Small Business, Big Lessons – Details, episodes & analysis

Part of the journey of small business ownership sometimes involves letting go, branching out into new areas and trying out new things.

This could be letting go of areas of responsibility as your business grows, letting go of expectations as you respond to customer demands, or letting go of previously held beliefs that are holding you back.

While changing and rethinking how you work can be exciting and fulfilling it can also be a source of stress and uncertainty. So how do you navigate these changes when your heart is telling you one thing, and your head another?

In this episode we’re bringing you stories about letting go, taking that leap and moving forward.

This podcast is produced by Buffer, an affordable and intuitive social media marketing software used by over 160,000 small businesses to build their brand on social media.

How can small businesses drive real societal change? As the founder of Gullybean, a hemp farm in Hudson Valley, New York, Damian Fagon is part of a small but growing number of non-white farmers in the U.S.. But after three years of growing crops — and many ups and downs along the way — Fagon decided to take his knowledge and build a non-profit to help fight for restorative justice, agricultural education, and better representation of Black and brown farmers.

This podcast is produced by Buffer, an affordable and intuitive social media marketing software used by over 160,000 small businesses to build their brand on social media.

What does it mean to build a business in public? Should you share business decisions in real-time and admit to your mistakes publicly? Is there value to involving your audience in the creative process? When Becky Okell and Huw Thomas first started dating, Becky stole one of Huw’s one-of-a-kind vintage jackets. The pair decided to remake that jacket and started sharing the whole journey on Instagram. This led to them founding Paynter Jacket Co. Their limited-edition jackets are only available four times per year and sell out in minutes, so their online store has only ever been open for 95 minutes.

This podcast is produced by Buffer, an affordable and intuitive social media marketing software used by over 160,000 small businesses to build their brand on social media.

Does success always have to equal growth? As businesses get bigger they will inevitably change what they do and how they do it. So what if the whole reason you want to start your business in the first place is inherently tied to being a small business? How do you get better at staying small? And how do you keep sustainably small?

In this episode we’re telling you stories of when businesses decide they’re big enough and that they can more effectively achieve their goals by staying small.

This podcast is produced by Buffer, an affordable and intuitive social media marketing software used by over 160,000 small businesses to build their brand on social media.

What does it look like to stay true to your "why", and how can it lead to better business decisions? Finding your why and building a business around that is something we hear a lot but how does it work in reality? Features Stephen Tracy, a data strategist who left Google to build a B-Corp-certified and sustainable scented candle business Keap.

This podcast is produced by Buffer, an affordable and intuitive social media marketing software used by over 160,000 small businesses to build their brand on social media.

Would you turn down a nine figure offer to buy your business? We hear from Buffer CEO, Joel Gascoigne, who did just that, along with stories from incredible small business owners and entrepreneurs who have turned down big money for their business.

In this episode we’re bringing you stories about saying yes to the right opportunities and saying no for the right reasons.

This podcast is produced by Buffer, an affordable and intuitive social media marketing software used by over 160,000 small businesses to build their brand on social media.

Can small businesses have an outsized impact? Is there a way to stay small and push against the cultural conditioning of ‘scale at all costs’? What makes a business truly great? Shawn Askinosie left a successful career as a criminal defense lawyer to start a bean-to-bar chocolate factory. Askinosie Chocolate has provided over a million school lunches to malnourished children in Tanzania and the Philippines, and recently named by Forbes as “One of the 25 Best Small Companies in America” - living proof that small companies can do good and still be profitable.

This podcast is produced by Buffer, an affordable and intuitive social media marketing software used by over 160,000 small businesses to build their brand on social media.

Community is at the center of many impactful small businesses. Whether we’re talking about the people who work with you to build your company or the people on the other side of the counter, having a community around your business can play a number of important roles.

But how do you cultivate a flourishing community that grows with and supports your business? How do you build that community? We speak to small business owners who have built meaningful communities, they share their insights and the big lessons they’ve learned from creating communities.

This podcast is produced by Buffer, an affordable and intuitive social media marketing software used by over 160,000 small businesses to build their brand on social media.

Small Business, Big Lessons is a podcast from Buffer that goes behind-the-scenes with inspirational small businesses to explore how they are questioning the best ways to build a business and uncover the big lessons we can learn from their journeys (so far).

The eight-episode series tells business stories from extraordinary small businesses and the people behind them, examining how they’re doing things differently and what we can learn from their journeys.

These stories prove it’s possible to build a business and do good along the way.