The 3 weeks that saved my company
In 2016, my company almost died.
We were growing XTRF, investing heavily, expanding into new markets. And then our investors pulled out of a planned funding round.
No warning. No second chance. Just gone.
I sat in my office and did the math. We had two, maybe three weeks of runway. After that, we were done. Ten years of building - finished.
And here's the strange thing: that was the moment I became a better CEO than I'd ever been.
Because when you have three weeks to survive, you don't have fifty priorities. You don't have a long to-do list. You don't attend meetings about things that "might matter someday." You have one priority: keep this company alive. Everything else is off the table.
I cancelled every project that went beyond those three weeks. Every question that wasn't about immediate financial stability - off my desk. Every meeting that didn't directly move us toward independence from investor money - cancelled.
For the first time in years, I had perfect clarity. And from that clarity came something I'd never experienced at that level: perfect execution. When you know exactly what matters, you stop wasting a single hour on what doesn't.
We survived. Not just survived, we came out stronger. Four years later, we bought out those same investors. And in 2021, we completed a sale to K1 Investment Management. A fantastic exit, on our terms.
That near-death experience taught me something I now teach every CEO I work with:
C = Clarity. Know what matters. Not 50 things. Three.
E = Execution. When clarity is real, execution becomes focused, almost effortless.
O = Outcomes. Define them clearly, measure them honestly.
CEO is not a title. It's a discipline. And these three letters are the whole discipline.
The irony? You shouldn't need a near-bankruptcy to discover this. You can practice it every single week.
And this is exactly why I built the Weekly Operating System.
It's a free tool that does one thing: forces you to start every Monday with clarity - your 3 outcomes for the week - and review your results on Friday.
Three outcomes. One week.
The same focus that saved my company, built into a simple weekly system.