🗣️ You're Not Getting Promoted Because You Sound Like a Designer

Quick question:

When you talk about your work in performance reviews, do you sound like a designer or a business partner?

Because there’s a difference.

A designer says: “I made the checkout flow more user-friendly”

A business partner says: “I reduced cart abandonment from 38% to 19%, protecting an estimated $480K in annual revenue”

Same work.

Completely different impact on the person deciding your promotion.

Here’s what most UX people don’t realize:

Your manager isn’t evaluating you on design quality.

They’re asking:

• Can this person operate at the next level?

• Can I put them in front of a VP and trust what comes out of their mouth?

• Do they think in impact or outputs?

If your language is stuck in “user-friendly” and “better experience,” you’re signaling IC thinking.

Even if your work is genuinely strategic.

This is the gap that keeps talented designers stuck at the same level for years.

They know they’re doing senior/staff/director-level work. But they can’t articulate it in a way that makes their manager think, “This person is already operating above their title.”

The Brag Sheet system fixes this specific problem.

It includes an Impact Quantification Framework that walks you through translating your work into the language that promotions are decided in:

• Revenue protected or generated

• Risk reduced

• Efficiency gained

• Time saved (for users or internal teams)

• Trust built (customer or stakeholder)

You don’t need perfect analytics.

The framework shows you how to use reasonable estimates and proxies that leaders actually accept.

Because here’s the truth:

Executives don’t need six-sigma precision.

They need a believable story with enough substance to justify the comp increase.

“Reduced step 3 drop-off by roughly 50%, which based on our weekly traffic likely prevented $400-500K in lost revenue annually”

That sentence gets you in the promotion conversation.

“I made the flow more intuitive” keeps you exactly where you are.

The $27 early bird price won’t last.

I’m raising it after the holidays once I see how the first group uses it, and I add more content based on their questions.

But right now, while everyone else is mentally checking out for turkey week, you can lock in the system at the intro price.

Or become a paid subscriber and get it free, plus everything I write about positioning yourself as a strategic partner, not just a designer:

Become a paid subscriber for $20/month or $180/year→

(Paid subscribers get the Brag Sheet free, 100% discount code is in Substack Chat)

Think about it: $20/month or $180/year for unlimited access to every framework, every teardown, every political playbook I create.

The Brag Sheet alone is $27 - you’re basically getting the subscription at a discount AND getting everything else I write.

Marina

P.S. The case studies inside show exactly how four designers reframed their work using this framework and got promoted within 6-12 months. You’re not reinventing the wheel, you’re following a pattern that’s already working.