THE METRICS WERE STRONG. SOMETHING STILL FELT OFF.
There was a season in my career when, by every external measure, things were working. Revenue was up. The team was growing. We were earning recognition and landing in rooms we had worked hard to get into. Looking at the scoreboard, you would have said we were winning.
I remember sitting with a quiet unease I could not quite name. It was not burnout and it was not doubt. It was more like a question that kept surfacing when things got still: Is this it?
That question does not come from ingratitude. It comes from something deeper. It is the part of you that knows the difference between building something impressive and building something that actually matters. That difference has nothing to do with what you have built at work. It has everything to do with how you show up everywhere.
Success is measurable. Significance is felt. It lives in far more places than any office.
What a Dirt Runway in South Africa Taught Me
A few years ago, I took a trip to South Africa by myself. I was a single mom at the time. I landed on a little dirt runway at the Sabi Sabi Reserve in pitch black, pouring rain. I got into a Range Rover with someone who barely spoke English and drove two and a half hours down dirt roads to a place I had never been, with people I did not know.
When we arrived, they asked if I wanted to get settled or go out on a night safari. My thought was simple: I can stay in a dry room the rest of my life. Let me grab my coat.
Over the course of that week, I visited a small school, spent time around local families, and watched a version of daily life that looked nothing like mine on the surface. What stayed with me was not the difference. It was the sameness. The way people loved their kids, protected their people, and found joy in the ordinary was a mirror I was not expecting to look into.
That trip cracked something open in me. I came home smaller in the best possible way. Less certain that my version of a full life was the only version. More curious, more grateful, and more awake to what had been right in front of me all along. Significance has a way of finding you when you are willing to be uncomfortable, to go somewhere unfamiliar, and to let an experience actually change you rather than just add to your collection of stories.
The Irreplaceable Currency
I come back to one truth often: time is our most irreplaceable currency.
I learned this the hard way. Early in building the business, I gave too much to work. I was the person who would answer emails at 3am, the one who convinced herself she could carry it all. One day I looked up and realized how fast my children were growing. Something shifted permanently in me at that moment. I decided I would stop trading the irreplaceable for the urgent.
That meant leaving a meeting to make a game. It meant driving across town after back-to-back meetings to be in the stands when it counted. It meant putting the phone down when it would have been easier to keep going. My kids knew I was there. Not almost there. There.
Those are not the moments that show up in any award application. They are the moments my children will carry with them. They are the ones I will carry too. No version of success is worth missing them.
Significance Lives in Community
Some of the most meaningful work I do happens nowhere near a business deal.
I have been involved with the Austin Women’s Fund for nearly a decade. I served as co-chair for the inaugural Austin in Common, an event that has helped grant over three million dollars to more than a hundred nonprofits working to close the opportunity gap for women and children in Central Texas. I mentor young founders through Ceresa, WELI, pitch competitions, Mentoring Mondays, and Femme Founder Bootcamps. I have judged, coached, connected, and showed up over and over, not to benefit the business, but because somebody once showed up for me.
I carry this belief everywhere I go: we all had someone who gave us a shot. Someone who saw something in us before we fully saw it in ourselves. That is personal. It is rooted in how I was raised. It is what drives me to lend time even when I am exhausted, to champion a woman who is 17 or 75, to stay in a conversation longer than is convenient because the person across from me deserves to feel heard.
That is significance. The recognition that sometimes follows it is a byproduct. The act of showing up is the thing itself.
Wandering as a Way of Life
People who know me well know that I am, at my core, a wanderer. I grew up crossing the country in a station wagon, stopping in small towns and roadside diners. I am the person who watches everyone in a room and quietly writes a story in my head. Is he about to propose? Are they celebrating something? What brought them to this table tonight?
That curiosity has taken me to some of the most defining moments of my life. It has also reminded me, over and over, that the people who have the most to teach you are rarely the ones in your own zip code or your own industry.
The more you expose yourself to other lives, other cultures, other ways of building a family, other definitions of a good day, the harder it becomes to think that achievement alone is the point. You start to see that a life well-lived is textured. It is full of people and places and moments that did not make you more successful. They made you more human.
That is what I want my life to be. Not a highlight reel. A full life.
The Scoreboard That Actually Matters
When you chase significance in the full texture of your life, in your family, in your community, in the adventures you are brave enough to take, in the people you invest in simply because you believe in them, it changes how you measure everything else.
You stop asking only what you built and start asking who you built it with and what it meant for them. You stop measuring a great year in revenue alone and start asking whether you showed up. Whether you were present, not just nearby. Whether the people you love felt like they mattered more than your to-do list. Whether you poured into the community that has poured into you.
Those answers tell you more about the shape of your life than almost any other measure.
As Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. That applies in every room you walk into, not just the ones with a conference table.
A Final Thought
If you are in a season of real momentum right now, take a moment to ask what else you are building alongside it.
Look inside your organization, your home, your community, and your own life. Consider how you show up for the people who depend on you, and also for the ones who have no particular reason to expect anything from you at all. Pay attention to the adventures you are brave enough to say yes to. Seek out the conversations where you ask a real question and then go quiet long enough to actually hear the answer.
Success without significance is still empty. Achievement is worth pursuing, and a life that means something is worth building right alongside it.
Build the impressive thing. Make sure you are also building a life you are proud of when the noise dies down.
Only one of those will matter when it is quiet.
– Beth
