Business is Good with Chris Cooper

Chris Cooper
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One on one mentorship saved my business. So I decided to share that process starting with a 200-word blog post. Fast forward to today and my mentorship practice is a 21 million dollar worldwide company with a team of 50 professional mentors. Scaling from a tiny gym business to one of the largest mentorship practices in the world meant developing simple systems that could be taught easily to others. But building a movement requires leading by example, and showing people that business isn’t evil; that building wealth doesn’t require taking it from others; and that creating value lifts us all. It’s always been important to me to succeed the right way: without empty promises or slimy sales tricks. So the purpose of the Business Is Good podcast is to share the models that will scale a business FAST; but, more importantly, to help you build a business you’re proud to own. Visit businessisgood.com for more info and resources from the show.

  1. 3d ago

    Starting A Single-Person Business: Part III - Building Your Collectors

    You've identified the problem you solve (Part I) and defined your first product (Part II). Before you can sell anything, you need to collect an audience. This episode walks through building your "collectors" — the places where potential customers find you, raise their hand, and give you permission to keep talking to them. We build the entire infrastructure live using AI. Five years ago, this setup would have cost $3,000-$15,000 upfront: a web developer, email software like MailChimp, and a marketing consultant. Today, the total cost is about $32 — a $12 domain registration and $20/month for AI tools. Hosting through Vercel or Netlify is free. Email through Resend is free for up to 3,000 emails a month. Facebook groups are free. This episode covers registering a domain name, building a one-page website with an email collector using a copy-and-paste AI prompt, setting up a public Facebook group with a strategic intake question, and defining the one call to action that ties everything together. The deeper benefit: when you build it yourself with AI, you understand every piece. You can change your headline at midnight, update your email sequence without a support ticket, and move at the speed of your own decisions. The barrier to starting a business isn't money or a team anymore. It's willingness to learn the tools. Free website builder prompt and Part II worksheet available in the show notes. Next episode: Part IV — your first marketing post and social media setup.

    24 min

  2. May 23

    Starting A Single-Person Business: Part II - Your First Product

    In Part I, you identified the problem you solve. In Part II, you're defining your first actual product — your minimum viable offer. Most people starting businesses make one of two mistakes: they build everything before selling anything, or they try to sell everything to everyone. Both fail. The solution is to define something specific enough to sell, simple enough to deliver quickly, and focused enough that you can tell if it's working. This episode walks through the 5-step First Product Exercise: Download the Worksheet: https://businessisgood.com/starting-a-single-person-business-part-ii-your-first-product/ Step 1: Write your transformation statement — "I help [specific person] go from [current painful state] to [desired outcome]." Step 2: Define your constraint — What's the smallest commitment that still delivers meaningful results? Time constraint (7, 30, 90 days) + scope constraint (one specific outcome). Step 3: Choose your delivery format — Done-for-you service, done-with-you coaching, or DIY program. Pick one based on how people are already trying and failing to solve this. Step 4: Name it and price it — Name describes the outcome, not the process. Price high enough to qualify serious buyers, low enough to validate demand. Step 5: Write the before/after promise — What they have/feel/know before vs. after. This becomes your sales copy and delivery commitment. Your first product will probably change. That's fine. But you can't evolve if you never start. Download the free First Product Exercise worksheet in the show notes. Next episode: Part III - Setting up your platform and building your audience. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

    17 min

  3. May 17

    Starting A Single-Person Business: Part I - What Do You Sell?

    This is Part I of a new series on building a single-person business from scratch using AI. Whether you're starting from zero or auditing an existing business, this episode covers the most foundational question you'll answer. Most people starting businesses ask the wrong question. They ask "what am I good at?" or "what should I sell?" The right question is: what problem am I solving? You don't sell a product or service. You sell the solution to a problem. This distinction matters because the thing you DO will change as you grow, but the problem you SOLVE stays constant. In this episode, I walk through two exercises: The Listening Exercise (for people starting from scratch): How to identify problems worth solving by documenting what people complain about, then filtering for frequency, willingness to pay, frustration versus resignation, and your unique advantage. The Product Autopsy Exercise (for existing businesses): How to map every product and service you offer back to the problem it solves, find the pattern, and cut everything that doesn't serve your core problem. If you think you're a personal trainer, you're locked in. If you know you solve the problem of people feeling weak and invisible as they age, you've got options: training, online programs, supplements, community building, coaching, retreats. The product is temporary. The problem is permanent. Next episode: Part II - Testing 2-3 solutions before you commit to building anything. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

    15 min

  4. May 10

    Self-Leadership: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Build It

    Every business is limited by its leadership. Good systems and operations are the floor, but the leader is always the ceiling. I've worked with over 3,000 entrepreneurs, and this pattern shows up everywhere: they can work hard, but they're limited by beliefs about money, mindset gaps, or self-doubt. When I tell them exactly what to do, they find reasons not to — "I need more evidence," "I'm too busy," "my situation is different." These are stories they tell themselves to avoid the uncomfortable work of growing themselves first. There's easy-hard (4am mopping, working weekends — visible labor) and hard-hard (cold outreach, publishing ideas — invisible courage). Nobody cheers the hard-hard. They might call you greedy. Self-leadership is a scientific process. You have to treat yourself as the ultimate experiment. It's the foundation for team leadership, peer leadership, and tribe leadership. If you can't control your emotions, no team will take your instructions. If you can't get over your fear of going first, you'll never get anyone to go with you. Go to leadyourself.ca/assessment — take the free test on the 8 dimensions of mental fitness. Then start the 180-day guided journey. Your business can only grow as much as you do. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

    10 min
  5. Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Chief: The New Four-Stage Framework

    Apr 26

    Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Chief: The New Four-Stage Framework

    Most entrepreneurs are giving themselves the wrong advice. Not because they're lazy, and not because they haven't read enough business books — but because the business advice industry doesn't sort itself by phase. So they end up doing the right things at the wrong time: hiring a fractional COO when they need ten new clients, building complicated org charts when they still can't take a weekend off, choosing typography when they should be making sales calls. In this episode, Chris Cooper walks through the four phases every entrepreneur moves through — and most get stuck in: Founder, Farmer, Tinker, and Chief. It's a preview of his rewritten book Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Chief — originally published in 2018 as Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief. The first three phases are sharper. The fourth is completely reimagined. You'll learn: Why building a business is a triathlon, not a marathon — and why the stroke that wins the swim will crash you on the bikeThe primary goal, the primary trap, and the exit signal for each of the four phasesWhy "Thief" became "Chief" in the rewrite — and what it really takes to build a movement instead of a companyThe six parts of a real movement — and why your competitor is never your villainA five-minute audit you can run on yourself this week to figure out which phase you're actually in There's also a twist in this episode — one the audience doesn't see coming. Stay until the end. Listen, subscribe, and share with the entrepreneur who needs to hear it.

    57 min
  6. The Six Mindset Myths Quietly Killing Your Business

    Apr 25

    The Six Mindset Myths Quietly Killing Your Business

    Get your free worksheet here: https://businessisgood.com/the-six-mindset-myths-quietly-killing-your-business/ After more than fifteen years of publishing daily and mentoring over 3,000 entrepreneurs, Chris Cooper has watched the game change completely. The old constraints — lack of information, lack of tools, lack of access to markets — are mostly gone. What's left is internal. In this episode of Business Is Good, Chris names the six specific beliefs he has watched, across thousands of entrepreneurs, quietly decide who grows and who stays stuck. These myths don't feel like limitations. They feel like wisdom — disguised as caution, humility, and responsibility. That's exactly what makes them so expensive. The six myths covered in this episode: "I need to learn more before I act.""If I raise my prices, I'll lose clients.""No one can do this as well as I can.""Wanting to make real money means something's wrong with me.""Growing my business means I'll never have a life.""I'll do it when things slow down." Each myth gets named, examined, and dismantled — with a real-world example showing what it costs and what changes when it breaks. This episode also introduces the Mindset Myth Buster — a free 15-minute worksheet that helps you identify which belief is running your business right now and commit to one specific action to break through it. The limiting factor in your business isn't the market, the economy, or your industry. It's the story you're telling yourself. This episode helps you change it. Free worksheet at businessisgood.com. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

    18 min

  7. Apr 19

    AI: Ally or Enemy?

    Is AI your ally or your enemy? On this episode of Business is Good, Chris Cooper makes the case that the answer is entirely up to you. Chris opens with a story that didn't get nearly enough attention: Anthropic — the company behind the AI model Claude — recently developed a tool called Claude Mythos Preview that found thousands of security vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser. Some of those flaws had gone undetected for nearly three decades. Rather than releasing the technology publicly, Anthropic quietly shared it with about 50 of the world's most critical companies — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, JPMorgan — through a program called Project Glasswing. The goal: fix the holes before bad actors find them. That's AI being used as a force for protection. Then Chris gets into why so many artists, writers, and editors are terrified — and why the recent collapse of a major book deal for horror novelist Mia Ballard is a story about deception, not technology. Her editor used AI without her knowledge, her publisher dropped her, and her career was left in ruins. The lesson isn't to avoid AI. The lesson is to own your process and be transparent about it. From there, Chris walks through exactly how he produces this podcast using AI: brain dumps into Claude, fact-checking that actually pushes back, plus audio editing, video clipping, social content, and graphics — saving roughly five hours per episode. The episode closes with a simple argument: AI bridges gaps. It removes the excuses. And curiosity is the only prerequisite. Topics: AI tools, small business productivity, content creation, Canadian entrepreneurship, technology adoption Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

    16 min

  8. Apr 17

    An AI Demo

    Most entrepreneurs know they should be creating more content. What stops them isn't motivation — it's time, and the feeling that each piece requires starting from scratch. In this episode, Chris Cooper sits down and shows his exact AI content workflow, live and in real time. Starting from a blank screen, he walks through how he uses five AI tools in sequence to go from zero to a fully published content package — podcast, video, blog post, Instagram carousel, short-form clips — in under 20 minutes. Here's where to watch the video: https://youtu.be/xwPRU70r24E Here's the workflow: Perplexity handles the research. Give it your audience and your topic area, and it tells you exactly what to talk about — then writes the script for you. Claude takes that script and multiplies it. One script becomes Instagram captions, carousel slides, a WordPress draft, and a YouTube thumbnail. All from one prompt. Descript turns your raw recording into a polished video. Edit by deleting text. Remove filler words in one click. Fix your eye contact. Level your audio. Export to podcast and video simultaneously. Opus Clips watches your video, picks the best short-form moments, captions them, and posts them directly to social — while you're already working on the next thing. The result: eight to ten pieces of content from a single recording session. No graphic design skills required. No video editing experience required. No social media team required. If you're a Canadian entrepreneur who knows content matters but keeps running out of time to make it, this episode shows you exactly where to start. New episodes every Monday at businessisgood.com. Connect with Chris Cooper: Website - https://businessisgood.com/

    10 min
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About

One on one mentorship saved my business. So I decided to share that process starting with a 200-word blog post. Fast forward to today and my mentorship practice is a 21 million dollar worldwide company with a team of 50 professional mentors. Scaling from a tiny gym business to one of the largest mentorship practices in the world meant developing simple systems that could be taught easily to others. But building a movement requires leading by example, and showing people that business isn’t evil; that building wealth doesn’t require taking it from others; and that creating value lifts us all. It’s always been important to me to succeed the right way: without empty promises or slimy sales tricks. So the purpose of the Business Is Good podcast is to share the models that will scale a business FAST; but, more importantly, to help you build a business you’re proud to own. Visit businessisgood.com for more info and resources from the show.

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