If you’re an entrepreneur, chances are excellent that you’re already someone who is open to great ideas—and always on the lookout for new sources of great ideas. One of the best ways to source fresh thinking for entrepreneurs is to watch what some of the hottest niche YouTube channels have to say. These are the top YouTube channels for entrepreneurs right now, producing some of our favorite videos on building a business. Here are a few reasons why you should be following each of them:
This channel blends the big business resources of Google with tons of small businesses in action. Here you can see videos on how real small businesses and entrepreneurs tackle challenges and grow their businesses online, both with Google tools and otherwise. It’s a great source of tips, hacks, and advice, and helps small businesses from all over get exposure and connect.
Ask around about what YouTube channels entrepreneurs and small business owners are watching and you’ll hear Marie Forleo’s name come up again and again. She comes across as funny, kind, and authentic, and earns her followers by providing advice on life and work which they can really use, while delivering it in an entertaining way. With about 410,000 followers, Forleo is among the most followed on this list. By following Marie Forleo, viewers can expect to see inspiring interviews, receive tips on how to build a meaningful business, and train themselves to be more productive and face obstacles throughout their entrepreneurial experience. Her bottom line mission: to help you and anyone else who visits, “to create a business and life you love.”
This channel is for “mediapreneurs” and others who want and need to grow an online presence. For anyone who makes or sells digital products or services online, this is a great channel with lots of actionable advice. It’s also useful to anyone who simply wants more traction online, from an online channel, or otherwise.
For Roberto Blake, “Always be Creating” is far more than the name of a channel; it is also his mission and a guiding principle, and you can see from just visiting his channel that he follows it, right down to publishing a daily list of his videos. Blake’s mission is to speak to being a Creative Entrepreneur, so his primary focus includes graphic design, social media, photography, unboxing videos, Vlogs, and related areas. In reality, though, his work is extremely useful to any creative entrepreneur, especially those who want to take concrete steps to monetize their work.
Blake comments, “Being a Creative Entrepreneur is different, you have to balance your art and craft with the challenges of running a business. I help enable people by helping reinforce or introduce technical skills, creative thinking, but also the practical ways to approach business and deal with clients and customers as a creative. The channel covers everything from tech, tools, techniques, and tactics while also offering encouragement and advice.” For Blake, mentorship is key to success as an entrepreneur, and he is providing that kind of guidance for others.
TEDTalks has always been focused on curating some of the best ideas from the best thinkers, leaders, and entrepreneurs from all over the world. This channel takes that process a step further, curating the talks from TED conferences and presenting them in video form. This is a fantastic channel for general inspiration and deep thoughts.
This online learning community, which is “home to an abundance of talented and accomplished teachers, as well as over 3 million students,” is perfect for those of us with side hustles and ambitions to learn more and expand our knowledge sets. It’s also ideal for people who are serious about starting a new business and succeeding with it, because it allows you to be a solopreneur while still connecting with a community of mentors.
Skillshare allows creators to subscribe for $8 a month, as part of its “mission to unlock universal access to learning.” Once you do, you can access any of the thousands of classes in business, design, photography, and other topics and take them whenever you have time. You can also teach a class of your own, growing your audience as an expert.
The YouTube channel gives you a “best of” view of the platform: “Skillshare students produce great work as well and many of them have gone on to teach on Skillshare or turned their passion into a profession. We use YouTube to highlight some of these amazing success stories.”
7. Y Combinator
This channel is a must for anyone interested in startups, and it can add a ton of value even for people just interested in running a smart business, too. Here you can find “how to” videos on creating and running a startup, podcasts with guests like Elon Musk and Anu Hariharan, short videos about business and startups from people like Mark Zuckerberg, and from Y combinator conferences featuring the latest in unicorn businesses.
8. Chase Jarvis
This is really three channels in one. The Daily Creative aims to answer questions on creativity, career, and living the life you want to live, how you want to live it. cjLIVE offers interviews with some of the most exciting innovators, entrepreneurs, and creatives in the world. cjRAW is sort of a catch all for what the other two don’t cover, especially when it comes to anything related to energy, hustle, and creative sparks.
9. Robin Sharma
With clients like GE, Microsoft, Nike, and 15 best-selling leadership books to his credit, Robin Sharma’s YouTube channel has a lot to offer business owners. Sharma’s focus is on self-help advice for businesses, in a sense, and his overall message is that if you find your passion and do your best work, fame and success will naturally follow. With 252,000 subscribers, it’s clear this message is resonating with people.
10. Kevin Rose
Serial entrepreneur Kevin Rose is also a Google Ventures General Partner, a Tony Hawk Foundation board member, and the founder of Digg, Revision3, and Milk Inc. He is a frequent contributor to various business periodicals and has received many accolades for his work as a businessperson and innovator. His channel provides lots of great interviews with entrepreneurs, mostly in the tech space, along with other posts with sound business advice and interesting insights.
Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis hosts This Week in Startups, a weekly roundup with a rotating panel of guests that discusses the news that affects startups and small, online companies. Calacanis is entertaining, smart, and honest, and he and his guests give anyone in the startup, small business, or tech space lots of interesting, and sometimes thought-provoking opinions to think about.
12. Tai Lopez
Tai Lopez is a business advisor, investor and consultant with a very popular book club, the “Book-Of-The-Day” free email newsletter, and podcasts that reach tens of thousands of people. Lopez offers advice on achieving wealth, health, happiness, and love. He has created a “Business Mentorship” program that is an alternative to traditional business school for people who don’t want to waste time and money. He has also recently summarized everything he learned over the years from his mentors and turned that knowledge into something he calls, “The 67 Steps.”
This show is just like it sounds; Bryan Elliott interviews business founders, startup founders, C-suite execs, YouTube gurus, and others to find out what goes on behind the scenes of their business and brand. The show offers detailed, candid profiles of important people in the business world, but in a way that offers real business insights you can use. Don’t let the (somewhat) smaller following of about 75,000 fool you; this is a devoted, engaged following for this highly targeted channel.
Sunny Lenarduzzi manages to achieve what so many of us struggle with: an easy, effortless “natural” way in front of a camera (or audience). This along with her education, entertaining tips on marketing and video specifically are accessible and useful for anyone promoting their own business. “The mission of my channel is to simplify marketing, business and branding for entrepreneurs of all levels,” Lenarduzzi says. “I started my channel simply to answer my clients’ questions about social media and had no intention of building a following. But, I soon realized the need for this kind of content and each week, my videos were being ranked in search and found by a whole new audience every day.”
One of her core messages, connecting your target audience with your authentic identity, is part of every video she makes and a fantastic takeaway for viewers. Lenarduzzi tells 99designs, “I believe if you have an intention to help, your content will reach more people than you could ever imagine. How do you want to impact people and why are you doing what you’re doing? Answer those 2 questions everyday and the rest will follow.”
15. Startup Grind
Startup Grind is a smaller yet still global community of small business owners, entrepreneurs, and other business professionals. The purpose of the YouTube channel is to connect everyone in this community, to allow members to educate each other, and features discussions with entrepreneurs from an array of industries who can share their lessons and experiences that might be helpful to others. The channel also helps connect entrepreneurs to monthly events all over the world—and if you can’t go, you can watch videos and see what happened.
16. Stanford Business
Think you can’t learn anything from going back to school? Think again. The Stanford Graduate School of Business channel is a fantastic source of information, featuring everything from talks with notables like Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Debra Lee of BET, to thought-provoking videos with graphics on topics like “Why Hollywood and Silicon Valley Need Each Other” and “How Women Can Overcome Bias at Work.” A useful channel for just about anyone doing business anywhere.
17. Entrepreneur Online
Entrepreneur Online is the YouTube component of Entrepreneur magazine, featuring interviews, podcasts, video features with graphics, and other items that fit right into the Entrepreneur content but translate much more effectively in video form. Here you’ll find a mix of news, food for thought, growth strategies, and expert advice you can put to use.
18. Gary Vaynerchuk
Serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck can’t sit still, but on YouTube that’s a positive. The author, expert, and business guru provides advice and strategies on social media and marketing on this channel, along with Q&A videos with viewer input. Vaynerchuk can be a little rough around the edges, and so what? He talks like a regular guy, until you listen to what he’s saying and realize he’s telling you things that can help you grow your business into a winner—and he knows from experience.