Operating Habits: Week 2 — The Friday Forensic
How to Turn One Week of Content Data Into Decisions That Actually Compound Your Progress
In 2026, I’m working directly with 100 creators building real businesses.
I want to bring operating strategy, competitive positioning, and financial planning to a community that’s fundamentally different from my typical industrial and technology clients.
For the first 100 creator founders: Four 60-minute 1:1 advisory sessions for $95.
Context: My standard engagement starts at $10K/month. This isn’t that. This is me learning from you while helping you build something sustainable.
Limited to 100 spots. 75 of 100 have filled. Offer expires this Friday, February 6th at midnight. And once it’s gone, it will not be returning.
You spent Week 1 getting your hands on the numbers. This week, we turn those numbers into decisions.
Start Here
Most creators fall into one of two camps. They either never look at their data, or they binge it the moment something goes viral, then promptly forget about it until the next dopamine spike.
Operators do something different. They build a simple, repeatable weekly review ritual that answers three questions:
What should I stop?
What should I keep?
What should I double down on?
Week 2 is that ritual.
I call it the Friday Forensic, a 15-minute weekly review that transforms raw numbers into concrete operating decisions. Think of it as your Weekly Business Review, sized for a one-person creator company.
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Daily tracking, which you built in Week 1, answers one question: What happened?
Weekly analysis answers the questions that actually matter: So what? and What now?
Without a weekly review, three predictable failures occur. First, you over-index on emotional moments. The viral post consumes your attention. The flop haunts you. Neither tells you much about the full picture. Second, you chase impressions instead of business-building outcomes. Impressions feel like progress. They rarely are. Third, you never close the loop between experiment and decision. You try something new, get a mixed result, and move on without ever resolving whether it worked.
A weekly review disciplines you to look at the entire week—not just the highlight reel. It forces you to separate vanity metrics (likes, raw views) from actionable metrics (followers gained, conversations started, relationships built). And it requires you to make explicit calls: Kill, Keep, or Double.
This is the difference between consuming data and using it.
You’re building one simple system with two components:
Content Performance Tracker v2.0 (Excel / Google Sheets)
Click here to make a copy or download the asset.
This is your data engine, an upgraded version of last week’s tracking sheet. It includes six tabs:
Daily Log (carried over from Week 1)
Weekly Summary (auto-calculated totals and averages)
Format Analysis (which content formats are efficient)
Platform Comparison (which platforms earn their keep)
Outlier Log (best and worst posts each week)
Kill / Keep / Double Log (your decisions and their results over time)
Weekly Analysis Worksheet (Word / Google Doc)
Click here to access the asset and make a copy or download.
This is your thinking surface—a one-page worksheet you fill in every Friday in 15 minutes. It walks you through five sections:
Pass 1: Vanity vs. Sanity
Pass 2: Format Audit
Pass 3: Outlier Hunt
Pass 4: Relationships & Conversations
Decisions: Kill / Keep / Double + Next Week Commitment
📥 Download: “Week 2 – Content Performance Tracker v2.0” (Excel) 📥 Download: “Week 2 – Weekly Analysis Worksheet” (Google Doc / Word)
Your goal this week isn’t to build a dashboard. It’s to build a weekly decision machine.
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Every Friday, right after you log Thursday’s numbers, you run through five passes:
PassFocusTime1Vanity vs. Sanity3 min2Format Efficiency Audit4 min3Outlier Hunt3 min4Relationships & Conversations3 min5Decisions & Commitment2 min
Open the Content Performance Tracker v2.0 and a blank Weekly Analysis Worksheet. Let’s walk through each pass.
Pass 1: Vanity vs. Sanity
Most analytics tools were designed to make you feel something, not decide something.
Pass 1 is where you deliberately separate “felt good” from “actually moved the business.”
From your Daily Log and Weekly Summary tabs, scan the week’s posts and sort them into two categories:
Left column — Entertainment posts: High impressions, but very low follower or subscriber growth. These are the sugar hits. They feel great but don’t compound.
Right column — Authority posts: Modest impressions, but strong follower or subscriber growth. These are the ones quietly building your business while you weren’t watching.
Then ask yourself two questions: Which posts were entertainment only? And which posts actually converted new people into followers or subscribers?
The point isn’t to kill every entertaining post. Some entertainment is strategic. The point is to know the difference and make those choices consciously rather than letting the algorithm’s dopamine reward system make them for you.
Pass 2: Format Efficiency — Finding Your Time Vampires
Not all formats are created equal. Some consume hours and deliver little. Others take minutes and silently build the business.
In the Format Analysis tab, you’ll see each format (video, carousel, text post, thread, etc.) broken down by number of posts, total impressions, total follower/subscriber growth, time invested in hours, and the automatically calculated ratios: impressions per hour and growth per post.
Your job in this pass is simple. Identify two things:
The Time Vampire: The format eating the most hours for the least growth. This is the thing you’re spending energy on out of habit, ego, or sunk-cost fallacy.
The High-Leverage Format: The one quietly delivering outsized returns per unit of effort.
On your worksheet, fill in both. This is where you catch insights like: “I’m spending six hours a week on YouTube videos that perform about the same as 30 minutes of text posts.” Or: “Carousels on LinkedIn are my workhorse. I should probably make more of those.”
The data doesn’t lie. Your feelings about which format “should” work best almost certainly do.
Pass 3: Outlier Hunt — Studying the Extremes
Most of your posts are average. That’s fine. Your strategy is defined by the outliers.
From the Outlier Log tab, identify two posts:
Best performer of the week. Which post significantly over-performed your baseline? Record the platform, topic, format, time of day, and hook. Then write a hypothesis: Why did this work? Was it the topic, the hook’s clarity, the timing, the positioning, the story, a contrarian take?
Worst performer of the week. Which post significantly under-performed? Same fields. Hypothesis: Why did this flop?Too abstract? Wrong audience? Buried the lead? Confusing call to action? Wrong platform?
You’re training yourself to stop saying “the algorithm hates me” and start saying: “This specific combination of topic, format, and timing worked. That one didn’t. Here’s my best guess why.”
Log these in the Outlier Log so you can spot patterns across weeks—not just inside one. Over a month or two, these hypotheses start converging into genuine strategic insight.
Pass 4: The Hidden Balance Sheet — Relationships and Conversations
This is the pass almost no creator runs. It’s also where much of the real value lives.
Two questions drive this section:
Which posts started real conversations? Who did I add to my network this week?
The Relationship Log
Inside the same Excel workbook, you’ll maintain a simple Relationship Log tab. Think of it as a primitive CRM—and that’s exactly the point. You’re behaving like a professional relationship business, not a “post and hope” account.
The columns are straightforward: Date, Name, Handle or Email, What they do, Company or Platform, How you connected (post link, DM, intro, podcast), Topic of conversation, Next action (send a resource, schedule a Zoom coffee, follow up by a specific date), and Outcome (friendship, future collab, nothing yet, TBD).
Every time a post leads to a meaningful DM, an email reply, an introduction from someone in your audience, or a call, add one line.
Weekly Relationship Metrics
On your Friday Forensic worksheet, add a small block:
New contacts added this week: _____
Zoom coffees held this week: _____
Zoom coffees scheduled for next week: _____
Posts that triggered the most valuable conversations: _____
Then ask: Did any posts lead directly to an invitation, a collaboration conversation, a new client lead, or a deeper friendship with another creator?
The answer to that question often matters more than which post had the highest impressions. Impressions decay. Relationships compound.
All of the analysis above is useless if you don’t change behavior. The final section of the Weekly Analysis Worksheet forces three concrete decisions:
KILL — What will I stop doing next week?
One clear decision. Examples: “Kill posting Instagram Reels that deliver zero follower growth and no DMs.” Or: “Kill cross-posting threads to LinkedIn without editing—they flatline every time.”
KEEP — What will I maintain as a baseline?
Examples: “Keep one daily LinkedIn text post—consistent 2,000+ impressions and steady growth.” Or: “Keep the weekly long-form Substack—it drives replies and depth.”
DOUBLE — What will I deliberately test more of next week?
Examples: “Double morning posts between 7 and 8 AM about operating strategy—2x conversions and strong DMs.” Or: “Double carousels that break down company case studies.”
Record these in two places: on the Weekly Analysis Worksheet for the current week, and in the Kill / Keep / Double Log tab in the Tracker.
The following Friday, come back and write: “Result after one week: Did this change help? Keep this change? Yes or no.”
That’s the difference between reacting to data and operating a feedback loop. Reaction is emotional. A feedback loop is a system. Systems compound.
Here’s a simple constraint that compounds dramatically over time:
Every week, schedule one to three Zoom coffees with new creators or operators who showed up in your DMs, comments, or intros.
Use the Friday Forensic to decide: Which one to three people from this week’s Relationship Log do I want to talk to next week? Then immediately send the invites and put them on the calendar.
Over twelve months, that’s somewhere between 50 and 150 new professional relationships. You’ll build a growing network of people who know your work firsthand, encounter unexpected collaboration and referral opportunities you never could have predicted, and develop a deeper understanding of your niche from the inside—not just from analytics dashboards.
You’re not just building an audience. You’re building a networked company of one.
Here’s how the tools and the habit fit together in practice.
Step 1 — Set Up (One Time, 20–30 Minutes)
Download and open the Content Performance Tracker v2.0. Add or confirm all tabs: Daily Log (from Week 1), Weekly Summary, Format Analysis, Platform Comparison, Outlier Log, Kill / Keep / Double Log, and Relationship Log.
Download the Weekly Analysis Worksheet. Save it as “Weekly Analysis Worksheet – TEMPLATE.” Each Friday, make a copy, rename it (e.g., “Week 2 – Friday Forensic”), and fill it in.
Step 2 — Keep the Daily Habit (5–10 Minutes Per Morning)
Continue the Week 1 routine. Log each post from the previous day into the Daily Log tab: date, post name, post type, platform, impressions, reactions, comments, shares, follower/subscriber growth.
Step 3 — Run the Friday Forensic (15 Minutes)
On Friday morning, open the Tracker and a fresh Worksheet. Run all five passes. Make your Kill, Keep, and Double decisions. Update the Outlier Log, Kill / Keep / Double Log, and Relationship Log.
That’s it. Fifteen minutes. One habit. A system that gets smarter every week.
By Friday, your job is to:
Set up the Content Performance Tracker v2.0 with all tabs
Download and save your Weekly Analysis Worksheet template
Run one full Friday Forensic using both tools
Fill in your best and worst post of the week with hypotheses
Record at least one Kill, one Keep, and one Double
Update your relationship metrics—new contacts, coffees scheduled
Then, if you want to commit publicly, reply or comment:
“I’ve run my first Friday Forensic. I’m killing ____, keeping ____, and doubling down on ____.”
That’s the moment you shift from creating content to operating a creator business.
Week 1 put your hands on the numbers.
Week 2 taught your brain to interpret them and act.
Next week, we zoom out one more level: platform efficiency, which platforms truly deserve your time, given your data. Not your feelings and biases.
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If you found this useful, share it with a creator friend who’s still guessing. And if you’re a paid subscriber, your Week 2 templates are waiting in the archive.
In 2026, I’m working directly with 100 creators building real businesses.
I want to bring operating strategy, competitive positioning, and financial planning to a community that’s fundamentally different from my typical industrial and technology clients.
For the first 100 creator founders: Four 60-minute 1:1 advisory sessions for $95.
Context: My standard engagement starts at $10K/month. This isn’t that. This is me learning from you while helping you build something sustainable.
Limited to 100 spots. 75 of 100 have filled. Offer expires this Friday, February 6th at midnight. And once it’s gone, it will not be returning.
John Brewton documents the history and future of operating companies at Operating by John Brewton. He is a graduate of Harvard University and began his career as a Phd. student in economics at the University of Chicago. After selling his family’s B2B industrial distribution company in 2021, he has been helping business owners, founders and investors optimize their operations ever since. He is the founder of 6A East Partners, a research and advisory firm, asking the question: What is the future of companies? He still cringes at his early LinkedIn posts and loves making content each and everyday, despite the protestations of his beloved wife, Fabiola, at times.