Advertise on podcast: Business is Good with Chris Cooper

Three friends graduated high school together. Same opportunities, same starting point. Fifteen years later, one makes $85,000 working overtime (exhausted), one makes $115,000 through specialization (better income, still trapped by time), and one makes $105,000 total with $30,000 coming from assets that earn while she sleeps. The difference isn't intelligence or work ethic. It's leverage. Most Canadians are stuck trading time for money. Statistics Canada reports that over 30% of workers have taken on side gigs just to survive. We work more hours for the same money because we don't understand the three fundamental paths to earning more. Path One: Work more hours (1X leverage, hard ceiling). Path Two: Increase your skills through education and specialization (3X leverage, higher income but still time-dependent). Path Three: Buy assets that work for you (infinite leverage, no ceiling). This episode combines Naval Ravikant's principles on leverage with Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad framework—but for regular people, not just entrepreneurs. You don't need to own a business. You can start with $50. Learn how to calculate your "Freedom Number," open your first investment account, and begin building wealth through Canadian index funds, real estate, and digital assets. Discover why only 3% of Canadians achieve financial independence, and how you can join them. Golden Hour Challenge: Create your Personal Leverage Map and take your first concrete step toward Path Three income. Stop renting out your time. Start buying assets. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

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't eat ideas? The ancient Mesopotamians solved this around 5,000 years ago by creating the shekel—a standard weight of barley or silver. The first actual coins came from the Kingdom of Lydia around 700 BC. Every successful society since has needed some way to measure and exchange value. This episode breaks down the fundamentals: the difference between money and currency, what "fiat" actually means, and how cryptocurrencies and stablecoins work—all explained in plain language you could share with your kids. But here's the critical insight: if money is a measure of value, then there's only ONE way to earn more money—create more value. You can do this through volume (more work), specialization (rare skills), or creation (making something valuable to others). Your Golden Hour task: List what you did today, then write what value each action created for someone else. This simple exercise will transform how you think about your work and earning potential. Stop chasing money. Start creating value. The money will follow. Listen now at businessisgood.com Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

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 walk you through a proven framework to identify your Daily Non-Negotiables—the 3-4 specific actions that, if you did them without fail, would make success unavoidable. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why the most successful CEOs follow strict daily routines (and it's not what you think)The three-part framework: Vision → Priorities → Non-NegotiablesHow to turn vague goals into specific, measurable daily actionsReal examples of strong vs. weak Daily Non-NegotiablesWhy 40% of your life is already on autopilot (and how to make that work for you)How to build a backup plan so your habits actually stick THE FRAMEWORK: Part 1: VISION - Who are you becoming? Identify the version of yourself one year from now at your absolute best. Part 2: PRIORITIES - What three areas create the most leverage? Focus on the growth areas that move you toward your vision. Part 3: NON-NEGOTIABLES - What's one specific daily action for each priority? Build habits that are specific, measurable, brief, repeatable, and valuable. THIS IS A GUIDED EXERCISE: I walk you through each step with pauses for you to think and write. By the end of this episode, you'll have your three Daily Non-Negotiables identified and ready to implement. YOUR GOLDEN HOUR: Protect your Daily Non-Negotiables. Block the time. Set up tracking. Build the system. Small actions, repeated consistently, compound into massive transformation. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Steve Jobs' wardrobe simplification strategyMark Zuckerberg's decision-reduction approachTim Cook's 4 AM routineWarren Buffett's time protectionJack Dorsey's themed daysDuke University research on habitual behaviorThe average person's 35,000 daily decisions Whether you're running a $100K business or building toward $1M, this framework will help you engineer success through consistent daily action. This is BusinessIsGood—practical business growth strategies for Canadian entrepreneurs who are ready to move beyond survival mode and build businesses that thrive. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

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—from what to eat for breakfast to whether to approve a budget—drains that battery a little more. By mid-afternoon, you're running on empty, but that's exactly when the big, important decisions usually arrive. Research proves this isn't just in your head. A famous study found that judges granted parole to prisoners 70% of the time in the morning, but less than 10% in the afternoon. Same judges, same cases—the only difference was decision fatigue. In this episode, Chris Cooper explores what decision fatigue is, why it matters for Canadian entrepreneurs, and how to train yourself like a mental athlete to make better decisions when they matter most. You'll learn six practical strategies for preserving your decision-making energy and discover how non-negotiable habits can eliminate dozens of daily choices. According to a 2025 BDC survey, 36% of Canadian business owners report that mental health challenges interfere with their work at least once weekly. For entrepreneurs under 40, that number jumps to 60%. Your Golden Hour task: Track every decision you make this week. You can't fix what you can't see. This episode sets up the next discussion on Daily Non-Negotiables and the Golden Hour system. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

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 only to Italy in G7 productivity decline. Business productivity dropped 1% in Q2 2025—the sharpest decline since 2022. The instinct is to blame remote work. But the data tells a different story: 77% of remote workers report being more productive at home, yet 85% of leaders don't trust it. The real issue? Most managers never learned to manage without proximity, and most employees never developed the self-management skills remote work requires. For decades, managers relied on presence as a proxy for productivity. Remote work exposed this weakness. Meanwhile, 61% of remote workers say they need more training, but only 70% receive it. The result: some thrive remotely while others work 65% more hours and burn out. The solution isn't about choosing remote versus office—it's about intentional skill-building. Managers need to learn outcome-based management. Employees need time management and boundary-setting skills. Organizations need to design work models deliberately. This week's Golden Hour challenge: If you're a manager, define what "good" actually looks like for one person's role. If you're an employee, track where one full workday actually goes. If you're an owner, identify your biggest productivity drain. The businesses that build these skills will dominate. The ones arguing about chairs won't. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

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 competitive wages. And even when you land them, there's a coin flip chance they'll be gone within 18 months. Here's the truth that changes everything: 90% of new hire failures happen because of attitude and personality issues—not technical incompetence. Only 11% fail due to lack of skills. You're hiring for the wrong thing. This episode breaks down the 80/20 Hiring Solution—a five-step system to hire for fit, train for skill, and build teams that actually stick around: Identify your ONE non-negotiable character traitStop competing for "experienced" candidatesBuild a 2-week onboarding system that creates competence fastCreate retention through growth paths, not just pay raisesReplace yourself in one role per quarter Southwest Airlines became an industry leader using this exact philosophy. Founder Herb Kelleher hired for humor and attitude first, skills second. You can do the same. Your Golden Hour this week: Write down the ONE character trait your best employee has. That's your new hiring filter. While your competitors wait for the perfect candidate to show up, you're building a system to create them. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

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 before. But here's the truth most people miss: AI isn't taking your job. Your outdated skills are. In this episode, we break down what employees need to do to stay relevant and how employers can manage workforce transitions without destroying their teams. You'll hear real examples from companies getting it right—Citibank trained 175,000 employees, Amazon invested $1.2 billion, and PwC created gamified learning that attracts 9,000 participants monthly. Workers now need new skills every decade, not every generation. Self-education isn't optional anymore. Companies that figure out how to retrain their people will dominate their industries. Those that don't will lose their best talent. The pace of change isn't slowing down. This episode gives you the playbook for navigating it—one Golden Hour at a time. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

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 to addiction and unhealthy coping mechanisms (they're twice as likely to experience depression and three times more likely to struggle with substance abuse), and offers a practical framework: choose ONE thing to be professional at - your business - and maintain 2-4 other pursuits where you can be a curious student without the pressure to win or monetize. Chris explains the blessings and responsibilities of both professionals and amateurs, warns against the "amateur professional" trap where hobbies interfere with work, and uses examples like dual-sport athletes and multi-company founders to show why divided focus rarely works. The episode emphasizes that peace from mind - not just peace of mind - requires positive distractions that restore our ability to focus when it counts. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

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 engaged You'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 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 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+1 Canada’s income tax history (1917 “temporary” tax). The Canadian Encyclopedia Provincial/territorial corporate tax—CRA administers most; exceptions Quebec & Alberta. Canada.ca Pre-populated returns (Denmark origin; 28 OECD countries). Tax Policy Center Quebec 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/