Why Smart People Fail (At Business)
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 “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.
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.”
…and, as always, I’ll give you some ways to overcome all three.
Connect with Chris Cooper:
Website – https://businessisgood.com/Connect with Chris Cooper:
Website – https://businessisgood.com/
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