Summary
Success is about hitting goals. Significance is about changing lives. The best leaders realize that what sustains performance isn’t what they get—it’s what they give.
I’ve spent 25 years doing both. And I can tell you: they cost different things.
What Success Actually Costs
Let me be specific about what optimizing for success looks like:
60-80 hour weeks that become normal. Constant expectations of sacrifice that you stop questioning. Vacations that get cancelled because “this deal can’t wait.” Family moments you miss because the client needs you. Holidays spent on your laptop because the project timeline doesn’t care about Christmas.
Taking on bad projects with crappy people because the money is too good to turn down—even though you know, deep down, they’re going to cost you more than the dollars they pay.
That’s not a cautionary tale. That’s just what success optimization looks like in practice.
And here’s what nobody tells you: you can win at that game. You can hit every metric. You can get the titles, the compensation, the recognition and still realize you’re building a life you don’t actually want to live.
I’ve done the math. I’ve traded the hours. I’ve taken the projects that looked great on paper and felt hollow in practice. I’ve optimized for revenue and watched relationships deteriorate. I’ve chased success hard enough to catch it—and then wondered why it didn’t feel like winning.
It’s because success measures what you achieve. But it doesn’t measure what you sacrifice to achieve it and it definitely doesn’t measure whether any of it mattered.
What Significance Actually Looks Like
Significance looks different. It’s less glamorous. The ROI is harder to quantify. The external validation is quieter. But the internal alignment? That’s where everything changes.
Significance is doing something that makes other people’s lives better—even when it’s not the highest-paying option. It’s helping others achieve their dreams instead of just chasing your own. It’s building tools that really matter and change lives, not just the ones with the best business case.
For me, that’s looked like working in substance abuse prevention. Helping parents figure out how to have “the talk” with their kids about drugs and alcohol—conversations that matter more than you could ever quantify in a quarterly report. Helping other parents find a path forward when things went completely off the rails. Giving schools the resources they actually needed to make a difference, not just meet compliance requirements.
That work didn’t make me wealthy. It didn’t build my personal brand. It didn’t accelerate my career trajectory. But it was significant. It changed lives. And I could feel the difference between that and the high-revenue projects I was running in parallel.
Or take Idostill.com—my significance lighthouse when everything else gets crazy. Helping people find the words to celebrate their love. Helping them articulate what matters when they’re renewing vows or rewriting their commitment to each other after years together. It’s not a massive business. It’s not what most people know me for. But it feels significant every single time someone tells me we helped them say what they couldn’t find words for on their own.
Or what I’m doing now at Fueled by Success—sharing the lessons I’ve learned about building momentum without burnout, creating systems that actually work, giving teams real no-BS answers instead of consultant platitudes. Helping people connect with the why that goes beyond the money. The thing that makes the work matter even when the metrics aren’t impressive yet.
That’s significance. And you can feel it in your body differently than success.
The Difference Nobody Talks About
Success and significance aren’t opposites. They’re different optimization functions.
Success asks: What can I achieve?
Significance asks: What difference does my achieving it make?
You can pursue both. I have. I still do. But when you’re forced to choose—and you will be forced to choose, repeatedly—the choice reveals what you’re actually optimizing for.
- Do you take the high-paying project with people you don’t respect, or the meaningful work that pays less but actually matters?
- Do you work through another holiday to hit the target, or do you protect the time with people who’ll remember whether you were there?
- Do you optimize your career for external metrics, or for internal alignment with what you actually value?
Those aren’t theoretical questions. They’re Tuesday afternoon decisions that compound into the shape of your life.
And here’s what I’ve learned watching leaders over 25 years: the ones who optimize purely for success often achieve it—and then spend the next decade trying to retrofit meaning into what they built.
The ones who optimize for significance might not move as fast. But they’re building something that doesn’t need retrofitting. Because the meaning is in the foundation, not added as decoration later.
Why the Best Leaders Choose Significance
Not because they’re noble. Not because they’re sacrificing success. But because they’ve learned something that took me too long to figure out: significance is what sustains you when success stops being motivating.
You can only get promoted so many times before titles don’t matter. You can only earn so much before money stops driving you. You can only win so many quarters before the dopamine hit wears off.
But helping someone find their path forward? Building something that changes how people work or love or grow? Creating tools that make other people’s lives genuinely better? That doesn’t wear off. That compounds.
The best leaders I know—the ones who sustain high performance for decades without burning out—all made this shift at some point. They stopped measuring success purely by what they achieved and started measuring it by what their achieving enabled for others.
Not in a martyr way. Not in a “I’m sacrificing for the greater good” way. But in a “this is what actually makes the work meaningful” way.
The Shift in Practice
Here’s what this looks like when you make it real:
You start asking different questions in meetings: Not just “Will this hit our targets?” but “Will this actually help the people we’re trying to serve?”
You evaluate opportunities differently: Not just “What’s the ROI?” but “Will I be proud of this work five years from now?”
You build teams differently: Not just “Who can execute?” but “Who am I helping develop into leaders?”
You measure impact differently: Not just “What did we ship?” but “What changed for people because we shipped it?”
This isn’t soft. It’s not about abandoning metrics or pretending revenue doesn’t matter. It’s about having a more sophisticated understanding of what actually creates sustainable value—both for your business and for your life.
What This Means for How You Lead
When you optimize for significance over pure success:
You build systems, not dependencies. Because significance is about what lasts after you leave, not just what you can achieve while you’re there.
You develop people, not just extract performance. Because significance multiplies through others, not just through your own output.
You protect time for what matters, not just what’s urgent. Because significance requires space that success-chasing crowds out.
You take on work that aligns with your values, even when it pays less. Because significance is measured in meaning, not just money.
You help others find their path, even when it doesn’t benefit you directly. Because significance is about contribution, not accumulation.
This isn’t idealistic. It’s practical. It’s the only way I’ve found to sustain high performance without burning out. The only way to build a career that still feels meaningful when you’re not chasing the next promotion.
The Compound Effect
Here’s what I’ve observed over 25 years: Leaders who optimize purely for success often peak early and plateau hard. They achieve impressive things in their 30s and 40s, then spend their 50s and 60s trying to figure out what it was all for.
Leaders who optimize for significance build slower but compound longer. They might not have the flashiest early career trajectory. But they’re still creating impact in their 60s and 70s because they built work that scales beyond their personal effort.
Success is additive. Significance is multiplicative.
Success says: What can I accomplish?
Significance says: What can I make possible for others?
One measures your achievements. The other measures your contribution to others’ achievements and contribution compounds in ways achievement never does.
The Choice You’re Already Making
Every project you take. Every client you accept. Every hour you allocate. Every priority you set. You’re already choosing between success and significance. You’re already optimizing for one or the other, whether you realize it or not.
The question is: are you making that choice consciously? Are you aware of what you’re trading? What you’re building toward? What you’re sacrificing and what you’re protecting?
Because here’s what I wish someone had told me 25 years ago: you can always make more money. You can always get another title. You can always hit another target. But you can’t get back the relationships you neglected. The moments you missed. The meaningful work you passed on because the pay wasn’t right. The people you could have helped but didn’t because you were too busy chasing metrics.
Time moves in one direction. And how you spend it compounds into the shape of your life. So the question isn’t whether you should pursue success or significance. The question is: what ratio are you optimizing for? And is that ratio creating the life you actually want to be living?
The Bottom Line
I’m not telling you to quit your job and go work for a nonprofit. I’m not saying money doesn’t matter or that hitting targets is meaningless. I’m saying: be intentional about what you’re optimizing for because you can build a wildly successful career that feels hollow. And you can build a significant body of work that also happens to be successful.
The difference isn’t in what you achieve. It’s in why you’re achieving it and who benefits from your achieving it.
Success is what you get. Significance is what you give.
One impresses people. The other changes them.
One fills your resume. The other defines your legacy.
The world has enough successful people. It needs more significant ones.
And if you’re reading this feeling that familiar tension—the sense that you’re winning at a game you’re not sure you want to play anymore—then you already know which direction you need to shift. Toward the work that helps people find their path. Toward the tools that actually change lives. Toward the systems that make other people better without burning you out. Toward significance.
Not because it’s noble. But because it’s what makes the work sustainable. What makes the wins meaningful. What makes the whole thing worth the hours you’re investing.
Success is a chapter. Significance is the story.
And you get to choose which one you’re writing.
