Career Growth for Working Women | Career Advancement, Visibility, Promotion, Raises

Have you ever told yourself you’re fine… while your body quietly disagrees?

So many high-performing working women assume burnout means they are not managing well enough, not resilient enough, or not strong enough. But what if burnout is not a personal flaw? What if it is feedback?

In this episode, I sit down with Rachael Edmondson-Clarke, a former corporate leader who knows the cost of high performance firsthand. After years of leadership success, Rachel collapsed on her office floor from burnout. That moment reshaped how she understood career growth, sustainability, and leadership.

Today, Rachael works with senior leaders and executive teams to help them perform at a high level without sacrificing their health, energy, or identity.

We talk about:
✅ Why burnout is often biological before it is emotional
✅ The difference between capability and capacity in leadership
✅ How high achievers unintentionally override their own warning signs
✅ Why rest and restoration are prerequisites for sustainable performance
✅ Small, realistic shifts that increase bandwidth without adding more pressure

If you are ambitious, responsible, and deeply committed to doing excellent work, this conversation will challenge the belief that pushing harder is the solution.

Burnout is not weakness. It is information.

And learning to read that information may be the most strategic career move you make.

🔗 Connect with Rachael Edmondson-Clarke 

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

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Are you proud of being low maintenance at work?

The one who handles everything without drama. The one who does not need managing. The one who quietly fixes problems before they escalate.

For high-performing women, that identity feels strong.

But what if being low maintenance is quietly slowing your career growth?

In this episode, we unpack the hidden career cost of being adaptable, dependable, and easy to work with. Because at higher levels, leadership does not promote the quiet executor. They promote the person whose leadership impact is clear and easy to articulate.

You will learn:
✅ Why low maintenance often becomes low visibility 
✅ The difference between being trusted to execute and trusted to lead 
✅ How over-functioning can train leadership to expect less authority from you 
✅ Why results without narrative rarely accelerate promotion 
✅ How to become visible without becoming performative

If your career growth feels slower than your capability, this conversation will hit.

You do not need to become louder. You need to become clearer.
Because at the next level, being easy is not the goal.
Being unmistakable is.

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

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Have you ever felt successful on the outside, but quietly exhausted, numb, or disconnected on the inside?

Do people see you as optimistic, capable, and strong… while you feel like something underneath is unraveling?

Have you ever wondered why achievement doesn’t always bring relief?

This episode is for the women who are doing “well” by every visible metric, yet feel tired of performing strength instead of living honestly.

My guest today is Polish Peter, a transformational coach whose story challenges the idea that success automatically equals fulfillment. Peter grew up in communist Poland and immigrated to the U.S. at 14 with no English, no safety net, and no clear identity. 

Over time, he built a life that looked impressive from the outside where he was speaking on hundreds of stages, coaching thousands of high performers, and being recognized repeatedly for his impact.

But his most important work did not come from growth alone. It came from breakdown.

After a divorce that shattered him emotionally and spiritually, Peter found himself in what he calls optimistic depression - appearing positive and driven while internally drowning. That season forced him to confront something many ambitious people avoid: the cost of performing instead of telling the truth.

So many high-achieving women have learned how to look okay long before they learned how to feel safe being honest.

They perform competence. They perform optimism. They perform resilience.

And over time, that performance becomes exhausting.

🎧 Listen now and join us for an honest conversation about performance, presence, and what real transformation looks like when you stop trying to fix yourself.

🔗 Connect with Polish Peter

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

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Have you ever felt like the harder you work, the less it seems to move your career forward?

You stay late.
You take ownership.
You carry more than your share.

And yet… things feel slower. Heavier. Stalled.

If you are a high-performing woman who built your career on effort, reliability, and excellence, this episode will hit.

Because there is a stage in your career where working harder does not make you more promotable.

It makes you more utilized.

And those two things are very different.

In this episode, we unpack:
✅ Why effort equals reward early in your career but not at higher levels
✅ The difference between being promotable and being highly utilized
✅ Why leadership promotes perceived impact, not visible exhaustion
✅ How over-functioning quietly caps your advancement
✅ The shift from effort to value clarity
✅ Why positioning matters more than performance at the next level

If you feel trusted but not elevated…
High potential but not advancing…
Valued but still proving yourself…

You are not underperforming.
You are likely using a strategy that has reached its ceiling.

This conversation reframes career stagnation for ambitious women who are ready for authority without over-efforting.

Because the next level is not unlocked by carrying more.
It is unlocked by making your value unmistakably clear.

If this resonates, listen closely. This is the shift that changes everything.

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

...

What if confidence isn’t something you think your way into?

What if the reason you feel stuck, invisible, or exhausted by visibility has nothing to do with mindset at all?

Many high-performing women are told they need to be more confident.

More visible. More assertive. More comfortable being seen.

But what if the real issue is not confidence but it’s safety?

In this episode, I’m joined by Jenny C. Cohen, an integrative neurosomatic practitioner and former award-winning performer, to explore why confidence advice often fails capable women and what actually happens in the body when visibility feels risky.

Jenny shares how years of performance, illness, identity shifts, motherhood, and trauma shaped her understanding of embodiment, and why so many women live disconnected from their bodies without realizing it.

We talk about:
✅ Why being “in your head” shows up as exhaustion, irritability, and invisibility
✅ How chronic stress and overfunctioning live in the body
✅ Why forcing confidence can increase burnout instead of relieving it
✅ The hidden cost of ignoring your body’s signals
✅ What embodied confidence actually looks like in real life
✅ Small, practical ways to rebuild safety and presence without pushing yourself

If confidence has ever felt like something you should have by now,but doesn’t quite land, this episode will help you understand why.

And more importantly, what to do instead.

🎧 Listen in for a grounded, honest conversation about confidence, embodiment, and what it really takes to feel safe being seen.

🔗 Connect with Jenny C. Cohen

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

...

Does your career feel heavier than it should at this level?

You’re hitting your goals.
You’re dependable.
You’re smart. Strategic. Capable.

And yet… it feels harder than it has any right to be.

If you are a high-performing woman who feels stuck, overlooked, under-leveled, or quietly frustrated despite doing everything “right,” this episode will shift how you see your career.

Because the issue may not be confidence.
It may not be executive presence.
It may not be effort.
It may be positioning.

In this solo episode, we unpack why so many capable women experience career friction at higher levels and why the strategy that got you here often stops working when you are ready for more.

We explore:
✅ Why effort equals reward early in your career but not later
✅ The difference between competence and leadership-level visibility
✅ Why being reliable can quietly lock you in place
✅ How mispositioning leads to exhaustion, resentment, and over-efforting
✅ The identity shift required for promotion and authority
✅ Why strategic clarity matters more than working harder

If you feel trusted but not promoted…
Valued but under-leveled…
Excellent but still proving yourself…

You are not behind.
You are not broken.

You may simply be operating under a success model that no longer matches the level you want to reach.

This episode reframes career frustration as data, not drama, and introduces a different path forward for ambitious women who are ready for authority without exhaustion.

If you have ever thought, “I know I’m meant for more, but I don’t know why it feels this hard to get there,” this conversation is for you.

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

...

Are you holding back at work because being visible feels risky

Do you know you have valuable ideas, but still hesitate to speak up or put yourself out there

Have you ever worried that being seen might make you look “too much” instead of credible

If any of that sounds familiar, this episode is for you 🩷

In this conversation, Shannon sits down with Kelly Schuknecht, a marketing leader with over 17 years of experience helping professionals grow their careers and businesses. Together, they unpack why so many capable women stay quiet at work, even when they know they have something important to say.

Kelly shares how confidence struggles often show up not as self-doubt, but as hesitation. Hesitation to be visible. Hesitation to claim expertise. Hesitation to step out from behind someone else’s vision and trust your own.

This episode reframes thought leadership as something very different from self-promotion. Instead of being about ego or attention, it becomes a way to clarify your thinking, build trust, and help others understand the value you already bring.

You will hear about:
✅ Why women are often conditioned to be “the person behind the person”
✅ How visibility can feel uncomfortable even when you are confident
✅ The difference between personal branding and thought leadership
✅ Why sharing your ideas is not about becoming louder, but becoming clearer
✅ How small visibility moves can change how leadership sees you

If you have ever felt overlooked at work, unsure how to speak up, or conflicted about being seen, this episode will help you understand what is really holding you back and what to do next.

🔗 Connect with Kelly Schuknecht

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

...

What actually keeps capable women stuck at work?

After 100 episodes, one pattern shows up more consistently than anything else. And it is not confidence, ambition, or effort.

It is mispositioning.

In this milestone episode, Shannon reflects on what hundreds of conversations with working women have revealed about career growth, leadership perception, and why so many successful women feel stalled even when they are doing everything right.

This episode bridges the evolution of the show, from conversations centered on working motherhood to a broader, more honest look at women’s careers across life stages. Because the patterns that hold women back do not start with motherhood. They start with how value is interpreted at work.

In this episode, you will explore:
✅ Why so many women are trusted, relied on, and appreciated but still not elevated
✅ The most common ways women create value at work and why some forms are easier for leadership to recognize than others
✅ How being successful on paper can still feel heavy, confusing, or misaligned
✅ The difference between performance and positioning and why effort alone often stops working
✅ Why women internalize career friction that was never personal
✅ What changes when you stop asking “What am I doing wrong?” and start asking “How is my value being read?”

Most women do not need to become more confident, more visible, or more ambitious.

They need their value to be legible.

When leadership cannot easily name how you create impact, growth slows. Not because you are failing, but because your contribution does not fit neatly into the boxes they already know how to reward.

Your career is not supposed to feel like constant effort.

At a certain point, the strategy that got you here expires. And that does not mean you failed. It means you are ready for positioning instead of proving.

This episode is not about fixing yourself. It is about understanding what 100 conversations have made clear about women, work, and what actually allows careers to move forward with clarity and sustainability.

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

...

Have you ever stepped into a role that kept expanding… without anyone really naming what you were responsible for?

Or found yourself carrying more and more because the system around you wasn’t clear enough to hold it?

My guest today is EA Clarke, a founder and executive who has spent decades inside fast-growing companies, building teams, scaling organizations, and watching what actually happens when growth outpaces clarity.

Across startups and scaling environments, EA kept noticing the same pattern. Companies don’t struggle because there’s a lack of talent. They struggle because expectations, communication, and role clarity quietly erode as they grow.

When that happens, people compensate.
They fill gaps.
They juggle competing priorities.
They take on work the system isn’t holding anymore.

And very often, the people doing that compensating are high-performing women.

This episode isn’t about doing more or pushing through.

It’s about understanding when you’re responding to a system problem, not a personal one, and how much relief comes from naming that difference.

If you’ve ever felt like your role keeps growing without conversation, or like you’re holding things together behind the scenes while everyone else moves forward, this conversation will help you see what’s really happening and why it’s not a failure on your part.

🔗 Connect with EA Clarke

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

...

Have you ever been told you are versatile, dependable, and capable in many ways, yet your career feels strangely stalled?

This episode explores why being great at everything can actually slow your career down at higher levels and why clarity often matters more than range when it comes to promotions and advancement.

When leadership cannot easily describe what you are known for, advancement often hesitates. Not because you lack ability, but because your contribution is spread across too many lanes to pattern match.

In this episode, we talk about how versatility can unintentionally dilute your signal, why leadership struggles to promote what they cannot place, and how women end up highly relied on without being elevated.

This conversation is for working women who feel trusted, involved, and busy but are ready for career growth that feels aligned instead of exhausting.

In this episode, we cover:
✨ Why being adaptable and capable everywhere can make advancement harder
✨ How leadership makes promotion decisions through pattern recognition
✨ The hidden cost of being seen as versatile instead of defined
✨ Why clarity beats capability at higher levels
✨ How to begin repositioning without shrinking or overcorrecting

If you have been feeling stretched, underrecognized, or quietly frustrated, this episode will help you understand what is really happening and why nothing about your career has been wasted.

You are not unfocused.
You are not failing.
You are simply at a stage where clarity matters more than range.

READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEP?
🚀 Start Here: Download the FREE 90-Day Raise Strategy and create your personalized plan to confidently position yourself for the raise you've earned. You'll also receive my exclusive Raise Strategy Coaching Series where I'll walk alongside you every step of the way.
📞 Let's Build Your Strategy Together: Book a Promotion Strategy Review if you're ready to personalize your plan, strengthen your positioning, and create a strategy that works for your manager, your company, and your career goals.
📲 Join the FB Community if you want to connect with other ambitious women for career conversations, support, and practical promotion strategies.
💌 Become an Insider to recieve weekly coaching, career strategy, behind-the-scenes insights, and practical tips to help you become impossible to overlook.

🎧 LOVE THE SHOW?
👉 Subscribe & leave a review so more ambitious working women can discover these game-changing career strategies!

✨ New episodes drop every Tuesday & Friday! Subscribe and leave a review if this resonated with you.

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