Learning more about your craft takes dedication, and dedication takes time – something we always lack. But this process doesn’t always have to be comprised of hours and hours spent sitting and reading books, blogs, and journals. Business podcasts are a great way to soak up the knowledge and news while you’re doing something else – driving to work, running on a treadmill or cleaning your house.
We’ve compiled a list of fantastic business podcasts where you’ll find everything you need to learn and grow – news, strategies, inspiration, advice, tips, and a supportive community.
1. This Week In Startups
Who: Jason Calacanis
Jason Calacanis is an entrepreneur, angel investor, author, and blogger. His most successful venture to date is Weblogs, Inc., which capitalized on the growth of blogs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. After selling it to AOL, Calacanis founded the Open Angel Forum, an event that connects early-stage startups with angel investors. His work continues to focus on startup investment.
Why:
In a weekly podcast, Jason Calacanis hosts business experts who analyze the latest news from the world of entrepreneurship and tech industry. Calacanis’ sense of humor and straightforward style bring a fresh twist to the conversations. In one of the latest episodes, you can hear AOL Co-founder Steve Case talking about his role in the internet revolution and pick up the innovation tips.
2. Entrepreneurs on Fire
Who: John Lee Dumas
John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of Entrepreneurs On Fire, a daily podcast that interviews entrepreneurs 7 days a week. Dumas served in the U.S. Army, moved on to the university and switched several jobs in corporate finance, the tech startup, and real estate.
Why:
Before he founded his own podcast, Dumas was an avid fan of podcasts such as Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income and Cliff Ravenscraft’s Podcast Answer Man. However, all of these podcasts delivered content on a weekly basis – and that’s what EOFire set out to change.
Entrepreneurs On Fire went on to become an award-winning podcast that delivers the inspiration and strategies to start your own business. Dumas has over 2,000 interviews under his belt. In each of them, guests like Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Barbara Corcoran, and others share their biggest failure, their biggest ah-ha moment, and their best advice for beginners.
3. The Tony Robbins Podcast
Who: Tony Robbins
Tony Robbins is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and business strategist. He penned six books, including the recent New York Times #1 best-sellers Money: Master the Game and Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook. He was listed among the top 50 of Worth Magazine’s 100 most powerful people in global finance for two consecutive years.
Why:
Robbins’ biography speaks for itself – he has plenty to say, and so do his guests. It doesn’t matter if you are a seasoned professional or a beginner, Robbins has seen it all and his guests have plenty of lessons and tips for all situations.
4. Tim Ferris Show
Who: Tim Ferris
Tim Ferris is an author of bestselling self-help books on the “4-hour” theme. This idea was developed while Ferriss was working 14-hour days at his sports nutrition supplement company, BrainQUICKEN. In time, he devised a daily routine that helped him escape a “workaholic lifestyle” and start working for 4 hours a day. Ferriss is also an angel investor and an advisor to Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Evernote, and Uber, among other companies.
Why:
Tim Ferris’ refreshing approach reflects in the fact that his podcast isn’t merely a bubble of business experts. He interviews professionals from different industries to gain insight into their daily routines and habits.
Some of his guests are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Foxx, Edward Norton, Tony Robbins, Peter Thiel, Amanda Palmer, Malcolm Gladwell, Rick Rubin, Reid Hoffman, etc. The Tim Ferriss Show is consistently among the top business podcasts on Apple, and it was the first business podcast to pass 100,000,000 downloads.
5. Smart Passive Income
Who: Pat Flynn
Pat Flynn is an entrepreneur, blogger, and podcaster. He is on the board of the non-profit humanitarian organization Pencils of Promise and serves as an advisor to tech startups LeadPages and ConvertKit. Forbes included Flynn on the list of 25 Marketing Influencers to watch in 2017.
Why:
The Smart Passive Income podcast is consistently among the top 10 business podcasts on iTunes. For a good reason – in 35 minutes, Flynn is talking about marketing strategies, possible business opportunities and utilizing the online sphere to maximize your profit. As Flynn says, there is plenty of advice on internet marketing and startups – however, he seeks to stick to the ethical practices that have been properly tested.
6. Getting Things Done
Who: David Allen
David Allen is a productivity consultant best known for creating a time management method called “Getting Things Done,” presented in the namesake international bestseller.
Why:
Business advice is all fine and dandy, but as you may learn from some of the podcasts we’ve listed so far, it can only get you to a certain point. One of the keys to success is also the way you manage your time and organize your entire day – which is why GTD should be a part of your podcast routine.
Getting Things Done podcast serves as a support system for anyone who is willing to try Allen’s method – he interviews people from all industries about their own experiences with GTD.
7. Mixergy
Who: Andrew Warner
Andrew Warner is an internet startup entrepreneur. After graduating from college, he founded a company that ran and managed multiple startups, Bradford&Reed. The most successful startups were online greeting cards website and game site Grab.com.
After selling his share in the company, Warner took a break and came back to found Mixergy, a unique teaching platform for business beginners.
Why:
On Mixergy, you can gather startup advice through interviews and courses. Some of the guest contributors were the founders of Wikipedia, Groupon, LivingSocial, LeadQuizzes, and LinkedIn. Each interview and course focus on the solutions to issues that are common among budding entrepreneurs. Here you can find some great Mixergy stories to inspire your startup efforts, including the story of turning quizzes into a powerful lead generation vehicle.
8. Re/code Decode
Who: Kara Swisher
Kara Swisher is the executive editor of Recode website, host of the Recode Decode podcast and co-executive producer of the Code Conference. Before that, she co-produced and co-hosted The Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital,” a major high-tech conference with interviewees such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many other world-class experts. Swisher also worked for The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Why:
Kara Swisher’s career in journalism is a great recommendation for a podcast – you know you’ll get a great interview and that she’ll make sure her guests give her the best answers. Insightful and straightforward, Swisher and her guests focus on tech and media’s key players, latest news, innovations and the way they’re changing the world we live in.
9. The Indicator by Planet Money
Who: Ailsa Chang, Cardiff Garcia, Jacob Goldstein, Noel King, Kenny Malone, Robert Smith, and Stacey Vanek Smith
This is the team of journalists, correspondents, hosts, and reporters from National Public Radio Inc. They are experts in business and economics.
Why:
Planet Money was founded in the midst of a storm known as the 2008 financial crisis. “Imagine you could call up a friend and say, ‘Meet me at the bar and tell me what’s going on with the economy.’ Now imagine that’s actually a fun evening. That’s what we’re going for at Planet Money,” the team says.
Following a podcast like this gives you an opportunity to keep your feet on the ground, as the world of online business ventures and startups can often distort your sense of the forces that drive the economy. Don’t expect lectures – Planet Money team is all about exploring, investigating and experimenting. Some of their endeavors include making a t-shirt and tracing the supply chain around the world from the cotton field to factory; launching a satellite and building an algorithmic trading Twitter bot.
Planet Money’s podcast, The Indicator, was launched in 2017 and focuses on taking a number or a term from the news and finding context and big ideas behind it.
10. Side Hustle Nation: Part-Time Entrepreneurship and Business Ideas
Who: Nick Loper
Nick Loper is a founder of Side Hustle Nation website, dedicated to the part-time entrepreneurship.
Why:
Maybe you don’t want to earn millions or be the next Bill Gates – maybe you’d just like an additional source of income on the side, but you’re not quite sure where to start. Side Hustle Nation podcast is dedicated to this specific goal – Loper and a variety of part-time entrepreneurs will share their good and bad experiences, as well as the actionable lessons to start your side business and grow it.
11. Authority Hacker
Who: Gael Breton and Mark Webster
Gael Breton is an online marketer and the co-founder of AuthorityHacker. Mark Webster is an online marketer, systems expert and the co-founder of AuthorityHacker.
Why:
The no-nonsense approach. Breton and Webster may not have 10 NYT bestsellers behind them, but they have youth, creativity and the drive. “One of the primary reasons for founding Authority Hacker was the weird proliferation of internet marketing “gurus” blogging about theory without actually showing results or running real experiments or dissecting their own real failures,” the authors say. “We share tactics because we are using them. We run experiments because we are running them on our own sites. We write about tools because we have used them.”
Quite enough to give it a try, no?
12. LeadQuizzes Podcast
Who: Jeremy Ellens
Jeremy Ellens is the co-founder of LeadQuizzes which offer entrepreneurs a simple and effective way to capture leads and grow their businesses through online quizzes. LeadQuizzes helped Neil Patel achieve 500% Increase In Lead Capture. Thanks to the quizzes, Kevin Gianni, CEO of Annmarie Skin Care increased his leads by 10,000 a month and sales by $100,000 a month.
Why:
LeadQuizzes Podcast is an ultimate go-to place for lead generation and sales conversion strategies. Ellens hosts a variety of successful entrepreneurs for unique stories about their business growth. You can hear advice from Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel, Eric Siu, Michael Lovitch and others – and the best thing is that many guests talk about overcoming the challenges typical for beginners.
For example, the latest episode follows the journey of Raj Jana, who created JavaPresse, a side hustle selling coffee grinders on Amazon. His business had 90% refunds in the first two months, but it has grown to sell 150k products and $2.3M in sales. Want to hear how? Click here and find out!
