Business is Good with Chris Cooper

Before you can earn more money, you need to understand what money actually is. And no, we're not talking about dictionary definitions. Money is simply a measure of value—nothing more, nothing less. It's the standardized measuring stick humanity invented so we could trade efficiently. Before money, early humans faced chaos: How many eggs is a goat worth? How does a philosopher survive when you can'...

Steve Jobs wore the same black turtleneck every day. Mark Zuckerberg wears gray t-shirts. Tim Cook wakes up at 4 AM and follows the exact same routine. Warren Buffett protects his calendar so fiercely that Bill Gates wrote admiringly about it. These aren't quirks. They're systems designed to reduce decision fatigue and conserve mental energy for decisions that actually matter. In this episode, I w...

A Toronto entrepreneur just made a $12,000 hiring mistake—not because she lacked experience, but because she made the decision at 4 PM after already burning through her mental energy on dozens of smaller choices throughout the day. This is decision fatigue, and it's costing Canadian business owners far more than money. Your brain has a finite amount of decision-making energy. Every choice you make...

Starting January 5th, 2026, tens of thousands of Ontario government employees return to the office full-time, with Alberta following in February. Major banks and corporations are rolling out similar mandates across Canada. But are we solving the real problem? Canada's productivity crisis is undeniable. Our GDP per capita has fallen to 75% of the US level (down from 90% in 2010), and we're second o...

The 80/20 Hiring Solution: Finding Staff When Nobody's Available" You're losing the hiring war. Not because there aren't good people out there—but because you're fighting the wrong battle. 48.3% of Canadian businesses say recruiting skilled employees is their top obstacle. You're competing with every other business in your market for "experienced" candidates, offering signing bonuses and competiti...

Two hundred years ago, jobs lasted generations. Your grandfather kept the same job for 40 years. Today? You'll change jobs at least 12 times in your working life—and you're unlikely to be doing what you're doing now in just five years. The job cycle has collapsed from multi-generational stability to something almost unpredictable, and AI is accelerating this change beyond anything we've seen befor...

In this episode, Chris explores the "professional amateur" mindset - the key to sustaining peak performance without burning out. After a conversation at his local bike shop about retirement, Chris realizes that entrepreneurs need singular professional focus on their business while maintaining amateur curiosity in other pursuits. The episode breaks down why entrepreneurs are particularly vulnerable...

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 try...

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 t...

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 ac...

Entrepreneurship Is a Hedge, Not a Risk AI 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 sm...

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...

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...

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 toolki...

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: b...

Top Skills Entrepreneurs Need at Each Stage You 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 —...

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...

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,...

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 l...

How Great Businesses Become Ineffective Bureaucracies Ever 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+1 Yo...

Give Yourself a Vacation Time 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...

Give Yourself a Promotion Your 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. Con...

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...

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: ho...

20 Businesses You Can Start for Less Than the Price of a Car What 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 c...