Monthly Archives: October 2022

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Looking for some new leadership podcasts to check out? We’ve got you covered.

From tips on how to be a better leader to interviews with top CEOs, these top leadership podcasts will help you develop your skills and knowledge.

Whether you’re a new or a seasoned leader, there’s something here for everyone.

1. CEO School

If you’re a leader who is also taking on entrepreneurship, you’ll enjoy this podcast.

Host and founder of a billion-dollar fintech company, Suneera Madhani, regularly brings on experts to discuss everything from scaling your business to creating a positive work culture. In her solo episodes, she shares advice based on her experience running her successful company.

Standout Episodes:

How to Have Effective 1:1s with Your Team to Drive Results with Empathy
Establishing a Culture that Drives Business Success
A Billion-Dollar CEO’s #1 Fundraising Tip

2. HBR’s IdeaCast

If you struggle to find time to listen to podcasts, this bite-size one is a great option.

Each week, HBR’s IdeaCast tackles one facet of leadership in 30 minutes or less. With over 600 episodes, this longstanding podcast has covered just about everything you might want to know about being a better leader.

Standout Episodes:

One Way to Fight the Great Resignation? Re-recruit Your Current Employees
It’s Time to Fine-Tune Performance Management
Fighting Bias and Inequality at the Team Level

3. Let’s Take This Offline: The Podcast for Everyday Leaders

In this podcast, host and former exec Kishshana Palmer looks to redefine what leadership looks like.

“Let’s Take This Offline” breaks down unpopular topics within the leadership space, such as doubt, vulnerability, and shame. Consider this a safe space for leaders who don’t feel like they have it all together and want reassurance that it’s OK.

Standout Episodes:

Summer Well Series: Create Your Leadership Roadmap
How Doubt Can Boost Your Leadership
No Second Guessing, You Are Enough

4. How Leaders Lead

When you’re working on improving yourself as a leader, it’s vital to get advice from all angles. This podcast does just that.

“How Leaders Lead” is an interview-style podcast that gives you access to top leaders in business, sports, entertainment, and more. Its host, David Novak, is the co-founder and former chairman of a Fortune 500 company who knows what questions to ask and which insights leaders are looking for.

Standout Episodes:

Embrace Big Changes with Curiosity
Bill Harrison, JPMorgan Chase Former Chairman & CEO – Preparing the Next Leader
Rob Manfred, MLB Commissioner – Finding Common Ground

5. Coaching with Leaders

Want to listen to a leadership podcast but don’t have a whole hour to dedicate to it? Then, this is the podcast for you.

With each episode averaging around 30 minutes, Coaching for Leaders is a short and sweet podcast on all things leadership, from giving feedback and managing difficult stakeholders to fostering inclusivity and improving communication.

Every episode is filled with tactical, actionable advice that you can use every day as a leader, making it a great listen for the morning when you’re getting ready for work.

Standout Episodes:

How to Involve Stakeholders in Decisions
How Top Leaders Influence Great Teamwork, with Scott Keller
How to Lead and Retain High Performers

6. The Unburdened Leader

When we talk about leadership, we rarely dive into the toll it can take on your mental health. Rebecca ching, LMFT, is here to tackle it.

With a background in family therapy, Ching has built her career around helping leaders navigate through the complex emotions and events associated with this path.

In each episode, she leans on experts in various fields to discuss leadership through the lens of mental health.

Standout episodes:

Leading Authentically After Hard Falls with Ref Rodriguez
The Intersection of Leadership, Brand, and Inner Work
Challenging the Fear of Rejection and Leading with Vulnerability

7. Coaching for Latina Leaders

While this podcast was designed with Latina leaders in mind, it’s a great listen for any leader.

What’s great about this pod is that it looks at leaders from a holistic perspective, helping them see how their personal lives impact their work lives.

That’s why you’ll see episodes focusing on journaling and meditation while others focus on leadership frameworks.

Standout episodes:

Living and Leading with ADHD
Lead at Work as Powerfully as You Lead at Home
Arrival Fallacy: How to Enjoy the Journey Toward Your Next Big Success

8. Coaching Real Leaders

Backed by the Harvard Business Review, this podcast is led by leadership coach Muriel Wilkins and is geared toward high performers struggling to grow as leaders.

Every episode starts with one question and one leader’s challenge to frame the episode. In one hour or less, Wilkins uses her background in coaching to help her audience navigate everyday challenges.

Standout Episodes:

How Do I Move from a Specialist to a General Leadership Role?
How Can I Lead Authentically?
Finding My Leadership Voice

9. Dare to Lead

In 2018, author Brene Brown wrote the New York Times Best Selling book Dare to Lead which serves as the basis for this Spotify Original podcast.

According to their blurb, this podcast features riveting conversations with “change-catalysts, culture-shifters, and as many troublemakers as possible.”

Standout Episodes:

Leading with Purpose In the Digital Age
Armored versus Daring Leadership
Why Every Leader Needs to Worry About Toxic Culture

10. Self-Control and Cheese

Ever wish you could talk candidly with your peers about the challenges you’re going through at work? Consider this podcast that safe space.

Hosts Bridget and Sara, two young leaders working at fast-growing tech companies, talk about everything from securing that promotion to navigating difficult conversations with your direct report.

If you work in tech (or plan to), this is the podcast to hear about what it’s really like and how to move within this space.

Standout Episodes:

It’s Not Job Hopping If The Company’s Toxic
The Leadership Crash Course
30 Under 30s A Scam

So, if you’re looking to up your leadership game, or just want to learn more about the art of being a great leader, then check out some of these top podcasts on leadership.

Growing followers on TikTok can seem like slow process. And if you’re putting in the hard work to create amazing content, it can feel extra frustrating.

To help speed things up, we’ve compiled a list of the best strategies to gain followers on TikTok — fast. Of course, nothing can replace good content, but there are a few tricks you can try to explode your engagement, visibility, and, most importantly, your follower count.

Let’s dive into the best tips and tricks to grow your TikTok.

1. Stop appealing to everyone.

When you try to appeal to everyone on TikTok, the opposite happens: you end up resonating with no one.

This may sound counterintuitive. After all, to get more followers, shouldn’t you appeal to more people? In reality, targeting a niche gives you a greater chance to be seen by a pool of engaged users.

For example, fashion is a popular category on TikTok. So much so, the hashtag #fashion has over 188 billion views on the platform. If you want to post fashion-related content, you might get lost in this competitive vertical. Instead, you could focus on a sub-niche like street style or mid-sized fashion, which has a fraction of the views but a more engaged audience.

The easiest way to niche down is by knowing your audience and what they want to see. Be specific. If you’re unsure, take a look at your competition. What do they do well? What videos get the most engagement? And, of course, use your buyer personas as a compass when brainstorming video ideas.

2. Post at the right time.

Sometimes, it’s not just what you post but when you post. This is especially true on TikTok.

A recent HubSpot Blogs survey of 300+ marketers identified the best and worst times to post on TikTok. Here are the results:

The best time of day: 3-6 PM and 6-9 PM
The best days of the week: Friday and Saturday
The worst time of day: 6-9 AM and 9-12 AM
The worst days of the week: Monday and Tuesday

Since TikTok is popular with the Gen Z crowd  — and they’re in school for a good part of the day — the morning and early afternoon “dead zone” makes sense.

When posting content on TikTok, stay clear of these slow hours, and try posting towards the end of the week or during the weekend.

3. Duet or Stitch top-performing videos.

TikTok offers a number of features to collaborate with others — which is key to getting more eyeballs on your content. Let’s talk about two features in particular: Duet and Stitch.

The Duet feature lets you play your video next to another user’s video. This is ideal if you want to add commentary or a funny reaction to the original video.

The Stitch feature enables you to play up to 5 seconds of someone else’s video as an intro to your own. 

The best way to leverage these features is by engaging with top-performing videos in your niche. You can do this by using the search bar and typing keywords relating to your brand. Then, once you’ve zeroed in on a video you like, tap the Stitch or Duet button and let your creativity fly.

But there’s more — you can also encourage others to Duet or Stitch your videos.

For example, Tesco, a British grocery chain, asks users to Duet the following video for a chance to become the new voice of their checkout machine:

The result? Tesco’s original video scored 22 million views and thousands of Duet submissions.

4. Participate in a challenge (or create your own).

Challenges are infamous on TikTok, and they have the power to explode your follower count. The trick is finding the right one for your brand. After all, some challenges fizzle out before they hit the ground, while others spread like wildfire.

Once you find a challenge you can work with, it’s important to put your own spin on it. That’s how you’ll really stand out.

You can also create your own challenge — just make sure it’s relatively simple to do. For example, Chipotle started the #LidFlip challenge, which encouraged users to flip the lid of their burrito bowl with style:

In the first six days, the challenge generated over 100,000 video responses. Even more impressive, it created a record-breaking sales day for Chipotle.

5. Jump on trending sounds and songs.

88% of TikTok users say sound is essential to the TikTok experience. Thanks to the algorithm, it’s also critical for driving more engagement.

TikTok has an extensive library of sounds — but you should prioritize the ones that get a lot of love from the community. This is because the TikTok algorithm tends to favor videos that leverage trending sounds. Plus, 67% of TikTok users prefer branded videos that feature popular or trending songs.

To get started, check out TikTok’s Creative Center which ranks the most popular sounds each day. You can also filter by region, which is helpful if your audience lives in a different location from you.

6. Cross-promote your TikTok.

Odds are, your audience is active on other social media besides TikTok. For this reason, it’s important to cross-promote your videos to other channels, such as Instagram or YouTube.

Remember that Instagram’s algorithm will not promote videos with a TikTok watermark, so you’ll need to upload the original video. YouTube, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same restriction.

It’s also worth noting that Reels cannot exceed 60 seconds, while TikTok videos can go for 10 minutes. So, you may need to trim your videos to adhere to Instagram’s time constraints.

Back to You

Ultimately, you’re only as good as the content you create. Although these tips can boost your visibility in the short run, it’s the quality of your content that influences people to hit “follow.” As a marketer, this means putting your audience at the heart of your strategy and creating content that speaks to them.

Running your own business can be a great career choice for people living with long-term disability or health condition.

This may relate, in part, to the increased flexibility around working hours that self-employment brings. Working for oneself can also promote a sense of being a master of one’s destiny and not having to contend with misconceptions and discriminatory attitudes from others that are often encountered while job hunting.

For entrepreneurs of any background, business networking, be this receiving the support and advice of others, identifying collaborative opportunities, or expanding the customer base, remains an essential undertaking.

Unfortunately, as in almost every other walk of life, networking is not without barriers for disabled entrepreneurs. In this post, we’ll discuss why networking can be a challenge and best practice approaches to networking that disabled entrepreneurs can put in place to stay on top of both the competition and their own health.

Why can networking be a challenge for disabled entrepreneurs?

As Bill Sahlman, a professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School explained in the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials: “All great companies — even those with iconic entrepreneurs — had many other people who were involved and, without whom, the company might not have made it so big.”

Networking can be a challenge for disabled entrepreneurs for various reasons, ranging from needing to expend a great deal of time and effort performing in social scenarios when one’s energy is already compromised to facing unpredictable building access issues at venues.

At the same time, a legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic remains an increased openness within the mainstream business community to conducting meetings and events remotely – allowing disabled networkers to engage with new people from the comfort of home and extend well beyond the limits of their immediate geographic location.

So, within this new post-pandemic reality of hybrid online and in-person networking opportunities, what are some excellent networking tips? Below we’ll discuss them.

5 Networking Tips for Disabled Entrepreneurs

1. Research disability-entrepreneurship organizations that can help you.

As explained previously, entrepreneurship is a popular and well-trodden path for many people living with a disability. With this in mind, there are numerous organizations out there dedicated to providing support to disabled business owners.

One such organization is the American Association of People with Disabilities which provides entrepreneurial advice, scholarships, and internships to its members.

Disability:IN is another national body offering support and advice to disabled business owners. It offers an accreditation plan called Disability-Owned Business Enterprise (DOBE) certification, and it’s meant for businesses that are at least 51% owned, managed, and controlled by an individual with a disability.

Additionally, there are local and state-run resources available to disabled business owners, as well as those catering to specific groups such as veterans.

Thoroughly researching and identifying all such organizations should be part of the early-stage due diligence of any disabled entrepreneur, as this type of highly tailored resource is low-hanging fruit for disabled business owners looking to grow their network.

2. Be realistic about the impact of your disability.

Running your own business can be physically and mentally exhausting, regardless of whether someone has a disability or not.

As the meeting and greeting that accompanies in-person networking events can be particularly draining – it’s vital that disabled entrepreneurs set realistic goals around what they can manage and understand exactly how their disability might impact them in different situations.

Going to networking events can be a great way of meeting new business contacts, but if the price of attendance is having to spend the following day in bed, entrepreneurs must weigh these considerations carefully.

Diego Mariscal, who has cerebral palsy, is the founder and CEO of 2Gether-International – a community for disabled founders offering peer support and expert mentoring. “A lot of people will go to an in-person networking event and there’ll be this frenetic competition to see how many business cards everyone can collect,” remarks Mariscal.

“That just does a disservice to both yourself and the people you’re trying to meet because, realistically, you just can’t follow up with 20 different people in any kind of meaningful way,” he continues.

“Particularly for somebody living with an energy-limiting condition – a better approach would be to pick one or two people that are going to be in attendance that you want to connect with. Once you’ve met those people – just stop. Chill, relax, and decompress because it’s going to be much easier to follow up with two or three people and build meaningful relationships than trying to do that with twenty.”

3. Be confident enough to use your disability and personality as a positive differentiator.

People with disabilities can often feel self-conscious about standing out, particularly at public events common with in-person networking. Nonetheless, at events where everyone is competing for eyeballs and attention, standing out from the crowd is potentially no bad thing, especially if it is augmented by an engaging, self-confident introduction and a display of strong interpersonal skills.

Networkers with disabilities should not be ashamed of their impairments and seek to conceal them but instead explore ways in which their disability could be viewed by others as a positive differentiator.

Heather Lawver is the founder and CEO of Perfectly Pitched, which helps early-stage social entrepreneurs develop compelling pitch decks and advanced marketing strategies. She also lives with two rare genetic conditions that cause her to experience significant levels of pain throughout the day.

Recounting her experiences working in an incubator program in 2014, Lawver says, “It has to start with you as the entrepreneur and being comfortable enough with your disabilities and who you are to ask for accommodations.”

She continues, “When I was in the incubator program, I got it into my head that, if you were pitching, it had to be done standing up because, if you were sitting down, you weren’t commanding the room. This was a problem for me with my pain issues and someone from the program offered me a chair but, at the time, I didn’t feel comfortable accepting this accommodation because I didn’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons.”

She says doing so was a mistake, that she ended up in so much pain she couldn’t speak and had to force her way through the pitch. Looking back, she recounts that she should have spotted the opportunity that sitting down to pitch could be a differentiator in storytelling style.

“It’s all about being comfortable in who you are and working out how you can turn it into an advantage rather than a disadvantage,” she adds.

4. Fine-tune and personalize your communication strategy.

If you’ve concluded that in-person events pose too many obstacles and you might be better off with online networking – be sure to take the time to hone your online communications and make them stand out.

Platforms like LinkedIn provide a great system for growing your network of like-minded professionals, but it’s vital to ensure that your online communications are polished and personalized.

Business leaders receive multiple emails and social media introductions daily.

To make yours stand out, avoid spamming generic introductory message templates in the hope of gaining someone’s attention. Instead, focus on personalizing messages and honing in on how you think a business relationship might benefit both parties.

Take the time to read the person’s profile and background to identify where their expert knowledge lies. That way, you can demonstrate a genuine appreciation of their thought leadership and how it might relate to your particular area of business.

5. If your differences make you feel awkward about approaching people, practice makes perfect.

Whether online or in-person networking, one way to ease the nerves or any awkwardness about appearing different might be to practice introductions with friends, family, and colleagues before taking the plunge into higher-stakes official networking events.

This might be particularly useful if adaptive technologies, equipment, or other accommodations are used. For someone with hearing loss, this might be trying out Zoom calls with and without an interpreter.

Someone with mixed mobility needs, who may alternate between using a wheelchair and other walking supports, might consider experimenting with both and doing some trial runs to establish what feels most comfortable when interacting with others.

Over to You

Like most activities in business, effective networking is as much an art as it is a science.

To maximize opportunities, entrepreneurs with disabilities have to begin with an honest appraisal of their health condition.

Rather than just trying to slide into a preconceived profile of what a successful business networker looks like, embrace your uniqueness and diversity, as that will be the quickest shortcut to getting to grips with your strengths and weaknesses both in business and in life.

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