5 Small Business Podcasts to Listen to During Lockdown

One word: podcasts.

As a small business owner, this is the perfect time to one-up yourself on your business game. No matter what you’re trying to improve in your business or your leadership, chances are, there’s a podcast for it.

Need to understand how to equip your business for the post-COVID recession? Want to identify better sales channels? Wondering how you can close deals faster? (Lumin PDF’s e-signature tool helps on that one.) 

Rocketship.fm

Rocketship host Michael Sacca has a special talent for telling business stories in a way that makes you want to listen. He weaves lessons on product management, growth, funding, and more into narratives that you’ll enjoy listening to and walk away from smarter for it. 

Rocketship.fm has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Inc, and more. Their current season is focusing on business’ greatest failures and what current business owners can learn from them. Episodes come out weekly.

Average playtime: 30 minutes

Favorite Episode: Product Failures: It’s Not You, It’s Your Team

Marketing Over Coffee

You might not think of yourself as a marketer, but if you’re a small business owner, you need to. Marketing Over Coffee serves up smart insights and interviews to help you improve your brand’s presence with new mindsets and tools. Hosts Christopher Penn and John Wall regularly give talks for executive audiences and their writings have been featured in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, yet their podcast remains accessible and jargon-free. Catch them every week for a fresh take on marketing and business.

Average playtime: 30 minutes

Favorite episode: Michael Jamin on How Screenwriting Applies to Branding

Dirty Secrets of Small Business

The business consultant hosts of this small business podcast are a refreshing change of pace from the in-your-face, keypoint-driven shows that tend to fill up business podcast feeds. With a nod to old-school FM radio talk shows, Adam Sonnhalter and Jack Mencini provide laidback, honest commentary on everything from how to reinvent your business plan to how to get yourself organized as a business owner. But don’t mistake their casual approach for unsophistication -- the consulting duo haveadvised numerous graduates of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program. 

You can catch Goldman 10, their newest segment, along with new episodes every week on how to pivot your business during COVID-19. 

Average playtime: 60 minutes

Favorite episode: How Do I Plan in Uncertain Times?

Mixergy

Mixergy digs deep into a topic that’s touchy with many small businesses: revenue. Each episode, host Andrew Warner takes on a different business as a case study on how to grow revenue (or how to lose it). 

What makes Mixergy stand out from the countless other business-themed podcasts out there, is the high-caliber guests that the show features. Over the course of ten years on air, Mixergy has interviewed hundreds of successful business leaders, among them names like Jessica Jackley of Kiva, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, and many others. 

During the pandemic, he’s airing “Recession Proof”, a segment that focuses specifically on how you can make your business agile enough to survive the recession. You can catch fresh episodes three times a week.

Average playtime: 60 minutes

Favorite episode: How This Founder Built a Niche Marketplace Connecting Businesses with Science

B2B Revenue Leadership

B2B Revenue Leadership is a small business podcast with a 36K+ following but feels like having a coffee with your neighbor (and his CEO, CRO, and venture capital friends). Host Brian G. Burns brings business execs from the SaaS world to share their experience on topics like leadership, selling and sales culture, entering new markets, and digital transformation. 

The show focuses on helping current and aspiring CEOs, VCs, CROs, CMOs dig into revenue-driving approaches to build sustainable growth. Burns spotlights some of the best new sales and growth tactics, combining data with anecdotal advice from his guests for truly valuable content. You can catch new episodes twice a week. 

Average playtime: 30 minutes

Favorite Episode: What a Real Leader Does in a Crisis and Why It Matters