Podcasts have exploded in popularity over the last few years. According to Infinite Dial 2022, over 82 million Americans listen to podcasts every week.
And given the flexibility, convenience, and wealth of valuable insights they offer, it‘s no surprise that podcast listenership continues to grow each year.
Nowhere is this growth more visible than in the business podcasting space. Business podcasts provide budding entrepreneurs, small business owners, and even established professionals access to meaningful conversations, valuable lessons, strategic frameworks, and inspirational stories.
By tuning into business podcasts during a morning walk or a long commute, listeners can painlessly strengthen their business acumen and leadership capabilities.
Here are some of the key benefits business podcasts offer:
- Learn from experts: Leading business podcasts provide access to seasoned entrepreneurs, bestselling authors, researchers, and industry veterans. Listeners can soak up these experts‘ well-tested ideas, frameworks, and experiences.
- Stay updated on trends: Podcasts help listeners stay in tune with the latest industry developments, consumer shifts, tech innovations, and other trends that impact businesses.
- Gain actionable tips: Beyond high-level advice, the best business podcasts break down concepts and equip listeners with tactical tips to apply in their own ventures.
- Get inspired: Listening to fellow entrepreneurs‘ real-life stories with all their highs and lows inspires listeners to persevere in their own journeys.
- Learn anytime, anywhere: With podcasts available 24/7 across devices, listeners can build business acumen during spare moments of downtime.
Here are 13 captivating and informative business podcasts every ambitious entrepreneur should tune into:
1. We Study Billionaires
We Study Billionaires offers unparalleled access into the minds of the world‘s financial elite.
Hosted by bestselling authors Stig Brodersen and Preston Pysh, this podcast has shattered records with over 100 million downloads globally.
By studying investing legends like Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio, Howard Marks, and Mohnish Pabrai, listeners can soak up rarely shared insights on building wealth.
The hosts analyze these billionaires‘ decision-making approaches, evaluate their portfolio moves, and extract key investment principles.
Beyond the flagship series, the podcast also features two additional shows for more comprehensive learning:
- Richer Wiser Happier hosted by William Green unpacks secrets to success in markets and life.
- Bitcoin Fundamentals hosted by Preston Pysh dives deep into Bitcoin investing and macroeconomics.
We Study Billionaires provides an unparalleled launchpad for any investor looking to learn from the best and boost their financial acumen.
2. The $100 MBA Show
With The $100 MBA Show, host and business training expert Omar Zenhom distills his most valuable content into bite-sized episodes.
Listeners gain access to the same battle-tested business concepts and frameworks taught in his $100 MBA training program and community, which has empowered over 500,000 students globally.
Unlike meandering interviews or boring lectures, each tightly packed 20-minute episode provides tangible takeaways to move the business forward.
Omar tackles critical topics like marketing, leadership, productivity, hiring, business strategy, and more. He also brings on world-class guests like Seth Godin and Simon Sinek for bonus insights.
For entrepreneurs and teams looking to systematically build capabilities across key business functions, subscribe to The $100 MBA Show.
3. The 10-Minute Entrepreneur
As the name suggests, The 10-Minute Entrepreneur podcast, hosted by serial entrepreneur Sean Castrina, offers quick hits of practical business advice.
Unlike meandering interviews, Sean tightly structures each episode to deliver tactical tips, inspiring stories, or counterintuitive ideas entrepreneurs can apply immediately.
With over a decade‘s experience building ventures, Sean knows the smallest shifts that drive outsized business results. He shares key lessons around financial management, hiring nightmares, scaling challenges, and other crucial topics.
The concise format respects busy entrepreneurs‘ limited time while ensuring they walk away with tangible value from each episode.
4. My First Million
Co-hosted by self-made entrepreneurs Shaan Puri and Sam Parr, My First Million showcases fascinating stories of performers, creators, founders, and innovators who‘ve hit their first million in revenue.
Unlike surface-level puff pieces, Shaan and Sam have intimate conversations exploring their guests‘ highest highs, lowest lows, and personal lessons from building million-dollar ventures.
The candid backstories inspire listeners to persist despite obstacles in their own entrepreneurial journey. Meanwhile, the strategic and tactical advice helps them replicate their guest entrepreneurs‘ success.
My First Million provides both motivation and practical steps for early-stage founders chasing their first million-dollar milestone.
5. How I Built This with Guy Raz
On How I Built This, acclaimed podcast host Guy Raz interviews legendary founders of iconic brands like Patagonia, LinkedIn, Stripe, Netflix, Instagram, and more.
Rather than rehashing well-known stories, Guy digs into intimate details including his guests‘ toughest setbacks, most difficult decisions, constant doubts, darkest moments of despair, and hardest lessons.
These unfiltered peeks behind the highlight reels inspire listeners to embrace failures and persist through self-doubt in their own entrepreneurial pursuits.
Meanwhile, the featured entrepreneurs also unpack their creative process for sparking game-changing innovations and discuss smart management strategies for transforming promising ideas into leading brands.
By blending vulnerable personal stories with actionable business insights, How I Built This fuels entrepreneurs‘ dreams and transforms perspectives around success.
6. The Ramsey Show
On The Ramsey Show, bestselling finance author and radio host Dave Ramsey tackles listeners‘ biggest pain points around debts, budgeting, saving, retirement planning, mortgages, college costs, insurance, and taxes.
Dave and his co-hosts offer tough love, sometimes controversial opinions, combined with non-judgemental advice to help listeners gain control and confidence around complex money matters.
Unlike preachy financial gurus, Dave speaks to real Americans struggling with average salaries, credit card bills, car loans, and financial decisions for their family.
The show equips listeners with practical money management principles, motivates them to persist through setbacks, and inspires them to build wealth and live generously despite past financial failures.
For entrepreneurs looking to build personal and business financial strength for the long-haul, The Ramsey Show provides much-needed perspective and actionable plans.
7. Startup Stories – Mixergy
Since launching in 2010, Andrew Warner‘s Startup Stories podcast has developed an extensive archive of over 1,500 entrepreneur interviews.
Andrew takes a journalistic approach, asking thoughtful questions to uncover founders‘ origin stories, biggest challenges, proudest triumphs, mental models, and hard-earned wisdom.
The unfiltered conversations highlight emotional entrepreneurial journeys spanning ecommerce stores, SaaS platforms, digital marketing agencies, app developers, and beyond.
listeners soak up battle-tested insights around venture capital, product-market fit, hiring tips, technical hurdles, acquiring customers, competition strategies, and other crucial topics.
Whether an aspiring first-timer or seasoned operator, Startup Stories provides inspiration and actionable ideas to move the business needle.
8. Entrepreneurs on Fire
Since launching in 2012, Entrepreneurs on Fire has rapidly emerged as a top-ranked business podcast. Host John Lee Dumas interviews today‘s most successful entrepreneurs to uncover their journey, best career advice, favorite business books, morning rituals, tools of choice, and wealth of business insights.
His friendly conversational style extracts vulnerable stories and strategic nuggets that resonate with listeners early on their entrepreneurial path.
With over 3,000 episodes and 1,000____+ founders featured to date, the sheer volume of content allows listeners to dig into niche topics and discover role models that personally resonate.
Entrepreneurs on Fire community fosters a motivational, passionate, and supportive environment that inspires listeners to turn ideas into reality without fear.
9. The Smart Passive Income
Pat Flynn from The Smart Passive Income podcast offers comprehensive strategies, mindsets, and tools for building an online business and generating passive revenue streams.
Rather than rehash worn-out advice, Pat shares fresh strategies for standing out online — from honing your niche and amplifying authority to delighting customers and automating workflows.
He reflects openly on his wins, losses, and lessons learned from growing his business ventures over the past 15+ years.
Laced with transparency and humor, the show equips digital entrepreneurs with actionable tactics while offering an inspirational reminder of the personal fulfillment possible when pursuing work you enjoy.
10. Masters of Scale
On Masters of Scale, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman tests unconventional scaling strategies with guests like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Oprah Winfrey, Instagram‘s Kevin Systrom, and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
The podcast tackles thought-provoking questions like:
- How do you balance major fast growth with overheating company culture?
- When should you pivot business models and product offerings?
- How do you retain creativity, innovation edge and excellence through rapid scaling?
These candid conversations with iconic leaders reveal vulnerable personal stories and go beyond high-level cliches around company culture, vision statements, and leading teams.
Instead, Reid dissects thorny leadership scenarios, analyzes counterintuitive trends and provides concrete scaling frameworks applicable across industries.
The cutting-edge insights help business owners accelerate responsible growth and build sustainable organizations.
11. The Working Genius Podcast
On The Working Genius podcast, Lencioni applies his trademark wisdom around productive teams to help individuals identify work areas where they naturally "light up", while also flagging activities causing misery and burnout.
The show provides ideas for better integrating family members‘ competing dynamics and harnessing everyone‘s genius, whether through work or hobbies, for greater collective success.
Listeners walk away rejuvenated with tips to find personal joy and fulfillment while also building thriving teams and organizations.
12. Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Former financial news anchor Nicole Lapin brings a breath of fresh air through Money Rehab – tackling listeners’ money issues with empathy, humor and a nonsense whip.
Rather than lofty jargon, Nicole speaks plainly. She tackles everyday issues – why budgeting fails, crushing credit card debt, navigating salary talks, managing college debt, buying versus renting, and more.
With a judgement-free zone, tough love and simple frameworks, Nicole rehabs bank accounts and empowers listeners to regain control of finances.
13. The GaryVee Audio Experience
The GaryVee Audio Experience offers unprecedented access to the entrepreneurial wisdom and infectious energy of Gary Vaynerchuk.
The podcast compiles #AskGaryVee segments, keynote speeches, fireside chats, exclusive insights and more into a single feed for maximum inspiration.
Gary tackles wide-ranging topics including social media content strategies, NFT investing, industry trends, personal branding advice, and company culture tips for startups.
His passionate, practical advice coupled with highly entertaining analogies and stories inform, motivate and inspire entrepreneurial hustlers and leaders alike.
The show equips every listener with ideas to stand out, elevates thinking and provides an essential springboard into the mind of an icon.
The Takeaway on Business Podcasts
Business podcasts make continuous learning, growth and improvement more convenient than ever for time-crunched entrepreneurs and professionals.
With captivating real-life stories, research-backed frameworks, counterintuitive insights and actionable tips from world-class experts now accessible on-demand 24/7 across devices, there’s zero excuse to stagnate.
Savvy entrepreneurs can extract strategic ideas while commuting, exercising or relaxing at home to sharpen competitive advantage.
While the episodes above offer fuel for soaring to new heights, even more captivating marketing podcasts await! Explore this expert roundup for a stellar line-up to further amplify your marketing leadership.
The knowledge and inspiration to thrive in business lies abundantly at your fingertips. Tune into these podcasts to access the best thinking while lifting your ambitions higher!
