Success Without Margin
What they don't tell you about making Partner
Every Sunday in May, I’m sharing an excerpt from my memoir, Built for More. This is week four. I was thirty-five on the cusp of a Partner promotion with a two-year-old and two six-month-olds at home.
Success Without Margin
It was 4:30 am. Our two-year-old and six-month-old twins were momentarily all asleep as I turned on the music in the cold garage and warmed up for my workout.
Forty-five minutes later, the house was alive with the rhythm of the morning routine. Bottles, pumping, pancakes, and diapers. So many diapers.
My partner, Marc, and I did our best to operate as an extension of each other —tagging in and out so that we could both get ready for our day—but it was still a loud, messy, chaotic scramble to get everyone out the door in the morning.
With all three kids finally loaded into their car seats along with the overload of daily luggage, I waved from the garage as Marc backed the minivan we swore we’d never own out of the driveway.
Then I grabbed my work bag, slipped on my black heels, and started the familiar drive to my company’s downtown office.
I loved this job, but the demands were intense. Our company was acquired by a global holding company a few years earlier, which opened doors to clients and scale exponentially larger than the mid-size clients I’d grown up in.
The stakes were higher. The pace faster. The industry was different in culture and methodology than what my team of consultants was used to. The whole game was different. It was complex and laced with decades of politics and networks that I didn’t know or understand.
I was in the deep end—learning to swim as fast as I could in the new current— while also trying to protect and guide the hundreds of people under my care through the storm.
On the highway, I opted to keep the radio off and tried to fall into a state of focus for the day ahead. I took deep breaths in an attempt to settle the noise in my head, but my mind raced in a million uncontrollable directions.
I need to order the groceries.
I owe estimates on the project extension.
What are we going to have for dinner?
Did I block my calendar to pump today?
Is everything in place for the office celebration this afternoon?
Shit, did I turn off the curling iron?
I pulled my car into the garage just before 8 AM. My heart was racing, my jaw ached from clenching, and a rising tension spread across my chest.
I put the car in park and lay my head back against the seat.
“When you step out of this car, you are their leader. Your energy will become their energy. One thing at a time. Focus on one thing at a time.” I said to myself, feeling the weight of my forefinger press solidly against my thumb.
“You are honest. You are humble. You are kind. You are strong. You can do this. Let’s go.”
The days, weeks, and months blurred by in that same familiar pattern.
There was so little space between my role at home and my roles at work. I was holding sick babies, changing diapers, and making dinner one minute. Only to check my shirt for baby spit up and log on to lead hundreds of people the next.
I stayed ahead. I did my best to be present in each specific moment and to use the performance tools I had to move in and out of my different responsibilities.
But the margins of my capacity were diminishing at an increasing rate.
Every minute was accounted for from the time I woke up at 4:07 AM to the time I finally closed my laptop long after the rest of my family had gone to bed.
I had no time to pause. To reflect. To find my confidence before stepping back out on the field.
Until finally, on October 11, 2022, I opened a blank journal page and told the truth.
October 11, 2022
It’s crazy how time can pass so quickly. How I was there, and now I’m here. And I’m really not sure how.
I turned 35, and Marc made me feel special with a cake and a few gifts, but my mind was spinning the entire time. Replaying that stupid meeting over and over in my head. Why does my brain do that when I know deep down it doesn’t matter in the long run?
Why can’t I be present, even when I want so badly to be?
I feel insecure at work. I feel like I’m barely keeping up, but everyone around me tells me I’m doing awesome. And that dissonance is heavy. Like it’s only a matter of time before they find out I’m in over my head.
Right now, I wish I weren’t a high performer. I just want to do my job with my head down— without a reputation to uphold.
The boys were sick this week. They’ve actually been sick all month. 3 cases of RSV. 3 double ear infections. Hand foot mouth, and the stomach bug. I’m trying not to be overwhelmed. I’m trying to make the right decisions between work and home. It’s my job to care for them. To be there when they don’t feel good.
I want to be there when they don’t feel good?
Maybe. I don’t know.
I have enjoyed the extra snuggles and the two-year-old reflections when we’re lying in his bed, but this is a lot to juggle. It’s all just a lot to juggle.
And sometimes, I can’t even remember what I’m doing it all for.
When the Ladder Isn’t the Answer
October quickly bled into the end-of-year flurry. I knew the pace was unsustainable.
“You know what’s important to you,” became the lie I told myself when that hard truth crept to the surface.
And deep down I did. I knew what success in life really meant for me, and it wasn’t about the next promotion or the next raise.
But I still felt stuck in the race, running in a direction I wasn’t sure I really wanted, and at a speed I couldn’t control.
I was paralyzed by the tradeoffs.
I didn’t have the capacity to weigh the costs of giving up opportunity at work versus missing out on the life I had at home.
So I kept going. Kept juggling. Kept letting life put more and more on my plate while I survived on the one hour a day that I had to myself before the sun came up in our garage.
As the end of the year drew closer, the buzz of the promotion cycle increased.
I knew I’d been put up for Partner promotion, so when our Chief People Officer’s name flashed on my screen, I had a gut feeling as to why he was calling.
After the usual back-and-forth of virtual-call pleasantries, his demeanor straightened.
I held my breath while keeping my posture performantly open.
“I’m so excited I get to be the one to make this finally official,” he said. “Welcome to the Partner team, Amanda,”
I reacted in the way you’re supposed to react to news like that, but deep down, I couldn’t tell if what I was saying was the truth or the performance.
I was genuinely grateful and proud. This was more than a job to me. I’d poured more than just my time into this company, and this was a meaningful milestone.
But my heart rate kept rising as tension spread across my chest.
It was getting hard to breathe.
I tried to stay focused on what he was saying, but was distracted by the pulsing in my ears and the heat surrounding my face.
“Congratulations, again. I hope you find some time to celebrate with Marc this weekend,” he said as we hung up the call.
I lay my head on my desk in the sanctuary of the room we’d converted to my office, and the adrenaline plummeted from my body.
“I can’t do this,” I said out loud for the first time. “This is too much.”
No sooner than I finished the thought, I heard the door from the garage swing open and our two-year-old’s voice calling for me from the bottom of the stairs.
“Mommy! Mommy!” he yelled.
I walked down to pick him up, and his laughter felt light against the weight of the last ten minutes.
Marc walked into the house with a car seat on each arm and all of the baby gear from the day in a pile at his feet.
“I got promoted to Partner,” I said, holding back the emotional crack in my voice.
He looked up at me as he knelt to unstrap the twins and set them up to play on the living room floor. “Congratulations. That’s great. You’ve earned that.”
“Yeah,” I replied as I set our toddler down and started making plates for dinner.
This was it. I had it all— I was healthy. I had a family. I was now a Partner in the firm I’d poured the last seven years of my career into.
But I was too busy to enjoy any of it. Too overwhelmed to let any single moment of success sink in. Too aware that success in one direction felt like sacrifice in the other.
Later that night, after all the babies were asleep, Marc and I picked up the leftover pieces of dinner from the floor and got everything ready for the night ahead.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I said to him. “Or if I’m going to do — if I’m going to fully step into the role of Partner in the next year— I need help.”
“Alright, just tell me what I need to take,” he said back as if he’d been waiting on me to ask that question for months.
And the truth is, he had been. But I’d held on to ideals that I felt obligated to uphold. To the expectations that I be involved in my kids’ lives, like I was a stay-at-home mom, but also be on a fast track as a leader in a now-global consulting firm.
Even with all of the tools I now had, I still held on until I almost broke.
Was I a breadwinner? Or a housewife?
The truth was that I could be both. That I was both. Or maybe I was something entirely different. Something not defined by the typical stereotypes.
But, either way, I couldn’t keep going about it in the same way I had been.
I lay in bed that night, listening to the white noise from the monitors on my nightstand, and I felt a wave of relief wash over my tired spirit.
Maybe I was actually in control.
Maybe there could be a version of life that didn’t feel like a dangerous treadmill.
Maybe I did have the power to change my current situation.
And maybe, I’d just found it.
P.S. Thank you to those who have reached out with questions or areas you’d like me to explore further. I’ll answer everything in Substack Live on Friday, May 29, at 12 PM MST. Please continue to hit reply or comment with your questions. Nothing is off limits.
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Amanda, I loveeeed reading your story about taking some breaths in the car, telling yourself how you positively impact people, speaking kindly to yourself, and then chugging along. Again, like I do with so much of your content, I relate so deeply. When I was in the mental health world, I remember having to take a minute before seeing my next client to gather my own thoughts, take a few breaths and settle before they came in. To set all of the personal things I was going through in life to the side so I could show up fully for the person walking into my room -- sometimes who's child had just passed, who'd just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, who had just had a psychotic break. I had to get really good at taking off the "me" hat and putting on my professional hat. I saw so much of myself in your story. Thank you for sharing.