Your 2026 pod list 🎙 | Is LinkedIn biased? 🤖 | The 1,000,000 SME achievement 🏆

Can AI do anything better than you? (the answer is yes - and that's the problem) 🧚 

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"Anything you can do, I can do better..." The song is catchy, but in the world of professional networking, bots might just be winning. This week, as many of us are looking forward to nostalgic holiday movies, a serious online movement is calling for LinkedIn to address a major issue: algorithmic gender bias.

Our experts dive into how AI, acting like a clever but flawed Christmas Elf, isn't just interpreting your profile - it's drilling down on society's unconscious biases. We look at the very real consequences when AI delivers "more of what it thinks you want to see" and explore how to build profiles that bypass the bias. 

We've just hit a major milestone! Through the business.connected programme with VodafoneThree, we have now delivered free digital skills training to one million entrepreneurs across the UK. That's a huge number of founders who've learned how to set up online payments, run effective digital marketing campaigns, protect themselves from cyber threats, and adapt to what customers now expect. As our CEO, Aaron Asadi, said: "We see it less as 'one million' and more 'the first million.' The next million businesses we train must be the most digitally and financially resilient yet." Bring it on. 

You crushed Black Friday: Our members’ products landed successfully in over 20,000 inboxes this month. Now, it's time for the final touches. While you're perfecting your holiday gift wrapping, tune into our curated list of the Top Small Business Podcasts of 2025 to prepare your business for a booming new year. 

business.connected supports one million businesses - and there’s more to come

Best of 2025: Enterprise Nation’s top 19 most listened to podcasts, by Chris Goodfellow 

Is LinkedIn’s algorithm rewarding “male-coded” content? by Jennifer Seig 

Backing Your Business: A simple guide to the new Business Growth Service, by Daniel Woolf 

How small firms can win more public sector work: Insights from CCS's Meet the Buyer day, by Daniel Woolf 

Watch: Building trust in AI and why its future is human, by Jonathan Dowden at Sage

🎧 Susan Allen: How period care brand Here We Flo got stocked in major retailers and secured big name investors

📝 Win new contracts for your business next year

🔢 Sage Accounting: Get 90% off for three months

💡 EDF: Find the best business energy tariff and get up to £150 in Amazon vouchers