The Importance of Celebrating Wins

Many leaders and entrepreneurs are ambitious and driven. They constantly push the envelope, setting and achieving bigger and bigger goals over time. The issue is not consistently raising the bar. The issue is not celebrating the wins.

I don’t celebrate any of my wins. I set a goal, accomplish it, and move on. I never think about it again. I inevitably set a new goal that’s bigger than the last. Rinse, wash, and repeat.

This driven way is not usually a problem. But it’s a huge problem when the goals are team goals and wins.

For some context, in 2020, EOS Worldwide began developing software. Initially, the software was intended to be a digital version of our paper-based tools. However, we were not a software company and had no capability to build software, so we outsourced the development.

The project was an unmitigated disaster. Our initial beta was terrible, as most beta launches are. The issue was that our team couldn’t progress and improve the product sprint after sprint, and we knew something was wrong. After deep analysis, investigation, and hiring multiple audit firms, we discovered that we would need to rebuild the entire application from scratch.

After nearly two years, we still didn’t have a viable product in the marketplace. In January 2023, we were at a crossroads. Should we continue building our own software, or should we scrap it?

With the support of our board, we decided to keep building. The world wants EOS® in its purest form. We love our licensed software providers, but they would never be able to create an integrated customer experience. Our content, our EOS Implementers, and our digital platform are the perfect marriage. We had to keep going to realize our vision.

We hired a new internal team to begin building the new EOS One™. Progress was slow—too slow. Over 50,000 users signed up for our beta, and we were growing impatient. We hired a rescue firm to work with our internal development team. We hired an interim CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and CPO (Chief Product Officer) to transform us into a tech-enabled training company with real engineering chops.

The level of change management required to get over one hundred team members and six hundred EOS Implementers is no easy task. We needed all our human energy rowing in the same direction, or we would have never achieved our goal. The first step was to get our internal team aligned and rowing. We needed a battle cry, a theme we could all get behind. Enter Matthew Coy, our CTO who created “The Run to April.”

The Run to April was the rallying mantra we all needed to drive towards our April 2024 EOS Conference in San Diego, where we would launch the new EOS One. Everything we did from June 2023 to April 2024 was about launching EOS One. We crushed it. The product was stable, fast, and EOS pure—a great start to where we ultimately want to go.

We celebrated as a team, and it was great. Customers signed up and gave rave reviews of the product. And the product was measurably getting better sprint after sprint—it still is.

However, I don’t celebrate wins for over a millisecond (not particularly healthy). We still had lots of work to do. We set a goal of $6.6M in ARR by December 2024. By the beginning of June, two months after launch, I felt like we were behind and wouldn’t make it.

We crushed May and were on pace to exceed June, but the momentum post-launch wasn’t there to give us a shot at July, which would put us behind, and we’d never hit $6.6M ARR. The Run to April was over. There was no rallying cry or mantra, and I sensed our human energy was low. We used all our energy in the sprint but forgot we were running a marathon.

I began pushing the team hard and lighting fires everywhere. I constantly reminded everyone how far behind I felt. Some of that pushing was appropriate and healthy, some not so much. The team began to feel like I was saying, “What have you done for me lately?” and thought I had lost confidence in their ability to execute. I didn’t. But what I did do was put the entire team in what Dan Sullivan calls the GAP.

I didn’t acknowledge the Run to April as a success; I was only looking at where we needed to be over the horizon. I didn’t recognize that we had no product in early 2023; we rebuilt the entire thing, launched a great product in less than ten months, and exceeded our MRR goals by over 200%. And maybe a goal of going from $0 in ARR to $6.6M in ARR in less than eight months may be a little aggressive.

I wasn’t living in the GAIN and then setting realistic goals that the team could feel good about. I was putting them all in the GAP and demoralizing them. I was managing the human energy but not in a healthy way.

We have a world-class team here at EOS Worldwide, and I’m proud of the work accomplished. Going from where we were last year to where we are now is nothing short of a miracle. And we still have lots of work to do. We aren’t changing our goals. We can do it, but we are running a marathon. We will move one step at a time and acknowledge our progress by looking backward.

I’m grateful to our board, the EOS Worldwide team, EOS Implementers, and our clients for believing in us and what’s possible for EOS. We are on a mission to get one million companies Running on EOS. We’ve got over 280,000+ already, and we are just getting started.

As we move forward, EOS One will become a fully integrated experience for running your business on The Entrepreneurial Operating System®. You’ll have access to all our training content, EOS Implementers, and all the digital tools you need to run a great business.

Next Actions

1. Read The Gap and the Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy

2. Acknowledge progress by examining it. Don’t let the team forget you are grateful for and confident in them. You have to say it; it’s not assumed.

3. Don’t give in to the temptation to leave the team behind. You’ve got to climb the mountain together and return together. No one can be left behind. Your running ahead demoralizes everyone, but you can’t stop pushing either.

4. Set SMART goals. Our $6.6M ARR goal on a $10/user product is VERY aggressive to achieve in 8 months starting from $0. We didn’t know what was possible and set these goals six months before launch.

5. Learn and be willing to adjust within reason.

We want to help entrepreneurs live their EOS Life™. Do what you love with People you love, make a massive difference in the world, be compensated well, and have time to pursue other passions.

To start progressing towards your EOS Life, visit www.eosone.com to sign up for a free account.