I had an unforgettable lunch some years ago in London. The venue was the popular restaurant called the Hard Rock Café. Since that London excursion, I have had lunch in the Hard Rock Café many times in many cities around the globe, from Sydney to San Diego, from Melbourne to Miami, from Barcelona to Baltimore, from Amsterdam to Atlanta, and many other locations including Dublin, Rome, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, Nashville, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and New Orleans.

Why do I like to dine there? There are many reasons. For one, they make a great hamburger! The food in general, although not luxury cuisine, is quite tasty and the servers bring it to your table hot and fresh. Also, although jazz is my primary choice in music, I’m not limited to jazz. I find rock and roll lore fascinating, and while my love for pop and rock music isn’t what it was during my high school days, I still have a reasonable amount of appreciation for the music of The Who, Steely Dan, Toto, Joni Mitchell, Yes, Cream, Creedence Clearwater, The Beatles, The Hollies, Tommy Roe, Carole King, Aerosmith, or Crosby, Stills, & Nash. And it’s fascinating to hear of their history as well as their music. Hard Rock Cafés are notable for having lots of rock and roll memorabilia, including drum kits, guitars, bass guitars, microphones, keyboards, horns, and even costumes of bands and artists as diverse as Abba, Led Zeppelin, Donna Summer, Three Dog Night, Sly & the Family Stone, Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, The Mamas and the Papas, Lady Gaga, The Moody Blues, and countless other artists and bands. The restaurants are a sort of museum of rock and roll folklore.

But how did it happen?

Here’s the story: two American entrepreneurs, Peter Morton and Isaac Tigrett were in London and decided to launch a little hole in the wall hamburger joint there in 1971. They called it The Hard Rock Café.

This was brilliant; I was living in Europe that year, mostly in Italy, but I had visited numerous countries throughout eastern and western Europe and vividly recall that ordering a hamburger in Europe at that time was a disappointing experience. Most establishments didn’t know what a hamburger was, and the one or two restaurants that made an attempt at grilling a burger proved disappointing. Morton and Tigrett had a promising idea.

Eric Clapton, the legendary guitarist, loved the place and came there often. He had “his booth” he was always assigned to. On one occasion he decided to have the owners reserve that booth just for him. In order to ensure that booth would be his, Eric gave them one of his guitars which they mounted to the wall of that booth.

But that act of affixing Clapton’s guitar to the booth was not really the beginning of a trend to collect and display rock and roll memorabilia. Instead, it was simply a quaint anomaly. The trend to collect and display memorabilia, turning the eatery into a rock and roll museum, came about when Pete Townshend, the guitarist for The Who, came in on one occasion to eat, noticed Clapton’s guitar mounted over Clapton’s booth, and said to the owners Morton and Tigrett, “Mine is as good as his,” and Townshend returned with one of his guitars and got the owners to mount it on another booth that would be Townshend’s claimed booth. And that is when the trend to collect rock memorabilia took hold. That is the precise moment it became a trend. Morton and Tigrett realized their London restaurant could attain a new level of panache by actively pursuing the obtaining of as many rock and roll artifacts as possible. They were so wildly successful in doing such collecting that this helped solidify their brand. People all over the world come to their many restaurants not only for a first-rate burger and fries (or many other delicious options on their expansive menu) but to walk around and view all the magnificent displays they have adorning the walls of their restaurants.

There is a lesson in this story for all of us.

It’s not that Eric Clapton asked to have one of his guitars mounted on the wall to reserve his booth. It was that Pete Townshend, noticing Eric’s maneuver, that followed suit, giving Hard Rock Café their second guitar to be displayed. And it was that moment when the owners, Morton and Tigrett, saw the possibility and the value of repeating that pattern that brought them a sense of identity.

And thus it is with the rest of us.

It isn’t that first oil on canvas painting you finish that matters. That may have been a one-off occurrence. But once you finish your second oil on canvas painting, you’ve struck twice. It’s no longer an anomaly; it’s the beginning of a pattern.

It’s not that first trip to the gym and churning out a commanding workout, or that first half-marathon you complete. It’s the second grueling workout or the second half-marathon that establishes the beginning of a pattern.

It’s not the first sale you close; it’s not the first deal you secure. That might have been an oddity. It’s the second sale you close or the second deal you finalize that points to a pattern.

Keep that in mind when you are attempting to establish consistency. Almost anyone can accomplish something remarkable on a one-time occasion. But repeat that great accomplishment and you are on your way to establishing a pattern of greatness.

Now do it. And then do it a second time.