Success at forty and success today are not the same word. Early in CI Web Group — founded 2006, hungry, proving — success looked like growth, headcount, industry visibility. The Daikin bet in 2008 felt like success when the room finally agreed I had been right. The restructure — 320 to 38, revenue north of ten million — felt like success when the company stopped lying to itself.
Today success means something quieter and harder: legacy, truth, and work that still matters when the applause stops.
From scale to stewardship
I do not miss 320 for its own sake. I miss people — some of them — not the overhead theater. Success today is a company that can serve clients with revenue engines and client-first integrity without me in every room. That is systems and soul operationalized — not a poster.
Becoming a grandmother to Dallas reframed the clock — read what changed about leadership. Success is measured in decades now, not quarters.
From winning arguments to winning Tuesdays
Success used to include being the smartest voice in the conference. Today it is whether a homeowner gets help at 9 p.m. because an entity file was true, a site was fast, a team answered. Customer experience over clever marketing — always. The operator scoreboard, not the agency portfolio.
That is why I say the agency model is broken without gloating: success today requires telling the truth about models that still invoice while failing clients.
Success today is not "did we grow?" It is "did we build something that helps people when we are not watching — and that our grandchildren will not be ashamed we optimized against?"
Personal success counts too
Losing over 100 pounds was success — not a number on a scale alone, but identity: someone who keeps promises to herself. That essay is about leadership transfer, not diet tips. Confidence built evidence by evidence — as a female CEO, not as performance. Learning never stopping — because stopping is how success turns into nostalgia.
What I still want
To solve hard problems with people I respect — why I still love it. To leave legacy over ego — encoded in Hands Up, in entity thinking (brand as file), in a company clients choose freely. To teach on stage without selling fear.
Success means today what it should have meant earlier: outcomes that compound, people treated honestly, and a future my grandson can use — not one I decorated for slides. That is enough. That is everything.