Podbean logo
  • Discover
  • Podcast Features
    • Podcast Hosting

      Start your podcast with all the features you need.

    • Podbean AI Podbean AI

      AI-Enhanced Audio Quality and Content Generation.

    • Blog to Podcast

      Repurpose your blog into an engaging podcast.

    • Video to Podcast

      Convert YouTube playlists to podcasts, videos to audios.

  • Monetization
    • Ads Marketplace

      Join Ads Marketplace to earn through podcast sponsorships.

    • PodAds

      Manage your ads with dynamic ad insertion capability.

    • Apple Podcasts Subscriptions Integration

      Monetize with Apple Podcasts Subscriptions via Podbean.

    • Live Streaming

      Earn rewards and recurring income from Fan Club membership.

  • Podbean App
    • Podcast Studio

      Easy-to-use audio recorder app.

    • Podcast App

      The best podcast player & podcast app.

  • Help and Support
    • Help Center

      Get the answers and support you need.

    • Podbean Academy

      Resources and guides to launch, grow, and monetize podcast.

    • Podbean Blog

      Stay updated with the latest podcasting tips and trends.

    • What’s New

      Check out our newest and recently released features!

    • Podcasting Smarter

      Podcast interviews, best practices, and helpful tips.

  • Popular Topics
    • How to Start a Podcast

      The step-by-step guide to start your own podcast.

    • How to Start a Live Podcast

      Create the best live podcast and engage your audience.

    • How to Monetize a Podcast

      Tips on making the decision to monetize your podcast.

    • How to Promote Your Podcast

      The best ways to get more eyes and ears on your podcast.

    • Podcast Advertising 101

      Everything you need to know about podcast advertising.

    • Mobile Podcast Recording Guide

      The ultimate guide to recording a podcast on your phone.

    • How to Use Group Recording

      Steps to set up and use group recording in the Podbean app.

  • All Arts Business Comedy Education
  • Fiction Government Health & Fitness History Kids & Family
  • Leisure Music News Religion & Spirituality Science
  • Society & Culture Sports Technology True Crime TV & Film
  • Live
  • How to Start a Podcast
  • How to Start a Live Podcast
  • How to Monetize a podcast
  • How to Promote Your Podcast
  • How to Use Group Recording
  • Log in
  • Start your podcast for free
  • Podcasting
    • Podcast Features
      • Podcast Hosting

        Start your podcast with all the features you need.

      • Podbean AI Podbean AI

        AI-Enhanced Audio Quality and Content Generation.

      • Blog to Podcast

        Repurpose your blog into an engaging podcast.

      • Video to Podcast

        Convert YouTube playlists to podcasts, videos to audios.

    • Monetization
      • Ads Marketplace

        Join Ads Marketplace to earn through podcast sponsorships.

      • PodAds

        Manage your ads with dynamic ad insertion capability.

      • Apple Podcasts Subscriptions Integration

        Monetize with Apple Podcasts Subscriptions via Podbean.

      • Live Streaming

        Earn rewards and recurring income from Fan Club membership.

    • Podbean App
      • Podcast Studio

        Easy-to-use audio recorder app.

      • Podcast App

        The best podcast player & podcast app.

  • Advertisers
  • Enterprise
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Help and Support
      • Help Center

        Get the answers and support you need.

      • Podbean Academy

        Resources and guides to launch, grow, and monetize podcast.

      • Podbean Blog

        Stay updated with the latest podcasting tips and trends.

      • What’s New

        Check out our newest and recently released features!

      • Podcasting Smarter

        Podcast interviews, best practices, and helpful tips.

    • Popular Topics
      • How to Start a Podcast

        The step-by-step guide to start your own podcast.

      • How to Start a Live Podcast

        Create the best live podcast and engage your audience.

      • How to Monetize a Podcast

        Tips on making the decision to monetize your podcast.

      • How to Promote Your Podcast

        The best ways to get more eyes and ears on your podcast.

      • Podcast Advertising 101

        Everything you need to know about podcast advertising.

      • Mobile Podcast Recording Guide

        The ultimate guide to recording a podcast on your phone.

      • How to Use Group Recording

        Steps to set up and use group recording in the Podbean app.

  • Discover
  • Log in
    Sign up free
Business is Good with Chris Cooper

Business is Good with Chris Cooper

Education:How To

The Empirical Empire

The Empirical Empire

2023-06-26
Download Right click and do "save link as"

"If you want to succeed in business, you're going to have to make a lot of mistakes."

That's true. But...

it's not the mistakes themselves that matter.

Many business owners make lots of mistakes, and don't survive them. In fact, that's true for the majority of small businesses.

They make pricing mistakes; they order too much inventory; they shoot for the moon with their restaurant design or gym equipment. Then they run out of money and it kills their business.

The more fragile your business, the more impact a single mistake can make. In a book that I wrote for gym owners ("Start A Gym",) I wrote that every mistake made at startup requires at least six months to correct...and, sadly, many gyms can't survive long enough to fix their mistakes.

The key to success isn't making mistakes--it's learning from mistakes, and never repeating the same mistakes twice.

The US military calls this the "OODA loop". In previous articles, I've referred to it as the Audit Cycle. Business schools call it the "Evaluation Process". My seventh-grade teacher called it "The Scientific Method" and my high school teacher called it "Evidence-based decision making."

It goes like this:

  1. Try something
  2. Measure the result
  3. Compare the result against other results
  4. If the result is better, keep doing it. If the result is worse, stop.

Of course, this system only works if you measure your results.

If you try something -- like running Instagram ads -- and you get ten new leads, then you don't really know if the advertising was successful until you compare it to something else.

Did you get ten new leads without the ads last month?

Could you have earned twenty new leads if you'd done the same ads on Facebook instead?

Would you have earned twenty leads with a different Instagram ad?

Would you have earned twenty leads if you'd doubled your ad spend with the same ads?

You don't know--yet. But measuring the efficacy of the first ad means you have a baseline to compare against.

The next month, you can change one of these variables, and measure against your baseline: ten leads.

This is how science works. This is the process of empiricism on which empires are built.

Now let's apply this to making mistakes.

Let's say you have people coming into your shop, but they're not signing up.

Are your prices too high?

Does your service not solve their problem?

Did you not explain your service in a way that evokes value?

Does your advertising attract the wrong people?

Your hypothesis is that your prices are too high. But you don't know until you measure, because your first attempt at pricing your service was a straight-up guess.

First, you measure your close rate.

Then, you look at the variables you can control: your price, your advertising, your sales process, your sales skill.

Then you choose one--and only one--variable to change. Since changing your prices carries the largest risk (if you're wrong, you're underpriced; if you're right, you have a different problem), you change your sales process.

You try a new sales process for the next ten leads, and measure the change.

If you sell more of your service, great - you keep the new sales process going.

The next test might be upgrading your sales skills. You work on those, and track the results over the next two months. Did your sales improve?

Real business "experience" has little to do with how much time an entrepreneur has spent owning a business, and everything to do with how many mistakes they've corrected.

The biggest challenge in entrepreneurship isn't that our first decisions are guesses. Of course they are--and most of our guesses will be wrong. We're going to make mistakes. What kills businesses is when entrepreneurs compound their guesses--and compound their mistakes.

For example, many gym owners will tell our mentors, "I can't charge that much for our coaching service."

When asked, "What else have you tried?" the answer is always "nothing."

Maybe they could charge more; maybe they couldn't. They don't know.

Maybe they tried raising their prices and fewer people signed up. But was the mistake in raising prices, or something else? They don't know for sure--they're layering a guess on top of a guess.

I'm absolutely guilty of this. As a new entrepreneur, I was overconfident in my guesses. I thought I was smart enough to guess right most of the time (which was wrong) and hardworking enough to just grind through my mistakes (also wrong). As I've matured, I've come to see every decision I make through an empirical lens: "we're going to try this. We're going to measure the outcome. If it works, we'll commit to doing it until we find something better. If it doesn't, we'll go back to the old way. We're not going to commit to doing it forever." Not only has this grown my business exponentially, but it's also removed the stress from making decisions, because every decision is just the next experiment.

The best part about taking an empirical approach is that your stress drops immensely, because you're no longer making 'forever' decisions. Your'e testing.

I'm comfortable with change, because I have a feedback loop in place. Not all of my decisions are good--but the good ones pull me forward, and the bad ones don't drag me backward for long.

"You don't win or lose - you win or learn." I've heard that one before. Learning - evaluation, measurement - is the key.

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

view more

More Episodes

94: How To Get More From The Taxes We Pay
2025-07-27
93: CASH vs KASH
2025-07-20
92: The Single-Person Business: Building a $1M Company Without Staff
2025-07-13
91: Is Private Healthcare the Solution to Canada's Healthcare Crisis?
2025-07-06
90: Is the "Information Age" Over?
2025-06-30
89: Saving the Sault
2025-06-22
88: Intrapreneurship
2025-06-15
87: The Art of War (Business Lessons from Sun Tzu)
2025-06-01
86: JFDI
2025-05-25
85: Where Growth Really Happens
2025-05-18
84: What You Can STOP Doing
2025-05-11
83: Luck Favours The Prepared
2025-05-04
82: How to Build a Business Scoreboard
2025-04-27
81: The Growth Mindset: How it Actually Grows Your Business
2025-04-21
80: What Culture REALLY Is (and How to Fix Yours)
2025-04-14
79: Chicken and Rice
2025-04-07
78: The "Save Game" Button for Business
2025-03-31
77: Those In The Back
2025-03-26
76: Captain, or Coach?
2025-01-20
75: The Best Workouts for Entrepreneurs
2024-12-09
  • ←
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • →
012345678910111213141516171819

Get this podcast on your
phone, FREE

Download Podbean app on App Store Download Podbean app on Google Play

Create your
podcast in
minutes

  • Full-featured podcast site
  • Unlimited storage and bandwidth
  • Comprehensive podcast stats
  • Distribute to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more
  • Make money with your podcast
Get started

It is Free

  • Podcast Services

    • Podcast Features
    • Pricing
    • Enterprise Solution
    • Private Podcast
    • The Podcast App
    • Live Stream
    • Audio Recorder
    • Remote Recording
    • Podbean AI
  •  
    • Create a Podcast
    • Video Podcast
    • Start Podcasting
    • Start Radio Talk Show
    • Education Podcast
    • Church Podcast
    • Nonprofit Podcast
    • Get Sermons Online
    • Free Audiobooks
  • MONETIZATION & MORE

    • Podcast Advertising
    • Dynamic Ads Insertion
    • Apple Podcasts Subscriptions
    • Switch to Podbean
    • YouTube to Podcast
    • Blog to Podcast
    • Submit Your Podcast
    • Podbean Plugins
    • Developers
  • KNOWLEDGE BASE

    • How to Start a Podcast
    • How to Start a Live Podcast
    • How to Monetize a Podcast
    • How to Promote Your Podcast
    • Mobile Podcast Recording Guide
    • How to Use Group Recording
    • Podcast Advertising 101
  • Support

    • Support Center
    • What’s New
    • Free Webinars
    • Podcast Events
    • Podbean Academy
    • Podbean Amplified Podcast
    • Badges
    • Resources
  • Podbean

    • About Us
    • Podbean Blog
    • Careers
    • Press and Media
    • Green Initiative
    • Affiliate Program
    • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Consent Preferences
  • Copyright © 2015-2025 Podbean.com