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Planet Money Summer School, Business School edition

Forget firing up a BBQ and jumping in a pool this summer. Fire up your favorite podcast app and jump into Planet Money Summer School instead!

That’s right. Our yearly crash course in economics essentials is back! This year, Planet Money Summer School offers you the opportunity to get an MBA … of sorts. You’ll learn the fundamentals of starting and running a business, without ever having to fill out a spreadsheet or sit through your classmate’s boring PowerPoint presentation.

NPR

Every Wednesday through Labor Day, you’ll hear curated excerpts from classic Planet Money stories paired with real-life biz professors breaking down essential concepts.

Even if you never plan to start a business, the concepts we cover will help you make better business decisions, take smarter risks, and maybe even grow a little bit richer. We’re talking about things like pitching an idea to investors, honing your product’s “unique value proposition,” and finding the best way to negotiate. Whether you want to start your own side hustle, or you’re just curious about the ins and outs of building a successful business, this eight-part series is for you.

In the first episode, for example, we hear the story of RaeShawn and LaShone Middleton, two trained chefs who lost their jobs during the pandemic. RaeShawn and LaShone decided to open their own business, which initially focused on delivering steamed crab to people’s homes. Following the success of that venture, they ended up opening up a brick-and-mortar restaurant called R&L Crab in Columbia, Maryland.

Along the way, RaeShawn and LaShone had to figure out the best way to finance their growing business. You’ll hear from Columbia Business School professor Angela Lee about the pros and cons of “bootstrapping”: self-financing your business with your own personal money or revenues from your business. The alternative to bootstrapping is finding outside investors, who get a piece of your enterprise in return.

“The benefit of bootstrapping is you own a hundred percent of your company,” says Lee. “And you have control over exactly how you run it, how fast you want to grow, where you want to expand geographically. The drawback is you have to make money to get money. And so it's a little bit of a slower growth process.”

Pitch Us Your Ideas!

In addition to offering business lessons, this year’s Planet Money Summer School will also offer you the opportunity to pitch your own business idea. And, in our final episode, we’ll choose a couple from the inbox to get free feedback from a renowned business professor, who doubles as a venture capitalist.

It’s like Shark Tank but no one will be mean to you, or give you money, frankly. Kind of a Guppy Tank.

Send us your business ideas: email planetmoney@npr.org… and put PITCH in the subject line. Your idea doesn’t have to be a big invention. It can be a tiny new product or service that you think people might appreciate.

Reminder: Planet Money+ members get to enjoy sponsor-free listening, for both Summer School and our normal episodes. Members also get free bonus episodes. This includes our most recent bonus episode, which features Planet Money Summer School host Robert Smith talking about what he learned while getting his own MBA.

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Subscribe to Planet Money+ for bonus episodes with behind the scenes takes, extended interviews, and extra facts we couldn’t fit into the main show. Plus, it’s ad free. You’ll get The Indicator and Planet Money Summer School too - all while supporting our nerdy, ambitious journalism. Learn more at Plus.npr.org/PlanetMoney.

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Planet Money Summer School, Business School edition

Pitch Us Your Ideas!

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