Podcast Playlist: Essential Listening for Every Entrepreneur

Calling all entrepreneurs! Consider this list your essential listening for the end of summer.

Our friends at Goodpds put together an extra-special podcast playlist featuring some of our favorite business pods created by and for successful entrepreneurs. Hit play and get ready to not only be inspired, also get some actionable, easy-to-implement advice to help run your company.

You can find and listen to this list (and other podcasts we love) by joining the BlogHer Group on the Goodpods App.

Hiding in the Bathroom – Intentional Entrepreneurship (43 min)
This interview is from 2016 when Courtney Nichols Gould was in the trenches of building her company SmartyPants which she recently sold to Unilever. In this episode, Courtney explains how what makes you a great opportunity can also make you a crappy person and how she and her co-founder (who is also her husband) were very deliberate about ensuring they would not create a culture that tolerated that. She explains the value of using “Transformation” as a guidepost for everything they did at the company.

How I Built This – Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley (56 min)
While we know Peloton as an incredible success story, it was not always the case. Founder John Foley is very candid when talking about what he calls the dark days of building the company. In his mid-40’s with two kids, the stakes were high for him as he heard no after no after no. While he saw the vision clear as day, the investors were simply not there. It’s inspiring to hear how he built the company in spite of all the obstacles.

Conversations with Toi – Entrepreneurship, Self Care and How to Go and Ask for What you Want (44 min)
Host LaToi Storr and guest Sydney Wong, founder and CEO of VenturX have a real conversation about fainting the confidence to ask for what they want, speaking for themselves and explain why “showing up” is so important. As they say, if you never put yourself out there, you’ll never be able to reach the potential of what may be. They give real advice on how to leave your mark in a room and explain how putting in routines is an easy hack to make you more successful.

The ReWork Podcast — Success is Surviving (27 min)
The Owner of Heath Ceramics talks about his Living Wage Initiative — the company’s promise to pay as much attention to their employees as they do their customers. The protests of 2020 got them thinking about what kind of company they were running and what they could do within their own ecosystem to make things tangibly better in socio-economic equity. He is candid about how some of the decisions they made were hard – particularly getting rid of their 401k matching program in order to better serve everyone.

Being Boss – Taking Time Off as a Business Owner with Dana Kaye (64 min)
The irony of owning your own business is that chances are you started it to have more flexibility in your life but the road to actually getting that freedom is fraught with feeling that you cannot take time off without hurting your company. This episode interviews Dana Kaye, of Kaye Publicity Inc who explains how she set up her team so that she can go on vacation without stressing about work the entire time.

She’s Got Moxie with Joy Chudacoff – Jesse Draper Unplugged. (25 min)
This is a must-listen-to episode for anyone looking for investors or bootstrapping their company. Jesse Draper, founder of the venture capital firm Halogen Ventures, shares real world advice on how to pitch your company to potential investors, how and why you should ask for feedback and why optimism is so critical when you are building your business.

Yo Quiero Dinero – How to be a Latina Tech Startup Founder. Tanya Menendez (43 min)
Host Jannese Torres-Rodriquez speaks with Tanya Menendez, Co-founder and CEO of Snowball Wealth. Tanya talks about the isolation she felt as a Latina founder in her 20s and how today she is more comfortable in her own skin. She also explains how she had to overcome the mental hurdle to understand that each time someone says “no,” it’s a data point, not the truth.

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