets had her feeling, “sluggish,” while Jon admits he was, “struggling.”

Lodge is even able to tell me how much it cost by pulling out a receipt and declaring, “$150 bucks or so,” a pretty cheap marketing tactic that really worked.

Considering the marketing budgets of some radio shows that have failed to take off in the way their podcast has, you have to give it to them. They know how to connect with their audience, a lot of which is based outside Australia.

You can’t accuse either of them of not working for their subscribers, 700 chicken nuggets is a commitment.

They were also lucky enough to admit that some fans were particularly kind. Jon said: “They messaged us to say they’d subscribe after to save us from eating another nugget.”

Less than a month later the podcast already has over 900 subscribers.

Lodge and Jon’s podcast is largely independent which means finding another income stream frees them up to put more effort and time into it, and time is something this podcast deserves.

The duo has managed to cut through the oversaturated world of podcasting and carve out their niche, a rarity in today’s market.

The podcast has also helped them both build their own social profiles and cement themselves as a cross between comedians and influencers, both boost over 100k followers on Instagram.

When they started the podcast both had under 50k.

Jon puts it down to simply, “posting and talking about things that are funny.”

Still, just because you’ve created something great doesn’t always mean the creators know best how to leverage it, but Jon and Lodge are navigating these waters and bringing their own brand of fun.

Instead of just relying on traditional ads they have chosen to lean into having a Patreon. It’s a relatively common concept in America but still pretty fresh in Australia.

This originally made them both hesitate. Jon said: “Someone recommended it to us, we were really hesitant and we felt a bit like we were putting our hand out and asking for money and that felt strange. It’s obviously not as common in Australia.

“But lots of our audience are from the U.S. So while it was weird for us it wasn’t weird for them.”

Lodge explained: “I think it was a bit of imposter syndrome. We are creating a podcast for free, why would people pay for it? But people were really happy to.

“Most of it goes towards paying our video editor and paying for our music.”

Of course, the two have a bunch of goals for themselves both personally and for the podcast but Lodge puts it most simply, “We don’t just think that’s gone well, great. We think we need to make another thing go well.

“It’s easy to think this podcasts a winner, and all done, but we need to keep pushing the envelope.”




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