fbpx

Top Podcasts for the Budding Entrepreneur

It may seem like self-development in business and entrepreneurship means a lot of reading, but there is a world of podcasts that we consume. Here are our recommendations of the top podcasts for the budding entrepreneur:

Akimbo: A Podcast by Seth Godin

On Tuesday mornings, we’re probably looking most forward to Akimbo: A Podcast by Seth Godin it gives you a marketer’s view of how we can act to change the culture. We’re not just talking about the culture at large, but the culture specifically around what we do, the culture around the people that we serve, and the community that we are. Every week, when Akimbo comes out, it is it definitely goes to the top of the queue. There is just something amazing about how Seth Godin can look at something and talk about it in an engaging way.

EntreLeadership Podcast

The EntreLeadership podcast offers you some of the top minds in business. Formerly hosted by Ken Coleman, and now hosted by Alex Judd, it’s primarily an interview podcast based around the leadership philosophy that Dave Ramsey used to build his entire business network. That philosophy governs all of the things that Ramsey Solutions does, and they do a fantastic job providing some amazing resources for small business leaders. In addition to the podcast, they’ve built a community that serves small businesses, often giving away excellent resources completely for free to podcast listeners. This podcast publishes weekly on Mondays, which makes for a great start to the week.

HBR IdeaCast

The Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast publishes on Tuesdays and offers listeners an opportunity to hear about emerging trends in business. The really cool part about the IdeaCast is that you get to experience the best interviews from each of their magazine’s issues in full when listening, rather than what they’ve pared down for the article they sought to publish in that month’s issue. The full-fledged interview, between one of the two hosts, both senior editors for Harvard Business Review, and the business or thought leader, provides you with a lot of data and findings surrounding what’s happening in business today. It’s terrific to hear from the study researchers and professors about the things that they’ve learned and share.

The John Maxwell Leadership Podcast

John Maxwell has written many books on the subject of leadership, and it’s amazing that none of them made the top books article, but we wanted to keep things solely focused on small business. The John Maxwell Leadership Podcast gives you lessons, insights, and candid conversations about how to be a leader. When your business grows beyond “solopreneur” status, you’re going to need to be able to lead your team. The podcast takes a deeper dive into the lessons he’s written about and Mark Cole, Jason Brooks, and John himself discuss how you can bring those ideas to work in your own life. Regular episodes publish on Wednesday, and the occasional “candid conversations” usually appear in their feed on Fridays.

The GaryVee Audio Experience

This daily podcast is the absolute holy grail of marketing knowledge. You’ll hear me frequently talk about looking for attention, and this is where that idea came from. The GaryVee Audio Experience is a daily dose of drinking from the fire hose of marketing. At first, I didn’t like Gary Vaynerchuk. His larger than life personality and style turned me off, but I listened beyond that first impression. As part of panels, on other podcasts and as part of other programs, the fact that he really understands what we’re all looking for in business, and that is the attention for our brand. We’re looking for the attention necessary to sell what we sell and to do what we do. The audio experience is a variety of different ways for you to consume that, whether it’s a keynote and Q&A that he has given, an interview that he’s done for radio or television and had the audio stripped, or his sage advice in conversations with celebrities and up-and-comers, it is an awesome documenting of the process. In it, you get to see an aspect of what he does in a way that is is very useful and very educational for every businessperson.

Would you rather read? Check out this article detailing our favorite books for budding entrepreneurs.


As we’ve shared on Hustleburg, we love Castbox as a podcast listening app, and the image above is a screenshot of my favorite podcasts in that app.

Market Your Business The Way Jalen Hurts Plays

Sticking to your content and social media marketing strategy, even when you don’t see immediate results, leads you to build an authentic, caring, and long-lasting community.

Over the weekend, college football saw an awesome and unlikely comeback where the University of Oklahoma, led by Jalen Hurts at quarterback, overcame a 25-point deficit to defeat undefeated Baylor University, 34-31.

The outcome for the Oklahoma Sooners, on the road against a conference foe with something to prove, reminded me of how it feels when you embark on the challenge of marketing a new venture online. Their response to stay in the game, keep working their gameplan, and make the adjustments necessary to overcome a situation that would paralyze many other teams looks like what many side hustlers who use internet marketing to build their business face.

At the beginning of your internet marketing journey, you’re starting from scratch. You have no content and no community, the two things you need to be effective in marketing your business or venture. In addition to starting at zero, you see your industry peers, prolific marketers, and the latest internet-famous meme zooming ahead with their established brand and content. It can be discouraging to see them share their successes, their engagement online increase, and the results from their past efforts as you create the “starter” content in the pre-launch days and early in your marketing calendar.

Build Your Community

As you build your community and add to your initial content, you don’t feel glamorous because you don’t even get the satisfaction of seeing small wins or momentum. Like in Saturday’s game, the competition seems to be unstoppable and out of reach, going up by 25. Everything they do is golden, while you dwell in the inertia of the pre-launch activities.

Those early weeks and months feel like an eternity as you don’t see visible progress in the metrics of contacts added to your CRM, follower counts, or engagement online. Content and social media marketing isn’t something to expect an immediate gain from or to be an instant answer for your business. It should be a part of building the community that supports it, and communities take time and care to build to reach the sustainable and engaging direct access to what your customers think about you.

In business, we don’t play a finite game with a singular opponent, but our lives are filled with wins, losses, and the payoff of success. Sticking to your content and social media marketing strategy, even when you don’t see immediate results, leads you to build an authentic, caring, and long-lasting community. That community will be there to support you and to keep you in business long after you’ve hit “Enter.”

Hard Work and Resolve

As those who watched Saturday’s game witnessed, when hard work and resolve to stick to the plan meet, momentum builds. As it does, you see results in the “little things,” and eventually, you prevail.

Even when you feel like you’re down 28-3 as Oklahoma was early in the game, they persisted. As should you.