Business is Good with Chris Cooper

You're losing the talent war—not because you're a bad employer, but because the game is rigged against you.Government standardizes pay across wildly different cost-of-living markets. Big corporations offer pensions and benefits you can't touch. Your salary dollar is worth less before you even start competing.So how do you keep great people when you can't match the offer down the street?Stop trying to win on salary. Your employees don't actually want more money—they want fewer problems. Money just happens to solve problems.In this episode, discover how a Toronto Maple Leafs GM facing a 43% tax disadvantage turned his structural weakness into a competitive advantage. Then learn the five-problem framework small businesses use to retain talent without breaking the bank:• Time Theft – Save them hours with on-site services and strategic partnerships• Food Friction – Solve meal planning and grocery stress cheaper than raises• Family Burden – Real examples like free staff housing and vacation property rotation• Health & Wellness Gaps – Group-rate access to trainers, RMTs, and financial planners• Development Stagnation – Create visible growth paths that keep people engagedYou'll also learn the five critical rules that make this work (including the tax structure mistake that turns perks into taxable income), and why foosball tables and branded swag are "perk theater" that won't retain anyone.Golden Hour Action: Survey your team with one question—"What costs you the most time or money outside work?"—then build your competing offer from their actual problems.The salary game is rigged. But the problem-solving game? That's one you can win.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

AI is supposed to make everything easier—but in many service businesses it’s doing the opposite: pushing people back toward humans they can trust. In this episode, I unpack why. First, audiences are shifting from links to answers—organic search and email engagement are down as more people ask LLMs directly. Second, trust is fracturing. A whole generation raised on edited, vetted nightly news now treats the open internet as suspect; when the stakes are high (money, health, legal, travel), they want eye contact, not a chatbot. Third, overload is real: infinite choices don’t mean better decisions; they mean decision fatigue. That’s why travel agents, financial advisors, and boutique service pros are seeing a quiet resurgence.But this isn’t anti-AI—it’s pro-human with AI at your back. I share a playbook for blending high-touch delivery with backstage automation: AI for intake, prep, drafting, scheduling, and QA; humans for discovery, judgment, and relationship. You’ll hear 10 examples of service roles that can lean into person-to-person delivery while using AI to scale the unscalable. The takeaway: trust is the new moat. Pair it with smart automation and you don’t just survive the AI wave—you surf it.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Is More Communication Better?We live in an always-on world where everyone can connect with anyone instantly. This much communication should make business easier and faster, right?Wrong. Communication has reached a tipping point where more is no longer better.In this episode, we explore why the explosion of workplace messaging tools, constant availability, and "open door" digital policies are actually hurting your business—and what to do about it.We break down five critical problems with overcommunication: CEOs who can't find time to think strategically, analysis paralysis from gathering too many opinions, leaders who dodge responsibility through "democracy theater," the office politics created when you ask for input you won't use, and the blurred boundaries that happen when founders overshare personal struggles to win loyalty.Drawing on insights from Naval Ravikant's recent podcast on why his company banned Slack, we examine why the best founders—from Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk—have always fought to "unscale" their companies and protect focused work time.Then we get practical. You'll learn specific frameworks including the Golden Hour (one growth move before opening any communication), how to set communication guardrails using asynchronous channels and office hours, and why "input does not equal a vote" when making decisions.If you're a founder or leader who feels chained to your phone, overwhelmed by notifications, and unable to do the strategic thinking your company needs—this episode is for you.Key takeaway: The right communication beats more communication. Every time.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Entrepreneurship Is a Hedge, Not a RiskAI is hollowing out the entry-level ladder—and waiting for “safe” jobs might be the riskiest bet of all. In this episode, I make the case that entrepreneurship isn’t a leap off a cliff; it’s a hedge against uncertainty. We start with why doing beats studying: real skills—focus, math-in-action, communication, selling, project ownership—grow faster through small businesses and gigs than through lectures. Youth (and career-changers) should learn by shipping, reflecting, and iterating with a mentor—more like a trade than a theory class.Then we track how once-stable white-collar roles (fitness coaching, accounting, creative services, even analysis work) now reward entrepreneurial abilities: building relationships, marketing yourself, collaborating, packaging outcomes, and selling solutions. These aren’t “nice to have”; they’re the new prerequisites.Finally, we explore entrepreneurship as a practical hedge. Instead of graduating into debt, degree, and delay, you can earn while you learn—stacking micro-projects, building a network, and compounding skills that can’t be automated or taxed away. Whether you go full-time or keep a job, a small business gives you agency: more ways to make money, more optionality in downturns, and a faster path to confidence and competence. Don’t wait for permission. Start small, start now, and let experience be the teacher that sticks.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Most service companies start the same way: a great practitioner opens shop and sells their own time—hairdressers, trainers, dentists, therapists, lawyers. That works… until it doesn’t. Quality depends on the founder; hiring “clones” leads to uneven results and micromanagement; SOPs multiply; and the business becomes a mini-bureaucracy. In this episode, I explain why the “be the best and do it all yourself” approach traps you—and how to scale without wrecking your brand.We walk through the five most common growth models (rent-a-chair, senior-junior-novice ladders, HQ services platform, affiliate/license, and “big fish + aux team”)—what they do well and where they stall. Then I lay out a practical move from practice to platform: productize outcomes (not just services), define roles and tiers, keep marketing/sales centralized, and build continuity revenue (memberships, cohorts, retail) while letting intrapreneurs grow under your brand. Finally, we add leverage backstage with AI—intake, plan drafting, comms, QA—so your team spends more time on human moments and outcomes.If you’re stuck between being the best in town and working 70-hour weeks, this is your path out: a platform where good people can do great work—and your brand gets stronger every time they do.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Canada’s tax problem isn’t just slow phones at the CRA—it’s a century of bolt-on rules that made filing confusing, subjective, and expensive to administer. A new review found CRA contact centres gave accurate answers only 17% of the time during the 2025 tax season window, echoing long-standing issues flagged by earlier audits (including millions of dropped and blocked calls). This complicated tax system creates unnecessary bureaucracy, wasted money, unpaid taxes, and a subjective audit process that means you can pay more (or less) taxes depending on how well your auditor slept the night before.Hiring more agents won’t fix a tax law that’s impossible to interpret. Simpler rules will. In this episode, I sketch a path to simpler, fairer, faster taxes. First, a quick history lesson on why we have income taxes, and how they became a Frankenstein's monster of laws that no one can understand. This will show us that the problem is getting worse, and will keep getting worse until we have a major system overhaul. Then I'll get into solutions.I explore proven options from abroad:Pre-populated / return-free filing (pioneered by Denmark; now used in most OECD countries) to slash time, phone calls, and errors—already being piloted in Quebec for simple returns. Flatter, broader bases with minimal carve-outs (think Estonia’s ultra-simple system) and NZ’s broad-base/low-rate GST—models that raise revenue with less friction. Withholding-as-final for straightforward T4 earners, so most people don’t file at all unless their situation is complex—borrowing design cues from the Nordics. Look, nobody wants to talk about tax until they have to. But when they do - and they have to every year - they hate everything about our tax system. It creates unnecessary frustration and anger. Nobody wants to deal with the CRA, and nobody wants to work for the CRA either. Why would they?Many people who don't pay taxes do it out of frustration - they just give up. They're not evil; they're just overwhelmed. Tax filings have become a game.I’m not anti-tax; I’m anti-waste. My companies happily pay millions of dollars in corporate taxes annually. Its employees add another 1M in income taxes to our society, and you can add HST on top of all of it. What I want is less money burned collecting taxes and more money spent on services. If Canadians want better healthcare, safer streets, and a clearer deal with citizens, we should push for tax simplification, not just bigger call centres.Sources:CRA call centres: 17% accuracy (Feb–May 2025); prior audits on access/accuracy. Investment Executive+1Canada’s income tax history (1917 “temporary” tax). The Canadian EncyclopediaProvincial/territorial corporate tax—CRA administers most; exceptions Quebec & Alberta. Canada.caPre-populated returns (Denmark origin; 28 OECD countries). Tax Policy CenterQuebec simplified / pre-filled return pilot (2025 filing for 2024 year). a...

Bring Back the Liberal Education (for the Post-Industrial Age)Our schools were built to make dependable factory workers: bells, compliance, one right answer. That model made sense in 1900—but the factory is gone and the incentives that shaped “industrial education” are still with us. In this episode, I argue for bringing back a liberal education—not as nostalgia, but as the most practical toolkit for the Augmentation Age.We trace how mass urbanization and child labor concerns led to school as factory—rewarding smart conformists while sidelining creativity, judgment, and inquiry. Then we rebuild the core: logic and critical thinking (to separate signal from noise), rhetoric and communication (to persuade with clarity), the scientific method and basic statistics (to test claims), plus philosophy/ethics, history/civics, literature/art, languages, media literacy, and durable numeracy. The aim isn’t more facts—AI holds those—it’s better questions, better decisions, and better action.I share why curricula can’t keep up with tool stacks, how AI shifts value from memorization to judgment, and where entrepreneurs can step in—micro-schools, cohort courses, and company “finishing schools” that teach by doing. We’ll also talk about the difference between “your truth” and “the truth,” why long-term thinking matters more than ever, and how to start a DIY liberal education at home or at work with simple practices that produce public, real-world artifacts.Bottom line: the Industrial Age is over. To thrive now, we need thinkers who can reason, communicate, and lead—and that’s exactly what a liberal education builds.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Your business grows to the level of your leadership and shrinks to the level of your systems. That gap—between your ceiling and your floor—is the roller coaster. The highs feel amazing; the lows can be lethal. In this episode, I show you how to smooth the ride and tilt the whole line up and to the right.First, we raise the ceiling. You’ll learn how to focus your effort where it matters most: buying back your time from low-value tasks, concentrating on high-leverage work like offers, sales, and partnerships, and practicing consistent self-leadership. I’ll walk through using The Golden Hour—a protected daily block to move one meaningful growth task forward—plus simple ways to partner smarter and make better decisions faster.Then we raise the floor. We’ll stabilize delivery by teaching changes before we make them, documenting the essentials with quick, practical SOPs, and keeping 90% of operations on the proven playbook while reserving 10% for controlled experiments. You’ll also hear how to set a single primary decision-maker for day-to-day operations with clear escalation rules, so the business keeps running when you’re not in the room.You won’t get off the roller coaster—but you can change the pattern from one step forward/one back to three forward/one back. Manage yourself first, then lead the team. Make your current “best day” the standard, raise it, and repeat.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Top Skills Entrepreneurs Need at Each StageYou don’t need every skill right now—you need the right skill for the stage you’re in. In this episode, I map the journey from Founder → Farmer → Tinker → Chief and show you the two keystone skills that unlock growth at each step, plus quick drills you can run this week.Founder: It’s you against friction. The superpowers are resilience and work ethic—shipping V1s, selling before perfecting, and turning chaos into cash. I share daily habits that keep you moving when everything feels uphill.Farmer: Consistency beats heroics. Here the wins come from focus and a practice mindset. We install a simple weekly scorecard (traffic → leads → show → close → ARPU → churn), build 10-minute SOPs, and kill “new idea whiplash” with a monthly change window.Tinker: Your machine runs; now you protect attention and capital. The keys are an investor mindset and patience—delegating <$100/hr work, measuring Effective Hourly Rate, testing small, and only scaling what beats baseline.Chief: At scale, outcomes are powered by people. Become a connector who goes first—over-introducing, sharing platform, and compounding goodwill. We’ll add simple rituals like “5-Intro Friday” and a give-first calendar.You’ll leave with a field guide to identify your stage, the two skills that matter most right now, and a 30-day plan to practice them. As a bonus, I’ll point you to templates (scorecard, SOP checklist, EHR audit, and intro scripts) so you can start today.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

You can build the best product in your category and still fall behind. Why? Because the market doesn’t reward “best”—it rewards best at business. In this episode, I unpack the pattern I’ve seen in conversations with very smart founders: they perfect the thing, but neglect the system that sells the thing.We start with the two brains of your business:Product/Delivery drives retention.Marketing & Sales drive attention and acquisition.Being great at #1 is necessary—but insufficient in a noisy, novelty-driven world where people discover the loud before the great.Then we dig into three traps that smart people fall into:The Technician’s Curse: When numbers dip, you “improve the product” instead of the pipeline (offer → traffic → show → close). We’ll install a simple weekly scorecard and fix the bottleneck first.The Projection Trap: Assuming customers and staff think like you do. We replace assumptions with customer interviews, plain-English messaging, and clear “definitions of done.”The “I’ll Figure It Out” Fallacy: Brains and hustle aren’t enough without context and reps. Borrow them—via mentors, playbooks, and proven scripts—so you make right moves faster.Finally, we make you best at business: choose a focused market, sharpen your promise and proof, show your mechanism, and adopt a weekly operating cadence—one growth action every morning, one bottlenecked metric every week, one small test at a time.You’ll leave with a playbook to turn smart into scale—and the three actions to run this week so your best product finally wins.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Killing the Golden Goose — Why Tinkering Hurts (and How to Stop)Ever “improved” your business and watched revenue dip? This episode is about the Tinker phase—when a little success gives you a little freedom…and you accidentally starve the golden goose that got you here. I unpack the three ways owners drag healthy businesses down:Fiddling for “better.” Endless tweaks to offers, pricing, scripts, and schedules without evidence. Fix: install a change discipline—a monthly change window, small A/B tests, a simple decision log, and a weekly dashboard (leads, show/close rate, ARPU, churn, CSAT).Neglect via distraction. A shiny side project steals your best hours while the core engine slows. Fix: a Minimum Care Plan—a daily Owner’s Power Hour (one growth action before anything else), a crisp scorecard cadence, 10-minute SOPs for recurring tasks, and one Primary-in-Command with clear escalation thresholds.Blowing it up. Panic leads to firing staff, scrapping models, or rebranding from scratch. Fix: a 30–60–90 recovery—stabilize, repair what worked, then improve surgically (one test at a time).You’ll leave with a practical cadence to keep speed, protect consistency, and grow without self-sabotage—plus three quick actions to run this week: schedule a monthly change window, add a daily Power Hour, and pick one metric to protect every Friday.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

What was the last nonfiction book you read—and what did you do with it the week after? Books are great for ideas and inspiration, but business results come from guided action. In this episode, I trace how business books evolved—from gatekept publishing to self-published “book-as-business-card”—and why AI now lets anyone draft a passable book in hours. As Jim Rohn put it: don’t let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action.Enter bots. AI agents can turn a single idea into a step-by-step plan: bite-size tasks, checklists, quizzes, role-plays, even “office hours” on demand. They follow a proven teaching arc—I do, we do, you do—so you practice, get feedback, and actually ship. Books still win at narrative and worldview; bots win at behavior change.I’ll show where creators are already selling bots (not just books or courses), when to use each format, and a simple playbook to convert one chapter into a 7-day action bot. Then I’ll invite you to try my Mentor GPT—built on the Simple Six framework—so you can feel the difference between reading and doing.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

How Great Businesses Become Ineffective BureaucraciesEver stood in line for a passport or permit and thought, “How did it get this bad?” Bureaucracy doesn’t start broken—it creeps in. In this episode, we unpack why even great companies calcify: Pournelle’s Iron Law (organizations drift to serving themselves), and Parkinson’s Law (headcount grows 5–7% a year regardless of workload). Wikiquote+1You’ll hear how complexity multiplies—extra layers, approvals, and legacy tech—until speed dies. (Yes, a major UK rail operator still uses fax to reach crews.) And why some governments deliberately keep paper ballots for auditability: simple systems are often the most resilient. The Guardian+1Then we get practical: map the customer journey with value-stream mapping, replace approvals with “freedom within a framework” (think Netflix’s culture), flatten spans & layers, and run a quarterly “kill-a-rule” review. You’ll leave with an audit checklist to keep decisions close to customers—and bureaucracy out of your business. Lean Enterprise Institute+1Sources: Pournelle’s Iron Law; Parkinson’s Law; EAC paper-ballot policy; Northern Rail fax reports; Lean Enterprise Institute (VSM); Netflix culture deck.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Give Yourself a VacationTime off won’t be handed to you—you must design for it. Run the “hit-by-a-bus” test, appoint a single decision-maker with thresholds, take a 3-day zero-contact trial, then audit and patch your playbook before booking a 7-day break. Think Kintsugi: vacations reveal cracks you can repair, making the business stronger—and you less fragile.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Give Yourself a PromotionYour Effective Hourly Rate (EHR) tells the truth about your role. If it looks like frontline pay, you’re doing frontline work. Learn how to buy back time (cleaner → VA → fulfillment → sales support), climb the Value Ladder from operator → manager → owner, and follow a 180-day plan to shift your calendar into $100–$1,000/hr tasks—so your pay finally matches your value.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

As a founder, no one’s coming to bump your pay—you have to do it. This episode shows you how to set a market-rate salary, use Profit First with quarterly +5-point raises, and route cash to purpose (Owner’s Pay, Profit, Tax, OPEX) instead of letting it stagnate. Walk away with a step-by-step sweep schedule and a simple rule: pay life from Owner’s Pay; run the business from OPEX.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

hinking about quitting your day job for your business—but not sure when or how? In this episode, we map a clear, low-stress path from side hustle to full-time entrepreneur. You’ll learn how to assess readiness (consistent revenue, basic cushion, repeatable demand), build a step-by-step transition plan, and avoid the common traps that burn founders out in month one. We also cover the human side: how to talk to your family and friends so you gain support instead of friction.You’ll hear the story of Sara Blakely, who built Spanx at night while selling fax machines by day—proof that you can grow a business before you take the leap. Then we get practical: timeline milestones, reducing fixed costs, protecting benefits, and installing the weekly routines that keep cash flowing while you scale.If you’ve been waiting for “perfect timing,” this is your sign. Start with a plan, validate with real customers, and graduate when the numbers (and your calendar) say you’re ready.Key TakeawaysReadiness checklist: revenue consistency, cash buffer, repeatable lead flowA simple transition timeline with milestones you can trackConversation bullets to win family/friend supportWeekly routines that protect cash and momentumConnect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

20 Businesses You Can Start for Less Than the Price of a CarWhat if one car payment could buy your freedom? A bad lease traps you for years; a small, scrappy business can pay you while you learn skills you’ll keep forever.Episode Snapshot: Chris breaks down why the “sure thing” job isn’t so sure anymore—AI automation squeezing office roles, global competition for remote work, and faster layoff cycles—and shows how to de-risk entrepreneurship without quitting your day job. You’ll get 20 practical business ideas you can launch for under ~$20k, from micro-gyms and AI implementation services to mobile detailing, STR cleaning, pressure washing, handyman work, photo-booth rentals, coffee carts, bookkeeping for trades, and more. We walk through lean launch steps, how to pre-sell before you spend, and why your KASH (Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, Habits) compounds faster once you start.Why Listen: For roughly a car payment, you can own an asset that cash-flows and builds you into an entrepreneur. We even run the numbers: a $30,000 starter budget over five years is roughly $580–$670/month depending on rates. Start small, learn fast, and let your first business teach you how to build the next.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Big-ticket consulting is wobbling. McKinsey, Accenture, Deloitte, EY, KPMG—together they’ve announced tens of thousands of layoffs while clients feed generative-AI the questions they once paid armies of analysts to answer. In this episode, Chris Cooper unpacks the coming “consulting crash,” explains why AI has punctured the information moat, and predicts that only one in ten traditional consultants will survive.But advice-giving won’t vanish. Instead, it splits:Mentors deliver high-level strategy—now super-charged by AI that runs instant market sims.Coaches drive execution—now backed by 24/7 GPT check-ins that break work into bite-sized actions.Using Two-Brain Business’s own Simple Six Mentor GPT as a live example, Chris shows how solo experts can scale to a million-dollar practice without bloated overhead, while clients build skills faster than ever.Whether you’re a consultant, coach, founder, or policymaker, this episode reveals how to pair human judgment with machine leverage in the new Augmentation Age.Key Takeaways / Timestamps0:00 – 3:15 Peter Thiel’s “short consulting” quote3:15 – 10:30 Layoffs & margin squeeze: data from McKinsey, Accenture, etc.10:30 – 16:45 Why governments still hire consultants—and why that shrinks16:45 – 24:00 Mentorship vs. coaching vs. AI augmentation24:00 – 32:00 Live demo: Simple Six Mentor GPT at BusinessIsGood.com32:00 – 36:00 Action plan for founders & advisors in the Augmentation AgeConnect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/

What if every tax hike was really our government saying, “Sorry—we failed”? In this episode we push past the usual “raise taxes or cut services” dead-end and show how Canada can deliver better policing, faster health care, and leaner mailrooms without taking another dime from your pocket.Episode SnapshotChris breaks down five evidence-backed alternatives—cutting bloated bureaucracy (hello LCBO payroll), investing in home-grown businesses instead of corporate bail-outs, reining-in public-sector strike leverage, super-charging civil servants with AI, and modernizing relics like Canada Post and the CBC. You’ll hear the latest numbers: Canada Post’s CA $841 million loss, LCBO’s CA $7.2 billion revenue vs. CA $1 billion-plus payroll, and real-world success stories—from Vancouver’s privatized parking model to digital licensing portals that slash wait times.Why ListenIf you’re tired of paying more for shrinking services, this episode hands you the playbook—and the talking points—to demand smarter spending, not higher taxes. Share it with your MP, your mayor, and the friend who says “there’s just no other way.” Raising taxes is an admission of failure. Let’s expect—and fund—better.Connect with Chris Cooper:Website - https://businessisgood.com/