A cartoon avatar of a delighted grey-haired white business woman surrounded by confetti. Career

#WIMDIwins – A VP Title and 20% Raise

There's nothing I love more than sharing #WIMDIwins with you, so here's the epic story of Laura, one of my coaching clients and a longtime WIMDI member.

Like Drake, Laura started from the bottom and got promoted TWO LEVELS UP and a 20% raise.

I mean, I assume that's what Drake's song's about, right -- women's career successes? Seems on-brand.

Anywho, let's see how she did it so that you too can become a successful rapper and/or VP who's building a 50k sq ft home with your own private basketball court.

Started From The Bottom

When I met Laura, she was stuck. She'd been a manager for years and was pressed up against her own personal glass ceiling.

You see, she had spent the last 18 months trying to convince her boss to promote her to the next level, but every conversation felt like a battle -- one she was losing. No matter what she said or did, she couldn't get through to him.

He just kept saying she wasn't ready.

"You're Just Not Ready"

Laura couldn't figure out why she "wasn't ready" but she had a hunch.

Laura was killing herself doing amazing work, but it was going unnoticed and unappreciated. And worse, she felt like everything she did was under heavy scrutiny.

She knew she didn't have the trust she needed from her boss to make big decisions and move the business forward. Every idea she brought forward got turned down. Her boss loved the word No more than 40 toddlers combined.

Of course, after losing 1000 fights with this man, her confidence took a huge nose dive, and she barely recognized herself.

She was sure that if she could solve her confidence problem, she'd be able to convince her boss to take her seriously.

The Confidence Myth We All Believe

Laura, like most of us, thought that if she could get more confidence, she'd be able to show up powerfully and convince her boss. First the confidence, then the successful conversation.

Seems pretty intuitive. But it's exactly backwards.

Confidence isn't something you just conjure out of thin air.

You build it out of evidence.

So, for Laura to sound confident, she had to pitch her boss ideas that were worth being confident about.

Ideas Worth Being Confident About

To get the confidence, trust, and buy-in she needed, Laura needed to show her boss ideas that caught his attention.

And honestly? She wasn't doing that!

She was struggling in two key ways:

Problem #1 - Bad Ideas

Some of Laura's ideas lacked strategic direction.

They weren't targeted at things that moved the core business forward in a strategic way. So they were interesting, but ultimately not anything the CEO cared about.

Problem #2 - Great Ideas Hidden in Garbage

Laura had lots of great ideas that addressed areas the CEO was obsessed with.

But.....they were buried by an avalanche of reasons nobody cared about so her boss couldn't find the gold nugget hiding inside the mess.

So Ultimately, Laura didn't feel confident because she (correctly) figured out that what she was saying to her boss sounded like time-wasting and attention-sucking distractions from the core business.

The Big Lesson

WIMDIs, Laura didn't have a confidence problem. She had a content problem.

Laura didn't need to act like a serious player in the business.
She needed to level-up her strategic thinking and messaging so that she could become a serious player in the business.

She had to learn how to come up with ideas that solved the big, strategic problems in the business.

So that's exactly what we worked on in our coaching:

Laura's Get Promoted Blueprint

  1. We developed her ability to truly understand the needs of her boss and the business so she knew what problems to solve.
  2. We looked at the value she brought to the table -- and how to position it more strategically to raise the CEO's eyebrows.
  3. We worked on making airtight business cases for her ideas so she could clearly demonstrate exactly why her projects were essential moneymakers.
  4. We cleaned up her communication so she was laser focused on delivering the gold nugget ideas (complete with business cases!), not burying her boss in a avalanche of worthless garbage.
  5. We built up her negotiation skills so she could turn her boss' favourite word from No to Yes.

And you know what? Once she got good at those five things, everything got easier.

Her boss started listening to her.

He started to trust that she'd make the right calls.

She built the evidence she needed to show up with confidence.

Boom.

The Big Wins

WIMDIs, I know I spoiled this story at the beginning, but let's do it one more time for good measure:

Laura finally got promoted two levels up to VP

She got a 20% raise.

AND she got the trust of her boss and the confidence she was looking for.

After she learned the right strategic business skills and tools, Laura made all that happen in less than six months.

She had been banging her head against the wall for 3x that long with no success, and then, just like that, she had a new title.

I love this story so much I could cry.

Win Like Laura

WIMDIs, I love Laura's story. But making it happen one Laura at a time is too damn slow for my little ambitious heart.

So I built a program -- The Game Changing Year -- to help a whole bunch of you move up the ladder, increase your influence, and make just ridiculous sums of money in the process. Check it out:

Laura smiling

The Game Changing Year

Join me and a whole bunch of Lauras-in-Training for 9 months of confidence-building, ass-kicking, wallet-enhancing strategic business education.

(and I promise it'll be way more fun than strategic business education sounds on paper)

Holly Burton
Holly is an executive coach for women in male-dominated industries. She works one-on-one with ambitious women to help them lead, get promoted, and create the careers they actually want in industries they love.

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