Don’t be a ‘chill host’ is the advice Priya Parker offers in a recent episode of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop podcast. Podcasts have become the new commute activity, weekly entertainment, news source and buzz for everything from fitness to career motivation. For businesswomen, podcasts can be indispensable in explaining how to handle stress, squeeze in a workout at the end of the day or advance a career. We have rounded up five female-run podcasts to inspire and empower businesswomen and planners.
Girl Boss with Sophia Amoruso
Self-described as “a digital community for ambitious women,” Girl Boss is a networking community founded by entrepreneur and nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso that features trailblazing women such as Emily Weiss, founder and CEO or Glossier; Elaine Welteroth, former editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue; and Payal Kadakia, cofounder of Classpass. Girl Boss is a members-only community (with a wait-list of 47,958 people!) However, Amoruso shares her knowledge and ambition with the masses through their podcast Girl Boss Radio and their website.
Start your obsession with Girl Boss by listening to this podcast in which Amoruso talks to Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, about the dangers of striving for perfection. Saujani believes that cultural differences that lead to boys being taught to take risks while girls are raised to be “perfect” can hinder the careers of women. She points to this imbalance as the reason women are often hesitant to move forward.
She Did it Her Way with Amanda Boleyn
Amanda Boleyn’s podcast was the platform from which she jump-started her career as a business coach, helping women take the leap from their 9-5 jobs to launching their own service-based businesses. Boleyn’s inspirational messages and advice can be applied to almost all businesswomen. Her recent podcast “How to Operate From Your Vision, Instead of To It” is a quick, 15-minute lesson on how to rethink your goal-seeking process. Boleyn states that instead of a ‘how → do → be’ model in which people believe that once they have something, they can then do something and finally become who they want to be, we must adopt a ‘be → do → have’ model.
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Skimm’d from the couch
theSkimm began as a daily newsletter in 2012 by co-founders Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin. It has since taken the internet by storm, been endorsed by the likes of Oprah and Trevor Noah and grown to include an app, a book and a podcast. The podcast is hosted by the company’s co-founders who chat to guests (mostly awesome businesswomen) about their careers and lives. A recent episode with Peggy Johnson, executive vice president of business development at Microsoft, covered negotiations from an introvert’s point of view. Johnson touches on the importance of reading subtleties in body language and patience in understanding others’ positions in a discussion.
Goop
Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, starts her episode titled “How to create meaning in groups” on the Goop podcast by asking “Why are we coming together, what do we care about and how do we focus the light on that?” She warns against being a “chill host” and failing to curate meaning in meetings or gatherings. Coming from a background in group dialogue and conflict resolution, Parker says a host must focus on creating connections amongst guests and meaning through conversation in addition to designing invitations, flowers and food.
Goop was born as a place for Gwyneth Paltrow to store personal recommendations and tips, but has grown into a lifestyle, travel and wellness blog informed by experts who give interesting takes on conventional conversations.
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Happier with Gretchen Rubin
Gretchen Rubin wants you to be happy. She has written books, has an app and runs a podcast, all of which are dedicated to “exploring human nature to understand how we can make our lives better.” Rubin’s podcast includes her sister Elizabeth Craft discussing good habits that lead to happiness. Incredibly personal, her podcast gives real life examples of the little things in our lives that bring us joy or how to change the things that don’t.
Check out the episode “A Little Happier” in which Rubin discusses a wonderful quality that her husband has and how it makes many events much happier affairs. She calls this quality “the ability to gauge when it’s time to leave.” In the short (five minute) episode, Rubin stresses the importance of being able to change plans or even write them off altogether if they are not going to bring you happiness.
