Introduction

Your Starting Point

Do you believe that you are capable of leading a company—the one you are working for now?

There was a time I didn’t believe I could. I was stuck—until I believed. Before I became an executive, I didn’t realize the importance of believing in myself and my abilities. But even if you know you’re good enough and you believe in yourself, you still have to do it.

The My Promotion Plan process I’m about to teach you is straightforward—and proven to work. But the perfect plan isn’t what’s holding you back from earning the promotion that you want. What’s holding you back is much deeper.

Right now, as you read this book, you might be hoping that it will be the silver bullet that lands you in the career of your dreams. You might be hoping that it takes all of your troubles away. Or maybe you’re hoping for a simple script to get your manager to give you a raise.

To be successful in anything, we need more than the perfect system or script. Before a system can work, we must believe in ourselves. As women of faith, we need an unwavering trust in God, who has given us the capacity and His strength to be more than we can imagine. We need to trust that God has already given us everything through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. We need to surrender our understanding in order to experience being the women God intended for us to be by doing things that are not always logical, comfortable, or in line with what we “feel like” doing.

So how does this impact our careers and our desire to advance?

Sadly, too many women haven’t been supported in their attempt to answer this question. As a result, they live far below their true potential, no matter how hard they work or how long they wait. Their true potential remains hidden inside, and the life of abundance they were created to live in is never realized. Many of us have asked the following questions:

Doesn’t God want me to be grateful for what I already have?

Should I even want to work outside the home while raising kids or supporting a family?

How am I going to keep up with the demands of today’s world?

Does it matter if I make less than men earn for doing the same work?

If my spouse is the breadwinner, does my income matter that much?

Won’t the Lord provide my daily bread?

Is it ok to desire more money?

Isn’t God supposed to give me the promotion?

Do I need to go back to school?

If I’m not valued here, should I get another job?

What if they find out I’m an imposter and I’m not as good as they thought?

Am I enough?

And how many of us have had these thoughts?

My manager hasn’t given me a raise, even though I’ve had great reviews. I must not be ready.

Others around me are advancing, and they don’t do a fraction of what I do.

I can’t ask for a raise. I don’t want to be viewed as one of those entitled millennials.

Since starting to write this book and through my online My Promotion Plan course, I’ve heard so many stories about women haunted by such thoughts and questions but didn’t have the confidence or know-how to go about advancing their careers. I started teaching others the My Promotion Plan system, leading to their own promotions and raises.

Many women know deep down that they are made for more, but their minds are holding them back from having the courage to go out and get what they want. This book will give you practical steps to help you gain the confidence and plan you need to advance your career. You will learn what God says you are capable of and how to use His strength as yours.

My goal is to teach you the best way to set career advancement goals so that your mind can get busy achieving them.

You deserve to live your dream life if you believe it.

Doubt Creeps In

Meet Elizabeth. She is like many of the women that I’ve mentored across the country.

Elizabeth nailed her last project, and her company has been elevated.

Her manager calls her into his office, and she is on cloud nine. Thinking that she has finally tipped the scales after many successful projects, she even lets herself believe she’s going to get the raise and promotion she has worked so hard for. She enters the office with a smile on her face, and her shoulders pulled back. She sits in the black leather chair with her ankles crossed as she smiles at her manager.

“Elizabeth, you did a nice job closing out that project. It is going to make a huge impact. I’d like you to work on something else for me. We are having an issue with a top client’s account, and I think you’re the person for the job. Are you up to it?”

With an already thinly stretched schedule and her home life bursting at the seams, she grins once more and says, “I’d be honored to help with the account.”

Her manager replies with enthusiasm: “Great, I’d like to get an update on your plan by the end of the week.”

Leaving the office, she heads straight for the bathroom. The tears start to form in her eyes. Excitement has transformed into resentment and frustration.

As she sits in the bathroom, she wonders, Where did I go wrong? Why am I never good enough? Why didn’t I ask for more money? Why doesn’t he advance me like others? If I can’t get promoted here, will I have to find another job? Is this really what God wants for my life?

Elizabeth wipes her final tears, takes a deep breath, straightens her outfit, lifts her head, and fakes a smile as she emerges from the bathroom. She has no choice but to complete the project she committed to. She quickly starts to plan accordingly and tells herself, This is the last time. When you nail this project, you are not going to sit around and wait any longer. You’re going in there to ask for what you deserve.

She nails the next project.

But doubt creeps in. She starts to think, Maybe I’m not that good anyway. If my manager doesn’t have enough confidence in me to promote me, maybe I’m just not ready. Reviews will be here in six months. I’ll ask then.

Elizabeth represents the majority of women in the workforce today—hardworking, dedicated, and high-achieving but too often without the compensation and titles to match.

Your Time Is Now

As a manager and executive, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing and hiring many new team members. I’ve hired many talented people, people who couldn’t earn promotions after years of work in their previous roles. I can’t imagine that they had a mystical burst of personal growth overnight. This left me perplexed because I was taught not to hire people who couldn’t get promoted at their previous jobs. So I dug deeper and discovered that there was an epidemic of women that were working hard and waiting to be noticed. But they weren’t putting their hands up because they deeply desired to be noticed, didn’t know their value, or questioned if they were capable.

Shortly after starting my leadership business and realizing that I wasn’t the only one who struggled with the confidence and the know-how to advance, I knew that I wanted to help people advance in their careers. It just so happened that all my clients ended up being Christian women. On our weekly group coaching calls, women would ask if they should try to advance if they want to have a child, or another. They questioned the timing of asking for a promotion after needing to care for their parents’ medical needs and calling off one day. They questioned if their ideas were good enough. If they were enough. They questioned if God wanted them to work.

That’s when I knew that I wanted to work more with women. But after writing the manuscript of this book, God spoke to me, saying, “Mary, I’m supposed to be in this book.” As a recovering perfectionist, I assumed this was a made-up delay tactic to postpone the editing portion, which I felt ill-equipped to tackle. So I decided to ask Emily, my editor. Surely, she would tell me that this was a bad idea and to just get on with the editing. But she didn’t. She told me that I should, in fact, put God in my book because she could tell that my faith has been a vital part of who I am.

She was right. I found it difficult not to bring my faith in because my relationship with the Lord is the very reason that I have the ability to have written this book. The Lord is the ultimate CEO and the one that provides all my needs. All of our work in and outside the home is to be done for the glory of God.

Work is worship.

I wasn’t perfect at this part every step of the way, and there were many times when I tried to manipulate and take the reins. Each time this would happen, I...