Starting a business comes with a lot of questions. How do you find customers? Price your products? Build a brand? Keep going when the first plan doesn’t work?
It’s a lot to keep up with.
The good news? There are more free learning resources than ever before thanks to social media. YouTube can be a helpful place to learn from founders, marketers, educators and business owners — often for free.
Some channels are full of vague “hustle harder” tips. Others share practical lessons you can use in your own business. Whether you’re starting a local business, building a personal brand or thinking about funding, the right channels can help you learn more efficiently.
The most useful advice is the advice you actually put to work. That might mean improving your videos, refreshing your website, updating your signage or creating printed materials that match the brand customers already see online.
To help you filter through the noise, we’ve put together a list of the top channels by your goals — from local marketing and personal branding to startup funding, productivity, AI tools and long-term strategy.
- YouTube can help entrepreneurs learn practical skills for free. From local SEO and video marketing to funding, productivity and AI tools.
- The best advice is only useful when you apply it. Whether that means improving your online presence, storefront, packaging or printed marketing, put your lessons into action!
- Choose top business YouTube channels based on what you need right now. That could be things like confidence, visibility, better systems, funding advice or help creating content.
- Be specific in your needs, not generic. Look for specific examples, tutorials and founder stories, not just motivation.
Quick guide: Which is the right business YouTube channel for you?
| Channel name | Key themes | Best for |
| Ali Abdaal | Productivity and workflow systems | Solo founders and creators |
| Think Media | Video setup and audience growth | Early marketing expansion |
| Y Combinator | Fundraising and product-market fit | Tech startups and scale-ups |
| Dan Martell | SaaS scaling and leadership systems | Established software companies |
| Alex Hormozi | Offer creation and sales acquisition | Bootstrapped small businesses |
| This Week in Startups | Startup trends and investor insight | Keeping up with tech and VC thinking |
| Simon Squibb | Bootstrapping and small business confidence | Early-stage local founders |
| Google Business Channel | Local SEO and visibility tools | Brick-and-mortar stores |
| Marie Forleo | Purpose-driven marketing and personal brands | Service-based professionals |
| Sunny Lenarduzzi | Video marketing and camera confidence | Personal brand building |
| Matt Wolfe | AI tool workflows and automation | Saving time with practical AI tools |
| Think School | Emerging markets and international business | Globally minded companies |
| Jorge Serratos / Sinergéticos | Spanish-language entrepreneurship | Reaching or learning from Latin American markets |
| Gary Vaynerchuk | Content and customer attention | Building a brand through social media |
| Roberto Blake | Freelancing and creative business | Turning creative skills into income |
| TED / TEDx | Big-picture ideas and inspiration | Looking for broader business perspectives |
| Robin Sharma | Focus and personal performance | Building better routines as a founder |
| Bryan Elliott | Founder stories and brand-building | Learning from behind-the-scenes interviews |
| Stanford Graduate School of Business | Leadership and decision-making | Learning from research-led business thinking |
Top channels for creators, solo founders and personal brands
More entrepreneurs are using content to build trust before they make a sale. For many small businesses, video, social media, or podcast marketing is no longer just “extra marketing”, it’s how people discover the brand, understand the offer and decide whether to buy. The following channels teach solo founders, service providers, coaches and educators how to create content themselves and do it more consistently.
Ali Abdaal
Ali Abdaal, a former doctor turned productivity expert, has built a huge online community around productivity, learning and work systems.
For an entrepreneur, his channel gives you practical advice on how to manage time, avoid burnout, build digital product lines and design workflows that allow a business to scale without letting the business take over your life.
Think Media
Run by Sean Cannell, Think Media helps business owners and creators make better videos and grow their audience. The channel shows that you don’t need a big studio budget to get started. Instead, they focus on practical video setups, YouTube algorithms and content strategy. It’s an essential resource for small business teams that want to create useful videos without having to hire a whole production team.
“A strong digital presence gives you leverage, but translating that online visibility into memorable, real-world customer relationships is what builds a lasting company.”– VistaPrint Editorial Team
Not sure where to start with your own YouTube brand? Check out our useful guide to how to brand a YouTube channel.
Best YouTube content for startups, SaaS founders and growing teams
If you’re building a startup, especially in tech or SaaS, you may need advice that goes beyond general business motivation. These channels cover funding, product-market fit, hiring, leadership and the realities of running a growing company.
Y Combinator (YC)
Y Combinator is one of the best-known startup accelerators. It provides a treasure trove of fundraising lectures, foundational startup templates and founder interviews. Rather than just celebrating famous tech icons, the channel functions as an open archive of how founders test ideas, pitch investors and get through the early stages of building a startup.
Dan Martell
A Canadian software entrepreneur and coach who successfully developed multiple tech companies, Dan Martell focuses on SaaS growth, leadership and systems. His content is tailored for founders who are moving from doing everything themselves to building a team and repeatable processes. His videos break down how to hire key executives, free up more of your time and prepare a company for future growth, investment or sale.
Alex Hormozi
Alex Hormozi built and scaled gym businesses before moving into investing and business education. His channel focuses heavily on customer acquisition, direct sales and core offer structure. While his style is direct and high-energy, the underlying tactical takeaways are practical and easy to apply. He provides clear formulas for making your offer easier to explain, so customers can understand your value faster.
This Week in Startups
Hosted by veteran tech investor and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, this channel offers long-form founder interviews and conversations about startups, venture capital and tech trends. It keeps viewers up to date on current technology shifts, changes in investor sentiment and wider trends that can affect growing companies.
Local business owners can use YouTube to learn practical ways to improve visibility and attract nearby customers. Source: Depositphotos
Channels focused on local businesses and brick-and-mortar brands
Not every business is chasing venture capital. Sometimes the goal is much simpler, and is more about getting found locally, bringing more people through the door and building a reputation customers trust and remember.
Simon Squibb
Based in the UK, Simon Squibb creates encouraging, highly accessible content focused on early-stage founders and small business owners. His videos emphasize confidence, idea generation and getting started. It’s an excellent resource for anyone who needs practical guidance on turning a simple idea into a self-sustaining local business.
Google Business Channel
This is Google’s official educational hub for local business owners. It focuses entirely on tactical local SEO, setting up and refining your Google Business Profile, improving your local listing and helping nearby customers find you. For service businesses, restaurants, shops, salons and other local businesses, this channel offers up direct instructions on how to get seen in local search results and attract nearby customers.
Keep your business name, address, opening hours and branding consistent online and in person. It helps customers recognize you faster and feel confident they’re in the right place.
Best YouTube influencers for minority or female founders and service businesses
If people buy from you because of your expertise, your point of view or your personal story, your brand needs to feel clear and consistent.
Marie Forleo (Marie TV)
Marie Forleo has built a massive global following by offering marketing and business advice specifically tailored for coaches, consultants and creative service providers. Her content explores personal brand longevity, business confidence and navigating industry bias. She specializes in helping experts build businesses around their expertise, voice and values.
Sunny Lenarduzzi
A video marketing strategy specialist, Sunny Lenarduzzi focuses on practical personal branding, video marketing and camera confidence. Her tutorials help entrepreneurs overcome the fear of showing up on camera, allowing them to create natural marketing videos that build immediate trust with an audience.
Best business YouTube channels to learn AI tools and automation
AI tools can help with everyday tasks like planning content, summarizing notes, researching ideas and speeding up admin. You don’t need to become a software engineer, but it helps to know which tools are worth your time.
AI tools can help entrepreneurs spot trends, simplify tasks and make faster decisions. Source: Depositphotos
Matt Wolfe
Matt Wolfe’s channel is a useful starting point if you want to understand new AI tools without getting lost in the technical details. His channel covers AI tools for marketing, content planning, design, research and admin. He breaks down new tools in clear, step-by-step videos, showing solo entrepreneurs how to save time on admin, planning and content creation.
YouTube creators who foster global perspectives
It’s easy to hear the same business examples again and again. These channels bring in lessons from other markets, languages and business cultures.
Think School
Think School is an Indian business education channel. It produces detailed corporate case studies, brand stories and market analysis, often with an India or emerging-markets lens. It’s a useful resource for understanding how global companies scale across diverse cultures and how business models grow in different markets.
Jorge Serratos (Sinergéticos)
Mexican entrepreneur Jorge Serratos creates impactful Spanish-language videos on entrepreneurship, business growth and founder stories across Latin America. His channel offers insights for business owners looking to understand cross-border opportunities, audiences across different cultures and markets and the unique realities of building a brand within Latin America.
Source: Depositphotos
Top business YouTube channels to learn strategy, mindset and leadership
Running a business takes practical skill, but it also takes patience, focus and resilience. These channels focus on long-term thinking, customer attention, creative work and the mindset side of entrepreneurship.
Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryVee)
A serial entrepreneur and marketing executive, Gary Vaynerchuk focuses on social media ideas, how customer attention works online, content, storytelling and brand strategy. While his energetic approach is well known, his core business advice centers on a very grounded concept: understanding exactly where customer attention lives and showing up consistently with content your audience actually cares about.
Roberto Blake
Roberto Blake is a strong fit for freelancers, designers, creators and solo professionals who want to turn their skills into a sustainable business. His videos cover pricing, services, content, monetization and the less glamorous parts of working for yourself.
TED / TEDx
Featuring short, ideas-driven talks from innovators and academics worldwide, the TED platform is best utilized for bigger-picture ideas and inspiration. While it doesn’t give you step-by-step operational instructions, it offers up perspectives that can help you think differently about your business, customers or industry.
Robin Sharma
Focused on attention, routines and personal performance, Robin Sharma provides personal performance frameworks for leaders. His content treats entrepreneurship as a long-term test of focus, energy and consistency, offering systems to improve all three.
Bryan Elliott (Behind the Brand)
This channel features long-form, unfiltered interviews with iconic founders, corporate executives and creative directors. By uncovering the messy, behind-the-scenes realities of building famous brands, it provides viewers with realistic insights into corporate culture development and problem-solving.
Stanford Graduate School of Business
For a research-led perspective, the Stanford Graduate School of Business channel shares world-class academic lectures, interviews and conversations with business leaders, researchers and entrepreneurs — connecting bigger leadership ideas with real business decisions.
Looking for more inspiration? Follow these exciting TikTok small business influencers.
Turn what you learn into something your customers can see
Watching helpful videos is a good start. But the real value comes when you use what you’ve learned.
That might mean improving your offer, updating your storefront, refreshing your website or making sure your printed materials feel connected to the rest of your brand. When your online brand looks polished but your signs, flyers or packaging feel different, customers may not even make the connection that they are from the same business!
Bringing your brand into the physical world could mean updating your business cards, packaging, flyers, signage or other printed materials. When an entrepreneur matches their on-screen persona with high-quality physical marketing materials, they create a cohesive experience that makes their business instantly recognizable, trustworthy and memorable.
Frequently asked questions about running a business
How to learn to run a business without a degree?
You don’t need a degree to learn how to run a business. Start with the basics: understanding your customers, pricing your offer, managing money and marketing your brand. Free resources like YouTube, blogs, podcasts and online courses can help you learn one topic at a time.
Is it too late to learn business?
No, it’s never too late to get into the world of business. Start with one practical area, like finding customers or improving your offer, then build from there.
Can I learn business on my own?
Yes, you can learn the ins and outs of business on your own using videos, books, courses and real-world practice. It also helps to get feedback from customers, mentors or other business owners along the way.
Is studying business really worth it?
Studying business can be worth it if you want structure, support and formal training. But it isn’t the only route. Many entrepreneurs learn by testing ideas, solving real problems and building as they go.
