Amanda NorthcuttFounder & CEO | Keynote Speaker, LevelUp · B2B sales as a solo is HARD. I’ve got you. I help consultants & coaches sell high-ticket services comfortably & confidently, while enjoying consistent, predictable revenue | Founder & CEO | Speaker |

Rethinking Conventional Success | Metrics That Don’t Tell the Whole Story

30 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief interview excerpt, Speaker A asks about how founders and leaders define conventional success. Speaker B reflects on their early academic environment, describing success as the accumulation of CV items—every minor achievement needed to be listed—highlighting a culture that values exhaustive documentation of accomplishments. They note that many founders they work with equate success with external, quantifiable metrics such as financial targets, team size, revenue growth, and personal stability (family, housing, etc.). The conversation then pivots to the concept of legacy, prompting a discussion about lasting impact beyond these conventional measures.

How do the founders that you work with typically define conventional success, or even what is your definition of conventional success? Like, I think of the American dream, for instance, but what comes to mind for you?
For me, in the environments that I was in early on in my career, as someone with a doctorate and in academia, it was all about what's on your CV. Like, how long is your CV? One of my early bosses gave me the advice that if you so much as sneeze, it needs to be on your CV. And so, that was the definition of success for the environments I was in. And with a lot of the leaders, founders I work with, yeah, it's either a financial goal, it's how big their team is, revenue, stability in their life, be it family, housing, whatever that looks like for them. And so, a lot of these very clear-cut, like, external metrics.
Nice. Okay. And then, how do you define legacy?
Lasting impact.