Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders

Have you ever wanted to attend the guest lectures of business leaders? Does taking the risk of starting your own company interest you? Do you like to hear the stories of past successes and failures? Yes, Yes, and of course you do. I've found a Podcast I want to recommend.

You'll need iTunes, then subscribe to Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast. There is a large audio library of lectures from great business minds and innovators.

I especially liked the lecture I listed to today with Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn. He has been involved with several great names in innovation including Paypal, Mozilla, and now LinkedIn. He reiterated a common point that I have taken to heart in the past few years. Each person represents themselves as their own company, their own product. You are in charge of your development and you are in charge of your image. The way our economy is developing makes it more difficult to find just one job and stay at it for a long time. So instead of letting that scare you (which it should a little), embrace the change and make yourself more valuable. If you are curious and work on your own continual education and training then there will always be work for you.

A little more on LinkedIn

The vision of LinkedIn is that it will be your resource to connect with the business world. This will help you maintain contacts and get answers to business related questions. I signed up about 2 days before I heard this Podcast, but I feel I'll be vamping up my LinkedIn profile soon. The profile is kind of like a living resume complete with a network of people to serve as your references. I haven't used the site enough to endorse it, or give a quality review, but I like the idea. I need another social networking site anyways, Facebook just doesn't occupy enough of my time these days... (joke)