10 Best Business Podcasts
Matt D’Angelo
Podcasts are a resource for small business owners. Essentially talk radio on demand, podcasts provide small business listeners with impactful stories and lessons for how to build better companies.
Studying the victories and pitfalls of brilliant executives can help you make informed business decisions in your own life. It also can offer new perspectives on common real-world problems, from driving sales to jostling for market positions with competitors.
These 10 podcasts cover a range of business-related topics. The common theme among them all, however, is they provide small business owners with an avenue toward valuable business information. Happy listening.
10. The Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast
Emily Hirsh breaks down key marketing concepts and offers small businesses strategies on how to drive revenue. This podcast only began in late August, but it offers solid marketing advice for small businesses. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at how Hirsh has driven sales for clients. Topics include the importance of focus in marketing, how to use Facebook Live for marketing and if ad costs will go up during the holiday season.
9. School of Greatness
Lewis Howes has an amazing story. After overcoming adversity as a kid, a career-ending injury crushed his dream of continuing as a professional football player. He switched his focus to “business, marketing, product design, human behavior and adding value.” On his podcast, The School of Greatness, he interviews interesting and important business leaders, and offers important tips for motivation and success.
8. Akimbo
This new podcast from Seth Godin is about culture. Akimbo is an ancient symbol for strength, posture and possibility. On his podcast, Godin addresses our culture and how we can change it. This can have major implications for entrepreneurs and small business owners looking to affect culture within their business. There are also some great episodes about other topics, like marketing. As a mastermind of modern business, Seth Godin won’t disappoint.
7. Upside
Upside is a podcast dedicated to startups outside Silicon Valley. A common misconception is you have to move to California to start a successful startup. Often, building the right startup means finding the right city or region for your industry, wherever that may be. Upside follows a similar format for each episode, where it learns about a business and extends a “hypothetical deal.” This means you’ll get a front-row seat to each step in the startup process, from the company’s origins to the founder’s ideas to a potential deal. The podcast also features a number of lessons for small business.
6. Building a Story Brand with Donald Miller
Donald Miller leads this podcast and focuses on how small business owners and entrepreneurs can connect with customers through branding. He interviews entrepreneurs and business leaders, such as Seth Godin, and discusses the power of branding. There are some great ideas to follow in this podcast on how to better engage with your audience.
5. Business Wars
Business Wars looks at major enterprise industries and breaks down important ideas and battles between companies. Host David D. Brown looks at major companies, such as Pepsi and Coke, and breaks down important business moments between the two companies. While these are more enterprise-focused stories, the lessons can trickle down to the small business world as well. Company clashes include Southwest and American Airlines, Red Bull and Monster, and Nike and Adidas.
4. We Study Billionaires
Preston Pysh and Stig Broderson take an in-depth look at the lives of the world’s most successful business leaders and entrepreneurs. This includes such tech moguls as Mark Zuckerberg and investors like Warren Buffet. These profile-style podcasts are full of great tips and ideas from the lives of successful business men and women. Similar to Business Wars, while this podcast isn’t small-business-focused, there are still some major takeaways for business owners and managers.
3. The Brainy Business
Melina Palmer takes a look into behavioral economics and why consumers buy products in her podcast The Brainy Business. Palmer is a sales conversion expert who’s looking to bring science and economics into the way businesses structure their offerings. Topics for this podcast include foundation episodes on concepts like priming, availability and scarcity. Palmer also has episodes like “What is Value?” and “The Power of Habit.” Each show is between 45 minutes and an hour long.
2. How I Built This
This podcast from NPR details the stories of some of the best-known companies on the planet. Guy Raz, a journalist who has created multiple podcasts for NPR, researches and interviews key company players to illuminate the entrepreneurial journey. While it isn’t a how-to-based podcast, the guests and companies Raz profiles can provide important lessons that apply to a wide range of businesses.
1. The Tim Ferris Show
As one of the most popular business and productivity podcasts out there, The Tim Ferris Show features exclusive guests, life hacks and the musings from Tim Ferris, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the game. These shows are long – sometimes upward of three hours – but packed with useful information and interesting facts.
Ferris has been working on this podcast for a while, so it’s probably best to skip around and choose the episodes that apply most directly to your life and business. Company profiles include Five Guys, Clif Bar, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed and Reddit.