📣 I got promoted. Here’s the feedback that made it possible.

If you’re a decision maker at your company, you need to be on the bleeding edge of, well, everything. But before you go signing up for seminars, conferences, lunch ‘n learns, and all that jazz, just know there’s a far better (and simpler) way: Subscribing to The Deep View.

This daily newsletter condenses everything you need to know about the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. Squeeze it into your morning coffee break and before you know it, you’ll be an expert too.

Subscribe right here. It’s totally free, wildly informative, and trusted by 600,000+ readers at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and beyond.

👋 Hey friends,

I became a Senior PM 1 at HubSpot this week.

It took ~4 ish years from the day I landed my first PM role to get here. And the thing that made the biggest difference wasn’t a framework I learned or a certification I earned.

It was a single piece of feedback that changed how I worked.

A while back, my manager sat me down and told me something I wasn’t ready to hear: you’re shipping good work, but people can’t see the impact of what you’re doing.

I sat with that for a few days feeling a little defensive. I was close to my customers. I was collaborating well with engineering. Features were going out the door. What more was there?

But the more I sat with it, the more I realized I was confusing activity with impact. I was proving I was busy. I wasn’t proving I was moving the needle.

That feedback was uncomfortable.

It was also exactly what I needed.

Here’s what I changed after that conversation.

1. I stopped letting wins speak for themselves.

Shipped a feature? Great. But “we shipped it” is not a business outcome. I started asking: what changed because of this? Fewer support tickets? Higher adoption? Faster time to value? I got specific, and I got that data before anyone asked me for it.

2. I built the habit of connecting my work to metrics my stakeholders actually cared about.

Not vanity metrics. Not “users clicked the button.” The metrics that showed up in leadership conversations. I started learning what those were early, and reverse-engineered my work to speak that language.

3. I made impact visible in real time, not just at review time.

This one is big. Promotions aren’t decided the week of your review. They’re decided in the dozen small moments throughout the year where people see you operating above your level.

I started sharing impact updates proactively in Slack, in team meetings, in short async recaps. Not to brag, but to give people the evidence they needed to advocate for me.

Here’s something I haven’t shared publicly yet.

Leadership wasn’t sure I’d make it through this promotion cycle. There was a real conversation about whether it made more sense to wait one more round.

And, that’s fair.

Promotion decisions are hard, and I’d rather be in a place that thinks carefully about them than one that hands them out freely.

But I asked for the chance anyway. Not because I was certain I’d get it. Because I wanted the opportunity to try, get real feedback, and know exactly where I stood.

That ask mattered. Not because it guaranteed the outcome, but because it forced me to articulate my own case clearly. To put into words what I had actually done, what had changed because of it, and what senior meant to me in practice.

And it worked out. But even if it hadn’t, I would have walked away knowing more than I did going in. Waiting until you’re a sure thing sounds safe. It’s actually just a slower way to grow.

Pick one thing you’ve shipped or driven in the last 30 days. Write two sentences that describe its impact in business terms, not product terms.

No jargon. No feature names.

Just: what changed, and why does it matter?

That’s it.

Do that consistently and you’ll be surprised how differently people start to see you.

See you next Friday,
Stef

P.S. If you’re an aspiring PM wondering whether you’re ready to go for that next step, this is your sign to stop waiting. You don’t need to be a sure thing. You just need to be willing to ask for the chance, hear the feedback, and do something with it.

That’s exactly what we work through together on ADPList. Book a free session with me right here: https://adplist.org/mentors/stefanie-brown