How To Turn One-Time Wins Into Growth Machines
Obsessing over problems only multiplies them.
I end every Friday with two simple questions: What went well? What didn't go well?
When I share this with CEOs, they often skip the first question. They think focusing on what's broken is the fastest path to success.
After a decade of building companies to $200M, I can tell you it's not true.
My calendar used to be packed with back-to-back meetings. My inbox overflowed with urgent "to-dos." I looked like a powerhouse on the outside.
But I was so focused on fixing problems that I overlooked what was working.
I was building my entire company around problems instead of success. We scaled through brute force, not by leveraging our strengths.
The breakthrough came after my concussion. I couldn't work like a beast anymore. I had to ask myself: What value do I bring if I can't fix every fire?
This pushed me to study our successes, just as intensely as I fixed our problems.
When you're stuck in problem-solving mode, all you see are problems. When you start celebrating wins, you see huge untapped potential.
Here's what I discovered: Every one-time win hides a repeatable success pattern.
Today, we’ll explore how to unlock these patterns and turn them into growth engines for your business.
Why Most CEOs Miss Their Biggest Opportunities
Fear makes us obsess over problems and ignore our wins.
Ironically, we start as CEOs believing our job is to put out fires. That’s true for a time, but if we stay in that mode too long, we train ourselves to focus on problems instead of wins.
This isn't just a mindset issue.
It's a fundamental business limitation.
I recently coached a founder whose marketing team created a viral TikTok video. It drove more sales in a day than they had the whole month before.
Instead of studying that success, they viewed it as luck and returned to fixing their underperforming ads.
When I asked why they weren't analyzing their biggest win, the founder said, "We're so used to putting out fires that we don't have time to study what's working."
This pattern repeats in many companies I work with. We get stuck in a cycle:
Problem appears
You solve it
New problem appears
Repeat until exhausted
If we don’t break this cycle, our problem-solving skills get stronger, while our ability to spot opportunities fades. This tunnel vision reshapes our company around firefighting, not growth.
Success starts with clarity on what you want to achieve.
I coached another CEO who felt stuck in problem-solving mode, despite working 80-hour weeks. When we explored deeper, he realized he was chasing someone else's idea of success – building a billion-dollar company.
Once he defined success on his own terms – finding freedom for deep work and time with his family – everything shifted.
Problems that felt urgent became optional. He saw ways he was already succeeding and could focus on what worked instead of fixing what didn’t.
The irony here is that after defining his own version of success, and letting go of external validation, his business grew faster. He's now about a year away from that billion-dollar business - but it's no longer what drives him.
Break this problem-obsession cycle by starting small:
Identify one win from this week, no matter how small
Document what contributed to that success
Ask: "Where else could we apply this approach?"
This isn’t just about positive thinking – it’s about training your brain to spot success patterns that can scale.
From this perspective, you’ll make strategic decisions that build your wins instead of just maintaining the status quo.
How To Spot Success DNA In Your Wins
Success leaves clues. The key is knowing how to recognize the patterns that drive results.
My breakthrough came when I couldn't work 90-hour weeks anymore after my concussion. I felt shame about not being the "powerhouse" I used to be. But this limitation pushed me to find leverage in our success patterns.
Ask yourself these three questions to extract the DNA from any win:
What specific elements moved the needle? (Get concrete with numbers)
Which actions directly led to this result?
What conditions were present when this success occurred?
Analyzing your wins won’t just reveal what works – it will change how you view your business. You'll start to notice patterns everywhere, from sales strategies that convert to team dynamics that drive innovation.
The biggest shift happens when you stop seeing success as random luck and start recognizing it as a repeatable formula.
For example, I noticed that our most successful product launches always included three elements: early customer involvement, a clear transformation story, and a 30-day roadmap for implementation. Once we identified this success DNA, we could replicate it across every new product.
Don't overthink this process. Start by documenting your most recent win in detail. What exactly happened? What contributed to the success? Which elements could you replicate?
Turning Isolated Wins Into Repeatable Processes
Don't reinvent the wheel with every success. Turn wins into processes anyone can execute.
Most businesses treat wins as isolated events rather than templates for future success. This creates a cycle of constant reinvention that drains energy and limits scale.
Start with these three steps to turn any win into a repeatable process:
Document immediately after success: Capture the exact process while it's fresh. Create a quick Loom video walking through the steps or use Claude to extract the key elements. I document anything we do more than twice – this frees my mind to solve new problems instead of remembering old solutions.
Create repeatable templates: Turn your success patterns into checklists anyone can follow. Keep these templates in a central place everyone can access. We use Notion for this across my businesses.
Measure what matters: Track the specific metrics that show if your process is working. This creates accountability and allows for continuous improvement.
My identity was tied to outworking everyone.
When I couldn’t do that anymore, I had to build systems that scaled without my constant involvement.
These systems let me shift from 90+ hours of work to just 20 hours a week while managing multiple companies.
For example, we turned a successful client onboarding into a documented process with clear templates, progress tracking, and automated check-ins.
What once depended on me became a repeatable system that consistently outperformed my previous efforts.
The goal isn't just documentation – it's liberation. Every win you systematize frees up energy to focus on the next growth opportunity.
The Friday Ritual That Transforms Business Strategy
The most powerful shift in my business came from implementing a simple weekly practice – what I call the Friday Ritual.
Don't wait until you "have time" for this – this ritual is what creates time. Block 30 minutes every Friday and protect it fiercely. It will become the highest ROI activity in your week.
The Friday Ritual consists of three simple steps:
Review wins first: Start by listing what went well this week. Find at least three wins, no matter how small. This trains your brain to seek success patterns.
Extract the pattern: For each win, identify the specific actions, conditions, and decisions that contributed. Ask: “How could we replicate this elsewhere?”
Plan for amplification: Choose one success pattern to intentionally apply next week. Where else could this approach work?
In my companies, a Slack message prompts my team every Friday: What went well? What didn’t go well? What can we eliminate? What can we delegate? What meetings can be emails? Does my calendar reflect my priorities?
This simple prompt has transformed us from reactive firefighters to strategic pattern-recognizers. We’re always identifying what works and finding ways to amplify it across the business.
The best part? This ritual becomes easier and more valuable over time as your pattern recognition skills strengthen.
Building a Success-Replication System
The ultimate goal is to create a business that automatically identifies, documents, and scales your successes – what I call a success-replication system.
This isn't just about documenting processes. It's about building an organizational muscle that turns every win into a repeatable asset.
Here's how to build this system:
Create a success library: Set up a central repository for documented wins and the processes that created them. Make this accessible to everyone in your organization.
Implement regular success reviews: Schedule monthly team sessions to analyze recent wins and extract replicable patterns. Make this as important as your financial reviews.
Build templates for everything: Develop standard templates for processes, communications, meetings, and decisions that consistently lead to success. These become your company’s operating system.
Automate the reminder: Set up automatic prompts that remind your team to document and analyze their wins. We use Slack for this, but any system works as long as it’s consistent.
Pay close attention to where your team generates results with less effort. Look for projects that energize rather than drain your team. Look for areas where you get outsized returns from minimal input. These energy patterns reveal your most sustainable growth paths.
Success-replication isn't about rigidity – it's about creating a foundation that frees you to innovate where it matters most.
Putting It All Together
Your biggest opportunities aren't hiding in your problems – they're waiting in your successes.
When you systematically study what's working, you stop struggling to reinvent the wheel. Instead, you build a machine that generates predictable success.
We can't be so limited in our roles that all we do well is problem solve.
Our value to our business is in our tremendous ability to see the potential to create more of what works. You can't see that potential if you're only looking for what went wrong.
The hardest part is looking past your own fear. But on the other side of that shift is freedom – freedom to pursue what you truly want, powered by energy instead of anxiety.
Start small. Take your biggest win from last month and run it through the Friday framework with your team. Document exactly what worked. Look for patterns you can systematize.
You'll be amazed at how much untapped potential is hiding in plain sight.
See you next week! 👑
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Special thanks to Julie Rogers for help editing this piece.