Idea #3 -The World is Podcasting, are you listening?

There is a plethora of excellent educational material exploding right under your nose; and almost all of it is free. That’s right, some of the best and most current educational content is available free via audio and video files distributed as podcasts. If you’re not familiar with podcasts, now is the time to dive in. For newbies, Apple’s website is the place to start. With 20,000 Audiobooks and over 65,000 Podcasts (and growing daily), there is content available for just about every discipline in the enterprise. This means whether you’re the CEO, CIO, Manager, Supervisor, or an Agent on the phones, someone is publishing free content that you and your team need to be listening to. Odds are some of your customers, and employees for that matter, are already podcasting about anything from quarterly earning reports to who got drunk at the company holiday party. Are you listening?

is the place to start. . This means whether you’re the CEO, CIO, Manager, Supervisor, or an Agent on the phones, someone is publishing free content that you and your team need to be listening to. Odds are some of your customers, and employees for that matter, are already podcasting about anything from quarterly earning reports to who got drunk at the company holiday party.Here’s how to get started.

Notice I didn’t say go out and buy an iPod? That’s because they’re not required to get started, all you need is a way to listen to audio on your PC. So the next time you’re stuck waiting for someone to join a conference call 10 minutes late, be productive and listen to something besides hold music.

Here are a few of my personal favorite podcasts that I absorb weekly.

• - Sales Rant - – Jeffrey Gitomer
• HBR Idea Cast – Harvard Business Review
• Manager Tools - Michael Auzenne and Mark Horstman
• Negotiation Tip Podcast – Dr. Josh Weiss