Podcasts are great. They give you raw, unfiltered content from people. That’s because people give out their thoughts in the heat of the moment. I don’t know of any podcaster or podcast guest who prepares for the questions they are going to be asked or prepares a written speech for what they are going to speak on. They say whatever comes to their mind.
In contrast, a book has filtered, restricted knowledge. So if you want to learn a lot from someone, listen to them on a podcast. That’s your best chance of picking their brain except of course talking to them in person.
Given this, let’s talk about podcasts. I will start first. Here are the podcasts I am listening to.
This podcast feeds the entrepreneur in me. It has stories of many people who beat the time-money equation and are now working for themselves. Most of them are from a tech background. So I can relate to the guests there. It motivates and gives me ideas for businesses as well.
This podcast is for professionals in tech, mainly but not limited to web development. Since I am a web developer myself, this helps me learn how the ‘popular people’ in our field are doing. It also helps with impostor syndrome.
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The Naval podcast is by the Twitter must-follow @naval. This podcast has deep insights on wealth, economics and society, both for the present and the future. Very short episodes too. It’s good to keep listening to it once a while. The knowledge density per minute is very high here.
React Podcast is a must for someone like me who finds himself working with only React these days. I will be honest though, I subscribed to it ages ago but I haven’t listened to it yet. But looking at the guest list and topics they are going to be talking out, I am super hyped about it. Skim through it, if you work with React or are aware of the React space, you will find some episodes interesting.
Apart from the podcasts, here are some of the individual episodes I found remarkable.
Quick Chat with Harry Dry of Marketing Examples - Harry is a developer with a good eye for marketing. Learning his perspective on building a thing people want was eye-opening.
Quick Chat with Reilly Chase of HostiFi - Reilly set out on a goal to reach $100k/y with this side project. He gave himself one year but he reached the goal in 6 months. An incredible podcast with key insights on building a good indie SaaS business.
Creating a $200k Side Project Without Writing a Line of Code with Ben Tossell of Makerpad - Ben used his specific knowledge to build the authority website in the no-code space. It’s an amazing application of specific knowledge with scale. Ben’s Makerpad reminds me of the famous How To Get Rich twitter thread by Naval.
How to Make $2.5MM as a Solo Founder by Teaching What You Love with Adam Wathan - Adam is the co-creator of TailwindCSS and the Refactoring UI book. In this episode, Adam talks about his career so far. In the end, I was spell-bound with what I heard. One of the best podcast episodes for me.
Confronting Your Fears and Taking a Leap with Pieter Levels of Nomad List - Pieter Levels is an icon in the indie maker space. This is a classic episode where Pieter talks about building profitable businesses in his usual no-fluff, no-BS style.
Negotiating Your Salary and Advancing Your Career with Josh Doody -Everyone wants to make more money. This episode gives you important ideas from someone who makes a living negotiating salary in the tech industry.
swyx (Shawn Wang) on infinite building - Swyx is one of my favorite professionals in the tech space. In this podcast, he talks about the various ways he is advancing his career. It’s a very good listen.
Everything in the Naval podcast :)
Kitze on Surviving Hype Driven Development Culture - Kitze is a popular person in the React space. He recently launched his SaaS after keeping it open-source for a while. I haven’t listened to this episode yet but I have an idea what this episode will contain. I am looking forward to listening to it in my next commute, whenever that happens (yay remote work).
Pick any of the above episodes, you will not be disappointed. :)
What are the podcasts you are listening to? Or do you have a podcast episode that left a mark on you? I would love to listen to them. Please share them as a reply to this email. 😇