Whether you’re investing in a serious side hustle, playing with a personal passion project, or building a small business, turn your commute into a daily motivation seminar by tuning in to these fantastic podcasts. Here are ten shows that I’ve come to know and love:
- Entrepreneurs on Fire. John Lee Dumas is the consummate host, interviewer, and teacher as he interviews business leaders and entrepreneurs on a daily basis. With a polished delivery, great sense of humour, and applicable strategies, every episode brings valuable insights and encouragement. JLD offers a host of free resources through his website and posts a new 20-minute episode every day.
- The Gary Vee Audio Experience. This guy comes with a serious language warning, but nobody matches Gary Vaynerchuk for sheer drive, intensity, and motivation. Extolling the virtues of patience, gratitude, and the still-underrated power of internet platforms, Gary reminds his audience that there has never been a better time in human history to build a scalable business and thrive. Length and style of content varies widely, from random 8-minute raw conversations to 50-minute conference addresses. New content is posted daily.
- The Fizzle Show. With weekly episodes coming out every Tuesday, hosts Chase Reeves, Corbett Barr, and Steph Crowder bring common sense perspectives and advice to the matters of building a successful side hustle or small business. Reeves brings the energy and humour, Crowder chips in with thoughtful perspectives, and Barr brings authoritative insights born from years of start-up experience. Listen to this trio for long and you can’t help but love them.
- The Tim Ferriss Show. Although not strictly limited to creative-entrepreneurship themes, no top ten list in this space would be complete without mentioning the Tim Ferriss Show. Tim is still one of the world’s top podcasters, publishing wide-ranging weekly interview content that consistently touches on business and entrepreneurship. Although I’ve learned to skip through the first five minutes of ads, Tim has a methodical interview style, speaks well, and draws applicable conclusions with legendary finesse.
- Growth Everywhere. Host Eric Siu runs a slightly less polished version of Entrepreneurs on Fire. He keeps his interview show moving quickly, and guests share about the highs and lows of building successful companies — mostly in the tech sector. New episodes are posted daily.
- The Brendan Show. Brendon Burchard spins nothing but positive energy healing, and self-improvement. With a mix of positive rants, excerpts from High Performance Habits, and clips from speaking events, this author and speaker brings fresh perspective and energy to every stage of business and creative activity. While parts of his content might strike some as fluffy, I like his brand of practical, forward-thinking optimism.
- The Smart Passive Income Podcast. Pat Flynn is another friendly voice in the same space and style as John Lee Dumas and Eric Siu. As the title suggests, his focus is on the strategies necessary to build passive online revenue streams through blogs, ebooks, online courses, and other forms of scalable content. New podcast episodes appear weekly.
- The Brian Buffini Show. With 45-minute episodes released weekly, Brian and Dermot Buffini offer a mix of high-profile interviews and well-prepared content related to building a successful business. As Brian Buffini likes to remind his audience, his personal story includes going from a young immigrant $200,000 in medical debt to building the largest real estate coaching company in the world. Like Gary Vee, this immigrant to America says there’s never been a better time to build a business.
- The Blog Millionaire. Host Brandon Gaille delivers short, well-prepared and smoothly delivered content related to building a successful blog. Tips are right to the point and extremely practical: search engine optimization, how to build great headlines, and how to assemble great content efficiently. Gaille also shares honestly about the struggles he’s encountered in his business and personal life, and how he’s overcome them to build a blog with over 1M unique visitors per month.
- Side Hustle School. Chris Guillebeau delivers daily stories of side hustle successes — passion projects that cash flow positively and grow to become significant sources of revenue. What this podcast lacks in exciting delivery it makes up for in the tales of people who are finding innovative ways to earn money doing things they love to do.
If you listen to junk radio during your daily commute as I did for many years, try changing things up. Trade the sports news and crappy radio commercials for the kind of quality content that will expand your perspective and give legs to your dreams. If you’re new to podcasting, start exploring the Podcast app (in iOS) or download the Podcast Addict app (in Android) to get started. If you’ve been sitting on a creative dream for a while, it’s time to get started.
Tim Cavey 