How does a GDP rise?

Since GDP is the total $ amount of financial transactions (buying and selling)... if you increase the number of transactions and/or the $ amount per transaction, GDP would increase.

if the # of transactions in one year was 1,000,000,000 and the average $ amount per transaction was $1,000, GDP would be $1,000,000,000,000 or $1T.

If the next year the # of transactions was 1,100,000,000 and the average $ amount per transaction was $1,000, GDP would be $1,100,000,000,000 or $1.1T or a 10% increase in GDP.

I don't know how many transactions we had in the past year or how much the average $ amount was per transaction, but since GDP was about $14.5 trillion...it was a lot but not enough to grow GDP per capita to make people (buyers) and businesses confident enough to spend their cash or take on additional debt.