“How I Tripled My Salary in Six Years”

Preamble to Promotion
Let’s start with the current rather than the past; your eye, like mine, is on the next rung, and it’s not moving fast enough. It almost never does. In the interest of transparency I admit right now that I am not a confident person; I’ve read all the books about how challenging it is for women to break the glass ceiling; I’ve practiced the “power stance”, the unfailingly firm eye contact, the inflection in my voice that says “I’m talking and don’t you dare interrupt.” With patience, you can chip away at your success understanding these recommendations, it may help. But if you hear nothing else, hear this: the answer isn’t “acting more like a man” or “trying to be softer like a woman”; it’s both. So to my story-- it’s true, and it’s simple beyond reality; every word and anecdote in these stories is fact; it’s no lie that fiction would be more believable- but fiction this is not. I’ve been dramatically successful; and it’s safe to say very little of it was intentional. You may not believe it but my rapid escalation up the stairs to senior leadership seem to “just happen.” Now I’m not saying I was averse to getting promoted; it just never came across my radar as a possibility for someone who married out of high school, attended community college at night and finally got a graduate degree in her forties. Trust me, at this moment I am convinced of my own conscious incompetence and the even more blaring incompetence of the VP’s and CEO’s who have blindly kept promoting me – missing the obvious fact that I am an imposter. But I’m here to share with you that most of the successful people you and I know feel exactly the same way. We are scared to get in front of a crowd, we struggle to make everything right while making it look easy. Forget the degrees; forget working hard; there’s one core competence that matters. If you don’t have it, you simply won’t get from where you are today to where you want to go to until you ‘get it.’ Stay tuned!

What the Heck am I Doing Here?
When they offered me $40,000 to be the administrator in a tiny medical practice that delivered fewer than 5,000 doctor visits a year and a smattering of hospital admissions my pen hit the paper before the deal had time to be rescinded... I was sure they'd made a mistake offering somone like me that kind of money.

I had an Associate's degree and was attending night school working toward my Bachelor's degree. Six years later, to the day, I’m the Administrative Director for a highly tuned physician practice machine that delivers 50,000 visits a year, thousands of hospital admissions, and dozens of outreach services orchestrated through a staff of over 50 physicians, a dozen mid-level providers, and close to 75 nursing and administrative support staff.

For years, in the nighttime quiet, my head and thoughts buried in a down pillow, I turned the question over in my mind: "What happened; how did I get this lucky?" This year I turned 40, and the light bulb finally came on. How did I go from assistant navigator to senior pilot ---practically overnight? It’s taken me a 20 year career to ferret out the answer. And now that I’ve got it, I’m going to offer stories & advice that will help you navigate your way to “get it” too.

The answer is so simple it'll amaze you, interested reader. If you're looking for career advancement; even if you're in a position that seems to have little room to grow.. you'll learn from these true-life stories that anything is possible. The theories are simple, the personal growth needed require commitment. Read on...it can happen for you; I guarantee it.

Briannan